27
January 1865
Audra picked some old, dried flowers off the rosebush she had planted at the head of her father’s grave. She hoped it would live, wouldn’t know for sure until it bloomed in spring. She had dug it up from near the house and planted it here five months ago, and it had bloomed a while longer, so she held hope it would come to life again in two or three more months.
Time seemed to have little meaning anymore. A day-by-day existence had made keeping track of dates pointless. She had only today realized that nearly five months had passed since her father had died. Her heart was filled with grief and guilt for having turned her back on him those first several months after finding out about Lena. Now a day did not go by that she did not wish he was with her, so that she could tell him again how much she loved him and needed his strength, his knowledge and wisdom…and his love.
She had never doubted that love. It was the way he chose to show it that had brought her such unhappiness. For Joey it had been the same, but she knew her father’s intentions had been good, and she was glad that she had forgiven him though forgiveness brought scant relief to her sore heart. Why did it take a person’s death to make those left behind realize the depth of their own love? It seemed that everything in life was backward, that no one seemed to know what was really important. Right now she just wanted peace, and to know where her next meal was coming from. She glanced down the hill at Toosie, who was loosening the dirt from last year’s garden with a hoe, keeping it prepared for planting again in a couple of months. Although it was January, it had been very warm, in the upper sixties, and the day was pleasant.
Lena sat in a chair on the porch, wearing a shawl, even weaker now since Joseph’s death. She had wept pitifully those first few days and had not been able to eat. What a shame it was that Lena had lived her life loving a man she could never truly have, but Audra could no longer hate or blame her. Now she simply understood. She had secretly vowed always to care for Lena and Toosie, and though she knew deep inside how much she cared for them, she had never really been able to tell them.
Part of her still could not forget they were Negroes, and that she was not supposed to care for them as she did; but more and more, these people were the only ones she could depend on—not just Lena and Toosie, but Henrietta and the few remaining slaves who had stayed on at Brennan Manor. Even Jonathan Horne had finally left, the last white person on the plantation besides herself.
The Negroes were doing what they could to help grow food and to take care of at least the house and grounds. The house was in bad need of painting, but there was no money for it. The thousands of acres beyond the home were overgrown, as was the land belonging to Cypress Hollow. Audra was not sure what she would do if Joey did not show up soon. There was pitifully little money left.
She knew she might be forced to leave, but she did not want to go until she knew what had happened to her brother. This was where he would come when the war was over…home. She should be here. She did not like the thought of possibly having to sell some of her property, but it might be necessary just to survive. She looked at her father’s grave once more, the old ache returning.
A horse came galloping into the back lawn, ridden bareback by a Negro man who charged up to Toosie and Henrietta and began shouting excitedly. Audra quickly left the gravesite and hurried toward the rider, alarmed when she thought she could hear more horses, a thundering sound, as though many riders were coming. Toosie threw down her hoe and yelled for her to hurry. When Audra reached her, Toosie grasped her arm and began pulling at her as she hurried toward the house.
“Get in the wood box in the kitchen!” she told Audra as they hurried up the back steps. “Henrietta, tell Mama to pretend she can’t talk! No matter what happens, she should keep still!”
“Toosie, what’s going on?” Audra demanded.
The Negro man who had ridden in galloped off to hide his horse, and Henrietta hurried her hefty frame past them and outside to talk to Lena.
“Union men!” Toosie told Audra as they hurried inside the kitchen. “The bad kind we’ve heard about—more like outlaws than soldiers! They’ve already been to Cypress Hollow and burned everything down. March Fredericks has turned traitor to his own kind and joined the Union outlaws. That was Freddie Washington that rode in. He said he got away and came straight here to tell us they’re coming this way. March Fredericks is looking for you!” She opened the wood box. “You hide in here, and I’ll cover you with more wood so they can’t see you.”
Audra turned to her before climbing into the box. “What about you?”
Toosie grasped her arms. “It’s not me Fredericks is after. If he finds you here, he’ll rape you and kill you, sure as I’m standing here! I’ll go sit on the porch with Mama and try to convince him you aren’t here anymore—that you’ve gone to New Orleans to live with Eleanor and her husband because your father is dead and there’s nothing left here now. If March thinks you’re gone, he might not do so much damage.”
“Toosie, you’re putting yourself in too much danger!”
The girl’s eyes hardened. “I’m just a nigger, remember? They’re not interested in niggers, just white women.”
“Don’t pretend with me, Toosie! You know good and well how beautiful you are to white men, you and Lena both! If they can’t get hold of me, they’ll take it out on you!”
“It’s a chance we have to take. If we all hide, they’ll know for sure something isn’t right, and they’ll tear this place apart looking for all of us. When they find us, it will just be worse for everybody! This is our only chance of getting rid of them without too much trouble! Now get in the box, Audra! Hurry! I can already hear them coming!”
Their eyes met, and Audra reached out and embraced her. “God be with you, Toosie.” She wished there was more time to think, but the sound of oncoming riders told her there was not. She climbed into the wood box, at an end where a good deal of wood had been removed. Toosie began quickly taking logs from the other end and placing them over her. Audra covered her head with her hands, and she bent over from the weight of the wood, finding it hard to breathe and wondering how many spiders shared the wood-box with her. This was no time to be worried about dirt and bugs. This was a matter of life and death. Toosie grabbed up some nearby kindling from a basket then and threw it on top of the wood that covered her. “I can’t see you at all,” Audra heard her say. “Just stay there, no matter what happens.”
Everything went dark when Toosie closed the lid to the box. “I’m going out onto the porch now to sit with Henrietta and Mama like we’re just enjoying the day.”
Audra heard nothing more, until she could literally feel the approaching horses. She could hear men shouting then, heard guns being fired, heard a scream. Who was it? The thought of March Fredericks turning on his own people sickened and infuriated her. She did not doubt that this was his way of getting back at the big plantation owners, men who had for years told him what to do, ordered him around. Richard and her father had both fired the man at different times, and she had never forgotten the sinister way he used to look at her. She knew Toosie was right about what he would do to her if he found her. She waited with a pounding heart, the weight of the wood becoming more and more oppressive. Something crawled over her hand, but she dared not move to shake it off.
Someone ran through the kitchen then, the footsteps heavy. A shot rang out, and a woman screamed again, followed by a hard thud. Someone heavy had been shot! Henrietta? No, not Henrietta! She heard more footsteps, several people, surely March and his men. There was a great deal of laughter, shouting and swearing, crashing sounds.
“I don’t believe you, you nigger bitch!” It was March’s voice. Audra knew it well.
“I told you she’s not here,” Toosie said, a pleading sound to her voice. An ache moved through Audra’s heart. Toosie was risking her life to keep her from harm. They sounded as though they were only a few feet from the wood box. “Search the house if you want. She’s gon
e to New Orleans to live with Eleanor. Look around! There’s nothing left for her now. Joey is gone, and Master Joseph died five months ago. The place is in ruins. Mama and I only stayed because we’ve got no place else to go!”
“Yeah, and because your mama loved Joseph Brennan. He fucked her good for a lot of years. You think people didn’t know that?”
Audra cringed, wanting to cover her ears.
“Now you’re the young pretty one,” March growled at Toosie. “I’m gonna find out what it was about your mama Joseph thought was so damn excitin’! I came here for a piece of ass, and if Audra Potter ain’t here to give it to me, then you’ll have to do!”
Audra heard a slap and the sound of someone falling. There came more shouting and the sound of heavy boots again. “Ain’t no pretty white girl in this whole place, Fredericks,” someone complained. “You lied to us, dammit, March! She wasn’t at the other place either!”
“We’re headin’ out to the next farm,” said another. “Ain’t nothin’ left here worth lootin’ except a few chickens and a couple of horses.”
“What about this little gal here?” someone else spoke up.
“This one’s mine,” March told them all sternly.
“Ain’t no other decent women left. The one out on the porch is pretty, but she’s a damn cripple, and there ain’t no man gonna have at that fat ole thing over there.”
“Hell, she’s dead, anyway. Let’s go! Abel says he’s sure there’s a couple of young girls at the farm west of here. He used to work there.”
The Benson girls! Audra thought. Herbert Benson owned a much smaller farm west of them, and he had two daughters, only sixteen and twelve. A man named Abel Runyon used to work for them. Another traitor! she groaned inwardly. Their own people were turning on them, using the war and the vulnerability of people who had lost everything as an excuse to come through and take what was left. How could men so easily turn into savages!
“Go ahead,” March was saying. “They ain’t the prettiest, but they’re young.”
“And they’ve got white skin. I’m sick of niggers. You can have this one.”
Men trampled out. Audra almost gasped aloud when one stopped and opened the wood box, then slammed the lid down again. “Shit!” he cussed. “If the bitch is hidin’ around here, I don’t know where it could be. Hell, a place this big, there’s a hundred places for her to hide.”
“I told you, she’s not here,” Toosie spoke up. Audra thought she sounded as though she was in pain.
“Maybe I can get it out of the crippled woman,” one of the others spoke up.
“No!” Toosie cried out. “My mama can’t talk. She had a stroke back in sixty-two and can’t speak.”
“Well, then, if she’s a cripple and can’t speak besides, she’s a pretty useless nigger, ain’t she?” the man answered. “You know what happens to useless niggers.”
The man walked out. “No! Wait!” Toosie screamed.
Audra heard a gunshot, and she felt like vomiting. Lena!
“No! No! Mama!” Toosie screamed.
There came a mixture of sounds then, men shouting outside, horses running again, combined with Toosie’s screams in the kitchen, and the sound of a struggle. Something crashed, bodies fell. She could hear blows, and Toosie was begging March to leave with the others.
“I’m gettin’ my piece, white or nigger,” he growled.
Audra could hear him ripping and tearing at Toosie’s clothes, and she could not let the horror go on any longer. Toosie was literally sacrificing herself for her, and she did not doubt that March Fredericks would kill her when he was finished with her. She strained upward against the heavy logs, pushing until the wood box opened and a few of the logs fell out. She wished there had been time to get her father’s rifle that she kept in the parlor, but there had not, and it probably would not have done much good against so many men; but there was only one man now, and he was so engrossed in trying to rape Toosie that he was not even aware of Audra’s presence.
March had Toosie down on the floor, and she lay as though in a daze, her nose and mouth bleeding. The skirt of her dress as well as her bloomers were torn away, and the man was positioning himself between her slender legs. Audra climbed out of the box, and finally March turned to see her standing over him with an upraised log. She brought it down hard against his head before he could stop her, and he fell away from Toosie, the front of his pants open. Audra brought the log down again, aiming for his privates, knowing that if she could hurt him there she could disable him long enough to find a way to kill him, but the man got to his feet too quickly. Her second blow glanced off his leg, and instantly he grabbed her around her throat with a powerful hand.
Only then she saw that in his right hand he held a knife. His head bleeding, the man pushed her to the floor, pressing the knife against her cheek, the tip of it near her eye. “So,” he sneered through yellow teeth, his breath reeking of whiskey. “You are here, you haughty little bitch! When I’m through with you, you’ll wish you had let me have at Toosie and stayed hidden, sweet little Miss Audra.”
He kept the knife near her eye and raised up enough to reach under her skirt and rip at her bloomers, then ripped into the skirt of her dress and cut it away. Audra struggled to breathe, trying to think straight. All she could see was that big knife, but she wondered if it might be better to feel it cutting into her than to feel March Fredericks shoving himself inside of her. Either way, he was going to kill her. She would rather fight him and die in the struggle than allow him his pleasure first.
He came down closer then, rubbing himself against her thigh, holding the knife close to her face again. “I’m glad the rest of them left,” he said with a hideous grin. “Now you’re all mine! Not so high and mighty anymore, are you, Miss Audra? You ain’t no better than me, and you never was!”
Audra stared at the knife, lying still for a moment to let him think she was going to submit. Suddenly she grabbed his right wrist with both hands and pushed it away, at the same time quickly ramming her head upward into his nose. March grunted and rolled slightly to his right. Audra used the moment to scramble out from under him and grab hold of a small black skillet that had fallen to the floor when the house was raided.
Instantly March was on her before she could get up. She swung the skillet, clobbering him in the head, but rather than hurt him, she only made him angrier. She wiggled to get away, hit at him with the pan again, but he grabbed her arm and slammed it hard against the floor. Audra screamed with a terrible pain in her right wrist.
“Bitch! Bitch!” he kept growling as a hard fist landed into her face twice. “I’ll kill you!”
Then Audra felt the tip of his knife jab into her throat. From then on everything that happened seemed as though it was a dream, as if she were standing there just watching the struggle. She was startled to realize she felt no pain, even though she knew that March Fredericks had cut her throat. Straddling her, he leered at her, holding the bloody knife in front of her eyes. She thought he was telling her he would cut her eyes out when he was done raping her, but his voice sounded far, far away.
For one brief moment, she thought she could hear Lee’s voice. I love you, Audra. She felt an amazing calm, and she stared at March Fredericks, while behind him Toosie stood looking down at them, Joseph Brennan’s rifle in her hands. Still, all sound seemed muffled, and when Toosie pulled the trigger on the rifle and fired, Audra heard only a faint, faraway echo. March Fredericks’s head caved in, and his body lurched to the side, pieces of flesh and skull landing on Audra’s dress.
Audra lay helplessly, watching Toosie, who stood frozen for a moment, still aiming the rifle at March’s body. She walked around Audra. “Your men killed my mama,” she said coldly. She fired the rifle again, this time into the man’s chest. Finally, as though coming out of a trance, she looked at Audra and threw down the rifle, ripping a piece of cotton slip from what was left of her clothes hanging on her body. She pushed the cloth against Audra’s throat.
<
br /> “Audra! Don’t die on me, please!”
Audra tried to answer, but she could not make her voice work.
“Oh, my God,” Toosie wailed. “Hold still!” She pressed the cotton tighter, pushed Audra’s hair back to study her neck. “He didn’t get the big veins. Hold this to your throat!”
Audra obeyed, still feeling no pain, wondering if she was already dying.
“I’ll go get some of the Negroes at the camp houses, if they aren’t all dead, too!” She leaned closer. “I’ll have them take you into one of their cabins. If those men come back, they’ll never think to look for a white woman in the Negro camps. I’ll find somebody to help me hide March Fredericks’s body. If those men come back and find out I killed him, they’ll rape me and hang me for sure! I’ve got to find a way to get rid of the body!”
Toosie’s face was bloody and swollen, and Audra could see her beginning to panic. She could hear a crackling sound, and she smelled smoke. Instinctively she knew that her precious home was burning. One of the Yankee raiders must have set a fire in another part of the house before he left.
She kept the cloth pressed tight against her throat. The pain was beginning to set in now, and she kept swallowing something, soon realizing it was her own blood, but she told herself to stay calm. Somehow she had to help Toosie. She grasped the woman’s wrist with her free hand, leaning up to her, trying to talk. “What is it? What is it?” Toosie asked. “I’ve got to get help, Audra!”
Audra squeezed her wrist, trying to tell her she had to stay calm. “Old…well,” she managed to say in a rough whisper. It was as loud as she could speak. “Throw…him…in the…old well…put…the cover…on it.”
Toosie was shaking. She nodded. “I’ll get you help!”
Toosie picked up the rifle and ran out of the house, and Audra collapsed to the floor beside March Fredericks, wondering if she would bleed to death or be consumed by the fire before Toosie made it back.
Tender Betrayal Page 38
