by Ginny Dye
“What you doing now, Moses?” Charlie asked.
Moses decided the attempt to explain his relationship with Thomas Cromwell, and the fact that he was half-owner of the plantation, would be completely unbelievable. He didn’t want to shatter the rapport he felt building. “I’m headed to Memphis with my friends.”
Charlie nodded, not seeming to care if he knew more of the story. He was suddenly eager to tell his own. “My kids be all grown up now. I ain’t sure where they be, but I found out through somebody in Richmond that my wife be out in Nashville. As far as I know, she ain’t with no other man.”
“Does she know you’re coming?”
Charlie shook his head, his eyes suddenly hesitant. “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout sendin’ no letter,” he admitted. “I don’t know how to read. I don’t reckon my wife do either. What good be a letter?”
“Do you know where she lives?” Moses asked. He knew Nashville wasn’t a small town.
“Done heard she lives with a sister down in the black part of town. I’m just gonna look ‘til I find her.” Charlie’s face twisted with emotion. “I sho nuff didn’t figure I would ever see her again. I don’t know for sho that I find her, but I sho nuff gonna try.”
Moses had more information he wanted. “Have you lived in Richmond since the end of the war?”
“Pretty much. I came in from the master’s place right before all them men got rounded up last summer and shipped back out to the country. I guess they left me alone ‘cause I be so old. They didn’t figur’ I’d do them much good workin’ in the fields again.”
“How have you been living?” Moses asked.
Charlie shrugged. “I been stayin’ here and there with folks. I been tryin’ to get a job, but nobody wants me ‘cause I’m so old. Folks been takin’ pretty good care of me, though. Ever’body be stickin’ together pretty good. I don’t see many people full, but I don’t see many starvin’ either. We all knows we be in the same boat.” He stared at the church steeples barely visible in the distance. “I left me some good friends in Richmond, but I want to see my wife again before I die. I done seen lots of families gettin’ back together over the last year. I reckon I wouldn’t mind none if it were me that had the smile on my face,” he added quietly.
Moses put a hand on his shoulder. “I hope you find her, Charlie.”
He looked around at the other people on the train. One in particular caught his attention. The piercing eyes focused on him indicated he had caught the other man’s attention as well. He stood, gripping the seatbacks to steady himself against the swaying of the train, and walked back. “Mind if I sit down?”
“Nope.”
Moses sat, studying the man who was studying him so carefully. He liked the man’s lean muscles, steady eyes, and calm expression. “I’m Moses.”
“I’m Dillon.”
Moses waited for him to say more, but there was just silence. “I’m heading out to Memphis,” he said casually. He waited a moment to see if Dillon would give him more information. He remained silent, but his eyes demanded more. “Have you ever heard about the boat that went down outside of Memphis last year?”
Dillon’s face twisted. “The Sultana.”
“Yes. I’m heading out there with a friend who almost died when the boat exploded.”
“One of the men you tried to board first class with?” Dillon asked bluntly.
Moses smiled. Dillon was obviously a careful observer. That meant he had heard everything he told Charlie. His gut told him Dillon also had a good reason to be so careful. “Yes. Matthew Justin is a journalist. He was traveling up the river with the returning soldiers from the prison camps.”
“Andersonville,” Dillon said bitterly.
“That’s right,” Moses said carefully, sensing that the surface calm hid a churning cauldron. “You spend time there?”
Dillon sighed heavily and seemed to relax some. “No. A bunch of men from my battalion were captured the last year of the war. They got sent to Andersonville.” His face stiffened. “They all died.”
Moses grimaced. “Over thirteen thousand men died there,” he said quietly. “Did you know the man who ran Andersonville, Henry Wirz, was found guilty of war crimes and hanged last November?”
Dillon nodded. “I heard. Seems to me he’s about the only one that didn’t get away with what he did. The rest of them high falutin’ Confederate men just seem to have gone back to their cushy lives.” His eyes flashed angrily and took on a haunted look that quickly faded into blankness.
Moses watched him. “Where are you headed, Dillon?”
“North.” Dillon’s voice was now as emotionless as his eyes.
Moses had seen this before. Talk of Andersonville had triggered painful memories for Dillon. “Where in the North?” he probed gently, trying to bring his new friend back from the darkness.
“As far north as I can go,” Dillon finally said after a long silence. His eyes met Moses’s. “I was stupid enough to think things would be better after the war. I thought if I helped win our freedom, that life would be better.”
Moses waited quietly. He understood what he was feeling all too well.
Dillon’s eyes took on a new level of raw pain. “They came for us.”
Moses waited, but Dillon had seemed to turn inward. “Came for you? What do you mean?”
Dillon stared at him, his eyes suddenly wild and feral. He clenched his fists as his face seemed to melt with agony. “A bunch of white men,” he finally ground out. “Last month. I was down in North Carolina with my family. I had walked into town through the woods to get some supplies. When I was almost home I heard a bunch of horses coming from the direction of my house…” His eyes glazed over as his voice faltered.
Moses felt sick. He knew what was coming.
“I jumped into the woods,” Dillon continued. “A group of white men galloped by. They was laughing and talking like they ain’t just done something horrible.” He shook his head. “I knew even before I got there. My wife and kids…” His voice faltered again. “They’d been beat to death.” His shoulders shook with silent sobs. “They done left me a note saying I best get out of the South or they would come back for me.”
Moses’s heart clinched at the same time he was filled with a fury so intense it almost choked him. “I’m sorry,” he managed. Right on the heels of his words was a sudden fear of what could happen to Rose and the rest of his family while he was gone. He tightened his fists as he battled his feelings.
“You got a family, Moses?” Dillon asked hoarsely.
“A wife and two children,” Moses responded, trying to speak evenly.
“You ought to leave the South,” Dillon hissed. “It ain’t gonna do anything but get worse.”
Moses saw the flames devouring the school and saw the fear on everyone’s face. He fought to think clearly. “They passed the Civil Rights Act,” he said firmly. “The Congress is fighting to make things better.” He winced when he realized how little confidence he had in those facts.
Dillon watched him with something akin to pity. “Can’t no law stop hatred,” he said bluntly. “Me? I’m going north to look for work. There ain’t nothing left to keep me down here. People in the South forced me to live as a slave most all my life. Now they done killed ever’body I loved. I wish I had been there so they could have killed me, too, but I weren’t so lucky. Now I just gotta figure out how to live.”
Moses searched for something to say, but he knew there were no words that would make any difference. He reached out and put his hand on Dillon’s shoulder for a long moment. Dillon’s eyes thanked him, but it did nothing to erase the pain on his face.
The two men sat quietly. Moses took deep breaths, beginning to see the shadow of an outline that was trying to give shape to his rampaging thoughts and feelings.
Matthew and Robert had passed the first hours in silence, both content to sit with their thoughts. The clouds had cleared, leaving a golden sun to kiss the tops of the mountains as they d
rew closer to the foothills. Rivers, swollen with melting snow and recent rains, gushed beneath the wooden bridges they crossed, newly rebuilt in the year since the war ended. They passed plenty of empty, barren fields, but they were now patch-worked with vibrant green fields bringing life back to the scorched Shenandoah Valley.
“Lots of memories,” Matthew finally murmured.
Robert nodded, too buried in haunting thoughts to even attempt to communicate with words.
“Has it gotten easier?” Matthew pressed.
Robert considered the question, sensing his friend was asking for himself as much as he was asking about him. Both of them had suffered so much through the war. Finally he shrugged. “Easier? I don’t know. I live with the memories better — at least on the plantation. Being back here…remembering all the battles…all the lives lost…” his voice faltered. He stared out the window until he felt control return. “I’m alive. The nightmares aren’t as bad. I chose to not die,” he said thoughtfully. “I guess that means it’s a little easier.”
“I suppose that’s all we can ask for,” Matthew agreed somberly. “Libby Prison was a hellhole, but it’s one I escaped. I guess that is what makes it easier. The Sultana? It was a senseless destruction of lives that should never have happened. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between my grief and my anger.”
Robert nodded. He understood all too well. He picked his words carefully. “I guess I have finally found a measure of peace in knowing there are no answers. I used to try to make sense of it. I tried to understand all the reasons for the war. I thought that would help.”
“It doesn’t,” Matthew said flatly. “I try to make sense of everything for my readers every day, but in the end I realize none of it makes sense. We are simply left to attempt to live our lives in the wake of a handful of people’s decisions. I do the best I can to clarify issues for my readers, and I hope I compel people to take action if they disagree with something, but in the end I have no control of anything.”
“We simply do the best we can,” Robert agreed. “I love life on the plantation because there are many days I can pretend we never had a war. I don’t think about battles, or being paralyzed, or almost dying.” He took a deep breath. “I work with the horses, I teach Clint and Amber, and I breathe fresh air. That’s all I really want.”
“It’s a good life,” Matthew said.
“It is, except that I miss Carrie every moment of every day.” His heart tightened as he thought of his beautiful wife. He missed her laughing green eyes and the way she understood what he was feeling even before he said anything. “It’s been less than two weeks since she left, but it seems like forever.”
“Do you regret her going to medical school?” Matthew asked carefully.
“Not even for a moment,” Robert responded quickly, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss her. It seems we’ve been apart more than we’ve been together since we married.”
“It seems that way because it’s true,” Matthew said wryly.
Robert sighed. “I remember when I first met Carrie. I fell in love with her almost immediately. I thought life would be so simple. We would get married, return to Oak Meadows, and raise a family.”
“And then the war happened.”
Robert shrugged. “Even if the war hadn’t happened, life would never have been the way I dreamed it would be. Carrie is not a plantation wife. She has always wanted more than that. I got a letter from her right before we left. She loves being in Philadelphia. She loves her new housemates. They are all going to the Women’s Rights Convention in New York.” He wasn’t surprised when Matthew cocked his brow at his tone. He frowned with frustration. “Is it wrong that I struggle with my wife’s insistence on independence?”
“Is it?” Matthew asked, his eyes watching him keenly.
Robert shook his head. “I’ll never stand in her way, because I love her too much. I can’t help wishing, though — at least sometimes — that she was content with staying on the plantation. It would certainly make life simpler.”
“I understand how you feel.”
“Do you?” Robert asked sharply, hating the tone of his voice, but his surging emotions made it impossible to sound reasonable. “Do you really? Sometimes I think it would have been better for Carrie if she had fallen in love with you instead of me.”
Matthew gazed at him steadily. “This isn’t about any feelings I have for Carrie. It’s about the fact that she loves you with all her heart. I know it ripped her in two to leave you on the plantation, but she is following something inside of herself that is bigger than she is. I know what women in medical school go through. It takes more than a casual desire to put up with the abuse they take on a regular basis. She’s choosing to be a doctor because it’s who she is. She would not be the woman you love if she shoved aside her own desires to stay on the plantation with you. It would make her less than she is.”
Robert sighed heavily. “I know,” he admitted. “I’m sorry for what I said. Can we just chalk it up to a moment of weakness and forget it?”
Matthew smiled easily. “If our friendship endured a war that put us on opposite sides, I’m certain we can handle a conversation.”
A sudden commotion at the front of the car grabbed both their attention.
Chapter Fifteen
“If things don’t change, Memphis will be destroyed!” a man shouted angrily. He leaned over his seat and shook his fist at a man in the seat behind him, his generous girth straining against his elegant jacket as dark eyes flashed beneath iron gray hair. “And it will be your fault, John Eaton. That poor excuse of a newspaper that you publish is going to be the end of all that is good about Memphis!”
Robert stretched forward to see the man he was talking to. He was immediately impressed by the steady dark eyes beneath a wave of dark hair. John Eaton’s face was covered by a salt and pepper mustache and a beard that hung down almost to his chest. He gazed calmly at his attacker.
“I hardly think one newspaper can destroy Memphis, Alfred.”
Alfred’s face grew even redder as he continued to shake his fist. “Your kind is doing all it can to destroy the city I helped found forty years ago. If it were up to you, I think you would want nothing but niggers filling the street.”
“From what I can tell, it’s not the blacks creating problems in Memphis,” Eaton responded. “You might look to the Irish running your government and police, or to the conservatives who are trying to deny basic human rights to all those who now call Memphis home.”
Robert leaned over to Matthew. “Do you know this man?”
Matthew nodded, his eyes locked on John Eaton. “He’s the owner and chief editor of the Memphis Post, one of the city’s two Republican newspapers. He’s not been in the city very long.”
Alfred was still ranting. “All that is good about the South has been destroyed,” he shouted. He pointed suddenly out the window.
Robert followed his pointing finger. Huddled by the side of the tracks, tucked against the woods, were groups of blacks gathered around campfires, laughing and talking as they ate.
“Look at them poor niggers,” Alfred snapped. “Everybody knows they can’t take care of themselves. They call that freedom? They think Yankees have come down here and done something good for them, but they’re forgetting the southern people were always their best friends.”
“Friends don’t make their friends slaves,” Eaton said blandly.
Alfred scowled. “The niggers have always needed someone to take care of them. We were doing them a favor.”
“That’s a dead argument,” Eaton responded, his eyes flashing but his voice still calm. “The blacks are no longer slaves. They are free people who are close to getting the rights they deserve. You are aware the Civil Rights Act passed, aren’t you?”
Alfred shook his fist again. “They can pass whatever blasted law they want to pass. Memphis is our city, and we’re going to treat the niggers the way we want to treat them. We don’t need all of them cro
wding our city. We certainly don’t need all the Yankees cluttering our streets, and the missionaries have done nothing but create problems ever since they arrived with their ridiculous plans of educating the niggers. They’re doing nothing but putting foolish ideas into their heads.”
Eaton smiled. “Are you aware of how many blacks are in school? Are you aware of how many are working? They aren’t cluttering your streets, Alfred. They’re helping to create a city we can all be proud of. You would see that if you weren’t so stuck in your Old Citizen ways. You may have helped found Memphis, but it’s going to take everyone in the city to move it into the future.”
Alfred’s face grew bright red as his Adams apple pressed against his starched shirt. He sputtered, searching for words to continue the attack.
Matthew took advantage of the break in the action to fill Robert in on what he knew. “John Eaton is on the executive committee of the Union Republican Party of Memphis that was created just this month. They are staunch believers that all men are created equal, and they believe the federal government has a duty to protect citizens’ rights.”
At the front of the train car, Alfred seemed to have run out of steam — at least for the moment. He sank down in his seat, his face set in angry lines.
“Eaton was a brevet brigadier general in the Union Army during the war,” Matthew continued. “He started out as a teacher and public school administrator and then went into the ministry.”
“The ministry?” Robert echoed.
“When he went to war, he went as a chaplain, not a soldier. In 1862, he was appointed to oversee the care of thousands of runaway slaves who had made it to the lines of Grant’s Army in west Tennessee and north Mississippi.”
“A contraband camp,” Robert murmured, thinking of everything Rose had told him about the Grand Contraband Camp she taught at.
“Yes. He ran the camp for the rest of the war and then joined the Freedmen’s Bureau in Washington, DC. He decided he could better serve the Union by publishing a Republican newspaper here in Memphis, so he gathered enough investors to finance it. He and his wife moved here late last year.”
