by Beth White
“Never mind that,” Moore interrupted. “I want to know where my sister is.”
Finding a place to stash Mr. and Mrs. Frye turned out to be a bit more complicated than anyone could have foreseen.
“Who is looking for him?” had been Joelle’s first question after she was introduced to the frail, mild-eyed schoolteacher. He had obviously been born a white man, but his skin had been darkened to make him look like a Negro from a distance.
Horatia wasn’t really sure. “We’ve been hiding him with Reverend Boykin in Shake Rag,” she said. “But after Mr. Schuyler came to visit—”
“Wait. Schuyler was there? When?” Joelle leaned against her desk. Her knees felt wobbly after the close call with Hixon nearly following her into the schoolroom.
“Yesterday,” said Shug. “He came to our afternoon prayer meeting and stayed for supper.”
That did not sound like Schuyler at all. “Schuyler came to a prayer meeting?”
“Yes, ma’am. Sure did.”
“Do you know what happened to his back?”
Shug and Horatia looked at one another.
“He didn’t tell you?” Horatia asked.
“There seems to be a lot he hasn’t told me. Never mind, we’ll get to his injuries in a minute. You were about to tell me what happened after he came to visit y’all yesterday.”
Horatia nodded. “He told us the Klan is spoiling for another showdown of some sort, and he’s afraid it might come back to Shake Rag. We all decided our village might not be the safest place after all for such an important witness. So we brought him here to see if you could find somewhere else to hide him and his wife.”
Joelle had stared at Frye, who just blinked at her from behind his glasses. Who was this man?
Things only got more complicated when she met Georgia Frye. A lifetime of established taboos roared to the surface. There simply was no road map to tell her how to navigate this strange new world in which she found herself. Education was one thing, but interracial marriage seemed both bizarre and unnecessarily dangerous. She couldn’t help wondering if Horatia had some of the same reservations, considering her previous objections to her daughter marrying the ebony-skinned Nathan Vincent.
There was no time to worry about it now, though. Georgia was easy to disguise as a kitchen maid hired for the party preparations. Nobody would take a second look at her, but Frye himself presented a trickier problem. He seemed neither fish nor fowl—a well-mannered white man with no trade besides that of educator, he would not pass for a servant, but because he was hunted, could not openly live in the hotel as a guest. She could hide him in one of the outbuildings—the icehouse or even the bathhouse, for example—but some guest would inevitably walk in on him, as Hixon had nearly done this morning.
Trying to get to the root of the problem, Joelle sat down with Frye at the kitchen table and listened to his account of the couple’s harrowing odyssey from Chattanooga to Memphis to Tupelo. “Believe me when I say I understand your passion for teaching,” she said when he’d finished his tale. “I’ve been exploring ways to keep my little school afloat amidst the lack of funds and supplies, not to mention the opposition of my neighbors. But help me understand your reluctance to leave the South. You could travel west, perhaps find a homestead to develop, where you and your family would be safe and you could found a school with little to no drama.”
“Of course we’ve discussed that very thing, many times.” Frye glanced at his wife, who quietly helped knead and shape bread dough into loaves across the room. “But as I told Mr. Beaumont, I have proof of certain federal crimes that my conscience will not let me ignore. I am waiting for these men to be brought to trial by the authorities so that I may testify. Until then, United States Marshals have tried to protect me with only moderate success. Twice I’ve barely escaped with my life. My wife’s own brother is one of their pawns and can most certainly identify us both. If he discovers where I am this time . . .” Looking troubled, he shook his head. “I don’t think we’d survive another attack. Mr. Riggins said if we began to suspect Shake Rag was no longer safe, we should apply to you. Miss Daughtry, these are very dangerous men, and I deeply regret putting you and your family in peril. I simply don’t know where else to turn.”
“Of course you did the right thing. I wish Schuyler were here . . . but he isn’t, so we’ll just have to improvise. Levi will be back by Wednesday. Until then I’m going to put you in my own room in the manager’s cottage. No one would think to invade my private space.”
Georgia Frye turned, looking horrified. “No, Miss Daughtry, we could never—”
“Yes. You could, and you will. I insist. Otherwise, I couldn’t live with myself. I’ll just make up a bed here in the kitchen by the fire. I’ve slept here many times while the cottage was being renovated.”
Frye frowned. “But what if someone comes in here early and discovers you sleeping here? Won’t they consider that odd?”
“I assure you,” Joelle said dryly, “this is by far one of the least odd things I’ve done in my life. No one will think a thing about it. Now tell me how I can get in touch with the Missionary Society about securing a qualified teacher for our school.”
twenty-five
“BEAUMONT, IF YOU DON’T SHUT YOUR TRAP, I’m going to gag you.” Crouching to remove a stone from one of his mount’s shoes, Jefcoat looked over his shoulder, a scowl making a straight line out of his thick dark eyebrows. He had become increasingly taciturn during the long ride back to Tupelo, which Schuyler took as a sign of both distrust and irritation.
Schuyler, forced to ride with his hands now in front of him, manacled to the saddle horn, had been allowed to dismount and stretch his legs. He grinned at his erstwhile tavern crawl companion. “I could always sing instead, if that would encourage a more cheerful disposition.”
Jefcoat snarled and turned back to the task at hand.
During the previous two hours of necessarily slow travel, Schuyler had used the time to engage his Negro captor in conversation. Besides the fact that information could generally be weaponized, he was genuinely curious about the unnatural alliance between a former slave and a demonstrably racist farm boy.
Tidbits he’d uncovered included the fact that, antebellum, Moore had risen to the position of overseer on the Jefcoat plantation. At the end of the war, he had been hired as a contractual agent between Jefcoat Senior and the labor needed to resume cotton production. Predictably, the freedman’s incentive to work for pennies on the dollar made Moore’s task both thankless and difficult. Still, his position was more desirable than the abject poverty of most of his peers. He had a tidy home, steady income, and little physical labor.
But Moore’s internal motives interested Schuyler far more than the economics of the situation. He sensed a roiling resentment emanating from the man that superseded all logic.
“Since my friend Jefcoat doesn’t seem eager for a joyful noise, Mr. Moore, perhaps you’ll indulge me in a little further explanation of how your sister came to marry this white schoolteacher you seem to loathe with such evangelistic fervor. Weren’t you raised in the same home?”
Moore, presently squatting on his heels, occupied in gnawing on a brick of hardtack taken from his saddlebag, gave Schuyler a scornful look. “I thought you was a Southerner. And you don’t know how that works? I’m not even sure Georgia and me had the same daddy. Yes, we’s in the big cabin with the other mamas and babies, but Mama was in the fields every day. When I got big enough, I went to work too. Georgia, being as pretty as she is, light-skin too, was sent to work in the house. Next thing I know she’s sent to the market in Memphis, and a man from somewhere up in Tennessee bought her—at least, that’s what I heard from some that came back.”
“So you didn’t see her again until you happened to be in Tuscaloosa at the same time?”
Moore shook his head. “No, but she’d learned to read and write somehow, and she wrote to my mother to let her know she was all right. We’d of never got those lett
ers except Mrs. Jefcoat was a kind lady and read them to us.” Moore glanced at Jefcoat, expression unreadable.
Jefcoat’s shoulders lifted, and he turned his head.
“After the war,” Moore continued, “my mama died, but I got a letter from Georgia saying she was in Memphis—by this time I’d learned to read myself”—his lips tightened— “and she’d married a white man.”
Schuyler listened, gaze fixed on Moore’s face. The rest of the story was bound to come out. He prayed Jefcoat would remain silent.
“I heard from her again,” Moore said, “after they moved to Tuscaloosa. Apparently they had some kind of job as traveling schoolteachers. This new public school program funded by the government—” Jefcoat grunted as if in protest, but when he failed to comment, Moore shrugged. “I didn’t expect to ever see my sister again, but two weeks ago Mr. Jefcoat sent me over to Alabama to retrieve some runaway field hands. I visited Georgia, and she seemed to be doing well. At least they was living in a cabin with four walls and a roof. That was the first time I met Frye.”
“So you collected your workers all by yourself?” Schuyler gave Moore’s slight frame a once-over.
“I had some help from local white men—friends of the Jefcoats.” Moore glanced at Jefcoat. “Still, it took three runs across the state line to get them all. The second time, my sister’s husband took matters into his own hands. I’d been sent into the Negro quarter of town to sniff out our contraband. On my way back, Frye had a bunch of local liberals waylay me and beat me.”
“Are you sure it was Frye?” Schuyler asked, skeptical. “He doesn’t seem the violent, coercive type to me.”
“They were costumed, and it was dark, but the leader called me by name and accused me of things only my sister would know. They said I had to understand I couldn’t force free men to come back to Mississippi and work under what amounted to slave conditions anymore. That if I knew what was good for me, I’d leave Alabama and never come back.” Moore let out a harsh breath. “Which I confess I was ready to do. But then they offered me more money to go back for the rest—after all, those men were indentured under a legal contract—and sent along more protection. The timing was interesting, because we got to Tuscaloosa right when the rally was scheduled to start. I saw Frye in the crowd, along with the Negroes I knew from the Jefcoat plantation. I heard the speeches from Reverend Thomas and Perkins. I saw your father get shot, and I saw the riot start—but I couldn’t get out of the crowd.” Moore’s hands were shaking. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his sweating face.
Schuyler couldn’t help a certain sympathy for all the man had endured, but many of his actions seemed to have been not only greedy and self-serving, but cowardly. “I was at the hearing. I heard your claims against Frye. Some of them don’t match what you just said. You told the judge you identified your attacker.”
“I did!” Moore exclaimed. “I know it was him!”
“And you’re dumb as a fence post,” Jefcoat said suddenly. “I never did understand why my father depended on you so much. I tried to tell him I could do a better job at managing the property—which he claimed was why he sent me away to college in the first place.” He flexed his big, meaty fists. “I never wanted to be sitting in a classroom. By the time I got my diploma and came back home, he’d already elevated his colored son to the overseer’s house.”
Schuyler, incapable at that point of coherent speech, looked from Jefcoat to Moore. He couldn’t help thinking of a pair of biblical brothers fighting over their father’s blessing. That had not turned out well for either brother, at least in the short run.
Jefcoat stood, his long shadow falling across Moore’s smaller, folded figure. “I put those stripes on your back, you fool. You think you’re so smart, but I used you to lure out the schoolteacher. None of us left with property and a name are going to stand for what’s ours being ripped away by people who didn’t earn it.”
Schuyler stood apart, absorbed in the drama playing out in front of him. “Moore, do you know who shot my father? You said you saw it happen.”
Moore shook his head. “I swear I didn’t—”
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” Jefcoat said. His face above the beard was pasty, sweating, and his hands moved in agitated circles. “I would never shoot a white man on purpose. I was aiming at the preacher, just to scare him, but your pa moved, got in the way, and it was too late.”
Schuyler stared at him. “You were in Memphis that night. With us at the opera. Drunk.”
“Of course I was drunk. I got on the next train out of Tuscaloosa and found the first saloon out of the Memphis station. I never killed anybody before.”
Schuyler lunged at him, manacles and all, catching Jefcoat off guard, knocking him to the ground. The handcuffs crossed the hairy throat, pressed in, while Jefcoat’s face purpled. A roaring took over Schuyler’s brain as he shoved down with his wrists. The large body beneath him writhed but could not dislodge him.
“Schuyler!” someone shouted.
He ignored the voice and kept pressing.
Then he found himself wrenched sideways to the ground, several bodies holding him down. He struggled against the restraining hands, groaning in rage. “Let me go! He did it!”
Reason returned, little by little, along with vision and other senses. He recognized Levi’s face above him.
He relaxed, tears leaking from the sides of his eyes. “He killed my father.”
Levi, face compassionate, grim, let him go and extended a hand. “Yes. I’m sorry, brother. Come on, get up. We’ve got him in custody.”
Taking Levi’s hand, Schuyler let himself be pulled to his feet. Disoriented, he looked around and found two men he didn’t recognize holding a very subdued Jefcoat by the arms. Moore stood off to the side, shaking and silent.
“Here, let’s get those off you.” Levi unlocked the handcuffs with a key he’d apparently gotten from Jefcoat.
“You were following me too. You didn’t go to Tuscaloosa.” Schuyler eyed Levi resentfully, rubbing his raw wrists. “You could have told me.”
“Didn’t have enough information.” Levi tossed the handcuffs to one of his deputies, who proceeded to cuff Jefcoat. “We suspected Jefcoat had been in Tuscaloosa that day. A man of his description was reported at the station later. But no one saw who pulled the trigger on your father. I knew he’d follow you if I sent you this way, looking for Moore.” Levi’s smile was wry. “The only person I know better at getting people to blurt things out than me—is you.”
“I’m glad to know I was good for something. While I was busy thinking I was about to die.” Schuyler released a disgusted breath, glancing at Jefcoat and then Moore. “But am I right in thinking this thing is not exactly wrapped up? As bad as they are, those two are just pawns on the evil side of this chessboard.”
“You’re right. One murder solved. But we don’t know who killed the judge and ordered that church to be burned. So I’m sending you on back to Tupelo to try to draw out the king, while I deliver Jefcoat and Moore to the closest federal officer. But don’t worry—as soon as I do that, I’ll be right behind you, watching and waiting.”
At dinner that evening, in a belated attempt to practice her recently attained skill in noticing things, Joelle scanned the company seated around the formal dining table. General Forrest, Mr. Hixon, and Doc, who had been invited for the evening, were dressed in black suits with starched white shirts and black ties. The European Mr. Volker wore a more eclectic style of evening garb, his vest a miracle of gold-and-burgundy brocade, the jacket sporting matching stripes at the cuffs. The women had adorned themselves in their finest silk evening gowns, even Joelle conceding to formality by donning the dress she’d worn to the opera and allowing Aurora to style her hair in a scalp-stretching concoction of curls and braids.
She was not comfortable by any means, but at least she didn’t feel like a country cousin amongst this well-dressed crowd.
The eight-foot table itself was beautiful too, co
vered in a fine ivory-on-ivory embroidered cloth. The gaslight chandelier threw grotesque shadows over the food presented in silver tureens and on decorative platters, her mother’s best imported dinnerware polished to a gleam. Horatia had outdone herself with yeast rolls, roasted new potatoes, capons in wine sauce, and bacon-wrapped green bean bundles. There would be raspberry tartlets for dessert, one of Joelle’s favorites.
Unfortunately, she found her appetite ruined by anxiety over Lemuel and Georgia Frye, hiding in her bedroom; wondering where Schuyler was; and concern for Levi, presumably arrived in Tuscaloosa by now. Furthermore, she couldn’t help thinking of Mr. and Mrs. McCanless dealing with the loss of their entire business. She could have at the very least invited them to come to dinner. Maybe they wouldn’t have come, but the gesture would have been neighborly.
Now it was too late. But she would send a note with Wyatt, first thing in the morning, inviting them to tomorrow’s evening meal.
Comforted with that thought, she looked around and noticed one more thing. Frowning, she turned to Hixon, seated to her left. “Excuse me, Mr. Hixon, but do you know where your friend Mr. Jefcoat has been the last day or so? I don’t believe he has been down for a meal today at all. I hope he’s not ill.”
Caught in the act of putting most of a roll into his mouth, Hixon choked and coughed violently. Finally he was able to gasp, “Er, no. Can’t say I do. I mean, I’m sure he’s not ill. Fairly sure. I don’t know.” He gulped his water. “Is there any wine?”
“Yes, after dinner, to go with dessert.” Joelle regarded him, puzzled. Mercy, what a reaction to a simple question. “Please tell Jefcoat I asked about him, next time you see him.”
“Certainly. Will do.” Hixon subsided once more into his food.
Joelle, picking at her own plate, caught General Forrest’s eye across the table.
He smiled. “I couldn’t help overhearing. I believe I heard Mr. Jefcoat say he was going hunting this morning. The woods hereabouts are full of game, and Jefcoat seems to be an enthusiastic sportsman.”
