From the Recorded Memories of Ruth Thatcher McGinnis
My biggest challenge during that time—the war years—was learning to occupy my mind in a constructive way. As I spent more time with Father Bowers, I got to know his wife, Eleanor, and she became a real lifeline for me. She was the first person to tell me to stop trying not to worry about Mackie, Wil and Thatch. She said that would be unnatural for a mother to not worry about her children, especially if those children were in a perilous situation—and war certainly is perilous. She asked if she could make a suggestion, and of course I said I'd welcome it. Think about them, she said—think about which one is the funny one, the serious one, the cutup. Think of special moments I'd shared with them, she suggested. In other words, she said, rather than worry or fear, let happy memories guide my thoughts. It was advice I gladly took, so instead of picturing fiery bombs and spurting blood and shattered limbs—which is what I'd been seeing in my mind—I saw my boys not as fodder for the Nazis but as my wonderful sons. I saw them as alive, as living, rather than dead. Taking that approach helped me more than I can tell you, and it also helped my relationship with Mack and with the children I still had at home. I wasn't fully aware of how my fear for the three who were away was affecting my love for the two who were at home. With Mack's blessing, I began teaching full-time at the College and with that, stopped seeing myself as useless. Oh indeed, that is how I felt, Sissy. My three eldest children were at war and my two youngest were teenagers in high school. My husband, thankfully, was so successful that he worked non-stop. And what did I do? I walked. I was studying theology a bit—just a bit, mind you—but only for my own edification, not to benefit anybody else. Periodically I would recall the surprise with which Father Bowers called me Dr. McGinnis, and the ease with which I shrugged off his apology and claimed my Mrs. status, as if having earned a Ph.D. was of no importance. My brother left his home and his family because people hadn't respected that achievement. And speaking of Si. One of the things my newly-formulated self did was accept his invitation to visit him and Cat for Thanksgiving. Mack, Jack, Nellie and me took the train to Chicago.
I had a few very rough moments during the trip, though. It often happened that the passenger trains would slow down and change tracks to give the right of way to the troop trains. I'll never forget the sight: Train cars packed with boys—and that's what they were, Sissy—boys, children, looking like they were playing dress-up in their uniforms, on their way to war. People waved at the trains and saluted them. And many people wept. All of the boys on the trains we saw were white, and I wondered whether, when the trains carrying my sons passed through towns, anybody waved at them or saluted them or wept at the sight of them. It required every ounce of resolve within me not to allow those thoughts to ruin that trip for Mack and the children—especially them.
From the Diary of Jonas Farley Thatcher
Christmas 1944. I'm having to really force myself to have any kind of Christmas at all, and I'm only doing it for JJ. I can't bring myself to string all those lights everywhere even though Sam said he would do it. It would remind me too much of Audrey. I also can't have the big party, either. I will get a small tree for the living room. I told JJ we'd go into the woods and cut a pine. I'll let him pick it out and we'll decorate it and I'll put all the presents under it—his and the ones he got for Ernestine, Sam and Ruby. I spend all the time I have alone trying to make myself remember the wonderful Christmases I had with Audrey instead of missing her so much this Christmas. And I don't know how I'm going to get through New Year's. Beau said I could go up to N.Carolina if I wanted to. We would be by ourselves, me and JJ for a few days. Beau and Big Si are in Belle City for the holidays which makes me wish all over again that I was part of a big family like that. That's what me and Audrey were building, a big, loving family. But that's all gone now. I don't think I would mind being at Beau's place by myself but I don't think JJ would like it much. He loves following Big Si around, talking to him about what all the fruits and vegetables are and going into the woods with Beau to hunt and fish. I had all but forgot how to do those things but I am remembering. Maybe I could take my son hunting and fishing. I'll ask him if he wants to go. And I will stop feeling sorry for myself long enough to call Mack and Ruthie to say merry Christmas. I still feel bad that I didn't know their boys were in the War. Just like they still feel bad they didn't know about Audrey and Allie. We promised to stay in better touch.
***
– Belle City –
Ruthie
Christmas dinner at Big Mack and Clara's brought a full house. Not as full as in the past but full enough that there were two adult tables and two children's tables and every seat was taken; full enough that Clara beamed her satisfaction as two turkeys and two hams and four dozen yeast rolls were devoured, in addition to the too-many-to-count platters and bowls of greens and green beans, squash soufflé, mashed potatoes, candied yams, beets and turnips and carrots. Big Si and Beau were there and brought with them deer meat cooked over a spit, and it too was devoured. Then there was dessert. Belle's barber, James Jackson, had become a regular at family gatherings, along with his companion, Aaron Stevenson, who was a pastry chef at one of the big downtown hotels and who was as relaxed and casual as James was formal and elegant. Today, he wore one of his trademark three-piece suits with vest, tie perfectly knotted, black shoes shined and, of course, hair perfectly cut. Aaron's hair was well-cut too, and his shave was smooth and close, but he still wore the white apron and chef's hat from the morning spent at the hotel baking the desserts for the dinners that would be served that day, and it did not and would not occur to him to change his clothes.
He'd arrived carrying two cakes, followed by James carrying two more, and had asked somebody—somebody who wasn't clumsy, he'd said—to go out to the car and get the pies. Beau had raced the younger children to the front door—Belle's three, Nellie and Jack, and Sadie's Dorothy and William—teasing that whoever got there first would get a whole pie to eat without having to share. Aaron was laughing and giggling louder than the children when the front door slammed.
They were a fine addition to the family gatherings, James and Aaron. Both had families that didn't want anything to do with them—Mack had correctly assessed their lack of interest in women—and they welcomed the opportunity to be part of a family. James always insisted on buying the food. All of it. He didn't cook but he did eat, he said, and thought it only fair that he pay for the food. After all, he said, it was the cooks who did the real work in preparing a meal for twenty or twenty-five people. Then he'd give his shy, quiet smile and offer that anyway, he ate enough for three people. There was nothing shy or quiet about Aaron. Older than James by eight or nine years—in fact, he and Beau were the same age—he was funny and gregarious and at least half the life of any party. He was generous to a fault and now considered everybody connected to either the Thatcher or McGinnis families as "my own kin" and treated them as such. He had taken a particular liking to Sadie Hill, getting her a job at the hotel where he worked to help her supplement her income. Though Mack and Ruth continued to pay her full salary, with the three oldest boys gone, there wasn't much work for her to do, and Sadie's pride would not allow her to accept money she hadn't earned. She had worked overnight at the hotel and now was at home sleeping. William and Dorothy had spent Christmas Eve with Mack and Ruthie, opening their presents on Christmas morning with Jack and Nellie. She would, she said, be at Big Mack and Clara's by five o'clock—just in time for Aaron's desserts.
Big Si, Big Mack and Aaron were each cutting a cake—chocolate, coconut and pound—when the telephone rang. "I'll get it," Mack said. "It's probably Si and Cat. They said they'd call before it got too late."
Emma Johnson got to her feet, ready to run for the phone and talk to her daughter, when she stopped in her tracks at the sound of Mack's voice: Whoever it was, it wasn't Si and Catherine. Mack's voice was raised, and he was telling whoever was on the other end to quiet down and calm down and start from the beginn
ing. "We'll be right there" they heard him say, and everybody was standing up when he hurried back into the room.
"That was Sadie. She says there's a man at the front door who says his name is Henry Fordham, and he's First Freeman's son!"
"Good God Almighty," Big Si exclaimed, startling them all. "He did have a son by that name. That was his name before he changed it—Fordham—Silas Fordham, and he had a son he said just disappeared one day. Went out and never came back. But Good God. That was…that was…way long time ago." He rushed for the front door. "Come on, y'all. Beau, Mack. Ruthie, you better come too."
They rushed out of the front door then had to run around to the back of the house to get Mack's car. As there was practically no traffic on the street on Christmas Day, they got to Sadie's house—that had been Pa and Beau's house and before that, First Freeman's house—in just a few minutes. They all saw the man on the front porch: Thin, stooped, white-haired. He had a blanket around his shoulders and was drinking a cup of something hot; they could see the steam rising. Sadie had given him a blanket and a beverage but had drawn the line at letting him in her house, and they didn't blame her. Mack pulled into the driveway and parked. Big Si and Beau were out of the car before the hand brake was set, Ruthie hard on their heels. The stranger had heard their arrival and turned to face them, and when they got close enough to see him clearly, Pa stopped in his tracks and said Great God Almighty again. There could be no doubt that this man was related to First Freeman—and to Silas Thatcher.
He looked at them and they looked at him and Sadie Hill watched all of them through the window. "It's cold out here," Ruth said. "Let's see if Sadie thinks it's all right for us to come in."
She excused herself as she passed the strange man on the porch and rang the bell. Sadie opened the door immediately. Ruth entered and pulled Sadie to the side. Her father, brother and husband stood aside and allowed the stranger to enter first. They followed and closed the door behind him. He walked to the center of the room and looked all around. Then he looked at each of the people in the room, studied their faces, for several seconds, and finally pointed to Big Si.
"You. You some kin to me." It wasn't a question.
Pa nodded. "He was my pa, too. I was raised in Carrie's Crossing. He told me 'bout you. It was the biggest sadness in his life that he didn't know what happened to you or why you left him like you did."
The man began to shake and shiver. Ruth took the cup from him before he dropped it, and Mack and Beau led him closer to the fireplace. He stood directly in front of it until he stopped shaking. "I didn't leave," he said. "I got took."
Then Henry Fordham told them the story of the past twenty-six years of his life: He'd been standing in front of a pool hall on Simpson Road on a Friday night. He had just gotten off work and gotten a haircut and was considering shooting a couple of games of pool, but he was hungry and didn't want to eat the pool hall offerings; he wanted a real meal. As he was pondering his next move, a truck pulled up and two men jumped out—two Colored men. Both were talking loudly and at the same time, so he couldn't make out what they were saying. Then they were beside him and he was between them and they had his arms and they threw him into the back of the truck, jumped in behind him, and the truck sped away. There were six other men in the truck, in addition to the kidnappers, and they were bound and gagged. So was he, in a matter of moments. They drove almost all night. It was still dark when they stopped. They were pulled from the truck and forced to walk into some woods where there were huts and cabins, barely visible in the just-breaking dawn. Henry said he was vaguely aware of a noise, a deep rumbling, maybe even roaring noise, that was constant. Then, as he eyes adjusted to the light, he saw men emerging from the huts and cabins and other men walking toward them. It was, he was soon to learn, the shift change: The men who had worked all night were returning to the structures to sleep, while the other men were off to work their twelve-hour shift. They worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week, every week of every year, Henry said, and they got paid not one dime. Not ever. Not in twenty-six years was he ever paid for his labor. And it was labor, he said: In plants and factories in Georgia and in Alabama. They moved the men around so they'd never know exactly where they were. Men would escape, and they wouldn't care because there was no place to escape to—the factories or plants were always far away from a city and always in or near woods. The men who returned spoke of snakes and wild boars and the occasional bobcat in the woods. There were others who never returned. They were fed a bowl of beans and rice three times a day, and it never was enough. They always were hungry and thirsty. There were buckets of water placed around the factory floor, but a man had to secure permission to get a drink, and it was rarely given. So they fainted from dehydration, they soiled themselves since the same permission was required to go to the toilet and they learned not to notice or care.
Henry Fordham stopped talking and stood still as a statue, Sadie's blanket still hanging on him. He watched them watch him, but there was nothing in his eyes to suggest that he wanted or needed or expected any one of them to say anything. He knew that there was nothing to be said. He knew what had happened to him, and he knew that there was no explaining it. He knew that being held as a slave sixty years after slavery's end was not the basis for a rational conversation. Even an uneducated, broken-spirited new kind of slave knew that much. So he didn't say anything. He just looked at them, and that he found interesting; he'd never seen Colored people like these. The tall man in the most beautiful suit of clothes he could imagine—during those low, deeply dark times when he fantasized about being set free, he imagined having rich-man things—and the tall, beautiful woman, who held his arm so tightly that it must be painful, could have stepped out of a magazine. She looked like a lot of the men enslaved with him—like an Indian—like the other man with them, the only one not wearing a suit. He looked more like an Indian than the woman, with his hair in a long braid down his back and the deerskin shoes on his feet. The old man, the man who was his brother, Silas, had on a suit too, but not a fancy one, and he didn't wear a tie, and he wore brogans, not fancy city shoes. True, they were new brogans, and they were shined—but nothing fancy about them.
The first one to speak was the lady who now lived in his pa's house. Her name was Sadie, she'd told him. She was crying and beating her hands against her chest. "I knew he hadn't just run off and left me and the chil'ren. I knew Willie wouldn't do a thing like that. That's what happened to him, y'all. What happened to Mr. Fordham here is what happened to my Willie, and I'll bet to Miss Emma's man, too." She was shrieking, and Ruth let go of Mack so that she could hold Sadie. Ruth was the next to speak.
"How many men, Mr. Fordham, in these factories and plants? How many men?"
"Too many. Way too many. And I only seen the ones where I worked, and they was always movin' us around, always at night so we couldn't see nothin' but the dark."
For years there had been wonderment about men who just disappeared without any provocation—good husbands and fathers, the women left behind all claimed. Now they understood. Now they knew. "How did you get here, Mr. Fordham?" Ruthie asked.
For the first time some hint of life showed in his eyes. "I wouldn't die so they brung me back," he answered, and when it was clear that they hadn't understood his meaning, he explained that he'd gotten too old and too sick to work. "They got this one shack for mens like that where they put 'em to die. Don't feed 'em much, don't give 'em much water, and they just die. But I didn't. I wasn't no use to 'em no more, so they brung me back here. They lookin' for some more, but all the young mens is gone to that war, and old mens, like y'all, is got jobs and workin' and ain't hardly nobody on the streets at night no more. 'Least that's what I heared the boss mens say."
Pa looked at Beau. "I guess we better take Henry with us." Then he looked at the man. "I'm Silas Thatcher, and this here is my son, Beaudry. That's my daughter, Ruth, and that's her husband, Mack. And that there is Miz Sadie Hill. She lives in this house now with her chi
l'ren. Me and Beau live in North Car'lina, and we'd be pleased to have you with us if you care to go."
Henry Fordham nodded his head and said a whispered thank you.
"Willie Hill," Sadie said. "Did you ever know Willie Hill from Belle City? He had a shoe shine bizness. Had a big box that he rolled all around—downtown in front of the hotels, out in front of the train station, in front of the banks. He was real good at shinin' shoes. Did you ever see him, Mr. Fordham, Willie Hill?" Sadie was shrieking again and sobbing. Ruth held her, wiped her face with the handkerchief Mack gave her.
They all felt Sadie's grief for a moment, Henry Fordham included. Then Big Si said they needed to get back to Big Mack and Clara's so folks wouldn't worry about them anymore than they probably already were worried. "We were havin' Christmas dinner at my in-laws house, and it was some kinda good food. Would you like to come eat?"
Henry looked at them, and then down at himself, at his thread-bare work clothes and patched brogans, and shook his head. "I ain't dressed no kinda way to go into folks' house for dinner."
"It's a family dinner, Henry, and you're my brother. Won't nobody care what you got on."
He was right; nobody cared what Henry Fordham was wearing, so struck were they by his story, as told by Pa, Mack, Beau and Ruth. Emma Johnson fainted dead away when she fully understood what happened to Henry and when they revived her, she, like Sadie, asked over and over whether Henry had know her Ed. Then, finally grasping the horrible enormity of the situation, she, too, wept helplessly and hopelessly. They all felt the same way: Helpless and hopeless. There was nobody to tell what they'd learned, and nobody to halt it. Even now, according to Henry, the hunt was on for new slaves. The only thing they could do, they agreed, was tell all the ministers at all the churches, who then would sound the alarm: No able-bodied Negro male should be out alone after dark. It was cold comfort certainly, but now the ministers could tell families where at least some of their missing men were, and confirming for them that they'd been right all along: The men hadn't just up and left one day for no reason.
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