January Dawn

by Cody Lennon

  The table hushed but for the clanking of silverware on dishes. They all wanted to know who this stranger was at their table that had been sitting there all quiet-like.

  I couldn’t recall exactly where the Stephens plantation was, but I did remember overhearing something the Army recruiter said on the phone the day I enlisted.

  “I’m from over in Wilcox County, Alabama, ma’am,” I said, trying to sound educated and not use my plantation bred manner of speaking.

  “Oh,” she said all sweet-like. “And how was life over in Wilcox County before you enlisted?”

  “Ma!” Alex interjected, obviously annoyed.

  “What, honey?”

  Alex talked to her in a hushed tone. “I told you not to--.”

  “Honey, he’s our guest. I was just having polite conversation.”

  “It’s alright, Alex,” I said. “It wasn’t particularly interesting, Mrs. Redman. Wilcox County isn’t exactly known for anything but its crop fields.” And its slavery. But I didn’t say that.

  Mr. Jeffries taught me the value of honesty and I didn’t want to betray that, but I also wasn’t exactly lying. It was more like skirting the edge of the truth.

  “Oh, so your parents are farmers?” she asked.

  Infuriated, Alex dropped his fork and stared hard at his mother. He knew somehow the conversation would turn to this and knowing how sensitive I was about the subject, he didn’t want me in the spotlight like that.

  Sitting calmly in his chair at the other end of the table, Mr. Redman looked up from his plate, also intrigued as to what my answer would be.

  “I don’t rightly know, ma’am. I never knew my parents.” I paused and then, without thinking, “I lived with Mr. Jeffries.”

  “Was Mr. Jeffries a relative of yours?”

  I chuckled quietly and nervously to myself and said, “No ma’am. Mr. Jeffries was a colored man. He raised me since I was a boy.”

  A curt “oh” escaped her lips. She didn’t ask any more questions after that. She just sat there, her back straight, taking small bites off her fork and not even bothering to look down at my end of the table.

  I wonder if I said something wrong.

  I had Lucas and Ben to thank for ending the awkward silence that followed. Just like the erratic tendencies of a child’s mind, they changed the subject and were asking permission to go play in the woods after breakfast. They said they had found a cool tree that would be excellent for climbing. Mr. Redman told them it was alright by him.

  Breakfast ended without any further conversation that involved me. Mr. and Mrs. Redman disappeared upstairs and one by one the Redman children went about their weekend activities and left their dirty plates sitting on the table. I took mine and placed them in the kitchen sink, following Alex’s lead. He apologized for his mother’s behavior and lurked off into the library.

  The morning started off chilly, but it got warmer as the day went along, so I decided to take my sweatshirt off and run it back to my room. When I reached the top of the steps, I slowed. I heard raised voices in a room down the hall.

  “—who he is.”

  “I don’t care. I know enough to know that he shouldn’t be sleeping under the same roof as our children, Silas. Think of our daughters.”

  “Jesus, Bethany. You act like he’s an escaped convict. He’s just a boy.”

  “He’s white trash, Silas. And he was raised by a colored man for Christ’s sake. What was Alex thinking, bringing him home?”

  “Now Bethany--“

  “He’s probably never even seen the inside of a school.”

  I could hear feet shuffling back and forth in the room.

  “Just because he isn’t educated doesn’t make him any less of a man.”

  I remembered a conversation I had with Mr. Jeffries one time. I asked him why Mr. Stephens beat us and treated us so. He said because people like him still live in the past. I was starting to understand what he meant by that.

  “Silas, we’ve raised our kids right. We’ve surrounded them with all the right people. We send them to the best schools. And we’ve done a damn fine job of keeping them away from the filth of this country.” There was sobbing.

  “Dammit Bethany, sit down! You know nothing about this boy, but here you are making him out to be nothing but dirt. Yes, he’s from the country. Yes, he wasn’t raised in a traditional household. Yes, he isn’t educated. But Bethany, I’d be damned if I’m going to throw that young man out of this house because of some misguided fear of your past. Our son trusts him and that’s good enough for me.” I could hear the former officer in his voice. “Now, you will treat that boy with the utmost respect, do you hear me? God only knows how much that boy has been disrespected in his life already.”

  “Silas, I --.”

  One of the doors on my end of the hall opened and jolted me from my eavesdropping. I turned to go to my room and there was Tessa standing in the hall. I knew immediately that she knew I had overheard her parents.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  “I was going down to the barn. Care to join me?”

  I figured it would be a good idea to get out of the house and out of Mrs. Redman’s way for a little while. I nodded and followed her down the stairs, out the backdoor and into the backyard where we made our way toward the barn.

  The barn looked to be falling apart on the outside, until Tessa swung the barn doors open and revealed an interior that was even nicer than parts of the main house.

  A single aisle ran the length of the barn. On one side were six horse stalls made of black iron fencing and finished wood and on the other were four more horse stalls and a door that led to another room. The entire barn was immaculate except for a stray hay straw fallen from the loft. It sure smelled like a barn though.

  I stepped up to the nearest stall and was greeted with a hearty snort from a pretty brown horse with a web of white paint on her butt. She stuck her head over the stall door and gave me a good sniff.

  “Hey girl,” I said, gently patting her neck.

  “That’s Lucy,” Tessa said, also giving her a pat on the neck. “She’s an Appaloosa.”

  “She’s pretty.”

  Tessa took me to all the stalls, giving me the names and the background story of all the horses. They were all rescues, taken from negligent owners and sent to the Redman’s to heal and live out the rest of their lives in peace.

  We stopped at the last stall where a beige horse with yellow hair greeted us. He snorted, stomped his foot and whipped his head around at us. His left eye was cloudy and coated in an inflamed casing of oozing tears.

  “And this sweet boy is Tux. He’s a Palomino. He belonged to an old man outside of Atlanta. About five months ago, the old man died of a heart attack. His family went to his place and found Tux in the backyard chained to a tree. They never even knew he owned a horse. Tux was emaciated and about a week or two away from death when they found him. When they brought him here he was so skinny I could count every one of his ribs.” Tessa patted him on the neck. “We sure fattened him up. Come on, I need your help giving him his medicine. He’s got an ulcer in his eye we’re trying to get rid of.”

  Tessa opened the stall door for me.

  “You know how to twitch a horse?” I nodded. “Good. Twitch him and keep him calm while I put the medicine in his eye.”

  I ran my hand down Tux’s neck and whispered softly to him. His coat was soft. I could feel the muscles in his body relax as I soothed him. Once I made sure he knew I meant him no harm, I grabbed the handful of meaty skin above his upper lip and pinched it in-between my fingers and the palm of my hand, twisting and pulsing softly. Mr. Jeffries taught me this. He told me it had some sort of calming effect on a horse.

  Once he started to calm down, Tessa screwed the cap off of a small tube of ointment and squirted the clear liquid into the corner of Tux’s eye.

  “Thanks for your help, cowboy. You seem to know a little about horses. Who taught you?”

>   “Mr. Jeffries. We had a horse once. His name was Baker.”

  He died, but I didn’t need to say that. Mr. Stephens didn’t want to spend the money on medical treatment for our horse. Instead, Baker died a slow, agonizing death. It wasn’t until he couldn’t stand upright anymore did Mr. Stephens finally shoot him and end his suffering.

  “Go grab two halters from the tack room,” she said, pointing to the side door.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Call me Tess. I’m no ma’am.”

  I got two halters off the hooks just inside the tack room door, handed one to Tess and we led the horses out to the pasture one by one. The last two horses we led out were Lucy and a black horse named Grizzly. On the way to the pasture gate, I noticed Tess glancing over at me.

  “I’m sorry about my mother,” she said.

  I knew exactly what she was talking about, but I didn’t acknowledge it. I unlatched the gate, swung it open, took the halter off of Lucy and let her run into the pasture as Tess was doing the same with Grizzly.

  “She thinks she can shelter us from the world we live in, but she can’t. The reason she said all of those things about you is because she came from a similar background. She grew up in the country, working on her daddy’s farm. She fought tooth and nail to be able to go to school. Her daddy wouldn’t let her go most days. He would keep her home and beat her. She got out of there at a young age, married my dad, and since then she’s been trying to erase every memory of her past. You just remind her of it, that’s all.”

  That explained a lot about her aggressiveness towards me and why she didn’t want me in the house.

  “She’s wrong about you, though,” Tess said on our way back to the barn.

  “She’s right about some things.”

  “Like?”

  She’s just curious. Go ahead and tell her. “Like I aint never been to a school in my life. Never had no education. I can’t even read.” I said. “And I don’t blame your mother for saying those things about me. I understand what she’s trying to do. There are a lot of men out there that like to hurt people.”

  It was all very clear to me. Mrs. Redman escaped from her personal hell like I did, married a good man, raised a family and was trying to make a good life for her kids. One where they didn’t have to feel the sting of a backhand or the pain of having pure hate and no love in their life. I wanted something similar. I understood then why she was so apt to get rid of me. I was a thorn poking at her most painful memories.

  “But you’re not one of them,” Tess said. I didn’t know if that was a question or not.

  “No.”

  I hung the halter back up on the wall and turned to walk back to the house.

  “I’ve got a few other things to do around the barn, if you care to help. I’d love the company,” she said, shyly leaning on a mucking fork and grinning like an opossum.

  It was at that moment that I realized that I was in love. I’d never felt anything like it before, but I knew it was love. Something in my heart flicked on. I felt a whole new wave of emotions that pounded through my veins like a drug and sent a spasm of coolness through my nerves.

  I graciously took the mucking fork from her hands and together we went to work cleaning the stables.

  I didn’t enjoy being a slave, but working with my hands was always something I liked to do. It was therapeutic and kept my mind at ease.

  We spent a good part of the day together, mucking out the stalls, restocking hay and feed, cleaning out water buckets, washing saddle pads, oiling saddles and organizing the tack room.

  We talked a lot. Well, I mean, she did most of the talking. She taught me a lot about horses that I didn’t know. We talked about her school and volleyball matches, and the war, unsurprisingly. When I spoke, she didn’t seem to mind my uneducated speech. It was just like talking to Mr. Jeffries or Alex. She was calm and polite, and didn’t once try to talk over me or correct me when I mispronounced something. I was at complete ease around her.

  She would do this thing where she would brush her hair behind her ear and look up at me with a shy smile. It made me absolutely crazy with love.

  She would catch me staring at her and I would turn away embarrassed, only to succumb to my desires and turn my eyes on her again when she looked away.

  Even though she was covered in horse dung, had dirt caked underneath her fingernails and hay and sweat sticking to her body, she still appeared to me as an angel, sent down to Earth just for me.

  Chapter 12

  April 3

  It was early evening and the sun was beginning to drift off into its evening slumber, leaving streaks of oranges and yellows in its wake. Alex slowed the truck to a stop on the side of the road, midway across the Talmadge Bridge.

  “Come on, I want to show you something,” he said, getting out and slamming his door shut. Cars sped by, sending pockets of air swishing over us. I peeked over the concrete railing and saw the dark water of the river nearly two hundred feet below.

  It’s a long way down.

  “Look over there,” Alex said, pointing toward the Navy base off to the north a few hundred yards. Two lonely ships sat anchored at their moorings with nowhere to go. They were all that Admiral Kearny had left in his Atlantic fleet. The dozen other docks went unused. They were a stark reminder of the sheer amount of lives lost already in the war.

  The cruisers looked small, but they definitely packed a punch. The top masts, satellites and the vast array of antennas that protruded from the top of the ships were highlighted by the melting sunset.

  The bulky deck gun that Alex was telling my about was visible on the bow of the ship, as were the anti-missile ship defense guns and the eight metal tubes that lay shut and ready to unleash its payload of guided missiles. It really was an impressive specimen of firepower.

  “That one right there is the Jackson, and the other is the Sabal.”

  “They’re bigger than I imagined.”

  “That’s nothing. You should have seen this place when it was full. There were ships twice the size of that. Growing up, my family would come down to the river and we’d watch the fleet leave the harbor. It was so cool, especially for a twelve-year-old boy. I remember watching that huge line of warships go out to sea, feeling so proud to be a Confederate. I thought we were invincible. Now look at us, we’re struggling to keep a hold on our own country.” Alex had a knack for getting either really angry or really depressed real fast.

  “General Gammon believes we can still win,” I said.

  “At what cost? Tens of thousands have died already. And a hundred more have died since we got out of the car. If we keep going at this rate, there won’t be a Confederacy next year.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want to fight?”

  “Hell no. I’m going to fight, and die if I have to. Look at this city, Colton,” he said, waving to the lit-up city on the opposite side of the bridge. “It’s beautiful and the people in it are even more beautiful. I love these people. Our culture is something unique in the world. I want to preserve it, and if that means going to war to do that then so be it.”

  “Why are we fighting in the first place?” That question had been bugging me since my first day in Basic. All everyone talked about was the war, but I never knew why there was one.

  “Because the President is a moron. He was former military. He served with my dad and Gammon back in the day, but he was the only one that wanted to dip his hands deeper into politics. He ran for office and the people elected him. We soon found out what a sly and greedy snake he really was. The policies and actions he’s enacted in office have pitted the entire international community against us. He dug us into a hole we can’t climb out of.”

  A human figure stepped out onto the balcony below the Confederate Navy Jack on the Jackson. Just in time too, all this talk of war was depressing my spirits. In robotic motions, the man stepped forward, turned, presented a bugle to his mouth and began to play. Alex and I came to attention, as would any soldier wi
thin earshot. I could hear the sharp, stirring melody of the song from the bridge. He was playing Retreat.

  It was only half a minute long, but it was an elegant and time-honored tradition. By the time the bugler finished, the sky had darkened a shade and the man was only a blur. I waited for him to play To the Colors next as they lowered the flag, but it never came, the man merely stepped back into the interior of the ship.

  “Why aren’t they lowering the flag?” I asked. Back in Fort Benning they would fold up the flag every night and unfurl it in the morning with Reveille.

  “Because Savannah is considered a frontline city. Units that are deployed don’t take their flags down until they are out of action. Come on, let’s go. The bar’s right down the road. Beauregard and Hayes are probably waiting, and I need a drink.”

  It took us forever to find a parking space. The nearest one was two blocks over, so we had to walk the two blocks back over to the riverside bar, a place called Bonnie Blue.

  “Welcome to the best military bar in Georgia,” Alex said, opening the black-tinted door.

  The place was packed and reeked of tobacco smoke and alcohol. We roved through the throng of people that crowded around the bar.

  If Alex was talking to me, I couldn’t hear him. The music was deafening, so loud that it made my insides vibrate.

  A vibrant blue light flooded out from the ceiling, bathing everyone in a fluorescent light and making some people’s clothes light up and their skin to darken. I followed Alex into an adjoining room that was also cloaked in blue light, but the music was less deafening.

  We found Hayes at a high-top table near the back. It was weird seeing him out of uniform. He looked like any average guy you’d pass on the streets. I guess I did too.

  “About time you scalawags showed up,” he said.

  “How’re you doing buddy?” Alex asked.

  “Ah, you know, itching to get started, so we can get this war over with.”

  “Hey, hey, look who showed up.” Beauregard materialized out of the crowd and placed four shot glasses on the table. “Drink up fellas, that’s an order.”