Raintree County

by Ross Lockridge

  Lately she had seemed listless during the day and unquiet in her sleep. He was distressed about her, wondering if perhaps she had caught the yellow fever. This pestilent monster from the swamp was making his annual summer visit to the Lower Mississippi and was killing his thousands. It was a good time to leave New Orleans.

  The day Johnny and Susanna left was close and hot. As they boarded the steamboat in the crowded harbor, Johnny heard a voice husky and plaintive above the tumult of arrival and departure.

  —Lost child! Lost child! it wailed over and over.

  The source of this cry became apparent when an old Negro passed through the crowd beating a little muffled drum, repeating the strange, monotonous call. Leaning over the railing of the steamboat, Johnny and Susanna waved to friends and relatives who had come to see them off, perhaps a dozen in all, smiling and nodding and jerking their heads in charming unison.

  —Aren’t they sweet? Susanna said pensively. They all love you so much, Johnny. Good-by, Dody! Good-by, Judy! Good-by, Bobby!

  Cousin Barbara wasn’t there. She had died the week before of the yellow fever. Johnny had bravely volunteered to go and see her in her last sickness, but she had forbidden it. No doubt it was because the fever had blackened and shrivelled her long, lovely body with a touch like fire and corruption.

  —She just literally burnt up, Dody had said. Poor Barbara.

  —The fever kills that blonde kind fast, Cousin Bobby had said to Johnny. There are some advantages in being black. The niggers hardly ever die of it.

  Some of the women were in tears as they watched the honeymooners leave. Dody stood waving her handkerchief and crying heartbrokenly. It was only a few nights before that she had been sleepwalking into Johnny’s room.

  Indeed, it seemed to him now that the whole structure of that delicious life had been swiftly decaying around him in the envenomed summer as yellow fever smote many with death, and election fever smote all with a rabid disease, and men and women did mad, lewd things.

  A mist crossed Johnny’s eyes; his throat felt big as he leaned there on the railing and watched the city and the crowded harbor dwindle until the figures on the pier were a line of dolls nodding and fluttering in the tremulous heat. He remembered how when he had come into this harbor months before, he had smelled a great stink. It must be here now, the same stink, even more detestable than when he had come down from Raintree County, because after all it was summer, the yellow fever was on the city, the slave pens near the Arcade must be fetid with their black stock. But he couldn’t smell it any more.

  Strange grief smote him. He leaned against the rail and turned his face away from Susanna so that she wouldn’t see how moved he was. He felt that he was leaving something archaic, beautiful, and doomed. In the main room of the boat, the orchestra was playing. The music drifted across the yellow flood of the Mississippi streaming through summer to the Gulf.

  All de world am sad and dreary,

  Ebrywhere I roam,

  O, DARKIES, HOW MY HEART GROWS WEARY,

  FAR FROM DE OLD

  FOLKS

  AT HOME, thoroughly, in the middle of a good hot argument, the Senator stopped long enough to suck life back into his cigar.

  —Between you, me, and—puff, puff—the outhouse, he remarked, looking around to see if he was observed, Abe Lincoln was the greatest charlatan in American History.

  The Senator made a satisfactory smoke ring and let his last remark sink in. Then he said,

  —Lincoln was just what the Democratic sheets called him—a clownish country lawyer. He had honest convictions about the Union and slavery all right, but does that make him a Great Man? Hell, no. Several thousand abler men than Lincoln had the same convictions, and hundreds of thousands died for them. Lincoln was a political accident. The Republican Party needed a man from the West in I860. As for the way he fought the War, no war was ever fought so badly as the Civil War. As for the freeing of the slaves, did Lincoln do the Nation or the Negroes a real service by the Emancipation Proclamation? Because of that great mistake, this Nation will go on bleeding for centuries to come. Lincoln was a freak of history. The popular mind made Lincoln into a symbol of the Common Man because Lincoln himself was so goddam vulgar and common. Besides, everyone loves a bleeding martyr. Booth made Lincoln great.

  —Garwood, Mr. Shawnessy said, you never recognized Lincoln’s greatness because you never understood his time. Only a very great President could have subdued the South. And all through the War Copperheads like you in the North kept the councils of the Union divided. You couldn’t heave a rock in Raintree County without winging a Southern sympathizer. The greatness of Lincoln was the greatness of America in his time. America in the years 1809 to 1865 was capable of creating a great man.

  —This is all hindsight, John, the Senator said. Lincoln is a useful symbol; I don’t deny it. God knows, I’ve made as much capital out of him as anyone. I acknowledge the debt. But when I allow myself to be swayed only by the hard facts of history, I can’t admit that Lincoln was a truly Great Man.

  —There are few if any hard facts of history, Mr. Shawnessy said. But there are some words in the right context. Perhaps the real office of the historian is to rebuild an accurate context around the few great words that survive.

  —I suppose, the Senator said, that we’re about to recite that admired classic of American oratory—the Gettysburg Address!

  His stub was out again, and he bit savagely at a new cigar and spit the tip into the street.

  —Lincoln had some power of phrase all right. But we exaggerate even that. If Booth hadn’t made Lincoln the Great Martyr, no one would have dug out the Gettysburg Address, which was a flop when delivered. Let’s not forget that the Civil War was a time of general eloquence anyway. There were themes to inspire it. At least a dozen men in the country were speaking more eloquently than Lincoln during the War. But of course Lincoln gets the historic limelight.

  —Great words, Mr. Shawnessy said, come only from great men. Almost every public utterance of Lincoln’s has a touch of greatness. He had the power to see issues clear and to make others see them clear. He was the voice of America long before the fighting began, of South as well as North. He defined the situation so clearly that even the South accepted his definition, and knowing exactly where she stood when Lincoln was elected, she threw down the gage. As early as 1858, this obscure lawyer from Illinois found the epochsummarizing phrase, A house divided against itself cannot stand.

  —What was so bright about that? the Senator said. Millions of Americans knew that the Nation couldn’t exist half slave and half free. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Just a Biblical quotation.

  Mr. Shawnessy smoked quietly, waiting for the sound of those words to stop echoing. The fabric of a house rose silently and stood waiting to be recognized, all murmurous with voices and footfalls, its upper chambers filled with filtered sunlight.

  Once long ago in a time discrete from time I lived in such a tall house with a beautiful woman from the Southland. And I think I can remember how she moved in the upper chambers of the house in twilight, and I think I can remember how this was in a time before a time of terror and devastation, and I wish I could remember what it was that happened to that antique life.

  —Well, what are you thinking, John? the Perfessor said.

  —Of farewells, Mr. Shawnessy said. I’m thinking—oddly—of how Abe Lincoln took leave of his fellow townsmen in Springfield, Illinois. While Southerners were screaming for blood and taunting the supineness of the old Union, Lincoln said:

  My friends, no one, not in my position, can realize the sadness I feel at this parting. To this people I owe all that I am. Here I have lived more than a quarter of a century. Here my children were born, and here one of them lies buried. I know not how soon I shall see you again. I go to assume a task more difficult than that which has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington. He never would have succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which h
e at all times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same Divine blessing which sustained him; and on the Almighty Being I place my reliance for support. And I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that Divine Assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain. Again I bid you an affectionate farewell.

  —Stop showing off that famous memory, sprout, the Senator said. I don’t want to brag, gentlemen, but I could beat that speech every day of the year, from the back of a train getting up steam, with a squawling baby in my arms, and a boy lighting a firecracker under me.

  —You couldn’t have pronounced a single phrase of it, Garwood, Mr. Shawnessy said. It’s the only utterance of the period that sounds right to us now. Lincoln, as usual, had the moral gravity to understand the tragedy of the hour. Compare it with the oratory of the South or of other Northerners during that time, and you’ll see what I mean.

  —I don’t see at all what you mean, the Senator said, rising to greet an approaching delegation, but for the time being, I bid you an affectionate . . .

  Farewell. Farewells echoed up and down the streets of country towns in Raintree County years ago, those little streets that lay like channels of eternity beneath the sugar maples. Farewells were spoken on verandahs of houses long ago. Farewells echoed in the vague, lost years before the War (these darkstained memories were all of the years before the War). And in these memories a young man walked along the pre-war streets. And if he followed far enough, these streets would bring him again through the memory of old farewells back to a certain street in Raintree County long ago, and looking up he would see once more on a steep lawn the mournful face of

  1860—1861

  THE HOUSE, SUSANNA’S TALL HOUSE IN FREEHAVEN

  became the home of the young married couple after their return from the South. These were troublous times for Raintree County and the Republic, and troublous too for Johnny Shawnessy. On his return, he became a full-time assistant to Niles Foster on the Free Enquirer, which was now a Republican daily paper, engaged in a desperate fight with the Democratic elements of the County and growing rapidly in circulation and influence as the election of 1860 approached. On the side, Johnny tried to work at an epic poem on the history and meaning of America, but for some reason it didn’t go very well.

  His life was dismally complicated by the fact that he was living in his wife’s house and that she was a Southerner. In the savage reprisals of a political campaign this domestic paradox was not overlooked by the rival newspaper. Only two weeks after Johnny’s return, the following editorial appeared in the Clarion:

  WHAT’S THIS ABOUT HYPOCRISY?

  Those who charge the Democratic Party in this County with the mote of hypocrisy in their stand on the slavery question had best look to the beam in their own eye. It is, we believe, only too well known that a certain young man from whose pen emanates three fourths of the inflammatory and seditious doctrine now appearing in the Republican organ of this community, has recently returned from a summer in the South, where he was feasted by the very people whose institutions he is now attacking with such venomous ferocity. Not only that, but we have it on unimpeachable authority that the imposing mansion which he and his lovely wife, a girl from Louisiana, inhabit near the Square includes in its domestic arrangements two colored people whose status with respect to those freedoms for whose protection the Republican Party claims a monopoly, is, to say the least, questionable. Now we, for our part . . .

  The appearance of this article forced a showdown between Johnny and Susanna.

  —How about it, Susanna? Are Bessie and Soona slaves? Johnny asked her, holding a copy of the Clarion.

  —O, I wouldn’t call them that, she said listlessly.

  They were at the breakfast table. Susanna, who hadn’t been feeling very well, was in a velvet morning robe, her black hair dishevelled. She had come down late, having spent so much time talking with the dolls in bed and dressing them that she hadn’t yet dressed herself. Johnny had finished eating and was ready to leave for the office.

  —Susanna, you’ll have to free those girls or get rid of them, he said.

  —They’ve been in our family since they were born, she said. They’d be unhappy anywhere else.

  —I’ve got to stop this criticism, he said. You can see the position I’m in.

  —I don’t see why you got yourself in such a position. Honestly, Johnny, after being South with me, I don’t see how you can go on being a Republican.

  —It’s useless to argue about it, Susanna. Those are my honest convictions. You can go on thinking your way, and I won’t quarrel with you. When you’re South, you can have your slaves. After all they’re your property, like this house. But this is free country up here, and as a Republican and a newspaperman, I’ve got to be able to repudiate this attack.

  —I wish we hadn’t come back then, Susanna said.

  —You didn’t have to come back, Johnny said, turning pale.

  —Johnny, I wish you wouldn’t pick on me now. I don’t feel well.

  —I’m not picking on you, dear. I just want to be able to say that those girls are not slaves.

  —You are picking on me, Susanna said. I wish we could go away from here.

  —We can’t do that, Johnny said. Not now.

  —Sure we could, honey, Susanna said pertly. I have plenty of money. We could take a trip. To Europe—or somewhere.

  Johnny bowed his head. Yes, Susanna had plenty of money. The house was hers, and the Negro girls were hers. With what he made, he couldn’t even buy her clothes.

  —I can’t go now, he said. I’m in a crusade for something I believe in. Don’t you understand, Susanna?

  —I don’t see why you’re so stubborn about it, Susanna said. What did anybody South ever do to hurt you? Why, you know how sweet and nice they all were to you, and you know you loved it. And now——

  —That’s not the point, dear. Those are personal matters. This is a contest of ideals.

  —But it isn’t, Susanna said, triumphantly. That’s just where you’re wrong, Johnny. What the Republicans really want is to take our slaves away from us and try to make us live in a different way. But we don’t want to live in a different way. We want to live in our own way. Besides, Johnny, I just don’t see how you can go out and electioneer for a man like Lincoln. If it was somebody else—why, all right, but Lincoln!

  She made a sound of disgust. She hunched her shoulders and shook her head. Something colubrine seemed to flow up and down under the velvet robe.

  —What’s the matter with Lincoln?

  —No selfrespecting person could vote for him, Susanna said, beginning to lose her petulant tone for one of strident conviction. Now surely you know that, Johnny.

  —Why? Johnny said, grimly watching the gap widen in the thin walls that they had maintained so long against the great boiling river of their sectional difference.

  Susanna stood up and began to walk lithely back and forth, thrusting her shoulders, shaking her hair, and stroking her neck.

  —I mean—well, it’s a wellknown fact, and you must have heard about it too.

  —What?

  She turned defiantly, standing at bay.

  —I mean the fact that Lincoln has Nigro blood in him!

  It was one of the notorious undercover smears of the campaign, growing out of the obscurity of Lincoln’s maternal background. But coming in all seriousness from Susanna, the statement somehow struck him as funny. He began to laugh.

  —He does too have Nigro blood in him! Susanna said, her eyes blazing. You don’t have to laugh. It’s so! I know it!

  Johnny laughed harder.

  —Lincoln’s mother was—was the issue of an illegitimate birth, Susanna said. Some Southern planter and a Nigro girl. Just ask Uncle Garwood.

  This really was too funny in a dreadful sort of way, and Johnny laughed helplessly with tears in his eyes.

  —What’s so funny about it? Susanna said, her voice getting higher. If you want a
Nigro for President, go ahead and elect him. Anyway, anybody that’d vote for Lincoln and abolition the same as says I’m no better than a nigger girl.

  —Don’t be ridiculous, Susanna. All I ask is that you get rid of these poor colored girls or pay them wages or something, and we’ll keep our political views to ourselves.

  —I know you don’t love me! Susanna shrieked. You never did! You’ve been asking questions about me! And you hate me! I know you do! Your mother and father hate me because I’m Southern!

  —Take it easy, Johnny said, his desire to laugh suddenly gone. All I——

  But the levees were gone, and the angry waters poured through. For the next few minutes he watched whitefaced while Susanna pointed her finger at him and shouted wild, incoherent things. At last he got up.

  —Look, he said, do what you please about the girls, but if they’re not free by tonight, I’m not coming back to this house.

  He walked out and down the long steps to the street and over to the Enquirer office.

  He was covered up with work all day. Several times, he went to a back window of the office and looked out toward the house, which was just hidden by a shed built close to the newspaper building.

  It was after dark before the special issue on which he and Niles were working was ready for press. With cold misgivings, he left the office and walked to the alley from which it was possible to look up a long, slanting shaft between buildings to Susanna’s house on its high lawn.

  What he saw shocked him.

  The house was ablaze with lights. All the windows, front, side, and rear, were streaming light into the quiet September evening. It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t say what. He ran down the slope of the alley and crossed a street and began to climb the gentle grade that led up to the house. Just as he set foot on the steps, there was a shattering sound like the bursting of a thousand wire strings. He realized then that his nerves were overwrought. What he had heard was someone letting both hands fall on piano keys. He ran up the steps and opened the door.