Come Juneteenth

by Ann Rinaldi

  Come Juneteenth

  Ann Rinaldi

  * * *

  Harcourt, Inc.

  ORLANDO AUSTIN NEW YORK SAN DIEGO TORONTO LONDON

  * * *

  Copyright © 2007 by Ann Rinaldi

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

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  system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be

  submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following address:

  Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive,

  Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rinaldi, Ann.

  Come Juneteenth/Ann Rinaldi.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Fourteen-year-old Luli and her family face tragedy after failing to tell their

  slaves that President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made them free.

  [1. Family life—Texas—Fiction. 2. Slavery—Texas—Fiction. 3. African Americans—

  Fiction. 4. Juneteenth—Fiction. 5. Texas—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction.

  6. Texas—History—1865–1950—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.R459Com 2007

  [Fic]—dc22 2006021458

  ISBN 978-0-15-205947-7

  Text set in Adobe Garamond

  Designed by Cathy Riggs

  First edition

  A C E G H F D B

  Printed in the United States of America

  This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, places, organizations,

  and events portrayed in this book are products of the author's imagination

  or are used fictitiously to lend a sense of realism to the story.

  * * *

  In memory of

  Rebecca Leigh Marseglia

  May 1, 1988—February 7, 2005

  * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AS ALWAYS, there are no words to express my thanks to the many authors who wrote the factual books on Texas: the lifestyle, the history, and the problems during the American Civil War. Without such research, no writer would be able to even start on such a project as I have undertaken.

  I am indebted, also, to my editor, Karen Grove of Harcourt, for her understanding of what I was trying to do, for her input and her patience and her respect for my work. And to my agent, Rosalie Siegel, likewise for her patience and her hand-holding, and sometimes for just listening, which has become, of late, one of the most important chores of literary agents.

  * * *

  PROLOGUE

  LAST NIGHT when the fire burned low, when the last of the sweet potatoes under the logs was just a crisp fragrance left of our supper, long after my brother Gabriel had taken his last swig from the flask in his haversack and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and turned over in his bedroll on the other side of the fire and grunted his good night, last night I lay awake long and unblinking in the spark-filled distance above me. The stars were like pine-knot torches and the moon was brighter than it had a right to be, casting shadows all over the place.

  How easy it would be to close my eyes and pretend I was on a hunting trip with Gabriel and Sis Goose, the kind we'd take in the fall after the crops had been brought in and before the first hog killings.

  And before the war.

  Before we worried about the bluecoats coming. Or how much money Pa was losing not being able to ship all his cotton to England because of the Yankee blockade.

  Before we were busy concocting a strange mixture of parched corn, rye, wheat, and okra seed to make our coffee. Before Gabe went off to guard the northern border and kill Indians.

  Before we had to worry about the Confederate states taking a third of Pa's able-bodied negroes to dig fortifications in Galveston. And all I had to worry about then was my next trip with Sis Goose to Aunt Sophie's plantation, which came about either because Aunt Sophie demanded her twice-a-year visits, as Sis Goose's proper owner, or because Sis Goose had committed some serious transgression at home and Mama didn't know what else to do with her.

  I was always sent along. Likely because I was part of Sis Goose's mischief and preferred Aunt Sophie's subtle punishments to brother Gabe's out-and-out direct ones.

  "Made a mess of things again, hey Luli?" Gabe would say. "Well, now, why don't you come on an' tail after me today and I'll find something for you to do."

  "Gabe, I think if I told you..."

  "Come on now. No time for tellin'." His words were kind, but he would brook no argument. "Lessen you want to go upstairs and see Pa. You want that now?"

  Nobody under God's good sun would want that. Pa may be an invalid, but he knows what goes on in every corner of the place. So then I mounted the horse Gabe had waiting for me and rode off around the whole ranch with Gabe to take stock of every broken place in the fences, work until after dusk if need be.

  But that time was all finished and done with. And for me now, too, there was no Sis Goose to snuggle against and giggle with on a trip like this, so that Gabriel scolded.

  Sis Goose was gone. Taken from us by the bluecoats. And not by Aunt Sophie as we had always feared would happen. Taken, as sure as an eagle swoops down and takes a rabbit.

  Or had she gone of her own free will? If she did, it's my fault. Because of the argument we'd had. I hadn't told Gabe about it. Let him think the Yankees took her. It was easier all around that way.

  Someday the truths will come out. Mine and Gabe's and Sis Goose's. We just aren't ready for them yet.

  All that matters is that we were here now, under these Texas stars that everybody talks about, to find her. Under these stars that give you no darkness to hide in. And, in the nights that come, or the sun-baked days, we're going to look for her out there somewhere beyond the rim of our firelight. Where, at night, the creatures howl out their apologies for all of us; and in the day, the sun beats down without mercy.

  Where the rushes grow on the banks of silver rivers and the blue-eyed grass and wine-cups and star phlox and wild petunias flourish. Where wild boar roam and snakes are in plenitude. And where you don't venture without a rifle and a keen eye for your target.

  I had both. Gabe had always insisted upon it. He taught me to shoot at twelve, and I was now as good as both my brothers. It's my vanity, my shot with a gun. I go out into the open and practice for hours sometimes. Lots of times Sis Goose was with me, cheering me on.

  She wouldn't touch a gun herself. She is afeared of them.

  Out here now, miles from home, you must know what you are shooting at. You must know the difference between outriders and criminals and runaway slaves and Confederate deserters.

  Gabe didn't trust me on that. "Wake me before you shoot," he'd said. "There might be others like us out here."

  This was my watch, nine until midnight. I had with me the pendant timepiece from Grandmother Heather, Mama's mother, in Virginia. I had often looked at it and wondered if it would keep perfect time out here in this savage land as it had kept the gentle hours in Virginia. It did.

  What was it Gabe had said? Others like us? I doubted it. Leastways there was nobody like me, fourteen and equal to the task Gabriel had given me. And him, look at him there, with his faded and worn Confederate uniform the only thing that fits him anymore, its buttons missing, the yellow sash as faded as Confederate paper money, the captain's insignia torn from his shoulders as the bluecoats had demanded. Him, beaten and worn, his wound from a battle with the Kickapoo Indians still h
urting him, but no matter. He is ready to cross the Rio Grande, if necessary, to fetch back the girl he loves.

  He hasn't seen her since he came home from the war. She was already gone by then. Does he know she is carrying his child?

  There is the question that looms over us like the wing-spread of a swallow-tailed hawk. I haven't told him. I promised Sis Goose I wouldn't.

  We don't speak of her anyway. He speaks about Kickapoo Indians a lot, especially one woman whom he'd unintentionally wounded when she was pregnant. After, her name had been changed to "One Arm Sleeps" and everyone helped her. He spoke about her in bits and pieces. It happened while he was stationed at Fort Belknap on the Brazos River, where his job was to keep Indians from attacking frontier settlers.

  He'd changed with the war. Something had gone out of him and something new had taken over. Some sense of loss, of guilt.

  Does he blame himself for not telling Sis Goose she was free these last two years? What kind of man doesn't tell his woman a thing like that?

  What would they say to each other when, and if, they meet again? That the choice to tell her she was free was not his to make? If he let that cat out of the bag half of Texas would be in an uproar, expecting a slave uprising. It was that simple.

  Of course I couldn't blame his long silences all on the slavery thing. He had killed Indians. Mothers and children. I suppose that is enough to put any man of conscience and honor to shame.

  I had never been afraid of him. And I cannot say that about my brother Granville, who never let little things like conscience or honor get in the way.

  After all, it was Granville who discovered a way to ship cotton out when nobody else could. He'd arranged things in the small quiet village near the mouth of the Rio Grande on the Mexican side, so cotton could be shipped to England. They say that at any given time seventy ships stacked with bales of cotton could be lying at anchor in the harbor off Bagdad, Mexico. And he'd run the Yankee blockade, too, bringing items we needed home to us.

  Nobody in the family questioned Granville's doings. "It takes men like Granville to build empires," Pa had said.

  So yes, I was a little bit afraid of Granville and what he'd become. He didn't care. He wanted it that way.

  Now, thanks to the war, I was a little bit afraid of Gabe, too. We both knew, of course, that that little bit was too much. But neither of us knew how to fix it.

  And so we just let it lie there between us while we attended to other things.

  I PUT MORE wood on the fire and gave in to remembering Sis Goose as she was on one of our visits to Aunt Sophie. We'd gone because Aunt Sophie demanded of Mama two weeks a year that Sis Goose visit. When we got there we found out that Lexxy, who served at table, was down with the bilious fever. Right off, Aunt Sophie told Sis Goose, "Go on, get changed, you must wait on the table tonight. You might as well learn. It could serve you well someday."

  The worst part was that she made Sis Goose wear her hair under a turban. She had Suzie in the kitchen do her up. And so there went the long, flowing hair, hidden from sight. And there was the rough, dun-colored dress covered with the whitest of aprons.

  Thank heavens there were only three of us—Aunt Sophie, myself, and Uncle Garland—at the table. I did not want to remain. I wanted to be excused, but Aunt Sophie said no. And the next thing I knew, in came Sis Goose with the platter of meat held in her slender hands. And there were tears in her eyes, but she performed her tasks as directed by Aunt Sophie.

  "Don't let Aunt Sophie bully her" were Gabe's last words to me before we left. And I promised I wouldn't. For I must mention here that by this time I knew about their secret liaisons, knew how he was smitten with Sis Goose.

  And here I was, sitting at table, scared as a kitchen mouse. The food tasted like sawdust in my mouth. I do not know how I got through supper.

  Later, in the room we shared, I found Sis Goose crying. "Why does she treat me like a slave?" she asked me.

  "It's her way. It's Aunt Sophie. It's why Mama wouldn't let her have you."

  "Do you know what she meant by it being good for me to learn to serve at table?"

  "No," I'd answered.

  "She meant if she died, she has it in her will that someone else should inherit me, and they might treat me as a slave. And if I couldn't do household things, they'd make me work in the fields. That's what she meant!"

  She started to cry. I held her. Where was Gabe in all of this? When I saw her with him, though they tried to keep their feelings a secret, I felt like I was a witness at God's creation, they went so well together.

  She was "high yellow" in color, or "bright." She was near as white as I.

  God's experiment. God's mistake.

  "She has papers saying I'm a slave," she said of Aunt Sophie.

  "If she does," I said lamely, "I've never seen them."

  "I won't stay here," she said, wiping tears from her chiseled face. "I won't be treated as a slave. I'll die first."

  "We won't ever let you," I said, taking her hands in my own. They were ice cold, yet her face looked feverish.

  She looked at me. "When that negro man came into the barn at home, he said all negroes were free. If what he says is true, I need to know."

  That again. The man in the barn. I was warned by both of my brothers to put the incident out of my mind. It had never happened. And if I said it did, one or both of them would convince Pa that I would be ten times better off at Miss Vincent's Academy for Young Ladies, an elite boarding school back in Virginia.

  And Pa would be convinced. He always listened to my brothers.

  So I never mentioned the man in the barn again. And so I had to face Sis Goose when she mentioned it and tell her that what the man had said was not true.

  I had to lie to her, my sister, my friend who'd always been there for me as I was growing up. Who'd taught me to walk and say words. Who'd played at dolls with me and was never jealous of the attention given to me by my brothers.

  I lied straight to her face. Right into her liquid brown eyes.

  "What the man in the barn said is not true. The slaves are not free. But not to worry. You're not a slave, anyway. And who pays attention to a little old piece of paper that might say so?"

  WHEN GABRIEL found out how Aunt Sophie had treated Sis Goose, he was fit to be hog-tied. Gabriel isn't given to anger quickly. Instead he does a slow burn, like a sweet potato in the fire, becoming more ready to explode with each minute.

  He was just about to leave for the end of his furlough when he found out. And on the way back to Fort Belknap, he stopped at Aunt Sophie's place to register his complaint.

  "You have taken away from her what it took Ma years to build," he told Aunt Sophie.

  "Don't you come tramping into my home and telling me what to do, young man," she said. And she gave him what for, as if he were a little boy and not standing in front of her in the uniform of a captain in the Confederacy. "Mind your own business, or I'll be forced into taking her back. Did it ever occur to you that if tragedy struck and we had to sell her, she has no training in household duties at all? And could be put in the fields?"

  "She is my business," Gabe told her. But no, it hadn't occurred to him. Or to any of us.

  "Just how does she get to be your business?" Aunt Sophie asked. "I hope you're not talking about what I think you're talking about."

  Gabe turned on his heel and left for Fort Belknap. The Kickapoo Indians he was up against back there were easier to deal with. Even a fox knows when it is outwitted and will creep back into its lair and lick its wounds and plan for next time.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I WAS IN the pumpkin patch, counting the ones that were good enough for Old Pepper Apron, our cook, to make into bread. I recollect that Pa was happy that he'd gotten one or two cents more on the pound from the cotton Granville had shipped out of Bagdad. And that the fields were being sown with winter oats and rye.

  I looked up and saw Sis Goose standing by the gate, a frown on her lovely face. It was all like s
ome Dutch still life I was learning about from my tutor. Sis twisted her apron in her hands. She always wore a snow-white apron, like I did, even though we had no real household chores.

  "Luli, there's an old negro man in our barn," she said.

  For a moment I did not understand. The place was full of negro men: field hands, household help. But the look on her face told me something was amiss.

  "Who is he?"

  "Says he comes from Virginny. Says..." and her voice broke.

  "Says what?"

  "Says the negroes are free. That Abraham Lincoln freed them in January of '63."

  That rumor again. But with the war there was a different rumor every week. I swallowed. Something on Sis Goose's face bespoke her distress.

  "Go and get Gabe," I told her. "He'll know what to do."

  Gabe was in the house, helping Mama decide whether the one hundred bushels of corn she wanted to trade for three pounds of sugar was worth it.

  I went to the horse barn, but I didn't go in until Gabe and Sis Goose came back.

  "Where'd you come from, Uncle?" Gabe asked the man, who looked old enough to be somebody's grandfather.

  "Virginny. I comes from Virginny," came the answer. "From Applegate I come. On the advice of Miz Heather."

  Applegate was my Virginia grandmother's plantation.

  Gabe scowled and ran his hands over the back of the man's mule. It had USA branded on its back. "This is a fine-looking animal. Where'd you get it?"

  "Miz Heather give it to me. And say to come here. She give me a message for y'all."

  "What message?" from Gabe.

  "She say that no matter what, I shud tell y'all that Mister Linkum done freed the slaves nigh over a year ago now."

  "Did she now?" Gabe's voice was tight, forced in its casualness. "Well, to my knowledge my grandmother never had a mule with USA branded on its back. This mule is government property," Gabe told him.