Come Juneteenth

by Ann Rinaldi

  "You want me to get rid of the uniform?" Max asked.

  "No. I'll keep it. Show it to my grandchildren someday," Gabe said.

  When he paid, Max told him that the little boy had been loitering around and begging for two days. "He's got no place to go," Max finished.

  Gabe nodded and without saying anything to me walked over to the table where the boy was wiping out his bowl with the last of his cornbread. "What's your name?" he asked.

  "Hamilton. But everybody call me Ham."

  "You intending on staying here and begging, Hamilton? Or would you like a home?"

  I gasped. Gabe was going to bring him home!

  The boy looked at him warily. "I still be free?"

  "You'll always be free," Gabe told him. "But you still need to eat. And lay your head down someplace at night. Being free doesn't take care of that. Responsibility does. You have to learn to read and write. You want to do all that, come with me. I'll take you to a place where they'll teach you how."

  It took only a minute for Ham to decide. "I come with you," he said, slipping off the chair. "Where we goin'?"

  "A fine place," Gabe said. "I promise."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THAT WAS the first glimmer I had into my brother's mind since he came home from the war. The way he was helping Ham, with all his own worries, Sis Goose being kidnapped, being commissioned to take over with the ranch, and me, Pa dying...

  My mind couldn't get a purchase at first on why he was taking time to help Ham, and then I pondered it out.

  Most likely he was trying to make up for those Indian women and children he'd killed. They, not Yankees, were his casualties of war. Ma had told me about them when she cautioned me to be patient with him.

  Anyway, we fed and watered the horses and mule and then were on our way.

  To San Felipe, Gabe said. "Even though I don't think Heffernan would be stopping at any Yankee headquarters or sheriff's office there. He's still a deserter. Though word may not have gotten out about him yet."

  He put Ham on the horse behind him, and you could tell by the way the little boy clutched at his waist how scared he was. What did Gabe intend to do with him? Leave him? Where?

  "I know some people in San Felipe," he said. "Catholic nuns. They take in children who have no one."

  Catholic? We were Presbyterian. How did it come about that my brother knew Catholic nuns? There was more to him even, I decided, than met the eye. And then a frightening thought seized me. "You're not sending me to a Catholic school in New Orleans, are you?" I asked.

  He grinned, enjoying my agony. "Should. Would do you a lot of good. But no, this is just a fine ladies' school, where you'll learn a lot more than embroidery, believe me. Officer I served with at Fort Belknap has his daughter there and told me all about it. You'll learn Latin and French, equations, philosophy. You'll quote Shakespeare and Cicero. Didn't do me any harm when I learned all that back in college in Virginia. You'll learn about the constellations in the sky and meet wellborn young men. You'll come home telling me what to do."

  "I could do that now."

  "You could try."

  We covered ten miles that morning, and Gabe put his Indian training to work tracking a horse's footsteps on the sandy ground. Several times he got off his horse and examined the prints, pronouncing them to be made by a Yankee horse, which he could tell because of the horseshoe marks.

  "You certainly are going slow there, Captain," I found myself saying to him. "If somebody I loved was kidnapped, I'd be racing across the prairie."

  He gave me an odd look. "The sun getting to you, Luli? I've been tracking. When you track Indians you go steady and unrushed and sure of yourself."

  I giggled. "So now Sis Goose is an Indian. Oh, look, there's something in the sand." I stopped and slid off my horse. "Signs, Gabe, the kind of signs Mercy Love makes when she spreads sand on her table at home. Come look."

  He slipped off his horse and came over. He squatted down. "Where?"

  "Right there. Can't you see? A moon and stars. A circle of stars. They say something about when we'll find her. And the moon is dripping blood. Oh, I wish I could understand what that means."

  His face went hard. "There's no moon dripping blood there," he said sternly. He got up. "I see nothing. Now stop making a joke of this. There're no signs at all. Get back on your horse."

  "But Gabe. You can't ignore such signs. The angels will get angry. You don't want to make the angels angry, do you?"

  "Get back on your horse, Luli. Now."

  "All right, if you want to be a spoilsport."

  We went on. The horizon danced before my eyes. "Where are the mountains, Gabe? Where did they go?"

  "No mountains here, Luli. We've passed them."

  "You mean they passed us. They danced right by. Did you know that mountains can dance, Gabe?"

  "Stop talking gibberish."

  "Gibberish?" I got scared. I somehow sensed that the words coming out of my mouth were not just right, but I couldn't have stopped them coming out if somebody paid me new Yankee dollars. I closed my eyes and rocked to the rhythm of my horse's gait. I almost went to sleep. "Soon as Ma calls me I'm going in for the noon meal," I told him. "I hope she's got some of that good vegetable soup of hers. Wouldn't you like some of that vegetable soup, Gabe?"

  "What I'd like is for you to shut your mouth for a while, dear sister," he said.

  We soon reached a spring and Gabe told me to get off my horse, that we were all going to wash. I caught him looking at me out of the corner of his eyes. "We don't want to look like outriders to the nuns," he said. "Find someplace to wash and change your dress, Luli."

  I was fishing out a clean dress from my saddlebags when I came across the blue cloak. "Who put this in here?" I asked.

  "Pa suggested I bring 'em along," he said. "I've got Sis Goose's."

  "But it's too warm. It must be over a hundred. I'm dying."

  He looked at me in alarm. He lifted Ham off the horse and started toward me. "Pa said it was worth six bales of cotton just to see you two wearing these together."

  "Pa just has a fancy for these cloaks, is all. Pa doesn't know the real world anymore. How could he? He hasn't been out of his bedroom in months."

  "Don't bad-mouth Pa!"

  "I'm sorry. But I'm never going to wear that cloak with Sis Goose again. Where is she? We'll never find her. She's gone from us. Flown away. Like geese do. Gone." Again the words were coming out of my mouth without my being able to control them. Lord, I hoped Gabe would remember his vow.

  I threw my cloak on the dusty ground, an action I couldn't control.

  "Pick it up, Luli."

  "No." I was testing him. I almost ran to a place along the stream where I could have my privacy.

  When I came back he and Ham were washed, too, and he was shaved and wearing a clean shirt.

  My cloak was still on the ground. This was bad. A battle of wits between us was always bad. He was putting away his shaving gear. Ham was helping him.

  "Get the cloak for me, Ham, would you?" he asked.

  Ham picked it up. Gabe brushed it off and started toward me, putting it on my horse's back. I backed away.

  "Stop it, Luli. No showdowns today."

  I stopped.

  He reached out one hand and I braced myself. "What's wrong with you?" I could hear the hurt in his voice. In a practiced way, like Ma did, he felt my face for fever. "You're burning up is what's wrong. God, child, you've got a first-rate fever. You've been talking crazier than a coot for the last hour."

  "Gabe."

  "What?"

  "You've got angels on your shoulders. They're powerful pretty ones, too. And they like you, Gabe. They're going to help you."

  His voice broke. "Ham, get me that large saddlebag in front, will you? There's a boy." He dug in it and brought out some boneset, Ma's remedy for fever. I hated the stuff but took it obediently because of all the trouble I'd been causing him. I saw Ma, not Gabe, standing over me now, cautioning me
to behave.

  Then I pointed out to Gabe how the sky was darkening in the west, ugly black clouds, and it was true, not some fancy I dreamed up. In the next instant I saw streaks of lightning, which always terrorized me, and I heard mutterings of thunder.

  "Your horse," Gabe said.

  "I know, I can't let him catch my fears, but I won't, don't worry."

  I felt chilled, but I followed Gabe diligently, never holding him back. I don't know what we looked like coming into the lovely little town of San Felipe, but with it being near one o'clock and hot and everyone taking siesta and the storm threatening, no one was in the streets.

  Gabe went right to the end of the dusty street where there stood a Mexican-style church. Next to it was what appeared to be a convent, whitewashed and with pots of geraniums on the spacious front gallery, where there was also a settle and some chairs.

  We got off the horses in front.

  "Wait here," Gabe said.

  Ham and I waited. My head was still throbbing. I wished Gabe would come out. I knew he was going to turn me over to the nuns for treatment, but I also knew he wouldn't leave until I was better.

  Right now I'd be willing to have a tooth pulled to get out of here.

  "You lucky you got such a brother to take care o' you," Ham said. "My brother wuz sold away."

  Should I tell him now how such a brother could boss you around, scold you so you'd have to run to Mama, who'd send you right back to him again, maybe for more? No, this wasn't the time. Anyway, he'd been witness to some of it.

  The door opened. Gabe came out. A nun was with him.

  "As you can see, we're a little dusty for wear," he told her. "My ma would never let us in the house this way."

  "Only thing I object to is the guns," she said. "You remember that, Gabriel. Leave them here at the door."

  I felt naked without mine but minded how Gabe gave his over with no protest.

  "Sister Geraldine, this is my little sister, Luanne. We call her Luli. And this is Ham, the boy I told you about. Ham, take off your hat."

  The boy did so.

  "I'd like to go into all of it with you now, ma'am, but I'd be powerful appreciative if you'd have someone see first to my little sister. She's fearful ailing. I gave her some of Ma's boneset on the trail for fever, and I've got some laudanum, too." He pushed one of his saddlebags with his foot.

  "Why, of course. Sister Helena!" she called out, then to us, "She's excellent with remedies. We'll put you right to bed. My, you are a pretty little girl."

  "Be good, honey," Gabe winked at me, teasing, and hugged me, but I wouldn't let him go.

  "Gabe, don't leave without me. Promise."

  "Course not," he said with rough tenderness, which I recognized as his form of love.

  I didn't know anything about nuns, so I at least expected Sister Helena to be as nice as the angels I'd seen on Gabe's shoulders. She was. She helped me into a soft nightdress and for some reason I felt no shame in front of her. She talked all the while. About my father, who they nursed back from the cholera years ago and who still sent around "tokens" of sides of meat, corn, flour, and wine, several times a year. About how Gabriel had been here a few years ago with Granville on a trip south.

  By that time I was propped up against goose-down and feather pillows because somehow along the way I must have told her I had a terror of lightning storms and that Mama surrounded me with such pillows and quilts because God never let geese and chickens get struck by lightning.

  Then, thanks to her magic remedies, which tasted a lot like Mercy Love's, I went to sleep and never woke until there was a gentle knock and the door opened so I could see both the sunshine and Gabe standing there.

  "You up?"

  I nodded.

  "The sisters are at mass praying for my soul. Look, don't tell them you shot the colonel, will you? He was here with Sis Goose a few days ago and kind enough not to admit he was shot by a young girl."

  "He was here?"

  "Yes. Wanted a priest to marry them." He slumped against the doorjamb. "Thank God for Catholic rules. The priest wouldn't do it. Needed more time, he said. I'll wager he needed time to look into this colonel with the shot arm and a young, scared girl with him." He wasn't looking at me.

  He gave the subject a new turn then. "Guess where I slept last night."

  "In the barn with the horses."

  "Do I smell that bad? No, I slept in the gallery, on the settle."

  "Why?"

  He shrugged. I could tell he just wanted to talk. And if he raised his head, I wagered I would see his eyes full of tears again, brought on by talking of Sis Goose. "Army training," he said. "Always post watch. That way I was able to sleep with my gun. And I never got wet. Is your fever gone? You're not seeing any more angels?"

  "They say you smell too bad."

  He came into the room and pushed the hair off my face and felt my forehead. "Come on, get dressed then and come down for breakfast. We'll say our proper goodbyes and get on with it."

  At the door he stopped, turned, and examined his hat. "There's something you're not telling me about Sis Goose, isn't there?"

  My mouth fell open.

  "Look, I know you two have secrets. I know that's what girls do. But I hope it isn't something real important that you're keeping from me, Luli."

  "I made her a promise not to tell, Gabe. And after we kept her freedom a secret from her for so long, it seemed the thing to do."

  He nodded. "Yeah. But promises sometimes turn out to be trouble. Just like the promise I made to myself never to give you a good swat once in a while."

  I was supposed to laugh. I didn't. He saw that and frowned.

  "In it deep, are you?"

  I nodded.

  "Anybody going to get hurt?"

  "Just hurt feelings," I said.

  He sighed. "Well, if it's too much for you to handle you can come to me. You know that. You can come to me for anything."

  Did he have to be so nice? By all that was holy, why did I make that promise to Sis Goose not to tell him she was carrying his child?

  "Come on now, get dressed," he said. "I'm about starved."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  WHEN WE LEFT, Sister Geraldine gave us some sliced baked ham on thick slices of freshly made bread. She gave me a stone jar of tea. "It will keep hot at least until noon," she said. "And it's good for you."

  Whatever arrangements she and Gabe made about Ham I didn't know. But I know that Gabe did give her money to clothe the boy and get him a good pair of shoes.

  She said she would pray for us. I somehow had the feeling we'd need it.

  SISTER GERALDINE had told Gabe that Colonel Heffernan said he was going to cross the river and head for Matagorda, near the Gulf.

  "I dressed his shoulder while he was here," she said. "The wound is superficial."

  "Lucky you," Gabe told me when we were on our way again. "I'll have to tell Cochran that you didn't kill him."

  We had to cross the river to find Heffernan, and so we rode to the riverside where there was a ferry.

  The man who operated it lived in a log cabin on a small nearby hill. "Yell for a crossing," a crudely painted sign read.

  "I done yelled," a voice said. "An' he said he be comin' soon. Waited for freedom, guess we kin wait for him."

  Under a grove of trees just to the left of us they were, and we hadn't seen them. A group of negroes with some worn-down mules carrying their few possessions. Gabe said hello and asked them where they were going.

  They looked the worse for wear, like they'd stayed out all night in the hard rain. There were five of them: two women, two men, and one young boy. They came forward.

  "I's Felix," the one who'd spoken to us said. He was gray-haired and strong looking, though obviously not young. His eyes were like the eyes of Mercy Love's owl, seeing everything and giving back nothing.

  "Gabe Holcomb and my sister Luli," Gabe said.

  The man nodded. "This here's my son Charley, brother Knox, an' Si
s Eda and Sis Hannah. We been travelin' for days. Goin' south to look for work. Done left Marse Jones for good," he finished.

  Gabe nodded. "Where you from?"

  "Up north a ways. Fifteen miles above Washington. My wife, she dead. Beaten to death by Massa's driver. She wuz carryin' another chile. Man dug a hole in the ground, made her lay face down in it, and beat her till she died. That wuz two years ago now."

  Gabe nodded. "Sorry about that. I've traveled a bit up that way and heard that old man Jones was rough on his people."

  "Rough don't say it," Felix answered. "That man made us wear chains sometimes when we worked in the fields. He had sixty bloodhounds that he rented out to slave catchers. My brother Horace, he done run off this May after we hear the war may be over. Massa ask for his return in paper. Willin' to give money. Next thing we know that Granger fella down in Galveston say we all be free."

  Gabe nodded. "Granger is the commander of the District of Texas. That was Order Number Three."

  "At first," Felix went on, "we all jumpin' up an' down. Feel like heroes, 'cause we lived to see freedom. Then Massa ask us to work for him. Nobody stayed. An' so we been travelin'. Now we outa food and have no money and doan know what to do."

  "Ate nuthin' but berries and grapes for five days," his son Charley put in.

  "Let's get to the other side of the river first," Gabe said. "I can give you some supplies."

  THE FERRY MAN came down the hill. The ferry looked like an oversized raft with rickety railings on the sides, but he said it could fit all of us. "It'll cost you five dollars," he said to Gabe. Then he looked at the crowd of negroes. "You got any money?"

  "No, suh," said Felix.

  "I'll pay for them," Gabe offered.

  And I was close enough to him this time to see his money. Again it was Yankee, not Confederate. More of Pa's money.

  I supposed Pa had made some sort of bargain with the group of important men he knew and had enough Yankee dollars now to replace his Confederate money. But what did people do who didn't have a pa like that, I wondered. I must ask Gabe.