Come Juneteenth

by Ann Rinaldi

Now Ma was something else. She took us both into the kitchen and gave us what-for. Couldn't we have done this? And why didn't we think of that? If both of us were just a bit younger she'd whip us with a broom handle. The two of us, the best shots in the county, and we couldn't put a bullet between that man's eyes? "What happened to you, Gabe, when you took that first shot?"

  "I didn't...," he answered, "you know..."

  "No, I don't. Why don't you tell me."

  "I didn't know she was carrying my child, Ma. The idea threw me like the best bronco in the corral."

  She looked at me. "I know you didn't tell me. You didn't tell him, either?"

  I shrank into the floor. I told her no. And to her why, oh to her why I said I thought it was Sis Goose's place to tell him.

  For the first time in my life Ma slapped me. On the face. Even Gabe winced and tried to protect me. "She had my back in the gunfight, Ma. C'mon, she's had a rough time."

  "She wouldn't have had to have your back if she'd properly prepared you for what was coming. Playing games is what she was doing."

  "Come on, Ma. Jeez. You don't know what she's been through. I can't allow you to treat her like this."

  Mama's eyes popped. "You can't allow ... you ... can't allow..."

  Gabe worked his charm then, and he had plenty of it. He put his arm around Ma's shoulders. "You gonna kick me out?" he asked her. "Hey? Where do I go next? The barn?"

  She broke then as he knew she would. She cried against his broad chest, and he held her while she cried it out. He signaled me with his head to leave the room for now, and so I went upstairs to my room.

  He came upstairs in a little bit. I heard him talking softly to Ma, bringing her along, settling her in her room. Then he came to mine and closed the door. "I'm sorry about all that," he said.

  "Thanks for defending me."

  "It's part of what I do. I wasn't fast enough this time." He came over to my bed, where I was sitting looking through some pictures. He put a hand under my chin and turned my face toward him. "Wow. You better get down to Mercy Love's and get some remedy for that. It's starting to swell."

  I nodded.

  "Ma will get over it. It's just her way of responding to the news."

  "All we need is for us to get over it," I told him.

  He sighed. "You're doing good, Luli. You're recovering."

  It is taking time, lots of time, but I am recovering. Don't I go once a week to our cemetery to lay flowers on Pa's grave? Didn't I greet Granville when he came home, all properlike? Didn't I take part in Christmas like I wasn't dying inside?

  And what about how I folded and put away all Sis Goose's things and left them outside Gabe's door? He said nothing, but one day when he was making one of his trips to Indian country to visit friends he'd made there during the war, he took them with him. Didn't I behave with decorum when Granville told Gabe it was time to send me to school and didn't I make the trip down there with Granville without any trouble?

  I put up with the silly girls at school, didn't I? I was even sort of a big sister to some of the younger ones. And I even met a young man of good breeding and danced with him and pretended I didn't have a care in the world. Until he confided in me how he unwittingly hurt his brother while rolling around and playing rough on the ground outside.

  "He's paralyzed," he confided in me. "And he's my twin."

  I didn't tell him about my sin at first. But I accepted an invitation to dinner at his family's home. And now that I'm home again, back from school and teaching the children on our ranch, we write back and forth regularly. Gabe said I could invite him for Christmas. I've told Gabe what happened with Billy and his brother, and he just closed his eyes for a minute and said, "If that's what it takes, Luli, if that's what it takes."

  I'm educated now. Among other things I can quote Shakespeare. A good man to quote. All that hatred and killing.

  I can, and do, help Mama keep the books. She is retired now but still keeps an eagle eye on things.

  The Yankees left in the spring of '69. They didn't leave Texas, no. Our state is still under what they call Reconstruction. Which sometimes turns out to be more of a punishment for Texans than anything. And lots of plantations, including Aunt Sophie's, are still occupied. Gabe rode over there a few times and came home to tell us it was a mess. And there are Aunt Sophie and my sister Amelia, still making their homes in Europe.

  I went with Ma and Gabe into our house after the Yankees were gone. The oak floors were scratched. The draperies all torn and ruined, as were the chairs and settles and whatever other furniture was left.

  Old rusty guns were on the floor in the dining room. Good dishes were cracked and broken. There were messages left on the walls in paint.

  I heard Ma give a little gasp. "Don't worry, Ma, we'll have it fixed up in no time," Gabe promised.

  I had already written to Granville in Mexico to bring everything back.

  We stayed in the log house until our old house was lovely and beckoned us to live in it again.

  Granville even brought back the Thoroughbreds. It is my job to exercise them every day. I guess Gabe thinks I need the fresh air. Either that or he has nobody else to do it properly. And I do it properly, right to the brushing down. I don't need any more scoldings from Gabe. All they do is bruise me and lacerate him.

  I gave nobody any trouble. Until the day came for me to move back into the big house, and then I told them no, I'm going to stay.

  "What do you mean you're going to stay here in the log house?" Gabe said.

  "I feel safe here. All my things are here."

  "We'll bring them inside."

  I just wanted to be alone. Couldn't they see it? Wasn't I old enough?

  "No," Gabe said firmly. "We're a family. There's not much left of us, but what's left is a family. Pa is gone. Granville is gone. Amelia is gone. Sis Goose is gone. There's only us for now, damn it, and we're a family!"

  Sis Goose's name hung in the air between us. Nobody talked about her anymore. Her name swung back and forth, hit me in the face, and then hit him.

  "No," he said again.

  I knew that "no." I grew up with it. "All right," I said. "I'll come."

  So I did. But gradually, because I always knew my way around Gabe, I left them. Piece by piece I left them. I'd say I was studying or going over my next day's school-work and I needed to use the schoolroom, and I'd burn a lamp late and then fall asleep on the old settle in Pa's study.

  Edom died. He must have been over a hundred. We found him dead one day in the back room. It didn't put me off. The place was now all mine. We buried him next to Pa, and now it seemed like all ties to the past were broken.

  On those nights when I fell asleep in the study, I'd leave a lamp burning and Gabe would come in and extinguish the lamp and cover me over, and I'd hear words about "you burning the place down and yourself with it" in my dreams.

  Every so often Gabe would leave for a few days to take a trip. He had the running of the place mastered. Those days I was to stay in the house with Ma. Strict orders. Sam was in charge but still deferred to Ma. Nobody knew where Gabe went on these trips. But he'd go once every two months or so. And he'd always take some blankets or trinkets for old Indian friends from before the war.

  Did he go to San Felipe to visit the nuns and Ham?

  Did he go a little farther into that sad little town to visit Sis Goose's grave?

  He never said. I knew better than to ask.

  What he needed was a woman, I decided. Granville had wired us that he'd taken a wife, a beautiful Mexican girl, and one of these days he'd bring her home to visit.

  When he did come home, Gabe always brought some Indian trinkets for me and Ma. He could have passed their reservation along the way.

  Finally, I just moved into the log house full time. Nobody said anything. I only went home when Gabe took one of his trips. I fixed the place the way I wanted it, with old rag rugs that Mama gave me. I had the kitchen pots and utensils. Mama let me keep the china from the l
og house, and on the walls I have drawings the children made me.

  My expensive schooling paid off in the end, anyway. And so here I sit in my study and wait. Usually I don't know for what. But this time I do. I am waiting for Gabe to come back from his latest trip. For no reason, except that when he does, I won't have to sleep in the big house anymore and take care of Mama.

  IT IS DUSK when he comes. Soon I must go to Mama's for supper. I hear the knock on the front door. He always knocks out of politeness to me. I rush through the gallery, down the hall to the front door. I open it and he is standing there. There is someone with him.

  A little boy, about eight years of age. Younger than Ham was when we found him.

  He is an Indian boy, though, dressed in leggings and fringed shirt and moccasins, with dark hair and the loveliest brown eyes I ever saw.

  I look into Gabe's eyes and for the first time since I shot Sis Goose, his eyes smile back into mine. "Hello, Luli," he says.

  I nod and look at the boy.

  "This is Sits in the Sun. I brought him to learn at your school."

  I nod again, and the little boy extends his hand and I take it. "Hello, Miss Luli," he says.

  I gasp. "He speaks English."

  Gabe nods. "I've taught him."

  They step into the house and I am full of questions, but I know better than to ask. In due time Gabe will talk. And he does, when I bring out some tea and some milk and biscuits for the boy.

  The child is looking at the walls, at the drawings of my students.

  "Right after he was born, Luli," he says with great difficulty, "I ... shot his mother in a battle. Never meant to do it. She was running away with him. My shot caught her, and..."

  "It's all right," I say.

  "No, no, it's never all right, honey. We must never mark it as all right. I'm not the father. Want you to know. He's dead. Relatives were raising him. I'd stop by and visit. Bring some things. Keep an eye out. Lately, I've been stopping by a lot. Since my own child was lost."

  I let him finish. Let the words crackle with the fire in the hearth and find their way up the chimney to the heavens. That's the only place they could be understood. There and here. In my heart.

  I let him finish.

  "I'd like you to educate him," he says. Like he needed to ask.

  I keep nodding. I would have nodded a yes to the devil himself at the moment. Because all I knew was that what we both needed had just walked through the door in the person of a precious little Indian boy who had nobody to care for him but two broken people looking for a way to get whole again.

  "It would be nice," Gabe goes on, "if you'd kind of take over with him. Let Ma be the grandmother. She needs that right now. But for that, you'd have to come and live in the house again. Could you do that, you think?"

  The little boy is eating his biscuits and drinking his milk. He smiles at me. "Papa says I have to learn to sleep in a bed," he tells me.

  "Papa, is it?" I tease my brother. I won't let him off the hook on that one for a while, you can wager.

  Gabe has the decency to blush. "He insists," he says.

  "Then let him say it."

  We finish our repast. I bring the dishes into the kitchen and wash them. Then I pick up a cloak. It just happens to be the blue velvet, worn from use now. I put it on and go back into the study where they are waiting for me.

  "Come on, Sits in the Sun," I say. "Let's go home."

  * * *

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  FOR OVER five years now I've wanted to do a book on Juneteenth, the name given to June 19th, the day in Texas, in 1865, that the slaves finally received their freedom. If you do the math, yes, it is more than two years after the slaves in the East were freed. And if you start to wonder how such a thing came to pass, you can stop wondering. No one I asked can tell me how the Texas ranchers could keep their slaves in bondage while those in the East were free.

  As for the book I wanted to do, I could think of no appropriate approach. The subject was as big as the state itself. I knew I had to narrow it down, personalize it. But I could think of no fitting plot. Slavery itself was too big a plot. It would smother me and the reader. No, I had to have a story first. Then I would deal with the history closing in all around it.

  Surely this dragging on of slavery hurt a lot of people. I wanted to show how it hurt a precious few, to make my readers care about them.

  I wanted to care about them.

  Then, early in 2005, the story started to assume shadows against a vast landscape. And I knew right off that it was not a happy landscape. I heard whisperings of my characters, but I did not know yet who they were. I heard angry voices, and I did know that these people had strong convictions, high ideals, traditions to live up to, traditions that might kill them if they didn't watch out. I knew they lived big, like everyone in Texas. I also knew they loved big and hated big. And that included each other. One minute they'd be laughing together, and the next they'd be shooting each other with words as deadly as the guns they were so expert in using.

  The story was starting to haunt me.

  Basically it would be the story of two girls, one white and one near white, the latter taken in by the family Holcomb as a baby, treated like a princess, while under Texas law still a slave.

  The portrait was coming into my sights, huge with its skies and its stars, its flat endless prairie, and its high mountain regions studded with peaks of lime shell and chalky rocks.

  I knew I had to bring it to a personalized snapshot, black and white, with all the shadows and gray areas. Only then could I build my story.

  For that is how all my historical novels begin. With characters. With their story. Never mind about the history. Oh, it's there, all right. It's up to me to fit my characters in to this landmark happening. Let it affect the characters' everyday lives. Let them lead me through it.

  But wait. It still can't be a story until these characters invite me in.

  Some take forever to do this, going about their business and ignoring me.

  The characters in this book, it turned out, were there, waiting for me. "Where have you been? We've been waiting five years."

  They had the gates of the ranch open, as well as the heavy front door of the house. Did I want a nice cup of coffee? Some of Luli's sugar cookies? Even Gabe and Granville's hound dogs greeted me.

  "I'm Luli," a lively, pretty, bursting-with-life teenage girl introduced herself. "And this is Sis Goose."

  Sis Goose played her role well. She was older, but shy. Beautiful, but already a woman with secrets.

  "And this is my brother Gabe," Luli said, grabbing his elbow with both hands. "My brother Granville is in Mexico. Building empires."

  "Mind your manners," Gabe said solemnly. You could see he took responsibility for her, for them all. He took off his planter's hat and smoothed down his brown, sundrenched hair. He was in his midtwenties. Could I do justice to his quiet brand of good looks? Or would mentioning them just demean him? He was so much more than that. A man crowded with obligations, worries, and a river full of memories he had to swim through every day before breakfast.

  "Welcome, ma'am," he said to me. "My ma is upstairs taking a nap. She's getting on now, you know."

  A dutiful son to Ma, I thought. Yes, I must remember that.

  "How's your father?" I asked politely. I knew his father was dying; after all, I'd put him in that upstairs bedroom and given him that stroke.

  He turned his planter's hat around in his hands. "Middling well, thanks for asking. Luli, stop jumping around like a possum on a stick."

  The girl quieted down. Thirteen, I'd made her thirteen. Impossible age, just to give him trouble. But she minded him. He saw to it. I also saw the fondness in his eyes when he looked at her. As for Sis Goose, there was something else in his eyes when they looked in her direction. Whoa there, Gabriel, I thought. Careful. A person could be as blind as a skunk in daylight and see what you feel for her when your eyes linger there.

  It's come to the po
int where they are part of me. They generously share their hopes and dreams and fears. I especially know Gabe's fears because he had a laundry list of them, even after he'd fought Kickapoo Indians in the war and come home, his wounds healing better than the guilt he carried.

  "I'm afraid of everything," he admitted to his young sister, and he-who-had-fought-Indians sacrificed his macho image to help she-who-was-frightened. Especially, he admitted, sitting down to eat with polite people in polite houses.

  "Even ours?" she asked.

  And there it is. "Especially ours," says he who has known the cost of the Southern honor his pa schooled them all in. And the heartbreak of living in a house in which everyone is lying to one another one minute and calling each other honey the next. That makes fighting Kickapoo Indians honest at least.

  But then, too soon, the story was finished and it was time to leave these people.

  Ma gave me a large stone jar of their precious coffee, like the nuns in San Felipe gave Luli, and a thick meat sandwich. "You'll need something to comfort you out there," she said.

  How did she know? I didn't ask. Just supposed that her world and mine were different only in the trappings.

  But I found the heavy front door locked. And I knew that, even if I could sneak out a window, I would find the gates of the ranch locked against me, too. Somebody didn't want me to leave.

  Truth to tell, I didn't want to leave, either. I liked it here.

  I stood in the hall, clutching my coffee and sandwich. "I have other books to write," I told them.

  "Who locked the door?" Gabe demanded.

  Turned out it was Luli. Who else? Sis Goose was long since gone. Anyway, ghosts can't do such things, can they? Another question: If Sis Goose was long since gone, why was Luli still running around, thirteen years old? Oh, I have to get out of here.

  "Do I have to worry about this, too?" Gabe acted irritated, but I knew him well enough to know he liked his role in the family. He must, because other than some gray at the temples he hadn't aged, either. And where was Sits in the Sun, the little Indian boy he brought home? Oh yes, Gabe, do take charge.