Blood Red Roses

by Russell James

  “No, no.” The lines on the old man’s face went tight with concern. “Have you seen Union soldiers?”

  “Didn’t know we should be looking,” Nate said.

  “Intelligence reports them moving east to assault Meridian again.” He straightened up in the saddle, but instead of looking more imposing, he looked more like a scarecrow. “The Mississippi Home Guard marches to intercept.”

  He turned and shouted to the column down the road. “Forward…march!”

  The column advanced. Nate held our horses in place, and the men passed around us like a stream around a stone. Of the group, scarcely one was of military age. Young boys with scared faces followed graybeard men stooped by the years. Each guardsman had perhaps one bit of a uniform—a hat here, a tunic there—but none wore a complete set. They did not march in step; in fact they did not march at all. Instead they dragged their boots upon the dusty road, more like a shuffle of tired, aching feet. The men did not sing as my father’s unit had on parade before departing. Instead, they made what sounded more like a collective sigh.

  The last of the soldiers passed by. At the column’s end trailed a boy younger than I, a small drum strapped across his chest. He looked with longing, tear-filled eyes at our buckboard. Had I bade him to, I am certain he would have clambered aboard and abandoned his appointment with combat. But Nate slapped the reins, and the horses pulled the wagon away with a jerk.

  We turned off the Meridian Road and onto a narrower, rutted path through a stand of gnarled oaks. The trees’ spreading branches blocked the sunlight that had bathed us throughout the morning, and the air turned decidedly cooler. As the day had grown quite warm and the road rather dusty, that change should have been welcome. But instead of relief, I felt dread.

  Farther down the path, the branches of the oaks closed in overhead and created a tunnel. Great sweeps of Spanish moss hung from the branches like gray shrouds. Though the air was still, these ashen curtains moved and rippled without pattern as far into the murky forest as I could see. Nate pulled his shirt collar up closer to his neck and hunched his shoulders.

  On the day my father left for the war, I had seen him off at the train station with the rest of his company. He wore the same newly sewn uniform as in my vision the last night at Uncle Trent’s. We said our heartfelt farewells, and he boarded the boxcar already filled with conscripted Confederates. The door opening framed him like a Matthew Brady photograph as the stationmaster rolled the door closed. At the clunk and click of the great door clasp, a foreboding permeated every pore of my body. In my soul stirred a sudden certainty, a certainty that would be the last time I’d stand in my father’s presence.

  That was the first time I’d ever experienced such a harbinger of disaster. The second time was when Beechwood plantation came into view.

  I gasped as I beheld the main house. The edifice rose white, tall and wide from a slight rise at the end of the pathway. Six columns worthy of ancient Greece supported a central balcony above the slim front porch. Narrow windows, tall as a man, lined the top and bottom floors. A metal roof coated in bright red paint topped the house.

  Such a sight was designed to induce awe, like a great city cathedral, but in me it instilled a dark dread, deeper than the one from my father’s departure, which was strange since the mansion appeared so grand.

  As we rolled closer, subtle changes made themselves apparent. The Spanish moss had taken a position along the far edge of the gutter and sent its first scouts creeping downward. A sea of glazed cracks marred the paint on the roof, and in several places, small patches had peeled away. Great fissures rent the mortar between the stones of the foundation, and in places dusty white piles lay beneath black gaps. From under eaves and behind shutters, dark green swaths of fungus peeked out to dare the touch of daylight.

  Nate pulled the buckboard to a stop before the main entrance, and the very air of the place seemed to close upon me, humid and heavy with a dripping sense of despair. It so weighted me, I could barely raise my head from my chest.

  “Out you go,” Nate said.

  The porch was empty, the main door closed.

  “You won’t announce my arrival?”

  “I’m paid to transport you, not to nursemaid you.” Nate shivered and gave the house a sideways glance with the same trepidation I felt. “Out you go. Now!”

  I rolled over the side with all the enthusiasm of a man exiting a lifeboat into a sea of sharks. No sooner had my feet alighted on the ground than Nate snapped the reins, and the horses pulled the buckboard away at a gallop.

  I scarcely had time to renew my now-recurring sense of abandonment, when the main door to the house opened. A tall man of cocoa complexion wore a black waistcoat over a white shirt and black pants. Two items struck me as different. The first was his bearing, which appeared quite proud, the opposite of the cowed demeanor of the slaves I’d seen in the Jackson streets. The second item was his blue eyes, which would be startling enough in a white man, but were spellbinding in a man of such dark skin.

  “Get in here, boy. You should have been here this morning.”

  Now, hard as it may be to believe, I clutched my meager possessions to my chest and ran inside. Perhaps because of my age or perhaps because of his authoritative tone, it seemed completely natural for this white boy to follow the direction of one the state decreed should be his servant.

  I must admit that the plantation home’s interior aroused as much awe as some European cathedrals. My more than modest upbringing could never have prepared me for the main house. Floors of mirror-polished mahogany ran to every room. Two chandeliers with two dozen candles each hung from the ceiling in a foyer larger than my uncle’s entire house. Twin staircases swept up from each side to a central second floor hallway. Portraits of men and women in Southern finery hung on the walls in golden frames. Curtains of thick, red velvet hung at the windows, pulled to each side with great black sashes.

  On a large table beneath the apex of the two stairways sat a great clockwork under a glass dome. A conventional face rose high in the center, and just under that four gold balls and paddles whirled like a horizontal windmill in a stiff breeze. At the base, two rings of small carved figures advanced in lockstep every second. The right and left rings rotated in opposite directions, so that with each tick, a different pair would meet where the rings touched, and the preceding pair would split away to meet again on the next full rotation.

  I stopped to admire this marvel. My father’s pocket watch sat embarrassed in my flour sack. A yank to my collar propelled me away.

  “Don’t you stop here in the main hall with your ragged clothes and filthy shoes,” the man I would later learn was named Washington said. “Get a move on.”

  We passed down the hall and out the rear door, where the sunlight struck me nearly blind. While the front of the house was darkened by the spreading oaks and drooping moss, the rear of the house opened to acres of cotton fields that seemed to stretch on forever. The merciless sun blazed down on the browning rows speckled with tufts of white. Bent low between them bobbed the heads of slaves gathering the snowy harvest.

  One silhouette rose above the scene: the darkened figure of a man on horseback midfield, high and haughty in the saddle, head shaded with a wide-brimmed hat. I could just make out the coiled bullwhip hung at his saddle’s side. As his head turned to survey the slaves, I could swear that there was a flash from the middle of his shadowed face, but I assigned it as a trick upon my eyes.

  Mouthwatering scents quickly drew my attention from the cotton fields. A narrow covered walk tethered a detached brick cook kitchen to the main house. A warm, spiced whiff of peach pie and the duskier aroma of rich, smoked meat invaded my senses. My cornbread breakfast had run its brief course, and hunger responded with full force.

  Washington must have seen the longing look on my face as we passed the kitchen’s puffing chimney. “Boy, ain’t none of that finery in there for you. Work this side of the Beechwood property line and you white on the outside o
nly.”

  We turned left around the perimeter of a fenced fruit and vegetable garden. We stopped in front of the stables.

  “You’re in here, boy.”

  I’d left a shack at my uncle’s farm, that was true, but at least I hadn’t roomed with the livestock.

  “The stables?”

  “Your uncle said you were an experienced stable hand. Aren’t you?”

  I’d spent some time in my father’s Pelahatchie livery, but mostly mucking out stalls and doing a pretty poor of job of it at that. If stable experience was supposed to have paid my ticket to Beechwood, it wasn’t going to cover the fare.

  But before I could admit my shortcomings, the specter of such an admission’s response coalesced in my mind. Tossed out of Beechwood, I’d have no place to go. And surely if I could muck stalls for my father, I could muck stalls for whoever ran the stable here.

  “Of course I’m experienced,” I lied. “I’ve years of it.”

  Washington gave me a look like he was on the fence about believing me. Then he surrendered to convenience. “Then get in there.”

  I walked in though the open door. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness. Along the left wall stood five stalls. The first stall appeared in good repair and clean. In the next two, the doors sagged open against their frames, as if exhausted from the effort of remaining horizontal. Over the last two hung the heads of two bedraggled-looking brown horses.

  “You sleep up there,” Washington said, pointing to a ladder that ran up to a loft. A thicket of spider webs covered the loft opening. “Your meals will be at the back of the cookhouse when the bell rings. Don’t ask me why you get such treatment.”

  At the time his sentiment perplexed me. Only later did I learn that the cooks only cooked for the Powells, and that slaves prepared their own rations of corn meal and pork whatever way they could.

  “Now, boy, you listen,” Washington said. “No matter what you heard about this family, you forget about it all.”

  That would be easy since I had nothing to forget.

  “Master Powell is to be treated with respect. And don’t you contradict him or you’ll see the lash across that white skin as fast as a black man would. And Missus Powell is never to be bothered. Ever. Especially in the garden. You won’t never see their daughter Lucinda down here in the stables. You will see Ramses. Each morning he’ll call for his horse Victor, and you’d better have that horse ready when he calls, or the lash will come your way again. You understand, boy?”

  I certainly didn’t, but nodded anyway. Washington grabbed my bag, threw it up into the loft, shot me a look of contempt, and left me alone in the stable.

  I quickly lamented every discordant thought I’d ever had about living with my uncle.

  Chapter Four

  I started my duties with an inspection of the two sorry nags in the stalls. My father had taught me a bit about appraising an equine, but even without that minor education, I could have diagnosed how ill-fit these horses were for service. Bones protruded from the tight skin on their sides like the ribs of a shipwreck. Their unbrushed coats hosted random clumps in some places, while other spots were but bare patches. Both horses hung their heads and eyed the ground with vacant stares, unaware or uncaring that I was there. I could almost sense that they knew their time of utility on the plantation was at an end, and the earth they stared down upon would soon cover their carcasses. I assumed that nothing but neglect kept them from being auctioned off by the pound for horsemeat.

  Two of the three vacant stalls were piled two feet high with waste and moldering straw. They’d be a solid morning’s work, if I could chip away at the compacted debris at all.

  The third stall was immaculate, the door on solid hinges, the floor carpeted with fresh straw. Whatever horse was out at work on the plantation was far better taken care of than the two that had stayed behind. I surmised that would be the overseer’s horse, Victor.

  To the right stood the tack room. Inside hung bridles and reins so cracked and desiccated that I was certain they would part upon first use. Dust and straw coated several saddles piled on a sawhorse.

  Under a short roof behind the stable sat what had once passed as a stylish carriage. Gaping holes rent the canvas top. Great tears split the black leather seat cushions. The top third of one of the enormous spoked wheels was missing, as if a giant had bent down and taken a bite of it, and just left the stubs of the shattered spokes.

  No doubt there had once been a greatness about these stables, as there had once been majesty in the tree-lined road that led up to Beechwood’s impressive portico. But all the buildings had entered a slow decline. There had been an age when a team of sleek horses filled these stalls, and a band of groomsmen kept them shod and fed. Now the sum had been reduced to two withered beasts and an ill-trained boy to care for them.

  A bell rang out across the fields, the call to end the working day. But I remembered it as well to be the crier of my supper’s arrival, according to Washington. I deserted the wreckage of the carriage and dashed through the stable to satiate my overwhelming hunger.

  I didn’t make it over the threshold. Just as I reached it, a horse blocked my way, a great black beast eighteen hands high if he was an inch, glossy as obsidian and speckled with sweat from his ride in from the fields.

  The overseer, Ramses, sat in the saddle. His broad chest was thick as an oak’s trunk and his hands that held the reins were as gnarled as that same tree’s roots. Graying stubble stippled cheeks that were creased and tanned from years in the sun. The sheen of a day’s sweat gave him a greasy glow. I absorbed all of this in an instant, for his most compelling feature held me transfixed.

  An artificial nose dominated his face. A tarnished silver tent opened above his upper lip and tapered up to a spot between his eyes. One narrow, brown leather strap ran from the right lower tip across his cheekbone and around to meet the nose’s other side. A second, similar strap attached to the apex above his eyes and ran up to bisect his forehead. It disappeared under his salt-stained slouch hat, and I assumed met the other strap at the back of his head.

  Ramses spit a stream of tobacco juice at my feet, aimed well enough to splatter dirt upon my shoes. His eyes were solid black, pupils and irises one, as if melted together by the seething hatred I sensed boiled behind them.

  My experiences with people were limited, having been born and raised in a rural environment. This was the first man I’d ever met who exuded evil. Malevolence seemed to radiate from him like heat from a glowing stove. He leaned down across his saddle and brought his face close to mine. He smelled of sweat and earth, and his nosepiece had the stink of sour coins in a banker’s till.

  “So you’re the new boy, eh? Jebediah?”

  Earlier, Washington had left me intimidated; the house and the stable had put me ill at ease. But now in the malodorous face of the overseer, I felt a terror so deep it wrapped around my spine and froze me so that I could not answer.

  He took my silence in stride, as one used to such scared subservience.

  “Simple rules, boy. Be in the stable after dark, and stay there. Never leave the property. And leave all them gyps to themselves. They don’t need no white-trash boy stirring things up. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” I managed. I now had been given two sets of rules to follow and hadn’t even heard from the plantation’s owner yet.

  “And you’d damn well better take care of Victor here like he was your own son.”

  Ramses gave the horse’s neck a slap. Victor snorted and stared down at me with haughty contempt.

  Ramses swung out of the saddle. He pulled his coiled whip from the saddle’s side and a rifled musket from a holster up front. Six deep notches scored the musket’s wooden stock.

  “He gets the best feed and needs to be readied by dawn,” Ramses said.

  He stroked the horse’s neck. The horse swung his head around and gave Ramses’s shoulder an affectionate brush. Victor’s gaze then returned to me, any trace of warmth
gone. Ramses swung his musket up across his shoulder and departed. As he walked, his right leg dragged just a bit, his boot twisted at an uncomfortable-looking angle. It was the first time I’d ever seen someone who was born with a clubfoot.

  Victor looked up and away, as a king would, awaiting his attendants’ removal of his crown and mantle. I unstrapped his saddle and, with great effort given the horse’s prodigious height, managed to slide it off his back. Victor instantly shook his saddle blanket to the ground and clomped off to the clean first stall.

  I dropped the saddle onto an open sawhorse in the tack room. When I returned, Victor stood in his stall, facing me over the door he’d evidently closed behind him.

  “Good boy,” I said. Perhaps I’d read too much into the horse’s demeanor. Victor was going to do half the work of caring for him.

  I stood at the gate and relieved him of his bridle. As I turned, Victor’s head shot forward, fast a striking snake. He bit my shoulder. Not a playful nip, but a strong, solid bite that made my flesh crunch.

  I screamed and jumped away. I slid back my shirt and exposed a red, bleeding crescent. Victor let loose a satisfied whinny that I swore was a laugh. He turned to the rear of his stall, as if he’d accomplished all he had to do today and could now retire.

  The overseer, the slaves, even the animals at Beechwood treated me with contempt. At that moment I feared Beechwood would be the foulest experience of my life.

  I had no idea that so much worse could be possible.

  Chapter Five

  According to the previous toll of the bell, I was due for supper. According to my stomach, I was long overdue. In all truth, had my stomach somehow been sated, my growing melancholy would have convinced me to avoid another opportunity for humiliation.

  I pressed some straw across the oozing cut upon my shoulder and headed back to the cookhouse. The closer I got to the kitchen, the less I entertained the idea of skipping my meal. A mélange of mouthwatering scents filled the air, and like a lion, my gut growled in anticipation of the biscuits and beef the aromas promised. I knocked on the open kitchen door.