Southern Son

by Victoria Wilcox

  “Yes, Ma,” he said, and thought that, in her own genteel and ladylike way, his mother was as much of a hero as his father was.

  Chapter Two

  GRIFFIN, 1863

  JOHN HENRY’S HOMETOWN WAS ONE OF THE PRETTIEST LITTLE CITIES in Georgia, dotted with red brick shops and white frame houses on the tree-lined streets that rose up from the railroad tracks. Griffin had been born in the prosperous 1840’s as a cotton shipping center on the Macon & Western Railroad, and by the start of the War it boasted a population of three-thousand, making it the busiest town between Atlanta, forty miles to the north, and Macon, sixty miles to the south.

  Henry Holliday had come to Griffin soon after its founding, looking for the opportunities a railroad town could offer a young war veteran, and Griffin had rewarded him well. From his first job in town as a clerk for the local druggist, he quickly rose to become a landholder, joining in the buying frenzy whenever a new section of town lots was opened up. But the biggest opportunity that Griffin had offered Henry Holliday was the chance to meet and marry Miss Alice Jane McKey, the eldest daughter of one of the wealthiest plantation owners in that part of Georgia. Alice Jane’s father, William Land McKey, owned hundreds of acres of prime cotton land on Indian Creek in nearby Henry County, and dozens of slaves to make the land produce; her mother, Jane Cloud McKey, was kin to the Elijah Cloud family who had first settled the area and had thousands of acres of cotton and hundreds of slaves of their own. So when Henry Holliday, who had plans to become a wealthy planter himself, married into that Southern aristocracy, his future was pretty much assured.

  John Henry took his aristocratic heritage for granted, since many of the children he knew in Griffin had wealthy planter relatives, too. It was the bounty of his grandfather’s Indian Creek Plantation that he had enjoyed, caring little about the cotton that had made the McKeys rich. It was the peach and plum orchards he loved, the Muscadine arbor heavy with ripening grapes, the beehives humming with honey bees, the clean-swept dirt yard where he could sit under the shade of a dogwood tree and eat bowls of bread and fresh sweet milk. On his grandfather’s plantation, there had always been good things to tempt a visiting grandchild’s appetite: beaten biscuits, red-eye gravy, farm-raised chicken with doughy dumplings, peach pot pie smothered with cream and cane sugar, and sometimes, on special occasions, a glass of Syllabub made of sweetened milk curdled with homemade wine. To John Henry, the plantation was the Promised Land and he was one of the chosen people, fed on the manna made by the Negro slaves who worked his grandfather’s land.

  Slavery may have been a “peculiar institution” as Northern abolitionists liked to call it, but for the wealthy planter class of Georgia and the rest of the Southern states, it was an institution that worked well. The whites ruled, the blacks obeyed, the cotton economy prospered, and the rising generation was taught to expect that things would always go along as they had for two-hundred years of Southern slavery. John Henry had been raised that way, knowing that when he turned twenty-one he would inherit some of the McKey land and the slaves that came with it, and he had fond memories of going with his grandfather to the auction block down by the railroad tracks where Mr. Daniel Earp, Griffin slave trader, sold males and females right out in the open.

  The Earps and their kind held a unique place in Southern society. Though the service they provided of procuring human chattel for the slave trade was an essential part of the plantation economy, the slave traders themselves were despised. Slave dealers were commonly known to be liars and cheats, using unscrupulous means to obtain slaves for sale, since the legal importation of Africans had been ended by federal law in the early part of the century. Wise plantation owners were cautious when dealing with slave traders; nice folks avoided them completely.

  While John Henry’s parents didn’t own dozens of field slaves, they did have enough House Negroes to keep their home running smoothly. The Holliday’s pretty cottage on Tinsley Street in downtown Griffin was kept clean by the colored housemaid, the meals prepared by the colored cook, the clothes cared for by the colored washerwoman, the buggy driven by the colored driver. The slaves were such an integral part of the family’s life that when nightfall came and they went to their own cabins behind the main house, the big house felt quiet and empty without them. For John Henry, it was hard to imagine a world without slavery, a world where black and white weren’t so completely dependent upon one another. But that was the world the Yankees were fighting for. For nearly two years, the War of Secession had ravaged the land as the North fought to abolish slavery and save the Union, and the South fought to preserve the Constitution and its guarantee of States’ Rights. And though both sides claimed to be guided by divine providence, neither side had made much progress. The North was out-generaled, the South was out-numbered, and the war thus far had been one long, bloody stalemate.

  Griffin felt the continuing weight of the war more than most Georgia towns, as it served as one of the main training centers for Georgia troops. Every week, the trains went out carrying men armed with devotion to the Cause and shouting the Rebel Yell, high and wild as a band of banshees. The sound of that yell would always remind John Henry of the war: of streets filled with soldiers dressed in Confederate gray, of shops emptied of goods as the Union blockade closed all the ports from Charleston to New Orleans.

  Times had gotten hard in the promised land in the two years since the war began, and the once-rich cotton economy was nearly at its breaking point. By that spring of 1863, flour was selling for $65 a barrel, bread was going for $25 a loaf, and the Confederate dollar was as good as worthless. In April there were bread riots in Charleston. In May the Confederate States’ government asked planters to give up their cash crop cotton land for planting corn and potatoes to feed the starving people of the South. In June General Lee’s army, having already foraged away all the food in Virginia, moved north through the Shenandoah Valley and into the farm land of Pennsylvania looking for rations and a chance to wage one final battle that might end the war while the South still had the strength to win. In July, in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the quiet Cumberland Valley town of Gettysburg, the army found its fight.

  All four Griffin newspapers carried the story of the Battle of Gettysburg as front-page news, but it wasn’t until a letter from cousin Mattie’s father arrived that the family realized how close the battle had come to home. Uncle Rob Holliday had been there at Gettysburg during the fighting, serving as a Captain Quartermaster under General Longstreet, though his own regiment had been kept back to cover the retreat. It was a heavy blow, he wrote, a hard defeat to accept, with twenty-five thousand Southern casualties in two days of desperate fighting and entire divisions decimated.

  Then, before the news of Gettysburg had even grown cold, came reports of the fall of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River as the Yankee General Ulysses S. Grant completed the encirclement of the Confederacy. There would be no more easy victories for the South, with the shipping lanes of the Mississippi River cut in two and General Lee’s army limping back from its defeat in Pennsylvania. But the war wasn’t over yet, and Henry Holliday was more determined than ever to move his family far from the battlefront.

  Though John Henry’s mother never complained about moving away from Griffin, there were tears in her eyes as she packed their things, and her younger sisters complained enough for everyone, anyhow. How would they get along in such an uncivilized place as south Georgia? Where would they live? Where would they go to church in that God-forsaken wilderness? Nineteen-year-old Ella and seventeen-year-old Helena worried that their brothers, Will and James and Tom, all of them off fighting, might not be able to find them once the war was over. And Margaret, twenty-four years old and promised to a young soldier named Billie Wylie, worried that he might not find her, either, and she’d end up an old maid. But Henry Holliday gave little heed to his sisters-in-law. He was their guardian; they would be obliged to go wherever he wanted to go, and he wanted to go south.

  John Henr
y was the only member of the family who joined Henry in looking forward to the move, though he felt like a traitor to his mother for doing so. But for a restless twelve-year-old boy, going south seemed like the adventure of a lifetime. Two-hundred miles to Valdosta! It would be the longest trip he had ever taken and the longest time he’d ever spent on a railcar, and that was fine by him. He had always loved the railroad, ever since he first knew the sound of the steam engines coming into town. The trains roared in on iron rails, bringing people from places he had never seen, taking them away again to places he had only heard about. To him, the railroad was a romance and an adventure, and now it would be his turn to travel off into the unknown. If only his mother weren’t so sad about leaving . . .

  But how could she not be sad, leaving her baby behind, buried on a hill outside of town? Nearly every Sunday that John Henry could remember, his mother had made a pilgrimage to the city burial ground to lay flowers on his sister Martha Eleanora’s grave, and many a time he had happily accompanied her. He liked sitting beside her as she drove the buggy out of town and across the low wooden bridge that led to Rest Haven Cemetery. He liked kneeling beside her on the grassy ground as she wove fresh cut flowers into pillows or wreaths to adorn the grave. He liked being alone with her and the sister he had never known, feeling close to them both and special as the only living child of his beautiful mother. So when Alice Jane asked him to go with her to the cemetery one last time to say a final farewell to little Eleanora before they left Griffin for their new home, he was glad to go along.

  It was sultry hot that August afternoon and John Henry was sweating in his wool jacket by the time they reached the Holliday plot at the top of the graveyard hill. He would like to have been coatless in his cotton shirtsleeves on such an uncomfortable day, but visiting the cemetery was almost a religious event for his mother, and religious events demanded a certain amount of decorum, so he wore his suit coat and tried not to complain of the heat. His mother was nearly as warmly dressed as he was, in her high-necked blouse and wide-sleeved jacket, her full cotton skirt and layers of petticoats, though she seemed not to be feeling the heat as badly as he was. His young aunts said it was the hoop skirts the ladies wore that helped to keep them cool, holding up the weight of all those petticoats and allowing a little breeze to blow past the legs. Of course, he would never dare to discuss such delicate things as skirts and petticoats with his ladylike mother.

  “John Henry, you clear away the weeds from Ellie’s grave while I sort these flowers,” his mother said as she gracefully gathered her skirts and climbed down from the buggy, and he obediently set to work pulling at the long grass that threatened to cover over the granite headstone. In Memory of Martha Eleanora, Daughter of H.B. and A.J. Holliday who died June 12th 1850 aged 6 Months 9 days.

  John Henry did the ciphering in his head, adding up that his sister Ellie would have been thirteen years-old now, had she lived, and wondered as he always did what it would have been like to have had a living sister instead of this small grave for a sibling. Her simple stone stood upright on a marble base at the head of the tiny plot, the footstone only two feet away. And underneath, six feet down in the red Georgia clay, lay the baby girl who had died before he was even born—died of the same malady that would likely have killed him, had his Uncle John not intervened.

  “Ma, tell me again how Uncle John saved my life when I was a baby.”

  His mother sighed as she set to arranging the flowers she would lay on the grave: yellow jonquils and purple petunias intertwined with glossy green magnolia leaves. “You know how your sister was born with a cleft in her mouth,” she said softly, though there was no one around to overhear the sad tale. “Ellie’s beautiful little face was disfigured by a gash in her lip. But worse than the appearance of it was how it made her unable to nurse properly. The poor little thing couldn’t suckle, and when we gave her cow’s milk in a pap, the milk ran back out of her mouth before she could take much of it in.”

  “So she starved to death,” John Henry said with childlike bluntness, and his mother nodded.

  “When you were born with the same condition, we knew we had to do somethin’—anything—or we would lose you the same way. That’s when your Uncle John brought Dr. Long down here from Jefferson County to assist him in an operation.”

  “Dr. Crawford Long,” John Henry added, proud that his life was connected to the famous surgeon who had pioneered the use of ether in surgery. He’d heard that story a hundred times as well.

  “That’s right. Dr. Long was your Aunt Permelia’s cousin on her Ware side, so he came as a favor to the family. Permelia came too, as a nurse to your Uncle John. You were only two months old at the time. So tiny, so helpless! But tiny as you were, they didn’t dare wait any longer to do the surgery.”

  “So Dr. Long gave me the ether in a cloth over my nose, and Uncle John mended me up.”

  Alice Jane nodded. “Your Uncle John did a wonderful job. He sewed the cleft in your lip together, and did the same with the opening in your mouth. And then there was nothin’ to do but pray that you would survive the surgery, and recover.”

  “But I did. You can hardly even see the scar on my lip anymore, and I don’t lisp at all . . .” though he still remembered the pain of being laughed at by taunting schoolmates.

  “No, sweetheart, you are just perfect now. You’ve done well with your voice lessons, learnin’ to speak properly, and when you’re grown to be a man, you can wear a nice mustache to cover that little scar line that remains. No one will ever know how close you came to joinin’ your sister here in the cemetery. I will always know, though, and be forever indebted to your sweet Uncle John for savin’ my precious baby. He’s a brilliant man, a talented physician.”

  John Henry sat quietly for a moment, though his thoughts were racing. If his uncle were indeed as brilliant as all that . . .

  “Ma? Do you reckon Uncle John might find a cure for other kinds of sicknesses someday? I mean, he cured me, didn’t he?”

  “He did indeed.”

  “Maybe someday he’ll find a cure for typhus,” he suggested, “or cholera,” and when his mother nodded, John Henry gathered his courage and went on. “Maybe he’ll even find a cure for—for consumption,” he said quickly, his words rushing out with childish hopefulness. “Do you reckon he could, Ma? I reckon he could. I reckon he could cure anything. I’ll bet, if he worked on it hard enough, he could figure out what causes the consumption, and make it go away. Oh, Ma!” he said, his heart coming up in his throat, “he has to find a cure for it. He just has to!”

  “John Henry, sweetheart,” his mother said in surprise, “what is all this? Whatever is wrong?” Then she laid down the wreath of flowers she had been fashioning and looked into his distraught face, her voice a worried whisper. “You haven’t been talkin’ with your uncle, have you? Surely, your Uncle John has told you nothing . . .”

  “I heard, Ma! I heard it all! I was right next door, listenin’ from the other room when Uncle John told you about havin’ the consumption! I didn’t mean to hear about it, honest I didn’t. I was just tryin’ to learn something . . .”

  Alice Jane let out a sound like a painful sigh, then touched a hand to his hair and said sadly: “Well, I suppose you learned somethin’ all right. I’m sorry that you had to hear. I didn’t mean for you to know so soon. I’d hoped to keep it private for a while longer, at least until we’d got moved and settled in. Your father doesn’t need to be dealin’ with this just now . . .”

  “But maybe Uncle John can cure you, Ma, before Pa has to know. Maybe he can save you like he saved me.”

  “Oh, my sweet boy!” his mother said as she pulled him close to her. “I do hope you are right. I pray to God for such a miracle! But I also trust in God’s divine providence. If Jesus means for me to be cured, I will be. Of that I have no doubt. But if this illness should take me . . .”

  “No, Ma!”

  “. . . if this illness should take me, then that is God’s will. You must bel
ieve that. But John Henry, your mother is not dead, so there’s no need to mourn just yet. And God willin’, I’ll live long enough to see you grown and with a family of your own before I die, as a proper mother should. That’s what I want, more than anything, for you to grow to healthy manhood and find a life that’ll make you happy. I want you to know the joy that I’ve known in raisin’ you, for you’ve been the light and the love of my life. But for now, we must decide how to keep your father from findin’ out.”

  “You’re still not gonna tell him?” he asked in surprise.

  “No, I am not. It’ll do him no good to know, and may harm his own recovery. So, my dear boy, you’ll have to share my secret a little longer. Now it must be our secret, together.”

  “Our secret,” he repeated, and somehow having a confidence with her made him feel better, though it was a heavy secret to share.

  “Now promise me one thing, dear. Promise me that you will never forget your sister here, for I fear that when I’m gone no one will remember to care for her grave. Promise me that you’ll come back here in days to come, and tend to Martha Eleanora’s grave for me.”

  “But all I can do is weed. I can’t make those fancy flower things like you do.”

  “Why, of course you can. You have good talented hands—you’re learnin’ how to play the piano, aren’t you? It won’t take you long to catch on to flower weavin’. Just take a stem like so . . .” and she nodded for John Henry to follow as she pulled a jonquil from her basket.

  “But flowers are women’s work!” he protested. “That’s what Pa says, flowers and sewin’ and tendin’ to babies . . .”

  “Is that so? Well, if your Uncle John hadn’t done such a fine job sewin’ up your lip when you were a baby, you wouldn’t be nearly so handsome now. He’s handier with a needle and thread than any woman I know, and he’s a fine man all the same.”

  She had him there. “I guess I could try and make one of those wreath things like you do. Just as long as you don’t tell Pa, all right? I’ll catch hell for sure, if he sees me makin’ pretty things.”