John Henry’s heart was fairly bursting out of his chest. Now the story was getting really good—breastworks and trenches, artillery and gunfire! He held his breath and waited for more.
“Behind the house, in the garden, were two more graves: Confederate dead, Colonel Grace of the 10th Tennessee and his chaplain. They say that Colonel Grace was wounded during the first day of the battle so his troops moved him behind the lines to the garden of our house. His chaplain went there to minister to him and was givin’ him the last rites of Holy Church when he was struck and killed by a shell. There’d been no time to move them before the Yankees came over the lines, so Colonel Grace’s men buried them there where they died, under the trees in our backyard. I like to think that at least they were near a Catholic home when they passed. Maybe one day they can be moved to a proper site, in consecrated ground.”
John Henry had to bite his tongue to keep from asking Aunt Mary Anne to tell the story again. To have a garden that was a cemetery was gruesome enough, but to have two war heroes buried there—now that was really something! His father shot him a look of warning, and he quickly wiped the hopeful smile from his face. He’d be sent on to bed for sure if he acted childish at a time like this. Still, dead heroes buried in the garden was mighty exciting!
Mary Anne didn’t see the look that passed between father and son. She had closed her eyes for a moment, exhausted by the memory and the retelling of it. “There was nothin’ left to stay for, so we set out to make our way here. I had no way to contact you, Henry—I didn’t even know for certain where your farm was. But I prayed for guidance, and look at the miracle of it: when we finally arrived in Valdosta there you were at the depot, as if God himself had led us every step of the way.”
John Henry was moved by her faith, and in her telling of the story, it did seem that some providence had saved the little family.
“But what about Mattie and Lucy?” He was startled to hear his own voice speaking his thoughts out loud. He looked quickly at his father, but Henry said nothing this time, and Mary Anne turned to answer him directly.
“They are still safe, praise God. I was able to see them when we passed through Savannah. The convent will keep them until the end of the term. Their father thought it the best place for them during wartime. The Confederate soldiers were always gentlemen of course, but I wouldn’t trust the Yanks, not even the officers.”
Henry nodded his approval. “Did Rob take the girls there himself?”
“Yes, in February, when he was home on furlough.”
She rested her hand absently against her full gathered skirt, and Henry asked softly, “And when is the baby due?”
John Henry started with surprise. He hadn’t even noticed his aunt’s swollen figure hidden under the long shawl that stayed draped around her. But Mary Anne didn’t blush at Henry’s question, though men weren’t supposed to comment on such things.
“Christmastime, or sooner. It’s been hard on the baby, I fear, all this refugeeing. But I think it’ll be a boy this time, Henry. I’ve prayed for Rob that it be a son.” Then she looked up and her eyes were filled with tears. “I want a son to carry on his name, if he doesn’t come home again.”
She said it with such courage, acknowledging the danger of her husband’s long years in the War, and Henry reached out and took her hand in his, speaking gently.
“He’ll be home, Mary Anne, and he’ll be proud of that son. A man always is.”
John Henry was surprised to hear the compassion in his father’s voice. Henry had never spoken so gently to Alice Jane, even while he tended her on her sick days. He was always polite, of course, cool and efficient in seeing to her needs, but never did he treat her with such heartfelt kindness. And suddenly, John Henry understood something elemental about his father, something his mother surely already knew. Henry hated weakness, and illness was weakness, and poor Alice Jane, through no fault of her own, was both ill and weak. But Aunt Mary Anne, in spite of all she’d been through, was still strong, and in the quiet shadows, John Henry could see the admiration in his father’s eyes.
Aunt Mary Anne’s baby came early as she had thought it would, but the tiny boy was all Holliday and a fighter from the start. Mary Anne named him James Robert after his grandfather and father, but the family soon shortened that to Jim Bob, a good Southern nickname that John Henry had suggested. The baby was the center of attention from then on, and even Alice Jane found the energy to join in the adulation.
Infants were a mystery to only-child John Henry. He watched with bewilderment as the women and girls all fussed endlessly over the new baby, envying his father’s freedom to leave the house every time the baby wailed, as Henry was suddenly finding town business more demanding than usual. Still, having Aunt Mary Anne’s brood wasn’t such a hardship, as long as cousin Mattie was on her way -- she and Lucy would be leaving Saint Vincent’s Academy at the end of the term in mid-December, and with the Yankees moving ever closer to Savannah, the girls wouldn’t be going back to school.
John Henry went along with his father to the depot to meet their train, eager to see Mattie’s familiar face and have her company once again. He was already full of plans for how they would spend the time together, riding and exploring the wilds around his father’s farm. But as the train pulled in and the passengers stepped down from the cars, his plans vanished into the thin winter air.
The little girl he loved was gone and in her place stood a stranger with Mattie’s eyes and a woman’s body, her long auburn hair pulled up from her neck, her small shoulders squared against the world. John Henry’s heart fell—did everything always have to change? He’d already lost the rest of his childhood, and now Mattie was gone too.
But then she saw him standing on the platform and her face broke into the wide smile he remembered, and she ran down the steps to embrace him.
“John Henry, it’s so good to see you again! I hoped you’d be here! How’s my mother? Is the baby well? Oh, I just know we’re gonna have the most wonderful Christmas!” And she kissed him on the cheek and hugged him again.
Her words tumbled out so fast that he hardly had time to answer, but it was just as well. For having her arms around him gave him a strange new sensation, pleasant and unfamiliar. She was still Mattie, but someone new as well, and he hardly knew what to make of it. And it was hard to keep his eyes on her face as she spoke, and not let them stray down to the curving figure in her small-waisted traveling dress. She looked like the girls who had grown too old for school, and left to stay with relatives and look for husbands in other towns. She looked like the girls he silently stared at as they walked home from Church, hips swaying in wide hoop skirts.
She was still talking, asking his father a hundred questions, telling Lucy to help with their bags, and still hanging onto him with one hand that sent shivers up his arm and made him dizzy. She didn’t see the blush rise up in his face when she spoke his name. She didn’t hear his young voice crack when he stammered an answer to her questions. And she didn’t know that, for the first time in his life, John Henry Holliday was falling in love.
Chapter Three
VALDOSTA, 1864
NONE OF THEM WOULD EVER FORGET THAT CHRISTMAS, THE LAST ONE of the War. It came at the end of a cold, gray December when the air hung heavy with an icy fog over the red fields, and even the sun seemed to have been captured by the Yankees and carried away. Yet in the midst of the suffering, life went on. Babies were born and christened, sweethearts met and made promises to one another. That was the year when John Henry’s Aunt Margaret McKey was married on Christmas Day when her soldier-beau from Griffin, Billy Wylie, came home from the army on furlough—thirty days for a wedding and a honeymoon, then back again to join his regiment in Virginia.
They were married in the parlor of Henry Holliday’s farmhouse, standing in front of the fireplace and attended by Margaret’s two younger sisters, Ella and Helena, as bridesmaids. Margaret wore the same wedding dress her sister Alice Jane had worn at her own wedding
sixteen years before, while Billy Wylie wore his Confederate gray uniform, threadbare but freshly pressed. Henry Holliday gave the bride away, handing her over to Billy while all the ladies cried, then the party moved to the dining room for the finest Christmas dinner that could be had in those hard times: roast turkey and salt ham, sweet potatoes and stewed pears, corn muffins and French honey bread, and a white pepper lemon cake with cane sugar icing on top. After dinner there were toasts to the happy couple, with brandy for the grownups and cider for the children.
Then came the dancing, the parlor furniture pushed out of the way and Alice Jane playing waltzes on the piano. Henry gallantly asked all the ladies to dance, laughing as he turned one sister-in-law after another across the wide plank pine floor, then he bowed to young Mattie and offered her a dance, too, while John Henry sat by his mother’s side at the piano and watched with pride. His father was as handsome as ever in his gold-braided Major’s uniform, his hair thick and shiny with pomade, his face sporting a stylish mustache and goatee. The move to Valdosta had been good for him, helping him recover the strength he had lost during his hard year of service to the Confederacy.
Billy Wylie, dancing with his new bride close in his arms, leaned toward Mattie and smiled. “You’re sure growin’ up, little Miss Mattie. Pretty soon it’ll be your turn for a weddin’!”
Margaret laughed with him, “And who will you pick, Mattie? Who are you fond of?”
“Why, I’m gonna marry little John Henry, of course,” she said with a smile. “We’ve always been sweethearts, haven’t we honey?”
She looked at him with bright eyes, and he flushed with embarrassment.
“I’m not aimin’ to marry just yet!” he answered, too seriously. “I’m just waitin’ ‘til I’m sixteen, so I can join the army and go fight in the War.”
A sudden chill ran through the room, as if the door had been opened a crack to let in the cold world outside, and Margaret gasped.
“Oh no, you mustn’t say such things! Why, the War will be over long before you can go. Won’t it Billy?” she asked, looking up anxiously at her new husband.
“Sure honey, we’ll have those Yanks licked real soon. Why, I hear General Longstreet is givin’ ‘em a good whippin’ right now. I bet we’re done with ‘em by summertime.”
Aunt Mary Anne sat in the warm corner by the fire, listening while she rocked baby Jim Bob. “Rob is serving with General Longstreet,” she said quietly, half to herself and half to the baby, and Henry stopped dancing and looked down at her with concern.
“Now Mary Anne, you mustn’t worry yourself about Rob. Quartermaster’s just about the safest job there is in the army. The officers have to protect the supplies no matter what. And Billy’s right; Longstreet will have the Yankees beaten back in no time.”
Mary Anne smiled at him bravely. “You’re right, of course, Henry.” Then she looked back down at the baby, but as she bent her head John Henry saw a tear fall and drop onto the sleeping baby’s cheek.
The conversation needed to change direction, and Henry gave it a gentle push.
“Well Mattie, you are a mighty fine dancer,” he said, “and much too good for an old man like me. Why don’t you see if my son will dance with you? I expect he’s tall enough to partner you now.”
John Henry started and tried to protest but Mattie was already at his side, maneuvered there by Henry on his way to the punch bowl.
“Well, Cousin,” she said, “it seems I have an empty space on my dance card. Would you care to step in for my last partner?”
She was just teasing him, smiling the way she always had when they’d played together as children, but John Henry wasn’t sure just how this game was played. But she didn’t wait for his answer, taking his hand in hers.
“Aunt Alice Jane,” she called to his mother, “play that waltz again, won’t you? That lovely one by Franz Liszt.”
“Oh do,” Margaret agreed. “That’s one of our favorites, isn’t it Billy? ‘Dream of Love’ I think they call it.”
Alice Jane was too intent on her music to notice that her son was squirming and wishing that she would plead sudden sickness and stop playing altogether. He didn’t know how to dance and didn’t want to learn now, just when everyone was treating him like a grown-up and listening to his talk of joining the army.
Mattie laughed at his furtive look toward the door. “Don’t be shy, honey, it’s only a little waltz. Just hold me like this,” she said, lifting his left arm with her hand as his right arm slid behind her back. “That’s right. It’s easy. Now watch my feet,” and she did a little side step in the square of space between them, her feet moving one-two-three with the music. He didn’t have much choice but to follow along, without making a scene that would appear rude. “That’s it. Just keep movin’ like that. Why, you’re a real natural dancer, John Henry. I think you must have been practicin’ with some other girl behind my back.”
“Why are you talkin’ to me like that, Mattie?” he said, scowling. “You don’t even sound like yourself anymore. They’ve ruined you up at that convent school, with all that lah-de-dah talk.”
“Why, I’m just tryin’ to talk sweet to you, the way a young lady should at a dance.”
“I liked you better the way you used to be. I miss the old Mattie.”
“Silly thing,” she said, looking into his face, “I’m still here.”
And in her round brown eyes he did see the same girl he had always known. One thing about Mattie’s eyes—they could never be dishonest.
“And I wasn’t teasin’ you about the dancin’ either,” Mattie added. “You are good.”
“Did you mean that other thing you said, about us gettin’ married?”
Mattie responded with a laugh. “Of course not, silly! I was just talkin’. Everybody knows I’m gonna marry a Catholic boy. Though I suppose you could convert. My father converted when he married my mother.”
“I couldn’t do that!” John Henry whispered in shock, casting a furtive glance toward Alice Jane. “My Ma would tan my hide if I ever joined that papist religion!” It was just an echo of his mother’s words and he hardly knew what it meant, but Mattie was offended nonetheless.
“Well, that’s just fine, John Henry! I had no idea that you disapproved so of my faith,” and she pulled herself away from him and put her nose up in the air.
“I’m sorry, Mattie. It’s just that,” his voice dropped to a whisper again, “you know how my Ma is about religion. It’s real important to her that I believe what she does.” He glanced back at Alice Jane again, just to make sure she wasn’t listening. “But I think religion’s pretty awful boring, mostly. Maybe it’d be more fun to be Catholic.”
“Religion is not supposed to be fun, John Henry! Besides, nobody’s gettin’ married for a while, anyhow. You’ve still got to go fight for the Cause and all.”
Now they were talking about something interesting again, and his face lit up. “I wish I was sixteen already! I’d be a hell of a fighter, Mattie!”
He felt very grown up, swearing in front of her like that, and she blushed just the way a lady should and said, “Oh, I know you would!”
She sure looked pretty when her cheeks went pink like that and her eyes were dancing, and her words made a wave of boldness sweep over him.
“Would you wait for me, Mattie?” he said, knowing that a soldier should have a special girl waiting for his return. “Would you be my sweetheart while I was gone?”
“Of course I will, honey,” she said, and took his hand in hers, squeezing it gently. “Best sweethearts always, I promise.”
“Always,” he repeated after her, and thought that he would never in all his life see anything lovelier than Mattie’s eyes in the firelight.
Aunt Mary Anne’s family stayed on at the farm through the rest of the winter and on into the spring, waiting for some word from Uncle Rob. They’d had no letter from him since Christmastime when he was sent on detachment to North Carolina with a wagon train of supplies, and the ta
lk was that he’d been taken prisoner by the Yankees. But Aunt Mary Anne refused to believe that awful possibility and spent her days quietly tending to her baby and writing and sending off letters that were never answered.
To Mattie fell the task of watching over her little sisters, and she amused them by taking them on long walks into the countryside, making trails through the tall grass, following the rabbit and deer into the dark woods along the ridge. On Saturdays when his school was out John Henry joined them, hitching two horses to the spring wagon and driving them all down the old Troupville Road to where the Little River and the Withlacoochee River ran together.
There where the two green rivers met the water slowed and wound past sandy shoals, sheltered by overhanging trees that filtered long shadows across the stream—a perfect, natural swimming hole. At the water’s edge, with the air full of the sounds of insects in the trees, John Henry sat on the soft grass and took off his shoes, rolled up the legs of his homespun trousers, and waded out into the water. If the girls hadn’t been along he’d have taken off the rest of his hot, heavy clothing as well and gone skinny dipping, feeling the grass and the fish skimming past his skin. But with the girls there he had to keep his clothes on and act like a gentleman.
Mattie helped the little girls tie up their skirts into their waistbands and left Lucy to watch them play at the river’s edge—the fear of water snakes was enough to keep them from wandering too far into the river. Then Mattie tied up her skirts too, and followed her cousin out into the cool, dark water.
John Henry watched her as she walked toward him in the golden light, the sun glancing off her auburn hair and making her eyes close in a squint against the glare, wrinkling her nose. She laughed as her skirts billowed up above the water and dipped her hand to chase a passing fish. The water on her clothing made it hang tight against her body, and John Henry stared through the shadows at the curve of her waist, the rise of her breast. He was mesmerized by the closeness of her and felt a sudden surge of something he didn’t understand, a need to touch her and feel that curve against his wet skin. Mattie turned to look at him as if hearing his thoughts, and he felt himself flush with embarrassment.
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