Southern Son

by Victoria Wilcox

  “You never forget someone you love,” she explained breathlessly, hanging onto her father as though she’d never let him go again and smiling through her tears, “and you never stop believin’! We knew you’d come home again Pa, Mama and I. Even when they said you were in a Yankee prison camp, we knew you were comin’ home!”

  “A Yankee prison camp?” he said, as though he’d hardly understood her words, looking dazed and confused at having his daughter back in his arms again. Then he nodded slowly. “That’s right, that’s right. But the damn Yanks couldn’t keep me away from my girls. I’ve walked all the way home. Signed their Oath of Allegiance at Raleigh, and walked all the way home. Where’s your mother, Mattie?”

  “In the house, nursin’ the baby. We’ve got a brother now, Pa. Did you get our letters? You never answered.”

  “A brother?” he asked, his heavy brows lifting in surprise. “You mean the baby was a boy this time?”

  “Yes, Pa. A beautiful little boy. Mama named him James Robert, after you and Grandpa Fitzgerald. But we call him Jim Bob. John Henry here thought of it.”

  “John Henry?” Uncle Rob said, turning his dazed eyes toward his sandy-haired nephew. “I thought you looked familiar, back there on the road. But you’ve gotten so tall . . .”

  “It’s been four years, Sir. I’m all grown up, now.”

  “That’s what he always says. He’s still just thirteen, though. Now come on in the house and see the baby. Oh, Pa! We’ve missed you so much!”

  But Uncle Rob hesitated, looking down at his worn and dirty clothes.

  “Maybe I should get cleaned up a little first. Where’s the well, John Henry? I should wash some of this road dust off before going in. I know how Alice Jane is about her clean floors.”

  “My mother won’t worry about the floor,” John Henry said, shooting Mattie a look that meant she wasn’t to say what she knew about his mother’s condition. “She doesn’t care so much about the house anymore, anyhow. You come on in right now, Uncle Rob. And Sir?”

  “Yes, John Henry,” his uncle said, as Mattie pushed open the gate and led him up the walkway.

  “I’m sorry about almost runnin’ you down, back there. If I’d known it was you . . .”

  “It’s all right, John Henry,” his uncle said somberly. “I’ve had worse things done to me, these past months, than bein’ kicked up by a horse.”

  And as Uncle Rob followed Mattie into the house, welcomed by a cry of joy from the ladies inside, John Henry wondered just what the Yankees had done to his uncle in that Northern prison camp. Robert Kennedy Holliday had been a bright and jovial man before the War, always ready with a smile and a taunting joke. Now he didn’t smile at all, not even when he heard that his wife had finally given him his longed-for son.

  Damn Yankees, John Henry thought. Damn Yankees.

  Uncle Rob had reached the end of his long walk, but his journey wasn’t over. He was restless to get back to his own home in Jonesboro and see what was left of his house and business buildings there. He was near penniless, worn out and disheartened, but he had a large and helpless family to provide for and he needed to get his affairs back in order again. So as soon as he’d had time to rest up a little and arrange for the journey, he took his wife and children back home to Jonesboro and John Henry had to say goodbye to Mattie. She’d been his only friend on the farm for the better part of a year, and having her gone was going to leave him lonely. But though he hoped for a last private moment with her to bid her a proper farewell, she was too busy doting on her father to pay him any attention. And as John Henry watched her ride away in the heavy-loaded wagon, seated between her father and little sisters, he wondered if he would ever see her again.

  With Mattie and her family gone, the farm seemed suddenly quiet again, even though his McKey uncles were staying on awhile longer. It was Uncle James McKey, with his surgical training, who finally told Henry Holliday the truth of his wife’s illness. He’d seen enough men die after battle, he said, to know when death was coming on. Since he had last seen her four years before, his sister Alice Jane had become just a shadow of her former self. Her porcelain fair complexion was now utterly transparent, the veins showing blue through the skin; her graceful figure was wasted away to emaciation; her lovely singing voice was hoarse and breathy from ceaseless coughing spells.

  “She never would let me send for the doctor,” Henry Holliday said in his own defense.

  “You surprise me, Henry,” Uncle James said, as they took their home-rolled cigars outside after supper. John Henry couldn’t help listening, as he was outside, too, the June night so thick and heavy that he couldn’t abide being indoors. While his father and uncle talked, he pretended to be absorbed in the lanky movements of a daddy-long-legs crawling across the porch rail.

  “I’ve never known you to bow to a woman before,” Uncle James commented. “You should have sent for medical help long ago, when somethin’ might have been done. Maybe with enough food, proper air and exercise . . .”

  “I won’t be chastised by you, James,” Henry said. “If you don’t like the way I run my home, you can leave now. You might find some place to stay over in Valdosta.”

  John Henry wasn’t surprised by his father’s stern words to his Uncle James. Henry was often stern these days, more so than usual since the bottom had dropped out of the cotton market and their whole cash crop wouldn’t bring enough to pay for next year’s seed. Henry had been too troubled by the farm and his finances to pay much attention to what was happening at home.

  But Uncle James was as hard-headed as his brother-in-law.

  “Surely you had to notice how thin she’s gotten, Henry. Unless, of course, your attentions have been turned elsewhere.” Then he said in subdued tones: “I hear your neighbor Mr. Martin has a comely daughter, and available, since her fiancé was killed in the war.”

  “How dare you, James McKey! Have you no decency? How dare you make such accusations right here in my own home!”

  “Calm down, Henry,” Uncle James said smoothly. “I’m not makin’ accusations. Just take it as a warnin’, for if there is anything untoward going on between you and Martin’s daughter, word will surely get out about it. This is a small community, and talk travels fast. And it won’t be just the community, but our family that you will have to answer to, if you ever do anything to dishonor Alice Jane.”

  “I’ll admit that I go over to the Martin place some,” Henry said, “but it’s strictly business when I do. Mr. Martin and I are working on a plan to plant some new trees in that back orchard, as his land adjoins mine there. And God knows I could use a new cash crop just now.”

  “Then I wish you success in your business venture, Henry. But you’ve drawn me off the subject. Alice Jane needs medical attention, and soon. I’ll do what I can, but I fear her disease has gone on far too long now to have any hope of remission.” Then he sighed heavily. “Poor, dear sister . . .”

  But Henry didn’t answer, and John Henry knew the conversation was over. It would have been better, he thought, if his mother could have told Henry in her own gentle way. Without her tempering influence, his father was a man of hot passions.

  He didn’t dare ponder long on the thought that those passions might include the neighbor’s twenty-two year old daughter Rachel, who was indeed comely as his Uncle James had said. John Henry had seen her in the orchard himself on occasion, a plump young woman with a ready smile and a mane of yellow hair. But surely his Uncle James was as wrong in his assumptions as John Henry had been years ago when he’d overheard what he thought was love talk between his mother and his Uncle John Holliday. His father was too honorable a man to do anything so dishonorable as what Uncle James suggested. His father was a hero, after all.

  Though the War had ended, the Yankee occupation went on. Georgia had been made a Department of the Military Division of Tennessee, stripped of its status as a sovereign state, and the Federals made regular forays to the farms around Valdosta. They were searching for Confederate
contraband, horses mostly, and took every animal with a CS brand, leaving many of the families in the county with no means of transportation—not that there was much of anyplace to go. Most of the stores in town were closed, and even the day school was on permanent summer vacation and wouldn’t reopen again, leaving John Henry with nothing much to do but farm chores and target shooting, and no one to talk to, now that Mattie was gone.

  His McKey uncles had moved on too, taking up some land together just over the Georgia-Florida line, a place they called “Banner Plantation.” They had hopes of putting in a cotton crop and making back some money for the family once the market rebounded. But for the present, they were busy clearing land and planting food crops, not cash crops. Their sisters Ella and Helena went to join them, though they came back to Cat Creek to visit with Alice Jane as often as they could.

  At his mother’s bidding, Aunt Ella and Aunt Helena took John Henry to Sunday Services at the Methodist church whenever they came to visit, as Alice Jane had become too weak to leave home and take him herself. Though she’d been raised as a Baptist and married as a Presbyterian, Alice Jane had recently taken fellowship with the Methodist-Episcopal sect, and her sisters had joined with her. It didn’t matter to John Henry which service his aunts took him to, as all the churches met in the same building, anyhow, where Union Church was held and the congregations took turns having their own pastors speak. Methodist was first and third Sundays, Baptist was second and fourth. As long as there was covered dish supper after the sermon, John Henry didn’t much care who was doing the preaching.

  His mother cared, though. She wanted him to understand the gospel as she believed it, and she even had the Methodist minister, the Reverend Newt Ousley, come out to the house to write her testimony for her so that John Henry would have it to remember her by. Her biggest quarrel with the Presbyterians was over the doctrine of election, as she explained to her son while he sat by her bed for his evening devotional and prayers.

  “The Presbyterians believe that some men are chosen, elected to salvation from before the foundation of the world. I think such a doctrine denies the power of our Savior to redeem the wicked from their sins. I believe that as long as a man is willin’ to repent and turn to Jesus, he can always be forgiven and begin again on the saintly road. Do you understand what I’m talkin’ about, John Henry?”

  “Yes, Ma, I reckon so.”

  “Then you must always remember that Jesus loves you and died for your sins. ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’”

  “Isaiah Chapter One, Verse Eighteen,” he said, trained to quote back chapter and verse whenever his mother recited the scriptures, as she believed that Bible study was as important a part of his education as reading and writing and arithmetic. “Ma? Do you reckon that Jesus thinks I’m a sinner?”

  He didn’t like to think he was, but he wasn’t always righteous, either. He still liked to play childish pranks, like hiding frogs in the laundry for the housemaid to find, or taking fruit from the neighbors’ trees. And sometimes, when his mother was resting and his father was away, he even stole a sip or two from Henry’s whiskey bottle which was kept hidden away under the sideboard in the dining room. But those were small enough sins, he hoped, to go unnoticed by God’s all-watching eye.

  “He thinks you’re a boy, I’m sure,” his mother replied. “And like most boys, you’re still learnin’ how to behave, and sometimes digress from the paths of rectitude. There are some boys, for instance, who would seek out the opportunity to drink liquor, even if they had to steal it from someone else. I would be terribly disappointed, John Henry, if I ever heard that you had done such a thing.”

  Though she was gazing placidly at the Holy Bible she held in front of her, her pale face as serene as ever, she had clearly just uncovered his crime and chastised him for it, and John Henry felt like a sinner, indeed. All his father’s rantings couldn’t put the fear of the Lord into him like a few gentle words from his mother.

  “I’m sorry, Ma,” he said, his eyes lowered with shame under his sandy lashes. “How did you know?”

  “Whiskey has its own aroma, John Henry. A lovin’ mother can smell it on her wayward son. I fear you have too much of your father’s hot Irish blood in you and a tendency to be rebellious at times. Like the wheat and the tares, there is both good and bad in you. But you must crush the tares, lest you be plucked out at the harvest.”

  Sometimes the meanings of his mother’s religious symbols eluded him, though he was sure she’d read him something somewhere about wheat and tares. But he was spared having to give the reference, chapter and verse, when his mother closed her eyes and sighed.

  “I am very tired, John Henry. Do you mind if we finish our devotional early? You go ahead and kneel by my bed and say your prayers. Then maybe you can go into the parlor and play me somethin’ soothing on the piano while I sleep. You know how Mother loves to hear you play.”

  The only school in session that fall was run by an ex-Confederate officer for the boys who had served under him, most of whom had gone to fight for the South before finishing their studies and had returned after the War as unlettered adolescents unfit for anything but fighting. So to help them catch up with their book learning and to keep them out of trouble, their former commander started up a little school on his own farm and taught them everything he could remember from his own school days.

  The most popular of those young veterans was a lad named Dick Force, who’d gone off to the War at only fourteen-years-old and come home again at nineteen with a knowledge of the world well beyond his years and an outspoken hatred of the Yanks. The younger boys called him “Captain” even though he had never risen past private, and idolized him because he’d been wounded slightly in the fighting at Gettysburg, though he was well enough recovered to get into fist fights with his friends. John Henry knew him by sight, as the Force family also attended Methodist services at the Union Church, and he thought the Captain seemed like a worthy idol. He was a head taller than the rest of the older boys, broad-shouldered and already wearing a small mustache, and the girls all giggled around him whenever he came through the door.

  The only folks who didn’t show Dick Force his accustomed deference were the newly freed slaves, and their bold insolence was more than an irritation to him and his friends. And most irritating of all was the federal Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands—the “Freedmen’s Bureau” that had been created to negotiate labor contracts between the former slaves and their former owners. To the white folks of Valdosta, the Freedmen’s Bureau was just another Yankee effrontery, made all the worse when Washington sent in black soldiers to oversee the operation.

  “But a nigra’s still a nigra,” Dick Force proclaimed to his friends, “freed or not. And I ain’t about to bow to a nigra, even if he is dressed up in Yankee blue.”

  Dick threw those words around a lot, but when he threw them at a black soldier in front of the Freedmen’s Bureau offices, he ended up in jail. Under martial law, he didn’t even have the right to speak his mind. If it hadn’t been for his friends sawing away the window sash of his cell to help him escape, Dick might have languished in that jail cell forever.

  John Henry heard of the escape from his church friends in town, and thought it a wonderful adventure, though the story would have been better if the Captain had done some fine shooting along with his fast run from the authorities. Word went out that Dick had taken his favorite horse and gone west to Texas, though most everyone knew he was really just hiding out in the swampy countryside until things cooled down a bit in Valdosta. To keep him comfortable in his hideaway on the banks of the Withlacoochee River, the town boys formed a sort of underground railroad running him meals and fresh bedding taken from their own homes.

  John Henry had little problem adding his own portion to the contraband, as his father was busy all day and his mother was sick in bed. No one paid any attention when he packed meals from
the dinner leftovers and stole a little of his father’s whiskey from under the sideboard in the dining room. For Dick’s horse, he brought feed and fresh apples from the orchard his father shared with Mr. Martin. He sometimes saw Martin’s daughter Rachel there picking apples too, and she always smiled and waved at him. She must like apples a whole lot, he thought more than once, to spend so much time in the orchard.

  It was on one of those bright fall days, just past noon, as he was getting ready to go pay a visit to the Captain, that all hell broke loose—at least that was the way it looked to John Henry. He’d just saddled his horse and slid his double-barreled shotgun into the saddle scabbard when a strange darkness began to creep over the sky. At first he thought it was some straying raincloud drifting across the sun and dimming the afternoon light, but the sky was cloudless blue as it had been all week. It wasn’t a fog coming in, either. Fogs came in early in the morning or late at night, starting down by the river and rising up over the fields of cotton and corn and sugar cane. This sudden darkness seemed to be coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once. The horse noticed the strangely waning light, too, and started whinnying and shying from his touch. Then the dogs on the porch started howling, and the cows in the pasture started lowing like it was coming on dusk, and from the distance came a moaning sound from the hired negroes in the fields.

  “Damn if it isn’t Judgment Day!” he whispered to the horse and himself both. “Do you reckon those darkies know somethin’ we don’t? Sounds like they’re callin’ to the Lord for mercy.” He had a passing thought that he ought to be calling to the Lord for mercy, himself, but he had his hands full with the horse and couldn’t fall to his knees just then. And thinking of praying, he thought of his mother and let the horse go, still saddled and ready for a ride.