“That wasn’t me, Cassie. Must’ve been Lonnie.” Jacob sounded distressed. “Reckon that means Lonnie’s dead.”
“Then what happened to you?”
“I’m getting to that.” Jacob heaved a deep sigh. “Reckon you got to know.”
Cassie was starting to be frightened. What had Jacob done?
“When I come to,” Jacob continued, “I was laying in a sort of ditch back in a skirt of trees. Weren’t no sounds of battle, nothing but birds singing. My head felt like it was near blown clean off, but it couldn’t have been, ’cause I was alive and breathing. I crawled out of the ditch, to the edge of the trees, and looked around. The field where we’d been fighting, why, it was swarming with Yankees.
“All I could think about, then, was getting clear of them Yanks. I wasn’t about to be taken prisoner. I high-tailed it off into the woods, but I must have passed out again. Next thing I knowed, I was waking up in a strange bed inside somebody’s farmhouse.”
Jacob was burning with fever, he told Cassie, and he drifted in and out of consciousness for days. Finally, the mother of the family nursed him back to health. “She put me in mind so much of Mama,” he said, “it made me pine for home something fierce.”
When he finally left, Jacob went on, he had every intention of heading back to rejoin his unit. “But I was sick to heaven of fighting. Of slaughtering men like hogs.” Jacob closed his eyes, and Cassie wondered what horrors he was seeing behind his lids.
“Oh, Cass,” Jacob said when he opened his eyes. The scar on his forehead stood out, red and angry. “How I ached to see you … Mama … Pa … everybody. I could scarcely remember your faces.” At that his voice broke.
Cassie’s throat was aching.
Then, his face and voice expressionless, Jacob said, “So I changed my mind and headed home instead.”
“You deserted?” Cassie couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice.
Jacob dropped his head. “It’s shameful, I know, but I wanted to see y’all so bad …” His voice trailed off.
Cassie didn’t know what to say. Her own brother, a deserter.
Jacob must have sensed what Cassie was thinking. He wouldn’t look at her. “By the time I got to these woods,” he said, “it hit me, the shame of what I done. And the shame it would bring to Mama.” Although he was so near to home, he couldn’t bear to present himself to the family. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave.
“So I been hiding in the woods ever since, sometimes sleeping here in the thicket, sometimes in one o’ the old Quaker caves down by the creek. You recollect them caves, don’t you, Cass? Myron showed ’em to us.”
“I recollect.” Cassie felt a weight inside her like a stone.
For a moment Jacob was silent. Then he said, “Y’know, I seen you a couple o’ times. The first time was when I come and got these britches off the line. You took me by surprise coming out—I had to hide behind the hedge—and, well, I couldn’t get up the nerve to show myself.”
“That was you.” It was a statement, not a question.
“You saw me?”
“No, I felt you. Only I didn’t know it was you. And I was too scared to go look.”
“Sorry I scared you, Cass.”
All Cassie could do was nod. She was overwhelmed by what Jacob was telling her.
There was another long pause. Then Jacob went on. “I swore I’d show myself the next time I seen you. But after that you was always with Emma or Philip, and I figured they wouldn’t understand, though I hoped you might.”
Guilt shot through Cassie. She didn’t think she did understand. Avoiding Jacob’s searching eyes, she asked him about Maybelle. “It was you that took her, wasn’t it?”
Jacob nodded. “I’d been living off roots and nuts for I don’t know how long, and what fish I could catch without a line. It was Providence, I thought, when I found Maybelle. Figured I could have me some eggs right steady. But I was so hungry, I ended up eating her.” He stopped. Cassie figured he was waiting for her to say something, and when she didn’t, he went on.
“More’n once,” he said, “I wandered to the house all set to show myself, but I couldn’t go through with it.” Jacob had picked up a pebble and was rolling it around in his hand. “One time I took one of Mama’s ash cakes from the windowsill where she’d set ’em out to cool. I couldn’t help it—I remembered how good they was, and I was just so hungry, Cass.”
Though he was staring at the pebble and not looking at Cassie, she heard the pleading in his voice. She knew he was desperate for her to understand.
“Mama give Ben a whipping for taking that ash cake,” Cassie heard herself say. It came out sounding hard and harsh, not at all like Cassie had meant it. Jacob’s face fell.
“Little ol’ Ben got a whipping on my account.” He shook his head. “I should have gone on and left—gone off to start a new life somewhere. I seen that, finally, since it was clear I wasn’t never going to get up the courage to show myself to Mama, and I wasn’t about to go back to the army and risk being shot for deserting.”
Cassie shuddered. It wasn’t so long ago that she had declared a bullet was what a deserter deserved.
“Yesterday,” Jacob said, “when I seen y’all out in the cornfield, I snuck in the house and took my silver mug from the mantel.” He lifted his head, and his tone turned defiant, more like the Jacob Cassie remembered. “I figured it was mine anyway, and it’d bring a heap o’ money in Danville or Greensboro. Enough so I could head out west—Texas, maybe even California.
“Even so, it was almighty hard to make myself leave, without saying good-bye, knowing I couldn’t never come back. I told myself I’d spend one last night in the thicket and then I had to be off—for good. Only I didn’t expect to run smack into you.”
Cassie was in turmoil. There were so many feelings tumbling around inside her, and she couldn’t put a name on any of them. She had never felt so confused in her whole life.
But Jacob was looking right at her, with those clear blue eyes of his. She had to say something. “Ain’t no need to go away if you don’t want to. General Lee done surrendered. War’s all but over.”
A brief spark came to Jacob’s eyes. “OI’ Marse Robert surrendered, huh? Then Johnston can’t last much longer.”
“Folks won’t know you deserted,” Cassie went on. “They’ll just think you been paroled and made it home quicker’n everybody else.”
Jacob’s face clouded. “What? And have to lie about what I done for the rest of my life? I’d rather leave, I think.” He paused. “Cass? You think Mama would be ashamed of me if I did go home? And Pa?”
Cassie didn’t answer. What would it be like, she thought, if everyone knew her brother was a deserter? She dropped her eyes.
Pain filled Jacob’s face. “You’re ashamed of me, ain’t you, Cassie?”
Suddenly Cassie’s breathing came hard. Was she ashamed of Jacob? She had worshiped him ever since she could remember … Her chest ached at the thought.
Then she remembered the buzzards. And Gus.
Names attached to things—or people—didn’t change what they were deep down. Yankee. Deserter. They were only names. Names that didn’t really tell you much of anything, when you got right down to it.
Maybe Philip was right. Maybe it was Cassie who had never been able to see Jacob clearly. So Jacob wasn’t perfect, like she had thought. So he had faults. That made him like everybody else, didn’t it?
Deserter or not, Jacob was still the same person he had always been. Her brother.
“No,” Cassie said. She was looking straight at Jacob now. “I ain’t ashamed of you.”
CHAPTER 15
HOMECOMING
Jacob stayed two weeks after he came home, long enough to take Gus into Danville and put him on a train to Ohio, and long enough to help Philip plant three more acres of corn and an acre of sweet potatoes. It rained on the day Jacob left for California. Mama said it was fitting that the sky should cry on the day that she lost h
er oldest boy for the second time.
In one way, Cassie understood why Jacob had to go; in another way, she didn’t. None of them, Mama least of all, held against Jacob what he had done, but Cassie thought he held it against himself. The note he left for Mama pretty much said so.
Jacob slipped away before dawn one morning, while everybody was sleeping. All he left behind was the note for Mama and a little wood carving of Hector for Cassie. Later, when Philip got up, he told Mama that Jacob had never intended to stay. “He told me so,” Philip said, “’long about the third or fourth day when we was planting.”
“He told you?” Cassie was stung to the quick. Why would Jacob tell Philip about his plans and not tell her?
“Yeah, he told me. We talked a lot out there in the field while we was working side by side. Jacob said it was plain to see I was smart as a steel trap when it come to farming.” Philip’s eyes were shining. Envy stabbed at Cassie.
Philip went on. “Jacob said he wasn’t never smart that way, and Pa seen it and favored me. It ate away at him, he said, and he figured he took it out on me without meaning to.”
“Pure foolishness,” Mama broke in. “Your pa never favored one young’un over the other.”
“I ain’t saying it’s true, Mama,” Philip said quietly. “I’m only telling you what Jacob told me. He said he always had the feeling he didn’t measure up to what Pa wanted, and that’s why he joined the army—to try to make Pa proud of him. And that’s why he said he couldn’t stay. ’Cause he couldn’t bear to see Pa’s face when Pa found out he deserted.”
“Why didn’t you tell this to nobody before?” said Cassie. “We could have told Jacob he was wrong and stopped him from going!”
“That’s just it, Cassie. He didn’t want to be stopped. There’s some things a man has got to do; he knew I seen that and you wouldn’t.” Philip’s eyes held sympathy. “It wasn’t because he felt any different toward you than he ever did.”
At first Cassie was hurt, but the more she thought about it, the more she understood. It seemed better in a way that Jacob should confide in Philip. It set things right between her two brothers at last, set things to the way they should have been all along.
Two days later Mama came home from Sloan’s store with news of General Johnston’s surrender. She said the war was over for good now, and folks at the store were saying that the trains arriving in Danville were already packed with soldiers coming home.
Soldiers coming home … coming home … The words echoed in Cassie’s head. If Jacob hadn’t deserted, he’d be one of them. Cassie closed her eyes and pictured it in her mind: a dark night, a knock on the door, and Jacob standing there on the step—how wonderful—when they all had thought he was dead! And later, when Pa made it home from Appomattox, the whole family would be together again, just like before the war.
Cassie couldn’t bear thinking like that. Finally, there was nothing she could do but take Hector and head for the woods. It was late in the afternoon, after chores but before supper. They took the wagon path through the orchard. The sun hung low in the creamy blooms of the apple trees.
Hector trotted at Cassie’s heels. He seemed completely healed from his fight with the deserter. His ears—one of them crooked now—were perked up, and his nose was in the air, waiting to catch wind of a rabbit. Cassie felt downcast and restless, and she dawdled along the path, picking blossoms from the trees, throwing sticks for Hector, trying to ignore her gloomy thoughts.
All of a sudden a gray squirrel scurried across the path, and Hector bounded after it. The squirrel ran up the trunk of the tallest apple tree and sat just out of Hector’s reach, chattering and scolding. Hector set into a frenzy of barking and jumping.
Even through her mood, Cassie couldn’t help being amused. “That old squirrel is acting right sassy, ain’t he, boy?” she said to Hector. Hector yipped and looked at her imploringly. His wagging tail whipped against the tree trunk.
“Ahh.” Cassie said, “you want me to teach him some manners. Reckon I could do that for a good friend like you.” She caught onto a low limb of the tree and swung into its snowy branches. The squirrel scampered up out of her reach.
Then a breeze kicked up, the branches trembled, and a rain of blossoms floated down and landed in Cassie’s hair and on her dress. The sweet smell of flowering apples filled Cassie’s nostrils. Above her and below her and all around her was a sea of white, so pure and clean, Cassie’s mood suddenly lifted.
She started to climb; she climbed higher than she should have. It felt good to be up so high, above the world and its troubles. She scooted closer to the trunk, held tight to it, and looked out across the landscape.
In the west, far across the woods, was the river, and the huge orange ball of the sun, suspended, ready to drop into the water. In the opposite direction, the last of the sunlight was scattered across Oak Ridge. Dusk was coming on fast. The piney woods and the pecan grove were already dark, and the stretch of road in between was fading quickly away. But Cassie could see a shadow moving through the pines where she knew the road was—a shadow that looked like a horse and wagon.
Who would be coming way out here with a wagon this late in the evening? It had to be Myron, but why?
“Reckon I’ll just find out,” Cassie said aloud. She clambered down the tree and took off running, Hector behind her. She reached the fork in the road before the wagon did, so she perched on the old rock wall to wait. The tree frogs had started to sing, and thick darkness was gathering all around her.
Soon the wagon appeared out of the pines. In the dark, Cassie wouldn’t have known Myron was driving the wagon, except that she recognized Lucy’s slow, plodding gait. All Cassie could see were shapes—one shape that was Myron’s, holding the reins, and the shape of someone else beside him. Cassie couldn’t tell who the other shape was. The glup-glup of Lucy’s hooves in the mud got louder; the wagon drew closer.
What happened then would always be a blur to Cassie. She heard the wagon wheels rattling. She heard Hector barking. She heard voices—Myron’s and another voice, one that was familiar, so familiar. All of a sudden Cassie was running toward the wagon. She jumped on, and she felt her father’s arms around her. Myron was laughing, saying something. Cassie didn’t hear him. All she heard was Pa saying her name. And she was crying.
The next thing that was clear in Cassie’s mind was the wagon pulling through the pecan grove with the lit windows of their farmhouse cutting through the dark up ahead. Pa moaned. “Oh, what a sight,” he said. “What a purty sight.” He squeezed his arm tight around Cassie’s shoulder. “Time was when I allowed I’d never see home again. Now I’m here with my Cassie girl, so near to home I can taste it.”
He turned to Myron. “Sweeney, you know what I want first thing after I hug my wife and babies?”
“What’s that, Willis?”
“You recollect what I told you was the one victual I hankered for down those long roads on my way home?”
Myron laughed and bellowed out, “Poke salad!”
Pa kissed the top of Cassie’s head. “Reckon your mama would fix me up a mess of poke salad?”
Cassie brushed her face against Pa’s woolly beard. She thought about Mama’s vow that she’d never make poke salad again, and all that had happened since. They had lost Jacob and gotten him back, only to lose him again. And in the short time Jacob had been home, he’d never asked for poke salad, not once. Would Mama make poke salad for Pa? Cassie didn’t know. But she didn’t want to say anything that would spoil Pa’s happiness—or her own. “Reckon Mama would do anything for you,” she told Pa.
Then they were home—Cassie had never even had time to picture what it would be like. The wagon pulled up in front of the house. Pa jumped down and slung Cassie down with him. They ran to the door, and they were inside. Everybody was there. Pa picked Mama up and swung her around. Tears streamed down Mama’s face, but she didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed. Pa slapped Philip on the back, like Cassie had seen him do the men
folk at the store. Pa hugged Emma, told her she was the spitting image of Mama at sixteen, which made Emma start spouting tears like a watering can. And little Ben got a ride on Pa’s shoulders.
That night at supper, Mama told Cassie she had an errand for her first thing in the morning.
“What you want me to do, Mama?” Cassie asked.
“I want you to take a basket and hunt me the tenderest, greenest poke shoots you can find. I aim to make your pa some poke salad for supper tomorrow.”
Cassie couldn’t believe her ears. She looked at Pa. Pa winked at her, and Mama smiled, a big smile that made her face look like the sunrise over Oak Ridge.
1865
GOING BACK IN TIME
LOOKING BACK: 1865
By the spring of 1865, when Cassie’s story takes place, it had been four long years since the country split in two in the bloody conflict we know as the Civil War. The storm that erupted on April 12, 1861, over Fort Sumter, South Carolina, had been brewing for a long time.
For years the North and the South had behaved like quarrelsome siblings, bickering over which region should have the most power in government—which should be the “boss.” Since the North had more money, people, factories, and businesses, it sometimes acted like the “big sister,” trying to force the South to “do things my way.” The South, in turn, would threaten to secede—to declare its independence and form a separate nation—if the North didn’t give in to it. One of the biggest arguments had to do with slavery. Many people in the North wanted to end slavery, but the wealthiest and most powerful Southerners relied on slave labor to run their vast plantations.
In 1861, the South made good on its threats and seceded, declaring itself the Confederate States of America. The North, led by President Abraham Lincoln, was determined to keep the United States from breaking up. Lincoln sent Federal troops to try to force the Confederacy back into the Union.
The Confederate army was not filled with wealthy slave owners, however. Soldiers were mostly laborers and yeoman farmers like Pa and Jacob—men who owned only a few acres of land and had no slaves. These men went to war not to preserve slavery but to protect their homes and families from the Northern invaders.
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