by Rod Miller
“Sure do. I’m obliged.”
Lee Pate’s boy. I wonder what he’s up to.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A silhouette stepped into the opening at the end of the barn’s alley, interrupting Ben Pate’s heated discussion with his stable man. The black man cowered another time as Ben struck him on the shoulder with the quirt looped around his wrist, then Pate shifted his attention to the intruder.
“What do you want?” Ben shouted down the dim corridor, whacking the shaft of his boot with the quirt as if punctuating the question.
“Uncle Ben?” came the reply. “Is that you?”
A pause to consider the “uncle” reference, then, “Who’s asking?”
The man removed his hat and stepped into the barn, hesitated, then walked down the alley. “It’s me, Uncle Ben. Mel. Lee’s boy.”
“Mel? You mean Melvin?”
Melvin stopped an arm’s length away from his uncle. “That’s right. Only I go by Mel now.”
“What the hell you doing here, boy? We ain’t seen hide nor hair of your family for months. Where you-all been?”
Melvin swallowed, scuffed the hard dirt floor with the toe of his boot, then bowed his head. “Well, Sir, Pa felt the need to leave in a hurry. You know how he is when he takes a notion. Anyways, we been makin’ our way across Arkansas.”
“Arkansas? What the hell for? Where you-all going?”
“Can’t rightly say. All’s I know is Pa wants to get shed of the United States. Talked some about Mexico.”
Ben laughed. “Mexico. I hate to say it, Son, but that daddy of yours is addled. Man ain’t got the sense God gave a hoe cake. So how come you to be here?”
“Pa sent me. Us. Me and Rich and Abel.” Melvin looked at his uncle, glanced at the stable man, then back to his uncle.
Ben dismissed the slave with a warning to do as he was told or he would find himself back in the fields. He shifted his attention back to his nephew, flaring the long tails of his linen duster as he turned. “Well, what is it?”
As cowed as the black man, Melvin bowed his head and rocked from side to side, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He cleared his throat, swallowed hard. “Pa wants us to fetch some of his belongings.”
He paused again, the pawing of hooves and the tooth-grinding of hay and the occasional nicker of horses the only sound. That, and the slow tap-tap-tapping of the quirt against Ben’s boot. Melvin grew more nervous in the silence; Ben grew increasingly impatient.
“I don’t know what that fool brother of mine has got in mind, but I don’t think he’s got any belongings left hereabouts. Someone rustled the cattle he left unattended. Pigs stolen. House has been pilfered of anything worth carrying off. Folks have even dismantled some of the outbuildings and hauled them off. Only thing left, far as I know, is the land. And as far as I am concerned, he abandoned title to that when he went off and left it. I’ve got lawyers working on deeding it over to me. I’m damned if I’ll let the farm our daddy and his daddy before him watered with their sweat leave Pate family hands just because your daddy Lee don’t care none about it. Family matters to me, if not to him.”
Ben had more to say, but paused to catch his breath after the tirade.
Melvin again cleared his throat and stammered into the silence.
“That’s—that’s—that’s the th-thing, Uncle Ben. He didn’t send us for no household goods nor cattle nor no other stock. It ain’t nothing he left at the home place that he wants.” He paused, fingers rotating his hat by the brim.
“Well, what, then? Speak up, Melvin! I swear, you’re as thickheaded as your daddy.”
“It’s just some stuff he gave to you for safekeeping—books is all. He says there’s a little book left him by his grandpa Ezekiel, a diary or some such. And a Bible what’s got family names and dates and such wrote in it.” Melvin lifted his head and met Ben’s eyes. “Just family stuff. I guess he does care some about the family.”
The quirt lashed out as if of its own accord, striking Melvin’s upper arm. He stepped back, grasping the welt.
“Don’t you be giving me back talk, boy! And don’t pretend you—or your daddy—know anything about family. Far as I’m concerned, there ain’t a one of your bunch fit to carry the Pate name.”
Speechless, Melvin tried to rub the sting out of his arm. He studied his uncle’s face—the flared nostrils, clenched jaw, furrowed brow. “It’s just old books. Pa says he’s got a right to them, on account of him bein’ firstborn.”
This time the quirt landed atop Melvin’s head, very nearly knocking all awareness out of him. He staggered, covering his head with his arms. The next blow struck his ribs. Melvin managed to shove Ben away.
“Leave off! You got no cause to be beatin’ on me!”
Ben raised the quirt, threatening another blow, and stepped toward his nephew; Melvin stepped back in response. “Shut up, you useless whelp! Lee ain’t getting one damn thing from me, firstborn or not. Being born first is the only time he ever got ahead of me. All our lives our daddy favored him and he never did one damn thing to deserve it. Now he’s gone off and left everything behind. Far as I’m concerned, that’s the way it will stay.”
“What do you care about a couple of old books, what with all you got?”
Ben laughed. “Fact is, boy, I don’t care nothing about them books. Haven’t even looked at that bundle of stuff since Lee gave it to me for safekeeping. Been locked in that safe all this time—and that’s where they’ll stay.”
“That ain’t hardly right, Uncle Ben. Them books belong to Pa by birthright.”
When Ben finally walked away, short of breath and rimmed with sweat, Melvin lay curled up on the packed earth of the barn’s alleyway. He could scarcely feel the sting of the welts striping his upper body. The hazy light seemed to grow dimmer as he strained against unconsciousness.
Oh Lordy, Lordy, Lordy. What am I goin’ to do now?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Abel wrung pink water from the rag and dabbed more blood from the torn scalp above Melvin’s ear. It was the only of his wounds to bleed. But the welts and bruises on his arms, back, and ribs would be painful for a time and would likely be slow to heal.
Richard paced back and forth on the porch of the house he and his brothers had grown up in, muttering words the others could not hear. Abel, sitting on the porch step beside Melvin, tossed the tainted water into the dooryard. He stared at the dented and rusty enamel bowl salvaged from a midden beside the house and threw it aside. The clang of its bouncing across the weed-infested yard stirred Richard from his trance.
“You’ve messed this up but good, Mel. Had you handled things right, Uncle Ben would’ve handed over them books and we’d be done with this.”
“Well I never asked for the job. You could’ve done it your own self.”
“Never thought I’d have to. Figured even a simple-minded ninny like you could fetch a book.”
Abel said, “There ain’t no need for that, Rich. Mel done his best. Ain’t no reason to think you could’ve done any better.”
“Sure as hell I couldn’t of done any worse.”
Richard resumed his circuit of the porch. Melvin sat wrapped in his own arms. Abel studied the home place. He could not fathom such change in just a few months. There was no sign of life, anywhere. The weeds that spotted the yard grew even taller in the fertile soil of the empty hog pens. The open door of the smokehouse hung tentatively on a single hinge. Half the siding from the barn was missing from the skeletal frame, put to other use elsewhere. The tool shed was gone altogether; only a scattering of rusty parts and pieces witnessed it ever existed. A shallow pit betrayed the former presence of the root cellar. Not even the outhouse had survived—it reclined on its side. The crescent moon cut in the door must have served as someone’s target, as bullet holes splintered the wood around it.
The house was likewise plundered. Only shards of glass remained in the few window sashes that still hung. The back door, shattered and splinter
ed from being kicked in; the front door missing. The fancy-carved double-doored wardrobe was gone from Ma and Pa’s bedroom. Pantry shelves were empty and pulled down. A length of stovepipe dangled from the ceiling in the sitting room, orphaned from the warming stove that once sat beneath it but was now gone. Missing, too, was the kitchen stove—its only trace the scorched floorboards under where it once stood. The bedroom the boys shared, a lean-to addition to the house, was in shambles; the shingles gone from the sagging roof, one wall missing and another barely standing.
You had to know where to look to find evidence of the family that once—and that only recently—lived here. The door frame between the front room and the kitchen showed a ladder of pencil marks, each accompanied by initials and a year, where Ma marked each boy’s growth as part of the family’s birthday ritual. There was the rough-carved and painted-over RP on a porch post that resulted in a hiding for the oldest son and a lesson for the other boys. A flattened tin can, tacked over the hole in the kitchen wall from the time Melvin failed his lesson in loading and seating a cap on Pa’s old single-shot pistol. Abel searched in vain for the pencil drawing he’d made of the barn— only pinholes and a torn paper corner remained where Ma had hung it on the wall. He must have been about seven back then.
Abel could not cry over any of it. Instead of sadness, he felt only the hollow emptiness of his former home. He returned to the porch and sat again on the step beside Melvin.
Richard said, “You done moonin’ around, baby brother?”
Abel shook his head. After a moment he said, “There ain’t much left to show we was ever here. It’s kind of sad.”
“The sad thing is, we ain’t here still. There ain’t no good reason on God’s green earth for us to be traipsin’ around Arkandamn-saw. We had a good life here, and we just walked away from it, with barely the clothes on our backs.”
“It was what Pa wanted,” Abel said.
There was no humor in Richard’s laugh. “What Pa wanted. Hell, that man don’t know what he wants. I swear he’s loony as a goose sometimes. And them times gets more regular the older he gets.”
“Still, he’s our Pa.”
“That don’t give him the right to ruin our lives.”
“He’s our Pa.”
“Dammit, Abel! Sometimes I think you’re as thickheaded as Melvin! You think him bein’ our Pa is all that matters on account of you’re still a kid. But me and Ma—hell, even Melvin!—we know better. I’ve gone along up till now but I’m about done with it. If it weren’t for Ma, I’d call it quits right now and not even go back.”
“You do what you think best. I’m going back. And when I do, I’m takin’ them books with me. Just like Pa said.”
Melvin said, “How do you figger to get them from Uncle Ben?”
“I don’t know,” Abel said. “I’ll think of something.”
“Don’t bother askin’ him,” Melvin said, rubbing the welts on his ribs.
Thought of the beating stirred Richard’s already boiling pot. “Sonofabitch,” he said. “I can’t believe Uncle Ben abused you like that. He’s got no right.”
Melvin shrugged and winced from the resulting pain. “He thinks he’s within his rights on account of he says Pa abandoned all claim to anything to do with the Pate family when he left.”
Richard pondered that for a moment. “He’s got a point, I suppose.”
“Richard!”
“Aw, shut up Abel. I ain’t give up yet. There’s one more thing we can try—it’s what Pa told me about just before he sent us on this wild-goose chase. Something he left behind here at the house that Uncle Ben will want. But I’m of half a mind to forget what he said and just take it back with us instead of them books.”
“We’d best do what Pa said.”
“Shut up, Abel. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. It ain’t up to you to decide, baby brother.”
Melvin said, “Well, hell! What is it, anyway?”
“C’mon. I’ll show you-all—if somebody ain’t stole it like they did everything else.”
The brothers passed through the empty doorway into the front room. Richard kicked around in the rubble on the floor and found a bent fireplace poker. He wedged the end between the hearthstone and fireplace and moved the heavy slab an inch or two and cast the poker aside. “C’mon you-all. Give me a hand here.”
Twenty-four fingers slid into the crack.
“Ready,” Richard said. “Pull!”
The stone resisted but once in motion slid away from the fireplace revealing a shallow hole. Richard swept around in the dirt until he uncovered the leather bag he sought. He untied the thong and unwrapped it from the neck of the pouch and poured the gold eagles inside into a jingling pile on the hearthstone.
“Hell’s fire!” Melvin said. “It’s a fortune!”
“No, Mel, it ain’t no fortune. Ain’t but eighty dollars there. It’s a goodly sum but far from a fortune. Still and all, it might be enough to convince Uncle Ben to part with Pa’s precious books.”
CHAPTER NINE
Ben Pate stared out the parlor window, sucking on a cigar and thinking about nothing. He was alone in the big house, save the presence of his hired man Friday, Peter, who was likely asleep at this hour. He slept in a small room off what Ben’s wife called the den, but was more an office, where he and Peter handled business affairs.
He turned away from the window, the rich furnishings in the room triggering thoughts of waste. This place, filled with fancy— and expensive—cabinets and couches, tables and chairs, hutches and highboys, wardrobes and sideboards, mirrors and lamps, draperies and curtains and other fixtures and fittings and finery was all his wife’s doing.
And she was seldom here to enjoy it.
Ben’s wife, a society girl raised in luxury as the daughter of a Charleston cotton merchant, thought Shelby County a backwater, and nearby Memphis a frontier town—never mind that some 8,000 people now called the place home. And never mind that the money coming in from all his land and livestock, his trade and shipping interests, his stocks and investments, amounted to more than enough to satisfy all the family’s needs and wants with plenty left over. Never mind all that. His wife also considered the schools hereabouts inferior, so she packed herself and their now-teenaged daughter and son off to Charleston where they would, she believed, receive a proper education.
And that left Ben to rattle around the big house alone most of the time. Alone, that is, except for Peter and the servants— slaves—a black man and his wife who lived in a shack out back. Exhaling smoke, Ben wondered at the point of it all. What good was this house if he found no pleasure in it? What good was a family that was not here to enjoy?
He thought of his brother Lee, and his family.
Misguided as the man is, his family sticks by him. Lee never had the business sense I’ve got so he never accumulated much in the way of wealth. But the Pate family farm that came down to him as firstborn son—even though I was more capable of running it— provided a comfortable enough living. And he walked away from it all, the fool!
Still, his family followed him to God-knows-where, and mine won’t even stay home. . . .
Ben smashed his cigar into an ashtray, again and again and again, reducing the stub to shreds. He and his older brother had butted heads all their lives. Lee was always the favorite, which made him, the younger son, work all the harder for approval that seldom came. Even now, with their father long gone, he somehow felt inadequate despite outpacing his older brother by any measure.
Of late, their disagreements—and Lee’s differences with the world—came down to slavery. Somewhere, somehow, Lee acquired the fool notion it was wrong; sinful even. You would think the man was a damnYankee instead of Southern born and bred, raised in a slave-holding family. Lee not only turned his own slaves loose, he berated any and every slaveholder he encountered for not following suit. He preached his doctrine at every opportunity and corresponded with newspapers throughout the South, expounding his views.
&nbs
p; His brother became a laughingstock.
Especially when his tirades turned to prophesying the ruin of the South, and all of the United States, for their sins. Lee could not say when or where it would come, but he claimed dreams and visions showing a great war of destruction. His notions had finally driven him to quit the country and leave for where he did not know. Good thing, too. Otherwise, the man would be in jail. Or an asylum for the feebleminded.
Plain and simple, Lee was a damn fool if ever there was one. War? Destruction? Bullshit!
Sure, Ben was well aware of the ongoing disputes among politicians. He had heard all the arguments against slaveholding—long-standing arguments hashed and rehashed since the uniting of the States some half a century ago. But that is all they were—political disputes. And, as far as he was concerned, all the time Congress wasted debating slavery meant less time to conjure up ways to hinder trade and commerce, and that suited him just fine. To think it would ever come to war, or that the South could ever be brought to heel, was twaddle. It hadn’t come to war when South Carolina adopted its Ordinance of Nullification back in ’32, declaring federal tariff laws unconstitutional and vowing not to obey them. Like then, like always, compromise and accommodation would continue to rule.
Ben heaved a big sigh, shook his head in slow disbelief—or, perhaps, discontent. He turned down the lamp, watched the flame shrink to a dim glow, and shuffled off to his empty bed.
Come midmorning, as Ben sat at his desk studying contracts, Peter knocked at the door and walked in uninvited, as was their custom.
“Some, uh, gentlemen here to see you, Sir.”
Ben rocked back in his swivel chair and clasped his hands across his belly. “Who?”
“I did not get their names, I’m afraid. They claim to be family—‘Tell him Lee’s boys is here,’ they said.”
Ben lurched forward, slapping his hands on the desk.
Lee’s boys! What the hell? I thought I’d made it clear to that muddleheaded Melvin to go away and leave me the hell alone!
