CHAPTER 25

The Captain’s Last Days

One by one, as they grew old enough to leave the high fertile plain on which they lived, the mixed people and the white people with whom they were related slipped away into obscurity. Other states became their homes, and they never returned openly to Jones County.

Once the son of Jeff and Molly (Jeff was not his real father, but because he was brought up in Jeff’s house, he was presumed to be negro) and his wife, a white stranger, wrote a postal card home, announcing that they would be in for a visit on a certain day and hour.

The card was read at the post office at Soso, Mississippi, and when the time of arrival was at hand, the train was met, en masse, and riled citizens ordered the conductor not to put off any travelers. So after a long journey home to visit his mother, the young man was not allowed to see her, but was transported out of the country, because he was supposedly part negro, and would have, therefore, been guilty of a crime, by having married outside his race.

Finally, there remained only a few people, over whom an old man reigned, as a king, over his subjects, up there in the “No Man’s Land” of Civil War fame. An old man, with a warped and twisted mind, a man who was almost wild in his habits, living in the woods by day, and always looking and listening for a hidden foe. A man who made weird faces by working and twisting his mouth.

When night came, he was indoors, and always with him were a strange group of people. People who felt that it was their responsibility to look after the “Captain,” as they fondly addressed him.

He was waited upon, hand and foot, and his least wish was granted by the dusky daughters of Georgianne. And by the offspring of Rachel, who were a mixed race, with apparently more negro blood than white, because the sons of Rachel had not been careful in choosing wives.

With having accomplished his purpose in getting Fan married, and Jeff married, the Captain cared little about what became of the rest. He did not mind two or three of his old cronies visiting with Georgianne whenever they chose, and he was not concerned about the number or the type of children born to her.

Banished from society, and with no true friend left in the world, Newt turned more talkative. And great tales he told these people about his exploits during his reign as governor of The Free State of Jones. Great tales of daring and cunning, back when he was leader of the deserter band, back in the days when a man’s life was no more than the life of a dog. Back when bloodhounds trailed the scent of men, and led them into encounters that resulted in terrible and violent death.

These people believed his every word, and many pretended that they, also, were his people, to other negroes, as it was a great privilege to have even known, and associated with so great a man, let alone, be his kinsman! negroes, not related to any Knight ex-slave assumed the name Knight.

Many of these were sired by the mill hands from the Panther Branch mill, and the Price mill, up above the old Sixtown settlement, and there was no accounting for their color.

Whether or not Newt had any intimate relations with Georgianne in his later life is not known, but presumably, he did not, since he never permitted her to live in his house, not even after Serena’s death.

During Serena’s last days with the cancer, it was Newt and Georgianne who brought her back to her old home, where she had reared her children, and nursed her as if she had been a child.

Old Georgianne was sad and repentant and begged Serena’s forgiveness. And before Serena asked to be carried back to Tom’s house to draw her last breath, she had made peace with Georgianne, and the gentle care and kind words of the quadroon soothed and quieted her troubled spirit.

She also forgave Newt, before her death, for all of his wrongs.

It was Tom who buried her, in a churchyard, where she was not excluded by the other white people, for in death, she was Serena, the faithful, the mistreated, and abused mother of a full white gentleman.

Out of respect to Tom, his father’s name was never mentioned. And pleased as he was to avoid talking about the past, he could not muster the courage to speak to him.

In Tom’s heart, there was no love. The memory of that night when he had run away occasionally stabbed him like a poisoned fang, and quickly, he brushed the thought from his mind.

Keeping his promise never to go back, Tom was not in close contact with what went on up there, after his mother’s death, but from reports that occasionally reached him, he knew that his father was reaping a bitter harvest from the seed that he had sown.

The men that once had been his friends were all gone, now, to other states, or dead. Most of them were dead.

The swamps beckoned to him, and the old man entered the dismal fastnesses, to be alone with his thoughts. Over the old beaten paths he trudged, until exhaustion halted him, and he would sit down upon a moss-covered fallen log to rest his creaking old bones.

The gun across his knees kept him steady company and was all the company that he desired, with the exception of a worn and dirty piece of paper.

Often he went into the secluded spot where he kept this piece of paper hidden, in a hollow log, known only to him. This paper bore the names of the men who had served under him, when he had held the upper hand of Jones Countains.

Upon hearing of the death of one of these loyal followers, Newt would arise and take his gun down from the gun rack, working his mouth and casting suspicious glances in all directions, as if to see if there was a possibility of his being followed. Then he would proceed, leisurely, and carelessly, toward the path that led down by the spring, mentioning to whoever happened to be with him at the time of his departure,

“Well, I must go and pay my respects to the dead.”

So, off into the swamp’s concealment he went, and when he reached the log in which he kept the old muster roll, he gently, even with a touch of reverence, withdrew it from its hiding place, and sat himself down on the log, carefully and painstakingly reading over the list of names, until he came to the name of the recently deceased, then he would place a mark beside that name, which signified that homage had been duly paid.

One by one, the marks were placed, and finally, the Captain felt that he was coming to the end of his road.

Although he had money, money that he had gleaned from the carpetbag regime, Newt made a pretense of being a very poor man.

His buggy was shabby, and his striped-legged mule was shaggy and unfit for much except buggying, but he called forth the grandson of Rachel one morning and instructed him to hitch up.

“I’ve got business to ’tend to, Boy, so git me off.”

He had casual acquaintances here and there, and a few folks that he called “friends,” because he had peddled a few fruit trees over the settlements before he came to this station in life, and those he had sold, and those who had taken the time to talk with him, were those he remembered. But to them he could not go, because this was a very personal matter, and he must find someone whom he could trust to carry out his instructions.

It was a bleak cold February day, and the road down into the Cracker’s Neck settlement was slushy. The old mule’s legs were muddy, up to his haunches, where he had sloshed through, bearing his master on this unusual mission.

His destination was the home of a cousin. A man who had long before denied kinship with the man who was banished to the negroes.

But when the creaking old buggy stopped, this Knight walked out and inquired of Newt what he would have on such a day.

Seeing his gaunt old frame, stooped with age, and shivering in the near freezing weather, he invited him to get out and come in to the fire and warm himself.

“I have come to make a request o’ you,” said Newt.

“And what will that be, that you want?” asked the cousin.

“Well, the time is a’ drawin’ near, an’ I’ll be a needin’ ye to see to my burial.”

“Oh, Pshaw! You got to die first, an’ ye’ll be here ’til the jedgement, an’ then ye’ll be to run down wi’ bloodhounds,” answered the cousin, jokingly.

“I am not a jokin’, this time. I want you to list’n keerful, an’ bury me like I say—” he paused, and blew his nose, which was in the very act of dripping—“I have nobody to see to it that I am put away like I want, an’ I knew you’d do it.”

He blew his nose again.

“Now, how is it you want?” asked the cousin. “Of course, that’s the last thing you kin do fer a man, so I’ll do it fer you, Newt.”

“Wal, jest see to it that my coffin lid is not nailed down. Jest lay the lid down, lightly like, an’ leave me be.”

“Now, is there any further instructions as to how ye want to be put?” asked the cousin.

“Yes. You can be lookin’ out good timber to build my box. See that it is plenty long, an’ have the sides twelve inches high.”

“Why, twelve inches won’t be deep enough for the box, Newt, but if it’s twelve inches that you want, that’s how deep it will be,” replied his cousin.

Those instructions completed the business, and Newt got back into his buggy and rode back up the way from which he had come.

With the final arrangements made with a man who had always kept his word, there was nothing more to do, except to return to his people, the only people he had in the world, who cared enough to give him decent burial, and await the time when the markings beside the names on the Knight Company muster roll would be complete, with the exception of one—his own.

“There will be no one,” he mused, “to put the mark beside my name.”

“Come, Chillern, an’ le’s clean off the graveyard. Hits growed up scan’lus, wi’ the late rains a drenchin’ the sage grass and bitter weeds. And out o’ respect to them dead, we orter hoe er off clean.”

The boys and girls of Rachel’s sons immediately pulled the hoes out from under the house at the end of the gallery and set out across the broad level, up towards the burial ground, in obedience to the Captain’s wish.

He arrived shortly behind them, breathing evenly, as he was strong-winded, even up in the last decade preceding the century mark, which he had hoped to attain.

His hair hung now, down to his shoulders, in a snowy mass of white curls, not a black hair was on his head. But even so, he did not look his age. He was slightly stooped, and time and toil had knotted up the big blue veins and the sinews that stood out on the backs of his big hands.

He wore his own natural teeth, and his eyes were without glasses, still sharp and clear, and capable of that strange killer expression, familiarly known back in his more active days.

He walked without benefit of cane, and he liked to “cut the buck” to amuse the young ones. With feigned gaiety, he passed between the two big lightered posts that were the gateway into the plot, which was staved in.

“If I’d a brought along a tool, I’d a worked some too,” he announced.

“You?” queried a young woman.

“Why, shore. I feel up to dancin’ a jig, er takin’ a jug,” he retorted.

He walked up to Rachel’s grave, and leaned there upon a stick that he had picked up, looking thoughtfully down at the mound.

“Old Rachel,” he said, aloud. “Many a time she’s fed me, and many a time my entire Company would a starved, if it hadn’t a’ been fer old faithful Rachel.

“I’d just as soon be laid here, beside her as anywhere.”

He turned, and stepped away from the grave, to a small straight cedar, a few feet away.

“I guess this place, here with this little cedar at the head of my grave would make me a good enough restin’ place,” he said, talking to himself.

The young woman ceased her work, and observed that he was trimming up the little cedar with his knife.

A few days after that, in passing the cemetery, it was noticed that this particular cedar was dying! The negroes thought that such an occurrence bore some significance and were reluctant to pass after that.

It was strange that this man who was not sick should be picking out a place to be buried. Surely he could not be sick, because he never missed a day taking down his old gun and walking into the woods, where he remained later and later in the evenings, even until pitch dark drove him in.

There was a mossy glen, off the beaten path, into which, now, a dim trail was beaten. This trail was made by the feet of the Captain.

Other trees, majestic and beautiful, reared lofty heads toward the sky, but one mightier than all the rest stood alone in the middle of this haven of solitude and peace. A long-strawed yellow pine, straight and towering, as a monarch, above the timber of stunted growth.

The dim trail led directly to this spot, but here it did not stop. Around and around the pine, encircling it, as if the feet of many children had beaten bare the earth, in playing a game. The trail was endless. The scaley bark of the tree was scrubbed slick, as if hogs had scratched and rubbed their lousy backs against the tree.

All this was the sign the Captain had made, in his last days of life. The pine drew him there, like a magnet, and he could not bring himself to leave it. Whatever power that tree held over him, he could not explain, but in his lonely days of ostracism, he found a kind of solace there, in nature’s realm.

He worked his mouth, he fondled his gun, he got up, and he sat down. He got up again, and he walked around the tree, seating himself down, and leaning his back against the trunk.

All day long, in any kind of weather, these movements were repeated, thousands of times, until repetition wore away the vegetation, and there was not a sprig of grass left.

Here, undisturbed, he had time to ponder the past, and the memory of many events crowded upon him.

He wrung his hands and beat upon his breast, but he could not shut out of his mind the horrible picture of that double wedding on a white Christmas, 1884, try as he might.

Remembering that there were many people of mixed-blood in Jones County, people who were not Knights, he felt that his inhuman sacrifice had been in vain.

He was not to know that in future years his purpose was to be accomplished, when the grandson of Molly would stand trial on a charge of miscegenation. He was not to know, that a man, then unborn, named Davis Knight, who was not a Knight by right of birth but was a Knight by right of a slave-name, inherited, would be on trial in the courts of Mississippi, where the Supreme Court would rule in his favor, and declare him a white man! Had he known these things, perhaps he would have been less bitter.

The terror on the faces of men, with ropes knotted about their necks, as they were suspended from limbs, raced through his distorted mind. The cries of starving children, the sound of many horns, echoed through his being—and he walked around the pine, working his mouth, and shaking his long white hair.

Creeks running red with the blood of friends and kinsmen, Jones Countians, as well as that of other Confederates, passed before his eyes. He closed them tightly.

The baying of hounds, the sound of fiddling, the beat of many horses’ hooves, the patter of rain on the roof, aroused him, but it was not rain on the roof, for he was only sheltered by the timber.

“Must be a goin’ crazy,” he said aloud. “Better git to the house, the rain is a mendin’.”

The rain had washed clean the earth, and morning came, sundrenched and fair. The air was crisp and fresh, and exhilarating, but it did not lift the spirits of the old man who sat huddled before the embers of an early fire.

The old rocker, homemade, creaked, as he rocked to and fro, meditating. He lived entirely in the past, as it was in past memories that he drew consolation. Sometimes he could almost feel the touch of his mother’s hand, could almost hear his father’s voice, and then that voice became confused with many voices. The melodious voices of field hands, singing and swaying in rhythm, to ancient tunes, as they bent over baskets of cotton, baskets, handwoven from white-oak splints. The odor of the new wood was still fresh in his nostrils.

Glancing up above the whitewashed fireplace, his eyes fell upon the black horn. The leather string was looped over the peg, and the beauty of its contours stirred in him a pride, as the pride that comes from the possession of a precious jewel, as he gazed upon its pearl like surface, dangling there.

Then he recalled the men, long dead, who had rallied to its clear notes, when he had summoned them from the hills and the hollows.

Pleasant memories were giving way to memories that were haunting him, and he shook himself, and stood up, tottering a little, as he reached for the black horn. He took it down from its peg, fondled it, like a kitten, in his arms, and then replaced it upon its peg.

He walked out into the brilliant sunshine, and from the steps of his porch, he surveyed the lands about him, the great trees that had sheltered his little children from the heat in summer, when they had played beneath the great branches.

“They are all gone now, though, the children, an’ I am here, alone,” he said to himself.

He walked on down the path to Georgianne’s house, where he would find companionship and hospitality. His step was slow, and he poked along, with his hand involuntarily going down to rest on the lower portion of his abdomen, as he often did.

Seeing him coming down the path, Georgianne walked out on her front gallery to greet him.

“Mornin’, Captain. How’re you a feelin’ this mornin’?”

“I never felt better in my life,” he replied. “I feel jest like dancin’ a jig,” and with that he leaned the whittled stick, which he had been using for a cane, up against her door-facing, and went into a dance.

The young women of Georgianne’s household, hearing him, also came out, clapping their hands, as he “picked ’em up, an’ put ’em down.”

Clapping and laughing at the Captain’s antics, they encouraged him on, but suddenly he stopped, and breathed deeply.

Not realizing that anything was wrong, the girls kept up the rhythm, but the grin on the Captain’s face changed to an expressionless mask. The mouth refused to work. The lips were tightly compressed, and the unseeing eyes were motionless, not a quiver of an eyelash. He toppled forward, and was caught in the arms of Georgianne.

The sudden weight against her forced her backward, but the quick-thinking onlookers came to her aid, and the dead body of the Captain was gently laid down on the edge of the gallery.

Georgianne seated herself beside him, flat on the floor, and drew his head upon her lap. Her plump old hands smoothed his brow, while the girls brought wet towels, she leaned over him, listening, trying to hear a last word, from the forever silenced lips, but no word came.

It was February again. The flowering shrubs in the yard were budded out, and the scent of spring was in the air, quite a contrast with the February a year before.

The striped legged mule to the old buggy was soon on the road to Cracker’s Neck. This time, the driver was a negro, going to deliver the message to Clean Neck George Knight, as he was the good man who had promised to carry out the wishes of a man who was to die friendless and alone.

There were so many Knights, bearing old family names, they were distinguished by nick names. There was “Hayseed George” and “Clean Neck George,” and the Jims were likewise nicknamed, “Water Mill Jim” and “Dry Jim,” in order that there would be no confusion.

So it was that Mr. Clean Neck George and a Mr. Edd Williams went up to Newt’s house to attend to his burial. They found him there, surrounded by Mulattoes, and Quadroons, and Octoroons of varying shades, from blond to light chocolate.

They were a people respectful, tiptoeing in and out, offering assistance, and demonstrating a willingness to do everything in their power.

The Captain was “laid out.” Nickles weighted his eyelids, lest those strange eyes remain open, and staring in death. His white hair framed a face, weather-beaten and tanned by exposure. The hands were folded across his breast, stiff and cold beneath the sheet that gently covered him. A new pair of high-top black vici kid shoes were on his feet.

“We been a waitin’ fer Mr. Tom to come claim his body,” said an old darkey. “We ’lowed as how he would be the one to bury him, to suit hissef, him the only son, but it looks lak he’s not a comin’.”

“When did you send the word?” asked Mr. Williams.

“Soon as we knowed he wuz dead,” was the answer.

“Well, then,” said Mr. Knight, “we’ll just start on the coffin, and get it ready, for he might not be a comin’.”

Tom had no intention of claiming his father’s body. When he received the message, he bowed his head, experiencing a strange emotion, which was part relief, and part grief. He was relieved that it was all over. This life of hate, of shame, of persecution, which he had been forced to endure, because he was the unfortunate offspring of the Captain.

“One can bury the dead, and in a sense, bury the past,” thought Tom, “but as long as there is a living reminder, the past cannot be buried. I am glad that he has gone on, but I shall keep my word. I said I would never go back up there among them niggers, and I’ll not break it now.”

Tom thought about all the newspaper articles, and all the magazine clippings that he had collected, where reporters gave elaborate accounts of this unusual man, so he got them all out, and read, and re-read them.

The emphatic denial that his father had ever been a soldier of the Confederacy, and the assertion that he had always been a Union man, fighting for the Union, that many writers chose to portray as a fact, gave Tom food for thought.

He thought that if what his father had told newspaper reporters was true, that then, he could be partially excused for the havoc he had wrought in Jones County.

With these thoughts in mind, he planned to write a story of his father, which would place him in a more favorable light, but he did not know enough about his father, or his father’s people to write an accurate account. So he fell upon the plan of contacting the descendants of the men who had been members of his father’s old Company, and they, quite naturally, wished to cover the black past of their ancestors. That was all the material that poor Tom could gather, and that is the story that has been handed to writers, over and over again.

The old clock on the mantle ticked away the hours. There was not another sound. There was not another white man there except the two, Mr. Clean Neck George and Mr. Williams, on the premises.

The hammers were silenced when the last tack was driven in the coffin. The material of the covering was black sateen, stretched tightly over the box. The store-bought handles were screwed in, and fastened into the wood. The lid was smoothly covered, and the inside of the box was carefully padded, and the body of the Captain had been gently laid.

The toes of the new shoes had stuck up above the rim of the coffin, as the twelve inches were too shallow, but the splicing to give the sides the right height was cleverly hidden.

No Tom.

“Well, we can’t wait much longer,” said the white men.

“Since he has been here all this time with you folks, and his own does not come, then you are the ones to say where to bury him.”

There was a long silence. Then the young woman who had watched the Captain trim the cedar, came timidly forward.

“He picked a place, when we wuz a hoein’ off the graveyard. He wanted, he said, to be laid wi’ that little cedar at the head a’ his grave, but hit’s died since—” she explained.

A small group were dispatched to the old burial site to dig a grave for the Captain, on the spot of the dead cedar, and his body immediately followed.

Behind it were all ages and sizes and colors of people, those who inhabited the highlands of that famous region, where many have sought without success the true story of their origin.

The two white men took charge, and the sateen-covered casket was placed inside a box of heavier timbers. The black smooth lid was laid down carefully, contained within the moulded edge of the coffin’s rim, that was designed to hold the unnailed lid in place. Then the heavy lid of the rough box was placed on, and there was not a nail used!

Mr. Williams was an uneducated country preacher, and a Godly man. He stepped forward, bareheaded, and lifted upward both hands.

“Les’ sing a hymn,” he commanded.

No more beautiful song service was ever rendered, as singing is the greatest natural gift of the negro. Voices were raised, softly and sweetly in reverence, as they sang “Nearer, My God to Thee.”

The tiny ones, not knowing the words, “carried the tune,” and all that time Mr. Williams stood there, hands upraised.

There was silence, as all the heads were bowed, but there were no tears, no flowers, just bare reality. The prayer was said, and the thudding of clay upon the unnailed lid sounded hollow, and eerie there in that remote and forsaken land.

The striped-legged mule fidgeted, and the wheels of the old buggy were moving a little, first backward, and then forward, just over, and outside the fence.

On the buggy seat sat old Georgianne, sad-faced and dry-eyed.

Her hair was as white as new-fallen snow, and her old wrinkled face appeared even whiter, as she sat there, her body swaying with the movements of the buggy.

The late sun’s rays glinted on the golden circlets in her ears, as she sadly shook her head.

The rest were leaving.

“Git up, Critter,” she slapped the lines, and clucked to the old mule, “it’s a gittin’ late.”