Chapter Nine

MARCH 1944

A week had passed since the storm. It was late Friday night when Chester finally went to bed and Celia snuggled beneath her quilt with a flashlight, the portfolio of documents, and Minnie’s diary. Opening the book, Celia stepped again into Minnie’s world.

January 1863

This morning I met Tom’s mother on the road to church. She clasped my hands in greeting, slipping me a letter, dirt-smeared and, if I am not mistaken, bloodstained. I hid it in my pocket, beneath my cloak, though I fear Grayson may have seen the exchange.

Despite our town’s and my family’s many differences, we still worship together on Sundays. Reverend Snow does his best to keep war outside our church’s doors and preach compassion for all those who suffer. How he’s done this going on these two years when anger runs white hot and the blood of too many of our young men has run red is something I’ve marveled over and greatly admire. I pray God will bless him for this.

The new year began in such high hopes among our slaves. President Lincoln issued an emancipation proclamation for all enslaved in states of rebellion. The joyous weeping within our walls and outbursts of thankful praise liked to break my heart.

Obadiah and Martha and all our slaves gathered with Father, Elliott, Emma, and me in our parlor for watch night and to pray in the new year. Only Grayson was absent —the first watch night we did not meet as a family entire.

We beseeched God for Union victory that will bring emancipation truly throughout the South. Spirituals sprang from every throat, black and brown and white. In those voices there was among us joyful harmony, a common and precious life cause. Surely the Lord received this as an offering of praise.

Why Father does not himself give papers to our slaves now of all times I cannot understand. The government —the government he is loyal to —is willing. Why is he not? Despite President Lincoln’s proclamation, Father still insists it is best and safest for our slaves this way, while the war lasts.

But what if the Union should fail? General Lee’s recent victory in Fredericksburg marked a turning point Father and Elliott cannot ignore. If the Confederacy prevails, President Lincoln’s proclamation will carry no weight here, and how do we know new laws won’t prohibit freedom papers? This concern agitates me more each day, and yet I continue to pray for Tom and his safety. So many concerns. I cannot discern the way of the Lord in this.

Celia closed the diary. So many voices, so many views. Tom. She’d seen that name somewhere else. Where? Tom —she remembered now —was the name, part of the inscription, in one of the books Celia had found in the attic trunk. Why did Minnie save two copies of the same book, hidden away? Celia hoped Minnie’s diary would say.

Of more immediate concern were the documents in the black leather portfolio. Celia had puzzled over them, and if she understood what she was reading, then bringing them to light was like to set No Creek on fire . . . or lead to a string of lynchings. The family at Garden’s Gate had fought the Klan once and survived. Even Miz Hyacinth, God rest her soul, had fought that battle against her own daddy in his day. But this . . . this would rip wide open a wound that had festered since slavery days.

There was too much at stake to go to Olney Tate yet, even though he and his family would want to know what she’d found, had every right to know. Celia couldn’t go to the Maes for help. They were good people as far as No Creek went, but blind members of the Klan, Celia’d bet her eyeteeth. Reverend Willard or Miss Lill would be ideal, but he lay in a hospital bed across the world in England and she wasn’t about to leave him.

That left old Doc Vishy —Dr. Vishnevsky, who was Jewish and from New York City, and years before that from war-torn Europe. Nobody in No Creek would expect him to know or pay heed to anything about slavery or land rights or papers from before an eighty-year-old American war. They hardly listened to him about doctoring unless they were desperate for a cure beyond their kitchen and herb gardens. Still, he was the wisest man Celia knew, and he’d certainly experienced injustice and suffering. He’d give her sound advice.

The next morning, she waited until Chester had gone off to Red Tuttle’s house to play stickball, then packed up the black leather portfolio, hiding it beneath her jacket, and made her way through the woods to the doc’s cabin.

Doc Vishy’s door swung open before Celia could raise her hand to knock. Little Cecilly McHone, not much past toddle days, grinned from ear to ear and threw herself, bouncing yellow curls and all, into Celia’s arms. “Celia! Celia!”

“Hey, Cecilly!” Celia swung the little girl, her namesake, into her arms and up toward the ceiling while she squealed.

“Cecilly McHone, you’re gonna break Celia’s eardrums!” Charlene McHone, the little girl’s mother, laughed. “Celia, it’s good to see you. Come on in.”

Celia stepped in gladly, drawn by the smell of fresh bread or something just as delectable baking in the doc’s cast-iron oven.

“I’m just about to take up apple dumplings —molasses, sorry to say, not sugar. Stop and have one with a cup of tea?”

“Nothing I’d like better!” Celia meant it, though she knew it was a squander of the McHones’ resources. She missed her mama’s cooking with a vengeance and had surely dropped three pounds since she’d been gone.

“Then set yourself down in my kitchen while I pull them from the oven and add a little cream.”

It really had become Charlene’s kitchen —a far cry from the spare kitchen Doc Vishy’d kept before the homeless McHones had moved in with him over two years before on Christmas Eve, the very night baby Cecilly was born in a shed behind Shady Grove church.

Celia had been supplying the couple with food and blankets, but it was Doc Vishy who’d delivered the baby by lantern light during the unusual church Christmas play Celia had directed in Ida Mae’s absence, and who’d taken the threesome into his home and heart.

Clay, Charlene’s husband, worked anywhere and everywhere he could, helping farmers with crops or repairing machinery or construction —he’d done most of the rebuilding of the barn at Garden’s Gate after the Klan had burned it down. Charlene cooked and kept house for them all, and little Cecilly made everyone’s life bright —especially Doc Vishy’s.

Charlene swiped a flour mark from her forehead, leaving another in her honey-blonde hair. “What brings you by? Lookin’ for the doc?” She poured a steaming cup of tea and ladled an apple dumpling into a bowl set before Celia.

“Whoa, Charlene —heaven!”

Charlene grinned, pulling Cecilly into her lap just as the little girl reached for Celia’s spoon. “Uh-uh —that’s Miss Celia’s. Share Mama’s, darlin’.”

Cecilly did.

“I am lookin’ for the doc.” Celia pulled the black portfolio from inside her jacket and set it on the table.

“Mmm. Looks official.” Charlene raised her eyebrows. “What you got there?”

“Not exactly sure. That’s why I need to talk to him.”

“Joe Earl, drunk as a skunk, went and pulled the tail on Hector Baldwin’s mule. Gave him a kick in the thigh Joe won’t soon forget.”

“That’s gotta hurt.”

“I reckon. Doc went over to set his leg early this morning but should have been back before now.” Charlene looked at the kitchen wall clock and straightened her mouth.

“What?”

Charlene shook her head, hugged Cecilly, and stood up to pound the yeast dough she’d been kneading. “I’ll bet anything he’s gone over to the post office. He does that every day now and if the mail’s not in, he sits and waits for it.”

“Looking for a letter from Marshall?” Celia knew two things worried the doc no end —his longtime friends in Europe suffering under Nazi persecution, and Marshall, who he’d taken in after the Klan had beaten and nearly hanged him.

It was only now, as Celia had grown older and understood more of what Hitler was doing to the Jewish people of Europe, that she realized the risk the doc, Jewish himself, had taken in marching into those woods to save Marshall. If it hadn’t been for Reverend Willard coming too, Celia sometimes wondered if the Klan would have hanged them both. She shuddered at the thought.

“Or from Europe. I’m not sure if he’s more feared of what he’ll hear or what he won’t. Marshall used to write every week, sure as the calendar turns. He hasn’t heard from him in weeks, not since the doc wrote him of his ma’s passing.”

Celia sighed. She couldn’t imagine what it would mean to lose her mother, let alone what it would mean if she was stuck in some faraway country on the other side of the world. Giuseppe had understood that.

“I don’t know why he enlisted. Schooling and doctoring was all he ever wanted, according to Doc, and he was doing so well in that Pennsylvania college.”

“He’d’ve probably been drafted if he hadn’t.”

“Maybe. But the doc’s been nearly beside himself for three weeks, not hearing anything from Marshall, frettin’ that he should never have told him about his ma dying. I worry for him, Celia. He’s aged like I never saw before. He needs to slow down. The doc’s too old to be traipsin’ over the countryside all hours. He needs help.”

“Doc’s claimed Marshall as family, same as you and Cecilly and Clay.” Celia knew, because Doc Vishy had claimed Chester and her as family, too. “He’s scared he’ll lose him in this god-awful war, just like he lost his own family during the Great War.” It was the first real thing Celia had learned about Doc Vishy when he’d moved to No Creek, how he’d watched his family die before his very eyes and not been able to stop the carnage. Celia shuddered to remember. “Reckon I’ll go along and see if I can’t meet up with him.”

Charlene gently pushed Cecilly from her lap. “Wrap up warm.” She wrapped another dumpling in wax paper. “For Chester. Mind you don’t eat it.”

Celia grinned. Charlene knew her too well.

Celia called twice before Doc Vishy saw her trudging toward him, preoccupied as he was.

“Celia!” He spoke as if surprised to find her on the road. “Have you heard from your beau?”

She felt her face warm. “Giuseppe —Joe, he generally goes by Joe now —is just a friend, Doc, but I did get a letter from him just the other day. He’s still in England, near as I can tell, though he’s not allowed to say much.”

“And Marshall?”

Celia shook her head. “Nothing. Sorry.” She felt she needed to apologize for Marshall and Giuseppe both, but she had to keep faith with Giuseppe’s request for secrecy. “I’m sure he would have said something if Marshall’d been sick or —or anything.”

Doc Vishy’s eyes bore into Celia’s, taking her measure, surely wondering if she believed that to be true or if she was trying to comfort him. At last, he nodded. “Yes, he is Marshall’s good friend. I just don’t understand why —”

“Maybe he’s just busy —training and stuff.” Celia knew that was lame. Marshall was never too busy to write Doc Vishy, the man who had sponsored him through school and into college —the man who’d connected him with doctors and professors of medicine to help him find placement in a college that accepted Negroes. Doc Vishy was as much family to Marshall as blood.

Doc Vishy shook his head again. “I should never have written him about his mother’s death. It was not my place.”

“Olney asked you to do it. You had to, and Marshall had a right to know. A letter was the only way.”

“Knowing —and deciding what to do with such awful knowledge —are different things.” He looked so stooped and gray in ways Celia had never noticed. She wondered just how old the doc was. He’d seemed ageless to her, at least before this year.

Charlene was right. The doc needed help for his rounds. He needed Marshall and a place they could both practice medicine, a place where people would mostly come to them instead of the doc running all over this end of the county to folks’ homes.

“Marshall said his battalion’s treated better in England than here. At least you know he’s okay.” All Celia’s sentences swung up at the end in hope.

“Yes, he wrote that —treated better by the British civilians —but not treated better by the American Army,” Doc Vishy nearly spat.

Celia had no answer for that. It boiled her blood that men like Marshall were prepared to fight and die to keep Germans from killing Jewish people and political prisoners and Poles and whoever Hitler didn’t cotton to, but the US Army treated its own colored troops like bugs squashed down in the dirt. It wasn’t just Marshall, who’d written Celia stories of rotten things that had happened since he’d enlisted. She’d heard the same from Giuseppe. It was hard for him, too, being from an Italian family, but not so bad as it was for Marshall.

“Go home, Celia. It’s cold out.” Doc Vishy pulled his coat collar up around his neck and walked on.

“Doc Vishy, wait! I came round to see you. Can I talk with you?”

“You are ill? Or Chester?”

“We’re fine, but I found something —something I need to know what to do with, and I don’t know who else to ask. Please. I’m near desperate to talk.” She waited but could see that Doc Vishy was trying to muster strength. “It might even have something to do with Marshall —something really good could come of this for him.”

Doc Vishy’s eyes lit.

“But I’m not sure.” Celia squirmed. She shouldn’t mislead him or take advantage of his worry, but it really could, in a roundabout way, connect to Marshall. His mother had been a Tate —Olney’s older sister. “Can you come to Garden’s Gate? Now? I don’t think I should let anybody else know about this until I know what it is, what to do.”

“Celia Percy, you intrigue me.”

“That’s not a bad thing, is it?”

He chuckled, at last. “No, Celia, not a bad thing at all. Lead on.”

On the way to Garden’s Gate, Celia filled the doc in on the tree from the storm and the secret room they’d discovered. Each revelation fired Doc Vishy’s curiosity, lightened and quickened his steps. Especially when she told him of Minnie’s diary written during the Civil War and the documents she’d found.

Chester was still out when the doc and Celia reached Garden’s Gate. She let them in through the back kitchen door, flicked the electric light, and spread the contents of the leather portfolio across the table. The doc sat down and polished his glasses.

“I’ll make us some tea.” Celia lit the fire under the kettle, but the doc didn’t take notice.

“Mmm” was the only sound she heard. And then, “Hmm,” and then “Hmm,” again.

Pins and needles crept up Celia’s spine as she waited, patiently as she could. The kettle boiled. She spooned tea leaves into the pot and poured hot water over them, stirring the loose tea, then wrapped the pot with a clean dishtowel while it brewed.

Still he studied the documents, one by one, turning over the fragile sheets of paper, squinting at their faded ink.

Celia cut a slice of bread —she was pretty good at baking bread —and buttered it, spreading it thick with her mama’s raspberry jam. She cut it into little triangles to make it look fancy and set it before the doc. She poured the tea, set the cup and saucer near his hand and the bowl of rationed sugar beside. Still, he took no notice. The clock in the front parlor bonged the late-afternoon hour.

At last, he sighed and pushed back from the table. His tea had surely chilled, but he sipped it anyway.

Celia couldn’t wait any longer. “What do you think?”

He looked at her, as if across a century. She understood that. “You’ve not shown this to anyone else?”

“Not a living soul.”

He sipped the tea again, staring into space, and set his cup in the saucer. “Do you know much about the days of slavery in this country, Celia?”

“A little. Miz Hyacinth said it was a shameful time and good riddance to the past.”

Doc Vishy nodded. “Sit down.”

Celia did, hadn’t even realized she’d been standing over him all that time.

“I am not an expert on American history, but my understanding is this. Before the War between the States, the Union and Confederacy, slavery was legal in this country, at least in the Southern states. Men, women, even children were bought and sold. They had no rights, not even to live together as husband and wife, not even to keep their own children.”

Celia had heard this, read some of it, but even in the Garden’s Gate library, extensive as it was, there wasn’t much to explain slavery beyond Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a book Miss Lill had insisted on adding a few years before. That was horror enough.

“In order to become free of such bondage, a person had to receive manumission papers from his or her owner.” Doc set his glasses on the table and rubbed his eyes. “If I understand all that I’ve read, these are the original manumission papers for a man named Obadiah Tate, his wife, Martha, and someone named Alma, apparently the sister to Martha.”

“Alma was Granny Chree’s name. Could that be her? And Tate? Olney’s family?”

“I believe so. They are dated before the war ended, signed and stamped with a family seal by the owner. My understanding from Olney is that his enslaved family wasn’t freed until after the Confederacy lost the war, forcing Southern owners to free their slaves. If that is so, then the Tates were held in captivity long after they were actually freed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nor do I. Did you read the signatures on the document?”

“I tried, but it was such curlicue handwriting.”

“There are two signatures. Horace and Elliott Belvidere.”

“Belvidere —that’s Miz Hyacinth’s family!”

“Olney Tate told me once that his grandparents were owned by the Belvideres.”

“I heard Miz Hyacinth say that Granny Chree was her nanny when she was young. If Martha and Obadiah married, that meant they were Olney Tate’s grandparents, and Marshall’s great-grandparents. And if that was so, it means that Alma —Granny Chree, Martha’s sister, was blood relation to Olney —a great-aunt or something.” No wonder Granny Chree gave Marshall her life’s savings when she died. Figuring that out made Celia’s head hurt. But she couldn’t be sure of the relationships until she read more of Minnie’s diary. She hoped it would make it all plain.

“There is more.”

“Worse than that?” Celia held her breath.

“Or better. There is a deed, signed and sealed by the same men, for land awarded to Obadiah Tate. If I understand correctly, it is acreage that adjoins land the Willards hold and the plot of prime land Miss Hyacinth willed to the Tates, but this larger tract of land is not owned by either of them. It is owned, I believe, by —”

The front door burst open then, jingling the bell over the library entrance. Chester and Red thundered through the hallway. Celia knew they were on their way into the kitchen.

Before she could speak, Doc Vishy swept the papers into the black portfolio and beneath his cup and saucer.

The boys burst into the kitchen. “Hi, Doc Vishy! What brings you here? What’s for supper, Celia? Can Red stay?”

Supper? The litany of questions confused Celia. She hadn’t thought of anything beyond Doc Vishy and the documents.

Doc Vishy stood, tucking the portfolio beneath his arm. “Good to see you, Chester, Red. I need to be going, Celia. Let me know if you hear from our friends.”

“Sure, sure I will.” But she wanted to stop him, to ask him more questions.

Chester and Red raided the cookie jar, which contained precious little, as Doc Vishy walked out the door with the portfolio. She hadn’t expected any of that, and the portfolio, walking out into the March dusk and wind, felt like a sudden loss.