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 her 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 menfolk 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.