VALDOSTA, 1864
NONE OF THEM WOULD EVER FORGET THAT CHRISTMAS, THE LAST ONE of the War. It came at the end of a cold, gray December when the air hung heavy with an icy fog over the red fields, and even the sun seemed to have been captured by the Yankees and carried away. Yet in the midst of the suffering, life went on. Babies were born and christened, sweethearts met and made promises to one another. That was the year when John Henry’s Aunt Margaret McKey was married on Christmas Day when her soldier-beau from Griffin, Billy Wylie, came home from the army on furlough—thirty days for a wedding and a honeymoon, then back again to join his regiment in Virginia.
They were married in the parlor of Henry Holliday’s farmhouse, standing in front of the fireplace and attended by Margaret’s two younger sisters, Ella and Helena, as bridesmaids. Margaret wore the same wedding dress her sister Alice Jane had worn at her own wedding sixteen years before, while Billy Wylie wore his Confederate gray uniform, threadbare but freshly pressed. Henry Holliday gave the bride away, handing her over to Billy while all the ladies cried, then the party moved to the dining room for the finest Christmas dinner that could be had in those hard times: roast turkey and salt ham, sweet potatoes and stewed pears, corn muffins and French honey bread, and a white pepper lemon cake with cane sugar icing on top. After dinner there were toasts to the happy couple, with brandy for the grownups and cider for the children.
Then came the dancing, the parlor furniture pushed out of the way and Alice Jane playing waltzes on the piano. Henry gallantly asked all the ladies to dance, laughing as he turned one sister-in-law after another across the wide plank pine floor, then he bowed to young Mattie and offered her a dance, too, while John Henry sat by his mother’s side at the piano and watched with pride. His father was as handsome as ever in his gold-braided Major’s uniform, his hair thick and shiny with pomade, his face sporting a stylish mustache and goatee. The move to Valdosta had been good for him, helping him recover the strength he had lost during his hard year of service to the Confederacy.
Billy Wylie, dancing with his new bride close in his arms, leaned toward Mattie and smiled. “You’re sure growin’ up, little Miss Mattie. Pretty soon it’ll be your turn for a weddin’!”
Margaret laughed with him, “And who will you pick, Mattie? Who are you fond of?”
“Why, I’m gonna marry little John Henry, of course,” she said with a smile. “We’ve always been sweethearts, haven’t we honey?”
She looked at him with bright eyes, and he flushed with embarrassment.
“I’m not aimin’ to marry just yet!” he answered, too seriously. “I’m just waitin’ ‘til I’m sixteen, so I can join the army and go fight in the War.”
A sudden chill ran through the room, as if the door had been opened a crack to let in the cold world outside, and Margaret gasped.
“Oh no, you mustn’t say such things! Why, the War will be over long before you can go. Won’t it Billy?” she asked, looking up anxiously at her new husband.
“Sure honey, we’ll have those Yanks licked real soon. Why, I hear General Longstreet is givin’ ‘em a good whippin’ right now. I bet we’re done with ‘em by summertime.”
Aunt Mary Anne sat in the warm corner by the fire, listening while she rocked baby Jim Bob. “Rob is serving with General Longstreet,” she said quietly, half to herself and half to the baby, and Henry stopped dancing and looked down at her with concern.
“Now Mary Anne, you mustn’t worry yourself about Rob. Quartermaster’s just about the safest job there is in the army. The officers have to protect the supplies no matter what. And Billy’s right; Longstreet will have the Yankees beaten back in no time.”
Mary Anne smiled at him bravely. “You’re right, of course, Henry.” Then she looked back down at the baby, but as she bent her head John Henry saw a tear fall and drop onto the sleeping baby’s cheek.
The conversation needed to change direction, and Henry gave it a gentle push.
“Well Mattie, you are a mighty fine dancer,” he said, “and much too good for an old man like me. Why don’t you see if my son will dance with you? I expect he’s tall enough to partner you now.”
John Henry started and tried to protest but Mattie was already at his side, maneuvered there by Henry on his way to the punch bowl.
“Well, Cousin,” she said, “it seems I have an empty space on my dance card. Would you care to step in for my last partner?”
She was just teasing him, smiling the way she always had when they’d played together as children, but John Henry wasn’t sure just how this game was played. But she didn’t wait for his answer, taking his hand in hers.
“Aunt Alice Jane,” she called to his mother, “play that waltz again, won’t you? That lovely one by Franz Liszt.”
“Oh do,” Margaret agreed. “That’s one of our favorites, isn’t it Billy? ‘Dream of Love’ I think they call it.”
Alice Jane was too intent on her music to notice that her son was squirming and wishing that she would plead sudden sickness and stop playing altogether. He didn’t know how to dance and didn’t want to learn now, just when everyone was treating him like a grown-up and listening to his talk of joining the army.
Mattie laughed at his furtive look toward the door. “Don’t be shy, honey, it’s only a little waltz. Just hold me like this,” she said, lifting his left arm with her hand as his right arm slid behind her back. “That’s right. It’s easy. Now watch my feet,” and she did a little side step in the square of space between them, her feet moving one-two-three with the music. He didn’t have much choice but to follow along, without making a scene that would appear rude. “That’s it. Just keep movin’ like that. Why, you’re a real natural dancer, John Henry. I think you must have been practicin’ with some other girl behind my back.”
“Why are you talkin’ to me like that, Mattie?” he said, scowling. “You don’t even sound like yourself anymore. They’ve ruined you up at that convent school, with all that lah-de-dah talk.”
“Why, I’m just tryin’ to talk sweet to you, the way a young lady should at a dance.”
“I liked you better the way you used to be. I miss the old Mattie.”
“Silly thing,” she said, looking into his face, “I’m still here.”
And in her round brown eyes he did see the same girl he had always known. One thing about Mattie’s eyes—they could never be dishonest.
“And I wasn’t teasin’ you about the dancin’ either,” Mattie added. “You are good.”
“Did you mean that other thing you said, about us gettin’ married?”
Mattie responded with a laugh. “Of course not, silly! I was just talkin’. Everybody knows I’m gonna marry a Catholic boy. Though I suppose you could convert. My father converted when he married my mother.”
“I couldn’t do that!” John Henry whispered in shock, casting a furtive glance toward Alice Jane. “My Ma would tan my hide if I ever joined that papist religion!” It was just an echo of his mother’s words and he hardly knew what it meant, but Mattie was offended nonetheless.
“Well, that’s just fine, John Henry! I had no idea that you disapproved so of my faith,” and she pulled herself away from him and put her nose up in the air.
“I’m sorry, Mattie. It’s just that,” his voice dropped to a whisper again, “you know how my Ma is about religion. It’s real important to her that I believe what she does.” He glanced back at Alice Jane again, just to make sure she wasn’t listening. “But I think religion’s pretty awful boring, mostly. Maybe it’d be more fun to be Catholic.”
“Religion is not supposed to be fun, John Henry! Besides, nobody’s gettin’ married for a while, anyhow. You’ve still got to go fight for the Cause and all.”
Now they were talking about something interesting again, and his face lit up. “I wish I was sixteen already! I’d be a hell of a fighter, Mattie!”
He felt very grown up, swearing in front of her like that, and she blushed just the way a lady should and said, “Oh, I know you would!”
She sure looked pretty when her cheeks went pink like that and her eyes were dancing, and her words made a wave of boldness sweep over him.
“Would you wait for me, Mattie?” he said, knowing that a soldier should have a special girl waiting for his return. “Would you be my sweetheart while I was gone?”
“Of course I will, honey,” she said, and took his hand in hers, squeezing it gently. “Best sweethearts always, I promise.”
“Always,” he repeated after her, and thought that he would never in all his life see anything lovelier than Mattie’s eyes in the firelight.
Aunt Mary Anne’s family stayed on at the farm through the rest of the winter and on into the spring, waiting for some word from Uncle Rob. They’d had no letter from him since Christmastime when he was sent on detachment to North Carolina with a wagon train of supplies, and the talk was that he’d been taken prisoner by the Yankees. But Aunt Mary Anne refused to believe that awful possibility and spent her days quietly tending to her baby and writing and sending off letters that were never answered.
To Mattie fell the task of watching over her little sisters, and she amused them by taking them on long walks into the countryside, making trails through the tall grass, following the rabbit and deer into the dark woods along the ridge. On Saturdays when his school was out John Henry joined them, hitching two horses to the spring wagon and driving them all down the old Troupville Road to where the Little River and the Withlacoochee River ran together.
There where the two green rivers met the water slowed and wound past sandy shoals, sheltered by overhanging trees that filtered long shadows across the stream—a perfect, natural swimming hole. At the water’s edge, with the air full of the sounds of insects in the trees, John Henry sat on the soft grass and took off his shoes, rolled up the legs of his homespun trousers, and waded out into the water. If the girls hadn’t been along he’d have taken off the rest of his hot, heavy clothing as well and gone skinny dipping, feeling the grass and the fish skimming past his skin. But with the girls there he had to keep his clothes on and act like a gentleman.
Mattie helped the little girls tie up their skirts into their waistbands and left Lucy to watch them play at the river’s edge—the fear of water snakes was enough to keep them from wandering too far into the river. Then Mattie tied up her skirts too, and followed her cousin out into the cool, dark water.
John Henry watched her as she walked toward him in the golden light, the sun glancing off her auburn hair and making her eyes close in a squint against the glare, wrinkling her nose. She laughed as her skirts billowed up above the water and dipped her hand to chase a passing fish. The water on her clothing made it hang tight against her body, and John Henry stared through the shadows at the curve of her waist, the rise of her breast. He was mesmerized by the closeness of her and felt a sudden surge of something he didn’t understand, a need to touch her and feel that curve against his wet skin. Mattie turned to look at him as if hearing his thoughts, and he felt himself flush with embarrassment.
“John Henry, what are you starin’ at? You look like a big catfish, with your mouth hangin’ open like that.”
He choked on her teasing words and turned aside, mortified that she had seen him looking at her that way. Stupid, stupid girl! he thought with anger and embarrassment. And feeling a need to prove something, he dove into the water and swam out toward the deeper, faster flowing stream. He was a good swimmer, but his heavy clothes slowed his movements and the branches of the underwater bushes caught and pulled at him, starting to drag him down.
Mattie saw and screamed at him, “John Henry! Hang on honey, I’m comin’!” and she gathered up her dress and tried to follow him into the deeper water. But the weight of her long skirt held her back and she watched helplessly as he slipped farther and farther away from her.
But the undergrowth that entangled John Henry also kept him from being swept out into the middle of the river, and he hung onto the branches and dragged himself slowly back toward the riverbank. Finally, soaking wet and mad at himself for looking so damned foolish, he stumbled up the bank and threw himself down on the ground. Mattie struggled up through the mud and the sand and fell down on her knees beside him.
“Whatever were you doin’, John Henry? I thought you were gonna drown! Are you all right, honey?”
“I just wanted to go for a swim,” he muttered, not looking at her, watching as a green snake slid down from a tree at the river’s edge and slipped out into the dark water.
“Well, you scared me to death. I was about to go out and save you, for heaven’s sake, and you know I can’t swim!”
He looked up into her serious, solemn face for a moment, then he started to laugh. “Well Mattie, that was mighty brave of you, but who’d have saved you after you’d saved me?”
She stared at him a moment, then started to laugh. “I didn’t think about that! I just knew you needed me, that’s all.” Then she lay back on the grass, her hand over her face to shield her eyes from the sunlight.
John Henry rolled over and looked at her lying there beside him, wet and dirty and laughing in the sun, her hair coming all undone around her face, and the feeling came again—the need to reach out and touch her face, run his fingers through her hair. It was an awkward feeling and he looked for something to say to break the silence.
“What’s the little ring you’re wearin’?” he asked, as the sunlight glinted off her hand.
“It’s a Claddagh ring, from Ireland,” she replied, holding up her hand to admire it. “It was my Grandmother Fitzgerald’s. My mother gave it to me when I went off to the convent school in Savannah. She says it’s an heirloom, and I am to pass it on to my own daughter someday. She says it was owned by an Irish princess, a long ways back. Imagine that.”
John Henry looked closer at the ring, noting the intricate carving of two hands holding a heart with a king’s crown above.
“The two hands are for friendship,” Mattie explained. “The crown is for loyalty. The heart is for love. I think it’s a good luck token and I wear it always.” Then she smiled up at him. “Maybe I should give it to you, so you don’t drown yourself!”
“Maybe you should learn to swim,” he shot back, making them both laugh.
Then she sighed and said softly, “Oh, John Henry, it’s so good to laugh again, like we used to in the old days. Seems like we used to laugh all the time, you and me and the whole rest of the world. Before the War. I miss those days. Seems like the best part of my life is already over.”
“I don’t know where my life is,” he replied. “Seems like every time I get things figured out, somethin’ changes. And then I’m supposed to just take it like a man, that’s what my Pa says.” He looked down at the ground, his fingers pulling at the wet grass, thinking that he might never be man enough for his father.
“He expects a lot from you now, I’m sure,” Mattie said, “with your mother so sick and all . . .”
“She’s dyin’,” he said suddenly, surprised himself to hear the words. He hadn’t planned to tell her. But being with Mattie always made him feel so safe that it just seemed to spill out of him all on its own. “Uncle John said it’s the consumption, but she made him promise not to tell my Pa.”
“What are you talkin’ about?”
“She hasn’t told anyone but me, but you see how she is. She just gets weaker all the time and coughs all night long. And last week, I saw her rinsin’ out her pillowcase early before my Pa got up. There was blood on it, Mattie. She’s coughin’ up blood.”
“Oh, honey . . .”
Then with the rush of words came the tears he’d held back for so long, and Mattie put her arms around him.
“My poor John Henry! How awful for you! But why hasn’t she told your father? Surely he needs to know.”
“My father . . .” he sniffed and wiped his hand at his blue eyes. “My Pa hates sick folks,” he explained, “and my mother doesn’t want to be a burden to him . . .”
The reasons didn’t seem to make any sense, saying them to Mattie. But having her arms around him was comforting, the closest thing to having his mother’s arms around him.
“Then we must tell him ourselves,” Mattie said reasonably, “so he can do what needs to be done for her.”
“No! I can’t! She made me promise not to tell anyone until she gives me leave. I shouldn’t even be tellin’ you. She made me promise, Mattie. I can’t betray her wishes like that.”
“But maybe if I tell my mother and make her promise to keep the secret, too, then we can do more to help. If I tell her it’s our sacred oath, make her swear on the rosary, then she’ll have to keep it secret, at least as long as we’re still here in Valdosta . . .”
And for the first time, John Henry realized that Mattie wasn’t going to stay on the farm forever, and a sudden loneliness ran through him.
“Do you have to go, Mattie? Can’t you stay on here after your family leaves? My mother could use the help, and I . . .”
“You know I can’t. We’ll be leavin’ as soon as my father comes home again. But it’s sweet of you to want me to stay.” She brushed her hand through his damp hair while she spoke, as if calming a small child. “You know we’ll always be together in our hearts, John Henry, no matter where we are. You’ll always be my favorite, dearest cousin.”
“I love you, Mattie.” He said it easily, as he’d said it all his life, like little brother to his doting sister. But now in the golden light at the water’s edge, it suddenly seemed to mean so much more.
“I love you too, John Henry. I always have and I always will.” And for one sweet moment in time, his mother’s illness and the war were both forgotten and the world was perfect again.
In April of 1865, the war finally ended when General Lee signed the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. But beyond that there was nothing dramatic to signal the end of the Cause and the fall of the Southern Confederacy—just the ghostly, desolate landscape of the conquered nation that was its own memorial. Even the assassination of Abraham Lincoln seemed little cause for celebration.
Though south Georgia had been spared any fighting during the war, a month after Appomattox one final fight came near to Valdosta. Jefferson Davis, the hunted, haunted president of the fallen Confederacy, was making a run for freedom from the Federals. His route led south from Richmond through the Carolinas and down into Georgia as he tried to reach the safety of Texas and the western territories. His plan was to cross over the Mississippi and rejoin Confederate sympathizers there where he might be able to start up the secession fight again. But he only got as far as Irwinville, Georgia, halfway between Macon and Valdosta, when the Yankees caught up with him, camped out with his family in a piney wood. The Yanks took him away in chains as a traitor to the United States of America. He said the chains made him feel like a slave.
Slowly the soldiers came home, from disbanded regiments in Virginia and Tennessee, from prison camps in the North, from lonely outposts in the far West. Most of them came on foot, walking hundreds of miles to find their homes in ruins, their families scattered. And one by one, John Henry’s uncles returned from the war: William Harrison McKey, with a battle wound that refused to heal; Dr. James Taylor McKey, who had served as a field surgeon and did his best to tend to his brother’s wound; and the youngest McKey brother, Thomas Sylvester, who had finished the war as a nurse in the Confederate hospital in Macon.
Tom was John Henry’s favorite McKey uncle, only nine years his elder and close enough in age to be almost like a big brother. So when word came that Tom was on his way home from Macon, John Henry saddled up his own horse and tied another of his father’s stock behind, and rode out to meet his uncle. It was a brave thing for a thirteen-year old boy to do, with the roads filled with starving, desperate men who would think nothing of stealing a horse or two and leaving a young rider in a ditch. But John Henry went armed with a shotgun in his saddlebag and his father’s long pistol laid across his lap, and knew that he could outshoot any man he could see. And with the headstrong determination of youth, he found Tom walking along the road from Macon and brought him back home to Valdosta. If his mother had known his plan, she never would have allowed such a thing, but his father seemed to understand his need to try himself on this adventure, and let him go.
It hadn’t been hard to recognize Tom, even amidst the straggling crowds of dirty soldiers who filled the roads. Tom’s red hair shone like something on fire, his usually fair complexion turned to the color of a ripe apple from weeks of walking in the summer sun. He looked more like a mischievous little boy who’d stayed out too long in the sun than a weary soldier coming home from War, but the huge knife at his side proved that Tom was man enough for the fight.
“I call her the Hell-Bitch,” Tom confided as he unsheathed the knife in the barn one afternoon after his return. “She started out as a plowshare back at Indian Creek, but your Grandpa McKey had it forged into a meat cleaver for slaughterin’ the hogs. When the War came, I had her forged again into this . . .”
He held the knife out toward John Henry and his nephew instinctively flinched away from the blade, fifteen inches long from swamp oak handle to point, two inches wide across the blade, and more than a quarter of an inch thick. Both edges of the blade were sharpened to a shine, and either side could have sliced a man clean through as easily as slaughtering a hog.
“Go ahead,” Tom said, “give her a try. She’s a beauty,” and he dropped the Hell-Bitch into John Henry’s hands.
The knife was so heavy that John Henry’s arms fell from the weight of it. But once in hand, he found the knife to be remarkably well-balanced.
“You can feel the meat cleaver in her still,” Tom said, “the way the blade runs up from the hilt. That angle at the point is where the corner of the cleaver-blade used to be. Give her a swing and you’ll see how well she handles.”
But when John Henry raised the Hell-Bitch over his head, Tom laughed. “Who taught you to knife fight, anyhow? You can’t throw a knife that big! You just cut with it.”
Tom took the knife back and slid it into the holster, then swung the rawhide bandoleer over his shoulder, pistol-style. “She’s a cross-draw weapon,” he explained, “like this.” Then in one quick move, he pulled knife from sheath and pointed it at John Henry, upside down in his hand so that the monstrous cutting edge was clean against his nephew’s throat. “That’s how you knife fight with the Hell-Bitch. One fast slice, and your enemy don’t have a jug’lar anymore.”
John Henry swallowed hard, though he knew his uncle would never do him any harm. “Did you ever . . .kill anybody with it?” he asked, half hopefully.
“Never had reason to,” Tom replied. “Once I showed her, the discussion was generally over. Besides, I didn’t get into much fightin’, bein’ in the regimental band and all. Mostly, I just carried her like a saber, for show, though she hides neat when she needs to. But no, she’s got nothin’ but pig blood on her. I’ve seen enough man’s blood to fill me up for life, anyhow.”
“But you said you never killed anybody . . .”
“Didn’t have to,” Tom said, his bright smile fading and his eyes taking on a distant look. “You heard how I finished the war by servin’ in the military hospital up in Macon?”
“I heard.”
Tom shook his head. “You never heard nothin’, boy. Nothin’ about what that hospital was like.”
“Tell me?”
“I’ll tell you, though tellin’ don’t do it justice, and I hope you never have to learn what it’s like for yourself. War’s a terrible thing, John Henry, and the hospital ward’s as bad as the battlefield. Men come in, all shot up, bleedin’ still or so far gone they don’t have nothin’ left to bleed, gangrene in their wounds, smellin’ worse than anything I ever smelled. Plenty of them died before the doctors could do anything to help them. Plenty more died after the doctors worked on them, hackin’ off their arms or legs. Out back of the hospital was a dead house to store the bodies until we had time to bury them. Sometimes that dead house was so full we couldn’t put any more in, and we had to stack up the corpses outside. The stench of it was somethin’ you wouldn’t ever forget. Some of them we never even knew their names, never could write home to their families or sweethearts to say how they died—not that the homefolks would have wanted to hear how it happened. Though knowin’s better than not, I reckon.”
“We haven’t heard anything about my Uncle Rob, not since the war ended,” John Henry said. “He was in a prison camp, last time there was any news.”
“Well, there’s hope in that, anyhow,” Tom said, as he slid the knife back into its sheath and pulled the bandoleer from his shoulder. “And your Aunt Mary Anne’s a pray-er, with that rosary of hers. Prayin’s better than just waitin’.”
“She says he’s comin’ home for sure, but I don’t know how she knows. What do you think, Tom? Do you think Uncle Rob is comin’ back again?”
Tom was quiet a moment before answering. “That’s hard to say, John Henry, that’s hard to say. War’s a funny thing. Some men go off and come home again just fine. But there’s some that come home and never do come back.”
While the family waited and Aunt Mary Anne prayed for Uncle Rob’s safe return, John Henry had to keep going to school—his mother insisted on it. A gentleman’s son still needed an education, even in a world rent apart, and John Henry didn’t mind too much. The seven-mile journey to school and back was a good excuse to take his horse for a fast ride, especially since the Cat Creek Road was pretty much deserted, the only traffic being an occasional gray-coated drifter heading home. And so it was that on one late May afternoon as he was on his way home from school, he nearly ran down one of those drifters.
The man was walking right down the middle of the dusty road, his head bent and his feet dragging, and he hardly moved at all when John Henry hollered at him to get out of the way. If the horse hadn’t been so well trained to John Henry’s hands, wheeling around and rearing its front legs clear off the ground, the man would have been trampled for sure. But even with the whinnying of the startled animal and John Henry’s shouts, the soldier barely moved at all. And the way the man just stood there, staring out of deep-set eyes and skinny as a rail, gave John Henry a spooky feeling, like seeing a skeleton come to life. He was glad to get his horse turned back toward home and take off again in a cloud of dust.
“It was the strangest thing, the way he just stared,” he told Mattie awhile later, as he brushed down the horse. “It was like he was seein’ a ghost, though he looked more like the ghost than me.”
“You should have stopped to ask if he needed help,” she chided as she held out a handful of feed to the horse. “He might have been lost, or hurt. He might have needed a place to stay.”
“He might have been armed and crazy, too, and ready to kill me for all I know. I should think you’d be more concerned for my safety than for the welfare of some stranger. I could have been hurt myself, you know, the way my horse reared up. If I didn’t have such a good seat . . .”
“If you hadn’t been racin’, your horse could have stopped faster. Seems like it’s your own fault she reared on you. You ought to be more careful, John Henry. Next time you will run somebody over.” Mattie had a way of sounding sweet even when she was scolding him, but he still didn’t like the lecture.
“It’s our road!” he retorted. “If folks walk down the middle of it, they’re gonna get run over!”
“John Henry,” she said, shaking her auburn head in that slightly superior way of hers, instructing a wayward child. But the instruction didn’t come, as she looked up from the horse and across the yard, her little mouth slowly dropping open in astonished silence.
John Henry, turning to follow her gaze, saw the same scarecrow-man he’d nearly run down on the road, dragging slowly up to the front gate.
“Aw, hell!” he complained, “that’s him. Now I suppose you’re gonna ask me to apologize to him and fetch him a plate of supper.”
But Mattie had no reply as she dropped the rest of the feed from her hand, picked up her calico skirts, and ran across the yard toward the gate. And to John Henry’s amazement, she threw herself into the drifter’s arms.
“Mattie!” he called. “What do you think you’re doin’? Mattie!”
But she didn’t answer him, as she buried her face in the drifter’s chest and started to cry. Then, for the first time, John Henry really looked at the man, his gaunt face half-covered in an unkempt black beard, his dirty uniform coat still carrying the gold collar badges of a Captain in the Confederate States Army. It was no drifter that he had almost run over, but his own uncle, Captain Robert Kennedy Holliday, Mattie’s beloved father come home at last.
Uncle Rob looked so different from the hale and healthy man who’d left Georgia four years before that John Henry hardly recognized him. But Mattie knew him, even with his haggard appearance. Her heart told her it was him the minute she looked up toward the road.
“You never forget someone you love,” she explained breathlessly, hanging onto her father as though she’d never let him go again and smiling through her tears, “and you never stop believin’! We knew you’d come home again Pa, Mama and I. Even when they said you were in a Yankee prison camp, we knew you were comin’ home!”
“A Yankee prison camp?” he said, as though he’d hardly understood her words, looking dazed and confused at having his daughter back in his arms again. Then he nodded slowly. “That’s right, that’s right. But the damn Yanks couldn’t keep me away from my girls. I’ve walked all the way home. Signed their Oath of Allegiance at Raleigh, and walked all the way home. Where’s your mother, Mattie?”
“In the house, nursin’ the baby. We’ve got a brother now, Pa. Did you get our letters? You never answered.”
“A brother?” he asked, his heavy brows lifting in surprise. “You mean the baby was a boy this time?”
“Yes, Pa. A beautiful little boy. Mama named him James Robert, after you and Grandpa Fitzgerald. But we call him Jim Bob. John Henry here thought of it.”
“John Henry?” Uncle Rob said, turning his dazed eyes toward his sandy-haired nephew. “I thought you looked familiar, back there on the road. But you’ve gotten so tall . . .”
“It’s been four years, Sir. I’m all grown up, now.”
“That’s what he always says. He’s still just thirteen, though. Now come on in the house and see the baby. Oh, Pa! We’ve missed you so much!”
But Uncle Rob hesitated, looking down at his worn and dirty clothes.
“Maybe I should get cleaned up a little first. Where’s the well, John Henry? I should wash some of this road dust off before going in. I know how Alice Jane is about her clean floors.”
“My mother won’t worry about the floor,” John Henry said, shooting Mattie a look that meant she wasn’t to say what she knew about his mother’s condition. “She doesn’t care so much about the house anymore, anyhow. You come on in right now, Uncle Rob. And Sir?”
“Yes, John Henry,” his uncle said, as Mattie pushed open the gate and led him up the walkway.
“I’m sorry about almost runnin’ you down, back there. If I’d known it was you . . .”
“It’s all right, John Henry,” his uncle said somberly. “I’ve had worse things done to me, these past months, than bein’ kicked up by a horse.”
And as Uncle Rob followed Mattie into the house, welcomed by a cry of joy from the ladies inside, John Henry wondered just what the Yankees had done to his uncle in that Northern prison camp. Robert Kennedy Holliday had been a bright and jovial man before the War, always ready with a smile and a taunting joke. Now he didn’t smile at all, not even when he heard that his wife had finally given him his longed-for son.
Damn Yankees, John Henry thought. Damn Yankees.
Uncle Rob had reached the end of his long walk, but his journey wasn’t over. He was restless to get back to his own home in Jonesboro and see what was left of his house and business buildings there. He was near penniless, worn out and disheartened, but he had a large and helpless family to provide for and he needed to get his affairs back in order again. So as soon as he’d had time to rest up a little and arrange for the journey, he took his wife and children back home to Jonesboro and John Henry had to say goodbye to Mattie. She’d been his only friend on the farm for the better part of a year, and having her gone was going to leave him lonely. But though he hoped for a last private moment with her to bid her a proper farewell, she was too busy doting on her father to pay him any attention. And as John Henry watched her ride away in the heavy-loaded wagon, seated between her father and little sisters, he wondered if he would ever see her again.
With Mattie and her family gone, the farm seemed suddenly quiet again, even though his McKey uncles were staying on awhile longer. It was Uncle James McKey, with his surgical training, who finally told Henry Holliday the truth of his wife’s illness. He’d seen enough men die after battle, he said, to know when death was coming on. Since he had last seen her four years before, his sister Alice Jane had become just a shadow of her former self. Her porcelain fair complexion was now utterly transparent, the veins showing blue through the skin; her graceful figure was wasted away to emaciation; her lovely singing voice was hoarse and breathy from ceaseless coughing spells.
“She never would let me send for the doctor,” Henry Holliday said in his own defense.
“You surprise me, Henry,” Uncle James said, as they took their home-rolled cigars outside after supper. John Henry couldn’t help listening, as he was outside, too, the June night so thick and heavy that he couldn’t abide being indoors. While his father and uncle talked, he pretended to be absorbed in the lanky movements of a daddy-long-legs crawling across the porch rail.
“I’ve never known you to bow to a woman before,” Uncle James commented. “You should have sent for medical help long ago, when somethin’ might have been done. Maybe with enough food, proper air and exercise . . .”
“I won’t be chastised by you, James,” Henry said. “If you don’t like the way I run my home, you can leave now. You might find some place to stay over in Valdosta.”
John Henry wasn’t surprised by his father’s stern words to his Uncle James. Henry was often stern these days, more so than usual since the bottom had dropped out of the cotton market and their whole cash crop wouldn’t bring enough to pay for next year’s seed. Henry had been too troubled by the farm and his finances to pay much attention to what was happening at home.
But Uncle James was as hard-headed as his brother-in-law.
“Surely you had to notice how thin she’s gotten, Henry. Unless, of course, your attentions have been turned elsewhere.” Then he said in subdued tones: “I hear your neighbor Mr. Martin has a comely daughter, and available, since her fiancé was killed in the war.”
“How dare you, James McKey! Have you no decency? How dare you make such accusations right here in my own home!”
“Calm down, Henry,” Uncle James said smoothly. “I’m not makin’ accusations. Just take it as a warnin’, for if there is anything untoward going on between you and Martin’s daughter, word will surely get out about it. This is a small community, and talk travels fast. And it won’t be just the community, but our family that you will have to answer to, if you ever do anything to dishonor Alice Jane.”
“I’ll admit that I go over to the Martin place some,” Henry said, “but it’s strictly business when I do. Mr. Martin and I are working on a plan to plant some new trees in that back orchard, as his land adjoins mine there. And God knows I could use a new cash crop just now.”
“Then I wish you success in your business venture, Henry. But you’ve drawn me off the subject. Alice Jane needs medical attention, and soon. I’ll do what I can, but I fear her disease has gone on far too long now to have any hope of remission.” Then he sighed heavily. “Poor, dear sister . . .”
But Henry didn’t answer, and John Henry knew the conversation was over. It would have been better, he thought, if his mother could have told Henry in her own gentle way. Without her tempering influence, his father was a man of hot passions.
He didn’t dare ponder long on the thought that those passions might include the neighbor’s twenty-two year old daughter Rachel, who was indeed comely as his Uncle James had said. John Henry had seen her in the orchard himself on occasion, a plump young woman with a ready smile and a mane of yellow hair. But surely his Uncle James was as wrong in his assumptions as John Henry had been years ago when he’d overheard what he thought was love talk between his mother and his Uncle John Holliday. His father was too honorable a man to do anything so dishonorable as what Uncle James suggested. His father was a hero, after all.
Though the War had ended, the Yankee occupation went on. Georgia had been made a Department of the Military Division of Tennessee, stripped of its status as a sovereign state, and the Federals made regular forays to the farms around Valdosta. They were searching for Confederate contraband, horses mostly, and took every animal with a CS brand, leaving many of the families in the county with no means of transportation—not that there was much of anyplace to go. Most of the stores in town were closed, and even the day school was on permanent summer vacation and wouldn’t reopen again, leaving John Henry with nothing much to do but farm chores and target shooting, and no one to talk to, now that Mattie was gone.
His McKey uncles had moved on too, taking up some land together just over the Georgia-Florida line, a place they called “Banner Plantation.” They had hopes of putting in a cotton crop and making back some money for the family once the market rebounded. But for the present, they were busy clearing land and planting food crops, not cash crops. Their sisters Ella and Helena went to join them, though they came back to Cat Creek to visit with Alice Jane as often as they could.
At his mother’s bidding, Aunt Ella and Aunt Helena took John Henry to Sunday Services at the Methodist church whenever they came to visit, as Alice Jane had become too weak to leave home and take him herself. Though she’d been raised as a Baptist and married as a Presbyterian, Alice Jane had recently taken fellowship with the Methodist-Episcopal sect, and her sisters had joined with her. It didn’t matter to John Henry which service his aunts took him to, as all the churches met in the same building, anyhow, where Union Church was held and the congregations took turns having their own pastors speak. Methodist was first and third Sundays, Baptist was second and fourth. As long as there was covered dish supper after the sermon, John Henry didn’t much care who was doing the preaching.
His mother cared, though. She wanted him to understand the gospel as she believed it, and she even had the Methodist minister, the Reverend Newt Ousley, come out to the house to write her testimony for her so that John Henry would have it to remember her by. Her biggest quarrel with the Presbyterians was over the doctrine of election, as she explained to her son while he sat by her bed for his evening devotional and prayers.
“The Presbyterians believe that some men are chosen, elected to salvation from before the foundation of the world. I think such a doctrine denies the power of our Savior to redeem the wicked from their sins. I believe that as long as a man is willin’ to repent and turn to Jesus, he can always be forgiven and begin again on the saintly road. Do you understand what I’m talkin’ about, John Henry?”
“Yes, Ma, I reckon so.”
“Then you must always remember that Jesus loves you and died for your sins. ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’”
“Isaiah Chapter One, Verse Eighteen,” he said, trained to quote back chapter and verse whenever his mother recited the scriptures, as she believed that Bible study was as important a part of his education as reading and writing and arithmetic. “Ma? Do you reckon that Jesus thinks I’m a sinner?”
He didn’t like to think he was, but he wasn’t always righteous, either. He still liked to play childish pranks, like hiding frogs in the laundry for the housemaid to find, or taking fruit from the neighbors’ trees. And sometimes, when his mother was resting and his father was away, he even stole a sip or two from Henry’s whiskey bottle which was kept hidden away under the sideboard in the dining room. But those were small enough sins, he hoped, to go unnoticed by God’s all-watching eye.
“He thinks you’re a boy, I’m sure,” his mother replied. “And like most boys, you’re still learnin’ how to behave, and sometimes digress from the paths of rectitude. There are some boys, for instance, who would seek out the opportunity to drink liquor, even if they had to steal it from someone else. I would be terribly disappointed, John Henry, if I ever heard that you had done such a thing.”
Though she was gazing placidly at the Holy Bible she held in front of her, her pale face as serene as ever, she had clearly just uncovered his crime and chastised him for it, and John Henry felt like a sinner, indeed. All his father’s rantings couldn’t put the fear of the Lord into him like a few gentle words from his mother.
“I’m sorry, Ma,” he said, his eyes lowered with shame under his sandy lashes. “How did you know?”
“Whiskey has its own aroma, John Henry. A lovin’ mother can smell it on her wayward son. I fear you have too much of your father’s hot Irish blood in you and a tendency to be rebellious at times. Like the wheat and the tares, there is both good and bad in you. But you must crush the tares, lest you be plucked out at the harvest.”
Sometimes the meanings of his mother’s religious symbols eluded him, though he was sure she’d read him something somewhere about wheat and tares. But he was spared having to give the reference, chapter and verse, when his mother closed her eyes and sighed.
“I am very tired, John Henry. Do you mind if we finish our devotional early? You go ahead and kneel by my bed and say your prayers. Then maybe you can go into the parlor and play me somethin’ soothing on the piano while I sleep. You know how Mother loves to hear you play.”
The only school in session that fall was run by an ex-Confederate officer for the boys who had served under him, most of whom had gone to fight for the South before finishing their studies and had returned after the War as unlettered adolescents unfit for anything but fighting. So to help them catch up with their book learning and to keep them out of trouble, their former commander started up a little school on his own farm and taught them everything he could remember from his own school days.
The most popular of those young veterans was a lad named Dick Force, who’d gone off to the War at only fourteen-years-old and come home again at nineteen with a knowledge of the world well beyond his years and an outspoken hatred of the Yanks. The younger boys called him “Captain” even though he had never risen past private, and idolized him because he’d been wounded slightly in the fighting at Gettysburg, though he was well enough recovered to get into fist fights with his friends. John Henry knew him by sight, as the Force family also attended Methodist services at the Union Church, and he thought the Captain seemed like a worthy idol. He was a head taller than the rest of the older boys, broad-shouldered and already wearing a small mustache, and the girls all giggled around him whenever he came through the door.
The only folks who didn’t show Dick Force his accustomed deference were the newly freed slaves, and their bold insolence was more than an irritation to him and his friends. And most irritating of all was the federal Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands—the “Freedmen’s Bureau” that had been created to negotiate labor contracts between the former slaves and their former owners. To the white folks of Valdosta, the Freedmen’s Bureau was just another Yankee effrontery, made all the worse when Washington sent in black soldiers to oversee the operation.
“But a nigra’s still a nigra,” Dick Force proclaimed to his friends, “freed or not. And I ain’t about to bow to a nigra, even if he is dressed up in Yankee blue.”
Dick threw those words around a lot, but when he threw them at a black soldier in front of the Freedmen’s Bureau offices, he ended up in jail. Under martial law, he didn’t even have the right to speak his mind. If it hadn’t been for his friends sawing away the window sash of his cell to help him escape, Dick might have languished in that jail cell forever.
John Henry heard of the escape from his church friends in town, and thought it a wonderful adventure, though the story would have been better if the Captain had done some fine shooting along with his fast run from the authorities. Word went out that Dick had taken his favorite horse and gone west to Texas, though most everyone knew he was really just hiding out in the swampy countryside until things cooled down a bit in Valdosta. To keep him comfortable in his hideaway on the banks of the Withlacoochee River, the town boys formed a sort of underground railroad running him meals and fresh bedding taken from their own homes.
John Henry had little problem adding his own portion to the contraband, as his father was busy all day and his mother was sick in bed. No one paid any attention when he packed meals from the dinner leftovers and stole a little of his father’s whiskey from under the sideboard in the dining room. For Dick’s horse, he brought feed and fresh apples from the orchard his father shared with Mr. Martin. He sometimes saw Martin’s daughter Rachel there picking apples too, and she always smiled and waved at him. She must like apples a whole lot, he thought more than once, to spend so much time in the orchard.
It was on one of those bright fall days, just past noon, as he was getting ready to go pay a visit to the Captain, that all hell broke loose—at least that was the way it looked to John Henry. He’d just saddled his horse and slid his double-barreled shotgun into the saddle scabbard when a strange darkness began to creep over the sky. At first he thought it was some straying raincloud drifting across the sun and dimming the afternoon light, but the sky was cloudless blue as it had been all week. It wasn’t a fog coming in, either. Fogs came in early in the morning or late at night, starting down by the river and rising up over the fields of cotton and corn and sugar cane. This sudden darkness seemed to be coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once. The horse noticed the strangely waning light, too, and started whinnying and shying from his touch. Then the dogs on the porch started howling, and the cows in the pasture started lowing like it was coming on dusk, and from the distance came a moaning sound from the hired negroes in the fields.
“Damn if it isn’t Judgment Day!” he whispered to the horse and himself both. “Do you reckon those darkies know somethin’ we don’t? Sounds like they’re callin’ to the Lord for mercy.” He had a passing thought that he ought to be calling to the Lord for mercy, himself, but he had his hands full with the horse and couldn’t fall to his knees just then. And thinking of praying, he thought of his mother and let the horse go, still saddled and ready for a ride.
“Ma?” he called, as the chill of the gathering darkness seemed to spread right through him. He had the awful feeling that the darkness was the angel of death passing over the farm, and his mother was about to die.
“Ma!” he cried, as he ran across the horse lot and the back yard, bounding up the back steps of the house and bursting into her room. His mother lay still as a corpse, her eyes peacefully closed.
“Oh, Ma!” he whispered, and dropped to his knees beside her bed. “Oh, Ma!” and the words choked out of him as he buried his head in her coverlet. “I love you, Ma! Please come back to me. Please come back . . .”
“I love you, too, son,” Alice Jane said, her sleep disturbed by her son’s pleading. “Come back from where?”
“I thought . . .” he was almost afraid to look up at her for fear that she was a specter already. “I thought you were dead, Ma. I thought the dark was the angel of death.”
“The dark?” she asked, then she smiled weakly and reached out her hand to touch his sandy hair. “Why, that’s just the eclipse comin’ on, John Henry. Didn’t your father tell you?”
“Pa’s gone, out at the orchard or somewhere. I was goin’ out too when the sun started to go away.”
“The sun’s not goin’ away, though it looks like it is. It’s just an eclipse, when the moon passes between the earth and the sun, and blocks the light. It’s a miracle in the sky . . .” She stopped talking a moment, and took a ragged, weary breath. “I saw a miracle myself, once . . .” Her eyes closed again, and for a moment John Henry thought she had gone back to sleep.
“What was that, Ma?” he asked, fearful of her sleep almost as much as he was of her death. One day she might drift off and never come back again.
“They called it the Fallin’ of the Stars,” she said, her eyes still closed. “It happened away back in 1833 when I was just a little girl. My father woke us all with his shoutin’, tellin’ us to come look quick.”
“And what did you see?”
“The stars fallin’ down from the sky. My father called it a star-shower. It looked like the whole sky was comin’ down in a fiery blaze, so bright and hot that I thought the stars would set the ground on fire. But they never really touched the earth. My father said they all burned up before they reached the ground. It was on that night that I first understood the glory of God, when the heavens came right down into our barnyard.” Then she started coughing, so hard that her whole body heaved with the sound of it, and John Henry had to look away. He couldn’t stand to see her sick like this, and couldn’t stand the helpless way he felt in the face of it.
“I’ll go now, Ma,” he said, standing up and taking a step away from her. “You need to rest . . .”
“No!” she said quickly, her eyes wide open again. “I want to tell you somethin’, John Henry. I felt the heavens close to me the night of that star-shower, but I feel them closer now. You know your mother is gonna be passin’ on . . .”
He nodded an answer, his heart too full for words. I know, he thought. I have known too long . . .
“I am not afraid to go, John Henry. The Lord has been good to me, and I expect he’ll be merciful to me when I cross. But I do worry over you, my sweet boy. I do worry about your welfare. You have so much that is good within you, if you will only hold fast to the things I’ve tried to teach you and stay close to the Lord and keep his word . . .”
“I will, Ma! I will be good, I promise!”
“Remember how I loved you, and how God loves you.” Then she added softly: “Your father loves you, too. I know he may not show it very often, but in his heart, he cares for you more than he even knows. Be patient with him, please. As our Lord is patient with us in our weakness, learn to be patient, too.”
He nodded again, trying hard to hold back tears, but his mother closed her eyes again, worn out from the words. “Now go on outside and see the eclipse, John Henry. It won’t last too long. It’s a miracle in the sky, and you may never see another one. Go see it for me, too, all right?”
“All right, Ma,” he said, leaning down to give her a kiss before he left, thankful beyond words that she was still alive. “I love you, Ma,” he said again, knowing he could never say it enough.
Outside, the sun had all but disappeared, only a circle of light hiding behind the darkness of the moon. But at least it wasn’t Judgment Day yet, he thought with relief, or the Angel of Death passing over either—not yet.
But the Angel of Death was hovering nearby and it came on dark wings at Christmastime and wearing Yankee blue. For the Yankees had not forgotten the embarrassment of young Dick Force’s escape from his military jail cell, any more than they had forgotten that the Southerners had been their sworn enemy, and they were only waiting until the Captain came out of hiding to make him an example to the people of Lowndes County. And unwittingly, Dick Force obliged them by answering an invitation from his sister to leave his river hideaway and come join the family for Christmas Dinner. If his sister hadn’t invited the whole church congregation to come along too, he might have had a peaceful meal.
John Henry was part of the crowd of well-wishers standing in the Force’s front yard on the cold December afternoon when Dick rode up the long dirt drive to his home. His sister was waiting for him on the porch, laughing about the surprise he would have when he saw the whole Methodist congregation there to welcome him home. But just as the Captain turned his horse into the yard and raised a hand to wave at his sister, shots rang out from the trees along the drive. The Captain cried out and slumped forward over his horse as his sister screamed, but no one dared run to his aid as the Yankee Lieutenant rode out from a hiding place in the trees. It seemed that word of Dick Force’s visit home had reached the garrison, as unguarded words always reach someone’s waiting ears.
“You Rebs can run all day if you want,” the arrogant Yank said as he rode onto the drive, his revolver still smoking in his hand, “but this is our country now, and we’ll find you eventually. Let young Force here tell you how much good your swaggering and swearing will do. You’re beat, Rebs!” Then he wheeled his horse and rode right down the driveway, safe from retribution in that goodly group of church members, while Dick Force lay panting for breath and bleeding on his saddle. To John Henry, still angry over what the Yanks had done to Mattie’s father, it was too much to be borne. He was about to run for his own horse, where he kept his shotgun hanging from his saddle scabbard, when one of the church founders stepped out onto the porch.
“Leave him be,” Major William Bessant said, raising his hands as though preaching a sermon, though his real career was the law. Bessant was the leading attorney in Valdosta, and folks listened when he spoke. “Boys, pull the door off that outhouse and carry Dick inside on it. And the rest of y’all listen to me. Evil work was done here today, we all know that. Dick’s crime didn’t deserve jailin’, let alone shootin’. He’s just a hot-headed boy, still angry over the War and the way the darkies are turnin’ against us, sidin’ with the Yanks. It’s an insult to all of us that Washington sent colored troops here to keep their peace, and no wonder Dick felt like insultin’ one of them. I feel like throwin’ some insults their way, myself. But my friends, look where Dick’s insults have led. He’s shot down right in his own yard, and we have no authority to do anything about it. As long as that Federal garrison is camped out in our streets, they are the law. But there is a higher authority than the United States government. The wicked may be in power, but God is in his heaven.” Then his voice rose, and he stood, white-haired and glorious as an Old Testament prophet full of righteous indignation. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay!”
Major Bessant’s words were meant to calm the angry crowd, but they only made John Henry’s blood boil all the hotter. Vengeance might indeed be the Lord’s, but sometimes the Lord’s work needed human hands.