VALDOSTA, 1868
THE HOLLIDAY HOUSE ON SAVANNAH AVENUE WAS TYPICAL OF ITS time and place: a single-storied wooden structure, clapboard-sided and shuttered at long windows, with two bedrooms, a parlor, and a dining room that doubled as a winter kitchen. The floors throughout were wide-planked Georgia heart pine, the plaster walls white-washed, the mantels and moldings Tung-oiled until they shined. The front door, with its sixpaned glass transom and double panels, opened onto a wide front porch that looked over the fenced-yard toward the railroad tracks and the town beyond. Flowers bloomed along the dirt walk that led from the house to the road, and the well in the front yard was shaded by a neatly painted well-house. Altogether it was a pleasant home, as pretty as its mistress, and a place that John Henry stayed away from as much as possible.
Not that anyone noticed his absence. It seemed that nobody noticed John Henry Holliday these days, or cared that he started staying out later than he should, coming home with a trace of whiskey on his breath. His mother would have noticed and scolded him into repentance, warning him against friends who drank liquor and bet money on cards and made trouble for the town, even if they were all sons of fine Confederate families. But John Henry found them to be good company, still loyal to the Cause, still spoiling for a chance to beat the Billy Yanks who were running their town.
The Federals were back in force after Georgia had refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment aimed at granting the former slaves full rights as citizens of the United States. Coloreds were, after all, naturally inferior to Whites, and lacking the mental and spiritual judgment that citizenship required. So although the Fourteenth Amendment had already been passed by a majority vote in the North, the Southern Democrats were morally opposed to it.
With the renewed flood of Federal soldiers came a greedy band of northern politicians, ready to reap a profit off the Yankee occupation. They offered to pay forty acres and a mule to any black man who voted Republican—the forty acres stolen, of course, from the broken-up plantations of the former slave owners. “Carpetbaggers,” folks called those thieving Yankee politicians, saying it like a cussword, and considered them to be only slightly above the turncoat Southern scum called “Scalawags” who sold out their own people to curry the favor of the Yanks. In those turbulent times the Ku Klux Klan arose to protect the rights of white southerners, and Negro Loyal Leagues were formed to defend the newly given rights of former slaves. On both sides of that Fourteenth Amendment battlefield tempers were running so hot it seemed the War might just catch fire all over again.
Some of those fiery tempers belonged to the hot-headed young men who called themselves “Vigilantes,” sworn to uphold the honor of the South. Though their actions put them somewhere outside the law, their names ran like a roster of some of the finest families in Valdosta: Jack Calhoun, Alex Darnell, Ben Smith, J.J. Rambo—good boys all of them, as long as they weren’t pushed too far and they weren’t drinking too much. But the Yankees were pushing hard, and there was always plenty of whiskey flowing when the Vigilantes got together amid the shipping crates and flour barrels in the back room of Griffin’s general store. Mr. Griffin himself was too busy to pay much attention to what went on back there, as long as the place was left clean and no dry goods disappeared. Only his seventeen-year-old son Sam, who fancied himself a Vigilante too, knew what plans those boys were making. Only Sam, and his pal John Henry Holliday, who spent every afternoon playing cards with the Vigilantes and besting them over and over again at Spanish Monte.
“Damn you, Holliday!” Alex Darnell cursed, “I’d shoot you for a card cheat if I could figure out how you’re cheatin’!”
“He ain’t cheatin’!” Sam Griffin said, springing to his friend’s defense. “He’s just better than you, that’s all. Learned it from his Pa’s Mexican servant-boy before the War, ain’t that right, John Henry?”
“Francisco taught me some things,” John Henry agreed. “But even if I was cheatin’, Alex would never know it. He’s too busy swiggin’ that bottle to pay attention to the hands like he ought.”
“You talk mighty bold for a youngster,” Alex said darkly, though he was only a few years past being a youngster himself. “You might just stay a youngster forever, if I get anymore sick of listenin’ to your chatter.”
“Cool down, Alex,” Jack Calhoun cautioned. “You get to fightin’ here, and Mr. Griffin will ask us to find somewhere else to do our drinkin’, and I for one would miss this fine view.”
The fine view to which Jack referred was a clear sight through the open freight doors of the storeroom and into the alleyway behind. For though the alley was just a muddy track overgrown with weeds and over-hung with shaggy pines, it offered privacy from prying Yankee eyes—and privacy was what plans like theirs demanded.
“Now y’all listen up,” Jack Calhoun went on, “the time’s comin’, soon enough, and we’ve got to be prepared. There’s a big political rally comin’ at the Courthouse for a carpetbagger runnin’ for United States Congress. Seems to me like we ought to give him a warm welcome, show him what we think of his tellin’ Yankee lies around Valdosta.”
“Welcome him?” Alex Darnell asked. “Seems more like we ought to chase him out of town.”
Jack Calhoun shook his head, a weary young War veteran burdened with leading a pack of ignorant, hotheaded boys. But those boys were old enough to load a gun and fire it, and plenty willing to fight with him against the Yankees who had beaten him and murdered his best friend, Dick Force.
“Chasin’s too good for Mr. J. W. Clift,” Jack replied, “stirrin’ up these nigras to vote for him, tellin’ ‘em how the Yankees saved ‘em, how they owe their salvation to the Republican government. Forty acres and a mule! Might as well promise ‘em the moon!”
“So what are we gonna do?” Ben Smith asked, “if chasin’ him out of town’s too good?”
Jack Calhoun took a slow look around the storeroom, his eyes resting for a moment on each of his listeners, before going on in hushed, unhurried tones.
“I’ve been thinkin’,” he said, “‘bout how easy it would be to set a charge of gunpowder under those Courthouse steps, light it up just when Mr. Carpetbagger Clift starts makin’ his speech. There’s enough space under the steps to set a keg, I reckon.”
“A keg!” Sam Griffin gasped. “But that much powder could kill somebody! We don’t want to make a murder, do we?”
“We may have to make a murder,” Jack answered, “to make the point. They won’t be sendin’ no more Yanks to Valdosta after we send this one home in bits and pieces. ‘Course, the Courthouse will take it pretty hard in the blast. But hell, what’s one building compared to what the Yanks have done to us?”
They all knew full well that sending one Yankee home all rearranged would only bring more fighting to their town—but fighting was what they wanted.
“So who’s in?” Jack asked. “I want to know right now. Anybody who’s out, get out now before I say anymore.”
Alex Darnell was the first to break the answering silence. “My father’s got a fresh stock of horses, if murder’s what it comes to. We can all ride out of town as soon as the place goes up. With the commotion it’ll be awhile before anyone comes lookin’ for us.”
“And where’ll we go, if we do have to run?” J.J. Rambo asked. “They’d look down by the river, where Dick hid out. I don’t mind killin’ a few Yanks, but I don’t relish gettin’ killed myself.”
“We could go to Texas,” John Henry suggested, as he sat on a crate of dry goods and counted up his penny-ante Monte winnings. “My father was there in the Mexican War. He’s told me about it a hundred times at least. I could get us there without any trouble at all.” At sixteen-years-old he was the youngest of the Vigilantes, but he reckoned that he ought to be able to add his say.
“The hell you could!” Alex Darnell said. “I wouldn’t follow a youngster like you to Sunday School, let alone all the way to Texas!”
“Why don’t we just shoot Mr. Congressman when he gets off the train?” Ben Smith asked, raising an imaginary pistol. “I could hide out in the trees on the other side of Ashley Street just like a sharpshooter.”
“And get yourself caught before he’d even hit the ground,” Jack Calhoun pointed out. “No, it’s got to be the explosion that does it. That way we’ve got the smoke and noise to cover our work. Besides, blowin’ up the Courthouse makes a statement to the Yanks, like I said.”
“We still haven’t settled on where we’ll ride off to,” said Sam Griffin. “Alex’s horses won’t do us much good if we ain’t got no place to go.”
“How about my father’s farm?” John Henry said. Though he was disappointed that the boys hadn’t gone for the idea of Texas, a romantic and adventurous destination, the remaining portion of his father’s plantation property was far enough out to make a good stopping place. “It’s past Cat Creek. There’s nothin’ around for miles, and I know all the trails through the woods.”
“Sounds good,” Jack Calhoun said with a nod. “If it comes to runnin’, we’ll take Alex’s horses and make a run for Major Holliday’s farm. You sure your father won’t mind us using his place for a hide out?”
“My father doesn’t give a damn what I do,” John Henry said sullenly. “Does anybody have any more whiskey? I need another lick.”
“You better stop that drinkin’ for a while,” Jack advised. “You’ll need your wits about you, if you’re playin’ mole.”
“Playin’ what?” he asked, bewildered.
“Mole,” Alex Darnell said under his breath, “underground varmint. Just a low-down card cheat . . .”
“I said that’s enough, Alex,” Jack Calhoun warned again. “Mole’s the one who goes underground, finding out what we’re not supposed to know. I figure your bein’ Major Holliday’s son, you know your away around that Courthouse. Be easy enough for you to wander around without gettin’ noticed.”
“Not as easy as it used to be,” John Henry said, “since my father’s not Agent for the Freedmen’s Bureau any more. You know they let all the local men go, once Martial Law come back around.”
“Even so, folks are used to seein’ your face around there. Won’t seem too strange to have you back around again, snoopin’ a little.”
“All right,” John Henry nodded. “So what do you want me to find out?”
“Particulars about Mr. Carpetbagger Clift. When he’s comin’ to town, when he’s gonna make his speech. We’ll wait to move on your information.”
“Sounds to me like everything hangs on Holliday,” Alex Darnell complained. “What if he gets it wrong, and it’s one of our boys who’s on the speaker’s platform? I don’t like trustin’ so much to a youngster, let alone a card cheatin’ one.”
There was only so much that John Henry’s pride could take. He hadn’t had to cheat even once against Alex, the boy was such a bad player.
“I may be young,” John Henry said, “but I can do the job. And I reckon I’ll be a good mole, too. No one would ever suspect me of lowerin’ myself to your level, Alex Darnell, and joinin’ in on somethin’ like this.”
“If you think you’re too good for this,” Jack Calhoun said, “then maybe you’d best get out now, before somebody does get hurt. If there’s local men around when the Courthouse goes up, your father’s likely to be one of them.”
John Henry shrugged an answer. “My father always wanted me to be a soldier like him. I reckon he’d understand about the risks of war. But don’t you worry about Major Holliday. He’s a hero, you know. He can walk on water.”
Then he took a long drink from the new bottle J.J. Rambo offered him, and felt the liquor burn its way past his aching heart.
Getting into the Courthouse to listen for information wasn’t too hard, as his father had done business for the Freedmen’s Bureau and his own face was familiar to the military guards there. And even if he hadn’t looked so familiar, who would think to question such a well-mannered and gentlemanly young man as John Henry Holliday? Although he was nearly as tall as his father, he was still a narrow-shouldered lad, beardless and blue-eyed, innocent-looking if not innocent in his heart.
“Excuse me, Sir,” he addressed the military commander, “but I hear there’s gonna be a political rally comin’ up soon . . .”
And the commander nodded and told him everything he wanted to know, the boy so obviously awed at the privilege of speaking to a real Federal Officer that he almost blustered with excitement.
“Why yes, son, a big rally for Mr. J.W. Clift. He’s running for United States Congress. He’s a powerful man, Mr. Clift, voting registrar for the whole state of Georgia. Appointed by General Pope himself.”
John Henry’s eyes widened in studied surprise. “Is that a fact?” he asked, letting out a whistle to complete the purposed effect. “Sir, you don’t suppose—I mean, if I was to stay out of the way and all . . .”
“Go on,” the commander said with a smile, enjoying the boy’s stammering subservience, so unexpected in a Rebel’s son. “Spit it out. I haven’t got all day.”
“Well, Sir, I sure would like to stay around here and help out some. Sure would be an honor to help get things ready for a United States Congressman comin’ to town.”
“I suppose that could be arranged,” the commander answered with a generous smile. “You go on over to my aide and get yourself a pass written up. A boy ought to know what’s going on in the world, and make himself some use in it.”
“Oh thank you, Sir!” John Henry gushed, “I surely do thank you!”
The commander was easy, a fool like most Yanks, full of pride and blind to what was going on around them. It was amazing such fools had won the war, John Henry mused, considering the cunning of their opponents.
But not all the Yanks were so blind. There were some who’d had their eyes opened, since their days of slave-laboring, and were still watching—like the guard who stood at the entrance to the commander’s office. He was a big black man, a former slave from one of the plantations near to the Holliday place, who’d run off to join the Union Army as it marched through Georgia. Now he was back in Lowndes County again, dressed smart in a new uniform of Federal blue, and feeling his position of importance as guard for the commander’s office. And maybe it was the Yankee blue the man wore with such seeming ease, or maybe it was seeing a familiar face himself, but the sight of the darky drove John Henry to forget his carefully crafted subservience.
“Out of my way, boy!” John Henry ordered as he tried to push past the guard. “I need to see about a pass.”
“I ain’t no boy to you, no how,” the guard said, pulling up his rifle so fast it nearly knocked John Henry down. “And I ain’t movin’ out of the way jest ‘cause some Reb’ chile say so.”
“You will move, or answer for it!” John Henry said angrily. “I’ve got business here, and no darky’s gonna get in the way of it, least of all some run-away field hand puttin’ on airs.”
If he’d had a pistol on him, he would have pulled it just to make the point. As it was, all he had was words and the arrogance of being born to the ruling class. But he also had enough of his father’s steely-eyed nerve to make the soldier back down a bit.
“And what business is it you got?” the guard asked.
“No business of yours,” came the cool reply. “Business for the commander himself—he’s sent me to get a pass. Now let me through, or I’ll report you for insubordination.”
The guard hesitated a moment before pulling the rifle away from John Henry’s ribs. “All right, you go on. But I’ll be keepin’ both my eyes on you. Like I kept both my eyes on that Dick Force ‘fore he run from jail. We got him after. We’ll get you, too, if you’re up to no good.”
John Henry knew full well that the man meant what he said, like he knew that he had only himself to blame for bringing the scrutiny. He should have put away his pride and been ready to bow and scrape before the guard the way he’d bowed before the commander, playing the game of guileless country boy that worked so well to win Yankee confidence. He could still do it now, if he wanted, and probably should . . .
Instead, he put his narrow shoulders back, turned his clear blue eyes on the guard, and drawled with all the arrogance of his fallen class:
“You do that, boy. You just keep right on watchin’. And maybe someday you’ll even learn somethin’. But I doubt it.”
Then he pushed on past and into the aide’s office, hearing the click of the hammer on the rifle behind him and hardly caring at all. As his father had said: pride was about all they had left, these days. Pride and a plan, and that seemed like more than enough.
The fourth of April dawned damp and warm, a mist rising up from the Withlacoochee River bottoms, the air all lazy and sweet with the smell of honeysuckle starting to bloom. Above the fields of fresh-plowed Lowndes County, whippoorwills sang and Jayhawks coasted against the sunrise, singing of growing things and life renewed, while in the dank alley behind Ashley Street, dark with overhanging pines and the shadows of secret plans, the Vigilantes readied for the death of a man they had never met and hated all the same. And as they finished their preparations, checking one last time on the position of the powder keg hidden under the Courthouse steps and stashing pistols in saddlebags for their horsed getaway, the Atlantic & Gulf Line Railroad hissed into town spreading a pall of black smoke across the white-cloud sky.
The crowd at the depot was mostly Yankee soldiers, making a big show for one of their own, but there were plenty of curious townsfolk as well, and the atmosphere was more like a holiday celebration than a coming election. Even the train came dressed for the party, decked out in drapes of red, white, and blue, its platforms hung with bunting and its engine and caboose flying flags of stars and stripes. Foreign flags, John Henry thought, as he stood close by the regimental commander and waited for Mr. J.W. Clift to appear. Foreign flags that would drape the coffin of a dead carpetbagger on his way home.
It was amazing how calmly John Henry could think of such things, murder and mayhem and all. But he’d lived so close to them for so long, most of his growing-up life, that death and destruction seemed of little consequence anymore. Everyone lived and everyone died. At least this man’s death would count for something, and that was more than most people got. It was more than his mother had gotten, anyhow. Alice Jane Holliday had died for nothing, her passing hardly even remembered by most folks.
Seeing his father striding toward the train platform, smartly dressed in a gray frock coat and tall top hat, didn’t calm him any. Though Henry Holliday no longer had his position with the Freedmen’s Bureau, he was still a plantation owner and a powerful man among the citizens of Valdosta, and had been personally invited by the Regimental Commander to come welcome the train. A dubious honor, John Henry thought. His father should have proudly turned down the invitation and watched the train arrive from the comfort of his own front porch, since the Holliday’s new home was just across the railroad tracks on Savannah Avenue. But Henry obviously enjoyed being courted for his vote, as he readily accepted the Commander’s invitation. At least his father had left Rachel at home, John Henry thought with grudging gratitude, though home was so close that everyone could see her standing out in the fenced front yard, giggling like a girl and waving a white handkerchief at the arriving train. Did she realize that the handkerchief looked like a sign of surrender? John Henry had little enough respect for Rachel as it was, and she was doing precious little to earn any more.
The brassy noise of the regimental band pulled his thoughts away from Rachel and brought him to quick attention. The band was playing Dixie in honor of the vanquished foes, then broke into a rousing rendition of The Battle Hymn of the Republic—half the crowd cheering one tune, half the crowd cheering the other. But as they started into The Star Spangled Banner, the music was blessedly drowned out by the squeal and moan of the braking train, iron on iron, a truer anthem of America. Then J.W. Clift himself finally appeared, smaller than John Henry had thought he would be, balder and rounder, and looking hardly worth all the effort that had gone into his imminent demise. But when he took a place on the back platform of the train and raised his arms to quiet the noisy crowd, his words had a fierceness that belied his small stature and meek appearance.
“My friends! My dear, Southern friends!” His voice had a nasal tone that spoke of his Northern birth. “What an honor it is to come among you! What a beautiful country you have here, so full of opportunity for those who seek and strive! Why, just this day I was crossing through the great swamp the Indians called the Okefenokee, a land of alligators and venomous snakes. A dangerous land, certainly. But it occurs to me that with some effort that land might be rid of its alligators, and those waters made safe for navigation, those swamps made healthy for cultivation. So it is all over the beautiful Southland in these days following our recent conflict. The land is ripe and ready for the taking, once the alligators are rid from our midst. My friends, there are alligators among us! But cast your vote for J.W. Clift, and I will vow to rid these swamps of danger. Cast your vote, men of Lowndes County, for J.W. Clift, and let us strive together to make our country safe!” Then, as if on cue, the brass band started up again, this time offering a discordant version of Stephen Foster’s Suwannee River, an ironic choice, considering the alligator talk.
The Courthouse had no real porch around it, so a raised platform had been constructed for the rally, leading off the wooden staircase and placing the speakers high above the crowd where their voices could carry out over the townspeople who had come to enjoy the spectacle. John Henry was enjoying it himself from his chosen vantage point in the doorway of Griffin’s General Store. Behind the store, Alex Darnell’s horses were saddled and ready to ride as soon as Jack Calhoun lit the fuse that would blow the Courthouse high into the blue spring sky. Jack had insisted on being the lighter; he was the oldest of the Vigilantes, he said, and more experienced at such things from his time in the artillery during the War. But John Henry figured there was more to Jack’s insistence than strategy. Killing J.W. Clift was Jack Calhoun’s way of taking personal revenge on the Yanks for the death of his friend Dick Force.
“Everything’s ready, just about,” Sam Griffin said as he stepped out from the store behind John Henry, sharing his space in the doorway.
“Just about?”
“Jack’s nervous we didn’t put enough charge in the keg, after all. I told him it was plenty, that my Pa would notice if I took any more. He’s fidgety, though. Says if it doesn’t blow clean, they’ll be more trouble. So I just snuck him a little more. He’s puttin’ it out there now.”
“In front of everyone?” John Henry asked, impressed by Jack’s bravery.
“It’ll be all right. Nobody’s watchin’, anyhow. They’re all caught up in Mr. Carpetbagger.”
“My dear Southern friends!” Clift was saying, “my dear colored Southern friends . . .” and he waited for effect while the colored men in the crowd, along with a few colored women, cheered him. “My dear colored friends,” he said again, his voice rising like a preacher’s putting down Satan and raising up righteousness, “shall you forever be in bondage to your old owners? Did our beloved, martyred President Lincoln not set you free?”
There were murmurs of assent, “yes, yessir,” the voices droned, “Massa Lincoln set me free. He died to set me free . . .”
“Did not the God of Heaven make you equal? Then be a man!” he thundered. “Let the slave-holding aristocracy no longer rule you! Vote for a constitution that will educate your children free of charge! Vote for a constitution that relieves the poor debtor from his rich creditor! Vote for a constitution that allows you a liberal homestead for your families! And more than all, vote for a constitution that places you on a level with those who used to boast that for every slave they were entitled to a three-fifth’s vote in congressional representation!” Then his voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. “My dear colored friends. Is this not freedom? Education without charge, relief from your debts, a home for your family, a place in society beside the men who were your oppressors? Does not this country owe you as much?”
“Amen, amen, this country do,” came the reply.
“Then, friends, there is only one thing for you to do. Vote Republican in the coming election, elect me and the men like me, who will see to it that all these things are given to you. Turn away from the Democratic-Conservatives who have held you in bondage these many years. The Republican Party offers you ease and equality, and asks nothing but your vote. I ask again, dear friends, is this not freedom?”
“What’s takin’ Jack so long?” Sam asked, growing restless as the speech ran on. “He should have had that powder placed by now, with no train and all . . .”
“What did you say?”
“I said he decided to light the fuse with no train. Said it would blow better that way.”
John Henry stared at him in disbelief. “It won’t blow better. It’ll blow him up! You can’t light that much powder at the keg. Surely Jack knows that, his bein’ in the Army with Dick Force and all . . .”
And as Sam looked back at him in horror, they both realized at the same moment what Jack Calhoun’s real plan was. He aimed to blow up the Courthouse all right—and himself along with it, going to meet his lost friend in some better world.
“We’ve got to stop him before he kills himself!” Sam cried.
“No we don’t,” John Henry said with a sudden comprehension of the situation.
“What do you mean? Of course we do!”
“Not we,” John Henry said steadily, “me. I’m the only one can get close enough to the Courthouse right now without drawin’ suspicion. Jack’s already crawlin’ around under the stairs. If you start crawlin’ around down there, too, the Yanks will figure somethin’s goin’ on. The guards are used to seein’ me there. Likely they’ll let me pass without lookin’ twice.”
Sam considered only a moment before nodding. “All right then, John Henry, you go. I reckon I better stay behind, keep an eye on things here at the store.”
He couldn’t blame Sam for looking relieved. Neither one of them wanted to take a chance at being blown up.
Getting close to the Courthouse was the easy part, pushing his way through the crowd of onlookers listening to the speeches. But getting close to Jack was another story. There was a ring of Yankee soldiers on the ground around the speaker’s platform, rifles raised and aimed into the crowd. They meant business and they weren’t letting anyone through—not even a polite Rebel boy.
“But Sir,” he said with wide-eyed pleading, “my Pa’s up on that speaker’s stand, and I got to get a message to him!”
“Give me the message, and I’ll pass it on,” the guard said, standing his ground.
“I can’t, Sir. It’s . . .” he cast around in his mind, looking for some likely-sounding excuse why he should be let through. “It’s personal,” he said at last. “It’s my Ma, you see. She’s in a way of needin’ him bad.”
And something in his words struck the guard as very funny, and he let out a laugh.
“Well, Son, if your Mama’s in a way of needing a man all that bad, you just run and tell her the Regiment will be right down to take care of her!”
It took John Henry a moment to understand the Yankee’s lewd joke, and by then he was too scared to be angry. With every passing minute, Jack Calhoun was getting closer to lighting that keg and blowing them all up. Somehow he had to get through that military guard.
But the soldier kept laughing, and his laughter caught the attention of one of the other guards, a big black man in Yankee blue.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“This Reb boy wants to get through the guard,” the first soldier replied. “Says his Mama’s needing his Papa home right away—says she needs a man. I say we go take care of her ourselves, so his Papa don’t have to be disturbed. What do you think about that?”
But the black man didn’t laugh. He just looked at John Henry with a gleam of recognition in his eyes, then he smiled with teeth as white as a panther’s.
“I know this boy,” he said smugly. “I know his Pa, too, and he ain’t even on the stand. Seems to me this boy’s been lyin’ to you, and I’m wonderin’ why. What’s he want to do that he shouldn’t ought to be doin’?” Then he pushed the barrel of his rifle against John Henry’s ribs. “What you lyin’ about now, Reb boy?”
He almost cursed himself for not having pandered to the soldier’s arrogance the last time they had met. But it was too late for bowing and scraping now. He looked from the black soldier to the white soldier, and knew there was no way he could get through them both. There was nothing left to do but yell.
“Gunpowder!” he hollered at the top of his lungs. “Under the stand! There’s a keg of gunpowder about to blow down there!”
The sudden panic surprised him, as his warning was answered by screams from the onlookers and a near riot on the speaker’s stand. The guards around the steps were pushed aside as a flood of politicians shoved each other down from the stand, stepping on anything and anyone in their way. John Henry only hoped the screaming and the running had made Jack Calhoun reconsider his suicidal plans.
But as he tried to push his way through the confused guards to find Jack, the black soldier grabbed ahold of him and held him back. “Not so fast. The commander will be wantin’ to speak to you, Reb boy who knows so much. I reckon I was right in keepin’ my eyes on you.”
John Henry’s own eyes were fixed on the crawlspace under the steps, where two more guards were pulling another young man out from the shadows.
“Jack!” he called out, unable to free himself from the soldier’s grasp enough to manage a wave. “Jack Calhoun! You’re still alive!”
But there was no answering greeting, only the dull stare of a young man whose death wish had been dashed like the rest of his hopes. Jack was alive, all right, and it was John Henry’s fault that he was.
“Friends, huh?” the black soldier said, smiling. “Well, I guess you can have some company when you hang. You know they hang traitors, don’t you? String ‘em up like this . . .” and to demonstrate, he yanked on John Henry so hard his feet came right up off the ground and he yelped out in pain.
Then a voice spoke from behind them, cool and commanding.
“That’ll do. You can put him down now.”
And to his relief, John Henry looked up into the steely eyes of his father, come to rescue him.
“And why should I do that?” the soldier asked, putting John Henry down but keeping a strong hand on him. “Don’t look to me like you got any say around here anymore, Major Holliday. You been put out as Freedmen’s Agent. And this boy’s goin’ up to talk to the Commander, tell him what he knows.”
For all his commanding presence, Henry Holliday was still no physical match for the soldier, big and heavy-muscled as a plowhand. But what Henry lacked in stature he more than made up for in boldness.
“Well then, we’ll just go together to see the Commander,” he said with a nod. “And I’m sure he’ll be interested in hearin’ how you’ve been mistreatin’ the boy who just saved his life. Probably give you jail time yourself for your rough handlin’ of him, or run you out of the service altogether. ‘Course there’s always plenty of work to be done back in the fields where you come from. I’m sure I can manage to find you a good position around the County somewhere.”
For a moment the soldier’s big black hand tightened on John Henry’s shoulder, and he winced in pain again. Then the man loosened his grasp a little.
“What do you mean, the boy who saved his life? This boy’s been in on somethin’ for a while. I know it.”
Then to John Henry’s astonishment, he heard his father let out a laugh.
“What you know ain’t worth listenin’ to!” Henry said, laughing again, loud and robust like John Henry had never in life heard him do. Henry rarely even smiled; he never laughed.
But he was laughing now, so hard that there were tears coming down his face.
“Big Nigger like you gets a nice uniform, thinks that makes him smart! Of course my boy’s been up to somethin’! He’s been workin’ for the commander for months now, doin’ errands and such. You think just because the Yanks freed the slaves, they know how to get along without someone doin’ their business for them? Why, without John Henry and boys like you, your commander couldn’t take himself a decent piss. In fact, the commander was just tellin’ me as much the other day, glad he’s got a big buck like you waitin’ on him hand and foot . . .”
It was all a lie, of course, and John Henry knew it. But the soldier didn’t know as much as he thought he did, least of all the cunning of a Confederate officer who was trying to save his son.
“You been talkin’ with the commander?” the soldier asked, wavering a little.
“Just ‘cause Washington put me out as Agent don’t mean the Commander’s done with me,” Henry replied, lying again. “So let’s go, boy. Let’s see what your Commander has to say about all this.”
If the soldier had been a Northern colored, or even a Southern city colored, he might have held his position. But he was a plantation colored, born and bred, and used to being ordered around by arrogant Southern planters.
“I say let’s go, boy,” Henry said again, his voice hanging on the word boy. “Or let my son go and get along about your business.”
There was nothing the soldier could do under the circumstances but release John Henry and walk away, broad shoulders hunched like he’d been horse whipped.
“Oh, Pa!” John Henry said, turning back toward his father with a heart torn between relief and amazement. “You saved me . . .”
But he’d barely gotten the words out when Henry’s hand came down across his face, slapping him so hard it nearly knocked him over.
“Don’t you ever shame me again, d’hear me? Don’t you ever make me grovel for you again! Bad enough you waste all your time down at Sam Griffin’s place, drinkin’ and such, but goin’ in on this fool business . . .”
“It wasn’t fool business, Pa. We were Vigilantes . . .” The word had seemed so adventurous, until now.
“Gunpowder in the hands of children looks like fool business to me. And it don’t make no difference to me who got it, or why, so save the excuses. You’re just damn lucky I happened to be nearby or you’d be headed off to jail by now like your fool friends. I expect Sam Griffin was in on this too, and Darnell’s boy Alex . . .”
“Jail?” John Henry said, rubbing his aching jaw as he stared wide-eyed at his father. “They’re goin’ to jail?”
“That’s what we do with law-breakers in this country. Just pray the commander turns them over to the civil authorities instead of lettin’ the military deal with them. It’s Martial Law, John Henry, and we’re still the enemy. Now get on home and make yourself useful. You’re done with those boys.”
Henry was right about the boys being thrown into jail, and it didn’t take the Federals long to get them there. Once the unexploded powder keg was hauled out from under the Courthouse steps, bearing the mark of Griffin’s General Store, the soldiers knew right where to look for the rest of the conspirators. They made quick work of it and found Sam Griffin still at the store, waiting for his friends to return, along with Alex Darnell still holding his father’s horses out back for their getaway. By nightfall, all the boys had been rounded up and hustled off to the same dank jail cell from which they had once helped Dick Force to escape. All the boys except John Henry, whose father had gotten him off in the nick of time.
So while his friends spent the night on the hard plank floor of the County jail, John Henry tossed and turned on his feather mattress. He deserved to be in jail with them; he almost wished he were. For though his father would surely mete out punishment for his misdeed, knowing his friends were suffering without him made him feel all the more guilty. Nothing Henry could do to him would be punishment enough to make up for his undeserved freedom. Even Henry’s open hand across his face hadn’t hurt all that much. Angry as his father had been, it was the most attention he had paid his son in longer than John Henry could remember.
But the boys didn’t have to languish in jail for long. As soon as the commander turned them over to the civil authorities, the Sheriff took bond and set them free again, pending civil action. The Superior Court could deal with them when the calendar opened up some. Until then, the judge was busy with more important matters, like a neighborly disputation over a fence line and the theft of some prized chickens. The opinion of most of the good people of Valdosta was that the boys had meant no real harm since the keg had been found to have no fuse or train attached. Surely, they couldn’t have meant to light it, only scare folks a little. And as it was, it was the coloreds in the community who were scared the most, fearing that the unlit gunpowder was a warning to them of what would happen if they dared to vote Republican in the upcoming election. Thanks to the gunpowder plot, there’d likely be a landslide victory for the Democratic-Conservative ticket, come Election Day. So all in all, things had come out fine, and the town turned its attention to other matters.
But the Federals weren’t so easily distracted. Gunpowder under a speaker’s platform, exploded or not, was clearly an act of aggression. And since the speaker on the platform had been a United States official, a Registrar of Voting assigned by General Pope himself, the gunpowder plot was an act of treason as well. So once word got to General Meade in Atlanta that traitors to the United States of America had been set free by the local authorities, the boys were in worse trouble than before.
The first John Henry heard of it was a banging on his bedroom door late one moonless night.
“Get up and get dressed!” his father’s voice commanded.
Even half-asleep, John Henry knew better than to disobey his father, and he rolled out of his rope-slung bed and reached for his clothes.
“What’s goin’ on, Pa?” he said, opening his bedroom door and blinking in the light of the oil lamp his father held to light the dark hallway.
“You’re goin’ to Jonesboro. Pack your things, and be quick about it.”
“Jonesboro? But it’s the middle of the night! Why am I goin’ there?”
“To save you from your own fool self,” Henry said. “Colonel Bessant’s in the parlor. He’s just got word that the Yankees are comin’, General Meade’s men. They’re plannin’ on takin’ your friends off to prison in Savannah to stand a military trial. So I’m gettin’ you out of town before they get here.”
John Henry was wide-awake by now, but his father’s words still made no sense to him.
“But why should I leave town?” he asked. “You got me off already. I didn’t even get arrested. What can the Yankees do to me?”
“Plenty, if your friends decide to talk. ‘Cause arrested or not, you’re still as guilty as the rest of them. Now pack up. We haven’t got much time.”
But John Henry had no desire to be leaving town just when things were getting hot again.
“But Pa, what if Jack and the boys need my help? They’ll think I’m a coward, or worse, for runnin’ away . . .”
“Runnin’ is what you should have done the first time you heard of this business. A boy’s got no place playin’ in a man’s work.”
“I’m not a boy!” he said stubbornly. “I’m near seventeen-years-old now, nigh unto bein’ a man myself . . .”
Henry cut him off with a cold glare.
“Are you man enough to hang? For that’s what General Meade plans to do with those boys, once he’s finished tryin’ them. Treason’s a hangin’ crime, John Henry. You think you’re man enough for that?”
The thought of his friends with their necks in a hanging noose made him feel so strangled himself that he couldn’t even speak an answer. But his heart was racing like a horse whipped to a lather. How could he leave when his friends might need him? What would they think of him when they found out he’d gone off and left them? And how could his father not understand that his place was with the Vigilantes, not away off in Jonesboro hiding out like some sissy boy?
But he couldn’t disobey his father, so he did as he was told and packed his things, ready for the long ride to Jonesboro. And the only consolation he could find was that Mattie would be there, and she, at least, would understand.