JONESBORO, 1868
MATTIE HOLLIDAY HAD OTHER THINGS ON HER MIND THAT SUMMER, however, for Mattie had a beau, a young Confederate veteran from South Carolina whose wife had died during the bombing of Charleston and left him with a baby daughter to raise. Mattie hadn’t actually met him yet, but they had exchanged letters and he was hoping to come to Jonesboro to court her. Her father had known him during the War and said he was a fine man, and her mother was delighted that he too was Catholic—there were so few Catholic boys in Georgia. It seemed a match made in heaven to everyone except John Henry, who couldn’t believe that Mattie could be so disloyal.
“You’re surely not serious about this, Mattie!” he said, as they walked home from town together one warm evening soon after his arrival. “You don’t even know him!”
“My father knows him and, of course, I trust his judgment for me. And besides, I think it’s terribly romantic, the tragic young war hero and his motherless babe, saved from a life of desolation by true love come again. It fairly sweeps me off my feet!”
“Well it sounds like dime novel nonsense to me!” John Henry said as he kicked at the dusty road in disgust. “Suppose he’s crippled from the War, with one arm and a big glass eye? He wouldn’t seem so romantic then, I bet!”
Mattie looked up at his flushed face and laughed. “Why John Henry Holliday, I do believe you’re jealous!”
He knew he was, but he couldn’t let her know that. “Don’t be stupid, Mattie. I just think you’re too young for this kind of talk. Next you’ll be thinkin’ of marryin’ this soldier.”
“Well of course, silly, that’s why he wants to court me,” she said condescendingly. “I’m eighteen now, plenty old enough to marry. Why, my mother had a husband and two babies by the time she was my age!”
How was it possible that Mattie had suddenly grown so much older? The year and a half between their ages stretched out like an eternity in his mind. “I just think that you ought to wait for awhile . . .” He shrugged, not knowing what else to say, but his heart went on, wait until I’m older and can ask for your hand . . .
Mattie smiled at him with sympathy, the way she looked at her little sisters when they fell and bruised a knee. “Oh honey, I know we’ve always been best sweethearts, but that was just child’s play. I’m a woman now, with a woman’s heart, and I need a family of my own to love and care for. I wish you’d be happy for me.”
And reflected in her shining eyes he saw himself the way Mattie saw him: just a tall, awkward boy who followed after her with loving eyes and silent longings. But his arms ached to hold her close and make her forget that soldier, make her forget anyone but him. There was a long silence between them, then Mattie slipped her hand into his and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
“Why, John Henry, I think it’s sweet that you care for me so. I’m sure I’d be hurt if you weren’t a little jealous. Please don’t let this spoil our summer together. I’m so happy to have you here.”
They walked on home, hand in hand as always, but he could still feel the touch of her lips on his face, and in his heart he heard the words that she had said when they were children together: “I love you, I always have, and I always will.”
Mattie’s gentle rejection didn’t help his mood any that summer. He was still angry at his father for sending him away from home and confused by a world that made even less sense now than it had during the War. If the Cause were just, why weren’t they still fighting for it? And if it were unjust, why had they ever fought at all? He was at that idealistic age when everything needed an answer and all he seemed to have were questions—and his exile in Jonesboro wasn’t helping any. His father had told Uncle Rob to put him to work, so John Henry was given a job at the newly completed granite train depot doing menial tasks no one else wanted to do: raking the gravel rail bed, scrubbing the wood plank walks, hauling coal and water—hard physical labor that was surely beneath his station, but left him with little time or energy to misbehave. After a long day in the scorching summer sun he was ready for a good meal and a soft bed, but there was still more work to be done. The horse in the barn behind the house needed tending, the kitchen garden was growing tall and thick with weeds, and Aunt Mary Anne always had extra chores to be done as well. The work went on right past sundown, six days a week.
On Sundays, there were family visits with relatives living out in the county—Aunt Martha Holliday who was married to wealthy Colonel Johnson and lived in a big house on a hill north of town, and Aunt Mary Anne’s uncle Phillip Fitzgerald who still lived on the old plantation south toward Lovejoy’s Station. John Henry sat quietly during those visits, dressed in his best wool suit, hot and uncomfortable in stuffy dark parlors, knowing he was the object of family talk—
“You remember Cousin Henry Holliday’s boy, John Henry? He’s here visitin’ with Rob and Mary Anne for a while. His father had to send him here after that unfortunate trouble down in Valdosta . . .”
“Well, we’ve sure never had any trouble like that in this family before. Must be somethin’ from that McKey side of his. You know how quiet his mother always was, and they do say still waters run deep . . .”
Then the voices would drop to a whisper and he would feel himself turning red with embarrassment and anger. If he hadn’t been raised to be so polite he sure would set them all straight. Wasn’t anything wrong in what he’d done, nothing at all. Why, there were vigilantes in every Southern town, Jonesboro even, horseback riders coming through just before sunset, guns showing, warning those free Negroes to mind themselves. Just a little show of strength to keep things orderly. Well, wasn’t that what he’d done too? But they talked about it like he was some kind of outlaw.
But worse than the way the family talked about him was the way Mattie talked incessantly about her soldier-beau. Was he really handsome or just good-looking? Was he as tall as Father? Were his eyes blue as Mother’s, or lighter, like John Henry’s? It was hardest of all to hear himself compared to the hated stranger. It didn’t matter one whit to him what the fellow was like, he was the enemy pure and simple, and Mattie was a traitor for caring about him. Hadn’t she promised to always be his sweetheart? Funny how fast always could end.
It was hard to get away from Mattie’s soldier talk in a house that was filled with Hollidays clear up to the attic, the room he shared with little Jim Bob, the baby born to Aunt Mary Anne that Christmas in Valdosta. So sometimes at night when he thought everyone else had gone to sleep, he’d quietly climb around Jim Bob’s little bed and steal down the attic stair, past the room that Mattie shared with her sister Lucy, and go outside to sit alone in the darkness of the back porch. He liked the stillness of the night when all the sounds seemed close and clear—the music of the crickets, the low drone of the katydids in the trees, and far away, the lonely whistle of a train headed south from Atlanta. And out in the moonlit shadows, under the backyard trees, there rested those two heroes buried in the garden—strange companions in the silence.
What he wanted was Mattie by his side, understanding him and helping him to understand life. What he needed was a fast horse and an open stretch of country, room to run and burn off the turbulent feelings that tore at him. So one sultry summer afternoon he quit work early and went on back to his Uncle’s house, saddled the family horse, and rode out onto dusty Church Street.
Just past the edge of town Church Street joined up with the Fayetteville Road, the old stagecoach route that wound from Whitesburg all the way to Decatur. West of town, the road crossed over swampy Flint River into Fayette County where the Hollidays had first settled. To the south was the track that led down to Lovejoy’s Station, through rich red farmland and cotton plantations. He turned the horse loose and took off at a gallop, headed nowhere in particular. But Uncle Rob’s animal knew the country well and had made that ride to the south over and over again, and by the time John Henry tightened his hold on the reins he was halfway to Lovejoy, pulling up to the drive of Phillip Fitzgerald’s place.
The Fitzgerald farm had been a fine plantation once, before the Yankees had ruined the cotton fields and everything else. But old Phillip, Irish stubborn, just plowed up the fields and started again. John Henry could see the result of that hard-headedness: acres of rich red furrows curving across the rolling hillsides, surrounding the white frame house in an ocean of cotton. Phillip had put everything he had into that ground, not minding that his home was hardly suited to a wealthy plantation owner. It was a rambling, doddering old dowager of a place, facing sideways toward the road, not bothering to put its best face forward. Phillip had bought the house along with the land when he first came to the country, adding onto it every time another daughter was born. Plenty of space was all the family needed, he insisted—what really mattered was the land.
“John Henry Holliday, is that you?” From the shadows by the front door a lilting feminine voice called out to him, and he was startled into answering.
“Yes, Ma’am. Sorry to bother you, Ma’am.” He couldn’t see the person to whom the voice belonged, but it sounded too young to be Phillip’s wife, Eleanor. Of course, with all those daughters on the place, it could be almost anyone. The horse snorted and tossed its head impatiently, ready to move up the drive.
“Well, are you comin’ on up or not? We’re ‘bout ready to start supper if you’re stayin’.”
“Hadn’t planned on it. I’m just out for a ride.” It was disconcerting talking to the shadows like that.
“Well, suit yourself.” The voice paused for a moment, as if considering. “You tell Cousin Mattie I said hello.”
He jerked the reins and the horse pulled around to the side. “Who is that up there?” he called. “Come on out where I can see your face.”
Musical laughter, then a dimpled smile in a halo of golden hair: “Why, it’s only Sarah, John Henry. Don’t you remember me?”
Even from across the yard he could see the blue of her eyes, thick lashed and shining. She was Phillip Fitzgerald’s second oldest daughter, close to Mattie’s age and every inch a young woman. She was tiny like all the Fitzgerald girls, with that wasp waist just about as big around as a man’s two hands put together, and a softly curving figure above and below. She put her hands on that little waist and tipped her head to one side, making her curly hair bounce in the afternoon light. “Well? Are you stayin’?”
Of course he couldn’t stay. No one even knew he was gone, and it would be coming on dark soon. He was just about to tell her so when his legs seemed to take a life of their own and swung him down out of the saddle and onto the drive. Sarah smiled and those dimples showed again.
“I’ll go and tell cook to set another place,” she said, then she turned and disappeared into the house, the porch door giving a sigh as it swung closed behind her.
So there he was, joining the Fitzgeralds for supper, with a stable boy tending to his horse, and wondering all along how it had happened. He went through supper in a daze, listening to Phillip’s thick brogue expounding on the price of cotton and the ravages of the boll weevil, thankful that nobody asked him how he happened to be out riding by their place just before dusk like that. And every now and then he’d look up and catch Sarah looking at him across the table with a shy flutter of lashes that set his head spinning. What was he doing here, anyhow?
Supper took forever but cleaning up took no time at all, with all the daughters rushing dishes off the table and into the kitchen. And suddenly he found himself on the moonlit front porch with pretty Sarah, a house-maid at a discreet distance, and those bright blue eyes looking up at him as if he were God Almighty. What else could he do? He slid his arms around that inviting little waist and stole a kiss from those sweet dimpled lips. And though he still had no idea how it had happened, it sure felt good to have a pretty girl in his arms. Damn Mattie for making him so miserable all summer! It gave him a sense of sweet revenge to know that it was Mattie’s own cousin he kissed there in the moonlight.
Sarah laughed a little when he kissed her a second time, and it startled him. “What’s so funny, Miss Sarah?”
“Nothin’ at all, Cousin.” He wasn’t really her relation, only first-cousin to her first-cousin, but it sounded nice and friendly. “I guess I just had a mind that you and Cousin Mattie were sweethearts.”
“Mattie?” He laughed too, but with a bitter edge. “Mattie’s all but engaged to that soldier boy of hers.”
“Well I’m awful glad to hear it, ‘cause I sure wouldn’t want to steal her beau away from her.” She cast her eyes demurely down, and her lashes made little crescents on her rosy cheeks. “And I had been hopin’ that you might notice me.”
John Henry looked down at her and began to realize just what was happening. There were seven daughters in the Fitzgerald family, and few men of any eligible age since the War. No wonder he had received such a quick invitation to supper and a gentle push toward the front porch with one of the oldest girls. Well fine, if that was the way it was. It was about time that somebody realized he wasn’t a boy any longer. And Sarah was just about the prettiest thing he had ever seen. Might not be bad to be her beau, not bad at all.
“I’ve heard folks talkin’ about what you did down in Valdosta,” she said, “tryin’ to chase out the Yanks and all.” Her eyes were dazzling in the moonlight, staring up at him like that. “I think it was mighty brave of you.”
Brave was he? “Mattie doesn’t think so. She says it was just plain foolishness, and could have gotten somebody killed.”
“Well, as long as you weren’t killed.” Her voice slowed a little as she said it, and her face dimpled again with that smile that made him feel like he’d just whipped the whole Yankee army single-handed. Why didn’t Mattie ever look at him like that? She just bossed and scolded and treated him like a child the way she always had.
“I guess it was dangerous, but I’m a damned good shot. I could have handled myself, if it had come to that.”
He raised his right arm over her head and aimed his hand into the starry sky, and Sarah gave a little “Oh!” when he pretended to pull the trigger.
“Wherever did you learn to shoot like that?” she asked in a flutter.
“My father taught me,” he said, and knew all at once that he shouldn’t have said it. He had a sudden memory of his father taking him out rabbit hunting in Valdosta. He remembered those days with a rush of emotion that stung at the back of his throat; happy days for him, before his mother had died and his father had married again.
Rachel. The memory of her laughter in the night made him sick to his stomach. He looked down at Sarah with a strange suffocating feeling and pulled his arms away from her. He didn’t belong here. He shouldn’t be doing this.
“Why John Henry, is somethin’ wrong? You look all pale. Why don’t you sit down and let me get you somethin’ to drink? Would you like a little lemonade?”
“No, I . . .I need to be goin’. It’s gettin’ mighty late, isn’t it?”
“Are you sure you’re all right? I can have someone drive you home in the wagon. You can tie your horse to the back if you want. Wouldn’t be any trouble at all.”
“No!” The last thing he wanted was to be coming home in the Fitzgerald’s wagon after disappearing into the night, like some lost boy being escorted home.
“No, I’ll ride. There’s plenty of moonlight tonight.”
“I know,” she said, and turned her head up to gaze at the indigo sky, “lots of nice moonlight tonight.” Then she laid her hand against his chest and asked sweetly, “You’ll come again soon, won’t you? Before that lovely moon is all gone?”
How had he gotten himself into this fix?
“Why, sure, I’ll be back. You just keep that moon hangin’ there for me.” It was a boldfaced lie, and there’d be hell to pay if Mattie ever found out he’d led her very own cousin on like that. Shameful behavior. What did they do to men who seduced innocent young women? He was sure he deserved whatever it was.
He left her standing there on the porch, waving him a sweet goodbye. He would never be able to face Sarah Fitzgerald again, not as long as he lived. He was a cad and had ruined her innocence, kissing her like that right in front of the whole world. It was as good as a marriage proposal he knew, and now here he was riding back to Jonesboro in the dark, longing to hold Mattie, wishing it had been her there in the shadows.
“Where have you been?” Mattie was waiting for him back of the house, scolding him while he unsaddled the horse. “Father is fit to be tied about the horse bein’ gone, and Mother is nearly frantic.” She stroked the animal’s face, and in the moonlight her hair was as red-brown as its russet coat.
“I just went for a ride,” he answered, trying to stay on the far side of the horse from her, avoiding her eyes.
“Fine time to go ridin’, in the dark!”
“It wasn’t dark when I left.”
“Well, where did you go that kept you so long?”
The uncomfortable feeling he’d carried all the way home was turning to irritation.
“I said I just went for a ride. What do you care?”
“I care plenty, seein’ as how I had to walk all the way up to the depot today to bring you your letter. And when I got there, all hot and dusty, you weren’t even around. Where did you go to, anyhow?”
“What letter?” he asked, not bothering to answer her question.
“From your father, the one you’ve been waitin’ for. It came inside a letter for my parents.”
She knew, of course, that he had been watching the mail for a letter from his father with forgiveness and a train ticket home. He was tired of railroad work and ready to get back to school. At least his summer of exile had taught him one thing: he didn’t want a life of physical labor. One more year of school and he could go on to college, learn to be a doctor like Uncle John, the richest man in the family. Sure would be nice to live in a fancy house like his Uncle John’s, with white columns and polished wood floors and servants bringing in dinner across the breezeway from the kitchen out back. And when he pictured himself in that kind of life, there was always Mattie by his side, dark eyes glowing, loving only him.
“Well anyhow, here it is,” she said, slipping the letter out of the hidden pocket of her skirt. “Though I don’t think you deserve it after tonight.”
He looked up at her with a sudden flush of color in his face, sure she was reading his thoughts. “Tonight?”
“After you stole the horse and all.”
“Oh, that. I only borrowed it.” Then he tore open the envelope and started to read aloud:
“Dear Son,
I hope that all is going well for you there in Jonesboro, and that you are being of great help to your Uncle Robert and Aunt Mary Anne, and remember always your manners and the debt of gratitude you owe them for taking you in.”
He glanced at Mattie with embarrassment. His father was still lecturing him, even from two-hundred miles away—
“Our businesses here are doing well, and I hope to see a good profit at year’s end. I am thinking of adding carriages to the stock of buggies we carry in town, which should do well here in Valdosta where there are no other carriage dealers as yet.
In light of the recent news that Martial Law has been lifted once again following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment by the Constitutional Convention at Macon, I feel that you will be safe in returning home. The military can no longer molest you for your mis-doings here, and the civil authorities are unlikely to pursue the matter further. Your friends have all been released from their incarceration in Savannah on a $200,000 bond raised by the merchants of Valdosta. I paid a share, as well, with the stipulation that the boys be sent away from Valdosta for a time, so there won’t be any more such trouble. Of course, I will expect you to be circumspect in your behavior when you return, paying all due allegiance to your new government. If I, a soldier of the Confederacy, can take the Oath of Allegiance and pledge to uphold the honor of the United States, then you, a mere boy, can certainly bow yourself to the civil authority . . .”
He stopped reading and said in disgust, “How can he be so cowardly, givin’ in to the Federals like that? Damn pack of lyin’ Yanks!” Then he crumpled the letter and threw it to the ground.
“Hush that swearin’!” Mattie scolded him. “Mother will hear you for sure.”
She handed him a curry brush, and he went to work with a vengeance on the horse’s coat.
“Well it’s a fact, lyin’ Yanks! And after all they’ve done against us! After all they’ve done to me, gettin’ me sent away from home . . .”
“You’re talkin’ nonsense. You know you got your own self sent away for tryin’ to kill that congressman. If your father hadn’t hustled you out of town, you might have ended up in prison like your friends, or worse. What if the soldiers had come after you, too?”
“I reckon I’m handy enough with a gun to take care of myself,” he boasted. “I could have finished off a few Yanks, if it’d come to that.”
Mattie stopped to look at him over the horse’s back, shaking her head. “John Henry Holliday, you have entirely too much pride, and it will land you in a heap of trouble one day!”
It was bad enough to be reprimanded by his father and uncle. He didn’t need to have Mattie criticize him as well.
“Don’t treat me like a child!” he said, grabbing the reins away from her and leading the horse into the barn.
“Well stop actin’ like one then, runnin’ off without even sayin’ where you’re goin’!”
She stood in the doorway behind him, the moonlight making a dark halo around her. He had a sudden notion that her skin looked just like ivory silk in that silvery light, and he threw caution and good sense to the wind.
“Do you really want to know where I was?” he asked suddenly. “Well, I’ll tell you. I was havin’ supper with the Fitzgeralds. Miss Sarah invited me.”
Mattie’s eyes opened wide. “Sarah invited you? Why would she invite only you and not the rest of the family?”
“Well, I don’t think she’s interested in the rest of the family, Mattie,” he said with a lazy drawl, taunting her. “Not like she’s interested in me.”
A trace of surprise and something else went across her face, then she tossed her head to one side, forcing a laugh. “Don’t be silly, you’re not near old enough for her! What do you know about courtin’?”
“Stop it Mattie!” he said, the teasing suddenly over. “Stop treatin’ me like I’m still a child!” His blood was boiling from the arguing, his mind still clouded from the confusion of the evening, and he reached for her arms and pulled her close to him.
“Let go of me, John Henry!” she said, trying to twist away from him.
“I will not.”
“I want you to let me go!”
His voice was husky with emotion. “I love you, Mattie, you know I do!” he said, and bent his head close to hers, letting the sweet smell of her skin fill his mind as his arms slid around her.
She stared up at him, her eyes dark and wide as a frightened deer. “What are you doin’?”
Until that very moment he didn’t know himself, but suddenly it was all so very clear. He knew just what he needed to rid himself of his frustrations, and just how to get it. “I’m gonna kiss you, Mattie, right here and now, in this lovely moonlight,” he said, echoing Sarah’s words without thinking.
Mattie caught her breath, “You wouldn’t dare! You know I’ve got a beau. What would he think?”
“I don’t give a damn what he thinks, or what your parents think either! Hell Mattie, right now I don’t hardly care what you think.”
He held her tighter, and she wriggled and hissed at him, “You are the most selfish, arrogant, vain . . .”
His kiss smothered her words into silence, and for a startled moment she stopped struggling, leaning toward him. Then she slipped one arm free from his embrace and swung back with all her might, slapping him hard against the side of his face. He let her go, stunned, and she finished the thought his kiss had interrupted:
“. . . despicable thing! Get your vile hands off of me!”
He laid his fingers against his burning face, speechless.
Mattie put her head up proudly. “I am goin’ in the house now, and if you try to stop me, I swear I’ll scream and wake my parents. And my father will not be as gentle with you as I have been. Good night, John Henry!” And she swept out of the barn with as much dignity as her wounded innocence would allow.
John Henry’s mind was reeling, his ear ringing from the blow of Mattie’s hand. She was right to slap him. He would have been disappointed in her if she hadn’t, after he’d forced himself on her like that. But for a fleeting moment she had leaned up toward him, and almost kissed him back. He knew it and she knew it, and that was all that mattered.
Then he smiled to himself. He’d just kissed two girls in one night.
He left Jonesboro two days later, taking the first train headed south, going home to face his father and the Freedmen’s Bureau. He made his polite apologies to Mattie, standing under the covered platform at the depot waiting for the train, and she nodded her forgiveness. She understood, of course, that he had been distraught over his father’s letter, and not at all himself. But when she raised her eyes to say good-bye, there was a spark of acknowledgment there. They were neither one of them children anymore. His kiss had changed all of that forever.
Henry met him at the depot in Valdosta with stern admonitions about staying out of political trouble, but John Henry had no intention of getting involved in that kind of business again. The Cause was truly lost when a loyal Confederate like himself could get sent away by his own folks.
“‘Course, you won’t have much time to get into trouble nowadays, anyhow,” Henry commented as he loaded John Henry’s luggage into the wagon for the short ride home to the house on Savannah Street. “You’ll be workin’ after school every day now. I’ve got you a position in town.”
“What are you talkin’ about, Pa?” John Henry asked, bewildered, though he should have been accustomed to the way his father liked springing things on him suddenly. “What kind of position? Doin’ what?”
“Workin’ with Dr. Lucian Frink, the new dentist just moved down here from Jasper. You know how we’ve been tryin’ to get a dentist to come to Valdosta for some time now. I guess the Institute finally attracted one, with all these new families movin’ into town to enroll their children. I reckon you’d rather work for one of the medical doctors since that’s the career you’re aimin’ at, but Dr. Frink’s the one who needed help. His office is right next door to my store, so I know you’ll be punctual.”
“I don’t know what to say, Pa. I hadn’t expected . . .”
“You hadn’t expected to work? Well, it’s about time you started to pay your own way in life. I’m doin’ better than I have in years, but that doesn’t mean I can afford to send you to medical college. You’ll have to put aside a pretty penny to pay your tuition, if you do manage to get yourself accepted.”
“I meant that I hadn’t expected you to find a job for me. I’m obliged, that’s all.”
“Damn right, you’re obliged. If it hadn’t been for my handlin’ your trouble about the Courthouse, you’d have spent the summer in military prison like your friends. But don’t think I’ll come to your rescue like that again. You get yourself in another fix with the law, John Henry, you’re on your own. I can’t afford to risk my own good name mixin’ in your misdoings. Next time . . .”
“There won’t be a next time, Pa,” John Henry assured him. “I’m through with all that, I promise. All I want to do is finish school and get on with my life.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Now straighten your collar and make yourself presentable. Your mother is eager to see you, after all this time you’ve been gone.”
“My mother?” For a fleeting moment his heart rose. Then his mind washed the pleasant impossibility away and he said heavily: “You mean Rachel.”
“I mean my wife. And your stepmother, though you’ve never made much of an effort to make her feel like either one. She’s a good woman, John Henry, and wants to be a good mother to you, if you’d let her. She’s been cookin’ all day, gettin’ ready for your homecoming, and I expect you to behave with proper gratitude.”
“Yessir,” John Henry said, as the wagon turned off the dirt road and into the picket-fenced yard where Rachel had planted rows of flowers along the walk. Then, under his breath so his father wouldn’t hear the sting of angry sarcasm in his voice, he added: “I’ll behave just as politely as she deserves.”
Things in the Holliday home were as unchanged as if John Henry had never gotten into trouble and gone away at all. Henry was still so busy with his business of carriage dealing and farming that he had little time for his son. Rachel was still intent on giving Henry a new heir, and spent her days making baby clothes that would probably never be worn, the way she kept conceiving and miscarrying one pregnancy after another. And even that was a constant reminder to John Henry of the fleeting nature of life and loyalty as his father participated lustily in Rachel’s baby-making plans. Did it never occur to them that he could hear everything they were doing in their bedroom right across the hallway from his? Did they not realize that he was near eighteen-years-old now, and just hearing them made him angry and anxious all at once? To try and drown out the sound of them, he even brought the young housemaid into his own bedroom a time or two—a thing he never would have done with a white girl, of course, but Lizzie was Mulatto, and until the Emancipation had been the Holliday’s bought and paid for slave, and that made any immorality more acceptable. But once he had her there he found he didn’t really want her after all, and he sent her back to her loft room confused and complaining that Mr. John Henry sure did act peculiar sometimes. He knew he wasn’t peculiar, though. It was just that he wanted Mattie, the way his father had Rachel, and he was sure that until he had her, nothing else would do.
It was a blessed relief to have to leave the house every morning, crossing the dirt road and the railroad tracks and walking up the hill to school for his final year of studies at the Valdosta Institute. He threw himself headlong into academics, excelling at every subject and finding that science and philosophy seemed to interest him the most. And as always, there were history and mathematics, composition and recitation, the long lines of literature to be memorized, the Latin phrases to translate and conjugate. But while others complained that Professor Varnedoe had never been as demanding as he was that final year, John Henry enjoyed the work and the security of school. The sameness of the school days, the routine of the school weeks, gave him a certain comfort in the chaos of his family life.
It was easier to attend to his studies, of course, with his friends all gone away. Willie Pendleton and Constantia Bessant had already graduated. Sam Griffin and the rest of the Vigilantes were out of prison and scattered to the homes of faraway relatives. And while John Henry still felt guilty that he had not been made to pay the price for recklessness as they had, he appreciated his freedom enough to keep quiet and behave himself. Besides, high marks would buy his ticket out of Valdosta forever, if his plans worked out. For while he had long wanted to follow in his Uncle John Holliday’s footsteps and become a medical doctor, his after-school job with Dr. Lucian Frink had widened his view of the possibilities before him. Medicine was all well and good, but John Henry found that the dental work performed by Dr. Frink fascinated him even more.
Dr. Frink was the first full-time dentist John Henry had ever known, as most small-town dental work was done by physicians who pulled teeth as part of their surgical services, the way Uncle John had done back in Fayetteville. But as a graduate of the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery and a specialist in dentistry, Dr. Frink’s work went far beyond just pulling teeth. There were decayed cavities to be cleaned out and filled with sheets of gold foil beaten paper-thin. There were crown restorations made of porcelain and gold fused together to look like real tooth enamel. There were artificial teeth carved out of ivory and set into bases of gold or vulcanized rubber. And the instruments the dentist used—forceps, turnkeys, excavators, pluggers, burnishers, burrs—were artists’ tools for a profession that was as much art as science, and one that John Henry’s talented hands longed to try. He had always been good at whittling, he told the dentist, and added without boasting that he was the fastest boy around when it came to draw and fire, with eyes so keen he could spot a rabbit running through the woods a hundred yards off. So when Dr. Frink smiled and said he seemed a natural for dentistry and ought to think about applying to the College of Dental Surgery himself, John Henry promised to give it some thought.
He thought about it, all right, through the long days at school and the even longer nights at home, and by the time graduation came, he had his mind all made up. With letters of recommendation from Dr. Frink and Professor Varnedoe, and with copies of his excellent grades from the Valdosta Institute, John Henry was all ready to apply to the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. The only thing he needed was a promise from his father that Henry would help him pay the cost of the tuition—an exorbitant $100 per session.
It was the money that caught him up. Though Henry’s business ventures were booming, he said flatly that he could not afford to send his son so far away for schooling. The Medical College at Augusta would have been one thing, but paying for the trips to Philadelphia and back and arranging for rooming in that expensive Northern city was quite another.
“Augusta was good enough for your Uncle John,” Henry pronounced. “And it’ll be damn good enough for you, as well.”
Henry sat in the parlor, smoking his after-supper cigar and reading the paper out of Savannah, and being as dogmatic as ever. John Henry had long since stopped expecting Rachel to curb his father’s swearing and smoking, the way Alice Jane had always tried to do. Rachel didn’t seem to mind that the house was filled with blue smoke and blue language whenever Henry was around, though his son didn’t dare emulate him. John Henry was still expected to keep a civil tongue and a cool temper, though cursing seemed more appropriate at the moment.
“The Medical College doesn’t teach restorative dentistry,” John Henry explained, trying for a voice balanced between instruction and supplication. “They teach extraction as part of the surgical curriculum. You can ask Uncle John about it if you don’t believe me.”
“Believin’ you is beside the point,” Henry said, taking a slow draw on his cigar. “Payin’ for your expensive tastes is more like it. If you’ll recall, I already sold off considerable land to pay your way through the Institute. Not to mention the money I paid into that bond to get your friends out of prison. Haven’t seen much gratitude for any of that.”
“I am grateful, Pa. Didn’t I do well, as you told me to? I graduated top of my class, didn’t I?” How Henry could always pull him away from the conversation at hand, make him feel so young and defenseless . . .
“Looks to me like you could learn what you need just by workin’ for Dr. Frink,” Henry went on, “and save me the cost of the schooling entirely. Surely he could train you good enough.”
“He can train me in some things, and he’ll have to, even if—even when,” he corrected himself, “I go off to school. Dr. Frink will be my preceptor; the Dental College requires them. I’ll work with him during the summer, learning clinical skills. But there’s so much more that I need to know—chemistry, anatomy, physiology, metallurgy—it’s a whole new field, Pa, a whole new world . . .”
“You always were a dreamer,” Henry said flatly. “Just like your Ma . . .”
“Ma would have wanted me to go,” he said quickly, taking the rare moment of reflection that Henry had offered. “You know what store she set in education. You know how much she always admired Uncle John . . .”
It was the wrong thing to say, John Henry realized as he watched Henry’s expression change in the blink of a cold blue eye. Henry’s words came out with a hiss and a cloud of smoke. “Yes, she always did admire your Uncle John, more than she should have.”
John Henry felt his face flush. “You forget yourself, Pa,” he said with emotion straining his voice. “My mother’s memory deserves better.” And my mother deserved better than you, he wanted to add, but kept himself from it. Angering his father would only keep him further from his goal and keep him home in Valdosta. If he wanted to leave his father’s home behind, he needed to leave well enough alone. “I can come back every summer to work with Dr. Frink and earn a little money as well. The course work runs September until June, with a break until the fall . . .”
“Not this fall,” Henry said. “This fall your cousin George Henry is gettin’ married, up in Atlanta. I’ve been thinkin’ of takin’ you and Rachel along, makin’ it a family reunion of sorts.”
Henry hadn’t said no, exactly, though he still hadn’t said yes, and John Henry knew that the conversation was over for the time being. If he wanted to go in his father’s good graces and with some of his father’s good money, he’d have to abide by Henry’s suddenly announced decision. No dental school this fall, or next spring either—then he realized what his father had said.
“A family reunion? Who all will be there?”
“Everybody, sounds like. Your Aunt Martha Holliday and Colonel Johnson and their boys, your Aunt Rebecca and that new husband of hers, Willie McCoin, and her boys. Glad Rebecca got herself married again, after your uncle John Jones got killed in the war, or we’d be supportin’ her, too . . .”
“And Uncle Rob?” John Henry asked impatiently. “Is Uncle Rob comin’? Is his family comin’, too?”
“I expect so, seein’ as Jonesboro is just down the railroad from Atlanta. It’s gonna be a big affair, so I hear. George is marryin’ a real society girl, granddaughter of one of the biggest planters up in Tennessee. Old money. Not that old money is worth much anymore . . .”
Henry was about to start on another of his lectures on the economic decline of the South, so John Henry quickly excused himself from the room. If dental school had to wait, at least he had something else to look forward to. For if Uncle Rob were bringing his whole family to the wedding, then surely Cousin Mattie would be there, too. And along with his plans for dental school, John Henry had some even more personal plans, plans that he hoped Mattie would find pleasing.
He lay awake in bed half the night thinking how fine the fall was going to be after all.