VALDOSTA, 1872
HIS FATHER, HOWEVER, HAD OTHER PLANS FOR HIM.
“I hope you’ve had your fill of big-city life,” Henry Holliday said over supper on John Henry’s first night home. “Time you got back down to the business of things, started pullin’ your weight around here. Dr. Frink has generously kept a position open for you. You’ll start tomorrow as his assistant until that diploma arrives and he can make you a partner. Rachel, pass the greens.”
And that was the end of the conversation, if it could be called that. Henry didn’t say another word and Rachel sat silent as well, and the only sound at the table was the clatter of china and silver as the plates went around and were instantly refilled.
It was all he could do to sit through the rest of supper without shouting out his feelings. He wasn’t the same boy who’d left home two years before, hot-headed and anxious to find something he couldn’t name, nor was he a struggling dental student dependent on his father’s continued good will. He was a man now, well-educated and well-traveled, and he knew what he wanted: freedom and space and some say-so in his own life. And he didn’t want to go into partnership with Dr. Frink.
But until he came into his inheritance, arguing with his father wouldn’t do any good. So he kept his troubles to himself, then escaped to the quiet refuge of the front porch as soon as the last plates were passed and cleared away. And as he had been the year before, he was struck again by how empty the country nights were. There was no noise of horse-drawn cars on cobbled streets, no raucous piano music coming out of corner saloons or street vendors hawking their wares in a crowded market place. Looking across the yard toward dusty Savannah Avenue, he could hear nothing but the chirping of katydids in the trees and the stifled beating of his own restless heart.
The creak of the door opening and closing behind him was startling in the silence, but Rachel’s voice was surprisingly soft, as if she didn’t dare disturb the darkness.
“Mind if I stand here awhile?”
“Suit yourself,” he answered, not bothering to glance her way. He didn’t have to look at her to know she was still wearing her white serving apron. She still smelled of cooking grease and cook stove smoke—homely smells that might have made him feel welcome, but only reminded him that he was home where he didn’t want to be.
Rachel stood in silence for a while, then said: “Thea Morgan’s been asking after you.”
“What’s she want? I fixed those bad teeth of hers last summer. She can go see Dr. Frink if she’s got more trouble.”
“Well, I don’t ‘spect it’s tooth trouble she’s got. More like a sweet tooth, I reckon. Looks to me like she’s sweet on you, John Henry. Been that way, so I hear, ever since you sparked her last summer.”
“Sparked her!” he said with a laugh. “I never sparked Thea Morgan! All I did was kiss her a little. And it wasn’t even all that much of a kiss, as I recall.”
“It don’t take much of a kiss to get folks talkin’. But it’s good talk, mostly. The Morgans are well-thought of around here. And your Pa thinks it’s a good match. He’s been talkin’ it over with Mrs. Morgan . . .”
“I am not gonna marry Thea Morgan!” he exclaimed, loud enough for all of Savannah Avenue to hear.
“I’m not sayin’ you are,” Rachel replied calmly, “but it wouldn’t do you no harm to go on up and pay her a visit. Folks’ll be expectin’ the Major’s son to make a showin’, anyhow. He’s been tellin’ everybody how you’re comin’ home and goin’ in with Dr. Frink . . .”
“Well, I’m not goin’ in with Dr. Frink,” John Henry said hotly, “so he can stop tellin’ the whole town that I am. And I’ve got better plans for myself than Thea Morgan! I’m aimin’ to marry my cousin Mattie . . .”
He hadn’t planned on saying all that, of course. But Rachel had got him so riled that it just seemed to come out on its own. And once out, there was no taking it back.
“Oh, John Henry!” she said in a hushed voice, “you mustn’t even think such things! Why, your Pa’d never let you marry that cousin of yours, if you was to ask the rest of your life. He don’t approve of in-marryin’. Says it’s bad for the bloodlines, like when cows breed too long in the same lot.”
If Rachel had been a man he would have hauled back and hit her. How dare she compare the sweet love he shared with Mattie to something as base as animal husbandry? But it wasn’t her comparison, after all, but Henry’s. So he kept his temper under control and his hands clenched tight against his sides.
“I will pretend you didn’t say that, Rachel.”
“Pretendin’ don’t make it so,” she said, undaunted by his cool reply. “That’s the way he thinks, and you ain’t changin’ it. So you’d best start lookin’ around elsewhere for a wife. If Thea Morgan don’t please you, there’s other girls around town.”
“I told you, I am not goin’ in with Dr. Frink. And I am not stayin’ here in this town, either. As soon as I come into my inheritance I’ll be leavin’ here for good and goin’ to Atlanta.”
She looked at him quizzically. “And how’s your inheritance gonna make you free as a bird?”
“Why, I reckon I’ll use what’s in the bank to pay my way, set up my own dental practice.” It sounded perfectly reasonable, but Rachel’s laughing reply was disconcerting.
“What’s left in the bank won’t pay your way out to Cat Creek! Don’t you know your Pa had to use that money up sending you to dental school?”
“What are you talkin’ about? That was my money, from my mother . . .”
“And you got it, one way or another. Your Pa was trustee. The bank didn’t fuss with him over it. ‘Course there’s still the land left, whatever good that’ll do you. You don’t seem to like farmin’ much. And you know those McKey relatives of yours won’t ever let you sell it off. So looks to me like you’re stuck right here, inheritance or no. ‘Cause your Pa’s only payin’ for you if you stay put. If you leave here, he won’t give you nothin’, that’s what he says. And you know he means what he says.”
He had never liked Rachel less than he did at that moment, though she wasn’t to blame for any of it. But after all his worries about getting out of St. Louis before Hyram Neil found him, it was maddening to find that his inheritance had turned out to be nothing but a mess of potage after all.
There was little choice but to do what his father had determined. Henry had things all arranged with Dr. Frink and had even paid money to have a second dental chair brought in and a second cuspidor installed in the dentist’s Patterson Street office. Under other circumstances, John Henry should have been grateful—having a partnership ready-made was a blessing for a new dentist just starting out. Instead, all he felt was trapped and angry.
Valdosta had never seemed more provincial than it did that summer. Even the people seemed provincial, though they’d all come from somewhere else originally and should have been more interested in things outside their own little county. But news from the outside barely caused a ripple, even when it was something as thrilling as a photographic wonder reported in the Savannah Daily News.
“Would you look at that,” John Henry said, as the headline grabbed his attention away from the rest of the mail. “A movin’ picture!”
“What’s that?” the postmaster asked, reading over his shoulder.
“It says right here: “The president of the Central Pacific Railroad, Mr. Leland Stanford, has asked a photographer to prove that all four feet of a running horse are off the ground at the same time at some point in the animal’s stride. The photographer, Englishman Edward Muybridge, has done so by taking a sequence of photographs showing a horse running. When viewed in rapid succession, the photographs show the horse’s motion, and prove Mr. Stanford’s claim. Science once again amazes.”
“I don’t see what’s so amazin’ about a horse runnin’ on four legs,” the postmaster commented. “Seems like the natural way.”
“It’s not the runnin’,” John Henry tried to explain. “It’s the horse havin’ all four feet off the ground at once, flyin’ more than runnin’. And more than that, this man’s got photographs that show it happenin’—a picture that moves. I reckon I’d like to see that!”
“I’d rather see that horse that can fly,” the postmaster said, missing the point entirely, and proving once again that Valdosta was a small world unto itself. But to John Henry, the story only reminded him of the exciting world beyond Lowndes County. In Valdosta there wasn’t any kind of photographer at all, especially not one who could make moving pictures.
“You got a letter here,” the postmaster said, interrupting his reading.
“I do?” he asked, putting the paper down. “From Jonesboro?” He’d been waiting a week or more for a letter from Mattie after writing her of his return to Georgia. But so far, no letter had arrived, and he was beginning to wonder if she were ill. Surely, there could be no other reason for her lack of correspondence.
“Not Jonesboro,” the postmaster replied, handing him the ivory envelope. “Another one of them letters from St. Louis, looks like. Been forwarded here by a A. J. Fuches. Looks like it’s from that lady again, judgin’ by the handwritin’.” He smiled knowingly as he handed the letter across the counter to John Henry. “Looks like you got yourself a lady friend out west.”
John Henry made no comment as he reached for the letter. It was just another in an embarrassing barrage of correspondence from Kate Fisher. She’d written him a half-dozen times already, the letters arriving almost as soon as he got back to Valdosta. Every letter was the same, her words filled with angry emotion. How could he have left her without even saying goodbye? Hadn’t their time together meant anything to him? Surely, he must have cared for her, the way he led her on . . .
He never answered the letters. Writing back would have meant joining in her emotion, and he had no intention of ever going that way again. And though he had indeed had some feeling for her—how could he not, with all her fire and passion?—the whole affair had left him with a bad taste in his mouth. When he thought of Kate Fisher, he remembered how courting her had almost lost him whatever was left of his inheritance. So the letters from Kate came and were read, and then burned in the fireplace.
But he couldn’t burn the memory of her. And though the memory of their time together was distasteful to him, it also seemed to symbolize the freedom he had lost. He’d been a grown man in Philadelphia and even more so in St. Louis. Here in Valdosta he felt like a child once more, Henry Holliday’s boy come home again to stay.
When Mattie’s letters finally arrived, they only made matters worse. The reason her correspondence had been delayed, she explained, was that she was no longer living in Jonesboro, having moved up to Atlanta where she was living in their Uncle John’s home and working as a teacher at a private school. The move had been necessitated by her father’s continued ill-health, as he’d left his clerking position at Tidwell and Holliday and had gone back home to recuperate. So the responsibility of supporting the family fell to Mattie as the oldest child. But she’d been fortunate in being offered a good position in Atlanta where schoolteachers were paid more than at the High School back home in Jonesboro. She’d even be able to keep working when the school year ended in June, as many of her students’ parents had asked her to stay on as a summer tutor.
Her letter would have seemed like good news, if only John Henry had been free to move to Atlanta himself. But trapped as he was in Valdosta, her letter only made him feel all the more restless. And it didn’t ease his mind any when she went on and on about how kind Uncle John’s family had been in helping her get settled there—especially dear Cousin Robert. For it was Robert who had first suggested that she move to Atlanta, and Robert who had arranged for the teaching positions. Why, without Robert, she wrote, she wouldn’t have known what to do with herself in Atlanta. The way she talked about him, Robert was a regular knight-in-shining armor, and John Henry began to wonder if Cousin Robert was being more than just accommodating. What if Robert had feelings for Mattie, too, and she were beginning to feel the same for him? But as long as John Henry was stuck at home, there was nothing he could do but worry about it.
He had another worry right there at home as people were beginning to talk about all the mail he received—not the few letters from his cousin, but the undiminished flood of correspondence from the lady in St. Louis. Word was beginning to go around town that he did indeed have a lady friend out west—talk that he didn’t want getting back to Mattie somehow. Spending time with a woman like Kate Fisher while on a visit to St. Louis was one thing. Bringing the story of the scandalous actress back to conservative Georgia was another entirely. So to throw off the speculation, he decided to follow Rachel’s advice, after all, and stop by the Morgans’ home to pay a visit on his old school-friend, Thea.
But word traveled faster than thought, it seemed, and by the time he arrived, hat in hand and hair neatly pomaded into place, the whole Morgan family was standing on the front porch waiting for him. There were a few neighbors outside as well, as though the whole end of Troupe Street had heard that a circus was coming, and had stepped outside so as not to miss the parade. That was life in Valdosta, he thought irritably as he opened the gate and walked toward the waiting family—everybody knew everybody else’s business, so nothing was ever a surprise.
But Thea did seem surprised, or the blush of her cheeks made her seem that way, anyhow.
“’Afternoon, Mrs. Morgan,” John Henry said, nodding to Thea’s mother.
“’Afternoon, John Henry,” the widow replied. Though she was still in mourning, her black widow’s weeds had been traded for less dour purple and gray. Thea, he noticed, was out of mourning entirely, and wearing a pink dress that almost matched the color of the blush in her cheeks. Unfortunately, the pretty dress didn’t disguise the fact that she was still as thin and pale-eyed as ever. And for a fleeting moment he had a memory of Kate Fisher, and how she’d filled every thread of the wine-satin gown she’d worn at the Planter’s Hotel . . .
“And how are your folks?” Mrs. Morgan asked, as though she didn’t see or hear of them every day.
“Just fine, Ma’am,” he replied. But though local etiquette required that he say something more, commenting perhaps on his father’s business or his stepmother’s garden, he let his comments end there. He had no interest in discussing his father or Rachel, or in satisfying Mrs. Morgan’s curiosity. He’d only come up here, after all, to calm the talk around town.
“Well then,” Mrs. Morgan said, as though they were finishing a conversation that had never really begun, “I’ll be going in now. Thea, you stay out here and entertain Dr. Holliday.” And with that she turned back into the house, the rest of the family following obediently.
“Yes, Mother,” Thea said, the blush rising even higher in her cheeks.
John Henry gave a quick bow as the older woman departed, then turned a bland smile to her daughter. “You’re lookin’ well, Thea.”
“Why, thank you,” she said, blushing again as though he’d made more than the prescribed polite remark. “You’re lookin’ well, too, John Henry.”
Her reply didn’t leave any room for further conversation, and for a few moments they stood together silently.
“Looks like it’s gonna be a rainy summer,” he said at last, nodding toward the horizon where the hazy sky was turning dark with clouds.
“Yes, I reckon it does,” she replied. “Be good for the crops, though.”
And with that the conversation ceased again, and he had to think hard to find something more to say.
“Do you see any of our old school friends much?” he asked, though he already knew the answer. Albert Pendleton was gone off to Augusta to continue his education. Constantia Bessant was married already, but not to Sam Griffin who had been so sweet on her. Constantia had married a newcomer by the last name of Crewe, and was already mother to a baby boy. And Sam himself, John Henry’s pal from those younger days, had gone off to Charleston and never written home. The other boys, the Vigilantes, had scattered to the winds after their release from the military prison in Savannah. It was good that John Henry already knew all that, because Thea, with her timid voice, gave him precious little news.
“No, I don’t see much of anyone. Mother keeps me busy here at home, most days.” And again the conversation ended, as she looked up at him with adoring, expectant eyes as though waiting for him to say something momentous.
“So how are those teeth doin’?” he asked at last, the only important thing he could think to say. “Any trouble since I filled them?”
And as if embarrassed by the mention of the dental work, she put her hand to her face and said in an even quieter voice.
“No,” she said. “They’re just fine now, thank you.”
And the conversation died again and they stood in uncomfortable silence. For a girl who was supposedly sweet on him, Thea had mighty little to say to him. And again, he had a flash of memory: Kate laughing and taunting him with her worldly conversation. Then another memory flooded past thoughts of Kate—Mattie, brown-eyes staring deep into his, soft words soothing his restless soul . . .
He looked down at Thea Morgan and couldn’t remember for the life of him why he’d bothered to walk all the way out there to see her. Sweet on him or not, she was still as uninteresting to him as she’d been back in school. At least then she’d held the fleeting promise of a first kiss. Once that was accomplished, he’d lost any more interest.
“Well, I reckon I’ll be goin’ now,” he said abruptly. “Give my regards to your family.”
Thea looked flustered and glanced toward the front door as if someone might be listening to her from there. “Wouldn’t you like to stay to supper?” she asked. “I’m sure Mother wouldn’t mind . . .”
“Not today,” he said, putting on his hat and heading for the gate.
“Then maybe some other time?” she asked hopefully.
He stopped for a moment and looked back at her, all dressed up to wait for his visit, her blushing face showing how happy she was to have him there. There was something pathetic about how a woman could be so set on a man who returned as little interest as he did.
“Sure, maybe some other time,” he replied, making the blush spread all the way into her pale hair.
His mother would have been ashamed at how easily he lied.
It had been too long since he’d been to see her, since before he’d left for dental school, but visiting her was always too painful. The stillness of her resting place and the quiet shadows of the overhanging trees only reminded him of how empty his life was without her. And even now, nearly six years since her passing, there was still a hole in his heart that had never seemed to mend. Yet suddenly he was hungry to see her gravesite again, to be close somehow to the mother he had lost.
Sunset Hill Cemetery had hardly any hill to it at all, as Valdosta was built on the sandy flatlands between two rivers: Alapaha River to the east, Withlacoochee River to the west, and nothing but piney woods in between. Still, the name of the cemetery was only partly figurative. While sunset seemed an appropriate name for a place where the light of mortality passed into the darkness of death, the mounds of fresh made graves did give a hilly aspect to the burying ground. One day, perhaps, the mounds would be covered by grass and ringed with flower bushes and greenery. But for now, Sunset Hill was just a dirt graveyard, one plot after another holding the remains of the first settlers of Valdosta.
His mother’s grave was near the center of the cemetery, and as he came close upon it, his mouth opened in astonishment. He’d been expecting the site to be unkempt, forgotten as his mother was seemingly forgotten by everyone but her still-grieving son. But instead of mounded dirt or scattered rocks as covered the other graves, Alice Jane’s grave was covered with flowers. Someone had made the plot into a flower garden, ringed with smooth river stones, and marked with a freshly-cleaned headstone and footstone.
“Well, I’ll be . . .” he said aloud, as if anyone there could hear him.
He stood staring in amazement a moment, then took off his hat and bent to his knees at the foot of the grave.
“Ma . . .” he said, “I’ve been gone away awhile . . .”
She knew that, of course, looking down on him from her certain place in heaven. For if anyone deserved a seat with the angels, keeping watch over the world below, his mother surely did. In his memory of her she’d always been an angel, too ill for most of his life to reprimand or raise a harsh voice. Most of their quiet conversations had centered around God and his mysterious ways. Most of their time together had been spent in study of the holy word or prayers at her bedside. And though those times had seemed constraining to him as a child, they seemed now like sacred hours spent in the company of one too good for the earth.
“Too good for my father,” he said, speaking out loud again. “Oh, Ma! If you only knew!”
And though, of course, she had to know that her beloved husband had brushed her memory aside to marry his young mistress, John Henry couldn’t bring himself to say the words.
“Well, she’s nothin’ like you, anyhow, nothin’ at all! And she won’t ever take your place, not with me. I’ll always be your boy, Ma. I’ll always be Alice Jane McKey’s son . . .”
And that was when he realized that her tombstone was missing something elemental: her maiden name had not been carved into the stone. The inscription read only: Alice Jane Holliday ~ September 16, 1866. And to his mind, that seemed a disloyalty almost as great as Henry’s hasty marriage to Rachel Martin. For Alice Jane had always been proud of her heritage, eldest daughter of William Land McKey, the master of Indian Creek Plantation. It was her McKey heritage, after all, that made John Henry as much of an aristocrat as upcountry Georgia could claim. It was her McKey inheritance, brought to her marriage as dowry, that had made Henry Holliday a landed gentleman. And now her McKey name was as good as gone.
“Except for Uncle Tom,” John Henry said aloud, “and Uncle James, and Uncle Will . . .”
And all at once he knew what he would do. South of Valdosta, just over the Florida line in Hamilton Country, was his McKey uncles’ place, Banner Plantation. He’d only been there once, on a brief visit after his mother’s death, but suddenly he had a yearning to be there again. Maybe there, in the midst of his mother’s people, he’d feel her close again. Maybe there he’d find some peace from the pain of living in Rachel and Henry Holliday’s house.
He stood and brushed the cemetery dirt from his trousers, still holding his hat in his hand. “I’m goin’ to see your kin, Ma. I’m goin to see the folks who still love you like I do.” He didn’t stop to wonder who had planted all those flowers on her grave.
But going wasn’t as easy as simply deciding to go. His weekdays were obligated to Dr. Frink; his weekends were obligated to helping out with his father’s businesses. Henry still had the profitable carriage and buggy business in town, and had brought in a stock of furniture to be sold at Zeigler’s Hall as well, and both shops needed tending on Saturdays when the county folk came into Valdosta to do their shopping. Then on Sundays, John Henry was expected to help out with the nursery farm his father had started on the family land out at Cat Creek. Where Henry had failed as a cotton planter, he was having some success as a horticulturist and seller of Scuppernong grape rootlets, pecan tree seedlings, and McCartney rose cuttings.
But even with all the work that needed to be done on the farm, it was still only proper that John Henry be excused to pay a call on his mother’s folks after having been gone away so long. And because it was the proper thing to do, Henry let him have a few days off to make the visit. So on a hot June morning, John Henry saddled one of his father’s horses and rode off for the forty-mile journey into Hamilton County, Florida. There was no train to take—that part of the country was still so remote, even the rails of the Valdosta-Florida Line ran away from it. But John Henry didn’t mind the ride. He’d walk all the way to Banner Plantation, if he had to, just to get out of Valdosta.
There wasn’t much of anything to mark the change from south Georgia to north Florida. It was all pretty much the same terrain: sandy soil and scraggly piney woods, brackish ponds, palmettos with their trunks bare to a crown of fan shaped leaves. And off to the east, the Suwannee River flowing slowly through the tangles of the Okefenokee Swamp. Nor were there any real towns along the way where he could stop for some refreshment in the summer heat. Even Belleville, the closest post office to the McKey place, was hardly more than a mail drop, with no hotel or general store where he could buy a drink. So by the time he found his way to Banner Plantation, he was breathless from the heat and drenched with sweat right through his cotton shirt and woolen riding vest.
“You look like you’ve been through it, boy,” Tom McKey said as he opened his front door to find his nephew standing on the doorstep. “Rough ride down from Valdosta?”
“Rough enough. I feel like I’ve been eatin’ bugs all the way. The gnats are bad this time of year.”
“The gnats are always bad down here. You get used to ridin’ with your mouth closed. Good to have you. Plan on stayin’ long?”
“Only a couple of days. I just needed some time away . . .”
Tom nodded as if he understood without hearing any more. John Henry was family, after all. It was Southern tradition that he was free to visit whenever he liked and stay as long as he liked with few questions asked.
“Well, this place is about as away as you can get,” Tom said. “I’m surprised you found us, all alone.”
“I asked around,” John Henry said as he led his horse to the barn out back of the main house—calling it a plantation house would have been too grand. Even with nine hundred acres in cultivation, Banner Plantation was still just a struggling farm, with a farm house and outhouse the only buildings between the dirt road and the barn. But it looked like paradise to John Henry, since there would be a bed and a washbasin inside and a pitcher of cool water from the well.
“So where is everybody?” John Henry said, coming into the house and seeing no sign of Tom’s brother Will, who was a partner in the farm, or his unmarried sisters who lived there as well.
“Will’s taken the girls off to visit with your Uncle James and Lorena. Won’t be back ‘till Sunday, so I guess it’s just you and me this trip. Hope you don’t mind bein’ entertained by a bachelor.”
“I don’t mind,” John Henry said. “You know you were always my favorite McKey uncle, anyhow.”
Tom smiled back at him, and John Henry was struck as always by how much Tom favored the McKeys—and Alice Jane in particular. For though he had his own bright red hair and fair skin, he had his older sister’s deep blue eyes, her gentle smile. John Henry was right to have come here looking for some bit of his mother remaining. And there was more than just the family resemblance; Tom was a great collector of photographs, and had a wall full of them. There, gazing out from silvery frames, were Tom’s brothers and sisters: Martha, Margaret, Helena, Ella, and Eunice, Alice Jane and Henry on their wedding day, James Taylor and William Harrison in their Confederate uniforms—and Jonathan Leval, the oldest son who’d gone west to Texas years before. John Henry stared at the photograph of that handsome young man and studied the face, familiar McKey features and a stranger’s eyes.
“I never knew Uncle Jonathan much,” he said to Tom. “What was he like?”
“Jonathan? I guess you could say he was adventurous, always lookin’ for the next big dream to follow. He heard about all that land goin’ for nothin’ out in the Republic of Texas and there was no keepin’ him home. He headed for that Brazos River country and never looked back. Last time we heard from him, he was growin’ cotton on a big spread in Washington County, makin’ a fortune, I reckon. ‘Course the way those Texans talk, everybody out there is livin’ in high cotton, gettin’ rich.”
“Texas sure sounds good to me right now,” John Henry said heavily, “just pack my bags and head on west as far as I can go . . .” Then a sudden thought came to him. “Hey Tom, let’s go west! Just you and me! Have us some adventures, maybe go all the way to that gold country in California! Just think of it: the whole wide open west just waitin’ for us, and all we have to do is get on a train and keep on goin’! How does that sound to you?”
Tom laughed. “Sounds like a nice dream, John Henry. But I’ve had enough adventures in my life already, what with the War and all. Besides, I’ve got other plans.” And surprisingly, Tom looked suddenly bashful. “I’ve made a proposal and been accepted. It’s someone you might know, a piano student of your mother’s, Miss Sadie Allen.”
John Henry let out a whistle. “Sadie Allen! Why, I went to school with her brothers. Isn’t she kind of young for you?”
“I’m not so old, John Henry. Only nine years older than you. But the wedding won’t be for a while yet, anyhow. I’ve got the plantation to think about right now. And I’ve got to get a place in Valdosta for us to settle into. Sadie doesn’t want to be this far off from her family. But that’s the nice part about having a young sweetheart—gives me time to get myself all set before I tie the knot. And what about you, John Henry? I always suspected you were sweet on your cousin, Mattie Holliday.”
“I was,” he answered glumly. “Still am, for all the good it will do me. But my Pa’s dead-set against the match, so Rachel says. She claims he doesn’t believe in relations marryin’.”
“That’s funny, comin’ from Henry,” Tom replied. “I hear the Hollidays were mostly inbred from the start. They’ve got cousins married to cousins and uncles married to nieces clear back through the line. You should have a talk with him about it.”
“Talk to my Pa? We don’t have conversations. He just gives orders and expects me to follow, that’s about the size of it. Tell you what: if I had my way, I’d be out on my own and never have to take his orders again.”
“So what’s stoppin’ you?”
“Money mostly. Rachel says that’s what’s keepin’ me in Valdosta. My Pa’s got things all figured out that as long as I stay around, he’ll pay my way. If I leave, he won’t give me a penny. I had planned on goin’ up to Atlanta to open my own practice, but it looks like that won’t be happenin’ now.”
“So what do you need your father’s money for? You’re comin’ up on twenty-one this summer. Soon it’ll be Henry who’ll be askin’ you for a handout.”
“I’m talkin’ about your inheritance, of course. Soon you’ll be a landed gentleman yourself, and near equal to your father.”
“Oh that,” John Henry said heavily. “I reckon there really isn’t all that much inheritance after all.” From what Rachel had said, there was precious little left.
Tom looked at him quizzically. “How much do you know about the inheritance, John Henry?”
He shrugged. “There’s some land, maybe a building somewhere too. My mother tried to tell me about it once, on my birthday. I wasn’t payin’ all that much attention. There was some cash money put aside that I was countin’ on, but I hear it’s gone now . . .”
“The cash is gone, all right,” Tom said. “Your father used it to put you through dental school. But that wasn’t the bulk of it, anyhow. It’s the land that counts. And the Iron Front especially.”
“The Iron what?” John Henry asked, though there was something familiar about the name, something his mother had told him long ago . . .
Tom’s voice changed a little, as though he were about to share something he’d kept close for a long time. “Sit down, John Henry,” he said, and motioned to the dining table, then waited until they were both seated before going on. “Do you remember much of what happened after your mother died, I mean after your father remarried?”
“Some. I remember the talk around town. I tried not to believe it . . .”
“And do you remember the trial?”
“You mean up in Savannah, over the Courthouse trouble?”
“No, not that,” Tom said with a shake of his head. “I mean the trial down here in Lowndes County, over your inheritance.”
John Henry’s mind rushed back to those turbulent days in the aftermath of his mother’s death. He’d kept himself away from home as much as possible, staying out late nights, playing cards and drinking with his Vigilante friends. There was only a vague recollection of his father fuming over some legal matter, but then Henry fumed a lot. He shook his head, “I reckon I wasn’t payin’ much attention to anything but myself back then.”
Tom leaned forward, pulling the oil lamp close until it made a circle of light on the dark wood table.
“There was a court case over Alice Jane’s inheritance. When she died, her share of my father’s estate passed on to Henry, at least the portion that wasn’t left to you. But when Henry married Rachel Martin, my family wanted to get that inheritance back. We’d heard some talk around the town about him and Rachel, and my brothers and I weren’t pleased about havin’ McKey property go to support Henry’s new wife, under the circumstances. The thing finally came to trial at the Courthouse there in Valdosta: McKey versus Holliday. And I’m the one who brought the suit.”
John Henry took a quick breath, stunned. Tom McKey was the most mild-mannered of men. It was hard to picture him fighting any kind of a fight, let alone taking on the hot-tempered Henry Holliday. And with a disheartening realization, John Henry knew that the town talk about his father and Rachel must have been true after all. Tom never would have made a public spectacle of the family if there weren’t something to it.
“The biggest point of contention was a business house back in Griffin, the Iron Front Building on Solomon Street. Our family wanted that building back and Henry wouldn’t agree to give it up, so the judge found a novel solution. He ordered us to cut the building in half, one side for each family.”
“The Wisdom of King Solomon,” John Henry said, remembering the Bible story his mother had recited to him. “Divide the baby in half and see who the real mother is. The judge must have had a sense of humor, seein’ how the building was on Solomon Street.”
Tom nodded. “And that’s just what happened. We built a partition wall right down the middle of the whole thing, one half for McKey, one half for Holliday.”
“Half Holliday, half McKey,” John Henry said, “kind of like me.” Then he remembered something else his mother had said: Good and bad sown together, like the wheat and the tares. Until the harvest, when the reapers come . . .
“So your father deeded over the eastern half of the building to my sisters and me, like the judge ordered. But Henry still has the western half, actin’ as your guardian until you come into your inheritance on your twenty-first birthday. That Iron Front building is your inheritance from your mother, John Henry. It’s full of renters now, shops leasing out space. Your father has been collectin’ rents on it in your name all these years, but now you’ll be turnin’ twenty-one, those rents will be comin’ to you.”
“You mean I’ll be a landlord?” he asked in surprise.
“If you want to keep leasin’ it out. As long as you keep the property in good condition, it’ll keep turnin’ a nice little profit every month. It may not be enough to set you up in your own practice, but it’s an income, anyhow. And it sounds to me like an income is all you need to pay your way out of Valdosta.”
He stayed on in Florida for a few more days, long enough to have a good visit with Tom—and to write a letter to his Uncle John Holliday in Atlanta. Might he beg his Uncle John’s hospitality for an extended visit there? He hoped to settle in Atlanta himself, once he came of legal age, and would need somewhere to stay while he found a partnership arrangement.
Uncle John’s reply arrived soon after John Henry returned to Valdosta. Of course he was welcome to come and stay for as long as he liked at his uncle’s home in Atlanta. The family was looking forward to visiting with him and hearing all about his recent graduation from dental school. But why wait until his twenty-first birthday? Uncle John’s own dentist, Dr. Arthur Ford, was planning to attend a dental convention at the end of July and was looking for someone to attend to his patients while he was gone. And if John Henry did well in that situation, he might be offered something more permanent.
His father thought him foolish for throwing away a perfectly good position with Dr. Frink in hopes of making a place for himself in Atlanta. But he couldn’t very well forbid the trip, what with his brother’s kind invitation and an offer of temporary employment tendered. So Henry gave his grudging approval, along with a warning that Dr. Frink couldn’t keep the place in his practice open forever once John Henry came to his senses and decided to come back home.
But John Henry had no intention of ever coming back to Valdosta, though he didn’t put it quite so bluntly to his father.
“I appreciate all you’ve done for me, Pa. But I reckon it’s time I made my own way in the world. Valdosta may be fine for some folks, but I’ve got bigger plans for myself.”
If Henry had a criticism to offer, he kept it to himself.