ATLANTA, 1872
HE WAS FEARFUL AT FIRST THAT ANNIE MIGHT SHARE HER SUSPICIONS with her cousin, but Mattie never seemed to waver in her affections or doubt John Henry’s affections for her. If anything, she seemed to favor him more than ever, smiling at him across the supper table, laughing at his stories, spending whole evenings willingly listening to him talk about his work at Dr. Ford’s dental office. And when she needed a ride to Mass on Sundays, it was John Henry she wanted to take her there, driving Uncle John’s runabout into town to the Church of the Immaculate Conception.
So when a letter arrived for John Henry inviting him away from Atlanta to pay a visit to his father’s Mexican serving boy, Francisco Hidalgo, he was loathe to go. Surely, the birth of the Hidalgo’s new baby required nothing of him but a congratulatory letter in return, or perhaps a wire. It had been years since he’d seen Francisco, after all, making them barely even acquaintances anymore, though they’d lived in the same household years back. But Francisco’s letter was adamant: Please come to Jenkinsburg as soon as you can. I need to speak to you personally.
Having Mattie say she’d miss him every day while he was gone almost made the trip worthwhile.
He took the train south to Griffin on a bright November morning and hired a horse to take him the ten miles out to Jenkinsburg. The autumn had been unusually cool, the trees turning early from green to yellow and brown, and the ground was covered with a blanket of golden leaves that scattered across the road with every stride of the horse. Overhead, the sky was a brilliant, cloudless, perfect blue.
Jenkinsburg wasn’t much more than a general store and a Baptist Church with a few farms scattered into the surrounding countryside. Francisco’s fields should have been laid fallow by now like his neighbors’ fields were, the neat rows of carrots and beans all harvested, the red dirt planted in a cover crop of winter grass. But as John Henry reined the horse to a stop in front of the place, he saw that there were still too many plants in the ground, the cornstalks dried and bending over, the greens going to flower. He’d heard that Francisco had been ill, and the place showed his lack of care.
“Rueben and Dickens have been tryin’ to keep things up,” Martha Hidalgo explained as she met John Henry at the door and ushered him into the cabin that faced the farmland. “We even kept John and Finney out of school this fall to help, but it’s awful hard to get all the work done. We’ll have to hire a man next year, I fear, and where we’ll get the money, I don’t know.”
“Francisco wrote that he needed me to come right away?” John Henry questioned. Considering Martha’s comments, he was afraid that what Francisco wanted was an extra hand on the farm. He’d left Valdosta to get away from one farm; he wasn’t about to start plowing and planting on another one.
Martha nodded. “We appreciate you comin’ so fast. Francisco’s got it in his head to take care of family business all of the sudden. Guess he’s had too much time to think, bein’ in bed so much this fall. You know how he is, though, always has to be doin’ somethin’.”
“Is he still feelin’ poorly?”
“You don’t know?” Martha said. “It’s the consumption. He’s likely had it for years, so the doctor says.” Then she stooped to a cradle on the brick hearth of the kitchen fire, gently pulling back the blanket to show a sleeping infant. “This is our newest, Exa Elon. Francisco named her after his sister he hasn’t seen since he was orphaned in the Mexican War. But I call her Nita. She’ll be one month tomorrow.”
John Henry bent to look at the child, and without thinking, reached a hand down to touch its honey-colored face. Then the baby opened its eyes and looked up at him, and for a moment he had the eerie feeling that the innocent child was somehow wiser than he was.
Martha took the child from the cradle. “She’ll be wantin’ to nurse, now she’s awake. Why don’t you go on over to the Springs and see Francisco?”
“The Springs?”
“The Indian sulfur springs, out past Jackson. He’s been seein’ Doc Whitehead over there. Rueben drives him over a couple of times a week, so he can do the baths and the water. The Indians used to say the spring water could cure anything. ‘Course, they believed it was healin’ spirits that did it, not the sulfur.” Then she looked down lovingly into her baby’s face. “The Indians wouldn’t let children nearby, for fear of the cryin’ scarin’ the healin’ spirits away. Savage superstition. There’s nothin’ more healin’ than havin’ a new baby around.” Then she looked back up at John Henry, and this time there were tears in her eyes. “Go on over to the Springs and see Francisco. He has somethin’ he needs to talk to you about.”
It was five miles from Jenkinsburg to the county seat of Jackson and another five miles from there to Indian Springs, and although the weather was still lovely for riding, John Henry’s thoughts were no longer on the pleasant Autumn day. Francisco was dying the slow death of consumption and leaving behind eight children and a wife who was already mourning for him. If they were having trouble making ends meet now, things were only going to get harder after he passed on.
Beyond Jackson, the road narrowed and led down into the wooded Ocmulgee River bottoms where the streams the Indians called the Abbothlacoosta and Hopoethlelohola converged from two directions to form Big Sandy Creek and where cold sulfur springs rose up right out of the ground. By the time the half-breed Chief William McIntosh built a hotel there, the Indian Springs were already famous. “The Saratoga of the South,” folks called the place, and visitors came from hundreds of miles around to try the healing Indian waters. But the Indians were gone now, driven out on their Trail of Tears to the Oklahoma Territory, and only McIntosh’s Indian Springs resort remained in what was now a white man’s town.
John Henry found Doc Whitehead’s shingle hanging just past the Wigwam Hotel, and he tied his horse to a rack outside the doctor’s office and pulled on the bell chain. A moment later, the door was opened by a gentleman in dark trousers and shirtsleeves, a stethoscope hung around his neck.
“Dr. Whitehead?” John Henry asked.
“Yes,” the man replied. “Emergency or appointment?”
“Neither,” John Henry replied. “I’m just lookin’ for someone, and hoped you might be able to help me. I believe he’s a patient of yours—Francisco Hidalgo?”
“Hidalgo?” the doctor queried. “You mean E’dalgo? From over near Jenkinsburg?”
So Francisco had changed the spelling of his name for something a little more sophisticated—and a little less Mexican, John Henry mused.
“I reckon that’s him. His wife said he was here at the Springs, takin’ the treatment. Do you know where I might find him?”
“Same place he always goes,” the doctor replied. “He’ll be down at the bath house, soakin’ in the sulfur water.”
“I hear it can cure the consumption,” John Henry said.
“I’ve seen some cures come out of the Springs. Even seen some when the patient was farther gone than Mr. E’dalgo.”
“And what about Francisco?” John Henry asked. “Is the water doin’ him any good?”
Of course it was improper for him to even ask such a question, considering the confidence between doctor and patient. But the grief in Martha Hidalgo’s face that morning made him ask anyway.
“Are you family?” the doctor inquired.
“I reckon you might call us kin.”
“Then you should know that I don’t hold too much hope. Mr. E’dalgo is far along, I’m afraid. Has been for some time. There must have been symptoms for years, of course, but they can be deceiving: the lack of appetite, the loss of weight, the tiredness, the night sweats, the chronic cough. But many illnesses cause the same conditions. It’s only when the lung tissue begins to come up that we know for sure, and then it’s really too far gone. As I said, Mr. E’dalgo is very ill. He’s a good man, a good father. Hard to see his family left alone like that. I’m glad to hear he’s got kin. They’ll be needin’ you.”
John Henry wanted to answer that he was only kin by association and not really responsible for Francisco’s dependent family, but the sympathy in the doctor’s face struck a guilty chord within him. If he wasn’t family to Francisco, who was?
He left the doctor’s office feeling as heavy-hearted as if it were his own life that was ending too soon, instead of that of a Mexican orphan boy who was lucky he’d had any kind of life at all.
The bathhouse stood on the high ground above the rocky shoals of the Big Sandy, close by the Indian Springs. The place was easy to find; you just followed the steam and the stench. If the sulfur water smelled of rotten eggs when it was cold, it smelled even worse when it was pumped from the springs to the bathhouse and heated over the big wood fires. It was no wonder the Indians had thought the Springs to be possessed by spirits—with the steam rising up from the roof of the bath house and the awful smell of the heated sulfur water, there was something almost supernatural about the place.
Francisco was in the bathhouse, as the doctor had said he would be, reclining on a wicker settee and wrapped from head to toe in Turkish towels.
“It’s the treatment,” he whispered hoarsely. “Pull up a chair.”
John Henry took a seat on a wicker stool and pulled off his hat, stunned speechless at the change that had come over Francisco. He was only a shadow of his sturdy brown-skinned former self, a thin cadaver of a man with dark eyes sunk deep into an ashen face. Swathed as he was in toweling, he looked like he was already wrapped for the grave.
“They have me soak in the tubs until I can’t stand the heat,” Francisco said, pausing to catch his breath, “then they wrap me up like this and let me sweat awhile. Supposed to bring out the poisons. Feels like they’re draining the life right out of me.”
John Henry took a moment before replying, unsure of what to say. “I saw your new baby,” he remarked at last.
Francisco managed a weak smile. “Seems strange to have life coming and going all at once, doesn’t it? But life is milagro,” he said, lapsing into the Spanish he’d spoken as a boy.
“A miracle?” John Henry said, translating without thinking. He’d learned a little Spanish from Francisco when he was growing up, and some of it still came back to him.
“Who knows? Maybe I will live long enough to see this new one grow old,” Francisco said, coughing weakly as he shifted on his settee, trying to sit up. “It’s about the baby that I needed to talk to you—the baby and the other children, as well.” His words came slowly, as he paused to take careful breaths. “Cisco Junior is seventeen now, near a man. But the others—Rueben, Dicken, John, Finney. They need guidance still. They need a strong hand. Maggie is just a toddler. And the baby . . .”
“Martha seems like a good mother,” John Henry said, hoping the reminder would somehow soothe Francisco’s worries. But his words seemed to have the opposite effect, making Francisco speak too quickly again.
“Martha has too much on her. I should be home seeing to the farm instead of here.” He coughed again, then fell back against the settee, moaning.
“Shall I get the attendant?” John Henry asked, but Francisco shook his head and went on.
“No, it’s you I need right now,” he said.
“But what can I do? I’m no medical doctor.”
“Not for me,” Francisco said painfully, “for them. For the children. For Martha. I need you to act as guardian for me, as your father would if he were closer. But Valdosta’s too far away, should they need something. You are just up in Atlanta . . .”
“But I’m too young to be a guardian!” John Henry protested. “I’ve just turned twenty-one myself!”
“And your father wasn’t much older when he took me out of Mexico. But he raised me anyway, as best a bachelor could do. Of all the things he did in that War, that was the bravest.”
“Brave?” John Henry asked. “What was so brave about that?”
He stopped himself before saying anymore, though the words were waiting to be said: what was so brave about Henry Holliday bringing an orphan boy back from the War? He was used to having slaves take care of him, after all. Now he had a Mexican orphan boy as a valet. There wasn’t all that much difference. And yearn as Francisco might to be a member of the Holliday family, he’d never been more than household help. But John Henry couldn’t say all that, not now when Francisco was so sick.
“There wasn’t anything brave about takin’ you in, Francisco,” he said carefully. “You worked plenty hard for your keep. My father was lucky he found you. But I still wouldn’t be all that good as a guardian. Atlanta’s a half-day’s train ride away, and I have my work at Dr. Ford’s office . . .”
But his easy words froze when Francisco reached out one thin, cold hand to his, like a touch from the grave.
“Hermano. . .” he said, the Spanish word coming out in a broken whisper.
“What?”
“Hermano,” Francisco said again. “I know I’m not blood relation to you, but you’re the closest thing I have to a brother, John Henry. And as my brother, I beg of you, please don’t let my children be orphaned as I once was . . .”
There was such pleading in his whispered words that John Henry could not deny them.
“So what do you want me to do?” he said heavily.
“Watch over my family for me when I die, as your father would have if he were here. Take care of them as he once took care of me . . .”
“But Martha must have kin. Surely there’s some real family close by?”
It was a reasonable enough question, but somehow it brought a new look of pain to Francisco’s face, and John Henry regretted the words.
“She has family,” Francisco replied heavily, “but you are all I have close. You are all I have to stand in stead for their father . . .”
“All right,” John Henry said with quiet resignation. “All right.” Francisco lay back on the settee, a faint smile on his pale lips. “De tal palo, tal astilla,” he said, lapsing into Spanish. “Like father, like son . . .”
Francisco’s gratitude did nothing to lighten the weight on John Henry’s heart, for the last thing he wanted to be was anything like his father. He was enough like his father, however, to take care of business matters. So before his return to Atlanta, he stopped by the Spalding County Courthouse in Griffin to record the deed to his newly inherited property, still fearful that somehow Hyram Neil had beat him to it.
The Courthouse stood across Broad Street from the railroad tracks, a solid building of red brick and white arched windows with iron-barred jail cells. John Henry remembered it well from his childhood days, when the Courthouse had seemed to him like a great red palace where all the important men of Griffin gathered: the cotton planters and cotton merchants, the slave brokers and mill owners, the bankers and railroad stockholders. And standing tall in the midst of them, his father was one of the most important men of all. Henry Holliday had been Clerk of the Spalding County Court back then, which gave him inside knowledge of all that was going on. He knew who was buying and selling property and for what profit, who was losing property to foreclosure, who might be willing to sell at a loss to avoid the embarrassment of a sheriff ’s sale. The great men curried his favor in hopes of gaining profitable information, and Henry used the favor to make connections that might one day win him real political office.
Of course, all that was before the War, and now Henry Holliday’s political aspirations were confined to the smaller world of Valdosta. But his legacy, it seemed, had remained in Griffin.
“Holliday?” the court clerk said, as John Henry handed him a copy of the deed paperwork, his father’s birthday gift to him that had come folded inside a letter reminding him of his duties as a guest in his Uncle John’s home.
“That’s right. John Henry Holliday.”
“Any relation to Henry Holliday?” the court clerk asked, peering at him through wire-rimmed glasses.
“He’s my father.”
The man looked him up and down and shook his head. “I don’t recall Henry Holliday having a boy as big as you.”
“I’ve grown now, Sir,” he replied. “I’ve come of age.”
“I reckon. I served with Henry Holliday in the War with Mexico, you know—Fannin’s Avengers. Fought under Winfield Scott after he took over from Zach Taylor. Too bad Scott went Yankee. He was a helluva commander.”
John Henry had heard it all before, a hundred times at least.
“Will this copyin’ take long?” he asked, as the clerk went about his slow labor of transcribing each long legal sentence into the heavy deed book.
“Only if you want it done right,” the man replied without looking up. “You don’t want to have me make a mistake and find yourself in a legal battle someday. That’s what started that War with Mexico, you know, a dispute over who owned what. I try to keep us peaceful here in Spalding County by recordin’ everything proper. Your father ever tell you about Veracruz? That was some fight, the last one for the Avengers before we got mustered out. We were twelve-month recruits, started up right after the War got going. But we only went as far as Jalapa with Scott before they sent us back to Veracruz to take ship to New Orleans. That’s where Henry found the boy, as I recall.”
“The boy?” John Henry asked. “What boy did he find in New Orleans?”
“Not there. Back in Veracruz, while we were waitin’ on the ship. His folks had been killed in the siege the spring before. He must have been livin’ alone there all that time, ‘till Henry found him. Warn’t more than a child, livin’ in the rubble of our bombardment from the spring. We had artillery on that city for near three weeks, land and navy both. There wasn’t much left to live in, but he’d lived somehow. Henry found him hidin’ in the horse barn behind a church, sleepin’ in the hayloft. Like the baby Jesus, some of the men said. But other’n said, ‘Shoot the dirty little Mexican.’ But Henry said no. He was Second Lieutenant, so his word meant somethin’. He kept the boy with him, in case the men got it in their heads to do some shootin’, anyhow. Don’t think he really meant to take the boy home, just keep him from gettin’ killed. It was the boy’s idea to go along.”
John Henry’s disinterest in hearing the man’s ramblings had changed to fascination. His father had never told the whole story of how he came to be guardian for a Mexican orphan boy, and Francisco had always spoken as if his life had begun on American soil. He’d even adopted the birthdate of July 4th in honor of his new country.
“What do you mean, it was the boy’s idea?” John Henry asked, urging the man on.
“Well, you couldn’t blame him for wantin’ to go,” the man said. “Henry was good to him, shared his rations, found him somethin’ decent to wear. The boy was so grateful, he’d do anything for Henry, fetch his drinks, carry his bags . . .”
“Be his valet,” John Henry said, and the man nodded.
“I reckon you could say that. Henry never asked him, but the boy did it anyhow. I figure he was tryin’ to make himself so useful that Henry couldn’t do without him. Anyhow, time came for us to board ship for New Orleans, and Henry figured to say goodbye to the boy there at the dock, but he couldn’t find him anywhere. ‘Too bad,’ was all he said about missin’ that goodbye, ‘he was a good boy.’ I was surprised he didn’t show more feelin’ about it, close as the two of them had got to be, but I guess that wasn’t the Lieutenant’s way. Cool, folks called him, and I reckon he was. Still, that boy had been mighty attached to him . . .”
“So what happened?” John Henry asked, caught up by the story, though of course he knew how the thing ended. Francisco came to Georgia and Henry kept him on as his serving boy.
“The boy stowed away,” the clerk replied. “That’s why we didn’t see him at the dock. He knew Henry wouldn’t take him home, so he hid himself away with the horses and the munitions, and didn’t come out ‘til we docked at New Orleans. Closest thing I ever saw to a smile on Henry Holliday’s face, I saw that day. We were off the ship and headin’ to the muster office when along comes the little Mexican. ‘Carry your bags, Señor?’ he says to Henry, about all the English he knew. And Henry just nodded to him. Not a word, only a nod, but almost a smile at the same time. I wasn’t surprised when he brought the boy home after that. Francisco was his name, as I recall. He lived with Henry a few years, then he went to work and moved on. Had a barbershop here in Griffin for a while. Haven’t heard much of him lately. Do you know how’s he’s doing?”
“He’s dyin’,” John Henry said. “He took the consumption.”
“Now that’s a shame,” the clerk replied. “Well, your deed’s all copied and legal. You can pay the cashier for the registration.”
His business taken care of, John Henry paid the registration fee and left the courthouse, his mind filled with thoughts of a stowaway boy and the American Lieutenant who had taken him home.
The Iron Front was an impressive piece of property, two-stories tall and made entirely of red brick, with long twelve-paned windows facing the street and letting the morning sun stream into the shops inside. On John Henry’s western side of the building, the liquor and tobacco store of N.G. Phillips occupied the entire downstairs space, and the proprietor looked up with a smile when a well-dressed young gentleman came into his shop setting the door bells jangling.
“Afternoon, Sir!” Phillips said in greeting. “What can I do for you?” He seemed the jovial sort one often found in establishments that sold liquor, and as he leaned forward on the counter, his paunch strained at the buttons of his plaid waistcoat. “Can I interest you in some of my fine stock today? Old corn whiskey, old Holland gin? Apple brandy, Virginia leaf tobacco?”
John Henry straightened his lapels and said with a purposely superior tone: “I am Dr. John H. Holliday. I am here to meet my tenants.”
“Is that a fact? Well, you look mighty young for a landlord.”
John Henry tried to ignore the insult and glanced around as if he really were inspecting the place. “This is a sturdy building,” he said approvingly, “good high ceilings.” Though he didn’t really know all that much about architecture, he did like the look of the place. The ceiling was covered with embossed tin panels and edged all around with a heavy molding of the same design. One sidewall was brick, but the other was a curious combination of fluted beams and covered arches—likely the court-ordered partition wall between his half and the McKey’s side of the building.
“It’s a real nice place,” Phillips agreed. “I’d be interested in expanding into the other rooms, if you’re lookin’ to sell the place.”
“I appreciate your interest, Mr. Phillips, but the truth is, I only own half the building. My Uncle Tom McKey owns the other half.”
“I know, I know, already got in touch with him about it, and he’s not ready to sell just yet. But I’m willin’ to buy one half at a time. I’d be willin’ to pay good money for it—cash money.”
Though John Henry had no intention of selling his inheritance before he’d even taken possession of it, he was interested in knowing just what it might be worth. “What kind of money are you talkin’ about?”
Phillips smiled and cleared his throat, obviously sure he had an impressive offer. “Eighteen-hundred dollars, Dr. Holliday. Top dollar for the place!”
John Henry had to stifle his surprise. Eighteen-hundred dollars! That was more money than he’d ever seen at one time. It was no wonder his mother had considered the Iron Front the true prize of his inheritance.
“Like I said, Dr. Holliday, top dollar. So what do you say? Are you interested?”
“I’d be lyin’ if I said I wasn’t impressed by your proposition, Mr. Phillips. That’s good money all right. And I can’t say I’m not tempted. But I’m not in the market to sell.”
Phillips sighed. “Well, you let me know if you ever change your mind.”
“I will certainly do that.” He eyed the shelves lined with bottles, amber and brown and full of choice liquors. “And I believe I will have somethin’ to drink, after all. A bottle of Tennessee whiskey, if you have it.”
“My pleasure,” Phillips said with a smile, “and for my landlord, something special.” He reached under the counter and pulled out a small silver flask and flipped open the stopper. “Just right for a young gentleman. Holds just enough for a day’s ride or an evenin’ by a lady’s side.” Then he opened a bottle of whiskey and filled the flask. “Call it a down payment, in case you change your mind.”
There was one more thing he had to do while he was in Griffin, and he rode up Hill Street to Taylor, whipping the horse to a gallop and heading east out the McDonough Road. There hadn’t been a hard rain for weeks and the dust of the road rose up in a cloud and trailed behind him. Then from out of the haze and the dust, he saw something else rising up: an angel hovering in the air, outspread wings reflecting the afternoon light. He reined the horse to a stop and wiped the dust from his eyes, and peered ahead again. There was indeed an angel poised there before him, bent with sorrowful face, and below it, row upon row of grave markers, stark white against the green hills.
The Confederate Cemetery had been established after the Hollidays left Griffin, acres of burial plots for the soldiers who had died during the battle of Atlanta. Griffin had been headquarters for the Confederate hospital, with thousands of wounded soldiers coming in every day on the train. Soon the schools and churches were full to overflowing with the sick and the dying, and the army commandeered private homes for hospital space as well. And still the wounded kept coming, more men than the medical officers could treat, more dead than the townspeople could bury. When the fighting ended, the corpses remained and the country was covered with the bodies of the dead, rotting in the hot Southern sun.
The ladies of Griffin lost no time in forming the Ladies’ Memorial Association, setting aside land for a new cemetery. They paid for head-stones for the graves, bearing the name, company, and state of the fallen, though too often the inscription was only Unknown. And to watch over the fallen heroes, they placed an angel of Italian marble standing on a tall marble shaft. They claimed it was the first monument ever erected to the Confederate dead; it was certainly the first angel John Henry had ever seen face to face. He must have heard and then forgotten what lay out the McDonough Road, and it was an eerie feeling to find himself suddenly surrounded by the silent dead, riding through the remains of all those lost young lives.
He rode up the hill to the top of Rest Haven, trying to remember just where his sister was buried. There was a tree nearby the spot, he was sure—he remembered playing under it while his mother had fashioned her flower wreaths. But the trees had grown and changed in ten years, and the place looked very different than he remembered it. He slid out of the saddle and led the horse, walking along between those graves until something at his feet caught his attention. A patch of granite showed through the grass, a sliver of a headstone peering out from under a tangle of weeds. He bent to brush away the overgrowth and saw his own name carved into the stone: Holliday.
He caught his breath and pulled away, then laughed at himself for his foolishness. It wasn’t his own name, of course. It was his sister’s grave he had stumbled upon, somehow remembering better than he knew how to find the place. He bent back down and pulled the rest of the weeds aside, reading the inscription:
In Memory of Martha Eleanora
Daughter of H.B. and A.J. Holliday
Who Died June 12th 1850
Aged 6 Months 9 days
Alice Jane had made sure that her baby’s exact age was recorded—6 months and 9 days, precious short little life. Ellie would have been twenty-two years old now, if she’d lived, likely married and with children of her own, children who would have called John Henry their uncle. He’d lost a whole part of his own life when his sister had died so young. He took off his hat and bowed his head, thinking a prayer, and felt a sudden rush of emotion.
He’d lost his sister before even knowing her. He’d lost his mother too soon. He’d lost his father too, when Rachel had come along. But he wouldn’t lose Mattie, and he’d do what he had to do, whatever he had to do, to keep her. He’d speak to Uncle Rob and win him over, show him how he’d changed since his reckless youth, how temperate and steady he’d become. He’d find a way to fund his own dental practice, being a man of respect in the community. He’d become a Catholic even, if Mattie wanted him to. He’d do anything he had to—but he wouldn’t wait any longer.
He pondered a plan all the way back to Atlanta, knowing that the hardest part would be changing Mattie’s father’s mind about him. For how could he do that if he couldn’t talk to him man to man? And how could they have such a talk when Uncle Rob was down in Jonesboro and John Henry was in Atlanta? He couldn’t very well just show up on his uncle’s doorstep uninvited, the prodigal black sheep returned, asking for Mattie’s hand and expecting a warm welcome.
When he arrived in Atlanta, he found the house on Forrest Avenue empty except for the servants who greeted him then scattered to their work. His Uncle John and Aunt Permelia, they said, had taken the family off to a social at Wesley Chapel Church. His cousin Mattie was visiting with her Fitzgerald kin over on Jackson Hill, but was expected home again soon. So with nothing else to do but wait, he wandered into the parlor to pass the time, sitting down at the grand piano and running his hands over the ivory keys.
The piano had been a housewarming present to Aunt Permelia, but she’d insisted she was too old to learn to play and her boys had never taken to it. So the piano stood there decoratively, deep rosewood shining with careful polishing and covered with lace doilies and fussy little knickknacks, adding a cultured air to the room and regularly tuned, but never played.
John Henry hadn’t played a piano in years himself, not since his mother had died and his father had sold the parlor spinet to make room for Rachel’s new furniture, but his hands still had a feel for it. There was a small stack of sheet music on top of the piano, laid under the paws of one those Chinese dogs his aunt collected, and he leafed through the folios reading familiar names—Schubert, Chopin, Liszt. He opened the Liszt and began to play, one finger finding the melody, then haltingly adding the chords, then right hand and left hand slowly remembering together. He knew he wouldn’t be able to accomplish the arpeggios, out of practice as he was, but he thought he could manage most of it. And intent on the music, he didn’t notice until she spoke that Mattie had come quietly into the room.
“I remember that piece,” she said, her voice as sweet as music to his ears. “Your mother was playin’ it that Christmas in Valdosta, at your Aunt Margaret’s wedding.”
She’d left the parlor doors open behind her, and the gaslamp in the hallway beyond cast a halo of light around her, making her look like an auburn-haired angel.
“And I remember you teachin’ me to waltz that night,” he replied, pausing over the keys while the music hovered in the air. “I was sure there wasn’t a more beautiful dancin’ partner in all of Georgia.”
“You were just a boy, John Henry,” she said with a smile, “you hadn’t been to many dances. And you were very reluctant, as I recall.”
“I was a lot of things then that I’m not now,” he said deliberately, remembering her father’s disapproval. “But I’ve changed, Mattie.”
“But I don’t want you to change! I just want you to be your best. I like you fine the way you are, mostly.”
“Mostly?” he asked, and his heart faltered. Did she know what she shouldn’t know? Had Annie shared her suspicions? But surely, Mattie wouldn’t be so comfortable talking with him if his sins had come between them. And the fact that she went on without a blush put his fears at rest.
“Well, you are hot-headed sometimes,” she said.
And knowing that she wasn’t talking about more important transgressions, he asked :
“And arrogant? I remember you accusin’ me of that, years back.”
“A little arrogant,” she agreed.
“And selfish?’
“Often selfish,” she said with a small nod.
“And vain?”
“Always vain!” she said with a laugh. “But John Henry, you can be awfully sweet when you try!”
And taking advantage of the light-hearted moment, he stood quickly from the piano and turned toward her with open hands.
“Well, at least I’m not reluctant anymore. Dance with me, Mattie?” “But there’ll be no music if you don’t play.”
He didn’t answer for a moment, gazing into her eyes. Then he said quietly, stepping closer: “There will be if you dance with me.”
There was a world of meaning in her hesitation, there was a struggle in her heart that played across her face, in those lovely eyes that could never lie. She loved him but she loved her father as well, and she couldn’t please them both at the same time.
“It’s only a dance, that’s all,” he said softly, reaching for her hands. “Waltz with me, Mattie, like we did when we were young.”
She hesitated only a moment longer, then answered by putting her hands in his. And as they turned together around the room, waltzing in the silence of the parlor, he knew they were both hearing the same thing: the music of their shared memories, the sound of two hearts that would always beat as one. When the music came to an end they were still standing together, arms circled around each other.
“Come home with me for Christmas!” she said suddenly, “home to Jonesboro. Oh, John Henry, let’s be together again the way we used to be!”
“Dear Mattie, there is nothing I would like better!” he said with a smile. For Christmas in Jonesboro would be the perfect time to speak to her father.