That night, in spite of Grant forbidding it, no power on earth could of stopped the rejoicing. Not after four years of fighting and starving and dying. Especially since all the generals had ridden away to Washington to meet with Lincoln to figure out how to shrink the military from the near two million that had fought against the Rebellion down close to the sixteen thousand it was when the Secesh traitors started the whole mess.
Most everyone, both white and black, except for Solomon and me and a few ancient aunties, went down to the woods outside the village and commenced to throw the biggest shebang ever held. Solomon refused to join in the festivities, saying he’d seen a right sharp of snot-flying drunks in his time and had no need of making a special trip to see more. So we watched the hullabaloo from up top the rise.
Outside the courthouse, a proper band, not some piddly fife-and-fiddle job, played “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” Overhead fireworks exploded like a century of Fourth of Julys crammed into one night. Great dandelions blew golden fluff into the night and giant chrysanthemums opened their red petals. For a spell, I was content to sit and ooh and aah with the old folk.
Then a mighty burst threw crazy bolts of light across all the faces below, black and white, and I could see them down there having a high old time. Next, the black sky went noontime bright as a fountain of silver lit up the heavens and rained sparks down on the merrymakers. The band played “Aura Lea” and sang about the “maid with golden hair.” In the sporadic flashes of fireworks light, I saw frozen glimpses of couples dancing. Most were just ordinary whores and their customers, but they were all raised up high in their joy to a place I longed to visit just once in my life.
“Solomon, let’s go on down there.”
My friend sat on a tree stump, one leg folded over the other, one arm tucked up in his armpit, the other holding his clay pipe to his mouth, all settled in the way he liked. He tugged on the pipe, puffed out a cloud of smoke, knocked the edge of the pipe on the heel of his boot, and said, “No, thank you, Queenie. This is where we were posted. Where we supposed to be.”
“Solomon, there’s no posting anymore. Everyone’s run off or been mustered out. Don’t you understand? War is over. We can do what we want. Go where we want. This is the start of a whole new life for us. We did it, Solomon. We won. We got a right to celebrate.”
“Won? What you think we won?” he barked back.
“Freedom, Solomon. We won freedom.”
He harrumphed and said, “You’ll see what black folk won. War was the easy part, buttercup. Peace with white folks gon be a whole new war. War we be fighting alone. You think them Rebs we saw riding off back home gonna be a hair different from what they were before the war? Only difference now is they hungrier, poorer, and meaner ’cause they got a grudge. Think they were done wrong.
“Since they’d die before they ever admitted what fools and traitors they were, every one of them beat Rebs’ll go to his grave sure as God that we, all us ungrateful slaves, were the reason for every bit of the misery they brought on themselves. Bad as they were before, they gon punish us now.”
“All we got to do is stay away from them. We can go north.”
“What? You think the Yanks’ll be a whole lot better? You think they’ll be waiting up North to give us their own good jobs? Nice houses to live in? Plates of fried ham and redeye gravy? Huh? That what you think?”
Though I told him that, of course, that wasn’t what I thought, he still said, “You dreaming, buttercup. North. South. White man’s a white man.” He drew heavy on his pipe like he had just spoken the final word and the case was closed.
Well, it wasn’t. “Dog you, Solomon,” I said. “If it was raining silver dollars you be moanin’ ’bout you forgot your umbrella.” I stood up, brushed bits of grass from my skirt, and smoothed the hair back behind my ears.
“Where you think you’re going?”
“Don’t think, know. I am going down there and have me a dance or two with a free man.”
Solomon jumped to his feet and blocked my way. “No, ma’am, state that crowd is in, wouldn’t be safe for a young lady without an escort.”
“Why, Solomon Yarnell, I do declare,” I trilled out, the way those sap-headed Southern belles back in Missouri used to. “Ain’t you the gentleman.” The instant I said it, though, I realized it was true. That’s exactly what Solomon Yarnell was. He was a gentleman. And had been from the start.
He tapped out his pipe, stuck it in his pocket, and grumbled to Matildy, “You heard the lady, best put on your dancing shoes.”
I ran to yoke up the team. If this was the first and maybe only time I was to be squired about by a fellow, I reckoned we’d do it in style. Also, I was imagining Justice Vikers watching me ride in and had to admit that I wouldn’t have minded seeing that impressive gent again.
By the time we navigated the back road down to the village in the pitch-dark night, the party was roaring and most in attendance had celebrated themselves into a state of paralysis. Leastwise that’s what we made out from the sound of the goings-on for we couldn’t yet see them, as groves of thick woods surrounded the open field where the revelers were dissipating themselves in the light of bright bonfires made of torn-down Secesh barns. We left Matildy tethered in the wagon we parked at the edge of the woods and commenced to make our way towards the spree.
Halfway through the woods, we spotted a pack of rough-looking jaspers malingering about a sad little campfire, passing a jug around, joylessly working at getting drunker than boiled owls. The gang was dressed in scraps of Yankee uniforms and civilian clothes, though these lowlifes were probably wearing Secesh gray a few days back. They looked to be hard cases who’d been heading nowhere fast when the war bumped into them and, now that the shooting was over, they were continuing on in the same direction.
Though they were ossified good, it wasn’t moon-howling, cutting-up drunk. It was mean, spoiling-for-a-fight drunk. It was the grudge-holding drunk of men drowning their sorrows. Men who reckoned they’d been done wrong. Just like Solomon predicted.
We were giving the jackals wide berth, keeping far back where they could neither see nor hear us, when the familiar gleam of a patch box, muzzle, and trigger guard of polished brass caught my eye, for they were all attached to a yagger rifle. My yagger rifle.