Good Time Coming Read online

  At the mention of Simon, a faint shadow of grief darkened Adelaide’s features before being quickly tucked away out of sight. Simon had been Adelaide’s first grandchild, and she had loved him with a fierceness that always surprised me. Perhaps he’d reminded her, as he reminded me, of the scalded boy who’d died in agony in her arms so many years ago.

  ‘Really, Katherine?’ she said, her lips tightening. ‘Barefoot? If you’re not careful, someone might mistake her for the grubby little sister of that rude Irish boy in whose company she spends so much of her time.’

  I opened my mouth to rush to Finn’s defense, but my mother knew me well enough to dig her fingers into my arm and stop me, just in time.

  Adelaide Dunbar was a sparse woman, lean and wiry and hard in body and mind. She always seemed tall to me, but I don’t think she really was. She had thick, iron-gray hair that was always meticulously coiffed, and small dark eyes that could bore right through you. By the time war came, she was well into her sixties, but she had a vigor and energy that in some ways reminded me of Hilda Meyers. She’d never been sick a day in her life, or so she claimed, and she certainly never had sympathy for anyone who was ill, regarding a tendency toward sickness as a symptom of both moral weakness and inferior breeding. Her father had been a colonel in the Revolution, and it was her one vanity. She mentioned it constantly.

  In addition to Chesney, Adelaide also brought along her aged, white-haired coachman, Uncle Kashi. ‘Uncle’ like ‘Aunt’ was a term of affection applied to aged servants. But Kashi was different from any black man I’d ever known, for he bore a strange pattern of spirals and dots tattooed across his wrinkled forehead and cheeks that had scared me when I was little. He also spoke with a strange guttural accent that reminded one that English was not his first language, for he’d come to our shores long ago directly from Africa.

  I’d always regarded him with awe. He was a link to that strange, dark continent about which I knew little, but which was always presented to us as a dangerous, frightening, benighted place, a place of witchcraft and superstition, of fearful pagan rituals and cookpots kept boiling in preparation for any stray, ill-fated European explorers who happened along.

  Most of the slaves who moved through the background of my days had always been slaves, as had their parents and their parents before them. Their grammar and diction might at times be torturous, but English was nevertheless their native tongue, and they didn’t sound all that different from the poorest of the white ‘plain’ folk we knew. They baptized their children and packed the galleries of our churches, they wore familiar calico dresses or sturdy trousers, and in every way seemed to fit naturally into our world.

  But Kashi gave the lie to that comfortably reassuring assumption. He was a living, startling reminder of a distant, unknown land with alien ways, and of a harsh, brutal passage and violent dislocation that our preachers might reassure us was benevolent, but which when confronted directly tended to cause discomfort and fear amongst the apologists for the institution my parents had long ago rejected.

  I asked Priebus, once, if Uncle Kashi remembered Africa. He gave me a funny look and said, ‘I reckon he remembers his memories.’

  Sometimes, I tried to look at our world through Kashi’s eyes, tried to see us as he must see us. But I knew it was impossible to accurately do so.

  I didn’t have that good of an imagination.

  Adelaide fit far better into St Francisville’s social life than Mama ever had. In fact, in a sense, she revived it, for lately folks had taken to hunkering down in their homes as if afraid to live. They were just enduring, waiting for the war and all its shortages and terrors and heartaches to finally go away.

  Two days after she arrived, Adelaide invited a bunch of the area’s ladies over for a ‘recipe party’. Recipe parties were becoming popular across the South. Women would get together and read their favorite recipes out loud. Most of the ingredients hadn’t been available for the better part of a year, so the women would just sit around and imagine what the dish or dessert would taste like. I thought whoever came up with the idea must be sick in the head, but the concept spread like the chicken pox.

  I tried to duck out of it, saying I’d planned to go hunting with Finn. I hadn’t been hunting again since I’d shot the deer, but I figured anything was better than spending an afternoon with a bunch of ladies sighing over imaginary apple pies and biscuits. But Adelaide gave me a stern look and said, ‘Anne-Marie, it is high time you learned to comport yourself as befits a lady of your station, rather than tramping through the woods with some Irish no-account.’

  I felt my hackles rise. ‘He’s my friend.’

  ‘I know. That’s the problem.’

  I’d heard Adelaide complaining to Mama just the day before about all the time I spent with Finn. ‘It’s not right, Katherine. It was bad enough when she was simply tagging along with Simon. But Simon’s dead, and she’s not exactly a child anymore.’

  ‘Yes she is. And she misses Simon and her father enough without me trying to separate her from her best friend.’

  ‘Her best friend? A scruffy little Irish boy? And that’s not to mention the time the two of them spend with Castile.’

  ‘Finn and Castile are both extraordinary people, each in his own way. I can’t believe they’re a bad influence on her.’

  ‘Do you even hear what you’re saying, Katherine?’

  There was a tense silence.

  Then, inevitably, Adelaide said, ‘And to think that child’s great-grandfather was a colonel in the army of Washington himself.’

  And so that Friday I found myself sitting on a straight-backed chair in the parlor. Our house was so small that the ladies were spread out around both the parlor and the dining room, with the wide pocket doors between them thrown open. As usual, everyone was talking at once, a dozen different conversations hopelessly entwining in my head.

  ‘—what you think of this new general they’ve sent to replace Butler? At least the Beast is gone! I hear he needed ten ships to haul away his loot—’

  ‘—Federals moved back into Baton Rouge – or what’s left of it. Just sailed right in and reoccupied it, with no one there to stop them. I ask you, what was the point in leaving? They can’t seem to make up their minds what they’re doing. Folks say they’re going to try to take Vicksburg again. How many times—’

  ‘—hoping maybe they were so busy plundering and pillaging their way up the Bayou Lafourche that they’d at least leave us alone for a time. But I had a letter from my sister just two days ago, and she says—’

  ‘—I tell you we’ve received a response to our petition? The Governor was most gracious, but he says it’s impossible to grant our request.’

  I recognized Trudi Easton’s voice and slewed around so that I could hear better. This was a conversation I had a vested interest in.

  ‘Oh, Trudi; I’m so sorry,’ said my mother, although I knew she’d understood from the beginning that Miss Trudi’s scheme would never succeed. ‘Did you ever write to Mr Easton about the possibility of teaching school yourself?’

  If I leaned sideways, I could see Miss Trudi, dressed in pink homespun, one fist wrapped tight around her silly locket. ‘I did, yes. I was most hopeful that he might find my arguments persuasive. Unfortunately, he insists that he simply cannot allow it.’

  I squirmed in my chair. If any husband of mine ever tried to tell me what I was and wasn’t ‘allowed’ to do, I reckoned I’d wallop him a good one. Then I became aware of Adelaide frowning at me, and quickly straightened up again.

  ‘—overseer told me just this morning we’ve had another half dozen men walk away from the quarters,’ said a voice I recognized as belonging to Rowena Walford. ‘Off to the contraband camps, no doubt. The fools. I try not to worry about them, but I can’t help it, even if I am as mad as all get out. I hear they’re dying like flies there, from all sorts of dreadful diseases. And of course the Federals aren’t giving them enough to eat. At least when the Yankees first came,
they were returning runaways to their masters. But that’s obviously a thing of the past.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Adelaide in that calm, assured way of hers. ‘They’ve figured out there’s no better way to bring us to our knees than to entice away our workforce. You’ve heard about this “Emancipation Proclamation” Lincoln is planning to issue in January?’

  Rowena Walford gave a loud, ringing laugh. ‘Pricelessly hypocritical, is it not? It only applies to those states in rebellion! And if we meekly return to their precious Union, we’ll be allowed to keep our slaves.’

  I was aware of Mama looking at me. I met her gaze, and she ever so slightly shook her head at me in warning.

  ‘Naturally,’ Miss Rowena was saying, ‘all thirteen of the parishes around New Orleans are as exempt as New Hampshire and Kentucky.’

  ‘Naturally,’ echoed Jane Gastrell. ‘You don’t expect them to free the slaves working the cotton and sugar cane plantations taken over by all those Yankee speculators, now do you? You have to laugh at how they show their sympathy for the slaves by emancipating those they cannot reach, and yet keep enslaved those they could set free.’

  ‘Well, I’ve heard that some Union regiments are threatening to mutiny, saying they’re not fighting this war to free the slaves so they can go North and take their jobs back home.’

  ‘Old Mr Mason says it’s a military maneuver,’ said Margaret Mason. ‘And a clever diplomatic tactic. He doubts the French or the British will recognize us now.’

  This pronouncement was met with a sudden, oppressive silence. Recognition was the one thing everyone had been hoping for; now it seemed more unlikely than ever.

  ‘Enough of all this,’ said Adelaide. ‘Who would like to give us the first recipe?’

  ‘Oh, I will, I will,’ said Trudi Easton, squirming in her seat with one hand raised like an eager child in school.

  My grandmother gave her a benevolent smile. ‘Mrs Easton; please.’ It amazed me how my grandmother had managed to learn the names of all the women present, despite having just met them.

  Trudi Easton stood up and cleared her throat. ‘This is the recipe for Mr Easton’s favorite banana cream pie. You take ripe bananas and—’

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a banana. With a stifled groan, I slid down in my seat and prepared to endure.

  Later, when the last of the ladies had finally taken themselves off and Adelaide retired to her room to rest, I said to my mother, ‘Do you think Lincoln would really withdraw this Emancipation Proclamation if all the Confederate states agreed to return to the Union by the first of January?’

  ‘I think he’d try. But it would never work. Things have gone too far now. You heard Rowena; the slaves are emancipating themselves and have been for months. I think eventually Lincoln will be forced to extend his proclamation to all states, North and South – whether he wants to or not.’

  ‘That’s a good thing, isn’t it? It’s what you and Papa always wanted.’

  To my surprise, my mother rolled her lower lip between her teeth and looked troubled. ‘It is, yes. But … I try looking ahead, and I can’t help but worry about what sort of future we’re making. This war has caused so much grief and loss, and stirred up so much anger and resentment. How can we ever live together again? North and South, black and white?’

  ‘The other day, I heard Reverend Lewis saying to Mr Marks that the United States government could have bought every slave in their country and ours, and given them a mule and a hundred acres of land out West, all for less than what the first year of this war has cost, and with no lives lost. So why didn’t they do that – or at least try?’

  ‘Because that’s not what they really want. What they want is to keep the West for whites, and whites only. And because they’re proud, and reckless, and unutterably stupid,’ she said, her face so hard that for an instant she reminded me of Adelaide.

  ‘You mean, Lincoln and the Federals?’

  ‘I mean the leaders of both sides. They’ve led us all into hell.’

  That night before going to bed, I let Checkers out for a run. It was cold but calm, a universe of brittle stars blinking at me from out of a midnight blue sky. The air smelled of wood smoke and frosted fields, and I went to sit at the top of the steps of the back gallery, my arms wrapped around my bent knees for warmth as I watched Checkers frisk happily about the yard, loping from one ghostly tree trunk to the next. Tipping back my head, I exhaled a long breath and watched it crystallize in a white cloud around me. But as I blew out another, I became aware of a soft murmur of voices.

  Uncle Kashi said, ‘That Massa Abe, he done promised freedom to any slave what walks into a Yankee camp.’

  I could see them now, Priebus and Uncle Kashi, sitting on the porch of Priebus’s cabin, the red coals of their clay pipes faint glows in the darkness.

  Priebus gave a derisive snort. ‘I hear all this talk ’bout Massa Abe, and it make me think of my pappy. He used to tell ’bout how black folks said the same things about Ole King George, back in the day – how he was gonna deliver them and make them all free. ’Cept he didn’t. It was all just talk. In the end, he got on his boat and sailed away.’

  Kashi stretched slowly to his feet, then bent down to knock out the coals from his pipe against the edge of the porch. He was small and withered, and must have been seventy-five years old, although his movements were still supple and strong. ‘You got no cock in dis fight; you’s already free, you. But I been prayin’ for this day my whole life, and I ain’t gonna live much longer. I’d like to die free.’

  Checkers came back to me then, hind end wiggling, nose cold when he thrust his face up against mine. I rose and quietly opened the back door. But Uncle Kashi’s words haunted me as I climbed the stairs to bed. I wasn’t surprised when we awoke the next morning to find the old man gone.

  At first, Adelaide refused to believe he’d run away; she was convinced something must have happened to him. She set us all to searching the barns and fields, thinking he’d gone for a walk and had his heart give out. She kept saying, ‘He was happy and contented; why would he leave? I’ve never had him whipped – I treated him like a member of my family. How could he do this to me?’

  But Kashi was definitely gone.

  He could easily have stolen one of the mules or horses, but he didn’t. He just walked off into the night, an old man with a tattooed face and memories of distant drums echoing in his heart.

  Twenty-Six

  Two days before Christmas, I was down cutting holly from the bushes along the drive when I heard a woman’s voice, loud and tight with anxiety, carrying from my mother’s doctor’s office.

  ‘But there must be something I can do!’

  I froze, embarrassed to be hearing something I obviously wasn’t meant to hear, but afraid to be noticed if I tried to move away.

  My mother’s answer was a soothing murmur. ‘If only you had come to me right away, Eloisa. But it’s too dangerous, now. Anything I gave you could kill you, too.’

  ‘You think I care? Don’t you understand? I can’t have this! What do you think it would do to Reuben, if he knew that while he was off fighting for our independence, this happened to me? Or, what – what if he doesn’t believe I wasn’t willing? I mean, I never told anyone about it. Now it won’t be long before everyone in town knows that I – that those seamen—’

  ‘Eloisa—’

  She gave a wild, hysterical laugh. ‘What kind of merciful God would let this happen? I must do something!’

  ‘You can’t. Don’t you understand? It’s too late. And I don’t say that because of the new laws, but because it’s too dangerous at this stage.’

  ‘No. Those men may have burned Reuben’s butcher shop and looted our house, but I’m not going to allow them to take what’s left of my pride and use me as an instrument to shame my husband and my country. I’d rather die first.’

  ‘Eloisa—’

  I heard the door yank open and barely managed to duck down behind
the holly before Eloisa Peyton came hurtling down the path to the gate. Her face was contorted with a horrible mixture of rage and grief and pain; her hands curled into fists she held tight to her sides. To my relief, she didn’t even glance in my direction, but took off toward town with long, determined strides.

  I was aware of my mother coming to stand on the low, shallow porch. Then she turned her head, and her gaze met mine.

  ‘You didn’t hear that,’ she said.

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  That Christmas was the coldest anyone could remember. A soft white layer of snow blanketed our world in a deceptively peaceful and heartbreakingly beautiful hush, and icicles formed on the edges of roofs. I’d never seen icicles before.

  We decorated the hall, windows, and mantels with holly, pine boughs, and mistletoe. Avery hauled in a small pine tree from our woods, and we set it up on the round table in the parlor. Adelaide and I spent hours making strings of popcorn and red berries, and hung them on the tree along with pinecones and stray bits of ribbon from Mama’s workbox. In the past, we’d always made cornucopias of colored paper and silver foil, and filled them with hard candies. But not this year. We had no paper, foil, or candies. Even dried fruit was too precious to hang.

  There was no money to buy gifts, and nothing in the shops to purchase anyway. I unraveled an old pink shawl that had been mine when I was a little girl and that had been so precious to me that I’d refused to let my mother throw it away. It had languished, forgotten, on a shelf. Now I rolled the wool into balls and used it to knit scarves for Mama, Mahalia, and my grandmother. I was better at knitting than sewing seams, although I did tend to drop a stitch now and then, and I could never keep my tension even, so the rows were kinda wavy, going from tight to loose and back again, depending on whether I was feeling tense or relaxed when I worked on them.

  For Castile, Priebus, and Avery, I made corncob pipes, although I wasn’t sure they’d get much use out of them. Some folks in the area grew tobacco, but it was getting pretty scarce these days.