Good Time Coming Page 20

  I thought about the beautiful, long-necked woman I’d seen in the parlor of Bon Silence, and the little girl who’d played with Checkers on our sun-spangled lawn.

  Castile said, ‘Leo’s sweet on Josephine. He been wantin’ to buy her and Calliope for years. Only, Mizz Walford, she won’t sell.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. Ask me, she just being mean.’

  I stared at him. This was a new idea to me. I’d always thought of Rowena Walford as smiling, exquisitely mannered, sugarcoated steel. But it had never before occurred to me to see her as mean.

  He said, ‘I still got the money we been saving. Maybe Mizz Walford’ll sell ’em to me.’

  But I knew by the way he said it that he wasn’t holding out much hope. And it occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t Leo she was punishing. Maybe it was Josephine.

  What I didn’t understand, yet, was why.

  Twenty-Eight

  Even the longest and fiercest of winters must eventually give way to spring.

  The cold loosed its hold on the Felicianas that year in lurches and gasps, with warm days that lured over-eager farmers to plow and plant their fields, only to watch the seedlings die when the temperatures again plunged.

  But gradually the threat of unexpected late freezes passed, and the bitterness of winter faded into a wretched memory. Yet spring had come to mean more to us than just balmy days and fields cloaked with breeze-rippled emerald green new growth. We’d learned by now to dread the arrival of good weather, for it was in spring that armies moved out of their winter quarters, generals plotted offensives and counteroffensives, and our husbands, sons, and fathers started dying again.

  Near the end of March, we heard that the Federals had once again given up on their canal across De Soto Peninsula. After digging a trench sixty feet wide and more than seven feet deep, they let the water break through, only to have the canal collapse and backfill while the mighty Mississippi just rolled on the way it always had. We started hoping maybe Leo would be coming home. Then word trickled through that a bunch of laborers from Grant’s Canal had been set to building a brutal, seventy-mile long corduroy road through the swamps and bayous to Hard Times, Louisiana.

  Castile spent a lot of time chopping wood.

  With Avery gone, Priebus had to take over the plowing. And when his back gave out, Mama finished it herself. We all worked together – Mahalia, Priebus, Mama, and I – putting in Irish potatoes and cabbages, eggplants and tomatoes, beets and spinach, and we planned to keep planting new rows every couple of weeks through the summer until it got too hot. Up the road, Rowena Walford experimented with growing rice and tried to convince everyone else to do the same. Mama took one look at the elaborate network of canals and dams required, and went on planting her corn.

  And then one night in mid-March, I awoke unexpectedly to a dark room. I lay for a moment, confused. I knew I couldn’t have been asleep more than an hour or two; so why had I awakened?

  Then I heard the low, distant rumble of a coming storm.

  Slipping from my bed, I crossed to the window. The moon was still well up, the sky sparkling clear and filled with stars. Feeling oddly tense and short of breath, I threw up the sash and leaned out into the cool night air.

  A restless wind stirred the branches of the oaks and brought me the scent of damp earth and green growing things. But from far to the south came an unmistakable, boom, boom, boom.

  It wasn’t thunder.

  My heart beating fast, I pulled on my night-robe and I felt my way down to the central hall to find the front door open. Mama was standing out on the gallery, her gaze fixed toward the south.

  ‘What do you think it is?’ I asked, my toes curling away from the cold boards underfoot as I went to stand beside her.

  ‘Sounds like the Federals are attacking Port Hudson.’

  By that spring of 1863, the South controlled only two strongholds on the Mississippi: Vicksburg, to the north of us, and Port Hudson, which lay just ten miles to our south. Together, they were enough to keep the Federal fleet from dominating the river. They also kept open the Red River, a crucial conduit for the cattle, horses, and supplies coming out of Texas and Mexico. So everybody with any sense had figured out that both towns would be targeted this year.

  We lay right between them.

  I wrapped my arms across my chest against the cold night air, my gaze, like my mother’s, on the south. We stood side by side, watching the flashes on the horizon and listening to the endless whomp, whomp, whomp of artillery. Then the flashes turned to a warm glow that lit up the dark sky.

  I said, ‘Looks like a fire. You think they could’ve captured Port Hudson that quickly?’

  She shook her head. ‘You can still hear the cannons firing.’ She surprised me by slipping her arm around my shoulders and drawing me close. ‘We should go back to bed. There’s no point in standing out here. Come on, honey.’

  I knew she was right. But it’s one thing to go to bed, and something else again to sleep.

  I laid awake most of the night, listening to the artillery barrage roar on and on and on, until I wanted to scream. Them, as a hint of dawn lightened the sky and the cold morning air filled with a chorus of birdsong, the firing ceased.

  I was just slipping into a deep sleep when a roaring explosion shook the house and sent startled flocks of doves and sparrows shrieking from the treetops.

  It wasn’t until later we learned what had happened, how General Banks had marched from Baton Rouge with twelve thousand troops, while Admiral Farragut gathered his fleet for what was supposed to be a mighty joint assault on the fortifications of Port Hudson. Except that Banks’s army spent so much time plundering the farms and villages between Baton Rouge and Port Hudson that Farragut grew impatient and launched his attack without them.

  He paid heavily for his arrogance and overconfidence. The great fires we’d seen that night had been kindled by an outpost on the western bank of the Mississippi. With the dark outlines of Farragut’s ships silhouetted against the flames, the batteries at Port Hudson were able to savage the Federal fleet. Only two ships, the Albatross and the Hartford, had managed to slip through. The rest had been severely damaged, while the spectacular explosion we’d heard at dawn was the USS Mississippi blowing up.

  Without Farragut’s fleet to back him up, General Banks called off the land assault on the fortress.

  We all cheered when we heard, relieved to know that for now, at least, Port Hudson was safe. We didn’t stop to think that an army of thousands lay just a few miles to the south of us, angry, frustrated, and eager to wreck havoc before returning to their camps.

  Early that afternoon, Mahalia and I were weeding the vegetable garden while Mama was off tending Margaret Mason’s aged father-in-law, who was dying. A thick bank of clouds hung on the horizon, turning from purple to green as they bunched and rolled. But the rest of the sky was a clear, balmy blue of a color that reminded me of a little girl’s satin sash. I straightened for a moment to stretch my back, a soft breeze feathering the loose hair around my face and carrying with it the scents of plowed earth and the sweet perfume of the jasmine blooming in a sunlit white cascade over the garden fence.

  It was the kind of day when the earth seems bursting with joy and the energy of renewal, when the pulse of life throbs at peace with the serenity of a natural beauty so rich and pure that it aches. I was just reaching for another tuft of sedge grass when I heard Finn holler, ‘Amrie!’

  I straightened again with a jerk.

  I could see him now, pelting down the lane toward us, one elbow cocked skyward as he held his straw hat clamped to his head. ‘Amrie! Federals comin’! A whole passel of ’em! They’re rounding up everybody’s livestock. You gotta hide your animals, quick!’

  ‘Oh, Gawd,’ said Mahalia, dropping her hoe in the dirt.

  We took off running for the pasture. Finn got there first. He scooped up our goat, Flower, and threw her over the withers of one of the mules. Mahalia ran to open
the gate as he scrambled up behind the bleating goat bareback and sent the mule cantering into the canebrakes. Checkers raced, barking, beside him, while I grabbed Queen Bee’s halter.

  But the big black and white cow wasn’t having any of it. She’d already been milked that morning and wasn’t due to be milked again until evening, and she knew it. Digging in her heels, she threw her weight onto her hindquarters and let out a loud bawl.

  ‘Queen Bee, please,’ I said, tugging harder.

  Mahalia came to flatten her hands on the cow’s hindquarters and push.

  Queen Bee wouldn’t budge.

  I could hear the heavy tramp of marching feet drawing closer; see the dust lifting from the lane to hang like a golden curtain in the sunlight.

  My gaze met Mahalia’s, and I saw my own carefully checked hysteria mirrored in her tight face. I thought of all the things we’d talked about hiding if the Federals came: the personal letters and journals the soldiers stole to use for toilet paper; the seeds we were saving for our later sowings; the small bag of salt Sophie Gantry had given Mama for saving her little girl when she was so sick. Nothing was more vital to our survival than the mules that pulled our plow, the sheep that gave us wool and meat, the cow and goat that gave us milk. But how do you keep animals hidden from an army that can descend without warning at any moment?

  Mahalia picked up a rotten branch that had fallen from a nearby oak and whacked Queen Bee across the rump. With a loud bellow, the cow jerked the halter from my grasp and bolted across the pasture.

  ‘Oh, Gawd,’ said Mahalia. ‘Now I done gone and done it.’

  Men in blue uniforms were already spilling across the pasture, laughing and shouting like schoolboys on a lark as they set about rounding up our mules and sheep.

  A beefy corporal with sunburnt, freckled skin and red hair walked over to snag Queen Bee’s halter. When she bawled and hung back, he pulled a pistol out of his belt and pressed the muzzle to her forehead.

  ‘No!’ I screamed.

  The booming report echoed across the pasture. Queen Bee’s legs crumpled slowly and awkwardly beneath her.

  ‘Amrie!’ Mahalia tried to grab my arm, but I jerked away from her.

  The redheaded corporal was already turning away when I sank to my knees beside Queen Bee. I could feel the warmth of her familiar body radiating up to me, her soft black and white hide glossy in the sunlight. But I knew even before I rested my hand against her neck that she was dead.

  With a sob, I looked up.

  Some of the men were chasing our chickens around the yard, laughing dementedly, wringing the necks of those they caught and tossing their bodies into the air. I watched in helpless, useless rage as they hitched four of our mules to our heavy farm wagon and set to work filling it with the hams and sides of bacon from our smokehouse, the butter and cheese and crocks of milk from the cool brick dairy beneath our cistern. Others were stripping the boards from the fence that protected our vegetable garden.

  I thought at first they were simply taking the fence boards for firewood. Then I saw them drive our sheep into the field, arms waving as they shouted, ‘Hah! Hah,’ the panicked sheep’s small sharp hooves sending up clumps of earth and newly sprouted vegetables high into the air.

  Shaking now, I pushed to my feet and walked with pounding heart to where a lanky, brown-haired soldier with bad skin was slipping a halter onto my mother’s aged bay gelding.

  I said, ‘Hennessey – this horse – is old. He won’t be of any use to you. Why can’t you leave him for us?’

  He looked over at me, his pimply face splitting into a jeering grin as he tongued a bulging wad of chewing tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other. ‘Aw. Looky here. The little Secesh baby is cryin’ ’cause we takin’ her hoss. Maybe you shoulda thought ’bout that before you started hurrahing for ole Jeff Davis, God rot his soul in hell.’

  Somehow I managed to swallow the retort that sprang naturally to my lips. But inside, I was thinking, I hope you die. I hope you die gutshot and screaming in pain and begging for mercy, and abandoned by the God whose strictures you flout even as you claim to honor him.

  Then I heard a shout, ‘Form up, men!’

  I’d thought this a group of stragglers rampaging without direction. But in that, I realized I had given them too much credit. An unshaven, weather-browned sergeant was working to assemble his giddy, jubilant party of vandals and thieves in order again, all beneath the amused gaze of a tall lieutenant with flowing, greasy black curls who sat astride a big, rangy chestnut.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said, stretching up in his stirrups before settling more comfortably and gathering his reins. ‘Move the men out.’

  I was aware of Mahalia coming to stand beside me, a dead white chicken in her arms. Together, we watched the Federal troops march down the drive to the lane, the rattle of our wagon’s wheels and the plaintiff baa-baa of our sheep mingling with the raucous laughter of the men to drift back to us on the warm, gentle breeze.

  ‘I guess we should be grateful they didn’t burn the house,’ I said, although I didn’t feel grateful. I was trembling with rage and a corrosive sense of powerlessness, all combined with a child’s outrage at the unfairness and the naked bullying of it all.

  Mahalia said, ‘At least they didn’t get Magnolia.’

  A new fear reared within me. ‘As long as Mama and Priebus don’t run into them.’

  She shifted her grip on the dead chicken in her arms. ‘Looks like we got us a heap of work to do.’

  I stared out over the ruined vegetable garden and swallowed hard.

  She said, ‘I jist don’t get why they done this. I mean, I can see takin’ the stock. But why kill the chickens and jist leave ’em? Why drive the sheep through our garden? Why?’

  ‘Because they’re evil.’

  Mahalia was quiet for a moment, her gaze troubled and focused inward. Then she said softly, ‘No, child; they just men.’

  But I would have none of it.

  I had seen what the Federals had done to Bayou Sara, heard the tales of their devastation of Baton Rouge and Donaldsonville and Grand Gulf, and of hundreds of such towns across the South. But there was something about watching the joy with which those men had sat about willfully destroying our lives – something about the naked hatred I had seen in their sweat-sheened faces – that shocked and troubled me more than I could have explained. But beyond that, it had awakened something in me that hadn’t been there before.

  I, too, had learned to hate.

  Twenty-Nine

  Mama and Priebus came home just as the sun was slipping below the line of oaks and willows along the creek. The yard was cool and blue with shadow, and a soft, sweet-smelling breeze blew out of the east. By then, Mahalia had finished gutting the slaughtered chickens and was helping Finn and me replant as many of the uprooted seedlings in the vegetable garden as we could salvage. Priebus immediately set to work butchering Queen Bee.

  But I noticed he had tears streaming down his cheeks as he did it.

  Thankfully, Finn had collared Checkers and kept him from rushing the Federal troops, for which I was inexpressibly grateful. The Federals were always shooting folks’ dogs. In addition to our goat, Flower, he’d also managed to save three mules. Mama insisted he take one, for the Federals had stolen Dander. A half-dozen or so of our hens had survived by scattering beneath the kitchen and other outbuildings. Our pigs had been rooting in the woods and were still there, along with three sheep that had somehow managed to evade the soldiers. But our corncribs, smoke house, and dairy had been stripped bare. And without Queen Bee, we would now have only the milk from Flower.

  Some of the soldiers had also rampaged through the house, leaving their muddy boot prints across the floorboards and simple mats. But they’d taken relatively little – a silver-backed hairbrush and mirror from Mama’s dresser; Papa’s collection of carved, wooden pipes; a small bronze horse that had stood on a chest in the hall. The truth was, we’d been lucky. It could have been so much worse,
and we knew it.

  And yet, I was aware of having lost more than our livestock and food stores, more even than my mother’s beloved old gelding and the placid, black and white cow that had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. I couldn’t have explained it, then. But I knew those soldiers had taken from me something substantial and vital, for I had wished pain, death, and everlasting damnation on a fellow being. And though I knew I should ask God’s forgiveness for my unbridled rage and the wickedness of my thoughts, I could not. The problem was, I wished it still – not only on the pimply soldier stealing Hennessey, but on the freckle-faced corporal who so coldly and senselessly sent a bullet smashing into Queen Bee’s brain, and his curly-headed lieutenant, and every one of the laughing, jeering soldiers who’d rampaged through my world.

  That night, my mother climbed the stairs to my room. I’d changed into my nightgown – now wretchedly thin and so short it barely covered my knees – and was standing at the open dormer window, my gaze on the moonlit treetops dancing softly against a misty, midnight blue sky. She set her tin candlestick on my bedside table and said, ‘I’m sorry you had to face what happened today alone, with only Mahalia and Finn.’

  I shrugged. After all, if she’d been home, we’d have lost Magnolia and the buggy, too.

  She said, ‘You can’t let things like what happened today harden your heart, Amrie. If you do, they win.’

  I twisted around to look at her over my shoulder. The dim, smudgy glow from the tallow candle was kind to her, making her look soft and pretty – more like the mother I remembered. In the past year, she’d aged so much. She wasn’t just thinner; she was also more drawn, shadowed always by worry and a bone weariness that had etched lines deep into her face.

  I said, ‘Our men would never do what those Federals did today.’

  ‘I’d like to think so. But … There are always some.’