Good Time Coming Read online

  But I didn’t.

  He said, ‘We can’t let this war harden our hearts and poison our souls, Amrie. That is why what happened here today is something to be cherished, because it shows that even in the midst of war, some shreds of our common humanity remain.’

  ‘And if that Commander Hart hadn’t been a Mason, Reverend? Would this have happened? Seems to me, people can’t stop dividing the world into folks they think are like them, and everybody else. The only thing that changes is how they decide which folks are like them and which folks aren’t.’

  He looked troubled, and I wished I hadn’t said anything.

  I pushed to my feet, conscious of the lengthening shadows and the fierceness easing out of the tea-colored light as the day stretched into evening.

  He said, ‘It’s a start, Amrie. When this war is over, it’s memories like this – sentiments like these – that will help us begin to heal and learn to live together again.’

  His words shocked me, for it was the first time I’d heard anyone suggest out loud that the South wouldn’t eventually prevail, that peace might come not with a begrudging coexistence and hard-won independence but with our ultimate, crushing defeat.

  In the deepening shadows, the tombstones around us looked cool and gray and achingly peaceful. I smelled the tang of dank old stone and the mustiness of freshly turned earth mingling with the sweet perfume of a rambling pink rose tumbling over the palings of a nearby rusty iron fence. ‘We can’t lose,’ I said, my voice husky. ‘We can’t have gone through all of this only to lose in the end.’

  The reverend’s mouth flexed soundlessly, his gaze not meeting mine, his features wan and sad.

  ‘We can’t,’ I said again.

  But I’d learned by then that saying something and making it happen are two very different things.

  Thirty-Eight

  That night I lay awake with my heart pounding, my thoughts leaping from one alarming scenario to the next. All my life, Mahalia had been telling me, ‘Child, you borrow trouble worse’n anybody I ever knowed. You spend so much time frettin’ about what might happen tomorrow that you forget to just enjoy today.’

  But I couldn’t help it. It had occurred to me that if the Albatross’s officers would go to such lengths to give their commander a Masonic burial, then what would Gabriel Dupont’s comrades do when they realized he was missing? How long, I wondered, would it take them to become alarmed when the captain and his sergeant failed to return to camp? A day? Two? How long before they realized that something more serious than a lame horse must have befallen the two men?

  How long before they sent out search parties to scour the countryside?

  I tried to tell myself that no one could possibly have known the two men had come here to our house. But was that true? What if they’d told someone their intended destination? What if some passerby had chanced to see them riding up our drive? Or what if … What if someone had seen us leading the two heavily burdened horses deep into the swamp that dreadful night?

  I told myself I was being foolish, that there was nothing to tie us to the dead men. But as I watched the shadows of the wind-tossed live oaks move on my wall and listened to the whine of the insects buzzing against my mosquito bar, my imagination conjured for me a dozen hideous scenarios.

  It was a long time before I slept.

  The next morning, Mahalia and I were washing our swamp-stained clothes in big kettles set over slow fires in the yard when we heard a distant rumble start up and then go on and on and on.

  Over the past few weeks, we’d grown accustomed to the Federals’ relentless nightly bombardments of Port Hudson. But this was something both more intense and ominously different. I lifted the three-pronged stick I was using to stir the clothes in the steamy, soapy water and tapped it against the side of the kettle. A warm breeze was shifting the willows and persimmons that grew along the gulley, and carrying the sweet fragrance of the honeysuckle scrambling over the ruins of an old nearby shed.

  ‘What you reckon’s happenin’?’ Mahalia asked, eyes wide in a slack, heat-sheened face as she stared toward the south.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

  An hour later, the bombardment stilled, and the air filled with a chorus of birdsong, as if all of nature had been holding its breath along with us.

  But it wasn’t long before we heard the relentless crash and roar begin all over again and continue the rest of the day and on into the night. Then, just before dawn, the wind picked up harder, blowing out of the south and bringing us the pinching reek of gunpowder and burned timbers and a foul, indefinable odor that we knew now to recognize as the stench of battle.

  ‘I guess them Yankees got tired of waiting for their siege of Port Hudson to work and decided to launch an all-out assault,’ said Mr Marks later that morning when he stopped by to sit on our front gallery and drink some of Mama’s okra coffee. ‘I don’t rightly see how a few thousand starving men can hold out against an army of thirty-five thousand, but there’s a heap of folks think they’ll do it.’

  ‘They’re very determined,’ said Mama.

  I sat at the top of the steps with Checkers while he and Mama talked for a time about the siege and what it would mean for Vicksburg if Port Hudson fell. But after a while, Mr Marks scratched his chin and worked around to the real reason he’d walked out to see us.

  ‘We got a letter yesterday from my Mary’s young cousin, Ned, from Richmond. He was taken prisoner at Fredericksburg, you know, but they paroled him after he lost one of his legs in a Yankee hospital. He says to tell you he saw your brother, Bo, while he was there.’

  A vast, informal web of communication existed, spreading throughout the South to carry news of sick, wounded, and captured loved ones to those with no other way of hearing what they so desperately wanted to know. But I’d noticed that folks were always hesitant and embarrassed when they brought us word of Bo. When the loved one was fighting for the Federals, things got a bit awkward.

  I glanced over at Mama and saw her face go pale. She said, ‘Bo has been hurt?’

  ‘Oh, no, ma’am! Didn’t mean to make you think that. Bo was at the hospital visiting a sick friend. But he recognized Ned and come over and talked to him. Helped get Ned released, he did. Bo’s a lieutenant colonel now, you know.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know,’ said Mama. ‘And how is Ned?’

  ‘Well, you know Ned. He’s frettin’ that no girl will want to marry him, now that he can’t dance.’

  ‘I’m sure he has no cause to worry,’ said Mama, smiling. Then her smile slipped a bit. The truth was, so many men were dying that the South was full of girls and young widows who were never going to have husbands.

  Mr Marks set aside his empty cup and rose to his feet with a grimace. ‘There is one other thing I wanted to tell you about. Word is, a bunch of Federals was ranging along Plank Road yesterday afternoon. Seems they’re looking for a couple of their men who’ve gone missing. I doubt we’ll hear much more about it as long as things are heating up down at Port Hudson. But it doesn’t hurt to be on your guard.’

  ‘Missing men?’ said Mama, as calmly as if they were discussing a couple of straying cows.

  ‘Mmm. A captain and his sergeant. I’ll let you know if I hear anything more.’

  Mama walked with him to the steps, then stood beside me while Mr Marks headed back down the drive. The wind rustled the Spanish moss and cast shifting patterns of light and shadow over his shoulders and bowed head.

  I waited until he was almost to the lane, then said, ‘What do we do if the Federals come here asking about those men?’

  ‘We act as if we’re the most weak, foolish, and hopelessly incapable females they ever met,’ said my mother, and turned toward the house.

  Her idea might have worked – if the Union officer who rode into our yard two weeks later hadn’t already tangled with my mother once before.

  His name was Lieutenant Lucas Beckham, and he came back into our lives the day after my thirteenth birth
day.

  It had rained that morning, a light sun shower that left the air balmy and the grass fresh and green in the fields. I’d been in the woods gathering blackberries, and was coming up out of the gully when I saw half a dozen blue-coated men turn their horses in through our gate.

  The pail slipped from my fingers, the fat ripe berries spilling in the long grass as I ran across the yard and up the steps to the back gallery.

  The central hall was still dark and cool with morning shadows, and the front door stood open to catch the breeze. When I’d left to go blackberrying, Mama had been taking the whalebone out of her fraying old stays so that she could reuse it in a new garment she was making of homespun. But she must have heard the approaching horses because she was now standing on the front gallery, her bent elbows cradled in her palms, her spine straight as she watched the Federals ride up to the house.

  Once before, I’d hidden in the hall while she confronted a group of soldiers. Not this time. I shut Checkers inside and went to stand beside her at the top of the steps. She cast me a quick, sideways glance. But she didn’t tell me to go back inside.

  They were near enough that I could see them now: an officer, his sergeant, and four troopers, all from the 4th Wisconsin Volunteers, which had recently become a mounted infantry regiment. I heard Mama suck in her breath and knew that she, too, had recognized the young, dark-haired lieutenant at their head. It was the same lieutenant who had ridden into our yard looking to impress slaves after the Battle of Baton Rouge.

  They reined in at the base of the stairs, horses sidling and tossing their heads as if sensing the agitation of their riders. We could see no bundles of loot tied to their saddles, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe they were just getting started.

  The lieutenant tipped his hat, his features lean and browned by the hot Southern sun. ‘Mornin’, ma’am,’ he said. He let his gaze wander over the house and yard. The past year had been hard on our place.

  ‘Lieutenant,’ said my mother, staring coldly down at him.

  ‘We’re looking for two of our men. A Captain Gabriel Dupont and Sergeant Jules Boyle. We think they may have come through here several weeks ago.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Lieutenant?’ said my mother, her voice dripping with amused condescension. ‘Have you misplaced them?’

  I threw her a frowning glance. If this was her idea of acting like a weak and stupid female, she needed to take lessons from the likes of Jettie Irvinel or Mary LeBlanc. The problem was, there was something about this particular lieutenant that affected my mother in an indefinable but significant way. But I wasn’t old enough yet to figure out what it was.

  He stared at her, his gaze steady and unreadable and yet vaguely unsettling. ‘In a manner of speaking, ma’am; yes.’

  She said, ‘The last group of Union soldiers we had through here rounded up what was left of our livestock and stole or destroyed much of value in the house. I don’t know if your missing men were amongst them or not. What do they look like?’

  He kept his features carefully composed, although his horse moved restlessly beneath him. ‘Captain Dupont is of above average size and frame, with long gold curls and blue eyes, while his sergeant is shorter, heavier, and dark.’

  ‘I don’t believe I have seen them,’ she said. ‘Perhaps they deserted. It does happen, does it not?’

  The lieutenant had his hands draped over the pommel of his saddle, and he studied the backs of them as if he found the subject of their conversation distasteful. And I thought, He might be out searching for Gabriel Dupont, but he doesn’t like the man. He doesn’t like him at all.

  He said, ‘Captain Dupont wouldn’t desert.’

  ‘So certain?’

  He raised his gaze to her face. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then perhaps he was taken prisoner by one of the cavalry patrols out of Camp Moore.’

  ‘There’ve been no reports of it.’

  The breeze gusted up, warm and sweet and billowing the leaves of the live oaks against the soft blue sky. ‘Is he a good friend of yours?’ asked my mother.

  ‘A friend? No. But he is a fellow officer.’ The lieutenant gathered his reins. ‘He’s also the nephew of the Governor of Wisconsin.’

  Oh, God, oh, God, I thought in a rush of panic. I forced myself to focus on the smooth coolness of the gallery’s floorboards beneath my bare feet and the wet odor of dew-dampened vegetation and earth rising from the tangle of salvia and indigo that grew across the front of the house.

  ‘Ah,’ said my mother with an assumption of calm indifference that filled me with both awe and admiration. ‘An important personage.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I hope you find him. Quickly.’

  His gaze met hers, and something passed between them, something no less real for being unspoken. He said, ‘If we don’t, I’ll be back.’ Then he wheeled his horse with a curt order to the sergeant beside him.

  We watched the horses’ hooves churn up the damp earth of our drive as they thundered toward the gate. Then I sank down on the top step, my arms wrapped around my knees. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ I said softly. ‘They ain’t never gonna stop lookin’ for him. Not if his uncle is the Governor of Wisconsin.’

  ‘Don’t say “ain’t”,’ murmured my mother. But she said it half-heartedly, and I knew her thoughts were with the Federal lieutenant she was watching turn down the sunlit lane toward town.

  Thirty-Nine

  A cool, misty morning a few days later brought an unexpected letter from Finn.

  Hey Amri,

  I said I’d write, so here tis. I’m with Kernel Parker now. We been harryin the Fedrals camped out around Port Hudson. It weren’t easy at first, livin in the saddle, but I’ve got to where I don’t mind it atall. Got shot once already, but it weren’t bad, and I’m fine now.

  You mite be interested to know Hiram Tucker was ridin with us, but he run off last week. I heard tell he joined some bushwhackers down by New Iberia, but I don’t know for sure. He was a good fighter but a mean, nasty varmit for all that. I know you never did like him, and I gotta say I’m glad he’s gone.

  Tell yer momma, Mahalia, and Castile hey for me, and maybe go tell Ma I’m all right? I know she worries, but she cain’t read so there ain’t no use me tryin to write her. I’d make this longer but I always did find writin a chore.

  Yer friend,

  Finn

  A few days later I walked into St Francisville to take a package of Mama’s herbs to Mrs Caine, whose boy, Spencer, was feeling poorly. While I was there, I stopped by to tell Castile about Finn.

  Castile had lost most of his stock back in May, when General Banks’s three divisions swept through Bayou Sara and St Francisville on their way to lay siege to Port Hudson. All he had left were the half-dozen mules and few horses he’d kept pastured down by the creek, and he’d decided to just leave them there and hope the Yankees never found them.

  These days he spent most of his time hunting and fishing, selling or trading the meat to anyone in town able to afford it and giving what he could to those poor families who’d starve without it.

  He was in his front yard filleting a mess of catfish when I walked up to him. ‘Hey, Amrie,’ he said, his eyes crinkling into a smile when he looked up at me. ‘How you doin’, child? Mahalia told me y’all had them Federals to yor house, lookin’ for them two missing men.’

  I studied his face as he reached for the next fish. But if Mahalia had told him of the part we’d played in the two Federals’ disappearance, I saw no sign of it.

  I perched on a nearby log, the sun warm on my shoulders, a soft breeze billowing the pale green leaves of the nearby willows against a clear blue sky. ‘That lieutenant, he says one of the missing men is the nephew of the Governor of Wisconsin.’

  Castile clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and shook his head. ‘That ain’t good. No, siree. That mean they ain’t ever gonna stop lookin’ for him.’

  I watched Castile run his knife up the belly of the catfi
sh, then hook his thumb in its lower jaw. ‘You still ain’t heard nothin’ about Leo?’

  He stilled for a moment, then tossed the fish guts away in a quick, jerky motion.

  I said, ‘You have heard something, haven’t you?’

  He nodded, the muscles of his jaw bunching. ‘Ain’t nothin’ I want gettin’ out, Amrie, but Leo done joined the Union army.’

  I stared at him. In the first, heady days of the war, the gens de couleur libres of New Orleans had formed the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, with over fifteen hundred free blacks signing up to fight for the Confederacy. They’d served for a year before being disbanded when the Federals overran New Orleans. We’d heard that some of those soldiers and their officers had now joined the Union Army to form the nucleus of the Federals’ own 1st Louisiana Native Guard. I knew lots of folks felt hurt and betrayed by the whole idea of it, and I had to admit, the thought of Leo fighting against us when we were struggling so hard just to survive hit me like a fist in my stomach.

  ‘Is he down at Port Hudson, Castile?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘With the Corps d’Afrique, they’re callin’ it.’

  I’d heard that when the Federals first started enlisting freed slaves in their army, folks in other parts of the South had laughed, convinced that Africans were by nature cowards. Folks said that’s why they were slaves, because they lacked the kind of courage that had driven the Indian tribes to fight to extinction rather than allow themselves to be subjugated by the white men. But free men of color had served in the militias of Louisiana for decades and fought bravely against the British at the Battle of New Orleans. No one I knew was surprised by the news that the black Federal units besieging Port Hudson were fighting with a tenacity and valor that was changing the thinking and attitudes of many of the Northern men fighting beside them.