Leigh Ann's Civil War Page 2

  I stared at him in disbelief. "This isn't money, sir. It's an official notice, from a major in your own army!"

  "Good man he is, too. One of the best. Well, of course if you insist upon looking at it that way, I can always tell him you lost it. That I never saw it. That you claimed you had it and went reaching in your pocket and couldn't find it, but out of the goodness of my heart I let the three of you go anyway. Couldn't I?"

  This man was beyond the pale. He might as well have foam dribbling out of his mouth. I felt as if I were drowning, standing there. I felt out of breath of a sudden, as if I'd been running and had come to a skidding stop.

  I had best get out of here, I thought, while I still can. I had best quit talking while I still have the promise of Carol and Viola and my own way home.

  While I still have three horses and five days' rations for each of us and the dog.

  "Thank you, sir," I said. When what I wanted to say was, You are the slut. You are the crazy man. You are the one who is dense. And I hope someday your house comes crashing down on you. No, I hope someday your world comes crashing down on you, so there.

  "Come on, dog," I said. And we left.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Spring 1861 Roswell, Georgia

  I was eleven when the war started. I didn't understand enough to worry, but I did understand it when Miss Finch, my teacher, said that since Georgia had been out of the Union since January we weren't going to be called Abigail Adams Academy for Young Ladies anymore but must find a new name. And Georgia might as well be cut off from the rest of the country.

  As my brothers got ready to leave for the fighting, there was muster on the town square every day. Cicero and I went each morning to watch. So did Primus, our negro overseer, when he could get away.

  When Louis caught me crying one morning after drilling was over and asked me why, I said, "Miss Finch said Georgia is no more part of the country."

  "Miss Finch is an idiot," he said. "She speaks in idle fabrications. If I had my way, I'd take you out of that ridiculous school run by that raving maniac and have you tutored at home."

  "Can't you tell Pa that?"

  "You know Pa hasn't been himself these days, sweetie. Teddy makes such decisions. And Teddy has too many other things on his mind. So for now at least, we'll leave things as they are."

  Pa's mind was already starting to turn because he had money worries, Louis had told me, because his Northern customers wanted him to continue shipping goods and he wouldn't.

  But I had other worries. "Who will take care of me when you and Teddy go away?"

  Louis knelt before me so that his fine sword scraped on the cobblestone walk. "First, we won't be gone long. We'll have this thing with the Yankees over with by Christmas. Teddy and I are going to have a meeting about the care of our women tonight. Likely it will be Viola and Carol. Do you think you can mind them?"

  "Viola and I are friends. Carol never liked me. She's been acting strange lately. She and Teddy fuss a lot."

  "That's their business, Leigh Ann."

  "I know why," I persisted. "Viola told me. It's because she hasn't been able to give him a baby in the year they've been married."

  He scowled. "What do you know about women giving men babies?"

  "Everything. Viola told me."

  More scowling. "I don't know whether to be angry or not. On one hand, Viola has saved Teddy and me a lot of trouble. On the other hand, she's done it too soon."

  "Don't be angry with Viola. I asked her. But that's not the only reason Carol and Teddy fuss. He wants her to stop teaching at the school for mill children. He says it wears her down. She won't. And she's jealous of the time Teddy gives me. The other day she slapped me for being impertinent to her."

  "Were you impertinent?"

  "I suppose so. But she didn't have to slap me. You and Teddy never slap me."

  "Does Teddy know she slapped you?"

  "No. I didn't tell him."

  "Good girl."

  "Or, she might want to be in charge because she's always wanted permission from Teddy to paddle me. He won't give it. If he's not here, no one can stop her. Please, Louis, you mustn't let Teddy leave her in charge."

  "Well, Teddy and I will discuss all this and likely leave it to Viola to care for you. She has sense. I'll suggest that if things get bad Viola write to Grandmother Johanna in Philadelphia for someone to come and take you all on up there until things settle down."

  "Why is Grandmother Johanna so nice when Mother is so bad?"

  "It just happens that way sometimes, sweetie."

  "Mother whipped you once with a riding crop, didn't she?"

  "We don't want to talk about that now."

  "And you were twenty years old! Viola said you were in your cups, and you laughed and came out of the barn and said you didn't feel a thing, then fell down and fainted. Teddy had to carry you in the house."

  "Leigh Ann..." It was said with icy admonishment. So I kept a still tongue in my head.

  And so he explained the war in fine fashion. I thought he looked so handsome in his captain's uniform. I was puzzled as to who was more handsome, he or Teddy. And I teased them both about it that afternoon in Louis's bedroom, until Louis came at me playfully and I ran downstairs, just in time to see Pa coming up.

  He went into Louis's room and began to take on about his boys leaving to fight the battle of some "no-count, money-hungry bankers and grubbing land-stealers up north." All relatives of his wife.

  "They want the Southern lands," he shouted. "First the Indians wanted it and now the Northerners. I'd rather give it all back to the Indians, though they didn't have the courage to fight for it but let the white man take it from them!"

  He bellowed. The walls shook. At that last remark about the Indians, Louis came tearing out of the room, his cheekbones high with color, his boots stamping on the stairs as he passed me.

  "Louis!" I cried.

  "Out of the way," he said gruffly. "Before I knock you over."

  I'd seen him this way only once before, when Pa had accused him of "doing a bit of thrumming" with one of the women negroes.

  That's when he had run away for two days and Teddy had to go and search for him and fetch him home. Louis had come home leaning over his horse, which was led by Teddy, and Louis had been so full of a cheap excuse for mint juleps that Mother had ordered him to the barn. The servants had to hold Teddy back, Viola told me. Mother had another servant tie Louis's hands to a wooden rail and asked Primus to whip him, or be whipped himself.

  Primus said no. So Mother did it. And she is strong. And Primus was whipped later. And the bond between Louis and Primus became so strong, nobody could break it.

  I asked Teddy what "thrumming" was. He wouldn't tell me.

  So I asked Viola and she told me. Viola, at fifteen, knew everything. So it led to my asking her how women gave men babies. And she told me that, too.

  From the hall steps I immediately burst into tears as I watched Louis go into Pa's library and slam the door. Pa came down and saw me and picked me up, sat down on the bottom step, and held me on his lap.

  "Don't worry your pretty little head about Louis," he soothed. "He acts like that because he's part Indian."

  I just stared up at Pa's face. Was this part of his "madness" coming on?

  "He most positively is," he assured me. "Can't you see his dark hair? And eyes? And how he'd rather ride with no saddle? And his high cheekbones? And how good he is working with silver?"

  I only saw one thing. That if Louis was part Indian, he was not my brother. Mother's hair was fair. Pa's was white. Viola's and mine was light brown and sun-streaked. Teddy's hair was the same as ours.

  I leaped off Pa's lap and ran through the front door, off the front verandah, and around the side of it, where I hid under the sweet gum trees and cried my heart out until Louis himself came to find me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  "Come on, Leigh Ann, before I come over there and scalp you."

  "Is that before or aft
er you knock me over?"

  He'd taken off his sword and unbuttoned his gray jacket and shirt underneath. I could see some dark hair on his chest.

  "You're getting a little cheeky there, aren't you?"

  In school we'd studied about Indians. They didn't have hair on their chests, did they? Teddy and Louis did. I'd seen them tear off their shirts several times when brushing down the horses or jumping into the stream in their small clothes.

  "I don't care. You had no call to say such to me. You're supposed to have manliness and courage and honor. That's what Miss Finch said all our Southern men from eminent families have."

  He tried to hide a smile. "I try, Leigh Ann, I try terrible hard, but it's downright difficult sometimes. What else did she say we're supposed to have?"

  "She said they're supposed to defend their mothers' and sisters' honor to the death if they have to."

  "Well, if the day comes when I have to, I'll gladly do it, Leigh Ann. Now why do you think I've come out here? There are different ways of defending one's little sister's honor. There are different kinds of honor. You've been told by Pa that I'm an Indian. Am I correct?"

  I said nothing. I looked at the ground.

  "And you've been shocked and hurt and you likely have come to the ugly conclusion that I'm not your brother. Am I right, sweetie?"

  I looked at him. "What did you study at college? Hoodoo?"

  He and Teddy had gone to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Thomas Jefferson's university. Louis, older by two years, had graduated. Teddy had left at the end of his second year to join the army.

  Now Louis laughed. "I have the gift of hoodoo because I am half Indian. Do you want to know about it?"

  "Yes, but first I want to know what you've got in that box you just set down." It was considerable large, that box, bigger than any of Mother's hatboxes by half.

  "Then come out of there and I'll show you. And I'll tell you the secret we've all been hiding from you. Let's take a nice walk down to the stream. But you must remember that I speak the truth, and it's a good truth. And it's your truth, too."

  I just stared at him. "Are we going to bury it?"

  "You can never bury the truth, Leigh Ann. It always comes to the surface when you least expect it to."

  "I mean the box. You've got a shovel." It was lying on the ground next to the box. He just kept smiling and I could not fight that smile. I stood and went to him and he brushed me off.

  "Yes, we're going to bury the box. And I'm going to ask you a very respectable favor this day and hope you will do it for me."

  I'd once told him I'd do just about anything for him and he'd admonished me never to say that to anybody. Not even to him. Or Teddy. I was puzzled, but made no further inquiry because he'd used what I'd come to know as his "We don't want to speak of that now" voice.

  We walked in the direction of the stream that ran beyond the cows' meadow. There stood a line of dogwood growing a little distance in front of a complete grove of pine trees. We sat down in back of the dogwood, cut off from the rest of the world.

  "This is a good place to tell you," he said.

  I sat across from him with my skirts billowing about me. In the distance I could see two fat deer, with their beautiful antlers etched against the sky, running through the rows of Indian corn. I felt a sense of peace settle over me such as I'd never felt before.

  It radiated from Louis's smile. I often found that peace radiated from Louis's smile.

  "Pa is a full-blooded Indian," he said quietly.

  I just looked at him. But the smile never wavered. It remained the same.

  "A Cherokee," he elaborated, just in case I needed to know.

  My eyes were wide now. I don't know why I didn't cry, or say, "No, it isn't so," or get up and run away. I knew I couldn't do that to Louis.

  Were the deer real, running through the Indian corn? Or were they sent to prepare me? My friend Careen believes in such signs. She also believes in spirits, can read signals in clouds, visits the plantation graveyard and talks to the dead, and is very otherworldly.

  "Are you all right, Leigh Ann?" he inquired gently.

  That grave concern of his brought me back on track. What would he do if I wasn't? Take it all back? Say he was only teasing? I had to be all right. He was counting on me. I nodded my head yes.

  "It'll take time," he said, "for it to sink in. But not long. There's nothing to be ashamed of."

  My first thought was, Do I look Indian? My hand flew to my face.

  "No, you don't," Louis said, reading my thoughts. "You don't look Indian at all."

  He could do that sometimes.

  "Does Teddy know you're telling me this?"

  "Yes. We were going to wait until you were older, but then Pa went and spilled the beans. And Teddy said I'd best tell you. Did you learn about the Cherokees in that ridiculous school?"

  "Yes, we learned this was their land, here on the northern banks of the Chattahoochee River."

  He nodded his head in silent approval. My spirits were roused.

  "What did the Cherokees call this place?" he asked.

  "Enchanted Land. And they said the white people were forbidden to be on it. But they came anyway."

  "You should know the Cherokees were the first American Indians to have an alphabet and written language. One of their chiefs, Sequoyah, was a talented silversmith. They had the first American Indian newspaper. They tried to get along with the white people. They had their own shops and businesses."

  "Where does Pa come in?"

  "He was one of the Cherokees who was living with the white men. He worked for one named Hunter Conners, who had no children and who gave him a fine piece of land and, in the end, his name. Then gold was discovered and hundreds of settlers came and the government took the land back from the Cherokees."

  "Did Pa have gold?"

  "No, he was growing tobacco. He made eight thousand dollars on two trips to Baltimore selling tobacco. That's where he met Mother. She was visiting her uncle, who purchased the tobacco. Pa had men working for him. Slaves. He made trips to Baltimore every year."

  "What did he do with the money?"

  "Well, he always thought that this area, with its big forests and its powerful waters, would be a good place for a mill. So the money, back in 1838, was enough to start building a mill."

  "Oh, that's a good story."

  "Do you know what else happened in 1838?"

  "They got all the Cherokees together and marched them out of here, and everyone calls it the Trail of Tears."

  "You don't know how lucky you are that you are aware of that. If you weren't, it would grieve me beyond belief."

  I looked into his dark eyes. He was not teasing. This Indian inheritance must go deep with Louis. I threw myself into his arms and he held me close. "I never would do anything to grieve you," I said. "I promise."

  Then he told me how Mother and Pa had wed soon after they met, and how successful the mill had been. And no, he didn't know why Viola and Teddy and I didn't have dark hair or eyes, but I must promise him never to be ashamed of the part of me that was Cherokee.

  I promised. Then he said, "Now let's pay mind to the box."

  He was about to move. I pulled away from him. "Not before you tell me why Pa is getting so strange in his mind."

  He shook his head sadly. He shrugged. "Of course it's the money he's losing on the mill. He's paid more tariffs to the North than he can afford. But I think it started when he found out that Mother is a secret Yankee. To get back at her he changed his will and had her name taken off as inheritor of everything. We children are slated to inherit. Which is probably why she hates us so. And why Mother and Pa have been holding their own war since."

  "And she's been running around with other men since, hasn't she?"

  He scowled. "I won't have you talking that way about our mother, Leigh Ann," he said severely.

  "That's what Viola says about her."

  "I'm not concerned with Viola at this moment.
I'm concerned with you. No matter what she does, she's still our mother. Do you hear me?"

  "Yes, Louis."

  "All right, sweetie. Now come along. We're going to bury the box under that pine tree right over there."

  CHAPTER THREE

  He took off his uniform coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, picked up the shovel, and started digging.

  "Why didn't you bring along Primus to dig for you?" I asked. I knew he and Primus had a special bond. Most of the negroes had feelings for him that went beyond common charity—Bench and Tumble, Cyrus and July, to name just a few. And Cannice, the "best cook this side of the Mississippi," as Teddy called her, mothered the boys by giving them special late-night treats in the kitchen, by overseeing the perfect laundering of their shirts, by listening when they wanted to talk.

  "I didn't tell Primus," he said.

  You didn't even confide in Primus? This must be important. But I knew better than to say anything.

  I did ask, "Can I know what's in the box?"

  He stopped digging. He'd already dug a respectable hole. He took out his handkerchief, wiped his brow, knelt down, and pried the box open.

  Inside was a heap of silver. It glistened in the sun. It was made into necklaces and bracelets, rings and armbands, all hammered with intricate designs.

  I'd never paid mind to the silver shop Louis had set up in a simply built little cottage he and Primus had made in the line of outbuildings in the quarters a distance behind the house. He spent hours there sometimes. Pa had said, "Leave him be. He needs time alone to practice his hobby. Viola likes to paint, doesn't she? And doesn't Teddy like to hunt with a bow and arrow? And what do you like to do, Leigh Ann?"

  "Read," I'd answered, "and gather sweetheart leaves to perfume the lye soap. Sometimes the servants let me mix them in. Teddy is teaching me to use the bow and arrow. And to swim in the stream."

  He frowned. "I hope you wear clothes."

  I laughed. Pa had taken a fancy, recently, to swimming naked in the stream. Teddy had caught him at it a couple of times and scolded him severely and made him put on some small clothes.