Come Juneteenth (11 page)

"You have to be my eyes and ears," he said. "Granville and Gabe used to do this for me. Now I have only you."

We didn't tell him that Sis Goose had moved out of the house, but he knew.

"Where is our little Goose Girl?" he'd ask me. He sometimes called her that.

I had to tell him. I could never lie to Pa. "She's moved to the quarters," I said. "She's put out with us, Pa, because we never told her she was free. Colonel Heffernan told her."

"Free is what you are in your heart and soul," he said quietly. "We never treated that girl like she was anything but free. I would have given her anything. If that Sophie had allowed it, she would have been our legal daughter years ago. And as free as a soul ever could be in this world."

"Pa, don't blame yourself."

"Send her to me," he said.

"What?"

"Send her to see me. She owes me that. I want to talk to her."

His hands were shaking. They'd been doing a lot of that lately. "Yes, Pa."

"Soon," he said.

P
A WAS
in bed when Sis Goose came to see him. They'd moved a bed into his study, so he wouldn't have to climb stairs at night.

"Stay with me, please," Sis begged, when I turned to go.

I looked at Pa for permission. He nodded yes. So I backed away a bit and sat in a chair in the corner.

Sis knelt next to Pa's bed.

"You don't want to live with us anymore, is that it?" he asked.

Sis took his hand. She adored him, I knew that. She knew her life here all these years had come about because he succeeded in holding Aunt Sophie off from taking her back. "I'm sorry, Pa. But I was so upset when Colonel Heffernan told me I could have been free two years ago."

"And how do you like being free now?" he asked her sternly.

Tears came to her eyes.

"Is it different from before? Seems to me you're working hard these days. Look at these hands." And he took one up in his own large ones. "You never had cracked nails before. What's he got you doing? Scrubbing floors?"

"No, Pa."

"Are you happier than before?" he pushed.

She lowered her head. "No."

"Even after he goes, girl. Even after they leave and we're back in the house again, you won't find any difference than before. What do you want to do? Marry Gabe?"

She blushed. "Yes, sir."

"Did he require that you be officially free in order to marry him?"

She tried to speak and couldn't. She sobbed.

"Well, you and your Gabe will always be welcome here. It'll always be your place. Now go. I'm tired."

She sobbed some more and ran from the room.

I went over to him.

"Thought that girl had more sense," he grumbled. "Thought all the years she lived with us mattered. And what happens? Yankees come and she chooses to live in the quarters. Chooses to be one of the slaves. All the education we gave her. All the love."

"Pa, don't. You're getting yourself upset."

He laid back and I adjusted his pillow. "Feel like I'm going to die," he said. "Tell you something, Luli. You write to Gabe. Tell him to come home. Granville's likely in Mexico. Write to Gabe. Tell him I need him. Bad."

"Pa, you're making yourself sick."

"Don't talk to me like that. Impudence. You've always been impudent. You're spoiled. Those brothers of yours spoiled you."

He mumbled some things that didn't make any sense. "Get me some rum," he said.

"Pa, Mama says you shouldn't."

"I'll tell you what, little girl. I know what I should and shouldn't do. Did those Yankees leave me any rum?"

"Yes, Pa."

"Then get me some. Now."

I did so, and I stayed with him while he drank it.
I can't do this alone,
I thought. What would Gabe do? Well, I know what he wouldn't do; he wouldn't go and worry Mama.
I'll write to him,
I told myself. Tonight. And I think we ought to send a rider to get Doctor Curley. I think Pa needs him.

***

D
OCTOR
C
URLEY
was the one Pa sent for when a slave was really sick or dying. Scarce ever for anyone in the house. Mama knew her tried-and-true remedies.

Doctor Curley lived about an hour away on a small plantation with less than ten slaves. And we hadn't seen him since Christmas.

But he came for Pa. Like everyone in the region he had great respect for Pa, who, by that same evening, couldn't move his left arm or leg. And talked with a slur.

Pa wanted only Mercy Love, who had her own collection of remedies, and on whom he'd depended in the past. But Mama said no, she was taking charge and it would be Doctor Curley.

He told us Pa had had a stroke. "Something greatly disturbed him," he said, "and upset the natural balance of things. Must be the Yankees. That'd stick in anybody's craw."

He prescribed rest and no excitement. "I hate to make calls anymore," he said. "I haven't had any opium, turpentine, quinine, or calomel since spring of '64. Malnutrition, diarrhea, digestive disorders, and smallpox are widespread. Don't let your pa have any bad news," he said, looking at me. "When are the boys coming home?"

"Gabe will be here soon," Mama said. "Luli will write to him."

"Do you know anything special that upset him?" Doctor Curley asked.

Sis Goose, I decided; she greatly upset his natural balance. She broke his heart. But I didn't say anything.

I
WROTE TO
Gabe, telling him about Pa and his stroke. I used the same overland mail rider we'd used all through the war and even gave him an extra Yankee dollar. Pa had them. Again, I didn't ask from where he'd gotten them. They accomplished wonders, that's all I knew.

I didn't tell Gabe about Sis Goose and how she'd upset Pa. I did tell him, "Don't come tearing through the gates with your rifle at the ready. The Yankees are an ugly lot. Pa says we have to cooperate with them or possibly lose a lot more.

"We need you home," I told him. "Just between us, I think Pa is dying. And I can't be you, no matter how I try."

N
O MATTER WHAT,
life on the ranch had to go on. As July approached, there were crops to bring in. Burs had to be picked off the sheep so they could be sheared for their wool. There was corn to be harvested, and it was time to plant the second round of crops: vegetables and black-eyed peas. It was also time to cut the grains: the barley, oats, and wheat. Which meant that the negroes who had stayed with us had to be managed under the new scheme of things.

Sam the faithful overseer, who'd always reported directly to Mama and taken his orders from her, managed the negros, now called
freedmen.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, as the case may be, the men the Confederacy took from Pa's fields to dig trenches in Galveston were now coming home and must be cared for and fed. And every day the needs of the Yankees in our house had to be attended to. They liked roasted meats and would consume a whole side of beef in two days. They had first pickings at the fresh fruit from Mama's trees, the
tender new vegetables. They drank plenty of rum and wine.

As we aired our log house out, swept it clean, replaced bed tickings and mosquito netting, the Yankees demanded the same services. Slavery was over, but they made us their slaves. And our needs were put in the background.

We accepted that, were even ready for it. What we were not ready for was the Fourth of July.

A
WEEK BEFORE,
Colonel Heffernan called us together. We stood in front of him like the negroes used to stand in front of Pa to hear his pronouncements.

"The Fourth of July is next week," Heffernan told us. "You all might remember the Fourth? It's a little holiday we like to celebrate up North. From what I understand you people had a lovers' quarrel with the North and what it stands for, several years before the war, and so decided to do away with the Fourth.

"Well, I'll miss it if we don't celebrate it here. Now I want all of you to put together a good, old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration for yourselves and for me and my men. I mean ham, fowls, and a pig with an apple in its mouth. I want chicken pies, sugar cakes, and the whole yard here lighted with pine-knot torches. I want plenty of the best preserves and jellies and cake and rum and the whole kit and caboodle. Somebody told me that the negroes here sing spirituals. That true?"

"Yeah," came a negro voice from outside the circle of whites. "We sings 'em."

"Then I want that, too. Along with 'Hail, Columbia' and 'Dixie'! Yes, 'Dixie'. Now get to work and no excuses."

Across the yard I met Sis Goose's eyes. She was standing next to Heffernan and I saw she was staring up at him, her mouth part open. I turned away, near tears.

"M
AMA, DID
we ever celebrate the Fourth of July?"

"Yes. Surely, you remember. We used to have all Heffernan mentioned and more."

"I don't remember."

"You mean you don't recollect your brothers pouring black powder into the bottom of an anvil and firing it off? Every year I couldn't keep you away from them doing it."

"Oh. Yes. So that's what that was for."

I was almost fifteen by now and yet it seemed as if my whole childhood had been outlined and defined by the war. Before that I couldn't recollect much, had even blocked some things out.

War had seemed the natural way of things. What human beings did. Now it was over, and I didn't know how to act, though I was ashamed to admit it.

I was helping Mama make some loaf cakes for the Fourth of July celebration. In a corner of the kitchen, Molly was churning butter. Once it was solid she would make fairy-tale figures from it, to set on the table, packed in ice.

"Mama," I said softly, so Molly couldn't hear, "I don't know how I feel about this Fourth of July. Isn't it for Yankees?"

She stopped beating the cake batter. "No. It's for you, too, Luli. Oh dear." And she wiped her hands on her apron. "I'm afraid that with all the attention we've paid to Sis Goose, we've neglected you. Just left you to grow up yourself, didn't we?"

"I had Gabe and Granville."

She came over to give me a hug. "And riding astride and camping out and firing guns at deadly creatures and bringing home deer and possum and such."

"I'm fine, Mama. It's just that I don't know what I'm supposed to feel. I hate the Yankees, the way they sit up there in our house and eat and destroy everything. Does that make them right and me wrong?"

"We can only pray all of them aren't like Heffernan," she told me. "I sense they aren't. But as far as hating them, you have every right."

"Can I still be a Southerner, and love the Confederacy, even though we lost the war?"

Tears came into Mama's eyes. "You be whatever you want to be, Luli. You are a good person. We're all good people. Because we lost the war doesn't make us otherwise."

"Then how can I celebrate the Fourth of July?"

"The same way you do everything else Heffernan says we have to do. Don't put your heart in it if you don't feel it. Only remember what your pa says. It's your country as
much as Heffernan's now. You have to have some allegiance to it. And learn to be an American all over again. The laws work for you as well as for him."

"And Sis Goose?" I asked. "What do you think she's feeling?"

"God knows," Mama said. "Maybe we will know when Gabe comes home. I only pray he doesn't come home until after the Fourth."

T
HE
F
OURTH
dawned clear and blue. And everything was done by the servants, exactly as every Fourth Mama ever remembered. Under the brush arbor in back of the house the long tables were set up, heavy with food.

The day before, pits for barbecuing sheep and beef, deer and wild turkey, were dug. I helped Mama make fruit pies. There was a pyramid cake made by Molly.

On the top layer, she placed a small American flag.

Heffernan had the flags, small ones and big ones, all over the place, and the red-white-and-blue bunting.

The morning of the Fourth he called me over to him at the foot of the steps to the house. Under his arm he had the bunting.

"Here." He gave it to me. "Drape it around the table. And don't let it touch the ground. I know it's not a flag, but if I see it touching the ground, I'll confine you to the house for the day."

Nothing would make me happier. I could spend the day with Pa. But Mama scowled, overhearing him. "Do
as he says," she advised, "or he'll find other ways to punish us."

At high noon we had to stand at attention while Heffernan's men lined up and fired off their guns in the air in salute to the occasion. Then the dancing began, and the former slaves were allowed as much rum as they wanted.

Half in their cups, they sang for Heffernan, and we were made to stand and listen as they sang "Hail, Columbia" and "Yankee Doodle."

As it was, Heffernan punished us anyway. After Mama and I had worked all morning he would not allow us near the table until all the negro servants had come up and taken their fill. The table was near stripped bare by the time we got there.

"I'm not hungry anyway," Mama told me. "But I'll take a dish to Pa. You take one to Edom."

Mama and I took the plates of food into the cool log house to Pa and Edom. Pa ate little but snoozed away in beat with the songs in the distance. Mama sat doing some needlework. I fell asleep in the chair to the drone of Edom's voice telling how the Indians were always afraid of the negroes on those trips south that he and Grandpa made to take the cotton to the river.

We didn't see Sis Goose all night. She stayed under the brush arbor with Heffernan and his men, serving them cool drinks and listening to the songs of the negroes.

T
HOSE SONGS,
which eventually turned into mournful spirituals that most white folks seem to love so, nearly drowned out the booted footsteps on the wide-plank floors.

Two men appeared in the doorway of Pa's study, one holding a lantern so the other could see. The lantern holder was Cochran and the other man was Colonel Heffernan.

"Excuse me," Heffernan said.

In his bed, Pa's eyes flew open. "Gabe?" he asked. "Is it Gabe?"