Come Juneteenth (17 page)

"As you can see, we're a little dusty for wear," he told her. "My ma would never let us in the house this way."

"Only thing I object to is the guns," she said. "You remember that, Gabriel. Leave them here at the door."

I felt naked without mine but minded how Gabe gave his over with no protest.

"Sister Geraldine, this is my little sister, Luanne. We
call her Luli. And this is Ham, the boy I told you about. Ham, take off your hat."

The boy did so.

"I'd like to go into all of it with you now, ma'am, but I'd be powerful appreciative if you'd have someone see first to my little sister. She's fearful ailing. I gave her some of Ma's boneset on the trail for fever, and I've got some laudanum, too." He pushed one of his saddlebags with his foot.

"Why, of course. Sister Helena!" she called out, then to us, "She's excellent with remedies. We'll put you right to bed. My, you are a pretty little girl."

"Be good, honey," Gabe winked at me, teasing, and hugged me, but I wouldn't let him go.

"Gabe, don't leave without me. Promise."

"Course not," he said with rough tenderness, which I recognized as his form of love.

I didn't know anything about nuns, so I at least expected Sister Helena to be as nice as the angels I'd seen on Gabe's shoulders. She was. She helped me into a soft nightdress and for some reason I felt no shame in front of her. She talked all the while. About my father, who they nursed back from the cholera years ago and who still sent around "tokens" of sides of meat, corn, flour, and wine, several times a year. About how Gabriel had been here a few years ago with Granville on a trip south.

By that time I was propped up against goose-down and feather pillows because somehow along the way I
must have told her I had a terror of lightning storms and that Mama surrounded me with such pillows and quilts because God never let geese and chickens get struck by lightning.

Then, thanks to her magic remedies, which tasted a lot like Mercy Love's, I went to sleep and never woke until there was a gentle knock and the door opened so I could see both the sunshine and Gabe standing there.

"You up?"

I nodded.

"The sisters are at mass praying for my soul. Look, don't tell them you shot the colonel, will you? He was here with Sis Goose a few days ago and kind enough not to admit he was shot by a young girl."

"He was here?"

"Yes. Wanted a priest to marry them." He slumped against the doorjamb. "Thank God for Catholic rules. The priest wouldn't do it. Needed more time, he said. I'll wager he needed time to look into this colonel with the shot arm and a young, scared girl with him." He wasn't looking at me.

He gave the subject a new turn then. "Guess where I slept last night."

"In the barn with the horses."

"Do I smell that bad? No, I slept in the gallery, on the settle."

"Why?"

He shrugged. I could tell he just wanted to talk. And
if he raised his head, I wagered I would see his eyes full of tears again, brought on by talking of Sis Goose. "Army training," he said. "Always post watch. That way I was able to sleep with my gun. And I never got wet. Is your fever gone? You're not seeing any more angels?"

"They say you smell too bad."

He came into the room and pushed the hair off my face and felt my forehead. "Come on, get dressed then and come down for breakfast. We'll say our proper goodbyes and get on with it."

At the door he stopped, turned, and examined his hat. "There's something you're not telling me about Sis Goose, isn't there?"

My mouth fell open.

"Look, I know you two have secrets. I know that's what girls do. But I hope it isn't something real important that you're keeping from me, Luli."

"I made her a promise not to tell, Gabe. And after we kept her freedom a secret from her for so long, it seemed the thing to do."

He nodded. "Yeah. But promises sometimes turn out to be trouble. Just like the promise I made to myself never to give you a good swat once in a while."

I was supposed to laugh. I didn't. He saw that and frowned.

"In it deep, are you?"

I nodded.

"Anybody going to get hurt?"

"Just hurt feelings," I said.

He sighed. "Well, if it's too much for you to handle you can come to me. You know that. You can come to me for anything."

Did he have to be so nice? By all that was holy, why did I make that promise to Sis Goose not to tell him she was carrying his child?

"Come on now, get dressed," he said. "I'm about starved."

W
HEN WE LEFT,
Sister Geraldine gave us some sliced baked ham on thick slices of freshly made bread. She gave me a stone jar of tea. "It will keep hot at least until noon," she said. "And it's good for you."

Whatever arrangements she and Gabe made about Ham I didn't know. But I know that Gabe did give her money to clothe the boy and get him a good pair of shoes.

She said she would pray for us. I somehow had the feeling we'd need it.

S
ISTER
G
ERALDINE
had told Gabe that Colonel Heffernan said he was going to cross the river and head for Matagorda, near the Gulf.

"I dressed his shoulder while he was here," she said. "The wound is superficial."

"Lucky you," Gabe told me when we were on our way again. "I'll have to tell Cochran that you didn't kill him."

We had to cross the river to find Heffernan, and so we rode to the riverside where there was a ferry.

The man who operated it lived in a log cabin on a small nearby hill. "Yell for a crossing," a crudely painted sign read.

"I done yelled," a voice said. "An' he said he be comin' soon. Waited for freedom, guess we kin wait for him."

Under a grove of trees just to the left of us they were, and we hadn't seen them. A group of negroes with some worn-down mules carrying their few possessions. Gabe said hello and asked them where they were going.

They looked the worse for wear, like they'd stayed out all night in the hard rain. There were five of them: two women, two men, and one young boy. They came forward.

"I's Felix," the one who'd spoken to us said. He was gray-haired and strong looking, though obviously not young. His eyes were like the eyes of Mercy Love's owl, seeing everything and giving back nothing.

"Gabe Holcomb and my sister Luli," Gabe said.

The man nodded. "This here's my son Charley, brother Knox, an' Sis Eda and Sis Hannah. We been travelin' for days. Goin' south to look for work. Done left Marse Jones for good," he finished.

Gabe nodded. "Where you from?"

"Up north a ways. Fifteen miles above Washington. My wife, she dead. Beaten to death by Massa's driver. She wuz carryin' another chile. Man dug a hole in the ground, made her lay face down in it, and beat her till she died. That wuz two years ago now."

Gabe nodded. "Sorry about that. I've traveled a bit up that way and heard that old man Jones was rough on his people."

"Rough don't say it," Felix answered. "That man made us wear chains sometimes when we worked in the fields. He had sixty bloodhounds that he rented out to slave catchers. My brother Horace, he done run off this May after we hear the war may be over. Massa ask for his return in paper. Willin' to give money. Next thing we know that Granger fella down in Galveston say we all be free."

Gabe nodded. "Granger is the commander of the District of Texas. That was Order Number Three."

"At first," Felix went on, "we all jumpin' up an' down. Feel like heroes, 'cause we lived to see freedom. Then Massa ask us to work for him. Nobody stayed. An' so we been travelin'. Now we outa food and have no money and doan know what to do."

"Ate nuthin' but berries and grapes for five days," his son Charley put in.

"Let's get to the other side of the river first," Gabe said. "I can give you some supplies."

T
HE FERRY MAN
came down the hill. The ferry looked like an oversized raft with rickety railings on the sides, but he said it could fit all of us. "It'll cost you five dollars," he said to Gabe. Then he looked at the crowd of negroes. "You got any money?"

"No, suh," said Felix.

"I'll pay for them," Gabe offered.

And I was close enough to him this time to see his money. Again it was Yankee, not Confederate. More of Pa's money.

I supposed Pa had made some sort of bargain with the group of important men he knew and had enough Yankee dollars now to replace his Confederate money. But what did people do who didn't have a pa like that, I wondered. I must ask Gabe.

I heard him talking to the river man about Heffernan. "Yeah, he come this way, last night afore the rain," the man said. "Pretty little girl he had with him, but I got the feelin' they weren't hitched. She didn't even talk to him."

Although the river was somewhat swollen by last night's rains, the trip across was uneventful. I held on to my horse's reins to steady myself. And to steady her. Gabe did the same with his horse. Of course the mule was as steady as a rock with all the supplies it was carrying.

On the other side we stepped onto a wharf and once on steady ground again, Gabe began to go through the contents of the bags the mule was carrying.

He gave the freedmen a goodly piece of bacon, some corn, and flour, and directed them to a plantation nearby where they could work for wages.

"Why do you give away so much?" I asked him as we continued on.

He didn't answer for a moment and then, like Rooney
Lee, he told me. "There shouldn't be any split in this country, Luli. We're all one country. Pa and Granville and I were never for secession. But we fought for Texas, Granville and I. And only lately, with this business with Sis Goose, do I realize how we've wronged the negroes. It's going to take a long time to get back on our feet again, but we can make up for some of it along the way."

It was the longest speech I'd ever heard him make.

"Pa never mistreated his negroes," I said.

"Slavery is mistreatment. Look what I've done to Sis Goose. But to talk that way during the war could earn you a hangman's rope around here. And we're, none of us, prepared in any way, for running our places without the negroes. I'm thinking of hiring some Scottish laborers. I hear they are hard workers. Because, in time, our negroes will drift off. Look, up ahead, does that seem like a town to you?"

I peered over what seemed like miles of wildflowers and did see some building in the distance against the hard blue sky. "Yes."

"It must be Fort Chivatato. The fort's long abandoned, but there is still supposed to be a sort of town there."

As we got closer we could see the dilapidated buildings huddled against the endless Texas sky. There were about four places of business and six homes. One house was larger, with a two-story balcony that didn't look strong enough to stand on, and windows that gaped at you.

When we got closer we could see a sign banging in a sudden wind that seemed to blow through the forlorn town.
BOARDINGHOUSE,
it read.

Outside several horses were hobbled. One had
USA
branded on its rump and sported a saddle blanket of blue that said the same thing in gold letters.

In the background, about half a mile away, loomed the old log fort. Deserted.

"They're here," Gabe said.

He retreated a little to a nearby grove of cottonwood trees and I followed. "We'll just wait here a bit. He's planning to go somewhere. Else the horse would be in back in the barn."

So we waited. We got off our horses and crouched behind the tree trunks. Gabe had his rifle at the ready and so I took mine from its sling on my saddle and cradled it in my arms. Bees droned and up ahead in the town a man crossed the street where suddenly rolls of tumbleweed were blowing and dust was picking up. He had an old hound dog at his heels. He went into a building with a sign that read
SALOON,
and the dog waited outside on the wooden walk.

In a little while the front door of the boardinghouse opened and a man came out.

Heffernan. Still in his Yankee uniform, though it and his boots looked hard worn.

He stood there, lighted a cheroot, and cupped the
light with his hands. Then he took a deep draught and continued standing there, looking around.

"Hold still," Gabe cautioned.

Then Heffernan went back to the front door, held it open, and stood talking with someone. "Half an hour." The wind carried the words to us as if they were in a tunnel.

He got on his horse and rode down to the end of the street, where he went into the saloon.

Gabe got up. "Get that blue cloak of yours out," he said to me.

I stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses.

"Go on, do as I say."

I searched clumsily in the saddlebag until I found the blue velvet cloak. "Put it on," Gabe directed. "You're going inside and you're going to find Sis Goose. I'll stay out here in case he comes back sooner than half an hour."

I put the cloak on, not wanting to argue with him. At this moment he brooked no argument. "I'll look like a butterfly in a grave, wearing this in there," I told him.

He paid me no mind. Just got up and adjusted the cloak around me and clasped it at the neck. "I want you to look like that to Sis Goose. Here," and he fished in his saddlebag and brought out hers, shook it out, and gave it to me. "Give it to her."

"What do I say to her if she's in there?" I asked.

"Ask her to come out. Tell her I'll handle Heffernan, not to worry. Ask her if she'll come home with us. Do I
have to tell you what to say? You're the one who has secrets with her. She's been like a sister to you since you were born. Now leave your gun." He took it. "You've got about twenty-five minutes."

"Wouldn't it be better if you went, Gabe?"

"No." His face was like a mask. "She's mad as hell at me for not telling her she was free. I'd need an hour to convince her otherwise. You go ahead. And give her the cloak. It'll remind her of things. Go on now."

He spoke to me as if I were ten years old. But I went. Across the dusty ground, up the steps to the boarding-house, and then through the door. I didn't bother to knock.