Come Juneteenth (3 page)

But Aunt Sophie never did settle down. If it wasn't a trip to England, it was a trip to Russia where she met the czar and czarina. Or the south of France in the middle of the winter. Or she was entertaining lavishly at their main plantation, Glen Eden. And her stuffed shirt of a husband didn't want Sis Goose. Or if he did, it would be only to have her raised as a household servant.

Mama said she'd run back to Virginia with Sis Goose first. The baby was that adorable with her beautiful smile that made her eyes light up, her pert nose, and golden skin. Everyone knew back then that she was going to be a beauty.

Three years after Sis Goose was born Mama had me. Aunt Sophie and Uncle Garland never did have children. But the year I was born, Pa came down with cholera, and
has been in a weakened state since. Mama had to take over running the place with the help of Sam, the negro foreman. The years went on, Granville and Gabe went east to the states, as we call them, to college, and soon enough came the war.

All Aunt Sophie ever demanded was that Sis Goose and I spend two weeks a year at her place. And always there was the implication that she might claim her. Take her away from us. We lived with that fear, especially Mama.

I thought it cruel of Aunt Sophie to do so. And I know by now that if she ever exercised her legal rights and took her, Sis Goose would run away.

"And then what?" I asked Gabriel one day.

"Be caught and sold as a slave by some conniving, stealing man," he said.

Oh, my head spins, thinking on it. And I prefer, on most days, not to think of it at all.

I
SHOULD TELL
some good things before I go on. I mean about our family and how we came to live here. And how my grandfather had to shriek and throw things in the air and yell out to the world that this land was his in order to claim it.

We're not yeomen farmers, with fewer than ten slaves. Neither are we small planters with ten to fifty slaves. Before the Yankees came, Pa had over seventy negroes working the fields and the gardens and tending the sheep, the horses, the cows, and the house. Pa was someone to be reckoned with, not just an ailing old man.

He was already in college in the states when his father, Grandpa Holcomb, came from Virginia as part of that group of Stephen Austin's original "old three hundred" families in that first community of settlers that came to East Texas in 1821.

Edom told me and Sis Goose all this. Edom is close to ninety by now and lives in the log house that is the first one Grandpa built before he built the big one. The same
log house all of us live in now that the Yankees came this past June of '65 and put us out of the plantation house.

Edom was in his early forties then, and was Grandpa's body servant. He told us how Grandpa claimed his land. To me, it's so romantic that I never tire hearing tell of it.

In order to take possession of the land, Edom says, Grandpa had to have three witnesses and a surveyor. Stephen Austin was there, too.

The surveyor walked the landmarks with Grandpa, from a red oak tree two feet in diameter, to a pecan tree, to an ash tree, and finally an orange tree. The surveyor dutifully marked it all down.

Then, in order to take possession, Grandpa had to cry out, pull up weeds, throw stones, drive in stakes, and perform other necessary solemn acts to show the land was his.

Exactly the kind of thing I want to do when I'm out riding and I see the endless land and sky. I feel like crying out and pulling up weeds and throwing stones, too. My spirit quickens and I know how Grandpa felt.

Grandmother was with Grandpa when all this happened, of course, on her tall gray horse, Smokey. She'd ridden that horse clear across the country, using a sidesaddle Grandpa had given her. She wasn't afraid of anything. Not Indians or wolves or outriders. And she could shoot a coin off the top of an apple without disturbing its skin. Gabe says I take after her with my shooting and my spirit.

Pa was there, too, when Grandpa claimed the land. It was just before they sent him back to college in Virginia. Grandpa chose a high bluff to build the plantation house on, but first he had to build the log cabin. He built it with logs right off the property. There is a huge fireplace inside. The door shutter is made out of thick slabs split right off the thick pieces of lumber. And the door was locked at night with a large peg that could not be broken through. This was in case of a raid by Indians.

The Indians did come, of course. After all, this was their land. Kickapoos, like the ones who plague our frontier, the ones who wounded Gabriel, would come and walk around the log cabin at night, hoping to scare the wits out of Grandmother. But all she did in reply was take out her spinning wheel and keep it whistling all night so they would be sure to hear it.

Edom told us that before their final leave-taking, they built a fire on the lawn, right where Ma's orchard is now, and danced around it in honor of Grandmother and her courage.

That sure made me proud. And whenever Gabe scolded me, he always put in how nobody would ever build a fire for me in honor of my courage, just to make me feel bad.

Anyway, after the Indians left Grandmother and Grandpa, the buffalo came. A whole drove of them passing through the river about a mile above our house. Grandmother figured there must have been close to a
hundred of them, and they never stopped. They went over the land like a flood, and they went southward, Grandmother said.

Those first years were a trial for Grandmother and Grandpa. They had about eighteen head of cattle, a small herd. They'd started out with more, but on the trip west the cattle got sick and some died. They had only six horses left. And they set about the task of surviving.

When the buffalo and Indians weren't plaguing them, the flies and mosquitoes were. Then one year Grandpa's corn crop failed. The next year there was a drought. The year the corn crop failed they had no bread, not until Grandpa raised a good corn crop.

They had no salt at all. But the cotton crop gave a good yield. The only problem was getting it to its destination.

The first few years, before he built his own landing on the river, Grandpa took the cotton to Mexico on pack mules.

Edom told us of this, too: "One slave could manage ten or twelve pack mules. The cotton bales weighed seventy-five or eighty pounds each. The only roads were Indian trails. But we managed eighteen or twenty miles a day."

He told us how the men were heavily armed. And how they hoped the Indians were too afraid of the colored slaves to attack. How, in Mexico, Grandpa exchanged his cotton for coffee, tea, clothing, and Mexican silver dollars.

Pa still has a cache of those silver dollars. I have three. I know my brothers and Amelia have their share, too.

I think about all this because I know how difficult it was for Grandpa and Grandmother to build up this plantation. And because now the Yankees have it. They just took it. And I dream of the day we can get it all back.

"What will it take?" I've asked Gabe.

"Words," he'd said. "Isn't that what it always takes?" And somehow I felt he wasn't just talking about the plantation, and I was treading on dangerous ground, so I shut my mouth right up.

T
HERE ARE
more good things I should tell, and I keep them packed away in my memory in a box with a big red bow on top.

I suppose, over the years, I have always been considered as "belonging" to Gabe by the family. And this was long before Pa got so sick he took to his bed and Ma took over the running of the ranch.

You would think the responsibility would fall to Amelia, but she took no interest in me other than to scold. Oh, she oversaw my piano lessons. With a ruler. She smacked my hands with it when I hit the wrong note. I recollect Gabe coming by one time and taking the ruler out of her hands and saying that Chopin didn't learn that way.

Even back then he was protecting me.

I think I was five and he was eighteen and just finishing up college back east. Granville was finished already. Gabe traveled home from the states, part of the way by the rails. Granville was nineteen. Amelia was a little bit jealous of them both, just because they were boys.

When I think about it now, it all falls into place and makes sense. Gabe was the only one who could get me to take medicines when no one, not even Mama, could. He'd fish a candy out of a carefully folded napkin in his shirt pocket and lay it down on the table between us and say it was mine if I would first take the foul-tasting stuff.

He was the one who put me on a horse and taught me to ride, under instructions from Pa, who said it was time. Sis Goose already knew how to ride. Granville had taught her. But she wasn't especially fond of it. And now she was jealous because Gabe was to teach me.

He did such a good job that Pa more or less turned me over to him and made him accountable for me. And when I did something wrong, like leave my horse's tack out in the rain, he, not I, got called on the carpet for it.

He taught me how to shoot, of course, how to clean a gun, how to prepare a wild turkey for cooking, things that Amelia had kittens over.

Things Sis Goose wanted nothing to do with.

I did get him in trouble once, too. When I was about six, Granville told me a story about lions and I was terrorized. I started seeing lions under my bed at night and so did the natural thing.

I got up and went down the hall to Gabe's room, with my favorite blanket, and got into bed with him.

Well, you would think I was the devil himself, tucking his green tail under the covers. Gabe woke in a start and said, "What in the hell are you doing here?"

I told him there was a lion under my bed. And he quickly got up, put on his slippers, and carried me back to my room, where he lighted a lamp and showed me there were no lions under my bed and, satisfied, I went back to bed and to sleep.

The next night my lion returned. And so did I, to Gabe's bed with my blanket.

The same routine. Only the next morning he took me by the hand and found Ma straightening her linen closet.

"Ma, I have a problem," he said. And he told her what it was.

She wasn't alarmed. She simply said she would think about it. Which meant she would bring the matter to Pa. And before you knew it, Gabe's worst nightmare came true. He was called into Pa's study and the door was closed.

I waited outside, with my blanket, and listened.

"Young man," Pa said sternly. "What's this I hear about Luli in your bed?"

"Gawd, Pa, it isn't like that." Gabe sounded miserable. "She sees lions under hers and is frightened out of her wits and comes to mine. I put her back, right off."

"Hmmph," Pa said. "You never think of locking your door?"

"Pa, I couldn't do that to her."

"Well, you
are
going to do it. Tonight. Hear me?"

"Yes, sir." Now he was more than miserable. And I got up and left. With my blanket.

Gabe did not dare disobey Pa. So he did lock his door. And the next morning they found me with my blanket, asleep in the hall on the floor outside Gabe's bedroom.

Gabe couldn't abide that. So he took his pillow and blanket and went out to the bunkhouse where the nigra ranch hands slept and found a bunk and bedded down there. He left the door of his bedroom open.

I slept in his bed. Nobody found out where he was sleeping until days later. When he came into the house, just to eat or change or wash, he wouldn't say a word to anybody. Pa told me to leave him be. So I did.

He wasn't shaving because he was so unhappy, I suppose, and he had at least four days' growth on his face. And it was the first time Pa allowed him at the table in his work clothes. Ma said if he didn't shave soon she wasn't going to allow him at her table anymore. "Yes, ma'am," he said. Poor Gabe.

"Look what you did to him," Sis Goose hissed when we were alone. "It's your fault. All yours."

"See what you did to your brother?" Pa asked. "And he's so good to you."

"I want him back in the house," I sobbed.

"You going to stay out of his bed? You going to get rid of those lions of yours?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, we'll see. Tonight."

As it turned out, Granville helped me get rid of the lions. After all, this was his fault, he admitted, and it was
a family crisis, and when it got right down to it, everybody in my family loved crises. But first Granville sat me down and told me that the only people who slept together in a bed were married, like Ma and Pa.

"Why?" I asked.

He squirmed a bit. "Because that's how it is. Those are the rules. Now look, my story was made up and there are no lions in Texas. They're in Africa. Far away."

But just to make sure, he came to my room and "exorcised" my lions. He did some of what Grandpa did when he claimed his land. He stamped his feet. He ripped up paper; he cried out; he rolled my marbles; and he performed other necessary acts, such as getting down on his knees and chanting to the lions that they had better leave or terrible things would happen to them.

I must say he was good at it.

And that night Gabe came back. He was cleaned up. Whitest of shirts, suspenders, cravat, clean-shaven face, all of it. He didn't say anything to me about the whole affair. That night at the supper table he just acted as if nothing ever happened, and when bedtime came I kissed him good night as if nothing had happened. But I lay awake in my room until I heard my elders coming to bed, until I heard the boys' boots on the stairs, and heard Gabe go to his room and not lock the door.

No lions came that night. And if they had, I would have suffered their growls, their bared teeth, their bites, and my own dripping blood, rather than go to Gabe's
room. Because, of all people, Granville had somehow instilled forever in me the rules about people sleeping together, though I knew no more than before. Just the look on his face told me all I needed to know. And the next morning at breakfast Gabe winked at me. To think he'd gone to the bunkhouse to sleep, rather than lock his door against me and leave me sleeping on the floor. Or give the affection we had for each other a bad name. I don't think I ever adored him so much.