Chapter Four

Ella watched Sunbeam and Moonbeam transport a heavy cauldron of scalding water from the coals to the wash tables behind the kitchen house. They inched along, their chattering in contrast to their alert movements, both sets of hands gripping an end of the hickory pole on which the iron pot dangled by its handle. Sunbeam's daughter, Belle, followed, dragging a small bundle of dirty linens—which, Ella thought, would be twice as soiled by the time she reached the tubs. She gazed silently at the child, her mother, and aunt. What would these faithful servants do when she was gone from here? She had been through so much with them during those terrible years at Moss Oak plantation; Victor Faircloth's cruelty had touched them, as well as her. She would be pleased if they stayed on at Greenpoole, collecting their wages, taking care of the place and ancient old Baker Ben until ... She did not like to think of Baker Ben dying; he was a part of Greenpoole, a part of her happy childhood memories when her father was alive. But he was dying. Recently, the obstinate old servant had marked his place off in her family's cemetery that was far away from the Negro plots behind the slave quarters. He knew he would not be denied his place among the four generations of Corrigans he had served so faithfully—even after her father freed him at the beginning of the war, and had paid wages to him, Meshach, and Hannah.

And Hannah. What of dear Hannah—the woman who had raised her and Honor, had nurtured them, spanked them ... nagged them into being the genteel young ladies their mother would have wanted them to be. Hannah has influenced their lives every bit as much as had their uncompromising grandmother. She had helped run Greenpoole when their father's drinking and her mother's illness weakened his will to do so. Hannah said she would never leave Georgia and "go to that wild Texas place what ain't hardly got no gen'teel folk like we gots in Savannah." Earlier today, Ella had stood outside the dining room door and overheard Gentry trying to reassure the old servant, but she would not listen, shaking her big kerchief-tied head and crossing her arms across her massive bosoms.

Ella studied the ground, feeling her chin begin to tremble. How could she just walk away from the parts of her life that had come to mean so much to her? She looked up to gaze at Moonbeam and Sunbeam now chattering back and forth over the wash tubs, one scrubbing and the other rinsing. Before Beatrice left at dawn this morning, she announced that she was taking the twins back to Savannah with her next week, saying she needed them since her "well-paid but ungrateful" servants, except for old Bootsie, had "moved on to greener pastures via a train going North. Ella, unhappy with the thought of losing the girls, knew better than to objected, and even though  Moonbeam and Sunbeam were free to come and go as they pleased, they dared not refuse the woman who had inherited them from their last master when they were twelve years-old—this, according to the former owner's "last will and tested" ... as the girls reported to Ella the day Beatrice first brought them to Greenpoole before the war. Ella suspected that the only reason her Grandmother was taking them away from her now was to increase her burden at Greenpoole so that she would finally see the futility of it all.

Despite her sadness, Ella smiled gently at the pair who still worked diligently over the wash tubs. She had learned during the hard years with Victor that affection grows between those who struggle together, who depend on each other for survival. She though of the day she had found Sunbeam, beaten and raped and near death, at the hands of Victor's brutal slave driver, Bruno. How could there not be a bond between her and this remarkable pair? The three of them had saved each other lives, had hid in terror together, comforted each other and, at time laughed together ... all too often had cried together in mourning. Did Gentry understand that when he took her away, she would be leaving behind much more than Greenpoole Plantation?

A long moment passed before she moved absently toward the stable where she intended to search for a mop handle to replace the one she had just busted on the window seal, as she swatted at a family of raccoons about to enter. If she had no luck, Meshach would fashion a new handle for her in no time. She was grateful that Meshach was sharecropping her land, was now Greenpoole's overseer, and had agreed to stay on after she was gone. He had been at Greenpoole for more than twenty-five years—was as much a part of her home as were Baker Ben and Hannah.

She turned when Cricket, another of Greenpoole's life-long dwellers, called out to her. He came bounding down the back steps, a huge bundle of dirty laundry clamped atop his head.

"Miss Ella, can you wait up, please...?" He hurried to the washtubs, dumped his bundle on the ground, and then raced up to her. He stood there smiling, not knowing what to do with his empty hands, his grin stretching almost ear to ear, the same energetic smile he had a babe. He was fourteen years old now, no longer short for his age but thin as a sapling, his long arms and legs ever ready for action, it seemed, for he could not stand still for more than a few seconds. "Did Mister Gen'te tell you, Miss Ella ... I is going to Texas with you all? I gonna be a vi'karo Mister Gen'te say, and I gonna have my own hoss—a fine, fast hoss that Mister Gen'te say I can pick out for my own self from all them hosses he gots in Texas. I gonna look for one just like Princess Gaia what belong to you 'fore the Yankees took her off the place." He paused, his smile slowly disappearing. "What the matter, Miss Ella? Ain't you glad I is going?"

Ella looked up from the ground. "I don't want to go, Cricket. Greenpoole is my home, not Texas."

He shuffled his feet in the dirt. "I ... I shore don't know what to say 'bout that, Miss Ella ... 'cept, you is going, ain't you?" He caught his bottom lip between his teeth, his worry obvious.

Ella finally nodding.

Cricket's smile returned. "That good. That good, Miss Ella. I go help them gals with them tubs now," he said, and hurried back to where the twins hunched over the washtubs scrubbing bed linens.

Ella's gaze traveled the cavernous stable that once held her father's prized thoroughbreds, empty, save for a lone black horse that stood like a peculiar novelty amid a long line of vacant paddocks. The herd of horses Gentry had brought from Texas at the end of the war had been sold long ago for Greenpoole's upkeep. Gentry's horse and a pair of carriage horses were in the small meadow accessed from the stable's open back doors. Timon Pledger's old horse, Blackie, preferred his paddock most of the time, "likely in hopes of getting someone to pet him," Gentry once said, while obliging the old pet-of-a-horse with a vigorous rubdown. Today, Ella ignored the animal as he stretched his elongated neck round to watch her, his gray-streaked muzzle twitching expectantly while his 'dismal excuse for a tail' twirled like an exuberant colt's. "You big baby," she muttered at him, welcoming a brief change of thought. "You're as ridiculous as your master was!"

She wasn't so angry at Timon anymore. Rather, she pitied him for what he had done. He has likely paid a thousand times over for stealing Gentry's letter to her then destroying it. Poor Timmy. He had silently loved her so much and for so long that he was driven to that terrible deed by a desperation that he was not equipped to handle. He'd had no experiences at all with the emotions of love, with jealously—or with the helplessness of hatred. Once, she could have taught him something about the latter. Try as she may to fight it, she still experienced that loathing sometimes when thoughts of Victor popped into her head, but unlike Victor, Timon deserved only her pity.

Gentry told her how emaciated Timon looked when he saw him in New Orleans two years back. Timon had been on the street, administering to a crowd of ragged, escaped slaves who had flocked into the city when New Orleans fell to the Union. Despite his godly mission among them, he had taken to "women and drink" and, Gentry said, "The poor cuss was one miserable human being, likely searching for ways to rectify the rotten thing he did to us." In recollecting her and Timon's childhoods together—his shy demeanor, his every present blush worse than an adolescent girl's—she could not imagine him sinking to debauchery and drink. She wondered absently where Timon had disappeared to after stealing Gentry's prized stallion from the Yankees. She glanced again at the empty paddocks. That was a switch—a Confederate preacher stealing a horse from Yankees instead of the other way around. She rested her head against Princes Gaia's vacant stall and let her tired mind escape to pleasanter times astride her beautiful golden filly when she cantered through the woods and trails and back roads of Greenpoole plantation. Her grandmother's effort in moving Greenpoole's thoroughbreds further inland, in hopes of keeping them out of Yankee hands, had been useless; Sherman's army, on its sweeping march to the sea, had taken every last animal. For days after his troops swarmed into Savannah over three years ago, her only interest had been the cavalry—hundreds of men seated victoriously upon hundreds of fine new mounts obviously not Government Issue horses. She had recognized many of those mounts as Greenpoole stock, but Princess Gaia was not among them.

Ella started upon hearing Meshach call her name, and she turned to see his giant frame silhouetted in the wide doorway.

"Miz Ella, them Yankee soldiers from Savannah what you done sold that fire wood to is 'bout through cuttin' it down. They chops three wagon loads this time."

"Did they pay you?"

"No'sum, they say they be 'long soon to pay up to the rightful one."

"I'm sorry, Meshach—I told them the last time they could pay you."

"Don't reckon they cotton to it, Miz Ella." He pulled his frayed straw fedora from his head and rolled the brim between thickly calloused fingers. "Seem like to me, we Greenpoole folk could be cuttin' and sellin' that wood our own self to them town folk what need it. That wood be getting' a mouty big price now."

Ella's nod was vague, he eyes absent with other thoughts. Meshach took up a broom and began to sweep the dirt floor, glancing at her from time to time, waiting, it seemed, for her speak. "I know my husband has told you of our departure next week, Meshach."

Meshach politely set the broom aside, and studied the tips of his brogans. "Yes' sum."

Ella turned away lest he see the sudden trail of tears on her cheeks. "And he offered you an extra share of the crops to keep the house in order?"

"Yes' sum. I be sendin' ten cents on the dollar to you and Mister Gentry. I be keeping the rest for to pay the workers and my own self."

There was a long silence while she waited for the tightness in her throat to subside.

"We ... we won't be back for a long time, Meshach, but I will return someday. I ...will. I won't sell Greenpoole, and my husband will continue to pay the taxes." She kicked a clump of hay, her mouth tightening. Gentry had forced a compromise; he would prevent Greenpoole's foreclosure indefinitely, and she would pack off to Texas without further ado. She pressed her face to the stall and wiped uselessly at the stream of tears.

Meshach snatched up the broom, the dust flying around him like a whirlwind. The old horse, Blackie, nickered as if in sympathy for Ella, and then stretched around to nudge her shoulder until, without looking; she absently stroked his persistent nose. Meshach came to her rescue, cupping the animal's muzzle in his giant hand and slapping gently at his long neck until he backed away.

"Mister Gen'te done teach me a lesson 'bout hosses from this old Blackie, here. He say if a hoss got heart and his legs ain't sprung, he don't need much else to do heself proud, no matter how he look." He looked Blackie over, shaking his head. "I ain't surprise at all Mister Gen'te keep this old black hoss after what they done been through together. Just the same, it 'pear to me Mister Gen'te sure miss that big red hoss what he leave in New Orleans with them Yankees."

"I suppose," Ella said.

"I asked Mister Gen'te if he miss that red hoss, and he sayed, 'Meshach, a man that don't pine after a good horse or a good woman ain't fit fer neither." Meshach laughed softly, his bass tone unobtrusive in the stillness of the stable. "Mister Gen'te tell you 'bout how that old Blackie save him from drowning in the ocean after that Yankee boat sink?"

Ella sniffed a "yes", her face still averted.

"I never forget how Mister Gen'te come flyin' cross that pontoon on this ole hoss. You 'member that, Miz Ella? Dat wuz the night them thousands of Confederates and mor'n half Savannah done cross that bridge just ahead of them Yankees what comin' over the hill at us."

"I remember," Ella said, regaining composure.

Meshach nodded at her, almost fatherly in his manner, and then he nodded again, as if in affirmation of what he would say next.

"And after that, I ain't never seed you so pleased as when you and Mister Gen'te get married. Mister Gen'te a fine man, Miz Ella, a rightly fine gent'man, if I ever knowed one."

Ella glanced briefly at him, and then turned to gaze out at the last cotton crop, ripe in the field.

Meshach laughed low again; anxiously, it seemed, as if she needed further cheering. "And I ain't never seen a hoss eat bananas like this old Blackie do. Mister Gen'te bring a stalk 'bout every week. 'Course, that Cricket boy and then chil'n eat most of 'em ... even 'fore the green is off'um." He glanced at Ella. "Cricket say Mister Gen'te gonna take him to Texas and make a cowhand out'n him. I sure glad something gonna be made out'n him long last." He laughed again. After awhile, when Ella remained silent, Meshach scratched his ear and took to sweeping again, this time without stirring the dirt.

Ella glanced at Meshach's unique face, which was now sad—he knew how much she would miss her home, the people, Negro and white, who had been a part of her life since birth. She wondered if he knew how much she would miss him—her trusted protector. In town, she witnessed strangers (mostly Yankee women) scurry to the opposite side of the street at sight of this hulking ex-slave, his frightening maroon-colored eyes and treacherous demeanor being all they encompassed before hastily judging him as someone they should fear. Ella knew that within this man was a thoughtful, intelligent human being, one with compassion not only for his own race but for many of those who had enslaved him. That she had witnessed him kill Victor's cruel Bruno did nothing to dampen her belief in his humanity—there was a time when she would have killed Bruno and his master, had she the strength.

"Well looka there, Miss Ella ... Miss Honor and them chil'ns climbin' up the hill," Meshach pointed to the bluff overlooking the river, "and Miss Honor look like she carryin' a big basket of vittles."

Ella smiled when her son grasped his little cousin's hand and led her carefully along the path. "Yes, Meshach, they are going to picnic and watch the last cotton being brought in from the field below."Her smile faded with this thought and she closed her eyes to the sight, thinking: and in another week, we will leave Greenpoole forever....

"Why don't you go on along and join 'um, Miss Ella? You look mouty tired. You done worked most hard today, you and Mister Gen'te."

* * *

Halfway up the path Ella paused to look around. Like always, she ignored the scars of war, evident in the shattered tree trunks and great chunks of earth gouged out where shell and cannon had struck. She saw only the gentle ripple of grass on the hillside and the arrowheads that floated gently along the river's edge. Closing here eyes, she tried to remember the sweet scents from the orchards and rose gardens that once drifted on the breeze up to the bluff. She had thought to replant the destroyed gardens soon. Meshach reported that there were young fruit trees on abandoned property hereabouts that could easily be transplanted at Greenpoole, rose bushes, also. She closed her eyes tighter. She could smell them now ... the roses ... the peach, orange, and lemon trees in blossom, delicious fragrances that she could almost taste.

The loud "splat" of a whip against a mule's rump in the cotton field below jerked her back to reality, and now only the river's unremarkable conglomeration of odors—fish and vegetation coupled with the scent of plowed dirt, reached her nostrils—even these she relished.

Growing sadder, she continued her examination of the land she would soon leave behind. The grass-covered levee still snaked its way along the river's edge and then disappeared into a shadowy stand of mulberry, bay, long leaf pine and oak trees; only now, many of those beautiful old trees leaned, split and broken, their dead tops folded down over their scarred trunks like aprons. To Adam's and Elizabeth's joy, Gentry and Meshach had rebuilt the destroyed pier and the ancient replica of the ship's crow's-nest on the pier's end. The children loved playing there, just as had five generations of Corrigans before them, but soon Corrigans at Greenpoole would be no more. This time, she made no effort to hold back the tears that suddenly poured down her face ... until she saw her son and niece running to meet her.

She joined Honor on the blanket near the bluff's edge where they could watch the goings-on below. For the first time, she dreaded the sight of cotton shrubs picked nearly clean of their growth. By sundown, the wagons would be full and the stems would be bare of all but their green leaves. She looked away, and then frowned at the children as they darted among the scarred trees and clamored over fallen trunks, shouting, and playing soldiers.

"Don't scold them, Ella, they're just having fun," Honor said. "Andy says there's no harm in a child playing war, now that it's over, as long as they pretend out Confederates won." She offered Ella a slice of green grape pie, then took a bite of it when Ella refused. "Andy and I are all packed and will be moving in with Grandmother tomorrow. Gentry said you will spend your last night with us in Savannah before you leave for..." she trailed off, afraid, it seemed, to finish.

"...leave for Texas, Honor. You can go ahead and say it, since, unless I get my miracle, Texas will all too soon be my home."

Honor scooted closer and grasped her hands. "Oh, Ella, please don't be sad! I been trying my best not to cry, but you are about to make me bawl my eyes out again. Andy says we can visit you soon, maybe next Christmas. We will bring Grandmother, if she'll go. So, you see, it won't be so lonesome there." She paused, the puddles in her own eyes silently overflowing.

Ella wiped at her own eyes. Honor squeezed Ella hands and cried enthusiastically, "I know what we'll do when we get lonely for each other, Ella. We'll stop whatever else we're thinking and think only of the great fun we've had together! Think only of things that made us laugh. Things like...," she began to giggle, "like ... remember when we were on the pier and saw old Picklepuss Faircloth coming up the road and we dropped down into river in our Sunday finery, clothes, hoops, hats and all, to hide behind the arrowheads?" She let out a squeal of delight. "The minnows were after us like crazy and frogs were hoping off the arrowheads onto us, remember? And our skirts kept ballooning up around our chins, and we started laughing so hard we lost our balance and went under, and then came up sputtering and laughing like it had never happened?"

Ella smiled slightly.

"Oh Ella, you looked so funny with the brim of you new hat hanging wet and limp around your shoulders ... mine was, too. Then, low and behold! We looked up and there sat old Picklepuss Faircloth in his buggy not fifty feet away, staring at us, and his face like a stone. Without a word between him and us, we ducked down behind the arrowheads and waited for him drive away. We were giggling like mad and couldn't stop no matter how hard we tried! Remember?"

It was hard for Ella to laugh when reminded of Victor Faircloth, but, in this instance, the memory was all too funny to prevent it, and so she did. After a moment, she smiled at her little sister, and Honor continued.

"We'll remember the great talks we had, Ella. You were always laughing at something I said—and it wasn't always because I was so dumb, either."

"You were never dumb, Honor, I was." She looked down, absently plucking at leaves that had blown onto the blanket.

"That's not a bit true, big sister, you were always smarter than me, but I didn't mind. I was really quite glad. It seems that so much worry comes with being smart." She flicked a finger at one of the leaves. I suppose smart people keep secrets better than most. Something I've never been able to do. If ever I've have a secret, the thoughts in my head are like a toothless old hound forever gnawing at a bone—I just can't forget it and let it lie."

Ella glanced up at her, amused. Honor was being Honor. "Want to tell me your secret, Honor?"

"I suppose I should, close as we've been." Suddenly she looked quite serious. "Alright, I'm gonna tell you at last. My secret is ... I knew the day little Adam was born that he wasn't Victor's child. I wasn't entirely sure, of course, but I sort of put two and two together after seeing how he looked so much like Gentry."

Ella smiled. "I think I knew you knew. So see? You haven't been harboring a secret after all."

Honor dipped her head, and looked quite guilty. "And Ella, don't get mad at me, but the rest of my secret is ..." she paused to bite her lip, then blurted, "I told Grandmother what I suspected! I suppose I told her 'cause I wanted to shock her ... give her a good jolt because she disliked my Andy so much back then. But she came right back at me, like she always does, saying 'So you just now came to that conclusion, did you? I knew whose child she carried long before he was born, just as your father knows.'"

"Father knew!?" For a long moment Ella could not speak, then finally uttered sadly, "Oh, what doe it matter, anyway? The past is over. Father and mother are dead and Victor is burning in hell. It's the future that threatens me now."

"Please don't feel that way, Ella. Going to Texas may not be so bad. Why, you just may like it after you get used to it. .I think I could be happy there but—don't tell Andy—I still have a yen to go to Europe someday. I'm hoping Andy and I and Elizabeth can live there a year or two before coming back and settling down. Grandmother's Cuthbert kin from Hilton Head moved to England, you know."

Ella did not look at her, still unable to understand how her sister could care so little about Greenpoole.

In a moment, Honor prodded her. "Ella, you'll be with Gentry, and I know you love him enough to want to be where he is, always. That's how I feel about Andy."

"Yes, I love him, and I will go, but Honor, I will hate that place!"

Honor clutched her hands harder, and spoke rapidly, "Look, Ella, I'll make a promise, if Andy's new job at the lumber mill doesn't work out, I'll insist we come to Texas! Elizabeth wants to go right now. She will miss little Adam so." She paused to look lovingly at the children as they ran past, and then she giggled. "Why, she actually stomped her little foot and said 'I go with Adam, Mommy, now!'"

Ella tried to smile. "I'll be the happiest woman alive the day you show up in Texas, Honor, but I'm afraid I'll always yearn for home."

Honor jumped to her feet. "Come back here, you two! Look at them, they see the Yankee's lumber wagons coming to the house and they're going to meet them, the scamps!" She jumped to her feet and tied her shawl around her waist. "You stay here and rest, Ella, I'll go after them." She took off down the bluff, beckoning to the children, yelling for them to wait for her, the tail of the new paisley silk shawl that Andy had foolishly spent his first civilian pay on, floated on the wind behind her like a pair of colorful wing.

Ella lay on the blanket, gazing up at the bank of feathery white clouds that drifted slowly across the sky, her mind agonizing on Greenpoole and her lost dreams for it. Engulfed by silence, except for the distant squeak of wagon wheels on the circle drive approaching Greenpoole, she longed again for the miracle that would make Gentry change his mind about leaving, turning over in her mind fresh appeals to sway him. Moment into her gloomy ruminations, the renting scream of a child propelled her upright, followed by another and another, paralyzing her for an instant as the terrified screams blasted like a mortal warning into her very soul.

Scrambling down the steep bluff, she saw Gentry sprinting from the cotton field toward the house, saw the line of wagons in the drive, saw the blue-coated drivers and the large mounted escort of Union soldiers jump to the ground and run to an obscured spot behind the wagons. Running, half sliding down the bluff, she searched for sight of the children, but saw neither. She screamed her son's name over and over, seeing, in her dreaded mind's eye, another instance ... another precious son, tiny and defenseless, slip beneath the choppy waters of the river. "No! God! No! You can't, God! Please! No!"

She ran harder, screaming little Adam's name ... until she saw him clutched safely in Hannah's arms, and saw little Elizabeth, kicking and crying in Moonbeam's arms, both children being carried into the house. But what-?

She stumbled toward the cluster of Yankees at the rear of the last wagon, heard a chorus of hard masculine grunts as the rear of the wagon was lifted then almost instantly lowered again. She pushed through the workers who had followed Gentry from the field, tearing at their sleeves, frantic to reach-!

Gentry sat on the gravel, one leg curled beneath him, Honor cradled like a baby in his arms, her head in the crook of his elbow, her small hand held tightly between old Baker Ben's gnarled and trembling palms. Ella stared at them, her mind so fractured, so broken by what she saw, that she dared not fully comprehend it. A tip of color, fluttering in the breeze, drew her eyes to it and she recognized Honor's pretty shawl, half its length wrapped tightly around the wheel of the lumber wagon, the other end encircling Honor's small waist. Ella dropped to her knees and slid her arm beneath Honor's head alongside Gentry's arm, and quietly sobbed her sister's name. Honor chest rose and fell, each breath like a rapid wind shuttering through her. Ella clutched Honor's hand and pressed it to her trembling lips.

"My legs, Ella ... I can't feel them," Honor whispered.

A sob tore from Ella, as she glanced down at Honor's skirt that was slowly transforming into a shiny red blanket, as blood soaked through the layers down to the hem. Then she was aware of Gentry ripping at her own skirt and petticoat, tearing them into strips, as he directed one of the Yankee soldiers to lift Honor's bloody garment away from her legs.

"Oh, Lawd! Oh, Lawd!" Baker Ben moaned at the same time Ella cried out at sight of the stark white bones that rose, jagged, from both Honor's legs at mid thigh.

Bring her inside! Bring her inside," Ella screamed, jumping to her feet, her eyes frantic upon Honor's ashen face.

"Not until we stop the bleeding," Gentry said, encircling one thigh with a strip of Ella's petticoat while the Yankee soldier tended the other leg in the same manner. Another Yankee rushed up and handed them two short sticks. The Yankee glanced up at Ella as he and Gentry twisted their tourniquets with the sticks. "She'll bleed to death if we mover her before the blood's staunched, Ma'am."

Ella dropped to Honor's side again, crying harder, unable to quell the terror in her voice as Honor's wide eyes slowly closed. She is dying! "Oh, Honor ... please, hang on! Don't do this, Honor! Please!"

"She's fainted, Ella," Gentry said, still working at the tourniquet. Move back and give her some air," he ordered none too kindly. "You too, Baker Ben." he added.

Ella stood, taking a halting step backward. Be careful what you wish for ... Beatrice had said. Ella's hands flew to her face, as she bent double, rocking back and forth, her agony kept silent only by her fist pressed against her open mouth.