ENTRY GARLAND STOOD ON THE BLUFF overlooking Greenpoole Plantation, his sunburned face void of emotion, his black eyes unreadable. Only the rapid drumming of fingers against his leather-encased thigh gave way his turbulent thoughts: It was time to tell his wife that the Georgia home she so revered was not for him ... would never be for him. Even had the war not changed things in the South, this place would not have been for him; he had been foolish to think it could be. He had been more foolish to let love for his wife over-rule his common sense. Ella's dream of restoring Greenpoole to its old splendor had become his nightmare, and he was tired of pouring "good money after bad."

He lit a thin cheroot and tossed the match over the bluff into the river. As beautiful as Ella's Greenpoole plantation on the Savannah River still was in many ways, the scars of war and poverty were everywhere. The end of slavery meant the end to prosperity to planters such as the Corrigans ... an end to "the old days" that Ella, and others like her, spoke of with such longing. Her sharecropping adventure with her freed Negroes—trading crops for labor—was a failure that she refused to acknowledge. Her share of those crops was never enough to pay the bills. Blind to reality, she and fellow planters refused to see the hopelessness of their efforts: Southerners across the entire South were starving on a new diet of higher and higher taxes; their land, animals, and goods of all types, confiscated for nonpayment. Conditions were the same in Texas for ex-Confederates and their supporters. Disenfranchisement—men stripped of their voting rights—left Southerners no voice. Without the vote, there was no sane way to fight the injustices leveled by land grabbers whose identities had never been Southern—the politics of the day giving them sovereignty over their victims. As proof that injustice—whether real or perceived—often bred insanity in those prone to violence, clandestine societies of mostly ex Confederates sprang up in nearly every Southern community ... bands of hooded men on horseback terrorizing black and white alike, setting ablaze crude wooden crosses ... hanging and burning terrified Negroes, as well as their white sympathizers.

Gentry wanted no part of this postwar turmoil. He had fought for neither North nor South and, like many Texans who clung fiercely to their individuality; he considered his isolated land along the winding Guadalupe River a perfect divide from both arguments. There, he and his little family could be lost from the rest of the world if that's what they wanted ... all the while prospering from a new inventive—trailing, and then selling, his thousands of longhorns at distant markets like Abilene, Kansas where the animals were fetching fifteen to twenty-five dollars per head. Before the war, his three parcels of ranchland, fifty thousand acres per parcel and with a major river—the Aransas, Guadalupe, or San Antonio River running through one or the other—had been populated by thousands of his longhorns and almost as many horses. When droughts hit, he and his men simply drove the cattle overland to the next parcel where the river was still full and left them there until, eventually, rain solved the drought problem, filling the rivers and growing the grasslands. So far, his acres were still intact—It was the slow, steady drain of his once vast herds that worried him.

He had returned to Texas four times in the past two years to sell off more and more of those cattle and horses—all to keep Ella from losing Greenpoole. With each brief appearance at his ranch, his vaqueros and their families eyed him with unspoken questions, undoubtedly wondering if he had gone loco. Only the ten-year-old boy, Erasmo, had the gumption to speak up.

"Is it for your bruja far away, Senor Garland that you must sell these cattle?" he said, his innocent brown face naked with concern. "Mama says that soon this bruja will have you sell the ranchero also, and we will have no more work and no more roof above our heads."

Figuring that Erasmo only repeated the talk that circulated among his ranch hands of late, Gentry had not scolded the boy. But before he left again for Georgia, he told Erasmo that someday he would bring his mujer to Texas and the boy would then discover that she was an angel, not a bruja ... an angel, who had bewitched him long ago.

His heart had not changed, nor was his love diminished by his mounting disgust for his wife's delusions about Greenpoole: It was his spirit that had been diminished, leaving him with a feeling of cravenness that he had never before experienced; his reaction to it was silent anger. With each passing day, he struggled harder to restrain that anger.

His foul-mouthed old friend, Hempstead Grouse back in Texas, said he was the worst kind of "whupped" that can happen to man.

"And out of respect fer your lady, Gent, I ain't mentionin' the part of her anatomy that's got you so goddamned whupped."

Had any man, other than Hempstead, made such a remark, he would have landed on his back in the dirt while spitting out a mouth-full of bloody teeth. But Gentry knew if he struck the wiry old desperado turned lawman, odds were he would just have to go ahead and kill him, for the bad-tempered old cuss would have done his best to kill him.

Anyway, Gentry doubted if Hempstead, a hard-bitten old bachelor "in loathe of female situations", would understand his reasons for pampering Ella. Her marriage to Victor Faircloth was his fault. His fault that the letter he wrote to her fell into the wrong hands. Had she gotten that letter, her years of misery would not have happened—but all she had known at the time was that he had made love to her ... took her virtue beneath the moonlit oaks alongside Corrigans' Pool ... then left town early the next morning without a word ... leaving behind only the note that the love-sick—sorry excuse for a preacher—Timon Pledger, stole before it could reach Ella's hands. What else was she to think other than he had callously used her and then jilted her? Afterward, the cruelties of the man she then married had all but killed the young woman he had fallen in love with. Four long years later, on the day he and Ella finally wed, he had silently vowed to do all within his power to heal her so completely that not one scar remained. An old misogynist like Hempstead Grouse would never understand loving a woman that much.

For the most part, he had succeeded in making Ella happy. She was forgetting the hard past, was never more beautiful than now, never more able with a glance to set his heart to jumping. But he did not fool himself that the gladness in those blue-green eyes was as much for Greenpoole's resurrection as for the newly rekindled love between them. He was almost ashamed of his secret pleasure when another batch of sharecroppers didn't work out as she planned or when it rained too much or not enough and her cotton crops perished—glad, even when it was his money being plowed under, every dollar of cattle revenue he provided swiftly gobbled up by that hopeless dream of hers. And now, after last years meager cotton harvest, Ella wanted to resurrect the tidal rice lands that her deceased father wisely abandoned ages before the war started! The steaming rice swamp was "drudge work"—a man's least desirable way of making a living, and Ella's workers were abandoning the swamp in droves. Aside from backbreaking labor, there slithered beneath those marshy acres of twisted undergrowth denizens of venom and sickness ... of a kind that the newly freed Negroes—now able to choose how they lived and died—were little inclined to embrace. Ella's tempting offers of land, to be deeded those who would work in the rice marshes for five years, had no effect on their decisions to leave. With not enough takers, Ella would have to give up on the rice soon. Maybe when her few remaining sharecroppers followed their predecessors into the cities, she would see the hopelessness of this damned scheme to prosper from the soil "like in the old days." Even with the help of the family's venerated matriarch, Beatrice Corrigan, he had been unable to make her understand that politics, taxes, and the punitive spirit of radicals in congress stood like an impregnable barrier to Southern dreams of recovery.

There was something mighty sad about folks who live so much in the past that they can't get their feet moving toward the future. In that respect, Ella was a lot like his mother. Kate Garland was stubborn, unrelenting in her efforts to hold on to the past. He wanted her to sell her land along the Nueces River near Corpus Christi, and move to his ranch seventy miles north. Incensed, she cried "never!" Staying on the land that his father had fought and bled for, kept her wild Irish-Indian husband alive ... kept "the old days" alive in her memory, which was all that was left of Kiel Garland.

Gentry's jaw tightened. He'd once though he was a man like his father—fierce in his beliefs ... unyielding in what he knew was right. Maybe he should do what Kiel did over thirty-five years ago when he set out to claim his bride. Gentry half-smiled despite his foul mood. Since boyhood, he had heard the story dozens of times from first one, and then the other, of his parents. He liked his mother's account best. She spoke of their "takin' to one another" with the lilting laughter of the strong-headed Irish girl she had been in the spring of 1835, when young Kiel rode silently into the Irish settlement of San Patricio along the Nueces River and carried her away while her clueless parents slumbered in the next room.

But Kate had been a willing conspirator, full of determination and knowing every minute what she wanted and who she wanted—a woman whose heart, once set, never changed since the first day she and Kiel laid eyes on each other in her father's general store. Was Ella's heart set? He wasn't sure. He was certain of only one thing; he had a rival—Greenpoole Plantation.

The red glow on Gentry's cheroot went out; he relit it and flicked the match into the wind. He had been silent in light of Ella's happiness at Greenpoole, relishing her laughter that had come so easy, until problems with her sharecroppers began to worry her. At the beginning of those troubles, he should have tried to convince her that the prosperity she wanted lied in his thousands of cattle and horses—not cotton!

He turned slowly and gazed all around him, but instead of seeing Greenpoole's tree-lined acres and the beautiful old Savannah River rippling past between delicately shimmering walls of vine-hung foliage, he saw a vast rolling prairie spattered with oak motts and knee-high prairie grass melting into infinite fields of bluebonnets, sunflowers, Indian blankets, and buttercups. A vast herd of wild horses thundered into his vision, and beyond them hundreds of long-horned cattle stepped warily from a wide patch of Mesquite brush to graze upon the peaceful open range.

After a moment, Gentry sucked deeply on the cheroot, and then spewed the smoke from between his tight lips as if he had tasted something foul. Slowly and steadily, there came into his black eyes a look more reminiscent of the "old days" and the old Gentry Garland. He took another drag from the cheroot before tossing it over the bluff's edge into the river. He'd wait until this last crop was in, and then he'd tell his wife to pack their duds, because he was taking her and his son home to Texas.

Finally, Ella gave up and leaned forward to face her sister, determined to speak softly, knowing if she let her emotions escape, the colossal empty room would echo her words like stones striking the walls of an iron well. "I'm waiting to know what you meant by that ridiculous statement, Honor. Surely the notion that we would leave Greenpoole must have come from somewhere."

Honor glanced fearfully at Ella and then at their grandmother, who still ignored them both. Honor quickly shifted her attentions to the small girl draped across her lap and began poking nervously at the girl's blond curls. The child immediately slid into a sitting position on the floor and scooted on her tiny rump until she was out of her mother's reach. When Honor motioned for her to return, the child entangled her fingers in her curls and stuck out her bottom lip. Honor giggled. "She thinks I'm gonna comb her tangles out."

"Honor ...," Ella persisted.

Honor again looked to their grandmother, but Beatrice stiffened her chin against her high lace collar, as if to say 'you got yourself into this, young lady, now get yourself out of it.'

Honor sighed. "I only meant that maybe ... someday ... we might all just move into Savannah with Grandmother ... like she keeps telling us we ought'a do." She hesitated, then blurted, "Grandmother says we'll never be able to turn this place around ... 'cause God and those hateful politicians in Washington won't let us."

Ella stared at her for a long interval and then settled back against the hard wooden chair. "You and Andy may go whenever you wish. I won't abandon Greenpoole to the sharecroppers. How would the work get done without Gentry and me encouraging them? Besides, I have Hannah and the others to think about. Old Baker Ben says he will never leave, nor will Cricket and the twins." She paused to note that neither woman was looking at her, "... and since Meshach was unable to abide the North and has come home, I intend to make him Greenpoole's overseer—the crops are bound to improve."

She waited for her two companions to agree. When neither spoke, she continued, "Meshach and the others love Greenpoole, just as I do and just as—"she glanced up from her sewing and looked sternly at first one and then the other, just as the two of you should love it, she wanted to say, but instead said, "just as Father and all Corrigans before him loved it. They would have never left simply because life got a bit harder."

"A bit harder, you say?" Beatrice finally spoke. She took a sip of tea then balanced the cup in her free palm, her sour expression deepening as she looked around the room. "I know the tables are gone—firewood for General Sherman's army in ought-four or later sold for Greenpoole's upkeep—but have you not another chair on which to set our repast?" Knowing the answer, she continued. "You know good and well, Ella, that Hannah and the others, except for old Bake Ben, would gladly follow you to town or anywhere else. Tis you who refuse to leave."

"That is the very truth," Honor chimed, nodding in agreement, as she jerked her attention from Beatrice to Ella and then back to Beatrice, apparently expecting the usual fireworks between her older sister and their domineering grandmother. But Ella spoke softly.

"You have so many lovely old tables and other treasures in your attic, Grandmother. Seems you would have sent them out here to Greenpoole by now, knowing our need."

Beatrice sipped at her tea, her weathered cheeks tightening as she gazed over the cup's rim. "You and your sister may divide my property between you, dear girl, when I am dead and buried. Until then, I shall keep my treasures where they are."

Honor leaned far out of her chair to deliver a hurried pat to Beatrice's knee. "In that case, Grandmother, I hope those lovely pieces of furniture stay where they are for a very very long time ... even if we do need them terribly . . . and your poor little great-grandchildren would be so much more comfortable."

Beatrice glowered at her, and then switched her gaze to Ella. "Your husband tells me that Greenpoole's taxes have increased and are due weeks before harvest ... a harvest that will not be sufficient to pay them, just as last time."

Ella set her cup firmly in its saucer. "I'm surprised Gentry spoke to you of that matter, Grandmother. I've never known him to complain."

"He was not complaining, dear girl, and why shouldn't he speak to me, his elder, and his friend? Anyway, he is a cattleman, not a planter—perhaps he sought wiser council than has been his privy of late." She ignored Ella's sudden frown. "As a former planter and eternal realist, I advised him to the best of my awareness and experience."

"May I ask what advice you gave him?"

"You may ask." She sipped her tea again before delicately replacing the cup on its saucer, scarcely making a clink. "I suggested he follow his heart ... as long as it did not bog him down in a quagmire of malcontent."

Ella smiled. "Thank you, Grandmother, because my husband does, indeed, follow his heart, and I am most fortunate that his heart is with me and here at Greenpoole, where it will always remain. There is no 'quagmire of malcontent' here," she added, ignoring that the two women glanced brief at each other.

* * *

At dusk, Ella stood on her balcony watching the red sun sink into the river and waiting for Gentry to come home. In the back of her mind was her grandmother's insinuation. Had Gentry disclosed feelings to Beatrice that he had yet to reveal to her? Oh, but he would never do that! If Gentry thought of moving them into town, he would have said so by now. Besides, he knew they couldn't run Greenpoole while residing seven miles away in Savannah. Even with Meshach in charge, they'd need to be here. Why, they'd wear themselves out traveling back and forth every day, for Heaven's sake!

The stunning red sunset shimmered across the river like liquid rubies, but Ella turned her back to it and pressed her knuckles to her lips, her mind racing, as she hurried back into her room. Gentry's in Savannah more than usual lately and seems so restless at times. Some days his moodiness made her so uncomfortable that she had to force her thoughts elsewhere—there were so many crucial matters to ponder that she did not have time for...

Her concentration turned automatically to the new tax notice in the bureau drawer. She'd have to ask Gentry for more money. Oh! How she wished Beatrice had not come to visit today! She frowned then glanced sidelong at herself in the mirror, wincing at the plainness of her dress ... the severity of the way she now wore her long hair in a tight bun on the nape of her neck. She looked so plain ... almost angry. Did Gentry find her unattractive? Subconsciously, she loosened the bun and let her thick blanket of pale hair fall to her waist. Was he glum because she no longer went out of her way to make herself pretty for him? But when did she have time to preen her feathers when they both worked themselves to the point of exhaustion each day? Or was he sullen because she neglected him, falling asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, sometimes so tired she pretended to be asleep, ignoring his touch until he gave up and rolled away from her.

Without further thought, she jerked the cover from her huge copper bathtub, lamenting only briefly over how General Sherman's men had taken the tub's beautiful Rocco base when they occupied Greenpoole late in the war. She emptied into the tub the six large buckets of cool water that Hannah and the twins kept filled to their brims for her bath.

After rummaging through several drawers for a forgotten pouch of coveted bath salts, she peeled away her sweat-soiled garments and sank gingerly into the cool, spicy water. Lathering her hair and body, she tried to remember the last time she had added fragrance to her bath, but could not recall. Lying back, she slipped beneath the water to swirl the soap from her hair, staying under for as long as she could hold her breath.

Upright again, she lifted her hands from the water and examined the odd pattern of chafed and sunburned skin atop her fingers. Even with the protection of gloves, her palms looked scalded in places where blisters had busted and peeled. She stared at her dirt-rimmed nails, and then thrust her hands into the water to soak. "Hard work never hurt anybody," she mumbled, repeating the axiom she had heard for years. "Hard work and success go hand in hand," she added, then wondered who had first voiced that bit of truth. Whoever had said it, she was sure it was truer now than it had ever been and, with a little cooperation from her doubtful family, Greenpoole's success would happen a lot sooner than later. It was up to her to convince them, but ... first things first. She smiled. Tomorrow she and Gentry would go to town and pay the taxes.

Still smiling, she towel-dried her hair, patted her body dry, and, ignoring her nightgown hanging on a nearby hook, slid between the linens to await her husband. She had neglected him too long.

* * *

Ella lay with her head resting cozily on Gentry's shoulder. A whispery breeze from the open windows and French doors toyed gently at the mosquito netting that hung from a tall mahogany frame attached to the ceiling over the bed. The moon was full and unusually bright ... splashing a transparent blanket of sliver over the couple and setting aglow Ella's pale, bare skin. Their breathing had slowed and, as usual after making love, they settled snugly against each other. She stroked his forehead with the softer back of her hand, and ran her fingers through his jet-black hair, her lips brushing his cheek from time to time, as she chatted casually about the unfairness of the Yankees in command of everything now. Laughing lightly, she repeated gossip Judith Ashville passed along about Cleta Harris' affair with a married Yankee, "the affair having started long before she divorced her husband—the low-brow drummer she had run away with during the war, thereby disgracing her socialite family to no end!"

She laughed softly again, and then, after a short pause, "I'd like to go into Savannah tomorrow, Gentry ... just you and me. We can pay the new taxes they have so unfairly leveled against us, and, if you like, we can dine at the Savannah Hotel afterward." She paused, waiting, but he was silent. She wiggled closer. "It'll be so much fun getting away for a few hours, and then we'll have a leisurely drive home in the moonlight. I hope the moon is like it is tonight, don't you?" She continued to stroke his forehead, waiting for his response, but none came. Disappointed, she was about to conclude that he was fast asleep and she would have to wait until morning to repeat herself, but then his low laughter jarred her, and she sat upright, trying to see his face in the shadows. Stunned, she watched him roll out of bed, pull on his trousers, and busy himself with the buttons.

"Gentry...?"

"Do you know what they call a woman who sleeps with a man for money, Ella?"

"I didn't!"

"You did. And I might as well tell you, we're leaving for Texas soon as the next crop's in and we've settled up with the sharecroppers—you and I and our son." He finished buttoning his pants and took his coat from the bedpost.

"But Gentry, we don't have time for a visit to Texas! After the crops are in, the land will have to be plowed ... readied for the next planting, and—!" Something made her hush, as he strode to the door then turned to observe her for a long moment.

"Not a visit, Ella. We won't be coming back to Georgia ... except maybe for a short holiday someday in the far off future."

"What? But I can't!"

"We've tried living your way, Ella. "

"What about Greenpoole? What about my home?"

"You can sell it, give it away, or burn it down—which I wish to God Sherman had done and saved us both a lot of headaches."

Ella jumped from the bed, pulling the sheet around her, her eyes ablaze and brimming, not knowing whether to scream her rage or sob her despair. Before she could do either, he stepped silently from the room and closed the door; the finality of it stunning her anew.

Chapter 2

"Beatrice!" Tessie shrieked, jumping as if a long-feared ghost had sprung up in the street to accost her. Standing in the charity line with a hundred or more other Savannahians, the old maid of Savannah was as shabby as any. Her faded bonnet, with a fresh camellia japonica pinned to the side, was like a wilted rag on her head—albeit her frayed garments were of the finest cloth. Beatrice had been sharing her home with Tessie every since Sherman and his army left Savannah three years ago, his departure followed a few days later by a hellish fire that destroyed half the downtown area before sweeping into adjacent residential sections and burning homes—one of them, Tessie's.

Twittering, Tessie immediately abandoned the crushing line, her shoes, broken open at the arches and split across her bunions, visible beneath her swaying skirts as she stepped off the sidewalk and rushed into the street to lean against the ancient old barouche in which Beatrice Corrigan sat, rod stiff, and scowling down at her. Before war and famine arrived, the luxurious old barouche and the bony-backed mule harnessed to it would have been a laughable spectacle on Savannah streets, but no one was laughing at such sights these days. Atop each of the two plush back seats were two stacks of cherry wood chairs, three to a stack. On the floorboard between them, a small cherry wood tea table lay on its side.

"Oh Bea ... don't be angry with me, please! I haven't tasted sugar in ages and today they are adding a beautiful sack of flour and a glorious pound of sugar to our weekly ration! Heaven only knows when they will be so generous again!"

"Tis Yankee charity," Beatrice spat. I would rather starve before I put a drop of their begrudged offerings in my mouth!" She jerked her hand from Tessie's grip, glowering at her, and swishing the hand back and forth, as Tessie tired unsuccessfully to recapture it. "Shame on you, Tessie Peckenpaugh! Next, you will disgrace us both by opening our doors to that despot Sherman himself, should he visit us again!"

A woman, identified as Northern by her handsome new attire, and with a small daughter clinging to her skirts, eyed Beatrice with hostility from the sidewalk.

"Excuse me, madam..." the woman said, her eyes steely with indignation, "General Sherman and our armies did naught but their duty to divest our country of its bands of rebellious revolutionaries—or rebels, as you are commonly known—but it sees their lot still exist and my husband has brought me into a most ungrateful nest of them."

Beatrice bristled. She jerked her head at the woman, her flat little straw hat doing a dance atop her silvery bun. Her lips spread into a tight smile. "I am a rebellious revolutionary, eh?" Her eyes narrowed. "Well, I am most pleased to agree with you, Madam. But lest you assume too much, I shall inform you that I have always been a "rebellious revolutionary", as were those of my ancestors who once fought to 'divest' this country of English tyrants. If you knew your history, Madam, you would know that this county of yours and mine is a land that was indeed created by rebels, and would not exist were it otherwise."

The woman's uniformed husband stepped away from his sentry post alongside the charity line and quickly escorted his wife and his child away.

Beatrice scowled after them, content, like most Southerners in the aftermath of loosing the war, to believe that the abolishment of slavery was not the North's only intention as they systematically destroyed the prosperous South. "War," they said, "had been the only way the North could dismantling a superior financial system—riches gained through the South's independent trade with Europe. That the "radical government in Washington" had simply used the Abolitionist to implement their goal was—to Southerners—a belief as irrefutable as the Bible itself. Deep down, Beatrice knew better, but she was angry at the destruction and, mostly, the indignities that followed. Paramount of indignities was the bread lines.

Still glowering, Beatrice stared down the street at another Union soldier and his family. The wife gripped the hands of two little boys while the soldier carried a small daughter on his shoulders. Beatrice shook her head. We are newly invaded by entire families of them!

Just then, one of Savannah's very own townswomen rushed up to the Northern couple and began to chat amiably, smiling and gesturing at them, as if they were the crème de la crème of Savannah society! Beatrice's eyes bulged with rage—the townswoman was none other than her very own seamstress before the war! Sewing for the Yankee infiltrators now, was she! Very well! From this day forward, no Savannah lady of any merit will waste an ounce of breath on that simpering wench! I shall see to it!

Two of Beatrice's old tea and cakes brigade, Bethel Truett and Prudence Hornden, abandoned the line and approached, shouting Beatrice's name and waving their arms in greeting; one clutched an empty basket, the other an old bucket, just as empty.

"Look at those two," she said to Tessie and growing even more hostile as she watched the pair approach. "Begging bread from the Yankees! I never thought to see this day when my own kind would—!" Silenced by Bethel and Prudence's unsuccessful attempts to embrace her, she raked up a handful of newspapers from the seat, and shook them in their faces.

"Have you not read these?" she cried, glaring. "They are Northern papers, every article gloating over their victory and ridiculing the South's hunger, chiding us for accepting their charity! Here! Read this!" She shoved a paper into Bethel's stunned face but then jerked it back. "I shall read it to you," she snapped. "This..." she wagged the paper, "is the New York Times describing one such spectacle right here in Savannah and such as is taking place this very instant!" She pointed at the needy crowd.

"Listen to this, you people ... here is what the Yankee's enjoy about our misery!" She stood in the cart and began to read, her voice loud and resounding, carrying to the heart of the hungry-eyed crowd:

"Rome, in the time of carnival, can exhibit no such spectacle. There are two doors to the store, one on Bay and the other on Barnard Street, affording entrance and exit. Several hundred persons of both sexes, all ages, sizes, complexions, costumes; gray-haired old men with canes, with bags, bottles, and buckets; old "Uncle Neds" who just before death gives them liberty from hardships and suffering are made freedmen by the mighty march of events; well-dressed women, wearing crepe for their husbands and sons who have fallen while fighting against the old flag, stand there with pale and sunken cheeks, patiently awaiting their turn. There are women with tattered dresses—old silks and satins which were lain aside as useless but which have become valuable through destitution."

Bethel and Prudence tugged at their attire as if such smoothing action could transform rags into their old elegance.

"There are women in linsey-woolsey, demi-white women wearing Negro cloth, Negro women dressed in gunny cloth; men with Confederate uniforms, men with butternut clothes. There is a boy in a crimson plush jacket, made from what was once the upholstering of a sofa. There are old men in short jackets, little boys in long ones—the cast-off overcoats of soldiers, the rags which have been picked up from garrets—wearing the boots and shoes which have been kicked off and thrown aside, down at the heel, out at the toes, open on the instep. There are old bonnets of every description, some with white and crimson flowers, some with ribbons once bright and flaming but now faded and worn."

Beatrice paused to draw a deep, ill-tempered, breath. Tessie, Bethel, and Prudence's eyes were upon her, sad with reminisces. Several women in the crowd wiped their cheeks with tattered shawls; one dropped her basket and moved slowly away. Beatrice continued:

"There are Shaker bonnets, "Sugar scoops," "coal scuttles," hats of every description, size, and shape worn by both sexes—women wearing men's hats of palm-leaf or felt, men wearing stove-pipes battered and bruised, felt slouched and torn, ventilated by accident and not by patent ventilators. There is one which had no crown, worn by a man who had red hair, reminding one of a chimney on fire and flaming out at the top."

Beatrice's voice rose in studied fury with the next. "It is the ragman's fair rather than the ragman's jubilee and day of rejoicing, for Charity, like a kind angel, has suddenly stepped in to ward off the wolf which is howling at the door."

An angry male voice interrupted from somewhere in the line. "The Northern dastards feign to feed us, yet rejoice that we starve!"

Beatrice's old mule shied backward a few steps before she ferociously jerked him still, her voice rising with increased fervor.

"There are teams in the street—old, dilapidated wagons—weak, broken-down horses and sorry mules with rope harnesses." She nodded wryly at her own sorry mule. "It is a collection of odds and ends. It is literally a distribution of the bread of life. In no profane sense, but in truth and reality, it is a sacrament, given freely, and I doubt not gratefully received. The recipients, at any rate, are eager to partake of it—so eager that the sentinels at the door at times are compelled to present their bayonets to the crowd to keep the passage clear."

"Damnation upon them!" a woman's voice cried as she threw off her stained slouch hat, shoved past the Yankee sentry, slung her empty basket at his feet, and stomped away.

Beatrice nodded her pleasure, her eyes falling quickly back to the newspaper.

"There will be some who fail to receive the aid they need—persons who have never known want who will suffer silently rather than mix in the crowd which throngs at the door. Others will obtain provisions when they have abundance at home."

Finished, Beatrice crumpled the paper into a ball and hurled it into the street.

Tessie capped her old friend's tirade with loud sighs of agreement and, jerking at the tattered shawl that hung from her bony shoulders like a frayed strip of gauze, she imitated Beatrice's hostile gaze at their two companions.

"Well, I just never—!" Prudence said, her layered chins jiggling, her round face growing even rounder in furious, but speechless, defense of herself.

Bethel patted Prudence's twisting fingers then bustled closer to the cart. "Beatrice Corrigan, how dare you judge us when, for the past two years, you have had your granddaughter's new husband providing your needs! Most of us are not so fortunate as that!" She raised her bosomy chest in a manner that could only be seen as confrontational. "And, as for tolerating the Yankees and thereby keeping 'the wolf from the door,' I have bequeathed any wasteful bitterness I might have harbored to our veterans and youth hotheads, for only they will live long enough to nurture it! I shall not live that long, Beatrice Corrigan, and neither shall you! Come Pruddie, old Mister Habersham is holding our place in line."

Beatrice slashed the mule viciously across his rump and jolted into the street, causing a rickety wagon to swerve from her path, its sway-backed horse showing a spurt of energy by rearing his front hooves a few inches off the sandy thoroughfare.

Tessie, running alongside and struggling to keep up, finally halted. "I shall be home soon, Beatrice! See you at tea time?" she called out, and after a moment, added, "Where on earth are you taking those chairs, Beatrice?"

Without looking back at her eternal house guest, Beatrice slapped the mule again, not bothering to reply that she was on her way to Greenpoole and would be gone overnight—a command appearance, of sorts.

That Bethel! Even without Gentry's generosity, no Corrigan—nor her own Cuthbert lineage, who had sold their property and left for England soon after the war started would ever please Northern detractors by showing neediness! Indeed not! Suddenly Beatrice was glad that she had refused the horse and buggy Gentry wanted to buy for her, keeping, instead, the oddly stunted mule that had wandered onto Greenpoole's property one day. Meshach had mended the fancy old barouche that she and her dear departed husband had purchased in their youth—and which the Yankees had evidently not wanted when they stripped Greenpoole of its vehicles and every last animal on the place during the war, including the slow-moving plow oxen, of which they had promptly roasted and ate! Beatrice was proud of her transportation: The old mule and barouche allowed her the respectability of equality among her peers—Savannah's genteel citizens of society whose two hundred-year fortunes had washed away beneath a relentless tide of blue-coated mercenaries, too massive in number to turn away.

On the outskirts of town, Beatrice tapped at the ache behind her bosoms, and then yanked at a dangling thread. Her last lace blouse was in no better shape than Tessie's sad-looking old shawl. And when, for God's sake ... is the woman going to discard that disastrous hairpiece bun? Even before the war, it was no more than a snarled ball of mousy brown fuzz, and now it looked as if a family of mice had actually made it their homes. Starving mice, no doubt.

* * *

Baker Ben, his black face as stoic as ever, slowly made his way across the dining room toward Beatrice seated at the head of the table. His long thin hands, sinewy beneath skin the color and texture of old leather, gripped an elaborate silver tray atop which sat a small two-layer cake without frosting or sauce. The tray and silverware had been salvaged from the cave beneath Corrigans' Pool where Meshach and Cricket had hidden them from Sherman's men in '64. The servants still laughed at how the Yankees, finding no sliver in such a magnificent plantation home, had dug up half the property looking for it. Ella did not laugh—they had found plenty else to cart away.

Baker Ben sat the cake in front of Beatrice and she eyed it grimly.

"Don't tell me it's that time of year again," she said, and glowered at the old servant, adding, "I thought you were getting so old and feeble you would forget all this silliness."

Honor laughed. "We reminded him to make the cake, and without frosting, just the way you like it." Honor gazed fondly at the old servant who had pampered and spoiled her throughout her childhood. "But Baker Ben hadn't forgotten at all," she said. "How could he, Grandmother, when his very own birthday is on the same day? As many of those cakes he's baked over the years, I bet he even knows how old you are."

"I doubt it. How old am I, Baker?"

"You is eighty-four this day, Miz Bea," he replied and then, haughtily, "and I is ninety-four, aimin' for a hundred and-four."

Gentry, Andy, and Honor laughed, but Ella, having chosen to sit between her son Adam and Honor's little Elizabeth, could only manage a smile. She ate very little of the rare chicken and dressing Baker Ben prepared for the occasion, and now she scarcely heard the drone of voices and light laughter of those around her. Oh, but surely Gentry didn't mean it! He was just angry... frustrated, as she was, with the slow progress at Greenpoole. But if he would just be patient...! A moment passed before her shoulders slumped. He meant it ... meant every word of it! Suddenly, she stared at her hands in her lap, pain alerting her that she had been wringing her perspiring fingers like a piece of wet laundry.

War had done away with many things in the South, but the tradition of paternalism seemed more important than ever. That being so, after supper Beatrice executed her dominion as matriarch of the family by tapping her spoon against her glass signaling that all should follow her into Greenpoole's sparsely furnished parlor, where they would have their tea and cake. She had parted with the dozen chairs and tiny table, but her sofas, settees, and other fine household items—collections over the past sixty years of furnishing and refurnishing first Greenpoole and then her house in town—were still in the attic of her Savannah home, all covered with sheets or packed away in crates and boxes: Therefore, Gentry and Andy helped the twins, Moonbeam and Sunbeam, lug the dining room chairs across the massive marble-floored entry hall and into the parlor where the small tea table sat.

Ella remained aloof from her husband and the others, sitting on the floor to entertain the children by reading Two Doves and the Owl to them—until she got to the part where the naughty old owl came along, killed the mother dove then flew away with the two baby doves in his clutches. She closed the book, suddenly remembering how she had detested that story as a child, and had cried when Grandmother read it to her. She was grateful when Adam and Elizabeth, unable to sit still for long jumped up and darted out into the entry hall, their shrill screams and laughter soon echoing through the great house and drowning out the adults. Hannah appeared from out of nowhere and, unhampered by her girth, chased the unruly duo into a corner, and then marched them off to bed.

Later, after Honor and Andy departed for upstairs, Gentry took Beatrice's hand and politely excused himself. When he kissed Ella's forehead and she neither spoke nor responded, Beatrice eyebrows shot upward. She waited until Gentry disappeared through the doorway before she spoke. "The last time I saw you ignore your husband like that, you were married to Victor Faircloth. What has happened?"

Ella closed her eyes and shook her head. A moment later, she was sobbing quietly into her hands.

"Well...," Beatrice drawled, "the honeymoon lasted a lot longer than I thought it would, you being so stubborn about leaving this place."

"You knew he wanted us to go to Texas and didn't tell me?"

"It was not my place to tell you. None of my concern."

"It's none of your concern that he wants to take me and your great-grandson away, far away, to a God-forsaken place so far from home that you may never see us again?" She arose from the sofa and marched to the window. "Or has he convinced you to sell out and come with us," she said, her disgust evident.

"Ha!" Beatrice retorted, not trying to hide her amusement at such a notion.

"I thought so," Ella nodded, turning. "I don't want to leave my home any more than you, Grandmother."

"But you will leave it." It was a factual remark rather than a question. Beatrice approached the window in time to see Gentry riding off toward the Savannah road. She glanced at Ella. Gloom had overtaken her granddaughter, and Beatrice waited for her to speak.

"He is willing to wait only until the last crops are in," Ella finally said. That's little more than a month from now," She turned to face Beatrice, her expression miserable. "How can I leave behind all I've cherished my entire life? All I've ever needed was my home ... my family ... Greenpoole." She did not attempt to silence the next burst of sobs.

"Beatrice patted her shoulder. "You will do better than you think."

Ella jerked away. "No I won't, and I don't want to." She wiped angrily at her eyes. "I pray to God something happens to stop us!

"Be careful of such prayers, my dear, because—"

"...because I just may get what I pray for? I hope so! I hope my prayer is answered, and I don't care how!"

"Ella, except for me and Honor, the family you speak of is dead and gone. Honor and Andy will soon find another way of life, one they are eager to undertake. I am certain Greenpoole will always be in Honor's memories, but she will not allow her feet to be frozen to Greenpoole's soil in a useless search for the past."

"It isn't useless, not if we work together! Honor never had sense enough to care about Greenpoole the way I do. She still behaves like a spoiled child, and Andy is worse ... running off to town every chance he gets ... to curse the Yankees when their back's are turned, he and his friends plotting revenge they could not possibly accomplish without being caught and hung!"

"I don't condone Andy's kind of bitterness. It will only cause him trouble. But aside from his hatred of Yankees, he and your sister have sense enough to know that life, as we knew it, is finished and will never return. Honor has the good sense to know that her obligation is to Andy and little Elizabeth, not to a dead past."

Ella clutched Beatrice's hands, shaking them with each word, "But if we work together, we can turn a profit at Greenpoole, Grandmother. I know we can. Greenpoole is our home!"

"Gentry and little Adam should be your only concern, Ella, not Greenpoole."

"My son and husband are my concern, but so are you and Honor. This land and this house was the pride of Corrigans for nearly two hundred years, and...! Oh, Grandmother, I thought you, of all people, would understand."

"I understand better than you know," Beatrice said, and Ella was surprised to see her grandmother's eyes glisten unnaturally for a moment before she continued speaking. "I think I told you once before that the happiest years of my life I spent with your Grandfather here in this beautiful old house, raising our son, and later, watching my grandchildren being born here. I often chastised your father for spoiling you both, but I was as guilty as he. More and more I look back and realize that I was shamefully remiss in the council entrusted me after your mother was so horribly injured in that accident. I should have taught you so much more than I did. I should have prepared you for a world I knew would someday collapse. Instead, I gave you entitlement—the same as was given me—when I should have given you vision, vision to see further than the tips of your noses."

After Beatrice went upstairs to bed, Ella stood on the veranda, staring into the dark night, and thinking of her grandmother's words. Vision to see what? Vision to see herself living out the remainder of her life in a strange land—tales about which made her cringe. In a few short weeks, she would be forced to desert her beloved home ... forced to reside, like a trapped animal, in a place she knew she would hate. Oh, God! If only something would happen to stop us from leaving! Beatrice was wrong—nothing could be as bad as leaving Greenpoole!

Chapter 3

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 mother's illness weakened his will to do so. Hannah said she would never leave Georgia and "never go to that wild Texas place what ain't hardly got no genteel 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 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 those who had come to mean so much to her? She looked up to gaze at Moonbeam and Sunbeam now chattering back and forth over the washtubs, 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 object. 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 said to Ella the day Beatrice brought them to Greenpoole five years ago. Ella suspected that the only reason 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 hovering over the washtubs. 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, Brunot. How could there not be a bond between her and this remarkable pair? The three of them had saved each others lives, had hid in terror together, comforted each other and, at time laughed together and, 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?

After a while, 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 in finding a handle, Meshach would fashion a new one for her in no time. She was grateful that Meshach was now Greenpoole's overseer, and had agreed to stay on after she was gone. He had been at Greenpoole for more than thirty-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 goin'?"

"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 goin', 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 away.

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 "Pledger's 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 that of an exuberant colt. "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 Pledger 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, he was driven to that terrible deed by desperation—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; A few years back, she could have taught him something about the latter. Even now, 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'd seen him in New Orleans a year before the war ended. 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," Gentry said. "The poor cuss was one miserable human being, likely searching for ways to rectify the rotten thing he did to us." In recalling 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. 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 two 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, Moss Oak, and Kearney 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 in choking puffs, as he averted his eyes from Ella's misery. The old horse, Blackie, nickered as if in sympathy for her, and then stretched his long neck 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 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 put together." 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 man, if I ever knowed one."

Ella 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 Northern women newly arrived in town, 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 Brunot did nothing to dampen her belief in his humanity—there was a time when she would have killed Brunot and his master, had she the strength.

"Well looka there, Miss Ella ... Miss Honor and them chil'n climbin' up the hill," Meshach pointed to the bluff overlooking the river. "Miss Honor look like she carryin' a big basket a' 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 site, and 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. Why, he out there pickin' that cotton jest like them sharecroppers."

* * *

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 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 our Confederates won." She laughed, and 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. Andy says we can visit you soon, maybe next Christmas. We'll 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.

When Ella did not speak, Honor grabbed her 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 just a few 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 difficult 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, and said 'What took you so long? I knew who little Adam's father was long before he was born, just as your father knew.'"

"Father knew!?" For a long moment Ella could say no more, then finally uttered, "Oh, what does 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 abroad someday. To England and then France. I'm hoping Andy and I and Elizabeth can live in England maybe a year or two before coming back and settling down. Grandmother's Cuthbert kin from Hilton Head moved to England, you know, and I'm sure they'd love to have us visit."

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 sister's 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 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 scream, and then another, paralyzing her for an instant as the terrified sounds 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 who—?

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 and then watched it lowly transforming into a shiny red blanket as blood soaked through the layers from hip to 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's dying! "Oh, Honor ... please! 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 mouth.

Chapter 4

Andy couldn't go to his family; there wasn't a Kearney left in Chatham County, his father and most of his brothers being dead in the war, and his mother gone to her Missouri kinfolk after the Kearney plantation was destroyed. For days, Ella had tried to console Andy, assuring him Honor would be fine, but being doubtful herself, the pair only added to each other's depression. When Andy and little Elizabeth weren't nearby, Ella was inconsolable—even when he made it clear that they wouldn't leave for Texas until they knew Honor would be all right, and had healed. She had only stared at him. "It's my fault! It's my fault!" she had cried, and nothing he could say convinced her otherwise.

Gentry searched the town one last time for Andy then headed for Greenpoole. As much as he wanted to find Andy, he was relieved that the young hothead wasn't in town—there were too many Union soldiers in Savannah and Andy's hatred for "the vile Yankee presence in the South" had intensified since Honor's accident.

At the fork in the road, Gentry stopped, and then turned off toward the one place he had not looked—the deserted Kearney plantation.

Scattered heaps of brick and ash were the only reminders of the Kearney's once stately home. Where a barn and stable once stood, there lay only piles of charred rubble. All that remained of the once fine-looking old plantation was a row of slave's cabins toward the rear of the property. Gentry rode up to each cabin and, without dismounting, looked into the open windows. The freed occupants had left long ago and only chunks of broken pottery and old rags remained. A horse neighed behind the last hovel, and Gentry slid from the saddle as Andy called out.

"I haven't hung myself, Gent ... if that's what you come to find." He sat on the ground, leaning against a hickory stump, a small campfire at his feet, and a bedroll laying open nearby. He tossed Gentry a bottle. "Have yourself a nip or two. I got another where that one comes from."

Gentry flipped the cork away and turned up the bottle, then wiped his mouth. "Worked up a hell of a thirst looking for you, Andy."

Andy's bloodshot eyes rolled aside to stare at nothing. "She's gonna die, Gent. My Honor's gonna die. She been feverish for a week now, talking out of her head. She's gonna die."

Gentry sat on the ground across from him, and took another drink before handing the bottle over. "It's the laudanum Doc Boles gives her, Andy ... it'll keep her half unconscious and talking gibberish for awhile."

She'll never walk again. It'll kill my Honor if she can't ever walk. You know her, Gent. Honor has two speeds—fast and faster. She'll die if she can't get where she wants to go on her own two legs."

"Don't tell me I know your wife better than you do, old pal," Gentry said, smiling. "The Honor I know won't waste time moaning over what was and what is. She'd be damned mad if she thought that's what you were doing."

Andy threw the empty bottle into the fire, sparks and embers swirling around them. "Those Goddamned Yankees...!"

"It was an accident, Andy. Those men were sickened by what happened. They saved her life. She would have bled to death without their help." Gentry poked the fire with a stick, and watched Andy pull the cork on another bottle. "Ella and Miz Bea are worried about you, Andy. Won't put you out none to show up at Greenpoole today, if only to make them feel better. What if Honor wakes and asks for you? Little Elizabeth—she needs you more than ever n-"

"Okay. Okay!" Andy's face reddened, and he looked past Gentry rather than at him. "Look Gent, I 'bout got this place sold. I can't keep up with the taxes anymore." He looked this way and that, as if taking a final inventory of the place. "Not much left of it, but there's a good pine woods back yonder and my buyer wants it. He's coming first thing in the morning. I'm waiting so I can show him around the place. I just want to be by myself 'til then, understand?"

Gentry rose and started to leave, but turned. "She's not dead, Andy, so stop acting like she is. Would you love Honor any less if she couldn't walk? She'd still be Honor. She'd never let an accident to herself take away the joy that's always made her so special? Hell no, she wouldn't. So pull yourself together and be the man she believes in."

Andy raised his head and ran his hands through his cap of wiry blond curls. His voice grew hoarse. "Man ... did she love to dance! Why, just that same morning, before those Yankees—!" He gritted his teeth, trembling, and then took a deep breath. "Just that same morning, we danced all round that big old empty house, laughing, chasing each other ... dancing like there was no tomorrow...." His head fell to his chest, his shoulders shaking. "She was real special, wasn't she?" he choked.

"Honor is special, Andy, not was. How 'bout I keep you company tonight, friend? I haven't camped out under the stars in a long time."

Without looking up, Andy shook his head, and waved him away.

Gentry paused long enough to squeeze Andy's shoulder, and then left.

* * *

The next morning at dawn, Gentry sought Ella out in Honor's room, from which she had rarely emerged. He found her at the window, her eyes shadowed but tearless at last. He rested his hands on her shoulders, and pressed his lips lightly to her crown of platinum hair. She did not move, and with his cheek pressed to hers, he too gazed out the window at the headstones that stood in neat rows at the end of what was once Greenpoole's rose garden. He knew her thoughts, and it pained him to see her torturing herself, reliving her parents' death and that of her and Faircloth's son, the little boy she often spoke of, as did Adam.

"Are the children still asleep?" she said.

"Like kittens."

"...and Andy, did you find him?"

"He's at his family's old place waiting for a buyer—he's selling."

"Selling? Today? But that Yankee sergeant came back yesterday and paid for the wood they forgot to pay for when-" she clenched her eyes a moment, "and he told Meshach he and his wagons were going to the Kearney place this morning. He said they had contracted with Andy to clear ten acres of timber. Why would he do that if he was selling?"

Gentry tried not to hurry. He said maybe Meshach had misunderstood, and then he kissed her cheek and left.

* * *

At the fork in the road, Gentry saw fresh hoof prints and three sets of wagon tracks leading off toward the Kearney place. He kicked his mount into a crazed run.

Around a bend in the road, he saw the wagons five hundred yards ahead and heard the distant squeaking of wheels mixed with the low drone of Negro voices bantering back and forth as the entourage rolled onto the property near the old slave quarters. Then, as speedily as an axe splits a piece of kindling, a blood-chilling yell exploded above the clatter, as Andy burst from the cabin, pistols blazing ... his mouth tore open in that eternal scream of battle reviled so by Northern veterans of the war. Almost in that same instant, a dozen rifles and pistols cracked again and again until their target lay, bloodied and still, his body half-hidden in a gently rippling patch of wildflowers. A soldier on one of the wagons clutched his arm while the man next to him, the driver, slumped dead over the dash. The Sergeant, who had helped stem Honor's bleeding, stepped from his horse when he saw Gentry. Gentry jerked his mount to a halt and did the same, thinking the Sergeant about to approach him, but the man took only a step then slumped to his knees and fell on his face, dead. Men from the third wagon jumped down and ran from body to body.

"Six dead, including one nigger who didn't hit the ground fast enough," one of them cried. "That son-of-a-bitching Confederate bastard makes seven!"

* * *

With Andy's gory body wrapped in a piece of canvas provided him by the Union soldiers, Gentry rode home to Greenpoole with his small brother-in-law cradled in his arms like a child. Andy's crazed plot to kill Yankees was testament to the madness of a war that, though ended, was still being fought in the hearts and minds on both sides, more so in the South than anywhere else. The notion was that time was supposed to heal all wounds, but Gentry had a feeling that the wounded face of humanity in the South would show its ugly side more and more rather than less. Civil war—non-military, but even more treacherous in its hatred—would fester into an underlying puss of evil that would seep over the land, both North and South, far into the future.

Gentry's black eyes looked neither left nor right, as he steadied Andy's lolling head against his shoulder and tried not to think how many long months must now pass before Ella nursed Honor back to health, if she lived past her injuries—which were soon to be compounded by the sorrow of loosing her husband. Only then would he finally be able to gather his little family and leave this senselessness existence behind.

CHAPTER 5

She wondered if Gentry was having success in New Orleans. He had gone there to collect money owed him for cattle that his men in Texas had shipped there, upon receiving Gentry's wire to do so. Quite a bit of money, she hoped. She missed him and wondered if he missed her. He'd not mentioned Texas since soon after Honor's injuries. Lately, with Honor getting better by the day, she sometimes wondered what he was thinking, but she dare not ask. Why temp a conversation she was not willing to have?

She glanced at the dust rag in her hand as if suddenly reminded why she had gone to the window, then slapped gently at the sash, being careful not to further disturb the long crack in the window pane. Hearing a sound behind her, she glanced over her shoulder to see Honor on her feet, aided by the pair of hickory crutches that Gentry and Meshach had spent days carving and then sanding until they were as smooth as marble. Ella continued dusting while glancing repeatedly over her shoulder to watch her sister practice maneuvering slowly back and forth across the floor. She was glad to see Honor smiling as she hobbled along. There were still days when she burst into tears over Andy's senseless death five months earlier, but true to her old tenacity, her mind and heart were proving to be as resilient as her young body.

"Look, Ella! I've got all my weight on my legs!" Honor, standing upright beside her bed, let go of the crutches, and they made a terrible racket against the wooden floor.

"No! Don't...!" Ella cried, rushing to grasp Honor's arm. "You'll fall, Honor. Lie back down. You're legs aren't strong enough yet."

"Wanna bet?" She jerked her arm from Ella's grasp. "You just watch me walk! And don't you dare touch me again unless I really start to fall. I'm just gonna take a few steps and then I'll use the crutches again. Okay?"

Silent, but hovering close by, Ella was suddenly ashamed of what she was thinking. She'd be rid of those crutches soon. Too soon! She thought for the thousandth time about Beatrice's declaration a month after the accident. "When Honor is on her feet again, I shall bring the twins to pack her and Elizabeth's things, and they shall come home to Savannah with me—as was the plan before that husband of hers orchestrated his foolish death! She had looked Ella square in the eyes. "... and then, my dear, you and Gentry can orchestrate his original plan."

Ella clutched at Honor, but Honor wretched away. "Damn it, Ella ...! What's the matter with you, jumping at me like that?"

"Don't swear, Honor."

"I won't swear if you will just leave me be, for Heaven's sake! I wasn't falling, but you almost made me!" Honor frowned, as she closely examined Ella's face. "What's the matter with you, anyway? You look like you aren't even listening to me!"

* * *.

Another month passed and Honor had been rid of her crutches for almost as long. Ella, again caught up in the day-in-day-out toil at Greenpoole, had begun to think that their grandmother, in her forgetfulness, had forgotten all about her pledge to drag Honor off to Savannah. Besides, Honor did not want to go; Ella was sure of it, although Honor had never said so. Nearly each week this past month, Beatrice had continued to show up at Greenpoole alone, leaving Sunbeam and Moonbeam behind in Savannah. Finally, Ella allowed herself to relax. Beatrice likely had concluded that Honor and little Elizabeth should stay where they are, since Honor was doing so well. Besides, little Elizabeth and Adam were the happiest of playmates and Beatrice, the ever-adoring great-grandmother, had likely realized what a shame it would be to separate them.

* * *

Despite hardships at Greenpoole, and Honor's intermediate burst of tears in mourning for Andy, Ella and Honor found time for enjoyment when the town ladies came out to check on Honor's health and provide the latest gossip. Somehow, the gossip was not as much fun as in the old days when they had "stirred the pot of bubbling secrets" with their cousins, the lively Sutton triplets from Hilton Head. Their world had turned too serious. All three Sutton cousins had married soon after the war began, Maureen and Nouveen moving to distant towns, except poor Vestal ... dead of childbirth a short year after her marriage.

Gentry was due home soon, and Ella had missed him, but it seemed that she loved him more when he was away this time, possibly because she dreaded what he was sure to say to her if and when Beatrice regained her memory and came for Honor. She found peace-of-mind only in that Honor would not leave the sister who had all but raised her, no matter how much Grandmother fumed and railed!

Ella knotted her hair into its bun and continued her chore of putting the house in order. This morning she would help Hannah prepare the meals, since Baker Ben was feeling poorly again and had taken to his cot. The servant gal Miffie had married a Negro Yankee soldier and moved to Washington, after which Baker Ben, jubilant in a crabby sort of way, abandoned his old room that was attached to the kitchen house and moved into Miffie's vacated quarters that were accessed through the manor's rear entrance.

Ella headed downstairs clutching the dust rag, pausing along the way to polish the once beautiful old mahogany banister of which Sherman's men had little regard as they carted away the upstairs furniture, scratching and knocking chinks in the wood as they went. On the landing, Ella pushed open the cracked, stained-glass window, and gazed down at the circle drive, pleased to see Beatrice's old barouche and harnessed mule. She hurried downstairs, wondering what gift grandmother had brought to Greenpoole today. Usually, she brought a box of coveted sweets or a bolt of cloth to sew new clothes for the children. Ella was laughing with expectation at the bottom of the stairs when the wide front doors opened and Beatrice strolled inside—following closely behind by Moonbeam and Sunbeam!

To Ella's shock, it took Honor less than five seconds to inform her that she has been looking forward to moving into Savannah for a very long time, since that is exactly what she and Andy had always planned—this, after Beatrice had handed her the letter from the Cuthbert kin in England, inviting Honor to visit them. They had actually sent steamship fare for her and Elizabeth! Honor did cry, thought, as she hugged Ella, sniffing that they must visit often before she leaves in a couple of weeks. Little Elizabeth was dragged out the door kicking and screaming between Moonbeam and Sunbeam, both of whom had a firm but reluctant grip on the child's tiny arms. After which, Adam refused to kiss his adoring great-grandmother goodbye. Days later, Ella was still angry. How could she walk away from Greenpoole and never look back, the ways she had?

* * *

Ella's anger was lessened only by Gentry's arrival from New Orleans the following week. After a quick meal with her and Adam, he went into Savannah to bank his money. Ella did not ask the amount, but hoped it would be enough. She had not told Gentry that the last batch of sharecroppers had moved on, and she wondered if he had noticed. When he was out of sight, she summoned Meshach and Cricket, gave them a dollar each and a large sack of vittles, and sent them on a long journey to Macon—where Meshach said a family of Victor's ex-slaves had gone and were now in dire straits. Afoot, they would likely be gone a couple of weeks. Uncomfortable with guilt that she had not told her husband what she intended, she closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her mouth. She'd tell him about the sharecroppers if ... if Meshach's trip was successful.

That evening, as dusk fell and Adam was asleep in his room, she pulled the new tax notice from her apron and laid it atop her bureau. She would not tell Gentry about the tax notice just yet, she decided—in a few days, perhaps, but not tonight. Even before he left, they had scarcely had a conversation these past months that hadn't involved money, and she regretted it. He was so kind to her, so understanding of her moods. She felt a familiar discomfort crawl over her. Sometimes, when she glanced at Gentry and caught him looking at her, she saw something intangible in his black eyes. Was it sadness? She had rather see anger in them, resentment, stubbornness, anything but sadness!

Had she made him doubt her love? Had she been so busy with Honor and everything else at Greenpoole that-! She loved Gentry as much as much as ever! Did he know it?

At the sound of his footsteps in the hall, she quickly smoothed stray wisps of hair from her face and, forgetting all about he taxes, rushed to the door and pulled it open. The look on her face must have pleased him; his eyes gladdened, and he smiled.

"I've missed you," he said, taking both her hands in his.

"I've missed you, too, Gentry. More than I could possibly put into words! I was just so worried about Honor for so long! I'm sorry if I-!"

"Shush." He quieted her with a finger to her lips. "I know, but Honor is fine now." He touched her cheek with the backs of his long, tanned finger. "She doesn't want you worrying about her. She's going to Europe. Getting on with her life, she said. And that's what she wants us do, Ella."

"That's what I want, too, Gentry. She rested against him, pressing her head against his strong shoulder. "You're so good to me, Gentry. I love you so. You know that, don't you?"

She waited for his reply then leaned her head back to smile up at him, expecting to see his eyes warm upon her face, but saw instead that they were trained on the slip of paper atop her bureau. Oh ... but that's not why...! But something would not let her say it. She grabbed his hand and led him through the French doors to the balcony. "We haven't watched the sun disappear into the river in a long time, Gentry. Look at it. Isn't it beautiful?"

She watched him turn his back to the sunset, lean against the balcony post, and cross his arms over his chest ... as if to keep me away, she thought, fighting a strange panic. Suddenly, she knew what he was about to say and there was no way to stop him.

"It's time to leave here, Ella."

The firmness in his voice made her shutter. She gripped the railing and stared into the glittering twilight for a long while before twisting her head in the opposite direction, away from him. "Please, Gentry ... don't ... don't make me go. Not yet. I ... I can't."

When, at last, she turned back to look at him, he was gone, had left as silently as a shadow moves. Through the open balcony doors, she saw only the door to her bedroom as he pulled it shut behind him. Dejected, she returned to her room and closed the French doors against the cold, knowing that if she remained on the balcony, she would see him riding away toward Savannah. Moments later, she gave out a soft cry, flung open the doors, and watched him ride down the road at a gallop, until the sun's glare on the river absorbed him into it, and he was gone.

* * *

She awoke in the night as the lamp at her bedside flared and Gentry sat down beside her. Silent, he slipped his hand beneath her hair to the back of her neck and pulled her gently forward until his lips pressed against her forehead. After a long moment, she dropped her head back to look at him ... then clenched her eyes shut against sight of his own: Those mesmerizing black eyes that had always thrilled her with their boldness ... their promise ... their sureness, were filled with sadness—a sadness unmistakable now in its intensity. With a soft cry, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him hard, clung to him, frantic in her desire to remove that sadness. His response was immediate, and soon the pleasure of it near maddening to her, his lovemaking carried out with a slow urgency that took her from bliss to ecstasy, and then beyond either.

When at last they lay silent in each other's arms, she stroked his dark cheek, happy, a great sense of relief filling her. Did his silence mean that he had thought it over and decided they did not have to leave for Texas just yet? Yes! That was it! That is why he had come to her, so sweet, so filled with desire for her. With a little more time, she could convince him that Greenpoole should be their permanent home—he was weakening, she could sense it. She snuggled against him and slept sounder than she had slept in months.

* * *

She did not know when he awoke and left their bed. During the night, she had roused only once to glance sleepily at his shadowed face. His eyes had been closed, his chest rising and falling gently in sleep, but when she tried to roll away to a more comfortable position, his arms tightened around her, and she had quickly fallen back to sleep. Now, wide-awake, she pulled herself up on her elbows and looked at the haze of cloudy sunlight visible through her windows. Smiling, she slid from the bed. She was still smiling as she washed her face in the icy water on her washstand, donned her clothes and combed her hair, while pausing occasionally to listen for Adam. He must be playing outside. She stepped onto the balcony and searched the grounds, then retreated inside as the frigid wind whistled eerily thought the trees and around the house, setting her teeth to chattering. Too cold for him to be out, and rain was coming, she thought, but strange he hadn't come running to wake her ... bouncing on their bed and making enough noise to wake every soul on the plantation. For the first time, she noticed that her fireplace, usually stoked and blazing by now, was cold. She opened her bedroom door and called out to Hannah, then went back to light the fire, but soon paused, frowning. Something wasn't right.

She peered out into the wide hall and looked left and right. Then, possibly because of the eerie silence, she tiptoed to the railing and looked down into the colossal foyer. The house was quiet. Too quiet! Whirling, she ran to her son's room, and then into the room at the end of the hall where Hannah slept. Both were empty! Frantic, she ran back to little Adam's room and threw open the wardrobe that held his clothes. Empty! The drawers ... empty! She stumbled into the hall, down the sweeping stairs, and stood, sobbing, in the center of the gigantic entry hall, unmindful of the cold marble beneath her bare feet, crying out her son's name, and then screaming for Hannah!

"They is gone, Miss Ella." Baker Ben said, from the back end of the entry hall. He stood, his frail body leaning against the doorframe, as if that was all that held him up. He pointed at the front door, and then waved his arm in a fashion meant to encompass the world. "They is gone to Texas. That ol' Hannah woman, too. Her was right unhappy 'bout goin', but Mister Gen'te, e'say his boy gonna need her more'n ever ... since his Momma done 'side to stay put in Georgia."

Ella felt her legs begin to weaken. She glanced about for something to hang on to, but her feet held her prisoner, moving neither forward nor backward.

Baker Ben drew a feeble breath, clutching the doorframe as he, too, swayed a bit. "I wuz wonderin' las' night why he come home in a rented buggy and a'pullin' his hoss behind it. Guess dat buggy how he done took them two off to de boat what's takin' 'em to Texas..."

The color drained from Ella's face. She dropped to her hands and knees, and like an injured animal afraid to lie down for fear of dying, she screamed, "Gentry! Gentry! You bastard! You bastard!"

Chapter 6

She pursed her lips, and wagged her head, her little pancake straw hat doing its customary bobble. Ella's sharecroppers were gone. That is where they were! Gone like all the others! Who could blame them? Even now, with a share of the profits, sharecropping was too much like the drudgery of slavery had been. Only this time, the back-breakers were the physiological challenges that freedom brought.

Beatrice continued to look all around. Where was her great-grandson? Adam was usually the first out the door when she came for a visit. She tightened her collar against the cold drizzle, and then shifted on the buggy seat to gaze fore and aft again. Several times in the past weeks, she had wondered why Ella had not come into town each Saturday as usual—nor had Gentry.

Now she began to worry. She tapped at the pinching sensation in her chest, annoyed that her indigestion came and went with much greater ado lately. She fished in her reticule for a sprig of mint, and was about to pop it into her mouth when a screeching, scraping sound—like heavy iron rasping against a surface that was just as unyielding—stopped her. She climbed down as quickly as her lumbago allowed, grunting with the effort, and hurried up Greenpoole's twelve slate steps. The metallic screeching grew louder as she crossed the veranda and approached the massive double doors, one of which stood slightly ajar. Was no one interested in keeping out the cold? She swung it open, and then stared, her face instantly transforming into an unlikely mask of shock. Her hand flew to her chest and then to her gaping mouth, as she gawked at her nearly unrecognizable granddaughter.

With one arm stretched far behind her, Ella slowly and laboriously dragged a long iron cot across the colossal marble-floored entry hall; her tall frame bent nearly double, her long, mud-streaked hair swinging heavily back and forth in front of her as she tugged her burden forward. Beatrice continued to stare. Ella's sleeves and skirt were heavy with caked mud, grass, and twigs, as if she had been sloshing around in a swamp hole. She is near soaked to the waist! She must be freezing! What on earth-? Ella raised her head then dropped it, but not before Beatrice took in the frightening sight of her face, pale and thin, as if she had not eaten in days, her wide blue-green eyes strangely haunted, as they stared back at her for a only an instant. Dear God! She looks positively wild! Demented, even!

The cot screeched along the floor as, without pause, Ella continued toward the wide front doors.

"Ella...! What has happened to you? What are you doing?"

Ella stopped, but did not look up or straighten from her humped position.

"What has happened, child?" Beatrice managed to sound calm.

Ella released the cot, and straightened. "You know what has happened, or you should know—you being my husband's confidant, his friend and adviser. She turned back to the cot. "You know what's happened," she added, dully.

Beatrice felt a moment of relief—at least Ella had not lost her mind." I do not know what has happened, Ella. How would I?"

"Didn't he stop to tell you goodbye, Grandmother, after he stole my son, and left me?"

"Oh, Ella. Do you mean that he-?"

"Yes. He stole my son and crawled away in the dead of night like the snake he is! Hannah, with him. She betrayed me."

"Oh, Ella..." The flatness of her granddaughter's tone was as alarming as her appearance.

"Baker Ben said Hannah went because she didn't want Adam to be frightened, but she should have told me. I trusted her. All my life I trusted her." She slumped against the cot's iron foot post.

Beatrice moved forward and reached out, stroking at the mud in Ella's hair. "Oh, my child, I would not have encouraged him to such an act. Surely you know I would not." But then, Beatrice gasped, her stare leveling on the lengthy form that lie wrapped in a patchwork quilt atop the cot ... a long, thin foot, encased in a red woolen sock, protruded from the end of the blanket.

"Oh my. Oh my. Poor old Baker Ben is gone," Beatrice whispered, not realizing she had spoken aloud until Ella nodded, and snapped one side of her wet hair out of Beatrice's grasp.

"He died four days ago. I couldn't bury him because of the rain ... ground too wet to dig a grave. It's been unusually cold and he hasn't begun to..." She tightened the blanket over his exposed foot. "I ... finished digging last night or...close to daybreak, " She pressed her muddy hair away from her face, then slid her wet palms down her soiled skirt, as if to dry them. "I pulled a tarp over the grave should it rain again ... staked it down with boards and scraps from the barn."

"You poor child," Beatrice whispered, touching Ella's shoulder tenderly before she lifted the blanket from Baker Ben's face for a farewell look. A moment passed before she nodded, noting without surprise how natural he looked—"as visibly unperturbed by death as you appeared to be with life all those years," she whispered. She patted his bony shoulder, encased in his "burying finery"—the bright red coachman's garb with braided epaulets that he wore sixty-five years ago when driving her and her husband around Savannah in their luxurious old barouche.

"I am glad you dressed him in these," she said to Ella, who was also gazing down at him.

"It was his wish. He kept them in good repair all these years just for this occasion. He kept them laid aside for months, reminding me of their purpose more times than I can remember. I'm burying him in the rose garden near Father and Mother, not in the quarters."

"But ... is there no coffin for him?"

"No. There's no coffin been built—Meshach and Cricket are in Macon looking for sharecroppers—the others left."

Beatrice nodded. "I am certain old Baker would put up a hellacious fuss about it, but the blanket will have to do." She removed her hat and short black jacket and rolled up the sleeves of her lacy white blouse. "Between the two of us, we should be able to carry him."

But she was weaker than she cared to admit, and Ella's strength, like her spirit, was spent. They eased Baker Ben's narrow mattress to the floor and dragged him on it to his final resting place, careful to maneuver him gently down Greenpoole's twelve steps.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, as they hauled the tarp aside, and lowered him, atop his mattress, as gently as possible into the hole and began the chore of covering him. An hour later, exhausted from wielding the heavy shovel full of damp earth, and oblivious to the fresh drizzle that pelted them without letup, Ella dragged the tarp back over Baker Ben's grave to keep the fresh mound of dirt from melting away in the rain. Finished, she dropped to her knees beside Beatrice, who was asking God to give old Baker Ben his place in heaven.

Ella joined her elder's plea. Her eyes burned and rain merged with the hot tears streaming down her cheeks, as she mourned yet another loss—the old ex slave who had nurtured her and her sister, alongside Hannah, since birth. She closed her eyes against the drizzle, seeing Baker Ben as clearly as she had seen him beside Corrigans' pool that day long ago when he casually revealed the pool's secret cave to her, then smugly explained how Victor's slaves escaped without a trace. "I ain't lied, Missy—them Moss Oak niggers what escape ain't on the place, they is under the place."

Before helping Beatrice to her feet, Ella gave the tarp a final gentle pat, her sad thoughts skipping from memory to memory, as she looked around her at the other graves—her dead parents, Andy, her precious little Seth, all of whom lay nearby. Greenpoole continued to slip away from her, death by death, soul by soul. She stumbled away from the tarp-covered mound, and moved among the gravestones. She would get her son back! And when she did, she would think of a way to hurt Gentry Garland the way he had hurt her—she would not rest until she had done both!

Chapter 7

"When the next crops are in," she said. "I will hire the Pinkerton Agency to find Adam and bring him home to me.

"The Pinkertons?" Beatrice cried. "For Heaven's sake, Ella, they spied on the Confederacy during the war!"

"We shall see," was Beatrice's only reply, forgiving, for the moment, her granddaughter's uncommon rudeness.

Beatrice could only watch and worry, as Ella, ignoring warnings to slow down, worked tirelessly around the house and grounds, in the stable, and in the gardens and orchards, all of which Meshach also worked tirelessly to restore. In all Beatrice's years, she had never seen anyone in such a state of mental and physical undoing, scrubbing the floors, the walls, the windows—daily pulling weeds from the graves in the rose garden, digging for their roots even before they broke surface. It was as if she knew if she stopped, she would fall apart—just as everything around her had fallen apart. She scarcely ate and was so thin that Beatrice worried she would collapse. But all the begging and pleading, and lastly, the hard slap across the face, did not jar Ella from her dangerous state of mind. Soon, Beatrice could not bear to look into her granddaughter's eyes, for Ella's anguish was ever evident in them, her tormented thoughts constantly flickering in their depths. Something had to be done, and quickly!

Beatrice daily pondered a solution while wandering thorough the big old mansion, something she had not done in years. Greenpoole Manor, once exquisitely furnished with the collected treasures of five proud generations of Corrigans, was now simply a collection of cavernous, mostly empty, rooms, its dying breath echoed with every hollow footstep across its bare floors. Like the whole of Greenpoole plantation, the house was beyond the frantic efforts of one thin, angry young woman bent on restoration. Why ... even if this old house was refurnished ... what good would it do?

* * *

Beatrice, agitated more than usual today, snorted loudly then wagged her finger at Cricket on the stairs, as he toted firewood up to her room, then mumbled beneath her breath. "Why, it would take the entire inventory of my attic just to furnish half the downstairs rooms of this monstrous old mausoleum!" 

"Huh?"

"Don't "huh" me, young man. Put that wood where it belongs and find Meshach—we are going to town."

Gentry had mercifully left his fine horse behind and taken old Blackie, and Beatrice sat on the seat of the enormous cotton wagon while Meshach and Cricket hitched the horse and Beatrice's mule to the cumbersome vehicle. I am crazy as a loon for bringing my treasures out here, she thought, as the three of them headed for town, but perhaps Ella will calm down if surrounded by a few comforts. Besides, if she decided to sell the house in town, she most certainly was not selling her treasures along with it!

*. *. *

With most of the downstairs cozily furnished and Beatrice's promise to sell, Ella seemed better—until a cold day in January when she stumbled, sobbing, into the house. She had been down by Corrigans' pool for hours, and her face stood out like a pale, ornamental mask as she stumbled toward Beatrice, her eyes swollen nearly shut from crying, her nose red and dripping.

"Grandmother!" she screamed, hoarse, and choking on her words. "I am with child! I'm pregnant! Pregnant!" She dropped to her knees beside Beatrice's chair, her eyes filled with disbelief of her own words. Then, wretched with convulsive sobs, she buried her head in her arms across Beatrice's lap.

Beatrice could only pat her shoulders and stroke her hair. The thought of Ella giving birth at this time, when food was so scarce and Ella's health was not at its peak, worried her as much as it horrified Ella. But perhaps this unwanted baby was the miracle that would jolt Ella back to her senses, and she would go to her husband and son—"without my having to conscript the final drastic measure," Beatrice said to Meshach, as the two of them hurriedly plucked the laundry from the clothes line just ahead of a rain shower. That night, after readying for bed, Beatrice got down on her knees and thanked God for His drastic measure ... surely Ella being with child was His latest miracle in disguise.

* * *

Whether consciously, because she must think of the health of her baby, or simply because nature induces a woman to eat when her body hosts another life, Ella regained her appetite. By the end of June, her cheekbones no longer stood out sharply beneath the covering of her alabaster skin. Beatrice was relieved that Ella appeared fit, even with the hard work of keeping pace alongside the new batch of sharecroppers—a family of Victor's ex slaves from his dreaded Moss Oak plantation. Beatrice did not have to wonder about their devotion to her granddaughter. The fact that Ella had suffered at Victor's hands, as well as they, united the effort between them.

But Ella continued to agonize over her little son's safety "in that God-forbidden place to which Gentry had taken him!" She seldom altered her expression with a smile, but both women laughed aloud when Judith Ashville rode out to Greenpoole especially to gift Ella with the same large, blue shawl the woman had worn to conceal her twelve pregnancies—all of which had occurred in rapid succession until her tyrant of a husband was sent off to Castle Williams Prison on Governors Island in New York right after the war and had not returned. His departure was another of God's miracles in disguise, Beatrice quipped.

Ella laughed dryly again, when, sitting on the veranda with Beatrice, she added more folded paper to the insides of her shoes. "Remember before the war, Grandmother, when we sat on this very same spot and you chastised me because I was too sure of myself ... too smug in the luxury of our life? You said it could all evaporate like morning fog on the river. How right you were!"

Beatrice smiled, and shifted the mending basket in her lap. "Yes, and we bantered back and forth over your reluctance to chose a husband, I believe."

"Well, I'll bet even that old fortune teller of yours, Bootsie, never guessed that I'd marry twice ... end up deserted, pregnant, and—"she violently stuffed the other shoe with paper—"barefoot!"

Beatrice did not look up from her sewing. Not that her mind was idle, but the moment was not yet right in which she should put her long thought-out plan into play. She glanced at Ella's swollen stomach outlined beneath the blue shawl. This time, time was not her ally. Her plan must be executed soon ... Ella's future depended on it!

Chapter 8

Nevertheless, she had gone; closed-mouth, and in no mood for questions. Even more surprising, she enlisted Cricket to drive her—she who, for all her years, handed the reins to no one. Ella watched as her grandmother offered him the reins in complete silence, remaining mute even when he let out a happy whoop and thanked her repeatedly for the honor, adding, "That wuz mighty nice of Mista Gen'te to take that preacher's old black hoss with him to Texas and leave behind this here fine-steppin' animal. I'se drivin' you to town in style, Miz Bea!" As the barouche pulled away, Ella sneered at Cricket's words. Nice? There was nothing nice about Gentry Garland!

Ella did not care that Beatrice had not invited her on the trip. A prisoner behind Judith's awful blue shawl, she wouldn't have gone, anyway. She decided weeks ago she'd stay hidden in the country and stay out of town. Everyone is Savannah must know by now that Gentry had abandoned her, abducting his son in the process. She could just hear the gossip about his farewell gift to her, which no shawl could reveal at this late date. This baby was two month from birth, and she was embarrassed that she could no longer sit properly but rather leaned into a chair, her legs stretched out in front of her, her back arched slightly upward. Thinking of her friend, Judith, she recalled past remarks of Savannah's elite tea and cakes brigade each time they discovered their youngest member was about to bring another little Ashville into the world, "Good Lord! I just saw Judith, and she is once again prisoner of that awful blue shawl!"

No telling what they were saying about her, since Savannah's palavering old biddies forever muddied the waters of truth. She wouldn't put it past them to decide someone other than her husband had gotten her into this fix—especially since her dear friend, Jack Kearney, was back.

She was sitting in her awkward position on the veranda the day he rode up astride a mangy-looking mule, his one leg dangling almost to the ground. She did not recognize him at first, and so would wait until the last minute before expending the energy needed to rising from the comfort of her chair. If he is someone looking for work, she would call out that there was none. Even if this decrepit looking one-legged man was starving, she wouldn't pay a stranger for work she expected her sharecroppers to do. She was saving every cent of her share to pay taxes and the Pinkerton she planned to hire.

She eyed the approaching stranger moodily. Perhaps she'd spare a couple of biscuits and a saucer of molasses, and that was all ... maybe a bowl of Meshach's cat fish stew, if there was any left.

But as he jerked the mule up at Greenpoole's bottom step, she saw a familiar glint of green eyes beneath the circle of a once grand brown beret. Her hand went to her throat as she tried to gaze beyond the tangle of beard hiding his face. He slid from the mule, slapped a crude wooden crutch beneath his armpit, and hopped, painstakingly, up Greenpoole's many steps.

Ella came to her feet, images racing across her mind like pictures in an old kaleidoscope she had lost long ago and now suddenly recovered—the brightly colored elegance of the Kearney brothers, ever cocky and primed for fun—especially this one, as he waltzed Savannah's belles around every ballroom floor in the county! "The best dancer in all of Georgia" the girls claimed; her among them. How poised, elegant, and carefree she and her dear childhood friend, Jack, had been as they whirled!

Before she could regain her speech, he was before her, leaning on his crutch and eyeing her up and down, the same as she was doing him.

"Oh, Jack..." was all she could manage to whisper, suddenly heartbroken for them both. He had been her dearest comrade, her confidant, and, as he often teased without meaning it, a beau after her own heart, and now they stood facing each other at the worst possible times in their lives—he, without one of his legs, and she, nearly in rags ... and without her old charm and beauty to bolster her. She released her shawl, and, with a cry, all but threw herself into Jack Kearney's arms.

"Hey! Hey! Hey!" he yelled, struggling to stay afoot, "Have a little mercy on a one-legged son-of-...the Confederacy," he said, grinning.

"Oh, Jack, I'm sorry about your leg!"

He pressed her at arms length, looking directly at the obvious hump beneath her skirt. "Now I'm thinking, would it be proper for me to extend my apologies for your condition?"

She blushed, suddenly reminded that she wasn't as pretty as she use to be ... being so disgustingly with child. She gathered the shawl tighter around her, and then tried to poke a long wisp of hair back into the careless bun on the back of her neck. "I ... I am a mess, aren't I?

"Yes, but the prettiest mess I've seen since the last time I treated myself self to your company." He bowed, extending the crutch and balancing briefly on his single leg. "I stand"—he wobbled—"if ever so unsteadily, in awe of your messy loveliness."

She laughed, the first genuine laugh in a long time, and caught him to her, again taken aback by the feel of him, how thin he was, how easy it was to support him. He grasped her shoulders, and now they both swayed, laughing at their clumsy efforts to buoy each other. He rounded his eyes and made a game of nearly falling, gasping in exaggeration each time she gasped and clutched him harder.

Suddenly they could not stop laughing, swaying in mock peril, each pretending to keep the other from crashing to the floor. Her mouth ached from doing things it had not done in ages; merriment, pure and unrestrained, had complete control of her. How good it felt!

Jack's face, lined now where there had been no lines before, was still the most beautiful sight she had seen in ages. She stepped back to feast her eyes on him, her heart quickening with adulation; how priceless their friendship... how precious the memories they shared.

Finally, they gazed silently at each other.

"I wish we could climb that tree out there, Jack, like we used to when we were kids."

"...so you could shove me out on my head again? No thanks."

"That happened just once, and only because you were throwing ants on me."

He chuckled, then sobered. "If I had two good legs, Ella, I'd be after you again. I'd marry you and I'd take care of you and the baby." He quieted, in frustration it seemed, before continuing. "Damn it, Ella, when I got to town this morning and heard Garland took off and left you, I got so mad I started to get drunk!"

"She smiled. "I'm glad you didn't.

"Only because I don't do that sort of thing anymore," he replied. "A man in my condition has to stay sober on his feet ... foot," he corrected, as if trying to elicit another smile from her.

She smiled again, but not at his remark. I'm not looking to marry, Jack, and I won't, ever again, after I've divorce Gentry Garland. And, Jack, for the sake of honesty, you were never after me or anyone else." Her smile widened. "You made it quite clear to every belle in Georgia that you did not intend to 'waltz any of them into matrimony, ever."

"...and now it's too late, isn't it?" he said softly. "The dyes been cast, and I sure enough can't waltz anymore. But I'll do anything for you that's within my power, Ella." He looked around. "Jesus, this place needs some work. Just tell me what to do. I still have two good hands; I can chop your wood and clean your stable. I'm busted ... couldn't buy a pair of bloomers for a gnat, but I'll bow up against anybody who gives you trouble." He gazed fiercely at her, and then away. "I do love you, you know ... always have."

Ella laid her head on his shoulder, tears filling her eyes. "You are my dearest friend, Jack ... have always been my dearest friend. The one thing that hasn't changed in our lives is our love for each other, and it will never change."

Later, as they stood beside Andy's grave, he draped his arm around her shoulders. "I'll never forget the day that brother of mine came tearing into the house to tell Mamma and Poppa that Mister Corrigan said he and Honor could get married—he was one happy runt. But..." his voice broke, "damn that crazy temper of his! I never could beat it out of him, nor could any of our brothers. No one could." He dropped his head.

Ella put her arms around him and clung tightly to him, just as she clung to all pure, sweet, memories of her past: That this memory, though not like he once was, had survived, and returned to her,, filled her with hope. Jack was loyal and, just as he said; he would do anything for her. His lost limb would not stop him from helping her get her son back, if that is what she asked him to do.

* * *

But in the following weeks, Ella came to realize that Jack's cheer was only a well-practiced performance. Aching inside, she mourned yet another loss, while tenderly conscious that her dear Jack's old exuberance, his shining spirit, had been blown away with his left leg, and it was not to be restored—even as now, when they has switched roles and it was she who tried to cheer him.

She suspected her grandmother's heart was softened by Jack's frailty, for Beatrice now showed him a regard that she had never extended to him nor his brothers, except Andy. All knew her begrudged acceptance of him was only because he had been Honor's husband. When she discovered that Jack lived in the old slave quarters on his family's destroyed plantation, she demanded he stay at Greenpoole. Ella marveled again each time she saw the odd pair—her grandmother and Jack, once sworn enemies—share a pot of tea, their heads together, chatting privately, it seemed, since they always hushed immediately upon her approach. She was soon to discover why....

Chapter 9

In the parlor, she was not surprised to find Jack, as unsmiling as her grandmother, leaning on his crutch behind his new friend's chair. Ella surmised they had stopped conversing the moment she opened the door. Worried anew by her grandmother's pallor, she studied her a moment.

"Are you ill, Grandmother?"

"Probably...," Beatrice growled, "but that is not why I summoned you. Jack has something to tell you, and so do I. Your first, Jack."

Ella looked quizzically at Jack, half smiling. "My, my, how glum the two of you look. What has happened? The sharecroppers abandon us again? I wouldn't be a bit surprised. If so, we'll simply get—"

"I'm leaving in the morning. I'm going to Missouri."

"Missouri?" Ella's confusion showed. "But Missouri isn't you home, Georgia is. This is! For Heaven's sake, Jack, have you a fever?"

He pulled an envelope from his pocket, and Ella glanced quickly at the other envelope in her grandmother's lap and though how ridiculous it was that they both had envelopes.

"This letter is from Ma's sister, Aunt Nellie, in Springfield. She said Ma and my little sister died of the cough. Aunt Nellie's husband and sons were killed in war—just like Pa and my brothers. Now Aunt Nellie's got my two little brothers and a widowed daughter-in-law with three youngens to feed. They need me. I'm all they got left."

"But, Jack, I was going to offer you half of Greenpoole just to stay and help me run things! Don't you want that? Missouri isn't your home! How can you call a place you weren't born and raised in, home? For God's sake, Jack, don't leave me! Not you! I...I'll...I'll marry you when I'm free, if you want..."

"Ella!" She heard her grandmother's angry bark, but did not take her pleading gaze from Jack.

"I can call Missouri home because I've got blood kin there, Ella—my little brothers. A man's home is where his family is—a woman's, too." He gazed meaningfully at her, and she felt her face flame. So that's what they've been up to! She whirled to glare expectantly at her grandmother.

Beatrice drew a deep breath through her nose, held it, then noisily released it through her mouth—a sure indication that a task, unpleasant but unavoidable, weighted her. She smoothed the long envelope in her lap, then raised it. "I have had this in my possession for some weeks, knowing it was the only thing standing between you and freedom."

"Freedom? My freedom? Have you both gone daft? But then she stared at the envelope. "What is that?"

"A declaration, in my own hand, stating what I have done, and also a letter you can present at Planter's Bank to see proof of my actions."

"Oh, Grandmother, you sold your house in Savannah!" Ella cried, her mood improving. She would miss Jack terribly, but now she would be able to pay the taxes and the Pinkerton much sooner than she thought.

"Yes. I have sold all my properties, Ella—Greenpoole plantation, among them."

Ella stumbled back a step, slowly moving her head from side to side. Jack, obviously afraid she would collapse, swung close to bolster her, but she threw up a hand to keep him away. "But...you can't do that!

"Greenpoole was mine, child; surely you knew."

Ella sunk to the sofa, staring at the floor but seeing nothing, as Beatrice continued.

"Had your father lived, Greenpoole would have been his after my death, and then yours—but not yet."

Ella stared silently at her for a long time, letting the shocking realization sink in, and then finally cried out, her pain glowing in her eyes. "How could you be so cruel! How could you? Greenpoole is all I've ever wanted! It's all I have left of my life! It is my life!"

Beatrice stiffened; her abrupt anger widening her owl eyes into a frightening stare. "You stupid woman! Your husband and your son and the child that you carry, is your life! This..." she swept her arm out, indicating their surroundings, "this is not your life! It is the rotting albatross around your neck!" Around all of our necks! And you must escape before you rot with it!" Grimacing, she pushed from her chair, surprising Jack, and now he swung to her side. She stood over Ella, trembling with her rage. "So help me God, Ella, if I have to hire that Pinkerton to drag you, you will leave this place! You will go to your family! You will go if I-!" She swayed, her mouth freezing in its open position, her rigid fingers going to her chest. Jack caught her, his crutch clattering nosily against the bare floor, as he fell backward onto the sofa with her.

Ella fell to her knees beside them, screaming for Meshach, and then screamed at Cricket, as he tore into the parlor. "Take the horse and get Doctor Boales! Hurry! Hurry!

* * *

War, and its aftermath, had absolutely no impact on the social structure that had separated the white classes in Savannah and across the South for generations, the high notion of blue blooded superiority clung to Chatham County's elite like an irreplaceable old heirloom. Persons of gentility remained aloof to anyone other than their own class, even though they were now as poor as were those from whom they and their ancestors had segregated themselves. There were but two events that could bring these white classes, high and low, together in one large, shoulder-bumping crowd—politics. . .or the death of someone respected by both caste; Therefore, it was respect for Beatrice Corrigan that drew the disparate throng to Greenpoole plantation for her burial. "Kinship for a fleeting measure of a day," Beatrice has once uttered at another such funeral.

Before sunrise, the same day after Ella sent word to Beatrice's tea and cakes brigade in Savannah that their illustrious leader had passed on, men from town arrived to construct the long plank board tables that would accommodate the copious amounts of food soon to arrive with nearly each mourner, no matter how poor. The men placed the tables beneath the least mangled oak trees a short distance from the old rose garden. Just like in the old days, Ella thought listlessly, as she watched from her bedroom—just like in the old days when Greenpoole hosted barbecues and elaborate lawn parties. Deep in memory, the strains of a sweet waltz began to play in her aching head. Her father had always hired the very best musicians, she recalled, and then clenched her eyes shut, silencing the music. When she opened them she saw Tessie Peckenpaugh rushing across the lawn, her arms piled high with a stack of table linens.

Tessie had arrived the prior evening with Judith Ashville and half of Judith's children. After occupying the chair next to Beatrice's simple oak casket for hours, Tessie, sniffing and crying, insisted on showing Ella the contents of the huge trunk she had brought along. Inside were the delicate linens, napkins and doilies she had made for her very own trousseau some twenty-five years ago and which were now to be used for Beatrice's funeral feast. Like the wedding dress Tessie had given Ella for her wedding to Gentry, this was to be their first use. Ella had wanted desperately to leave poor Tessie to her bouts of tears, but that was not to be.

"You know, my dear child, when our dear Bea sold her house to Banker Treadwell, he agreed that she and I could reside there until her demise, but ..."she glanced sadly at Ella then blew her nose into a worn lacy handkerchief that Ella recognized as one of Beatrice's ... "so I shall have to move out right away now." She glanced at Judith Ashville a distance across the room. "Our sweet Judith has offered two rooms of her lovely home, but I am afraid Mister Ashville is not at all pleased that she did—he was quite discourteous to us both on the ride out today."

Though she felt little like answering, Ella was obliged to do so. "It is Mister Ashville's way, Miss Peckenpaugh. Just ignore him."

"I cannot abide the man. I would be quite miserable under his roof."

"It is hard to believe that Grandmother did not make provision for you, Miss Peckenpaugh—her permanent houseguest, and dearest friend."

Tessie glanced warily at Ella. "I am not a brave woman, my dear, but I ... I would very much like to accompany you to Texas."

Stunned, Ella stared at her. "You must be joking."

"Oh, no! I know it's said to be a terribly wild place, but when I think of going, the thought indeed suggests an excitement I cannot explain.. . ." Her dark blue eyes sparkled with sudden anticipation. "A new place ... a new life, and perhaps, even ..." She reached out, her trembling fingertips touching lightly at her trousseau trunk before she jerked the hand back and squeezed the fingers tightly, almost punishingly, in her other hand.

Ella continued to stare at her. Had Grandmother planned this? Had she know she was dying and planned this? Ella's expression grew grim, as she allowed herself to be angry at her revered elder all over again.  Of course, she knew! She always knew everything!

"I'm not going to Texas, Miss Peckenpaugh. I intend to buy back Greenpoole. I intend to use the money Grandmother got for her properties for that purpose. I'm sure Banker Treadwell will not decline such a profit ... seeing as he will have gotten Grandmother's house in town for nothing."

"You can't."

"Oh, but I can."

"No, my dear, you cannot." She hesitated only a moment. "Immediately after the sale, Bea sent the money to your husband."

"What?"

"Yes. She left only enough for our steamboat passage—for the boy, Cricket, also, and for provision on the way—food, water, and such. So you see, you cannot possibly do such a thing. I suppose poor Bea knew you would try." Suddenly, the ever-meek old maid of Savannah seemed almost defiant, and Ella's shock turned to rage.

She smiled nastily at the tight-lipped Tessie. "You, Miss Tessie, aboard a steamer, when the only body of water you aren't terrified of is in you bathtub? You've never set foot in a boat, remember? You wouldn't even cross that pontoon bridge to escape the Yankees, remember that? And if you go with me, you will be on a deep, dark, dangerous sea ... tossed by howling winds and waves ... perhaps a terrible storm. Aren't you afraid you'll drown or get eaten up by a monstrous sharks?"

"I ... I am doing it for Beatrice. I promised!" Her gloved hands shot to her splotched cheeks, and she gazed worriedly across the room, her mind no doubt on the horrors ahead. In a moment, she was boo-hooing and poking fretfully at the pins protruding from the pitiable fuzzy bun at the back of her head.

Ella's shoulders slumped. How could Grandmother have done this to me? I would have gotten back my son and Hannah, and brought them home to Greenpoole, but now...! She burst into bitter tears and ran from the room, pushing past the reaching arms of Beatrice's tea and cakes brigade, who had gathered at the foot of the stairs sadly consoling each other.

Sometime later, she held a cool cloth to her red, swollen eye and, as was expected of her, went downstairs to accept the mumbled condolences from the vast number of visitors ... after they had moved hesitantly along to gaze down at the chalky white face that little resembled the once exuberant Beatrice Corrigan.

"I love Southern funerals," said the Northern woman Mrs. Fenwick, as she balanced a chipped, French made Sèvres china plate in one hand and shoved a shrimp patty into her mouth with the other. As she chewed, she gazed about the yard at the conglomeration of mourners, swallowed, then explained, "I love Southern funerals because there is always such a diverse mix of you people. Wonder what your grandmother would say about this huge crowd—especially us Yankees showing up to pay our respects?"

"Probably that the lot of you were drawn by the smell of good Southern food," Ella replied, and guided the surprised woman and her near empty plate back to the loaded tables.

Cricket handed Ella a note; she thanked the woman for coming then turned aside to read Jack's note: Are you too mad at your old friend to tell him goodbye? Hester and I are waiting at Corrigans' Pool.

Stronger than her earlier feeling of betrayal was the fresh well of sadness that suddenly stung her eyes. She slipped the scrap of paper into her pocket and made her slow way through the sympathetic crowd to the bluff.

She saw Jack leaning against the mossy bolder that fed ancient Corrigans' pool, his fingers playing with the steady trickle of water that cascaded down the slick, rocky surface. Hester grazed nearby, her bony rump loaded with the same raggedy bedroll that had been there the day Jack arrived. Silent, Ella sat on the cracked marble bench at the pool's edge and stared into the blue-green depths. Jack watched her a moment then jabbed his crutch beneath his armpit, swung to her side and sat down. He gazed at the pool and then at the gigantic oaks that surrounded the entire area in a misty, sun-flecked haze. The sweet chirping of a Robin broke the silence and Ella wondered how it dared sing on this saddest of days.

"We sure had some good times here, remember? Talking, soaking or feet ... laughing." Jack caught Ella's chin in a crooked finger and turned her face until their eyes met. I'd be highly flattered if that's what you were remembering right now."

Ella nodded, but it was not Jack and the times they spent together as children and later as best friends that filled her mind this minute. She closed her eyes, trying blot out that moonlit night over six years ago when, at Gentry Garland's urging, she so willingly surrendered her virtue to him. It crossed her mind that she had been more than willing, but she quickly pushed the uncomfortable thought aside. Than foolish night was the beginning of her misery, and now, after thinking he loved her enough never to see her hurt her, he had done his worst! Better had he slit her throat before stealing her son away!

"But...," Jack was saying, "we can't go back, Ella. We aren't those people anymore ... never will be again."

"I ... don't know who I am anymore, Jack. I can't seem to think straight anymore, either. We can't go back, but what's to become of us? I'm afraid!

He pressed his forehead tightly to hers, and she felt him slightly tremble just once. "Me, too," he said, pausing for a long moment before continuing, "but I think, maybe for the first time in my life ... what becomes of us is up to us." He pressed a kiss into her hair, then pulled back to smile mischievously at her. "As for myself, I'm going to Missouri, where I suspect Aunt Nellie's got her widowed daughter-in-law convinced she's duty-bound to take me on."

Ella sniffed. "About time you married somebody."

Yeah ...," Jack drawled, leaning back to stretch his arms out and yawn, "looks like I'll have myself a plump, homely wife who'll cook my meals, have my babies, and consider herself damned lucky to have a one-legged scamp like me."

"She will be," Ella said softly, as she brushed a lock of dark hair from his eyes and smiled sadly at him.

"Aunt Nellie says the girl is kindly and has a great personality—which means she ain't much to look at and she talks a lot."

Ella could not laugh, even knowing he was trying to make her do so. "I wish we had married, Jack. You once said that friends make better alliances than lovers."

"It'd been like incest ... you thinking of me like a brother—although knowing full well we ain't brother and sister, I wouldn't have been that religious about it, myself," he added with a chuckle, and this time she chuckled with him.

Jack arose, and gripped her hands. "Pa used to tell my brothers and me that no matter how many bad things happened to us, if we thought real hard on it, we'd see that good lessons were learned from each mishap. Think about it, Ella. Think real hard." He slipped an envelope into her hand and kissed her goodbye.

With tears glistening on her cheeks, she watched him tie his crutch to the bedroll on Hester's rump, then he belly-flopped across her back, swung his leg over, and sat upright. He tipped his brown beret and then, as if to extract a last laugh, cocked the cap between Hester's ears as he rode away.

When he was gone, Ella eased her tired body onto the cool grass between the pool and the marble bench, and tore into the envelope. Inside was a map, crudely drawn but to the point. High in the corner was a depilated old mansion, unmistakably Greenpoole ... and from it, ran a wide line past Savannah into the Atlantic, then along the coast into the Gulf of Mexico ... until the line took a sharp turn inland and stopped at the outer rim of a large circle, inside which was scrawled the words 'Blood Kin'. She crushed the paper in her palm and after stretching her arms across the bench, laid her cheek against the cold marble and cried.

THE NEXT DAY, ELLA LEFT GREENPOOLE PLANTATION WITH ONLY HER grandmother's old camel back Jenny Lind trunk, and small carpetbag, holding her worldly possessions, but the weight she carried in her heart was heavier than any dozen trunks she could have filled in better days. Tessie followed her closely down the steps to the wagon that would take them the short distance through the avenue of oaks to Greenpoole's dock. Sitting high in the water at the end of the pier, and waiting for them to board, was The Swan—a paddlewheel steamer that plied the river between Augusta and Savannah. In Savannah they would board another steamer for the journey along southern coastlines then into the Gulf of Mexico, and then ...Texas.