The Orphan Mother Read online

  * * *

  Two days later, in the evening, Mariah found herself back in Franklin, a few blocks south of the courthouse square on Almond Street, back again in the Thirsty Bird.

  She started to make her way toward the bar, but a man kicked over a chair in her path, jumping to his feet with a force. He was a big man, heavy; one of the Caruthers brothers, with his muscles tight and strong from pushing a plow. Mariah caught May’s anxious eye across the bar and stepped out of the big man’s way. He had no interest in her, but in a little man across the table from him. He moved quick and caught the little man by the collar. Soon the little man’s feet dangled off the floor.

  “What you say to me?” Caruthers shouted, so close to the little man’s face he blinked against the words.

  “Nothing.” The little man’s voice shook. “I didn’t say nothing.”

  “You a damn Conservative coward, and I best not see you here no more. That’s what I saying.”

  The little man shook loose and skittered away from him, toward the door. “You damn black son of a bitch,” he spat at Caruthers, who was now at a safe distance. His voice still shook a bit, with anger or fear, Mariah couldn’t quite tell. “You be dead before the end of the day, hear me? You lucky I don’t do it here and now.”

  Caruthers moved forward as if to catch him again and the little man jumped back through the door, quick as a rabbit trying to dodge a fox. The door swung shut behind him. Caruthers, grumbling something under his breath, moved toward the back of the bar and was absorbed into a circle of men Mariah recognized from around town.

  For a moment, it was dead quiet.

  Then April called over to a man sitting alone in a corner. “Working on the sermon, then, Preacher?” The air settled down around them, like she had breathed the tension right out of it.

  Preacher, a round-shouldered man with a tonsure of grizzled white hair, snorted and took a long sip at the sticky jar he kept cradled in his hands. He sat at the end of a long table on which April and May had set the usual liquor and loaves of bread. Unlike Pastor Willis, the comfortable and well-dressed leader of the Negro Methodist church, Mariah knew this preacher only vaguely—she’d heard that he preached in small hamlets in Middle Tennessee, but he’d never given a sermon that she’d heard.

  She saw him watching her through the side of his eye. She was intrigued. He traveled the back roads, he knew the travelers, the beggars, the flotsam that washed up like driftwood after the immense flood of war had washed them away. Did he know who’d killed her boy?

  Or perhaps John Scrugg knew something. Scrugg, an immensely tall and bent old smith who worked out of the back of his old shack on the other side of the river, lived close to the road north to Nashville, and from that perch he watched the comings and goings of traffic, shoed the horses of travelers, and paid attention to the news of the world. John detached himself from the group around Caruthers and walked over to the serving table, where he poured himself a taste, dropped some coin in the hat, and turned to survey the group. Surely he, too, might know who these men were?

  And then she saw Nessie, a scrawny woman with twiglike arms, sitting in the back on the other side of the room—she who Della said might definitely know something.

  Mariah bought a cup of ale and sat down next to her. Nessie moved farther over on the bench to make room. They chatted idly, Mariah acknowledging Nessie’s expressions of sympathy for Theopolis, and then began.

  “I want to ask you a few questions, and I hope you’ll show me the respect I deserve by givin’ me the truth. You hear?” Mariah wondered how long she could count on the respect of being older and smarter and fiercer than most. At some point she’d have to be trickier about her approach, but just then she was in a hurry.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “How long you been workin’ for Mr. Smithson?”

  “Ise afraid I don’t know exactly, ma’am. Could be a couple three years by now. I worked on a farm in Laurel Hill since I was real little. With my sister. The two of us.”

  “Mississippi?”

  Nessie nodded again.

  “We was sold to a farmer down there, we worked good for him a long time. Not sure how long. Then some men from Tennessee come down, say they need a few niggers up here, so he rented us out and sent us up to work at a place called Wheatlands.”

  “I know the Wheatlands. What they have you do there? Oats and sweet potatoes.”

  “Can’t stand a sweet potato now, that’s the truth.”

  “And Mr. Smithson. He buy you from the Wheatlands?”

  “Yes ma’am. But then the war got done not six months later.”

  “And he payin’ you now?”

  “Some. Don’t know how much is a lot, but I got money now.”

  “He works at the Daily Gazette, that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know what I’m about, don’t you? Tryin’ to find out what happened to my boy.”

  “I heard ladies talkin’ about it, yes.”

  “Tryin’ real hard. And ain’t nobody seen nothin’ real, only heard this and that. And now I’m here because they say your man, Mr. Smithson, he sees and hears everything in this town. That true?”

  Nessie wrapped her arms around herself and looked around, uncertain.

  “Nessie, girl, you listen to me. If you heard that man say somethin’ about who did this, I’ma make you tell me.”

  “Oh, ma’am, I can’t help you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m telling you same as I told that lawyer. I don’t know nothin’.”

  “What lawyer?”

  “One of thems come from Nashville asking they questions.”

  “You tellin’ me you never heard that Smithson say nothin’? Not even when you in his bed?”

  “You don’t know me, you don’t know what I do.”

  “Damn liar!”

  People were looking at them. Nessie was no scared girl, though. And she didn’t seem to want to fight, either. She tried to calm Mariah and lowered her voice. “I heard only things he say when he drunk.”

  Mariah leaned closer to Nessie, their noses nearly touching, Nessie’s breath warm against her cheek. “You tell me right now.”

  “He said it was some nigger who shot him.”

  Mariah exhaled and stepped backward, paused for a moment, and then broke into a fit of laughter. “A nigger?”

  “Yes, Mariah. That’s what he said.”

  “You tellin’ me a group of white men attacked my only son and beat him within an inch of his life, but it was a Negro who put the bullet in him?”

  “I know it don’t sound right, Mariah. That’s just what I heard him say. He was drunk.”

  “You stupid girl.” Mariah knew it wasn’t true, that Nessie was as smart as anyone, but she wanted to say it anyway. It made her feel worse as soon as she said it, especially when Nessie wouldn’t be provoked.

  “I’m sorry, Mariah. He a drunken fool. He just write what they pay him to write. He ain’t no different than none of them. I don’t got no idea what he know for true, and what he know for tales and rumor.”

  “A Negro,” Mariah said, disgusted. “Them white men would love that. They’d build a statue in the courthouse square for him. You think it’s true?”

  Nessie considered it. “It could be. Might not be. It ain’t like we Negroes agree on much.” She looked over at Caruthers. “Maybe someone had their reasons, I don’t know.”

  A pause, an inhalation, an exhalation. Mariah looked about her—at the Preacher, at John Scrugg, at the others. Someone would know something. One of them would. She would not stay a slave to the abuse of that white world no more. She would at least know it, it would not be a mystery.

  Chapter 17

  Tole

  July 15, 1867

  The next few days, Tole and Mariah developed a routine. Tole went out to Carnton to work around the cemetery by late morning dressed in tattered overalls and work boots crusted with field dirt, and Mariah would have the d
ay’s work planned out for him. In the early evening, when swirls of pink and sapphire would marble the sky with billows of broken cloud, Mariah would holler for him, tell him supper was on the table, and Tole would go first to the shed to wash up some, and then go inside to the kitchen and sit in front of a hot bowl of stew.

  “Musta been somethin’, livin’ in this house during the war.” Tole slurped his soup, held his spoon like a young child. Mariah sat beside him with a bowl of her own.

  “You seen your fair share of war. Don’t know the difference.”

  “Did indeed. Thing is, I was out there killin’. You was here bringin’ em back to life.”

  “Mostly they died, too. But slow. Or they lost they legs. Maybe you done that to them.”

  She’d remembered being on her knees with old sheets and linens, mopping up puddles—lakes, oceans, it seemed—of blood. She remembered the piles of limbs outside and below the bedroom window where the surgeons did their work.

  She couldn’t remember every man’s name who died, and she often thought of this. Was it William who had asked for water, William from Georgia? Or was that Hank, from Alabama? It sometimes seemed desperately important that she remember. There was one essential thing different from their two experiences, Tole’s and Mariah’s: Tole’s enemy had been Confederates, but Mariah’s enemy had been death. Though some of them would have liked to see her and her posterity in chains forever, and all of them fought on the side that would have ensured that, she remembered fighting the deaths and pain of the Confederate men, who whispered their gratitude to her. Death, despair, giving up—that was the enemy. She hardly saw the color of their uniforms, which were all different shades anyway. She was not sure she would be so generous now.

  Mariah sat back in her chair. “You ever wonder what your life would’ve been like if it wasn’t for that war, Mr. Tole?”

  “I wonder, yes.” Tole took a pause, a slurp of soup, and said, “Sad for me to admit this, but awful as it was, the war gave me purpose.”

  “That sounds ugly.”

  “I was good at it. Never been real good at nothing before. Hell of a thing for a man to be good at, but it’s true.”

  “What about before the war? You ain’t gone tell me you grew up wanting to be a soldier.”

  “You mean when I was a child?”

  He had the weathered face of a man twice his age, etched like a hunting knife into soft birchwood, lines and crevices that splintered like shattered glass, and the droopy eyes of a drinker. He could hardly remember being a child. By her reaction, it appeared Mariah couldn’t hardly think of him as a child either.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothin’, Mr. Tole. You go on. Answer the question.”

  “Childhood seems so long ago these days. I can barely remember running around uptown with my older brother. He and I used to talk about joining the circus.”

  Mariah’s mouth twitched.

  “Don’t go laughin’ now. Ain’t nothing funny about that. Them boys work real hard.”

  “Oh, I know it. I was just picturing you balancing yourself on one foot on some beast of an elephant. They’d call you Zanzibar the Zulu King or some such.”

  “All right, make fun.”

  “I’m not makin’ fun, Mr. Tole. I think it’s nice when boys dream.”

  “I wanted to be a clown, myself.”

  “Oh Lord help me.”

  “One night my daddy caught my brother painting my face white and he whipped me.”

  “He don’t like clowns.”

  “Nah. He thought I was making my face white so I could look like the white kids.”

  “Were you?”

  “Maybe I just wanted to look like a clown, how about that? Ain’t that good enough?”

  “George Tole, the circus clown. You done made my day with that one.” Mariah sipped her water.

  Tole smiled and used his spoon to push his vegetables around the reddish-brown broth. “All right then,” he said. “What about you? You ever have dreams as a little girl?”

  Mariah was quiet for a moment, then said, “No,” with an unblinking honesty. It was just a fact to her.

  “No? Just like that.”

  “It was different for me, Mr. Tole. You was free. I wasn’t raised like that. I lived on the plantation in Louisiana with Miss Carrie. I was hers. Her plaything, though sometimes I thought we was friends. And when I grew up, I was the girl who kept her clothes neat and brought her breakfast in bed. And when I grew older still, and Miss Carrie suffered them children dying, I was the one who ran this house.”

  “And all that time, you never let yourself daydream? You never wondered what was beyond those trees?”

  Mariah shook her head. “Didn’t do much good to dream. Never seemed much point in it. Life wasn’t bad.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The McGavocks treated their slaves better than most. We didn’t get whipped or beaten or taken advantage of as much.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Miss Carrie never laid a finger on me. I was never hurt. Not ever. Other slaves on other places, they wanted to escape worse than I did. They wanted to be free right then. But me, I could imagine staying at Carnton forever. I never thought there’d be a day where I’d be free, that was the problem...It was a different kinda slavery, the kind that steals your desire and hides the world. I spent my whole life serving other people, and I didn’t think much was wrong about that. It just was. Some women stare out the window their whole lives wondering what’s out there. They know there’s something else they was missin’. I didn’t look out the window—too busy.”

  Tole felt angry, hearing this. These were terrible words to hear from a woman so intelligent, and he hated slavery even more in that moment. “What about now?” he finally asked, barely able to say the words. “Now that you free. You have any dreams now?”

  Mariah pondered the question for a moment. “You promise you won’t laugh?”

  “Long as you don’t say you wanna join the circus.”

  Mariah chuckled. “I think I’d make a fine doctor.”

  Tole nodded. “I can picture it.”

  “Yeah? You ain’t just sayin’ that?”

  “Not just saying that, no sir. You as strong a woman as any I ever met. I remember seein’ you that day with Missus Dixon’s blood all over your hands. Besides that, you have a special way with people. You know when to be hard, know when to be soft.”

  “I always thought medicine was the only magic I’d ever need.”

  She stopped talking and tucked her lips in. Her eyes turned glassy and she widened.

  Tole could tell she was keeping herself from crying. Maybe she was thinking of the war.

  “Healing people makes me feel like I matter.”

  Tole considered this. “I reckon that’s a true thing, it does matter.”

  The two of them finished their soup and stared off through the window, grimy with cook smoke.

  “Soup was good,” Tole said. “Thank you.”

  Mariah picked up her bowl and his and brought them to the washing area. “It’s no bother. Used to make it for my husband, but he died. Couldn’t heal him neither.” She looked back at him as she washed the dishes with soap and a washcloth.

  “You ever miss being married, Missus Reddick?”

  Mariah dried her hands on the towel. “Suppose I miss it some nights. If it were up to me, it would always be daylight,” she said. “How about you?”

  “Oh, I weren’t much of a husband.”

  “That ain’t what I asked.”

  “I miss having somebody around. Feel like I’ve gotten a little too used to it being so quiet all the time.”

  Mariah nodded in agreement.

  “I bet you were real good at it,” Tole said. “Being married.”

  “I was young. Not sure I believe there’s such a thing as being good at it. You just gotta try your best to be decent. I think maybe we learned that a little too late.”

  “Where
you meet him?”

  “McGavocks bought him over in Montgomery. Brought him back to train their blood horses. That’s what John McGavock did, before the war—raised horses. They’re all gone now, of course. Now he’s trying for fruit trees.”

  “He a good man?”

  “Bolen? He was. He was a difficult man, but I could depend on him.”

  “Did you love him?”

  Mariah smiled sadly. “I don’t know. Some days I guess I did. Some days I coulda strangled him, too, ’specially in the beginning. But we had some happy times. He knew how to make me laugh. He got under my skin like nobody else. He used to whistle in the morning time, sometimes before the sun. I might have stabbed him some of those mornings. But we was happy enough. We was always working, and always knew they could split us whatever time they want, we weren’t officially married in a church or nothing. We was as happy as they let us be. It’s some kind of marriage, I reckon, but not the kind for white ladies.”

  Tole nodded and bowed his head shyly.

  “I never expected much in the way of kindness. But I remember I musta told him a hundred times how much I loved white lilies.”

  “White lilies?”

  “They been my favorite flower since I was a little girl and I always wanted a man to bring me white lilies. I always thought, someday, he gone take the hint, and he gone bring me some. But he never did.”

  “I know how that goes,” Tole said. “There so many things I think back on, things I shoulda done.”

  “I remember I’d hear stories of women bein’ in love. They’d tell me about that feelin’ in their stomach when their man would come around. Said it felt like a million butterflies, and I’d say I knew that feeling real well, but the truth was, I ain’t never had it. You ever had that feelin’, Mr. Tole?

  Tole looked up at Mariah and said, “Yes ma’am.”

  * * *

  That evening, Tole worked well into the blackness of night, the cemetery lit by a soft dusting of light from the half-moon. Finally he pulled a pile of brush from one corner of the cemetery, dragged it into the fallow field to be burned, and decided he’d had enough for one day. He glanced off across the trees and the fields to where Franklin lay sleeping.