Leigh Ann's Civil War (2 page)

"She's trouble, Tom. Talks to birds. Knows all that negro hoodoo crap."

"So, we'll ship her off to Nashville with the rest of them."

"We could. But I have another plan."

"
You
have a plan. Excuse me, Russ, but we're not kids at home anymore planning to raid the pantry. I've got a good record in this man's army and I'm not about to ruin it."

Sergeant Mulholland stepped closer to his brother's desk and, lowering his tone, imparted his plan to his brother.

The major listened again.

I watched his face.

He raised his eyebrows, looked over at me, bit his bottom lip, looked over at me again, shook his head no, and this time took my measure from head to toe and nodded yes.

Then he opened a drawer of his desk, took out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses, and offered one to his brother. They both drank the amber-colored liquid down quickly, because obviously Russ's plan necessitated it.

"Tell me why," he asked me, "should I let you and the Viola girl go and not just this Carol we're to negotiate for?"

It was time.

I reached into my pocket, took out the protection notice, walked over to his desk, and gave it to him.

He read it and his face went white. "Major McCoy, eh?" he said. "A high-ranking Yankee official."

"Yes, sir," I answered.

"It doesn't say we have to let you go."

"No, it doesn't, sir. But your brother here beat me and smacked me around. He tore my shirt in front and exposed me. I can report that to Major McCoy."

He thought for a moment. "Did you show this notice to my brother?"

I felt a cloud of dread. "No, sir. I was saving it for the right moment."

He laughed. "Then you have no complaint against him. You gave him no warning." He laughed again. "I always did say you Southerners were dense. Did you know that we caught the person sent here from Philadelphia to spirit you and your sisters away? Could have arrested him. Sent him back." He was gloating.

I thought quickly. "Either we all go home, sir," I told him, "or none of us goes."

"What's that you say?"

"I'm just telling you what my sister-in-law Carol will tell you. What she will say. Carol won't go without me and Viola. She wouldn't let us come on this trip alone and she won't let us continue alone. I just thought you ought to know."

"Damned stubborn Southerners."

"Yessir."

"Why are you so polite?"

"I was raised that way, sir."

"Who raised you? They say your pa's crazy and your ma's a slut."

"My brothers, sir. Louis and Teddy. They are both Southern gentlemen."

He humphed. "Manners are all they got left. All right, all right. We'll use this protection notice for all three of you to be sent back under the guidance of my brother here. And for God's sake, Russ, no more beating her or smacking her around, you hear?"

"Yeah, I hear."

"And get her some decent clothing."

"How am I gonna do that?"

"Excuse me, sir," I said, "but I'd just as lief stay in my boys' clothes. I can get another shirt. And if I can take the dog with me."

"The
dog?
Are you sure there isn't anything else you want?"

"Yessir. I'd like my protection notice returned, if you please."

He leaned back in his chair, smiling. "Russ, secure a horse for each of them. And five days' worth of rations for each. And the dog. As for the protection notice, little girl..." He held it in his hands, looking at it. "You've used it up. It's like Yankee script. Once you've used it, it's spent. Did your brothers teach you nothing about money?"

I stared at him in disbelief. "This isn't
money,
sir. It's an official notice, from a major in your own army!"

"Good man he is, too. One of the best. Well, of course if you insist upon looking at it that way, I can always tell him you lost it. That I never saw it. That you claimed you had it and went reaching in your pocket and couldn't find it, but out of the goodness of my heart I let the three of you go anyway. Couldn't I?"

This man was beyond the pale. He might as well have foam dribbling out of his mouth. I felt as if I were drowning, standing there. I felt out of breath of a sudden, as if I'd been running and had come to a skidding stop.

I had best get out of here,
I thought,
while I still can. I had best quit talking while I still have the promise of Carol and Viola and my own way home.

While I still have three horses and five days' rations for each of us and the dog.

"Thank you, sir," I said. When what I wanted to say was,
You are the slut. You are the crazy man. You are the one who is dense. And I hope someday your house comes crashing down on you. No, I hope someday your world comes crashing down on you, so there.

"Come on, dog," I said. And we left.

I was eleven when the war started. I didn't understand enough to worry, but I did understand it when Miss Finch, my teacher, said that since Georgia had been out of the Union since January we weren't going to be called Abigail Adams Academy for Young Ladies anymore but must find a new name. And Georgia might as well be cut off from the rest of the country.

As my brothers got ready to leave for the fighting, there was muster on the town square every day. Cicero and I went each morning to watch. So did Primus, our negro overseer, when he could get away.

When Louis caught me crying one morning after drilling was over and asked me why, I said, "Miss Finch said Georgia is no more part of the country."

"Miss Finch is an idiot," he said. "She speaks in idle fabrications. If I had my way, I'd take you out of that ridiculous school run by that raving maniac and have you tutored at home."

"Can't you tell Pa that?"

"You know Pa hasn't been himself these days, sweetie. Teddy makes such decisions. And Teddy has too many other things on his mind. So for now at least, we'll leave things as they are."

Pa's mind was already starting to turn because he had money worries, Louis had told me, because his Northern customers wanted him to continue shipping goods and he wouldn't.

But I had other worries. "Who will take care of me when you and Teddy go away?"

Louis knelt before me so that his fine sword scraped on the cobblestone walk. "First, we won't be gone long. We'll have this thing with the Yankees over with by Christmas. Teddy and I are going to have a meeting about the care of our women tonight. Likely it will be Viola and Carol. Do you think you can mind them?"

"Viola and I are friends. Carol never liked me. She's been acting strange lately. She and Teddy fuss a lot."

"That's their business, Leigh Ann."

"I know why," I persisted. "Viola told me. It's because she hasn't been able to give him a baby in the year they've been married."

He scowled. "What do you know about women giving men babies?"

"Everything. Viola told me."

More scowling. "I don't know whether to be angry or not. On one hand, Viola has saved Teddy and me a lot of trouble. On the other hand, she's done it too soon."

"Don't be angry with Viola. I asked her. But that's not the only reason Carol and Teddy fuss. He wants her to stop teaching at the school for mill children. He says it wears her down. She won't. And she's jealous of the time Teddy gives me. The other day she slapped me for being impertinent to her."

"Were you impertinent?"

"I suppose so. But she didn't have to slap me. You and Teddy never slap me."

"Does Teddy know she slapped you?"

"No. I didn't tell him."

"Good girl."

"Or, she might want to be in charge because she's always wanted permission from Teddy to paddle me. He won't give it. If he's not here, no one can stop her. Please, Louis, you mustn't let Teddy leave her in charge."

"Well, Teddy and I will discuss all this and likely leave it to Viola to care for you. She has sense. I'll suggest that if things get bad Viola write to Grandmother Johanna in Philadelphia for someone to come and take you all on up there until things settle down."

"Why is Grandmother Johanna so nice when Mother is so bad?"

"It just happens that way sometimes, sweetie."

"Mother whipped you once with a riding crop, didn't she?"

"We don't want to talk about that now."

"And you were twenty years old! Viola said you were in your cups, and you laughed and came out of the barn and said you didn't feel a thing, then fell down and fainted. Teddy had to carry you in the house."

"Leigh Ann..." It was said with icy admonishment. So I kept a still tongue in my head.

And so he explained the war in fine fashion. I thought he looked so handsome in his captain's uniform. I was puzzled as to who was more handsome, he or Teddy. And I teased them both about it that afternoon in Louis's bedroom, until Louis came at me playfully and I ran downstairs, just in time to see Pa coming up.

He went into Louis's room and began to take on about his boys leaving to fight the battle of some "no-count, money-hungry bankers and grubbing land-stealers up north." All relatives of his wife.

"They want the Southern lands," he shouted. "First the Indians wanted it and now the Northerners. I'd rather give it all back to the Indians, though they didn't have the courage to fight for it but let the white man take it from them!"

He bellowed. The walls shook. At that last remark about the Indians, Louis came tearing out of the room, his cheekbones high with color, his boots stamping on the stairs as he passed me.

"Louis!" I cried.

"Out of the way," he said gruffly. "Before I knock you over."

I'd seen him this way only once before, when Pa had accused him of "doing a bit of thrumming" with one of the women negroes.

That's when he had run away for two days and Teddy had to go and search for him and fetch him home. Louis had come home leaning over his horse, which was led by Teddy, and Louis had been so full of a cheap excuse for mint juleps that Mother had ordered him to the barn. The servants had to hold Teddy back, Viola told me. Mother had another servant tie Louis's hands to a wooden rail and asked Primus to whip him, or be whipped himself.

Primus said no. So Mother did it. And she is strong. And Primus
was
whipped later. And the bond between Louis and Primus became so strong, nobody could break it.

I asked Teddy what "thrumming" was. He wouldn't tell me.

So I asked Viola and she told me. Viola, at fifteen, knew everything. So it led to my asking her how women gave men babies. And she told me that, too.

From the hall steps I immediately burst into tears as I watched Louis go into Pa's library and slam the door. Pa came down and saw me and picked me up, sat down on the bottom step, and held me on his lap.

"Don't worry your pretty little head about Louis," he soothed. "He acts like that because he's part Indian."

I just stared up at Pa's face. Was this part of his "madness" coming on?

"He most positively is," he assured me. "Can't you see his dark hair? And eyes? And how he'd rather ride with no saddle? And his high cheekbones? And how good he is working with silver?"

I only saw one thing. That if Louis was part Indian, he was not my brother. Mother's hair was fair. Pa's was white. Viola's and mine was light brown and sun-streaked. Teddy's hair was the same as ours.

I leaped off Pa's lap and ran through the front door, off the front verandah, and around the side of it, where I hid under the sweet gum trees and cried my heart out until Louis himself came to find me.

"Come on, Leigh Ann, before I come over there and scalp you."

"Is that before or after you knock me over?"

He'd taken off his sword and unbuttoned his gray jacket and shirt underneath. I could see some dark hair on his chest.

"You're getting a little cheeky there, aren't you?"

In school we'd studied about Indians. They didn't have hair on their chests, did they? Teddy and Louis did. I'd seen them tear off their shirts several times when brushing down the horses or jumping into the stream in their small clothes.

"I don't care. You had no call to say such to me. You're supposed to have manliness and courage and honor. That's what Miss Finch said all our Southern men from eminent families have."

He tried to hide a smile. "I try, Leigh Ann, I try terrible hard, but it's downright difficult sometimes. What else did she say we're supposed to have?"

"She said they're supposed to defend their mothers' and sisters' honor to the death if they have to."

"Well, if the day comes when I have to, I'll gladly do it, Leigh Ann. Now why do you think I've come out here? There are different ways of defending one's little sister's honor. There are different kinds of honor. You've been told by Pa that I'm an Indian. Am I correct?"

I said nothing. I looked at the ground.

"And you've been shocked and hurt and you likely have come to the ugly conclusion that I'm not your brother. Am I right, sweetie?"

I looked at him. "What did you study at college? Hoodoo?"

He and Teddy had gone to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Thomas Jefferson's university. Louis, older by two years, had graduated. Teddy had left at the end of his second year to join the army.

Now Louis laughed. "I have the gift of hoodoo because I am half Indian. Do you want to know about it?"

"Yes, but first I want to know what you've got in that box you just set down." It was considerable large, that box, bigger than any of Mother's hatboxes by half.

"Then come out of there and I'll show you. And I'll tell you the secret we've all been hiding from you. Let's take a nice walk down to the stream. But you must remember that I speak the truth, and it's a good truth. And it's your truth, too."

I just stared at him. "Are we going to bury it?"

"You can never bury the truth, Leigh Ann. It always comes to the surface when you least expect it to."

"I mean the box. You've got a shovel." It was lying on the ground next to the box. He just kept smiling and I could not fight that smile. I stood and went to him and he brushed me off.