Titus Gamble
PROLOGUE
Baying hounds coursed the woods. Ahead of them, a mulatto youth ran from the savage canine howls and the men who followed. Dogs to rip and tear, men to lay the whip upon his back. Or worse? Did they know? Had she told?
“Run, damn yo’. Run ’til yo’ heart won’ stan’ no mo’. Run til it bus’.”
Better that than the skinning knife and shameful, horrid, excruciating mutilation. But had she told?
Vines reached out to trip him. Branches lacerated his face and bare arms. Mud from the shallow bogs clung to his feet. The breath whistled in his chest, so tortured he thought his ribs would explode with every jarring step.
“Run, nigger boy! Jes’ keep on runnin’. Keep on runnin’.…”
“Wait,” whispered the water and the trees. “Wait for the dogs … the baying hounds of Shannon.…”
He was barefoot and his shirt hung in tattered banners across gaunt, dusty flesh. Strong, young muscles lay bunched and lean, wasted by hunger and fear. He’d been running for two weeks, sleeping by day in hidden places out of the sight of man, stealing such food as he could find in an attempt to satisfy the ravening devil in his gut. The further into Louisiana he went the less forage he could find, and the last four days had been a time of starvation, his only sustenance three raw duck eggs found by the side of a murky bayou. Hunger grew greater than the fear of capture and return to the plantation from which he had escaped, and when he heard the sounds of men and saw the tenuous cloud of dust seeping up from the trees ahead, he turned toward them. “Yo’ gots ta eat, nigger boy,” he said softly, the words underscored by the insistent rumbling in his stomach. “Yo’ gots ta eat, o’ die.” Staggering up and down the low rolling hills, he stumbled over the last crest and stopped, wide-eyed, at the sight below.
A partially cleared valley was alive with activity. Never had he seen such an array of precisely aligned tents, never so many men in one place as the thousands who milled about in apparent disorder. Like shocks of grain cut and gathered in the field, long, rifled muskets stood stacked at intervals of twenty feet, their bayonets gleaming and unbloodied, a condition General Benjamin F. Butler, staunch defender of the Union, yearned to see corrected. Over the whole conglomeration hung, not the Confederate flag, but the stars and stripes of the Union, just like the one which had fluttered over the Brennanburg meeting hall only two years earlier.
The youth forced one bare foot ahead of the other. Amid the incredible pungency of men and horses, food smell hung separately in the air, hung between the low-slung crest and the encampment like a clearly marked road that he could follow with his eyes closed, the rumbling in his stomach pushing him to his destination. No one paid attention to the single, ill-clad figure walking down the dusty avenues. He stopped by a large tent whose smeared and grimy flaps shrugged listlessly in the merciless humid August heat, stirred to a sad, untimely jig by the faintest of breezes. An iron stovepipe sprouted from the peaked cloth roof, and from it a gout of black smoke erupted and spewed a dirty trail of soot that descended on a nearby tent, driving the occupants out, choking, coughing, and cursing in the noonday glare, then retreating into the maze of the camp.
The youth paid little attention: he had found the cook’s tent, and his eyes were riveted on a massive stewpot braced over a bed of glowing coals. Looking about anxiously, the light-skinned young Negro took a hesitant step closer, then another, and when sure he hadn’t been noticed, dared to peer over the edge of the pot. A stomach-churning, mouth-watering aroma assailed him from the depths, and he reached trembling fingers for a ladle hanging nearby. Even as the skinny hand grasped the long iron stem, a beefy fist grabbed his wrist and spun him about. “No, you don’t, boy. This here’s army stew made for them as fight. Ain’t for civilians, be they white or ragtag niggers like yerself.”
The youth squirmed and tried to free himself from the soldier’s grip, but the ponderous cook reached out with surprising speed and dug the fingers of his other hand into the mulatto’s shoulder. “Tryin’ to run away seems almighty suspicious, boy. Maybe you been up to somethin’ already. You done somethin’ you shouldn’t oughta done?”
Jerking free, the boy fell back on his buttocks. His round eyes stared up at the cook with animal intensity. “Ah ain’t done nuffin’.”
The cook rubbed his hands on the filthy apron covering a blue shirt that had never seen the benefit of soap or water. His grin displayed an uneven row of crooked yellow teeth. “Well, well. The boy has a tongue. What would you be doin’ tinkerin’ with my pot o’ stew? You a rebel spy come to poison our mess?” At that the big man placed both hands on his wide hips and guffawed heartily at his idea of a joke.
“Ain’t no reb. Ain’t neber.”
The cook stopped laughing abruptly and leaned over the youth, his eyes cold and dangerously serious. “Then what’re you doin’ near that there kettle?”
The mulatto weakly struggled to his feet, kept a careful arm’s reach away from his questioner. “Ah’m hongry. Ain’t et in fo’ days.”
“Well, looks like you just gonna stay hungry. This food’s for soldiers … General Butler’s fightin’ men. I can’t go handin’ out food to every nigger comes hightailin’ it through our camp. Hell, if I did that …”
“Dey’s eatin’,” the youth blurted, pointing to a group of black men surrounding a campfire, drinking coffee and eating stew from metal plates.
The cook grunted. “That’s ’cause they’re soldiers. You can tell that by them blue shirts. Yessir, honest-to-goodness soldiers. General Butler’s gettin’ together a whole army of Africans. He puts a blue shirt on a black nigger an’ gets him a instant soldier.” He paused, eyes twinkling. “God-damnedest bunch I ever seen, but I reckon it don’t matter if they can’t fight, just so long as they can stop bullets.” The very idea was too much. The blustering cook nearly doubled over with mirth. His face reddened and sweat beaded on his forehead, ran through almost nonexistent eyebrows and seeped into his eyes, the salt stinging and blinding him. Dirty knuckles dug at his burning eyes, and by the time he could see again, the mulatto youth was gone. Concerned, the cook quickly checked the ladle and pile of tin plates. Satisfied nothing was missing, he snorted derisively and disappeared into the darkness of the tent.
Avoiding a battery of caissons thundering past, the youth darted along an adjacent row of tents toward a flagpole from which hung a brilliant ensign of red, white, and blue. His stomach was tight and empty. The encounter with the smell of food had made him queasy and uncertain as to whether or not he would be able to keep anything down even if his plans succeeded, yet was determined to try. At one large, clean tent an orderly polishing a pair of high-topped black boots looked up at the mulatto, the Negro’s question startling him from the boring task at hand. “What?”
“Where does Ah jine? Ah wants ta so’jer … agin de rebs.”
The orderly stared at the black as if the decision was his alone, finally scowled and gestured briefly toward a cluster of tents across the parade ground. “See that’un in the center with the wood table in front an’ that ol’ sign right up above? Well, that’s where, if they’ll take you. You look a mite gaunted for soldierin’.”
The mulatto began walking across the cleared, dusty expanse. Away from the food smell, his stomach calmed down and he was able to concentrate on the next step. Squaring his shoulders, he tried his best not to look afraid. A man could tell, they said, when a person was afraid. Like dogs.
Two men sat behind the table, facing each other with a small but substantial pile of coins glittering between them. No one else was in sight. The soldier with the tented stripes on his arm glanced speculatively at his cards, at the coins, back to his hand, to the deck, then once again to his hand in a never-ending, calculated ritual. “I’ll open with this shiny half-dollar. Will you match that, lieutenant?”
The one called the lieutenant, a boyish-faced young man whose delicate hands and cultured voice bespoke the mark of affluence, sucked petulantly at his lower lip. His eyes fluttered with a thousand understatements as he placed a crisp greenback in the pot. “Match it and then some, sergeant.”
The sergeant, a gruff, scuffily bearded man of forty-five, chewed on his moustache and frowned in distaste for the paper money. He preferred solid coin, but there was nothing to be done, for the man he faced was not only a lieutenant, but the lieutenant, nephew to General Butler. The enlisted man sighed, removed one of the silver half-dollars and put in a greenback taken in an earlier pot. He was damned if he’d use good silver as long as he had the lieutenant’s worthless paper at hand. “How many cards?”
The lieutenant smiled and brushed back a wayward lock of hair. He shook his head, declining gracefully to part with a single card. “I’ll just keep these, if you don’t mind, sergeant.”
The old campaigner stared into the baby blue eyes. No cards. A pat hand or two pairs? The lieutenant’s eyes gave away nothing, only stared back noncommittally. The sergeant decided he was bluffing and held two pair. “Dealer takes two,” he announced gruffly, tossing two aside and lifting new cards from the deck, noticing at the same time the bony hand and dusky flesh on the table. He glanced up to see a dark face, thin from hunger, a pair of wide-set eyes staring feverishly at him. “What do you want?”
“S’cuse me, suh.…”
“Go on. I’m listenin’.”
“Yassuh. This where Ah kin jine up? Ta fight agin the rebs?”
The enlisted man held his small deck of five cards carefully, slowly fanned them out to display each card one by one, then just as carefully placed them facedown on the table, stuck the stub of a cigar in his mouth, lit a match and held it to the blunt end of the tobacco. The lieutenant coughed, slightly but emphatically, and the sergeant, angered by the officer’s dislike of cigars, blew out the match. Thoughts of revenge foremost in mind, he continued to chew the unlit stub as he studied the youth. “So you want to soldier, eh?”
“Yassuh!”
Disapproval crossed the lieutenant’s face and his pink cheeks flushed darkly. The sergeant did not fail to notice, but hid his glee at a chance to irk his superior. “Well, seein’ as General Butler reckons to raise himself an army of Africans, I reckon I can sign you on, though you look like mighty poor soldierin’ material.” The sergeant took pencil in hand and slid a roster in front of the youth. “I don’t s’pose you can write.”
“Yassuh. Decipherin’ too,” the youth answered proudly.
“Huh!” The sergeant looked at him carefully. A writing African was a rare one: he had come across no more than three in the last two weeks. “Mebbe you’ll do after all. Sign your name there on that line.” The sergeant studied the light-skinned Negro as he wrote. “You don’t look all that African to me.”
“He is a … mulatto, sergeant,” the lieutenant interjected, as if the very word made him nauseous.
“What’s that?”
The officer grimaced, irked by the northerner’s ignorance, more so by the necessity to explain further. “He has … white blood in him. A father, most likely.”
The yankee enlisted man shook his head in disbelief and pulled the roster to him. “Mebbe they’ll make him a corporal, then. Hey! What’s this? You only put a first name down here.”
“Dat’s all Ah gots. One name. Ain’t got no las’ name.”
“Well, you’ll have to have one. Rule is, the army can’t use anybody but freedmen, and Gen’l Butler says we can’t sign runaways. The Union don’t want ’em.”
“No las’ name.”
“Well, then, you can’t join.” The sergeant picked up his cards and once again faced the officer as the youth turned away, his shoulders slumping dejectedly. “Boy!” the sergeant called. “If you do have a last name, well, then you wouldn’t be a runaway.” He stared intently at the mulatto. “Maybe you have one but just forgot with all the excitement of enlistin’. You get my meanin’?”
The youth returned to the table, stared down at the roster, started to say something, but the sergeant appeared to have forgotten him.
“Lieutenant, I have a quarter-eagle says what I drew can whup anything you’re standin’ pat on.”
The lieutenant, having recovered his composure, smiled gratuitously and watched the bet. “You must have drawn well, sergeant. I feel compelled to see your quarter-eagle and …” he paused, enjoying himself and counting the sergeant’s meager stack of coins “… raise—I believe that’s two dollars and six bits in front of you—precisely that much.” A half-eagle and a two-bit piece clanked onto the growing pile.
The sergeant paused. Two pair wouldn’t be enough to beat him, and the ace kicker in his hand pretty well assured him three of any kind the officer could come up with would be too small. The lieutenant was bluffing about the pat hand, as sure as syrup came from maple trees. With a grin, he pushed his coins into the pile and impetuously displayed his hand. “Read ’em an’ weep, lieutenant. Three pretty kings.”
“My, my, you were lucky,” the lieutenant countered as he placed his cards down one at a time, face up on the table. “But not lucky enough.”
“Damn an’ tarnation!” Five little hearts flaunted their baleful color at the once again poverty-stricken sergeant. “Damn! I should’ve known better. My ma always used to tell me. ‘Son,’ she said, ‘there’s two mistakes a man owes it to hisse’f not to make in this world. Never gamble an’ never join the army.’ Two mistakes, an’ I made ’em both. ‘Never join the army … never gamble.’ Ma was sure enough—”
“Ain’t no runaway!” The shouted statement interrupted the sergeant, drew his attention to the other side of the table. The youth slapped down the pencil and slid the roster toward the soldier.
“Huh?” the sergeant exclaimed, startled by the mulatto’s outburst.
“Ain’t no runaway ’cause Ah gots me a las’ name lahk yo’ said. Yo’ gots ta spell it fo’ me, an’ den Ah writes it down.”
“What?”
“Gamble,” the youth proudly replied. “Two mistakes an’ Ah’m goana make ’em both an’ get it ober an’ done wid. Ah’m jinin’ de army, an’ mah name’s Gamble. Titus … Gamble!”
CHAPTER ONE
This morning, he thought to himself. Is it this morning?
Drium Brennan sat up, a bead of sweat trickling down his temple. Morning, and still dark. His left hand moved to the bedside table and groped until his fingers touched the cool metal, then quickly followed the familiar shape to the polished walnut grip. Slowly he lifted the heavy flintlock pistol from the ornate velvet-lined hardwood case and brought the eight-and-a-half-inch barrel through the enfolding darkness until the chill orifice of the muzzle pressed soberly against the side of his head. The sun was up. There could be no question, for sounds gave darkness the lie. Wistfully, he listened. Only a moment more. One moment …
Rury was always the first up. Big Rury. Broad shouldered, raven haired, deep of chest and long of leg. Big Rury who rode with Bedford Forrest during the war and came back safe and sound and eager for more battle. Confident and competent, the lad was a natural leader, yet tended to brashness and impatience. But age would cure impetuosity, and even now Big Rury could be counted on. Drium listened with warm pleasure to his son’s loud swaggering stride through the hall, the heavy brisk tread of his feet as he descended the stairs to the lower reaches of the house, to the great hall where he would seek to appease an appetite worthy of two normal men. Rury, his eldest son …
The flintlock pistol weighed three pounds and four ounces and Drium’s hand and arm began to tremble with the burden. The darkness remained …
A woman’s voice, soft and lilting, humming an Irish folk ballad, wafted down the hall and through the darkness to the ear of the old man who loved the old songs. Fianna was attending her bath. Fianna the beauty, named for one of the tribes of old. Even lovelier than her poor departed mother she was, and herself the prettiest lass in all Kilkenny. Roiling tides of deep scarlet hair billowed over Fianna’s shoulders, white as delicate porcelain. Her daring eyes and lithe provocativeness had driven to fever pitch the blood of many a poor lad among the Southern aristocracy, and not a one of the lot worthy of her hand. At times, Drium feared for her: mysterious and conspiratorial blood—the dark blood of the old ones—ran in her veins. He loved her deeply, for she was Fianna the youngest, his only daughter.…
The arm, once capable of holding a full stone extended, he recalled bitterly, weakened, and unable to sustain the deadly weight, dropped to rest on his leg. Age was a bloody bastard, come to rob a man of strength. Aye, and sight too, which had started going bad the day Dub had ridden in minus his left arm. Slowly, he leaned forward until his forehead pressed against the gaping hole. The pistol and its mate were keepsakes given him by a friend long dead. “I had not thought to put them to such use, old friend,” he muttered into the darkness. With a .69 caliber blast, death would be quick and painless: one moment, life; the next, complete obliteration. He had decided his course long ago when the first ominous hints began to intrude and darken his life, fill his days with apprehension. Drium Brennan would not exist in a world he could not see.
Light tap-tapping in the hall. Steps precisely placed, pausing, then crisply descending the main stairs. After coffee the steps would return and the lad would go to the cupola, there to spend the morning. Dub, the middle-born, who returned from the war scarred in flesh and spirit. Silent Dub. Troubled Dub. He carried the traits of both sides of the family. Fair and feminine of build, he was audaciously reckless, decorated by Jefferson Davis himself for spellbinding feats amid the clouded theater of war. Drium had watched him secretly. Sensitive and poetic in repose, the very sight of him evoked strong memories of his mother. It was a woman the lad needed, to take him out of himself and set him at rights with the world.
Darkness roused, awash with a proliferation of purple circles seeping outward like a splotch of ink on paper, the purple joined by and blending with pink. “Clear, damn it all,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Clear,” he repeated, raising his head and shaking it from side to side. Weary muscles grateful for release gave way and the pistol sagged to the covers. Fingers dug into the sheets and the elder Brennan swiveled in bed to face the east window of his room and the morning sunlight he knew to be streaming through the thin curtains. The pink expanded, contending against the retreating darkness that slowly gave way to a background of vibrant yellow, against which familiar features took on definition and swam into hazy focus. For another blessed day, the saints be praised, sight returned to Drium Brennan. Morning had come to Shannon.
Fianna sank into the warm luxuriant depths of the tub, reclining against the petal-shaped pewter back and closing her eyes, shutting out the pattern of light on the wallpaper and drifting into an imaginary realm of knights and ladies. The soap bubbled to an ample froth across the surface of the water, reaching up to all but obscure her rapture. She dreamed of castles tall and strewn with articles of war, of young, gallant lads dashing at each other in combat and staining the greeny sward with crimson, dying as she leaned over the parapets on the high walls and languorously gestured to the one who gained her fancy. A rap on the door burst the illusion.
“Honey?”
“Yes, Ella Mae.”
“Yo’ bes’ hurry dat bath. Yo’ cain’t take all day. Miz Emerson goan be ’spectin’ yo’. Ah’se layin’ out dat purty blue dress a’ vores. Hurry up, now.”
“Oh, all right.” Fianna made a wry face in the mirror. Muttering “Mrs. Emerson” under her breath, she stood in the tub, stepped from the water, and whipped a towel from a nearby chair, furiously rubbed the already glowing skin until her whole body tingled with life. Humming to herself, she heard Dub in the hallway, followed by his lightly placed steps up the stairway to the cupola. Quickly, she stepped into the hall, holding the towel loosely about her, leaving one small rounded breast temptingly exposed. She heard his steps pause on the stairway in response to the sound of her bare feet on the polished floor and glanced up to meet his gaze, smiling innocently and making no effort to conceal the red-tipped beauty she knew would rouse Dub. “Good morning, brother,” she called sweetly.
Dub’s spare, frail form stiffened, and what he meant as a bow turned out as little more than a curt nod of the head. His high cheekbones matched her noble caste, but in the spare light from above, his face was more saturnine than provocative. His burning eyes traveled down the pale, desirable, and forbidden aspects of her form, lingered on the lovely rounded mound whose pink crown tightened beneath his hungry gaze. “Good … morning, Fianna,” he managed, forcing himself to look away, turn and hurry up the narrow stairs to the cupola.
Fianna tossed her head and hurried to her room, grinning over an easy early-morning victory. “Crazy Dub …” she chuckled softly in a singsong little girl’s voice. “Poor silly crazy brother Dub …”
“Land o’ Goshen! What yo’ doin’ traipsin’ ’roun’ de halls wid nuffin’ on but de clothes yo’ was bo’n in, chile? Ain’t yo’ got no shame?” Ella Mae, moving rapidly for one with such great weight, hurried to wisk the girl into the room and shut the door. “Lawdy! A house full o’ mens an’ yo’ behaves lahk dat. No sense. No sense a’tall. You growed full, now. Showin’ yo’se’f off lahk a—”
“Oh, don’t carry on so, Ella Mae,” Fianna pouted, flinging the towel onto the bed. “I have sense enough to know I don’t want to breakfast with Mrs. Emerson and those other old hens she runs around with.”
“Hesh up, now. Doan yo’ say ’nother word. Yo’ mama put up wid dem ladies an’ seen to de buildin’ of a fine church. Now yo’ gets to do de same so dat Brennanburg gets itse’f a fine school.”
“Who cares?”
“Hesh up, Ah said. Hesh up an’ git dressed afore yo’ papa hear dat sassy talk an’ give yo’ a lickin’. Be thankful, Ah says. What wid de war an’ all, t’ain’t many places as lucky as here, dat kin think about such things as schools an’ de lahk. Yankees done taken away mos’ folks homes, taken de lan’ from under ’em an’ de roofs from ober dere haids. Yo’ lucky an’ doan know it.”
Fianna closed her eyes as the black woman scolded, pulled the dress over her head, and fitted the fabric to the girl’s figure. Color came to Fianna’s face and her eyes flared with dark ambition. For a moment she stood motionless, staring from her window into the bright sunshine lighting the fields below. “Yankees won’t take Shannon from us,” she said softly. “Shannon is ours and will stay ours. Shannon, and Brennanburg.”
The cupola was a square, fifteen feet to a side. Framed sheets of glass formed the walls, which faced in the four directions of the compass. Each side of glass was tinted to represent a season: yellow to the east, for summer; red to the west, for fall; blue to the north, for winter; green to the south, for spring. During the passing of a day, the interior of the cupola was suffused with a palette of varying hues and combinations of colors. Morning was Dub’s favorite time. Every day at dawn he rose, dressed, and came to watch through the early hours from his vantage point atop the plantation house. The years had seen many changes. He could remember, as a boy, the circle of towering pine trees, closer by far than they were in the spring of 1866. Each year since he could remember, the circle had receded, had drawn away from the plantation house. Now rolling fields surrounded him and the trees were but a shaggy line almost a mile from the house in each direction, the line broken by the few monolithic pines and the pair of magnolias left to shade the main house from the ravages of the East Texas sun.
Dub leaned across the balustrade surrounding the well and looked down through the matching concentric circles—the one over which he leaned and the one cut in the floor of the second-level hall—to the hardwood, patterned floor of the dining room–reception hall. Lit by the slanting eastern light, the tiny ridges of the floor cast abnormal shadows and gave the impression of a miraculously rectangular landscape as seen from a great height. A heavy door slammed. The front door. Footsteps sounded in the hall, and Rury, fresh from his morning breath of air on the front porch, crossed the space on his way to breakfast. Big Rury. Brave Rury. Dub scowled and fingered the medals on his gray cloth cavalryman’s coat, the left sleeve of which hung empty and straight before being caught and held with a single tuck at his belt. He straightened and the blood rushed to his head, forcing him to grip the balustrade for support.
Staggering away from the hole in the floor, Dub stared past his reflection and watched the plantation come to life. A widow’s walk surrounded the cupola and he could have stood outside to let the early-morning spring breeze lave him, but he did not like to be seen, to be exposed to scrutiny he could not return. Who knew what prying eyes might take that moment to look up to the roof and see the mutilated figure? The Negroes, though slaves no more, continued their daily trek to the fields, coerced not by the threatening whip of an overseer but by the necessity of obtaining food and clothing and a small but needed pittance for their labor. Barnet, the former overseer, still carried his whip of authority, though he had not dared use it since the end of hostilities. Now he rode among his charges and shouted out Rury’s orders for the day’s work. And a full day’s work it would be. Sluggard’s could be docked varying portions of their “pay” and, on rare occasions, might receive a cuffing from one of Rury’s hamsized fists. Those for whom blows or loss of salary weren’t enough were punished with dismissal. A recalcitrant field hand was booted from the plantation and loosed in a world of uncertain fortune for which he or she was totally unprepared. The specter of uncertainty, especially for the older ones, was enough to keep most in line.
The slaves—Dub couldn’t help but think of them as slaves, even though they had been freed—were dark dots on the expanse of green when Dub moved from the window to sit on the seat circling the balustrade. The cupola was bathed in warm yellow light. The glass, distorted by a myriad of haphazard swirls and bubbles trapped when the liquid sand hardened, sent fluid shadows drifting across the floor with the sun’s progress. Dub’s face felt warm—uncomfortably so—and he stepped across to rest his cheek against the cool winter glass. The blue glass did not cool him, though, for the warmth he felt came not from the sun but from within him. Anger stirred his darkened passion. Fianna … his sister. She knew, and flaunted herself at him. Did she not think he was a man with a man’s hunger, no matter what? “I am a man,” he moaned through set jaw and grinding teeth. Fingers clawed at his armless sleeve as he pressed himself against the glass and sought to cool the torment in his blood. “I am a man! A man, do you hear?”
Drium, the pistols hidden for the day, rounded the bottoms of the stairs and, following the gentle breeze which circulated through the house, made his way to the spacious dining room and took his place in a broad, high-backed wicker chair. It was, he reflected, good to be alive on a fine spring day. A mockingbird outside the open windows agreed. Drium rang the bell to summon Ella Mae and sat back, enjoying the morning. There were few such left. Any day, summer would be on them and the weather would change rapidly to the stifling, humid, mosquito-plagued climate of an East Texas summer.
Ella Mae waddled out of the swinging doors to the kitchen and brought him a steaming mug of coffee. “Yo’ comin’ down late today, Marsa Brennan.”
“And if I wasn’t feelin’ well, what would you be bringin’ an old man for a remedy?”
“Ah reckins a mug a’ mah coffee, marsa,” the black woman answered proudly. “’Course, if yo’ needs a physic, Ah kin fix yo’ up some a’ mah special herb tea.”
Drium Brennan made a wry face and raised his hands in mock protest and horror. “The coffee will be just exactly to my liking, Ella Mae,” he answered, laughing softly and accepting the mug.
The door to the sitting room and library slammed shut, and Rury’s footsteps sounded in the hall before he entered the dining room. “You got that grub packed, Ella Mae?”
“Soon, now, Marsa Rury,” she said, turning toward the kitchen. “Ah’se jis’ bringin’ yo’ Daddy his mo’nin’ cup a’ coffee. Yo’ co’n bread be done cookin’ in two shakes. Janus is sittin’ in de kitchen, waitin’ ta finish loadin’ de ho’se. He say, do Ah see yo’ fuhst, tell yo’ dem new shoes on jes’ fine an’ dat ho’se ready an’ rarin’ ta go.”
“Well, hurry up then, dammit,” he retorted gruffly. A moment later and he had seated himself across the table from his father. “Barnet knows what needs to be done. If he can get those niggers movin’, you might remind him about those four loads of timber.” He paused. “You be all right?”
“I always have been,” Drium snapped in response, suddenly angry at the solicitation implied, then angry at himself for taking offense. He might never see Rury again. The loaded .69 weighed on his mind. “You travel careful, son. I’d not like to see ye safely back from the war only to fall at the hands of the damned Republicans.”
Rury grinned. “They’ll not touch me. Two weeks and I’ll be back drinkin’ coffee with you.” The big man turned in his chair and glanced toward the kitchen. “Hell, might take three weeks if that damn kitchen darkie takes much longer.”
“Ella Mae is a good woman, Rury. She’s just gettin’ old—like the rest of us.”
“You aren’t old, pa. Hell, you look fit to wrestle any curly wolf in the woods. When I get back, why don’t you ride with us some night? We’ll put the fear in some of them Shreveport niggers. Ever since that Union General started stealin’ land from folks like us and givin’ it to them goddamn darkies, they’ve been actin’ mighty uppity.” He paused, chuckling at the thought. “By the Jesus, that’d be a sight! Drium Brennan himself, astride that big gray stallion, like the old days.”
Drium grinned at the notion of a nighttime gallop down a moonlit river road, the crash of guns.… A shadow reminiscent of the morning bouts with his eyes flitted at the corner of his vision. “No … no. I’m too old to … for such shenanigans. I’ll leave it to you young bucks to go riding off and away all night. I’ll stay here at Shannon where I belong.”
“Hell, we’ll stay close to home, then. Little Cypress and back. A little over an hour and you’ll be home in front of a hot toddy.”
Drium sat up with a jolt, assuming the posture of command, to which he was so accustomed. “I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you yet again. You keep those Hounds away from the niggers in Brennanburg. I want the good citizens to get a bellyful of nigger trouble before we lift a finger to help them. Anyway, Little Cypress is too close to home. A big tow-row like that would bring the Yankee troops down from Jefferson in no time. You stick to farther away or back-country squatters until the Yanks pull out for Fort Worth.” Drium’s agitation irritated him almost as much as Rury’s constant pushing for excessive action without the necessary planning. When would the lad learn to consider all the factors? As always, youth was too hasty, too quick on the trigger. The old man sighed. “I hate to hear myself speakin’ words of anger to me eldest. It’s sorry I am, Rury.”
“It’s all right, pa. I got carried away, seein’ you on that gray and all.”
“Son?”
“Yes, pa?”
“I want you to take Dub with you to Fort Worth.”
Rury, in the process of rolling a cigarette, spilled the tobacco and glanced up, startled by his father’s request. The conciliatory mood vanished. “You know what you’re askin’?”
“The boy stays cooped up all the time. He needs to get out, needs to help you with the runnin’ of things.”
“I don’t need help. You know what happened the last time in Natchez.”
Drium sipped slowly, not liking the taste of the coffee once it had cooled, but biding his time all the same. “I know there was some trouble,” he began, trying to placate his son.
“Pa. He killed that man.”
“The man made an insulting remark.”
“He was drunk and didn’t know what he was sayin’. As was Dub, who started the whole thing anyways, then took offense and shot him in the belly. If that wasn’t enough, he followed the poor bastard while he crawled across the floor, and when he got to the doorway, put a bullet in the back of his bloody head. Natchez folk aren’t about to take that sittin’ down. He was a white man, pa, one of their own. Hell, those townsfolk had the rope already looped over a cottonwood. If I hadn’t showed up with Barnet and the others … What do you think’ll happen in Fort Worth with all them blue-coat bastards around? With that damn gray uniform he insists on wearin’, they’ll goad him into a fight then sling him up quicker’n a common field nigger, and with only me along, there wouldn’t be any stoppin’ them.”
Drium sighed, rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Maybe you’re right. It’s not enough the damn Yankees took his arm, they’d hang him too.”
Rury, satisfied he’d changed his father’s mind, relaxed and finished rolling the cigarette. “If you ask me, that Yankee bullet took off more’n his arm. Looks to me like it carried off part of his senses too.”
The older man blazed with anger. “You don’t say that about your brother. You don’t say that, ever. He’s a fine, sensitive boy, he is. The war and losing an arm was hard on him, but don’t you think for a minute he doesn’t have a keen, sharp mind. He’s a Brennan. The finest blood of Ireland flows in his veins, same as yours. We Brennans were always fighters. Fought the British for a hundred years. Brennan blood flowed deep in Kilkenny, Cork, and Shannon. Your grandfather and I fought Indians for this land, and Mexicans as well. We founded Brennanburg. Folks there look to us for guidance and order. Now you and your brother have come back from the war and added the cursed Yankees to the blood list as well. And like the Brennans of old, we’re still here, holding our land and proud as man can be. Shannon is ours. Brennanburg is ours. People hereabouts look to us for leadership. Brennan word is law. As long as we remain together, as long as we are one family, none of that will change. And your brother is as much a Brennan as ye are. Don’t ever forget that.”
“Very stirring, papa,” Fianna announced as she entered, walking over to kiss Drium on the cheek. “You are always so eloquent when you give your favorite speech on what it means to be a Brennan.”
“I find it unseemly for a daughter of mine to speak lightly of her grand lineage,” Drium grumbled, obviously wounded by her flippancy. He stood. “I’m goin’ to get some hot coffee,” he announced stiffly. “I’ll hurry Ella Mae along for you, Rury. You may remain seated and keep your … ebullient … sister company.”
Fianna curtsied playfully to her father as he stalked out, slamming through the double doors. The sound of his displeasure still hanging on the air, she leaned over to kiss Rury lightly on the cheek, the low cut of her bodice revealing in their entirety the twin bounties of perfection with which nature had graced her figure.
Rury waved her aside. “Keep your charms for the young men who come callin’, sister dear. You’ll not spin your web about me.”
“What on earth could you be meanin’, me dairlin’ brother?” she asked coyly, sarcastically emphasizing the brogue her father so loved.
“You know bloody well what I mean. There’s lasses enough for me without havin’ my own sister dangle her indecencies in my face. You can save that little game for your other brother. He’s smarmy enough to fall for it.” Fianna ignored him, left him talking to himself as she dropped lazily into a chair. She was a beauty, he had to admit, and sister or no, he couldn’t deny the pressure in his loins as she swung about seductively and looked at him from under demurely lowered eyelashes.
“Will you bring me a present from Fort Worth?” she asked in her best mannered voice, leaning back and looking for all the world like a queen.
Rury shrugged. “It’s just a cow town, you know. Not like Nachitoches or Jefferson.”
“But you’ll bring me a present anyway,” she pursued.
“Hmmm. If I have the money.”
Fianna pouted. “If you don’t spend it all on the prostitutes, there ought to be something left for me.”
Rury glanced anxiously at the door, but Drium was thankfully still in the kitchen. “I’m goin’ to see about buyin’ stock. There won’t be time for any … pleasure. Or present buyin’, neither. Maybe instead, you’ll have somethin’ for me, if you’re still flauntin’ yourself about like a tupenny Dublin whore.”
Fianna’s face grew cold and contemptuous. “Who’s bein’ the naughty one now?” she asked tartly. “I should think the nickel girls of Natchitoches would be enough for the likes of yourself.”
“Little bitch,” Rury spat in return. He stood to his full height and glared down at her, diminutive in the large chair.
Unimpressed by his overwhelming stature, Fianna matched his gaze. It was Rury who angrily turned away first and left his sister smiling impassively, alone and victorious on her wicker throne. “Safe trip, brother Rury,” she called to the receding figure as once again the kitchen doors slapped shut.
Afternoon, lazy in the sun. The whitewashed walls of the big house reflected light filtering through the protective trees. Bees hovered lazily over nectar-swollen flowers. The cupola above passed into spring, the emerald interior silent, heat soaked, dreamlike, and still.
Barnet, the dull, heavyset overseer, filled the door to the library with his unimaginative presence. Sweat delineated the bulging lines of his belly beneath the work shirt. He wore gloves with the fingers lopped off. The back of his hand left a long dirty smear in its wake when he wiped the perspiration from his forehead. Drium Brennan tolerated the man because, next to Rury, the hulking individual was the most feared man on the plantation, and his presence held all but the most recalcitrant ex-slaves to docile, willing servitude, subject forever to the whims and financial fortunes of the Brennan household. Barnet was liked by few whites, and those only when he had a few coins from which he might be parted. Shannon’s lord glanced away from the loose papers on his desk and acknowledged the overseer with a nod. “Reep Lancer come to see you, Mr. Brennan.”
“Send him in here.”
Barnet nodded and left. A moment later, the unassuming form of Brennanburg’s leading merchant entered the room. Drium rose and offered his hand across the expanse of the walnut desk. “Afternoon, Reep. You look all flustered. How about some sherry?”
The merchant dabbed at his face with a checkered cloth bandanna. He hated these visits, hated playing the supplicant to the lord of the manor. Still, there was nothing to be done. Power was power. “No. No, thank you, Mr. Brennan.”
Drium gestured to a seat. “What brings you out to Shannon on a working day?”
“Two things, Mr. Brennan.” Reep sat in the proffered chair and leaned forward, his long body awkward and singularly uncomfortable in the presence of Shannon’s owner and the founder of Brennanburg. “First, there’s the matter of Robert Cousins.”
“Cousins … the farmer down on Owl Creek?”
“Yes. I’ve been giving him credit for the past six months until his big lumber deal went through. Well, he sold the lumber, but instead of settling with me, he’s using my money to enlarge his dairy herd. It don’t seem fair.”
Drium sat back in his chair and stroked his silvery mustache. “Hmm. Of course, I’ll need to check your books, Reep. But it seems clear enough. I’ll have a talk with Cousins. And number two? …”
The merchant nodded, pleased with the favorable resolution of his personal problem. Reep thoroughly disliked Brennan, but had to admit the man had always been more than fair with him. The next request wouldn’t be so easy. He coughed twice, wondering how to begin. “Well, as the responsible citizen who makes a home and living in Brennanburg, I …”
“Speak your mind, man. I’ll not have you shilly-shallying about.”
“Yes, sir. It’s the darkies down by Little Cypress Landing. Those young freed niggers ain’t got nothing but trouble on their minds. Coming into our stores like they owned them, pawing at our goods, stealing when they can get away with it. I run one out at gunpoint. Since Bill Hutchins got hisself killed by Yankees, there ain’t been no law, save for you and Rury, and with Shannon to look after, neither of you can be in town but part of the time. Of course, we’re lucky in that Sheridan or any of his scalawag lackies ain’t sent us one of them nigger police, but it does seem as if we ought to have someone.”
Drium’s face darkened.
“Not that we’d let him stay,” Reep quickly continued. “Still, we need someone sure enough, and it’s time you sent someone over to take office. Most of them darkies come off your place to begin with. Valerius, the one leading them, is yours, ain’t he?”
Drium chuckled softly. “Funny. When the Yankees come and parceled out sections of my land, givin’ them to any nigger who came traipsin’ down the road, none of the good people of Brennanburg lifted a finger in protest. Now you have your own nigger problems it’s a different story.”
“There wasn’t a thing we could do, Mr. Brennan,” Reep bridled. “You know yourself the Yankees—”
“I know nothin’ of the sort,” Drium interjected, slamming his fist on the desk. “If it wasn’t for the generous efforts of the Hounds, all of Shannon might have been divvied up among a bunch of field niggers. It’s grateful I am to those sons of the South who have ridden by night to stand in defiance of the aggressors. It’s grateful I am to … whoever they are.” He peered at the merchant from under his beetling brows, but the townsman had regained his composure and remained utterly expressionless, his face devoid of any indication of insubordination, betrayed only by the calloused fingers fluttering nervously on his knees. The stillness of the moment grew to a tangible substance between them. Drium exhaled slowly, giving in to the obstinate stare. “Rury will be back from Fort Worth in two weeks. Perhaps I’ll send him to town for a few days.”
Reep brightened. Rury in town. No darky would dare step out of line with Rury Brennan to put him in place. The merchant rose and thanked Drium politely, bid good day and left. The lord of Shannon smiled complacently at the man’s back. The years of war had wrought many and bitter changes in the south, but Shannon remained, her lands nearly restored to their former size in spite of spineless fools like Reep Lancer. Brennanburg, the town Drium and his father had founded in a wilderness some thirty years ago, was still his.
Chirruping insects signaled an end to the day. Cook stoves burned in shanties to the east. The sun dipped into the western line of trees, splayed long, clearly delineated fingers across the land. Bathed in baleful red, Dub watched the sunset from his eyrie in the cupola, stared through the blood red veil of fall as night washed over the forest and fields, turning green spring bloom to sentinent obsidian. Morning and evening. Dub liked to watch both from his command post on the roof. A single arm reached across to finger the hilt of his saber hung under the empty sleeve, and once again Dub reconstructed the illusory battle in which he lost his left arm. He had built the story as he lay in the hospital, telling and retelling each incident, embellishing and adding minuscule details as he went along until he almost believed it himself. Almost …
A carriage wound along the drive to the house, pulling up out of Dub’s sight at the main entrance. Fianna did not wait for the coachman to assist her, rather dismissed him imperiously and sent him on his way. She could not bear the touch of his hand. As the carriage clattered off around the house, she wearily ascended the front porch steps to find her father sitting in the large rocker, finishing his evening coffee and indulging in a slice of apple pie freshly baked from the last of the previous year’s apples. “Late for supper,” he remonstrated. “We missed you.”
Fianna kissed her father on the forehead, grimaced petulantly, and perched on the railing. “Gladys Emerson insisted we dine with her.”
“Who was there?”
“Oh, papa, don’t make me recount. Gladys, of course, Catherine Lancer, the others. Always the same.” Fianna removed her sunbonnet and freed an avalanche of crimson curls, letting them fall about her shoulders. “They make me feel so old. It’s not fair. I’m only nineteen.”
“You’re a Brennan, my daughter, and Shannon needs to be represented at such affairs.”
“Well, I wish ‘Shannon’ could sometimes attend one of those dreadful get-togethers without me.”
“Daughter,” the older man reiterated, “you … and I … all of us are Shannon.”
“I know, papa. I know. But this part of Shannon is tired. It’s been a perfectly horrid day. I’m sure they all hate us. You’d better come in soon. The mosquitos are terrible. Good night.” She left him before he could offer any further homily, bounding up the stairs past Ella Mae who was staggering down beneath a burden of soiled garments.
“Lan’sakes, chile, yo’ knock dis po’ body down de stairs an’ she ain’t never goan ta get put tagetha’ agin.”
Fianna hurried into the upstairs hall, and with a malicious smile and a backward glance to make sure she was alone, stole to Dub’s bedroom. Not finding him there, she crossed back to the narrow stairway leading to the cupola and crept up the winding steps. “Dub?”
The young man spun about, outlined against an eerie, fading ruby background. “I didn’t hear you.”
“That’s because I’m a girl and very quiet. Girls know when not to make any noise.” She stepped to the balustrade around the circular orifice in the center of the cupola. “I wouldn’t want to fall, would you?” she asked, leaning across the oak railing, the bodice of her gown buckling to reveal soft white breasts. Dub tried to look away, but could not tear his eyes from the forbidden sight. “Dub?”
“What?” His voice was a whisper, lost in the shadows.
Fianna straightened and met his gaze with her own fathomless eyes. “Will you do something for me?”
“What?”
Fianna rounded the balustrade, advanced on him and stopped inches away. “Do you remember the emerald ring papa gave mama before she died?”
“Yes.” He could smell the freshness of her hair. “Fianna …”
“She wasn’t buried with it. He keeps the ring in the old jewel box over the fireplace in his bedroom. I saw it there only a few days ago. Papa was looking for something—a stickpin, I think—and he opened the box. There was her ring, large and beautiful. Tomorrow, when papa is downstairs, will you get it for me and bring it to my room?”
Dub paled and stepped back, sitting involuntarily. “No!” he whispered, afraid.
“Papa will never miss it.”
“He will too.”
“Dub …” She sat next to him, tiny white fingers idly adjusting his collar, touching his throat. “I saw something interesting today when I was going into Brennanburg. Would you like to know what I saw?”
“No.” Dub gripped the edge of the seat, his knuckles white.
“I had Janus take me the long way, around the north fork. It dips down then sweeps high along the bluffs. I had him wait with the horses while I went for a walk. The flowers are so pretty this time of year and a person can see ever so far. Even better than from here. I could see just about all there is to look at.” She paused, her eyes catching his, holding them with unheard, mocking laughter. “I saw you, Dub, going into the woods with that big buck name of Brutus Lee. Isn’t that strange? I could see—”
“Stop it!” Dub’s hand swung up, stopped only inches from his sister’s face.