The Storm Before Atlanta (20 page)

“Mas’r has a very pointy nose,” Dulcie said. “And there’s sort of a little cleft at the end of it. And Anne had the same little cleft at the end of her nose.”

Both the boys were perfectly silent at this. Jeremy was looking at her, but Charlie wouldn’t.

“And then Anne had a little boy with curly blond hair and blue eyes. And after that Missus hated her even more than before and would whip her for anything at all. So Mas’r decided to sell her, but he wanted to keep the little boy. And that’s when she ran away. With the little boy.”

Charlie was now staring fixedly out the door of the shed with his face looking like he was somewhere far away. Dulcie wondered if he would run away from the sound of her voice and from her story.

“Mas’r had gone away. He said he had business to attend to in Milledgeville, but I think he just didn’t want to be there when the slave factor came to buy Anne. Only just before that, Anne ran away, and they tracked her down with dogs and caught her.”

Dulcie closed her eyes for a moment as the memory overwhelmed her—the cries, the baying of the dogs, the smell of fear and blood.

“They whipped her two hundred times and made all of us watch. Then Missus sold the baby away.”

“Sold the baby? But you said he was white!”

“He wasn’t white,” said Charlie, turning from the door. His customary grin was gone and the expression in his eyes was unfathomable. “He was black.”

“But she said he had blond—”

“It don’t matter what he had,” said Charlie. “One drop of black blood makes a person black.”

“A child is a slave if its mother is a slave,” said Dulcie. “It doesn’t matter what the father was.”

“But … but …” Jeremy looked completely baffled, and Dulcie had the curious sensation that she and Charlie were standing together, enemies, on the opposite side of a great chasm of understanding from Jeremy.

“What happened to the mother?” said Jeremy.

“To Anne? She died.”

“But that’s murder!” said Jeremy.

Dulcie just looked at him. She couldn’t bring herself to say “No, it’s not,” and if Charlie said it, she thought, she would hit him. Charlie didn’t say it.

“And you care what happens to that Missus woman now?” said Jeremy, angry. “We ought to bring her in here and chain her up!”

“No,” said Dulcie.

“She deserves it! How can you not think she deserves it?” Jeremy was furious now.

“Nobody should have it done to them,” Dulcie
explained. Suddenly she felt very tired. “Go ask Missus what happened to my parents,” she said to Jeremy. “She’s not gonna tell me.”

“There’ll be an account book,” said Charlie suddenly.

“Let’s get the account book.”

Dulcie looked at him, surprised. “How do you know?”

He shrugged. “Farmers keep account books. They write down … things they sell—I mean, livestock and like that—” He wouldn’t meet Dulcie’s eye.

Jeremy went up onto the porch, with Charlie beside him and Dulcie just behind. That Missus lady of Dulcie’s was still sitting there, rocking.

“We want to know where Dulcie’s mother is,” said Jeremy.

“My husband takes care of all that. I wouldn’t know a thing about it,” said Missus. Her expression was vacant but her blue eyes were calculating. Jeremy imagined those eyes watching Anne be whipped two hundred times.

“Let us see the account book, then,” said Charlie.

Jeremy was surprised. He’d learned in Tennessee that southern men took great pride in being polite to women. Charlie wasn’t being polite, and for once he wasn’t smiling. Maybe Dulcie’s story about Anne had upset him more than he’d let on.

“And who are you, if I may ask?” said Missus. She looked at both of them. Dulcie wasn’t in her line of view.

“One Hundred and Seventh New York Volunteer Infantry,” said Jeremy. He didn’t feel like he needed to give her his name. Not after what he’d just heard about Anne.

“And you?” said Missus, looking at Charlie.

“I don’t know who I am,” said Charlie.

Looking at Charlie’s grim expression, Jeremy thought,
If he wasn’t my friend I’d be scared of him
. Missus must’ve found Charlie scary too, because she got to her feet and went into the house. A minute later she emerged with a leather-bound ledger.

Jeremy sat down on the steps with the ledger on his lap and read through it, with Dulcie on one side of him and Charlie on the other. He was a little surprised that Dulcie couldn’t read, but he guessed she had just never been taught how.

The ledger started in 1850. There were pages and pages about selling corn and cotton and watermelons. A steer named Harvey had been sold. A horse and a cow had been bought. There was nothing about hiring any slaves out. There was something about selling a woman and a boy, and then the woman was crossed out. Anne, Jeremy thought. Then more produce and livestock. He turned the page.

“I think that’s it,” said Charlie, leaning over and pointing. “October third, 1858.”

Jeremy read aloud, “Sold to Jos. Butler of Milledgeville for $850, my negro wench Aed. about 30 years.”

“But my mother was hired out, not sold!” Dulcie turned angrily to Missus. “You never said she was sold!”

Missus shrugged, not looking at any of them. “I don’t know. My husband takes care of all that sort of thing. It’s not my affair.”

“Where is your husband?” said Jeremy. He hadn’t even thought of the husband, who might show up suddenly with a gun and start shooting.

“In the barn,” said Missus at the same time that Dulcie said, “He was drafted and sent to Atlanta.”

Jeremy pointed at the ledger page. “Is this Dulcie’s mother? Sold October third, 1858?”

Missus rocked. “I don’t know. I don’t remember when it happened.”

“Eighteen fifty-eight,” said Dulcie. “This is 1864. I was five, and now I’m eleven.”

Jeremy looked at the following pages. “There’s nothing else about any slaves in 1858.”

Charlie took the book from Jeremy and flipped through it. “No, I reckon that’s Dulcie’s mother.” He ripped the page out of the ledger and handed it to Dulcie.

Missus looked up at the sound of tearing paper. “You don’t be coming in here tearing things up!” She got to her feet and looked at the barn. “James! James!”

Jeremy jumped up. Maybe the husband was in Atlanta, and maybe he was in the barn. He and Charlie and Dulcie dusted on out of there, Dulcie with the ledger page about her mother clutched in her hand.

When they got to the road they parted ways. Charlie headed back to the Reb camp, and Dulcie led the way back
to the Union camp. Jeremy looked over his shoulder. There was no sound of pursuit, and he guessed that Missus had been lying and her husband was in Atlanta like Dulcie said.

But what if he had come out with a gun and told Charlie and Jeremy to leave and Dulcie to
stay
? Jeremy wondered what he would have done in that case. He hoped he would have done the right thing.

The meeting with the two Rebs in the forest had taught Jeremy that the right thing was hard to do when fear told you to do the wrong thing.

EIGHTEEN

T
HE
25TH OF
M
AY WAS A PERFECT
,
SUNSHINY DAY
,
NOT
too hot. The Twentieth Corps were out of the mountains now, and the marching was easy along a dusty red Georgia wagon road. The 107th marched four abreast, and Jeremy beat time with his drum. There was no enemy in sight, and it seemed likely there would be no more opposition from the Rebels until they reached the fortifications of Atlanta.

“Can’t wait to see them fortifications,” said Nicholas. “We been hearing so much about ’em. What do you think they’ll look like?”

“Like those red log-and-clay things we been seein’, only mountain-tall,” Dave guessed. “They’ve sent all the slaves to work on them; the things must be huge.”

It was afternoon, and they’d marched all morning, stopped to eat, and marched on—they’d made several miles, and Jeremy began to wonder how much further it was till Atlanta and when they’d get there.

“I wonder if we’ll take Atlanta just like that,” he said. “We been driving the Rebs back right along the way. I think we’ll drive ’em right out of Atlanta, too.”

“Could be,” said Nicholas.

“They can’t stand up to the 107th!” said Dave.

“Nothing can!” said Jeremy.

“Nothing in a Reb uniform, anyways,” said Lars.

“They don’t wear Reb uniforms,” said Nicholas. “They wear ours.”

“It looks like it’s going to storm, later on,” said No-Joke.

“What are you talking about? There’s not a cloud in the sky!”

“I don’t know. It just feels like it. Like there’s going to be a storm later.”

“You and your megrims, No-Joke. Cheer up,” said Nicholas. “Tell us what you’re going to do when this cruel war is over.”

“What are
you
going to do?” said No-Joke.

“Oh, I don’t know. I thought about giving up the schoolteacher game and going to college.”

“I’m going to move to the city,” said Dave.

“What city?”

“I don’t know. Maybe
New York
,” said Dave bravely. “I want to do something different. I don’t want to go back to the farm.” He cast a sidelong glance at Nicholas. “I bet there’s colleges in New York.” Then he added quickly, “What about you, Lars?”

Lars reddened. “What about you, LDB? What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Jeremy hadn’t thought about this. His plan had been to die nobly in battle. He didn’t have a backup. He still doubted he was going to need one. “Might not
be
an after the war.”

“You got the megrims worse than No-Joke,” said Nicholas, waving a hand dismissively at him. “You didn’t tell us what you’re going to do, Lars.”

Lars’s face was brick red. He looked off to the horizon, toward the young green stalks of a distant cornfield, as if he found them fascinating. The tramp, tramp, tramp of the long marching column went on.

“Lars has a sweetheart,” said Dave. “And he wants to marry her.”

A whoop went up from the men around Lars, who turned so red that Jeremy thought he might have an apoplexy.

“Who told you that!”

Dave danced out of the way of Lars’s fist and then fell back into step beside him. “Easy to guess. Nobody writes letters every single night.” He chuckled, enjoying egging Lars. “For three solid hours. And haunts the chaplain all the time, asking him when the next mail is coming in.”

The men laughed. Lars’s face stayed red, but to Jeremy’s surprise he didn’t seem all that angry. Jeremy tried to imagine a woman who would want to marry Lars. A vision of an enormous woman, six feet tall with muscles like
a cart horse and hair like polished brass, sprang into his head.

“I never noticed that he was writing for that long!”

“It’s only lately,” said Dave.

“She must have written him a nice letter, huh?”

“We’re all coming to your shivaree, Lars!”

Jeremy grinned at the thought. If he could go to Lars’s shivaree he could pay him back for a lot. Maybe that’s what shivarees were all about. A lot of couples in the Northwoods got married secretly to avoid it—the young men outside the bridal couple’s house all night long, beating kettles and drums and anything else that would make a loud noise, whooping and hollering and singing rude songs. It would be fun to do that to Lars.

“How about you, No-Joke?” asked Nicholas, taking pity on Lars at last. “You going to get married?”

“I told you. I’m going to start a school for freedmen.”

“Oh! Why do that? Someone will teach those freedmen.”

“Right. It doesn’t have to be you. Let their old masters teach them. They owe ’em an education, at least.”

“That would be a terrible idea!” said No-Joke. “How can slave owners teach slaves to be free?”

“Maybe they don’t need to learn to be free.”

“They need to be able to read and write,” said No-Joke. “And cipher. And for some of them, more. Music. Theology. Law. Medicine!”

“I met a colored doctor when we was in Washington,”
said Dave. “A surgeon for one of the colored regiments. He was a real doctor, had went to college for it and everything.”

“There will be more of them!” said No-Joke excitedly. “Thousands of colored doctors!”