House on Diablo Road: Resurrection Day (The McCann Family Saga Book 3) (2 page)

If only I was young again. If only turkeys could fly!

Buck turned to his teary-eyed godson to give him a good chewing out but relented after seeing the woebegone face. “You gotta promise never to come down this road again. You hear me?” he finally managed to say.

“
It’s not my fault. Cal double-dog-dared me, and I ain't no sissy like he said. Some of the guys swore on the bible that there’s a one-eyed troll living in that house.”

“
So you just had to see for yourself, eh? Listen here. The man may look like a troll, but we have to try to think of him as human, regardless of evidence to the contrary.”

“
....but that’s not all, Mr. Hennessy. Cal says if you come at twilight, you can see an empty noose swinging from that tree.”

Buck half turned to spot the ancient dogwood but kept a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. “Don’t be ignorant, boy. I should've known Cal was behind your flight into the nonsensical.”

“
Yes sir, but I know one thing I
did
see. I saw a graveyard behind that house.” Tobi’s voice rose with excitement. “It was all grown over with weeds, like nobody cared anymore. I could make out some of the headstones. Some were from a long time ago, and some had the last name McCann. The angel headstone had the name 'Hennessy'.”

Buck gnawed off a plug of tobacco and glared at the road ahead. “I know. Fact is...I’ve wanted to forget that little graveyard for a long time.”

“
How long, sir?”

Buck’s words came out choked, as if he were strangling on them. “Since my sweet Charlotte died and was buried there in 1860. Lost both my wife and my baby boy. That stone angel watches over their resting place.”

Tobias McCann had unintentionally opened a door that had remained locked for decades. Now the years fell away—all the way back to before the logging empire, when cotton was King, before Buck was a young lumberjack, before the tree came down to destroy his leg. Time drifted farther back to a simpler time, back to the plantation and a time of both turmoil and euphoria mixed into one heady elixir.

In his mind, Buck could see Charlotte running through the cotton field toward him, her hands circling her belly swollen with his child. He could see that peaceful, girlish smile and dimpled cheeks. The memories broke through to swirl him away, back to before the Civil War.

In the heat of that savage summer, the puffs of cotton blanketed the fields like unseasonable snow, stretching as far as one could see. Nineteen year old Buck Hennessy dragged the long tow sack behind him and pulled cotton until sundown. Beside him toiled a diverse group of field hands who had become brothers in the common cause of living. So much so, that young Buck was content for the first time since he left Irish Shanty Town at age fourteen.

He had married and brought his seventeen year old bride Charlotte from the fever stricken Boggy Slough, to McCann Plantation on Diablo Road. They came at the invitation of her cousin, Cyrus McCann’s wife Lucinda. There they made a go of it, and that year would be both the sweetest and saddest interlude in Buck's long life.

Cyrus paid fair wages and treated all as equals. He and Lucinda never failed to deliver food to the fields before sitting down to their own meals. Beyond that, Cyrus provided workers with clean cabins—each with its own fireplace and wooden floors, rather than solid dirt that was prevalent elsewhere. The cotton farm had become the most productive in Texas, due in part to excellent working conditions and fair treatment.

Although Lucinda had invited them to live in the main house, Buck and Charlotte felt more comfortable in a cabin of their own. It was there in that humble home that Charlotte felt the first flutter of life in her womb. In her happiness, her footsteps quickened, and her pale face became flushed with color. “Just think, Colin.” (She liked calling her husband by his given name) ”Soon little feet will be following in your footsteps.”

Young Buck warmed to the idea of fatherhood. It had been the only time in his life that he could call something his very own. Inspired by the happy event to come, Buck set to work constructing a cradle in his spare time and pushed himself to pull more cotton than any man ever had.

Yet Nature, ever whimsical, did as she pleased without rhyme or reason. When Charlotte was six and one half months along, on a sticky hot August day, she collapsed while delivering water to the field. Buck groaned with horror at the sight of the white cotton bolls staining to crimson with her blood. Charlotte cried out “My baby. Please, God...not my baby.”

Buck's mind flashed back to his own mother who had delivered ten children successfully but lost half as many. His big heart was already breaking, even as he lifted his wife from the ground and dashed to their cabin with her in his arms. After several hours of bed rest, Charlotte rallied, and the baby remained in her womb for the time being. Still, her husband would not leave her side and sat staring numbly, his awkward laborer’s hands knotting and flexing in his lap. Finally, Charlotte sat up in bed and demanded that Buck return to the fields.

"Bring Lucinda to sit with me until my strength returns," she told him."It would be a comfort for my cousin to be here with me."

Buck reluctantly agreed, and upon his return to the fields, he worked harder than ever. Their child was likely on the way, eager to enter the world too soon; if the baby survived, they would need extra money for a doctor's special care. The pickers were paid by the weight of the sack, and Buck was already counting his pay, as the endless rows stretched seemingly to infinity. The bag grew heavy and cumbersome, but he never faltered.

At night when he went to bed, he could still feel the repetitive motion of his arms and hands and the pull of two hundred pounds against his neck and shoulder. But when he did sleep, he dreamed of a beautiful baby boy who made not a sound and was light as air in his arms.

During the second day of her confinement, Charlotte, who had grown paler and thinner, shared with her cousin her premonition of dying in childbirth. Lucinda merely shook her blond curls and fluttered her thick black lashes in denial. Danger and doom filled the room like a predatory animal waiting and watching in the corner. In her desire to set things in perspective, an unusually generous Lucinda shared her own discontentment:

“
At least you've been given the chance to bring a child into the world. I have none. Cyrus and I are as barren as an overworked field. He’s too decent a man to place the blame on my shoulders, so he says it is he who cannot give me a child. But I know better. It is I who is unable to bear children. A woman knows things she can not admit to. So you see, you're
luckier than I, if that’s any comfort to you.”

Charlotte took Lucinda’s hands in hers. “How can you know the problem lies with you? I don't know about these things, but I’ve heard that sometimes it is the man who can not father a child.”

“
A woman knows what she cannot do.”

Lucinda looked so miserable that her cousin let the subject drop. “I'll return later tonight,” she said. “You won’t be alone. I’m sending someone after the midwife.”

Late that afternoon, without a single breeze to cool their skin, the pickers laid down their sacks and took their rest under the spreading sycamores. Not even a bird sang in that stifling air, as if something lulled them to a stupor and stole their song. No animals stirred, and an unnatural quietness lay over the fields like a shroud. Then a scream pierced the stillness, and it was a sound recognizable to all. It was the sound of a woman caught up in the life and death struggle to bring forth a child.

Buck jumped the cotton rows until he reached his cabin, and there at the door a mahogany skinned young woman met him. Her thick black hair was wound into a top knot, and her brightly colored skirt and beaded bodice indicated an ancient Native heritage. She spoke English with a peculiar cadence that seemed almost foreign to one accustomed to Irish backwoods brogue. “I ask that you stay outside for now,” the woman said. “This is woman's work here now. I will let you know when the baby comes.”

“
No offense, but I didn’t send for you. I need Lucinda McCann here with her.”

“
I’m all that your wife has. The McCanns have gone into Morgans Bluff for supplies, and this baby can not wait for anyone.”

“
Who are you, and who sent for you?”

The woman lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “I am a trained midwife, a Caddoan and the last of my people in the woodlands. I’m called Minna. It is a name of my people. I sometimes use the surname Morgan when there is any need for it, because I am the mother of Jared Morgan, whose father is Reese Morgan. I am sure you have heard of him.”

Buck smiled and nodded. “Everyone knows that name. He’s your husband?”

“
Not exactly, but he acknowledges our son. All that has no bearing on anything, except
to tell you who and what I am. I am here to help deliver your child. I must tell you that your wife is small and frail, and, as you know, your baby is coming too early.”

Minna let her statement wind its way into Buck’s exhausted brain. When he did not reply, she became blunt: “By all rights, I should not have come down Diablo Road, the pathway of your people’s Satan. No other midwife would. Added to that, I took a chance that you would shoot me as a renegade. I am obviously a full-blood. I took that chance to try to help your wife and baby.”

“
I am grateful…but Charlotte needs a doctor!”

“
The doctor is too far out to come in time, even if he is sober. The least you can do is trust me. Now wait outside.”

Minna’s courage and composure settled Buck’s mind, and he obeyed. He trudged out to the steps and sat for what seemed an eternity. When the midwife finally came out, her eyes avoided his, but the slump of her shoulders and the thin line of her mouth broke the news before she spoke it. At last, she lifted her eyes to meet his. “I tried to give your baby my breath, but his lungs could not take it in. He was too early out of the womb. Mr. Hennessy, your boy is in a better world than this one.”

Buck felt as if a knife had been inserted directly into his heart, and even then, it beat wildly out of control and against his will.
A boy. We had a little boy for a moment.

“
And Charlotte? What about my sweet Charlotte?”

Minna shook her head. “I will spare you details that make no difference now. Just come say your goodbyes while you can.”

Buck rose stiffly and tiptoed inside, as if not to awaken one who is simply sleeping. He bent down to capture his wife’s hand, which fluttered out to him like a small frightened dove. She opened her eyes. He leaned close to hear the words she struggled to speak.

“
Colin...she won’t bring him to me. Tell me why she won’t bring my baby to me!” The last words came in a weak wail of despair.

Buck pulled her to him “Later, my love. You can see him later, after you've rested. He’s sleeping now.”

Charlotte fell back on her pillow, and Minna made Buck leave long enough for her to tend to Charlotte’s needs. When he returned, his girl bride opened her eyes again, but now the flame flickered, wavering on the brink of extermination.

“
I’m tired, and I think my time is up. Come close...closer. Promise me. Promise you’ll stay with cousin Lucinda and Cyrus. Trouble’s coming. I saw it in a dream where the
dogwood tree was red with blood. Help them if you can. Cyrus is not as strong a man as you, and there’s our baby to care for. You raise him. Don't let anyone take him away.”

Buck ground the tears from his eyes with his fists. “Shh. You’re going to go to your baby in just a little while, and when you see him, kiss him for me. Tell him his papa loves him.”

A smile flitted briefly about her graying lips, and her hand went limp in his. Crushing waves of grief flooded Buck’s senses, and he was washed away to a far shore where there was no solace and no salvation. He heard and saw nothing—neither the song of the lark nor the murmur of the field hands outside his door. One last time, he pulled his wife to him, crushing her against his chest, as if to will to her his life. How could she be gone, when she was still soft and pliable in his arms? Yet she was so cold, even in the hot dead air of their cabin.

Minna stepped forward and placed a firm hand on his shoulder. “Give her to me now, and go and see your child. I’ve washed his tiny body and dressed him to meet the angels.”

“
No. Don't ask it of me. I can’t bear to see his face! I’ve killed his mother with my love for her. She was not meant for childbearing. Better she had never known me.”