All Things New (31 page)

“I’ll give you my opinion, but you won’t like it.”

He was showing no mercy, refusing to tell her not to worry, that everything would be all right. But she needed advice, and she had no one else to talk to. “Go ahead, tell me.”

“We have to lead by example. Our generation has to make peace with the Negroes and with the Yankees. We have to show our sons and daughters that the old South was destroyed because it was flawed and that we’re willing to embrace the changes. It will only lead to more suffering if we don’t. We can show our children that many of the changes are good. . . . It begins with us—you and me.”

Eugenia leaned back in her seat, smoothing her hair off her face with both hands. “How did this happen to us? How did we lose everything we once had?”

“Pride. We began to believe that we were little gods, expanding our empires, living well at the expense of an entire race of people. The Almighty finally had enough and showed us we were only human after all, that we would bleed and die from cannonballs and bullets. He reduced us to the same poverty and helplessness that we inflicted on the Negroes—but some of us just haven’t learned that lesson yet. Young men like your son and his friends are still hanging on to the illusion of power, stubbornly refusing to let go of a way of life that has been judged as flawed. They’ve lost their possessions, their livelihood, their status as aristocrats—even the pride they once had in our beautiful South—yet they’re still trying to be gods and exercise power over the fates of others.”

Eugenia looked around at her once-beautiful parlor and saw the dust, the shabbiness and cobwebs. “We used to believe that our wealth and prosperity were God’s blessings, signs of His favor.”

“It’s impossible to believe that anymore, isn’t it? The war has exposed our false beliefs and the moral rot that accompanied slavery. All of our prideful decisions and the shameful way we treated the
Negroes have been exposed. We were flawed, Eugenia. God said so. It’s time to let go of our old attitudes and rebuild the South with compassion for others and with the belief that’s at the core of our Constitution—that all men are created equal. And it’s up to us to lead by example.”

Could she do that? Could she discard a lifetime of beliefs and suddenly pretend that she saw the Negroes as equals instead of as an inferior race that could never be educated or given responsibility? “How do I decide which changes are necessary and which ones will bring my world toppling down?” she asked.

David exhaled, taking a moment to think before he replied. “When the Yankee invasion came and you left for Richmond, you had to decide which things in your life were truly valuable and which things had to be left behind. Now is your chance to do it again.”

“My family, my children were the most important things to me—then and now. That’s why I’m so worried about Daniel not facing his responsibilities. That’s why I’m trying to make sure my daughters find husbands who will provide for them and take good care of them.”

David shook his head again. “That’s the old way of thinking. You are a strong, intelligent woman who has proven that you don’t need to be taken care of. You can decide for yourself what’s best for White Oak, and you can teach Daniel that his way of thinking about Negroes is wrong. You can allow your daughters to think for themselves, too, instead of arranging marriages for them—especially with young men who think murdering Negroes is perfectly fine. Isn’t your daughters’ happiness more important than family connections and social classes and maintaining old alliances?”

“Change is so hard,” she murmured. “I’ve endured too much of it already.”

“I know. But some of the things that seemed so important in the old days just aren’t worth dragging along into your new life. They’ll hold you back and weigh you down. Ask yourself what’s worth fighting for, what’s worth hanging on to in God’s eyes, and
leave the rest. You’ll be happier and freer without it.” He stood, preparing to leave.

Eugenia rose to face him, resting her hand on his arm to plead with him. “Will you talk to Daniel for me? Stop him before he commits more violence? You can explain it to him just like you explained it to me.”

David slowly shook his head. “He won’t listen to me, Eugenia.”

“Of course he will. Why wouldn’t he?”

“Because he’s a Southern aristocrat, and I’m not.”

29

Josephine tossed in her bed, unable to sleep. The sticky summer night glued her skin to her nightclothes and plastered her hair to her sweaty neck. She was still furious with Mary, and the sound of her deep, untroubled sleep in the bed across the room added to Jo’s restlessness.

After remaining in bed for two days, Josephine had no tears left to cry. She had mourned the loss of her friendship with Alexander and grieved the inevitable prison sentence of a marriage to Harrison Blake. Dr. Hunter had guessed that she was in bed because of grief, not illness, but she hadn’t trusted him enough to confide the reason for her sorrow. “I wish I could help you,” he had said.

When she couldn’t stand the heat a moment longer, Josephine grabbed her pillow, pulled the gauzy netting from around her bed, and walked down the hall to the upstairs porch, hoping for a breeze. In the stillness she heard the low mumble of men’s voices, coming from the porch below her.

For a moment she feared that a band of vagabond Negroes had come to break into her home and take vengeance on her race. White planters and their families had long feared this would happen and that they would be slaughtered in their beds. Jo remembered how terrified she had been in the chaotic weeks after her father
went away to war, leaving her and Mother and Mary alone and outnumbered. But Daniel was here to protect them now, and as she listened she was relieved to recognize his voice among the others. She let her pillow and the netting drop softly to the floor and stood still, straining to hear.

“. . . scare him off but not hurt him—”

“He won’t scare! We’ve tried before, remember?”

“Shhh! . . . My family’s asleep.”

The floorboards creaked beneath her bare feet as Josephine crept to the edge of the porch and peered down. The men stood on the porch beneath her, out of sight. She could see a drooping clump of horses tied to the hitching post, but it was too dark to distinguish whose they were.

“. . . Freedmen’s Bureau out of town for good . . . I know for a fact that he’s investigating the shootings and the fire.”

“We have to keep the slaves from testifying.”

Jo sank to the floor, sitting cross-legged, hoping to hear better, but the conversation was very soft and the incessant scrape and buzz of crickets and cicadas drowned out some of their words.

“Chandler has caused trouble since the day he arrived.”

“We have to get rid of him for good. Agreed? The slaves will be too scared to testify when they see what happens to him.”

Josephine heard murmurs of assent, and her heart began to race with fear.

“Okay, but how?”

“Accidents happen . . . look like an accident.”

“. . . make him disappear . . . bury the evidence.”

“The bureau will send someone else, so what’s the point?”

“Maybe they will . . . or maybe the others will be too scared to come.”

“When should we do it?”

“Tonight. Why waste more time?”

Josephine heard more murmuring as several men talked at once.

“Enough! We’re agreed,” Daniel said. “So what’s the plan?”

She listened in horror as her brother and the others discussed
how they could murder Alexander Chandler in his bed tonight, then set fire to the bureau office, leaving no evidence. Their plan shocked her. Alexander hadn’t done anything to deserve this. The war was over. He was no longer their enemy. How could her brother kill an innocent man, just to hide his own guilt?

Josephine stood and hurried into the house, determined to run downstairs and stop them. This was wrong! She would find out who the other men were and let them know that she had heard their plot. They wouldn’t get away with it.

But when she reached the stair landing she halted, remembering her recent argument with Daniel and how furious he had been with her. She remembered lashing back at him in anger and realized then it was her fault that he had learned of the arson investigation. If they murdered Alexander, it would be her fault.

Daniel and his friends would never listen to her. Her brother had been outraged by her friendship with a Yankee, and his friends would be outraged, as well. If they knew she had overheard them, they would detain her here while they completed their plan.

She had to warn Alexander. He needed to run. Now!

Jo hurried back upstairs to her room. It seemed to take forever to wiggle into her clothing, her body damp with sweat and fear. She was finally dressed—but now what? She couldn’t run all the way into town by herself in the middle of the night. Nor could she go by horseback. The stables were in plain sight of the porch, where the men were still plotting. Someone else would have to warn Alex, but who?

Lizzie. She would know who to send. She and Otis were Alexander’s friends, too. Josephine slipped out the back door and hurried down to Lizzie’s cabin. The night was feverishly hot and humid, the air as thick and suffocating as wet cotton. Even the insects rasped their complaints. She knocked on Lizzie’s door and called softly to her.

“Lizzie! . . . Lizzie it’s me, Josephine.”

A moment later the door opened and Jo felt the heat billow from the cabin as if she had opened an oven door. “Missy? What’s
wrong?” Lizzie’s bony face glistened with sweat. She looked disoriented and frightened, and so did her husband, Otis, who appeared in the darkness behind her. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and Jo averted her eyes from his lean, bare chest.

“Please! I need your help. I just overheard Daniel and his friends talking, and they’re planning something horrible.”

“Oh, Lord, help us!”

“Not against you, Lizzie . . . they’re going after Alexander Chandler and the Freedmen’s Bureau. Please, someone has to go into town and warn him to get out of there. He needs to hide!”

Lizzie glanced all around, her eyes wide with fright as she whispered, “Step inside, Missy Jo, so nobody hears you.” She opened the door wider, and Josephine entered a Negro’s cabin for the first time in her life. Lizzie closed the door behind her.

The single-room house, airless and stifling, smelled of woodsmoke and sweat. Lizzie’s children lay on the floor in a row like logs, with no mosquito netting to protect them. Their bare arms and legs glistened with one of Lizzie’s smeared concoctions to keep the mosquitoes from biting. Josephine could hear the insects’ high-pitched hunger and see a wispy cloud of them hovering over the sleeping children.

“Now say that again, Missy?”

Josephine told her what she’d overheard of the patchy, whispered conversation. “Please! You have to go into town and warn Mr. Chandler. They’re planning to kill him!”

Otis let out a deep groan like a man in pain. He shook his head. “We can’t, Missy, we can’t. Much as I’d like to help him, you know we ain’t allowed out after dark. There’s a curfew on all us colored folks. Massa Daniel and his friends will string me up for sure if they catch me out on the road or in town this time of night.”

Josephine had forgotten about the night patrols. She couldn’t ask Otis to risk his life for a white man, even though Alexander had set up the bureau to help the former slaves. Tears filled her eyes. “But I don’t know what else to do! They’re going to kill him!”

“When they gonna do this?” Lizzie asked.

“Now! Tonight! They’re planning it right now. Someone has to stop them!”

“Well, it ain’t gonna be my Otis,” Lizzie said. She linked her arm through his as if locking a chain, and Jo knew by her uplifted chin that she would never give in. “Now, I sure hate to see anything happen to Massa Chandler because he’s a good man. But if Otis or any of our folks try and warn him, those white men will do the same thing to us that they’re planning for him. Otis ain’t going and that’s that. He has a family to look after.”

“It’s gonna have to be you, Missy Jo,” Otis said. “Them men won’t hurt you.”

“But . . . but I can’t go!”

Lizzie’s chin seemed to jut out even further. “Why not?”

“All alone? I-I’m too scared!”

“Well, how do you think we feel?” Lizzie asked. “We’re scared half to death every single day of our lives.”

Josephine looked into Lizzie’s eyes—maybe for the first time in her life—and saw the terror she hid behind her tough façade. No doubt she was remembering the beating Otis had already suffered.

“Time’s wasting,” Otis said. “If them men are gonna do this before sunrise, then you don’t have much time. They riding horses?”

“Yes.”

“Best way is for you to take the shortcut through the woods.”

According to Daniel, a pack of dangerous, homeless Negroes still camped out in the forest between here and town, in spite of the night riders’ efforts to dislodge them. Josephine shuddered and shook her head. “Those woods are too dangerous for a white woman, even in daylight.”

Otis looked at his wife, and she finally nodded. He slowly pulled his arm free from her grip. “I’ll go with you that far, Missy Josephine, but I can’t go into Fairmont or onto the roads. I’m sorry.”

Jo couldn’t breathe. It would be dangerous for both of them. She longed to run back to her room and climb into bed and tell herself that this had all been a very bad dream. But she couldn’t
stand by and let them kill Alexander. She would be as guilty as Daniel and the others.

Otis put on his shirt and his broken-down shoes, making the decision for her. “Let’s go, Missy Josephine.”

The night was so dark, the woods so thick that she could barely see where she was going. Josephine couldn’t remember ever being so scared. She not only feared the woods and the dangers it hid, but she was terrified she would arrive too late. Alexander would die, and it would be her fault. Otis strode along the path so quickly she had to jog to keep up with him. And as badly as she longed to stop and catch her breath, she grew frustrated with him for stopping every few minutes and looking around, listening.

“We have to hurry, Otis! Why do you keep stopping?”

“I’m listening for their horses. They might take this shortcut, too, and I’m scared of the night patrols. They catch me out at night, they’ll do a lot worse than beat me this time.”

Josephine didn’t want to believe that her brother would hurt Otis if she was with him. But she’d heard him plot to kill Alexander, and he was a white man. “I’m so scared, Otis. If the riders get there before us, they’re going to kill him!”

“Are you praying, Missy Josephine?”

Otis took off at a trot again before she could reply, but the truth was that she hadn’t thought to pray. She hadn’t prayed in months. Why bother when God didn’t seem to hear her or answer her? Otis glanced over his shoulder as if to see if she was still behind him and said, “I’m praying, too, Missy Josephine.”

Oh, God, please,
she began to silently beg—then stopped. What had Alexander said about praying? He’d said that God couldn’t answer if she prayed for something that was contrary to His will. Surely it wasn’t God’s will for Alexander to die, was it? Or for her brother and the others to commit murder?

Heavenly Father . . .
The words brought tears to her eyes, reminding her of her own father. He had been stern when he’d needed to be but was also kind and loving, willing to give Josephine whatever she asked for if it was something that would do her good and
not harm. And surely that was the way her heavenly Father was, too. She finally understood what Alexander had been trying to teach her: God couldn’t answer her prayers during the war if it meant harming His other children, the slaves.

All at once, Josephine knew that God was with her and Otis in these dark, terrifying woods, and she silently cried out to Him as His child.
Heavenly Father, please help us.
Please help us get to Alexander in time to save him. He’s trying to help the Negroes, Lord. He loves you, and he’s trying to obey you by coming here and loving his enemies and helping us rebuild.
She gripped Otis’s shirttail, laboring to keep up with him as her tears fell faster, blinding her.
I love him, Father. I love Alexander Chandler and I know you do, too, and I don’t want anything to happen to him.

The maze of trees began to thin as they finally reached the other side of the woods. They were almost to town. Otis stopped again, but this time Josephine was grateful for the chance to rest. She was unaccustomed to so much exercise and she was exhausted, her clothing drenched with sweat from the heat.

“This is as far as I can go,” Otis whispered. “I’m sorry, but there’s too much open space from here on into town.”

The night was so dark that Jo couldn’t see any familiar landmarks. She didn’t seem to be anywhere near the road. Could she do this all alone?

She had to. She didn’t want Alexander to die. “I’ve never been to his office, Otis. I’m not even sure where it is.”

“Stay on this path until you get to the railroad tracks, and—”

“Path? What path?”

“This is the trail that Rufus and Roselle and the others take to school. See it?” Josephine had to bend down and peer carefully at the ground in order to see the narrow dirt track that led out of the woods and through the weedy, overgrown field. “Keep your eye on that trail and it’ll take you all the way to the railroad tracks. Then turn and follow the tracks to the office. It’s a little brick building behind the train station.”