The Orphan Mother (2 page)

July 2, 1867

There had been a heavy summer rain the night before, and the smell of early July rose in the air, a heady scent of sweet olive, daylilies, and the rich earth that bore them. The dirt smelled different in the South, George Tole thought, not like back east—not bad, but it didn't smell like home either. The summer had turned muggy and endless, with long bouts of daylight and dancing fireflies. Tole would listen to the children outside of his window, horsing around past their usual curfews, up to no good, probably, the way children of a certain age could be.

Tole didn't have a lot of reasons for leaving his house, but the summons from Mr. Elijah Dixon was undeniable. One of the children had brought it. He had knocked and then dropped the envelope before racing back to his friends. The note was short but clear.
Come see me. Elijah Dixon.
Mr. Dixon was an important man, a magistrate, maybe someday a judge, and had important friends. Tole had heard the name Elijah Dixon way back when he lived in New York, seen his name in the newspapers. He didn't know what to make of the summons. He considered whether maybe all that trouble had followed him to the back wilderness of Middle Tennessee, but then he talked himself into believing that there was no way Mr. Elijah Dixon could know anything about that or care if he did.

Now Tole made his way down Fourth Avenue, weaving through horse-cart traffic and a parade of businessmen headed to work, newspapers snug in the crook of their arms, a whole block of black coats and bowler hats. You wouldn't know Tole was a freeman by the way he walked: a tall, dark Negro with a scar above his eye shuffling like a ghost, heavy-footed and head bowed, eyes fixed on the street. But he was as free as any man walking south toward South Margin Street that day. He never was anything but free.

He continued past the southernmost commercial block and into the residential streets, stopping only to lift his pant leg and scratch the small mosquito bites around his ankle. He kept on, turning onto South Margin, a quiet street of cherry brick houses. This was his favorite block, softened by trees, sourwood and sugarberry, river birch and American beech. The leaves seemed to burst with a new shade of green, revitalized by the previous night's rain.

Tole stood at the corner house on South Margin, a stately brick Victorian with a pitched slope for a roof and a cupola just above it. After looking it over he walked up the dozen steps, holding the black iron railing, and knocked on the door.

An older Negro woman, white-haired and proper, answered.

“Here to see Mr. Elijah Dixon,” Tole said.

“He expecting you?”

“Uh, yes. I was to be here at ten o'clock. His wishes.”

“Wait there.”

The woman closed the door and Tole waited outside. When the woman returned, she asked him to walk back down the steps and around to the side of the house where he'd find a latched gate that would lead him to the backyard shed, where he was to wait. Tole did as he was told. Inside the shed he found some wooden pallet beds, a couple of wash buckets, a few pieces of rough furniture. He pulled a stool over and sat down.

When the door finally opened, Elijah Dixon stood in the doorway, a large, heavy man, well over six feet, with a drum-tight belly that hung like a sack over his belt buckle. Dixon was older than Tole by twenty years. Tole guessed he was close to sixty, but he didn't look much older than Tole himself, despite that auburn beard, marbled with gray and white, that had spread like wild grass over his jowls, onto his second chin, and down his neck.

The Dixons had lived in Franklin as long as anyone could remember. Elijah's father, old Lyceum Dixon, had made bricks and sawed boards back when Abram Maury was exploring his way through the territory. Elijah Dixon, the last of the patriarchs, flushed red in the sunlight behind his beard, and never wore shirts with collars because he fancied himself a laboring man and inheritor of the great strength of his forebears, though this had long since become only a kind of costume, a myth Dixon repeated about himself.

Tole knew that Elijah Dixon had turned the building of houses, sidewalks, bulwarks, and forts into a speculation operation heavily invested in railroads and the new furniture and textile factories back east. But he had also mastered the art of never appearing above himself, and since Dixons had always been thick-handed, hard-hammering beasts known for their ability to carry heavy things, Dixon wore the garb of the laborer, kept the brickworks in operation, and couldn't contain his smile when he passed by a new house or over a new sidewalk built of bricks stamped
Dixon
.

“George Tole,” Dixon said in a loud, jovial voice. “I apologize for keeping you waiting.”

“It's fine,” Tole said, standing.

“Margaret get you anything? An iced tea?”

Tole cleared his throat, not sure how to answer, and before he could, Mr. Dixon was already hollering the order to Margaret, who was standing on the back porch. Tole nodded.
Thank you, sir.

“Please sit,” said Mr. Dixon. Tole sat.

“A bit of commotion this morning,” Dixon said. “My wife's having another baby.”

“Congratulations, sir.”

Margaret came in and handed Tole the glass of iced tea, and one for Mr. Dixon as well.
She must have had it ready
, Tole thought.

“No lemon for me,” said Mr. Dixon.

Tole sipped his tea and tried to swallow quietly.

“It's funny,” Dixon went on. “I adore lemon meringue, a lemon cake, a lemon chess pie, and my wife makes the most delightful lemon squares you've ever tasted, but I can't stand the taste of an actual lemon. Isn't that strange? One of life's mysteries, I suppose.”

“Yes sir.”

“Speaking of wonderful things,” Mr. Dixon said. “You have children of your own?”

Tole paused, unsure how to answer. “No. No sir, I don't.”

“Swore I'd never have a family,” Dixon said. “Thought I was too old to be a father. Didn't think politics and fatherhood went too well together. Thought I'd always be too busy to raise children proper. But my daddy was always away, always at the office, so maybe it doesn't matter. It changes you, being a father. Didn't think I'd have enough love in my heart for a fifth child. Then my wife told me, and there it was. You'd think four would be enough to keep us busy, wouldn't you?”

“You would think,” Tole said.

“Yet every time we bring a new baby into this world, my heart makes room.”

“That's real special,” Tole said. He had learned long before to nod his head and agree when white men took to rambling on about whatever was on their mind. In those moments he would make his mind blank so he didn't say anything he'd regret.

“I'm hoping for a boy—Augusten. If it's been a girl, she'll be Lily Kate. We were originally going to let our oldest boy name it, but he's not the most trustworthy when it comes to baby names. He came to me and he said, ‘Daddy, if it's a boy, I want to name it Jonathan, after Grandpa. And if it's a little girl, I want to name it Stinky.' So we thought to go with Lily Kate, after my wife's mother. Shouldn't be long until we find out.”

Tole sipped the tea, waiting. Dixon looked him up and down, a crooked smile on his face. Tole knew the baby talk had been a test to see if Tole knew his place, which was to sit and listen quietly to whatever Dixon said. Tole passed.

“I didn't bring you all the way down here to go on about babies and lemon meringue,” Dixon said. “I don't want to waste your time, I'm sure you got many things to do.” Tole heard the sarcasm and let it pass. Another test passed.

“It's no bother, Mr. Dixon.”

“Heard some stories about you,” Dixon said.

“I wouldn't believe none if I were you.”

“Heard you were pretty sharp with a rifle.”

“I know how to use one properly, that's true.” His previous life had indeed caught up with him, and to be honest, Tole had known the conversation would go this way. He'd naively hoped it would be about something else: how, perhaps, a freeman from New York could help Mr. Dixon out with some issue that required a freeman's experiences. But he knew, because it was the only thing white men ever wanted of him, it would be this:
You were pretty sharp with a rifle
. This was the only skill of Tole's anyone ever remembered.

“Heard you were better than proper with a rifle. Heard you killed eight Union boys all by yourself back in New York. Sound like something you did?”

Tole nodded. “I've heard that.”

“Heard some other things, too. Heard you killed your first man for pay when you were just nineteen years old.”

“I know who told you that. They ain't to be trusted.” He guessed all men like Dixon knew how to find each other, and that the one in New York had found the one in Tennessee.

“Doesn't matter who told me,” Mr. Dixon said. “Just what I heard.”

Tole kept silent. He'd already said too much.

“Don't care about your past unless you think I should,” Mr. Dixon said, in a way that made it sound like a threat. “I called you here because I heard you were the best.”

“I may be the best at drinking whiskey until I piss my bed,” Tole said. “That's about the only thing I know for sure. Also, I know I haven't shot a rifle in a long time.” He was desperate to steer the conversation anywhere but to where he saw it was headed. He had given up that life.

Dixon smiled, big and toothy and utterly false. “There's this fellow across town, a real troublemaking son of a bitch, doesn't like the way I conduct my business. He thinks he can make a name for himself by ruining mine. Fellow goes by the name of Bliss, wears a hat with an orange feather. You know the one I'm talking about?”

“Can't say I do.”

Tole waited out the pause that followed. When Dixon spoke, it was clear, unmistakable. “I need Bliss to not be a problem anymore.”

“I don't think I understand,” Tole said. He wished he didn't understand, more like.

Dixon smiled again, grinned, eyes cold as fog. “You know, Tole, I don't like violence. I'm a family man. Was one of the first men to call for the bloodshed to stop when the war was still raging through these streets. But sometimes, it's the only way.”

“You mean the easiest way.”

“Is it easy?” Dixon was so eager to know. It was obscene, even to a man like Tole.

Tole didn't know how he should answer. Truth was, he was the most proficient sharpshooter to come out of New York. He was more at home holding a rifle than he ever was holding a woman or a child, and he had learned, after much resistance, that this was his fate in this world. This was, indeed, all he was good at. And though he had traveled far to leave his past at the bottom of an empty bottle, Dixon's question excited him a little, and then a little more. There was a part of him that missed it, hungered for the cold rush of knowing where he fit in the world. He missed being good at something.

“Now look,” Mr. Dixon said. “All I'm asking is for you to do something you've done a dozen times before. And you'll be rewarded. You've got my word on that. I've invited you into my home, and I hope you'll trust me to make good on my promise.”

“The man you been talking to must not have told you that I gave that life up a long time ago. I was a different man back then. I've changed.”

“'Course you've changed,” Dixon said dryly. “You're older and drunker. But people like you don't change that much, Tole. You are who you are. And I'm asking you politely, one more time, to join me in this venture. I think we could do great things together.”

Tole looked down at the table. “Just one job?”

“Just the one.”

“Because I'll only do the one. No more.”

“No more,” Dixon repeated. “Do we have a deal?”

Tole nodded assent, his eyes tracing the table's wood grain.

“Good.” A pause. “So this is how it's going to be done. There's a man who'll be giving a speech next Saturday morning. Around ten o'clock, in the middle of the courthouse square. I'm sure you've seen white men deliver these kinds of speeches before.”

“Time or two. Politics and such.”

“Very well then. I want you to find yourself some high-up place, a rooftop or an attic window, anywhere with a clear line of sight to the courthouse square. You'll want to have a straight shot to the podium. Understand?”

Tole nodded, amused that any man would think he needed advice about shooting.

“You'll see a man with a hat with an orange feather. That's Bliss. He's a bad man, Tole. He's the one I want you to dispose of. A real rabble-rouser. He leads men to make poor decisions, and we will not ever have peace with men like him around. He's more dangerous than he looks. You follow me?”

“Yes.”

“When he gets up to speak, a few of my—my friends will cause a little disturbance.”

“Disturbance?”

“A riot. Of sorts. They're going to crowd around, cause all kinds of havoc, and that's when you take your shot. In the chaos. No one will know what happened. You hear me?”

He did, and one more time Tole was trying and failing to figure out how to get out of the job when the door to the shed swung open and a black woman—skin a light creamy coffee color—stormed in, arms full. Sweat shone on her face. She didn't pause deferentially in Dixon's presence, but spoke to him as an equal. “Mr. Dixon, you have a new baby boy.”

“Wonderful news,” Dixon said, grinning with those big white teeth. “Wonderful. It's Augusten, then.”

“You want to see him?” the woman asked patiently, shifting the bundle she held.

“Of course! Of course! Tole, you'll excuse me? We understand each other?”

Tole nodded. The moment to change his destiny had passed, erased by a baby. Dixon left. Tole sat down to gather himself, and while he did so he watched the midwife.