Crossing Ebenezer Creek Read online

  “Col. L. and his entire staff are stinking drunk, after making ‘war’ on a distillery,” he wrote.

  The candle went out. Caleb reached for his brass match safe. With the candle flickering again, he went back and forth on what to write next.

  He thought about the waves of people who poured into the march mile after mile. “They come with hopeful hearts. Every evening somebody brings roasted groundnuts, persimmons, or some other gift to Capt. G.’s tent.”

  Caleb remembered the bright-looking young men who approached Captain Galloway yesterday. They stood at attention, gave the sharpest salutes. They wanted to join the army.

  “Want to help you lick the Rebels!” said one.

  Another: “Do our part for freedom!”

  Caleb could still see their downcast faces when the captain explained that there were no colored soldiers in Sherman’s army. “It’s outright lunatic that Sherman won’t let hale & hearty colored men join the ranks, but he will only take our labor. To his credit, at least he pays us.”

  Caleb sharpened his pencil.

  “When out foraging today Pvt. D. asked, ‘What is secesh?’ ” In talking with some colored people he got lost every time they spoke of ‘secesh.’ I explained that it meant Rebel, that it came from ‘secessionist.’ I then had to explain ‘secessionist.’ Capt. G. has gotten him and Pvt. S. to give up those beards & use shaving kits every day. He told me this a.m. that they have sworn off cards.”

  Caleb’s mind meandered to Mariah, to how it took every ounce of self-control not to take her in his arms as she talked about what happened to her pa, her ma. How he wished that he could hold her now.

  “Camped near Bostwick.”

  BEHOLD A PALE HORSE

  He came out of nowhere like a hound from hell. Mariah was about twenty yards from her campsite, lugging two buckets of water, when he charged toward her.

  “You!”

  She froze, turned. “Yes, sir?”

  Astride a pale horse, he looked Mariah up and down, pointed at his horse. “Water.”

  Trying not to tremble, she set a bucket before the horse, watched it dip its head down, looked away when it slobbered. Raising her head slightly, she saw the man looking out over the colored section of the camp. Everybody had stopped what they were doing. Mariah saw Chloe hugging Zeke and Dulcina to her bosom. She saw Zoe, Mordecai, and Jonah shrink back into the woods.

  “Girl!” the white man barked.

  Mariah swallowed. “Yes, sir?”

  “Look at me, girl!”

  Mariah obeyed but kept her head to the side.

  The man was a winter wind, his gaze chilling her to the bone. Spittle in his beard. Face unworldly white. Heavy-lidded blue eyes. Steel blue. Icy. Caleb was right. Deadly.

  General Reb.

  “Remove the bucket!” he commanded.

  Mariah obeyed, holding her breath as he spurred his horse, charged off, then cantered up and down knots of cringing colored people. All eyes lowered as he passed by. A time or two he stopped before a group. His horse reared up, grunted, squealed.

  And behold a pale horse! streaked through Mariah’s mind, taking her back to that jackleg preacher, Archibald Dyuvil, who came to the Chaney place at Christmastime. The man always took his text from the Book of Revelation, had a hard fascination with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The word “apocalypse” terrified little Mariah. More so after she asked her pa what it meant.

  “End of days.”

  Mariah could see, could hear that preacher reading one passage again and again. About the opening of seals, the noise of thunder, and four beasts saying, “Come and see … Come and see … Come and see …”

  A white horse, a red horse, a black horse—then the preacher paused. Rising to his full height, he bellowed, “And I looked, and behold a pale horse and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”

  Bible slammed shut, he shouted, “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse be War, Famine, Disease, and Death!”

  While General Reb taunted her people, Mariah remained motionless. She didn’t move a muscle until a trail of dust was all that remained of the pale horse and its pale-eyed rider.

  The man left evil in the air and Mariah sick to her stomach. A cup of red cedar bark tea didn’t help much.

  “Did he hurt anybody?” asked Caleb later that evening.

  “No,” replied Mariah. “Just seemed out to terrify.”

  “But thank the Lord, we had wagons hid like you told us,” said Chloe. “Nobody had to scatter and scramble.”

  Mariah wished Caleb didn’t have to go to the forge, wished he could stay longer than the time it took for him to hand out goods.

  And behold a pale horse! Those words haunted Mariah as she lay in the tent later that night, praying for sleep, for General Reb’s face to be wiped from memory. No sooner than it began to fade her mind was flooded with frightening news on the day’s grapevine. Rachel had heard of soldiers in another part of the march finding colored people tiresome. “Cast them out from their camp. Cast them out without so much as a kernel of corn. Sent them to their death or to a maulin’ for sure when Rebels come upon those poor souls.”

  Hagar had heard about a man who didn’t move fast enough when some soldiers ordered him to groom their horses. “Whipped the fella with their belts to get the name and place of his owner, then hog tied him and hauled him two miles back to the plantation, dumped him at his owner’s front door.” She had also heard that days back a couple of Yankees had snatched a young girl, dragged her into some woods, and—

  Rest easy.

  If only Caleb was there to repeat those words himself.

  Rest easy.

  In slavery Mariah had never known what it was to feel safe. And now she didn’t feel safe on the march.

  She remembered Caleb’s calmness during that first wagon ride. How sure he was of things. Mariah fixed her mind on that to banish the storm clouds in her mind.

  MANY THOUSAND GONE

  Caleb had pulled a muscle in his back in the forge the night before. Captain Galloway spared him forage duty. “Rest up. Heal quick,” he said.

  Caleb was sure he would with the comfrey poultice Chloe was applying to his back. As he sat there on a carbine crate, he saw his injury as a blessing in disguise. It meant a whole day with Mariah, who looked like a new penny.

  With the poultice in place and his back bound, Caleb harnessed and hitched the horses.

  “I’ll load,” said Mariah.

  “Let me help with some things.”

  “I insist.”

  Caleb didn’t argue. He stepped over to the cook spot for another cup of coffee. He was impressed with the orderly way Mariah got Dulcina and Zeke in the wagon, then the provisions and belongings.

  Things were a little more chaotic with the wagon Mordecai was set to drive carrying Hagar, Hosea, Rachel, Miriam, the Doubles.

  Ben placed little Rose on his pony.

  “Where’s Jonah?” Caleb asked.

  “Captain Galloway asked him last night to report early to run messages,” replied Mariah.

  Another blessing, thought Caleb.

  Then a shock.

  Wagon loaded, Mariah was climbing into the driver’s seat.

  Caleb poured the rest of his coffee onto the ground.

  “What do you think you’re doing, young lady?” He had reached the wagon.

  “What it look like?”

  “I ain’t crippled.”

  “But one wrong move and you could go from bad to worse.”

  “You can truly handle horses?” Caleb teased Mariah. “You sure I can trust you with my life? How I know you won’t drive us off a cliff or into a gully?”

  “Caleb, you can trust me. With your life. With anything else.”

  Caleb reached into his back pocket for his buckskin gloves, and handed them to Mariah.

  “Who taught you to drive?” They were about a half mile along.

  “My pa.”

  Behind them so
me distance, people riding on mules, in oxcarts and wagons, along with ones walking had been singing “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel.” Now they switched to “Many Thousand Gone.”

  No more auction block for me.

  No more, no more.

  No more auction block for me …

  On they sang of terrors, of toil. No more peck of corn, driver’s lash, pint of salt, hundred lash, mistress call, children stole.

  No more slavery chains for me.

  The refrain was a shout.

  Many thousand gone!

  “Yes, thank God.” Mariah sighed. “Thank God, many thousand gone.”

  “Come on,” said Caleb. “Let’s hear you sing.”

  “Oh no, you don’t want that.”

  “I bet you’re a regular little songbird. Bet you have a lovely voice.”

  Mariah looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Caleb, I can’t carry a tune to save my life.”

  He had never met a girl so guileless. It made her all the more adorable. “What else did your pa teach you?”

  “Swim, fish, trap.”

  Mariah’s hands were practically swimming in his gloves, but the girl was more than making do. Caleb had to admit it. Mariah could drive. Right amount of give and take on the reins. Knew how to take a curve. Not once did she crack the whip.

  Caleb found it hard to keep his eyes on the road or on anything else other than Mariah. He was trying to occupy his mind with the silky, swirling bands of clouds when Mariah asked, “When you go out with a forage team, do you bust into homes and stores like we heard soldiers do?”

  “I stay clear of all that. Just load what I’m told to load.”

  “So how is it that you’re able to bring us things? Seen you give things to Hagar and others too.”

  “On occasion I find things lying in the street, on the side of a road. Banjo, jackets, hats, parasols, trousers. Cases where soldiers weren’t in a mood to take, just ransack. Something in particular you need?”

  “No. Just curious.”

  “Other times I put it out there some of the things people could use. Pay for it with favors. Shoe a horse and things like that, or trade with something a soldier asked me to be on the lookout for.”

  “That’s how you got my boots. Put it out that there was a need?”

  “Uh-huh. Lately, most of what I come by is thanks to Privates Sykes and Dolan. They keep an eye out. Oftentimes soldiers just grab and dash. Don’t really know what they got till they camp and start sorting.”

  “The first time those two handed out food they looked at us like … creatures from the moon.”

  Caleb laughed. “Most of them have no idea, no custom with being person to person, white with colored. But Private Sykes and Private Dolan they are trying. One of the blacksmiths with the Fourteenth is an uncle of Private Sykes. So I help the uncle out at his forge sometimes. And Sykes helps me out.”

  “Blacksmith, that’s your trade?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Trained up from young?”

  “Yup.”

  Caleb felt uneasy about this turn in the conversation. He was fast thinking about how he could turn it back to the march.

  “Can I ask you something, Caleb?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Your speech has a—you talk with a little more polish than I’ve ever heard from colored. Did your master let you learn openly?”

  Caleb looked away, rubbed his chin. “I guess you could say I was allowed to learn openly.”

  “So your whitefolks wasn’t all-out crazy?”

  Caleb shrugged.

  “Your ma and pa, they were on the same place?”

  Caleb started to tell her the truth, then thought better of it. Now wasn’t the right time. He just wanted to enjoy her. “Yeah, my folks they lived together,” he finally said.

  “Were they—”

  Thank goodness—a bugle call came. Halt!

  As soon as Mariah brought the horses to a stop, Caleb eased down from the wagon. “Want to find out why he stopped. Won’t be long.”

  “Another bridge Rebels burned,” Caleb explained when he returned.

  “Any idea how long before the pion—I mean, the pontoniers be finished?”

  Caleb smiled. What a head she was developing for all this soldier business in just a few days. “Not long,” he replied. And now that the conversation had moved from him to the march, Caleb was determined to keep it that way.

  “They say Rebels in all kinds of confusion. Can’t make out if Uncle Billy’s boys are aiming for Macon or Augusta. Some predict he will cut east and storm South Carolina.”

  “Wait now, who’s Uncle Billy?”

  “General Sherman. Troops call him Uncle Billy,” Caleb explained. “Loyal to the death. Anyhow, soldiers sent on destruction raids are going above and beyond. When wrecking railroad track, bending rails into hairpins and neckties not enough for some. They aim for something more insulting to Southern soil, like twisting rails into a giant US.”

  “Us?”

  “No, short for United States.”

  “Why all the destruction? Why don’t Sherman simply hunt down as many Rebel soldiers as he can?”

  “Rebel soldiers not his main concern.”

  “Who is?”

  “Sherman’s out to terrify civilians—the everyday people. Figures if he makes their lives hell, they’ll clamor for Georgia to quit the Confederacy. Surrender.”

  Mariah looked worried. “But what if it don’t work, what if—?”

  “With or without Georgia, Confederacy is on its last legs. Lost cause.”

  Mariah didn’t look like she believed him. She had gone from the picture of delight to the picture of worry.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Last summer, in July, y’all heard about Gettysburg and Vicksburg?”

  “The battles?”

  Caleb nodded. “Gettysburg made Rebels abandon hope of invading the North. After Vicksburg the Union was on the way to getting back control of the Mississippi.” Caleb saw Mariah still looked worried. “And by smashing up Atlanta, Sherman destroyed a chief source of weapons and other supplies.”

  “Caleb, couldn’t there be some battle up ahead that the Union could lose?”

  “Could be, but the Union will win the war.”

  “But what if they don’t? What if—if the Union lose … will the Captain Galloways of the world have to—”

  Now Mariah looked downright terrified.

  “Have to do what?”

  “Give us back?”

  “No one’s giving you back, Mariah. Nobody’s giving anybody back.”

  Ten minutes later, they were on the move again. When they reached a wide stretch Caleb saw Mordecai’s wagon gaining on them.

  “Mordecai and Chloe?” Caleb asked. “I notice most nights he cozies to her the most. Was there a time when they were, you know—”

  “Coupled up?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Mariah shook her head. “Looks to me like Mordecai out to make up for lost time.”

  “Lost time?”

  “Yep.” Mariah turned to Caleb. “I reckon about … thirty years.”

  Caleb asked God to let him grow old with Mariah.

  “The way I heard it, they had eyes for each other, but as a boy Mordecai vowed to never marry so long as he was in bondage. Didn’t want to ever see his wife or children abused.”

  “That’s some sacrifice—and Chloe strikes me as one of the finest women God ever made.”

  “A saint.”

  Caleb noticed that Mariah was squinting. He removed his hat, plopped it on her head, and tipped the brim down.

  “Thanks much.” She smiled. “Anyhow, Miss Chloe, she tried to get Mordecai to budge by tellin’ him that her whitefolks wasn’t all-out vicious. And that was true. Never struck any of their slaves. Never had anybody whipped. Never had that many slaves to begin with. I think five at most. The Doubles, their butler, Jim, who died last year, and the housekeeper, Gertie, who
decided to stay. But back to Miss Chloe. See, she argued that if her whitefolks ever gave her a cussin’, he would not be there to hear it. She said them bein’ on two different places was good. Would make their Sundays together much sweeter.”

  “Thirty years, that’s a long time to hold out on love. Think they’ll marry now?”

  “I hope so. They long overdue for some happiness.”

  In a different time and place Caleb would have inched closer and slipped his arm around Mariah’s waist.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, you and Jonah. You two ever—?”

  “No.”

  Caleb loved the quick response. So definite.

  “Jonah’s another brother to me. Nothing more.”

  “Seems to me Jonah would like to be more than a brother.”

  Mariah pursed her lips. “Can we talk about somethin’ else?”

  Caleb gave her a salute. “Yes, Captain Mariah!”

  “Captain?” she said. “Can’t I be your general?”

  Caleb melted under Mariah’s sly and frisky smile.

  Sweetest day of my life, Caleb thought later that night, a night bearing easy breezes and calm. Just about everybody seemed in a light mood.

  Hosea on the banjo he’d found for him. Ben playing the spoons. One gaggle of youngsters did the cakewalk. Another was patting juba.

  Jonah was the exception. Sour all through supper and afterward he stomped off. Caleb was glad he did. But he hoped Jonah would cool off, recognize that he wasn’t the one at fault. A man can’t keep what he never had.

  Caleb was grateful to Mordecai and the Doubles for once again giving him and Mariah private time. After supper, with oversight of Dulcina, they passed the time with Hosea and Hagar’s band.

  Caleb didn’t mind sharing Mariah with Zeke at all. He enjoyed watching her tickle him, make funny faces.

  When Mariah settled Zeke down and began darning a sock, Caleb went to work on the timberdoodle he’d started the other day. As she talked, Caleb whittled away.

  “Cabbages big as moons!” Mariah exclaimed, recalling her ma’s garden.

  When she fell silent, Caleb feared bad memories were creeping up. But then she jumped up, smiled. “I want to show you some things.”