Come Juneteenth (20 page)

"Me, too."

"Remember, no sass."

"No sass," I agreed.

I turned and started walking back to the convent.

Y
OU WOULD
think things were all right after that. They were, in small portions, like a spoon of sugar in a lifetime's cup of coffee. We had more bitter than sweet between us. And because of that we trod like the ground was full of rattlesnakes that I couldn't shoot in a hundred years.

I sit here in my room of the log house, the same room Pa had when he was alive, and I have my after-school cup of tea and write in my diary. Bone weary I am and only twenty-one years of age.

I have been teaching school here now for what seems like years. I teach the freedmen's children. It's a promise Pa made to them that 19th of June when he gave them their freedom so many years ago, and an obligation we have. The freedmen call the day Juneteenth now and have a great celebration.

I teach eight children. I could do more.

Pa died the summer Gabe and I came home from our trip. He did not take it well that Sis Goose was dead.
Gabe wanted to spare him and me by telling him that Heffernan shot her.

But I said, "Please, Gabe," because I don't sass him anymore, "please let me tell him the truth."

He looked hesitant.

"Pa always liked the truth," I reminded him. "It's about Southern honor."

He just looked at me with a strange light in his eyes and said, "Go ahead."

And so I did. Did I say it was easy? Pa lay in bed and cried. Gabe looked away, out the window. I wiped Pa's eyes. "My poor little Goose Girl," he said, "and carrying a child, too. My first grandchild. Yours, Gabe. You sure you tried your best to get her back?"

"Yes, sir." Gabe's answer covered a whole range of emotions.

Then Pa said, "My poor Luli. What a way to have to grow up."

Within a week he died. We buried him in the family cemetery.

Now Ma was something else. She took us both into the kitchen and gave us what-for. Couldn't we have done this? And why didn't we think of that? If both of us were just a bit younger she'd whip us with a broom handle. The two of us, the best shots in the county, and we couldn't put a bullet between that man's eyes? "What happened to you, Gabe, when you took that first shot?"

"I didn't...," he answered, "you know..."

"No, I don't. Why don't you tell me."

"I didn't know she was carrying my child, Ma. The idea threw me like the best bronco in the corral."

She looked at me. "I know you didn't tell me. You didn't tell him, either?"

I shrank into the floor. I told her no. And to her why, oh to her why I said I thought it was Sis Goose's place to tell him.

For the first time in my life Ma slapped me. On the face. Even Gabe winced and tried to protect me. "She had my back in the gunfight, Ma. C'mon, she's had a rough time."

"She wouldn't have had to have your back if she'd properly prepared you for what was coming. Playing games is what she was doing."

"Come on, Ma. Jeez. You don't know what she's been through. I can't allow you to treat her like this."

Mama's eyes popped. "You can't allow ... you ... can't allow..."

Gabe worked his charm then, and he had plenty of it. He put his arm around Ma's shoulders. "You gonna kick me out?" he asked her. "Hey? Where do I go next? The barn?"

She broke then as he knew she would. She cried against his broad chest, and he held her while she cried it out. He signaled me with his head to leave the room for now, and so I went upstairs to my room.

He came upstairs in a little bit. I heard him talking
softly to Ma, bringing her along, settling her in her room. Then he came to mine and closed the door. "I'm sorry about all that," he said.

"Thanks for defending me."

"It's part of what I do. I wasn't fast enough this time." He came over to my bed, where I was sitting looking through some pictures. He put a hand under my chin and turned my face toward him. "Wow. You better get down to Mercy Love's and get some remedy for that. It's starting to swell."

I nodded.

"Ma will get over it. It's just her way of responding to the news."

"All we need is for us to get over it," I told him.

He sighed. "You're doing good, Luli. You're recovering."

It is taking time, lots of time, but I am recovering. Don't I go once a week to our cemetery to lay flowers on Pa's grave? Didn't I greet Granville when he came home, all properlike? Didn't I take part in Christmas like I wasn't dying inside?

And what about how I folded and put away all Sis Goose's things and left them outside Gabe's door? He said nothing, but one day when he was making one of his trips to Indian country to visit friends he'd made there during the war, he took them with him. Didn't I behave with decorum when Granville told Gabe it was time to send me to school and didn't I make the trip down there with Granville without any trouble?

I put up with the silly girls at school, didn't I? I was even sort of a big sister to some of the younger ones. And I even met a young man of good breeding and danced with him and pretended I didn't have a care in the world. Until he confided in me how he unwittingly hurt his brother while rolling around and playing rough on the ground outside.

"He's paralyzed," he confided in me. "And he's my twin."

I didn't tell him about my sin at first. But I accepted an invitation to dinner at his family's home. And now that I'm home again, back from school and teaching the children on our ranch, we write back and forth regularly. Gabe said I could invite him for Christmas. I've told Gabe what happened with Billy and his brother, and he just closed his eyes for a minute and said, "If that's what it takes, Luli, if that's what it takes."

I'm educated now. Among other things I can quote Shakespeare. A good man to quote. All that hatred and killing.

I can, and do, help Mama keep the books. She is retired now but still keeps an eagle eye on things.

The Yankees left in the spring of '69. They didn't leave Texas, no. Our state is still under what they call Reconstruction. Which sometimes turns out to be more of a punishment for Texans than anything. And lots of plantations, including Aunt Sophie's, are still occupied. Gabe rode over there a few times and came home to tell us it
was a mess. And there are Aunt Sophie and my sister Amelia, still making their homes in Europe.

I went with Ma and Gabe into our house after the Yankees were gone. The oak floors were scratched. The draperies all torn and ruined, as were the chairs and settles and whatever other furniture was left.

Old rusty guns were on the floor in the dining room. Good dishes were cracked and broken. There were messages left on the walls in paint.

I heard Ma give a little gasp. "Don't worry, Ma, we'll have it fixed up in no time," Gabe promised.

I had already written to Granville in Mexico to bring everything back.

We stayed in the log house until our old house was lovely and beckoned us to live in it again.

Granville even brought back the Thoroughbreds. It is my job to exercise them every day. I guess Gabe thinks I need the fresh air. Either that or he has nobody else to do it properly. And I do it properly, right to the brushing down. I don't need any more scoldings from Gabe. All they do is bruise me and lacerate him.

I gave nobody any trouble. Until the day came for me to move back into the big house, and then I told them no, I'm going to stay.

"What do you mean you're going to stay here in the log house?" Gabe said.

"I feel safe here. All my things are here."

"We'll bring them inside."

I just wanted to be alone. Couldn't they see it? Wasn't I old enough?

"No," Gabe said firmly. "We're a family. There's not much left of us, but what's left is a family. Pa is gone. Granville is gone. Amelia is gone. Sis Goose is gone. There's only us for now, damn it, and we're a family!"

Sis Goose's name hung in the air between us. Nobody talked about her anymore. Her name swung back and forth, hit me in the face, and then hit him.

"No," he said again.

I knew that "no." I grew up with it. "All right," I said. "I'll come."

So I did. But gradually, because I always knew my way around Gabe, I left them. Piece by piece I left them. I'd say I was studying or going over my next day's school-work and I needed to use the schoolroom, and I'd burn a lamp late and then fall asleep on the old settle in Pa's study.

Edom died. He must have been over a hundred. We found him dead one day in the back room. It didn't put me off. The place was now all mine. We buried him next to Pa, and now it seemed like all ties to the past were broken.

On those nights when I fell asleep in the study, I'd leave a lamp burning and Gabe would come in and extinguish the lamp and cover me over, and I'd hear words about "you burning the place down and yourself with it" in my dreams.

Every so often Gabe would leave for a few days to take a trip. He had the running of the place mastered. Those days I was to stay in the house with Ma. Strict orders. Sam was in charge but still deferred to Ma. Nobody knew where Gabe went on these trips. But he'd go once every two months or so. And he'd always take some blankets or trinkets for old Indian friends from before the war.

Did he go to San Felipe to visit the nuns and Ham?

Did he go a little farther into that sad little town to visit Sis Goose's grave?

He never said. I knew better than to ask.

What he needed was a woman, I decided. Granville had wired us that he'd taken a wife, a beautiful Mexican girl, and one of these days he'd bring her home to visit.

When he did come home, Gabe always brought some Indian trinkets for me and Ma. He could have passed their reservation along the way.

Finally, I just moved into the log house full time. Nobody said anything. I only went home when Gabe took one of his trips. I fixed the place the way I wanted it, with old rag rugs that Mama gave me. I had the kitchen pots and utensils. Mama let me keep the china from the log house, and on the walls I have drawings the children made me.

My expensive schooling paid off in the end, anyway. And so here I sit in my study and wait. Usually I don't know for what. But this time I do. I am waiting for Gabe to come back from his latest trip. For no reason, except
that when he does, I won't have to sleep in the big house anymore and take care of Mama.

I
T IS DUSK
when he comes. Soon I must go to Mama's for supper. I hear the knock on the front door. He always knocks out of politeness to me. I rush through the gallery, down the hall to the front door. I open it and he is standing there. There is someone with him.

A little boy, about eight years of age. Younger than Ham was when we found him.

He is an Indian boy, though, dressed in leggings and fringed shirt and moccasins, with dark hair and the loveliest brown eyes I ever saw.

I look into Gabe's eyes and for the first time since I shot Sis Goose, his eyes smile back into mine. "Hello, Luli," he says.

I nod and look at the boy.

"This is Sits in the Sun. I brought him to learn at your school."

I nod again, and the little boy extends his hand and I take it. "Hello, Miss Luli," he says.

I gasp. "He speaks English."

Gabe nods. "I've taught him."

They step into the house and I am full of questions, but I know better than to ask. In due time Gabe will talk. And he does, when I bring out some tea and some milk and biscuits for the boy.

The child is looking at the walls, at the drawings of my students.

"Right after he was born, Luli," he says with great difficulty, "I ... shot his mother in a battle. Never meant to do it. She was running away with him. My shot caught her, and..."

"It's all right," I say.

"No, no, it's never all right, honey. We must never mark it as all right. I'm not the father. Want you to know. He's dead. Relatives were raising him. I'd stop by and visit. Bring some things. Keep an eye out. Lately, I've been stopping by a lot. Since my own child was lost."

I let him finish. Let the words crackle with the fire in the hearth and find their way up the chimney to the heavens. That's the only place they could be understood. There and here. In my heart.

I let him finish.

"I'd like you to educate him," he says. Like he needed to ask.

I keep nodding. I would have nodded a yes to the devil himself at the moment. Because all I knew was that what we both needed had just walked through the door in the person of a precious little Indian boy who had nobody to care for him but two broken people looking for a way to get whole again.

"It would be nice," Gabe goes on, "if you'd kind of take over with him. Let Ma be the grandmother. She
needs that right now. But for that, you'd have to come and live in the house again. Could you do that, you think?"

The little boy is eating his biscuits and drinking his milk. He smiles at me. "Papa says I have to learn to sleep in a bed," he tells me.

"Papa, is it?" I tease my brother. I won't let him off the hook on that one for a while, you can wager.

Gabe has the decency to blush. "He insists," he says.

"Then let him say it."

We finish our repast. I bring the dishes into the kitchen and wash them. Then I pick up a cloak. It just happens to be the blue velvet, worn from use now. I put it on and go back into the study where they are waiting for me.

"Come on, Sits in the Sun," I say. "Let's go home."

F
OR OVER
five years now I've wanted to do a book on Juneteenth, the name given to June 19th, the day in Texas, in 1865, that the slaves finally received their freedom. If you do the math, yes, it is more than two years after the slaves in the East were freed. And if you start to wonder how such a thing came to pass, you can stop wondering. No one I asked can tell me how the Texas ranchers could keep their slaves in bondage while those in the East were free.

As for the book I wanted to do, I could think of no appropriate approach. The subject was as big as the state itself. I knew I had to narrow it down, personalize it. But I could think of no fitting plot. Slavery itself was too big a plot. It would smother me and the reader. No, I had to have a story first. Then I would deal with the history closing in all around it.