Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 (4 page)

“What I’m trying to say is that I have all ideas that Aaron Collins won’t take kindly to his son courting my daughter, and you should realize that before you set foot in his house on his son’s arm. I’m not going to ask you not to go, but I want you to think about what you might be letting yourself in for. I’m afraid I have a lot of enemies now. But you have to make up your own mind about the way you feel.”

Lena had been silently dipping up the fish stew into wooden bowls. As she placed them on the table, she grinned. “Praise be, John. For once, you’re staying out of the child’s life. If you’ll keep that up, maybe she’ll be lucky enough to land Nathan for a husband, and then some of the miserable years I’ve spent with you will seem almost worthwhile.”

Years of living with her nagging had taught John that she only got worse if she thought her needling irritated him. Turning his head slightly so he wouldn’t even have to look at her, he turned his full attention upon the daughter he loved so much that it helped make up for some of his own misery in the life he’d shared with Lena.

“Weldon Edwards is going to be at that party. You know who he is?”

Kitty nodded, slipping from his lap to take a seat on the bench. “He’s a Radical, and he wants war.”

“Right. He’s here to round up support for a secession meeting planned in Raleigh, and he’s also soliciting funds from wealthy slave owners like Aaron Collins to help finance the cause and get an army ready.”

“I don’t care about that or the talk of war, Poppa, because I want to go to the party and just have a good time.”

Lena dramatically pretended to drop her spoon. “Praise be to hear you say so, Katherine. Maybe the good Lord has heard my prayers, after all. You just go on to that party and keep your mouth shut about your father’s traitorous political views. You believe every word he says as though it were God’s own gospel. But you keep your mouth shut, and you just might snare Nathan Collins for a husband and find yourself living in that mansion of theirs, with slaves to wait on you hand and foot, and you’ll never have to worry about a thing for the rest of your life.”

John slowly shook his head from side to side, a sad expression on his face. It became increasingly difficult to remember any love he might have once had for his wife. More and more, he was called upon to stretch the recesses of his mind to attempt to remember a good reason for ever having married her in the first place. Beauty? Yes, that was what had attracted him. Lena had once been beautiful. Not nearly so lovely as Kitty, but, back then, Lena had been the prettiest girl around. And sweet, too. She never nagged or complained, hanging on to his every word as she vowed that all she wanted from life was to be his wife and follow him to the end of the world, if need be.

“Your mother makes it sound so simple,” he said finally, eyes grim above his wrinkled, sun-parched face. “Life isn’t all that easy, honey, and I hope you never get the idea that it is.”

“Let’s don’t talk about it anymore.” Kitty felt uneasy as the tension in the room mounted. “I’ll go to the party and have a good time and won’t worry about political issues.”

“You should never concern yourself with political issues,” her mother said sharply.

John stiffened. Over and over again, he’d told himself never to drag out philosophies and ideals and display them for all to see and make light of. He would do well to keep his feelings and opinions locked safely inside. But more and more lately, with the countryside alive with all the talk of secession and war, it was becoming harder and harder to keep silent.

“Politics affects women’s lives, too,” he said stiffly. “Why shouldn’t a woman be aware of the world about her? It’s refreshing to talk to a female who knows about something besides havin’ babies and cooking.”

Lena’s eyes blazed. “If I had a servant to do all my work for me, maybe I’d have time to concern myself with other things. I’d sit on a porch swing and fan myself and spend my days reading poetry and approving menus and giving orders on how I want my house run. I’d have a baby every year like you’d have me do, because I’d have a wet nurse to take care of it.

“But I don’t have the time to learn about anything else, because all I do is work my fingers to the bone around here. A poor provider you’ve been, John Wright. I’ve had to grovel for every bite rye ever put in my mouth since I married you!”

Their eyes met and held angrily. John brushed at the tip of his nose with the back of his hand, then tucked both hands into his pockets, as though he were afraid of what might happen if he didn’t confine them.

“And you’ve been a damned poor wife, Lena.” His voice came out hoarse and rasping. “I know you hurt a lot when Kitty was born, but all women hurt when they have babies. But you thought you were something special, and you didn’t like the pain, so ever since then, you’ve used every excuse you could find to turn me away from you. But you and I both know it’s because you’re not woman enough to try to have another baby!

“Say it!” His voice rose. “Why don’t you tell the truth for once in your life instead of needling and nagging and lying about
me
?”

Out came his right hand, and he balled it into a fist and brought it crashing down on the table, angry with himself for letting her rile him so, Each time she would start one of her attacks, he would promise himself not to let her make him lose his temper again…and each time he lost all control of his senses. He had never hit her. She had not quite driven him to that point, and he prayed she never would, but his hands trembled with the desire to strike her.

Lena’s eyes were darting with anger as her tongue pushed against her teeth nervously, anxious to attack. Her body twitched with excitement.

“How dare you talk to me this way in front of Katherine?” The words came out in a rush. “I wasn’t afraid to have another baby, you old fool. It was the thoughts of your touching me that made me sick. You’re lazy, John Wright…lazy and shiftless, and a nigger-lover to boot! You’re no good, and all our neighbors are calling you ‘white trash’ because of your fool Federalist notions. The truth is—you don’t want war because you’re too big a coward to fight!”

Kitty’s eyes were on her father, frightened at the way the color was rising in his cheeks above his beard.

Suddenly, swiftly, he reached down and snatched up the bowl of fish stew sitting in front of him, and, with one swift motion, sent it hurtling through the air to crash and splatter against the far wall of the kitchen. Jumping up, his chair falling with a dull plop onto the clay floor, he towered over Lena, his body almost convulsing in anger.

“You get out of my sight, woman, or I’ll give you the beating you’re begging for. Don’t say another word to me, or so help me, I think I’ll kill you!”

Face pinched, knowing she had pushed him as far as she dared, Lena swished from the kitchen and disappeared into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

John picked up his chair and slumped down into it, hand over his chest. Kitty started to get something to clean up the mess from the thrown stew, but she turned to him anxiously instead. “Are you all right? You look funny…” And then her voice broke. “Oh, Poppa, I hate it when you two fight like that!”

“I know, I know.” He waved a hand in the air for silence, not wanting to hear any admonishment. “It scares me the way she can make me so angry. She makes me lose almost all control, and one day, she’ll bring out the worst…” He shuddered.

Kitty went about cleaning up the mess from the wall and the floor as John sat in silence. When she finished, he stood up once again and held out his hand to her. “Let’s go out to the barn and take another look at Betsy and the new calf.”

They walked side by side, hand in hand, across the bare ground. Next spring they would plant potatoes and beans and corn in the clearings beyond, and Kitty would be right beside her father, helping him furrow rows and little trenches where the seeds would be sown.

It was a much different scene from the farm of Aaron Coffins, with his maybe four hundred acres, abundant with plantings of corn, tobacco, and cotton. Aaron Collins had the slaves necessary to work such vast holdings, and the threat of slavery being abolished caused him, and others like him, much apprehension and worry.

John paused to stare out at the clearing, now raw and stubbled with broken, dying, cornstalks. “I believe those Scuppernong vines are going to have a good harvest next year, Kitty. You know what that means? I might just have a money-making crop besides the money I’ll get from the beehives.” He sighed. “If war doesn’t come…” His voice trailed off, evidence of his depression and concern over the clouds that were gathering in the South.

Kitty didn’t want to talk about war. She chose instead to pursue the subject of the grapes. “I hope they do better than those vines you planted a few years ago. We hardly got enough from them to have fruit for cobblers.”

“Well, I went to Raleigh about this variety, because I’d read in one of those agricultural newspapers about how the Scuppernong will grow in this soil, ‘cause it’s sandy. I talked to one of those agricultural men, and he told me all about setting them out…what to do for them and all. And it looks as though I just might have something.”

“I hope so.” She squeezed his hand as he continued to gaze thoughtfully across the empty fields.

“Tobacco’s going to be king one day,” he said. “No matter what them agricultural fellows say about abandoning it for a less demanding crop. Sure, it exhausts the soil. And I’ve read about how a planter should move his crop around each year from one acre to another, but how can you do that when you don’t have that much land to start with? Maybe some farmers will have to give it up, but it’s still going to be king. Remember that, because all of this will be yours one day. You learn what you can, and you turn this land into tobacco land. There’s still plenty of ground where you see all that timber over yonder. I’m not as poor as your mother thinks. As long as a man’s got land, he’s never poor.”

He paused, as though lost in thought, then took a deep breath and went on. “Sure, I had to sell off some land now and then, and I hated having to do it, but I’ve hung on. I’d rather have my land than all the gold on earth, because you know it’s going to be there tomorrow. With money, you never know.

“Don’t ever sell this land, Kitty, girl,” he said, almost fiercely. “I’d rather see you starve to death, I think, than sell the Wright land.”

“I won’t, Poppa,” she said firmly, “but if war comes…”

“If war comes, we’ll lose everything.” He ground out the words. “Men who want war are fools. I say free the slaves and let all men live free. Let those with large plantations hire their labor or dig the soil themselves. War will destroy us. Civil war can be glorious news to none but demons or mindless fools…or maddened men. And I, for one, will never take up arms to defend slavery!”

They walked on slowly toward the barn, each in private thought. Kitty pushed thoughts of war from her mind, and she thought instead of the magnificent Collins mansion, with its avenue of tall cedars leading the way from the main road around a circular drive. There was wisteria in the spring, glorious lavender blossoms splashing down over the verandas, bright and cheery against the white-washed brick of the two-story columnar house. And the lawn was green and rolling. It was beautiful. She’d been there several times, riding in the wagon beside her father as he delivered honey from his beehives to the Collins family.

Turning her head slightly, she looked back at the dilapidated little house that was her home. Three rooms and the added-on kitchen. But she was grateful for whatever was given to her. She’d never coveted the riches and wealth of others. Sure, there had been times in the past, when she attended the one-room schoolhouse in the settlement, when classmates had snubbed her and the other poor children. But she had held her head up proudly, remembering her father’s declaration that “a man’s true wealth is valued by
the purity of his soul”, and she liked to think
her
soul
was
pure, therefore making her extremely wealthy.

“I had a dream once,” her father was saying, a faraway look in his eyes. “I guess you could even call it an illusion, maybe, but either way, I was going to take this land that’s been in the Wright family for two generations…and I was going to make it into one of the finest plantations in all of North Carolina. But to do that, I had to have slaves, and I didn’t believe in it then, just as I don’t believe in slavery now. So most of the land stands in uncleared timber.”

He stopped walking again, turning to put his hands on Kitty’s shoulders as he gazed down into her eyes. “I guess what I want now is to one day see you do to this land what I couldn’t.”

His hands dropped away, his shoulders slumping as he began shuffling along. “An old man’s dream, I guess. War will come, and the land will be lost along with every Southerner’s dream. But I don’t guess I’ll ever stop dreaming. A man shouldn’t ever part with his dreams or illusions, ‘cause when they’re gone, well…he might still exist but he will have ceased to live.”

“I’ll share your dream, Poppa.” She blinked back the tears. “Together, we can make it come true.”

“Another thing, Kitty,” he said thoughtfully. “Don’t be mad with your mother. She’s not the girl I married. Just pity her, as I do, and try to love her in spite of the way she is. I know it’s hard, but I guess it’s what God wants us to do, ‘cause when He gets tired of the way she acts, He’ll just deal with her directly. It’s not up to me to beat her in the ground the way I’d like to sometimes…”

She laughed, because his eyes were twinkling and he was no longer angry. The tension had passed.

Reaching the barn, John paused. “I’m going to take you into town tomorrow and buy you the prettiest hoop dress we can find. I’ve got some money put back from selling honey, and I want you to walk into Aaron Collins’s house looking so pretty that every man there will turn his head to look at you!”

Laughing, he reached out to tug one of her long braids. “That is, you’ll be pretty if I can get you to stop braiding your hair like an Indian and fix yourself up a bit.” Then, his voice gruff with emotion, he added, “I just want the best for you, girl.”