Читать книгу Leroy - K.G. Griffin - Страница 6

Leroy awoke in the early Tennessee dawn and lay still thinking, just thinking: What would he do now? Darkness closed in on his thoughts as he sighed, then moaned, while a single tear ran down his cheek. “If only I could’ve fought like my brothers. I could have been like David fightin’ Goliath, and maybe my extra effort would have rallied the Rebels and made the difference.”

Leroy was now a skinny ten-year-old with a shock of blonde, almost white hair and eyebrows of the same shade that complemented his pale blue eyes. He had a smattering of freckles across his nose and almost always wore a serious expression, due to the trauma of the war. He was about average in height for his age, but definitely wiry. He tried to keep his emotions in check, but that was not always possible, and when he felt especially blue, he sought the company of his faithful mule, Molly.

Finally, he rose to go about his chores, what chores there were since so much had been lost due to the war. The 120-acre Stockard farm, located in Wayne County, Tennesse, had once thrived with cotton, wheat, corn and cattle but was now in ruin with broken fences, crops destroyed and no tools left even if there had been a harvest. But there was still one banty hen. Maybe she had laid an egg he could fry up for his mother. He quickly dressed in his homespun shirt and trousers that were way too short and headed to the hen house, and yes, sweet chicky had come through after all. “Here, chicky, chicky,” he called as he reached to retrieve the prize. “You’ve done your job after all, little one.”

Leroy hurried back into the house to fix the egg before his mother woke, but instead he found her staring out the front window in a daze. “Maw, we have an egg. I’ll fix it fur you.” She turned and looked at him with a vacant stare and then sank to the floor. “Maw, it’s okay. I’m here. Don’t worry; we’ll be okay.” He soothed her unkempt hair, kissed her cheek, helped her to her feet and directed her to the table. The wood stove had already been lit to bring some warmth, so he placed a generous spoon full of lard in the cast iron skillet and soon had the egg sizzling. If only I had a side of bacon, he thought. He placed the egg on a small bone china plate painted with blue bells and sprouts of hollyhocks and put it in front of his mother. Then he took a silver fork, monogrammed with his mother’s initials eSj for Eliza Jane Stockard and placed it in her hand, but her arm went limp and fell back to the table. He then picked up the fork and began to feed her.

Afterwards, Leroy led her back to her disheveled bed. He returned to the kitchen to find a piece of stale bread which he used to sop up what was left of the egg and downed it quickly with a glass of warm milk. His older brother Samuel had already been up that morning to milk Smiley. Samuel stomped up the back steps, trying to shake the mud from his boots before entering the house.

Samuel already had the bearing of a young man. He was tall for his age and looked older than his 12 years, and he carried himself with assurance and authority. He resembled his deceased dad with brown hair and brown eyes. He had been delegated man of the house, and he took that assignment seriously, although he had learned that barking orders did not work well with Leroy or their sister Mary Jane. He found asking instead of telling worked best. He too was as skinny as a rail as food was not in abundant supply.

Samuel asked, “How’s Maw this mornin’?”

“No better,” Leroy responded. “I’m gonna ride Molly to Doc Browning’s and see if he can take a look at her.”

Just then, their older sister Mary Jane came in the front door. “Did I hear you say Maw’s no better?”

Mary Jane was the oldest of the three having recently turned 14. She and Samuel favored in their facial features, but she had a sunnier disposition. She had curly hair that she struggled to keep in place and a wide grin that would break loose when she thought of something humorous. She had determined the war was not going to get her down. She wanted to mother her brothers, but they, of course, would have none of that. She wore a tattered dress passed down from her maw, which she had tried to alter, taking in the hem and the cuffs, but her sewing skills were somewhat lacking.

“Right. I tried to git her to eat an egg this mornin’. I had to feed her myself. I knowed she woulda done better fur you if only you’d been here,” griped Leroy.

“I doubt that. Anyways, I had to stay all night at the Millers helpin’ take care of their sick younguns. They all had the croup. By God’s grace, the baby’s fever finally broke around six this mornin’. What a relief! I thank they’re gonna pull through, but I’m exhausted. I’ll check on Maw, and then I’m gonna git some rest. Are you goin’ for Doc Browning?”

“I’m on my way.” Leroy quickly ran to the barn, saddled Molly, all the while speaking softly to her, and minutes later headed down the dirt road toward Doc Browning’s house. He found him at his home coming out the front door heading for his horse and buggy. “Doc, could you take some time today to look in on Maw? She’s in an awful state, and we don’t know what to do. Seems like every day she gits a bit worse.”

Doctor Browning looked sympathetically toward him, and quickly said, “I’ll try to stop by later today. I’m on my way to help Sally Simpson give birth to her first baby, so it may be some time.”

Leroy marveled at this news. The beautiful brown-eyed Sally, with deep dimples and red ringlets that framed her pretty face, was only 16, and she was already going to be a mother. Before the war, his brother John had been sweet on Sally although they did no more than look at each other with googly eyes. Once John had chased her across the school yard and grabbed her around the waist, but that was as close as he ever got. Leroy felt happy for her, even if he didn’t like her husband Walt, whom he deemed a stinkin’ yellow-belly because he refused to join the Tennessee Rebels. His own brothers, William, James and John eagerly joined the Rebs, but after the surrender at Appomattox, where were they? He had heard they had all survived, which he considered a miracle, and he hoped they’d be coming home soon.

Leroy slowly guided Molly toward home and tried to think of something they could do to help their maw and something more they could do to put food on the table. Fortunately, Smiley was still producing a generous supply of milk, and Mary Jane was churning butter to sell. Maybe they could figure out a way to make cheese. Molly was a good work mule. If they could get some seed, maybe they could plant a crop in the spring and get back on their feet. There was a small vegetable garden on the side yard, but rabbits kept helping themselves, and the drought had also taken a toll, but mostly it was just the raping of the earth by all the soldiers marching through their land that had brought devastation. Of course, the worst was General Sherman and his rotten crew.

When he turned in toward the path leading to their house that was now in great need of a white wash and repairs to the front wrap-around porch, he was startled to see a man in a tattered, dingy gray uniform tethering his horse out front. As he came closer, the man called out, “Leroy, you little whipstart, am I glad to see you!”

Leroy recognized the voice, slipped off Molly, ran the last few yards and jumped into the arms of his brother John. “Johnny, I hardly knew who you were!”

“Hey, I guess the war has left its mark on me, but I have all my limbs; that’s more than I can say fur so many others. Kid, I woulda knowed you anywheres, the way you cock yore head when yore ridin’ that silly mule. But look at you, why yore a foot taller fur shore. How old are you now?”

“I’m 10 this past month, and I was hopin’ General Lee would keep fightin’ so I could join up with you, James and Willy, but the war ended afore I could.”

“And that’s a good thang, kid. You would not want to see and do what I saw and did. I thank the Good Lord that I’m alive. I was wounded at Shiloh, but they patched me up and sent me back out to fight. Believe me, it was no picnic.”

“Did you kill any of them rottenYankees?”

“Indeedy, I did. I notched my musket three times and probably could’ve scratched a couple more, but I warn’t shore, and I didn’t want to brag without certainty. But I had enough of killin’.” John paused and looked down as the memories of the horrific sights of the war were still fresh in his mind. “I tell you after a while it was pure drudgery, and all I wanted was to come home, hug Maw and sit down for one of her home-cooked meals and maybe steal a kiss from sweet Sally.”

At the mention of Sally, Leroy remembered the news Doc Browning had shared. “Johnny, Sally married that detestable Walt Simpson, and she’s in the throes of labor right now givin’ birth to their first youngun, so I doubt you’ll be gittin’ any kisses from her. And, Johnny, Maw’s not well. She’s taken to her bed, and I hate to tell you, but we have precious little food. Thangs are truly dire.”

John frowned and looked toward the front door. He immediately bounded up the steps with Leroy right behind as John began calling, “Maw, Maw, I’m home; I’m home.”

There was a moan from the front bedroom, and John ran in. “Maw, Maw, it’s me, John.” He gathered her in his arms and carried her to the front room and laid her on the faded red velvet settee. She managed a faint smile, and with her withered hand reached out to touch his bearded cheek. Samuel and Mary Jane came running in to greet their older brother.

After some tears and hugs, John spoke with disdain, “How come you didn’t take better care of her? You knowed she was delicate. You knowed she couldn’t fend for herself after Paw died. That was yore job, the three of you, just take care of Maw. How hard could that be? Huh, answer me. How hard could that be?”

Samuel was the first to speak. “We tried, Johnny; truly we did. She was holdin’ up until this past May when she started downhill. Hidin’ out in the woods when the Yanks came through shore didn’t help her none. We did all we knew to do, and Doc Browning has been checkin’ on her, but it seems lately we can hardly git her to eat or sit up for more than a minute or two. We’re runnin’ outta food, and she’s as thin as a stick. Johnny, I’m so glad yore here. Maybe you can help her. We don’t know what to do.”

John bit his lip and assessed the situation wondering what in tarnation he could do. The farm was a wreck; the house was mostly deserted without servants to help these kids. And they were still kids.

“Let me do some thankin’ on it. I spect Willy and James should be coming in soon, and we’ll try to figure out what can be done.”

Leroy let out a yelp, “Yes sir! I cain’t believe our big brothers are gonna be here to help out. I am so happy, so thankful to the Good Lord!”

“You cain’t spect much outta Willy. He had a hole blowed through one leg and had to leave the bottom half at Stones River. He’s gotta crutch, but he needs a peg leg. And James is no better. He’s in one piece alright, but the war has addled his brain a bit. Poor James spent 18 months in a Yankee prison in Delaware and darn-near starved to death and lost most of his teeth due to scurvy.”

The following week both Willy and James came home. The greeting was bittersweet as they saw the sad condition of their mother and the wilted farm. It wasn’t just the fault of General Sherman’s Yankees; even Confederate marauders had taken what they wanted and left the Stockards high and dry.

After much debate, the older brothers decided there was not much left upon which to build, and they were in no shape to get things up and running again. Leroy became increasingly worried when he heard them talking about Texas.

“Yore jest gonna high-tail it to Texas and leave Maw and us kids here to fend fur ourselves?”

John replied gruffly, “Look, Leroy, we can git land in Texas and git a fresh start. We can then send fur y’all, includin’ Maw, if you can git her nursed back to health. Besides, the war didn’t tear up Texas the way it did Tennessee, and there’s land to be had fur cheap. Railroads are headin’ that way, and thangs will git goin’ fast when they start shippin’. That’s the best we can do. Now don’t fret. We’ll send fur y’all when we git settled.”

There was no use arguing with them. They were dead-set on going, and nothing Leroy, Samuel or Mary Jane could do or say to persuade them otherwise. The day they left, Leroy hung his head in frustration and anger. Mary Jane put her arm around him in comfort, but Leroy couldn’t let her see his tears, so he turned and headed for the barn to stroke Molly who consoled him more than Mary Jane ever could. As he hugged Molly’s neck, he broke loose with deep sobs and poured out his heart, “I thought they’d come home and help us. They don’t care ‘bout me, Samuel or Mary Jane. I don’t even thank they care about Maw, those good-for-nothin’ brothers.”

Days, weeks, months passed, and the three of them managed to keep some food on the table. Samuel had found work on a farm that had lost all its slaves to emancipation. His pay was mostly in kind, food and an occasional pig or chicken. Things looked somewhat better, and their maw rallied for a spell. Doc Browning had given her a concoction that kept her more alert, but sometimes she talked out of her head. The kids came to accept the fact that she would never be the same mother who had run a shipshape household with servants and kids ordered around to do all the necessary work. Surprisingly, that fell mostly to Leroy as he had a head for managing things. Besides, Samuel and Mary Jane found work from time to time and readily left the household duties to him.

Once in a blue moon, they would get a letter from one of their big brothers, usually John. “Life is good here in Texas, but we can’t send for you just yet. We have a stake in some land in West Texas, but it looks like we might end up in some different county given the land prices. We are trying to determine where the rail line will be built, so we can get land that will be close by and make transporting cattle easier. That’s the plan, so just be patient. We have high hopes.” Sometimes there would be a couple of Yankee dollars in the letter.