Lost Souls Recovered, page 1
Title Page
Lost Souls
Recovered
Eric Walker
Durham, NC
Copyright
Copyright © 2022 Eric Walker
Lost Souls Recovered
Eric Walker
edubbiey@aol.com
Published 2022, by Torchflame Books
an Imprint of Light Messages Publishing
www.lightmessages.com
Durham, NC 27713 USA
SAN: 920-9298
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61153-474-0
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-61153-496-2
E-book ISBN: 978-1-61153-475-7
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 International Copyright Act, without the prior written permission except in brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
1 — Spring, 1887
2 — Spring, 1887
3 — Spring, 1887
4 — Spring, 1887
5 — Spring, 1887
6 — Spring, 1887
7 — Spring, 1887
8 — Spring, 1887
9 — Spring, 1887
10 — Spring, 1887
11 — Spring, 1887
12 — Summer, 1887
13 — Summer, 1887
14 — Summer, 1887
15 — Summer, 1887
16 — Fall, 1887
17 — Fall, 1887
18 — December, 1887
19 — December, 1888
20 — Summer, 1890
21 — Summer, 1890
22 — Summer, 1890
23 — Summer, 1893
24 — Summer, 1893
25 — Summer, 1893
26 — Summer, 1893
27 — Summer, 1893
28 — Summer, 1893
29 — Fall, 1893
30 — Winter 1894
31 — Late December 1899
32 — Late December, 1899
33 — Late December, 1899
34 — Late December, 1899
35 — Late December, 1899
36 — Late December, 1899
37 — Late December, 1899
38 — Late December, 1899
39 — December 31, 1899
40 — Spring, 1910
41 — Spring, 1910
42 — Spring, 1910
43 — June, 1917
44 — June 1917
45 — June, 1917
46 — Spring, 1920
47 — Spring, 1920
48 — Spring, 1920
49 — Spring, 1920
50 — Summer, 1922
51 — Fall, 1922
52 — Fall, 1923
53 — Fall, 1928
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Dedication
To my parents
who encouraged me to write my story.
Epigraph
All that I am, my mother made me.
—John Quincy Adams
1 — Spring, 1887
Even with the War a little more than two decades in the past, John was a virtual slave, chained to the people who’d once legally owned his mother. At seventeen, and his youth pulling at him to go, to explore, to find a woman, he hankered to break the chain and go elsewhere—anywhere that wasn’t Richmond—but thoughts of leaving his saintly mother kept the chain in place.
His mother would die of a broken heart if he told her about what Madame Laura Billingsly had made him do a few years back. Laura had figured he wouldn’t tell a soul, surely not his mother, and certainly not Monsieur Tyrone Billingsly. Laura had been right.
He hated the suffocating mental cage Madame Billingsly caused him to live in; she had taken away his freedom to even tell a secret to his mother. As much as he wanted to mute the voices in his head telling him to kill Madame Billingsly, the voices lingered.
He stood one spring evening in the butler’s pantry and poured imported sherry into two teardrop sherry glasses as he had done so many times. He could pour exactly three ounces of sherry into each glass with his eyes closed without spilling a drop.
John was a lean, five foot, eleven inches tall. He had short, wavy, raven-black hair, russet copper-tinted eyes, a mahogany-colored face, full lips, and a slightly bent nose that sat atop a strong jaw.
Tyrone Billingsly demanded that John be turned out in fine clothes when he worked in the house or when he took Billingsly to town. So this evening he wore the usual attire—a white shirt with a stiff, standing collar; a black vest that closed almost at the throat, thereby almost covering his tie; a short, black waist jacket that exposed his shirt cuffs; black breeches; and black-laced shoes.
It was almost dinner time at the Billingslys’ mansion, also known as Billingsly.
Torrential rain had enveloped Richmond for five consecutive days. The crop fields, cleared by former slave labor, had turned into bogs.
Laura stood in front of the oversized roundel dining room window, her right hand pressed against it. She felt the window vibrate as the hail and rain pelted it. She looked at the leaden sky and wondered if the window, and all the windows in her mansion, would protect her and her expensive furnishings from the relentless barrage of water sent from above.
She saw in the reflection when Tyrone sat at the dining table; then she drew the heavy, ornate blue-velvet curtains and joined him at the other end. Just the two of them.
The Billingsly estate was large—both the house and the three hundred acres of surrounding land. The house was an eight thousand square foot, twenty-five room Greek Revival house, characterized by Dorian pillars that wrapped around it. Intricate wrought iron gates connected the pillars on the second-floor portico. The long entranceway leading to the front of Billingsly was adorned with live oak trees that were arranged symmetrically on each side. Sprawling gardens and landscaping contained twenty-four flower beds and twenty different kinds of trees. Seemingly endless walkways formed a maze. A heavily adorned pergola stood at the rear of the massive botanical garden.
Laura had been known to lose herself in the gardens after an argument with her husband.
When the last of the Billingsly children had moved out several years ago, Tyrone Billingsly had decided to reduce his kitchen staff, expecting that he and Laura could get by with one cook. Laura had protested, believing that her society friends would whisper that something was wrong with the Billingslys, that they were depleting their money. Tyrone had won that battle, but Laura knew when to keep her powder dry and when to strike with a full-frontal assault. Her husband had felt it many times before, as had Sam, John, Ann, and anyone else in her line of fire.
Sam, the Billingslys’ longtime cook, had prepared one of Laura’s favorite dishes for the evening: lobster cutlet, a pastry shell filled with a timbale of black grouse in a chestnut purée, spring lamb, and johnnycake.
The Billingslys often had a bracer before their meal. Today was no different. The sherry aperitif would be served at six-thirty as was their custom when Tyrone was in town. And maraschino cherry sorbet would be served at the end of the meal to refresh the palate.
John’s stomach gurgled and his hands felt heavy as he prepared to serve dinner to the Billingslys. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to exorcise all images of what Laura had done to him a few years ago and to slow his heart rate as much as he could. He stood ramrod straight, picked up the salver that held the Billingslys’ sherry aperitif, and walked gingerly into the dining room. He surveyed the dining table setup, hoping, praying, that he had set the table pieces to Madame Billingsly’s satisfaction. She was persnickety and the icy matron of the house. Everything was in place, and John’s heartbeat returned to its normal rhythm.
A thunderclap startled him, causing him to stop in his tracks. Horrible images of Laura resurfaced. His heartbeat quickened again, and his mouth went dry, anticipating some kind of rebuke from her, his perfect table setup notwithstanding.
A corner of the ornate Persian rug on which the dining table sat was curled up. John failed to notice it, tripped, and spilled the drink on the Ice Queen.
She shot him a three-second basilisk stare, then screamed: “You stupid idiot!”
As she used her white, monogrammed linen napkin in an effort to dry the amber stain from the lace on her pink satin polonaise, John said, “I’m sorry, Madame Billingsly.”
She raised her head from her dress, and John suffered through the same stare that could stop a charging bull in his tracks. He thought he had gotten used to Madame Billingsly’s obloquies, but this time they stung hard, penetrating the fortress he’d erected around himself to deflect her fusillade of contemptuous sniping. She had managed, though, to intensify his hatred for her.
“Laura, it was an accident,” Tyrone said.
Laura rose up from her chair in a huff, paused to steady herself from John’s mishap, and hurried over to look in the Louis XV gilt-framed mirror, which hung above the Louis XV-styled birch sideboard. She turned and eyed Tyrone.
John w
She stormed out of the dining room and ran up the garish, sweeping, walnut-paneled staircase, hurried to the master bedroom, and slammed the door.
Tyrone took in a mouthful of grouse, then suddenly dropped his fork.
The clank from the fork startled John, who was cleaning the table of the wreckage from the spilled sherry. John looked into Tyrone’s stoic gaze. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t see the carpet was out of place.”
Tyrone looked at the rug and nodded.
k
Laura stood in front of the cheval in her bedroom and removed her corset with the assistance of her servant, Emmaline, or Auntie Em, as Laura’s children referred to her. Laura was a petite woman with Victorian-pale skin and long flaxen-colored hair, which she often kept in a stylish chignon netted in black velvet. She was fastidious about her coiffure and had an on-call coiffeuse. Although she’d had a curvilinear shape that had caused men to ogle when she was younger, she’d begun to fill out after the last of her four children moved out. She allowed her expensive clothes to camouflage her amorphous shape.
Tyrone opened the stately oak bedroom door and walked in. Laura was in the walk-in closet where she had stockpiled her expensive and haute attire. Godey’s Lady’s Book, Harper’s Bazaar, and The Delineator kept her abreast of the latest fashions. Her wardrobe was replete with the finest silks, wools, and cottons. She had dresses for each occasion—day, afternoon, evening, and formal. Her clothes were needed for the bon ton who visited her. When robed in her togs, she exuded authority that exceeded her physical stature.
After making Tyrone wait for a sufficient amount of time, she walked out of the closet. “His behavior was most unacceptable. I want that sprat out of here. I don’t trust him.” Arms folded, she looked at Tyrone through narrow eyes, waiting for him to spill out the right answer.
“My dear, it was an accident.”
She tightened her folded arms, as if to wait for the right answer.
Tyrone stood his ground. “For God’s sake, just let it go. That boy does fine work around here. Besides, I owe it to Ann to keep him here. And if I were to dismiss him, who’d serve you as well as that boy? He’s smart; he does what he’s told.”
Her anger flared hot, she drew herself up even more stiffly and shouted a harsh retort. “I don’t give a damn.” She paused to let Tyrone feel her words.
He shook his head but said nothing.
She continued: “Stop defending that insolent boy; I mean it.”
She turned around to see Emmaline holding her black pelisse with both arms outstretched, mutely asking if she would like to try it on. Laura liked wearing her haute attire, even if for a moment.
Although Laura didn’t care if Emmaline heard her use disparaging language when referring to a Negro, Emmaline managed to escape such degrading remarks. Even after the War, Laura still considered Emmaline her property, for which she deserved some protection.
Although the irony was not lost on Tyrone, he didn’t say anything; he had learned to live with it.
Laura loathed that Tyrone had always been so paternalistic with his slaves and the ones who were his present workers. She thought he was too nice for his own good, failing to understand the immutable law of nature that separated the gentry from the untouchables, the mudsills.
John’s shift finally ended, giving him a reprieve from Laura’s painful disdain. He changed into his tattered togs, placing his work attire in a wardrobe reserved for the house servants. He stepped out the back door and quickly felt the driving rain on his face. He returned to the house and retrieved a mackintosh from the servants’ closet and donned it.
He cut through the Billingslys’ soggy, wooded botanical garden in the back of the estate, jumped a small wooden fence, and with anger fueling him, he sprinted a quarter of a mile to get home.
2 — Spring, 1887
Ann hung damp clothes on a rope line in the open room of the slave cabin she shared with John; it was a cabin along with others in the area that was built by slave labor a few years before the Billingsly’s slaves would have a place to live. When her body cooperated, doing the laundry was her job, as well as sweeping the floor, cooking, and washing the dishes. Her hovel was small, but it was hers, and she did what she could to keep it tidy.
She was a stout forty-nine-year-old with grape-colored skin and dark brown, recessed eyes. Tufts of unruly black hair dangled from her blue-and-white checkered madras tignon.
When not working at the Billingsly estate, John’s job had grown into hunting for food and doing whatever Ann needed him to do when her body failed her.
As she wrapped John’s trousers around the rope line, she winced at the stabbing pain in her back. She toddled to the wall and put her right hand on it to steady her balance. The pain began to subside after she took in three deep breaths. She knew the routine: Stop and breathe deeply. It often worked, as it did this time.
The front door flung open, and she turned slowly. John stood in the doorway, huffing, his clothes rain-soaked, his ego bruised. Ann had seen this expression before, an expression she knew could bring trouble to her son.
“Something wrong?” she asked. She pointed to one of the mismatched kitchen table chairs for John to sit.
John was too angry to sit. He wiped the rivulets of water that dripped from his hair onto his forehead.
“You listen to what your mama say. Now sit,” Ann insisted.
His mother was all he had in the world, so he dared not argue with her. He removed the mackintosh.
Ann wrapped a quilt around him. After John’s measured descent to the chair, Ann said, “Now, tell me what’s on your mind, son.”
He was restless, moving his legs up and down in rapid fashion, and he made fists subconsciously. “I’m not working for Madame Billingsly again.”
He told her about the accident with the sherry just ninety minutes earlier.
Ann was quiet as John droned on about Laura. Her mind wandered off to the time and effort she’d expended to convince Master Billingsly to hire John to work in his house. She had worked hard to convince her former owner that John was ready to graduate from the field to the house. In one entreaty, Ann had said, “My boy’s ready; he’ll do you proud, Massa,” as Ann continued to call him, even after slavery was abolished over two decades ago.
She had been an exceptional nurse to the Billingsly children before she’d developed debilitating arthritis in her back, which later forced her to stop working for the Billingslys as a house servant. Tyrone gratefully remembered that Ann had once stayed by his youngest son’s side for thirty-six hours, never leaving him—except for a few comfort breaks--until his fever broke. Despite Laura’s protest, Tyrone, in appreciation for Ann’s exemplary servitude, allowed Ann to remain in the cabin following the War, and he allowed her to feed from his trough of crops after she was no longer able to work.
Billingsly had worried that John was too young at fourteen and a half to do housework, but he’d give him a try. John turned out to be a quick study and was soon able to master the chores of a house servant, or garçon, as Laura frequently called him in a dismissive manner.
Ann had wept with delight when she’d first seen John dressed in something other than the rags he wore when working in the field and even in church.
John’s future was now staring Ann in the face again. “John, my precious son, listen to me. It’s a good job for a boy like you to work in that house. Could benefit you later someday,” Ann said while rubbing his cheeks with both hands.
John’s anger was still strong. “Mama, you washed their clothes … nursed their children. You took care of them from head to toe. Same for that house. You even prayed and took care of Madame Billingsly when she was real sick. It’s too painful to even think about.”
Ann reached across the table and held John’s right hand. In a notch above a whisper, she said, “I remember when the mistress came down with the sweats. Yeah, we prayed. Massa said the prayers saved her life.”
John hated that Ann referred to Billingsly as Massa and his wife as Mistress. As he grew older, he fumed silently every time he heard his mother utter those godforsaken words. She was still tied to the past, he wasn’t. She was born a slave, had been married, and had twin daughters before John’s birth. John was born five years after slavery had been abolished. John’s whole life lay ahead of him, one not fettered to the evils of slavery. “I like Monsieur Billingsly; he’s done right by me,” John said. “He knew of my interest in wanting to read and write, and from time to time he or his pastor would help me with that. He said I was a fast learner.”
