Lost Souls Recovered, page 5
Trust rang in John’s head. He saw no hope for his life; it was over. Laura had him trapped and cornered with no way out. But he decided not to go down without saying something to the Ice Queen about trust. He squeaked, “You say you never trusted me. Monsieur Billingsly trusted you not to touch me. You made me do something that wasn’t right.”
“What are you talking about, boy?” she asked, the rifle aimed steady at his chest.
When he was a stripling a couple of years back, she stripped him of his innocence. “After you kill me, tell Monsieur Billingsly what you made me do to you.”
Laura’s eyes went blank. Still holding a firm aim, she repeated, “What are you talking about, you spineless cur?”
“Madame Billingsly, you know what you did. You asked me to dig a hole for a rosebush and you came out with that nightgown …”
As her eyes remained blank, John gazed down at his crotch. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
He’d be dead soon, but she had given him the opportunity to confront her about the rape. He had confronted her about it and given her a visual she’d not soon forget, he thought. But as much as he wanted to enjoy her abject humiliation, he couldn’t because he knew she would have the last word. And the last word would no doubt have something to do with his mother.
She’d done it to strike back at Tyrone. Although she’d never confirmed her husband’s dalliances, the persistent rumors of Tyrone’s affairs were all the confirmation she’d needed, along with her mother-in-law’s warning about the Billingsly men.
Shortly after Laura and Tyrone were married, Laura had complained to her mother-in-law about her husband’s rumored assignations. Her mother-in-law told her that there was a wicked strain encoded in Billingsly men to “stray,” to sometimes even cross the color line to satisfy their lusts. “You may not like it, but you’ll grow to tolerate it. My Edward has done it, as did his father, and right on up and down the line.” She’d paused, then offered a bit of solace. “The Billingsly men come from a long line of patriots; they’re well respected and they take care of their families.”
Laura decided to strike when her husband was away. She started drinking early to work up her nerve to do something so taboo. After the cognac had dissolved her inhibitions, she found John cleaning the pantry. She instructed him to dig a hole in the backyard to plant a rosebush. As John dug the hole, Laura stumbled outside wearing a silk robe on top of a gauzy chemise. She took a swill of cognac and tossed the snifter to the ground. She sat under an elm tree and called John, snapping, “Get over here!”
Her robe was partially open and only the gauzy nightgown covered her breasts.
He looked at her with gobsmacked eyes. While averting her glassy eyes, he reached down to help her stand to her feet, but she grabbed him and forced him down.
“Madame Billingsly, please, don’t …”
“You love your mama, don’t you?” she asked, slurring her words.
John nodded and understood the implication.
“Then do what you slaves do best.”
Although she was intoxicated, he couldn’t challenge her; that’d make matters worse. His eyes welled with tears as she touched his nether region.
After listening to John’s account of the assault, the raging fire in her eyes resumed. She said, “You are a filthy liar and a bastard. I hate you. You’ve just signed your death warrant.”
The condemnations no longer hurt John at this point. He figured she was lashing out at him to deny the truth.
“After I kill you, I’m going after your mama. I’m going to burn down that rat hole she lives in.”
She motioned with the rifle for John to walk down the stairs. She poked him in the back with the rifle as he went down, letting him know she was fully in charge.
Halfway down the staircase, she caught her right foot in the hem of her floor-length chemise, and she jabbed the barrel of the rifle into John’s upper back, then the two tumbled down the stairs, ricocheting off the wall and balustrade. Both lay motionless about a foot apart on the white marble floor in the foyer.
John came to after a few minutes, staring at the leg of the Victorian chaise lounge chair. He raised himself off the floor with his elbows and turned and looked at Madame Billingsly. With his mouth agape, he shook his head at seeing her lying motionless on the floor. He snapped up from the floor and debated whether to flee.
A dram of guilt overcame him. “Madame Billingsly, are you alright?” He repeated it. No response. He shook her. No response.
Fearing the worst, he grabbed the rifle and darted out of the front door. Just as fast, he pivoted and returned to the house, knelt down beside her, closed her eyes, straightened and pulled her chemise to her feet, and said he was sorry for what happened. His teacher and tormentor, the woman who had a heart as hostile and inhospitable as the desert, was dead. And he had a part in it.
He darted out of the house and made his way to the side, where he saw the barn owl’s penetrating eyes again, watching his every move. The bile resurfaced. He swallowed hard, squinted hard, then looked at the owl again, which hoo’d a few times as though he were decrying John’s deed.
John ignored the owl, picked up the flasks, and ran home under a quiet moonlit night.
5 — Spring, 1887
Ann had made it a habit of not going to sleep until John had returned home from work or wherever else he’d been. Tonight was no different.
She sat at the wonky kitchen table looking through a magnifying glass, struggling to read bits and pieces of last week’s Richmond Dispatch under the lantern’s dim light. Although she could only read the simplest of words, she delighted in asking others the meaning of a certain word. As she finished scratching out m-u-n-i-c-i-p-a-l on crumpled foolscap, she heard footsteps at the front door.
No sooner had John opened the door, Ann said in a soft voice, “It’s late, John; where have you been, son?”
“Nowhere, Mama; just out.”
Ann looked at the pine box in John’s left hand. “What’s in that box you holding?”
“Just some fishing tackle.”
He was getting irritated with the questions, but he knew he’d have to remain calm, despite his whirling mind and aching stomach.
“Okay, son.” She looked at the rifle John held in the other hand. “Where’d you get the rifle?”
He was ready with another concocted answer. “Old Man Wilkins gave it to me. He said it was for my birthday. Told me to shoot some rabbits with it.”
She looked at him askance, and John was troubled by it. He didn’t like lying to his mother, but there was no choice.
She touched his forehead, which was dappled with beads of sweat. “Son, you … your head’s warm.”
Another question and more irritation. He didn’t answer.
Noticing an odor on his mouth, she sniffed twice. “What’s that smell?”
He ignored the question again. He still had the nasty taste of bile lodged in the back of his mouth.
Her eyes drifted downward, stopping at the hole in his pants.
He realized what she was looking at. He sat down at the kitchen table as the weight of her questions and eyes was too much to bear.
Ann put a lantern on the kitchen table, then poured him a dipper of water, hoping it would erase the foul odor emanating from John’s mouth.
He had rehearsed it on his run home from Billingsly. He had now sawed off the chains that bound him to Richmond. It had to be said: “Mama, you told me that I’m a man and that I’ll be moving on soon. That soon is here.”
“I know, son,” she said quickly, failing to grasp what John meant by here. We can talk about it tomorrow. It’s late; go to bed. I’ll fix you a nice breakfast in the morning. I’ll make your favorite—fried apples.”
John couldn’t wait until the morning to talk about it. Nothing could change his mind. The sooner he left the better. He had to escape Monsieur Billingsly, who’d have lots of questions for John, as Billingsly knew John had wide access to the mansion while he worked there. “Ma, it’s not safe here for me. I need to leave.”
He’d never told her about ever feeling his safety was in jeopardy. He had to get to the bottom of it. “Tell your mama what’s the problem, son.”
His departure time was set; Tyrone was scheduled to return to Billingsly in two days from his business trip. “Just trust me, Mama. It’s best that I leave.”
Given John’s age, Ann suspected that John’s departure had been coming; that didn’t mean she was prepared to accept it. She emitted a cry for help from the Lord, as she often did when in pain.
She felt the familiar twisting and harsh pang in her stomach. John failed to ease her mind as to the reason he felt he needed to flee. She’d be prepared to accept it if she had more notice and they had talked about it over time. She was losing her family once more, and she had no control over it. She thought of how she had sobbed for weeks after Moses had been sold to a slave owner in Kentucky, how she had lost her will to live after losing her twin daughters.
“Where will you go?” she asked haltingly, her voice cracking.
Although he had imagined this day would arrive in one form or another, he never developed a plan. “Just go; don’t know where,” he said with a bewildered look on his face.
“Son, can’t you wait a few days?”
His dark and foreboding eyes spoke for him. He was leaving, and his mother couldn’t talk him out of it, not for a week, not for a day.
As John had done no planning, Ann thought of something to help with his impending departure from the only place he called home.
Douglas popped in her mind. Douglas had once told Ann that he wanted to move to Alabama to live with an older half brother. He was a handyman around town, someone who had demonstrated exceptional carpentry skills. He was a few years older than John. He’d helped build the tiny addition to Ann’s cabin that had later served as John’s bedroom. She allowed herself to believe, along with her prayers, that Douglas’s maturity would help them in their travels. Like Moses in the Bible, Douglas would shepherd John to some promised land.
“Douglas been talking about leaving Richmond to go to Alabama. Maybe you can go with him. Your Mama would like that.”
John nodded to acknowledge that his mother was scared and that she had just offered a good piece of maternal advice.
“If you make it to Alabama, try to find Cousin Riley.”
“Who’s Cousin Riley?”
“I saw Cousin Riley a few times on old man Windsor’s plantation. My mama called him Cousin Riley. Don’t know why we called him Cousin Riley. I just figure we related somehow. Heard he was sold down the river years ago.” She paused, then added, “Last I heard, he’s somewhere near a place called Mount Hope. “If you find him, son, that be good for you; maybe we share his blood. You hang on to that hope.”
“I wish I could have met your mama. Tell me her name again.”
“Esther. She was a quilter; they say the best one in all of Richmond. She made that quilt you use to stay warm at night. I wished she had lived long enough to see my handsome boy.”
John smiled and the darkness that lived in his eyes and heart began to dissipate.
Ann gave more information about John’s grandmother. “I remember Mama telling me not to upset the white man. She didn’t want the white man to sell us like they sold Cousin Riley. I remember Mama saying she heard he ended up in Mount Hope after being sold to another slave owner.”
“When was he sold to another slave owner, Mama?”
“Don’t know. Thinking sometime before the fighting started.”
John had no siblings, and no cousins, aunts, or uncles that he knew of. This Cousin Riley was an unknown putative familial bond. Ann was his sole family. The possibility of finding someone who was related to him, of seeing someone else who had some of his blood, excited him. “Describe him, Mama?”
“Can’t recall too much about him. He’s years ahead of me. I do remember Mama telling me that he has a long, nasty scar on his right cheek. Mama said Windsor cut him with his fishing knife because Cousin Riley sassed him.”
“You never told me these things.”
“Lots of things I ain’t told you. Some things just too painful for a child to hear.”
“Mama, I’m not a child.”
Ann protested. “You my child.”
k
Early the next day John and Douglas sealed the deal—they were going to Alabama, everything be damned; they’d leave around dusk to get a head start on Billingsly and his hounds that John thought would be sure to follow.
Ann hated to see John leave; he’d just turned seventeen, young enough to need his mother’s protection and advice, yet old enough to start his own life, his own family, like she did at a young age. She was sixteen and Moses was twenty-one when they jumped the broom on Windsor’s plantation.
After John had finished the breakfast Ann made for him, she kissed him on the right cheek, then squeezed him tightly.
John went to his room and sat on his bed. He adjusted the light in the lantern on a stand, then put his head in his hands. His heart was laden with guilt from the wreckage he had left behind at Billingsly, but he knew there could be no turning back. Whatever lay in front of him was worth the risk of staying alive. He was ready to test his wings, even given the circumstances, and hoped his mother’s abiding love would keep him going.
He broke his contemplative mood by packing his haversack with a few clothes, Billingsly’s pocket watch, and sundry things he thought he’d need for his uncertain trek. Ann had told him she’d give him some of his favorite victuals for the trek. After a half hour of packing, a small, blue-gray mouse crept warily up to John’s feet and began sniffing his brown brogans. John picked up the mouse with his right hand and stared at it, feeling the mouse’s heartbeat, wondering if he were old enough to leave his mother. He raised the mouse to his nose, able to feel the vibrissa tickle his nose and hear the faint whistle of his breath as he looked in the mouse’s coal-black, beady eyes, hoping for confirmation that he was doing the right thing by leaving Richmond.
He bent down and shook his hand to dislodge the mouse; it settled on the dirt-stained pinewood floor. The mouse continued to sniff at John’s feet even as John walked around his eight-by-ten-foot bedroom. John knelt down on his knees and cupped his left hand, and the mouse settled comfortably in his warm hand. It was best for the mouse to move on, just like him. He set his new friend loose in a large crop field several yards from the cabin, hoping that the mouse, like himself, would be able to survive a new life.
He returned to his bedroom and removed the flasks from the pine box, shoved the box under the bed, and put the flasks inside his haversack. He rubbed his hands across the brocade of his grandmother’s green-and-white, floral-patterned quilt, which had kept him warm for so many nights, as though he were trying to caress his grandmother’s spirit, asking her if the course he was about to set out on was the right one. He shook his head several times; he had to leave.
Standing up, he hefted his haversack over his right shoulder feeling its weight, wondering whether he could carry the freight on a long and uncertain journey. He abruptly took the haversack from his bag and tossed it on the bed, lifted the flap, and retrieved the flasks from one of its pockets.
The engravings were enigmatic to him. As if to make them appear more discernible, he traced his right hand over one of them. They meant nothing to him. He had claimed his prize at great sacrifice only to have no understanding of its value. He espied a small muslin poke sack in the corner of his room and placed the flasks in it. He pulled the hemp strings tight and put the poke sack in his haversack.
With the .22-caliber rifle in his hand, he stood in the door frame watching Ann rock in a rickety rocking chair.
As if she heard him standing behind him, Ann said, “Son, something on your mind?”
He stepped quietly in front of Ann. “Ma, don’t be afraid to use this,” he said with his left arm outstretched, the rifle a foot away from her.
Ann had no use for such a weapon. “I ain’t never shot nothing. Don’t plan to start.”
“Okay, Mama, but it’ll be in the cockloft in case you ever need it.”
He worried about his mother, who had always taken care of him, his sisters, the Billingslys, people of all stripes, caring little for herself, asking little in return. She was all magnolia and no steel. It made sense why she couldn’t harm anyone.
Ann stopped rocking. She struggled to get up. John helped her stand, and she led him to the front porch where John helped her sit. She patted the warped floorboard for John to sit next to her.
It was a warm and still May night, a propitious time to leave. Douglas would be coming soon. And Billingsly would soon return home to discover his dead wife; he’d return with questions for John and Sam and anyone else who could possibly shed light on Laura’s death.
“Mama, what’s my name?” he asked, looking with his head down while he tapped a loose plank with his left foot.
Before she could respond, John pointed to the meteor shower racing across the sky.
“Beautiful, like my son’s heart.”
Bile percolated in John’s esophagus when he heard his mother’s praise.
After the shower grew faint, Ann rested her head on John’s shoulder and said, “Your name John Moses.”
“No, Mama, I mean my last name. Don’t I need one?”
Ann paused. She thought of the Windsor name, the surname of the man who’d owned her as chattel. “Reckon you do, son. I was told they attached Windsor to my name. Then Billingsly got on there, too. You want Billingsly?”
“Never will I take that name!”
“What if I need to find you some day? Someone’ll need to know your name.”
John scratched his head; he was stumped. He conceded that his mother had a point, so he decided to accept it for now. “Okay, Mama, for now.”
“Good, son. That make your Mama happy. Maybe you change it later.”
“You’ll know, Mama.”
She wagged her narrow, right index finger at him. “That be right by me, son, but don’t you dare mess with John Moses. Them my names I gave you.”
