Belle City

  Belle City

  Also by Penny Mickelbury

  The Carole Ann Gibson Novels

  One Must Wait

  Where to Choose

  The Step Between

  Paradise Interrupted

  The Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione Novels

  Keeping Secrets

  Nights Songs

  Love Notes

  Darkness Descending

  The Phil Rodriguez Novels

  Two Graves Dug

  A Murder Too Close

  ***

  Belle City

  a novel

  Penny Mickelbury

  Whitepoint Press

  San Pedro, California

  ***

  Copyright © 2014 by Penny Mickelbury

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, corporations, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Whitepoint Press First Edition 2014

  Cover and book design by Monique Carbajal

  Cover photo © iStockphoto.com/niknak99

  Author photo by Peggy Ann Blow

  Published by Whitepoint Press at Smashwords

  ***

  For my unknown ancestors. Your journeys made mine possible, and

  For my known Georgia ancestors:

  Andrew Jackson and Mary Poe Shehee

  James Oliver and Mexico Shehee Hembree

  Arthur Jennings and Mexico Hembree Mickelbury

  I am grateful, perhaps especially, to my father who, though Louisiana-born, made his way to Georgia and made Georgia his home.

  ***

  Belle City

  ***

  Part One

  Carrie's Crossing

  1917 - 1922

  ***

  – 1917 –

  "Let me shoot him," Tobias whispered, settling the stock of the shotgun firmly into the soft part of his shoulder.

  "No," Little Si said, shaking his head. "It's my turn, we do it my way."

  "Shhhh."

  "Shush your own self, Jonas Thatcher," Silas Thatcher hissed without moving a muscle. His feet were planted, left in front of right, a yard apart. His body was angled so that his left shoulder pointed directly at the deer which, at that moment, raised her head. In a single, fluid, powerful motion, Silas pulled the arrow back and released it. None of them saw it travel or even hit the deer. They knew she was hit when she collapsed.

  The three boys stepped out of the dense underbrush, still moving quietly and cautiously but in a hurry to reach the felled animal to end her suffering if she wasn't already dead. She was. It was a productive day: A deer for each of their families, a brace of rabbits for Silas and Tobias to take home, three quail for the pots in Jonas's house because his mother didn't eat rabbit or squirrel.

  "I sure wish you'd teach me to shoot that bow and arrow," Jonas said to Silas.

  Tobias replied for his brother. "You got to be a Indian to shoot a bow and arrow, Jonas, and you ain't no Indian."

  "You ain't neither," Jonas said, stung.

  "Our Ma is, you know that," Silas said. He and Jonas were best friends, and he didn't want to hurt his feelings.

  "You reckon she'd mind if you taught me how?"

  Silas considered but again Tobias answered. "Our Pa would. He don't even want us playin' with you, just like your Pa don't want you playin' with us." At fifteen, Tobias was two years older than his brother and Jonas, old enough to understand the danger contained in the nuance of their family relations and old enough to hate it. They all were Thatchers, but Jonas was white and Silas and Tobias were Colored. Jonas and Silas had been best friends since they met in the woods foraging for wild strawberries years earlier—one of them illegally on the other's family's land—but neither had given much consideration to the fact of the sameness of their names and the difference in their color. They were friends, a relationship that Big Silas Thatcher, Tobias and Little Si's father, strenuously discouraged.

  Tobias bent over the deer and yanked out the arrow, which he gave to Silas. "That was a good shot, Si. Make sure you tell Ma how good."

  "I will," Silas said, savoring his older brother's praise and looking forward to that of his mother who was, in truth, only half Muscogee Creek Indian.

  "How many people y'all havin' at your celebration?" Jonas asked, as much to have something to say to the other boys as to find out the answer.

  Tobias gave him a strange look. "What celebration?"

  "For your brothers. Beau and...I forget the other one's name. They goin' to the war, ain't they? Just like my brother Zeb's goin.'"

  "It ain't a celebration, it's just a dinner that the whole family's comin' to." Tobias tied the deer's front legs together, then the back ones, and hoisted the animal up and onto his shoulders. "We better get going, Si. We got a longer walk home than you, Jonas. Plus you ain't got to carry your deer, seein' as how you got a horse." Tobias was as tall as a man and almost as strong, and as he turned and walked off, Silas and Jonas looked admiringly at his back, the muscles rippling under the weight of the dead animal. He really was almost a man, Si thought, like his older brothers, Beaudry and Eubanks.

  "Why ain't y'all havin' a celebration?" Jonas asked in the silence that was left after Tobias's departure.

  "'Cause there ain't nothin' to celebrate," Silas said as he helped Jonas tie his deer's legs. "My Ma says they're all crazy, goin' way cross the ocean to fight a dang war."

  "My Pa says my brother's gonna be a hero."

  "Your brother ain't Colored. Now let's get this deer up on that horse." They lifted the deer as Jonas whistled for his horse, who came strolling through the brush toward them.

  "What the hell?" Jonas exclaimed, almost dropping his end of the deer when the horse appeared wearing a daisy chain around its neck.

  "Oh, Lord," Little Silas groaned as they hoisted the deer onto the horse's flank. Then he turned a full circle, looking up into the trees. He stopped, facing a giant oak, and squinted into the branches. "Come here, Girl," he said, and his eyes followed the almost imperceptible rustle of the tree's branches. The boys, both trained hunters, heard a soft thud, then the underbrush parted. Jonas inhaled.

  "Who's that?"

  "My sister, Ruthie," Silas said as the grinning girl walked toward them. She wore half a dozen daisy chains around her neck, and her inky black, waist-length hair flowed freely. She was as tall as the boys, reed-thin, red-brown colored, and she walked without seeming to move. She stood close to Si.

  "Who's he?" Ruthie asked her brother.

  "Jonas Thatcher. And how come you're spyin' on us?"

  "Daddy don't want you playin' with him, and I wasn't spyin', I was fishin'."

  Little Silas gave exaggerated looks all around, up and down. "I don't see no fish."

  Ruthie smirked at her brother. "They're in the creek, keeping cold."

  "Fishin' where?" Jonas asked.

  "Carrie's Creek. Where else?" Ruthie said, looking at Jonas as if finally seeing him and uncertain what she felt about what she saw.

  "There ain't no fish in that water. Not a single one."

  Now Ruthie did look at him strangely. Then she looked at her brother. "What's he talking about, Si? The creek is full of fish."

  "No, it ain't. Is it, Si? Tell her."

  Silas fidgeted uncomfortably as his glance slid away from Jonas but refused to meet his sister's. Both were waiting for him to reaffirm their position, and he was caught between the truth and a lie, between his sister and his best friend. Ruthie grabbed his hand. "Come on, Si, we gotta go. Bye, Jonas." And they were gone, Ruthie and Silas, and Jonas watched them go, feeling...fe
eling something strange and different that he couldn't put words to, but knowing that he didn't want them to leave.

  "What's that got to do with anything?" he called out. He couldn't see them–danged Indians could disappear into the danged air–but he knew they heard him. "Being Colored, I mean?" he called out, and waited as the sound of his voice reverberated in the dense forest. Then Ruthie emerged, silent and graceful. She walked toward him.

  "Say what?"

  "How come your brother can't be a war hero just 'cause he's Colored? What difference does it make?"

  Ruthie gave him another one of her looks, but this one was different; this one was the kind of look that meant he'd done or said something stupid. "You don't know the diff'rence between bein' Colored and bein' white?" she said.

  Jonas knew he was turning red because he could feel the heat rise in his face, but Ruthie didn't seem to notice. She was waiting for him to answer. "'Course I do, but that don't mean a Colored man can't be a hero. If he fights a good fight, then he's a hero."

  Ruthie looked long and hard at Jonas Thatcher, remembering the times Little Silas had defended his friend in arguments with their Pa who would thunder, Zeb Thatcher's a mean, nasty cracker and I don't want you playin' with his boy. Don't want you nowhere near him! And Little Silas would respond: Jonas ain't like that, Pa. Jonas ain't nothin' like that!

  "What you say is true, but everybody don't think like that, Jonas," Ruthie said and turned away from him.

  "I wish I was Colored," Jonas said so softly that not even the wind could hear what he said, but she did and turned back to face him, the look on her face different this time. "If I was Colored" Jonas said, "I could marry you, Ruthie Thatcher."

  "You'll get yourself killed six times you say that again, Jonas Thatcher."

  He laughed even though there was no humor in her voice or in her eyes. Nothing there but deep seriousness. But he felt good talking to her, being near her. And besides, a thing could only die one time. He said that to her, then asked, "How'm I gonna get myself killed six times?"

  "I got four brothers, a daddy, and Uncle Will, and each one of 'em'll kill you, you say something like to me again."

  "Si won't hurt me."

  "He'll kill you. Bye, Jonas." Walking silently but rapidly, she disappeared into the forest, and Jonas climbed on his horse and rode off in the opposite direction. Their houses were less than a mile apart through the woods and twice that by the dirt road, but the distance between them was the distance between white and Colored in Georgia in 1917, and that was a great, gaping chasm.

  "What did he say, Ruthie, when you asked him?" Silas had retrieved Ruthie's fish from the stream, and, rabbits strung over one shoulder, fish over the other, he'd started for home, knowing that his sister would quickly and easily catch up.

  "He said Beaudry and Eubanks could be heroes just like his brother...what's his brother's name?"

  "Don't matter what his name is. He's either lying or he's crazy. Anyway, who you gonna believe: Jonas Thatcher or your own Pa?"

  "How come he thinks there ain't no fish in the creek? And how can him and us be named Thatcher, but we're Colored and he's not? We some kin to them, Si?"

  Little Si blew air through his lips. "Don't ask me stuff like that, Girl."

  They walked quietly through the dense forest, Ruthie leading the way, holding low-hanging branches out of the way of her brother's face. There was a dirt road leading to their family farm but through the forest was faster and cooler. It was almost noon and the sun was directly overhead, but they were protected by the massive maze of tree tops. They'd beat Tobias home. Carrying the deer, he'd have walked the road, hoping for a ride, and if nobody came along, he'd just trudge along in the heat. "I can take the rabbits and fish, Si, if you want to go help Tobias," Ruthie said. Si stopped walking and without a word, he slung the rabbits and fish over his sister's shoulders. He knew that she loved being alone in the forest, that she loved being alone anywhere, especially when she had something on her mind. And he could tell by her stillness—the stillness that was inside of her—that she was thinking hard.

  "See you at home," Little Si said and angled north toward the road.

  "You're gonna have to stop bein' friends with him, Si."

  Si stopped walking but he didn't turn around. He waited for her to say something more, but she didn't. He didn't, either.

  ***

  Normally, Jonas would have been in a hurry to get home and show off his prizes, especially since they represented his going away gifts to his big brother. For reasons that Jonas couldn't figure out, Zeb seemed not to like him. More than once, he almost asked Si how it was that his older brothers liked him—taught him things and did things with him—but he'd been too embarrassed and hadn't wanted his friend to know how Zeb was always punching or pushing or laughing at the youngest of the Thatcher children. Shoot, Jonas thought, Si and his sister even liked each other, and Jonas's sisters hated him more than Zeb did.

  The thought of Ruthie Thatcher caused a hitch inside Jonas, like something was hung up in there somewhere. He breathed in and out until it went away, to be replaced almost immediately by another hurty kind of feeling at the thought that Si would kill him. And he had no doubt that Si would, because Ruthie said so. And he had no doubt about anything that Ruthie Thatcher said. He didn't know why. He just knew that if she spoke, what she said would be the truth. Which would mean that there were fish in Carrie's Creek.

  He saw the smoke dancing in the air from the cook stove in his house, and before he smelled the food, his stomach rumbled. It was almost time for dinner, and he hadn't even had breakfast. He'd snatched a piece of leftover from the bowl on the kitchen table on his way out that morning before dawn, but that was so long ago his body didn't remember eating it. Whatever his Ma had for the midday meal would be welcome, even if it was something he didn't like, like squash or okra. Then he had a mouth-watering thought: Maybe there was something left over from breakfast: biscuits and grits and gravy.

  "Git up, now, Red," he said, urging his horse to hurry. He already was tasting leftover grits and bacon and biscuits. If Zeb and his Pa hadn't eaten it all. That thought made him hurry the sedate old horse even more as his house came into view through the woods. It was the rear view and his sister, Esther, was hanging clothes on the line. She turned at the sound of galloping, saw it was him, and turned back to her work. Esther hanging up clothes was not a good sign. It meant that his mother was feeling even more poorly than usual. Esther had gotten married the year before and lived several miles away in Spencerville. If she was back here long enough to wash clothes...

  "Hey," he called out, riding into the yard.

  "Don't kick up dust, Jonas."

  "Ain't you got nothin' to say about my deer? And the hens?"

  Esther looked at the deer and the quail, and then at her youngest brother, and she gave him a small smile. "You had yourself a busy morning, didn't you?"

  "Sure did," he said, walking–not galloping–the horse around the side yard and down to the barn, where he knew he'd find the Zebs: His Pa and his brother. He called out to them as he got closer, and Big Zeb stuck his head out.

  "Hey, Boy! I wondered where you'd got to." Still carrying the pitchfork, Big Zeb's eyes widened in surprise; he came to meet Jonas. "Well, now. Ain't this somethin'."

  "It's for Zeb's goin' away celebration. A hero can't go off to war on a empty stomach."

  "I reckon you're right about that," the old man said as he leaned the pitchfork against the barn and came to get a close look at Jonas's bounty. "These some fine lookin' animals, Boy. Where you get 'em?"

  "North, over by the creek," Jonas replied and knew immediately that he'd made an error. His father's eyes narrowed and his shoulders tightened.

  "You been with them niggers again?"

  "They was huntin', I was huntin," Jonas said, hoping he sounded off-handed and relaxed, like Si's brother Tobias always sounded. Or like Ruthie sounded: Like the words were coming from God and nobody better
give any back talk. He slid down off the horse, keeping his back to his father, and began to untie the deer and the quail.

  "Big ol' woods and y'all just happened to be huntin' in the same place at the same time."

  "Yes, sir," Jonas answered, though his father had not asked a question.

  "I want you to stay away from them people, you hear me, Jonas? You done got too old to be runnin' through the woods, chasin' behind some niggers. Leave 'em be, you hear me?"

  "What if they Indians, Pa, and not niggers?"

  "Who tole you they was Indians? They ain't no more Indians than you and me. Anyway, ain't been no Indians in these parts for sixty, seventy years. Now, I said stay clear of 'em, you hear me?"

  Jonas nodded and his pa slapped him on the back of the head. "Yes, sir, I hear you," Jonas said.

  "Aw right, then. Let's get this hero food gutted and cleaned. I believe I'll salt the deer."

  "Can I eat first, Pa?"

  Zeb gave his son a surprised look. "Sure you can, Boy. You done all this huntin' and haven't et?" Jonas shook his head. "Then go 'head on in the house. And if ain't nothin' left from breakfast, tell Rachel to fix you somethin'."

  Jonas's face fell. His sister Rachel hated him more than Esther did. Dang it. Why did Ma have to be poorly again? She'd be proud of him and happy to fix him some food. Rachel would just be mad at the extra work she'd have to do.

  "Come on. I'll go with you and I'll tell her," Pa said with a sly grin. "I'll tell her she can fix you some breakfast or she can clean and gut them birds. What you think she'll choose?"