The day was bright and sunny, a sharp contrast to his mood and to the desolate condition of the countryside through which he rode. Houses, humble and grand, had been burned, battered and ruined. Fields, once fertile and productive, lay uncultivated and weed-choked. Even the ancient trees lining stately and fashionable avenues had paid the price of Sherman’s wrath. Their outstretched boughs had been reduced to stumps, like the many human limbs Buck had amputated.
At last he came to the long, canopied drive to Jasmine, the Thomson family home. By some miracle the stately oaks had escaped the Yankee vendetta. As Gypsy’s shod hoofs clattered along the red-brick pavement, Buck’s mind slipped back to the last time he’d seen his father, a memory he wished his mind could erase.
#
April, 1859
Jasmine Plantation
South Carolina:
Buck rapped on the door of his father’s study and entered before there was time for a response. Raleigh, seated behind the desk writing in a ledger, looked up. His annoyance quickly faded at the sight of his first-born.
“Welcome home, son,” he said cheerfully. “How was Columbia?”
“Hot and humid. But I’m not here to talk about the weather. Mose just told me Claudius was whipped to death by that son of a bitch overseer of yours.”
Raleigh’s face reddened. “Don’t use that kind of language in my house, son. You know I don’t allow it. Claudius was whipped . . . and then he died. I’ve already fired Snead.”
“Fired! You ought to have shot the son of a . . . that man long ago. He’s been nothing but trouble.”
“He was responsible for a good deal of the success we’ve enjoyed here. He worked hard and expected others to do the same.”
Buck put his hands on his father’s desk and leaned forward. “He beat those people unmercifully, Father. He’s done it for years. I’ve seen the results of his beatings and treated them myself. I’ve told you this many times before, but you wouldn’t listen. Now you’re culpable in a murder.”
Raleigh stood up suddenly. His face was close to Buck’s. “How dare you speak to me that way. I told you Snead’s gone. That’s the end of it.”
“Hell it is. Claudius’s blood is on your hands. You can’t wash it off this time.” He pulled away from the desk, turned his back, then spun around to face his father. He would have liked to shout, but the breeding of good manners won over the base urge. “It’s wrong, Father. This whole business is wrong. Slavery’s wrong. You know it and I know it.”
“Now you listen to me, young man. You sound like one of those damn abolitionists.” Raleigh Thomson was livid, shaking with rage. “Those high and mighty Yankees condemn us for having slaves, but they’re the ones who buy them in Africa, build the ships to bring them here, and sell them in Charleston. They’re willing enough to purchase our cotton, picked by those same slaves, for their factories—factories where they employ children and immigrants unable to speak English, to whom they pay starvation wages.” He took a deep breath. “That’s their form of slavery.”
“But they don’t beat them to death!” Buck retorted, his voice finally raised. “They don’t sell them or rip their families apart for profit.” He headed for the door. “Slavery. I’m sick of this whole damn business.”
“Stop,” Raleigh bellowed.
Involuntarily, Buck did.
“You self-righteous hypocrite. You despise slavery yet you’re willing to accept the fine, luxurious home it’s provided you, as well as an expensive education. You say you hate our whole way of life—hunting, riding with foxhounds—yet you’re the best rifle and pistol shot in this part of the country. And what do you shoot? Pine cones and paper targets. Some of my friends wonder if you’re not a ‘fancy boy’. Still, you’re not above asking me to pay for medical school.”
His father’s tirade inflamed Buck’s ire. With one hand on the door knob, his voice quivering with rage, he said, “You’re right, Father. I’m not like you or your friends. I don’t believe in owning people or whipping them or killing animals for sport. I want to heal people, not hurt them.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t fit in here and I never will. I’m going to medical school, but I don’t want a penny of your damned blood money. I’ll manage on my own, and you’ll never see me again.”
So much for home sweet home.
#
Peering to the end of the broad lane, Buck sat up straight in the saddle and stared, then sagged dejectedly. All that remained of the once beautiful mansion were smoke-tainted red chimneys standing like tombstones in heaps of gray ash.
The semicircle of dilapidated cabins behind the destroyed house was deserted. Shutterless windows stared like dead eyes at the desolation surrounding them. Even the dogs were gone. The only sign of life in the entire compound was a thin thread of smoke curling from the blackened tin pipe of one of the slave shacks. Its front yard was cleared of weeds and shaded by a large chinaberry tree.
Buck rode up slowly, dismounted, and not knowing what to expect, tapped on the porch rail with the barrel of his Colt and held it ready. An entire minute must have elapsed before he heard a mumbled sound from inside, and another minute until finally, a stooped, rail-thin, white-haired Negro woman shuffled barefoot from the dim interior leaning on a gnarled cane. She cupped a veiny hand over rheumy eyes as she stood blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight.
He hardly recognized the woman standing before him. Once strong and stout, she seemed to have shrunken into a wrinkled mummy. She wore a faded gray dress he vaguely remembered as having once belonged to his mother. It was tattered and patched now. The elegant fitted waist hung loose and low, the hem ragged and soiled. He put the gun away.
“Emma, Emma, it’s me, Buck. I’m home.”
“Lord help me, Mr. Buck, I feared I’d never see you again.” She shook her head slowly and lowered herself with Buck’s help into a rickety chair on the porch. “They been bad times ‘round here, bad times.”
He sat on the steps at her feet and held her bony fingers. “What’s happened, Emma? Where is everybody?”
“The black folks, they all run off, Mr. Buck. The white folks, they done gone too. Even the horses . . . been stole or shot.”
He scanned the bleak sight before him and shook his head. Despite his distaste for the injustice and cruelty of the world he’d known here, he couldn’t deny that it had also boasted elegance and beauty. The two-and-a-half-story mansion with its fluted columns, wide piazzas, French windows, expensive furniture, sophisticated décor and carefully collected library had attested to culture and refinement.
“The Yankees do this, Emma? Burn the place, run everybody off?”
“Yessir, but not Yankee soldiers, just bad men. They even burned the cotton seed from meanness, so’s we can’t plant no more.” She looked around suddenly. “Where’s Mr. Clay? He ain’t with you?”
“Clay’s dead, Emma.” Buck said hoarsely. “Killed in the war.”
“Oh God, Oh Jesus, not my baby. Him gone too?” The old woman wailed and beat her chest. “Oh, sweet baby Jesus. Seems like God don’t never stop punishing this poor family.” She rocked back and forth in her chair, humming tunelessly.
“What happened to Father? How did he die?”
“Lord have mercy, child. There’s too much pain, too much. He was pure tired, Mr. Buck. It was all more than a man could take. He wanted to do the right thing. Truly he did, but it was all too much. He just sit on that porch and rock for hours, staring and sipping whiskey. I doesn’t ‘member Mr. Raleigh drinking much before, but he don’t seem to care ‘bout nothing.”