Blood and Apples

I had climbed up the apple tree to get away from another of Ma’s punishments.

I know she’s beside herself. I know she’s got six mouths to feed on her own, now that Pa’s runned off with his best gun, an’ joined the war.

Pa should be here, running the farm. He’s not the best Pa, not the second-best neither. Not very good at all, but it’s what we were given, an’ Ma says make do. But chores don’t get to run off and join a cause, so us kids are the ones left to do it.

Chores, I don’t mind. I can milk the kine an’ get the eggs, even when that nasty ol’ hen gets all angry and pecks at me something fierce. I can muck an’ spread feed with the best of ‘em. I can feed an’ sweep and even cook a bit, fair middlin’.

But mindin’ my brothers? No.

They don’ lissen to any wimmin but Ma, and only on the end of a thorny stick when it comes to that. Me? Might as well whistle in the wind. So I don’t, and tell ‘er so, and I get smacked if they act up, and can’t smack ‘em when they don’t mind me.

Me an’ Sissy do the chores, ‘cuz they sure don’t. Then we make ourselves scarce.

I think she goes fishin’, ‘cuz more offen than not she comes in with a nice fat trout. Now that it’s autumn, I come in with some nice ripe apples, an’ we can all eat like kings.

Otherwise, it’s cornbread. Or hominy. Or green corn isself. It’s war, and harvest is small. We’re kinda hidden where we are, so the armies crossing up and down and crosswise miss us. We’re small fry, anyways, they druther dally up there.

I don’ like ‘em. I don’t like her.

Victoire Pauline Marie Gabrielle de la Vincendière. What a mouthful, and don’ let you fergit it. Comes from Saint Dominique, some godforsaken island. Bought L’Hermitage from Mister James Marshall, that Scots man who done bought up all the land round here. Great great granther had already bought Hidden Hollow Farm, so our paltry acres are just kinda lost in the shuffle. We like it that way.

Miss Priss loves to entertain the troops. How some old maid like her could afford to buy the whole thing outright, and bring over her whole family, I will never know. And mebbe don’t wanna.

And slaves. So many slaves. What did she do, to be that rich, without a husband? And then hafta leave it all behind, and ship her valuables to little ol’ Frederick County?

Suspicious. Foreign. I don’ trust ‘em.

I guess they didn’ make themselves friends ‘round here neither, ‘cuz they finally sold the farm to the Trail family, who rented it to the Bests. Miss Priss still entertains the gray troops over on her Frederick holdings, we hear. Ignores the war, thinks nothin’ of flauntin’ her wealth. An’ that’s when the trouble started with the Bests, aping her ways.

They claim they don’t own slaves, they have “hired help.” Both black an’ white, so I guess that makes it even? If’n that’s so, they how come he’s selling and renting blacks, and using their chilluns as collateral? I know I ain’t much better, but I ain’t no white trash, we own our land.

I reckon Mister David Best is a right chowderhead, ‘specially after what just happened yesterday.

Mister Best thinks he owns this land, and ever’ting and ever’one. Don’ matter how many times my Pa went over to set ‘im straight, it’s allus back to MY land, MY tenants. He’s a tenant hisself!

Yesterday he bellowed hisself home, ‘cuz he had the audacity to march up to Ma and demand rent!

Ma don’t take no guff from no one, ‘specially not a balderdash-spewing bluffer. She gave him such a hidin’, I could hear and see it from my hidey perch.

Hearin’ him holler his way up the hill was a most satisfyin’ sound, let me tell you! I stifled my giggles in my apron.

But Ma has been in such a fearsome mood ever since, and I’m a-feared for the future of our backsides.

But now I’m a-hidin’ from the soldiers.

General Lee hisself was camped in the Best fields for a few days, ‘bout a week ago. Then they left, headin’ to Sharpsburg, and burned our bridge on the way out. Pa helped put out the fire, tol’ us all about the excitement, and was gone the next mornin’. To join the Union.

Now, the same field is covered in more tents, and there’s a whole lotta blue uniforms. And right whereabouts where Gen’ral Lee’s tent stood, or the wagons that loaded his stuff, there were exclamations and hullaballoo. And runnin’ and more gesticulations, an’ off the Union went.

And there goes my oldest brother, draggin’ Pa’s second-best gun, to join them.

I climbed down to find Sissy, an’ figger out what to do. I’d already picked a full apron of apples, knotted up like a haversack for totin’.

Only I found her, down near the river – in the comp’ny of a bunch of blacks.

They’s cleaning fish left an’ right, as Sissy was pullin’ ‘em out of the river.

And one of them, a big, burly, man, was givin’ me a strange look.

Sissy was leaving. With them.

She wasn’t gonna tell me, thinking I’d’a given ‘em up for the runned away slaves they were.

I could hear ‘em whisperin’, and I knew they were wonderin’ what to do with me. A mischief, at least, I reckon. But what they didn’t reckon on was me plopping down, tellin’ them I’m a-coming with, and sharing the apples I’d brung.

I was mad at Sissy, an’ I tole her so. Leavin’ without me? Don’ matter if she fell in love with one of ‘em or not, but not havin’ my back? We’d hash that out later, when there was time.

But not now. Connipt later. Sissy and the big man snuck back to our farm, to get more apples and most of the chickens. Come sundown, we was movin’ north.

Sissy wasn’t there to hear me whine, but an old lady was. She shuffled over to me, and the others got outta her way. “Yer ta be liken mah granddaughter,” she muttered at me, “An’ this is strangeness. Dangerous. Death stalks us, but if’n you stay, you die.”

I shuddered. I didn’ like most a’ my family, but I didn’ want them dead neither.

She patted my hand, which was odd. I’d never been touched by a black before. “All get a chance to run, they must take it. Like you are.”

I looked around. They were doing chores. Guttin’ fish, makin’ a small camp, lightin’ a smokeless fire. More’n my brothers would do. Better’n my brothers would do.

I think, I gots some heavy thinkin’ to do.

Sissy came back, with that mountain of a man. Did they strip the tree? We feasted on apples an’ fish, an’ packed the rest for walkin’. I weren’t sure if’n I could do this, but they all promised to help.

I promised myself I wouldn’t put them in more danger.

They also brought news. That excitement I saw? Those Union boys found an order signed by General Lee hisself, with battle plans. They were going to meet Lee and end the war with what they now knew. But that meant we had to go another way, or we’d walk right into the back end of the battle.

An’ the sun set, an’ it was time to go.

I knew right then an’ there, the pastor was wrong. These were people, who were runnin’ away from slavery. I’d seen the whip marks. I saw the fear. But if they planned this, when Ma and the rest couldn’t see what was going on, then who’s the smarter?

I was glad my dress an' apron were dirty. Less glimmer to be seen and remarked on.

I slung a pack of apples an' fish over my shoulder, an' followed my guides into the dark.