Part 3
The sound of a crackling of fire fills a small two bedroom farmhouse on the outskirts of Red Creek where Agatha Cummings, a short white haired woman with a face that has yet to show signs of age, stands over the pan of eggs and bacon. She pulls the food off the old stove top and brings it over to the table. She wipes her hands on the white apron that protects her blue dress from the grease of breakfast.
“Elliot, Elba! Come get it.”
Elba, a young blonde girl with Bible tucked under her arm dressed in a similar blue dress as her mother with a, comes in from the porch. She takes a seat at the table, opens up the Bible and begins scanning through the pages.
“Where’s your brother?”
“I not sure mama.” She stops on a page and starts mouthing the words to herself, underlining each word with her pointer finger, “I think he was out feedin’ the chickens.”
“Go out and fetch him.”
“But mama I’m readin’!” Elba began to huff and puff.
“No buts, go an’ get him. Ya wouldn’t be acting this way if your Papa was home.”
Elba stands and runs outside shouting for her brother. He doesn’t answer. She walks around to the chicken coup, “Elliot! Where are you brotha? Mama gonna be mad, ya may even get a whippin’!” Elba laughs, mama never gives her a whipping. She spends her days cleaning the house and reading the Bible, wishing she could fight lions and live in a land far away like Daniel. ‘Oh, how fun and exciting that would be,’ she always thinks.
She comes back alone.
“Where is Elliot?”
“I don’t know mama, but one of tha horses is gone.”
Agatha runs out of the house toward the stable, “Elliot!” One of the horses indeed was gone. She returns to the house with tears rushing from her eyes.
“Where he go mama?”
“Probably to go and find ya, papa.” She put her head into her hands, “Nothing we can do now but pray.”
“Dear God,” Elba begins, “Please watch ova my stupid brotha and my papa. Make sure they come home safe to protect me and mama. Amen.” She forms the sign of the cross with her right hand. “Good mama?”
“Good.” Agatha lifts her head from her hands and grabs her daughter’s hand.
“Why didn’t papa have some men with him? Why did he go all alone mama?”
“Your papa isn’t liked here anymore.”
“Why not?”
“He killed a bad man and the town didn’t like that.”
“But if the man was bad why don’t the town like it mama?”
“Cause he was one of them and papa is from outside.” Agatha serves her daughter breakfast. Elba starts eating, Agatha continues, “The man was wanted for some things he did when he went out to Chicago, and your father being the law here had to go arrest him.”
“But papa killed him?”
“Papa went out to the Sloane house and,”
“Where’s the Sloane house?” Elba interjects.
“It’s ‘bout 50 miles to the east, anyway papa rode out there to arrest him, but when he got there Mr. Sloane shot at him and killed ya papa’s horse and ya dad got hurt bad when the horse fell dead. Ya, papa took his rifle and sent that evil man to the hell that ya read about in that book.” Agatha stands up and walks over to the front window. The high mountains loom off in the horizon, she starts to cry again as she thinks of her only son out there alone.
“Elliot an’ papa will be home for ya know it mama; I prayed, so God an’ Jesus will watch ova them.” Elba walks over to her mother and grabs her arm leading her back to the table, “Sit and eat breakfast” She serves her mother breakfast and returns to the pages of the Bible hoping that her belief in those centuries-old words will protect her father and brother, but her mother knows that the west is godless, so she eats in fear.
A fear she tried to escape from by coming to Red Creek. A fear of losing everyone she holds dear.
She thinks back to a hot September morning many years ago; fog crept in from the Tennessee River as she stared out her bedroom window over dew soaked cotton fields that stretched out below her. She could hear a whip cracking off in the distance﹘ a sound that always brought a shiver down her spine. It meant that somewhere out in those fields her brother was ripping a slave’s back raw. It was sound she despised, but as much as she pleaded with her brother to stop the whippings and free the dozens of slaves working on the plantation she knew he would never allow that.
She walked downstairs and out onto the porch as a cool breeze blew carrying with it the sound of hundreds of voices. The voices grew louder and she could hear the wheels of wagons and the hooves of horses tramping over the road leading to the plantation. Her brother, Tom, came out from the fields atop his white horse as two uniformed men rode up to the great house. A large number of disheveled men waited outside the main gate.
“Ma’am,” one of the men began to speak as he tilted his hat toward Agatha, “My name is General William Rosecrans, my men need a place to rest for a few hours. I hope that you do not mind them taking residence outside of your home for a spell.” He smiled as he stepped down from his horse, “And me and my officers will take up some space in the dining room or study and have a cup a coffee if you do not mind any.”
Tom stepped off of his horse and walked toward the general. Rosecrans removed his white gloves and extended his hand toward Tom. Tom did meet it with a handshake, “Ya gonna stay here cause you got all them men with all them guns, but you will not be welcome.” Tom mounted his steed and rode back into the fields.
Rosecrans tried to hide his anger with a fake smile. He watched as Tom went back to the field where he immediately began yelling and whipping down a young slave.
“I apologize for my brotha General, he isn't an avid supporter of you Union folk.”
“And you ma'am?” He questioned
“I wish this war would jus’ end,” Agatha stared out over the field and watched as her brother took the whip to Lyle, one of the young slaves. Agatha always felt something for the slaves, especially poor Lyle; who her brother treated worse than most. “I wish the violence would stop.”
“I assure once we claim victory this pointless violence will cease,” Rosecrans spoke as he listened to the crack of a nine tails against human flesh.
Agatha waved to a couple of the female housekeepers and had them lead General Rosecrans and his officers into the great house. She followed them in as the sound of ripping skin echoed over the cotton fields.
A few hours past Agatha was knitting in the study when Tom began yelling in the dining room below. Shouting that was followed by the sound of a gunshot. Agatha threw her knitting to the floor and sprinted down the stairs into the foray. Another gunshot echoed through the house.
She entered the lobby as two Union soldiers rushed past her and out the front door. Agatha walked into the dining room where a Union officer sat face down in a piece of white cake; his blood dripping onto the floor. Tom sat across the table with his hand on his chest, blood spilling over his fingers.
“Fuck.” He sputtered, “Bastard shot me. You best run sister, I killed that one,” he motioned his head toward the dead Union officer “an’ lord knows they ain’t gonna take it too well.”
Agatha stepped closer to her brother and cupped her hands on her mouth.
“We ain’t got time for a goodbye,” he coughed spitting up a tiny bit of blood, “Just get a suitcase an’ leave this place, it ain’t safe.”
Agatha rushed out of the dining room, back upstairs past the study, and into her room. She grabbed a few dresses and shoved them into a suitcase. She could hear Tom speaking when another gunshot rang out, then her brother’s voice was gone. tears welled up in her eyes as loud footsteps began pounding the blue ash floors, which was followed by the crackling of a raging fire. Smoke began to seep through the cracks in the floor. Agatha grabbed her suitcase and ran down the back stairs.
She ran across the yard to the stable, she could hear gunshots echoing behind her, but she didn’t know who they were shooting at until she saw the bullets impacting the stable walls: she ran faster.
She hopped on a horse that was to be saddled and ready for a trip her brother was supposed to take into town. She rode the horse west and tried not to look back.
Now she sits hoping her husband would ride back east alive with Elliot by his side bringing their laughter back to the home to replace her pacing footsteps and Elba’s incisive praying.
