Land Thieves

I jumped on Romeo and headed for my own when the ten days of service was up, saying good-bye I hoped for the last time to the United States Army. I would catch that Baltimore train at St. Louis, Missouri, take it into Kentucky and off I flew at a high rate, a several days’ journey left from there. Without announcement I hopped the fence in back a’ Titania, then jumped that fallen pine I’d forgotten to clear, and into the waiting arms of my family once more. Sylvia and Titi were both on the porch this time, caring for Johnny, Nancy hopefully at something good in the kitchen…

Home.

I was a slave owning, land owning Christian farmer now, trying to put the Army days behind me. Father was surprised to see me when I first got home, but I told a story about my service at Fort Gibson, and that the old Arkansas boys had everything under control. He still stared down at that fiddle, spent a good deal a’ time either at his gin or ridin’ most evenings before supper. He arose everyday late, my mother said, conferred with the aging Mr. Stunk that all was well and tobacco profits secured, then it was off to his other interior passions and patterns.

Pa opened up about the Negro Fort affair only once, when I was fiddlin’ with the fire by that infamous family fiddle after supper one night.

“The Negro Fort!” he yelled out suddenly. “Burn ‘em out, Soldier!” he yelled at me, as I tried to kindle a great flame. Once the fire was good and tall, I sat back down to keep an eye on it and Father, who nodded satisfaction…

“He and the others are dead, Son.”

“Who, Father?” I asked, to which Pa answered tearfully:

“Jack is dead, Son…”

And it reminded me of my broken heart over Black Hawk, the women and children on that river trying to escape the long, violent, loud arm of a relentless United States Army under President Jackson’s solemn command. I had nightmares still about… I asked Ruby, and she told me it’d come out at some point, but I still don’t think I can write the story down yet.

What I can report is that I wrote the Secretary of War, a Lewis Cass of Ohio, requesting permanent leave of the United States Army to pursue other interests, from educational to farming at home. There was always the chance my request would be denied, especially if war was to break out more than it already was on the frontier… But I did my part for me and my family, had some peace I was headin’ in the right direction away from the dishonors and horrors of the Black Hawk War, away from what led Father into his lonely study every day pretending to learn the fiddle while becoming a sadly expert drinker of flammable liquids, tryin’ to forget he was ever anywhere near that Negro Fort in the Florida Panhandle.

While I waited for Washington to respond to my request, I joined our field hands to clean up Titania into a fine example of productivity and profit. Not a smoker myself, it was hard to see why people would pay so much money for our tobacco, but they did, and it was shipped all over the world. The American population was growing, if you discounted the declining numbers of native people, which our early censuses did very purposefully. The slave population was on the rise, as well, next to it political and moral controversy! Abolitionists yelled out “Foul!” and we southerners was soon painted quite the devil for keepin’ Negroes in chains against their will.

Slavery was all we knew; I was born into bein’ a slave owner, myself, while Cato, Will, Nancy and all the others were born into their position. I didn’t know any other way but to take advantage of an advantageous situation, the profits comin’ in, and minus the occasional outburst brought on by Mr. Stunk’s whip, we all seemed fine with it. Titi was an angel sent from heaven to us, and I felt like I could show her the front door, give her her freedom without a single change in her choice to be among us. She and the other Negroes were family, just like Belle had been, Old Pete now passed, Sweet Filly on her last leg, our new colt Romeo, Ma, Pa and all of us livin’ on the Cottage. Family!

I’ll admit to a little fear… What if Titi did leave us? What if we gave her, Nancy and Cato their freedom one day… I thought they would just stay and that they loved us, but with that freedom, what if they just… left? That fear kept Pa all right with Stunk’s whip and a staunch supporter of any politics that kept things status quo. I leaned that way, too, except for Stunk’s whip—which I fantasized sometimes would be wrapped around his own neck one day, hung up on one of our loftiest pine trees as a warning against unnecessary cruelty.

I thought of Mr. Stunk beating Jack for worshipping in the African way, him bolting to freedom across into Spanish Florida, only to be cut down by Andrew Jackson, Pa and the United States Army. Three hundred men, women and children burned down and slaughtered to make way for more slavery and American expansion. More than five hundred men, women and children slaughtered along the Mississippi River, myself a part a’ the killing…

I don’t know what I’d do without Ruby here. I might descend into some sort of self-harm, but she keeps a fire for me, reminds me it’s never too late to turn things around, ask forgiveness from God and acquire a spot in that dream the preachers call heaven.