Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [144]
“Very good. But open the box you’re carrying first.” Daddy dusted off his hands and returned to his chair, watching as Gilbert pried open the second box. A dozen bottles, filled with ambercolored liquid, nestled beneath layers of wood shavings. “Ah . . . I see they all made it safely,” Daddy said. “Uncork one of them, Gilbert, and pour me a glass.”
As I watched Gilbert scurry around the room waiting on Daddy, I realized that my father would never change. He couldn’t change. His attitudes toward Negroes had been born and bred into him, hardening and solidifying year after year until they had turned to stone. He would carry them to his grave. So many of the people he lived with and worked with carried the same attitudes that no one even questioned them anymore. If the South won the war, nothing would change for the Negroes. Slavery would continue the way it had for centuries. And if Tessie and Josiah gave birth to another child, Daddy wouldn’t even think twice about selling him, just as he’d sold Grady.
Many people would say I was wrong to think about deceiving my father, taking advantage of his friendship with Confederate leaders in order to help his enemies. They would say I was wrong to mislead Charles and his father about what I did at Libby Prison. But those who’ve been through a war will understand how right and wrong, truth and lies, can sometimes get confused in the smoke and mayhem of conflict. They certainly were no longer clear to me. What was clear, though, was that in God’s eyes, my father was wrong to own people as his slaves.
“Are you home to stay this time?” I asked him.
“For a few months, anyway.”
“I think we should throw a welcome-home party for you. We can invite all your friends, share some of these treats you’ve brought.”
“That’s a good idea, Sugar. I’m glad you thought of it. Thank you, Gilbert,” he said as the servant finally handed him his drink. Then Daddy happened to glance down and notice Robert’s old shoes on Gilbert’s feet. “Good heavens! Why are you wearing such a disgraceful pair of shoes in my house?”
“They all I got, Massa Fletcher.”
“Well, what on earth have you done to wear them out that way—walk to Texas and back?”
“They were probably poorly made to begin with,” I said. “I couldn’t afford to buy him new ones. Shoes are very expensive these days.”
My father fished another gold piece out of his pants pocket and tossed it to me. “Here . . . catch. Take him downtown tomorrow and buy him a new pair. Buy yourself a new pair, too, if you’d like.”
Gilbert and I didn’t notice anything unusual the next morning as we headed downtown to a store on Main Street to buy his shoes. We caused enough of a stir all by ourselves, outfitting a slave with new shoes costing twenty-five dollars a pair. Slaves usually wore their master’s castoffs, whether they fit him or not.
Had we driven past the capitol, we might have noticed the huge crowd of people milling in the square, armed with knives and axes and pistols. But we drove down Main Street, not Franklin, and we had no idea of the danger we were in until the mob poured down the hill into the commercial shopping district, clamoring for food. As they streamed past the window of the store we were in, shouting for bread to feed their starving families, the alarm bell in the square started to ring. I saw that the mob was mostly women—poor and ragged, some as thin as skeletons. Many carried ragamuffin children in their arms. The woman at the head of them was as tall as a man, wearing a hat with a long white feather in it and armed with a six-shooter. The women surged into bakeries and grocery stores, grabbing food off the shelves.
“What’s going on?” one of the other customers asked as we crowded near the store window to watch.
The proprietor quickly locked the door. “I think you’d better stay inside where it’s safe, ladies. Those people look like rabble . . . and they’re out of control.”
I watched in astonishment as the crowd flooded through the shopping district, looting the stores,