Tennessee Rose Read online

  HORSE DIARIES

  #1: Elska

  #2: Bell’s Star

  #3: Koda

  #4: Maestoso Petra

  #5: Golden Sun

  #6: Yatimah

  #7: Risky Chance

  #8: Black Cloud

  #9: Tennessee Rose

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2012 by Jane Kendall

  Cover art copyright © 2012 by Ruth Sanderson

  Interior illustrations copyright © 2012 by Astrid Sheckels

  Photograph credits: © Bob Langrish (this page)

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kendall, Jane F.

  Tennessee Rose / Jane Kendall; illustrated by Astrid Sheckels. — 1st ed.

  p. cm. — (Horse diaries; 9)

  Summary: Although raised on a southern plantation and owned by a Confederate officer, a Tennessee walking horse helps a slave during the Civil War.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-98731-1

  1. Tennessee walking horse—Juvenile fiction. [1. Tennessee walking horse—Fiction.

  2. Horses—Fiction. 3. Slavery—Fiction. 4. Southern States—History—1775–1865—Fiction. 5. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction.]

  I. Sheckels, Astrid, ill. II. Title.

  PZ10.3.K32Te 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011031019

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For my cousin,

  Sherrill Rucks Gates,

  Tennessee born and raised

  —J.K.

  For Ruth

  —A.S.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1

  Belle Rivière

  2

  Around in Circles

  3

  The Captain’s Daughter

  4

  Fort Sumter

  5

  Leaving Home

  6

  Manassas

  7

  Into the Night

  8

  Going Home

  Appendix

  About the Author

  About the Illustrators

  “Oh! if people knew what a comfort to horses a light hand is …”

  —from Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell

  Belle Rivière

  Alabama, 1856

  My name is Tennessee Rose, but most everyone calls me Rosie. My full name, as entered in Captain Randall’s breeding log, is quite a mouthful: Belle Rivière’s Tennessee Rose Fleurette. Belle Rivière is the cotton plantation on the Black Warrior River where I was born, and Tennessee is where my ancestors came from. Everyone in my family—and we Southerners do set great store by family—bears these names, to honor our heritage. Fleurette is because my mother was Tennessee Fleur: fleur is French for flower, and fleurette is a little flower. I am Rose because I have a white scallop-edged marking on my forehead, the only spot of brightness on my dark bay coat.

  “Why, that’s mighty like a rose!” exclaimed my owner, Captain Randall, when he first saw my marking. “And that’s what I shall call her. Tennessee Rose.”

  I was very old when everyone started calling us Tennessee Walking Horses, but when I was young we went by many names. We were called Plantation Walking Horses, Tennessee Pacers, or Walking Saddle Horses. Captain Randall just called us “my Tennessee Walkers,” and that is how I thought of myself.

  My early life was with my mother, Fleur of the tender and teasing ways. My first memory is of her cleaning me. Then she nudged me up onto my wobbling legs—I must admit it took a few tries!—so I could find the nourishment I needed. More than anything, I remember the sense of her, her comforting presence and her warm smell. I always knew when she was nearby, even if I couldn’t see her.

  Fleur was a chocolate-brown mare with legs so long I had to stretch up to reach her milk. She was lighthearted and sweet and thought it great fun to flick her mane against me until it tickled. How I would snort in delight! Her muzzle was as soft as a moth’s wing. When she nuzzled me, I felt as though the world would always be a place of safety.

  For the eight months before I was weaned, Fleur and I were never apart. Those were golden days, and I remember them as always in sunshine. (I’m sure that is not the truth, but that is how memory works.) I remember the heady smell of the yellow roses that climbed the stable walls, and the mockingbirds that nested there and sang to us at twilight. I remember the stillness just after dawn, when the sun was low and mist lay cool and pearly along the river. I remember waking to Fleur beside me, and hoping that I would never be anywhere else.

  I spent many of those days playing with my older sisters, who were also named for flowers: Magnolia Fleurette (we called her Maggie) and Pansy Fleurette and Lily Fleurette and Honeysuckle Fleurette. I never really knew my brothers, for they were a rowdy lot and disdained the company of mares and fillies. I would often see them in the far paddock vying for the attention of the stallions, including my father’s. He was Tennessee Samson, a strong-shouldered bay so named for his enormous strength.

  Like all mothers, or so I imagine, Fleur was full of advice. Make friends with the humans, she told me, for we depend on them. They feed us and shoe us and keep a roof over our heads. We Walkers are not wild creatures who can live in the woods, and humans are important.

  All the humans? I said slyly. Even Miss Minnie? Miss Minnie was the captain’s twelve-year-old daughter, a snippy little thing the grooms referred to (well, behind her back) as “a holy terror.”

  Oh, my child! Fleur rolled her pretty eyes. Stay clear of that one. And remember, humans can no more completely understand our speech than we can theirs. But sometimes you can break through. It all depends on their tone of voice. Those who speak in low and kindly tones can be trusted. Those who are sharp and nasty—she snorted—be polite and leave them alone. Now, when it comes to your training—

  I’m going to be trained?

  Of course you’re going to be trained. All Walkers are trained to the fifth gait.

  I had no idea what she meant and stared at her.

  She smiled and leaned close. Every horse on earth can do four gaits, she explained. Walk, trot, canter, and gallop, which is really no more than a canter gone fast. My land! Even a sorry old long-eared mule can do those gaits. But we Tennessee Walkers don’t trot much—we don’t need to.

  Why not? I asked.

  Because, she said proudly, we have a fifth gait, a fast light walk for which we are famous. It’s called the running walk. I’ll show you. Be still now and watch me.…

  She nudged me into a corner of the paddock and then, on a diagonal, dashed swiftly to the far side, her legs flashing in and out. Then she stopped, wheeled smartly, and came back as swiftly as a bird in flight. There! she announced as she pulled up. That is our wal
k.

  Will I be able to do that? I asked eagerly.

  I don’t see why not, she replied. It is, after all, in your blood.

  In those long and lazy days before the war, there were some fifty horses at Belle Rivière. Captain Randall was known far and wide as a talented breeder of Walkers and Thoroughbreds, and twice a year he went up North to buy breeding stock that he shipped home by rail. The paddocks were always full of mares and stallions, frisky young colts and fillies, and shy little foals tottering about on untried legs. No humble split-rail fences for Captain Jefferson Lafayette Randall! Our paddocks, of which there were four, were outlined with the same white-painted fences as those of the Kentucky breeders he so admired. Along these fences he had planted elm and pecan trees. In the punishing heat of summer we had shade for comfort, and water from the troughs for our parched throats.

  Although I took it for granted—I knew nothing else, after all—I knew that Belle Rivière was quite the grand affair. Eventually I crossed it more times than I can count, but I never did know how large it was. I do know that if you rode end to end and stopped to remark on every little aspect (as the captain did), it would take the better part of an entire day.

  The driveway leading to the road to Demopolis was half a mile long and lined with chestnut trees that met high above in an arch. The driveway was covered with a layer of crushed gravel that the slaves raked and watered every day. (The crunching sound when carriage wheels rolled over it was very pleasant, but how we horses hated all those tiny stones that got caught in our hooves.) The paddocks and sawdust rings were along the right and overlooked the river; to the left were the vegetable and flower gardens, surrounded by low brick walls. Miss Martha-Anne, the captain’s wife, grew every kind of flower you can imagine, and her roses were the finest in Marengo County.

  After the paddocks came the stables, which were built in an L shape. They were made of redbrick that had been whitewashed to a rosy hue, with slate-tiled roofs in shades of blue and greenish gray. The aisle floors between the stalls were brick, too, in a fancy crisscross pattern. The stalls were roomy, with hard-packed sand floors covered in a comfortable cushion of straw. Our mangers were kept filled with grain from large bins made of tin to keep out the mice.

  The family’s favorite horses were stabled in the main wing, which faced east over the Warrior. The land across the winding brown river was untamed, steep and rocky and thick with pine trees. Every morning the sun rose behind their dark, spiky branches, tinting them with orange and gold.

  At the end of my first year, I was moved into the main wing and assigned to a slave named Levi, who would be my groom.

  But I want to stay with you, I said to Fleur.

  This is a great honor, she said seriously. It means that the captain has plans for you, more than just having a baby every year. Oh, stop fretting, she said when she saw my woeful expression. We’ll still see each other every day. Besides, from what I hear, Levi’s a right nice child.

  For once Fleur was wrong. Levi was far more than a right nice child. He was the finest human I was ever to know, and the kindest. We took to each other on sight, mysteriously and easily, almost as though I’d always known him.

  “There’s my Rosie,” he said that first day, rubbing my head and slipping a chunk of carrot into my mouth. “If you aren’t the purtiest thing I ever did see …”

  I reckon Levi was about twelve years old then, tall for his age and lanky. He was the same rich chocolate color as Fleur, with big brown eyes that showed every emotion and crinkled at the corners when he laughed, which was often. He was seldom quiet, always whistling a merry tune, or humming under his breath, or talking to me. How that boy loved to talk! And gradually, as Fleur had said, I came to understand him. He had been born and raised at Belle Rivière, content with his lot until the day his father and mother and baby sister had been sold to a planter in Georgia. Captain Randall was a shrewd trader of humans and horses, and they came and went as he judged their worth. Solomon and Sarah and Katurah were gone … but Levi, who had showed an uncanny skill with horses at an early age, had remained.

  I had been groomed many times, but the grooms always raced through it as though it were just a job. Levi was different. He went over every inch of me as though he had been given a present to be opened slowly, savoring every moment. His hands were as soft as Fleur’s muzzle. When he combed out my long, waving mane and tail he started from the bottom up, never tugging or pulling but gently working out each tangle.

  And so, between Levi and Fleur, I was happy. Then came the day when I could not find Fleur. One day she was there, cantering around the paddock and playing “chase me” games. The next she was gone, vanished as though she had been a lovely dream.

  Where’s Fleur? I cried to Maggie. Where’s our mama?

  She’s gone, honey, Maggie replied, shaking her head.

  For one terrible moment I thought Fleur was dead. What do you mean, she’s gone? I wailed.

  Sold, said Honeysuckle. To a planter in Mississippi. They took her away this morning in a wagon, with two other brood mares and Pansy.

  That night Levi slept in my stall, curled up in the straw like a barn cat. Before he fell asleep, he reached out to pat me and murmured words of comfort. “Now we’re the same,” he said sadly. “Both our mamas been sold, and we’re never gon’ see them again in this world. Never mind, Rosie, I’ll take care of you. We’re together now, forever, you and me.”

  Although in time the pain of missing Fleur eased, no day went by that I did not remember her. You can’t look back, said Maggie, who was wise beyond her years, and so I turned to Levi, who made me feel as safe and loved as Fleur had. I imagined that we would spend the rest of our lives at Belle Rivière, the days sliding into the months, the months into the years. But I was young then, and rather foolish.

  Around in Circles

  Every day began with Levi. For a boy who worked so hard and had so little, he was always cheerful. He and the other grooms lived in a room beside the tack room, all crowded together on a line of cots, their clothing hung on nails. (I looked in the window once, and their quarters weren’t much bigger than my stall.) Levi had five other horses to care for, but he always greeted me first. “Good mornin’, Miss Rosie,” he would call out, a wide smile lighting up his features. “Did you sleep well? Goin’ to get my breakfast. You be good now till I get back.”

  The slaves in the cabins cooked for themselves, but the grooms lined up for their meals at the back door of the kitchen. This was a large one-story building, separated from the Big House by a covered walkway. (Fancy humans, Fleur had told me, didn’t like the heat and smoke of cooking in their houses.) Levi came back every morning with a slab of fried bacon, a tin mug of coffee, and a large square of hot corn bread dripping butter and sorghum. The coffee had the most enticing aroma. Once, when he saw me sniffing at it, Levi poured out a little in his plate for me to lap. How he laughed when I rolled my lips back and spat it out! I do not know how humans can drink that bitter brew when there’s water to be had. The corn bread was quite tasty, though.

  After he ate, Levi would lead me into the aisle and tie me to a ring on the wall, then muck out my stall. He collected every bit of dirt and debris into a wheelbarrow, took it away, and then spread a layer of clean straw with a pitchfork. Fresh oats and hay in the mangers, a bucket of water from the well by the stable door, and I was ready for whatever came next.

  I learned to do many things that year. I had seen horses wearing halters, so the first time Levi slipped one over my ears I didn’t fuss all that much. Then he clipped a rope to it so I could be led about, from stall to paddock to grazing pasture. I also learned to back up, which was easy. If someone pushes you backward, it stands to reason that you’ll back up.

  The real work began the following year with a trainer named Justice Barks. He was a peppery, dried-up little man, bowlegged from a lifetime in the saddle. Barks he was named and bark he did, but I knew from Fleur’s teachings that he meant well. First he cli
pped me to a long rein called a longe and led me around in circles. Around and around I went, first to the left and then to the right. When he wanted me to stop, he’d say the word, hold the longe, and give me a treat. This was more than worth a juicy bite of apple or carrot, so of course I obeyed.

  There she goes, Maggie would crow from the adjoining paddock. Little Rose in circles.

  Oh, hush now, said Lily. We all did it and it didn’t hurt us any.

  After completing their basic training, Maggie and Lily had been chosen by Miss Martha-Anne for dressage. At a strapping sixteen and a half hands, it seemed I was to be a saddle mount. Although our days of frolicking in the paddock were behind us, we talked over the fence when we could and caught up at the end of the day.

  After I went around and around in circles for what seemed like forever—but was really only a few weeks—Mr. Barks started adding tack. First he put a saddle blanket across my back so I could get used to the feeling of something on me. Then a saddle was fastened around me … and taken off and put on again many times, always with a treat. The bridle was the worst, even though Levi warmed the metal bit between his hands to take the chill off it. It felt so odd to have something in my mouth other than food! But I did as I was asked and settled down to it. What choice did I have? Then it was back to the circles, but now Mr. Barks would urge me to go faster, first into a trot and then into a canter. That was more like it! I liked going fast, and I sincerely hoped I wouldn’t have to do show jumping like Maggie and Lily.

  Why do you like it so much? I asked Maggie one night.

  Oh, it’s heavenly, she sighed. If you take off just right, you soar over the jump—it’s like flying.

  Heavenly? It looked like pure torture whenever I saw her practicing with Miss Martha-Anne. Going around in figure eights, clearing finicky fences without touching the rails with your back hooves, and all for what purpose I never did know.