Tennessee Rose Read online

  Don’t y’all listen to her, Charger snorted from across the aisle. He was the smartest horse I ever knew, an ancient white stallion who at the age of ten had ridden to the Mexican-American War with the captain’s father. His hip bones stood up from his swayed old back, his eyes were watery and red-rimmed, and what teeth he had were the color of tobacco. There’s no nobler lot than to be a saddle mount, he said in his creaky voice. I should know.

  Not long after that I was ridden for the first time. Levi led me to the railing, where Mr. Barks was sitting. Before I knew it, he was on my back! I bucked a bit and tried to get away, but then I realized something wonderful. He may have been a cranky fellow with no manners, but Justice Barks sat lightly in the saddle. His hands on the reins were light, too, sending deliberate signals to my bit. He clucked softly, turned me to the gate, and we were out and onto the driveway.

  Mr. Barks and I went up to the main road and back every morning for months. You’re meant to walk for a hundred miles until you’re trained, Maggie told me, and so I guess that means we did it two hundred times. Gradually, Mr. Barks would urge me to walk faster without breaking into a trot. I can’t remember the exact moment when it clicked in … but one day I realized I was doing the fifth gait! I could skim over the gravel with great speed, and I never tired of it. I loved the feeling of the wind in my mane and my tail streaming out behind me. I loved the rhythm of it, and the way it pulled me along. Fleur was right—the running walk was in my blood.

  I guess the captain liked what he saw. Every so often he would come to the paddock and ride me around or take me up and down the driveway a few times. At the end of that summer, he decided that I would be his personal mount.

  “She’s tall and strong and responsive,” he told Mr. Barks, “and I like a young horse I can mold to my ways. I need a big horse, and I like the look of this one.”

  The captain was well over six feet tall, with blond hair he wore to his shoulders and a pointed beard that hid a small chin. He was always beautifully groomed, his ruffled shirts gleaming with starch, his boots polished to a mirror shine.

  And so, with the captain on my back, I finally saw the whole of Belle Rivière.

  I saw the Big House, which was set on a hill above terraced gardens that sloped down to the river. The house was large and white, with six fluted columns across the front and tall windows that were kept open in the hot months to catch the faintest wisp of a breeze.

  I saw the carpenter’s shop and the sawmill and the blacksmith’s shop (with fifty horses at Belle Rivière, his anvil rang all the day long). I saw the little schoolhouse that Miss Martha-Anne had built for the slaves, which on Sundays doubled as a church, and I finally saw how most of the slaves lived. There was a short row of brick cabins, which were screened from the house by a stand of pines—these were for skilled laborers like the blacksmith and those servants who could not fit into the attic of the Big House, and they were tidy and well-built.

  The seventy-five hands who worked the cotton, however, lived close to the fields in two long rows of cabins. The cabins were sad-looking, made of crude pine boards and tin roofs rusted with soft red streaks by the humidity. Each cabin was fronted by a tiny scrap of garden, where the slaves grew collards and beans to add to the supplies the captain and Miss Martha-Anne gave them. Wash hung on lines strung between the trees, and babies tumbled like puppies in the dust by the front steps.

  And I saw the cotton.

  King Cotton it was called, for it ruled the South. Cotton, not the captain’s horse trading, paid for all that was Belle Rivière, and there were five hundred acres planted along the Warrior. Every spring the river flooded her banks and left the fields rich and moist and ready for planting.

  There is nothing more beautiful than a cotton field. The bushes are a lush deep green, set off by the bright red Alabama soil. When the fields come into bloom, they are covered by a layer of white, as if snow had fallen. But it is a cruel kind of beauty. The plants grow little more than hip-high. The older slaves have to bend low, the younger reach up, all dragging long canvas sacks behind them. When the bolls open, they are four-pointed and razor sharp. At picking time the slaves come in from the fields barely able to straighten, their poor hands bleeding.

  The slaves lived in shacks. I lived in a splendid brick stable. Why, I wondered, did Captain Randall treat his horses better than he did his humans? I can only think it was because he took them for granted … or maybe it was because we cost more. Either way, it didn’t seem right.

  The Captain’s Daughter

  November 1860

  The slaves didn’t have to work on Sundays, except for the cooks up at the Big House and the grooms. Not a day goes by that a horse doesn’t need to be fed and watered and have its stall mucked out, and the grooms were up at dawn as usual. James and Sam, the two senior grooms, toiled the hardest, attending to Pearl and Papa. They were just about the prettiest creatures ever, a brother-and-sister team of perfectly matched dappled gray carriage horses. Every Sunday morning, they were washed and brushed until they shone like silver so they could ferry the family to church in Demopolis. The carriages lined up along the main street under the trees, and Pearl and Papa looked forward to gossiping with horses from around the county.

  Sam would do their manes in fussy little braids with scarlet ribbons and tie ribbons in their long, flossy tails, hurrying all the while. That carriage had to be waiting by the front door at precisely eight o’clock. The carriage was long and low and painted a shiny dark blue, with red wheels that set off Pearl’s and Papa’s ribbons. James would drive sitting up front in his Belle Rivière livery—a brass-buttoned dark blue jacket and cream-colored trousers tucked into high boots. (The captain made all the grooms wear livery on special occasions, parties and barbecues, and whenever family from Georgia or Virginia came to stay. “All tricked out in this itchy jacket,” Levi would mutter, running a finger under the tight collar. He grumbled, but I believe he was secretly pleased at how elegant he looked.) Then James would flick his whip, call “Gee up!” and away they would go. I think we all breathed a sigh of relief when the carriage disappeared down the driveway. I know Levi did.

  Then he was off to Miss Martha-Anne’s little schoolhouse for Sunday services. Charger once told me that it was against the law in many parts of the South to teach slaves to read, but the Randalls paid no mind. I put it down to common sense. Keeping children who were too young to work penned up in school meant they wouldn’t get into mischief, climbing trees or stealing peaches from Miss Martha-Anne’s prize orchards. On Sundays, the schoolhouse was too small to hold everyone, and the slaves would spill out onto the porch and down the steps. When the wind was right I could hear singing—low, mournful songs about crossing rivers and big, joyous songs about a place called Beulah Land. Oh, they sounded fine!

  On many Sunday afternoons, Jonathan Abbott, who had been hired to tutor the Randalls’ son, Lafayette, would come to the stable to chat with Levi. I’m not sure how they started talking, but I suspect that Jonathan, a Connecticut Yankee, was lonely so far from home and needed a friend.

  Lafayette would have been poor company—he was about sixteen then, at home because he had been dismissed “in disgrace” from a famous military school in South Carolina called the Citadel. I never heard the whole story, but knowing what little I did of him, I’d warrant it had to do with laziness. Human breeding is very mysterious. I remember thinking at the time that the captain was a fine man, and certainly his wife was the kindest and most hardworking lady I ever knew. But their children never lifted a finger unless they wanted to.

  Levi and Jonathan would sit on a hay bale outside my stall and discuss books and politics and freedom. Levi talked a lot about freedom. At first I didn’t understand, for no horse is ever really free: as Fleur had told me, we weren’t wild creatures and needed humans to care for us. But I guess it was different for humans, including Levi. In the North, Jonathan told him, they thought slavery should be abolished. It wasn’t right for a man to
be owned outright, as if he had no will of his own, and not be paid for a day’s labor. They also talked about a man called Abraham Lincoln, who had just been elected president and had vowed to end slavery in America.

  “They sure do hate him round these parts,” Levi commented. “I never heard anyone mention his name without making a face.”

  “There’s already talk, you know, of the Southern states leaving the Union,” Jonathan said soberly. Then he leaned over and said in a low voice, “Have you thought about the Underground Railroad? They could get you away from here. If you can get across the river into Ohio, you’ll be free. I know some people—”

  “I couldn’t leave Rosie,” Levi said, shaking his head. “I made a promise that I’d always take care of her. We’re a team, Rosie and me.”

  How my heart lifted at that! I wanted Levi to be happy, but I couldn’t bear the thought of our being parted. I wanted to stay as we were. Nothing much changed at Belle Rivière: there was a rhythm to our days, a shape to each week, and we lived in our own world. Although Miss Martha-Anne bought things at the dry goods store, I believe we could have existed for years on what we grew and what we made, right down to the beehive wax that was used for candles.

  But there was no equality to this world, no fairness. It all became clear to me one Sunday afternoon in November 1860. I’ve seen far worse since then, but even now I don’t like to remember that day.

  After church and Sunday dinner, the captain and Miss Martha-Anne had gone visiting at a plantation on the other side of the river. Miss Minnie and Lafayette had decided not to go along. Miss Minnie had always had her eye on me, slipping me sugar lumps and praising me to the skies. I remembered what Fleur had said and tried to keep clear, but it wasn’t easy. So on that crisp fall afternoon, when she came sashaying up to me in her fanciest riding togs, my heart sank. Her long blond ringlets were bound up in a net, she was twitching a riding crop against her thigh, and her blue eyes glittered.

  Levi, who was sitting beside me reading a book Jonathan had given him, sprang to his feet. He hid the book behind his back, but not before she saw it.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Minerva,” he said politely.

  “What’s that?” she said suspiciously.

  “Nothin’. Just a book.”

  “Show me.”

  Reluctantly, he held it out.

  “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson,” she read off the cover. “Huh. Yankee trash.” She sniffed.

  “Yes’m.” There was an uncomfortable pause. “What can I do for you this afternoon?”

  “What you can do,” she said, “is saddle Rose. In my saddle.”

  “Your sidesaddle?”

  “Yes, my sidesaddle,” she said coldly. “I want to ride Rose.”

  “But … Rose isn’t trained to a sidesaddle,” he said nervously.

  Lafayette, who had followed Miss Minnie into the stable, leaned against the wall and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Better do what she says,” he said, and grinned nastily. “Won’t be worth it not to.”

  “I smell trouble,” Levi murmured into my ear.

  “What’s that, boy?” Miss Minnie said sharply. “What’d you say?”

  “I said no trouble,” he replied. “I’d be pleased to saddle Rose for you.”

  Just try to do what she says, Maggie said from the next stall. She’s pitiful in the saddle, not half the rider her mama is.

  I don’t know what to do with a sidesaddle! I fretted. How does it work?

  Everything’s all on one side, Maggie explained quickly. She curls her right leg over the pommel and there’s only one stirrup—you just get foot signals from the left. Pay attention to the reins, honey, and be careful.

  I say throw her the first chance ya get, Charger cackled.

  Levi buckled Miss Minnie’s sidesaddle around me and led me into the dressage ring and over to the mounting block. “She really don’t know how to do this,” he tried to say again. “She won’t know what you’re—”

  “Be still and give me a hand up.”

  Minerva Randall was no Justice Barks. Her hands were heavy and angry and she jerked the reins. “Canter, you wretched beast!” she cried, beating my left flank with her boot heel as she hauled on my right rein.

  Those signals were familiar, so I broke into a canter. We circled the ring a few times, and then she decided to take me over a jump. The center of the ring was set up with a series of two- and three- and four-barred jumps. I had jumped obstacles before, like fallen branches in the road when the captain and I went to town, but nothing like this! When we came to the first fence, I stopped in confusion and put my head down.

  Miss Minnie rolled over my neck and fell off me. She stood immediately, the reins still in her hand, her black silk top hat tilted over one eye. “How dare you!” she gasped, and smacked the saddle with her crop. (I was just glad she didn’t smack me.)

  “Miss, oh, miss,” Levi was yelling as he dashed across the ring. “Please, miss.” He reached out and patted my neck. “Please, miss, Rosie’s no show horse. Please don’t try to jump her, please.”

  It all happened so fast I didn’t catch every word, but I knew Levi was trying to defend me … and I was suddenly afraid for him. No! my mind screamed. Go back, I can do this, please, go back!

  Lafayette, who was sitting on the top railing of the fence, started to laugh. “Your life is over, boy,” he called out to Levi.

  “Give me a leg up,” Miss Minnie panted. “I’ll jump this horse if I want to.”

  Two more times she tried, and two more times I balked. By now my mouth was sore and aching, and I could taste the salty tang of blood on my bit.

  “Please,” Levi begged again. “Don’t do this to Rosie, you’ll hurt her. You don’t know what you’re doing—”

  “What in tarnation is goin’ on here?” the captain’s voice rang out as he strode into the ring.

  Miss Minnie shot Levi a triumphant look and dismounted. “Oh, Papa,” she said pathetically, turning up a sugary-sweet face. “I was so bored ’cause you and Mama weren’t home so I decided to give Rose a little exercise. Just around the ring, but this awful boy wouldn’t let me. He sassed me, he was rude, he even called me a bad rider.”

  “Is this true?” the captain thundered.

  Levi’s eyes were on the ground, and I saw him swallow hard. “No, sir,” he said hoarsely. “She was tryin’ to jump Rosie, and I think she hurt Rosie’s mouth, sir. I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to be rude, honest.”

  Calmly, the captain reached out his hand, palm up, and Miss Minnie placed her crop in it.

  “Turn around,” he said to Levi. “Now.”

  Slowly, Levi turned. His fists were clenched at his sides, and he held his head high.

  And then Captain Randall laid into him, slashing the crop across his shoulders with every word. Levi never made a sound, not so much as a whimper. “Don’t … you … ever … sass … my … daughter … again,” said the captain. “If you weren’t good with the stock, I swear I’d sell you off this place tonight.”

  He turned to his son. “Get down from there, Lafe, and stop smirking. Go into the house, Minerva. I’ll attend to you later.”

  The captain threw the riding crop into the dust and turned on his heel. “Take care of Rose,” he said over his shoulder to Levi, who had sunk to his knees with his head bowed. “My wife’ll bring you a new shirt in the morning.”

  That night Levi slept in my stall again, but I could offer him no comfort. He rocked back and forth, trying to muffle his sobs with the torn and bloody shreds of his shirt. “I got to get out of here, Rosie,” he moaned. “This is no life for me. If I could take you I would head for that Underground Railroad. But it wouldn’t be safe. I’ll just have to wait until we can leave this place together. One day, Rosie. One day we’ll get our chance.”

  I leaned over and nuzzled his head, for it was all I could do, and he held on to me and sobbed like a little child.

  I never felt the same way about Captain Randall
again. He never knew—I was as obedient as I’d ever been—but I began to think that Levi was right about freedom. Maybe being safe and well-fed wasn’t enough. Maybe we did need to get away from Belle Rivière.

  Fort Sumter

  April 1861

  All that winter, Pearl and Papa had come home from church on Sunday with the latest news. They were more pretty than they were smart and didn’t fully understand what they heard, but we had wise old Charger to interpret. I never really cared about politics, but Charger, who had lived through two decades of history and a war, took a keen interest in every snippet.

  For months he’d been telling any horse who would listen—and more who wouldn’t—that trying to get around Abraham Lincoln and the government in Washington, D.C., would only bring a heap of trouble down on our heads. You can’t ignore the Yankees, he said sourly. There’re too blasted many of ’em.

  Just before Christmas, Pearl and Papa told us that South Carolina had left the Union. In January, five more states seceded: Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and our own, Alabama. Texas and Virginia soon followed, as would three more states by June. If we had lived in our own world at Belle Rivière, it seemed we now lived in a new country—the Confederate States of America. A stern-looking man named Jefferson Davis was our president, and Richmond, Virginia, was our new capital.

  I had met visiting horses from as far away as Maryland and Tennessee. Charger had been to Texas and the New Mexico territory, and even down into Mexico. Isn’t America awfully big? I asked him hesitantly. Big enough for two countries or even three or four?

  This isn’t about land, you silly filly, he said tartly. It’s about that man from Illinois, and it’s about money. Suppose we have to start paying the slaves to pick cotton? How much do you think that will cost?

  Despite all this exciting news, we kept to our old routine. The captain and I rode into town every Friday so he could pick up the mail and newspapers and chat with his friends at the bank. It was a pleasant change from riding the fields, and I looked forward to it all week. The road was smooth and sandy and wound by small farms with orchards and barns and tall stands of corn rustling in the breeze. There was no finer surface for my running walk! When I worked up a good head of steam, we could make the ten miles in a little over half an hour.