MADELINE'S JOURNAL
December, 1867. Christmas nearly here and we are as close to starvation as we have ever been. Soon I will have to tell everyone — Prudence, the Shermans, the other loyal freedmen. For every cent we earn, I pay out two. Unless I go crawling to George H., I see no alternative but to admit failure and inform Cooper that I lack the ability to manage Mont Royal successfully. The prospect of leaving this place, with my dream of rebuilding it a ruin, is exquisitely painful. Yet abdication, if that is the right term, seems my only course.
If I choose to follow it, Andy, of all those here, will take it hardest, I think. He is proud and excited about going to Charleston as a convention delegate. Talks about it constantly ...
Des LaMotte talked about it, too, with Gettys and Captain Jolly, in Jolly's shanty.
It was two weeks before Christmas; dark, drizzly weather. Des was worn to emaciation by his months in prison. Jolly in contrast looked fit, was sporting a new linen duster he'd stolen from a traveler. He was busy with a greasy rag that he slid back and forth on the barrel of one of his Leech and Rigdons, burnishing it.
"We have got to do something besides talk," Des declared. There was a wounded quality in his friend's eyes, Getty's observed. Des would say almost nothing about his time behind bars, but it was evident that it had been a harrowing experience.
Jolly spat on the barrel and caressed it with the rag. "Shit, that's all we ever do, sit around and talk. She's sending her darky to the convention. Why don't I just hunt him up and blow him down?"
"Because then it'll be something else, some other issue or outrage, until she turns the whole district into high niggerdom."
"LaMotte, I'm tired of this," Jolly said. "Do you want to get rid of her or don't you?"
"You know I do."
"Then let's do it. Otherwise you're just a dog with a bark and no teeth."
The tall dancing master reached for Jolly's throat. The captain quickly set the muzzle of his revolver against Des's palm. He grinned. "Go on. Try to choke me. I'll put a ball through your hand into your skull."
Red-faced, Des lowered his hand. "You just don't understand, do you? I want her dead but I don't want to go to prison for it. I've been there, in prison" — he was sweating — "terrible things can happen to a man of intelligence and sensibility. Vile things not even physical strength can prevent."
Gettys decided it was time to relieve Des's misery. He drew a packet from his old velvet coat. "If you all can stop your spatting, I think we've got the answer. My cousin Sitwell traveled all the way to Nashville for a secret conclave —" He saw Jolly's puzzlement and took pleasure in saying with a superior air, "Convention, Captain. Meeting. He brought this back."
He showed a wrinkled broadsheet with a big, bold heading. TENNESSEE TIGER. The tiger, a steel engraving, crouched ferociously in front of a Stars and Bars. "Read the poem," Gettys said, pointing it out.
Des read it aloud. "Niggers and Leaguers, get out of the way. We are born of the night —" Captain Jolly's interest perked up. Des said, "You mean they allow publication of this sort of thing in Tennessee?"
"And similar things in a lot of other places, Sitwell informed me. You don't see any names, do you? Read on."
"Born of the night, and we vanish by day. No rations have we but the flesh of man. And love niggers best... the Kuklux Klan."
Des stared at the others with slowly dawning understanding. Loftily, Gettys explained to Jolly, "The Kuklux is that club for skylarking and scaring darkies. Sitwell says it's turned into something more. A white man's defense league. Klaverns are springing up all over the South."
"What's that?" Jolly said.
"Klavern? It means a Klan den, a local chapter. They have a regular constitution, called the Prescript, and a whole lot of fancy titles and rituals. And robes, Jolly. Robes that hide a man's face." Grinning, he tapped the captain's sleeve with the broadsheet. "Know who's going 'round the South helping to set up the klaverns? The head man of the Klan. The Imperial Wizard. Your old friend Forrest."
"Bedford himself?" Jolly's tone was reverential. Service with Forrest's cavalry remained the high point of his life, and for a moment he was in the past, remembering how they had campaigned. In the worst rainstorms, through winter sleet, riding with the blood up, faced always with the possibility of death and never turning from it, because they rode for the cause of the white race.
As Jolly thought of his great leader, he kept losing track of his surroundings, the shanty that smelled of stale food, discarded coffee grounds, urine. He kept seeing the general on his great war-horse, King Philip. And the niggers. The wailing, terrified niggers of Fort Pillow —
It was in '64 that Jolly had helped Forrest invest the garrison forty miles north of Memphis. After capturing Fort Pillow, Forrest had busied himself elsewhere, allowing his men to deal with the prisoners. They dealt with them with gun, sword, torch. Jolly had personally driven six nigger privates into a tent at gunpoint, then ordered his first sergeant to set fire to it. He could hear the niggers screaming now. The memory made him smile.
After Fort Pillow, the North howled "atrocity" and "massacre." Forrest insisted that he hadn't ordered the killings, and had been elsewhere when they took place. But neither had he restrained his men.
Lowering his voice, Gettys said, "Cousin Sitwell's friends in York County have invited Forrest there to help start a klavern. I'd say we need one on the Ashley, too."
Des's carroty hair glowed in the light of the kerosene lamp behind him. "Can we get Forrest here? Send him a telegraph message?"
"Yes, and I'll pay for it from store profits," Gettys said with enthusiasm. "Got plenty to spare. Where do we send it?"
Jolly stroked his close-shaven face with the gunsight, raking the disfiguring scar because it itched like the devil. A nigger corporal at Fort Pillow had given him that with a skinning knife, a moment before Jolly put one of his Leech and Rigdons against the buck's eye and fired.
"Mississip," Jolly said. "Sunflower Landing. That's the general's plantation in Coahoma County. Last I heard, he was trying to farm again. You sign my name to the message, Gettys — no, shut up. Do like I tell you. Sign Captain Jackson Jerome Jolly. The general will come here for one of his officers, I promise you."
He leaned back, pleased. Again he dragged the metal sight back and forth over the Fort Pillow scar.
"Things is finally movin', boys. We're about ready to declare open season on uppity nigger women."
Have resolved to break the news of Mont Royal's plight no later than a week before Christmas. Meanwhile, there is some startling geologic discovery at Lambs, a short distance down the river. It has the entire district excited. Must find out why.
38
The night local chugged up the Lehigh Valley in a thunderstorm. Near Bethlehem, George's attorney, Jupiter Smith, fell asleep, leaving his client to stare out the window at the rainy dark.
The men rode in a private car at the back of the train. Built to George's specifications, the car had furniture upholstered in red plush, fine wood paneling, and etched glass dividers to screen the dining table. Years ago, Stanley had bought a similar car for the Hazards; a rail accident had destroyed it. George had scorned the wasteful expenditure until a year ago, when he began to see a certain sense in it. Pittsburgh was fast becoming the state's iron and steel center. George wanted Hazard's to have an important part in that expansion, and he expected to travel there often. He decided he'd worked hard and deserved to travel comfortably.