The Orphan Mother by Robert Hicks
The Dixons had lived in Franklin as long as anyone could remember. Elijah’s father, old Lyceum Dixon, had made bricks and sawed boards back when Abram Maury was exploring his way through the territory. Elijah Dixon, the last of the patriarchs, flushed red in the sunlight behind his beard, and never wore shirts with collars because he fancied himself a laboring man and inheritor of the great strength of his forebears, though this had long since become only a kind of costume, a myth Dixon repeated about himself.
Tole knew that Elijah Dixon had turned the building of houses, sidewalks, bulwarks, and forts into a speculation operation heavily invested in railroads and the new furniture and textile factories back east. But he had also mastered the art of never appearing above himself, and since Dixons had always been thick-handed, hard-hammering beasts known for their ability to carry heavy things, Dixon wore the garb of the laborer, kept the brickworks in operation, and couldn’t contain his smile when he passed by a new house or over a new sidewalk built of bricks stamped Dixon.
“George Tole,” Dixon said in a loud, jovial voice. “I apologize for keeping you waiting.”
“It’s fine,” Tole said, standing.
“Margaret get you anything? An iced tea?”
Tole cleared his throat, not sure how to answer, and before he could, Mr. Dixon was already hollering the order to Margaret, who was standing on the back porch. Tole nodded. Thank you, sir.
“Please sit,” said Mr. Dixon. Tole sat.
“A bit of commotion this morning,” Dixon said. “My wife’s having another baby.”
“Congratulations, sir.”
Margaret came in and handed Tole the glass of iced tea, and one for Mr. Dixon as well. She must have had it ready, Tole thought.
“No lemon for me,” said Mr. Dixon.
Tole sipped his tea and tried to swallow quietly.
“It’s funny,” Dixon went on. “I adore lemon meringue, a lemon cake, a lemon chess pie, and my wife makes the most delightful lemon squares you’ve ever tasted, but I can’t stand the taste of an actual lemon. Isn’t that strange? One of life’s mysteries, I suppose.”
“Yes sir.”
“Speaking of wonderful things,” Mr. Dixon said. “You have children of your own?”
Tole paused, unsure how to answer. “No. No sir, I don’t.”
“Swore I’d never have a family,” Dixon said. “Thought I was too old to be a father. Didn’t think politics and fatherhood went too well together. Thought I’d always be too busy to raise children proper. But my daddy was always away, always at the office, so maybe it doesn’t matter. It changes you, being a father. Didn’t think I’d have enough love in my heart for a fifth child. Then my wife told me, and there it was. You’d think four would be enough to keep us busy, wouldn’t you?”
“You would think,” Tole said.
“Yet every time we bring a new baby into this world, my heart makes room.”
“That’s real special,” Tole said. He had learned long before to nod his head and agree when white men took to rambling on about whatever was on their mind. In those moments he would make his mind blank so he didn’t say anything he’d regret.
“I’m hoping for a boy—Augusten. If it’s been a girl, she’ll be Lily Kate. We were originally going to let our oldest boy name it, but he’s not the most trustworthy when it comes to baby names. He came to me and he said, ‘Daddy, if it’s a boy, I want to name it Jonathan, after Grandpa. And if it’s a little girl, I want to name it Stinky.’ So we thought to go with Lily Kate, after my wife’s mother. Shouldn’t be long until we find out.”
Tole sipped the tea, waiting. Dixon looked him up and down, a crooked smile on his face. Tole knew the baby talk had been a test to see if Tole knew his place, which was to sit and listen quietly to whatever Dixon said. Tole passed.
“I didn’t bring you all the way down here to go on about babies and lemon meringue,” Dixon said. “I don’t want to waste your time, I’m sure you got many things to do.” Tole heard the sarcasm and let it pass. Another test passed.
“It’s no bother, Mr. Dixon.”
“Heard some stories about you,” Dixon said.
“I wouldn’t believe none if I were you.”
“Heard you were pretty sharp with a rifle.”
“I know how to use one properly, that’s true.” His previous life had indeed caught up with him, and to be honest, Tole had known the conversation would go this way. He’d naively hoped it would be about something else: how, perhaps, a freeman from New York could help Mr. Dixon out with some issue that required a freeman’s experiences. But he knew, because it was the only thing white men ever wanted of him, it would be this: You were pretty sharp with a rifle. This was the only skill of Tole’s anyone ever remembered.
“Heard you were better than proper with a rifle. Heard you killed eight Union boys all by yourself back in New York. Sound like something you did?”
Tole nodded. “I’ve heard that.”
“Heard some other things, too. Heard you killed your first man for pay when you were just nineteen years old.”
“I know who told you that. They ain’t to be trusted.” He guessed all men like Dixon knew how to find each other, and that the one in New York had found the one in Tennessee.
“Doesn’t matter who told me,” Mr. Dixon said. “Just what I heard.”
Tole kept silent. He’d already said too much.
“Don’t care about your past unless you think I should,” Mr. Dixon said, in a way that made it sound like a threat. “I called you here because I heard you were the best.”
“I may be the best at drinking whiskey until I piss my bed,” Tole said. “That’s about the only thing I know for sure. Also, I know I haven’t shot a rifle in a long time.” He was desperate to steer the conversation anywhere but to where he saw it was headed. He had given up that life.
Dixon smiled, big and toothy and utterly false. “There’s this fellow across town, a real troublemaking son of a bitch, doesn’t like the way I conduct my business. He thinks he can make a name for himself by ruining mine. Fellow goes by the name of Bliss, wears a hat with an orange feather. You know the one I’m talking about?”
“Can’t say I do.”
Tole waited out the pause that followed. When Dixon spoke, it was clear, unmistakable. “I need Bliss to not be a problem anymore.”
“I don’t think I understand,” Tole said. He wished he didn’t understand, more like.
Dixon smiled again, grinned, eyes cold as fog. “You know, Tole, I don’t like violence. I’m a family man. Was one of the first men to call for the bloodshed to stop when the war was still raging through these streets. But sometimes, it’s the only way.”
“You mean the easiest way.”
“Is it easy?” Dixon was so eager to know. It was obscene, even to a man like Tole.
Tole didn’t know how he should answer. Truth was, he was the most proficient sharpshooter to come out of New York. He was more at home holding a rifle than he ever was holding a woman or a child, and he had learned, after much resistance, that this was his fate in this world. This was, indeed, all he was good at. And though he had traveled far to leave his past at the bottom of an empty bottle, Dixon’s question excited him a little, and then a little more. There was a part of him that missed it, hungered for the cold rush of knowing where he fit in the world. He missed being good at something.
“Now look,” Mr. Dixon said. “All I’m asking is for you to do something you’ve done a dozen times before. And you’ll be rewarded. You’ve got my word on that. I’ve invited you into my home, and I hope you’ll trust me to make good on my promise.”
“The man you been talking to must not have told you that I gave that life up a long time ago. I was a different man back then. I’ve changed.”
“’Course you’ve changed,” Dixon said dryly. “You’re older and drunker. But people like you don’t change that much, Tole. You are who you are. And I’m asking you politely, one more time, to join
Tole looked down at the table. “Just one job?”
“Just the one.”
“Because I’ll only do the one. No more.”
“No more,” Dixon repeated. “Do we have a deal?”
Tole nodded assent, his eyes tracing the table’s wood grain.
“Good.” A pause. “So this is how it’s going to be done. There’s a man who’ll be giving a speech next Saturday morning. Around ten o’clock, in the middle of the courthouse square. I’m sure you’ve seen white men deliver these kinds of speeches before.”
“Time or two. Politics and such.”
“Very well then. I want you to find yourself some high-up place, a rooftop or an attic window, anywhere with a clear line of sight to the courthouse square. You’ll want to have a straight shot to the podium. Understand?”
Tole nodded, amused that any man would think he needed advice about shooting.
“You’ll see a man with a hat with an orange feather. That’s Bliss. He’s a bad man, Tole. He’s the one I want you to dispose of. A real rabble-rouser. He leads men to make poor decisions, and we will not ever have peace with men like him around. He’s more dangerous than he looks. You follow me?”
“Yes.”
“When he gets up to speak, a few of my—my friends will cause a little disturbance.”
“Disturbance?”
“A riot. Of sorts. They’re going to crowd around, cause all kinds of havoc, and that’s when you take your shot. In the chaos. No one will know what happened. You hear me?”
He did, and one more time Tole was trying and failing to figure out how to get out of the job when the door to the shed swung open and a black woman—skin a light creamy coffee color—stormed in, arms full. Sweat shone on her face. She didn’t pause deferentially in Dixon’s presence, but spoke to him as an equal. “Mr. Dixon, you have a new baby boy.”
“Wonderful news,” Dixon said, grinning with those big white teeth. “Wonderful. It’s Augusten, then.”
“You want to see him?” the woman asked patiently, shifting the bundle she held.
“Of course! Of course! Tole, you’ll excuse me? We understand each other?”
Tole nodded. The moment to change his destiny had passed, erased by a baby. Dixon left. Tole sat down to gather himself, and while he did so he watched the midwife.
The woman was carrying linens and instruments that Tole didn’t recognize. She set them down on a table, went out back and pumped a few spurts of water into the bucket, returned and began washing the instruments. Blood polluted the water, spiraling like spilled ink, until the bucket was a dull shade of dirty pink. Tole watched her wring out a towel and mop down her arms.
“You the one delivered the baby in there?” he asked.
“You a pretty observant fella,” she said. “What gave it away?”
“Ain’t no easy way I know of to get dry blood off your hands. Not unless you got some kinda alcohol.”
She turned to him, intrigued. “What reason would you have for knowin’ that?”
“There was a war, you know.” He was full of sarcasm and yet this woman made him want to confess, too. “Found myself with blood like that on my hands more times than I’d like to count.”
It was the truth, Tole thought, with one difference: the blood on her hands was the blood of life, the blood of labor and innocence, the result of bringing something perfect into the imperfect world. The only blood Tole knew was the blood of vengeance, of endings, and even though he knew the blood of a dead soldier and the blood of a birthing mother looked the same, he couldn’t imagine it felt the same when it was on your hands.
“Too many men like you around these days,” she said.
“What kind a men are those?”
“The killin’ kind.”
And then Tole recognized her. He’d seen her before, near his house. The laugh lines around her mouth, the brilliant gray of her eyes. He hadn’t been able to place her before, and then it came to him. “You Mariah Reddick.”
Mariah turned, the angle of the sun lighting the planes of her face. “We know each other?”
“I suppose we don’t. I live near your boy.”
“You know my son? You know Theopolis?”
“Yes’m.”
“What’s your name?”
“Name’s Tole.”
“Tole? That a Christian name?”
“My mama named me George, but I never liked it much. George Tole. Most people call me Tole.”
“I like the name George myself. Sounds presidential.”
Tole smiled. “I reckon it does. But lots of Negroes named George, you ever notice that? Lot of wishful thinking, I think. Anyway, not many folks goin’ to confuse me for a president.”
Tole watched Mariah scrub the blood off her hands, blood that left a faded copper stain on her palms and forearms. He took a beat-up flask he had tucked down in his boot and unscrewed it. He stood up from his stool. “Got a good amount of whiskey left in here. It’ll surely clean the stains right off.”
Mariah looked up at him, and Tole moved closer. The floorboards creaked under his weight. He reached out toward her hands. “May I?”
Mariah nodded, so Tole held her hands in his and poured a thin stream of the moonshine over the back of her hands, rubbed the cloth over the thick, protruding veins that jutted out, high as her knuckles, and then asked her to turn her hands over. He drizzled a bit more liquor onto her palms. The smell filled the air like a promise or a ghost between them. He rubbed her hands with his, and up her arms, his eyes careful to stay directed at the task, never straying to meet hers.
“There you are, ma’am,” he said, letting her palms fall from his.
“I think I can finish up here.” Mariah took the bloodstained towel from him. “You shouldn’t be drinkin’ that poison.”
“Hooper made it.”
“Hooper?” She laughed. “Then it ain’t poison, but still kill you.”
Tole took a short swig from the flask and tucked it back in his boot. “I’ma be on my way now. That baby in there’s real lucky to be born into your hands.”
She stared at him a moment, impassive. Then he could see a smile touch the corners of her eyes. He wondered what a full-blown smile would look like. Dazzling, he thought.
“Kind to say.”
“You have a real good day, Missus Reddick. Get some rest now.”
Chapter 3
Mariah
July 6, 1867
Mariah awoke and lay in bed to listen to the branches of the poplar brushing the side of her little house. She worked too hard for too little—even if the money now was hers, and didn’t just go to the McGavocks as it had when she’d been a slave. She took on every birth she could, but Dr. Cliffe had managed to cut into her business recently with his promises of scientific reproduction and rational birth. He gave lectures. She’d been to one, “Progress of the New Man,” down at the public room of the Masonic Hall. The point of this lecture, from what she had understood, was to reveal the existence of things called germs, little critters too small to see, which caused every manner of illness, including stillbirth, and which could only be battled by advanced sterilization procedures that the doctor, coincidentally, had learned. Well, she’d been doing just fine without his invisible germs, and she could see her handiwork walking down the street tailing after their mothers.
Once she’d cleaned up and eaten a cold biscuit, Mariah went and stood on her porch a couple of feet above the muddy thoroughfare of Cameron Street: the queen of all she surveyed, she leaned on her front porch rail like she had herself prepared a few remarks to share with the gathered mosquitoes, the flies, the white men rattling past behind their mule teams. Pillowy bolls of the Middle Tennessee sky floated above a wide expanse of blue.
Franklin was a town that some time before had lost a limb or two, or some fingers and toes, and had not yet fully recovered. It still limped; it could still feel its phantom l
People, soldiers and not, had disappeared, no word from them again. Quite a few of the Negroes had lit out for other places north. White families left, too, having lost a business or a father, back to Mama’s old home place where they crowded into too few rooms and fought over the family land. Others, like the fancy German carpenter and furniture maker, Lotz and his family, had tried to stay, but eventually fled for some new life in the West.
In some parts of town, houses still stood empty. The quiet on some streets could be unnerving. An empty dwelling always seemed on the verge of being filled again, each window just a moment away from being lit by lamplight. And each day that a house’s eyes remained dark and dead, its people snatched up and delivered to new places, was a shock; a rebuke to those who stayed. And why did they stay? Habit, greed, faith, philosophy, poverty—who could know?
There had been no black blocks before the war because there had been very few black cabins. But now little neighborhoods had grown up around those few freemen’s houses that had existed before the war. Blood Bucket was the best known of these, and white people had made way for it by moving across town as quickly as they were able. New houses and shacks grew up on the white west side of town, while black men and women moved into the old ones on the east side.
The new houses on the west side were lined out and straight-cornered, elegant and monumental, building geometrically to angled peaks that looked out over the town. These Greek Revivals appeared, suddenly, but the metamorphosed shacks and shotguns of the Bucket just seemed to grow. This seemed right to Mariah; it seemed beautiful.
Mariah had brought Franklin into the world, in a manner of speaking. Not the physical town, but a goodly number of those who dwelt in it, especially the young. There they were right over there, across the way in the courthouse square, white boys and girls trying to climb over the new platform built that morning for the political meeting. The colored carpenters shooed them away. She had birthed all those children, she had caught them coming out, she had been the first person they’d ever seen. She was the first to bathe them, the first to whisper to them, the first to look them in the eye before handing them off to their mothers. She believed this was the hidden beginning of their memories. Even if they couldn’t explain to themselves why they were so respectful and a little afraid of the colored woman with the gray eyes, it was no puzzle to the woman herself.