Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 13:41:18 -0500
From: John Ellison <paradegi@sympatico.ca>
Subject: The Landing - Chapter 2

This story contains situations and scenes of graphic sex between consenting
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Copyright 2008 by John Ellison

Additional works publish in Nifty in the Military Category:

The Phantom of Aurora
The Boys of Aurora
Aurora Tapestry
The Knights of Aurora
Aurora Crusade

The "Aurora" books are a series and should be read in sequence.

A Sailor's Tale

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The Landing

Chapter Two


	It was the last Friday in August, and a typical summer's day. The
sun was burning high in the sky above, the air muggy and humid. Ordinarily
I would be down at the swimming hole with my mates. However, Mam Berta, our
cook, housekeeper and disciplinarian, had finally tired of my
procrastination and ordered me into town. She knew exactly what dirty
things boys could be - she had three sons of her own, huge, strapping boys
- and she could only imagine what the contents of my school locker were. Me
too. I had no idea what I had left behind when school had closed in June,
and left moldering in a hot, near-vacant building all summer.
	Mam Berta threatened to whup my skinny white butt proper if I
didn't move myself. Having been the recipient of several whuppings from the
old black woman, I moved and wandered down the street, heading for the
County Consolidated Schools.
	The school building, which was located on a large, open plot of
land across from the Evangelical Temple on Hampton Road, was a stern stone
and brick series of buildings. Surrounded by playing fields and a makeshift
stadium, where I was dragged every Friday night during football season, the
buildings housed the County Elementary School and Hampton High School. The
two schools were separated by what was laughingly called the Athletic
Complex, actually a gymnasium that smelled abominably, some dressing rooms,
which smelled worse, and a murky pool where the male students swam
nekkid. The girls wore swimming costumes that looked like they'd been
designed by Queen Victoria.
	The Consolidated Schools had been designed and built back in the
middle of the Great Depression, and paid for by the WPA. As with the town,
it was segregated. No blacks had seen the inside of the place, although
that was going to change in a few days. The Supreme Court, the Congress,
and the State Legislature had all decreed desegregation and that was
that. The day after Labor Day, when the schools reopened, fifty blacks
would be bussed from their normal temple of education - a long, low,
clapboard building in Overbridge - to the Consolidated Schools.
	So far as I knew no protests were planned, although Stubby Richmond
and Daddy Smith, the stalwarts of the Klan, were rumored to be planning a
cross-burning, which would only make matters worse.
	For almost one hundred years race relations had been more or less
stable. The white folks lived in their part of town, the black folks in
theirs. Segregation, "Jim Crow" as it was called, was alive and well and
living in the South.
	I won't lie and say that everything was fine between the races. It
wasn't. While almost every white lady in town employed a black maid, cook
or laundress, there was virtually no interaction between the races at all.
	The town was divided by Conyngham Creek. On the west side, which we
all called Overbridge, lived the blacks, their houses and businesses lining
winding, unpaved roads, except for Davis Street, which stretched in a
straight line from the bridge to the town limits. The houses were all built
of pine and cypress, and they all looked as if a good wind would blow them
down. Most had never been painted, and more than half had sagging roofs and
porches. The business buildings along Davis Street looked, well,
tired. These were the usual collection of small town economic enterprise: a
drug store, a beauty parlor, a tailor, a barber, and so on. There was a
large, decrepit looking hotel where visiting blacks could rent rooms - the
Landing Inn was segregated and barred to persons of color. There was a fire
station, where all the firemen were black, with two rigs and a tall, brick
tower, and a police station, where all the constables were black, a jail,
and the schools. There was also, or so it seemed, a church on every corner,
ranging from the AME Church, brick, four-square and with a bell tower, to
small, one room converted shotgun shacks. As an added attraction the town's
sewage treatment plant was located in Overbridge, next to the Heavenly Rest
Cemetery, where only black folk were buried.
	White folk were accommodated in Magnolia Cemetery, which overlooked
the river east of town. Both burial grounds were privately owned by
Mr. William van Lews, the town undertaker and owner of van Lews' Furniture
Mart. Magnolia Cemetery, tree-dotted and criss-crossed with well cared for
walks and flower gardens, was where the white folks went when they were
"called to Glory".
	On the east side of the Creek was the white section of town, the
streets wide and paved, and lined with well kept houses with neat lawns and
flower beds, usually tended by young blacks in the employ of Mr. Theophilus
Monroe, a stately, well-spoken black gentleman. The Monroes had been
tending the gardens and lawns of Charles Town Landing for generations, and
were descended from slaves who had tended the gardens of Broadlands House
and Conyngham Hall.
	Other than the house servants and Mr. Monroe's gardeners, one
rarely saw a black face in the white part of town, and if one did one also
could expect a Sheriff's deputy to pull up in his patrol car and ask what
his or her business was in this part of town.
	Downtown there were blacks in evidence, as there had to
be. Ravelli's employed black waiters, the better to lull the tourists into
thinking they had stepped back in time to the days of the Old
South. Biedermeyer's also employed blacks in the separate but equal
cafeteria that occupied half of the main floor. Separating the cafeteria
was a tall wooden partition, one side for whites, the other for blacks. The
white side of the cafeteria had tall windows overlooking the street. The
white folks sat in cushioned banquettes or at tables, with white linen
clothes and silver plated cutlery. On the other side of the partition,
black folk sat at a long Formica and chrome counter, or at long, bare deal
tables lined with spindly wooden chairs. They ate off of plain white, heavy
china with stainless steel utensils. There were two windows, both as tall
as the windows in the white section, but these overlooked the alley behind
the store. There were two kitchens, one where the food for the white folks
was prepared, and another where food for the black folks was prepared. The
only commonality was the wait staff - they were all black.
	Everything it seemed had been done to perpetuate the "separate but
equal" society we lived in. Down at the bus station there were four rest
rooms, two for whites (ladies and gentlemen), two for blacks (men and
women), as there were in the railroad station. White folks ate, drank, and
peed in separate facilities. Even the whore houses were segregated. If you
were white, and horny, you went to Peckinham's Road House, where the booze
and the girls (usually a Smith) were cheap. If you were black, and horny,
you frequented Ethel's, a low, dark dive just outside the town limits.
	The only time the rules were relaxed was on Saturday Market Day,
when the farmers and townsfolk gathered around small booths lining the
square to buy vegetables and handicrafts, buy or sell a mule, sample
fresh-baked pies and cakes and barbecue, and picnic on the Court House
lawn.

******

	Leaving the coolness of the house and walking into the heat of the
day had been like slamming into a brick wall. I had barely reached the road
before I was drenched in sweat and panting as I walked toward the
schools. The street was quiet, as it almost always was, the only thing
stirring being Lucy, a bitch of no known breed, sheltering on the porch of
the Finch house. She was languidly licking herself and looked to be
pregnant again. As I neared the terrace café of the hotel I could hear the
low hum of conversation and saw that the tables were less than
half-filled. Down on the landing steps the old, white-painted steam launch
that brought tourists up from Charleston maintained steam, patiently
waiting for the tourists to finish eating.
	As I passed the terrace I gave a short wave to Tony Ravelli, who
was busy schmoozing with the tourists. Tony was a sometimes lover of mine,
very receptive to my schoolboy ministrations and claimed to be straight. I
gave him a small wave as I passed and grinned at him. For a straight boy
Tony sure did love to have his pecker sucked, and never mentioned what we
did in the privacy of his bedroom.
	I rounded the corner of the hotel and looked over the expanse of
the square. It was populated, as it always seemed to be, by the usual
suspects. Outside of Biedermeyer's, sitting on the benches provided, a
clutch of old men, retired farmers for the most part, sat gossiping,
chewing tobacco and taking sips from Mason jars of Daddy Smith's sippin'
likker, which they hid in brown paper bags. These old men were a
fixture. They gathered every morning in Sully's Café to have coffee, eat
donuts, read the papers and argue in the manner of old men with too much
time on their hands. Breakfast over, they would amble over to Biedermeyer's
for the day.
	Outside of Lucille's a clutch of convent girls, easily identifiable
by their black, habit-like school uniforms and white, short-sleeved
blouses, giggled and pointed at what passed for the latest fashion in hats
and frocks in the display window. As always they were chaperoned by two
Ursiline sisters and I wondered how the ladies stood the heat in their
ankle length, black habits and starched wimples.
	As always of late, Stubby Richmond was standing outside his
hardware store, chewing on an unlit cigar and glaring across the square at
one of the town radio patrol cars parked near the bridge over The Krik. The
car had become a regular fixture for nearly five months, as had the two
policemen sitting in it, riot guns close to hand, since the night of
Thursday, the 4th of April, when Overbridge had exploded in protest at the
assassination of Martin Luther King.
	It had been a day that no one would ever forget. Until that day,
while relations between the races were not all sweetness and light, they
weren't all that bad either. Most people in town were resigned to the
coming changes. There wasn't a hell of a lot anyone could do about them, so
being Southerners we accepted what was to come with as good a grace as
possible and, as it turned out, figured out a way to get around the
government orders.
	However, the events of that day changed everything. No longer were
blacks and whites to live in uneasy harmony. Benign tolerance was replaced
with blind hatred and deep distrust formed a chasm between the
communities. The bond that had joined individuals through wars and
depression was torn asunder. For the first time, and from then on, the long
forbidden word was spoken openly and disdainfully; there were no longer
white folks and colored folks. There were "us", and niggers.

******

	I recall the day was a typical spring day, not too warm, not too
cool. I did what I did every day, walked to school with the gang, sat in a
drafty classroom listening to the drone of the teacher trying to pound some
history, or geography or whatever, into my less than receptive skull. Lunch
was the usual near inedible slop dished out every day. At 3:00 in the
afternoon school let out and I ambled home, listening to Sinjin bitch,
admiring the view of the Conyngham boys (I always let them walk ahead so I
could admire their firmly packed little butts) and, as we strolled past van
Lews' funeral parlor, admired the sleek horses waiting in the wide, covered
driveway of the house. The horses were pulling one of Mr. van Lews pride
and joy, a black, varnished, hearse.
	Funerals in the south tend to be old-fashioned and
traditional. Mr. van Lews, never one to let the grass grow under his feet,
catered to every taste. For the modern thinking, young, up-and-coming
professional there was a long, sleek, black Cadillac "funeral coach", as he
insisted on calling the hearse, the latest in a long line of "coaches". The
undertaker bought a new hearse every two years, the old one going to his
establishment in Overbridge, and eventually being sold to an up country
mortician who couldn't afford a modern, up-to-date, funeral coach.
	For the tradition-minded, and this included many of the old
families and country folk, Mr. van Lews maintained two horse drawn hearses,
black and silver for adults, white painted for children. The hearses and
horses were kept in a long, brick stable behind the funeral home.
	Leaving the horses, and playing grab ass, we ambled through the
square, bade goodbye to the Ravelli boys, and continued on home. It was
something we did every day, according to a pattern that never seemed to
change.
	At home I saw that the usual Thursday pattern was well along. We
lived according to established routines. After breakfast, if he were not
out on a call, Father would take up his medical bag and drive to the town
hospital. I would grumble and snort and drag my skinny behind off to
school. Mother would go into the kitchen and sit with Mam Berta and plan
the day's menus, drink gallons of coffee and gossip. When they were done
that Mother would go off and sit in her sitting room, paying bills, writing
letters and so on. Mam Berta would terrorize the day girls, supervise the
cleaning, and head downtown to shop.
	For Mother, lunch was always at 1:15. After lunch she would call on
her neighbors and friends, or shop. Wednesday she would drive into
Charleston to visit my sister. Thursdays, Mother was "at home" and from
2:00 until 4:00 she would entertain her friends to tea and cake and more
catty gossip.
	That afternoon I arrived at home and went into the house the back
way. I had no desire to thrust myself into the nest of old cats in the
drawing room, and much preferred to sit at the battered old kitchen table,
drink milk and nibble freshly-baked cookies. Mam Berta would grumble and
mumble away and eventually pack me off to do my homework. This was the
rule: cookies and milk, and then homework until dinner time, which for me
was 6:00 pm. Dinner for my parents was always at 8:15, and children were
not invited.
	After I had been fed and watered I had an hour or two to kill
before bedtime, which was 9:00 pm on week nights. I usually watched
television, or went over to Sinjin's to pass the time with him. That
evening I didn't watch television, and Sinjin asked me to go into town to
the chemists shop to pick up a prescription - his mother was
ailing. Normally I would have demurred, but as it was still warm out I said
yes.
	As Sinjin and I started out I thought I heard the dull reports of
gunfire. We looked at each other and then we noticed a sharp, acrid smell
in the gentle breeze blowing from the west. Sinjin thought that there was a
fire somewhere, probably in Overbridge. I thought so too, because something
was always burning down over there, which was not surprising as most of the
buildings were firetraps.
	The closer we got to town the stranger things seemed to be. As we
entered the Landing I saw men, white men, carrying shotguns and hunting
rifles, hurrying toward the Court House. Along Marion Street the shops and
hotel were closing, and I saw Mr. Ravelli and his sons busily hanging the
storm shutters that protected the windows of the ground floor from the
periodic tropical storms that roared in from the Atlantic. Mama Ravelli was
hurrying around the terrace restaurant, stopping at each table and waving
at the black waiters to hurry with the service.  Stubby Richmond was
standing outside his hardware store with Simmons, Daddy Smith and two of
the Smith boys. Each one carried a weapon, hunting rifles so far as I could
see.
	A town patrol car went roaring by, its red roof light flashing
ominously, and I watched it make the turn that would take it over the
bridge and then I saw a huge, roiling column of flames and smoke lighting
the sky above Overbridge. Something was definitely wrong and, frightened,
Sinjin and I hurried into the chemist shop, snatched up the prescription
and ran home.
	Twilight had waned and the street lights lit our way as we hurried
down Broadlands Avenue. As we skittered past his house, I saw Mr. Conyngham
standing on his front porch, a shotgun in his hands. He was looking toward
town where the sound of sirens filled the still air. Sinjin peeled off and
ran into his house while I hurried on home. As I turned into our driveway
and under the porte-cochere, I could see some of the cadets from the
military school in front of the gates that led to the school. The gates
were closed but behind the ornate metalwork was what looked like a
deuce-and-a-half truck. The truck's lights were on, brightly illuminating
the boy cadets standing guard. I saw that they were wearing olive drab
fatigues, helmets, and carrying more or less modern Garand rifles instead
of their ceremonial Enfields. This, I think was the time I realized that a
Southerner's worst nightmare might be on the cards.
	I had hardly entered the foyer when my mother pounced on me,
demanding to know where I had got to.  She had obviously been looking for
me. She was calm, and her voice was icy for some reason, although I knew
she was worried sick when she found me missing. I was worried sick when I
saw what was in her hand: my father's old Webley pistol.
	Ignoring my sputtered excuse, Mother ordered me to go to my room
and under no circumstance was I to leave it. Mother's icy calmness was
frightening and I whined and begged her not to make me go upstairs where I
would be alone. She relented and told me to go into the library where the
two dailies, Flora and Annette were huddled, watching television. The
images being broadcast showed a night of terror and destruction.
	Few people realize that there were more riots that night than the
media could report. Detroit, Chicago, New York, all were featured in the
news broadcasts, but there were others. Overbridge was our riot.
	When the first reports of King's assassination came over the air
waves and blacks began to gather in protest, tempers began to rise and
while the ministers and perceived community leaders tried to calm the
people down, rocks began to fly, and then trash containers, and windows
were smashed and Overbridge exploded in protest at the assassination of the
Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King. The police were called and for whatever
reason fists flew, truncheons were drawn and the riot was on.
	The Captain of the Overbridge police station called for
reinforcements from the Landing, but the police there were all white and
the Mayor, Mister Wallingford, refused to let the town officers anywhere
near Overbridge. He ordered the cops to blockade the bridge. He also
ordered them to use whatever force they needed to keep the blacks in their
place, which was on the other side of the bridge.
	Much later I learned that Wallingford had more than just the town's
ten-man police force to rely on. There was a State Troopers' barracks less
than fifteen miles away, and he could appoint "Special Constables" at
will. More importantly, the Mayor was not hesitant when it came to calling
out the Klan. Stubby Richmond was always going on about the "niggers
rising", and warning everyone who would listen to be prepared. Everybody
was, for this was the South, and I doubt there was a house in town that
didn't have at least a shotgun around.
	Daddy Smith hated coloreds with a passion, probably because they
worked hard, didn't live in a falling down shack, or have a tribe of
slatternly daughters or lummox sons. The average black showed Daddy Smith
and his whelps up as swamp trash, and Daddy didn't like that at all.
	At the time I was too busy being terrified to worry about the
various white cabals more than willing to shoot their black
neighbors. Damian Lee had finally appeared. He'd been over to Goose Creek
popping corn with one of the girls from school when he heard a report on
his car radio. He broke speed records getting home and was soon running
around trying to find the keys to my father's gun cabinet. Mam Berta was
looking thunderous, and announced that she'd like to see the color of the
free issue nigger that would dare to even look crossways at her lambs (I
assume she meant me and Damian).
	For a while I parked myself in a chair in one corner of the entry
hall, my eyes wide and my heart pounding. In the distance I could hear the
shrill whistle of the tourist launch, a screaming banshee sounding in the
humid air as it chugged downriver toward Charleston. I also heard the
muffled, sharp cracks of what I knew to be rifle fire, interspersed with
the dull thud of what could only be a shotgun being fired.
	As I waited, the Finch sisters came into the house, with their
dog. Miss Adele, grim-faced and determined, was carrying a shotgun, while
her sister, Miss Hester, carried an old horse pistol (which her Granddaddy
had carried in some Indian war). The two old ladies didn't seem fazed at
all. After seeing my mother, pistol in hand, ordering Flora and Annette to
stop their sniveling and help her barricade the front door with an antique
sofa and some tables, the Finch sisters took up position on either side of
the door, vowing that none of "those people" would ever set foot in
Broadlands House.
	There was a definite feeling of exodus and need for safety in
numbers in the air, for the next thing I knew my mother's flimsy barricade
was across the brilliantly polished floor as the Cecils pushed the front
door open. Mrs. Cecil, her normally perfectly coiffed hair tied up in a
ratty old bandana, pushed her boys into the hall. Nicholas immediately came
to stand beside me, while Gregory and Bob Lee, men in their own eyes, went
in search of Damian, and a gun.
	Over the next hour or so the smell of burning wood drifted in
through the open windows. Bob Lee, who had gone up to the roof where there
was a good view of the town, reported black columns of smoke and flame
roiling over the rooflines of Overbridge. He also reported that there were
State Troopers gathering outside the Ursiline Convent.
	The Misses Finch gripped their weapons even more tightly and Damian
appeared. He handed me an old Purdy fowling piece and told me that my job
was to guard the river entrance. With Nicholas, I reluctantly left my
perch, walked down the long hall, through the Music Room and onto the wide
porch that overlooked the normally gray waters of the Cooper River.
	The sun was now long set and deep shadows darkened the waters,
which were empty of traffic, and a low mist was also settling across the
black waters.  I watched for a while and then realized that there was no
way that rioters would ever appear on the river. First of all, there were
few boats, mostly rowboats, the cutters from the military school marina,
and the like. To get to them a mob would have to cross the bridge and
somehow reach the wide steps leading down from the flood wall to the river,
which didn't seem likely, given the number of armed men on the white side
of the bridge and along the Krik. Second of all, the only other way to get
to the river from Overbridge was an old, winding road that ran past the
Smith place and God help the black man, woman or child on riot bent who
dared to go anywhere near there. Every Smith, male or female, had
figuratively been born with a gun in his hand, and could drill a squirrel
at a hundred paces.
	Nick and I sat on the steps that led to the lawns for what seemed
like hours. A gentle wind began to blow from the west, riffling the leaves
and branches of the moss-draped live oak trees and jacaranda bushes, and
bringing with it the sounds of yelling, the clanging of a bell, and what
sounded like an explosion of some sorts. This caused Nick to hug me
tightly, and for a while we just cuddled. The wind shifted and we no longer
heard anything, which seemed to make matters worse.
	As the night deepened more neighbors appeared, the thick, stout,
brick and stucco walls of Broadlands House offering safety and a measure of
security. First were the Conynghams, Tristan and Damian and their mother
left in my mother's care while Mr. Conyngham hurried into town to join the
growing number of white men called out as "Special
Constables". Mrs. Conyngham was also armed, with a shotgun. The boys
carried their pillows and blankets and settled on sofas in the drawing
room. Their mother sat nearby, peering out of the window into the darkness.
	Sinjin and his mother showed up. Mrs. Tradd was clutching a huge
rosewood box - containing her jewels I found out later - while Sinjin tried
to look brave, holding a Remington pump action shotgun that I was sure
would have knocked him on his ass if he fired it. He and Bobby Lee Cecil
were sent upstairs to sit in front of the Palladian window that overlooked
the street.
	From time to time Damian Lee appeared, armed to the teeth, and then
disappeared. I knew he wanted to head into town but as the only "adult"
male in the house, he had to stay and protect the women and children. He
knew that everybody was carrying a weapon, but the Code dictated that he
stay.
	I was quite grumpily uncomfortable, and sent Nick off for some
blankets. The temperature dropped and it was cool, around 55 degrees or
so. When he returned Nick wrapped himself in his blanket and huddled close
against me. I was scared shitless to say the least, what with the house
being turned into a fortress, and filled with women twittering about what
was going on in Overbridge. The sound of buildings crashing and guns being
fired did not help at all. I wanted to go find Sinjin, but I had been set a
duty, and until Damian Lee told me to go to bed, I would stay. I had no
choice. I was a little man and the Code was strongly ingrained in me.
	Sometime during that long evening Nick fell asleep, and snored
softly, his head resting in my lap while I tried, ineffectually to keep my
eyes open. Before I knew it, it was morning, and I was lying on my own bed,
with Nick cuddled against me. I raised my head and saw that we had both
slept in our clothes, a most uncomfortable feeling.
	I wondered how I had got there. I didn't remember going to bed, and
assumed that someone, probably Mam Berta, maybe Damian, had carried both
Nicholas and me to bed.
	Nick's hand was resting on my stomach, a bare inch away from my
morning wood, which was pooching out the front of my shorts. Ordinarily
this would not have bothered me at all, but the door suddenly opened and in
walked Charlie Pegram, looking disheveled and not quite the neat, trim,
Citadel cadet he was.
	"Hey, little man, how's it hanging?" Charlie asked as he crossed
the room and sat on the bed beside me.
	I grinned at Charlie, the secret love of my life. "Hey. Where'd you
come from?" I asked. He was supposed to be down in Charleston.
	Charlie chuckled. "Your daddy called the Superintendent, who let
the cadets go for the week, what with the trouble and all. I called Philip
Charles and we drove up here."
	"Gosh, you did?" I asked, visions of Charlie dashing to my rescue,
waving a sword, with horn blaring and flags flying.
	"Yep. We had to fight our way through but Philip Charles waved his
pistol at 'em, and then a Charleston cop car came up and the miscreants
scattered."
	I couldn't help but giggle. Charlie tended to sound at times as if
he were a character in a Victorian novel.
	Charlie smiled. "Not really. Charleston is quiet, not like Detroit
or Chicago. They're still rioting up there and it looks like half the town
is afire."
	"What about Overbridge?"
	Charlie stood up and looked out the window. "Cooper, it's about
gone. The fools burned down most of Davis Street, the hotel, and the movie
house. Mam Berta's house is gone and two of her boys are in the calaboose."
	"For sure?"
	Charlie nodded. "For sure. The governor called out the Guard and
they're mopping up." Charlie shook his head sadly. "The damn fools! What
did they gain? White folks won't trust 'em ever again! The fools yelled and
danced and threw rocks and took pot shots at the police and burned down
half the town and what did it get them?"
	I could understand Charlie's anger. It was like me burning down the
house if I got punished for something I didn't do. All I was really doing
was cutting off my nose to spite my face.
	"They'll rebuild," I said. "Folks have got to live and . . ."
	Charlie wheeled and glared at me. "No, no they won't!" he
declared. "Your great granddaddy isn't around with a secret stash of
Consols. Nobody, black or white, has any money to speak of, and if they do
they sure aren't going to help folks who burn down the place everytime
something happens they don't like!"
	I was a little surprised at Charlie's vehemence. Normally he was
the kindest guy I knew. His anger caused his normal, peaches and cream
complexion to turn a deep red. He took a deep breath. "Cooper, you know
me." I nodded. "I know it's difficult around here, but that's the way it's
been for two hundred and more years."
	He returned to sit beside me on the bed. He looked over to where
Nicholas was snoring away and smiled. "That kid sure can make a noise."
	I grinned and shrugged. "He has adenoids," I said casually. "You
should hear him during pollen season."
	Charlie laughed quietly and shook his head. "I'll pass." Then his
face turned hard, and his blue, blue eyes darkened. "Coops, things are
never going to be the same again. The niggers have drawn a line in the
sand."
	I gasped. Charlie, my sweet, sweet Charlie, a boy who wouldn't say
shit if he had a mouthful, had used the forbidden word! Gentle folk, folk
like Charlie and my Daddy, folk of good blood and breeding, never, ever,
called the Negroes "niggers". People like Stubby Richmond, the Smiths, they
used the epithet all the time, but not good people. Never good people!
	Charlie saw the shocked look on my face. "I'm sorry Coops, but what
else are they? We didn't shoot their Messiah. We were over here, on our
side of the Krik, minding our own business, and what do they do?"
	"He was their hero," I temporized. "They don't have anyone else
now," I said weakly.
	Charlie waved his hand dismissively. "I know they all loved Doctor
King. So did a lot of white folk. He was a good man and he preached
non-violence."
	"But . . ." I began.
	"No!" Charlie growled. "The niggers think they've got the upper
hand. Well, there are folks around who will make sure that they go on
thinking it. Only that's all they'll get."
	"The Klan?" I probed. "The Smiths?"
	Charlie nodded. "Bad times are a-comin' Coops." Charlie
sighed. "Oh, the darkies will do the Jungle Bunny Stomp on the Court House
lawn; they'll burn down a few businesses and pat themselves on the back and
tell themselves that we're too frightened of them and give 'em what they
want." He laughed angrily. "Well, let 'em think what they want. We'll make
sure they get what we give 'em!"
	I was confused. I didn't understand the depth of desperation in the
black community, and I didn't understand the depth of Charlie's anger. I
also wondered who "we" were.
	I didn't have a chance to pursue Charlie's words. He stood up
abruptly. "You and Grampus there get yourselves downstairs. Your momma's
holding breakfast for you."
	Momma? Momma hadn't actually cooked in the kitchen in years! "Um,
Mummy?" I asked tentatively. "Where's Mam Berta?"
	Charlie shook his head. "She went to Overbridge," he replied
bluntly. His tone said that Overbridge was the best place for her to be.

******

	Things never returned to normal. While no one was killed, the few
blacks that ventured over the bridge separating the town trod
carefully. Mam Berta appealed to my father and her sons, Moses and Layton,
were released from jail on bail - which my father advanced, although I knew
he could hardly afford it. In a good year he cleared forty thousand, out of
which he had to maintain the house, his practice, and pay Philip Charles'
Citadel tuition. Papa didn't care, and even though his standing surety for
Mam Berta's sons caused some grumbling in town, as far as he was concerned
they were, by definition, family, and that was that.
	Overbridge looked like a war zone. The State Troopers patrolled the
streets, and the rank smell of charred wood lingered still. Very few of the
burnt out businesses and homes were being rebuilt. One of these was Mam
Berta's house. My father did manage to advance her a few thousand dollars
to help her rebuild. Like I said, she was family, and Papa was only
continuing a tradition begun back in 1865.

******

	In 1861 Philip V Marigny was a millionaire. He owned Broadlands; he
owned a townhouse in Charleston, and more importantly, he owned two,
modern, steel-hulled screw driven ships, the Carpathia, and the Athenian
and he was smart enough to know that the government in Richmond was
composed of fools. The Secretary of the Treasury, Memminger, a South
Carolinian, had proposed, and President Davis and his advisers had agreed,
that the surest way to bring in France and Britain on the side of the
Confederacy was to embargo cotton. The mills in Lancashire and France
depended on Southern cotton; without it the mills would have to close, and
economic chaos would follow.
	Philip V thought the politicians out of their minds. He, along with
a host of others, ignored the embargo, filled both of his ships with bales
of cotton, and sent them to England where his agent purchased new Enfield
rifles, bayonets, uniforms and other accoutrements of war. He also filled
one of the holds with luxury goods. The ships easily eluded the then
ineffective Union blockade and sailed into Wilmington, where the cargoes
were sold at auction. The rifles and articles of war were shipped inland,
where Philip V parceled out the arms and ammunition. Some of the new rifles
went to the boys at the military school, the rest went to outfit a regiment
of infantry, Colonel Philip de Marigny commanding, which was eventually
absorbed into Hampton's Legion and later became a part of the 2nd South
Carolina Infantry. The Regiment fought at Gettysburg, where Philip V was
wounded, and invalided home.
	Back home, Philip studied the terrain, so to speak, and decided
that the South was lost. The Yankees were too numerous, too rich, and now
that they had a cause, the freeing of the slaves, it was only a matter of
time before the Stars and Bars was replaced by the white flag of surrender.
	Philip V had sunk half his fortune or thereabouts in Confederate
bonds, which he knew would become worthless. His ships, battered and
weather-beaten, still ran the blockade, and while much of their cargoes
were war supplies, he still managed to bring in the luxury goods the people
craved. He kept some of his profits in the bank in Charleston, but the bulk
of his money was sunk in the gold-standard securities of the day: Consols.
	Consols, actually Consolidated Annuities issued by the British
Government, paid three per cent interest, sometimes for a fixed period of
years, sometimes not. They could be bought, or sold, on the London Change,
and were the bedrock of the British financial system. The actual
certificate didn't look like much, but presented at the Annuities Window at
the Bank of England they could be exchanged for gold coin of the
realm. Philip V had a satchel full of them.
	In 1865 the South was devastated, especially in those areas where
Sherman's horde had laid waste to crops and houses, whole villages, and
stolen everything from pigs to family silver that could not be hidden. Vast
miles of land lay derelict, populated only by crows and long lines of
returning Confederates. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court
House. Richmond, Charleston, all the major cities and towns were occupied
by hard-eyed, hard-visaged bluebellies, most of whom thought petty larceny
a pleasant sideline. Nothing was safe if for some reason the troops entered
your house.
	Grand Larceny was freely committed, at the hands of Carpetbaggers
from the North, and their white sympathizers, Scalawags, and hordes of now
freed slaves, all of whom were hell bent on looting every state treasury
they could gain control of. Through vote-rigging, terror tactics,
disenfranchising voters (all Democrats) and the "Oath of Allegiance", which
nobody would take, they quickly gained the upper hand.
	The Landing was a typical small town of the era. The War was over,
and the boys were returning home - those who had survived. Commerce was at
a standstill, and the plantation fields, once green and white with cotton,
were empty and weed-choked. The labor force, the black slaves, had decamped
en masse, some following Sherman's barbarians, most flocking to Charleston
or Columbia, to live in shanty towns and exist on handouts from the
Freedman's Bureau.
	The Yankees had never understood the South. They thought they had
won the War, and while they had won the final battle, they little realized
that the War would go on for another fifty years or more. To the average
Yankee, the South was beaten, desperate, on her knees, and ripe for
plunder. With their Negro allies, in and out of uniform, they thought the
South would buckle under, abandon her arrogance and gentility, and grovel
at the feet of her new masters.
	Oh, how little they knew of the South!
	The collective South looked down its nose at the invaders,
shrugged, and whenever possible, ignored them. They continued in their
traditional ways as much as possible, knowing that they couldn't change
things. Let the Carpetbaggers steal the election - the Radicals in
Washington were bound to side with them anyway. Let the ex-slaves have
their freedom. Let them see what freedom meant. There would be no more
weekly issue of rations, no more yearly issue of new clothes or cloth to
make them, no more "Chrismus Gifs". The former slaves were on their own.
	In the cities, Charleston, Columbia, Savannah, the aristocrats
withdrew into their own special enclaves. In Charleston gentle folk
returned to what was essentially the site of the original city of Charles
Towne, the area south of Broad Street. On the plantations, folks rolled up
their sleeves and set to work. They ignored the rapacious Yankees as best
they could, and ineptly began to rebuild their lives.

******

 	Over the fireplace mantle in the drawing room at Broadlands is a
painting. It is of Philip V late in life. His hair and beard are white, his
frame lithe, the hands and face - he is staring directly at the viewer -
are weathered and rough, the marks of a man who has had a hard life. Philip
V is the picture of a proper Victorian gentleman. He is wearing a
Confederate gray frock coat, open to reveal a matching waistcoat, across
which is draped a heavy, gold chain. His trousers are pressed and under his
wing collar is a colorful four-in-hand tie.
	He is sitting at his desk, battered and splintered here and there,
the rosewood and mahogany dull with age. The desk is piled high with
account books, factor's reports, bills of lading, a list of comestibles,
the prices blurred. The artist, Sir Luke Fildes, had caught the mood, the
light, the aura of a man who had faced adversity, and overcome it.
	I have a different portrait in mind. I see Philip V, not broken,
but near to it, sitting on the old bundling board that has stood on the
second floor porch for close on to two hundred years. He is staring out at
his patrimony, what there is of it. Overhead the sky is leaden, bringing
promise of rain. The river, dark and foreboding, is devoid of
activity. There are no wooden skiffs or barges polled by black men, and
piled high with the fruits of the land: cotton, corn, rice.
	Philip V does not wear broadcloth, or fine linen. His trousers,
such as they are, have seen hard times, ripped and patched with whatever
piece of cloth that came to hand, roughly sewn and showing it. On his feet
his boots, taken from a dead Yank, not quite shoddy, but as split and
patched as his trousers. Around his neck a rough neckerchief, torn from an
old piece of calico, wet with perspiration, for it is a hot, muggy day. His
hair, once red and shining with golden highlights, is matted and in need of
cutting, and graying.
	Behind Philip V his house, a place once of laughter and good times,
a haven of hospitality where fine china, good silver, and crystal graced
tables laden with barons of beef, plump turkeys, delicate fish, shrimps
brought upriver from the bay. Bottles of bourbon and fine wines waited to
be passed by smiling footmen dressed in the house livery of the de
Marignys. The hospitality of Broadlands House, gone now, replaced with
leathery shad and grits.
	Philip's eyes drift, taking in the once-neat double row of brick
cabins that stretched along the river bank and ended at the wall of the
military school, the Quarters, now derelict, the glass of the windows
shattered and now shards scattered across the wooden boards of the porches,
small harbors where black slaves once lounged after work, laughing,
watching their children playing. The cabin doors are broken and ripped from
the hinges, the roof trees sagging. The people who had called these small
structures home were gone. Some had followed Sherman's hordes. Others, mad
with the excitement of freedom, had danced and laughed their ways into the
city. They were free men all, and none had any idea of what awaited them.
	I can see the look of disgust on Philip's face. His slaves had
abandoned the land. He made no apology to any man that he had owned
slaves. Slavery, with its imagined horrors, had been forced on him, indeed
on the South. But . . . he had been a good master. Never had a slave been
whipped, or physically punished. He had never sold a slave, for such was an
abomination. He had provided for his people, patronizing to be sure, but he
had housed them, and fed them and, although it was illegal, schooled the
more intelligent of them.
	He had done his Christian duty in providing a church for his
people, and when they were sick or hurt, he called a proper physician to
tend to them. He had thought that his people were happy and content. He had
been a fool, and was paying the price thereby.
	As were his people.
	They flocked to the cities to find that there was no white "master"
willing to see to their needs. They lived in shanty towns, except for the
lucky ones who appealed to white ladies, who had not the heart to turn away
an old darky. The unlucky ones lived on handouts, rations of salt pork and
grits doled out by an uncaring Freedmen's Bureau, and believed the lies of
free land, free houses, free schools. Little did the free slaves know, or
understand, that they were little more than cannon fodder in a new war, a
political war where power came from the ballot box and so long as the free
blacks voted the Republican ticket, they were the new kings of the South.
	Philip V had no time, or patience to worry about what was happening
beyond the confines of his country, his lands, and his patrimony.
	The fields, once lush with corn and cotton, barley and oats, were
empty, for nothing had been planted in the spring. There had been no hands
to till, or hoe, and there had been no seed to plant. The pine forests, and
the weeds, were returning to reclaim the once fertile land.
	The town was as derelict, as empty as the fields, except for feral
cats and rawboned curs searching for a meal. Black-draped wraiths hurried
through the streets, widows without hope of seeing their men return from
the War. There were too many widows, too many orphans, for there was not a
family that Philip knew of that had not suffered a loss, even the
no-account Smiths, who lived in squalor out on River Road. They had been
loud, self-proclaimed Unionists, but when Sherman's Bummers and thieves
came, even the Smiths had rallied to the Stars and Bars, and two of them
were buried in the ruin of Magnolia Cemetery.
	People were starving; women who had never lifted a hand except to
call a black slave or butler, were suffering from rickets and
impetigo. Children, once cosseted and coddled by black Mammies, had the
pinched, wan faces of the slums. Nobody had food, save for the fish that
still could be caught, or a bag of rice or hominy hidden when the marauders
rode through. Nobody had any money, and little hope of getting any anytime
soon. Most people had silver and jewelry hidden. The Marigny silver, famous
for its beauty and weight before the War, was hidden in a gator hole,
guarded by an old bull that bellowed romantic invitation in the warm, muggy
spring to any female gator in hearing distance.
	But what use was something that was inedible and unsaleable, or
nearly so? The auction and sales rooms of Charleston were stuffed with old
family possessions, silver of every kind, furniture, books and gewgaws
beyond measure, with no takers at a decent price. The Carpetbaggers and
Scalawags, the soldiers and their women, knew that it was a buyer's market
and offered ten cents on the dollar, if that.
	I can see Philip's face, as red now as his hair once had been, his
choler rising. He was a man of tempestuous temper, as all red heads seemed
to be, and the thought of the insulting price offered by a smooth-talking,
oily-faced Yankee from Maine for Broadlands, rankled. Fifty cents an acre,
cash money, payable in good Yankee greenbacks. Philip had scornfully
rejected the offer, taking a buggy whip to the man and his equally
loathsome black companion, driving them off in as fine a fit of temper as
the neighbors had seen in years!
	I can see Philip rising, pacing, ignoring the rising storm brewing
on the horizon, remembering the snide words of the black man. "Who will
till your fields? Who will plant your cotton? Who will pick it?"
	Who indeed?
	There were blacks, of course. But they were "house niggers", and
all far along in years for the most part. There were ancient butlers,
gray-haired Mammies, arthritic Cooks and maids. The old had stayed with
their families, the young had fled, off to the Day of Jubilee.
	Those former slaves who had remained were as proud of their white
families as Lucifer. Family status, family wealth and station, was
reflected in them, or so they thought. Most had been chosen for their
intelligence and looks, and carriage. They dressed in fine cloth and linen;
they ate well; they enjoyed a privileged status in slave society and
thought nothing of looking down their noses at the ignorant field hands,
men for the most part incapable of anything other than picking cotton. The
house slaves had never picked so much as a radish from the vegetable
garden, and saw no reason to start now.
	Faced with the intransigence of the remaining blacks, Philip
despaired of ever bringing his fields back to life. Even if he could entice
laborers from the cities, how would he pay them? He had no money, save for
$26.25 in silver coin, doled out to him in Abbeville by the paymaster from
the small cache that was all that was left of the Confederate
Treasury. Philip V had managed to be a part of the small escort guarding
the refugee Government, President Davis and his wife and children,
Secretary of State Benjamin, the hangers-on and aides and assorted camp
followers that had fled Richmond. Philip V had ridden his spavined old
horse south, scouting ahead for the fifty cadets from the Naval Academy
that formed the main guard.
	In Abbeville, when it finally dawned on Davis and his Cabinet
(those who were left) that it was over, the decision was made to release
the boy cadets and cavalry escort. They were to go their own way, granted
leave to return to their homes, and paid off. The money, $26.25, was $26.25
more than Lee's veterans received.
	Philip V knew of the poverty and deprivation that stalked the
land. He knew that there were families that would lose their homes and
plantations because the politicians in Columbia, determined to bring the
Rebs to their knees, had jacked up taxes to impossible levels. The Yankees
in Washington, the Radical politicians had coldly determined that the South
would pay for its pride, pay for its arrogance, and live under the
jackbooted heel of occupation for as long as it took to teach them the
lessons they should have learned, and to pay for Chancellorsville, and
Gettysburg, to pay for the defeat of blue-clad troops that fell in windrows
and lines of blood and gore at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.
	I can see Philip V, pacing, pacing, wondering where the money to
pay the taxes would come from. Wondering how he would pay for seed, or pay
the workers needed to bring the land back. The Yankees had decreed that
blacks could be hired, for thirteen dollars a month. Before the war, one
hundred and twenty slaves, not counting babies and pickaninnys, had worked
the land. Conyngham Hall, the nearest neighbor, had been home to near two
hundred slaves. The Cecils had had only sixty-five slaves, while the
Pegrams had only owned a handful, house slaves, for they were in banking,
not land. The Tradds were, on paper, the wealthiest family in the county,
on a par with Wade Hampton, the richest man in the state. They owned three
plantations with over four hundred slaves.
	I can see Philip V ticking off a mental list of names and places,
once-rich plantations, many now devoid of life. Each now needed help. The
widows and orphans of the South were helpless, or nearly so. Philip V's
neighbors were as bad off as he. They were struggling to put food on their
tables, as he was, food to feed their children, their wounded husbands and
brothers and sons, and the few blacks who had stayed.
	They were struggling to find a way to repair the roof, or the
sagging porch, struggling to find a scrap of cloth to make a dress, or a
pair of pantaloons. Like Philip, they were faced with starvation, and
desolation, and despair.

******

	I can see Philip V now, staring once again at the empty fields, at
the destroyed cabins, staring at the emptiness. Gone were the chickens and
cows and pigs that had helped each plantation be more or less
self-sufficient. Gone were the vegetable gardens, the radishes, the corn,
the heads of lettuce ground under the hooves of horses ridden by vengeful
men, or under the wheels of artillery caissons, deliberately so, the better
to starve the civilians into submission.
	I can see Philip V arguing in his mind, his temper in check for
once. What to do?
	For almost a hundred years the Marignys had been the leaders. In
peace and war they had always taken the lead. When a storm surge roared up
the Cooper and wiped out the rice fields, a Marigny had come forward with
advice and cotton seed. When the nation went to War, in 1812, Philip III
rallied his neighbors and marched off to battle. When Lincoln ordered an
armed suppression of The Glorious Cause and the Righteous Confederacy in
1861, a Marigny, Philip V, had stepped forward, saber in hand, and raised
the colors.
	I can see Philip V, pacing, pacing, his mind racing and seeking a
solution. Some of his neighbors would never pull themselves up out of the
wreckage of war. Others would simply put aside their arrogance and their
pride and do what they had to do. Let the Yankees have the
arrogance. Southern pride would be like the silver, hidden until better
times.

******

	In time, and with the help of the Consols, the Landing revived. It
was never the same as it had been, and never would be again. The old life,
much of it, was gone. But life has a way of renewing itself. The damage
from the War was repaired, new people came, trade revived.
	Phillip V died a man well-respected and truly mourned. He had
survived storms and floods, war and earthquakes. He lived to a ripe old
age, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. The pride that was the
South returned.
	At his funeral he was called a Christian Gentleman, which he was. I
have often wondered if his Christianity, his generosity, his love of his
fellow man would have extended to his great grandson. How would he have
looked upon the boy who had inherited his hair coloring, his flashing,
emerald green eyes, his spirit and his temper?
	How would my ancestor have looked upon his gay great grandson?




The Landing

Chapter Two


	It was the last Friday in August, and a typical summer's day. The
sun was burning high in the sky above, the air muggy and humid. Ordinarily
I would be down at the swimming hole with my mates. However, Mam Berta, our
cook, housekeeper and disciplinarian, had finally tired of my
procrastination and ordered me into town. She knew exactly what dirty
things boys could be - she had three sons of her own, huge, strapping boys
- and she could only imagine what the contents of my school locker were. Me
too. I had no idea what I had left behind when school had closed in June,
and left moldering in a hot, near-vacant building all summer.
	Mam Berta threatened to whup my skinny white butt proper if I
didn't move myself. Having been the recipient of several whuppings from the
old black woman, I moved and wandered down the street, heading for the
County Consolidated Schools.
	The school building, which was located on a large, open plot of
land across from the Evangelical Temple on Hampton Road, was a stern stone
and brick series of buildings. Surrounded by playing fields and a makeshift
stadium, where I was dragged every Friday night during football season, the
buildings housed the County Elementary School and Hampton High School. The
two schools were separated by what was laughingly called the Athletic
Complex, actually a gymnasium that smelled abominably, some dressing rooms,
which smelled worse, and a murky pool where the male students swam
nekkid. The girls wore swimming costumes that looked like they'd been
designed by Queen Victoria.
	The Consolidated Schools had been designed and built back in the
middle of the Great Depression, and paid for by the WPA. As with the town,
it was segregated. No blacks had seen the inside of the place, although
that was going to change in a few days. The Supreme Court, the Congress,
and the State Legislature had all decreed desegregation and that was
that. The day after Labor Day, when the schools reopened, fifty blacks
would be bussed from their normal temple of education - a long, low,
clapboard building in Overbridge - to the Consolidated Schools.
	So far as I knew no protests were planned, although Stubby Richmond
and Daddy Smith, the stalwarts of the Klan, were rumored to be planning a
cross-burning, which would only make matters worse.
	For almost one hundred years race relations had been more or less
stable. The white folks lived in their part of town, the black folks in
theirs. Segregation, "Jim Crow" as it was called, was alive and well and
living in the South.
	I won't lie and say that everything was fine between the races. It
wasn't. While almost every white lady in town employed a black maid, cook
or laundress, there was virtually no interaction between the races at all.
	The town was divided by Conyngham Creek. On the west side, which we
all called Overbridge, lived the blacks, their houses and businesses lining
winding, unpaved roads, except for Davis Street, which stretched in a
straight line from the bridge to the town limits. The houses were all built
of pine and cypress, and they all looked as if a good wind would blow them
down. Most had never been painted, and more than half had sagging roofs and
porches. The business buildings along Davis Street looked, well,
tired. These were the usual collection of small town economic enterprise: a
drug store, a beauty parlor, a tailor, a barber, and so on. There was a
large, decrepit looking hotel where visiting blacks could rent rooms - the
Landing Inn was segregated and barred to persons of color. There was a fire
station, where all the firemen were black, with two rigs and a tall, brick
tower, and a police station, where all the constables were black, a jail,
and the schools. There was also, or so it seemed, a church on every corner,
ranging from the AME Church, brick, four-square and with a bell tower, to
small, one room converted shotgun shacks. As an added attraction the town's
sewage treatment plant was located in Overbridge, next to the Heavenly Rest
Cemetery, where only black folk were buried.
	White folk were accommodated in Magnolia Cemetery, which overlooked
the river east of town. Both burial grounds were privately owned by
Mr. William van Lews, the town undertaker and owner of van Lews' Furniture
Mart. Magnolia Cemetery, tree-dotted and criss-crossed with well cared for
walks and flower gardens, was where the white folks went when they were
"called to Glory".
	On the east side of the Creek was the white section of town, the
streets wide and paved, and lined with well kept houses with neat lawns and
flower beds, usually tended by young blacks in the employ of Mr. Theophilus
Monroe, a stately, well-spoken black gentleman. The Monroes had been
tending the gardens and lawns of Charles Town Landing for generations, and
were descended from slaves who had tended the gardens of Broadlands House
and Conyngham Hall.
	Other than the house servants and Mr. Monroe's gardeners, one
rarely saw a black face in the white part of town, and if one did one also
could expect a Sheriff's deputy to pull up in his patrol car and ask what
his or her business was in this part of town.
	Downtown there were blacks in evidence, as there had to
be. Ravelli's employed black waiters, the better to lull the tourists into
thinking they had stepped back in time to the days of the Old
South. Biedermeyer's also employed blacks in the separate but equal
cafeteria that occupied half of the main floor. Separating the cafeteria
was a tall wooden partition, one side for whites, the other for blacks. The
white side of the cafeteria had tall windows overlooking the street. The
white folks sat in cushioned banquettes or at tables, with white linen
clothes and silver plated cutlery. On the other side of the partition,
black folk sat at a long Formica and chrome counter, or at long, bare deal
tables lined with spindly wooden chairs. They ate off of plain white, heavy
china with stainless steel utensils. There were two windows, both as tall
as the windows in the white section, but these overlooked the alley behind
the store. There were two kitchens, one where the food for the white folks
was prepared, and another where food for the black folks was prepared. The
only commonality was the wait staff - they were all black.
	Everything it seemed had been done to perpetuate the "separate but
equal" society we lived in. Down at the bus station there were four rest
rooms, two for whites (ladies and gentlemen), two for blacks (men and
women), as there were in the railroad station. White folks ate, drank, and
peed in separate facilities. Even the whore houses were segregated. If you
were white, and horny, you went to Peckinham's Road House, where the booze
and the girls (usually a Smith) were cheap. If you were black, and horny,
you frequented Ethel's, a low, dark dive just outside the town limits.
	The only time the rules were relaxed was on Saturday Market Day,
when the farmers and townsfolk gathered around small booths lining the
square to buy vegetables and handicrafts, buy or sell a mule, sample
fresh-baked pies and cakes and barbecue, and picnic on the Court House
lawn.

******

	Leaving the coolness of the house and walking into the heat of the
day had been like slamming into a brick wall. I had barely reached the road
before I was drenched in sweat and panting as I walked toward the
schools. The street was quiet, as it almost always was, the only thing
stirring being Lucy, a bitch of no known breed, sheltering on the porch of
the Finch house. She was languidly licking herself and looked to be
pregnant again. As I neared the terrace café of the hotel I could hear the
low hum of conversation and saw that the tables were less than
half-filled. Down on the landing steps the old, white-painted steam launch
that brought tourists up from Charleston maintained steam, patiently
waiting for the tourists to finish eating.
	As I passed the terrace I gave a short wave to Tony Ravelli, who
was busy schmoozing with the tourists. Tony was a sometimes lover of mine,
very receptive to my schoolboy ministrations and claimed to be straight. I
gave him a small wave as I passed and grinned at him. For a straight boy
Tony sure did love to have his pecker sucked, and never mentioned what we
did in the privacy of his bedroom.
	I rounded the corner of the hotel and looked over the expanse of
the square. It was populated, as it always seemed to be, by the usual
suspects. Outside of Biedermeyer's, sitting on the benches provided, a
clutch of old men, retired farmers for the most part, sat gossiping,
chewing tobacco and taking sips from Mason jars of Daddy Smith's sippin'
likker, which they hid in brown paper bags. These old men were a
fixture. They gathered every morning in Sully's Café to have coffee, eat
donuts, read the papers and argue in the manner of old men with too much
time on their hands. Breakfast over, they would amble over to Biedermeyer's
for the day.
	Outside of Lucille's a clutch of convent girls, easily identifiable
by their black, habit-like school uniforms and white, short-sleeved
blouses, giggled and pointed at what passed for the latest fashion in hats
and frocks in the display window. As always they were chaperoned by two
Ursiline sisters and I wondered how the ladies stood the heat in their
ankle length, black habits and starched wimples.
	As always of late, Stubby Richmond was standing outside his
hardware store, chewing on an unlit cigar and glaring across the square at
one of the town radio patrol cars parked near the bridge over The Krik. The
car had become a regular fixture for nearly five months, as had the two
policemen sitting in it, riot guns close to hand, since the night of
Thursday, the 4th of April, when Overbridge had exploded in protest at the
assassination of Martin Luther King.
	It had been a day that no one would ever forget. Until that day,
while relations between the races were not all sweetness and light, they
weren't all that bad either. Most people in town were resigned to the
coming changes. There wasn't a hell of a lot anyone could do about them, so
being Southerners we accepted what was to come with as good a grace as
possible and, as it turned out, figured out a way to get around the
government orders.
	However, the events of that day changed everything. No longer were
blacks and whites to live in uneasy harmony. Benign tolerance was replaced
with blind hatred and deep distrust formed a chasm between the
communities. The bond that had joined individuals through wars and
depression was torn asunder. For the first time, and from then on, the long
forbidden word was spoken openly and disdainfully; there were no longer
white folks and colored folks. There were "us", and niggers.

******

	I recall the day was a typical spring day, not too warm, not too
cool. I did what I did every day, walked to school with the gang, sat in a
drafty classroom listening to the drone of the teacher trying to pound some
history, or geography or whatever, into my less than receptive skull. Lunch
was the usual near inedible slop dished out every day. At 3:00 in the
afternoon school let out and I ambled home, listening to Sinjin bitch,
admiring the view of the Conyngham boys (I always let them walk ahead so I
could admire their firmly packed little butts) and, as we strolled past van
Lews' funeral parlor, admired the sleek horses waiting in the wide, covered
driveway of the house. The horses were pulling one of Mr. van Lews pride
and joy, a black, varnished, hearse.
	Funerals in the south tend to be old-fashioned and
traditional. Mr. van Lews, never one to let the grass grow under his feet,
catered to every taste. For the modern thinking, young, up-and-coming
professional there was a long, sleek, black Cadillac "funeral coach", as he
insisted on calling the hearse, the latest in a long line of "coaches". The
undertaker bought a new hearse every two years, the old one going to his
establishment in Overbridge, and eventually being sold to an up country
mortician who couldn't afford a modern, up-to-date, funeral coach.
	For the tradition-minded, and this included many of the old
families and country folk, Mr. van Lews maintained two horse drawn hearses,
black and silver for adults, white painted for children. The hearses and
horses were kept in a long, brick stable behind the funeral home.
	Leaving the horses, and playing grab ass, we ambled through the
square, bade goodbye to the Ravelli boys, and continued on home. It was
something we did every day, according to a pattern that never seemed to
change.
	At home I saw that the usual Thursday pattern was well along. We
lived according to established routines. After breakfast, if he were not
out on a call, Father would take up his medical bag and drive to the town
hospital. I would grumble and snort and drag my skinny behind off to
school. Mother would go into the kitchen and sit with Mam Berta and plan
the day's menus, drink gallons of coffee and gossip. When they were done
that Mother would go off and sit in her sitting room, paying bills, writing
letters and so on. Mam Berta would terrorize the day girls, supervise the
cleaning, and head downtown to shop.
	For Mother, lunch was always at 1:15. After lunch she would call on
her neighbors and friends, or shop. Wednesday she would drive into
Charleston to visit my sister. Thursdays, Mother was "at home" and from
2:00 until 4:00 she would entertain her friends to tea and cake and more
catty gossip.
	That afternoon I arrived at home and went into the house the back
way. I had no desire to thrust myself into the nest of old cats in the
drawing room, and much preferred to sit at the battered old kitchen table,
drink milk and nibble freshly-baked cookies. Mam Berta would grumble and
mumble away and eventually pack me off to do my homework. This was the
rule: cookies and milk, and then homework until dinner time, which for me
was 6:00 pm. Dinner for my parents was always at 8:15, and children were
not invited.
	After I had been fed and watered I had an hour or two to kill
before bedtime, which was 9:00 pm on week nights. I usually watched
television, or went over to Sinjin's to pass the time with him. That
evening I didn't watch television, and Sinjin asked me to go into town to
the chemists shop to pick up a prescription - his mother was
ailing. Normally I would have demurred, but as it was still warm out I said
yes.
	As Sinjin and I started out I thought I heard the dull reports of
gunfire. We looked at each other and then we noticed a sharp, acrid smell
in the gentle breeze blowing from the west. Sinjin thought that there was a
fire somewhere, probably in Overbridge. I thought so too, because something
was always burning down over there, which was not surprising as most of the
buildings were firetraps.
	The closer we got to town the stranger things seemed to be. As we
entered the Landing I saw men, white men, carrying shotguns and hunting
rifles, hurrying toward the Court House. Along Marion Street the shops and
hotel were closing, and I saw Mr. Ravelli and his sons busily hanging the
storm shutters that protected the windows of the ground floor from the
periodic tropical storms that roared in from the Atlantic. Mama Ravelli was
hurrying around the terrace restaurant, stopping at each table and waving
at the black waiters to hurry with the service.  Stubby Richmond was
standing outside his hardware store with Simmons, Daddy Smith and two of
the Smith boys. Each one carried a weapon, hunting rifles so far as I could
see.
	A town patrol car went roaring by, its red roof light flashing
ominously, and I watched it make the turn that would take it over the
bridge and then I saw a huge, roiling column of flames and smoke lighting
the sky above Overbridge. Something was definitely wrong and, frightened,
Sinjin and I hurried into the chemist shop, snatched up the prescription
and ran home.
	Twilight had waned and the street lights lit our way as we hurried
down Broadlands Avenue. As we skittered past his house, I saw Mr. Conyngham
standing on his front porch, a shotgun in his hands. He was looking toward
town where the sound of sirens filled the still air. Sinjin peeled off and
ran into his house while I hurried on home. As I turned into our driveway
and under the porte-cochere, I could see some of the cadets from the
military school in front of the gates that led to the school. The gates
were closed but behind the ornate metalwork was what looked like a
deuce-and-a-half truck. The truck's lights were on, brightly illuminating
the boy cadets standing guard. I saw that they were wearing olive drab
fatigues, helmets, and carrying more or less modern Garand rifles instead
of their ceremonial Enfields. This, I think was the time I realized that a
Southerner's worst nightmare might be on the cards.
	I had hardly entered the foyer when my mother pounced on me,
demanding to know where I had got to.  She had obviously been looking for
me. She was calm, and her voice was icy for some reason, although I knew
she was worried sick when she found me missing. I was worried sick when I
saw what was in her hand: my father's old Webley pistol.
	Ignoring my sputtered excuse, Mother ordered me to go to my room
and under no circumstance was I to leave it. Mother's icy calmness was
frightening and I whined and begged her not to make me go upstairs where I
would be alone. She relented and told me to go into the library where the
two dailies, Flora and Annette were huddled, watching television. The
images being broadcast showed a night of terror and destruction.
	Few people realize that there were more riots that night than the
media could report. Detroit, Chicago, New York, all were featured in the
news broadcasts, but there were others. Overbridge was our riot.
	When the first reports of King's assassination came over the air
waves and blacks began to gather in protest, tempers began to rise and
while the ministers and perceived community leaders tried to calm the
people down, rocks began to fly, and then trash containers, and windows
were smashed and Overbridge exploded in protest at the assassination of the
Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King. The police were called and for whatever
reason fists flew, truncheons were drawn and the riot was on.
	The Captain of the Overbridge police station called for
reinforcements from the Landing, but the police there were all white and
the Mayor, Mister Wallingford, refused to let the town officers anywhere
near Overbridge. He ordered the cops to blockade the bridge. He also
ordered them to use whatever force they needed to keep the blacks in their
place, which was on the other side of the bridge.
	Much later I learned that Wallingford had more than just the town's
ten-man police force to rely on. There was a State Troopers' barracks less
than fifteen miles away, and he could appoint "Special Constables" at
will. More importantly, the Mayor was not hesitant when it came to calling
out the Klan. Stubby Richmond was always going on about the "niggers
rising", and warning everyone who would listen to be prepared. Everybody
was, for this was the South, and I doubt there was a house in town that
didn't have at least a shotgun around.
	Daddy Smith hated coloreds with a passion, probably because they
worked hard, didn't live in a falling down shack, or have a tribe of
slatternly daughters or lummox sons. The average black showed Daddy Smith
and his whelps up as swamp trash, and Daddy didn't like that at all.
	At the time I was too busy being terrified to worry about the
various white cabals more than willing to shoot their black
neighbors. Damian Lee had finally appeared. He'd been over to Goose Creek
popping corn with one of the girls from school when he heard a report on
his car radio. He broke speed records getting home and was soon running
around trying to find the keys to my father's gun cabinet. Mam Berta was
looking thunderous, and announced that she'd like to see the color of the
free issue nigger that would dare to even look crossways at her lambs (I
assume she meant me and Damian).
	For a while I parked myself in a chair in one corner of the entry
hall, my eyes wide and my heart pounding. In the distance I could hear the
shrill whistle of the tourist launch, a screaming banshee sounding in the
humid air as it chugged downriver toward Charleston. I also heard the
muffled, sharp cracks of what I knew to be rifle fire, interspersed with
the dull thud of what could only be a shotgun being fired.
	As I waited, the Finch sisters came into the house, with their
dog. Miss Adele, grim-faced and determined, was carrying a shotgun, while
her sister, Miss Hester, carried an old horse pistol (which her Granddaddy
had carried in some Indian war). The two old ladies didn't seem fazed at
all. After seeing my mother, pistol in hand, ordering Flora and Annette to
stop their sniveling and help her barricade the front door with an antique
sofa and some tables, the Finch sisters took up position on either side of
the door, vowing that none of "those people" would ever set foot in
Broadlands House.
	There was a definite feeling of exodus and need for safety in
numbers in the air, for the next thing I knew my mother's flimsy barricade
was across the brilliantly polished floor as the Cecils pushed the front
door open. Mrs. Cecil, her normally perfectly coiffed hair tied up in a
ratty old bandana, pushed her boys into the hall. Nicholas immediately came
to stand beside me, while Gregory and Bob Lee, men in their own eyes, went
in search of Damian, and a gun.
	Over the next hour or so the smell of burning wood drifted in
through the open windows. Bob Lee, who had gone up to the roof where there
was a good view of the town, reported black columns of smoke and flame
roiling over the rooflines of Overbridge. He also reported that there were
State Troopers gathering outside the Ursiline Convent.
	The Misses Finch gripped their weapons even more tightly and Damian
appeared. He handed me an old Purdy fowling piece and told me that my job
was to guard the river entrance. With Nicholas, I reluctantly left my
perch, walked down the long hall, through the Music Room and onto the wide
porch that overlooked the normally gray waters of the Cooper River.
	The sun was now long set and deep shadows darkened the waters,
which were empty of traffic, and a low mist was also settling across the
black waters.  I watched for a while and then realized that there was no
way that rioters would ever appear on the river. First of all, there were
few boats, mostly rowboats, the cutters from the military school marina,
and the like. To get to them a mob would have to cross the bridge and
somehow reach the wide steps leading down from the flood wall to the river,
which didn't seem likely, given the number of armed men on the white side
of the bridge and along the Krik. Second of all, the only other way to get
to the river from Overbridge was an old, winding road that ran past the
Smith place and God help the black man, woman or child on riot bent who
dared to go anywhere near there. Every Smith, male or female, had
figuratively been born with a gun in his hand, and could drill a squirrel
at a hundred paces.
	Nick and I sat on the steps that led to the lawns for what seemed
like hours. A gentle wind began to blow from the west, riffling the leaves
and branches of the moss-draped live oak trees and jacaranda bushes, and
bringing with it the sounds of yelling, the clanging of a bell, and what
sounded like an explosion of some sorts. This caused Nick to hug me
tightly, and for a while we just cuddled. The wind shifted and we no longer
heard anything, which seemed to make matters worse.
	As the night deepened more neighbors appeared, the thick, stout,
brick and stucco walls of Broadlands House offering safety and a measure of
security. First were the Conynghams, Tristan and Damian and their mother
left in my mother's care while Mr. Conyngham hurried into town to join the
growing number of white men called out as "Special
Constables". Mrs. Conyngham was also armed, with a shotgun. The boys
carried their pillows and blankets and settled on sofas in the drawing
room. Their mother sat nearby, peering out of the window into the darkness.
	Sinjin and his mother showed up. Mrs. Tradd was clutching a huge
rosewood box - containing her jewels I found out later - while Sinjin tried
to look brave, holding a Remington pump action shotgun that I was sure
would have knocked him on his ass if he fired it. He and Bobby Lee Cecil
were sent upstairs to sit in front of the Palladian window that overlooked
the street.
	From time to time Damian Lee appeared, armed to the teeth, and then
disappeared. I knew he wanted to head into town but as the only "adult"
male in the house, he had to stay and protect the women and children. He
knew that everybody was carrying a weapon, but the Code dictated that he
stay.
	I was quite grumpily uncomfortable, and sent Nick off for some
blankets. The temperature dropped and it was cool, around 55 degrees or
so. When he returned Nick wrapped himself in his blanket and huddled close
against me. I was scared shitless to say the least, what with the house
being turned into a fortress, and filled with women twittering about what
was going on in Overbridge. The sound of buildings crashing and guns being
fired did not help at all. I wanted to go find Sinjin, but I had been set a
duty, and until Damian Lee told me to go to bed, I would stay. I had no
choice. I was a little man and the Code was strongly ingrained in me.
	Sometime during that long evening Nick fell asleep, and snored
softly, his head resting in my lap while I tried, ineffectually to keep my
eyes open. Before I knew it, it was morning, and I was lying on my own bed,
with Nick cuddled against me. I raised my head and saw that we had both
slept in our clothes, a most uncomfortable feeling.
	I wondered how I had got there. I didn't remember going to bed, and
assumed that someone, probably Mam Berta, maybe Damian, had carried both
Nicholas and me to bed.
	Nick's hand was resting on my stomach, a bare inch away from my
morning wood, which was pooching out the front of my shorts. Ordinarily
this would not have bothered me at all, but the door suddenly opened and in
walked Charlie Pegram, looking disheveled and not quite the neat, trim,
Citadel cadet he was.
	"Hey, little man, how's it hanging?" Charlie asked as he crossed
the room and sat on the bed beside me.
	I grinned at Charlie, the secret love of my life. "Hey. Where'd you
come from?" I asked. He was supposed to be down in Charleston.
	Charlie chuckled. "Your daddy called the Superintendent, who let
the cadets go for the week, what with the trouble and all. I called Philip
Charles and we drove up here."
	"Gosh, you did?" I asked, visions of Charlie dashing to my rescue,
waving a sword, with horn blaring and flags flying.
	"Yep. We had to fight our way through but Philip Charles waved his
pistol at 'em, and then a Charleston cop car came up and the miscreants
scattered."
	I couldn't help but giggle. Charlie tended to sound at times as if
he were a character in a Victorian novel.
	Charlie smiled. "Not really. Charleston is quiet, not like Detroit
or Chicago. They're still rioting up there and it looks like half the town
is afire."
	"What about Overbridge?"
	Charlie stood up and looked out the window. "Cooper, it's about
gone. The fools burned down most of Davis Street, the hotel, and the movie
house. Mam Berta's house is gone and two of her boys are in the calaboose."
	"For sure?"
	Charlie nodded. "For sure. The governor called out the Guard and
they're mopping up." Charlie shook his head sadly. "The damn fools! What
did they gain? White folks won't trust 'em ever again! The fools yelled and
danced and threw rocks and took pot shots at the police and burned down
half the town and what did it get them?"
	I could understand Charlie's anger. It was like me burning down the
house if I got punished for something I didn't do. All I was really doing
was cutting off my nose to spite my face.
	"They'll rebuild," I said. "Folks have got to live and . . ."
	Charlie wheeled and glared at me. "No, no they won't!" he
declared. "Your great granddaddy isn't around with a secret stash of
Consols. Nobody, black or white, has any money to speak of, and if they do
they sure aren't going to help folks who burn down the place everytime
something happens they don't like!"
	I was a little surprised at Charlie's vehemence. Normally he was
the kindest guy I knew. His anger caused his normal, peaches and cream
complexion to turn a deep red. He took a deep breath. "Cooper, you know
me." I nodded. "I know it's difficult around here, but that's the way it's
been for two hundred and more years."
	He returned to sit beside me on the bed. He looked over to where
Nicholas was snoring away and smiled. "That kid sure can make a noise."
	I grinned and shrugged. "He has adenoids," I said casually. "You
should hear him during pollen season."
	Charlie laughed quietly and shook his head. "I'll pass." Then his
face turned hard, and his blue, blue eyes darkened. "Coops, things are
never going to be the same again. The niggers have drawn a line in the
sand."
	I gasped. Charlie, my sweet, sweet Charlie, a boy who wouldn't say
shit if he had a mouthful, had used the forbidden word! Gentle folk, folk
like Charlie and my Daddy, folk of good blood and breeding, never, ever,
called the Negroes "niggers". People like Stubby Richmond, the Smiths, they
used the epithet all the time, but not good people. Never good people!
	Charlie saw the shocked look on my face. "I'm sorry Coops, but what
else are they? We didn't shoot their Messiah. We were over here, on our
side of the Krik, minding our own business, and what do they do?"
	"He was their hero," I temporized. "They don't have anyone else
now," I said weakly.
	Charlie waved his hand dismissively. "I know they all loved Doctor
King. So did a lot of white folk. He was a good man and he preached
non-violence."
	"But . . ." I began.
	"No!" Charlie growled. "The niggers think they've got the upper
hand. Well, there are folks around who will make sure that they go on
thinking it. Only that's all they'll get."
	"The Klan?" I probed. "The Smiths?"
	Charlie nodded. "Bad times are a-comin' Coops." Charlie
sighed. "Oh, the darkies will do the Jungle Bunny Stomp on the Court House
lawn; they'll burn down a few businesses and pat themselves on the back and
tell themselves that we're too frightened of them and give 'em what they
want." He laughed angrily. "Well, let 'em think what they want. We'll make
sure they get what we give 'em!"
	I was confused. I didn't understand the depth of desperation in the
black community, and I didn't understand the depth of Charlie's anger. I
also wondered who "we" were.
	I didn't have a chance to pursue Charlie's words. He stood up
abruptly. "You and Grampus there get yourselves downstairs. Your momma's
holding breakfast for you."
	Momma? Momma hadn't actually cooked in the kitchen in years! "Um,
Mummy?" I asked tentatively. "Where's Mam Berta?"
	Charlie shook his head. "She went to Overbridge," he replied
bluntly. His tone said that Overbridge was the best place for her to be.

******

	Things never returned to normal. While no one was killed, the few
blacks that ventured over the bridge separating the town trod
carefully. Mam Berta appealed to my father and her sons, Moses and Layton,
were released from jail on bail - which my father advanced, although I knew
he could hardly afford it. In a good year he cleared forty thousand, out of
which he had to maintain the house, his practice, and pay Philip Charles'
Citadel tuition. Papa didn't care, and even though his standing surety for
Mam Berta's sons caused some grumbling in town, as far as he was concerned
they were, by definition, family, and that was that.
	Overbridge looked like a war zone. The State Troopers patrolled the
streets, and the rank smell of charred wood lingered still. Very few of the
burnt out businesses and homes were being rebuilt. One of these was Mam
Berta's house. My father did manage to advance her a few thousand dollars
to help her rebuild. Like I said, she was family, and Papa was only
continuing a tradition begun back in 1865.

******

	In 1861 Philip V Marigny was a millionaire. He owned Broadlands; he
owned a townhouse in Charleston, and more importantly, he owned two,
modern, steel-hulled screw driven ships, the Carpathia, and the Athenian
and he was smart enough to know that the government in Richmond was
composed of fools. The Secretary of the Treasury, Memminger, a South
Carolinian, had proposed, and President Davis and his advisers had agreed,
that the surest way to bring in France and Britain on the side of the
Confederacy was to embargo cotton. The mills in Lancashire and France
depended on Southern cotton; without it the mills would have to close, and
economic chaos would follow.
	Philip V thought the politicians out of their minds. He, along with
a host of others, ignored the embargo, filled both of his ships with bales
of cotton, and sent them to England where his agent purchased new Enfield
rifles, bayonets, uniforms and other accoutrements of war. He also filled
one of the holds with luxury goods. The ships easily eluded the then
ineffective Union blockade and sailed into Wilmington, where the cargoes
were sold at auction. The rifles and articles of war were shipped inland,
where Philip V parceled out the arms and ammunition. Some of the new rifles
went to the boys at the military school, the rest went to outfit a regiment
of infantry, Colonel Philip de Marigny commanding, which was eventually
absorbed into Hampton's Legion and later became a part of the 2nd South
Carolina Infantry. The Regiment fought at Gettysburg, where Philip V was
wounded, and invalided home.
	Back home, Philip studied the terrain, so to speak, and decided
that the South was lost. The Yankees were too numerous, too rich, and now
that they had a cause, the freeing of the slaves, it was only a matter of
time before the Stars and Bars was replaced by the white flag of surrender.
	Philip V had sunk half his fortune or thereabouts in Confederate
bonds, which he knew would become worthless. His ships, battered and
weather-beaten, still ran the blockade, and while much of their cargoes
were war supplies, he still managed to bring in the luxury goods the people
craved. He kept some of his profits in the bank in Charleston, but the bulk
of his money was sunk in the gold-standard securities of the day: Consols.
	Consols, actually Consolidated Annuities issued by the British
Government, paid three per cent interest, sometimes for a fixed period of
years, sometimes not. They could be bought, or sold, on the London Change,
and were the bedrock of the British financial system. The actual
certificate didn't look like much, but presented at the Annuities Window at
the Bank of England they could be exchanged for gold coin of the
realm. Philip V had a satchel full of them.
	In 1865 the South was devastated, especially in those areas where
Sherman's horde had laid waste to crops and houses, whole villages, and
stolen everything from pigs to family silver that could not be hidden. Vast
miles of land lay derelict, populated only by crows and long lines of
returning Confederates. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court
House. Richmond, Charleston, all the major cities and towns were occupied
by hard-eyed, hard-visaged bluebellies, most of whom thought petty larceny
a pleasant sideline. Nothing was safe if for some reason the troops entered
your house.
	Grand Larceny was freely committed, at the hands of Carpetbaggers
from the North, and their white sympathizers, Scalawags, and hordes of now
freed slaves, all of whom were hell bent on looting every state treasury
they could gain control of. Through vote-rigging, terror tactics,
disenfranchising voters (all Democrats) and the "Oath of Allegiance", which
nobody would take, they quickly gained the upper hand.
	The Landing was a typical small town of the era. The War was over,
and the boys were returning home - those who had survived. Commerce was at
a standstill, and the plantation fields, once green and white with cotton,
were empty and weed-choked. The labor force, the black slaves, had decamped
en masse, some following Sherman's barbarians, most flocking to Charleston
or Columbia, to live in shanty towns and exist on handouts from the
Freedman's Bureau.
	The Yankees had never understood the South. They thought they had
won the War, and while they had won the final battle, they little realized
that the War would go on for another fifty years or more. To the average
Yankee, the South was beaten, desperate, on her knees, and ripe for
plunder. With their Negro allies, in and out of uniform, they thought the
South would buckle under, abandon her arrogance and gentility, and grovel
at the feet of her new masters.
	Oh, how little they knew of the South!
	The collective South looked down its nose at the invaders,
shrugged, and whenever possible, ignored them. They continued in their
traditional ways as much as possible, knowing that they couldn't change
things. Let the Carpetbaggers steal the election - the Radicals in
Washington were bound to side with them anyway. Let the ex-slaves have
their freedom. Let them see what freedom meant. There would be no more
weekly issue of rations, no more yearly issue of new clothes or cloth to
make them, no more "Chrismus Gifs". The former slaves were on their own.
	In the cities, Charleston, Columbia, Savannah, the aristocrats
withdrew into their own special enclaves. In Charleston gentle folk
returned to what was essentially the site of the original city of Charles
Towne, the area south of Broad Street. On the plantations, folks rolled up
their sleeves and set to work. They ignored the rapacious Yankees as best
they could, and ineptly began to rebuild their lives.

******

 	Over the fireplace mantle in the drawing room at Broadlands is a
painting. It is of Philip V late in life. His hair and beard are white, his
frame lithe, the hands and face - he is staring directly at the viewer -
are weathered and rough, the marks of a man who has had a hard life. Philip
V is the picture of a proper Victorian gentleman. He is wearing a
Confederate gray frock coat, open to reveal a matching waistcoat, across
which is draped a heavy, gold chain. His trousers are pressed and under his
wing collar is a colorful four-in-hand tie.
	He is sitting at his desk, battered and splintered here and there,
the rosewood and mahogany dull with age. The desk is piled high with
account books, factor's reports, bills of lading, a list of comestibles,
the prices blurred. The artist, Sir Luke Fildes, had caught the mood, the
light, the aura of a man who had faced adversity, and overcome it.
	I have a different portrait in mind. I see Philip V, not broken,
but near to it, sitting on the old bundling board that has stood on the
second floor porch for close on to two hundred years. He is staring out at
his patrimony, what there is of it. Overhead the sky is leaden, bringing
promise of rain. The river, dark and foreboding, is devoid of
activity. There are no wooden skiffs or barges polled by black men, and
piled high with the fruits of the land: cotton, corn, rice.
	Philip V does not wear broadcloth, or fine linen. His trousers,
such as they are, have seen hard times, ripped and patched with whatever
piece of cloth that came to hand, roughly sewn and showing it. On his feet
his boots, taken from a dead Yank, not quite shoddy, but as split and
patched as his trousers. Around his neck a rough neckerchief, torn from an
old piece of calico, wet with perspiration, for it is a hot, muggy day. His
hair, once red and shining with golden highlights, is matted and in need of
cutting, and graying.
	Behind Philip V his house, a place once of laughter and good times,
a haven of hospitality where fine china, good silver, and crystal graced
tables laden with barons of beef, plump turkeys, delicate fish, shrimps
brought upriver from the bay. Bottles of bourbon and fine wines waited to
be passed by smiling footmen dressed in the house livery of the de
Marignys. The hospitality of Broadlands House, gone now, replaced with
leathery shad and grits.
	Philip's eyes drift, taking in the once-neat double row of brick
cabins that stretched along the river bank and ended at the wall of the
military school, the Quarters, now derelict, the glass of the windows
shattered and now shards scattered across the wooden boards of the porches,
small harbors where black slaves once lounged after work, laughing,
watching their children playing. The cabin doors are broken and ripped from
the hinges, the roof trees sagging. The people who had called these small
structures home were gone. Some had followed Sherman's hordes. Others, mad
with the excitement of freedom, had danced and laughed their ways into the
city. They were free men all, and none had any idea of what awaited them.
	I can see the look of disgust on Philip's face. His slaves had
abandoned the land. He made no apology to any man that he had owned
slaves. Slavery, with its imagined horrors, had been forced on him, indeed
on the South. But . . . he had been a good master. Never had a slave been
whipped, or physically punished. He had never sold a slave, for such was an
abomination. He had provided for his people, patronizing to be sure, but he
had housed them, and fed them and, although it was illegal, schooled the
more intelligent of them.
	He had done his Christian duty in providing a church for his
people, and when they were sick or hurt, he called a proper physician to
tend to them. He had thought that his people were happy and content. He had
been a fool, and was paying the price thereby.
	As were his people.
	They flocked to the cities to find that there was no white "master"
willing to see to their needs. They lived in shanty towns, except for the
lucky ones who appealed to white ladies, who had not the heart to turn away
an old darky. The unlucky ones lived on handouts, rations of salt pork and
grits doled out by an uncaring Freedmen's Bureau, and believed the lies of
free land, free houses, free schools. Little did the free slaves know, or
understand, that they were little more than cannon fodder in a new war, a
political war where power came from the ballot box and so long as the free
blacks voted the Republican ticket, they were the new kings of the South.
	Philip V had no time, or patience to worry about what was happening
beyond the confines of his country, his lands, and his patrimony.
	The fields, once lush with corn and cotton, barley and oats, were
empty, for nothing had been planted in the spring. There had been no hands
to till, or hoe, and there had been no seed to plant. The pine forests, and
the weeds, were returning to reclaim the once fertile land.
	The town was as derelict, as empty as the fields, except for feral
cats and rawboned curs searching for a meal. Black-draped wraiths hurried
through the streets, widows without hope of seeing their men return from
the War. There were too many widows, too many orphans, for there was not a
family that Philip knew of that had not suffered a loss, even the
no-account Smiths, who lived in squalor out on River Road. They had been
loud, self-proclaimed Unionists, but when Sherman's Bummers and thieves
came, even the Smiths had rallied to the Stars and Bars, and two of them
were buried in the ruin of Magnolia Cemetery.
	People were starving; women who had never lifted a hand except to
call a black slave or butler, were suffering from rickets and
impetigo. Children, once cosseted and coddled by black Mammies, had the
pinched, wan faces of the slums. Nobody had food, save for the fish that
still could be caught, or a bag of rice or hominy hidden when the marauders
rode through. Nobody had any money, and little hope of getting any anytime
soon. Most people had silver and jewelry hidden. The Marigny silver, famous
for its beauty and weight before the War, was hidden in a gator hole,
guarded by an old bull that bellowed romantic invitation in the warm, muggy
spring to any female gator in hearing distance.
	But what use was something that was inedible and unsaleable, or
nearly so? The auction and sales rooms of Charleston were stuffed with old
family possessions, silver of every kind, furniture, books and gewgaws
beyond measure, with no takers at a decent price. The Carpetbaggers and
Scalawags, the soldiers and their women, knew that it was a buyer's market
and offered ten cents on the dollar, if that.
	I can see Philip's face, as red now as his hair once had been, his
choler rising. He was a man of tempestuous temper, as all red heads seemed
to be, and the thought of the insulting price offered by a smooth-talking,
oily-faced Yankee from Maine for Broadlands, rankled. Fifty cents an acre,
cash money, payable in good Yankee greenbacks. Philip had scornfully
rejected the offer, taking a buggy whip to the man and his equally
loathsome black companion, driving them off in as fine a fit of temper as
the neighbors had seen in years!
	I can see Philip rising, pacing, ignoring the rising storm brewing
on the horizon, remembering the snide words of the black man. "Who will
till your fields? Who will plant your cotton? Who will pick it?"
	Who indeed?
	There were blacks, of course. But they were "house niggers", and
all far along in years for the most part. There were ancient butlers,
gray-haired Mammies, arthritic Cooks and maids. The old had stayed with
their families, the young had fled, off to the Day of Jubilee.
	Those former slaves who had remained were as proud of their white
families as Lucifer. Family status, family wealth and station, was
reflected in them, or so they thought. Most had been chosen for their
intelligence and looks, and carriage. They dressed in fine cloth and linen;
they ate well; they enjoyed a privileged status in slave society and
thought nothing of looking down their noses at the ignorant field hands,
men for the most part incapable of anything other than picking cotton. The
house slaves had never picked so much as a radish from the vegetable
garden, and saw no reason to start now.
	Faced with the intransigence of the remaining blacks, Philip
despaired of ever bringing his fields back to life. Even if he could entice
laborers from the cities, how would he pay them? He had no money, save for
$26.25 in silver coin, doled out to him in Abbeville by the paymaster from
the small cache that was all that was left of the Confederate
Treasury. Philip V had managed to be a part of the small escort guarding
the refugee Government, President Davis and his wife and children,
Secretary of State Benjamin, the hangers-on and aides and assorted camp
followers that had fled Richmond. Philip V had ridden his spavined old
horse south, scouting ahead for the fifty cadets from the Naval Academy
that formed the main guard.
	In Abbeville, when it finally dawned on Davis and his Cabinet
(those who were left) that it was over, the decision was made to release
the boy cadets and cavalry escort. They were to go their own way, granted
leave to return to their homes, and paid off. The money, $26.25, was $26.25
more than Lee's veterans received.
	Philip V knew of the poverty and deprivation that stalked the
land. He knew that there were families that would lose their homes and
plantations because the politicians in Columbia, determined to bring the
Rebs to their knees, had jacked up taxes to impossible levels. The Yankees
in Washington, the Radical politicians had coldly determined that the South
would pay for its pride, pay for its arrogance, and live under the
jackbooted heel of occupation for as long as it took to teach them the
lessons they should have learned, and to pay for Chancellorsville, and
Gettysburg, to pay for the defeat of blue-clad troops that fell in windrows
and lines of blood and gore at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.
	I can see Philip V, pacing, pacing, wondering where the money to
pay the taxes would come from. Wondering how he would pay for seed, or pay
the workers needed to bring the land back. The Yankees had decreed that
blacks could be hired, for thirteen dollars a month. Before the war, one
hundred and twenty slaves, not counting babies and pickaninnys, had worked
the land. Conyngham Hall, the nearest neighbor, had been home to near two
hundred slaves. The Cecils had had only sixty-five slaves, while the
Pegrams had only owned a handful, house slaves, for they were in banking,
not land. The Tradds were, on paper, the wealthiest family in the county,
on a par with Wade Hampton, the richest man in the state. They owned three
plantations with over four hundred slaves.
	I can see Philip V ticking off a mental list of names and places,
once-rich plantations, many now devoid of life. Each now needed help. The
widows and orphans of the South were helpless, or nearly so. Philip V's
neighbors were as bad off as he. They were struggling to put food on their
tables, as he was, food to feed their children, their wounded husbands and
brothers and sons, and the few blacks who had stayed.
	They were struggling to find a way to repair the roof, or the
sagging porch, struggling to find a scrap of cloth to make a dress, or a
pair of pantaloons. Like Philip, they were faced with starvation, and
desolation, and despair.

******

	I can see Philip V now, staring once again at the empty fields, at
the destroyed cabins, staring at the emptiness. Gone were the chickens and
cows and pigs that had helped each plantation be more or less
self-sufficient. Gone were the vegetable gardens, the radishes, the corn,
the heads of lettuce ground under the hooves of horses ridden by vengeful
men, or under the wheels of artillery caissons, deliberately so, the better
to starve the civilians into submission.
	I can see Philip V arguing in his mind, his temper in check for
once. What to do?
	For almost a hundred years the Marignys had been the leaders. In
peace and war they had always taken the lead. When a storm surge roared up
the Cooper and wiped out the rice fields, a Marigny had come forward with
advice and cotton seed. When the nation went to War, in 1812, Philip III
rallied his neighbors and marched off to battle. When Lincoln ordered an
armed suppression of The Glorious Cause and the Righteous Confederacy in
1861, a Marigny, Philip V, had stepped forward, saber in hand, and raised
the colors.
	I can see Philip V, pacing, pacing, his mind racing and seeking a
solution. Some of his neighbors would never pull themselves up out of the
wreckage of war. Others would simply put aside their arrogance and their
pride and do what they had to do. Let the Yankees have the
arrogance. Southern pride would be like the silver, hidden until better
times.

******

	In time, and with the help of the Consols, the Landing revived. It
was never the same as it had been, and never would be again. The old life,
much of it, was gone. But life has a way of renewing itself. The damage
from the War was repaired, new people came, trade revived.
	Phillip V died a man well-respected and truly mourned. He had
survived storms and floods, war and earthquakes. He lived to a ripe old
age, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. The pride that was the
South returned.
	At his funeral he was called a Christian Gentleman, which he was. I
have often wondered if his Christianity, his generosity, his love of his
fellow man would have extended to his great grandson. How would he have
looked upon the boy who had inherited his hair coloring, his flashing,
emerald green eyes, his spirit and his temper?
	How would my ancestor have looked upon his gay great grandson?