Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Author:Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-04-05T16:00:00+00:00

17

IN THE FIRST YEARS OF THEIR MARRIAGE, HORSE revealed his loyalty to Annie piece by piece, and she thrived beneath the attention. She was his holy woman, his Hagar, his Sarah. And he was her Horse. She opened up and talked more, even kissed him on the cheek when he was not expecting it. By the time news of an attack on Fort Sumter reached the farm, Horse had settled comfortably into married life.

A year later, it shocked them all when a bespectacled boy knocked on the door with the news that Mr. Harrison’s son had died in a battle down in Tennessee. Months earlier, when they learned the younger Harrison had volunteered with a Kentucky regiment, they feared for him, but none anticipated what happened next. It was April 1862, and the word Shiloh passed between them. They looked for news, hoping for abolition but more concerned with who would inherit all of them should the old man die. Once Harrison learned he would not even have a body to bury, he sat in his chair staring out at the stand of maples in his front yard. Nothing could rouse him. Every now and then the housemaid summoned Horse to the house for a repair and whispered what she had gleaned from the occasional newspaper that reached them. River transport was disrupted. So was cotton production. The war was affecting everything, and the demand for hemp would be considerably less that year.

The men were cutting timothy hay when Horse relayed the information.

“What do it mean for us?” Jess coughed and wiped the sweat from his face before straightening up to look at Horse.

“I don’t rightly know,” Horse answered.

Off in the distance, Horse saw two hats astride horses. He shaded his eyes with his hands. The Harrison farm was not on the way to anywhere else, the trail ending at the house, so it was a rare sight to see passersby. He squinted. A slow, dark line snaked behind the horses. The other men were looking now, too. A muffled yell rang out, and though none of the husbands knew whose voice it was, each one of them sprang to life, certain he had heard his own name. Among them, Horse’s feet beat through the grass, and he tried to say Annie! As he neared them, he saw the shadow of a white man raising his gun, but Horse could not stop running, even when he heard the shot, because there was the unmistakable figure of Annie crouching at the back of the coffle. Now the women were screaming, and it took a moment for Horse to understand that they were yelling for the men to stop. Horse slowed, glancing around at the husbands. They had halted, but their necks were strung tightly. Horse had to act or they would all get hurt. He searched his head for the words that would save them and opened his mouth, knowing, before he’d uttered a sound, how little he could salvage.

“Sir, we don’t aim to cause no trouble.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.