Good Time Coming by C.S. Harris

Author:C.S. Harris [C. S. Harris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2016-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Eight

Even the longest and fiercest of winters must eventually give way to spring.

The cold loosed its hold on the Felicianas that year in lurches and gasps, with warm days that lured over-eager farmers to plow and plant their fields, only to watch the seedlings die when the temperatures again plunged.

But gradually the threat of unexpected late freezes passed, and the bitterness of winter faded into a wretched memory. Yet spring had come to mean more to us than just balmy days and fields cloaked with breeze-rippled emerald green new growth. We’d learned by now to dread the arrival of good weather, for it was in spring that armies moved out of their winter quarters, generals plotted offensives and counteroffensives, and our husbands, sons, and fathers started dying again.

Near the end of March, we heard that the Federals had once again given up on their canal across De Soto Peninsula. After digging a trench sixty feet wide and more than seven feet deep, they let the water break through, only to have the canal collapse and backfill while the mighty Mississippi just rolled on the way it always had. We started hoping maybe Leo would be coming home. Then word trickled through that a bunch of laborers from Grant’s Canal had been set to building a brutal, seventy-mile long corduroy road through the swamps and bayous to Hard Times, Louisiana.

Castile spent a lot of time chopping wood.

With Avery gone, Priebus had to take over the plowing. And when his back gave out, Mama finished it herself. We all worked together – Mahalia, Priebus, Mama, and I – putting in Irish potatoes and cabbages, eggplants and tomatoes, beets and spinach, and we planned to keep planting new rows every couple of weeks through the summer until it got too hot. Up the road, Rowena Walford experimented with growing rice and tried to convince everyone else to do the same. Mama took one look at the elaborate network of canals and dams required, and went on planting her corn.

And then one night in mid-March, I awoke unexpectedly to a dark room. I lay for a moment, confused. I knew I couldn’t have been asleep more than an hour or two; so why had I awakened?

Then I heard the low, distant rumble of a coming storm.

Slipping from my bed, I crossed to the window. The moon was still well up, the sky sparkling clear and filled with stars. Feeling oddly tense and short of breath, I threw up the sash and leaned out into the cool night air.

A restless wind stirred the branches of the oaks and brought me the scent of damp earth and green growing things. But from far to the south came an unmistakable, boom, boom, boom.

It wasn’t thunder.

My heart beating fast, I pulled on my night-robe and I felt my way down to the central hall to find the front door open. Mama was standing out on the gallery, her gaze fixed toward the south.

‘What do you think it is?’ I asked, my toes curling away from the cold boards underfoot as I went to stand beside her.

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