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From DOC (Doc Holliday)

 Fourteen

Heading Home

Not marching, 

no.

More of a slink,

say it isn’t so.

But we are tired, 

full of woe, 

So homeward bound,

off we go. 

  1865, the war was over. You’d think it was a happy time. It was, for about a minute, the day we read the paper and all jumped up and down for joy. 

  Then the boys came home. Uncle Robert was the first to get back, which meant that Mattie and the rest of the Holliday clan went back to Jonesboro. The house was eerily quiet again except for the creaking floor and Mama’s coughs. I missed Mattie the most, but I missed them all. 

  Cisco was next. He was a ghost of the fellow who had left us. I almost didn’t recognise him. He knew where to find us from Daddy’s letters. I’ll never forget the morning that he slipped in from the fog. He must’ve lost a hundred pounds. He looked skeletal and coughed worse than Mama. Aunt Fawnie and Wanetta had stuck around, afraid what they’d find at Indian Creek. They put him straight to bed with a warmer and some broth. I sat at his bedside. 

  “Cisco, I missed you so. You missed a lot of shenanigans here with the Hollidays too.” He coughed, it was bloody, and I brought him a clean handkerchief. “Do you want me to read to you?” He shook his head, no. “Alright. Do you want me to stay, or should I let you rest?” He just stared off into oblivion. It seemed very bleak. Poor wretch! 

July, 5th, 1865

Dear John, 

  Thank God, thanks to Julie and June the house was spared from Sherman. There had been a bloody battle right here last year. Lucky we did not stick around for it. We lost Granny Bea. She was very old, you know. Has Cisco made it home? We are all praying for him and hoping Indian Creek fared better than here and Fayetteville. Uncle John is home. Amazingly his house is still standing although it has been raided and wiped clean. He mourns his books, but counts his blessings as do we all. He says he will be dropping in there on you as soon as he can. I hope you are doing well, and not missing us too much. We miss you. 

Love,

Mattie

 Mama, too, like Cisco, kept to her bed. She was very weak and tired. Unlike Cisco she liked me to read to her. Keats was our favorite. She liked “Ode to a Nightingale” and “To Autumn”, but I preferred “La Belle Dame sans Merci” and “Lamia”. 

  Nobody saw a doctor during the war, they were reserved for the boys and amputees. Uncle John did drop in soon enough for his house call. He had quite a beard and looked like he had aged a hundred years. I thought him, Merlin. He brought good news from Indian Creek to my aunts. It had miraculously escaped the war and stood still. Uncle Tom had returned to an empty house. Even Ole’ Berner, the overseer, was gone. Nobody knew where. That was something. Then he looked in on Mama first, then Cisco, and confirmed what we already dreaded. They had consumption. 

Consumption

How long?

Bloody

White Plague?

Dreadful

Cough.

Cold

Sweats.

Shining

Brow.

We All

Know.

Not

When we go. 

Gray Day.

Chill Wind.

Dark Pall.

  Fearing that Mama could never make it to Indian Creek, my dear aunts stayed on with us. How a few years had changed their spinster lives into cooks, housekeepers, and nurse maids. God love them, they did their best. It was decided that Mama and Cisco would be moved to the sunporch where they could get some sunshine and fresh air while swaddled in blankets like caterpillars. I read them Journey to the Center of the Earth and Uncle Silas. Everybody was in awe of these stories although my aunts tried to act shocked about Uncle Silas. I heard them laughing about it later.

  “Ttt…” Aunt Fawnie would shake her head but I could tell she was amused. 

  “You see what drinking will get you?” Aunt Wanetta warned. 

  To hell with Reconstruction. I’d make the most of it and try to keep out the gloom. 

From DOC

 

  One

  It’s really a funny story. My mother grew up on a wealthy cotton plantation in Tinsdale, Georgia, called Indian Creek, with her brothers and sisters, my aunts, Fawnie and Wanetta and my uncles, Billy and Tom. My grandparents, the McKeys, were Scots-Irish. Grandma Jane had come from Stone Mountain; her maiden name was Cloud. Grandpap Bill had built her a big house that I thought looked like something straight out of The Iliad, with marble pillars and a statue of Dionysis in the orchard. He was smiling, and his hair curled up into little horns hidden beneath the wreath of vines. It was a charmed place, a fun place. 

  Mammy was in charge of the children, Grandma helped with prayers. They were Presbyterian, but the church was in town, forty miles away, so they only attended on holidays. Grandpap had a sort of folly, a chapel, beyond the herb garden where the roses grew, and the bees buzzed. Sometimes a breeze picked up and blew through there on hot summer nights when it was sticky hot indoors. The sounds of the bugs and frogs gave it an otherworldly feel. There weren’t just slaves, there were staff. There was an overseer, Ole’ Berner, and the tutors, Miss Mitchell and Mr. Leslie, who taught everything from embroidery to Latin. 

  It was a grand house full of music and dance. Mama and my aunts sang and played piano. Uncle Tom played the fiddle like a cricket. They held holiday balls in the great room where they waltzed the starry nights away. 

  It was a working farm complete with stables and a carriage house. There were gray and white horses, mules, goats, chickens, and ducks. Grandpap didn’t keep any pigs, said they smelled. He was most fond of his hounds and their pups. 

  My father’s family, the Hollidays, on the other hand, ... (Dream Time, TTYL)

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