Poison Spring Read online

  A few miles from our house, Poison Spring trickled through the hilly woods. Nobody knew where the spring got its name. The water didn’t smell bad, and I’d seen deer and squirrels drinking out of it without keeling over dead. Still, I never drank from it, even when Edith double dared me to. She called me a baby when I had refused, but when I told her to taste it, she had said: “It would not be proper for a lady to drink out of a spring like some animal.” When I’d cupped my hand and splashed water at her, she had dashed away, crying all the way back home.

  “Good morning, Travis.” Mama kept rocking. You couldn’t sneak up on her, never in a hundred years.

  “You want me to milk Lucy?” Lucy was our cow.

  She rocked, lost in her thoughts. I was about to ask her again when the chair stopped and she pushed herself up. Mama didn’t look at me, but moved to the rough-hewn column, looking down the path, then stepping down off the porch. I didn’t see anyone coming to pay us a visit.

  “Would you like to walk to the sawmill with me?” This time she turned around, looking at me with a certain light in her eyes, an idea formulating in her head.

  She would get these notions, and, once one took root, she’d tear into it like a dog feasting on a meaty bone.

  “Sure,” I said, but gestured through the breezeway. “But should I milk Lucy first?”

  “She can wait. Are Edith and Hugh still sleeping?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Should I wake …?”

  She had turned, her long legs moving down the path. I ran back inside, grabbed my hat and a canvas sack for kindling. By the time I caught up with her at the main road, my lungs heaved for breath.

  Mama wore a cotton work dress of red and gold plaid and flat-heeled button shoes. She had forgotten her bonnet or straw hat, but the sky shone blue, and the pines blocked most of the sun.

  Always, this land had been thick with forests. I figured it would take a hundred thousand years and ten times the number of slaves Uncle Willard had to clear the land for farming. Walking down the road often seemed like walking in a cave. Those pine trees stretched all the way to heaven, and oaks and dogwoods had just begun to blossom. I would stop to collect pine cones and twigs for kindling—though they were soggy from all the rain and would take a good long while to dry out—sticking them in a burlap sack I’d grabbed, then hurry to catch up.

  Twenty minutes later, we turned down the woods road that led to Papa’s sawmill. Well, once it had been a road. Now the grass grew so thick you couldn’t see any ruts from the wagons that used to haul lumber to Camden, there to ship timber up or down the Ouachita, or winding down the Princeton Road to Harmony Grove, or sometimes to the Tate family’s place on the river at Tate’s Bluff. Now the road, like Papa’s mill, had been all but abandoned.

  A half mile later, we reached the mill.

  I think Papa would have preferred to have become a furniture maker, or just a carpenter, but, as long as I could remember, he had been a sawyer. He had joked—or I’d assumed he’d been funning us—that when he first bought our land, he had discovered the pond. First, he tried fishing, but the catfish and crappie were too smart, so he decided to make the pond a millpond.

  Usually a sawmill was located next to a river, but we were too far from the Ouachita. Papa had dammed a creek from the pond, and put up the mill. To turn the water wheel in the mill he had built, all Papa had to do was open the dam. The water flowed, the water wheel turned, and the shafts inside the mill pushed the muley saw up and down. Muleys were old-fashioned, slow. The saw cut only on the downstroke, and ours was a small operation.

  Rarely did Mama, Edith, or Baby Hugh come to the mill. Papa had never wanted them around here, especially when running the muley. Even away back at home, the buzzing of that saw could be heard, and it often had made Baby Hugh cry. But Papa would let me sweep up sawdust, or coat the machines with oil to keep them from rusting. Once, I’d even helped one of Papa’s workers clamp a log on the carriage. Another time, with Papa and a freedman named Jared Greene smiling over me, I’d burned Papa’s timber mark, FFM—Ford Family Mill—onto a two-by-four. That had to have been five years ago. Usually I just marveled at the workers Papa had hired to help him out. Every one of them was missing a finger, some more than one; one fellow even wore an eye patch and had a hook—like a pirate—for his left hand. Jared Greene had lost two fingers on his right hand. It felt funny whenever he would shake my hand.

  Ford Family Mill. I reckon I was doomed to fail Papa if he wanted me to take over the mill. Writing, reading, telling stories fueled my passion, though I had no idea how one did that for a living. I had no interest in becoming a sawyer, yet I had to admit that I always enjoyed the smell of sawdust and grease and freshly cut trees.

  That pleasant smell no longer entered my nostrils. I smelled only the wetness of the forest. A pine tree had fallen, crashing through the roof of a privy. The tool shed remained unscathed, but the main building had also been wrecked by another falling tree, an oak. One of the old wagons appeared rotted. A squirrel stood guard, angrily chirping at us from the open door. Or should I say, the missing door. I guess the squirrel had decided a shanty made a better nest than one up in a tree. Which would have struck me as funny, but Mama choked out a sob. She hadn’t been up to the mill in a coon’s age, either.

  There were few scraps of lumber to be picked up for kindling, no grease. Nobody working. It looked like a ghost town. Only mountains of sawdust, some of which bulged out of overfilled baskets or barrels, the rest on the floor. I drew in a deep breath. I’d always loved the smell of wet sawdust. Wet sawdust didn’t sting one’s eyes and nose. Wet sawdust didn’t remind me that, when Papa would let me work with his crew, my job had been to sweep it up. Those overflowing baskets and barrels were filled with my labor. Labor I hadn’t done for years.

  Squirrels leaped across the tall pines. Birds chattered. A gust of wind caused the trees to rustle. Finally Mama sighed.

  “I don’t think we can do it, Travis,” she said after the longest while.

  “Do what, Mama?”

  “Run the mill.”

  I blinked incredulously. “Who? Uncle Willard …?”

  “No,” she snapped. “Not Willard.” As Papa would often tease—or maybe he wasn’t teasing—Mama was “getting her Abolitionist up.” Her head shook again, and she said softly: “I was thinking we could do it. Ourselves. You, Edith, and me. Let Miss Mary look after Hugh.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  Moving over to me, Mama smiled and tousled my hair. “Not a big operation, Travis. Nothing like Connor was running. Just cut a few boards. Just enough to earn some script, or enough to barter with Mister Kroger at the town mercantile. But I don’t think that’s feasible, after all. Do you, Travis?”

  Of course it wasn’t feasible. It was inconceivable. Even compared with other family-run sawmills in the county, the Ford Family Mill had been downright tiny, four or five hired men and Papa. The Fountains owned one, The Fountain Timber Company, on the other side of Camden along a stream that flowed into the Ouachita. But the Fountains had three brothers, and those brothers had eleven working-age boys—three already married with kids of their own—and still Ezekial X. Fountain III hired five or six others to help haul, cut, stack, and sell lumber. I was just thirteen, but I had enough sense to know that if Mama, Edith, and I tried operating the mill by ourselves, we’d likely wind up looking worse than Jared Greene or that fellow with the hook and the eye patch who had so intrigued me back in 1860.

  But I said: “I don’t know, Mama. We could, I reckon, try.”

  “No.” She squeezed my shoulder. “That was a forlorn hope. We’ll find another way. Let’s go home. Get you some breakfast.”

  She steered me out of the mill, away from the wet sawdust, and back down the path.

  “How’d we get to be poor, Mama?” I asked.

  “We’re not poor,” she said. Not defiantly. No emba
rrassment or hint of a lie in her voice. “We have each other. We have our health. Most of all, we have the Lord’s blessings. I’d say that makes us far from poor, Travis, but rich. Yes, we are very rich, indeed.”

  Which brought to mind something else Papa was always telling my mother. Anna, you missed your calling, girl. You should have become a preacher.

  I could picture Papa at the supper table, saying those words, Mama shaking her head, maybe mentioning that she’d heard that from Papa more than a million times but laughing anyway, as she topped off his cup with coffee. It brought back a lot of good memories, but then my smile vanished, for it seemed that all I had now was memories of those good years.

  Yet a thirteen-year-old boy in Ouachita County, Arkansas, didn’t have long to feel down. Not in 1864. Back home, chores awaited me, so while Mama went into the kitchen, opening a window so it wouldn’t become an oven in that part of the dogtrot, I went about my work. Milking the cow. Yes, Uncle Willard, Lucy still gives milk, I thought while filling the bucket. Chopping wood. Gathering kindling. Fetching eggs, which I turned into a game.

  Since I was seven, I’d been adding ten years to my age, during my imaginary games—so in my mind I was now twenty-three-year-old Travis Ford—Confederate spy, out to steal the battle plans from the Yankee invaders and deliver them to Bedford Forrest and turn the tide of the war. I had overheard Uncle Willard talking to the preacher about how misplaced battle plans had helped the Yanks win a battle near Sharpsburg, Maryland, so it was my turn to save the day for the Confederacy. As I looked for eggs, I pretended I was sneaking into Sibley tents, hotel rooms, county plantations captured by Yankees and turned into headquarters where I would find the battle plans, general orders, or sacks of coffee for Mama. And I would get out, alive, before the hens noticed what I was doing and could come after me with blood in their eyes.

  * * * * *

  Lieutenant Travis Ford, C.S.A., special courier for Bedford Forrest, under the command of recently promoted Colonel Connor Ford, walks through the Yankee camp, bold as brass. Only twenty-three years old, yet already the Southern newspapers compared him to the likes of Revolutionary War heroes Nathanael Greene, John Laurens, and Francis Marion, the famed Swamp Fox. Ford makes a beeline for the general’s tent, sharply saluting a major chomping on a cigar. The major straightens, returns the salute, and goes back to doing what he did best. He picks his nose.

  Stopping at the fire in front of the general’s tent, Ford pretends to warm his hands, all the while glancing at the major, the other Yankees. Ford himself wears the blue, which comes from the officer he killed in the woods with his bare hands. If discovered, if caught, well, an enemy captured wearing the wrong uniform behind the lines … that meant only one thing. Hanging did not appeal to Lieutenant Ford.

  No one is looking. This is his chance. He darts inside the tent, finds the papers, grabs two of them, then barges out of the tent, ready to fight.

  No one has noticed him. The Yankees go right along pecking the ground, scratching the earth, clucking like the cowards they were. Ford stops fingering the ivory grips of his LeMat revolver. He would not have to fight his way out. Yet.

  He has the plans. He can leave now, but then he sees the patrol bringing in the gray-clad prisoner.

  “We’ve captured Colonel Ford!” a red-bearded sergeant brags. “The war is ours!”

  Travis Ford stares as the Yankees ease Colonel Ford, his father and commanding officer, off a mule. He watches the miserable curs shove the Confederate hero into a prison pen, and the young lieutenant knows one more mission awaits him. Slowly he crosses the Yankee camp, picking up another egg, then his LeMat is in his hand.

  He shoots the nearest guard, turns, fires three more times in rapid succession. Just as rapidly, three more Yankees fall.

  “Come!” he yells, shooting the sergeant off his horse, leaping into the saddle, reaching down with his free hand. His father grips it. They smile at each other.

  “What is going on?” the Yankee major says.

  Lieutenant Ford aims the LeMat, pulls the trigger, and the cowardly Bluecoat is dead.

  “Long live the South!” both father and son shout, and gallop out of the Yankee camp, firing, shouting, laughing.

  * * * * *

  Once I had retrieved the Yankee plans to capture Camden, which also revealed all the weaknesses to hold on to Little Rock, I hurried back inside with a dozen eggs, delivered those to Mama, and then heard the jingle of a wagon trace outside.

  “Who is it, Travis?” Mama asked.

  Edith, who had finally awakened and was bringing Baby Hugh into the kitchen, answered first.

  “It’s Miss Mary, Mama.”

  Chapter Three

  She had arrived in a fancy touring carriage, custom built by Chase’s Carriage Factory in Camden, the side curtains rolled up, pulled by a matching pair of gray mares. I never understood why Miss Mary needed a wagon that big. It would seat six or eight people, and she was alone except for the Negro driver, who was helping her down from her throne in the back.

  When Miss Mary Frederick turned to reach back into the wagon, Baby Hugh freed himself from Edith’s grip and bolted, never touching the steps, practically flying across the yard toward the carriage, the slave, Miss Mary, and the covered dish she had retrieved.

  “Miss Mary! Miss Mary! Miss Mary!” Baby Hugh screamed loud enough that I feared he might startle the team. The slave, old Mowbray, who had been with Miss Mary as long as I had known her, must have thought the same, because, although he grinned widely, he quickly moved to the two horses, whispering something and rubbing the heads of the animals.

  “What’d you bring us? What’d you bring us? Is it cake? It sure looks like cake. Chocolate? I love chocolate.” At least Baby Hugh had the decency to wrap his arms around Miss Mary’s waist and say: “It’s great to see you, Miss Mary. How you been?”

  “Is it great to see me, Baby Hugh?” Everybody called our brother that. Somehow, Miss Mary maintained her balance and did not drop the dish into the wet pine needles. “Or is it great to see half a carrot cake?”

  Our brother backed away, his smile evaporating. “Carrot … cake?” He gulped.

  I imagine his face paled, his stomach turning over, and him falling to his knees and wailing. He despised carrot cake, even though he’d never tasted it. I reckon he thought it was good for you, or maybe he—like most of us by that year—had grown sick of carrots.

  Edith had managed to leave the porch. She grabbed Baby Hugh’s upper right arm and chicken-winged him back toward the house. “You go wash, Baby Hugh. Face and hands and behind your ears. Breakfast is ready.” Then she bowed, like she was curtseying to a queen. “It is wonderful to see you, Mary,” she said. “Mama’s fixing breakfast. Won’t you join us?” She relieved Miss Mary of the dish.

  “Breakfast?” Miss Mary clucked her tongue. “Child, it is almost time for dinner. Are y’all sick?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You’ve wasted half the morning. You’re just getting up?”

  “Well ….”

  I couldn’t help myself. “I’ve been up, Miss Mary,” I announced proudly. “Went with Mama to the sawmill.”

  That was the wrong thing to say.

  “Goodness gracious,” she said, stepping around my twin sister and making her way to the steps. “Sawmill. Why on earth would you go to that wretched, noisy place?”

  “It isn’t noisy, Mary.” Mama had stepped out of the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron. “Unless you mean the squirrels. They’ve practically taken over the mill.” She sighed. “But I think wretched describes it accurately.”

  I was making a note to myself to look up “wretched” in our Webster’s Dictionary: Unabridged: Pictorial Edition. But after hearing Mama’s last statement, I decided I knew the meaning.

  “Won’t you join us, Mary?”

  “Eating this late in
the morning, Anna Louella, would spoil my dinner.” Mowbray, the slave, was helping her up the steps. “But … I suppose ….” They embraced under the dogtrot, and disappeared inside, though Mama quickly reappeared.

  “You wash, too,” she instructed Edith and me. “Both of you.”

  “But, Mama,” I protested. “I’ve been up and washed already.”

  Which might or might not have been the case. Honestly I couldn’t remember.

  “Yes. And you’ve been in the barn and gathering eggs. Wash.”

  * * * * *

  You have to give Miss Mary credit. She might discreetly, or maybe bluntly, chastise Mama’s sometimes relaxed discipline or her Yankee sensibilities and politics, but never did she turn up her nose at our table. I’d never been inside her house, but I imagined her breakfast consisted of poached eggs, and fried ham, and buttermilk biscuits with jellies and preserves and tons of butter, mountains of hot cakes, and sausages, and bacon and grits, and tea and milk and apple cider. Served by an army of slaves marching in and out of the kitchen, summoned by silver bells.

  Scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, and a cornmeal gruel must have been unappetizing to her, but she sipped hot tea, and made no comment about our breakfast. The towering bald slave profusely thanked me when Mama sent me out with a plate filled with more food than Edith, Baby Hugh, or I ever got. Usually our leftover breakfast became our dinner, but Mama had scraped the skillets clean to give Mowbray some food. From the looks of him, I figured Miss Mary fed him pretty well. He wasn’t starving. But he sure acted like it.

  “I must practice my French, Anna Louella,” Miss Mary said, and, as was their custom, they spent the next five minutes talking in that poetic but foreign language. None of which we children really understood. Miss Mary said it was the language of genteel society, even if her family had been Germans, and Mama said she had learned it in Illinois, which didn’t sound French to me, at all. But hearing them talk always reminded me of Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers, and The Count of Monte Cristo. Adventure stories that I dearly loved.