Among the Fair Magnolias Read online

  She watched, dumbfounded, as the freedmen spilled out of the cabins, dozens of them, all carrying rifles. All at once Trooper reared, and she heard Thomas, her Thomas, shouting, “Beware! The freedmen are armed!”

  Shouts rang out and horses whinnied as the Klan faced the freedmen. Then Leroy appeared, his face set and determined, glowing in the light of the torches, his rifle aimed at the rearing gray horse.

  She heard the weapon fire.

  In another instant, the ghostlike figure riding Trooper had fallen to the ground. The gray steed bolted and galloped off in the wake of the other horses, with the Klaners fleeing as gunshots rang out from the armed Negroes.

  Emily dismounted and ran to where the man lay, praying that it would not be Thomas, that she had been mistaken all along, that the voice she had heard was not his. But as she lifted the sheet from his face, Thomas’s glazed eyes stared up at her.

  Emily screamed.

  Then Tammy and Sam and Leroy were beside her, kneeling over the bleeding man. “Lieutenant McGinnis!” Tammy was crying. “Is you hurt? Is you hurt bad?”

  Leroy cupped Thomas’s head in his hands, and Emily watched in disbelief as a faint smile spread across Thomas’s face.

  “Sure am glad your son is such a good shot,” Thomas murmured. “Sure am thankful for that, Miss Tammy.”

  Then he fainted.

  As Sam and Leroy carried Thomas into their cabin, Tammy held Emily and explained. “He bin informin’ the freedmen now for almost six months. Eva’ since before they done hanged our Washington. Bin attending them Klan meetings, bin ridin’ out to the plantations, to the freedmen’s cabins to warn them, to beg them to arm themselves, to be ready. Bin bringing rifles and such to us. He bin tryin’ to protect us.”

  Tears streamed down Tammy’s face. “Sometimes it’s worked. Otha’ times, like with Washington, waddna nothin’ he could do.” Tammy reached out and grabbed Emily’s hand, her grip firm. “He’s one of us, Miss Emily. He saved my Leroy tonight. They was coming for Leroy, and Lieutenant McGinnis done told him what to do.”

  Emily sat in stunned silence, trying to process Tammy’s words as Tammy and Sam busied themselves with Thomas.

  “Someone’s gone to fetch Gladys—she done removed many a bullet during the war,” Leroy was saying.

  Emily knelt beside Thomas. “Oh, my friend. I’m so sorry. So sorry for everything.”

  “The Klan have to believe it was all real,” he whispered to Emily. “Foolish girl! Go back to my house.” His breath was heavy, his eyes closed. She reached for his hand and clasped it. “Make up whatever story your wild imagination can find, but don’t you ever let anyone know you were here. Do you understand?” He managed to open his eyes, and Emily nodded.

  “My friend. My dear, dear friend. I misjudged you so.”

  “You couldn’t know, dear Emily. Go now. Quickly.”

  “Yes, yes, I will. But I must do one thing first.” She bent down and softly kissed Thomas on the lips.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A DOZEN ROSES OF DIFFERING COLORS SPREAD THROUGHOUT the garden, stubbornly displaying their colors in the fading November sun. Emily looked at a soft yellow one and admired its tenacity.

  Thomas caught her gaze and said, “It will be absolutely breathtaking out here for a spring wedding.”

  “Yes. Mother is beside herself with joy.”

  “And you, my dear scalawag bride?” As he spoke, his soft blue eyes came alive with love.

  Emily smiled at his term of affection and kissed him softly on the forehead. His shoulder was bandaged, and a sling held his arm in place. He swore it was healing, but Emily was unconvinced.

  “I, my dear Thomas, am simply overcome. It is all so unexpected. The veil has been lifted, and I still have not recovered.”

  “Then I hope you never recover, if it means you becoming my wife.”

  She snuggled closer to him, drawing a quilt around their shoulders. “I will delightedly be your wife. But you, you are the scalawag, my Thomas.”

  My Thomas.

  They had spoken of it every day since the Klan’s raid on the plantation, but she whispered it again. “It was something so strong. I felt it, Thomas, felt a piercing inside that I must, I must find you. Do you believe it was the Holy Ghost?”

  “Yes, I believe that God propelled you to the plantation so you would see the truth.” Thomas drew his good arm more tightly around her. “I would never have wished it so, but now I thank God for it.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know, though, Emily, that someday I would have told you, when I felt it safe.” This he had also repeated to her a dozen times in the past days.

  “Yes. But that would have been a long time in coming.”

  “Certainly,” Thomas admitted.

  “It isn’t safe even now.”

  “No, especially not now. And what we do now is what we must determine.” He kissed her hand.

  “Yes, tell me of your time in Atlanta. What have you learned? Will you formally resign from the Klan?”

  “Moving to Atlanta will be a big enough breach. I’ll have much more freedom there.”

  “But you love the plantation.” This she had not dared to say before. “How can you leave it?”

  “It is better for all of us that I move to Atlanta. On my last trip I met several businessmen who wish to help me find employment.”

  “And your parents?”

  “Father has encouraged me to leave.” He met her eyes. “When I explained my situation to my father and yours, they both supported my decision to seek employment in Atlanta and find a suitable home for us.”

  Emily thought back to that night when she had ridden back to the McGinnis plantation, fumbling with her words, trying to explain the news while Thomas lay in a bed at her house surrounded by Tammy and Gladys and Sam and Leroy. Later she had described to him the reaction of her parents and his. “They were confused, terrified, angry, relieved, dumbfounded. I’ve never felt so many emotions bumping around in one room all at the same time.”

  She smiled at Thomas. “You know that Father was completely baffled at first about my change of heart toward you.”

  “Baffled, perhaps, but delighted too. I have appreciated his trust, his support of my desire to marry you, even though I had not been completely honest with him for all those months.”

  “Father respects you, Thomas. And Mother, as I’ve said, is simply beside herself.”

  Thomas nodded. “Emily, our parents have watched their whole way of life come crashing down. They will come around, but it takes time, perhaps a long time, for people to learn to accept those who are different. Some will never change, but our parents will, I am sure of it.”

  “I trust it will be so.”

  “I suppose you’ve heard that Leroy is marrying and moving to Atlanta too.”

  “Yes, I have heard this.” Now she wanted to tell him the one thing that she had not yet dared to admit. She cleared her throat and whispered, “I thought I was in love with him.”

  “I know.”

  She pulled back from his embrace. “You know?”

  “Leroy and I spoke often. It was he who in fact told me I should reveal my true loyalties to you before it was too late.”

  Emily managed a smile. “I misjudged so many things!”

  “You could not know.”

  “And you are very sure you want to spend your life with the likes of me? A woman who is strong-willed, impetuous, lacking wisdom.”

  “I am absolutely positive that I want to spend my life with a beautiful woman who is learning temperance and grace while still holding firm to her convictions.”

  Temperance! Would not Miss Lillian laugh to hear Thomas pronounce that word? Then Emily pouted. “And what will I do for all these months with you so far away in Atlanta?”

  Now Thomas brought her close again and met her lips with his in a long, luxurious kiss. Emily melted into his arms as Thomas whispered, “You will plan our wedding, and I, my dear, will plan t
he rest of our life.”

  EPILOGUE

  EMILY’S DAUGHTERS, RACHEL AND NICOLE, HELD ONTO HER legs tightly as Emily stood at the edge of the cotton fields on her parents’ plantation. She breathed in the fragrance of late summer on the plantation, so different from the fast pace of their lives in Atlanta.

  She sighed, feeling the pinching in her heart as she thought back to her former life.

  “It looks like white fluffy clouds growing in the field,” three-year-old Rachel exclaimed, exuberant.

  “Clouds,” chimed in two-year-old Nicole.

  Yes, yes it does.

  “This is where Mama grew up. And sometimes I went into the fields and picked cotton.”

  “Can we pick cotton, Mama? Please, please,” begged Rachel.

  “Yes, perhaps we will tomorrow, girls.”

  Emily closed her eyes and saw herself bending and picking on that night when the lightning had chased and stabbed her. Then she winced as the memory of Washington’s body swinging from the oak tree flashed into her mind. In another memory, Leroy was aiming his rifle at Thomas and pulling the trigger.

  So many difficult memories from the year of 1868.

  And yet Emily always thought back to those days as short and bittersweet parentheses in time. A time of exponential change and possibility.

  She knelt down beside her daughters, drawing them close as she looked out to where the sharecroppers worked in the fields.

  The freedmen.

  But not truly free.

  Earlier in 1872, Georgia had been completely “redeemed,” as the Democrats called it, meaning that the state had returned to conservative white Democratic control. She thought of the defunct Ku Klux Klan, defunct only because there was no longer a need. White supremacy reigned again in Georgia, as it had before the war.

  Antebellum, Emily thought sadly.

  Thomas came up behind her, encircling her waist with his arms. “Here you are! All my beautiful girls!”

  “Mama says we can pick cotton tomorrow,” Rachel squealed, now grabbing hold of her father’s hand.

  “Then I suppose we shall,” Thomas said, laughing.

  How Emily enjoyed hearing her husband laugh, and seeing a spark of hope in his eyes.

  He came beside her, and she rested her head on his shoulder. Many things had changed for the better, and yet she wondered how many years would pass before true equality between whites and blacks existed in Georgia.

  Leroy still fought for it. Just the week before, she and Thomas had attended his church in Atlanta and listened to his eloquent sermon, punctuated with scripture and politics. After church, the two families dined together at Leroy and Clara’s home, Emily and Clara sharing stories of their children’s antics.

  There in the sanctuary of that home for that afternoon, they tasted true equality. And brotherly love. Love beyond the limits of what society imposed.

  As Emily, Thomas, and the girls turned from the fields and made their way up to the Big House where they would share dinner with Father, Mother, and Anna, Emily prayed for the day when that kind of love and equality would be spread throughout the land.

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  ALTHOUGH I AM FROM ATLANTA AND TOOK PLENTY OF HISTORY classes in high school and college, I did not remember the hope and horror of the Reconstruction period in Georgia, and was frankly embarrassed at my lack of knowledge as I began delving into this ‘parenthesis of freedom’ in the life of black Georgians. The following information (taken from www.georgiaencyclopedia.org) gives a few details about the end of Reconstruction:

  Conservatives used terror, intimidation, and the Ku Klux Klan to “redeem” the state of Georgia. One quarter of the black legislators were killed, threatened, beaten, or jailed. In the December 1870 elections, the Democrats won an overwhelming victory. Black Georgian voters, first manipulated, were ultimately disenfranchised, beginning in the 1890s. The last black member of the General Assembly, W. H. Rogers, resigned in 1907 as the final representative of the Reconstruction-era coastal-Georgia political machine. Not until 1963, during the civil rights movement (also called “Second Reconstruction” by some scholars), would another black politician, Leroy Johnson (a Democrat) enter the General Assembly, with black Republican, Willie Talton of Warner Robins, not following until 2005.

  In large part, for the masses of Georgians, black and white, the major legacy of Reconstruction would be a sharecropping life. Property taxes, which had previously fallen most heavily on slave owners, now fell on landowners, and during Reconstruction tax rates increased as well. For this and other reasons, a transformation took place. While the majority of Southern whites had owned land during the antebellum period, the majority had become landless sharecroppers by the early 1900s. Though landownership by Georgia’s black farmers had grown to 13 percent by 1900, most remained sharecroppers. White and black Georgians awaited another transformation of the economy; it would take World War II (1941–45) to bring it about. Where black political rights were concerned, another Reconstruction would be necessary.

  AN OUTLAW’ S HEART

  Shelley Gray

  To Mendy.

  Thank you for years of friendship, beautiful smiles, and, of course, for spending one eventful evening with me at the Menger Hotel bar.

  CHAPTER ONE

  July 1878

  RUSSELL ANDREW CHAMPION HAD KNOWN BEFORE HE’D SET one dust-covered boot on the parched Texas ground that it had been a mistake to come home. No good ever came from seeing things that had haunted a man’s dreams for well on seven years.

  The outlaw Scout Proffitt had been correct when he’d muttered under his breath that some things can never be undone.

  Instead of returning to Broken Arrow, Russell should have taken another drink, ridden in another direction, agreed to another job.

  He should have done something. Heck, anything, in order to avoid the pain he was about to bear. After all, some things were marked too deeply in his memory to ever attempt to erase. He shouldn’t have even thought to try.

  In his case, it was sorely obvious that some wishes and dreams were never destined to become reality. Not any of the good ones anyway. He would’ve thought he could have figured that out by now.

  But it seemed he hadn’t. Long ago, he reckoned he must have some need to refuse to live in peace. He needed to shake things up in his life whenever he felt like he was almost the right sort of person.

  But now, as he looked around the Iron Rail Ranch, it wasn’t his past fears that painted everything in front of him the color of rust and pain. Instead, a deep feeling of dismay colored his vision.

  It turned out that the Iron Rail Ranch was not prettier or nicer than his middle-of-the-night nightmares. In fact, it was all a whole lot worse than he remembered it.

  Dismounting from Candy—his sorry-named mare he’d never had the gumption to rename—Russell cursed his weaknesses. A real man would have long ago pushed his past firmly where it needed to go. Somewhere deep in the ground. Preferably six feet under.

  Yet here he was.

  “Looks like I haven’t learned much in twenty-two years of living, Candy,” he murmured.

  When the mare merely blew out a rush of impatience, Russell figured his fall was now complete. Even his horse couldn’t see the benefit of what he was doing.

  He couldn’t blame her for that however. At first glance his house looked like it had fallen upon hard times a good five years ago and then had determined to stay standing out of sheer stubbornness. It appeared as if no one had gone near it with a paintbrush or a hammer since he’d been gone. Paint was peeling, the two windows were cracked, and one of the front steps had given in to decay and collapsed.

  The whole thing made him kind of sad, and he hadn’t thought such a thing was possible. After staring at the door shut tight against the stifling heat, he turned away and guided his horse to the barn.

  It, too, looked like it not only had seen better days, but it wasn’t as if it hadn’t been all that good in the first pl
ace. Course that was probably because it hadn’t been all that much to begin with.

  Spurs clicked against dirt as he guided Candy into the dark confines of the barn. The horse fussed a bit and pawed the ground with her hooves. She wasn’t happy about her new surroundings.

  “I know, girl. Place looks worse than a ghost town in Nebraska. And where in the world is Ma’s gray mare?”

  Candy, of course, had no answer.

  Lost in old memories again, Russell didn’t need it. Thinking about his stepfather’s horse, he reflected that the gelding had had the best of Emmitt Johnson. Such that it was. Kismet had been everything Candy had never been. A fine specimen of horseflesh who’d been coddled like a favored child all his life.

  But now all that remained of the beautiful horse with that exotic-sounding name was one long saddle slung over the rail like a child’s leftover toy. The leather was dry and parched. Cracking. Russell couldn’t stop staring at it—he would’ve gotten beaten well and good for even thinking about leaving a saddle in such a state.

  Rubbing his backside at the memory, he frowned. Matter of fact, he had gotten beaten more than once for not putting tack up like he should.

  But now all that seemed to care were his memories.

  Candy nervously sidestepped and whinnied when he opened the stall door.

  Wrinkling his nose at the scent of soiled straw, rotten wood, and a multitude of things better left unidentified, Russell sighed. “Can’t say I blame you, girl.” Dropping her reins—’cause Lord knew she sure wasn’t going anywhere—Russell found a rake and began mucking out the stall. Subconsciously, the muscles in his arms and shoulders settled into the forgotten rhythm. And just as automatically, his mind drifted away from where he was, imagining other things. Imagining a sweeter life.

  Years ago, those daydreams had been his refuge.

  When he’d ridden with the Walton Gang, fanciful daydreams had kept him alive. For a man with so very few good things to think about, dreams were the only things worth saving. In the bitter years after, those thoughts had kept him from giving in to despair. Now, his dreams embarrassed him.