An Awful Offering
Summary : This was the argument over slaves, with a new twist. Mama could not abide it. All our neighbors were going off to fight. Papa left for war a sad man, thinking he'd failed his mother. She let him think it. Jack has never forgiven her for that alone.
My favorite piece from my favorite read "An Acquaintance with Darkness". I have a weird hobby of imaging other characters in place of other characters, and after watching RotG and reading the book again I thought it would be fun if I change the characters with Rise of the Guardians cast.
Warning: Nick's the father and Tooth will be the mother so bear with me.
The fire in the stove had gone out. There was some kindling but no paper. Jack searched and searched. Now what to do? He fetched the box of love letters, put them in the stove, piled the kindling on top, and watched them burn. Mama would have cried, he thought, but Papa would have said, "Good boy, that world's all over with, and you must go on." He set some water to boil, searched the ladder to see what was to be had to eat. Not much. Some cold ham and leftover hard biscuits. No milk, no butter. Hadn't there been a pot of strawberry jam this morning?
The place was wiped clean. Bunny had taken everything. Why? Because she wanted him to be miserable when he came back here. So Jack would flee back to Uncle Pitch's. Well, Jack would settle for cold ham, hard biscuits, and tea without milk. He sat down and waited for the water to boil.
The house was so silent. Jack wished he had a cat or a bird. He'd had both back in Hawthorne, but Mama wouldn't let him bring them here in Burgess. Aja, his best friend and surrogate sister, took care of them for him. The cat had been old and died. Aja had let the bird go free. He'd always wanted to, but Mama had said no.
Mama again. Would he never stop thinking of her? Even in anger?
Mama was gone! The fact of it closed in on him. How could she be gone? For his whole life she had been moving about in the background, telling him what to do, complaining, plaguing him for the most part, but there.
Now she was gone. The quiet mocked him. He was worn down-there's the truth of it-from the last six weeks of nursing her. He was glad the drudgery was over. No more cleaning up bloodstained handkerchiefs or sheets. No more changing the bedding because she'd wet hefself. No more hearinf her hacking cough in the middle of the night. That's why he was unable to cry. Because he was glad it was over.
By her own admission, she had been a selfish person. "My daddy spoiled me so." She was proud of it.
Mama, Uncle Pitch and Uncle Sandy had grown up in a two-story frame house in Santoff Claussen. It had upstairs and downstairs galleries, and outbuildings for servants. Mama had said his father was collector of the port, but Jack thinks he must have owned the port for all the money they had. Her family had eight slaves just to keep that house. Her father also owned a country seat in Moon.
His Papa had never deceived her. He was not wealthy. He was still in the army when she met him. It was 1848 and he had just returned from the World War, dashing and full of the Devil's own merriment, or so she told Jack.
Uncle Pitch was back from Lunar, a doctor already. "He has no money, Toothiana," he told Mama. "And you need money to live."
"Don't marry him," Uncle Sandy begged her, "you'll kill each other." Uncle Sandy was sixteen and had already toured Europe, where he had learned, apparently, how some men and women who are in love can kill each other.
Mama married him. She did not think she needed money to live. She thought that what she needed was culture, gallantry, protection, tradition. Papa had all those things. Jack remember her saying that Uncle Pitch was crude and cruel, and Uncle Sandy was jealous.
The water had started to boil. Jack got up and made tea. He found an old pot of honey that had eluded Bunny. He poured it into his tea, lots of it, and sat sipping the hot sweetness. He put some honey on the dried biscuits and shied away from the biting cold of storm.
Papa stayed in the army for two years after they married. When he was sent to other posts Mama lived in Santoff Claussen with her family. That's when he wrote her all those love letters. Then in 1851 Jack was born; Papa left the army and bought the place in Hawthorne from Aja's father.
He made it into a lovely little farm. He was a success. The only failure was in Mama's eyes because it was just a farm. She had wanted a country seat.
And then, too, Papa would not buy slaves. He and Mama argued constantly over it. She said a woman bred to gentility and culture had slaves. Papa hired her one housemaid. All the other hired help was for the fields. Then came the panic of 1857. Jack doesn't know what a panic really is. It seems he has been in a panic all his life. But when it has to do with the failure of trust companies, shipping lines, and cotton crops, everybody loses money. Mama's parents, who have both died since, were wiped out. They lost near everything, or I think Mama would have taken him and gone home. They muddled on for four more years. That's a long time to muddle. When the war broke out, Papa said he was duty bound to re-enlist.
"The New Army will honor your commission," Mama told him.
"Most likely," Papa said, "but I prefer to get my old commission back in the Old Army."
This was the argument over slaves, with a new twist. Mama could not abide it. All our neighbors were going off to fight. Papa left for war a sad man, thinking he'd failed his mother. She let him think it.
Jack has never forgiven her for that alone.
She let the hired help go, let the fields go fallow. She and Jack lived on what they could grow in the kitchen garden. That's when she took up the occupation of the needle. Uncle Sandy, who had married an influential woman, introduced her to some rich ladies in Santoff Clausson. Mama sewed for them. Jack thinks when Papa was killed and Aja's uncle foreclosed on the farm in Hawthorne, she was glad to come to Burgess.
He had no right to miss her now. But he did. He missed her so bad he wanted to die. You don't have to live somebody to miss them. You get used to having them around, like a cat or a bird. He finished his tea and went to bed. He had to be up and early in the morning so he could move in with Aja's family and move on.