THE TIES THAT BIND
Chapter 2: Ranch Hands
Late January/early February 1861: Texas Legislature debates secession.
I thought Mama woulda keeled right over on the spot when she saw Willy walk through that door. I just kept my place at the table while she fluttered about him like he came back someone famous. She kept patting at her hair and trying to keep her eyes from watering. It was such a nice sight to see. My Mama was a happy woman, never did I see her out of sorts. I suppose it was only natural. My Pa was a regular spitfire – one extreme or the other – he needed Mama to sort of even him out. Keep him level headed and all that.
Mama was finally able to pull herself more than an arms length from Willy to lean out the window and call for Pa. "Eli? Eli, do you hear me? Elias Whitlock, get in here!"
Pa had been out in the yard teaching Lucy how to keep the books for the new cattle season. Y'see Lucy had this sort of natural intellect. Now, Willy was darn smart – ain't no denying that – and I had my own way about me, but for Lucy, it just came natural. Since the day she was born it was like she was just pickin' up on things. She had this knack of just watching a person at a task or chore and knowing how to do it herself. Half the time she coulda told you a better way to do it.
Like I said, Mama called her a free bird and Pa loved her to pieces, but neither really was too keen on her mannish ways. That girl will forever be running around this ranch in trousers; I don't know how many times Mama's tried to wrestle her into a skirt. She never had much cause for skirts and petticoats always getting in the way and such – especially out in the barn. But Mama insisted she was growing up a third son and didn't want her to lose that genteel female nature.
I don't think I always understood the concern… She was wild at home, but it wasn't like we couldn't take her nowhere. She cleaned up something nice on Sundays for Church and whenever we went into town she was the picture of propriety. She was always very caring too, just like Mama. She'd sit with you whenever you were feeling sick or just a little lonesome. She had a knack for bring happiness with her everywhere like a lantern. And she was good at listening too. Sometimes I'd talk to her for hours about nothing and everything. She always knew the right time to offer her own two cents or when to just keep quiet and listen.
Like I said, Lucy picked up on an awful lot. She played all the cards in her hand.
I heard her usual sprint coming from back around the house where she had been learning the numbers. She hopped up the steps and launched herself straight at me. "He's here?" She whispered in anticipation as I hugged her, warm from the sun and her cornsilk hair fighting its way out of the braid Mama had woven this morning.
"But of course, you think I was lying to you?"
"Jasper," she let herself down and gave me an attempt at a stern look, "If the day ever comes that you think you can lie to me, you've surely gone crazy." She gave me a final smile before running inside to give Willy the same sort of tackling hug. I could hear her soprano shout "Willy!" followed by an "Oof!" of surprise as she jumped on him and my mother's laughter as my Pa came up the stairs.
"Well," Pa said quietly as he stepped methodically up the stairs, putting his ledger and pencil stub back in his breast pocket. "I wonder who that could possibly be?"
"Did you guess?" I wondered. I'd honestly tried to keep it secret – and apart from Lucy – I thought I had.
"Not until Lucy started yellin' his name on her way back from the barn."
"Dang it," I muttered. "Well, Mama was certainly surprised…"
"I am too," he agreed as he clapped me on the shoulder. "I'm surprised you kept it from us for so long…" he was quiet for a moment, watching all the jubilation through the open door.
"That was a nice thing you boys did for your Mama," he nodded. "With Willy having to look for a job soon and the way things been in the East lately…" he paused and shook his head. "I thought it was going to be a lot longer before we saw him."
"I'm glad," I smiled lightly. And I was. Not to say that my family hadn't been happy at all these past months, but there's something about having everyone together – even for a little while – that just feels right. "Do me a favor, Pa?"
My father smiled that wry knowing smile – the one everyone says they see in me all the time – and adjusted his hat. "I know, Jasper, I know. We'll let it rest for now. I know he can't help it. Willy always was the type to light off for new discovery. No politics. I wouldn't do that to your Mama. I trust you've had the same discussion with him?"
"Of course," I nodded. "That was probably the first thing I told him after greeting the boy."
Willy enjoyed his time back at home, swept right back into the swing of ranching. He chased the new calves around the open fields on horseback, helping Pa corral them to be branded. He took to helpin' Mama with the chickens too. She never did like going out to kill one for dinner in the evenings. Said it made her heart heavy. Usually, since Pa and I were out, she was left to do it. Willy liked helping her around the house. Lucy joked to me that Mama might've finally found herself the daughter she always wanted. I think Willy just liked being home and with Mama for once in such a long time.
Mama had that way about her. She just kinda moved smooth and peaceful like. Sometimes, watching her was like watching a dream. Everything kinda had its own speed. Mama was what our negro ranch hands called 'bone sweet'. Bone sweet, they says, was this way that certain livestock like sheep and cattle were. They sort of radiated this inner tranquility and you couldn't help but sort of get sucked in by it; it just made you peaceful inside too. Mama had that. Mama was bone sweet. It just made you want to be 'round her all the time. Willy hadn't had that for a long time, now.
That first whole week, Willy told me every night how he'd wanted to sneak out after Mama and Pa had gone to sleep, just to run down to the ranch hands' huts and see them for old times sake. Pa contracted about a dozen free negroes to help him on the ranch. They lived about a quarter mile across the property and on the other side of a patch of trees and our big ol' barn.
When Willy and I was young, we used to hear their music until late at night, how they'd be laughing and singing. Willy swore they was dancing too, he insisted that any kind music that done sound like that had to have some toe-tappin' along with it. When Willy and I was about eleven, we snuck out the house one night and made the dash around the barn and on the far side of the outcropping of the Bald Cypresses.
Turns out Willy was right. They had been a dancing up a storm. They were certainly surprised to discover young Jasper and Willy Whitlock peeping over their windowsill at close to ten o'clock at night, but they welcomed us inside nonetheless. We were young and still rather unassuming. Living out on the ranch with nothing but family, the hands and an occasional trip into town to introduce us to society, we weren't really sure what was so wrong with us associating with the help.
The men worked with Pa in the fields with cattle and on the ranch. I learned over time that most of the women worked in town and walked the five miles in and out every day, while the older children tended the smaller. Willy and I grew accustomed to life with the ranch hands and a few times a week we would sneak down out our attic window, down the hill, around the barn and towards the small beacons of light, sat all squat and low in the field at the edge of the road.
Pa found out eventually, and frowned upon it rather deeply. Mama insisted that there wasn't nothing wrong with it and eventually we were allowed to continue our visits but only in the daytime, none of this sneakin' off at night business.
Over the years, Willy and I got to know the people that worked under our Father. They was nice people. They always had good stories to tell and songs to sing; from what I could tell they cooked mighty fine food as well. Willy and I always politely declined their offers though. They never did have much…
Anyways, back to what I was saying! That first week back Willy kept telling me how he wanted to sneak out – just for old times sake – to visit our friends down the hill. I told him they wasn't no different than when he left and that it would be awfully embarrassing to be in our twenties and whipped by our Pa for sneaking out the house to see the ranch hands.
But not much ever came of Willy's plans because he passed out asleep, dead like a log not more than a few minutes after laying down each night.
I told Alex about this when we were working to move a few hundred head of cattle over a field for new grazing. "Willy keeps going on about visitin' you all but doesn't really make it too far into his plan before he's asleep like a log," I laughed.
Alex is a year younger than me. And as much fun as it was to hear the stories and songs of the older ranch hands at night, they were adults and weren't much fun in the day time. So, Alex and his sisters Maggie and Loretta – along with Noah and George – became our friends. We were all round about the same age and when we got cut loose from ranchin' and workin' every now and then, we liked to have fun together. We jumped off tree limbs into the pond at the edge of Pa's property. We pretended to be pirates – like in the stories George and Noah's grandma was forever tellin'. Sometimes we were Mexican outlaws, living on the lam. Other times, I'm pretty sure we just ran willy-nilly through the tall grass of the up grown cattle fields.
I had gotten to know Alex best. I'm not sure why. His full name was Alexander Macedon Hampton. His mama had named him after Alexander the Great. When he was still a baby, she just always had this feeling about him – that he'd be destined for great things. He always told me it was better than being named after Napoleon, as there weren't very many good nicknames for something like that.
"Does he? Shoot, you know, we're full grown men now? Y'all can just walk down during the day. Knock on the door like everybody else does."
"I know that. That's what I been saying. And I figure Pa would either tan us something awful or think we's right crazy if we snuck out of the house at our age. I don't want to find out. I think he's just excited to be back…" I smiled as I circled around the last stray steer, urging it forward.
"Must be quite a change for him," Alex noted sagely as he turned and squinted towards the pinkly orange sunset.
"Must be. I can only guess as good as you. I ain't ever been out of this county, let alone all the way near New York City and Boston."
"I reckon I'd like to see it someday…" Alex mused as we headed at a slow pace back towards the barn.
"That's all good and well, for you, but I heard just as many of Willy's stories as you have and I think that's just a few too many people in too small a space. Can't be good for a person."
"No world travelin' for you, Jas?" Alex laughed. "'Spect to live your whole life in this spit of Texas?"
"I s'pose so," I replied as I slid out of my saddle.
"'No justification for rash action', my eye!" Pa smacked the broadsheet from in town down on the table. The candle flickered with the force of it. I swallowed tightly and glanced sideways towards him from my spot across the table.
Willy and Lucy were busy talking over some such topic and peeling potatoes over a basin while Mama tended the fire in the hearth.
Pa didn't miss my glance. We had been hearing all sorts of things trickle in from different parts of the state and the country in general. I'll be frank when I say I didn't figure it was long before the entire country split in two or President Lincoln marched the Army in here and put the hoopla down like Washington and Whiskey Rebellion not a generation ago. Personally, I'd a wished that Texas just never joined in this royal mess.
At any rate, we were just learning the finer details of what was happening in the state Legislature. Sam Houston had noted – as Pa reiterated – that the election of a certain President Lincoln was unfortunate but no cause for rash action.
"Look at this, boy," he slid the paper across to me. "I swore to you and your mother I wouldn't discuss it, but I can't ignore it neither."
...The Informal State Convention of Texas on the 1st inst. passed an Ordinance of Secession, by a vote of 166 to 7. The action of the Convention is to be submitted to the people on the 23d, and if indorse by them, the Ordinance is to go into effect on the 2d of March. Governor Houston, it is understood, has recognized the Convention's action. Meantime rumor reaches us from Fort Smith, Arkansas, that the Texans intend to still further to prove that secession must necessarily be accompanied with outrage. Forts Washita, Cobb, and Arbuckle, in the Indian Territory, are threatened by them...
"What?" I couldn't help but gasp. I laid my whittling knife - which had been the prior occupant of my thoughts - on the table. "That can't be… We had enough trouble on Indian land, if we push any further in or start any more trouble it'll be like we were moving in for the first time again. Washita? Arbuckle? Cobb? Those are federal forts. They ain't occupied by not Texas cavalry. That there is US Army territory," I whispered as I jabbed my index finger at the offending words.
"I know, son. I know. The Indians and the Unionists. Colonel Emory, the commanding officer, has been out there for a while."
"Long enough to give the Indians enough incentive to side with the US Army?"
"I don't know. But we haven't encroached any further on their land for a very long time, son. But the US Army has had outposts all through their land since Texas joined the states…"
"It's anyone guess, then?"
"Well, I don't know about that. All I'm saying is I don't know, Jasper. I just don't know."
Credit for 'bone sweet' information goes to Chapter 7 of malicecat's Kim/Jared fic Tempo.
A word on vocabulary: I use the cultural and period relevant term 'negro' as sparingly as I can and only as a way to denote the differences between the white and black workers on the ranch. While I'm not one to promote censorship, I feel the more vulgar and common term of the time is uncalled for and wantonly offensive. Despite its being more realistic, I'm not going to use it.