A/N: Sorry about the delay I have been sick, and actually am going to the doctor later today to see if I have bronchitis, so uh, yeah. Sorry for the delay! Also does anyone here think I should like, make a running mini-series interspersed throughout the chapters that like tells the story of J.G.'s years in the confederate army? I dunno it might be cool. Let me know!
"I see... Mississippi!" Marina says, pointin' out the dark blue car.
"No, that's Missouri!" Maribel says back.
"What's the difference?" Elise asks.
"Mississippi's here," Maribel points it out on Elise's tablet computer, which they're usin' for their lil' licence plate game, "and Missouri's here!"
"Well we still need Mississippi, and we don't have it." Marina argues.
"Nothin' ever got earned by cheatin', Marina." Maribel tells her friend.
"Ja, I know that. That's what the girl at the laundry mat told Vati." Marina says back. I sigh. I've seen about five Mississippi licence plates, but the girls told me I ain't allowed to play on the grounds of bein' an adult, thus makin' it unfair. Luckily, we've only got a few more hours 'til we're in Allen.
"Hey," I say, "who wants to stop fer dinner before we get to Allen?" They all cheer.
The fast food place is crowded, but there's a kid's play area which I learned is a must for Marina who ain't used to sittin' still for very long and don't much like it. She's like a rocket-powered bouncin' ball, that one, 'specially when she's been sittin' still for the last two hours. She's off to the play area instantly. Maribel and Elise stand in line with me, and Maribel soon tugs at my hand.
"What is it, honey?" I ask her.
"Can we stop at the capital buildin' in South Carolina? Elise don't belive that they still got yer flag up there!" she says. I look around and hope no one knows what she's talkin' about 'cuz I don't wanna get into an argument with a total stranger about whether or not I'm allowed to be proud of the lost Confederacy. Most of the nations just frown at me when I say it, but they know what bein' proud of their country no matter what is like, 'cuz it's still part of 'em. Humans will actually get in my face and really fight me over it, some of 'em. And I've only lost those fights a handful of times.
"Yeah, we'll stop. There's an old plantation, which I'd have to look up the name to, but we'll go see that too, so y'all can see what it was like." I promise her.
"Wowie! Do they got the slave houses and everything too?" she practically yells, makin' everyone look at me funny.
"She's been obsessed with the idea of slave life since she heard of it in school. Y'all know what lil' kids is like sometimes." I say and people roll their eyes and go back to their business.
"Herr Jones!" Marina yells, comin' runnin' towards me, a little black boy followin' her. "He hit me!" she tells me, pointin' her finger at the kid, her lavender-colored eyes shinin' angrily. I dunno why her daddy's got red eyes, her uncle's got blue and she's got lavender. Must be from her mama.
"She pushed me first, Mister!" the kid says in his defense.
"You shouldn't be hittin' people, y'know." I tell the kid, "And Marina, you shouldn't be shovin' people."
"What's a stupid dirty n-" I clap my hand over Maribel's mouth before she can say what she was gonna say, but everyone knows what it was and they're all lookin' at me.
"Like I said, obsessed with slave life, even the language." I tell the crowd. I glare down at Maribel who's lookin' innocently at me with my hand still over her mouth. "Maribel, I told you to not use those words as they ain't kind, didn't I?" she nods. "Then you gotta say sorry to him fer doin' it." I uncover her mouth.
"I didn't git to finish so why do I gotta say I'm sorry?" she asks.
"'Cuz I said so." I tell her simply.
"Fine. Sorry fer almost callin' you a bad name." she tells the boy, "But nobody, 'specially not yer kind is gonna git away with hurtin' my friend!"
Oh, Lord... Everyone's glarin' extra hard at me now. It occurs to me just then, with everyone in the restaurant glarin' at me, that maybe opinions are changin' even in the South to be against my own. On the other hand, we're only in Pennsylvania, which in my book is still yankee territory.
"Hey... Maribel, if you shut yer mouth right now we'll go to another Civil War museum while we're in South Carolina." she puts her hands over her mouth and looks up at me. I look at the kid that hit Marina.
"Git outta here." I tell him. He scampers away. "And don't be hittin' my girls!" I call out after him.
"Er... three kids' meals and a double burger meal, right? So, here or to go?" the cashier asks me.
"To go." I tell her simply.
Eventually, after ignorin' Marina when she keeps askin' me exactly what Maribel was gonna call that kid, we're pullin' into the tour site. It's one of the preserved plantations in the state, and this one's got everything. Our lil' group gets on a cart and away we go.
"As the trees here clear away, you can see the mansion in which the planter's family would have lived in..." The guide says. It nearly takes my breath away, the house, 'cuz it looks almost exactly like the one at Big Farm, back when I was a kid. There's even a big oak tree in the side-yard, just like there always was on the farm.
I never was allowed into the house, most of my time livin' on the farm spent hidin' my blond hair and pale skin from the planter so he didn't send me to the town orphanage, but I can see how rich people livin' in the time would want stuff like flowy silk sheets and nice heavy drapes on the windows.
Soon, actually out of the mansion and goin' across the back, where the servants slept,
"Not everyone on the plantation got to live in luxury. In face, the slave cabins we're coming up on right now generally housed anywhere from eight to ten adults each, and countless children." the tour guide says.
"Izzat true, Daddy?" Maribel asks me.
"Well, I mean, it was crowded, but there was only about fifty kids to two-hundred adults on Big Farm." I tell her.
The girls are a lil' bit freaked out by the small, drafty cabins, but I remember how nice it could feel with everyone close and tellin' stories and makin' shadows in the fire. Sure, sometimes when it was cold, it was miserable, but those days were outshined by the nice warm nights where all us boys hardly even had blankets on us, layin' in a big pile, dreamin' what we'd be when we were all grown up and the others 'cept for me were free.
Soon, the tour is over, and usin' the government money Alfred always manages to get for me when I ask, I buy each girl somethin' from the gift shop. Marina wants a straw hat, made on site. Elise wants a book talkin' about the work days with pictures and everything, and Maribel gets a shirt that has the place's name on it.
Soon, we're on the road, bound for our next stop, the Confederate Museum, a collection of Civil War history and South Carolina's part in it. I always like to go to these places, to relive the good days of before I got involved in all this country stuff. Sure, I like havin' Nat and Maribel, but I really do miss the hot days when I'd sit on the porch with Missy Fredrickson, the planter's daughter, and tell her all about how I'd grow up to be the best and kindest planter ever in the whole South.
I'm standin' there, explainin' to the girls why there happens to be two colors of confederate uniform (most of our clothes were home-dyed and when the gray dye ran out we used this nasty yellowish color, and woe to the boy in an all-gray company with a yellow "butternut" jacket on), when someone behind me says,
"You must have a lot of interest in the subject, to know all that."
I turn around and look at a man with orange hair and green eyes, and he looks so much like someone else I once knew that I freeze for a second and then nod.
"Yes sir, I do."
"Well, why don't I take you and your kids here on a tour through some of our other things. It'll be fun!" he says.
"Er, alright." I say, and then hold my hand out to him to shake. "My name's J.G. Jones." he takes my hand, sayin',
"Shawn McGuire."
I freeze again. When I was in boarding school, in Missouri, there was a boy. He had parents who'd moved from Ireland when he was a baby, so he had red hair that was more a bright orange, and dark, dark green eyes, exactly the color of a forest in the low light of midnight. His name was Rowan McGuire, and me and him had some history. We got too close, and I ended up gettin' a whip to my back by the school's headmaster beatin' the sins outta me, which I still got scars from. I ran away after that to join the confederate army, and Row joined the union. It's alright, though, as he'd be dead anyway, bein' a human to my nation, but still, there were times in my life when I wished we could've stayed at the school and stayed friends...
"Nice to meet you." I say. "This is my daughter, Maribel, and her two friends, Marina and Elise." I point out the girls as I say their names. Shawn McGuire grins at all of us.
"Well, then, J.G., Maribel, Marina, Elise, let's start the tour, eh?"