“Stop,” Raleigh bellowed.

Involuntarily, Buck did.

“You self-righteous hypocrite. You despise slavery yet you’re willing to accept the fine, luxurious home it’s provided you, as well as an expensive education. You say you hate our whole way of life—hunting, riding with foxhounds—yet you’re the best rifle and pistol shot in this part of the country. And what do you shoot? Pine cones and paper targets. Some of my friends wonder if you’re not a ‘fancy boy’. Still, you’re not above asking me to pay for medical school.”

His father’s tirade inflamed Buck’s ire. With one hand on the door knob, his voice quivering with rage, he said, “You’re right, Father. I’m not like you or your friends. I don’t believe in owning people or whipping them or killing animals for sport. I want to heal people, not hurt them.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t fit in here and I never will. I’m going to medical school, but I don’t want a penny of your damned blood money. I’ll manage on my own, and you’ll never see me again.”

So much for home sweet home.

#

Peering to the end of the broad lane, Buck sat up straight in the saddle and stared, then sagged dejectedly. All that remained of the once beautiful mansion were smoke-tainted red chimneys standing like tombstones in heaps of gray ash.

The semicircle of dilapidated cabins behind the destroyed house was deserted. Shutterless windows stared like dead eyes at the desolation surrounding them. Even the dogs were gone. The only sign of life in the entire compound was a thin thread of smoke curling from the blackened tin pipe of one of the slave shacks. Its front yard was cleared of weeds and shaded by a large chinaberry tree.

Buck rode up slowly, dismounted, and not knowing what to expect, tapped on the porch rail with the barrel of his Colt and held it ready. An entire minute must have elapsed before he heard a mumbled sound from inside, and another minute until finally, a stooped, rail-thin, white-haired Negro woman shuffled barefoot from the dim interior leaning on a gnarled cane. She cupped a veiny hand over rheumy eyes as she stood blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight.

He hardly recognized the woman standing before him. Once strong and stout, she seemed to have shrunken into a wrinkled mummy. She wore a faded gray dress he vaguely remembered as having once belonged to his mother. It was tattered and patched now. The elegant fitted waist hung loose and low, the hem ragged and soiled. He put the gun away.

“Emma, Emma, it’s me, Buck. I’m home.”

“Lord help me, Mr. Buck, I feared I’d never see you again.” She shook her head slowly and lowered herself with Buck’s help into a rickety chair on the porch. “They been bad times ‘round here, bad times.”

He sat on the steps at her feet and held her bony fingers. “What’s happened, Emma? Where is everybody?”

“The black folks, they all run off, Mr. Buck. The white folks, they done gone too. Even the horses . . . been stole or shot.”

He scanned the bleak sight before him and shook his head. Despite his distaste for the injustice and cruelty of the world he’d known here, he couldn’t deny that it had also boasted elegance and beauty. The two-and-a-half-story mansion with its fluted columns, wide piazzas, French windows, expensive furniture, sophisticated décor and carefully collected library had attested to culture and refinement.

“The Yankees do this, Emma? Burn the place, run everybody off?”

“Yessir, but not Yankee soldiers, just bad men. They even burned the cotton seed from meanness, so’s we can’t plant no more.” She looked around suddenly. “Where’s Mr. Clay? He ain’t with you?”

“Clay’s dead, Emma.” Buck said hoarsely. “Killed in the war.”

“Oh God, Oh Jesus, not my baby. Him gone too?” The old woman wailed and beat her chest. “Oh, sweet baby Jesus. Seems like God don’t never stop punishing this poor family.” She rocked back and forth in her chair, humming tunelessly.

“What happened to Father? How did he die?”

“Lord have mercy, child. There’s too much pain, too much. He was pure tired, Mr. Buck. It was all more than a man could take. He wanted to do the right thing. Truly he did, but it was all too much. He just sit on that porch and rock for hours, staring and sipping whiskey. I doesn’t ‘member Mr. Raleigh drinking much before, but he don’t seem to care ‘bout nothing.”

She continued rocking for a long minute, then in a toneless voice began her story.

“It must a been about three days ‘fore General Sherman and his troops got to Columbia. I was setting here on the porch when these men come riding up. They was at least six of ‘em, all dirty and ragged with bushy beards and pistols shoved in they belts. Your momma, she wouldn’t never a let men of that low caliber step foot in the front yard, but she weren’t here. Thank the Lord she didn’t live to see this.”

Buck sat quietly, waiting for her to continue. After a time she did.

“The leader, a scruffy man with a fat belly and a mean mouth, he rode right up to the front steps and yelled ‘Anybody home?’ like he was calling some Jezebel down in a holler. Your poppa, he comes out the door, walking proud like he always do. ‘I’s Raleigh Thomson, sir,’ he say real genteel, like they was gentlemen stopped by for a afternoon a lucre, ‘at your service.’ ‘Anybody else home?’ the fat man say. ‘No sir,’ Mr. Raleigh say back. ‘My wife’s passed and my two boys is . . . away.’ ‘Away fighting with them other Rebs, huh?’ ‘They with the Confederate army,’ your poppa say, standing up straight.”

She rested her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes, as if she were reliving the sadness of that day.

‘Got any liquor in the house?’ one man yell. Your poppa, he say, ‘No sir, nothing left but a little wine for medicine.’ ‘Well Mr. Reb,’ that fat man say, ‘you set on this here porch while we see what we can find.’ He told one of the men to point a gun on Mr. Raleigh while they went inside. ‘I expect them men was in there over an hour tearing up the place, but they didn’t find nothing they wanted.”

She clamped her jaw at the memory. “So they went and poured coal oil in the house and set it on fire. Oh, Lordy, it blaze up like a pine tree. And Mr. Raleigh, your poppa, he was just standing in the yard with the men watching his house burn—” her voice tightened, as if in misery “—then all sudden-like, he run up the steps and into that fire. I don’t know why he done that, what he was trying to get. I bust out crying then.”

She cried again, a soft keen of pain.

“That fat man, he rode over to where a bunch of us black folk was standing, scared to death, and he yell, ‘You people, get out of here now. You’re free. Understand me? You’re free. Free to go.” Emma sobbed. “One of our men go up to him and say, ‘Yes, sir, but where it is we suppose to go?’”

Tears trickled down the old woman’s wrinkled face as she finished her story. She wiped her eyes on her apron, then cleared her throat and leaned forward again.

“You know, Mr. Buck, things changed ‘round here after your momma passed, and ‘specially after you left. Mr. Raleigh, he lost interest in most everything.” Her tone hardened. “He even bring back that overseer Snead and his brood.”

“Brought Snead back!” Buck exclaimed, barely controlling his rage. “Whatever possessed him to do that?”

She shook her head. “Mr. Raleigh, he needed somebody to run the place. After the fighting started, the new overseer joined the army, and some of the black folks, they just up and left. Your pa knowed Mr. Saul wouldn’t let no more of them run off, so he bring him back, along with them sons of his. Sometime his wife and daughter come here too. They was stealing the place blind, Mr. Buck. That Snead cheated us on weighing our cotton and didn’t credit us like he should. That devil was stealing cotton, selling it hisself and keeping the money that belonged to your poppa. When one of us said he was gonna tell Mr. Raleigh what him and them boys of his was doing, that’s when the bad whippings commenced. I wish you was here to take care of the folks like you done before.”