Chapter One: Simeon Ramsey

And the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering

But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.

And Cain was very wroth and his countenance fell … 

I am puzzling out the words in my daddy’s old Bible when a stranger sets down next to me. All the others here at the inn is busy drinking or gambling and Lathern, my particular friend, has gone off somewheres, most likely with that gap-toothed girl what was making eyes at him as she brought out the victuals. I nod to the stranger and skooch over to make room on the bench by the fireplace.

“You’re right obliging, sir.” The stranger holds out his hands to the red warmth of the glowing logs and remarks on the coolness of the evening. He is a dark-complected feller, something like an Injun, and with a strong nose like an Injun, but his hair is kindly curly and he has a big beard which Injuns never do and he don’t talk like no Injun that I ever heard. 

“Name’s Aaron,” he says, looking me up and down. “Jake Aaron, pack peddler working my way back to Greenville, South Carolina. Though had I a mite of sense, I’d head south to Mexico or north to Canada.” 

He takes a deep draft of his cider and stares into the fire. I close the Bible, keeping the place with my thumb. 

“I hear Mexico’s right hot and full of bandits,” I say, “and I reckon Canada’s right cold and full of savages. Up yonder you’d be carrying your pack through snow and ice nine months of the year if my geography schoolbook had the right of it. What’s wrong with this country?”

He screws his head around and looks at me like I ain’t got no sense. “Son,” he says, “haven’t you heard about Ft. Sumter? Oh, this is a fine country, none better, but it’s about to be torn asunder. And we are setting right at one of the ripping places. War’s coming, make no mistake.”

Only last night, when our wagon train put up at Garrett’s Inn near Warm Springs, we had heard something of Sumter and the cry of war. A feller there had a Tennessee newspaper and he was plumb full of talk about South Carolina taking the fort from the Union soldiers. There is always folks eager to tell the latest news whenever we stop at an inn so I already knew that sometime back of this South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and maybe Texas, along with several others, had voted to leave the Union. Why, I even knew they had elected a feller name of Jeff Davis to be the head of them, but I hadn’t paid it much mind, figuring that it wouldn’t change my life none.

My life is set and arranged according to the seasons. In the spring and summer of the year I go with a wagon train on the Buncombe Turnpike, carrying goods between Greeneville in Tennessee and Greenville in South Carolina. Come fall I follow the droves of hogs along the same road when the packed dirt turns to a stinking slough of mud and hog shit. Hard, dirty work but a few more years and I’ll have enough saved to buy me a place near Maryville in Tennessee where Cora’s people are. And then I’ll turn farmer and my life will still run according to the seasons.

“Mr. Aaron,” says I, making light of the peddler’s gloomy words. “I ain’t got no slaves nor do I want none. I just want to tend a little piece of ground and raise up a family. What they do in South Carolina ain’t none of my business.”

He don’t say nothing for a spell, just shakes his head and looks at me kind of pitiful like. Then he reaches out a hand and taps the Bible where I have it laying on my knee and he says, solemn-like, “And Cain talked with his brother Abel and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.”

It gives me something of a chill, hearing this stranger say the very words I was just reading, but as I am about to ask what he means, Lathern shambles back in with a grin on his face like a shit-eating dog. I can see he wants to tell me what he’s been doing but quick as he worms in beside me, I speak up.

“Lathern, Mr. Aaron here says they’s going to be a fight now that South Carolina’s gone and turned the Union out of that fort.”

Lathern just grins wider, looking every bit the fool he sometimes is. “Reckon I could make a soldier,” he says, lifting up his chin and squaring his shoulders. “March behind a brass band carrying a rifle gun and wearing a fine uniform. Yeah, buddy, that’d be a sight better’n driving these blame wagons up and down the muddy ol’ Turnpike.” 

He sniffs at his fingers and grins some more then waves them under my nose. “Take a smell, Preacher. You know what that is? Gen-yoo-wine East Tennessee -----.”

I knock his hand away. “I know what it is, you fool,” I tell him. He likes to call me Preacher on account of I read my Bible every night and because I don’t go after girls like he does. Not that I ever did much, but now that me and Cora are promised, to my way of thinking ain’t none of the others even worth looking at.

The peddler looks at his half-empty tankard. “It’s coming, boys; will you, nil you, war’s coming. Once they fired on Sumter—” 

“I told you,” I said, feeling some aggravated now, “I ain’t no part of this. It don’t matter none to me who the government is, long’s I can have me a little piece of land and make a crop. Besides, I don’t hold with fighting.”

“Dang, Preacher,” Lathern’s grin is gone now and he is frowning at me. “Have you turned Quaker like that girl of yourn?” He stands, shaking his head. “That ain’t no religion for a man. You’ll be thee-ing and thou-ing, next thing I know.” 

He’s funning me some, but I know that underneath he’s serious. Then he slaps me on the back and heads off to where some fellers are hoo-rahing over their dice game. A cloud of baccer smoke is hanging low over the gamblers and through the blue haze I see the gap-toothed girl slip out the door with one of the other wagoners. He has his hand on her big old rump and is pushing to hurry her along.

“A Quaker?” The peddler raises his thick black eyebrows at me. “Are you an Abolitionist as well?”

Something in this feller’s manner makes me want to explain myself. “Like I told you, I got no slaves, nor do I want none. This whole fuss about slavery ain’t nothing to do with me. And I ain’t no Quaker neither. Lathern just said that on account of the girl I aim to marry. Her family are big Quakers over in Maryville, but she’s living with her aunt in Greeneville, Tennessee and she goes to the Presbyterian church there.”

Cora has told me how her family helps runaway slaves on their journey north. When first I learned this, I had to study on it some for it seemed to me that it was the same as stealing another man’s property. But then she told me stories of how bad some folks treated their slaves and how n----- families got broke up and sold away to different states, and how all that the runaways wanted was to get to where they could make it on their own. Listening to her tell these awful tales in her sweet low voice, I had come to see that them runaway n-----s weren’t anyways different in their wants from me.

But still and all, I ain’t no Abolitionist. I ain’t a slave and I don’t own no slaves so, as I see it, it ain’t my fight.

The peddler is tapping on my Bible again. He has his eyes closed and is rocking back and forth a little. The words come out almost like a song.

And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother?

And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?

And he said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground …

And he goes quiet but his eyes is still shut and he is still rocking back and forth.

I take a look in my Bible and he is saying the words exact. “You got a fine memory, Mr. Aaron,” I say, “but I wish you could tell me what you mean.”

“I mean,” says he, opening his eyes and staring into the fire like he was seeing pictures in the flames, “I mean there’s a storm coming, and a mighty flood that will sweep everyone up—Union, Secesh, Quaker, Abolitionist—all of them caught up and swept along in the raging waters. Some will go under, some will survive, but none will be unchanged.”

“Noah had an ark,” I say, thinking of a hidden cove I know over in Tennessee. “He rode the flood high and dry, him and his family.”

Mr. Aaron turns his great dark eyes on me. “So they say. And they say too that Noah planted vines and became a drunkard. And cursed his son Ham who had seen him naked. Cursed him and his seed forever, saying they would be servants all their lives.”

He reaches out a finger and taps my Bible yet again, “Ask any church-going, Bible-believing slave owner and they’ll tell you that their Negroes are the descendants of Ham and that God meant them for slaves. And now, here we are … and I tell you again, there’s a storm coming.”

He drains the last drops from his tankard and stands. Pointing a finger at me, he says, “My friend, you’re young and think you can stay out of this. But I’ve seen it all, time and time again, and you’ll not escape the storm. You can run from it but it’ll be there waiting for you when you least expect it. And, sooner or later, after the storm has passed, there’ll be a need for redemption.”

His sad eyes bore into me and he says, low and most to himself, “And it will be a terrible redemption … “

For a moment he stands there, looking like someone trying to call up a word or a memory, then shakes his head and starts for the door. I call after him, “Ain’t you sleeping here? It’s black dark and cold outside.”

He waves a hand in the smoky air like he is pushing my words aside. “I prefer the clean straw of the barn and the peaceful company of the brute beasts. Good night to you, Sim. Try to keep your head above the water.”

•••

In the middle of the night I wake and lay there in my blanket, listening to the sounds of the others in the big room. The coals in the great fireplace is banked but a red glow flickers on the humped shapes around me. We are all laying, feet to the fire, like the spokes on a wheel. Some are snoring and one feller calls out ‘Gee up there, you sorry critter, gee!’ and jerks about like he is having a bad dream. Over to the left, someone lets loose a fart and I think that maybe Mr. Aaron was in the right of it to sleep in the barn. Though critters is bad to fart, somehow it don’t smell near so bad as with folks.

Mr. Aaron seemed a nice enough feller but that was some crazy talk he was doing. What I say is let the Unionists and the Secesh fight it out amongst theirselves. I’m not like Lathern, a fool for a brass band and a fancy uniform. No, I’ll keep on like I’m doing, putting by a little more coin every year. Two more years should see me married to my Cora and tending our first crop. I can see the rows of corn with bean vines twisting up some of the stalks and the broad green leaves of pumpkins and candy roasters spreading beneath. A big-bagged Jersey cow, a flock of red chickens scratching around … pigs in the woods, growing fat on acorns and chestnuts … Cora in a pink sunbonne … 

I think some more about the peddler, carrying that big pack of gewgaws and gimcracks to tempt the females who don’t never get into town and I think I’ll ask him in the morning does he have some pretty I could buy to take to Cora. If nothing don’t happen, we’ll be in Greeneville tomorrow night and I’d admire to see her fine gray eyes sparkle at the pleasure of a gift.

When I fall asleep, I dream of her. Her and me riding in a boat down the French Broad River. It is running bolder than I’ve ever seen it and our boat skims along at a great pace, high above the hidden rocks.