* * * * *
Luke and Nate have worked their way back south from Port Royal, Virginia. They had found out from P.T. Cox, who had been in prison with Robert that Robert left Port Royal heading to Norfolk and then to Charleston, South Carolina. Luke had made a decision their best course of action was to head back home, and now they have traveled the length of Virginia and find themselves in the middle of North Carolina.
“How much further Luke do you thank it’ll be afore we gets to my place?”
“Nate, in about ten miles we will come to Raleigh; then we are gonna head southwest to your place, should be there day after tomorrow.”
“Lands sake, you don’t mean it – day after tomorrow?”
Night found them southwest of Raleigh making camp on the Cape Fear River. “In the morning I’ll find us someone that will ferry us across this river Nate. It is too wide for us to try to swim the horses across, besides its just May and that water has got to be pretty cold. If we can get across pretty fast tomorrow, and we push hard all day, we should be pretty close to your farm by dark. It’s between Monroe and Rockingham, right?”
“Shore ‘nuff Luke ‘bout five miles west out of Rockingham. I’s got me a good bottomland farm on the Pee Dee River. So rich youse can poke a stick in the ground, and it’ll grow leaves. Good rich bottomland Luke. Had me a good house, a barn, and a smoke house. After them Yankees done tore it up I don’t know what’s left.”
Luke was pretty accurate in his estimation of how far they could travel. At sundown, the following day, they are on the eastern side of the Pee Dee. Nate’s farm is on the western side. “Luke if’en you was to squint yer eyes and peer purty hard you can almost see my farm from here. It right over th...there...” Nate said pointing.
“What’s wrong Nate? What did you see?”
“Luke, there’s a light a comin’ from my house. They said them Union cannonballs blowed my house away...something jest ain’t right Luke, something ain’t right...”
“Calm down Nate, get hold of yourself, we’ll get this all straighten out tomorrow. You are probably not looking at the right spot – remember it’s been a long time since you have been home.”
The sun was barely up when Luke awoke to a noise. He looks toward the river’s edge, and Nate is urging old Sassy, his mule, into the current. Nate’s intent is to swim the river to his farm – he fears something is wrong, and he is not waiting any longer to find out what it is.
“Hold on Nate, give me a minute to saddle up, I’m coming with you!”
The Pee Dee River is not very wide, and certainly not deep, so swimming the horse and mule across was not difficult at all. Coming up on the western bank Nate dismounts from Sassy and gets the first good look at his homestead. “What? He exclaimed. “This can’t be right!”
From the bushes a gun barrel juts out and a voice demands, “Hold it right there mister or I’m aimin’ to shoot you dead where yer stand.”
Nate thinks he recognizes the voice, but he cannot remember from where. “Be easy with yer trigger finger there friend, we’s not come to do y’alls no harm. Does I know you?”
For a second or two there is almost total silence. The only sound is the water dripping from the wet gear on the mule. “Step forward mister, the suns at yer back and I can’t make out yer face.”
It hits Nate like the specter from the bushes had fired his weapon, it was what Nate would later call a ‘revolution.’ This revelation that had come to Nate, was the voice! He recognized that voice, “Son! Nate Junior, is that you? It’s me Son, yer Pa!”
From the brambles and foliage along the Pee Dee, a youngster cautiously emerges holding a double barrel shotgun. He still has it pointed at Nate as he questions, “Pa? Pa? Is that really you?”
“Yes, boy, it’s me, your Pa – I’s have returned!”
Without waiting, Nate Junior drops the shotgun to the ground and begins to run toward the old, weathered barn about a hundred yards distance. “Ma! Come quick! Ma! Ma! Ma!”
The hayloft door of the barn opens, “Lands sake boy, what’s all that commotion about?”
Nate Junior could not speak; he turns back toward the river and points.
Elsa, Nate’s wife, descends from the hayloft to the hallway of the barn. She could not speak either. She continues to wipe her hands on the white apron she is wearing although her hands had been dried moments earlier. Softly she speaks, almost in a whisper, “Nate? Nate, is...is... it really you?”
She realizes the tall, black fellow standing soaking wet at the edge of her yard is indeed her husband. He is so thin, and his face has the haggard look of war, but she could recognize her man Nate anywhere. She knows it is her Man!
The loving embraces the three of them enjoy standing there in the yard bring tears to Luke’s eyes. He is watching true happiness, and just to think, he says to himself, ‘and I didn’t want to take this detour to Nate’s farm.’
Nate steps back to admire Elsa, “You is shore a sight for my old tired eyes. I had done hear’d you and Nate Junior had been done kilt by them Yankees.”
Later as the four of them sit eating breakfast Elsa tells of the tremendous battle that took place in her yard. To Nate and Luke her ‘battle’ was just a small skirmish between a foraging party of the Union and a squad of scouts from the Rebs. The Yanks did; however, have a Napoleon cannon with them. They only fired two shots. One hit the small smokehouse, which occupied a spot between the house and the barn and the second demolished the house. She said she and Nate Jr. were out in the field some distance away, and the smokehouse contained a fresh deer that had just been slaughtered.
She guessed the story of her and Nate Junior’s untimely death must have come from the mess the cannon ball made with the deer meat; however, she could not explain how Luke’s uncle Isaac found out about the ‘battle.’
After all the explanations, they had a big laugh and Luke repeated the axiom, ‘Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.’ “Amen, to that,” replies Nate. Elsa explains she did not post a letter to Luke since she had no idea where he was, and Nate responds that he did not write because he thought they were both dead.
Elsa explains that the deer had been the last of their food. Since that time, she and Nate Jr. have been barely surviving living in the loft of the barn. Nate hunted rabbits and squirrels until they exhausted all the gunpowder.
“Boy,” said Nate, “you means to tell me you wuz gonna shoot me out by the river with a empty shotgun?”
“Nah, I no’d I couldn’t shoot you, I wuz jest tryin’ to scare you.”
“Well boy, you did a fine job of that,” Luke said laughing.
Elsa continued with her story. After the shotgun became useless they trapped, and raised a small parcel of corn from the corn kernels that she had picked up from the spot where the Yankees corralled their horses. They still cooked in the house’s fireplace eating mostly fish they caught in the river. She said she and Nate had eaten so much fish she though Nate Junior was sprouting gills.
“Well, I’ll be, so it was fire from this ole fireplace that I sees from ‘cross the river.”
“Yes Luke don’t know what we’d done our cooking on without it.”
“I’ll tell you what – Luke and me have been all the way up in Virginny looking for Robert, his pa. We got wind of him, but never did find him. We was headin’ back to Scarlettsville since all the family is gathered there. No, not my Pa and brother Jefferson, both of them got kilt down in Alabama, but the rest, including Ma are at Scarlett. I’m thankin’ all of us together will have a better chance there than trying to make a go of it tryin’ to live here. Right now the Carpetbaggers and Scalawags is runnin’ everything. They’ll git this place afore too long.”
“Nate Scarburg, you knows you’s still my man. Where’s you go I go, but Nate, this here War has done been over fer a year, and things is not getting any better, what is we to do?”
“Elsa,” said Luke. “Let’s all go back to Scarlett. The b
ig house she is done burnt up, but the carriage house and the barn they is still there, so is the Mill. We’s have enough men folks to raise food and run the Mill, and if we need to, we’ll built more houses. Whether white or black, we’s all family and together no one can beat us, not even this awful War.”