Holcomb was confiding in Eliza Two dangerous knowledge, for even she was aware that Indians were despised in Georgia; only the Negro was lower than the people. Holcomb was trusting her to keep his secret. He thought her worthy of keeping it, despite the scars on her face. He didn’t view her with pity, but as someone he could talk to. His kindness reminded her of her father’s and Pop George’s.
Then he told her of the saddest night of his life, when white men had given his family a choice: die or leave their land. The group of men had included Holcomb’s white relatives. They had grim faces—like the Franklins—and when Holcomb’s grandmother had called to their white kin with the authority of an elder, one of them had walked up to her and slapped her to the ground. His parents had asked to pack belongings into the wagon, but the white men would not give them that chance. They went into the house, tossing things outside. Holcomb had been hiding and watching this scene, but at this, he had run to his great-aunt in the woods. He only had been six, and he was afraid that he would get lost, but finally he saw her cabin. There he lived with her for ten years until she’d died. He believed she’d been covered by a blessing, and that this had extended to him as well, for white men had come through the woods many times, but never barged into his great-aunt’s little cabin. When she passed away, he burned the cabin to the ground as she had asked him to do, and began a life of travel. And for years, he had roamed, unable to settle, until the day he’d ridden his horse to Wood Place. Until he’d met Venie in the kitchen house. Yet Holcomb never had forgotten the pain of seeing his family loaded onto a wagon by those white men and sent on their way out west. Every morning that he rose, he thought of his family. Every night before he went to bed, he did the same. He knew that he would not stop missing them, for kin was a line that never snapped.
From his pocket, Holcomb pulled a leather pouch like the one from around his neck. He told Eliza Two that he had made this pouch for her. It was filled with tiny things, and he had said a medicine prayer of healing over this pouch, in both the old words and those of Jesus, and it would give Holcomb much happiness if Eliza Two would wear it. When she placed the tied strings over her head and tucked the pouch inside her bodice, there was no miraculous feeling. She did not experience instant joy, but when she looked in the distance toward the direction of the left cabin—when she saw the light of Rabbit’s lantern—she experienced a longing to be with her sister, one that she had not felt since the night their father had left. She rose, looking down at Holcomb, but he told her, go ahead. And Eliza Two walked toward the left cabin until she was at the fence and called through the spires. At the sound of her twin’s voice, known from within the womb, Rabbit gave a cry. She ran to the fence and unlocked the gate. They held each other for some time, and then Rabbit led her to where Leena sat on the quilt.
The Arrival of the Yankee
In the years before the Civil War, cotton was the dominant crop in the south, and some northerners had relocated to the region to partake in the wealth. Many did not flourish, and the customs were foreign, especially the holding of slaves, which had fallen from style in the north. The weather was oppressive in summers, a punishment to make up for the benevolence of the glorious springs and mild winters.
One such northerner was a young man named Matthew Thatcher, who, in 1856, had traveled to central Georgia to make his fortune. He was twenty-five years old. While in college, Matthew’s mentor had encouraged him to travel there, where the problem of his mediocre lineage and lack of inheritance would not pose impediments. His mentor was a Harvard graduate but not put off by the younger man’s awkward manner. The mentor staked Matthew one thousand dollars, a chestnut gelding, three tailored suits, and gave him the deed to one hundred eighty acres. Matthew would be required to pay his mentor back within twenty years—so it was really a gift, because the mentor was in his sixties, and most men did not live long in those days.
“I know you’ll find your way,” the mentor said. “And don’t carry all your money on your person.”
They were sitting in his library, each on a sofa facing the other. Matthew puffed on a cigar, as if he was used to smoking.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Unknown to the mentor, Matthew had his own money saved; he was good at cards, and several of his wealthy classmates were not. It would be enough to hire three white hands until he could buy his own slaves. The property his mentor had purchased was located on a parcel that abutted Putnam County. The place had formally been owned by the Polcott family, a line of slave traders who’d held auctions out in the country. Yet that family sought to come up in the world, and when they wanted to move their business out from the country, they wanted quick cash. This is how Matthew’s mentor had acquired their land in Baldwin County, paying the Polcott family enough to expand their slave-trading business to the capital city of Milledgeville, as well as to Macon and Augusta.