Secret Tides

  Secret

  Tides

  SOUTHERN TIDES

  BOOK ONE

  GARY E. PARKER

  Our purpose at Howard Books is to:

  Increase faith in the hearts of growing Christians

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  Because He’s coming again!

  Published by Howard Books, a division of Simon & Schuster

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  Secret Tides © 2004 by Gary E. Parker

  Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information, address Permission Department, Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Parker, Gary E.

  Secret tides / Gary E. Parker.

  p. cm—(Southern tides ; bk. 1)

  ISBN: 1-58229-359-7

  eISBN: 978-1-451-60520-4

  1. Plantation life—Fiction. 2. Southern States—Fiction. 3. Accident victims—Fiction. 4. Young women—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3566.A6784S43 2004

  813′.54—dc22

  2004040523

  13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

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  Edited by Ramona Cramer Tucker

  Interior design by John Mark Luke Designs

  Cover design by Kirk DouPonce, UDG / Design Works

  Cover images by Robert Papp

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or publisher.

  Dedication

  A long time ago, when I was a history major at Furman University in South Carolina, my dad told me, “Son, you can’t make a living with a history major.”

  Well, to some extent, he was right. Yet if I hadn’t majored in history, I don’t think I ever could have written a story like the one you’ll find here. Being a history major gave me an interest in the large canvas of the human story, and that interest in the human story keeps me ever curious. It seems to me that without that curiosity, life gets pretty dull. With it, however, life takes on rich meaning.

  So I dedicate this to all the history majors out there. Maybe you can’t make a living with it, but perhaps you can make your life and the lives of those around you a little bit fuller, more colorful, more worth living.

  Acknowledgments

  Although this is a work of fiction, the social culture of the South Carolina lowland rice plantations just before the Civil War certainly wasn’t fictitious. The men and women—both black and white—of this time and place lived the lifestyle reflected in these pages. Books such as A South Carolina History by Walter Edgar, Mary’s World by Richard Cote, An Antebellum Household by Anne Sinkler LeClercq, The History of Beaufort County by Lawrence Rowland, Alexander Moore, and George Rogers Jr., Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made by Eugene Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps by William Dusinberre, and Diary from Dixie by Mary Boykin Chestnut gave me both information and context for the telling of the story. Any historical inaccuracies in these pages reflect on my failings, not those of these eminent researchers and writers.

  In addition to the books that gave me confidence I was telling the story correctly, I also need to acknowledge the men and women at Howard Publishing for their enthusiasm for this project, especially Philis Boultinghouse. Ramona Tucker, editor, also deserves appreciation for her diligent approach and eager attention to detail and schedule. Her sharp eye made this work better.

  Finally, as always, I express gratitude to my wife, Melody. She keeps the world around me humming so I can have the time to do fun things—like sit down to read, research, and then write the stories of the people you’ll find in these pages.

  Note to the Reader

  The years between 1858 and the beginning of the Civil War were tumultuous ones for the South. Rumors of war abounded—a war that would forever change life for everyone, slave and plantation owner alike. Old institutions crumbled, and the system that had kept everyone—socialite, poor white, and servant—in their places disappeared.

  In the effort to accurately reflect the time frame in which this historical fiction is set, I have used certain terms in this work that are offensive to me, personally, and that aren’t reflective of modern speech and attitudes. Particularly is this true in reference to the men and women held in slavery on the plantations depicted in this novel. Please know that when terms like darky, blackey, coloreds, and Negro are used, they are reflective of this time frame and not meant as any offense to today’s African-American community. Other terms that referred to the slaves, among them the most offensive, are not used in spite of their common uses in the period written about in this project.

  Thankfully for all of us, the evil of slavery in our country disappeared during the Civil War, and many of the unfortunate racial terms and attitudes associated with it began to disappear from the American scene. There is no way to estimate—or apologize for—the physical, emotional, and spiritual damage inflicted upon generations of African-Americans through the travesty of slavery. The truths of God teach us that all people are equal, regardless of race. May the day hasten to come when we all fulfill God’s will in this crucial arena of human relationship.

  GARY E. PARKER

  Part

  One

  There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  Chapter One

  The Oak Plantation, 1858

  A band of thunderstorms hit the beaches of the South Carolina lowlands the day Camellia York accidentally killed the father of the man she hoped to marry. The storms didn’t come ashore all at once, though. No, they gradually made their way inland, slowly eroding the blue sky of the early November day with dark clouds.

  As the storms approached, Camellia stood barefooted about midway down a long wood table in a plantation cookhouse about three miles from shore. An old black woman, so stooped she looked like she’d carried a rock the size of a washtub on her neck for a long time, worked on the opposite side of the table. The woman’s skin was so inky black that folks often said, if not for the whites of her eyes, they’d never see her after night fell. Camellia’s skin was a soft white, and her hair hung in rich brown waves past her shoulders. The black woman wore a green bandanna, but it did little to contain the gray sprigs she called hair. Camellia’s lips were full; her teeth were even and whiter than most. The lips of the black woman seemed to sink in around her mouth, and most of her teeth had long since disappeared. A dip of snuff filled her right cheek.

  Flour covered the hands of both women. Camellia wiped sweat off her brow, leaving a smudge of the flour between her
blue eyes.

  The black woman grinned and pointed at the flour spot. “Miss Camellia makin’ her sweet young face a mess. Lay on a mite more flour, and you be lookin’ like a swamp ghost.”

  Camellia laughed and bent forward. The older woman grabbed a rag and wiped off the flour.

  “There’s not enough flour from Beaufort to Charleston to make you a ghost,” drawled Camellia.

  “That be true,” said the black woman, chuckling. “Stella be black as the ink in Master Tessier’s pen, oh yes I am.”

  The wood floor under the two women’s feet creaked as they worked. Flies buzzed in and out of the open window to their right. The air hung heavy and hot in spite of the ominous clouds gathering outside. A low rumble sounded in the distance. A fireplace as wide as a wagon covered the room to Camellia’s left, and the fire in it made the cookhouse even hotter than the outdoor temperature. Camellia faced the window and hoped to catch a breeze, but none came. She glanced around the room—a rectangular space about twenty by forty feet. Pots and pans and all manner of other cooking utensils hung on nails on the walls. Shelves on two of the walls contained flour, sugar, salt, and vegetables they’d put up in jars and cans. Barrels in the corners held cornmeal, rice, and wheat.

  Camellia picked up a clay jar, poured flour into a bowl, took a touch of lard from a pail, and dug her hands into the flour. Stella did the same. Her hands turned as white as Camellia’s. A strange notion seeped into Camellia’s head. Could it be that all people were the same color, under their skin? she wondered. She held up her hands, covered with flour. “Look, Stella. Our hands look the same.”

  Stella spit into the snuff cup she always kept close by but said nothing.

  Camellia wiped her hands on her apron, then scrutinized Stella. “Our clothes are about the same too.”

  Stella shrugged, obviously not catching Camellia’s meaning.

  Camellia started to say more but then decided if she explained it, Stella would just look at her as though she’d lost her mind and wave her off. So Camellia went back to her dough, massaging it steadily as her mind stretched with the realization of how much like Stella she truly was: An apron covered her plain brown dress, just like an apron covered Stella’s plain gray dress. They both went barefooted except in winter or on the rare times they had traveled to Beaufort, close to thirty miles away, to attend church. They both labored from sunup to sundown on The Oak, a rice plantation of almost 3,000 acres and 325 laborers.

  Camellia blew a loose strand of hair off her cheek as sweat rolled down between her shoulder blades. She patted out a biscuit and laid it by the ones she’d already finished. Stella dropped one beside hers. Camellia studied the wrinkles in Stella’s hands—although nobody knew for sure, most folks figured Stella close to seventy. Camellia’s earliest memories brought Stella’s face to mind instead of a mama’s or papa’s. Stella had given Camellia a piece of peppermint—the first she’d ever had as a young child—and the girl had seen Stella every day since. That, maybe more than anything else, had stamped Camellia like a branding iron marked a horse. Now, except for her color, a little more refined speech, and the fact that nobody owned her, Camellia saw herself as real close to a darky.

  The thunder rumbled again, this time closer, and Camellia hoped it would rain and break the heat. Although they’d finished the harvest a week earlier, the coastal lowlands often stayed warm right up to nearly December. Right now the day felt as hot as July—a sticky suffocating blanket that made the dogs stay under the porch of the manse and slowed everybody’s labor to a crawl.

  The thunder sounded once more. Camellia left the table and walked to the window. Low black clouds put a mean face on the eastern half of the sky. To the west the horizon remained blue, except for a few white clouds. Camellia scanned the yard. The manse stood on four-feet-high stone pillars a good rock throw away, a stately two-story white house with four columns on the front. Porches wrapped both the front and back. An oak tree, at least a hundred years old and so wide it took four people to get their arms around it, stood to the right of the front porch. From this ancient oak, with its moss-draped branches, the plantation had taken its name. About a half-mile to the left of the manse, snaking its way toward the Atlantic Ocean, the slow-moving Conwilla River created the current that made rice growing possible. A gravel drive, bordered on both sides by twenty-five moss-draped oaks, connected about a quarter-mile away to a wide dirt road that ran from Beaufort to Charleston.

  Camellia wiped her hands on her apron. Although she owned none of The Oak and labored as hard as any of the coloreds that made it run, she loved the place. She loved the sandy soil that shifted under her feet; loved the crash and spray of the ocean she visited almost every Sunday afternoon because she lived too far from Beaufort to walk to church; loved the sounds of the frogs, birds, and insects that made every summer night a throaty concert; loved the flowers that bloomed almost year-round, their smells and color keeping everything alive. Mostly though, she loved The Oak because she loved—

  Lightning cracked the sky. Camellia jerked away from the window, her daydreaming ended. Thunder rattled the cookhouse as she turned to Stella. “That thunder sounds mean. Like it’s got something hurtful to say but no words to speak it.”

  “Maybe it’ll bring us some wet,” said Stella. “Cool us down a mite.”

  “It sounds angry, not wet.” Camellia eyed the odd sky—half of it blue, half black.

  Stella grabbed a handful of potatoes and started peeling them. “What you know about angry thunder? A child your age don’t know such things.”

  “I’m eighteen now.” Camellia picked up a stack of the potatoes. “I can tell if a storm’s got rain in it. Just open your nose and smell—that’s all you got to do. And when it don’t, it gets mad, you know that. Wants to take out the anger on somebody.”

  “You talk like a slave mammy,” said Stella. “Readin’ the storms.”

  “A white girl can read storms,” Camellia claimed. “And this storm”—she looked at the window again—“I don’t know … feels frightful … like it’s a portent of something rough.” The thunder mumbled again, and she shivered.

  Stella stepped to the window, peered out, then moved back to her potatoes. “Got some blue sky left. Maybe the storm won’t even get us.”

  Camellia wiped her brow.

  “Not sure which is better,” continued Stella. “We need the rain, but the wind and the blow might do some damage.”

  “That’s the way with storms,” said Camellia. “They bring the good and the bad, one in hand with the other.”

  Stella smiled. “There you go again with your philosphizin’.”

  Camellia shrugged. “Just thinking. I mean, just look at that sky. Part blue, part black. Which side will win? Which way will it go? And which is better? We do need the rain. But what if the storm whips up a bad wind, enough to tear up a house or two? So which is better? Storm or no storm? Hard to know beforehand, right? You think one thing is better but can’t know for sure for a long time.”

  Stella kept at her potatoes. “You’re a smart girl. Too bad you ain’t had a chance to get some learnin’.”

  Camellia didn’t reply, but her hands peeled potatoes even faster. The fact that a girl of her station had no chance for an education made her sad. But she knew no way to change the matter, so she wouldn’t complain.

  “When is Captain York gone be back?” asked Stella.

  “Tomorrow,” Camellia said, thinking of her pa, a former cavalry officer during the Mexican War. “He and Mr. Cain are hauling a couple wagons full of supplies back from Charleston.”

  “You reckon he’ll bring back the blue calico you been wantin’ for that new dress? If he does, I’ll make a pretty one for you, just like you ask.”

  “Pa’s not always dependable these days,” Camellia said, frowning. “You know that. It’s like he can’t keep his head on real straight sometimes.”

  “He’s got a lot on him, runnin’ this big place,” Stella put in. “The Oak is
an armful, that’s for sure.” She sliced her potatoes and dumped them in an iron pot.

  Camellia cut the last of hers and dropped them on top of Stella’s. Captain York, her pa, served as overseer for Mr. Marshall Tessier. He managed the work of all the Negroes, plus a couple of white men who helped him. Every night he came home worn out and hungry. As the oldest child and only female in the house, the duties of cooking, cleaning, and keeping house fell squarely into her lap, in spite of the fact that she’d worked all day on the same plantation her pa had run for as long as she could remember. Sometimes that seemed strange to her, but since everybody in her world had their place and didn’t usually squabble about it, she just squared her shoulders and kept quiet.

  “That woman over in Beaufort said she didn’t want him courting her,” Camellia said. “He took it hard.”

  “That was half a year ago,” Stella commented sharply. “He ought to be over any hurt she caused. She was a loose woman anyway.”

  “He’s worse, if anything,” lamented Camellia. “Like a barrel rolling downhill, busting up more and more as it bounces toward the bottom.”

  “How’s he worse?”

  Camellia wiped her hands. “Oh, you know, his drinking. And he spends most of his off time gambling somewhere. Cockfighting, horse racing, card games … anything he can find to make a wager. He hardly ever stays home, even on Sundays when he’s not at work.”

  Stella’s hands stilled as she swiveled toward Camellia. “Look at me, child.”

  Camellia obeyed.

  Stella took both of the girl’s hands. “Your pa got a lot of barky edges. Always had them. That woman in Beaufort, even as loose as she was, kept him with some calm. Now that she’s gone, his mean ways have bucked back up. I seed it happen lot of times. A woman puts away a man, and he just goes off wild.”