Chapter 8
I
The summer afternoon heat saturated the plantation like molasses poured from Above. Everyone in his right mind had retreated to the nearest chair and vowed not to exert himself for the duration. Jack was in the barn, stoking the boiler on his tractor.
Two cars pulled up in front of the mansion. The first was a state police car with Ruthie in the backseat. The second was an ambulance with two paramedics in white outfits.
A state trouper got out of the patrol car and went up onto the porch where Lee and The Colonel were sitting in a stupor.
“Can you tell me where I can find Stephen Foster Abernathy?”
Neither Lee nor The Colonel reacted in any noticeable way to the Trooper’s presence or the sound of his voice.
“Excuse me.”
The Colonel raised his drinking hand almost imperceptibly and gestured with his little finger. It could have been a toast or a magical gesture banishing the intruder to Eternal Darkness.
The trooper decided to take more direct action. He stepped boldly forward to knock on the door.
There was no answer for the longest time, but the Trooper held his ground.
The door opened. Lydia took one look at the Trooper and slammed the door in his face, screaming hysterically.
The Trooper tried to open the door again, only to discover that she had locked it. He banged on the door with his fist.
“Open this door, in the name of the law!”
Lee and The Colonel remained unperturbed.
The Trooper glanced back at the car to see if anyone could advise him, and then turned to resume banging on the door.
A shotgun went off inside, and a few buckshot shattered the small window above the door. The Trooper immediately dropped to the floor and rolled away from the door drawing his revolver.
Bubba could be heard screaming inside.
“Lydia!”
The second trooper leaped out of the car drawing his gun and assumed a position near the porch steps.
The shotgun went off again. This time the gun was apparently pointed more towards the hall ceiling than the front door.
The noise of the gunshots penetrated Lee’s fog, and he turned squinting to behold the two Troopers with guns drawn ready for action.
Inside Bubba wrestled with Lydia, trying to wrench the smoking gun from her hands. She struggled for all she was worth trying to fight off her assailant.
“Let go of me, you filthy Yankee! I’ll die before I let you defile me.”
“It’s me, Lydia. Calm down.”
Kathleen came running into the hall from the back of the house.
“What the hell’s going on?”
Sister Sarah was in the living room where she knelt on the floor in prayer.
The state trooper shouted from the porch again.
“Open up in there, we have a warrant for Stephen Foster Abernathy.”
Kathleen gasped and bolted up the stairs.
“Oh my God.”
Lydia collapsed into a swoon relinquishing control of the gun, and Bubba eased her into a chair.
“Open that door and come out with your hands up.”
Bubba opened the front door with no intention of raising his hands. The Troopers braced themselves for a showdown.
“Put those guns away and get off this property at once.”
The calm authority of Bubba’s reprimand punctured the troopers’ confidence and cast the whole situation in a new light. They were too well trained however to back off
“I’m sorry, Sir, but we’ve got orders to take Stephen Foster Abernathy to Sunnyside State Hospital.”
Upstairs Kathleen was banging on the locked door to Foster’s room.
“Foster! Foster! Ruthie’s brought the cops!”
Bubba held his ground.
“I don’t care what kind of papers you have, you’re not coming inside this house.”
“Our orders are to escort Mr. Abernathy to Sunnyside. If we have to use force to take him, we will.”
Foster emerged from a second story window onto the roof of the porch. As he began running towards the end of the roof, he was spotted by Ruthie. She jumped from the car pointing wildly at Foster.
“There he is! Get him!”
Foster reached the end of the porch and leaped onto a limb of a large tree by the driveway.
Just as the Troopers arrived at the trunk of the tree, there was an ear-piercing screech as Jack and his steam tractor came rumbling around the house. The boiler had a full head of steam, and Jack was yelling almost as loud as the steam whistle.
Foster jumped down onto the tractor as it almost ran over the troopers.
The paramedics sprang out of the ambulance to join the Troopers in the chase.
Ruthie went up onto the porch to lord it over Bubba.
“Your little practical joke is over, Bubba. He’s going to the looney bin where he belongs, and we’re going to turn this pigsty into the most exclusive community in the South.”
“I won’t stand for this, Ruthie. By God, I’ll make you eat everyone of the contracts you’ve signed.”
“It’s not just me, Bubba. You’re up against one of the biggest conglomerates in the world.”
The Colonel had shuffled over towards Ruthie while taking a swig from his jug.
The Colonel stood a little too close to Ruthie, and stared at her as he swayed back and forth. When she finally turned to glare at him, The Colonel spewed out a mouthful of whiskey into her face.
Uncle Jack’s tractor came barreling across the front lawn with Foster on board, and the Troopers and Paramedics in hot pursuit.
One of the Troopers jumped back into the car and drove it up onto the lawn and into a position to block the tractor.
The tractor plowed into the car as Jack gave her full throttle and blew the whistle for all it was worth.
The car rolled onto its side; but something gave, and the tractor let our an enormous hiss, filling the air with a cloud of vapor.
The troopers and paramedics chased Foster around the lawn through the steam cloud. When they finally grabbed him, one of the paramedics whipped out a syringe and gave Foster a quick injection in the hip.
Everything had happened too fast for Bubba to intervene. The steam cloud enveloped Foster whose eyes went bleary as he collapsed into the paramedics’ arms. The two paramedics began dragging him towards the ambulance.
“What about those other guys?”
“This is the only one we have papers on. Get him in the ambulance and let’s get out of here.”
II
Hundreds of wounded and dying Confederate soldiers lay on blankets and cots in the remains of a warehouse being used for an army hospital. Somewhere in the night outside cannon volleys battered down the last remains of Civilization, and the sky flickered with the light of burning cities.
Two doctors and a handful of volunteer nurses moved through the soldiers trying to act as though there was some hope of restoring these men to normal productive lives.
Foster lay on the floor under a blanket. He appeared to be unconscious.
A woman knelt beside him and wiped his face with a rag. Foster opened his eyes to behold Annabelle. She wore a nurse’s cap, and her elegant gown was soiled with dirt and blood. She seemed exhausted and ill, but her eyes glowed with a sense of purpose.
“I can’t move my arms or legs.”
“Just rest now. You’ll need your energy later.”
She kissed his hand and touched his forehead before moving away to another soldier.
III
Foster woke up wrapped in a blanket in a wagon being pulled by a mule along a rough dirt road. Refugees and stragglers from the retreating Confederate Army walked in the dark beside the wagon.
Cannons still echoed in the distance, and the horizon glowed with flames.
Foster tried to raise his head up to see where he was. He could not free his arms underneath the blanket, but he managed to pull himself up for a brief m
oment.
The wagon lurched, throwing Foster back down. The road descended sharply to a riverbank where there was a ford. A rope had been strung across the river to help people on foot make it across. The horses seemed barely able to keep their footing in the current.
As Foster’s wagon started across the river, it began to float, and its wheels rose off the bottom. It was caught in the current and swung out beside the mule.
As the driver struggled with the mule, the wagon began leaking in several places. Foster struggled to get free from the blanket as water poured into the wagon.
The wagon capsized, and Foster was swept away by the current. Still bound by the blanket and barely able to keep his head above water Foster disappeared into the night.
IV
The Voice of God thundered in the darkness just as it did in days of old for Cecil B. DeMille.
“Stephen Foster Abernathy!”
Foster tries to respond to the call.
“Here am I.”
“Stephen Foster Abernathy!”
“Speak, for thy servant heareth.”
For some reason it was Annabelle who replied.
“You have a visitor.”
Foster gradually regained his sight and discovered he was in a small white room with nothing in it but a cot. Sunlight streamed through a small window above him.
He caught a glimpse of Annabelle in a clean white nurse’s uniform as she left the room closing the door behind her.
Jesse stood in front of Foster with his hat in his hand.
“De Judge sent me to give you de Word.”
“Yes?”
“De Tar Baby she ain’t saying nothin’ en Br’er Fox, he lay low.”
Jesse vanished into thin air. Foster began to lose consciousness.