Chapter 8: Family Matters

Mildred Kendrick was worried about her daughter. Deborah had gone far away and was about to marry there. Since the continent had been first settled, women had been marrying far from their families – though more of them married at home and then went west with their husbands. Probably, after the slaughter of eligible men in the recent war, Deborah’s generation would be doing even more moving and then marrying.

Still, she had the traditional responsibility of telling her daughter of the facts of married life before the daughter’s marriage. She had performed that duty for Gladys, although she suspected that Gladys had – as Mildred had herself – been the recipient of whispered secrets from some close friends who had married earlier.

She, of course, could not put such details in a letter. Still, she wrote a veiled warning.

Dear daughter
I so wish that I could be with you as you prepare for your wedding.
The distance, as well you know who traversed it, is just too far.
I wish you all the joy that comes with the wedded estate, and hope that you have some older friends in the neighborhood.
Your loving mother.

Deborah could not imagine what her mother was trying to express. She had enough experience in their relationship to leave off trying quite soon. She had all sorts of older friends. Marjorie, who was her mentor and supervisor, was also a friend as was more than a year older. Jane was several months older. Sam – whom mother knew she was marrying, that ought to count as friendship – was older, and several officers still in the area were older yet.

Actually, the area, which was less densely populated than Massachusetts, had three groups of people, the Negro, quite the most numerous, the Confederate whites, and the Union whites, by far the least numerous.

Her students were not about to advise Deborah about anything. For that matter, on a large plantation in normal times – and most of the local colored population had been slaves on large plantations – most slave girls lost their virginity to their master before they reached 15, and most knew about it before they reached 10. Now, the war had not been normal times, with most white men gone. Still, the culture was the same, and it did not consider that an adult woman lacked any information about sex.

The Confederate whites had much the same reticence as Massachusetts did, but Deborah had little interaction with them. None of the women had the slightest sympathy with her, either.

The Union whites socialized together to a small extent, but most of them were in small blocks dealing on a day-to-day basis mostly with Negroes. In a nation which had an awkward undersupply of young men; the Union whites of the county were more than two out of three young men.

Deborah knew the teachers in the close-by schools, but all of them worked hard, and those schools were not all that close-by. None of those teachers were married. Most of them were virgins, and one of the exceptions would never admit that. The other was a widow, but she lived so far that she was not even invited to the wedding.

Mrs. West, the Methodist missionary’s wife, knew Deborah. She was, however, only a few years older. She regarded the teacher – who had two years more education as well as whatever advantage Massachusetts education had over Illinois education – less with maternal feelings than with awe.

Deborah had friends, even some older friends, but the advice that her mother couldn’t give her was not coming from any of them.

After seeming to her that the marriage would never really occur, it now seemed to be approaching at the speed of a railroad engine. The ceiling of the house was finally done. The windows were installed in a matter of days. The doors were bought ready-made and hung in one day.

The school was scheduled to take the entire week around Christmas for a holiday. Knowing that, she and Sam decided that the Sunday before Christmas would be a good day for a wedding. They approached Pastor West, who agreed.

Her next shopping trip was into Montgomery to choose a new dress for the wedding. She selected the cloth and carried it to a seamstress to make it. Sam offered to pay for the dress, but there were some things which a woman must buy for herself.

Then the furniture that they had already selected was delivered. Sam payed some of Caligula’s crew to stay and help move the furniture into the right rooms. The dining-room table required some work to get through the doors, but Sam and Caligula figured it out. Deborah blushed to see this crew of Negro men carrying a bed on which she and Sam would sleep together, but the men said nothing.

Sam and Deborah took longer in the groves on their way to the school than ever before. He stopped the shay at the old barn that had served the plantation. They walked around behind it and had one more, rapturous kiss. This would be the last they would see each other until their wedding day. That would be in only four days, but they looked to be four long days.

Finally, she went in, and he drove back.

When he got to the store, he found a customer waiting.

“Bucephalus,” Sam said, “the store is closed Wednesday afternoon.”

“General, you got to give me credit.”

“It’s early yet. Your crop’s not in the ground. It’s still the old year. What do you need so much today?”

“It ain’t today,” Bucephalus said. “They stole my money. I don’t have anything.”

The story took a little time to get out. Bucephalus had hidden all the cash he got for his cotton crop in his cabin. The door had no lock. He had been in the market for a mule and had gone to look for one. When he got home, the door was open, the cabin was messed up, and the money was gone.

“Come into the store with me,” Sam said. When he checked the books, he found that his memory had been correct. “The thief didn’t get quite everything.”

“I looked, and I didn’t find a penny.”

“Remember when Teacher Kendrick told you to pay me for the goods that you would buy this next year?” Bucephalus nodded. “Well, you did, and you still own that. I don’t have to give you credit, you have already paid for a couple of month’s purchases.”

When that was clear, he told the freedman to see the sheriff the next day. What good that would do, Sam couldn’t tell, but the sheriff should be at least aware of each crime. He had more customers the next 3 days, but none with so dramatic a story.

Marjorie, Jane, and Diane were tremendously excited about the coming wedding. It was the most romantic event that had happened to their little group since they gathered a year and a half before. The newly furnished house was charming; General Warren was the most handsome bachelor they had ever seen; Deborah’s new dress was a delight and would sweep Sam off his feet; the honeymoon over Christmas was ideal and the most romantic period possible.

Deborah was much less certain. The wedding which had been coming down on her like a train engine was now a run-away engine and she was aboard. Home was a continent away, and what could she tell them? All her friends closer were enthusiastic about the wedding and the meal they were planning to celebrate it, and what could she tell them? Sam was a very nice man; she was afraid of him because he was a man,

Saturday night, the other teachers gave her first chance at the communal tub, and she used it carefully. Sunday, she rose from a fitful sleep, and Marjorie helped her into her corset and special dress. The teachers had abandoned corsets the first ghastly summer, but they were all wearing them this day. She picked at the marvelous breakfast Messalina had prepared.

Lieutenant Trenton – who would be best man – showed up with a carriage to take her and the other teachers to the church service. She tried to sing the hymns, but made no effort to follow the sermon. When the service was over, the entire congregation was invited to stay for the wedding.

She had driven Stepper several times. She briefly wondered whether she could get to the shay and away before anyone caught her.

Instead, she watched Sam while he walked down to the front. She walked down with Marjorie to join him. She pledged to love, honor, and obey him. At the end of the service, her mouth was absolutely dry while Sam kissed her and people cheered.

She went back to the school beside Sam in the shay, with the carriage right behind. Messalina had outdone herself on the dinner, but Deborah had difficulty swallowing the few bites she took.

The others gave the meal the attention it evidently deserved. They talked afterward, enjoying their time together. Finally, Lieutenant Trenton rose. “I give you the happy couple,” he said raising his glass, “as they leave.”

She had no choice. All day, she had not really had a choice. Sam pulled back her chair, helped her on with her wrap, and led her to the shay. While they did not see anyone on the road to Sam’s house, he did not stop for a kiss.

Once they were in the house, though, he caught her hand. She turned to him, and he pulled her into a kiss. His chest was hard against her breasts, and his hand stroked down her back and gripped her buttocks. He pulled her against him, and she felt his hard male organ pressing her belly.

When he let her go, he ducked through the door into the dining room. She heard his boots clump into the kitchen and return. He was carrying two sticks of fire wood.

“I left a fire in the Franklin stove,” he said, “but it will be low.” He had moved his Franklin stove from his room in the store to the bedroom, their bedroom.

He led her in, tossed the two sticks into the stove on top of the smoldering embers, and used a bellows to bring flame to light them. He closed the stove, removed his coat and hung it in his wardrobe, and helped her off with hers. He hung it in her wardrobe.

“Want me to wait outside?” he asked.

“I shall need your help with the corset,” she confessed. He walked around her – she had not moved since entering the room – and unbuttoned the back of her dress. Then he looked at the laces for a moment. He pulled both ends until the bow came undone. He pulled at laces and edges until the entire garment felt loose.

“Thank you, Sam,” she said. “I can do the rest. You have been very thoughtful.”

“But you would rather I leave.” And leave he did.

Were they not supposed to wait until night? Clearly, Sam did not think so, and what would they do? Besides which, she could not think of a way to say that. She stripped slowly, hanging each garment in the wardrobe, even putting her shoes on the bottom. She put on the cold nightgown and climbed between the cold sheets. Minutes passed.

There was a knock on the door, and it opened an inch. “May I come in?” Sam asked.

“Yes.”

He came in barefoot and stripped to the waist. He was carrying shirt, boots and stockings, and put them away. His chest was hairy, and he looked, somehow, even larger like this. He stripped off trousers and briefs while facing his wardrobe. His buttocks were hairless and even paler than his chest. Then he turned around.

The hairiness that was his chest trailed lightly down to his groin. There, it sprouted as densely as his beard. Sticking out of that patch of hair, sticking up, was his male organ. She had never seen another man’s, and his looked awfully large. It was redder than his face, and somehow angry.

The room was awfully bright. She should have bought heavier fabric for the curtains and pulled them closed.

Now, Sam was walking toward the bed. He pulled the sheet and blanket all the way back.

Sam’s experience was with three women, all of whom he paid. He’d known a cavalry sergeant from Kentucky, though with much more experience. The man had been prone to talk about that experience on dark, cold nights.

It was difficult to get in a virgin, and it always hurt her. The Kentuckian had been told by his father to use a little fat to ease the entry, and he always had. Girls were more enthusiastic later times.

Sam might not know much about women, but he knew about pain. You went through it as fast as you could; nothing much could ease it, although whiskey helped a little. There had been whiskey at the wedding meal, and he had noticed that Deborah hadn’t taken any. That was her choice, and he respected it.

He had brought some fat from the kitchen with the firewood. He had left it on the edge of his wardrobe, and now he had it on his left index finger. He used his right hand to pull back the covers, and saw that Deborah was completely clad in a nightgown.

“This won’t work while you’re wearing that,” he said. He got onto the feather bed and lay beside her. This was his first time in this bed; he’d used his cot to keep this one fresh for the two of them.

“Then pull up the sheet.” She raised her hips and pulled the bottom of the nightgown up to her waist.

When Sam pulled the sheet up, Deborah sat up and pulled her nightgown up to bunch under her armpits. She clasped the sheet with a few fingers of each hand and sank back to the feathers.

She thought Sam might be laughing at her silently, but he kissed her. His beard was still ticklish, and she wondered that she had ever thought that pleasant. His hand was cold on her bare belly. Then it stroked up her body to clasp a breast. It wasn’t that cold, but her nipple got harder than it had in any January back home.

After he’d tweaked that nipple, he stroked down her body. When his hand reached the hair on her mound, she closed her legs tightly.

“We are married,” he said.

“I know.”

“Your mind knows. Your legs do not.”

She consciously spread her legs. His fingers combed downward through the hair there. When he clasped her intimately, her legs closed again quite of their own accord. That only pressed his hand against her more firmly.

This time, he was laughing at her.

“Am I so amusing?” she asked.

“You are delightful, and sweet, and innocent, and soft.” On the last word. he moved his fingers to show where he was finding her soft. One finger parted those lips. She managed to spread her legs.

He removed his hand and brought it over to his other one under the sheet. Before she could see what he was doing, he kissed her again. The hand returned and rested heavily on her mound. A finger parted her lips, feeling greasy. He stroked there.

“Now,” he said. He kissed her, but only briefly.

Then he was above her. One knee was between her legs. Then he spread her legs with his hands and wedged another knee there. “Spread them for me, Deborah,” he said. She did, and his knees were pressing against her thighs, spreading them more.

She could feel something wider and softer and warmer where his finger had been. It pressed in, and she began to feel discomfort.

“Grit your teeth,” Sam said. The pressure, however, was relieved.

Then he lunged forward above her, and something tore within her. The pain was intense, and she shrieked. She could feel herself filled, occupied where she had never been filled before.

“Is that better?” Sam asked. Oddly enough, it was. The pain had been unexpected, but it was going away. While in a tender and private place, the pain had really not been worse than a switching, and it hadn’t been repeated.

“I’ll try to be quick,” Sam said. When he moved out, some echo of the pain returned. It was not as bad, and it was expected. He moved back and forth more quickly. Then he thrust into her as hard as before, gasped, throbbed in her newly-discovered depths, and collapsed on top of her.

When he moved off, he wrapped his arm around her and took her left breast in his hand. She pulled the sheet up to keep that clasp hidden, and then pulled up the blanket to cover the sheet.

Something was dripping out of her at quite the wrong time of the month. Sam seemed to be sleeping, but she could not possibly fall asleep like this.

When Sam got out of bed, though, it seemed to wake her. He put on his coat over his skin and went out. When he was gone, she got up and dressed in the ordinary clothes she had in the wardrobe. She looked out the window, and it was time to start supper preparation. She went into the kitchen to see what they had.

Sam came in the kitchen door a few minutes later. He kissed her forehead before going through the door into the dining room. He had obviously been visiting the outhouse, and she got her coat to go out there as well. It was a 2 – hole version, and she shivered to think of sitting beside Sam while they both did their business. There was some hay available, and when she wiped herself, there was a brief echo of the pain. There seemed to be a drop of blood on the hay.

When she came in he door, Sam was laying the fire in the stove. He took a long splinter into the other room and came back with it glowing. He used that to light the stove. Apparently, cooking was her task, but lighting fires was his.

“Should I have got some wheat flour?” he asked at supper. “I know you don’t like corn ears; is corn meal all right?”

“Sam, I like corn ears. I loved the corn on the cob you brought to the school.”

“Only ate half an ear.”

“We had several meals with what you brought for us,” she said. “You can’t keep a wasp waist and eat all you want. Anyway, corn meal is fine. Wheat flour has its uses, and I’ll buy it sometimes, but you don’t use it instead of corn meal.”

She feared a repetition of the afternoon that night. Sam did come to bed naked, but he merely blew out the lantern and got in beside her. The stove burned its last in the night. When she woke in the dark, she found herself pressed against Sam and his arm around her. She got the chamber pot out of her wardrobe, used it, and stashed it under the bed. When she climbed back in, she was so chilly that she returned to Sam’s warmth.

Again in the morning, Sam went out to the outhouse before she rose. She dressed and then made the bed. There was a spot of blood on the sheet, and she blushed. That was her blood.

They went to the school after breakfast to retrieve her clothes. Sam stayed downstairs. Marjorie knocked on the door while she was packing to offer her two of the mansion’s linen sheets.

“I suppose this is the Freedman’s Bureau property,” Marjorie said, “And you’re still a Freedman’s Bureau teacher. We wouldn’t have wanted them to get stained, though, would we?”

Unclear how Marjorie could have known that her sheets had been stained by blood, not really certain that she did, Deborah thanked her briefly and packed the sheets with the clothes.

When she got the carpet bag to the top of the stairs, Sam was at the bottom looking up. “I’ll take it from there,” he said. He came up the stairs, took the bag, and carried it downstairs and out to the shay.

They did not stay much longer. They exchanged Christmas greetings, accepted congratulations on their marriage, and assured the three other teachers that they would return the next day for Christmas dinner.

Back home, and that thought was still strange and a little frightening, Sam carried the bag into the house and straight to the bedroom. He hung his coat in his wardrobe. Then he stood as though he planned to watch her unpack.

“Make a fire in the kitchen stove, please,” she said. While he was gone, she unpacked the linen sheets, stripped the bed, made it with the new sheets, and then unpacked and put away all the rest of her clothes. She did not have a basket for dirty sheets. What else were they missing?

She went into the kitchen to start dinner. Sam was out, but the stove was going nicely. Sam came back – in his shirtsleeves – soon after.

“The shay is in the stable, and Strider is in the meadow,” he said. “I have to put in a hayfield next year. Before planting season, you have to tell me what you want in the vegetable garden.” He sat down, apparently intending to watch her cook.

Her cooking experience was generally as Mother’s assistant. Gladys was usually around, and the rest of the family paraded in and out. Still, there was a difference between having people around and having one person watching her like a hawk. She felt rather like the field mouse that hawk fancied for dinner. Finally, she had an inspiration.

“We lack a laundry basket,” she said. “Does your store carry those?”

“Yes. Would you like me to fetch one?” He headed for the door.

“Please. And wear a coat.”

He laughed. “Yes’m.”

When he returned, he put the basket down on the kitchen floor, but then he went back. She was grateful, and then a little guilty. The kitchen was nice and warm, but it was the only room in the house with a fire.

When she could leave the food to simmer, she set the kitchen table. She used the good plates and the real silver since Sam’s dinnerware did not run to two of anything. When everything was ready, she went to find him.