Chapter 39

During the next six months, Nathan decided that, rather than go back to Catfish Hollow, he would just mail money. This time he only sent two hundred dollars to each family, and opened a pass book account at a local bank for each of the three remaining members of the group. Each account got three hundred and seventy-one dollars deposited in it, the share from the sale of the fifty coins they’d brought back. In the letters he sent with the money, he told each of his friends what their pass book account was, and the name of the bank it was at. He also told them he wasn’t going to convert any more coins unless someone got in a bind and had to have the money quickly. The money was safe where it was, and he didn’t want to appear in Catfish Hollow again until it was time to go get Hilda Mae.

Bernadette loved being a mother, though it was hard at first. She’d never been around babies, except for her nephew, who acted completely different from her own daughter. Whenever Bernadette was around her, little Juliet hated to go to sleep, and got cranky quite often because of it. She wanted to play, and jerk excitedly and sing to her mother. But, whenever Curtis Lee picked Juliet up, the girl melted into relaxation and cooed at her father before closing her eyes and going to sleep. It was almost like magic. He could put her down for a nap any time he chose.

Bernadette’s fears that she would respond to the baby nursing, like she responded to Curtis Lee nursing, proved to be unfounded, though, when she could mount him again, she invariably dribbled breast milk all over his chest and face while she rode him to happy orgasms. He got very good at anticipating the onset of her orgasm, and sucked at her nipples to make it even better.

During the shooting contest between Moses and the department armorer, the man told him about the records he had seen at the Truman Library that referenced the sale of seven Whitworth rifles to a suspected Southern sympathizer in 1864. On a Saturday shortly after, Moses and Bernadette, posing as two students from a local university, sat down with ten boxes of records, marked “late war” in the basement of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library. The curator explained that, when records were being transferred from the White House to the Library, it had been assumed that these boxes pertained to late WW II. It was only after they had been in Kansas City for ten years, that a volunteer opened the boxes and found out they were Civil War records instead.

Then, the Federal bureaucracy being what it is, it had been so difficult to arrange to send them back, that the Truman Library had simply kept them and made them available for scholarly review. It was in these records that the armorer had found a report that seven rifles had been sold to Benjamin Stubbs. Now, Moses and Bernadette were trying to find anything else that pertained to Benjamin Stubbs, or the rifles they had found.

On the third day of sifting through documents that included provisions lists, hostler’s reports and an amazing amount of other minutia that made the day-to-day operations in war time possible, the name Stubbs finally came up again. It was in a copy of a letter from the Governor of Missouri, dated the 4th of March, 1865, thanking one Ralph Turner for his patriotic assistance in bringing about the capture and successful prosecution of “the traitor, Stubbs”. Other than that, there was nothing.

The search moved to judicial files. Based on the letter from the Governor, the search was centered in Jefferson City. It took weeks just to get permission to get access to those, and it was finally accomplished only with the assistance of the curator of the Truman Presidential Library, who connected the request for access to the letter that had been found. Then three more weeks went by while State employees determined that the records in question had been forwarded to the State Historical Society in 1934. That group was only too happy to comply with a request from the Truman Library and dug through musty wooden crates in a sub-basement to locate records from a hundred years past.

The record of trial, such as it was, turned out to be ten pages of handwritten notes, tied with string that fell apart when the knot was pulled at. The indictment accused Benjamin A. Stubbs, a merchant residing in Fairview, Missouri, of rendering aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States Of America. There were two witnesses for the prosecution. One was a Union officer who testified that information had been found that rifles had been sold to Stubbs by a British arms merchant. The other was a witness identified only as Ralph E. Turner, and one piece of evidence. That evidence was a much folded letter, dated February 16th, 1865, that read as follows:

Dear Sir,

In view of the dismal course of our cause of late, I have procured seven weapons of the finest quality. Their intended use is to bring about the demise of the Northern leadership, and turn the course of this glorious rebellion. This is the same rifle that was used to execute General Sedgwick, on the ninth of May, 1864 at the Spotsylvania Courthouse, where he was taken from twelve hundred yards and struck in the head.

I propose that sharpshooters of the highest caliber be selected, to cross into the North under cover of false credentials, and situate themselves such that, on a day to be chosen, they may be in a position to execute the misguided President of the Northern States, as well as his top five commanders, wherever they may be on that day.

I have also amassed a sum of gold to bolster the spirit of the men chosen for this mission. They will be heavily sought after when their mission is complete, and must be assured that both they, and their families will be well taken care of. Both the weapons and the gold are in the hands of a trusted man, who has pledged to make them available on short notice when needed.

I await with great anticipation your response to this correspondence.

I will not sign this letter, nor should you in your response, as there is the possibility that, in crossing lines, they may be taken and read by those unfriendly to us.

The transcript of the trial, only two pages long, indicated that Turner had identified Stubbs as the author of the letter. No mention was made as to how the letter had come into the possession of the government, or why Turner was thought to know who had written it. The defense accorded to Stubbs was short. He stated that he knew of no rifles, or gold, and was the victim of some nefarious plot constructed by intolerant business competitors. He pointed out that no assanations had taken place, and no rifles had been presented as evidence against him.

The sentence of the judge took only a fraction of one page, and was an order to take the prisoner outside the courthouse and execute him summarily by firing squad.

With certified copies of the bill of sale, from “Bond, Freed & Co”, found in the Truman Library Archives, and the court documents, the seven Whitworth rifles and five telescopic sights found by the children were put up for auction. A private collector purchased everything for $47,500.00 dollars. The seller’s name was kept confidential by the auction company.

The news of this completely unexpected increase in wealth sent shock waves through the group of friends. It was hard to believe that the rifles had been worth far more than the glittering gold each of them had held in their hands. Quite suddenly, though no one outside the group knew it, Johnnie Sue, Luthor and Jesse, with their combined assets of $35,500, were arguably, as a team, among the wealthiest of the population of Catfish Hollow.

And, in a city where a very nice home could be purchased for below fifteen thousand dollars, a whole new range of options suddenly became available to Nathan, Curtis Lee, and their wives.

Having the resources to buy a home, and finding someone who will sell a home to a mixed race couple in 1965 in Kansas City, were two different things. There were the beginnings of exclusive suburbs being developed in Johnson County, on the Kansas side of the city, but those developments were closed to all but the wealthiest blacks. “Suburban flight” was not yet a named concept, in those days, but it was happening. Oddly, the greatest population of blacks was on the Missouri side, even though segregation was more entrenched in that State. It was still illegal for mixed marriages there, though, so Missouri was not an option for either couple. Had they waited four more years, that law would be stuck down by the same court that had so electrified the country in 1954, though it had a few different members.

As a result, the easier course of action was to purchase rural property, and have a home built. Plans were complicated by the need to accommodate both existing families, and the expansions to them that were anticipated - both Flossie and Bernadette wanted more children - as well as the anticipated arrival of at least two more families. Moses still intended to marry Hilda Mae, and letters exchanged between Bernadette and Johnnie Sue made it clear she still couldn’t make up her mind which of her blood brothers she would marry, and intended to bring them both North.

That meant either a very large house, or a series of smaller ones. And, while they had the resources to build whatever they wanted, there were still building codes and laws to deal with, as they applied to “developments”. The solution, arrived at over a period of six months, was to buy a farm, which would allow them much greater flexibility in terms of erecting “buildings”. It was named “Whitworth Farms”, in honor of the rifle that financed it.

The spring of 1964 was tumultuous in Catfish Hollow. Hilda Mae and Johnnie Sue were both scheduled to graduate from “High School”. Marian’s chat with Wilamina Thorpe, Johnnie Sue’s mother, about her suspicions that Johnnie Sue might be engaging in “exploratory sexual activity”, was taken to heart, primarily because Wilamina knew that she, herself, was extremely hot-blooded, and had no trouble believing that her Tomboy daughter, who had blossomed into a beautiful young woman, was hot blooded as well. Johnnie Sue’s lifelong friendship with Luthor Cripps had been assumed to lead to such things eventually, but that assumption was challenged by the fact that the Hawthorn boy hung around with them all the time. No one anticipated that Johnnie Sue would be so hot-blooded as to take on two boys, one of them colored. Not a woman to take chances, though, Wilamina chose to put her daughter on birth control pills.

They worked. In fact, they worked remarkably well, considering that Johnnie Sue and her two men were not kept apart, like the Wilson girls had been kept apart from the men who plundered their sex. Johnnie Sue, in fact, was probably getting more dick than any other three women in town combined. She was literally soaked in semen, as often as she could arrange it, both inside, and out. There were dark stains on the boards of the tree house platforms that would take years to bleach out ... stains created by sperm dripping out from between Johnnie Sue’s gleefully spread legs.

Now, a month before graduation, as Johnnie Sue lay with her blood brothers, still more spunk filling her pussy, she was mildly unhappy. She was unhappy because she wanted to go North, and get into college there. She had the resources to do that now, in a bank account in her name. At the same time, she was leaving her fountaining pricks, and would not have access to Luthor’s for a whole year. Jesse wouldn’t be able to come North for two years, and she didn’t know how she was going to be able to stand it.

Her solution was remarkably simple, and fit entirely within the complex social bonds that the blood brothers had formed, and which were so completely different than most other social bonds in the rest of the world. She sat up, her now full and soft breasts jiggling.

“We have a problem,” she said.

Both boys, sated for the moment, lay nakedly and looked at her.

“I’m leaving in a month, and you two are staying here,” she said.

She got sad looks in return.

“Luthor will be able to come North in a year, and we can have a baby then,” she said. “But that won’t be fair to Jesse, because he can’t come for a whole ‘nother year.”

The boys looked at each other, interest in their eyes. Up to now, all the talk had been about how not to have babies. The pill had been a huge emotional release for all of them.

“We can’t really do much about that,” pointed out Luthor, whose prick was reviving at the thought of making a baby with Johnnie Sue, even if it was a whole year away.

“Yes, we can,” said Johnnie Sue, stretching. “Jesse can get me pregnant before I leave.”

“That’s goofy,” said Luthor. “You’ll have the baby all alone.”

“No I won’t. Bernie and Hildy and Miss Flossie will be there,” she said.

It was that easy. Luthor didn’t complain that he didn’t get to make the first baby. Jesse accepted that his blood brother wanted to have his baby. Johnnie Sue stopped taking her pills, and, over the next month, she let Jesse spurt inside of her, while Luthor took care of giving her the sperm baths she loves so much on the outside.

At home, there was a little more argument about Johnnie Sue’s plans.

“I’m going to college,” she announced one night.

The argument for her to stay was more mechanical than emotional. Both her parents knew it was in her best interest to get out of Catfish Hollow. Her promise to help them with expenses took the bite out of losing a working hand. All the parents now knew that something had been found, and sold, that put their children in much better circumstances than they’d ever hoped for. And hope goes a long way toward a parent letting go of a child when the time comes.