Chapter 9: The Weight of the Mail

(Late May 1865, Fort Columbus)

It had been near three weeks since Emma’s letter reached me.

The days kept passing, each the same shade of gray. The guards had eased off the worst of the questioning once they understood we knew nothing more about rails and depots that weren’t already in Yankee hands. Tiny’s bruises yellowed, then faded. My own hurts scabbed over, but the one inside stayed open and raw.

Then one afternoon the same guard who’d brought Emma’s letter came back.

He didn’t bark this time. Just slid a second letter through the bars and walked away like he was ashamed of what he carried.

The handwriting was George’s—careful, slanted, the way Aunt Ruth had taught him when we were boys.

I waited until the corridor was quiet. Tiny lay on his bunk with his arm over his eyes, giving me the silence he knew I needed.

Virgil,

I have written this a dozen times and burned every page. Words feel too small for what I have to say, but I will try.

You know what happened in North Carolina. You know whose hand held the pistol. I see Samuel’s face every night when I close my eyes, and I hear his voice telling me the cane can’t be raised again once it’s cut. I have carried that with me like a bullet I can’t dig out.

We heard in the prison yard—guards shouting it loud enough for every Reb to hear—that Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Johnston will follow any day now. I was in Richmond when the city fell. I watched the fires from Capitol Square while our people sang “Dixie” in the streets with the flames lighting their faces. I thought of you and Samuel singing it on the porch when we were children, and I stood there in a blue uniform and cried like a fool.

The Confederacy is ash and memory. I tell myself that means the killing can stop, but it does not bring Samuel back, and it does not wash the blood from my hands.

I have used every favor owed me—some I did not even know I had—to see that you and Private Tanner are paroled before June is out. You will be free soon. When you are, come find me if you can ever bear to look at me again. Or stay away forever. I will understand either one.

I loved him too, Virgil. He was my little cousin who used to follow me around asking a thousand questions about Boston and snow. I see that boy every time I see your face.

Forgive me if you can.

If you cannot, I will carry that as well.

Your kinsman still, though I have no right to the name,

George

At the bottom he had drawn a small, careful sketch: a rough wooden cross in red-clay dirt, the name S. Kane carved deep.

I sat a long time with the letter in my lap. Anger came first—hot, clean, familiar. Then sorrow rolled over it like a flood and put the fire out. What was left was something quieter, something that hurt worse.

I thought of Samuel’s last words to George: You can’t raise the cane back up when it’s in the field.

He’d meant it for both of us.

Tiny spoke from his bunk without opening his eyes.

“Your cousin again?”

I nodded, though he couldn’t see it.

“He’s getting us out.”

Tiny let out a long breath. “Then I reckon the man ain’t all bad.”

“No,” I said. “He ain’t.”

That night I took out the pencil stub again. This time the words came easier, though they were few.

George,

I don’t know yet what I’ll do when these gates open.

But I know Samuel forgave you. He said it with his last breath.

I’m trying to be half the man he was.

Virgil

Next morning I pressed the folded paper into the guard’s hand along with the single coin he’d once slipped me for tobacco I never smoked, and I asked him quiet to see it sent. I didn’t know if it would reach George. Didn’t matter. I had said the only thing that needed saying.

Outside our high window the gulls wheeled and cried over the harbor, sounding almost like children laughing.

For the first time in three weeks, I let myself believe I might live long enough to hear Tennessee birds again.