Chapter 1: The Last Summer Before

The first time Cousin George came down from Boston was the summer of 1858, when I was fourteen years old and Samuel thirteen and still missin' two front teeth. After that, every June like clockwork, that northbound train would whistle into Danville station and out would step our Boston dandy—shoes shined bright enough to see your reflection, straw hat tilted just so, trousers pressed with a crease sharp enough to slice Sunday ham—ready to spend a whole month turnin' our quiet farm life upside down and inside out.

By the summer of 1861 we'd done it four years runnin', and I reckon every soul on the place figured it would go on forever, same as the corn growin' and the sun risin'. Shows how much any of us knew about the way the world can crack clean in two.

George was Ma's sister Martha's boy—first cousin on the Harris side—and Lord have mercy, when that train slowed and the conductor hollered "Danville!" and George stepped down onto the platform, Samuel and me near bust a gut laughin' every single time. There he'd stand, blinkin' in the Tennessee sun like a mole come aboveground, valise in one hand, a box of Boston chocolates in the other, lookin' for all the world like a city peacock dropped straight into a henhouse full of plain brown chickens.

Pa would shake his head slow, spit a stream of tobacco juice into the dust, and mutter somethin' low about Yankees and foolishness and city boys who wouldn't know a plow handle from a parasol. Ma, though—she lit up like Christmas mornin', eyes sparklin' behind the tears she always swore was just dust, and hugged George so hard his stiff collar popped loose and his hat went crooked. Samuel, bein' sixteen that last summer and full of pure hero worship for this exotic creature from the North, trailed after him like a faithful hound pup, beggin' to carry the fancy leather valise or the parcel tied with real string instead of binder twine.

Me, I was seventeen and thought I knew everything worth knowin' about the world and a fair piece besides. Took one look at George's soft, pink, unblistered hands and declared him about as useful as teats on a boar hog. Took him less than a week to prove me dead wrong.

First full day, I dragged him fishin' down at the creek, figurin' I'd show this city boy how we did things proper in Tennessee. Handed him a cane pole I'd cut myself, a rusty Maxwell House coffee can full of nightcrawlers me and Samuel had dug at dawn, and my smuggest grin. Ten minutes later George was squealin' higher than a stuck pig because a big ol' crawdad had latched onto his big toe like it meant to take it home for supper. Samuel laughed so hard he fell clean into the water, splashin' like a hound after a stick, and I laughed harder watchin' George hop around on one foot in them shiny shoes, hollerin' in that clipped Boston accent that sounded like he had a mouthful of marbles, "Good heavens, Virgil! The wildlife here is positively insurrectionary!"

I about died laughin' at "insurrectionary." Still don't know to this day if he meant it as a joke or if that was just how Boston boys talked when somethin' pinched 'em.

We laid there on the creek bank half the afternoon after that, shirts off, feet danglin' in the cool water, too wore out from laughin' to move. Sun speckled down through the sycamores and painted gold patches on Samuel's freckled back. George just stared up at the sky like he'd never seen it before—blue so deep it hurt to look at.

"Y'all got a different sky down here," he said finally, voice soft with wonder.

Samuel giggled, kickin' water. "Sky's the same everywhere, silly."

"No sir," George answered, serious as Sunday. "Up north it's hemmed in by buildings and factory smoke and church steeples. Here it just rolls on forever, like God left the gate open and forgot to close it."

I didn't say nothin', just felt the truth of it settle in my chest like a hand squeezin' gentle. That was the first time I ever thought maybe leavin' Tennessee would feel like leavin' part of my own skin behind.

That was how every June went, year after year. George would show up smellin' of train smoke and city soap and peppermint sticks, and within a day the three of us were inseparable—runnin' wild from dawn till the whippoorwills started callin', gettin' into just enough trouble to keep life interestin' but not quite enough for Pa to reach for the razor strop. We built forts in the hayloft that could withstand Indian attacks, swam naked in the creek when Ma wasn't lookin', and once even tried smokin' rabbit tobacco rolled in newspaper behind the barn till Samuel turned green as a gourd and puked for a solid hour straight. George swore us to secrecy on that one, said his Boston aunts would faint dead away if they knew their precious nephew had turned into a tobacco fiend. We swore on a stack of Bibles and a jar of lightning bugs, and we kept that secret till the day we died.

Those summers felt golden and endless, like the sun had decided to stay parked right over our farm forever and never move on.

Evenings on the porch were the best part of George's visits. After chores were done and the cows milked and the chickens shut up safe from foxes, when the fireflies started their twilight dancin' and the air hung heavy with honeysuckle and Pa's pipe tobacco driftin' lazy, George would spin tales of Boston that made my jaw hang loose as an old barn door.

Streets paved smooth as a billiard table, he'd say. Gas lamps that came on by themselves when the sun went down. Ships with masts taller than our church steeple, sails like clouds captured and tamed. And the library—Lord, the library—this part always got me—a whole building bigger than the Danville courthouse, stuffed floor to ceiling with nothin' but books. Thousands of 'em. Tens of thousands. More books than a man could read in ten lifetimes.

Samuel's eyes would get round as supper plates. "You mean folks can just walk right in and read any book they want? For free?"

George would laugh, pushin' his spectacles up his nose. "Well, you have to be quiet as church mice, or the librarians will shush you clear into next Sunday. Fearsome creatures, librarians. Worse than any bear you've got in these woods."

I tried to act like it was no big thing, but truth is I felt a tug in my chest every time he talked about that library. Aunt Frances had already planted the love of words in me down in Savannah, but George made it sound like there was a whole world of 'em waitin' just past the mountains—stories and poems and ideas bigger than tobacco crops and Sunday sermons and the same hills we'd always known.

'Course, we had to return the favor and educate him proper in the ways of Tennessee. Took him out to the back forty and taught him how to swing a scythe without cuttin' his own fool leg off. Made him milk old Bessie, and he squealed worse than he had with the crawdad when she switched him hard across the backside with her tail. Samuel and I even snuck him out one midnight to go coon huntin' with the Crawley boys, dogs bayin' up a storm. George spent half the night trippin' over roots in the dark and whisperin' in that Boston voice, "Are you certain these creatures are worth the considerable risk to life and limb?"

But the real trouble—the kind that changes everything and don't ever let you go back—started when talk turned to politics.

It was late June of that last summer, heat so thick and heavy you could wring it out like a dishrag and mop the porch with it. We was lyin' out under the stars on account of it bein' too hot to sleep inside, even with all the windows flung wide and the doors standin' open. Samuel had already dropped off, snorin' soft like a little steam engine, but George and I were still awake, watchin' the Milky Way sprawl across that black velvet sky like God had spilled a sack of diamonds.

George rolled onto his elbow and asked real quiet, like he was afraid of the answer, "Virgil... how come y'all still keep slaves down here? I mean... how's that sit right with folks who go to church same as we do?"

The question hit me square as a slap across the face, even though I'd known it was comin' someday.

"We don't," I said, sharper than I meant to. "Not on our place, anyway. Pa won't have it—says no man ought to own another, says it's a sin against God and nature both."

George nodded slow, thoughtful, moonlight catchin' on his spectacles. "That's good. Real good. Your pa's a righteous man, Virgil. But... most folks around here do. And the newspapers up north, they say the whole war everybody's talkin' about is gonna be about that one thing—slavery and whether it spreads west."

I sat up, heart poundin' harder than it should. "Ain't just about that, though. It's about Washington politicians who never set foot in Tennessee decidin' what's best for us. It's about tariffs that choke our farmers and taxes that bleed us dry. It's about states' rights and whether we got any say in our own affairs anymore."

George didn't argue like some fire-breathin' abolitionist preacher. He just sounded sad, world-weary for someone only eighteen. "I reckon both sides got their reasons, and both sides think they're in the right. But Virgil... if it does come to fightin', whose side you gonna choose?"

I didn't answer right away. Couldn't. The crickets filled the quiet between us, and somewhere out past the barn an owl called low and mournful. Finally I said, "The side that leaves my family alone. The side that lets us live our lives without interference."

He was quiet a long spell, then reached over and squeezed my shoulder, fingers tight. "I hope it never comes to choosin', cousin. I truly do. But if it does..." He trailed off, couldn't finish.

"If it does, what?" I pressed.

"If it does, I hope we both remember we're family first. Before we're Yankee or Rebel, North or South. We're blood, Virgil."

"Blood don't choose sides," I said, echoin' what Ma would say later when the choice got forced on us all.

"Sometimes it has to," George whispered into the dark. "And that's the tragedy of it."

Neither of us spoke after that. Just lay there listenin' to the night breathe—crickets, a hoot owl, the far-off low of a cow wantin' her calf. I could hear Samuel's little snores beside me and feel the hard ground under my shoulder blades, and I remember thinkin' this was the most perfect moment I'd ever live, and I hadn't even known it till it started slippin' away.

George's last night with us, Ma made a feast fit for the Second Comin'—fried chicken crispy as autumn leaves, biscuits swimmin' in sausage gravy, fresh corn cut off the cob, green beans cooked with fatback till they melted on your tongue, and her famous peach cobbler that could make even a circuit preacher forget his sermon.

After supper the grown-ups argued in low, tense voices in the parlor while us young'uns pretended to sleep on pallets out on the porch. But I heard every word through the open window.

Pa's voice, tight and angry: "Martha's boy is welcome here any time, Sarah, blood's blood. But I won't have him fillin' Virgil's head with Yankee notions and abolitionist poison."

Ma's reply came soft but firm as iron: "He ain't fillin' nobody's head with nothin', Otis. He's just tellin' his truth same as you tell yours. And blood don't choose sides—I won't have it, not in this house."

"Blood's gonna have to choose real soon," Pa said quiet, and that scared me worse than the yellin' would've. "And when it does, we'll see who stands where."

Later, when the house had finally gone quiet and the arguments died down to uneasy silence, George slipped out onto the porch and sat down beside me in the dark. Moon was full and fat, silverin' the fields till they looked almost peaceful.

He pulled somethin' from his coat pocket—a little leather-bound book, pages edged in gold.

"For you," he whispered, pressin' it into my hands. "Longfellow's poems. So you remember there's more than one way to be brave. And so maybe... maybe you'll think of me sometimes, and remember we were friends before we were anythin' else."

I took it, throat so tight I could barely swallow. The leather was soft and warm from bein' next to his heart. "You come back next summer, hear? Promise me, George."

He tried to smile, but his eyes were wet and shinin' in the moonlight. "If the trains are still runnin', cousin. If the world ain't gone completely mad by then. If..." He couldn't finish. Just pulled me into a quick, fierce hug and then disappeared back into the house before I could say anythin' more.

The next mornin', early enough that dew still hung heavy on the grass, he boarded the northbound train with his trunk and his city clothes and his broken promises. Samuel and me stood on the platform wavin' till the train rounded the far bend and even the smoke was gone. Samuel kept his arm up long after, wavin' at nothin', tears streamin' down his cheeks.

"He's comin' back, ain't he, Virgil?" he asked, voice small and scared. "Next summer, he'll come back, right?"

I wanted to say yes. Wanted to believe it myself. But I just pulled him close and said nothin', because I knew—somewhere deep in my bones—that the world George was ridin' back to and the world we were standin' in were already different countries, already dividin' into enemy camps.

I never saw George in peacetime again until many years after the war.

Not until years later, after everythin' had burned and bled and broken, did our paths cross once more. And by then we were different men entirely, scarred and haunted and carryin' ghosts neither of us could shake.

But that was the summer the world cracked open like a rotten egg. The summer laughter still rang clear in our house, but underneath it you could hear the low, steady drumbeat of what was comin'. Like thunder rollin' slow and mean across distant hills, gettin' closer every single day.

And me, seventeen years old with a book of poems tucked in my shirt and a fire kindlin' in my chest, I didn't know yet that the choice George asked about was gonna cost me everything I loved most in this world.

But that's a story for the next chapter.