Legacy Of The Horses...Spring 1865

By Patricia McGrane

Legacy Of The Horses...Spring 1865 is the sequel to the earlier novel Because Of The Horses. It continues the story of three rural East Tennessee families-the Marshes, the Pattons and the Johnsons. Their saga takes place against the backdrop of a still cruelly divided nation exhausted from years of Civil War upheaval. By this time, the Confeder

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patricia W. McGrane
• Release date: Jul 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9780999109434

Patricia McGrane

Patricia McGrane grew up in Johnson City and Nashville, Tennessee and graduated from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University. After completing a career as a professional fundraiser, corporate writer and trainer, magazine writer and editor, and English teacher, she began the next chapter of her life as a fiction writer. After living in Riverside, Connecticut, for thirty-four years and raising their family there, she and her husband recently moved to Melbourne Beach, Florida. Because Of The Horses is her first novel. She is currently researching and writing her next book which continues the story of the Marsh family.

Book preview

Part One

Passages

Even when you think you have your life mapped out, things happen that shape your destiny in ways you never have imagined.

…Deepak Chopra

1

Home—the place he thought he would never see again. As the man limped up the Jonesborough Road, the sweet East Tennessee air filled his nose and energized his weakened lungs. The Smoky Mountains with their snow covered peaks rose up in front of him forming a majestic wall. His trek across the state had been long, but uneventful. He had stuck to the woods and fields as much as possible, killing only what he needed, and remaining mostly unnoticed. To his surprise, he had seen only Union troops since crossing out of Middle Tennessee. It seemed the Confederate army had abandoned this part of the state after being defeated at the Battle of Knoxville and at both the Battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga.

A few farm wagons and horses with riders had passed him, but no one recognized him with his long, matted, gray hair and tattered cap pulled down over his eyes. A full bushy gray beard flecked with red covered most of his face, reaching up to meet the cap. Besides, why would they know him now anyway? He barely knew himself. Time and misery had taken its full toll. Hell, everyone thought he was dead and buried in Vicksburg, and maybe he mostly still was. If he had just laid there and let it happen, maybe it would have been better that way. But no, he had to come back, see what he had missed. He longed for the embrace of his parents and the soft nuzzles of the horses. He needed to run his hands over the home he’d left behind and dig his fingers into the soft green pastures and fields.

When he reached the drive up to the house, he stopped and stood completely still, taking in the surroundings. Filled with rotting boards and boulders covered in thick vines and weeds, the drive was clearly impassable, except by foot or on hands and knees. Disoriented and confused, he looked up and down the road to get his bearings and make sure he was in the right place. His parents would have never allowed such a state of disrepair. Maybe they had moved into town because of the War, but he couldn’t imagine them giving up the farm and the horses or abandoning their abolitionist work.

Stumbling and crawling up the jagged drive, he stopped near the top to catch his breath. From here, he could glimpse the tops of the chimneys and the outline of the roof in the early spring treetops. Even though he was sweating heavily, his body was gripped by shivering, and dizziness clouded his vision. The old familiar sour taste of fear filled his throat. Maybe he should leave.

Pull yourself together. You’re home now, he muttered to himself, but when he got close to the house, he saw that only a shell remained standing. Gaping holes had replaced all the windows and doors. Like giant black eyes, they stared back at him. All the porch railings and most of the floor boards had been removed, allowing a thick apron of weeds to encase the front and sides of the house as far around as he could see.

Steadying himself, he climbed onto one of the porch floor beams and by putting one foot in front of the other, he inched toward the front door opening. Entering the eerie remains of his childhood, he cast his eyes all around, searching for anything familiar, but there was no shred of his family or the life they had shared until he reached the kitchen. Running his fingers along the doorway molding, he found his initials HJ and his brother’s JJ on each side of the door and the notches measuring their height over the years. Guess they couldn’t take that, he whispered. The only other items left in the kitchen were the sink pump, now covered in orange rust and the big wood stove. He smiled thinking how his mother had been so proud to have these two new indoor inventions out here in the country.

Thick spider webs shrouded the stairs to the second floor. Again he had to climb over missing steps and jump onto the floor at the top. Long webs hung from the ceiling and clung to his hair and clothes. His search of the upstairs revealed only vacant rooms, water damaged, buckled flooring, and piles of animal droppings. The gaping window holes left him feeling so dizzy and disoriented, he had to sit down to make his head stop spinning. The questions kept twisting through his brain. Where were they? What happened here?

When he felt steadier, he crept back downstairs and decided to check the basement. His mother always kept an assortment of preserved vegetables and fruit. If he could just eat something, he hoped the dizziness might go away. In the little housekeeper’s room off the kitchen, he found the entrance to the cellar-a simple opening in the floor that had once been covered by a trap door. That door had been ripped away, leaving the stairs exposed. He lit a match and held it high as he slowly climbed down into the darkness. At the bottom, he tripped on a broken step and fell to his knees on the dirt floor. Striking another match, he found an old lantern under the stairs and lit the candle stub inside.

Lying on his back on the cool earthen floor, he took in the basement of his youth where he and his brother played hide and seek among the bags of flour and barrels of vegetables and fruit. Now as far as he could see in the dim light, the cellar had been stripped of all the work tables and the tall shelves of preserves. He braced himself against one of the side walls and felt his way along toward the daylight shining in from the other side of the cellar. When his feet became tangled in a pile of old sacks, he threw his hand hard against the wall and his fingers touched a small wooden door with a thick ring in the wall. My God it’s the tunnel! he cried, his voice sounding scratchy and foreign. How did they miss this?

He had to tug on the ring with all his strength several times until the small door finally gave way and swung open. Striking one of his last matches, he leaned inside for a look. The descending ladder was missing, but the tunnel below appeared intact as far as he could see.

His parents’ home had been one of the few safe houses that had been part of the Underground Railroad in that part of East Tennessee. The stale earthy smell jolted him back to the days when he and his brother had helped their parents build out the tunnel. Later they shepherded freed and runaway slaves into the dark passageway to hopefully escape to the North. The tunnel took them into the woods behind the back garden. Once there, they were on their own until they reached the next safe house leading north. They never knew how many of these desperate travelers actually made it to safety. Their family’s only satisfaction was in knowing they had tried to help them when all else seemed lost.

He pushed the door back into place and moved toward the outside hatch door to the cellar. Daylight shone brightly through the opening where the door had once been. Like all the other doors in the house, this one was missing too. He climbed the stone steps and breathed in the crisp mountain air. Gazing about he saw that the chicken coop was still standing, as well as the doorless outhouse. All that was left of the big horseshoe barn were a few posts and the caved in roof. The paddock had been dismantled completely, leaving only a dim outline of where the big ring had been. The water pump beside the paddock was still there, but so heavily encrusted with rust, he couldn’t move it with his bare hands.

He sat down by the pump, closed his eyes and pictured the big white farmhouse shining in the grove of red maples, the elegant furnishings and polished wood floors, the kitchen brimming with freshly baked bread and always extra plates of food for the travelers. And his parents ever present, quietly helping the strangers slip away. The barn had been one of the biggest in Washington County, bustling with an array of magnificent horses—Chestnuts, Morgans, Tennessee Walkers, and American Saddlebreds. These memories had sustained him after he was drafted into the Confederate army. The idea that he would come home again had kept him alive in that Hell hole of dead bodies in Vicksburg, and later after he clawed his way out and ran away.

2

The Arabian mare had gone down last evening around sunset. Foam covered her mouth as she struggled to breathe. In the dim light, Rice Marsh, the owner of the farm, knelt beside her on the straw floor of her stall. He stroked her swollen belly, afraid that if the foal didn’t come soon, he would lose both prized horses. Rice and Morgan, a freed slave and one of his most trusted farmhands, had been with her all night.

Born with a withered right arm and a little stub of a hand, Rice, now in his mid-twenties, carefully pushed himself up against the stall and brushed away the straw. He mopped his face with a handkerchief and ran his fingers through his curly black hair. I’m going down to the house to check on Lelia. I’ll be back before she foals.

Morgan shook his head. I be right here, Mr. Rice. She still not be close to comin.

Outside the barn, Rice lit one of his cigars and walked down the sloping drive to the house. The orange glow from the rising spring sun was just sliding over the hills. In the distance the Smokies provided a dark blue backdrop for the show. In a few more minutes, brilliant sunbeams would be flashing through the trees and dancing on the house. Even though the Civil War raged on in different parts of the country, the Limestone farm and most of East Tennessee had grown quiet and peaceful compared to previous years when both armies occupied the area. After the Union secured Knoxville and the Confederates retreated, life in this part of the state had become quieter most of the time.

Early morning always made Rice think of his parents, Eli and Harriet. His mother, neatly dressed with her long golden gray hair done up in a low bun, would already be doing the baking for the day and making breakfast at the same time. And his father in a crisp clean shirt, black jacket, string tie and wide brimmed black hat would have already been to the barn to help turn the horses out. Mostdays, he would then have ridden away to minister to one of his small Presbyterian congregations in the Limestone or Jonesborough area.

Even though Eli and Harriet had been dead for almost two years, Rice often thought he saw them moving about the house or barn or even in the Bee, their general store across the road. Sometimes the sweet tobacco smell from Eli’s pipe hung heavy over the front porch or drifted out of his old study. Just the day before, he had glimpsed his father riding his favorite horse Gray through the pastures and up the far ridge to look at the lush hidden valley on the other side.

Gray and Eli had a deep spiritual relationship. They spoke their own horse to man language of love and respect. After Eli’s sudden death, Gray stopped eating and drinking water. Eventually, he lay down in his stall and refused to get up. In a matter of a few days, he was gone to roam forever with Eli and Harriet.

As he neared the farmhouse, Rice could see their housekeeperNerva, another rescued former slave, and his little boy Thomas sitting on the steps of the big wide,