Moonlight through the Pines ((1788) (Jail time in Atlanta))

Part Four


You know how it is there early in the morning in Atlanta, with the bums in jail still asleep against the walls of the jail cell; before even the jailers are awake to eat their breakfast, before the wagons come by with goods, go across the square, and there be still the beggars just coming awake in the square, looking for their next drink, or getting a drink out of the nearby fountain. But if you are inside the jailhouse, in one of the side cells, you stand up, there waiting for you in the not so far distance, is the moonlight through the pines. The longer you look towards it, the more it seems to crawl over to you.
“Well,” said Shep Hightower to his three other jail mates, “I sure can see it,” he told them. “But yesterday morning, I couldn’t, I wonder why?”
“It isn’t that you couldn’t” said Rum Bum Raphael “you couldn’t have seen it. That’s all that’s too it.”
The other two came over to the bared in windows in the cell and they stood there looking out into the far-off pines. “There nice looking trees but I can’t see the moon,” one of the two said. “I don’t mean to make you two feel bad… (referring to Shep and Raphael), he told them, “I tell you true I can’t see it!”
“Afterwards, when you’re feeling better, things will change, and then you’ll see it,” said Rum Bum Raphael.
“I know it,” he replied, “I’m all for it now. But later on I’ll be…” and he went silent.
“He makes his living with the boats,” said Raphael. Yes said Pig’s-eye Pet, from the upper Mississippi, “if I lose all this time here in jail, I’ll lose my living, I hope I can get out in ten-days, drunken and disorderly conduct, that’s why they put me in here, how about you?” he asked Shep.
“I think the fellows who put me in here,” said Shep, “needed me to argue with them so they could put me in here, because the one kept on…I can’t even pay my way out.”
“All this will not last, you know,” said Pigs-eye Pet, “maybe I’ll go back up towards Pig’s eye, that area on the Mississippi, by what they call Minnsota, and build a bar; I’m getting too old for this.”
“Listen,” said Shep. “I don’t give a hoot, who’s president of this country, or mayor of this city, I haven’t done anyone any harm, that can talk.”
“Well, you’re here for somthin’” said Pig’s-eye.
“Yes, I’m here because of someone with a long tongue,” said Shep, “I was accused of evading the draft, I wasn’t in the war!”
“Do you know what we do with them?” said Rum Bum Raphael.
“Don’t get tough with me,” Shep said. “You folks asked me. I didn’t offer it freely.”
“Shut up,” said Pig’s-eye Pet to Raphael, “you’re liquor is still in you talking.”
“So you wouldn’t,” said Raphael.
“It’s just like I told you,” answered Shep.
“But you didn’t tell us much; I don’t understand right off, I don’t mean to be nasty. I guess it’s a disappointment, too. You look like a fine man.”
Shep didn’t even answer him.
“Maybe he’s not so fine a man,” said the third man, with no name.
“What’s that? A threat?” said Shep.
“Listen,” said Pig’s-eye Pet, “Don’t everyone be so though so early in the morning. I’m sure Shep has done his share of fighting, he’s a broad man, he just didn’t fight in the war, and he’ll tell us why when the time comes.”
“So you’re sure I’ll do as you say,” said Shep.
“No,” said Pet, “and I don’t give a damn, but I may cut your throat when you’re sleeping for being a coward or draft dodger. I am angry now,” he said. “I’d like to kill you but you’re younger and tougher, so I’ll just wait!”
“Oh, hell,” I’ll tell you. “Don’t need to threaten so much.”
“Come on, Shep.” Raphael told him. The third unnamed inmate said, “I’m very sorry for what I said, I think we all are but we still got to know.”
The three of them stood in front of him, and watched and waited for him to speak. They were all older men, in their late forties or early fifties. They all wore bad clothes; none of them wore hates, and they looked like they had not a dime to their names. They talked plenty among themselves, knew each other, and they spoke the kind of English bums with no money spoke, drunks. Pet and Raphael looked like distant cousins. Pet being a little taller than Raphael, and the third inmate. All three slim, dirty thick hair. Shep figured none were as mean as they talked, but he was plenty nervous when Pet threatened him, and no one said a word.
Then they threw a Blackman into the cell with them. The one with no name cried out, “Get this nigger out of here, what the hell is the matter with you jailers,” and the two jailers were laughing fiercely, holding their stomachs. One of the three men stood behind the Blackman, the other two (not to include Shep), stood in front of him, blocking the sight of the jailers, then there was a smash, Pet had hit the Blackman in the face, while the other two started kicking him, and Pet plunged his head onto the wooden floor, nearly broke his neck. One of the jailers’ shot a bullet over their heads. “Nigger,” yelled the jailer, “get on over here,” and the jailer took him out of the cell immediately; said Shep, “Take me out of her also; I’ll bunk with the nigger! It’s safer!” And the three white men took offence to that.

“They calls me Isaiah, cuz I looks fur the hand of God in all I does,” the Blackman told Shep, while both sitting on the lower of the iron bunk beds, in the next cell, the Blackman trying to get his head and neck back up, it had been twisted and bruised pretty bad. “Here,” said the jailer, handing the Blackman a cut of rum, to settle his pain. And he stood up, walked over to the jail bars and grabbed the rum, and drank it, and Shep took a sip out of the same cup, right in front of the other three bums in the next cell, which infuriated those men more. The beating the three men gave the Blackman didn’t make them feel one iota bad about what they had done.
“You seem awfully brave about it all, over in that cell,” said Pet to Shep.
“I was watching how brave you were, one against three,” then the Blackman looked up, saw Pet, the Blackman was taller than all of them, pert near six-foot three. He looked in pretty bad shape.
“I’ll see you when you get out of jail,” said Pet.
“Don’t talk about it,” Shep said, “you don’t scare me, I’ve beaten better men than you, it makes me sick even thinking about what I’d do to you, should you want to find out what sort of day will it be, the day you face me.”
“Well,” said Pet, “we’ll see.”
“That’s up to you.”
“What sort of day do you think it will be?” asked Raphael.
“Just about like today, as you did to this nigger!” said Shep.
“All right, as soon as that day comes, we’ll both be looking for you.”
The man with no name simply said, “That’s fine, you folks just put it down against what you think you owe each other, I’m out of it.”
Said the jailer, “Have a bottle of beer, shut you guys up for a spell,” and he handed them a quart of beer through the jail bars.


When Shep Hightower served his time in jail, and was released—having told his wife, Emily about that situation, she was fearful they’d be after him.
“Don’t worry,” Shep said, “it was all big talk by drunks, rum business. Their lives are all drinking, no money, and big talkers; they have other business to attend to, just say your goodbyes to Atlanta, and don’t worry either about those boys.” And as they rode out of Atlanta that early Saturday morning, he showed his wife the moon’s glistening light through the pines, and noticed on the grass in the park area, Pet and Raphael, both sleeping off a previous night’s drunk.






The Ozark Ritt Bank

1788-1789

Part Two of Three


Shep Hightower went into the Ozark Bank (owned by the Ritt family) and sat down at a table. He and his wife Emily noticed the bank had new panes of glass in their windows, as if the war had at one time shot it up and was now fixed up. There were a few drunks on the wooden sidewalk outside, drunk, and a few drinking standing outside of the bar across the street, and some folks eating in a nearby restaurant.
An elder man was playing dominoes sitting at a table in the bank with a younger man; said the older man to Shep, “You must be Shep Hightower, I’m Albert Ritt and this is my son John, have you eaten yet I know you’ve been on a long journey, but I’ve been expecting you?”
We’ve had some boiled cabbage and beef stew, and black bean soup last night, even had a bottle of beer. My wife and I are both still plenty full. I’d like to get down to business. This is my wife Emily.”
And thus, Albert took a liking for them both immediately.
“How do you do,” said Emily.
“You will have some coffee?” he asked Emily.
“Thank you,” said Emily. “We are quite alone here?”
“Except for me and my son,” Mr. Ritt said. “You have land about seventeen miles outside of town, four-hundred acres of it.”
“Ah,” said Shep. “I had imagined it was something bigger.”
“It can be…!” said the elder Ritt, “we can triple that, when you pay for the first four-hundred!”
“On what terms?” asked Shep?
“I see,” said Albert, “would you mind leaving us?” he said to his son, although he looked as interested as ever and smiled at Shep and Emily as he left.
“He’s noisy,” said Albert. “He doesn’t understand much business yet, only nineteen.” He motioned for his lawyer and account to join them at the table.
“Oh, yes,” said Albert. “Now these are the circumstances that would—that have made me consider you for a non-collateral loan. I knew you father, and my father knew your father’s father, while in the tobacco business.”
“I’m broke,” said Shep.
“I see,” said Mr. Ritt. “But do you owe any money to anyone? Can you be libeled?”
“No,” said Shep.
“Quite so,” said Albert, “that in itself is something accommodating. I know that the good business folks in England trusted their fortune with your father and grandfather, and made well by doing so, I’ll trust you likewise. Your name is a good name, like gold.”
“I’d leave the next two years to you, land and all, plus $2000-dollars in cash.”
“Then what?” asked Shep.
“Of course you have to start paying back the loan, with interest and the cost of the land. Buy yourself some niggers to do the work, you can get them cheap now, fifty dollars a head, seventy-five next month, and ten-years from now they’ll be worth $800-dollars a head. You see it is quite simple, just don’t betray me. I expect you all paid up in five-years, land and all, plus twelve hundred dollars interest a year, and we’ll settle on a price for the land.”
“When would I get the money?” asked Shep.
“Five-hundred when you agree and sign this paper, and the other fifteen-hundred, when you start loading up your wagon with needed supplies, and buy those niggers I told you about. You can get them here, but they’ll cost you a little more or go on down to New Orleans, they got a market place for them. You don’t need the real fit ones; they cost you more, buy the weaker ones, and feed them.”

Shep and Emily went off with the five-hundred dollars, and they both smiled at Mr. Ritt. He hid his money in his sock, and in the morning, asked the store keeper, “Where you want us to start loading our supplies, “Alright,” said the storekeeper, “Mr. Ritt, said to let you charge up to $1500-dollars.”
Said Emily, as they were loading the wagon, “Shep, I think I’m pregnant, it feels like a boy. If it is, I’ll name him Charles, I like that name.” Shep immediately said, “No more lifting for you.”


A Rebirth of Shep’s Love

1789

Part Three of Three


After a while, after they settled in, but their first log cabin up, bought three slaves, started to plant their first crop, he seemed to be in a circle of life, a perfect geometrical circle, with no beginning or end, with the child on its way; hence, there appeared even a to be a new and more softer love he had for his wife, as if he’d catch the early morning sun hitting a raindrop on their bedroom window, as if it had come all the way from heaven just to look upon her. And the sound of her voice appeared to change for him, as if it was Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. And he carried a letter in his pocket as he was doing the planting, as if it had kept the scent of a thousand roses on it, he’d look at it as if it was Emily herself. All in all, it was a kind of rebirth of his love for the woman he loved, and the child she carried inside of her for him.

No: 509 ((parts one and two, completed 10-31-2009; part three, written, 11-1-2009) (part of the book “The Vanquished Plantations))