January Dawn (15 page)

I don’t know how much of that was my ability to read, or rather my memory of reading the words twenty times already that evening, but I was immensely proud of myself.

A knock at the door caused me to stuff the book under the mattress.

“Come in.”

Tess came in leading Lucas by the hand. They both were in their pajamas. Tess in a pair of her volleyball shorts and an old t-shirt with a stretched out neck that fell loosely off to one shoulder and little Lucas in a night shirt that went all the way to his knees.

“Sorry to disturb you,” she said. “He wanted to say goodnight to you.”

“Night night, buddy. I’ll see you in the morning,” I said, giving him a hug.

“Goodnight,” he said tiredly.

“Go and brush your teeth and I’ll come tuck you in,” Tess said.

“I can tuck myself in.” Lucas left with his head held high.

“He really likes you,” she said.

“He’s a good kid.”

“I really appreciate you coming to my game today. And bringing the boys. I know they liked it.”

“I enjoyed it.”

Tess stood in the doorway leaning against the door frame, her hands clasped behind her back cushioning her weight. She wanted to say something.

She could stand there forever and I could look at her forever, she was so beautiful.

“Can I bend your ear for a minute?” she asked shyly.

“Sure.”

“I have something to show you. Give me one second.” She disappeared into her room across the hall and came back with her computer tablet in hand. It was a smaller version of the one Shannon had used during the field exercise, but this one was not military in nature.

She closed the door behind her, crawled onto my bed and sat cross-legged in the center. I crawled up next to her, our knees gently touching.

“I’ve been doing some research,” she said.

“On what?”

“You.”

“Me?” I asked, surprised.

“Alex told me about you.”
He did what?

“What did he tell you?” I said this much harsher than I intended.

“Everything.” Tess looked at me imploringly, expecting a reaction. My face may have remained stoic, but my mind was reeling.
How could he? He promised not to tell. Now Tess is only going to see me as some pitiful boy with a fucked up past. I hoped she would like me. How could she now?

“Don’t be mad at him. He’s my twin brother. We tell each other everything.”

Take a deep breath and relax
. I cupped my face in my hands and massaged my temples with my fingertips.

Tess put her hand on my thigh and said, “It’s okay. Your secret is safe with me.”

I let my hands fall from my face, my fingertips gently overlapping hers.
You can trust her
.

“I’m going to kick his ass in the morning,” I said lightheartedly. What was done was done. There was no going back.

“If you’re going to kick somebody’s ass, it should be mine. I made him tell me. You’re very intriguing, Colton. You don’t talk very much. I wanted to know who you are. And what he told me, it was---your story is unreal. I had a hard time believing any of it, so I searched the internet looking for any explanation. What I found was horrific.”

Maybe she knew the answers to the questions I had been asking myself my entire life.

Tess shifted onto her stomach and laid across my bed holding the tablet out in front of her. I followed suit and laid beside her, our shoulders softly touching and our faces only a few inches apart. Her smell was entrancing. It wasn’t body wash or shampoo or anything flowery that I smelled, no, it was her natural smell. It was something familiar that I had grown accustomed to.

With a few taps and swipes she pulled up an article on her tablet. “I found several news articles about modern day slavery in the Confederacy. It seems that people like you aren’t entirely rare. More like uncommon. But you, Private Tennpenny, are unique in one way.”

“How so?”

“You’re white. Most modern slaves are either black or immigrants. I tried googling your name, but nothing came up. Tennpenny is not a very common surname.” She said all this without looking up from the screen. “The most likely scenario I could imagine is that somehow your parents owed a debt to this Mr. Stephens and they used you to pay it.”

A few strands of her hair hung low over her busy eyes as she scanned the articles. I could see the soft glow of the screen on her face. She was too engrossed in her research to notice I was staring.

“Statistics on human trafficking in the Confederacy are hard to come by, but if you dig deep enough you can find a few tidbits. This article here is talking about the feds busting a human trafficking ring in Mississippi. ‘Twenty-two traffickers and seven civilian buyers were arrested after a raid by the Tactical Operations Squad of the Confederate Legion. Over one hundred slaves were freed as a result of the raid, most of whom spent years in forced labor or prostitution around the country.’ Wow, this is truly amazing. You don’t hear about any of this in school. They say slavery ended a century ago, but it’s still a prospering enterprise.”

It was nice to know that Tess was taking such a sincere interest in this.

She scrolled down the webpage and said, “Oh my god.”

Below the news article was a series of pictures taken from the slave trafficking bust. It showed the ghastly conditions that those slaves endured. They were sickening and grotesquely familiar. I didn’t need to be reminded of the squalor I came from.

Tess switched to another webpage.

“There’s another article here from South Carolina about a triple murder-suicide. It says: ‘The victim and his family were found in bed, butchered in their sleep. The police followed a trail of blood to the backyard and found the body of an unidentified black man, killed by a self-inflicted gunshot. The body was found in an underground storage tank. Upon further investigation, the storage tank was in reality a makeshift prison cell, lockable from the outside only. A mattress, a bucket full of feces, and a pair of iron manacles were discovered alongside the body of the man, who investigators are saying, was kept against his will and forced to work for more than a decade. When asked to comment about what he saw, one officer broke down in tears’…Jesus, Colton.”

In my head, I could only picture Mr. Jeffries lying in a pool of his own blood.

“Look at this.”

There was a side by side picture on the screen. The picture on the left was an old black and white photo of a black man with a grisly mosaic of scars on his back. The date said 1861. The picture on the right was of a teenage black boy with a similar set of scars, but this picture was newer, perhaps taken only a few years ago. They both were eerily similar.

I looked at it once and winced at the memory of those pains. I sat up at the edge of the bed and stared at the floor. I could still hear the sound of the whip cracking. I could still feel the nauseating blow of the sharp leather serrating the skin on my back, the prolonged agony of recovery, and the torturous misery of old scars being viciously reopened by more beatings.

“Can I see it?” she asked.

I knew exactly what she wanted to see. “You don’t want to.” This night was quickly turning a dark corner.

Tess crawled out of bed and knelt on the floor in front me. She took my hands in hers. “I may not want to, but I need to. Before I met you, Colton, I never even knew slavery still existed. This is the world we live in. We can’t hide from it and expect it to change on its own.”

“I look like a monster, Tess. I’m a freak of nature, you said it yourself.”

“I said you were unique, not a freak.”

“What’s the difference?”

If I do this, I’ll just get the same reaction as I got before.

“You don’t have to be scared,” she said.

“But I am scared.”

She cupped my face in her hands and said, “You don’t have to be, not with me.”

If it was anyone else…

I reluctantly pulled my shirt over my head and bared my back to Tess. I could see her fright in the mirror above the dresser. She gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. I knew it
.
Colton you’re so stupid!

I fled to the bathroom and slammed the door behind me. I rested my fists on the sink and fought the urge to punch the creature staring back at me in the mirror.

How could you be so stupid?

The door creaked opened. Tess eased in, slowly shutting the door behind her. I watched her in the mirror as she gently placed her cold hands on my back and tenderly traced the contours of my scars. Her hands felt soft and angelic. There was no judgment or condemnation in her touch.

“You’re not a monster. You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever met,” she said, almost at a whisper.

I turned to face her. Our bodies were close. As her eyes looked up at me, bottomless and inviting, she placed her hand on my chest and toyed with the stray tentacle of scar that stretched over my shoulder.

“Scars just make us more interesting.” Her voice parted from her lips in a wave of soft sweetness that diluted my anxiety into fluid bliss.

She stretched up on the tips of her toes and kissed me, slow and intimately. Her lips were cushions of love from which flowed a surge of ecstasy that ignited every nerve in my body. The heart pounding electricity warmed me from my head to the balls of my feet. I wanted to scream with delight.

“Goodnight,” she said, and walked out.

I could never have imagined a more perfect first kiss.

The sky was black as a thunderstorm swept in from the coast and showered the Redman Plantation with sheets of water for hours on end. It slapped against the windows and didn’t give the slightest idea of letting up. Boisterous claps of thunder rattled the house to its foundation. Leaves and tree limbs and anything light enough for the wind to pick up was thrown violently across the yard.

There was no way for us to work outside in that kind of weather, so Alex and I sat in the library and he taught me how to play chess. Mr. Redman was working away at his desk, a pair of reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose.

A pair of headlights shown through the dining room window. A half minute later there was a banging on the front door. Alex got up to check it out. He came back with General Gammon in tow.

“Gentlemen,” he said, shaking the wetness from his hat.

The General had dark rings under his eyes and his disheveled uniform was spattered with rain.

Mr. Redman got up from his desk and shook the General’s hand. “Everything alright, Dominic?” he asked. “It’s very seldom you drop in like this?”

“I need a word with you, Silas. In private.” Gammon’s voice sounded grave.

“Right this way.” Mr. Redman led the General out onto the porch.

Alex and I sat back down on the couch and tried to resume our game, but neither of us could focus. We were trying to overhear the conversation on the back porch, but the drumming of the storm droned out everything.

“What do you think their talking about?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Whatever it is, it can’t be good. I’ve never seen the General like that before.”

We could see them standing outside the window on the porch. Neither of them were happy about whatever they were talking about. The General was very animated with this hands when he spoke. He would flutter his arms out wide, or chop his hand into the palm of his other hand, or point fingers at something in faraway places. Mr. Redman was the calmer of the two and would sit there with his arms crossed. He took the General’s berating with ease at first, but they both were soon talking over each other.

They came in twenty minutes later. The color in their faces was drained from the vigor of their argument.

“Boys,” Mr. Redman said in a tone one knows to prelude bad news. He retrieved a glass decanter and four small glasses from the bookcase. He poured the amber liquid from the decanter and doled a glass to each of us.

“I’m sorry boys, but I’m going to have to cut your leave short this week. I’m recalling all military personnel. You must report to base by 0900 tomorrow morning.” The General couldn’t look us in the eye for very long, instead he stared at the whiskey in his glass.

“May I ask why sir? Is it the invasion?” Alex asked.

“Over the last two weeks the Yankee Navy has been shelling our eastern port cities. Jacksonville, Charleston, Wilmington, Norfolk, the list goes on. Our Savannah has escaped much of this destruction, until recently. My intelligence analysts have been working day and night trying to pin point where the invasion will come…and when.” The General swirled his drink and took a sip. “No luck so far. The enemy is doing a damn fine job of masking their intentions. It could happen any day. But rest assured gentlemen, wherever the enemy decides to land, we will be there to throw them back into the sea. That’s why I need you boys to report to base. The Ninth will be the tip of the spear in my defensive operations.”

This is really it. I’m heading off to war.

The General looked as if he wanted to say more, but gulped down his drink, cupped his hat under his arm, acknowledged us with a curt nod and made an abrupt exit. Alex’s father saw him out.

Alex looked over at me in disbelief. He was thinking the same the thing I was. There had to be something more to Gammon’s visit. He didn’t drive all the way out here to recall us back to base. That’s what the MPs are for.

When Mr. Redman came back into the room, Alex asked him, “Dad, what did he really come here for?” Mr. Redman stayed silent. “You and Gammon have been tight for years, but the General doesn’t make house calls just to warn us of an invasion we already knew was coming.”

Mr. Redman poured himself a full glass this time and sat back heavily on to the couch.

“When you were in Basic, how many rumors did you hear about me?” he asked.

“They’re a bunch of lies.”

“Not all of them,” he said. “Sit down for a spell and maybe I can clear up some of the nonsense.”

Mr. Redman cleared his throat and went on to explain about his time spent in the war in South America. This is what Alex had always wanted. He listened intently, sitting up on the edge of his seat.

Nearly eight years ago, longtime war hero Brigadier General Silas Redman led his division in a successful offensive operation against the city of Sucre, the capital of Bolivia. With the help of revolutionary forces they took the city in less than a week.

The President, then Lieutenant General and Chief of Staff of the Army, gave a thankless commendation of Silas Redman’s success by placing him in charge of the thirty thousand POWs rounded up after the war ended. Gammon was a full bird Colonel at the time, serving directly under Silas Redman. Together, they were an unstoppable force.

Never ones to be humiliated, they did their job with profound efficiency and skill, disarming an entire defeated army and placing them in temporary internment camps.

Later on, it came to light that the Chief of Staff started the war not just to oust the residing government, but to set in place a government that would be friendlier to the Confederacy.

One afternoon the Chief of Staff visited Silas at his command and handed him a list. The list contained the names of over twenty-four hundred POWS and ex-government officials that he wanted Silas to execute with impunity. The Chief of Staff didn’t want to risk the chance of a counter-coup happening after Confederate forces left the country. He commanded Silas Redman to carry out the executions in secret and bury the bodies in mass graves in an undisclosed location in the western mountains.

“I didn’t want that kind of blood on my hands, so I refused,” Mr. Redman said.

“And what’d he say?” Alex asked.

“He threatened my career, but I still refused. Out of spite, he called Gammon into my office and ordered him to carry out the executions. Gammon was about to refuse also, until I told him not to.”

“But why? Why tell Gammon to carry out the orders?”

“Because there was no sense in both of us losing our careers. With me gone, Gammon had a straight shot at promotion. It was an opportunity I wouldn’t allow him to squander. I was ready to retire anyway. All of the political squabbling of those days had deadened my spirits. And besides, you were eleven at the time. I had already missed so much of you growing up. If I carried out those orders, I wouldn’t be able to look you in the eye today and say that I was a worthy man to be your father.”

Mr. Redman finished off his glass and poured another one.

“So, the Chief of Staff didn’t discharge you?” I asked, trying to make sense of all the rumors.

“No, he knew I was too beloved by the people to do that. He was running for election later that year and he knew he would take a hit in the polls if he did that. Instead, he stifled my career by stationing me as some paper-pushing office general in Montgomery.” A pause. “This country took a step in the wrong direction when they elected him as president. I simply couldn’t serve a man like that.” Mr. Redman retreated into a nostalgic stupor.

A duo of thunderclaps shuddered the house as Alex and I processed all of this information. We had finally found the truth behind all the rumors.

“But I don’t understand, why didn’t you just pop the top on the whole thing? Tell the press or something, keep him from getting elected.” Alex asked, still a bit confused.

“I tried. I had several contacts in Europe that I tried to inform about the executions, but my messages were intercepted. The President spun the story around on me and claimed that I was attempting to sell state secrets to a foreign government. I thought he would put me on trial, but he didn’t. He knew the publicity alone would destroy me, and he was right. The pressure was too great and I resigned the day after his inauguration.”

“You must have had friends left in the Army. Why didn’t you ask for their help and try to overthrow him before he took power?” You could tell Alex was trying to validate all the thoughts going through his head.

“What you are talking about is a coup, son. Those types of things don’t happen in First World politics. Besides, the Army was just not what it was when I was growing up. Back then being a soldier actually meant something. The snake that we call our president has uprooted the foundations of our country. Two months after being in office, under the guise of national security, he established his own private paramilitary organization to combat any opposition to his rule, both foreign and domestic. The Confederate Legion does his will, no matter what the task.”

“There had to have been something you could have done.”

“The President’s a powerful man, Alex. Even back then, he had his connections. He threatened to take everything I had. This land, this family, everything. I wasn’t willing to take that risk.”

It was all coming together now, all the questions were answered, except one.

“What does this all have to do with Gammon coming here today?”

“Because he came to remind me about the Janus Contingency.”

“The Janus Contingency?”

“Janus was the Roman God of transitions and gates. He was known as a two-faced god that looked to the past and to the future, presiding over all conflict, thus war and peace. And so came about The Janus Contingency, a top-secret file discovered by accident in the War Department over a year ago. The mistake was covered up almost immediately, but word of it still got out to a select few.”

“And what was in this file?”

“Rumor has it that the file contained a termination order with a list of names---signed by our very own President.”

“And your name’s on it?” Alex asked.

“We don’t know for sure, but we have to assume so.”

I thought I had it all figured out, but this confused me even more.

“But what does this Janus thing do?” I asked.

“Bolivia was just a cog in the President’s ascension to power. He’s committed untold atrocities since then. If the Confederacy should lose this war, his war crimes could surface and he could face an indictment from the World Court. Believe me when I say that he will not let that happen. If this contingency plan is enacted, everyone whose name is on that list will be dead within twenty-four hours.”

I had involuntarily stepped into a deadly mire that involved the most powerful men in the Confederacy. It was a sobering realization that chilled me to the bone.

“So, if we win the war, then we have nothing to worry about,” I said.

“We can only hope.”

*

As I lay in bed that night, sleepless and fidgety, I couldn’t help but worry about the disturbing events that transpired earlier that day. The rumors about Mr. Redman were wrong, well partially wrong. Learning the truth behind the rumors came at a price. What Alex and I uncovered today was upsetting and it had us both scared to death. We both were now implicated in state secrets against the President of the Confederate States of America.

Shake it off, Colton. Go to sleep. There’s no use picking it apart. What’s done is done.

I only managed to shut my hyperactive brain off for a minute before my worrying thoughts returned.
What’s war going to be like? What’s it like to shoot at someone? Or kill someone?
Can I perform like I was trained to?
The fear of battle sent a shiver down my spine.

Elroy always told us that training was nothing like real combat, but it was equally as important. What we were doing in Basic was catalyzing and sharpening our instincts. He said that combat produces the adrenaline that fuels the instincts in a soldier. Those instincts are what keep you alive, he said. Forget them and you’ll be dead.

The ceiling fan revolved around and around with a faint metallic tingle. It reminded me of the Apache helicopter I saw once at Fort Benning. Its blades were much bigger than the fans, but it used the same concept. It was loud too, boy was it loud. I could hear it far before I could see it. I was glad I was an infantryman and not a pilot. I would not want to battle one of those things.

I tossed and turned and kicked the covers off of me. It was too warm. After a few minutes, I pulled the covers back up, the ceiling fan was making me cold.
Why can’t I get comfortable?

I heard a noise out on the porch and saw a dark shape move across the window and stop at the door. The clock on the dresser showed one a.m. The knob slowly turned and the door opened. I sat up on my elbow and squinted in the darkness. It was Tess. She was wearing her usual pajamas of short shorts and an old t-shirt.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said, closing the door softly and noiselessly.

She tiptoed to the side of the bed and crawled under the covers next to me.
Mrs. Redman would for sure tan my hide if she found out about this.