Free Come Juneteenth by Ann Rinaldi Page A

that the holiday lasted as long as the yule log burned, so the household help made sure that log kept burning all right.
    In between the festivities, the visitors, the dancing,
Pa and Mama and the boys met frequently in Pa's study, talking about what was to come in this new year of 1865.

    The war would end soon now. It was only a matter of months. The slaves would be freed. "We'll not tell them about the war's end until the spring planting is done," Pa said. "I know that's what Henry Ware of Oak Grove plans on doing."
    I was in on that meeting for reasons I can't recollect. But not Sis Goose.
    "How many of our people do you think will stay after they're told?" Mama asked.
    "A goodly amount. We'll have to pay them, of course. But I can't hit home enough with the idea that
things must stay the same for as long as we can keep them that way,
" Pa said.
    Yes, we all agreed. The same as always. Until always was not just a word but a family's history and livelihood.
    Things must stay the same.

    I THOUGHT Gabe forgot, but he didn't. He called it paying your debts. He called it Southern honor.
    He brought me to Granville before that visit was over and made me tell him what I thought of the lotion he'd brought home, then left me there with him, in his room, alone.
    Granville's room was filled with foreign remembrances,
pictures of ships (for, yes, we had photos now), awards for seamanship, and him.

    He wasn't clean-shaven like Gabe. He had a beard, dark eyes, a slight but lithe build. I was afraid of him.
    As it turned out, he didn't believe in making a child work herself to death in the barn as punishment, or copy some glorious section of the Bible, or iron his shirts for a week, or write up the history of his lotion, or even in spanking. But he did believe, oh how he believed, in washing the mouth out with vile-tasting soap, the kind the ranch hands used to wash up with. After all, that's where the dirty word had come from, didn't it? And wasn't that tradition? And mustn't things stay the same?
    He took me outside, out back, where there was a trough to wash up in and where I afterward threw up.
    Somehow I think Gabe knew what Granville did to me. Because I caught him looking at me once in a while across the table that night with that somber and sorrowful gaze.
    Granville was quietly unsorry about it. It was done.
Don't make me have to do it again. And don't go running to Ma.
    I couldn't eat supper, so I didn't. "I don't feel so well, Ma. I'm kind of under the weather. I can't eat. Can I go lie down?"
    She wouldn't excuse me. She knew, and she always
backed up the boys. So I sat there, green in the face and near tears.

    Guilty as a deer eating Ma's daylilies, Gabe was, and wanting to make it up but not knowing how. If only I could keep him that way.

    I WATCHED G ABE and Sis Goose all the time now, when they didn't know I was watching. I saw that he had special looks for her and she for him, looks that did not require words. How could I have been so blind before, thinking nothing of it when he lifted her off her horse, or his hands lingered a little longer when he helped her on?
    Sis Goose and I slept in the same room, so I kept my mouth shut when she came to bed later than usual after taking a walk with Gabe.
    And, lying there in my bed, waiting for her to come up, my mind would race and whirl.
    Would he tell her she was free?
    Did she think, now, that he owned her so he had a right to love her? Would she marry him if she were not a slave?
    When would he tell her? Was he afraid that if he told her beforehand, she'd "run off with some roustabout," as her father had said?
    What would she say? "I can't forgive you for keeping me in bondage. I can't marry you, Gabe."
    "Take care of her," Gabe admonished me when his holiday furlough was over and he left for Fort Belknap.
    If he didn't have to wait for the circuit preacher to come through, would he have wed her before he left? I recollected how antsy my sister got waiting for that