James Burke - White Doves at Morning

"There's old folks at Angola I got to care for. Here, I got this twenty-dollar gold piece. I brung a juju bag, too." Flower walked up the plank and felt the wood bend under her weight. The water under her was as yellow as paint in the moonlight. She saw the black head and back and S-shaped motion of a water moccasin swimming across the current.

She placed the coin in Abigail's hand, then removed a small bag fashioned out of red flannel that was tied around her neck with a leather cord and placed it on top of the coin.

"How'd you come by this money, Flower?" Abigail asked.

"Found it."

"Where?"

Flower watched the moss moving in the trees, a sprinkle of stars in the sky.

"I best go now," she said.

She walked back across the plank to the woods, then heard Abigail Dowling behind her.

"Tell me where you got the gold piece," Abigail said.

"I stole it from ol Rufus Atkins' britches."

Abigail studied her face, then touched her hair and cheek.

"Has he molested you, Flower?" she said.

"You a good lady, Miss Abigail, but I ain't a child and I ain't axed for nobody's pity," Flower said.

Abigail's hand ran down Flower's shoulder and arm until she could clasp Flower's hand in her own.

"No, you're neither a child nor an object of pity, and I would never treat you as such," Abigail said.

"Them two men yonder? What do you call them?" Flower asked.

"Their names?"

"No, the religion they got. What do you call that?"

"They're called Quakers."

Flower nodded her head. "Good night, Miss Abigail," she said.

"Good night, Flower," Abigail said.

A few minutes later Flower looked back over her shoulder and saw the flatboat slip through the cypress trees into a layer of moonlit fog that reminded her of the phosphorous glow given off by a grave.

THREE days later Willie Burke was walked in manacles from the Negro jail to the court, a water-stained loft above a saloon, and charged with drunkenness and attacking an officer of the law. The judge was not an unkindly man, simply hard of hearing from a shell burst at the battle of Buena Vista in 1847, and sometimes more concerned with the pigeons whose droppings splattered on his desk than the legal matter at hand.

Through the yellow film of dirt on the window Willie could see the top of a palm tree and a white woman driving hogs down the dirt street below. His mother and Abigail Dowling and his friend Jim Stubbefield sat on a wood bench in the back of the room, not far from Rufus Atkins and the paddy rollers.

"How do you plead to the charges, Mr. Burke?" the judge asked.

"Guilty of drunkenness, Your Honor. But innocent of the rest, which is a bunch of lies," Willie replied.

"These men all say you attacked Captain Atkins," the judge said, gesturing at the paddy rollers.

Willie said something the judge couldn't understand.

"Speak louder!" the judge said.

"I'd consider the source!" Willie replied.

"We have two sides of the same story, Mr. Burke. But unfortunately for you the preponderance of testimony comes from your adversaries. Can you pay a fifty-dollar fine?" the judge said.

"I cannot!"

The judge cupped his ear and leaned forward. His face was as white as goat's cheese, his hair like a tangle of yellowish-gray flaxen.

"Speak louder!" he yelled.

"I have no money, sir! I'll have to serve a penal sentence!" Willie said.

"Can you pay twenty-five dollars?" the judge said.

"No, I cannot!"

"I'll pay his fine, me," a voice at the back of the room said.

The judge leaned forward and squinted into the gloom until he made out the massive shape of Jean-Jacques LaRose.

"The only fine you'll pay will be your own, you damn pirate. Get out of my court and don't return unless you're under arrest," the judge said.

"May I speak, Your Honor?" Abigail Dowling said.

The judge stared at her, his glasses low on his nose, his head hanging forward from his black coat and the split collar that extended up into his jowls like pieces of white cardboard.

"You're the nurse from Massachusetts?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, that's correct!" she yelled.

"Everybody in this proceeding is red-faced and shouting. What's the matter with you people?" the judge said. "Never mind, go ahead, whatever your name is."

Abigail walked out of the gloom into a patch of sunlight, her hands folded in front of her. She wore an open-necked purple dress with lace on the collar and a silver comb in the bun on top of her head.

"I know Mr. Burke well and do not believe him capable of harming anyone. He's of a gentle spirit and has devoted himself both to his studies and works of charity. His accusers-"

She paused, her right hand floating in the direction of Rufus Atkins and the paddy rollers. "His accusers are filled with anger at their own lack of self-worth and visit their anger with regularity on the meek and defenseless. It's my view their testimony is not motivated by a desire to further truth or justice. In fact, their very presence here demeans the integrity of the court and is an offense to people of good will," she said.

The judge looked at her a long moment. "I hope the Yankees don't have many more like you on their side," he said.

"I'm sure their ranks include much better people than I, sir," Abigail said.

It was quiet in the room. One of the paddy rollers hawked softly and leaned over and spit in his handkerchief. The judge pinched his temples.

"You want to say anything, Captain Atkins?" he asked.

"I haven't the gift of elocution that Miss Dowling has, since I wasn't educated in a Northern state where Africans are taught to disrespect white people," he said. "But that man yonder, Willie Burke, attacked an officer of the law. You have my word on that."

The judge removed his glasses and pulled on his nose.

"You're a member of the militia?" he said to Willie.

"Yes, sir, I am!"

"Will you stop shouting? It's the sentence of this court that you return to your unit at Camp Pratt and be a good soldier. You might stay out of saloons for a while, too," the judge said, and smacked down his gavel.

After the judge had left the room, Willie walked with his mother and Abigail and Jim toward the door that gave onto the outside stairway.

"Where's Robert today?" Willie asked, hoping his disappointment didn't show.

"Mustered into the 8th Lou'sana Vols and sent to Camp Moore. The word is they're going to Virginia," Jim said.

"What about us?" Willie asked.

"We're stuck here, Willie."

"With Atkins?"

Jim laid his arm across Willie's shoulders and didn't answer. Outside, Rufus Atkins and the paddy rollers were gathered under a live oak. The corporal named Clay Hatcher turned and looked at Willie, his smile like a slit in a baked apple.

IT rained late that afternoon, drumming on Bayou Teche and the live oaks around Abigail Dowling's cottage. Then the rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun and a strange green light filled the trees. Out in the mist rising off the bayou Abigail could hear the whistle on a paddle-wheeler and the sound of the boat's wake slapping in the cypress trunks at the foot of her property.

She lighted the lamp on her desk and dipped her pen in a bottle of ink and began the letter she had been formulating in her mind all day.

She wrote Dearest Robert on a piece of stationery, then crumpled up the page and began again.

Dear Robert,

Even though I know you believe deeply in your cause, candor and conscience compel me to confess my great concern for your safety and my fear that this war will bring great sorrow and injury into your life. Please forgive me for expressing my feelings so strongly, but it is brave young men such as yourself who ennoble the human race and I do not feel it is God's will that you sacrifice your life or take life in turn to further an enterprise as base and meretricious as that of slavery.