Waters Plantation (A German Family Saga Book 3)

Book summary

Albert Waters, a former Texas planter, faces family secrets and rising tensions in post-Civil War Texas when his son Toby, set on embracing his heritage, confronts his past. Amid violence and accusations, their bond is tested across a divided land. This powerful family saga unfolds in Myra Hargrave McIlvain’s historical series.

Excerpt from Waters Plantation (A German Family Saga Book 3)

August 1875

Washington County, Texas

Albert Waters never admitted to anyone that he didn’t sleep well on the night of a full moon. He figured with no woman to disturb, sleep would come in good time. Tonight, was different. He lay awake to listen, one last time, for the boy...he must stop thinking of Toby as a boy. He was a man–a Harvard man–at least he would be in a few weeks.

Those precious days had ended when Toby would ride home on weekends from school at Soule or Baylor––summer days of working in the fields and finishing up to plunge naked into the creek, or in winter when they warmed themselves next to the iron cook stove. Toby always rattled on about his school buddies or some wonder he’d just read and wasn’t sure he believed.

The old clock had chimed four times when he heard the mare’s hooves pounding down the road and around the big house to the corral gate. Surprised at Toby riding the animal so hard in the summer’s intense heat, Al raised up on his elbow and pulled back the curtain to watch his son dismount. The moon painted a ghost-like sheen on the new barn and stables as Toby, almost as tall as the mare’s head moved in and out of the shadows. He pulled the saddle from the animal, threw it against the fence. Instead of walking the mare to cool her down, he paced back and forth across the lot.

Al sat up, waiting to hear the bad news. Instead, he heard the squeak of the back screen and the click of his son’s bedroom door. Something must have gone wrong at the class farewell party. The boy had been jumpy before he left. Took an extra-long time to iron his shirt and brushed his wiry curls more than usual. Al thought of teasing him about primping to go courting, but he remembered how he would have hated such an intrusion.

A familiar angst crept over him, and he leaned back onto the bed. The wild oats that people kept warning him to expect had not been sown, at least not enough to make him worry. Toby made him proud at every turn, but he always wondered if the truth were out, would his son feel the same about him?

Al kept shoving aside the image of the two o’clock train.

Unable to get back to sleep, he swung himself off the bed, went through a round of stretches the army surgeon told him he needed to do for the rest of his life to keep that left leg from drawing up like a piece of old leather. He wasn’t sure it helped; the limp never got better, and the leg still looked as gnarly as an oak branch. But just in case it did a little good, Al gritted his teeth through the painful exercises every morning.

Sweat ran down his torso as he lit the kerosene lamp next to his bed and carried it to the washstand beside the well on the back porch. He stripped off wet, limp drawers. The bucket of water he poured over his head felt like ice cascading down his naked body. He grabbed a towel and scrubbed himself warm and then padded barefoot back to the old wardrobe. After he pulled the crisply ironed shirt over his head, he balanced against the wardrobe to shove each foot into stiff trousers. His gaze fell on the old burled walnut cradle that had been used by the Waters’ sons for as far back as his grandfather. For three solid years, he had rocked that cradle with his toe every single night to lull Toby to sleep.

They had agreed that Toby would spend this last night with his school friends and breakfast would be Al’s treat—eggs, beignets, and Creole coffee—the New Orleans specialty they usually prepared together. He had never learned to roll out dough to make the beignets as fluffy as Violet’s. From the time he was big enough to sit on the kitchen counter and watch her nimble slave fingers massage the floured rolls, he imagined that someday he would be able to do it. Toby had caught on quickly, and even with hands larger than Al’s, the boy showed unusual dexterity. “These are surgeon’s hands,” Toby always said when he kneaded bread dough, filleted a fish, or sewed a button on one of Al’s shirts.

The warm kitchen caused the dough to rise faster than he expected. The grease had started heating when he heard Toby washing up on the back porch. “You’re right on time,” he shouted.

Early light framed the boy, almost as tall as the door. His stubborn curls lay wet against a lean face, tanned to the color of caramel.

Al glanced up from the frying beignets. “You hungry?”

“Not really.” Toby reached for the pot, poured warm milk into a cup to cut the strength of the Creole coffee that he refused to drink straight the way Al loved it.

Al looked at the lowered head to see if it might be a hangover. The boy drank a little, never anything like he had done. He tossed a couple of hot beignets in powdered sugar before scooping them on a plate and raking in some eggs. “See if this wakes you up.”

“I said I’m not hungry.” Toby’s eyes, reflected in the yellow lamplight, looked angrier than his words that were hardly more than a whisper.

Al pulled the pan of grease off the hob, shoved the skillet of eggs to the back of the stove, poured himself a cup of coffee, and slid onto the bench across from his son. “What’s up, Toby?”

“Why do you call me that?” He hunched over his cup, both hands gripping it in a vise.

Al shook his head, a blank stare on his face. “What do you mean?”

“It’s not my name. My name’s Tobias. I don’t remember you ever calling me by my name. Violet is the only one who ever called me Tobias.”

Al felt the old fear rising in him, the dread he had lived with since the boy’s birth. “You were so little. Tobias seemed like a big name for such a small package.” Al spoke the truth.

“I’ve been bigger than you since I was twelve.”

Al shook his head, groped for an answer. He wrapped his fingers around his cup to dull the tremble.

“All right. I’ll ask straight out. Before I leave today, I want to know the truth. Was my mother your slave?”

Al thought the coffee was going to come back up. “God, no, Toby––Tobias. You know me.” The words hung in his craw, the implied innocence, the image of a man of principles.

“What I know for sure is you always preach...you always warn me about having strong seeds. How I’ve got to respect the ladies. What about you?” The cottonwoods filtered the new sun sending slits of light, shining threads of dancing dust particles on Tobias’ clenching jaw. “You never speak of my mother. Until the day she died, Miss Samantha never claimed me as her nephew. She didn’t even claim you as her husband. She stayed across the road in the big house and glared down at me from her bedroom window. I’ll say it plain. Am I a nigger like Jarrell Packerman said last night?”

Tobias shoved down a surge of guilt as he stared at his pop—a spiffy dresser who always wore ironed shirts and creases in his trousers even when he went to the fields—slumped now over his coffee like a man hit in the gut. He had obviously tried to make this last breakfast special, hadn’t even combed his curly brown hair, only rubbed it dry. He had always been awkward rolling out the beignets. This morning the splattered flour was mixed with sweat and turned into globs of paste streaking the front of his shirt.

Last night was supposed to be a farewell event for all the men in his class. He was the only one going so far away, and he planned to ask Patricia Sutlebury to write to him. If she agreed, he intended to kiss her. He had practiced asking if she’d wait for him to become a doctor, move off her family’s big plantation and live with him in Brenham. He was going to say he’d never be as rich as her father, but a doctor’s family would have respect from the townspeople.

The party had turned into a raunchy drinking match with some of the men talking wild. He finally maneuvered Patricia onto the porch overlooking the Sutlebury’s garden. The moon made her pale face and exposed shoulders look like porcelain, and her hair all curled and twisted with ribbons glistened like spun gold. He had reached for her hand when Jarrell Packerman swaggered out the door like a Banty rooster. “You think you ought to be out here? Courting Miss Patricia?”

“Jarrell, don’t talk so ugly. We’re saying goodbye. Toby’s going all the way to Boston.” Her voice sounded soft, almost mocking.

“You’re drunk. Go back inside, Jarrell.” Toby wanted to hit him in the mouth, knock that pasted-down yellow curl off his forehead, but that would ruin everything. He needed to be alone with Patricia, see if he had a chance to court the most beautiful girl in the woman’s college. Every man on campus stared at her and hoped she’d look his way.

Jarrell leaned on the porch railing, bent suggestively toward Toby. “It’s one thing for your ol’ man to get your kind into Baylor. It’s another when you start courting one of our women. They may mix in New Orleans, but we don’t mix here.”

The words played a trick on Toby’s mind, held him between surprise and insult. Before he could get his wits about him, Patricia’s eyes squinted, she bent toward him like she was looking for worms in a pile of cow shit. She picked up the edges of her soft summer dress and shrugged her naked shoulders. “I’m not staying out here while you children fight.” She turned, her eyes lowered away from him, making a show of stepping carefully in the dark.

Toby watched her go, wanted to cry out, beg her not to listen to that raving drunk. Instead, he walloped Jarrell so hard that his sorry ass landed beyond the porch railing in Mrs. Sutlebury’s rose bushes. He didn’t look back to see the damage. He held himself tight, sucked in his breath to keep stinging tears from spilling over. When he reached the stable, he saddled the mare and rode her hard until she was sweating and he was cooled off. Jarrell’s words echoed––pulsing with the beat of his heart.

For as long as he could remember, he had wanted to ask about his mother. Did Al miss her? What was she like? Did he get his height from her? They always talked—about the crops, about tearing down the old slave quarters to build the new barn, and even what to stock in Al’s stores in Brenham and Independence—but never about their strange life living in the little frame house across the road from Miss Samantha. He knew Jarrell had to be lying, trying to worm his way into Patricia’s life. Besides, Al would never deceive him. He was the most upright man Toby had ever known. But, as he rode, knowing that Jarrell Packerman’s words had destroyed his chance with the only girl he had ever loved, the moonlight flashing through the canopy of trees like flames licking an iron stove, fueled his anger. The questions burned into him like red-hot embers.