Brotherhood Read online

  For Mary

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  For more information about the Penguin Group visit www.penguin.com

  First published in the United States of America by Viking,an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2013

  Copyright © Anne Westrick, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Westrick, Anne.

  Brotherhood / Anne Westrick.

  pages cm

  Summary: “The year is 1867, and the South has lost the Civil War. Those on the lowest rungs,like Shad’s family, fear that the freed slaves will take the few jobs available. In this climate ofdespair and fear, a group has formed. Today we know it as the KKK”—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-101-60251-5

  1. Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877—Fiction. 2. Race relations—Fiction. 3. Prejudices—Fiction. 4. Family life—Virginia—Fiction. 5. Ku Klux Klan (19th cent.)—Fiction. 6. Richmond (Va.)—History—19th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.W52733Bro 2013

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013008272

  Map courtesy of Mike Gorman, from the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibilityfor author or third-party websites or their content.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Map

  A Note to the Reader

  1: The Posse

  2: Twisted Wrists

  3: Overstepping Boundaries

  4: The Road to Cold Harbor

  5: Ghosts

  6: Brotherhood

  7: Sheriff Parker

  8: Gin Rummy

  9: The S Word

  10: Brown Rabbits

  11: Lye Soap

  12: The Tortoise and the Hare

  13: A Burst Bubble

  14: Yankee-Lovers

  15: Letters

  16: Devil on His Shoulder

  17: Whiskey

  18: Yankees on Patrol

  19: Stitching Seams

  20: Bending Low

  21: Chickens

  22: Cat and Mouse

  23: The Best of All Possible Worlds

  24: Accidents Happen

  25: Glory, Hallelujah

  26: Bad Boys

  27: The Golden Rule

  28: A Newspaper

  29: A New Recruit

  30: A Standoff

  31: Keep the Cause Alive

  32: A New Disguise

  33: A Warning

  34: A Torn Skirt

  35: Lord Have Mercy

  36: The Next Time

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A Note to the Reader

  IT IS SAID that we mirror the times and places in which we were born, and our journeys to adulthood are marked by moments in which we gain new understandings and the courage to change ourselves and our world. Brotherhood is the story of a fourteen-year-old boy whose point of view reflects his time and place—Richmond, Virginia, in 1867—but his view is one that today’s readers will undoubtedly find callous and racist. My intention in writing this story was not to justify his view, but to draw readers so closely into his world that they experience his emerging capacity to question his circumstances.

  —A. B. Westrick

  1

  The Posse

  THE FIRST SOUND Shad heard was the squawk of a chicken. Then the thud of a fist on wood. Bam. Bam. Bam. The hollow walls rattled. A man’s voice. “Mrs. Weaver?”

  The light was early yet, and Shad glanced beside him. His older brother lay asleep there in his trousers—right there on top of the white cotton ticking. Hadn’t even changed into a nightshirt. Shad nudged Jeremiah’s shoulder and heard his brother grunt, but he didn’t wake.

  The thud came again. Bam. Bam. “Mrs. Weaver? Official business of the government of the United States. Open up!” The voice was flat and nasal—not Virginia-born.

  Shad nudged Jeremiah harder this time, but still his brother didn’t rouse. Shad rolled off the straw mattress, feet on cool dirt, and headed for the window. But at the sill, he jumped back. “Lord!”

  There was a boy maybe Jeremiah’s age—seventeen—maybe a tad more—blond like Jeremiah. He stood on the other side, only inches from Shad’s face. Navy blue cap. Blue uniform. Brass buttons. Musket on his shoulder. He said, “Going somewhere, Mr. Weaver?”

  The bedroom door flew open, and Shad spun around. Two blue-clad boys and a man stormed inside, and the man announced, “Jeremiah Weaver, you are under arrest.”

  From somewhere in the house, Shad heard Mama yell, “You ain’t got no right!” He wanted to find her—protect her—but he felt a tug on his nightshirt. The outside boy had reached through the window and grabbed it, shouting, “He’s trying to escape.”

  Shad balled a fist to slam in the boy’s face, but the man saw him and moved fast, crossing the little room and blocking Shad’s upraised arm. The outside boy yanked the nightshirt, the man shoved, and Shad fell hard, his head hitting the sill on the way down.

  He heard the outside boy announce, “We got him.”

  “Not this one,” the man said. “The other one.”

  Shad struggled to all fours, his head throbbing, anger mounting. The man pushed him down again, pinning him to the floor. Shad couldn’t see more than a shuffle of boots and Jeremiah’s bare feet while the boys dragged his brother from the house. Then he felt a stomp on his back, crushing his ribs. Air raced from his lungs. Shad choked. Coughed. Gasped to refill his chest. Images flashed through his mind—a man stuffed in a barrel, a man flailing his arms—and for a moment, Shad thought he might vomit.

  He heard horses whinny out front, and he rose in pain, holding his ribs. He rolled over the windowsill and dropped the few feet to red dirt, but by the time he circled front, the posse was galloping toward Richmond. Not two minutes there and gone, and the little white house quivered with the rumble of hooves.

  “Damn Yankees!” he yelled at their backs.

  He turned to see Mama, bug-eyed with fury. “Shadrach, you run into town and get your granddaddy.” Her voice faltered and he feared she would cry. “You hear me, son? Tell him they done arrested Jeremiah.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Yes, I’ll—” He reached for her.

  Mama was shaking all over. When he put his arms around her bony shoulders, her tears started running, so he set his head on top of hers. His mama was small—so very small. “Yes, Mama,” he whispered. “Don’t you worry none. Everything’s gonna be okay. I’ll get him back.”

  But truth to tell, he didn’t think everything would be okay and didn’t know if he could get his brother back. All he knew for sure was that Mama needed
Jeremiah. It was always “Jeremiah this,” “Jeremiah that.” “Jeremiah first” ever since Daddy left.

  Shad stroked Mama’s hair—long, thin, brown hair, going gray from worry. Then he patted Mama’s shoulder and settled her into a chair. He ducked into the bedroom for his britches and burlap-sack shirt, but the simplest movements—taking off his nightshirt, bending to pull up his britches—sent pain through his innards like an arrow. “Ow!”

  “You okay, baby?” called Mama.

  “Fine, Mama,” he lied. “I’m fine.” He released his breath, long and slow, erasing the strain from his face so that Mama wouldn’t add him to her list of worries. He emerged from the bedroom and kissed her on the cheek.

  Then he ran.

  He could see the horses way up Nine Mile Road—a straight line cut through green fields gone to weed. The sun was low behind him, and it hit him—he’d overslept. Late for lessons. Again. But no, he couldn’t go for lessons today. Not today.

  He ran and ran, but his sides hurt, and soon enough his thighs seized up and he couldn’t keep on. His head ached. His chest. If that man roughing him up hadn’t been bad enough, Shad was exhausted—he’d hardly slept last night.

  Had it only been last night? That meeting of the brotherhood. Boys setting a farmhouse on fire. The smoke, the sparks, the roar of flames. It all came back and a shudder went through him. His foot hit a rut in the road and he stumbled, tripping forward, swinging his arms to keep his balance and stay upright. His ribs twisted and he cringed. His breathing came hard.

  He looked up the road and couldn’t see the horses anymore. He slowed. Two full years since the war had ended, but the Yankees were still beating up on Virginia.

  Two full years since the surrender of the greatest general the world had ever known. Robert E. Lee.

  Two full years of Yankees patrolling Richmond’s streets. He hated them! And before that, four years of fighting and food shortages and hotels turned to hospitals for men blown to bits by shrapnel and cannons.

  The War Between the States was supposed to have secured Virginia’s right to make her own laws. South Carolina had seceded from the Union, and after a heap of argument, Virginia had seceded, too. But it had all come to naught. Worse than naught—every Southern family had lost a boy to battle, and most lost more than one.

  Daddy had dragged his feet, not wanting to fight, but he couldn’t drag them forever. It was September 1862, five years ago, when he rode off on Mindy-girl to join Virginia’s 62nd Cavalry Partisan Rangers regiment. Shad had watched him wave good-bye, waving his whole arm, brushing it wide and wild against a white-cloud sky, brushing so hard that for a moment Shad believed he’d brush the war away.

  Now as he hustled up Nine Mile Road, Shad got tight in the throat thinking on scruffy old Mindy-girl, on Daddy telling him he had two special girls in his life—his horse and his wife. Shad squeezed his hands into fists. He picked up his pace, then slowed again. Caught his breath. What would Daddy say now if he could see the fields lying fallow? If he knew they’d arrested Jeremiah?

  Only fourteen and he had to handle this without Daddy. Had to get Jeremiah back for Mama.

  His eyes caught a scrap of blue cloth stuck in blackberry brambles, but he didn’t stop. No, he couldn’t take the time to pocket scraps this morning.

  2

  Twisted Wrists

  SHAD TURNED TOWARD Church Hill. To get to Granddaddy’s, he’d have to go south and west to Shockoe Bottom, and the very thought of the climb made his ribs throb all the more. Richmond, the city of seven hills—river city on the fall line of the James, largest city in all of Virginia—but darn those hills. Up, down, up, down—what he’d give to ride Mindy-girl again. He fingered the tender spot where his head had hit the windowsill. Lordy, life sure would be easier if his family lived in town.

  He made it to Twentieth Street, then Broad—the downhill leg—and whoa! There was Rachel. She was clutching her flower-print skirts in her fine caramel hands, her brown lace-up shoes working fast. What was she doing out this early? She was supposed to be teaching, not running these gray-brick streets at dawn.

  He called to her, and she looked over a shoulder.

  “Shad? Oh, Lord, get away, get away.”

  “Rachel?” She was going the wrong way—toward the Perkinsons’. He needed to get Granddaddy. But he could take a minute here. He could see she was in a tizzy.

  “I don’t want to talk to you!”

  “Rachel—what—?”

  “I don’t want anything to do with you and your family!”

  Her words hit him like a slap across the face. He stuttered, “W-wait.”

  She looked at him, but her feet didn’t stop. Her dark eyes blazed with anger. Wisps of black hair stuck out under a red calico kerchief that didn’t match her dress, not at all. It wasn’t like Rachel to be in town all mismatched.

  Shad ran and reached for her arm. He caught her hand, and she stopped. She stopped all right. But she shook his hand away. Her eyes said, Don’t you dare!

  He pulled back and rubbed her sweat between his fingers. “Sorry. I, uh . . .” He winced in shame for having grabbed her. He wanted so much for her to think highly of him—to impress her. It was crazy to care what a freed slave might think. But he did care. She was . . . different.

  He watched her chest go up and down. Watched her breathe through her mouth. She was probably only a year older than Shad, but nearly a foot shorter and—much as he hated to admit it—a lifetime smarter.

  “I hope they hang your brother,” she said. “He might get away with killing a Negro, but not a white man. No, sir. That’s a hanging offense.”

  The slap became a wallop. Shad shook his head. “What? What are you talkin’ about?”

  “Don’t give me that know-nothing look. He said ‘the Weaver boy’ before he died. He said ‘the Weaver boy’ shoved him in a barrel. Lord, have mercy.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. He—who?”

  “George Nelson!”

  “No!”

  “You ask your brother. He’ll know what I’m talking about. Doc Moore sent for us to identify the body. I saw him. Saw George Nelson with my own eyes—his body laid out there. And Lord, what Miss Elizabeth will say when she hears! How am I going to tell her?”

  Shad struggled to breathe. He felt winded again—his chest aching more from her words than the blow from the Yankee boot. “But—wait—”

  “She’s been waiting long enough. I have to go.”

  “You got it wrong.”

  “Don’t give me that, Shadrach Weaver. George Nelson saw your brother. They fished him from a barrel in a pond and he said it was ‘the Weaver boy,’ and then he up and died. Your brother is going to pay this time. He can’t get out of this one.”

  “No, you got it wrong,” Shad said again, but the moment the words were out of his mouth, he knew he shouldn’t have spoken.

  He gritted his teeth and watched as the realization came over Rachel’s face. Her eyes grew silver-dollar bright. Her neck stretched up and her shoulders down. Then her mouth fell open and she covered it with her hand, even as she spoke. “You were there.”

  Shad’s tongue grew thick. He wanted to speak, but he couldn’t form words.

  “Get on! What do you know?”

  “I—I—”

  “You tell me. You tell me right now! You know what happened.”

  He shook his head.

  “I see it in your eyes.”

  “Rachel—”

  “Don’t you Rachel me, Mr. Weaver. Sir!”

  Maybe it was the way she said sir. Maybe it was the way she saw through him. Maybe it was the way Mama had shaken all over this morning. Or the way they’d taken Jeremiah when he was so fast asleep and hungover, he hadn’t put up a fight. Maybe it was Rachel saying George Nelson had died.

  He didn’t know, but he grabbed Rachel’s wrist
s and twisted them. He bent them into each other and heard her let out a little shriek, and he didn’t let go. Through her arms he felt her weight shift and knew her knees had buckled, but still he didn’t let go. Her eyes bored into him and he held her wrists and he felt strong.

  He got ready for her to kick him where it hurt, knowing that if she so much as tried to kick him, he’d break her wrists. He’d snap them plumb in two.

  He waited for the kick. He was ready. But she got still. She closed her mouth and her nostrils flared. Her eyes went coal black, the whites disappeared, and she winced without making a sound. Her arms were still, but he could feel the pounding of her heart through her wrists.

  Then he shuddered and let go. He watched her gulp air like it was water. What had come over him? It had surprised him that he’d grabbed her wrists. He looked at his hands, wondering at himself. He was stronger than he knew, and he didn’t like how he could hurt her. He hadn’t meant—

  She snatched up her skirts and marched off.

  “Wait! Wait a minute.”

  She didn’t wait.

  He rushed to catch up. “Rachel, wait!”

  She marched with a holier-than-thou air. He got alongside her and saw that one hand rubbed the wrist of the other.

  “I’m sorry. Look, I’m sorry.”

  She kept on marching. Her eyes brimmed with tears. One tear had gone down her cheek and left behind a shiny line straight to the corner of her mouth.

  He hadn’t meant to hurt her. “I’m real sorry. I mean that. I’m real sorry.”

  “You,” she started to say. Then she shook her head. “I’ve got nothing to say to you!”

  He opened his mouth to explain—he wanted so much for her to understand—but no words came to him. He wrung his hands and stood still on the cool brick street. He’d taken too much time—he had to get Granddaddy—but he lingered a moment longer, watching her lean into the Broad Street hill, watching her flowered skirts swish-swish back and forth, watching until she turned toward Grace Street, watching until he couldn’t see her anymore.

  3