Lifestone

     The young slave rose from her kneeling position near the very edge of the dense cotton-row she’d been working diligently to clear. Hope shook the cultivated dirt from her callused hands, then angled them above her squinted brown eyes like a shield and focused as far ahead as she could manage, on where the cannon-fire thundered straight out of the blue like a magnificent and sudden storm.

     While she and the others in the fields had stopped altogether to pay attention to the imminent rumbling of the guns, the distant sounds they’d paid little heed to only two days prior were no longer so distant and had now drawn perilously close enough to shake the very ground they stood upon. She turned and directed her attention toward the others’ terrified and confused faces, then wiped her moist brow with the cleanest portion of the soiled apron she’d tucked neatly at her waistline, just above the thinning fabric of her faded yellow sundress.

     The quartet of white men in charge of the slaves leaned forward against the worn saddles of their twitching horses, pointing directly at the sounds. They spoke candidly, frankly and loud enough for the young woman to decipher their conversation’s contents. While they remained unswervingly malicious and unfailingly vicious, ruling all the slaves before them as if they were nothing more than an organized herd of ignorant cattle, she was surprised at the grand feeling they exuded of confidence and elation, as if the looming cannon-fire were nothing more than show. They spoke heedless of caution, giving no credit to the obvious fact that the swarming Yankee army had managed to cut a giant swathe a few miles north at Peachtree Creek, littering the battlefield with thousands of bodies from both sides of the conflict.

     Rather, the four men’s concern seemed wrongly skewed to the young woman. The men boasted of

General John Bell Hood and his formidable army of Tennessee, blocking the Yankee advance and planting a proverbial dagger in the rising hopes of the Union once and for all. They spoke with a peculiar assurance, as if Hood were some god, and that the battle-tested men of his almighty army were heavenly angels, and that this unearthly alliance would properly shield their cherished Atlanta, and drive the damn Yankees directly out of Georgia and straight to a bloody hell where they rightfully belonged.

     But the sustained and unceasing barrage of the deafening cannons seemed far more convincing to the young woman, and she turned towards the Johnson Plantation to her rear and observed a dozen slaves chaotically packing the long wagons of the Johnson family with supplies and valuables, hustling frantically in and out of the great mansion. There was no doubt about the Johnsons’ outlook on the prevailing circumstances, and the young woman understood that the impending evacuation would scatter the slaves into the surrounding fields or woods, or further South, away from the fighting. She considered several alternate escape plans for herself and the others, but her concentration was interrupted abruptly by the formidably raspy voice of the one-eyed man in charge of them: “Git back to that cotton!” His words cut through the humid air, sending a cold chill down her spine and froze the others to stand petrified and huddled in small, protective circles inside the shredded paths of the cotton-rows.

     He leaned to his right and spit a wad of tobacco juice that distorted a patch of the brown dirt to a muddy-red color, with just enough force and volume to splatter against the bare feet of the young woman. His accuracy had been honed during a lifetime of such spitting, and he let out an evil laugh as if he’d just seen the single funniest thing he’d ever witnessed. He rolled the remaining tobacco around

inside his jaw, then he hacked out a second volley that landed squarely on the left foot of the young woman, just above the ankle.

     Hope stood her ground composedly and remained as stiff and as unperturbed as if nothing at all had just occurred, almost as if she’d maintained the upper hand. She raised her chin majestically, but the defiant gesture agitated the man, and ceased his wicked and unnerving laughter as abruptly as it had begun.

   The one-eyed man pulled back the reigns against the muscular neck of his jet-black horse, and the animal reacted with a snort, then bucked back on his haunches and lifted his front legs into the air as if he would soon gallop off into the safety of the clouds. The man glared menacingly at the young woman through his deep-blue right eye and adjusted the black eye-patch that concealed his missing left eye- the very one that had been gouged out in a knife