My name is William Pierce Mabry.  I’m six foot five and I’ve been accused of being meaner than hell.  That’s okay, if they think I’m mean, they’ll leave me alone.  I’d rather have their respect than their friendship.  I grew up on a plantation in Georgia.  When I was fourteen and already over six feet, my pa sent me to apprentice to a man named Thomas Cook.  Mr. Cook is a carriage maker.  He taught me and my two brothers how to make everything from a farm wagon to a brougham.  I love working with the tools.  I love the feel of the wood as it takes shape in my hands.

Mr. Cook has taught me more, though.  My family is Methodists.  They’re very proud of the fact that my great-grandfather, Hinchia, built the first Methodist chapel in America and hosted Bishop Asbury when their church was being farmed.  But they are quite lax in their faith when it can be twisted to justify their ownership of other human beings.  I don’t suppose I can blame only the Methodists for that failing.  Other faiths, even the Baptists, are guilty of doing the same thing.  Not Mr. Cook, however.  He is a good Baptist, and he believes slaveholding to be sin, an opinion with which I concur. 

Six years have passed since my brothers and I went to learn the carriage building trade from Mr. Cook.  My brothers have since gone back to the family plantation.  I went back once to try and persuade my father to free his slaves.  He told me never to come back.  My grandfather, Joel, was sorry to hear it.  He is wiser about the slave business.  He knows it is evil, and one day the south must surely give it up or it will destroy us.  He asked me to keep in touch so I shall write him.  My father, however, says I am dead to him, so I shall never go there again.  I will stay with Mr. Cook’s family.  I am engaged to his beautiful young daughter, Catherine.  She’s such a tiny thing, not quite five feet tall, and I can encircle her waist with my hands.

Ten years have passed, and much has happened.  Mr. Cook’s father died and left him a fine inheritance.  We went to Alabama and took several of the fellows from Georgia with us.  We built a first rate carriage manufactory in Milltown, but it failed to prosper.  The winds of war swirl about us.  The core issue is slavery, though most clamor about states’ rights and manufacturing.  Mr. Cook’s moral position is well known, and the slaveholders, who are the ones who have the money to buy our carriages and wagons, disdain to do business with an avowed abolitionist.

I myself am not in Mr. Cook’s favor at the present.  Catherine and I have five fine young sons, but I have six.  The mother of the sixth is Catherine’s sister.  I have sinned in the eyes of my church, and I have disappointed the woman I love so.  I am anathema in the eyes of the father-in-law I respect so much, all for a moment’s foolishness.  At least he is not shunning me as my own father.  I just have much to do to redeem myself in his eyes.

We went from Alabama to Louisiana.  There is much available land there, good for farming, and much timber to be cleared in order to farm the land.  The timber will bring a good price.  We did not get away from my past when we came here.  Most of our neighbors are people we knew in Alabama and Georgia.  I am afraid I had to show a rather strong hand in front of one of my young sons yesterday.  We were taking our corn to the mill to be ground into meal to see us through the winter.  We met a fellow driving his carriage.  I knew him all too well, and I had a score to settle with him.  I stopped the wagon and he stopped his buggy.  I stepped down and took him by the collar.  His feet never did manage to reach the ground.  I said right sharply, “If you do not stop spreading tales about me, sir, I shall have to horsewhip you,” and flung him back on to his buggy seat.  My son’s eyes were very large, but I could not explain the situation to him.

More years passed, and I worked hard to bring the land to fruition.  Catherine forgave me my indiscretion, and we had seven more sons and two daughters.  Two of the boys died when babies.  The others grew to be strong, hard working young men.  One of the girls is tall and strapping and works as hard as the boys.  No slaves on our land.  Our farm seems like an island of strength in a world spinning out of control.  The southern states have seceded, and the nation is at war with itself.  I do not wish to be a part of it, but I did leave with the Minden Rangers, a volunteer troop raised from the men of this parish.  I am, after all, a southerner.  I am really too old for war at thirty-five.  I was only with the troop a few months when the Confederacy passed a law allowing men of my age to refrain from the battle.  I was glad to go home.  With all the talk of slavery, it does not feel like my war.  Most of the foolish men who follow the rich fellows to their death and doom have never owned a slave in their lives, and don’t even realize what they throw their lives away to defend.

This war has been a hideous devastation.  I suspect the south may never recover.  So many lives wasted.  So much land ravaged and ruined.  Black fellows free for the first time in their lives with no funds from the north to educate and train them to become citizens.  The south has no funds left to do the job.  I see an economy that will leave us all, black and white, much worse off than we were before the war.

I am sixty now.  I have, I hope, lived through the worst of the Reconstruction.  We have an old Negro woman who lives in a cabin on our farm.  Hah, old, I say?  I don’t suppose Caroline is more than five years older than myself.  She is a hard working woman, doing her best to raise her two young sons and a grandson.  She grows a patch of vegetables, and in return for helping Catherine with the laundry and housework, we give her a share of our grain and what meat we can spare when we butcher.  The two older boys are able to help my sons in the fields some, and from that they make the only cash the family ever sees, which is not a great deal less than we see ourselves.

One of the worst parts of the Reconstruction is the nightriders.  They hide themselves in bed sheets and traipse about the countryside wreaking havoc.  They are the same foolish men who fought and bled to preserve a doomed slave economy from which they themselves never profited.  I suppose it makes them feel more important to presume they are better than some poor, hard working fellow just because of the color of his skin.

This night they have come upon my property.  I assure you, they shall regret that.  I try to hasten, for I hear them down about Caroline’s place, and she has no defense at all against them.

“Heigho?  What is the matter?  What are you doing there?”  Suddenly I feel a dreadful pain in my chest, and all the noise and clamor begins to recede in the night.  I fear someone else shall have to take the story from here.

I will take up the story.  I am Mr. Mabry’s son, Joe.  My farm is next to his, but he is already dead when I get there.  The fools that shot him have fled, but Caroline tells me who they were.  “Mr. Walter Ferguson hit me in the head with his pistol, but I saw Mr. Calvin Skinner shoot Mr. Mabry in the chest.  Mr. Jack Melton and Mr. W. C. Henderson was with them.”  It was a fairly moonlit night.  They had started to beat Caroline for no good reason she knew of when my father arrived on the scene to challenge them.

When it became daylight, we got our good friend and neighbor, Mr. Richard Tubb Moore, to come and help.  He and four others found tracks leading north of the house.  There were two tracks, a number 5 and a number 7 shoe.  They tracked them for a quarter mile.  Eventually Melton and Henderson came in on their own and gave a statement which allowed the sheriff to arrest the other two.  Skinner was held without bail, but the other three were allowed to make bail.  Only Henderson and Skinner were finally charged with the murder.  The shooting happened in April.  The trial went through July and on August first, the jury brought in the verdict everyone expected.  The only eyewitness was poor old Caroline, and they let her testify.  By Louisiana law, her testimony could not be used to convict a white man of any crime, just because of the color of her skin.  The verdict for both men was “not guilty.”

That all happened in 1885.  On New Year’s Eve of 1887 Mr. Calvin Skinner was enjoying the comfort of his abode.  Someone filled him with buckshot.  Probably some fool shooting to greet the New Year.  No particulars were ever known, and no charges were ever brought.