Traveler trilogy Book 2, updates every Friday!
Five years after killing Levi Cornwall, Arthur Morgan is happy. He has a wife who loves him, an honest job he enjoys, and two beautiful children named Sadie and Hiram. All of it is turned on its head, h...
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"Your friend doesn't look much worse for wear," Beau said to Jenny as they walked, arm in arm towards the river at the edge of the property.
Jenny cocked her head. "Well, no. Why would he?"
Beau raised an eyebrow and grinned at her. "I reckon you'd have heard by now. Whole town's talking about the man he beat up in the parlor house the other day. Some greasy, yellow-haired bastard who was saying all manner of disgusting things to a lady. Apparently, Arthur stepped in to defend her honor."
Jenny gritted her teeth and looked away. "A greasy, yellow-haired bastard, you say? I know the one. I was wondering how he got the shiner on his eye when I last saw him. Apparently his nose is broke, too. If we're talking about the same feller, trust me. He deserved it."
"He sounds like my cousins," Beau laughed. "They're cruel just for the sake of cruelty. I think most of them are still stuck in the dark ages where the nobility ruled on the backs of slaves. It would be funny if it wasn't so awful." He paused for a moment. "You know, sometimes I don't think slavery ever ended the way Lincoln intended it to."
"Lots of things didn't end when white people said they did," Jenny scoffed. "You've never been to an Indian reservation, have you?"
"No," Beau admitted. "But I'm guessing you were raised on one?"
She shook her head. "Nope. My father was white, so we lived in a house on a smallholding. But that house was in Oklahoma, which was just called 'Indian Territory' back then. I may not have grown up on reservations, but I saw them plenty. They're absolute hellholes of disease and despair."
"I'd describe plantation life the same way," said Beau. "Do you know that slavery has been outlawed since '64, and yet all the folk you see working our tobacco fields are descended from slaves my grandfather used to own? He quite literally left them in his will to my father, including my wet nurse and the house maids who raised me, and he died several years after the end of the Civil War. They were supposed to be free men and women, and yet they were left in a will just like property."
"Your mother didn't raise you?" Jenny questioned, raising an eyebrow. She knew rich folk had odd ways, but it never really occurred to her that rich parents wanted nothing to do with their children.
"On paper," Beau replied. "But in practice, I didn't see her much. She was too busy being a society lady with my father. Then when I was about twelve, she died, and I wasn't the least bit sad at her funeral. As far as I'm concerned, she wasn't really my mother. Just the woman who happened to grow me inside her body for nine months. She was always concerned about looks and appearances, and I never could quite measure up to what she and my father wanted me to be."
"So the servants raised you?"
"Yes," Beau answered. "There were three of them in our house, plus my wet nurse, Elizabeth. They were my real mothers. When I had a bad dream or I was sick or in pain, they were the ones who comforted me. They cooked my dinners, played with me, bathed me, and clothed me."
