Read Online Heaven and Hell by John Jakes - Free Book Online
Authors: John Jakes
Tags: United States, Fiction, Historical fiction, General, Romance, Historical, United States - History - 1865-1898
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arms and slightly press the contour of your waist." Des laughed at that. He considered all dancing moral, because he considered himself, and every one of his pupils, the same.
The five years in which he taught from the standard text, Ram beau's Dancing Master--his worn copy was in his saddlebag this moment--were magical ones. Despite the abolitionists and the threat of war, he presided at opulent balls and plantation assemblies, watching with delight as attractive white men and women danced by candlelight from seven at night until three or four in the morning, hardly out of breath. It was all capped by the glorious winter social season in Charleston, and the grand ball of the prestigious St. Cecilia Society.
Des's knowledge of dancing was wide and eclectic. He had seen frontier plank dancing, in which two men jigged on a board between barrels until one fell off. On plantations he'd observed slave dancing, Page 44
rooted in Africa, consisting of elaborate heel-and-toe steps done to the beat of clappers made of animal bone or blacksmith's rasps scraped together. Generally, the planters prohibited drums among their slaves, deeming them a means of transmitting secret messages about rebellions or arson plots.
He had dreamed long hours over an engraved portrait of Thomas D. Rice, the great white dancer who'd enthralled audiences early in the century with his blackface character Jim Crow. From Carolinians who'd traveled in the North, he'd heard descriptions of the Shaking Quakers, notorious nigger lovers whose dances gave form to religious doctrine.
A single slow-moving file of dancers, each placing one careful foot ahead of the other, represented the narrow path to salvation; three or more concentric rings of dancers turning in alternate directions were the wheel-within-a-wheel, the Shaker vision of the cosmos. Des knew the whole universe of American dance, though to those who paid him he admitted to liking only those kinds of dancing that he taught.
His universe was shattered with the first cannon fire on Fort Sum ter. He mustered at once with the Palmetto Rifles, a unit organized by his best friend, Captain Ferris Brixham. Out of the original eighty men, only three were left in April of this year, when General Joe Johnston surrendered the Confederacy's last field army at Durham Station, North Carolina. The night before the surrender, a beastly yankee sergeant and Lost Causes 41
four of his men caught Des and Ferris foraging for food and beat them unconscious. Des survived; Ferris died in his arms an hour after officers announced the surrender. Ferris left a wife and five young children.
Embittered, Des trudged back to Charleston, where an eighty-fiveyearold uncle told him Sally Sue had died in January of pneumonia and complications of malnutrition. As if that wasn't enough, throughout the war the whole LaMotte family had been shamed by members of another family in the Ashley River district. It was more than Des could bear.
His mind had turned white. There was a month of which he remembered nothing. Aging relatives had cared for him.
Now he rode his mule through the marshes, looking for plantation clients from the past or people who could afford lessons for their children.
He'd found neither. Behind him, barefoot, walked his fifty-year old servant, an arthritic black called Juba; it was a slave name meaning musician. After his return home, Des had signed Juba to a lifetime contract of personal service. Juba was frightened by the new freedom bestowed by the legendary Linkum. He readily made his mark on the paper he couldn't read.
,
Juba walked in the sunshine with one hand resting on the hindquarters Page 45
of the mule ridden by a man with only two ambitions: to practice again the profession he loved in a world the Yankees had made unfit for it, and to extract retribution from any of those who had contributed to his misery and that of his family and his homeland.
This was the man who confronted Cooper Main.
A
The five years in which he taught from the standard text, Ram beau's Dancing Master--his worn copy was in his saddlebag this moment--were magical ones. Despite the abolitionists and the threat of war, he presided at opulent balls and plantation assemblies, watching with delight as attractive white men and women danced by candlelight from seven at night until three or four in the morning, hardly out of breath. It was all capped by the glorious winter social season in Charleston, and the grand ball of the prestigious St. Cecilia Society.
Des's knowledge of dancing was wide and eclectic. He had seen frontier plank dancing, in which two men jigged on a board between barrels until one fell off. On plantations he'd observed slave dancing, Page 44
rooted in Africa, consisting of elaborate heel-and-toe steps done to the beat of clappers made of animal bone or blacksmith's rasps scraped together. Generally, the planters prohibited drums among their slaves, deeming them a means of transmitting secret messages about rebellions or arson plots.
He had dreamed long hours over an engraved portrait of Thomas D. Rice, the great white dancer who'd enthralled audiences early in the century with his blackface character Jim Crow. From Carolinians who'd traveled in the North, he'd heard descriptions of the Shaking Quakers, notorious nigger lovers whose dances gave form to religious doctrine.
A single slow-moving file of dancers, each placing one careful foot ahead of the other, represented the narrow path to salvation; three or more concentric rings of dancers turning in alternate directions were the wheel-within-a-wheel, the Shaker vision of the cosmos. Des knew the whole universe of American dance, though to those who paid him he admitted to liking only those kinds of dancing that he taught.
His universe was shattered with the first cannon fire on Fort Sum ter. He mustered at once with the Palmetto Rifles, a unit organized by his best friend, Captain Ferris Brixham. Out of the original eighty men, only three were left in April of this year, when General Joe Johnston surrendered the Confederacy's last field army at Durham Station, North Carolina. The night before the surrender, a beastly yankee sergeant and Lost Causes 41
four of his men caught Des and Ferris foraging for food and beat them unconscious. Des survived; Ferris died in his arms an hour after officers announced the surrender. Ferris left a wife and five young children.
Embittered, Des trudged back to Charleston, where an eighty-fiveyearold uncle told him Sally Sue had died in January of pneumonia and complications of malnutrition. As if that wasn't enough, throughout the war the whole LaMotte family had been shamed by members of another family in the Ashley River district. It was more than Des could bear.
His mind had turned white. There was a month of which he remembered nothing. Aging relatives had cared for him.
Now he rode his mule through the marshes, looking for plantation clients from the past or people who could afford lessons for their children.
He'd found neither. Behind him, barefoot, walked his fifty-year old servant, an arthritic black called Juba; it was a slave name meaning musician. After his return home, Des had signed Juba to a lifetime contract of personal service. Juba was frightened by the new freedom bestowed by the legendary Linkum. He readily made his mark on the paper he couldn't read.
,
Juba walked in the sunshine with one hand resting on the hindquarters Page 45
of the mule ridden by a man with only two ambitions: to practice again the profession he loved in a world the Yankees had made unfit for it, and to extract retribution from any of those who had contributed to his misery and that of his family and his homeland.
This was the man who confronted Cooper Main.
A
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