We Meet Again

We Meet Again

We Meet Again

An Anthology

G. B. Carmichael

COPYRIGHT © 2023 G. B. Carmichael

Cover Art by Russ Banks; used by permission

Cover Layout by Michael Paul Hurd

Interior graphics from Pixabay (unrestricted) and the personal collection of G. B. Carmichael

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, without the express written permission of the author, except where permitted by law. This book is subject to copyright laws in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, and elsewhere.

This work may not be used for generating or testing Artificial Intelligence content or capabilities without the express written permission of the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, relationships, dialogue, and incidents are drawn from the author’s imagination and should not be construed as portrayals of real events.

ISBN (e-book): 9781958418208

Publisher: Lineage Independent Publishing,

Marriottsville, MD, USA

Maryland Sales and Use Tax Entity: Lineage Independent Publishing, Marriottsville, MD 21104

[email protected]

To Our Readers,

Some of the stories in this anthology present subject material related to mental health (e.g., depression and suicide) that may be upsetting to some individuals.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD

We Meet Again! (A Novella)

Celestine’s Story

Private Banks

Khadija’s Story

Julius, Robert, and Tommy’s Story

Rebecca

In the Heat of the Night

At the Bus Stop

The Miracle of World War I

Not Such a Good Idea

Lady in Red

The In-Between

Casualties and Canaries of World War I

And the Lights Went Out!

The Explosion that Rocked the Street

You Never Can Tell

The Hero

Ain’t Karma a Bitch

Counting Tears

The Highwayman

The Street Urchin

The Rescue

Ode to a Peony

The White Peony

The Miracle Gift

After the Storm

Candle in the Dark

Flashback

In the Garden

The Ticking Clock

The Telephone Call

What a Revelation

The Archaeological Find.

Well, I Never Expected That!

The Grail

The Hooker

Hidden Treasures

Desert Island Discs.

Chance, Choice, or a Memory?

A Philosophical Question

The Visit

First Love

On My Terms

The Love Poem

The Milestone

Missing

Right is Right

The Resolution

The Anniversary

A New Arrival

Unwelcome Visitor

The Last to Fall

The Waiting Room

The Legacy

The Cry of the Mountain

The Locked Door

The Opera Ticket

Time Traveller

Bigfoot

The Dancer

The Incident

Trapped in Ireland’s Shadows

The Painting

1: Molly

2: One Foggy Night

3: The Old Man.

4: The Crystal Glass.

The Empty Chair

Walking With Ghosts

Just Think of Me

A Message from Your Mother.

Acknowledgments

FOREWORD

Writing anything for publication is challenging, and G. B. Carmichael has certainly risen to that challenge. In this magnum opus, she presents an extensive body of work that includes two novellas, a wide range of short stories, and a few poems thrown in for good measure. This is her second anthology and fourth book overall.

Life was the inspiration for every story or poem in this anthology. Sometimes playful, occasionally lusty, always cheeky, and thoroughly captivating, the stories will engage the reader in thought-provoking and sometimes visceral ways. The first novella, We Meet Again, discusses the legacy of former slaves in the United States.

Later, Carmichael brings World War I and World War II into the reader’s focus in short stories such as The Dancer or The Miracle of World War I. In a couple of other stories, she tells the stories of adults suffering from depression or dealing with seemingly insurmountable situations (hence the trigger warning).

One of my favorites is The In Between, which captures the everlasting nature of love. The story speaks volumes in just a few short pages, and I suggest that it is a tissues to the ready tale. Another of my favorite stories took me back to Liverpool in approximately 1960. You’ll just have to find it. It’s short – but sweet.

The stories as a whole are a cross-section of life on this earth – and sometimes what comes afterwards.

I am honored to be the editor and publisher of this anthology and look forward to G. B. Carmichael’s future works.

Michael Paul Hurd

Author/Editor/Publisher

Lineage Independent Publishing

We Meet Again! (A Novella)

Celestine’s Story

Celestine hurried up the narrow street. She wasn’t one hundred percent sure it had been him , but just the possibility filled her with terror. Panic now laid waste to any logical thought other than escape.

She passed over Magazine Street, up the roads leading to Lafayette Square, and boundless options for escape.

Just one more block and the question of Was it or wasn’t it? would not matter.

She was crossing the Camp Street intersection, when from a darkened doorway she’d barely passed, someone swiftly stepped up behind her. His left hand covered her mouth as the right arm encircled her waist and lifted her backward into the shadows.

We meet again, lovely Celestine. His voice was the devil’s, every word dripped venom and evil. Her bladder involuntarily voided in a fight or flight response; sadly, she could do neither.

Daniel FitzAlan, known by all simply as ‘FitzAlan’ was the overseer at the Magnolia Grove Plantation that stood in between St. Peter’s and St. Charles, northwest of Saint Louis, in Missouri. A grand Italianate-style mansion, it boasted seventy-five rooms, including a gaol, and was owned by Danny’s boss, sugarcane planter Andrew James Jackson, who’d had it built in the 1830’s.

Celestine had been born there fifteen years previously. Her mother, Khadija, still cried for her home somewhere on the African continent.

Her father was either Danny or her owner, Andrew Jackson. Both had frequently taken their pleasure with her mother before whipping the skin off her back for being slow to respond to an order given in her bed or out in the fields.

This was not an unusual occurrence in those dark days.

KHADIJA HAD BEEN CAUGHT in a raid on her village when she was about seven. Her mother and baby brother had been sold on the block in Saint Louis’s Market Street; she never saw them again. Soon after, she was sold to the Magnolia Plantation.

Celestine had heard the stories, her mother’s not much different from so many of the plantation’s slaves. The only thing Khadija could recall with certainty was her name. The boss man, though, had decreed her new name to be Betsy from the day she arrived at Magnolia Grove.

When Betsy was delivered of her beautiful daughter, she promised herself to raise her child to be ready to run if ever an opportunity presented itself to them.

Every week she wrapped bread and fruit in her kerchief and hid it by the edge of the field, near the gates of the plantation’s backroad.

Sometimes, as Celestine grew and the master visited her mother’s cabin, she would make him laugh and he’d press a nickel into her tiny hand before sending her to a neighbour, or to play outside. Betsy saved every one of them. Even one dollar might be the difference between death and freedom. There were worse things than death awaiting many of the caught runaways. She’d heard tell of slaves being given to the dogs to tear to bits, and hanging was always a favourite. (did you know, readers, that the word picnic, comes from pick a piccanniny and hang him, a suggested invitation for a day out’s entertainment for Southern folk back then?)

As a small child, Celestine played and was schooled with the master’s children in the big house nursery suite. The boy, Rhett, and she were fast friends and fished and swam in the bayou. She had good memories of those innocent summers. It was Rhett who’d asked his father where Betsy had been born. Celestine had told him she wished she knew what country was her mother’s native home. He had promised to ask if she’d get him one of her mother’s famous biscuits.

GABON SITS ON THE COAST of Africa. Equatorial Guinea and the Congo were neighbours. Many of her peers on the plantation claimed heritage from these places and others were from Cameroon and Angola. The slavers had raped their way down the west coast of Africa.

When Celestine learnt all of this, she sought out the older women who spoke of Gabon as their homeland. She sucked every snippet of memory of their culture, history and of the land itself; she needed to understand her heritage. She begged lists of names for girls there and popular family names.

Eventually, she decided upon Alvi. Once she was free, no-one would ever call her by her slave name again. She would be Alvi Koumba, a free woman of Gabon. She spent many hours daydreaming of her life when she was eventually free.

WHEN RHETT WAS FIFTEEN, two years Celestine’s senior, his father gave her to him as a birthday gift, to learn the ways of men’s pleasure. Over the previous two or three years Celestine had watched the changes transform her childhood friend. Each trip home from his school, she noted a little more of her friend had disappeared.

Now he was a young facsimile of his father and she was just a slave, his slave, and he used her as such.

Around this time, Celestine began to notice the male slaves speaking in whispers round the evening fires. She sat quietly on the edge of the gatherings and listened. She heard talk of a man they called Old Abe who was causing a ruckus up north and calling for the end of slavery; they were talking of the war that had been raging on for near two years.

The year of 1863 began as every New Year’s Day did, with them having to clear the detritus and debris from the New Year’s Eve ball which the master hosted annually. However, the day ended very differently for the master, and every slave-owning man in the south.,

Mr. Lincoln, Old Abe, the President of America, had declared that morning that all slaves, including those held by rebel state men or women, were declared free from that day. The third year of the civil war began with a noble declaration in the North and was answered with a furious rebel yell in the South.

The whispers around the fires were soon about places like Shiloh, Yorktown and Sharpsburg, or Antietam as it’s called in the North. They told of the bloodshed and bitter fighting. Things were not going so well for the Confederate States. More men would flock to the ranks, including the boss man and his son Rhett and many slaves, who were forced into the army of the south. Forced by their owners to fight to secure their continued enslavement.

The overseer, Daniel FitzAlan was now in charge of the day-to-day running of the plantation under the Mistress.

Melanie Jackson, nee Bouvier, was a bored socialite, ten years her husband’s junior and Daniel was a devil, with the looks of a dashing vagabond: wild black hair, turbulent blue eyes and a heart as black as his stallion. It wasn’t long after Rhett and his father left for the war that the whispers between mouth and ear began. Talk was of the mistress’s sojourns to her boudoir with the dashing overseer every afternoon. Those two hours or so of calm on the plantation was a blessing on all the staff. There was nary a one who was not afeart of the overseer.

BY THE MARCH CELESTINE had decided it was time to run for freedom. Khadija refused to be included in the plans; she blamed her age and pointed out that she didn’t have the education her daughter had been accorded and it might be the reason that would get them caught. The girl begged, but her mother would not be swayed. She did promise, though, to come as soon as Celestine sent word that she had work and a home for her mother to come to. Finally, Celestine acquiesced: as soon as Mr. Lincoln had these rebels whipped, her mother would join her.

The following week Celestine waited till the moment Mr. FitzAllan had rounded the back of the big house and she took off running. It was early in the year of 1863 that she, Alvi, declared herself FREE!

She took the most illogical route. An old captive Iroquois Indian had told her of a secret path through the swamp to the south of the boundary of Magnolia Grove. They’d expect a runaway to head to the northern states or at least toward the Union troops.

She travelled at night, and she’d learnt from her eavesdropping where the safe houses were rumoured to be. The railway she’d heard spoken of was the freedom railway. An underground network all across the country, homes where there was help to be found for the likes of Alvi. Now she thought herself free, she would use her slave name no more.

For three days, she travelled south, then in Mount Vernon, Illinois, where a friend arranged a ride northeast towards her final destination.

From there she was to go to meet a contact in St Louis on the north side of Lafayette Square, where another helping hand would see her along the next part of her journey to Hagerstown and freedom.

Sadly, the short walk from the south side outskirts of Lafayette square. to the north side where her contact awaited her, was where she thought she’d spotted Daniel FitzAlan.

She’d retraced her steps and made her approach via another route. She was just approaching the last intersection before the road led into Lafayette Square when, unseen by Alvi, a man stepped up behind her. Reaching from the darkness of a doorway and without warning, his right hand clamped over her mouth while is left simultaneously encircled her waist, lifting her off her feet. Alvi’s blood ran cold as the devil’s voice whispered in her ear, We meet again, Celestine!

FitzAllan!

After dragging her into the alleyway, he put her feet back on the ground and, turning her to face him, he punched her hard on the side of the head. Everything went dark and her knees buckled. If she fully lost consciousness, it was but fleeting.

Daniel had underestimated this young girl. He assumed he had her senseless and malleable. Instead, she grabbed the small roll of coins from her pocket and, closing her fist tightly round them, smashed nickel and knuckle into his nose. It stunned him long enough for her to notice the large rock being used to hold the rubbish lid in place. Using both hands and every ounce of strength, she delivered a blow that ensured her the time to make it to her meeting and escape. She stuffed the coin roll back in her pocket and divested Daniel of his money pouch, then took to her heels as if Lucifer himself was on her trail.

By late June, she’d made it to Hagerstown. Here Alvi first set eyes upon black men in blue uniforms. Free men and black. Here she became a camp follower.

SHE’D BEEN STANDING on a street corner agog at the sight of these saviours, line upon line of black and white soldiers all fighting to make her free. It was so wondrous to her that she didn’t notice the sister mulatto standing beside her. This light skinned woman was beautiful. Her skin like a milky coffee and her hair, much like Alvi’s own, only longer, was piled high and tied with a brightly coloured kerchief. She smiled; her full red lips looked luscious against her bright white teeth.

What’s the matter, chile,’ you never saw a woman smile afore?

Alvi paused, then offered out her hand, Excuse me forgetting my manners, Miss. I was admiring your hair style. My name is Alvi. Alvi Koumba.

Why hello, Miss Alvi, I am Miss Désirée. They shook hands in the genteel fashion of the day.

They fell into easy conversation about the troops in all their splendour, and the emancipation bill (though Alvi did not know then, that was what the declaration had been called). She soaked up every snippet, any piece of information might be vital.

Miss Désirée told her that she was travelling with the troop’s supply train, helping in the cookhouse. Alvi asked was it possible for any woman to travel with them.

Well now, honey, you gotta have something to trade for a place or you gotta work. You got anything to trade, chile?

Alvi paused, thinking what was clear but unsaid in Desirée’s words. She concluded that as it had been taken from her by force before, she reckoned for freedom, she could tolerate being some soldier’s woman till she reached the north.

Yes’m. I got me some trade goods, an’ I ain’t been a chile since I was thirteen years old.

Désirée led her into the camp. Her newly rouged lips and primped hair piled into her own kerchief, she was a sight to behold. Not a man failed to notice as she sashayed alongside her new friend.

A week later, Alvi contemplated the past months. She’d ridden in her first locomotive, travelled almost seven hundred miles, went alone through swamps and slave country, and had made friends and found a new version of herself that would not be easily recognisable by her mother. Having detrained in Columbus, they were joined by the 2nd Massachusetts Regiment, who were newly come from the battle at Fort Wayne. They were headed northeast to a place named Gettysburg. There was thirty-three miles to their destination.

ALVI HAD GLEANED A broad knowledge of herbs and healing from all the women at Magnolia Grove. It stood her in good stead and had won her a place working in the hospital tent under the regimental surgeon. The fact that she could read and write and knew her numbers turned her into an invaluable assistant even when surrounded by the slaughter of battle.

The first three days of July taught her many life lessons. She found herself to be stoic, calm in the midst of panic, and with a depth of compassion she’d have never anticipated in herself. Even the Confederate white soldiers appreciated the care and compassion she showed to those who previously would have valued their dog higher than her life.

Alvi saw hundreds of men die, suffering the damage of shot and shell. She also witnessed their true heroism in the face of not only impending death, but in the face of a life in ruins, with bodies and minds broken. Faces of soldiers damaged by artillery or a surgeon’s knife as he battled and sliced, to save their life but not their looks.

It was here the 54th Massachusetts Regiment joined the depleted numbers she’d previously travelled with.

She was no longer an ignorant girl by July 7th when they left Gettysburg and headed South through Washington and Richmond, crossing then from Virginia into North Carolina.

It was on the 7th that she met Julius Cade, a sergeant in the newly formed 54th. They’d only received their colours in the May and here they were: the first ever Black regiment in the union army.

Their white officers were held in high regard by the private soldiers, especially their Colonel, Robert Gould Shaw. He was the son of a prominent Bostonian family who were staunch supporters of the abolitionist bill.

Initially, Colonel Shaw was reluctant to accept this commission for he feared they’d never allow his men to see action, but at last accepted the post.

Julius and Alvi both were hit by the thunderbolt, love at first sight and the regimental Chaplain reluctantly agreed to marry the pair on the 11th of July. Each night, the pair lay together under the stars planning for their life when the war ended. They figured they’d have enough of a nest egg of saved pay, especially as Alvi was now on the hospital payroll as a surgeon’s assistant. They reckoned Kansas or Colorado, a small piece of land where they could settle, raise a family, and have Alvi’s mother come live with them.

Alvi had never known such joy: she asked herself sometimes was it right to be so happy when the country seemed hell bent on destroying itself, and all in it.

Julius had only one gripe, despite their uniform, and finally the arrival of their weapons, it would seem that the powers that be held little confidence or trust that the black soldiers would hold the line in the face of the enemy’s guns.

It gnawed at his pride and every man jack in the regiment felt the same. Had these men not more reason than anyone to want to wipe the slave-owning grey coats from the face of the earth? However, changing men’s thinking takes time. Waiting for this change was affecting the morale of the 54th.

On the morning of the 16th, Julius expected a day no different from the previous ones. There had been no portent to hint at the significance this day would have on him and history.

Near Grimball’s Landing, they were out foraging when they happened upon a skirmishing party of the 1st Carolina Regiment. There followed the drawing of first blood by the 54th. They prevailed with panache and valour. Robert Gould Shaw’s confidence in his troops was proven and then some. The word of their success and courage heated the telegraph wires up and down the country. Everyone in the 54th claimed it was a glorious day for the forwarding of the cause of the North and freedom for all enslaved men in every state. They enjoyed the notoriety and glory for forty-eight hours, never realising it had signed the death warrant of many celebrating that day.

Colonel Shaw soon received orders that he and his men should assist in the razing of a small town they passed through. Shaw didn’t hold with making the women and children suffer more than they had to, surrounded by war. He and his men felt the shine of their pride and honour dull at having such a terrible task. Shaw sent word to his commander in chief, asking if this was general orders issued or just a vengeful act by an officer Shaw’s senior. He never received a reply to this communication.

Instead, he received orders for what appeared to be a suicide mission. He was to have the dubious honour of leading the attack on a position to the south of their encampment. He would be in overall charge of the 54th, and units from the 3rd New Hampshire’s, 6th Connecticut, 9th Maine, 48th New Yorkers and the 76th Pennsylvania regiments. It was conferred as a great honour, but Shaw suspected it was to punish them for showing these pompous asses at HQ and Washington that his men were equal to any in the Union army, his men having distinguished themselves so well in their first major engagement and earning their unique place in history.

ON THE MORNING OF JULY 18th, 1863, Alvi drew Julius into a warm embrace, saying he’d best be home on time for supper as she had something special she wished to discuss with him. She had confirmed her suspicions: she was pregnant with their first child.

Julius kissed her tenderly and swore she was the prettiest thing he’d ever laid eyes on. His embrace was so fierce she felt his foreboding that he did not expect to return to her. All day she prayed he’d be proved wrong.

Alvi watched from a distance the charge of the 54th across open ground to attack the parapets of Fort Wagner. She witnessed the decimation of this historic and brave regiment. Some six hundred troops had taken the field; Colonel Shaw and 280 men were killed, wounded or unaccounted for. Forty-two percent of the regiment, including her Julius, were gone, gone into the annals of history and glory, and the arms of the Lord.

Alvi took his pay and the paltry gratuity given to the black widows, a lesser amount than that sent to the women of the white soldiers. Was Colonel Shaw’s widow’s grief and loss greater than that of Sergeant Cade’s wife? Alvi realised that even though more enlightened than the men of the South, racism was still alive and well in the North.

She stayed