Leigh Ann's Civil War Read Free Page B

tears as I watched Louis go into Pa's library and slam the door. Pa came down and saw me and picked me up, sat down on the bottom step, and held me on his lap.
    "Don't worry your pretty little head about Louis," he soothed. "He acts like that because he's part Indian."
    I just stared up at Pa's face. Was this part of his "madness" coming on?
    "He most positively is," he assured me. "Can't you see his dark hair? And eyes? And how he'd rather ride with no saddle? And his high cheekbones? And how good he is working with silver?"
    I only saw one thing. That if Louis was part Indian, he was not my brother. Mother's hair was fair. Pa's was white. Viola's and mine was light brown and sun-streaked. Teddy's hair was the same as ours.
    I leaped off Pa's lap and ran through the front door, off the front verandah, and around the side of it, where I hid under the sweet gum trees and cried my heart out until Louis himself came to find me.

CHAPTER TWO
    "Come on, Leigh Ann, before I come over there and scalp you."
    "Is that before or after you knock me over?"
    He'd taken off his sword and unbuttoned his gray jacket and shirt underneath. I could see some dark hair on his chest.
    "You're getting a little cheeky there, aren't you?"
    In school we'd studied about Indians. They didn't have hair on their chests, did they? Teddy and Louis did. I'd seen them tear off their shirts several times when brushing down the horses or jumping into the stream in their small clothes.
    "I don't care. You had no call to say such to me. You're supposed to have manliness and courage and honor. That's what Miss Finch said all our Southern men from eminent families have."
    He tried to hide a smile. "I try, Leigh Ann, I try terrible hard, but it's downright difficult sometimes. What else did she say we're supposed to have?"
    "She said they're supposed to defend their mothers' and sisters' honor to the death if they have to."
    "Well, if the day comes when I have to, I'll gladly do it, Leigh Ann. Now why do you think I've come out here? There are different ways of defending one's little sister's honor. There are different kinds of honor. You've been told by Pa that I'm an Indian. Am I correct?"
    I said nothing. I looked at the ground.
    "And you've been shocked and hurt and you likely have come to the ugly conclusion that I'm not your brother. Am I right, sweetie?"
    I looked at him. "What did you study at college? Hoodoo?"
    He and Teddy had gone to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Thomas Jefferson's university. Louis, older by two years, had graduated. Teddy had left at the end of his second year to join the army.
    Now Louis laughed. "I have the gift of hoodoo because I am half Indian. Do you want to know about it?"
    "Yes, but first I want to know what you've got in that box you just set down." It was considerable large, that box, bigger than any of Mother's hatboxes by half.
    "Then come out of there and I'll show you. And I'll tell you the secret we've all been hiding from you. Let's take a nice walk down to the stream. But you must remember that I speak the truth, and it's a good truth. And it's your truth, too."
    I just stared at him. "Are we going to bury it?"
    "You can never bury the truth, Leigh Ann. It always comes to the surface when you least expect it to."
    "I mean the box. You've got a shovel." It was lying on the ground next to the box. He just kept smiling and I could not fight that smile. I stood and went to him and he brushed me off.
    "Yes, we're going to bury the box. And I'm going to ask you a very respectable favor this day and hope you will do it for me."
    I'd once told him I'd do just about anything for him and he'd admonished me never to say that to anybody. Not even to him. Or Teddy. I was puzzled, but made no further inquiry because he'd used what I'd come to know as his "We don't want to speak of that now" voice.
    We walked in the direction of the stream that ran beyond the cows' meadow. There stood a line of dogwood growing a little