Monthly Archives: February 2016

Voices in the Walls 18

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Chapter three, continued

Aunt Rachel put the coffee pot on the table and set out two cups. She settled in across from me and said, “Now, why don’t you tell me exactly what is going on.”

I told her of being called back from Baltimore and of Father’s fears. “He believes that if it comes to war, a lot of the fighting will be in Virginia, and that Washington City itself will be in great danger. There would be no safety there for Sarah, so he asked me to bring her here.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me, Matthew . . .”

“Aunt Rachel, people call me Matt.”

“All right, Matt. Don’t think you aren’t welcome here, but why didn’t Thomas send Sarah to live with his own sister. You must know that he and I don’t get along.”

“He said the North would be safer.”

“No, I don’t believe that. Southern Pennsylvania is right on the border between slave states and free ones.  We are more likely to have fighting here than in South Carolina where your Aunt Mary lives. There has to be another reason.”

I liked the way she went right to he heart of the problem, and I liked the way her face looked. She was alive to reality and ready to embrace the world as it really was. Aunt Mary, on the other hand, was the kind of woman Mrs. Davison would have been if she could have managed it.

I said, “I think Father considers my Aunt Mary rather empty-headed.”

She smiled briefly at some private memory, and said, “I haven’t met your Aunt Mary. What do you think of her?”

I thought back to when I had last seen her, three years ago during one of the times we were staying at Waterside. I remembered her grating voice and her endless conversations about nothing at all. I said, “I agree with Father.”

“Then perhaps she would not be the one to go to for safety.”

We drank our coffee in silence while Aunt Rachel thought it over. 

I get along well with people, mostly because Father trained me early how to put people at ease and give no offense. But that was just a thing I had learned to do. It was rare for me to feel truly at ease, but Aunt Rachel made me feel as if I had known her for years.

Out of the blue, she said, “You look like your father, but you remind me more of my sister – your mother. You have her calm. Your father was always restless; full of some kind of nervous energy. I teased him about it once. I told him he sat still at a full gallop. He didn’t like that very much.”

Aunt Rachel looked so much like my mother that everything she said took me back to childhood. I thought about how others treated Father and said, “I never knew anyone to tease Father.”

“I’m sure he would not allow it. He had too much pride for that.”

“Why don’t the two of you get along?”

She smiled sadly. “Personality and politics. We were both born stubborn, and we disagreed about slavery. My family has been of the Society of Friends since Pennsylvania was a colony, and we have always opposed slavery. You father was a slave owner. When I was younger, I thought all slave owners were sub-human beasts.”

That was hitting pretty close to home. “I hope you don’t still feel that way,” I said stiffly.

“Oh,” she said, “you do have your Father’s temper after all! No, Matt, I don’t feel that way any more. I hate slavery as much as I ever did, but not slave owners.”

100. We Hold These Truths (post 2)

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.  .  .   that all men are created equal  .  .  .

I studied Indian culture for five years and wrote my first master’s thesis on caste based economics. Five years wasn’t enough time to scratch the surface of the complexity of the subject, so anything I say here is a tweet when an encyclopedia is needed.

During the time of my studies, the 60s and 70s, academics were calling black-white relations here at home an American caste system. To see how the differences outweigh the similarities, let’s look as some of the characteristics of caste (jati) in India:

  • Jati groups are exclusive. You can’t join them and you can’t leave them.
  • Jati groups are arranged in a hierarchy.
  • You enter your group at birth and exit it at death. An individual cannot move from one group to another.
  • Upper groups are pure, lower groups are polluted (ritually, don’t look for germ theory in a millennia old culture)

You can see that the first two characteristics fit pre-Civil Rights America. The third fits America except for passing, which was seen as an aberration. We will never know how much it was a norm.

The last characteristic is hugely different between the two cultures, but not absent in America. When I was young, I was told, “If you are ever in a swimming pool and a n—– gets in, get out immediately because they all have V.D..” I didn’t believe it, even then, but you can see how the idea that they are dirty and shouldn’t be touched would reinforce the idea of segregation.

Dirty Jew would have fit well into the two race system of Nazi Germany, as well.

Nevertheless, the caste system in India is overwhelmingly complex. Once you get past the surface, similarities to race are swamped in a myriad of differences. Caste is a bad metaphor for the American situation.

*****

I want to share one caste-race sidelight. There was a massive immigration of Indian workers from the Calcutta and Madras areas to Trinidad, ironically to replace recently freed black slaves who refused to go back the the cane fields as paid workers. When the immigrants were removed from local scrutiny in India, everybody passed for a higher jati; at least that was the belief of the immigrants after they arrived in Trinidad. It was while studying this phenomenon I came across the folk caution:   Beware of the black Brahmin and the pale Chamar.

Two points: When the control from above was removed, hierarchy collapsed. And, even though the racial component of caste is highly attenuated, light-is-good and dark-is-bad still retains a toehold in the conversation.

*****

And now we have come full circle. I began this series of posts by explaining why a white science fiction and fantasy author has an interest in race. Now we return to my novels, which is the original reason for this website. In Serial, the fragment Voices in the Walls is still underway, portraying a young white southerner’s struggle against his own racism. Elsewhere, I am working on the fourth novel in the Menhir series, tentatively titled Mud, which tells the story of a young outcaste fighting to escape his lowly status in the fantasy city of Renth.

Everything that ever happens to a writer is grist for the mill.

I’ll leave you with a riddle:

Question: How many painters does it take to make a masterpiece?
Answer: Two. One to paint, and one to tell him when to quit.

These last five weeks of posts won’t constitute a masterpiece, but it is time to quit. Except for this:  next week I will post here the opening of the novel Mud.

Voices in the Walls 17

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Chapter Three

After Sarah had chosen a small trunk and Aunt Rachel had hustled it and Sarah upstairs, I rolled the cart into a barn and returned to the house.

The kitchen made up one back quarter of the lower floor.  Most of one wall was taken up by a huge fieldstone fireplace.  Aunt Rachel had an new iron wood-burning cook stove, but she had put it to one side of the fireplace so that a friendly fire could still be built on cold winter days. The sideboards and bin tables were scrubbed and fresh. Feed sack towels hung on the stove drying, but they were neatly hemmed, and had been patched where they had worn through. Even over Sarah’s burnt bacon, I could smell the faint odor of spices.

I had just decided to go and fetch an armload of wood to make myself useful, when she returned. She asked if I drank coffee and I said that I did. She asked me if I wanted to rest, but I had no intention of taking an afternoon nap, no matter how little sleep I had gotten.

While she talked, she worked around the kitchen, making up a fresh pot of coffee and putting right the damage Sarah’s cooking had done. As I studied her, it stirred up memories that I had thought were lost. Rachel Darby Pike. My mother had been Amanda Darby Williams.  Aunt Rachel was the younger sister, and she looked much as I remembered my mother.

I wondered why I had not seen her for all these years. I knew that she and Father did not get along, but now that I had met her, I couldn’t imagine why not. 

Thinking back, I could remember a great deal about Mother, although some of the memories were probably not my own. During those times we spent at Waterside, Father would have sudden spells of eloquence when he would talk for hours about her. He called it keeping her memory alive for me, but I am sure that he was keeping it alive for himself as well.

Mother had been a plain woman like Aunt Rachel. She was a Pennsylvania Quaker whose family had opposed slavery for over a hundred years. How she had come to marry a southern plantation owner was something even Father had never explained. Mother had not fitted in at Waterside. None of the neighbors would associate with her. It was not that she pushed her views on them; rather, her whole quiet way of living was an affront to southern society.

I suppose that I owe much of what I am to her. When I helped Mr. Dreyfus load his wagon, and called him Mr. Dreyfus, it was what Mother would have done if she had been in my place.

Aunt Rachel put the coffee pot on the table and set out two cups. She settled in across from me and said, “Now, why don’t you tell me exactly what is going on.”

*****

Since I have set Matt up for major changes in outlook, it should be apparent that this bit about his mother is a beginning of the process of making those changes believable. To change the son of a fire-breathing, slave whipping plantation owner into someone modern readers could accept would be too much of a stretch. Matt’s father is a southerner and slave owner by accident of birth, and a moderate by the standards of his day. Matt has to face major changes, but not such major changes that the reader is likely to doubt that they could happen.

99. We Hold These Truths (post 1)

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Thomas Jefferson said it, but he didn’t believe it. Ask Sally Hemmings, if you think he did.

Jefferson was ahead of his time, but not far enough ahead to resist the pressures to retain his slaves. The French Revolution was so far ahead of history that it ended in dictatorship under Bonaparte. Lincoln was certainly ahead of his time; he freed the slaves, but he could not give them lasting equality.

Throughout human history, human culture has been a repudiation of the idea of equality.

*****

If I were black, my whole approach to life would be different. As a sympathetic white guy, I am angry at the stupidities of race in America. If I were a young black man, I would be pissed. My viewpoint and priorities would different. After all, its hard to remember that you’re trying to drain the swamp when you’re up to your ass in alligators.

As a white guy, the alligators aren’t trying to eat me, so I can see beyond them. But all I see is swamp.

*****

Hierarchy. It was invented by winners to keep the losers losing. It means “I’m better than you are.” No one ever said, “You’re better than I am”, and meant it.

Race is a handy way of keeping track of who’s supposed to be better than whom. It’s helpful it there is a strong physical dissimilarity between the winners and those who are forced to lose, but it isn’t necessary. In America, a white-looking black is still a black. In Japan, the situation is even worse.

There is a “race” of people in Japan which used to be called the Eta. Now that word has fallen into disrepute and they are called Burakumin. They are utterly indistinguishable from “normal” Japanese, yet they were, and often still are, considered untouchables and subject to powerful discrimination.

Of course things are better among native peoples who have not been damaged by civilization, right? Try reading The Tiwi of North Australia if you think that, or let me tell you about them. Women are controlled by men through arranged marriages. The old men have power, which translates as first choice. Young women are married to old men. Young men are pretty well restricted to marrying old women who have become widows. They will get young women later, when they have grown old and powerful. Does that sound like a fun way to live, for men or women?

In many traditional Muslim countries, the rights of men are many and the rights of women are few. For late breaking examples, see any television, any day.

Nothing is further from equality than a caste system.

If you seek the origin of the word caste, you will find that it is Portuguese, not Sanskrit. Roughly, it means color; the Portuguese who founded a colony at Goa on India’s west coast used their word to apply to the Indian notion of varna, and gave us all a word with new connotations.

In the 60s and 70s, some academics were calling black-white relations here at home an American caste system. There are similarities, but the Indian situation is far more complex.          We’ll look more closely at that idea tomorrow.

98. Black, White, Aryan, Jew

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Race. In America, it means black and white. I have spent the last few weeks arguing that race in America is a construct. We all partake of the same gene pool, varying only in the amount of various genes we possess. Take the whitest non-albino; put him on one end of the line. Take the blackest black and put him on the other. Assemble the millions of us who are not recent immigrants from elsewhere and put us in between. There would be no break in the gradation.

Nevertheless, race is still here, so embedded in our national consciousness that the truth of our unity is swamped by the voice in our heads screaming, “I don’t care. Blacks are still blacks, and whites are still whites!”

This kind of confusion about basic reality leads to tragedy, and not only in America. Try this sentence:

In the days of the Third Reich, Germans persecuted Jews.

If this sentence sounds accurate, you are missing a few points. The Jews who were sent to the death camps were largely Germans. I am sure that was no comfort to them, and it isn’t the most salient fact about the situation. But it is important. If we put a wrong label on something, it makes it hard to think clearly about that thing. This process is still going on, as today’s politicians turn complexities into sound bites.

Hitler offered simplified and false solutions to real problems, based on the idea that there was a German race and a Jewish race. Jewish is not a race. It is a religion, and sometimes an ethnic group.

German is not a race. It is a language, and it is shared by several countries other than Germany. Germanism is also an attempt by the late-formed country of Germany to find national unity in a semi-mythical past.

Aryan is not a race. If you say Aryan in today’s world, it will evoke Hitler’s movement to elevate his blonde, blue-eyed “super race” to world supremacy. That super race is a myth made up of equal parts hatred and scientific misunderstanding.

The term Aryan originates in northern India, 3500 years ago. It refers to the “light skinned” conquerors who drove out or enslaved the dark skinned native population. The word Iranian is a modern variant of the word Aryan. As for the “light skinned” conquerors, think Koothrappali from the Big Bang Theory. They were light skinned only compared to the people they conquered.

Hitler should be rolling over in his grave at the thought, but he got his information third hand.

It started with Max Muller, a German born-scholar who spent his career at Oxford. Linguists of his day discovered the link between the languages of Europe and South Asia, and developed the notion of an Indo-European language family. They believed this family of languages originated in the southwestern steppes of Russia, and was introduced into South Asia through the Aryan invaders. Muller was a strong proponent of Aryan culture, considering it one of the greatest developments of mankind. By Aryan, he meant the culture of India. After others had misrepresented his ideas, he clarified that Aryan culture did not imply an Aryan race.

As time passed, proponents of European superiority such as Arthur de Gobineau moved the origin place of the Indo-European language family to northern Europe, confused current notions of race (such as Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean) with the linguistic and cultural classification Aryan. They “invented” the Aryan race, which they considered to be light skinned in the European sense, the originators of civilization, and superior to all others. The caramel skinned invaders of India had been thoroughly whitewashed.

The last member of this trio is Huston Stewart Chamberlain, born in England, raised in France, and ending his life in Germany, converted to German superiority by Wagner’s music. He wrote the Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, in which he saw the history of the world entirely in terms of conflict between the Aryan and Jewish races. It became a bible of Nazism, and Chamberlain became a mentor to Hitler.

Labels like Jew and Aryan matter, just as labels like black and white matter in America. A “Jew” in Nazi Germany might be a Zionist extremist who believed that God chose his people and would smite all his enemies, or a modernistic atheist who had repudiated his Jewish ancestors, or some poor schmuck who just got misidentified. It would all be the same in Auschwitz.

And the Aryans that Hitler believed in, didn’t exist at all.

Voices in the Walls 16

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Chapter two, continued

She squeezed my shoulder and laughed. It was a sound full of compassion and understanding, and there was surprising strength in her hand. In that moment, she won my heart.

Aunt Rachel put Sarah to work frying bacon. When Sarah wanted to know why the servants didn’t cook, Rachel told her that there were no servants in her house. Sarah was working up to pout again, but we didn’t stay to see it.

Aunt Rachel had a two wheeled handcart that she used to move heavy things around the yard. She showed it to me, then walked out to the crossroads and helped me load Sarah’s trunks on board, shaking her head in amazement. I explained how Sarah had lived in one boarding school after another, with no real place to call home. These trunks were her home and her security.

Aunt Rachel listened. She said, “I understand. I don’t like to criticize Thomas because I know he’s your father, but he should have done better by her.”

“He did the best he could!” I replied heatedly.

She said, “Perhaps,” but she wasn’t convinced.

When we got back to the house it was filled with the smell of burned bacon. Rachel said, “Go pick one trunk to take up to your room. Then Matthew will put the rest in the barn until later.”

“I don’t want my trunks in some old barn,” Sarah snapped.

Rachel did not respond to Sarah’s tone of voice. She just said, “Fine. They can stay on the cart, but if it rains this afternoon . . .”

“I want them in my room!”

“All right. When you finish eating, you can carry them up.”

I thought poor Sarah was going to explode. She crossed her arms with offended dignity and said, “You can’t possibly think that I am going to carry my own trunks.”

Rachel lifted the overcooked bacon onto a plate and began breaking eggs into the grease. Over her shoulder, she said, “Who is going to carry them up, then?”

Aunt Rachel busied herself around the kitchen while Sarah thought about it. By the time she had heated a half loaf of bread and put it on the table along with eggs, bacon, jam, and butter, Sarah was ready to say, “I’m sorry, Aunt Rachel.”

Rachel said, “No one expects you to carry your own trunks, because you aren’t big enough. Matthew and I will carry your things up, but not now. Matthew is as tired as you are. I can see it in his eyes. So as soon as you eat, go choose one trunk, like I said, and we will put the cart with the rest of the out of the rain. This evening, after your brother has rested, he and I will take your trunks up.”

“Thank you, Aunt Rachel,” Sarah said, but I wasn’t sure if she was really thankful or not.

Rachel was not through. She sat down and faced Sarah directly. “Sarah,” she said, “I don’t expect you to carry your trunks up because you are too little, but I will expect you to work as long as you stay in my house. I don’t have any servants here. I live alone, cook my own meals, wash my own clothes, and raise my own food. You are welcome to stay here, but it is going to take more work to keep a house going with three people in it than it does for one. You two are going to have to do the extra work. There just isn’t anyone else here to do it.”

Sarah didn’t answer. She turned back to her food with a look that would have curdled milk. Aunt Rachel didn’t seem to mind. I decided then and there that I wouldn’t worry about Sarah as long as our aunt was there to keep her in line.

97. Truman, Eisenhower, and one other

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Once again it is Presidents Day. We used to celebrate Washington’s birthday and Lincoln’s birthday, but now we lump them together and throw the other forty-two Presidents in for good measure.

Not all of them deserve to be remembered, but Truman and Eisenhower do, especially during Black History Month.

No, I didn’t forget President O’bama, but he’ll get his share of acknowledgment. So will President Kennedy. Maybe even President Johnson; Lyndon Johnson, that is. Andrew Johnson is all but forgotten, despite the fact that he was impeached for trying to continue Lincoln’s policies.

Not many people remember what Truman and Eisenhower did for African-Americans. Mind you, we are talking about the fifties. Neither president was particularly pro-Black, and neither would have marched in Selma, but their actions, whatever their motivation, moved the cause of Civil Rights forward.

In July of 1948, Truman issued Executive Order 9981 which abolished racial discrimination in the United States Armed Forces. Like Lincoln before him he was able to do things as Commander in Chief that would never have passed in Congress.

Need I add that practical necessity was a driving force in the action, along with pressure from civil rights leaders who did care about the plight of blacks? And need I add that the white military was not thrilled? Kenneth Claiborne Royall was forced to retire as Secretary of the Army after he spent a year trying to block execution of Truman’s order.

Most of the desegregation of the Army took place on President Eisenhower’s watch. So did the early Civil Rights movement. Eisenhower was in favor of equality under the law, but sympathetic to the feelings of the white South. That made him a centrist in the 50s, but leaves him completely out of the conversation today. That’s unfortunate.

After Brown v. Board of Education, Arkansas’ Governor Faubus deployed National guard troops to keep black students out of LIttle Rock’s Central High School. Eisenhower convinced him to stand down. Then Faubus withdrew the National Guard and left the black students at the mercy of the mob. Eisenhower sent in federal troops to protect them and forcibly integrate the school. It made him no friends, but it was his duty to enforce the rulings of the Supreme Court. He did his duty, and set the stage for the integrations of schools across the South.

*****

As a student of history and a citizen sympathetic to the civil rights movement, I knew all this before I started to write. As an honest scholar, I did the research necessary to freshen my memory and get the names, dates, and places right.

Everywhere I turned in my research, another name kept coming up – Philip Randolph. There is a story behind the story, and one I’m not ready to tell. After all, I just discovered Randolph, and my knowledge of him is sketchy. Nevertheless, here are the bare bones.

In 1917 Randolph founded the black rights magazine Messenger. Through the 30s and 40s he organized black workers in labor unions. In 1941, he planned a massive march on Washington for access to defense employment, pressuring President Roosevelt into Executive Order 8802, the Fair Employment Act. Through the rest of the 40s he brought increasing pressure on the Federal government for desegregation, resulting in Truman’s Executive Order 9981. He formed an alliance with Dr. King in 1957, and was instrumental in bringing about the March on Washington in 1963, where Dr. King gave his I have a dream speech.

Here is a man who has just jumped to the top of my list of people I need to know more about.

Voices in the Walls 15

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Chapter two, continued

The door opened on my second knock. I had forgotten how tall she was. She was nearly as tall as Father with a raw-boned pioneer look about her. She looked as if she should have been loading her husband’s flintlock during an Indian attack in Kentucky a hundred years ago.

I had also forgotten how young she was. Her face was clear and unlined and the brown hair tied gracelessly on top of her head was without gray. I did a quick calculation. Aunt Rachel was three years younger than Mother, so she would be thirty-three this year. In my mind, I had made her short, old, and gray, but she was none of those things.

There was a moment of confusion on her face, too, then she smiled and said, “Matthew and Sarah?” I nodded.

She reached out immediately for Sarah’s hand and Sarah curtseyed. Rachel laughed and said, “None of that! Come in; come in.” She ushered us into a hallway that ran the length of the house, saying, “I got a telegram from your father, but it was very short. He said a letter would follow to explain everything, but you seem to have beaten it here, so you will have to tell me what is going on.”

How do you put the changes that have torn your life apart into a few words for a stranger? Rachel saw my distress, and said, “Well, never mind. You can tell me later. How long do you plan to stay?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe a long time.”

Her face suddenly became serious. She nodded and said, “Lincoln’s election, of course. Thomas would see it as a danger. But if he acted this quickly, things must be even worse than I thought.”

“He sees it as a great danger, Ma’m.”

For a moment she had a far-away look in her eye. Then she was all practicality again, asking us how we had come so quickly and where we had slept last night. When she found out that we had slept on the train and had had no breakfast, she started to herd us into the kitchen for some food. I interrupted to say, “I need to get Sarah’s luggage in first.”

“I wondered if you were traveling with just one carpetbag,” she said. “Why don’t you fetch her things in while we start something to eat.”

I hesitated, embarrassed, and then said, “Do you have a wheelbarrow or a cart?”

“Yes. Why?”

I pointed out the front door. She leaned past me and saw the pile of trunks making a small, tumbled mountain at the crossroads. I was cringing inwardly, waiting for her scorn, for I knew that she was a plain woman. 

Instead of making a comment about the pile of trunks, she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “How much of that is yours?”

“It is all hers.”

“You are traveling with one valise and she has all that. You have not been raised together, have you?”

“No, Ma’m.”

She squeezed my shoulder and laughed. It was a sound full of compassion and understanding, and there was surprising strength in her hand. In that moment, she won my heart.

96. Ancestors?

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I have a grandfather Logsdon, a grandfather Harvey, a grandmother Patterson, and another grandmother who was a bit of a black sheep. Her name was “Per-vet”; that is how I’ve heard it pronounced, but I never met her and I’ve never seen it written down.

According to a document sent to me as junk mail by a company which wanted to sell me a plaque, Logsdon is an English name, derived from Longsdown, meaning a long hill. Harvey is pretty certain to be English. Patterson is supposed to be Irish, by one authority, and Scotch-Irish according to another. History will tell you that the Scotch-Irish were just Scots who went to colonize Ireland. I strongly suspect that “Per-vet”, if seen written down, would be spelled funny and would be French.

So we see that a cursory glance says I am one-half English, one fourth French, and one fourth either Scots or Irish or both. But how reliable is that?

Not very. Let’s take the name of one of my grandparents and play with the possibilities it offers. A hypothetical fellow named Patterson, from Patterson Holler, deep in Appalachia, where there are a hundred families all inter-related back nine generations, is probably safe in concluding that he is Scotch-Irish.

However, another man named Paterson(1) comes straight to America from Belfast and marries a woman named Smith. His son, Patterson(2) marries a woman named Jones, his son Patterson(3) marries a woman named Wilson, his son Patterson(4) marries a woman named Harlan. Their son, Patterson(5), will have one-sixteenth of his genetic heritage from Patterson(1). His name will be Patterson, but should we call him Scotch-Irish?

Should we call him he Scotch-Irish if the young women named Smith, Jones, Wilson, and Harlan were all visibly black women?

*****

Like everyone else, I’ve seen the PBS program Finding Your Roots. The team behind the scenes is impressive, but no matter how good you are in genealogy, history, or biography, there is always a limit to certainty. Documentary evidence is always suspect. People lie, clerks transpose names, and harried bureaucrats write down what they think to be true because they have to write down something. Those in charge of data are people in power, and axes get ground. The stories unearthed are sometimes fascinating, but let’s remember to take them with at least a grain of salt.

*****

Then we have Ancestry.com. I have no intention of criticizing their work, but their advertisements deserve a kick in the ribs.

We’ve all seen the one about the black woman with ancestry from Ghana. Lets assume that she did have an ancestor from Ghana (an assumption we make without accepting the very shaky hypothesis that genealogists can determine such a thing from a DNA sample) and that her ancestor arrived in America about 1800. That is nine generations ago. Our subject would have 256 great great great great great great great grand parents in that generation. That one of them was from Ghana tells us next to nothing. The other 255 ancestors were probably from all over Africa and Europe – just like my ancestors and yours.

There is the another ad where a white American who has believed that he is Scottish discovers after a DNA test that he is actually German. He has to trade his kilt for lederhosen.

Cute, but this holds about as much water as cheesecloth. What is it to be a German? Germany only became a country about a hundred-fifty years ago, and its borders have fluctuated widely since then.

Hitler notwithstanding, there are no genetic Germans, just folks who happen to live in a particular part of Europe, during a narrow range of years, speaking a particular language. These things leave no trace in the DNA.

Searching for ancestors can be an exercise lubricated by snake oil. While there’s nothing wrong with a little fantasy, it can lead to blindness. When I was young, everybody bragged about their lost Cherokee ancestors. Nobody bragged about their lost Black ones.

Voices in the Walls 14

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Chapter two, continued

Southern Pennsylvania is a area of rolling hills. The pioneers had cleared much of the forest for fields, but plenty of timber remained. It must have been lovely a month earlier when the hillsides were ablaze with fall colors, but now only a few stubborn brown leaves clung to the oaks, and all the rest of the woods were gray.

The Emmitsburg Road passed southward paralleling Cemetery Ridge and a mile to the south I could see a pair of hills Dreyfus called Round Top and Little Round Top. Once he had warmed up to me, the teamster gave me a running commentary on the local sights, gossip, and politics. By the time we pulled up, I had a beginner’s understanding of the region.

(One of the benefits of historical fiction, particularly of well known times, is the amount of research material available, along with instant recognition by your readers. The flip side of this benefit is the likelihood of getting caught out if you screw up.

Years ago I came across a library book full of photographs taken days after the Gettysburg battle. It was also full of detailed maps, with notations on the maps of where each picture had been taken. I didn’t need the pictures of bodies, but the maps gave me every road, hill, orchard and farmhouse, down to the names of who lived in some of the farmhouses. Rachel Pike’s farmhouse was one of them; its actual occupants were conveniently not named.)

We stacked Sarah’s trunks at the roadside (I was getting mighty tired of those trunks!) and I waved good-bye to Mr. Dreyfus. Sarah was through pouting, but she didn’t wave. I suppose she thought a lady should be above waving to servants, but I had liked the man.

We stood at a crossroad. Behind us, both corners were in grain fields, one plowed and fallow, the other still in ragged stubble. On the corner to our left was an orchard; peaches I thought, from the shape of the naked trunks. Aunt Rachel’s house sat back from the road on the last corner. It was a substantial two story house with a widow’s walk and a wide verandah, flanked by two magnificent oak trees. There was a cluster of outbuildings behind it.

The house had a look of age, and though it had been reasonably well kept up there was just a hint of decay about it. A cracked window pane here, a few boards leaning against the side of the house where some repair had been begun and never finished, and paint that should have been renewed a few years ago – the sum of these little things gave the house a forlorn and haunted look.

Father had written to Aunt Rachel with the details of why he was sending us to her, and had sent a brief telegram in case we arrived before the letter, but of course there had been no time for a reply. It was just possible that Aunt Rachel was not here. I took my carpetbag in one hand and took Sarah’s hand in my other, and we walked up to the house.

I knocked on the door and waited. Sarah had become very quiet. She had never met our aunt. Aunt Rachel and Father had never gotten along, and it had been ten years since I had seen her.

The door opened on my second knock. I had forgotten how tall she was. She was nearly as tall as Father with a raw-boned pioneer look about her. She looked as if she should have been loading her husband’s flintlock during an Indian attack in Kentucky a hundred years ago.