Fiction: Jaudon – An American Family (a novel) [1]

The beginning of a tale that might never end

By Ed Rogers

[Editor’s Note: Ed tells me that he “needed to write something, so why not write something that I might never finish? The saga will continue through generations, maybe longer than I will be around to tell it. It could be my farewell song.”
    I hope we will all be around long enough to listen to all of the saga Ed manages to sing.]

In the beginning

Claude Napoleon Jaudon was born in the year 1754. His place of birth was a farm outside of Paris, France, a muddy, pigshit-smelling place that only a farmer could love. Claude was no farmer, and at a very early age he ran away and joined the French Army. He quickly rose in rank and as a sergeant became aide-de-damp to the young Captain Marquis de Lafayette.
    By the time the French Army touched the shores of the New World, Claude Jaudon was a captain and General Lafayette was leading American troops into battle. At the siege of Yorktown, Claude took a musket ball in a leg. They wanted to take the leg off but Claude would have nothing to do with that and rode out the rest of the war in a hospital and walked with a limp from that day forward.
    With the war over, General Marquis de Lafayette returned to France and Claude Napoleon Jaudon was discharged and remained in his new country.
    Claude was allotted land in South Carolina for his service in the War for Independence. He raised tobacco and married a second time after his first wife died of the flu. He fathered nineteen children and lived to be over a hundred. The locations of his farm and his grave are lost in time. But the Jaudon name would move on through history.

James Franklin Jaudon was twelve at the start of the Civil War. His family, like many others, left South Carolina in hopes of starting a new life in the Indian territory that was being opened in Mississippi. A lot of his cousins lived close by, so when talk of war arose it was a family matter. Who would go and who would stay to care for the others’ crops was the big debate. No one wanted to stay behind. To the last man, they all wanted to go and do battle, all of them believing it would be over within a few months. In the end, they all went and most of them didn’t come back.

    Home guardsmen from the Mississippi militia stayed behind to make sure the slaves didn’t revolt. All across the South, the fear of a black revolt during the war was real. But these men became more than just a home guard. They roamed the countryside in teams searching for young men to conscript and send to the front line. The poor souls they conscripted had little hope of returning home. And when food crops came in, members of the militia would be there taking a share from each farm. They claimed it was for the troops, but the troops never saw any of it. These men became more of a lawless gang than a protecting force. After the war, General Nathan Bedford Forrest would organize these gangs to start the forerunner of the Ku Klux Klan, whose members he called The Night Riders.
    Even as Union troops invaded, these gangs continued to ride the back country hanging freed slaves and deserters alike, careful to avoid being spotted by the enemy troops.
    Charles Whitfield owned a large plantation bordering the land of the Jaudons, so you might say they were neighbors. By the end of the war, Colonel Whitfield’s big plantation house was occupied by the Union Army, and he never returned home. He was said to be hiding in South America.
    One of his freed slaves, a pretty, light-skinned girl, who was said to be the Colonel’s child, hid on the Jaudon farm. Chassy was hiding from both the Union soldiers and the “regulators” – the latter would hang her and the former would rape her. She was about the same age as James, who was madly in love with her.
    This is the beginning of the story of the American Family Jaudon.

Chapter 1. The James Jaudon Family

James and Chassy became parents at age seventeen and sixteen. The war was over but the hate was deep. During slave time, having a baby with a slave had never been thought of as a bad thing – it was the right of the slave owner and increased his wealth by adding one more slave. However, now that the slaves were free, it was no longer a matter of business, but was viewed as fraternization with a lower species, the consequence of which, for both parties, was death at the end of a rope.
    James’ father, William Jaudon, had returned from the war half the man he had been, having spent over a year in a prison camp, where only a quarter of the men who went in came back out. He knew what horror men could do to their fellow men, and that was a lesson he would never forget. When he learned that his son was having a baby with an ex-slave, fear pierced his very soul.
    His fear grew when the child was born, for it was not black and looked nothing like its mother. William had hoped for a dark-skinned baby that could have been passed off as a former slave’s love child whose father had long since gone north. But there would be no fooling anyone here – this baby was white.
    Later the night of the brith, William called James onto the front porch. “Son, you have to take your child and leave. If you stay here, we will all pay for your foolishness.”
    James knew his father was right, but he had no other home. “Where will we go, what will I do?”
    Thinking out loud, William said, “The baby will be your sister Sara’s child. You will all four take the wagon and two mules and head to Texas. There’s land to be had there. Nobody will know you there or doubt that Sara is your wife and the black girl is the titty mommy.”
    James was crying. “I can’t do that. To leave my family – I’d never see you or Mommy again.”
    William patted his son on the back as he headed back inside. “You were man enough to make that child, and now you’ll be man enough to do what needs to be done. I’ll go let Sara know she is now a mother.”
    “When do I have to leave?” James asked.
    “As soon as the girl can travel.”
    James sat on the porch steps with his head in his hands, listening to the wailing and screaming coming from his sister, who had done nothing to deserve the fate that was being pushed upon her.

Two weeks later, with the gift of William’s only milk cow and some bedding, pots, pans, tools, a flintlock rifle, and William’s 1851 colt naval revolver with ball and caps, the three said their good-byes and James sadly urged the mules westward, staying on the back roads in hopes of avoiding any contact with people who might know them. Danger would be their companion for a long time to come, and death would be close behind. They were going to need a lot of luck to survive until Texas. They would first cross Mississippi, then the State of Louisana. But once into Texas, they would be safe, or so they thought.
    They managed to go mostly unseen, and the few people who did spot them paid no attention. They camped the first night by a creek and the second night under a large oak tree. The third night would be their last in the State of Mississippi, because they were nearing the Mississippi River. All three of them were roadsore from the bouncing wagon, but time would numb that pain – it was a long way to Texas.
    Sara rode next to James, and Chassy sat behind them on the bedding, under a cover to keep the sun and dust off the baby. Chassy called up to James, “What will you be naming the baby?”
    With all that the trip involved, he had forgotten that the baby needed a name. They had simply called it “the baby.” James thought for a moment and then smiled. “Claude Napoleon Jaudon, after my great grandfather.”
    Sara, who was resigned to her situation, but nonetheless not happy with it, spoke up, “You’re going to give a black baby our great grandfather’s name? It’s bad enough that you bedded the black whore, but I can’t sit here while you spit on our family’s name.”
    James dropped the reins, caught Sara’s shoulder with his right hand and slapped her across the face with the other. “You will never address the mother of my child like that again.”
    Tears rolled down over the red marks on Sara’s face. “You ever touch me again, I’ll get off this wagon and walk back home. Then we’ll see how far you and the mother of your baby get before they hang the three of you.”
    James had never raised his hand against anyone before and shame befell him. “I’m sorry, Sara, I should never have hit you. But we are going to be living together and we need to respect each other or it will be a living hell.” He picked up the reins to go on.
    Chassy reached up and touched Sara. “I understand why you are bitter, and I’m sorry we are to blame for that bitterness. All this is unfair, for you and for us. We shouldn’t have to flee across the country like hunted animals just because we love each other. And you shouldn’t have to pretend you’re the mother of our baby. But remember, this baby is as much a part of you as he is of James and me.”
    James held up his hand. “Quiet, I hear riders coming up ahead.”
    Chassy slid the long flintlock up to James, who cocked it and waited. “Remember to stick to our story.”
    Three men approached, each wearing pieces of a Confederate uniform, but James doubted they had seen any fighting – they were just want-to-be’s, troublemakers with guns, trying to prove they were badasses.
    The tall one in the middle spit tobacco juice into the dusty road and inched forward toward James, along the side of one of the mules. James raised the rifle. “That’ll be close enough, mister.”
    The tall man threw his hands up in mock horror. “Oh, please don’t shoot me.”
    The other two men laughed and all three of them reached for their guns. James fired and the ball hit the tall man in the chest and knocked him off his horse. Chassy had laid the baby in a safe place and now stood to fire the Colt 1851 at one of the men. She hit her target as the other man was firing his own pistol. James pulled his Bowie knife and threw. Making a singing sound as it flew through the air, it caught the third man dead center, and he stared at James in disbelief for what seemed a long time before he fell to the ground.
    James looked around. “Is everybody okay? Is the baby alright?”
    A piece of the wagon’s seat had been shot away by the third man’s bullet, which had missed Sara by inches. James had never killed a man, only bears and other animals. Now he needed to think of these men as animals who had needed killing. He jumped down, saying, “Help me. We have to hide the bodies.”
    They kept the men’s pistols and ammo but released the horses. They had enough going against them without being hunted as horse thieves. There was very little else worth keeping.

    “They didn’t have any food with them. That means they live close by. We have to get as far from here as we can before those bodies are found.” James helped the women back onto the wagon and popped the mules with the reins.
    It was getting on to dark, and they had not planned to move at night for fear of coming across the nightriders. James had never seen them, but had heard stories of men who wore white hoods and killed before asking who they had killed. But now there wasn’t a choice – they had to run, and run fast.
    The old wagon bounced and rocked with each bump, and the sweat on the mules’ coats shined in the moonlight, but there was no slowing down. They were only a few miles from the Mississippi River and the relative safety of Louisiana. Chassy kept a sharp eye out for any sign of someone following them.
    Sara hollered, “I see lights – it must be the river crossing!”
    James slowed the mules to a walk. They pulled up as the last trip for the evening was ready to start. The ferry boat had paddle wheels on both sides and seemed big enough for maybe two wagons and their animals and a few horses with riders. There was still room for them.
    They boarded and tied the wagon and animals down as the boat pulled out into the mighty Mississippi. Chassy shouted, “Riders are coming!”

Copyright © 2019 by Ed Rogers