Across the Moon (Old Joshua)
1869
Charles Hightower died in the fall of 1869, at the age of eighty, leaving Joshua Jefferson $3,000 dollars and four acres of land, starting from where his shack stood; Dylan Hightower, his son now 24, the same age Charles was when he met Joshua, was in charge, his daughter Emma, 19, his wife Aurea, forty-eight, they would continue to live. at the Plantation House, but the days of heavy plantings and big harvests were over.
Emily Hightower, mother of Charles, born 1755, died 1790, died young, aged 35, it was her dream to see the plantation strong and in its glory, Charles brought it to that stage, and always felt proud, for his mother’s sake to have done so. Her wife, Aurea, was different, her pride was more in her children than in her husband and the plantation, as was Emily; The priorities for each person are often different. Emily always said that God came first, then her and her husband, then the children, and then the plantation; she had a system, Aurea, although a good wife and an excellent mother, she never really had a system.
Emily died one night in bed, with no one around to see her, the doctor was downstairs having coffee with a few shots of moonshine and not paying much attention to his patients’ symptoms, evidently Emily couldn’t breathe for ten or fifteen minutes, because that was the length of time that the doctor kept his patient alive alone, who was in a crisis mood. When she died, she died because of the doctors, carelessness, her husband, Charles Jason Hightower, shot her in cold blood, shot him to death right at the table where he sat and drank his whiskey mixed coffee, shot him three times in a wild stupor.
The judge said: “We would have hanged you anyway, for incompetence, you saved the court time and money Charles, go and have a good day, case dismissed, under the old law of, your gun misfired, while you were in a fit out of anger, he fired accidentally, because I’m sure his intentions were not to kill him, even though he deserved to be run over.”
And the judge, after Hightower left the courtroom, told the clerk not to write the first part of the record of what he said, and to let him read it later, in case he needed to fix some sentences.
Josh was still helping out at the place, he had come to the conclusion that he was going to die here, right on that plantation, it would have been too much for him to have to try and start over in life. He was familiar with everyone and everything in that area, it was home to him, and since he wasn’t mad at the ship that brought him to America, Mr. Hightower had made up for it, I guess. He had a new light on the matter in 1869. Silas would remain on the plantation, do most of the work, and care for his father, while Jordon spent most of his time at the Grocery Story in the Ozark, as a clerk, sleeping . on a cot in the back of the room, and flirting with the black woman when they stopped by to say hello.
He asked Aurea, “Josh, do you want to come to the funeral?”
“It won’t be necessary,” he said sadly, and walked away, not to be rude, but I think he was starting his grieving process, Aurea heard him mutter as he walked away, “I can see it from my shack.”
The old Hightower churchyard was on a slope in the fields, with a fence around it. Someday, whoever bought the plantation, might have to move it further, unless they wanted to leave that little piece of land, with several trees around it, where it was, and it was like an oasis, in the middle of the field, and nobody wanted to cut it down. all those tall trees and trying to level the mound.
Joshua and Charles saw each other almost every day for 56 years, more than his wife, children and business partners, more than anyone alive; It would be hard for Joshua, but once buried, once Charles was six feet under, he, Joshua would do what Charles told him to do: not look back.
“Flowers, I’ll pick some flowers,” Josh said to himself aloud, now 66; still lithe and youthful, his bones strong, his face showed that he had passed the time, but he was not bad.
That night, after dinner, he walked to the fields, climbed onto that mound and looked at the grave, the hole had already been dug, he noticed, people came from the village all day to say goodbye to the house, where his coffin lay. a guest bedroom upstairs. He took a deep breath, almost out of breath before, stood in front of the hole, the edge of it, dropped his flowers, geraniums, blurry eyes, said: “He will be a coming Lord,” the reed pipe of him in one. hand, a bible in the other, looking down into the hole, “Yes, he’s coming soon, tomorrow I hope Sir, his wife Aurea, she says so (Aurea was behind a tree crying, silently, she saw Josh there but he didn’t say a word and maybe Josh knew she was there but he didn’t say a word) but he died and we’ll all be dead one day so I’ll see him soon I hope he got me out of hell in New Orleans Lord , and he said to me one day, ‘Josh, don’t look back, it’s all in front now, nothing back, son,’ yeah, he says son, and I try not to look back, but sometimes I just can’t help it, but he’s right, sir, there’s nothing back there worth looking at or looking at.”
And old Josh looked up and sure enough he saw Mr. Charles Hightower, or at least he would swear, “There he is, riding his horse across the moon,” and he said it in a stronger tone. than a whisper, and his wife, hiding behind a tree, watching everything, looked up, and she too would have sworn, at that very moment, her husband was on an old spotted horse they kept in the stable that died within a few minutes. weeks. Before Charles had, there, across the moon Charles and the horse rode. Perhaps only as a figment of his imagination, but for that one moment in time, it was real, a real greeting, perhaps from beyond the living.