The Mockingbird's Ballad

"Well, well," was all Solon could muster.

"Yes, Sir, voted Populist in '92 and been rabble rousing for socialism ever since. You know what that is?"

"Yes, I do, Ma'am," Solon looked thoughtful, his mind thinking of Lou and his conversation not long back about the mess of robber baron government.

"Old man Owens down the way from him thinks he's titched," she said matter- of-factly.

"Well, well does he?"

===

Solon slept most all the way home, waking only to change trains in Meridian and Birmingham.

===

In the middle of February 1898 a message boy with the telegram ran up the street beside Ervin's boarding house onto the front porch of C. D. Sherrill's. A passing farmer, Mr. Graham, went out to the boy. He read the telegram. Then he shouted several times.

"They Sunk the Maine, Spanish in Havana sunk the Maine!" Lou heard the racket and came to the door as the twelve-year-old black boy stood in the middle of the road, winded and holding his knees. Mr. Graham stood beside the boy looking dumbstruck.

"They killed our sailors," he sputtered. Lou got to her buggy just as Joe jogged up from towards the billiard parlor.

"Mama, is it true?"

Joe had been set to begin at the University of the South in Sewanee come fall. He didn't. His education would be in a different setting from the beautiful campus fifty miles east.