This is Adam (Lightwood History Collection Book 4)

by Brainard Cheney

  Mrs. Hightower’s eyes blazed. “Why, Adam, this is blackmail! Or something of the sort! Why!” She strode jerkily across the entrance and back again. “Why, they are not going to do such a thing to you! I certainly won’t let the bank do us this way! I’ll see Mr. Littleton today—I’ll call him now before the bank closes.” She added, in scorching irony, “Why, why, this is a fine come-off!”

  Adam’s face drew up ruefully. “I—I hates to git you into it, but look like—“

  “Into it? Why, what about what I’ve got you into!” She crossed her arms on her chest with a sudden determination. “I’ll borrow the five hundred for you, if I have to. But Mr. Lincoln is due back here now. We ought to be able to bring the deal to a head in a few days.”

  Adam wagged his head thankfully. “Sho’ glad to hear that!”

  But Mrs. Hightower’s eyes were still hot with indignation. “I am really amazed at Mr. Littleton—and he is supposed to be my friend and adviser! And Peter Bright, too! It’s low down of him!” She started her striding again. “All of them, all of them. Out to do you in, because you are colored and me in, because I’m a woman and a widow. . . . It’s outrageous!” She turned back to the steps and, under the impulse of her indignation, to her original purpose. “Adam, I’m going to get out of this place. I’m going to get out and I mean it! I’m going to sell out everything I’ve got and go. I won’t live here among them!”

  Adam shrugged. “Hit do try you!” he agreed grimly. “I sho’ couldn’t blame you—couldn’t blame you a bit!” He lifted a drawn face that worked convulsively. “Hit’s m-more’n a widow like you ought to have to put up with! Hit sho’ is! And I feels real bad ‘bout bringing hit on you. But look like the bank was goin’ to sell me out and take my land, after I done got hit more’n half paid for.”

  Mrs. Hightower’s face was sympathetic. “Why the idea, Adam! It’s I that got you into this! The idea!” She drew herself up. “But just the same, I’m not going to put up with it!”

  “That’s right!” Adam agreed fervently, “that’s right—you oughter not put up with it!” He pondered the steps, picking up the bag of presents he had laid on them. “But it won’t be so long now, Mrs. Hightower.” He went on with an air of revelation. “Not so long. Marse, he beginning to grow up.”

  Mrs. Hightower batted her eyes and said, “Oh” in a low, startled voice.

  “Yessum. Me and Marse got pretty well acquainted while you wuz gone.” Adam nodded his head measuredly. “He growin’ up and he growin’ up all right.” By the tone of the last two words he conveyed what she wanted to know.

  Mrs. Hightower paused, to stare out into the yard, then said finally, “I’m relieved to hear you say that, Adam.”

  “Yessum. . . He probably not goin’ to be as big a man as his pa,” Adam continued, conscious of the importance of his responsibilities. “But he goin’ to be like ‘im. Goin’ to be like ‘im where hit counts.” He put a finger to his forehead. “He thinks like the Colonel. And whut he tell you, hits like that—you kin depend on it.”

  Mrs. Hightower swallowed, her lips loosening, her face gathering in warmth. “I hope you know that nothing could please me more than to hear you say this, Adam!”

  Adam raised his voice in attributive astonishment. “H-hit would surprise ye, how much of his pa is in him!”

  Mrs. Hightower came nearer the steps.

  “Maybe you ain’t never heard it, but they say that when the Colonel was a young feller right after the War.” Adam set down the paper bag again. “And a dollar was hard to come by for anything. He took to raftin’ timber. And he made a name for himself as a rafthand. They said he was great to ride a log—in assemblin’ the raft.

  “I seen ‘im once take a pike pole in his hand and do it just for the fun, down at Bell’s ferry.”

  Adam’s voice shifted to the present time. “The Brights bin raftin’ some pine timber at Hightower’s old ferry, runnin’ the logs out’n the swamp—water’s still up in the sloughs. And me and Marse happen by there, while they wuz runnin’ logs out’n slack water down to the boom.

  “Marse, he watched ‘em close a good while. Then he say, ‘Kain’t I try my hand at that?’

  “Mr. Dave say, ‘Sho!’ And he give ‘im a pike pole and show him how to handle it to balance on the log. And we stand by with a boat to pull ‘im out if’n he slip off.

  “But, Marse, he brought his log right on the boom.

  “Old man Peter say he rode hit just like his pa use to!”

  Mrs. Hightower, grown tense, broke her stance. “Do, Adam!” she said gently. “How could he tell?”

  Adam shrugged. He said firmly, soothingly, “H-hit’s not goin’ to be so mighty long ‘fore he’ll be able to take over here. Hit’ll surprise you one of these days.” He picked up the paper bag and tucked it under his arm, adding softly, “He’ll git done, at last, whut his pa waun’t give the time to do!” He put on his hat and moved off toward the gate.

  Mrs. Hightower continued to stand at the steps, staring out into the yard.

  18.

  “HOW YOU LIKE Hinshaw’s new boat?” Kiger Steele asked from the stern of the shallow, narrow, green punt.

  Adam, sitting at the opposite end of it, ten feet away, lifted his head casually to inspect the boat and the man in the stern. “Hit’s all right!” he said politely. There had been a glint of a gold tooth when Kiger spoke, but his face, with its white freckles and shark’s nose, was now bland and secretive. Adam gazed at the willow piles beyond him with a slight frown of impatience, and wondered what Kiger could be up to?

  “All right?” Kiger echoed, raising his fishing pole to look at the bait on the hook and cast it farther out toward the current of the muddy Oconee. “Hit’s better than that, ain’t it?”

  “I don’t like these here shallow punts to fish in,” Adam said, “you kain’t move around in ‘em good.” Obviously they weren’t here just to try out Slappy’s skiff!

  Kiger looked up from his floating cork and said heartily, “Sho’ saves sweat at the paddle!”

  Adam detected a lack of genuineness in his voice. Kiger had sent him word that he had something to tell him, something that he needed to know and that he would come out and go fishing with him. It wasn’t the way he would have picked to spend the Fourth of July. And now Kiger was taking his time about getting around to his business! Adam spoke without looking up from his cork. “Bound Hinshaw Slappy would git ‘im the easiest-paddlin’ boat!”

  “Look man, he went to a lot of trouble and expense over this thing!” Kiger said, in protest. “He got old man Green Fork, over in Riverton, to make it! Out of yellow poplar! It’s made right! Just draws three inches of water!” His enthusiasm seemed forced to Adam.

  Adam had planned to take his boys and Marse and his pal, Walter Bruce, seining, with a fish fry on the bank today. But he had had to call it off for this! He wouldn’t be taking up his time with Kiger, if things hadn’t come to such a strained, curious pass. The Yankees had never shown up and the Land Deal was still hanging fire. The widow had written to Philadelphia, but she heard nothing from them. The Wyche field had finally got dry enough to plow and he had been planting it to corn and velvet beans—too late for cotton now—and hadn’t been off his place for a good while. But he knew by what he heard that everybody around him was upset. He knew, too, that they suspected that he had a hand in the mysterious delay. In the commissary at Adair, he had overheard Mr. Bright (knowing that old man Peter had raised his voice as he passed for just that purpose) saying to Mr. Milt Murdock, “She’s a city woman and don’t know nothin’—got ‘im where he’s so biggity, white people can’t have dealin’s with him!”

  Adam glanced over his shoulder at the bow of the punt. “I could tell it wuz one of old man Fork’s jobs by that chain and anchor he always puts on a boat.”

  “You got to chain it to keep it from runnin’ out from under you!” Kiger bragged. “Old man Green named it, The Green Ghost. You kin see it there on the side of the bow, paint
ed on it!” Kiger raised his paddle to point to the black lettering.

  Adam resisted the suggestion of Kiger’s gesture with a shrug, grimacing. “Just look’s like an extry long c-coffin box to me!” he grumbled in irritation at this prolonged talk about the boat, about everything, except what they were supposed to go fishing for. He had had enough of it! He fixed him with a keen gaze. “Look here, Kiger, whut is it you want to tell me that I needs to know? Let’s git on with it!”

  “I’ll git to it. I’ll git to it, Brother Atwell,” Kiger said, with jocular formality and a flash of his teeth. He lifted his nose. “But hit looks like yo’ fish too well fed here around the Hightower landing. We bin here close to an hour and ain’t had a nibble.” He raised his pole and began to wind the line around it. “Pull in the anchor and let’s paddle over to that old dead river you told me about.”

  When they had got to the mouth of the old course and moored the boat among the funnel-shaped trunks of the trees and the long tails of Spanish moss, Adam turned around on his seat toward the stern, ostensibly to get fresh bait for his hook, but said, “Well, Brother Steele, as you wuz goin’ to say?”

  Kiger had found it a hard pull across the river and he sat on, with his legs stretched out before him, grinning and shaking his head, as he panted. “Kain’t say yet!” he soughed. “Devil’s Elbow like to got me!”

  Adam saw that his shirt was wringing wet—a white, store-bought shirt that looked new (the pasteboard collar button that came with it was still in the collar band). He wondered why Kiger always dressed up like he was in town. He shook his head, responding to Kiger’s show of good humor. “Lookin’ at that Sunday shirt you done sweated down, I wonder if’n you don’t aim to preach to me?”

  “No suh, no suh,” Kiger began, still breathing hard, but lifting his nose to resume his public manner. “Kiger Steele aims first to thank you. He aims to thank you for givin’ him good advice—good advice that he wants to let you know he profited by.” He nodded his head in a pulpit gesture of reiteration. “Thank ye, and he appreciates it and that’s one reason he’s here now to try to return the favor.”

  Adam could not resist saying crisply, though with a twinkle in his eye, “Well hit must be a big ‘un, for all this w-warmin’ up you’re doin’!”

  Kiger picked up his pole but he only used it to gesticulate with, resembling, for the moment, an attenuated fiddler crab. His manner was hortative. “I’m more indebted to you than you knows, Brother Adam. And I want first to make you acquainted with the how-comes and where-withs of my indebtedness.” He unwound his line, pausing in his harangue to put a catalpa worm on his hook and spit on it. “Ole thick-skull Kiger like the tomcat. Yeah, he like that cat, the monkey make pull his chinquapins out’n the fire.”

  Abruptly, he pulled in a bream out of the water and took it off the hook, but without interrupting himself. “Kiger is still a-singeing his paws on chinquapins. But it’s a po’ game that’s all for the gander and none for the goose. And he done learn a thing or two. One is that monkeys likes to chatter. He learn how to listen. He learn how to lay around where he kin listen. That’s how come he know ‘bout whut he goin’ to tell you ‘bout. Hit’s important to you.”

  Adam, pulling up his line to find his hook bare, said, “I better git you to spit on my bait!”

  Kiger went on. “I know you don’t think highly of those monkeys I bin doing business with. You ain’t got no use for ‘em at all. But I hopes you won’t let it warp yo’ judgment none. I don’t aim to try to change yo’ mind about them. I don’t think I kin do that. But don’t let hard feelin’s make you soft-headed, Brother Atwell!”

  Adam said, with dry detachment, “You means Paley, too?”

  Kiger nodded, watching Adam’s face tighten. Then with an abrupt change in his manner, he said, soft and easy, as if he were breaking eggs into a skillet of salt water to poach, “I knows why the Yankees ain’t come back down here to close the Land Deal.”

  Adam’s hand jerked slightly, but his face remained impassive. Eyeing Kiger, he said laconically, “I hears a new reason-why ever day.”

  Kiger sat up to deliver his next words, as if a poker pot lay between them. “I’ve seen it in a letter from Philadelphia, signed with the name ‘Archibald Lincoln,’ in green pen-and-ink!”

  Adam’s nostrils tightened and he lowered his gaze. “Go ahead!” he said.

  “Mr. Paley and Mr. Lincoln have swapped letters back and forth during the past month—that why they ain’t closed the Deal!”

  Adam’s face darkened with blood and the whites of his eyes shoaled up when he raised them. After staring fixedly at Kiger for a long moment he lowered his gaze again. He said finally, “I don’t believe hit!”

  Kiger caught the end of the pole between his legs to release his hands. He pointed to one palm with the index finger of the other hand, as if he were lining out the words in a letter. “Mr. Lincoln write ‘We understand yo’ proposition, but we are afraid our arrangements’—yessuh, arrangements wuz the word”—Kiger’s voice was sharply expository—“‘our arrangements with Mrs. H!’—he didn’t spell it out—‘our arrangements with Mrs. H. have gone too far.’”

  Kiger withdrew his finger for a moment to look at Adam. He went on. “Then he say this, ‘We have agreed to exempt her mineral rights’—that means clay—‘and she has agreed to withdraw her exemption for the Wyche field.’” Kiger lowered his long hands like a preacher dropping dirt into an open grave. “That wuz it, Brother Atwell—did I, or didn’t I see a letter?”

  Adam said gruffly, doggedly, “Where’s the letter? I ain’t seen no letter yit!” He tried, without conviction to make his voice derisive. “Yeah you done forgot to bring ‘em with you, hey?”

  “No, Brother Atwell. Not-a-tall, a-tall!” Kiger studied his cork briefly, then turned confidently toward Adam and said quietly, “You has always represented to me, Brother Adam, like you don’t care so much ‘bout the written word, that you never did learn how to handle it.”

  Adam shrugged sharply, his eyes smoldering on the distance. “I kin tell green ink!”

  Kiger looked beyond him slyly, lifting his voice. “Mr. Paley wanted me to bring some of them letters. I wuz the one said I didn’t think you’d appreciate it, if’n I did.”

  Adam managed to keep his swollen face expressionless. “Go on!” he said, making a muffled, wheezing sound.

  Kiger suddenly grappled with his pole and brought it up, but the fish had got off the hook. He took out time to bait it again, saying in his high voice, “Well, who’s pullin’ whose chinquapins out’n the fire now, Brother Atwell?”

  Adam said gruffly, with a glint in his eye, “S-so they sont you here?”

  Kiger resumed without responding to this. “Mr. Paley answered that letter and yestidy he got back the letter he wuz lookin’ for. Yessuh, the one to the dot and to the tee!” Kiger let his baited hook swing out over the water and lowered his pole. “You kin guess whut that wuz, Brother Adam, kain’t you? There wuz just eight words on the page of paper, below the Dear-Suh line. It said, ‘If you kin work it, it’s a deal.’” Kiger looked out at his bobbing cork and tightened his line, repeating the letter’s message. Then he went on, “I reckon you kin guess whut Mr. Paley’s proposition wuz, kain’t you Adam? Mr. Paley propositioned Mr. Lincoln that he would undertake to see to it that the widow thought her clay deposits were on land lease, not the land bought fee simple, so that she wouldn’t ask to exempt ‘em. And after the deal was all over Mr. Paley would then buy the clay from Lincoln by the ton, as he dug it up. That’s it.

  “He tell me and Hinshaw—Mr. Paley do, that that the best clay in the State of Georgia, there in the Hightower swamp, and he knows the widow never would sell him a lump of hit, not and she could help it, anyway! He say he kin dig it and haul it to the river bank and barge it down to the railroad crossing. He aim to put up his clay works there.” Kiger brought another bream from the water. “But Mr. Paley make a condition to his undertaking to keep the widow in the dark
”—Kiger paused with the fish in his hand to find Adam’s gaze. “And, yessuh, that’s why I’m here, Brother Atwell. Because that condition wuz that Mr. Lincoln give you a ten year lease to the Wyche field and the right to renew!” Adam looked away, but Kiger’s voice pursued him, saying, “That whut those words, ‘It’s a deal’ means in Mr. Lincoln’s letter. . . .”

  Adam’s throat was dry and his head ached. Avoiding Kiger’s gaze, he got down on his knees, astride his seat, and washed his face in the river with both hands. He scooped up a handful of the water and swallowed it to wet his throat. Then he reached into a side pocket of his overalls and got out his tobacco and his knife and cut himself a chew. This he masticated, as he restored his plug and Barlow and resumed his seat, getting the saliva back into his throat. The astringent balm of nicotine cleared his head. Then he spat, with premeditation, into the river. “Kiger, I forgot to offer hit to you. Will you have a chew?” he said apologetically. “H-hit’s Brown Mule.”

  Kiger, who had been gazing at him speculatively, frowned, and shook his head.

  Deliberately, Adam pulled up his fishing line with its bare hook—the bait, he knew, had long been gone—and began to wind the line about the pole. He finished the job, sticking his hook in the cork, before he spoke. “Let’s go home, Kiger!” he said, in a rough, off-hand voice, his face set. “You tolled me a long way off to bring me such monkey business!”

  Kiger’s long face seemed to contract, his lips sticking out, but he didn’t say anything. Sullenly he wound up his own line, glancing at Adam out of the tail of his eye. Finally he spoke, in a low-voiced protest. “Now look a-here, Adam, you sho’ ain’t goin’ to be that kind of a fool! A ten-year lease on the Wyche field!. . .And the other way you goin’ to lose it, lose it for sho’!”

  Adam looked at Kiger steadily, then contempt came on his face, and finally a grim smile. “I reckin that wuz Hinshaw Slappy wanted to git me that lease on the Wyche field, hey?” he said. He gave a short, harsh laugh and stood up in the boat. “Here,” he said, “gi’me that paddle and le’me git where you are! I’ll take us back across. I knows how to keep out of that Devil’s Elbow current.”