While in the hospital Coral Tebbs had traded a stolen watch for a broken pepperbox revolver and ten dollars in greenbacks. The money was long since spent, but he had managed to repair the revolver, and now it would shoot. Late in the afternoon he fired the revolver three times at a rusty codfish can and missed every time. Mag popped her head out of the house door and cried, You Coral, take care like I bid you if’n you go shooting at a mark, for Zoral’s at play in the dooryard. Hell, he told her, I was firing towards the brush. Three revolver shots were the agreed signal for Nazareth Stricker to take up his journey, blanket roll and all. Naz must be established in the old Rambo privy before dark, because Coral could travel through brambles and ruin of the Rambo homestead only by daylight or in the edges of dusk. He could not travel there when it was black-dark.
Painstakingly the Yankee must walk his solitary path as directed: through the swamp to the sweet-gum thicket, off in a left oblique directly toward the tall twin pines which could be seen rising in the east . . . then, when arrived between the pines, he must scrooch down and work south until he reached the remains of a rail fence. That was the most dangerous part of his journey: the woods were open. But Coral had met not so much as a stray Georgia Reserve or a Negro through all his recent trips to the swamp.
Coral thrust the revolver in his belt and crutched leisurely behind a weedy brake as if bent on more target shooting; then he headed for the Rambo ruins as fast as he could travel. It was hard for him to negotiate the last fifty yards because of blackberry coils. He arrived at the privy cursing and scratched. He envisioned misfortunes— he saw Naz forgetting to scatter the last of his pepper, and thus he was pursued by the noisy hounds once more. Would Naz remember to cross the broken rails, and slink behind concealing dried-out vines until he saw the charred chimney on Granny Rambo’s cottage site looming before him? Would he have sense enough to lie flat and motionless if he heard voices or the step of an approaching mule?
Coral pushed open the swollen door of the old bleached structure and nearly fell backward. Naz Stricker was lounging upon his rolled quilt.
Jesus God! You scairt the piss out of my bladder.
But ain’t this the place? This backhouse—
Sure it’s the place, but you ought to waited my signal.
You did shoot.
They had a lively discussion. It seemed that an hour earlier Nazareth Stricker had heard three shots and had started out. They did not know where the shots came from; Coral had not heard them.
Guards at Andersonville, said Naz. Guess they shot three more of our boys. Thirty-day furlough apiece.
They don’t get that!
Devil they don’t. Every time they shoot one of us.
God damn lie.
Well, said Naz judiciously, we won’t get anywhere arguing about it.
Tangles grew high, the railroad was out of sight, so was the Tebbs place, so was any track traveled commonly by slaves of the region. Together the youths dragged an old plank and placed it across the privy holes, and on this the quilt and coat could be arranged.
Couldn’t find much to feed you on, said Coral. He produced half a dozen raw turnips from the pockets of his ragged jacket.
These’ll be prime, Coral. I’m fairly starved for greenery. Naz started gnawing.
Got anything left to wet your whistle?
I filled the canteen with swamp water on the way.
Reckon there’s plenty water in Granny’s old well. Tomorrow we can rig you a bucket. Too bad you can’t build no fire, but smoke’d give us away.
So easily it became we and us.
Coral, two things I wish I could have. Strange things.
Like what?
A shawl and a bonnet. An old lady’s bonnet. Maybe one of those big wide ones that hides the face?
Coral stared at him blankly until he saw Satan jumping in the splintery gaze of Naz Stricker’s deep small eyes. Then their glee rose together. Coral laughed seldom, usually he only grinned when he was sardonically pleased. Now he brayed in a choking anguish which had not overwhelmed him since he was wounded. He said, Granny Rambo! Shawl and bonnet! Well, by Jesus, Yank, you shall have them!
He provided these articles of dress the next day but not without peril. He stole an old shawl which he had not seen his mother wear in years, and found a crushed bonnet in the barrel. The slats were bent, the bonnet was a tatter but it would serve. He was in the act of stuffing the booty into his haversack when he was pounced upon by Mag, who had been watching through the crack of the open bedroom door, and he had thought that she was asleep all the time.
Coral. What you think you’re a-doing?
He felt dizzy, he felt his face go hot and then felt strength and color draining. Well, he said, sparring for time.
Set down on that bench. Look at me. Look at your Ma. What you up to, anyway?
Well, he said.
You got my shawl that belonged to Aunt Eliza; and half that ham is gone that was left this morning, and I don’t know what’s come with all the corn pone and leftovers. Who you giving things to?
Well.
You speak up and confess to your Ma, or I won’t give you nary a cent for plug tobacco, not never more. Coral, you selling my property, maybe to buy drink?
Hell, you know I don’t scarcely never drink. Makes me puke.
You tell me, or I’ll get the lend of a cattle whip off’n somebody.
Well. I’m helping somebody.
Who you helping?
His glance, sly and mournful and shamed, came to meet hers. He looked away quickly. I got me a girl.
A girl? Whereabouts?
Back yonder in the swamp.
What’s she doing there?
Living. I come acrost her whilst hunting. Member the day I shot that chicken hawk? Twas then.
Mercy on us. Where she come from?
Up Atlanta way. You know. All these folks wandering here and there, ain’t got no home to go to, count of Sherman’s army and them Yankee bummers. She tells how they burnt the very roof over her head.
Sakes. You never had you a girl before, did you? My sonny boy, my eldest, never did I think— Astonishingly the Widow Tebbs lifted her dirty frilled poplin apron to her face, then lowered it quickly. When I think of all the menfolks I’ve done entertained, and how I’m scarlet as they say, but I do love a-doing It— When I think about my own flesh and blood— First little Laurel with the boys a-slathering after her— And now you. Coral, you laying with her?
A mite.
Well, that dirty swamp hain’t no place fit for a poor homeless girl. Coral, you go fetch her straight away to this house. She can sleep right here in your bed. Go fetch her as I bid you.
Ma, I can’t.
How come you can’t?
Cause she’s black.
The widow fell upon him with open palms, striking blindly, vociferous but incoherent. Zoral, seated on a small vessel in the room beyond, witnessed the assault through the open door and stretched his throat in a scream. Coral was nearly overcome with amusement at the serious rage with which his fabrication was greeted, but he managed to ward off a few of the slaps, and at last had to slam his mother away from him. His arms had always been powerful if stringy of muscle; they had developed additional power through a year and a half of crutching. He did not wish to hurt Mag, he merely shoved her into a state of collapse on the floor, where she remained sobbing.
He took the haversack with him as he left the house. You know what the old saying is, Ma, he chortled over his shoulder. Man hain’t a man till he’s run a nigger girl down a cotton row.
Oh, sonny boy, sonny! Keeping a wench! Keeping a black girl—
He left her lamenting, and headed for the swamp, and eventually traversed a half circle through open woodland until he could come unobserved to the Rambo farmstead. You damn Yankee, what I suffer for the sake of you. T
he old lady caught me with this here truck, and she like to jump down my throat. I had to tell her I was keeping a stray nigger wench back yonder in the brush.
Nazareth’s grimy face showed alarm. Think she followed you?
Hell, no, she’d never follow. Just set there and bawl.
Won’t that yarn make a deal of trouble for you at home?
Hell, no, she’ll just fret. And heap insults upon me, and then turn soft. Naz Stricker, I want to show you something.
Coral toiled away from the privy, manipulating his crutches slowly among vines. He began to circle the scraps of blackened timbers near the chimney. At first his search was unrewarded, but after much hunting he found the object he sought, the rolling-pin-kind-of-shape upon which he had seized in thought two nights earlier. It protruded from the wreckage, doubtless it had not been moved since the day when Granny Rambo died. It was a portion of the bed in which the old woman had been lying in her hour of doom. Foot-post or head-post, Coral knew not which. It was turned from a single length of timber, you could not tell what color the wood had been to begin with, you would know only when you cut it. The knob which had reminded Coral of a rolling-pin handle was about four inches in length, thrusting smoothly out from a larger column. Coral got down on his knees and tried to move the thing; he could not. Naz Stricker came to help him.
You ain’t even quarter-witted. Never ought to stir from that privy by daylight.
Coral, you can’t manage this alone.
Together they loosened the burned-off post (it was two or three feet long) and Nazareth cradled it until they reached shelter. The privy was only forty-nine inches wide: they would find that out when they came to measure. Naz kept a big broken crock in the corner to put his feet on when he slept; thus he made a bed in an L-shape, thus he slept in a foetal position. He declared that it was better than sleeping in Andersonville.
What say you bout this pole, Naz?
It’s gosh-awful heavy.
But we’d only need a teeny mite of the thick part.
You’re the one who’d have to lug it around . . . of course the core of it would be reamed out to accommodate your stump . . . it’s stout enough . . . that’ll cut like iron.
What nature of wood is it?
Could be teak or mahogany.
What’s them?
From tropic lands. From many an ancient river, from many a palmy plain.
Hain’t you smart with your rhymes and truck!
It’s a hymn.
Don’t care if it’s a her. Where’d Granny Rambo ever get such like, to build her bed out of?
Devil knows. Doubtless twas carpentered by someone else, long ago. Take teak—some of the ships load it for ballast in the hold; and I’ve known Pa to buy bits in Philadelphia, where also he bought that other light stuff I can’t remember the name of.
Naz, would this serve?
It’ll be a chore. You’d have to get hold of tools some way.
Just you leave that to Granddaddy.
Harness and straps and padding will be a chore even worse, said Naz Stricker gloomily.
He was not at all sanguine about the prospect of success. That night, instead of dreaming about Home or dreaming that he was besieged by starvation and complaints and rotting men who labored after him with outstretched hands and swelling eyeballs, he dreamed he had contrived for Coral Tebbs not one wooden peg but two. Neither of them fitted properly. Coral’s face grew darker and darker. He took his revolver and shot his mother—a neat but shrunken little white-haired woman, in Naz’s dream. Then he shot Naz. Then he shot himself.
...Mr. Claffey, sir.
Ira Claffey looked pityingly from the verandah, and limped down to shake Coral’s hand. Coral, what can I do for you?
Like to beg the lend of some tools off’n you.
You shall have them. You look tired, my boy. Does your limb bother you greatly?
No, sir, I get around pretty peart. But I’ve studied out a way to make me a peg-foot; but we hain’t got the needfuls.
Let one of my hands help you. Jem has learned some carpentry, and we have a workbench here.
Prefer to go my own gait, said Coral stubbornly, sullenly.
Ira looked into the stern young beetling face, and wondered at the almost infernal intent he recognized. Come along to the implement shed, Coral. He reached for his keys.
Saw, gouges, file, other things which Nazareth had declared they would need. These Coral carried to the Rambo place; he carried the saw slung upon his back. He was eager to begin work immediately in the slight period of daylight remaining, but Stricker looked at his shaking hands and said No. Naz was wiser than Coral. Rome, Nazareth told Coral Tebbs, was not built in a day.
Hell no. Nor Atlanta nor Milledgeville neither. But Atlanta got burnt in a day, as you damn Yankees ought well to know.
Oh, pull that ramrod out of your ass, said Naz pleasantly.
Naz gained energy by the hour. When the Tebbs family ate high on the hog, as now, the widow paid old Simeon, the Bile Negro, to bring her a hand-cart load of vegetables from time to time. Yams, cabbages, carrots, kale turned sweetly tender by the frosts: these were piled on the stoops, front and back, in profusion. Naz craved these things even more than he enjoyed the ham which Coral had served to him that morning, and there were plenty of goober peas. In days to come Naz would munch on birds and rabbits which Coral Tebbs sought and roasted for him.
The following morning they set to work in earnest. Coral said that his mother had fussed at him but little . . . there was small opportunity to fuss, for men from the guards’ camp appeared at sundown. Jollity ruled in The Crib. A railroad engineer came later, bringing liquor. Mag was sound asleep when Coral went to the Rambo site after breakfasting on ham and eggs; he brought ham and leathery fried eggs and fresh milk to his Fellow Craftsman.
Reckon she thinks I’m plumb silly bout that black wench.
Now, Reb, hush. We must fix a place to saw this post.
(A shame which seemed an unnatural figment of existence, when viewed in the light of his domestic surroundings, and his attitude toward them— The same shame which prevailed upon him in the army was active now when Coral spoke of his mother. He had said simply, She’s a widow woman. . . . Guess your Pa left her well off? . . . Not too well. We contrive to get along.)
They broke a saw blade on the solid bed post in the first hour of labor, and Coral must needs visit the Claffey plantation again to express regret and to ask the value of the blade. To Ira Claffey’s notion the blade had no value . . . it had a value far in excess of anything which Coral might offer in recompense. The saw’s worth was beyond estimation in a land where no saws were manufactured except in some crude smithy. Ira found another heavier saw for Coral and watched the boy inch along homeward. Ira tried to envision his sons moving in the same road. He could not envision them. Sometimes he found it hard to assort their features, the individual characteristics of eyes, ears, hair-tufts. The sons blended together, distant, filmy, without voice, with only a hollow song rising, a mingling of drone and unidentified words as in a Mass heard long before in Mexico.
The peg-leg-foot constructed by Naz Stricker and Coral Tebbs resembled a potato masher with a short thick handle, and twin flat staves protruding from the masher portion. Achieving the necessary hollow space to admit Coral’s stump was the work of tiresome hours—Coral holding, Naz gouging with his one hand until the fingers cramped; the peg jammed down between stones in the privy’s ledge, Naz steadying, Coral gouging out the hard dry powder, powder of wood like the dust of metal. The thing was cumbersome. It had to be: there must be sufficient space in the socket to admit padding—padding soft but solid, and with an aperture tailored to the exact dimensions of the mutilated leg. It was no mean task for anyone to perform, and materials came to hand only as the fruit of ingenuity and long search . . . raw cotton found in an abandoned picking-sack, and
ginned by the boys’ own fingers . . . a flannel jacket which had been worn in turn by the Widow Tebbs’ babies.
Coral, you might as well go soot your face, said Mag. You spend all your hours with that little black tramp.
She ain’t no tramp, poor thing.
Who’s she belong to, did she say?
Man by the name of—Puckett.
What? Some kin of Captain Ox?
I reckon not.
Whyn’t you spend your sleeping hours at night with her, same as your waking hours?
Ain’t really room for me and her in the tent I done made.
You mean to say you built her a tent? Out’n what?
Pine branches and old canvas wagon-cover.
Why, where’d you find canvas?
Corner of the loft of our stable.
Why, there ain’t— There wasn’t no canvas there!
Yes they was.
Mag found the supposed situation easier to accept than she had thought possible. Throughout her life she had seen innumerable yellow people large and small; there was a slave child in Americus pointed out as the spit and image of Mag’s elder brother Claudey; often her callers boasted about their high jinks on the other side of the color line. Only trust, she thought, that the wench don’t bear Coral a child here and now.
I low you might fetch her to the house, at that, the widow said reluctantly. Folks might think she was a servant of our’n; and she could help see after Zoral, and keep him off’n the railroad track when I lose sight of him.
Folks know we don’t own no niggers.
Somebody could of left her to us, like in a will. Coral, you never did tell me what is her name.
Ah—Nazareth.
Hain’t that a queer one.
Her old master was mighty religious, so she says. It’s a religious word.
So tis. I recollect that Pa talked of Nazareth constant.
Dimly, when she thought of Nazareth at all, Mag thought of her not as kinky-haired Afric, but as a comely brown-faced girl with a soft voice and round small breasts. When rain boiled coldly against the sloping roof at night and made its tunk-tunk-tunk in pans spread around to catch leaks, Mag was glad that Coral had built a hut to shield Nazareth from the elements, and that she was well fed. Poor little critter, said Mag in the ignorant depth of her warm misshapen spirit.
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