Bring on the Blessings

by Beverly Jenkins

  “How far are we going?” she asked.

  “About forty miles. Should be there in under an hour if we don’t get stuck behind a combine.”

  Bernadine knew what a combine was. She’d seen the huge farm machines on the Discovery Channel. It never occurred to her that one would be out on a road though. The TV always showed them working in some field. Not wanting to expose her ignorance she nodded her thanks and turned her attention to the countryside.

  They rode along in silence, and to her it seemed as if they’d left civilization behind. She couldn’t believe the sparseness of the land. Pancake-flat plains of green and gold shimmered unchecked to the horizon. The number of trees could be counted on one hand—the number of houses on the other. For the hundredth time that day, she wondered if maybe she had been crazy to take this all on. How in the world was she supposed to grow a community out here in the middle of nowhere? She had enough confidence in herself and her mission to know that everything would work out in the end, but getting there was going to be the problem. “Not many trees out here.”

  “Nope. Not enough rain.”

  “Must make it hard to farm.”

  “Sometimes. Some years are drier than others.”

  They left the interstate and were now on a bumpy dirt road traveling past fenced-in rolling fields that could only be described as amber waves of grain. “What’s that growing?”

  “Winter wheat.”

  “Is there spring wheat?”

  “Yeah,” he said smiling as he looked her way. “Winter type grows better around here. Mennonite immigrants brought it to this part of the country when they came from Europe.”

  She waited for him to say more, but when he didn’t it made her wonder if he was just not much of a talker or if he still felt guilty about his small faux pas at the airport. She hadn’t been offended. Out here on the plains of Kansas, she was sure the local population had never met a woman with her spending power, and especially not a Black women, but rather than press him, she sat back and watched the wheat.

  Now Bernadine appreciated silence and introspection, but after ten miles of it, she was ready to talk—about anything. “You must have some questions about why I’m doing this.”

  “I do, but thought I’d let my neighbors do all the asking. I’ve embarrassed myself enough for one day, I think.”

  Yep, she liked him a lot. “I bought Henry Adams for two reasons. One, it’s not often we Black folks get the opportunity to save our history. When I saw the piece on TV about the town going up for sale, I knew what I had to do.”

  “Not many people in the country know how famous Henry Adams was once upon a time.”

  “I didn’t either until I Googled it.” And she was astounded by what she found. “I’d never heard of the Dusters or the Great Exodus of 1879.” Tens of thousands of Black people fled the south after the Civil War and settled in places like Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado in order to escape the violence perpetrated by the Redemptionist Democrats against the newly freed slaves and their families. It was the largest mass exodus of the race of its time. “I was surprised to read that Frederick Douglass was against our people leaving the South.”

  “Douglass was a politician losing his constituents just like the White planters were losing their cheap labor.”

  “And Congress held hearings about the Exodus?”

  “Yep. The country thought so-called agitators were behind all those Black folks pulling up stakes, like maybe the race couldn’t think for themselves and enjoyed all the killing and murdering the Klan and the Democrats were doing.”

  She shook her head. One of the articles she’d read on the subject told of an army general writing to President Hayes to inform him that in an effort to keep the Blacks from leaving the South, planters were lined up along the Mississippi armed as if the country was still at war.

  He went on, “Entire church congregations from places as far east as Tennessee and Kentucky packed up everything and everybody and lit out for Kansas, looking for peace and opportunity. During the first winter, many of the colonies didn’t have housing, so folks lived underground and in places carved out of hillsides; called them dugouts.”

  Bernadine found that amazing. As much as she loved her creature comforts she couldn’t imagine having to live that way, but she supposed if she had been one of the dusters dealing with all the violence and hate, underground might not have looked too bad.

  “We called our high school sports teams the Henry Adams Dusters.”

  “I saw in the report that the town no longer has a high school.”

  “No. Tornado came through about ten-twelve years ago and took it to Oz.”

  “And you never rebuilt?”

  He shook his head. “The state told us if we did, we’d have to pay x amount for new insurance, new site developments, new environmental assessments. We didn’t have that kind of money, so we shut down. The few high school kids left were bused over to Franklin, about fifteen miles west. Been no Henry Adams Dusters since.”

  Bernadine sensed his disappointment. She thought how hard it must have been for him to watch his hometown slowly disappear like sand through fingers. In its prime, Henry Adams and the surrounding valley had been home to nearly six hundred people. Presently there were fifty-two.

  “You said you had two reasons for wanting to buy. What’s the second?”

  She told him.

  When she finished he whistled. “That’s pretty ambitious.”

  “It is, but when much is given, much is expected, and I have a lot.”

  “Then if I were you, I’d wait to drop that dime. Let folks get to know you first.”

  “You don’t think they’ll like the idea?”

  “Can’t really say. I’ve no problem with it, but there’s a small group who didn’t want to sell. They’ll scream long and loud when they hear this.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. “They have any clout?”

  “Only if you call making me crazy clout, but I’ll let you judge them for yourself. Wouldn’t be fair of me.”

  “You always this noble?”

  He grinned but kept his eyes on his driving.

  They turned off onto another dirt road so filled with holes and ruts the truck bounced and bucked like a rodeo rider. Bernadine swore her behind was cracked in at least six places. “How much would it cost to put in a paved road?”

  Humor flashed across his dark brown face. “You’ll have to ask the state.”

  The next turn was onto another road barely wide enough for the big truck to negotiate. Door-high grass slapped against the windows like a bizarre car wash. The bucking and bouncing continued. She supposed if she planned on living there she’d get used to the rocking and rolling, but for the moment all she could do was hang on and hope she didn’t hit her head on the ceiling of the truck.

  When they came out into a clearing and the road evened out, her rattled bones gave up a weary and grateful hallelujah. Off in the distance she spotted weathered old wooden homes standing against the horizon like abandoned sentinels. “Is this it?”

  “It’s just around the next turn.”

  Bernadine could feel her excitement rising. She’d owned a lot of things in her life, but a town? Never.

  “This is what’s left of the neighborhood closest to town. Back in the day a good two hundred families lived here.”

  Viewing the scene through her window, she noted that now there was nothing to mark their existence but occasional piles of bricks hidden within stands of tall grass that made the homesteads look like the deserted nests of some strange bird. The truck rolled past the remains of fences, and sad-looking barns with caved-in roofs perched on walls too tired and too old to care. The area could have passed for the movie set of a ghost town.

  And it got worse. He turned into what had once been the main business district. “This used to be downtown. There was a hotel over there, a livery, a general store. Had a couple of barber shops, tailors, and a seamstress shop. At the end of
the block was the local gambling joint called the Liberian Lady, and next to it was the post office.”

  As with the area they’d driven through earlier, now there was nothing left standing but a handful of boarded-up and abandoned storefronts interspersed with tumbledown piles of stone, wood, and brick. It was easy to see that at one time buildings had lined both sides of the street. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine Henry Adams in its nineteenth-century prime; its streets filled with wagons, the wooden walks filled with men and women going in and out of the shops as they went about their daily errands. July was driving slowly, enabling Bernadine to get a good look at the old town she’d purchased, and the emptiness of it saddened her, mainly because the Dusters had had such dreams.

  “Can we get out?” she asked him. She wanted to walk a bit, feel the historic ground beneath her feet.

  He seemed to view her and her attire skeptically for a moment then said, “Sure.”

  They were standing in front of the old Henry Adams Hotel. Like the rest of the buildings that had once stood so proudly, there wasn’t much left to proclaim it as the vibrant and classy hotel it must have been once upon a time.

  “Lady named Sophie Reynolds originally built the place,” he explained. “Had four floors, indoor plumbing, a ballroom, and a fancy dining room. My grandmother said folks for miles around came here just to see the big winding staircase that led to the rooms upstairs. After Miss Sophie died, the Jeffersons ran it; then sometime during the 1930s it was converted into a movie theater. It closed for good back in the seventies.”

  Standing in the heat, Bernadine took in the carved detail on the brick above the plywood covering the doors and wondered if it like the town could be brought back to life. She looked up and down the street and envisioned what downtown might look like with a brand-new library, businesses, and a new post office. The more she saw the more she seemed to envision.

  They continued the tour and walked across the cracked paved street to the empty field where the general store once stood.

  “Rich woman named Virginia Sutton built it in the 1870s, and it sold everything from penny candy to rifles. Its biggest claim to fame was that it had the tallest flagpole in the county. Legend has it that my great-great-grandfather Neil tied a man named Malloy to it for insulting my great-great-grandmother Olivia.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, he and his brothers were something else. All outlaws.”

  Bernadine stared.

  He nodded. “Have my grandmother show you the old picture albums. Neil and the rest of the Julys, including their baby sister, Teresa, were wanted from Mississippi to the Mexican border for train robbing.”

  Bernadine knew there’d been Black outlaws in the Wild West days but had never imagined actually meeting one of their descendants. “I’m impressed.”

  “This was quite the town back in the day. Some Black people may not know their family history, but around here we do. Our elders were smart enough to write everything down. Wait until you see all the scrapbooks and old newspaper articles. Some of the state’s colleges and museums have been after us for years to turn our archives over to them so they can preserve them, supposedly, but no. We’re holding onto it all.”

  She could only agree. “What else is in the scrapbooks?”

  “Elder meeting minutes from the end of the nineteenth century. Menus from Miss Sophie’s dining room—stuff like that. There’s even the original drawings of the town’s layout from the 1870s. You can barely make out the plots now because the maps are so old, but we have them. Not many towns can say that.”

  “You’re very proud of your ancestors, aren’t you? I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Real proud of the town and that my people were originally Black Seminole.”

  She stopped. “Really?”

  He grinned. “More history here than you can shake a stick at, as the old folks used to say.”

  “I guess. Going to be a lot of pressure on me when I start to rebuild, I take it.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  They continued their walk and she continued to be marveled by his tales and descriptions of buildings that had come and gone. The more she saw of how little remained of the Dusters’ dreams, the more she felt the call to resurrect the place. It didn’t matter that she would have to start from scratch—she had the money—what mattered most was to put life back into the place so that the history could continue to be handed down. “Have you lived here your whole life?”

  He nodded. “Lived ten years in California, but after two divorces and a bellyful of corporate life, I came back. Only one of the few people who has. Everyone else who’s left here never looked back.”

  “What would make people return and stay?”

  “Jobs and being able to farm and make a decent living.”

  She mulled that over and filed it away for later.

  He changed the subject. “Folks are having a reception for you. Be a good chance for you to meet everybody. That okay?”

  “That’s fine,” she said, fighting off the nervousness kicking in. She wasn’t sure she was ready but she knew she was in this to stay.

  CHAPTER

  4

  They got back into the truck and drove a short distance down Main Street. Trenton slowed down and parked in front of a short, ramshackle one-story building that appeared ready to fall down. Edges of its tar-paper roof fluttered in the hot breeze. The structure itself was a hodgepodge mixture of old gray wood, which was scorched black in some places, and bricks; many of which were missing. The listing sign above the screen door read in faded painted letters: the Dog and Cow. “That’s not a name you see every day.”

  He chuckled. “This is our diner.”

  Bernadine wondered what kind of food a place that looked as bad as this served.

  “You ready?”

  “Yep.”

  He came around and helped her down. Even though the walk had let her stretch her legs, lingering aftereffects of the roller-coaster ride from the airport still had her behind feeling like cement. Looking down at her dark green suit, she noted that she wasn’t real wrinkled though. Thank God for money.

  “Looks like everybody’s here too.”

  His nod directed her to the field next to the diner. It was filled with cars and pickup trucks. All but a few had seen better days and all were covered with dust. The sight of so many vehicles made her wonder what kind of reception she’d receive. “Any advice?”

  “Just be ready for anything.”

  That didn’t help her nerves, but then she heard the distinctive voice of Aretha Franklin singing “Chain of Fools” floating out of the diner’s open windows. Because ReeRee, as Franklin was affectionately known back in Detroit, was a homegirl, Bernadine took it as a good sign. Straightening her jacket, she set her purse strap and followed him inside.

  It took her eyes a few moments to adjust to the dimness, but once they did she saw that the place was indeed packed. If there were twenty vehicles parked outside there had to be forty people inside. All of them, men and women, were staring at her curiously. As Aretha sang the last note you could hear a pin drop.

  “Everybody,” Trent announced in the silence, “this is Ms. Bernadine Edwards Brown, our buyer.”

  Gasps of surprise met openmouthed stares. Stunned faces looked her up and down. “I thought she was supposed to be White?” someone called.

  “Well—”

  “A Black woman?”

  Then suddenly someone in the dimly lit place began to clap. Others joined in, and soon applause and cheers filled the air. A few of the older men even waved their canes.

  The surprise must have been evident on her face because as she turned to Trent he nodded and said, “Welcome to Henry Adams, Ms. Brown,” and joined in the applause.

  Bernadine could see that most of the people were seniors. All were wearing their Sunday best and they were beaming, clapping, and hooting. Overwhelmed, she gracefully wiped away the moisture forming in the corner of her
eyes. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but it certainly hadn’t been this outpouring of welcome. In a few more seconds she was going to bawl.

  “Thank you,” she said trying to keep it together. “Thank you very much.”

  An elderly lady who introduced herself as Agnes Jefferson stood and asked Bernadine, “Do you know the history of this place, young woman?”

  Bernadine was in her midfifties. No one had called her young in years but she’d been raised well, so she said, “Yes, ma’am. I do. That’s why I wanted to help.”

  There were more whispers of excitement.

  “Are you going to rebuild the town?”

  Agnes reminded Bernadine of the little old blue-haired ladies at the church she grew up in. “That is my plan. Most of the paperwork for the deed transfer has already cleared. My lawyers—”

  “You have lawyers—as in more than one?” another woman, tall with dark skin and flowing silver hair, asked before introducing herself. “I’m Tamar July by the way. Trent’s gram.”

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” And she was. “To answer your question—yes, more than one.”

  As she watched Tamar and Agnes exchange an impressed glance, she added, “I hope to start building right away, but first I want to talk to you and get your take on what you might want the new town to look like. Second, I need to find a place to stay until I can get a house built.”

  A short light-skinned man with thinning straight hair and who looked to be sixtyish or so rose to his feet and stuck up his hand.

  “Yes?”

  He stepped out in order to be seen. His black pinstriped suit was shiny with age. “Ms. Brown, I’m Riley Curry, former mayor of Henry Adams.”

  A few people let out load groans.

  Bernadine pretended not to hear. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Curry.”

  “You mentioned having a house built. For what purpose?”

  “Residency.” Bernadine gave Trent a sideways look but he kept his face void of any response.