The Emancipation of Robert Sadler

by Robert Sadler

  Toward the end of the summer the cotton fields were like broad white carpets, and I had to learn how to pick cotton. I was as bad at cotton picking as I was at plowing. With my long sack strapped around my neck, and holding the mouth of the sack chest high, I would drag it along the ground beside the rows of the five-foot high cotton plants, pulling cotton from the bolls. At the beginning of each row there were baskets; we emptied our sacks into these baskets. At the end of the day, the baskets were weighed.

  Jed tried to teach me how to pick. “Don’t put yor fingers all the way into the burr, just put them in about halfway. Then pull the lock out.” He showed me how to stoop down, too. “Yoll bend this way so you don’t git tired. Sometimes you carry two rows.” Then he told me with a laugh, “Some o’ these old-timers can pick 200 pounds before noon!”

  The cotton pickers moved down the rows of cotton, pulling the blossomed cotton from the bolls. The unopened bolls were left for another picking. My hands were clumsy, and I broke branches as I handled the plants. This was a serious offense and warranted a snap of the whip because cotton will not bloom on broken branches. I just couldn’t seem to get the knack, and I envied those who did it so well. Their fingers moved with skill and precision, whereas mine were troublesome and awkward.

  Weighing-in time was at the end of the day. In my sack they would always find dry leaves or a piece of boll, and the penalty would be no food or a lash. I didn’t pick enough cotton to satisfy the overseers, either. The other slaves picked 200 to 400 pounds a day. I could never reach that quota. Not once.

  On Sundays we didn’t go to the fields. I stayed near Buck and Corrie’s shanty, not wanting to go near the quarter. Most of the time I went to the church service with Miss Ceily. There had been no attempts on my life yet, but I thought every morning might be my last.

  One Sunday afternoon I was alone in the shanty and was startled by a shout at the door.

  “Robert Sadler!” a woman’s voice called. I sat absolutely still, not knowing what to do. “Robert Sadler? Are you in there?” the voice called again. Finally, I decided to answer and moved quietly to the door. There was a young black woman standing beside the shack peering inside. She wore a cotton dress wet with sweat, her hair pulled up beneath a straw hat, and she held a paper bag at her side.

  When she saw me, her eyes grew wide and she cried, “Robert! Robert, is that you, chile?”

  I stared at the stranger wondering what she wanted with me. “Robert,” she whispered, in a warm but frightened voice, “come on out here and let me see yoll.” I didn’t answer her, and I didn’t move. I just stood staring at her.

  The woman put her bag down and held her arms out to me. “Robert, honey—I’m your sister Margie.”

  Margie.

  I gasped. Margie. Something inside my head blew into a million pieces. I saw a horse-drawn buggy and a terrified fourteen-year-old girl sitting in the back. I heard the long-ago-lost voice of Pearl, “No, Lord, don’t take Margie! No! Please, Lord, bring Margie back!” Margie!

  “Robert . . . honey . . .”

  I moved out the door, my heart beating wildly. I stumbled toward her, and as the burst of sunlight hit me, I fell into her arms.

  Vaguely I heard the Beals’ chickens clucking and crowing in the yard, and I could hear the dogs barking, yet there was nothing around us, nothing and nobody. It was not happiness that I felt, and it was surely not hope—merely a numbness. The dead had come back to life.

  Margie held me tightly. “I swore I’d find you again some day, Robert, honey—I swore—”

  “Pearl—Pearl’s daid,” I sobbed.

  “I know, honey. I done found that out when I come here the first time.”

  “Come here the first time?”

  “Chile, I been here at this ole farm three times lookin for yoll!”

  I straightened.

  “First time a white chile ran me off. I come around the back and come to the door, and a lil white girl come and say, ‘Whatchou wantchere?’ I told her I was lookin for my brother, Robert Sadler, and my sister, Pearl Sadler, who was bought by Sam Beal six years ago.

  “That lil old chile lift up her lip at me like she was fixin to take the hickory to me herself. ‘Pearl’s daid!’ she hollered at me, and then she told me to git or she’d call her daddy on me. So I couldn’t do nothin but leave. It done broke mah heart, and I never found out where you was that time.”

  I closed my eyes. That little chile must have been Anna . . .

  “So I come back agin,” Margie continued. “It’s a walk that takes the whole day nearly. Figger 10 or 12 miles. Then I was runned off the place two more times. Oh, I know that I ain’t allowed here, but I had to come somehow.”

  She smiled at me. “Ah brought yoll some things.” For a crazy second, looking at her in the sunlight, I saw Mama again.

  “Here’s some trousers I done sewed for ye, not knowin yer size or nothin—and a shirt. . . . You sure done growed!” Then she pulled out some vanilla wafers, cold pork chops, and a cluster of grapes. There was also a jar of Vaseline.

  I stuck a vanilla wafer in my mouth, and she lowered her eyes. “Yoll ain’t eatin but a handful a day, are ye?” I didn’t answer her.

  Then she told me of her escape from the family in Hartwell, Georgie, who had bought her from Tom Billings.

  “One day Janey come and carried me offa that place.”

  “Janey?”

  “Yes, honey, our sister, Janey.”

  I could remember no sister by that name.

  “Well, chile, she be third from the oldest, and she found out where I was and she come lookin for me in a big ole car! She tuk me to Anderson to live with her.”

  I listened as though I were hearing a story that the white children might make up before they went to sleep at night.

  “Janey tole me,” she continued, “that the only way I could stay free would be if’n I got married. Tole me if’n I was married, the white folk couldn’t come and carry me back to Hartwell. So they done fixed up a weddin, and I got married to a gittar player they found who was willin to go through with it for five dollar.

  “Been trouble ever since.” Margie sighed, then took a breath and said, a little brighter, “I gotta be movin along, chile. I’ll be back agin.” She kissed me on the cheek, held me tightly for a moment. “They beatin on you, honey?”

  “Naw, they ain’t beatin on me.”

  When Margie had gone and I was alone again, I thought maybe I had dreamed the whole thing. But a paper bag filled with wonderful things was proof that I had not dreamed it all. A stranger named Margie had been here.

  19

  I was sure glad when the cotton picking season was over. I was given chores such as chopping wood, cleaning the barns, feeding the hogs and mules, and painting and fixing. I did all that I was told to do with very little concern or care. I spoke little, and even when I was with Buck and Corrie and their little boy, Adger, I had nothing to say.

  Margie came to visit me once more, this time bringing Janey. They brought fresh peaches, walnuts, flour, cornmeal, a ham bone, and canned mackerel. In another bag were shirts and pants and sweaters and even shoes. We had enough to give away. We sat by the hearth in Buck and Corrie’s shanty cracking and eating walnuts, and talking.

  Janey was a large-boned, striking girl with high cheekbones and flashing eyes. Her broad smile was bright and showed beautiful, white, even teeth. She was obviously someone who wouldn’t be held down. I eyed her with interest.

  Janey didn’t say much to me, but she seemed to be genuinely concerned about me. She told us about a brother of ours named Johnny, who lived in Anderson.

  I could not remember a brother named Johnny. Then she told me that I had another brother named Leroy who lived near the Beal farm. She told me Leroy owned his own little farm. It was shocking for me to be hearing things like this, and I couldn’t relate in any way to the news. Strangers who called themselves my sisters telling me of a free world outside and about brothers of mine owning f
arms—it was just too much for my one good black ear to bear.

  “I won’t be back for a while,” Margie told me. “I’s gone have a baby.” The words meant nothing to me. People having babies all the time.

  When they left, Janey said to Corrie, “Kin yoll teach him about washin and sech? He stinks terrible. ’Sides that, he’s got bugs so bad they’s crawling all over his face!”

  Corrie worked from sunup until late at night, but she squeezed in time for me as well as for her child and husband. I had forgotten all that Miss Harriet and Mac had taught me about keeping clean. Corrie showed me how to wash myself like Janey had asked. She showed me how to wash my teeth with a stick and reminded me to wash my clothes.

  Soon the winter would descend upon us. Even though the South Carolina winters were mostly mild, the temperature sometimes got below freezing, and there was an occasional snowfall. The cold weather didn’t last long, but without heat, shoes, or warm clothing, it was agony. I refused the clothes Janey and Margie brought because I didn’t want to have what others didn’t have. Buck and Corrie took what they needed and I gave the rest away.

  With the harvesting finished, the pressure was not quite so heavy on us, and I felt myself begin to loosen up a little. I began to notice things again, like sunshine and trees. I noticed faces and stars at night, and I noticed animals. One day when I was through working in the barn, I took a walk down to the creek that ran through Sam Beal’s land. I stood on the bank watching the water for a minute or so, and then got down on my knees and stuck my head in the water. I scrubbed at my scalp and then dried off with my shirt. When I stood up, it occurred to me that I wasn’t alone. I turned around and saw a young man standing not six feet from me.

  “Hi,” he said with a friendly voice.

  “Hello, Thomas,” I answered coldly.

  “Whatcha doin down here, Robert?”

  I smiled sarcastically. “I’m taking a bath, suh, watch yoll doin here?”

  “I’m takin a walk, thassall,” he snapped. “’Sides, it ain’t none of yor bi’ness.”

  I shrugged and climbed back up the bank to begin the walk back to the barn. Thomas Beal ran after me.

  “Robert!” he called. I stopped. “Robert, yoll doin OK?”

  “Jes fine, Thomas,” I answered without looking at him. A July sun flashed across my mind, and his chubby face covered with mud; we were children and playing in the rhododendron in the yard.

  “Well, it’s jes that I know it must be hard for yoll bein in the field when you been in the house all them years.”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “Listen here, Robert—”

  I took a loud breath indicating my disinterest. “Robert, I just wanted to say—that is, listen, I gotta tell ye somethin—”

  “Thomas, if you got somethin to say, say it.”

  “It’s about, well, about—about that stealin’ business.”

  I turned away. “I don’t care to talk about thet there subjec’, Thomas. ’Scuse me, I gotta go back to mah work.”

  “Wait, Robert. I think you oughter know something! You remember Mitt and Waxy? The boys you was givin the stuff to and they was sellin it?”

  “Uh-huh, I remember.”

  “Well, they was sellin the stuff to—”

  “To another plantation, Thomas. They had a way. I knows all about it.”

  “Robert, they wasn’t sellin it to nobody on no other plantation.”

  “Hunh?” I looked at him, wondering what he was getting at.

  “Robert, they was sellin that stuff to—Thrasher.”

  My mouth opened in spite of myself.

  “I swear I’m tellin you the truth.”

  “Thomas, you is plumb crazy—” I rolled my eyes and began to laugh.

  “Daddy went down to the quarter when he got drunk one night and went to the Edwardses’ place, and he told Mitt and Waxy they could leave the plantation.”

  I didn’t believe him. “You crazy, Thomas. They is good workers. Master Beal need strong mens. They ain’t enough strong mens on this farm!”

  Thomas looked at me sadly. “There ain’t enough of nothin on this farm, Robert, and that’s the God hepp me truth.”

  That night I told Buck and Corrie what had happened. “Ah declare,” Corrie said, wagging her head. “I been hearing that Massuh’s drinkin is causin him to ruination . . . mebbe it’s true.”

  “Why would he turn out Mitt and Waxy?”

  I had to find out for myself, and I cared so little for my life that I went down to the Edwardses’ place that night. I called inside. When Mr. Edwards came to the door, he looked surprised.

  “Whatcha want here, boy?” he asked.

  “I come to find out if it’s true that Massuh done turn out Mitt and Waxy for they freedom.”

  “They is free, all right. But they is still workin the land share-croppin.”

  Mrs. Edwards called from inside. “Come on in, Robert.”

  Mrs. Edwards gave me a smile. “Robert, I’m so glad you come by. I been wantin yoll to know that we don’t hold no hard feelin’s for yoll. Come on and set yerself down here.”

  Mrs. Edwards told me, “Son, bein a slave they want you low and mean and like a animal. But we ain’t no animals. We is people, an we gotta remember thet. Don’t let them make you a dog when you is a human bean.”

  I nodded. A human bean.

  “Yoll prayin, son?”

  “I reckon not, Ma’am.”

  “Yoll better not forgit Him, hear? He’s the answer to all this. He’s the only answer. If you don’t got the Lord, you gets a festerin and all tore up on the inside. Nossuh! Let’um tear us up on the outside, not the inside. Son, don’t you evah forgit the Lord!”

  “Mitt and Waxy’s place ain’t no better than this one, but they call it theirs,” said Mr. Edwards.

  “Do Massuh pay em?”

  “He done give em tools an seed, a few chickens an a hog. They keeps half the crop and the other half goes to Massuh.”

  “Lord!”

  Mitt and Waxy farmed like they always had, but now instead of being called slaves, they were called sharecroppers. At least they were out from under Thrasher’s whip.

  Then came the day Master Beal come looking for me. He found me standing by the door of Buck and Corrie’s shanty.

  “Robert!” he shouted. “Come here, boy.”

  Sweet Jesus, I comin home.

  “You deaf, boy? Come ’ere!”

  I hurried to his side. Might as well die quick. “Yessuh, Massuh Beal, suh.”

  “Go get me some gin at the store yonder.”

  “Hunh?” I was shocked. He might as well have told me to take a little jaunt to Jupiter. I couldn’t have heard right. Buck wasn’t around. Nobody was around to tell me if I heard right.

  “You ain’t still dumb, are you, boy? Run up to Jube’s and get me some gin. You’s the only nigger around. Take the horse and git.”

  Take the horse! What was he saying? Then I looked at the horse he was pointing at. It was Trigger, Thrasher’s horse!

  Okay. They’re wanting to kill a nigger today. I’m the one. I’m gonna git killed.

  “Suh, Massuh Beal, suh, yoll mean I should git on Trigger, suh?” I was so confounded I almost called Trigger “suh,” too.

  “Get on that horse, Robert, and get up yonder now! Don’t you know Thrasher’s daid?”

  Hunh? I stared at Master Beal like I was seeing double. He rubbed his chin with his fist. “Tha’s right, the Thrasher be daid. He got hisself stabbed in the gut while he was sleepin. Now, get me thet gin.”

  Thrasher dead! As easily said as “Today is a nice day” or “Tomorrow it might rain.” Thrasher was dead.

  The narrow dirt road was lined with trees, and you could see the ironwood, fire pink, and asters growing wild along the sides of the road and in the clearings.

  Never in my craziest dreams had I imagined I’d be sitting on Trigger—Thrasher’s horse! And here I was, going for gin at Jube’s Market for Master B
eal. If that didn’t beat all.

  The horse was as demonized as his owner was, and I was glad that I got back without breaking any bones. A few days later someone poisoned that horse.

  The slaves were still scared of Thrasher after he was long dead. They thought his ghost might come back and torture them. Some said they could hear Trigger going up and down the quarter at night looking to do devilment. There was talk like that.

  20

  Another year went by, and I labored and prayed and grew stronger, but never better at being a field slave. I couldn’t plow, hoe, cut stalk, or pick cotton right. It was misery twenty-four hours a day. My only relief was in the winter months when I was put to other chores before plowing time would begin again. I missed Big Mac. There was hardly a day went by when I didn’t think of him.

  The summer of 1925 I turned fourteen years old. I had grown large. Though I wasn’t tall, I had broad shoulders and thick arms. The other boys didn’t want to fight me because I could beat them. Jed, who still worked the same fields as I did, often teased me because I was so clumsy with the plow. “One of these days thet mule gonna plow you, Robert.”

  Jed told me his real name was Zephaniah. The white master had it changed to Jed. “They find Zephaniah too hard to say. So they shorten it up an’ call me Jed.” A Jeremiah was called Jerry, a Josiah would be Joe, and a Delilah Lee was changed to Lucie. I thought of Tennessee, who refused to allow her name to be changed and wouldn’t answer to Carolina. I smiled and said a quiet prayer for her right there in the field, for her and for John Henry and the baby.

  It was on a Saturday night in the middle of the summer that Buck cleared his throat and told me, “Boy, we’s leavin this here farm.” When it had sunk in, I jumped up and down. “Buck! Buck! Don’t leave without me! Promise me yoll won’t leave without me!” Buck promised.

  That night there was a dance going on down in the quarter and they were “settin the floor,” but I didn’t go. Though I wasn’t sure if my life was in danger in the quarter, I surely wasn’t welcome and everybody stayed away from me. I walked slowly across the yard, past the chicken coop, and up the hill to the barn where the mules were.