“Of course not,” I said, “. . . why would you think that?”
“You sure could fool me!” chuckled Papa.
“But I think Katie might be,” I added.
“Whatever you say’s fine by me,” Papa said. “But I’ve never seen a look like that on your face before. If it means what I think it means, you’d better tell Jeremiah before it goes too far . . . although, I don’t know, he and Emma would probably do fine with each other too.”
“Papa, what are you saying!”
“Nothing, only that things are getting a little too mixed up around here for me to keep track of.”
Though no one had seen them, two others had been watching Mayme and Micah coming toward the barn behind the dozen cows. They had also heard their playful banter and had drawn a similar conclusion about its meaning as had Templeton Daniels.
From her upstairs window, Emma had been watching ever since they had run after the stray cow. For reasons she did not fully understand herself, she continued to stand at the window as they drew nearer and nearer, until at last she could hear their voices as they laughed and chided each other.
Katie was right. Micah Duff was just about as good-looking a man as she’d ever seen. If only William could have a daddy like him or Jeremiah someday.
But seeing the two having such fun together confused Emma’s mind and heart. Finally she turned away from the window, wondering where Jeremiah was.
Where Jeremiah was as the herd of cows and their two herdsmen made their way toward him was, in fact, inside the barn.
He had been cleaning out the last of the previous night’s straw and muck in preparation for the evening milking when the unmistakable sound of Mayme’s high-pitched laughter carried over the fields toward him. A pang shot through him as he suspected its cause. He crept to the door and looked out from the shadows. There were Micah and Mayme a hundred yards away. He shrunk back a few steps and watched their approach.
Then he remembered the stalls. He needed to get them finished!
Quickly he turned back inside, grabbed the pitchfork again, and hastily completed the last of the stalls and spread them with fresh straw. He had just finished when he heard Mayme’s father outside. Every word between the three of them about Micah’s competence at milking reached his ears.
With the first clopping of hooves on the hard brick floor toward the stalls, Jeremiah suddenly realized he did not want to be seen. He didn’t want to embarrass Mayme—or himself. But it was too late to get out. He glanced about, then hurried to the depths of the barn and slunk down in the darkness behind several bales of hay.
The voices he heard following the cows in, though he could not see their faces, were ones he knew intimately—
“. . . not sweet on him, are you Mayme?” came Templeton’s voice through the darkness.
It was all Jeremiah needed to hear. No amount of protestation on Mayme’s part could dislodge the searing words from his brain.
“. . . better tell Jeremiah . . .”
“. . . he and Emma’d probably do fine with each other too.”
The words reverberated in Jeremiah’s brain and he could not stop them. But he could not get up and leave until the milking was done.
For another forty minutes Jeremiah lay crouched on the floor and listened to Mayme and Templeton as they talked about Micah Duff and what an extraordinary man he was.
When they finally left, it required some stealth for Jeremiah to get out of the barn and clean himself up without being seen so that the aroma of the stalls would not betray where he had been for the past hour.
He was late for supper and had difficulty explaining his strange disappearance for the latter part of the afternoon.
He said little throughout the rest of the evening, as did Emma. The conversation between Micah Duff, Mayme, and Katie, however, flowed well enough without them.
A TRIP
10
Ever since Uncle Ward had come to Rosewood with the deed to the property Katie’s mama had signed over to him, he’d been a little uncomfortable knowing that he was the owner of Rosewood when he really considered that it ought to belong to Katie.
And besides that, he didn’t want to run the risk of Rosewood being in jeopardy if something should happen to him. I know he and my papa talked a lot about it, and with Katie some too. Uncle Ward wanted to make some changes to the deed so that Katie and Papa—and even me—were part owners too. Uncle Ward had planned to go see the local lawyer, Mr. Sneed, about it some time back. But since none of us, especially Katie, trusted the man, Uncle Ward had put it off until now.
He announced one day that he was going into Charlotte to see a lawyer there and he wanted Katie and me and Papa to go with him. Besides changing the deed to the property so that his wasn’t the only name on it, Uncle Ward said he was going to make a will too. He wanted to make sure nothing like what happened with Katie’s uncle Burchard could ever happen again. He didn’t trust the local lawyer to do that either. There was a lot of bad feeling about the two Daniels brothers and their “plantation full of niggers,” as the locals called Rosewood.
Speaking for myself, I was just glad to be getting away from Micah and Jeremiah for a while!
Katie looked over at me as we left, and bounded down the road away from Rosewood behind our uncle and my papa, and smiled. She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. I think she had been feeling the awkwardness too.
What she was feeling toward Micah Duff, I didn’t know. As close as Katie and I were, I wasn’t ready to ask her quite yet.
As Jeremiah watched the carriage bound for Charlotte disappear from sight, he too felt a strange sense of relief. Maybe now he could get his brain clear. He had thought everything with Mayme was all settled . . . until Micah had appeared. Now he wasn’t sure what was going on!
Jeremiah walked into the barn to unfasten the cows from their stalls and get them outside to pasture and on with their day’s business.
As we went, Katie and I didn’t talk too much at first. Maybe we were both absorbed with our own thoughts. I know I was! As much as I loved everyone we were leaving behind, I’d been too unsettled for the last couple of days from the things Papa had said to me to be able to think straight.
After Papa’s words inside the barn, suddenly I felt shy and awkward around Micah Duff. We’d had such a good talk and such fun together. But all of a sudden I started walking around like a silent scarecrow. I know he saw the difference because he looked at me funny a time or two.
What if Papa was right? If he had noticed me behaving peculiar, had everyone else noticed too? What did Jeremiah think? Though he’d seemed to be happy whenever he was with Emma . . . maybe he hadn’t noticed anything at all!
Oh, it was all so confusing! Life had been simpler when there hadn’t been any young men around. And when we were younger and weren’t thinking about them. But I was nineteen now and would turn twenty in August and I couldn’t help it, I was thinking about them now!
So like I’d said, bouncing away from Rosewood in our nice traveling carriage, Papa and Uncle Ward in the front and me and Katie on the padded leather seat behind them, was a relief. It was just the four of us, without all the complications of everyone else. I feel a little bad for saying that, but it’s what I was thinking.
The trip to Charlotte wasn’t like the trips we took with everybody every year to celebrate the end of the harvest. This was what I guess you’d call a business trip, though Katie and I had been looking forward to it almost more than we wanted to let on to the others. It didn’t take long before we were talking excitedly about all we wanted to do and see and about getting to stay in a hotel room together—alone, just the two of us—and go shopping and eat in restaurants. We were excited anticipating what a good time we were going to have.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen in the lull following the hubbub of breakfast and the departure of the four, Micah sat at the table lingering over his last cup of coffee as Emma cleared up around him. Josepha had disappeared to the chic
ken coop.
“So what do you think, Emma?” said Micah, taking a sip from his cup, “—here we are—you and me, a couple of blacks, sitting like this in a white man’s plantation house, another couple of blacks outside . . . and not a white person anywhere to be seen. It’s just like Henry said when he first told me about Rosewood—a kind of unusual place! It’s pretty remarkable for Ward and Templeton to trust all the rest of you like they do.”
“I neber thought ’bout it like dat, Mister Duff—you reckon dey really do, like you say, trust us?”
“It appears so to me, Emma. There’s nobody here but us Negroes. I would say that’s a pretty high level of trust!”
“Dat’s good, ain’t it, Mister Duff?”
“It’s always good when people trust each other, Emma. At least I think so.”
“What ef people’s bad, Mister Duff? Dere’s bad folks dat’ll take advantage ob a person’s trust.”
“Well, that’s true,” nodded Micah. “I suppose that’s the chance you take when you trust people. But I think I’d still rather be a trusting person than a suspicious one. It takes more character to trust than it does to be suspicious.”
“Character—whatchu mean by dat?”
“Inner strength, or maybe maturity,” said Micah. He paused and thought for a few seconds. “Being a good person,” he added, “strong, selfless—those are qualities of character, Emma.”
“You mean like Miz Katie and Mayme.”
He looked at her deeply, then slowly smiled. “Yes.” He nodded. “Mayme and Katie are certainly young women of character. But they aren’t the only ones.”
“I know—you’s be meanin’ Mister Templeton,” said Emma. “He’s a right fine man.”
“Yes, he is,” smiled Micah. For now he kept what else he was thinking to himself.
“How you git ter be so much like a white man, Mister Duff?” asked Emma.
Micah threw his head back and roared with laughter. “How do you mean, Emma?” he said, still chuckling.
“You talks so good, an’ you’s smart an’ always sayin’ dose important kind er things.”
Again Micah laughed. “Why can’t a black man be just as intelligent as a white man?”
“I don’ know,” said Emma. “I jes’ neber met one dat wuz.”
“Well, I don’t know if I am or not, Emma,” laughed Micah. “All I try to be is myself and be the best myself I can be.”
Already, with the others gone from Rosewood less than an hour, Emma had begun to feel more relaxed around Micah Duff. Without realizing it, she found herself gradually opening up and talking more freely.
“But saying important kinds of things like you said, that’s not necessarily all there is to life, Emma. And besides, a person’s character is formed by what a person does and what a person is, more than by what he says. You know how to do a lot of things, Emma. You’re always helping someone with something. That’s character too, Emma.”
“You really think so?”
“Of course—it’s a spirit of helpfulness.”
“Mayme taught me ter do things,” said Emma. “I reckon I learned ter try ter help folks from watchin’ her. She taught me and Miz Katie everything. Back when I wuz a slave I wuzn’t good fer nuthin’ but runnin’ errands. They’d always tell me to go fetch a rug or mop or go git somebody. All I eber did wuz help pretty white girls fix dere hair. But Mayme, she knows how ter do everythin’.”
“But it’s also who you are,” said Micah, “that makes you a person of worth.”
“I ain’t worth nuthin’,” said Emma. “But Mayme, dat’s her, all right. She kin do things like you say, but she’s a fine person too—she’s about da finest person in da worl’.”
Micah nodded. He did not like to leave the discussion at that, but perhaps Emma wasn’t quite ready to look at herself differently. He knew such things took time.
“Well, Jake’s likely got those cows out to pasture by now,” he said, rising, “I suppose I better get out there and help him with that fence we are going to put in.”
As we bounded along the road south between Greens Crossing and Charlotte, Katie and I found ourselves talking about Micah Duff, though I was still too embarrassed to tell her what Papa had said that day. But Katie was going on and on about him like she’d never met anyone so wonderful in her life. And I suppose she hadn’t . . . and neither had I, come to think of it.
Before she’d only said how good-looking he was, and I hadn’t really taken her too seriously—I mean in thinking that she might actually be interested in him . . . for herself, I mean. But now with the way she was carrying on about him, I began to wonder if she was more interested than I had realized.
It didn’t occur to me that the two men in front were probably hearing every word we said. All of a sudden, Uncle Ward turned around.
“Say, Kathleen,” he said, “that Micah Duff is quite a young man. He seems fond of you too.”
Katie’s face turned red as a beet. That’s when I knew that his words must have hit pretty close to home.
“He’s . . . oh, he’s nice to everyone, Uncle Ward,” Katie stammered.
“Yeah, maybe . . . but you never know—you’re a pretty fine-looking young lady.”
Papa turned around and glanced at us, then threw me a little wink and got that twinkle in his eye that meant he was having fun with somebody.
What was he thinking, I wondered!
After that Katie didn’t mention Micah Duff once more the whole way.
COMPLICATIONS IN CHARLOTTE AND ELSEWHERE
11
JEREMIAH AND MICAH WERE BOTH BARE-CHESTED and dripping with sweat from the hot sun that same afternoon as they dug holes and set the fence posts for a new section of fence across one of the grazing pastures. It was one of their first chances to work alone together for a full day since Micah had arrived. He had asked about Jeremiah’s years since they had parted long ago, and how he had come to find Henry. Most of the past two hours Micah had spent listening to Jeremiah’s story.
“Everything you are telling me is truly remarkable, Jake,” he said. “The Lord was guiding your steps here just as surely as He was mine.”
“I reckon dat’s so,” nodded Jeremiah. “But as good as it’s been wiff my daddy, an’ as appreciative as I am fo his kindness toward me, I still habn’t been altogether at ease in my mind all dis time on account er runnin’ out on you like I done.”
“That was a long time ago, Jake—think nothing of it.”
“But I regret it, Duff. You wuz good ter me when I needed help, an’ I been wantin’ ter ax yo forgiveness eber since—so now I’m axin’ for it. I’s sorry, Duff.”
“Thank you, Jake,” said Micah, looking deep into Jeremiah’s eyes. “As far as forgiving you is concerned, I did that the day you left. I never thought ill of you then, and I think all the more of you now to see how you’ve grown into such a fine young man.”
“Thank you, Duff.”
As Jeremiah and Micah were working a half mile away from the house, Josepha returned from her chores outside. She found Emma in the kitchen. Emma had been thinking about her conversation earlier in the morning with Micah Duff. A smile had unconsciously come to her lips. Josepha saw it as she entered and half suspected the cause. A scowl spread over her face in response to Emma’s smile.
“Whatchu lookin’ at me like dat fo, Josepha?” said Emma. “You lookin’ daggers at me!”
“You jes’ watch yo’self, girl,” said Josepha.
“Whatchu mean by dat?”
“Jes’ dat dere’s two fetchin’ young men out dere dat’s bof got eyes fo you.”
“Whatchu talkin’ bout! Ain’t nobody got eyes fer me!”
“All I’s sayin’ is don’t you git yo’self in ober dat fool head ob yers agin. Don’t you go back ter da way you used ter be.”
“I ain’t neber goin’ back ter dose days, Josepha. You oughter know dat. I’s different now.”
“I hope dat’s so, girl. But folks don’t change as m
uch as dey think dey do.”
“Well, I done learned my lesson.”
“Dat’s all well an’ good, and women says dat all da time,” persisted Josepha. “But den a man comes along an’ dey forgets agin, lose dere heads and gits foolish all ober agin. Women are da biggest fools in da worl’ sometimes, how dey lose dere heads ober some men dat ain’t got but one thing on dere mind.”
“Oh, but Jeremiah and Micah—dey ain’t like dat!”
“Eben men like Jeremiah and Micah got eyes in dere heads.”
“Not for no dummy like me with a pickaninny on her hip. Besides, dey bof got eyes fo Mayme.”
Josepha grunted and muttered something about the “blind foolishness of young folks” that Emma couldn’t quite make out.
Leaving his shovel standing in the hole he’d just dug, Jeremiah straightened, pushing his hand into the small of his back to work out the knots from being bent over for so long.
“I reckon dat’s ’bout enough fo today,” he said.
Beside him, Micah also straightened. “Amen,” he agreed. Micah stood tall, leaning on the handle of his shovel and staring off in the direction of the river. “Say, how’s the fishing in that river?”
Jeremiah followed his gaze. “Dere’s a couple deep pools where dere’s always some catfish,” he replied.
“Let’s go get some!”
“Well, it’s late enough in da day, I reckon. The sun ain’t so hot now. Might be we cud catch a few.”
“Is there enough time before supper?”
“Always enough time fer fishin’!” Jeremiah grinned. “I’ll go fetch two poles.”
Micah took Jeremiah’s shovel and hoisted both over his shoulder.
“How ’bout you dig some worms out ob da garden?” Jeremiah said.
“Great—more digging.” Micah smiled, but set off quickly on his task.
A short time later, the two young men walked across the field toward the river, their damp work shirts tied around their waists. Sweat still gleamed from their bare arms and chests and mud still clung to their boots and pant legs. A bucket swung from one of Jeremiah’s hands and two cane poles were slung over his shoulder. Micah carried an old baking-powder can full of dirt and worms.
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