He wasn’t a handsome man when he came here, and he knew that had not changed, yet when he last shaved, he stopped mid-whistle and looked at the man who stared back at him. His normally too pale skin had darkened from long hours outside, and his body was harder. There was a new line to his jaw. To his amazement, he looked like a person to be reckoned with. Not exactly a mean son-of-a-gun, but no pushover either.
He was preparing a kindly article about Nicodemus, mixed with glowing words about the character of the people there. Surprisingly, there was an ironclad rule in the town against drinking. He spoke glowingly of the industry and temperance of the residents. He chose his words carefully, knowing exactly how far to go. He knew what would rile folks up and what would not.
When he had worked for two solid hours, doing his best with some irregular type, he looked up and saw a woman coming across the prairie. She wore a white turban on her head, and she was black as a gun barrel. She walked right up to the door, stopped, and looked at him hard, her slim-fingered hands stilled across the front of her apron.
Dumbstruck, he waited for her to speak.
“You be the man Meissner?”
“Yes.” The black woman carried herself with an aristocratic bearing that would do pride to any Southern belle. Tall, straight as a pine tree. But it was her force, like an electrical charge, that stunned him. A combination of anger and intention as though she could kill through focus of will.
“I is known as Queen Bess. Bethany Herbert’s mother. I come to tell you to leave my daughter alone.”
He stammered. “I can assure you, ma’am, that my intentions are strictly honorable in every way.”
“Ain’t no white man’s intentions honorable when it comes to our people. Yours ain’t either,” she said flatly. “If you think that, you is a fool. But I’m telling you this for your own good. Leave my daughter alone. She set apart. A healer. She has a calling. Birthing is part of it, but there’s a lot more. Lots of women of her kind never marry. I never married.”
His eyes flickered. Never married, yet she had a daughter.
“Oh yes, Mr. Meissner, I know all about white men. Stuff you don’t want to know. The only good thing that come from me and my doings with white men is my daughter. That’s all.”
“Ma’am, I swear to God, such thoughts have never entered my mind.” Even as he said the words, he was swept with shame, remembering his pleasure in seeing Bethany coming across the field.
“Ain’t your mind I’m worried about. I’m telling you, quit sniffing around her. You is putting notions in her head.”
“She’s the one who’s putting notions in my head, ma’am. She’s asked me to help her get land for you folks. She has a right to do that.” His face was hot with dismay. “I’m telling you, ma’am, she’s the one that comes to me. Not the other way around. And if you think there’s anything immoral going on between us, you are mistaken. Your daughter has a splendid mind. It’s a great pity she’s not white.”
He was so shocked by his own words that he could not speak. Fixed by her gaze, his tongue thickened. Those fierce, judgmental eyes. It was the eyes’ fault. They had caused him to blurt what he did not even know he had believed until that very moment.
“You wish she was white,” she mocked. “You wish she was white. That’s the only thing that’s keeping you from my daughter. Well, it had just better keep on coming between you, if you know what’s good for you.”
His chin quivered. This crazy woman had come out of nowhere and made him say things he didn’t mean.
“But I don’t think I has a thing to worry about. You see, I know you, Mr. Meissner. I met you a thousand times before. You’re white through and through and won’t taint your precious blood in any way that can be found out. Ain’t like panting and sneaking around in the dark on a plantation. And you ain’t got the guts to go after what you want in daylight. Can’t hide that kind of thing out here.”
She continued to watch his face. Sullenly, he stared at the ground. Later, he wished he had talked back. Offered a word or two in his own defense. He was a man of words. He valued words; knew the power of words. But he had been stunned to silence like a bug paralyzed by a tarantula.
It came from her recognition of thoughts he hadn’t even known he had. Desires that were buried deep inside his soul. She had forced him to look at a side of himself he didn’t even know existed.
“Who are you?” he whispered. “What are you?”
Her smile was grim as death. “I just am, Mr. Meissner. I just am.”
She turned and walked back the way she had come.
The next day, after pacing the floor, staring gloomily at the type, and starting a new column three times, he finally went outside and began yanking weeds in his new corn patch. By noon, he knew what he was going to ask of the people sponsoring his town company.
He spent the next morning composing a letter to Mr. Frank Slater, who was providing the bulk of Millbrook’s money. When he had finished, he saddled his horse, rode off to Oberlin, the nearest town with an official post office, and mailed his letter.
He got a reply a week later and whooped when he read it. It was cautious, but positive. He had permission to move his paper to Nicodemus. Immediately, he started thinking about a new name for the publication. If he could persuade all the colored people trekking into Topeka and Leavenworth to come on out to Nicodemus, there was no doubt whatsoever, their town could be voted in as the new county seat.
There would be an ample supply of labor and work for all through the effort to raise up the town. Everyone would get rich, and he would have the satisfaction of helping a race he had always defended with his words.
He saddled his horse and rode toward Nicodemus. He eyed the schoolhouse, heard Bethany’s voice as he passed, but did not want to interrupt her lessons. He went down to the blacksmith shop.
Jim Black looked up, nodded, then turned back to the horseshoe he was fitting.
“Looks like you’re starting to get a lot of work from outside the community,” Meissner said.
“It’s building. Slow. Real slow, but people are starting to come.”
Meissner strolled outside, walked down the street, and took inventory. There was a sparsely stocked general store, the livery stable, the school-hotel-storage building, and Jim Black’s blacksmith shop. Other business and services—such as Dolly Redgrave’s dressmaking—were conducted from the settlers’ homes. The town needed more people.
He watched an old woman tend to her new garden and, in his head, began to compose columns bragging on the industry and vitality of the town. His town, by God. He planned the celebration that would take place to welcome Nicodemus’s first newspaper. He planned the publicity release for the Eastern presses.
By evening, everyone knew there was something afoot. Meissner waited for everyone to assemble in the schoolhouse. He envisioned a fine new school, set apart, constructed from limestone quarried from the bluffs near Nicodemus. Self-consciously he strode to the front of the room.
“Tonight, I bring you good news,” he began. “Very good news indeed. My paper, the Millbrook Wildhorse, is backed by affluent people who have an interest in the railroads. They wish to share their prosperity with the people living on the Great Plains. A railroad is essential to a county seat, and a county seat is essential for attracting a railroad.”
He straightened. Trembled with the importance of what he was about to say. “They have selected you—your town, Nicodemus—as being worthy of the all-out, no-holds-barred effort to get the county seat.”
Confused, the blacks buzzed like hornets. Henry Partridge, looking even more like an eel due to the flesh-stripping winter, waved his claw hand. “Thought Wade City was going to be the county seat.”
“Despite the very best efforts of Mr. Potroff and the lying bunch of thieves in back of him, he does not have enough people to petition for county organization. I see no reason—In fact, I’m quite positive, that with the right backing—and I have it—Nicodemus would m
ake an ideal site.”
He paused, bewildered that there was not the immediate joyful shout he had expected.
“I hope you understand what this will mean for the economic security of this community. Not just the economy, but the recognition you will get nationwide. It will be a Mecca and the first Negro community in the nation to have this status.” He flushed. Perhaps they didn’t understand. “Nicodemus will be the county seat.”
His neck reddened, and his freckles were stark against the sudden whitening as the blood drained from his face. Perhaps he should explain more thoroughly that he was offering them the opportunity of a lifetime.
“Mister, I’ve got news for you.” All turned to look at Patricia Towaday. She was a slight woman with snuff-colored skin sprinkled with dark freckles. Her voice trembled in the manner of a person not used to speaking up. But, driven by fury, she couldn’t restrain herself.
She and her husband and two children had come to Nicodemus better outfitted than anyone there. They had bought a team, a wagon, and a fair amount of seed when they went through Wyandotte. The railroaders at Ellis had confiscated it all in exchange for Wade’s unpaid freight bill.
“If there’s one thing our people know, it’s when white folks offer us something, it time to run like hell. The last time we listened to a white man was Wade, and he told us we were going to be rich and happy. We pert’ near starved to death.”
“Amen,” piped up Sister Liza Stover.
“Most of us don’t even have the animals we came here with. We like to died during the winter. The only difference between the winter coming up and the winter we just went through is that we’re a lot smarter. And we is plenty smart enough to know better than to listen again to another white man.”
“Yeah,” said her husband. “It took us a while, but we learned.”
“You don’t want my newspaper here in this town?” Meissner asked. “You don’t want a chance to be the county seat?”
“We don’t want you in this town.”
Everyone turned toward the woman who had stepped forward from the back of the packed room.
“We don’t want you, and we won’t have you.” Queen Bess did not bother to look at anyone else. Her eyes burned with contempt. “We don’t want your wrongful, hurtful ideas killing what we have here. Sapping its life with little half-truths and lies.”
Bethany walked forward and stood to one side of Meissner. “Momma, you’re wrong,” she pleaded. “You’re wrong. This man wants to help us. We need to let him help us.”
“We don’t need to be taking nothing from white folks. Not their money, or their words or their ways,” snapped Queen Bess.
Meissner stood helplessly to the side. Then Bethany turned to him. “Mr. Meissner, I apologize that your presence and your expertise should be so poorly received. More than anyone here, I know and appreciate your kindness, but you have to know I, too, am stunned that you would come riding in here and just assume we would all be tickled to death without feeling out one single soul first.”
Dumbfounded that Bethany first praised him and then criticized him in front of the group, he opened his mouth to defend himself and then thought better of it.
Bethany’s cheeks darkened. Her voice was staccato. Clipped. Furious. “How would you like it, Mr. Meissner, if a Negro came riding into Millbrook and announced he was going to plant himself in the middle of your town, expecting a royal welcome, and intended to speak for you, decide for you, and tell you what to do and what to think?”
Bethany looked around. Queen Bess beamed, and Teddy’s eyes were alight with pride.
“That’s right, child,” someone murmured. “You tell him, sister. You’ve got it right.”
“We thought you were different. I told these people you were different.”
“Ain’t no white person different,” taunted Queen Bess. “Not at heart. They just think they are because they ain’t been tested.”
“The point we need to make ain’t being said so Mr. Meissner here can understand.” Earl Gray’s yellow, bloodshot eyes hardened with anger. He had lost his wife and child during the winter. Word was, he was planning to marry a widow with two grown children who’d come trekking into town two months ago. Word was, he was still so bitter over his loss that the widow was marrying a ghost and might as well be living a single life. But apparently there was life in the ghost after all.
“What’s not being said is, we don’t ever, ever want white folks living in our town. Not now, not ever. Get out.”
The room was quiet. Norvin Meissner’s skin prickled. Everyone in the county had heard the story about these blacks forming a lynch mob to hang Wade.
He swallowed hard. There would be no help for him. No place to hide. Stunned, he struggled to find some words to offer in his own defense, but before he could speak, Jim Black edged up beside him.
“I’se a plain man,” he said. “Ain’t got Bethany’s ways with words, and God knows I don’t have Meissner’s. I make my living with my hands. Can’t put my words together fast enough to always say what I’m thinking. But there’s something starting up here that’s wrong. I know it, and you know it. This here man is a good man. Make no difference if he black or white. He still a good man. Ain’t no call to say he ain’t. He loaned us books for our school. Gave us old paper to get the children started. He told folks about this town. Stuck up for us. Ain’t no call to act like he’s like most white folks, ’cause he’s not.”
“Oh, yeah?” Gray said bitterly. “You just sidling up to him because you is starting to make a little money off blacksmithing for him and his kind.”
“I’m taking money from white folks, too,” LuAnne Brown said. “I’m helping these people. You all know I helped out at the Hayses when they had their new baby. I was proud to do it, and they needed me. I don’t understand what’s come over you people. I truly don’t.”
Meissner’s gaze swept the room, seeing the division on their faces. They needed to slug this out without him here. He reached for his cap and pulled on his jacket. “I apologize for coming here without thinking some things through.” He knew this was not the time to speak in his own behalf. He left quickly and rode home under a black velvet sky sparking with stars that winked and mocked his foolish heart.
Once inside, he poured himself a rare jolt of whiskey and stared at nothing in particular. A poem came to mind. He hadn’t thought of it in years. He could only recall a few words: “These harsh, well-meaning hands, I thrust between the heart-strings of a friend.”
He went to the pile of books he had heaped in the corner and thumbed through the well-worn pages, found the poem, and read Sill’s old, familiar lines over and over.
“Lord be merciful to me, a fool.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Teddy absently ran his fingers across his saw blade. He stood in the broad entrance to Jim Black’s shop and stared across the prairie. Normally, no matter how broody he felt, it didn’t keep him from working.
He had started up his coffin-making business again. It had earned him a decent living during Reconstruction before he became a landsman. Now there were three orders waiting as word was getting around that he built the finest coffins in Western Kansas.
Today, however, he was too heartsick over Norvin Meissner to rustle up any energy. The grass waved in the early summer breeze. Flies were starting up.
Jim Black swore as the shoe he was shaping refused to yield to his relentless hammer. The metal would need reheating. Horseshoeing was one of the first pieces of outside work to come in, but Jim lacked the assortment of tools and ready-made shapes he had on the plantation. He didn’t have a single shoe even remotely adequate for the huge Percheron blissfully eating oats in the corner of his shop. He had tried three times to shape the new shoe from scratch.
“S’pose I should count myself lucky to have nails,” he muttered.
Teddy turned to watch him ease the shoe off the anvil and back into the fire. Jim had been out of sorts, too, ever since the meeting with
Meissner. His timing was off.
Hell, they were all out of sorts. There was something wrong about running off the only white friend they had made out here. Teddy recalled the day when he first met Meissner and the editor offered him coffee, real coffee, like he was quality folks. Worst of all, now they didn’t have a sponsor to untangle the maze for filing a claim. He wished he could get the notion out of Bethany’s head. His face tightened with worry.
He started toward his tools, then stopped and went outside. He shielded his eyes against the sun’s glare. A lone rider was coming toward the town.
“Someone heading this way,” he said to Jim. “Work for you, maybe.”
“Maybe not.” Jim manipulated his tongs back onto the horseshoe and lifted it from the coals back onto the anvil. “Could be trouble.”
Jim resumed hammering, and Teddy watched the rider. Not wanting to break the blacksmith’s concentration, he did not speak again until he heard the hiss from the red-hot shoes as Jim lowered them into a tub of cold water to cool.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Teddy said softly. He stepped outside the doorway.
“Someone you know?” Jim called.
“I’d know that horse anywhere. That sure am one fine horse.”
Jim stepped outside the shop and stood beside Teddy. The rider was close enough now for him to appreciate the elegant Morgan mare. “Cavalry man, I ’spect. They’s the only ones that gots horses that caliber.”
“Yeah,” Teddy said. “But that man started out walking, not riding. He walked right into a death trap. Most of his bunch never made it out.”
“Hope to hell he was on our side.”
“ ’Bout as on our side as a man can get,” Teddy said. “That man yonder was in the 54th Massachusetts. Our side and our kind of people.”
“Don’t know nothing about no 54th Massachusetts. Just know mostly our people ain’t easy riders.” Hardly any Negroes had had access to horses on a plantation. The danger of them running away was too great.
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