Tom had moved his family into town this spring and built a proper soddy. She didn’t think she had ever seen the man when he wasn’t smiling. Tom’s two children never missed a day of school, and even before he moved to town he found a way to come in every time the drums called folks to a meeting. The evenings were filled with singing and Tom’s lively banjo music.
Now, whenever a settler started a new business, seemed like another one followed. There were six hundred people in the settlement. About one-fourth were taking homesteads, but many of the newcomers were staying in the town of Nicodemus and making their living with the skills they had developed on plantations.
Six hundred people. Certainly not enough room in the school for more children. She knew there were parents who lived farther out trying to teach their children on their own. She got ready for bed with the sound of Tom’s banjo ringing in her ears, but instead of lying awake trying to figure out how to do everything herself, for once she fell into a deep sleep.
Bethany watched the people gather around the circle where Silas Brown did his preaching. It was cooler, sweeter outside. The ground around the campfire was bare as glass. Worn down by these gatherings. There were no benches as there would have been back home where there were logs available. No stumps to set on. Folks just flopped down on the ground.
She smiled and nodded as she walked toward an empty spot and spread out an old quilt.
“Evening, Miss Bethany.”
“How do, Miss Bethany.”
Zach Brown, Silas and LuAnne’s oldest boy, looked quickly at the ground as she drew near.
“Evening, Zach,” she said, forcing him to look up. Although she was embarrassed by his stark adoration, she remembered how awestruck she had been by Miss Nancy’s tutor. She would have followed the man anywhere.
She had coaxed and encouraged Zach when he started to read. He had struggled dutifully and made adequate progress. Then when she started on numbers, his mind raced ahead. He would soon need advanced instruction.
Bethany saw Jedidiah Talbot and remembered his neat ledgers of figures with land calculations. Impulsively, she went over to where he was sitting, forgetting for an instant that her heart beat too rapidly and she couldn’t control her thoughts when he was around. Jed jumped to his feet when she approached.
“Miss Bethany?”
“Do sit back down. Really.”
“Only if you’ll join me.”
Miserably self-conscious, she sank to the cloth he spread out and arranged her skirt. His eyes were questioning. And something else. Was that amusement she saw there? Was he making fun of her? Did he know that when he came near the very colors in the air brightened?
“Thank you,” she said. Surely it had looked to him and everyone else as though she had headed right toward him. And so she had, but it wasn’t to get an invitation to sit on his dirty old blanket. She got right to the point. “Jed, I have a student who needs advanced math instruction.”
He listened carefully, his head cocked to one side. That endearing precious way he had of focusing perfectly. A courtroom habit, she supposed, of carefully following arguments. Then she blinked back tears as she realized she was thinking of his mouth and those beautiful gray, intelligent eyes instead of keeping her mind on finding the right words for Zach Brown’s sake. It just showed what a poor job she did of looking after her students.
“Yes? He needs more instruction?”
“Yes, or will. Soon, not now. I mean, I’m fine for now.”
“And?”
“And I was wondering.” She straightened and looked at him steadily, all business now. “I was wondering if you would be willing to provide it.”
“To a child?”
“To a child, Mr. Talbot. But he’s no ordinary child.”
“I don’t doubt that, Miss Bethany. You know of course that I’m extremely busy right now and likely will be even busier when the election for the county seat comes closer. Wade City isn’t going to give in without a fight.”
“Actually, I’m not asking for just the one child. I’m asking that you teach arithmetic to all the children.”
Jed didn’t laugh but looked at her soberly.
“I have every reason to believe you’ve been trained in higher mathematics.”
“I am,” he said simply. “I was first in my class in calculus and physics.”
“I am away a lot, too, doctoring outsiders. And we can just hope my work holds up. We need all the money we can get until more people are self-supporting.”
“So what is it you want from me, exactly?”
“I for sure want you to teach Zach Brown. If you can’t take on the rest, I want you to find out just who knows what in Nicodemus. Please ask them to take turns teaching the children. At least ask. People pay attention to you.”
“I will ask. I can promise you that much. Are you going to do the same thing with the reading?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Like a college, then?”
“Yes, as close to that method as I can make it.”
“I’ve never seen it tried with little children before, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.” He hugged his knees and shoved back his hat. He reached for his pipe, then patted his pocket. “Out of tobacco,” he said. “I seem to keep forgetting I don’t have any.”
“I hope you don’t have to think too hard about what I’m asking you to do.”
“Don’t have to think at all about my part. That’s easy. I’m just trying to come up with the others. You can count on me to teach your young man. Earnest Jones used to be a miller. He would have to understand simple numbers to know what to charge his customers. In fact, there’s a lot of men around here who can do simple math. That’s not the hard part. The hard part is going to be convincing them they should be school teachers.”
Then Gertie Avery stood and walked to the front. Her ample body was clad in a linsey-woolsey dress of dark brown that just matched her skin. Quavering with controlled strength, she led them through chorus after chorus of a spiritual. The cords of her neck vibrated.
Her voice was powerful as thunder, then as soft as sleet, then the crackling of little fires, then the vibrancy of a cello. Bethany and Jed were drawn into the spell; her rhythm, her echoes. Swaying, they responded to the call, filled the empty prairie with their own sound—creating their own shade of black, souls leaping to the stars.
Oh God, thought Bethany. Before you split the world, before there was land and sea, before you even divided light from dark and day from night, there had to have been music. You brought forth music first, and for me and my people it’s never stopped.
It will always be there, always be there. It’s the only thing the white folks haven’t figured out how to take away from us. I’m going to do everything I can to keep us right here in Nicodemus. This Promised Land where we can sing our songs and even use our drums. Our place.
She scarcely heard the sermon. Her mind was filled with plans for her school. Having decided to give up control of every detail, she found it was easy to imagine other ways.
When the service was over, she quickly jumped to her feet. She didn’t want to give Jed Talbot a chance to walk her home. Not only did she not want him to get any ideas, she didn’t want other people to, either. She flushed at that mocking look in his eyes again, as though he could see right through her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Jed sat on a stump outside his soddy, reading through the narratives he had spent eight years collecting. Some of the stories were so heartbreaking he could hardly bear to set them on paper. It was years of work for nothing. No one would ever be interested in them now. Everyone—including blacks—wanted to put slavery and the war behind them. The North just wanted to rebuild its industry, and the South wanted to reconstitute its exhausted economy.
He watched a hill of ants scurrying back and forth. Even little insects had a natural sense of order, unlike the people here. Nicodemus was becoming a squalid mess. God knew there were plenty of men and
women willing to work long, hard days, but the colony now had a larger population than most small Kansas towns.
Some of the newcomers were from Mississippi and Alabama, and some of the emigrants brought supplies. Although the colony was mostly Kentuckians, there was a mixture of blacks now. With opinions. Six men arrived last week with two teams and seed and made it clear they didn’t come to starve. Thank God, Nicodemus had hit two good water wells right from the beginning. He never thought he would see the day when he longed for a good overseer, but that was what they needed.
The ants just worked. They didn’t want to argue stuff out around a campfire every evening.
He was burdened by his promise to Bethany to help with the school. They were all overworked, but he simply didn’t have the time. Meissner’s question about the number in Nicodemus who actually had book learning had hit a sore spot.
Slaves hadn’t been allowed to learn to read and write. Even one of the town’s founders bore a brand on his cheek as punishment for daring to sneak some learning. Most of those who had acquired some education came to it late and were just marginally literate.
Jed wiped the sweat off his forehead and glanced at the horizon, then peered again at a speck growing larger and larger. He never thought he would see the day when he dreaded more people coming, but Nicodemus was stretched too thin to take in another group of destitute and starving strangers who had heard about the miracle town.
Coming home to Nicodemus, the Promised Land.
He could see the newcomers more clearly now. Two men were perched atop a gaudy, green spring wagon with gold scrollwork. Jed scoffed. It was a silly contraption. Relatively useless for the prairie. Seats in front and back and not much room in the rear to haul merchandise from town. They pulled up at the blacksmith shop. A tall black man, slender as a young sapling, gingerly climbed down and stood next to the team.
Jed walked over to meet them. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he mumbled. “What do we have here?”
The man still sitting on the wagon seat was dressed in a gray three-piece suit and wore a bowler hat. He was light complexioned—nearly as white as Dolly Redgrave—with an elegant, perfectly trimmed mustache. As Jed strode toward them, the first man stepped forward and held out his hand. It was encased in a fawn-colored glove.
“Mr. Talbot, I presume?”
Jed nodded. The man’s diction was perfect, educated, and Northern. “Yes, sir, I’m Jed Talbot.”
“Please allow me to introduce myself. I am A. T. Kulp, Jr., and this gentleman here is E. P. McBane.” Kulp laughed good-naturedly as his travel companion groaned and tried to climb down. “Although my citified friend here is a little worse for wear, he will most certainly be joining us shortly. He has had the dubious distinction of clerking on Wall Street, and no doubt is waiting for a bell to clang before he makes his grand move out of this vehicle.”
McBane snorted, gave Kulp a look, and stiffly climbed to the ground. He stood with both hands atop a walking stick. “We are both attorneys, sir, like yourself, and my wordy friend here is a right fair wielder of a pen. When he’s not talking your leg off.”
Kulp bowed deeply. “I have come here from the city desk of the Chicago Conservator, where I read little snippets about your town from time to time. And like my companion here, I have heeded the call of the West. We have come to seek our fortunes. We have come to assist you in the settlement of Nicodemus. We are quite concerned, sir, that you might regard us as competition, being a lawyer yourself.”
“God, no,” Jed said. “God, no.” He laughed. Too pleased to find words to match Kulp’s elegant introduction, he couldn’t stop smiling. Educated men. At last God had sent him educated men. Men who could help handle the myriad of business details plaguing him. Land claims and surveys and convincing the state of Kansas they had a bona fide school right here in Nicodemus.
A. T. Kulp looked more like a displaced African chief than an editor. His skin was a soft gray without a trace of brown—like black ink washed with water.
McBane groaned as he steadied himself against the wagon, straightened, and rubbed his fists into the small of his back. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Talbot. A pleasure indeed, but I can’t say the trip was a pleasure.”
“Welcome,” Jed said. “I can’t begin to tell you both how welcome you are.”
That evening Kulp and McBane helped Jed carry his belongings outside his soddy to make room for the straw pallets he had borrowed from the community storeroom. The settlers would build a house and a business office for the two men in short order, but, in the meantime, they would stay with Jed.
They ate at the Browns, then walked back to Jed’s. After the two men settled in, Jed decided to bring up creating a school district. It would be a gift from heaven for Bethany because they would receive state funding.
Her exhaustion showed in her tired eyes and her thin, weary face. There were too many students clamoring for attention. Jed’s heart skipped a beat every time he thought of her. She had been terrified when he asked if he could walk her home the night she sat beside him at the campfire.
But for the life of him, he couldn’t think of a thing he had said or done. That evening, her face, lighted by the flickering flames, was hauntingly beautiful when she talked about plans for her school. Then it lost all its animation in a few seconds.
He knew the look. Slave dumb, no expression at all, like he was out to trick her.
He studied the two men—McBane with his refined features and Kulp, broad-nosed with tight, curly hair like a buffalo—then took the plunge.
“Gentlemen, I would like your help in securing the first school district. The state of Kansas needs to see other men than me appearing before them for every request in the world.”
McBane looked interested. “A school, you say?”
Jed laughed. “Yes, we have a school here.” He proceeded to tell them of the growing number of children who were yearning for book learning, and their dazzling progress. “We can’t keep up,” he said. “We’re out of manpower. Not just the teaching; we need help with everything that requires people with an education.”
“Looks like we showed up in the nick of time,” said Kulp. “The Scriptures say a three-fold cord cannot be broken. Who can stand against us?”
“Exactly,” said Jed. He expelled his breath in a rush. “Who indeed?”
“Do you know the steps for accomplishing all of this, brother?”
“I do. I’ve got it all drawn up. Subject to revision, of course.” He smiled, sheepishly aware of his day-to-day high-handedness.
Bethany’s back was turned toward the doorway, and Jed hesitated as he watched her clean the slate Jim Black had rigged up. He didn’t want to startle her. She was humming a song he had never heard before. He loved to hear her sing. Watch her sway. See subtle movements of her hips.
He stood a few more minutes, holding his hat in his hand. Bethany went to the window and looked out. The intense afternoon sun was softening. Groups of people would soon begin gathering around the campfire to trade stories, and to nosily agitate each other with good-natured teasing.
He watched quietly. She was as expressionless as a sphinx now whenever he came near, and he knew it wasn’t her true nature. Her cheeks glowed like over-ripe peaches, and a dark flush rose on her copper skin when she taught the children. Her dark eyes glowed with intensity on the days she discussed ancient Greeks and the power of ideas.
When she was arguing with Meissner the two went at it like wild cats—cheerfully gleeful adversaries thrilled at a chance to match wits. A couple of times when Bethany had been sparring with the editor, she seemed to forget Jed was even in the room. But when he had cleared his throat and tried to pipe up with his two cents, Bethany stiffened, as though she were frightened. Her lips closed in a thin, tight line.
She looked lonely now. He yearned to touch her skin, to run his fingers through her black hair, which he had never seen loosened from a tight bun since the day they quarreled over the
turban.
Embarrassed at having stood silently so long, he slipped back outside the door, then made a noisy entrance, giving Bethany time to compose herself at her makeshift desk.
“Jed, how nice to see you.”
“Miss Bethany,” he said, wishing she meant the words. “You know that Kulp and McBane and I have been to Topeka. I just got back this afternoon.”
“So that’s where you’ve been these past couple of weeks. I do wish I had known. Momma has a whole list of medical supplies she can’t find around here.”
“It was careless of me not to check,” he said, “but we didn’t want to disappoint you if things didn’t work out.”
“Disappoint me? How could your trip possibly disappoint me?”
“It was all about you.” He twisted his hat around and around in his hands. “You are now the first official schoolmarm of the first official school in Graham County. You will have state funding.”
“Money for books? And my children will have real diplomas?” Her hands flew to her cheeks, her face bright with joy. “I can’t believe you did this. Oh, you wonderful, wonderful man. How did you do this? Money for books!”
Then, for the life of him, Jed couldn’t account for the change in mood and the fearful look on her face. “I forgot myself. Please forgive my unseemly conduct,” she stammered.
To his dismay, she burst into tears and ran out of the building.
Estelle Sinclair was composing her column for the Wade City Chronicle when Josiah finished sorting the mail and handed her the Millbrook Wildhorse. She skipped through the patent pages that were shipped from back East, as they would be the same as the ones appearing in her paper. She turned to the local items.
The color drained from her face, and her pulse throbbed in her stringy neck. She rushed to the back of the store where they had set up their printing press. “Josiah! You’re not going to believe this. Those damn niggras have organized the first official school district, and it says here, right here in this paper, that little white children will be welcome.”
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