“My God,” said Josiah. “Let me see.” He reached for the paper, quickly read the column, tucked the paper under his arm, and headed off to the hotel to see Potroff.
Aaron Potroff read the Millbrook Wildhorse. His jaw tightened. It had gone far enough. What these people were proposing for little white children was beyond the pale. Not only did little black children think differently, their blood was different. It moved sluggishly like cold oil down a river choked with rotting roots. Hell, it even smelled different. Smelled like copper mixed with rotten eggs.
Once he had cut open a vein on a little nigger boy’s arm, just to see for himself if the blood looked like his, or if it flowed black or some other color. Their brains had to be stoppered up, too. Clogged with spooks and clangety noise. He sickened at the thought of dragging down the minds of precious little white children.
He relit his dead cigar. “We cannot have white children going to that school, Josiah.” His voice was calm, reasonable. He controlled his breathing, not wanting to reveal his surge of excitement at the memory of the smell of black blood. The intoxicating sense of power when that pickaninny stood trembling, his lip quivering, rightfully sensing that to survive he must not make any sound at all
“Hell, I know that,” Sinclair said. “Everyone knows we can’t let our children go to school with a bunch of ignorant niggers. Don’t know how they managed this, but we’ve got to stop it. They’ll be sorry they tried this.”
Potroff flicked a speck of tobacco off his shirtfront.
Sinclair raged on, infuriated by Potroff’s apparent calm. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Aaron? What this means? If any little white child wants to get an official certificate verifying his education, he will have to attend school in Nicodemus.”
“I heard you, Josiah. But I don’t want the Wade City Chronicle to attack the school. It wouldn’t set well with all the white dogooders buzzing around. Here’s what you need to do.”
Two weeks later, a brief item appeared in the Wade City Chronicle:
A little baby died during a difficult delivery assisted by Miss Bethany Herbert of Nicodemus, Kansas. The family was passing through this area, and, according to my source, the unfortunate mother was taken in the throes of labor out in the prairie, and her husband rode to Nicodemus for help. He reported that Miss Herbert at first was strongly reluctant to come, then agreed to for a hefty sum of money. But once there, according to the husband, she put an ax under the bed to cut the pain and then a pan of water beside it to cool the fever and said there was little else she could do about the situation. “It’s my mammy what knows ’bout birthin’,” she said. “Dat’s her business. Mammy knows lots of things I don’t.”
This information is a direct quote from the grieving husband, and they kept on with their unhappy journey to Denver, with his miserable wife cradling their dead child, as she refused “to bury her precious darling on this godforsaken prairie.”
In addition to her doctoring, Miss Bethany Herbert is the school teacher at the newly formed Nicodemus School District No. 1, sanctioned by the state of Kansas.
The damage was done. Once news spread on the prairie, there was little hope of calling it back. Women from the South immediately believed that Bethany was too ignorant to deliver a baby, let alone teach school. There may have been darker forces at work also, they whispered.
They repeated common knowledge on plantations. That the niggras spit in the food, put ground glass in scrambled eggs. That they were all looking for sly mean ways to do a body in. And some of the black women, especially the ones from the West Indies, could kill with a look or cause your cows’ milk to curdle or your corn to shrivel up or your well to go dry. They kept little dolls and knew how to stick pins in them so people died in agony.
So people who were worried about their family’s health and missed living back East where things were a little more up to date now found themselves calling on a white doctor instead of the Herbert woman and her conjuring mother. When Doc Osborne came, if he could pull them through the crisis at all, he ended his house call by urging them to sell their homestead and move to Wade City, where they would be given a free lot in town.
Don Hays gave Teddy a copy of the Wade City Chronicle; he was then obliged to take the sorrowful thing to Miss Bethany. He found her in the schoolhouse. It was late afternoon, and the children had left for the day. Solemnly he handed her the paper. She read it quickly and raised her eyes with growing disbelief.
“That’s an out-and-out lie.” She touched a finger to her trembling lips. “As outrageous a lie as I’ve ever seen. There were no deaths, no difficult deliveries. Even if it were true, you know I have never, ever relied on primitive customs.” Stunned, she read the passage again. “ ‘An ax under the bed to cut the pain,’ ” she said scornfully. “ ‘A pan of water beside the bed to cool the fever.’ ” She slapped the paper down on her desk. “I have never used that kind of grammar in my life.”
“Everyone around here know that, daughter.”
Her mother had slipped inside silently as a panther. Her black face gleamed under her white turban. Bethany could not hold back the tears. She rose, and Queen Bess stepped forward and held her close.
“Patricia come over this morning. Told me everything, child.”
“It’s such a lie, Momma.”
“Cry it out, child. It the only thing that will help. I know all about white man’s lies. Ain’t nothing I haven’t heard before.”
“It just hurts so much, Momma. I didn’t know anything could hurt so much.”
“Child, child. I has been blamed for things what don’t even make sense to pass off onto an ignorant black woman. The scalding go so deep it like a sore that can’t heal. It hell because it really don’t heal, neither. Other things do, but wrongful blame nearly never does. It like a black, smoking rock beneath your heart. If you is a black person, you can’t speak up or point out what ain’t true. All you can do is shuffle your feet and look dumb and try to keep from aggravating white folks even more.”
“Why would anyone say such things?” Bethany looked at Teddy as though she expected him to have a ready explanation.
He lifted his hands to ward off her queries. “I don’t know what’s going on here; I swear I don’t. I swear I don’t know how spreading this kind of lie would be doing anyone any good.
“I do.”
Jed Talbot hurtled through the door like a tornado and slammed his copy of the Wade City Chronicle down on the table. “I know who would benefit.” His face was stern, his gray eyes cold with outrage. “Who would benefit by this is that no-count white doctor.”
“But making me look bad will not make him look good,” said Bethany. “Not in a hundred years. The man simply doesn’t know anything, and I’ve heard he’s drunk most of the time. Drunk and dirty.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Jed. “Doesn’t matter what’s true. It just matters what folks think is true. That’s all that counts. And if they think you’re an ignorant black woman who puts axes under the bed to cut the pain, they’re sure as hell not going to come to you for medicine.”
“It’s more than that, Brother Jed.” Kulp and McBane walked inside. “Much, much more.” Kulp’s voice was thick with fury.
“It’s not the doctoring,” said McBane. “It’s the school. If the Wade City folks can convince people you can’t put two sentences in the right order, they sure aren’t going to send their children to school here.”
“It both. Sure enough,” Queen Bess said.
Kulp and McBane had never met her, but they knew who she was, and she knew who they were. “Madam, your reputation precedes you,” Kulp said, his face grave, his voice deferential. “Your abilities are well known in this community.”
Queen Bess raised her chin and nodded graciously. She studied these two fancy black men, spitting smart, shiny as a rooster’s wings. Patricia said they mammy fed them pages out of a dictionary ’stead of mother’s milk when they was babies, and they just naturally digested
all those long, long words.
Her own Bethany. Jed. Teddy. All of them. Mixed blood. Too many mixed bloods coming into Nicodemus. Causing trouble. Riling folks. She and Patricia couldn’t see nothing to do about it. All these fancy folks was going to drag all the black folks into hell for nothing.
“They ain’t nothing we can do about this, you know,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
“Beg your pardon, ma’am, but there is. Edward and I are volunteering to help teach school and to organize all the other systems needed to run a school.”
Jed choked back a lump in his throat. “My God, my God, A.T. What an inspiration you will be.”
The men were already phenomenally successful. They were building one of the most amazing land location businesses in Western Kansas. The first week they came, they began advertising in the Stockton News, the Millbrook Wildhorse, the Topeka-based Colored Citizen, and other papers back in Eastern Kansas. They boasted that they not only located and surveyed, they were qualified to practice in all the courts of the 15th Judicial District. They had printed formal business cards and advertised they would take care of all business before the local United States land offices and even that involving Washington, DC. Whites and blacks alike were seeking their services.
Most amazing, though, was their immediate involvement in state politics. They had already lobbied to be admitted to the Republican convention at Topeka and were furious when they were turned away. They immediately gyrated toward the activities of the state’s colored men’s organizations.
Kulp had peppered Kansas newspapers with letters from Nicodemus showing the community in the most positive light. He had even presented a paper to the St. John’s Literary Society on one of his visits to Topeka.
“This is not to minimize your credentials, Miss Bethany,” McBane said. “Please do not misunderstand our intention.”
“I don’t. But absolutely no one, I mean no one, can perceive you two as being ignorant and uneducated.”
“This is very generous of you,” Jed said. “While we’re discussing this, there’s some state standards for what we have to teach the youngsters.”
“Say no more, Brother Jed. I know both Greek and Latin, and Brother McBane here knows everything that can be done with numbers. I’ve always wanted to teach school, haven’t you, Edward?” Kulp tried to keep a straight face.
“Well, not exactly,” McBane said, “but one thing is becoming clear. Everything I ever wanted to be, and most of what I’ve never wanted to be, is going to be used up in this town.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Queen Bess, Bethany, Teddy, and Jed were en route to Stockton. Once there, they would all go their separate ways and shop quickly so they could start home before dark. No one ever went out from Nicodemus in a wagon without planning to bring back as many supplies as they could manage. Bethany had a long list of requests from the women. Teddy wanted to scout for off-price lumber, and Jed had business at the courthouse.
Queen Bess had saved enough money for another washtub. She wanted a separate one to process rabbit pelts and start a shoe business. She was getting more washtubs than you could shake a stick at for all her little ventures. She tried not to be too prideful, but in the evening, when she sat out, there was something about that little line of tubs. It eased her heart.
She hadn’t figured out all the details yet, but she got the idea a couple of weeks ago when Jamal Gray sailed past, running like the wind, and brought down a jack rabbit with a slingshot sure as David brought down Goliath. Up until that time, she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what poor black folks—and a passel of them at that—were supposed to do about shoes.
Back home, when they were slaves, providing shoes was the master’s problem. Then after they were free, back in Kentucky there were always little animals, deer running afield, even softened tree bark if you were plumb desperate. Or they had old rags or vines to weave together. But out here rags were snatched up right away for quilts and clothes. After watching Jamal, she’d struck a deal with the boy.
She sat in the back with Bethany, listening to Jed and Teddy. Jed hadn’t eased up a bit since Kulp and McBane came to town. He was still striving, plotting, stirring things up. All hell had broken loose after he organized Nicodemus Township. The folks around Wade City started writing the governor, saying he never should have let it happen, and Jed was firing his own letters right back to Topeka.
What Jed was telling Teddy right now wasn’t nothing she didn’t already know. Until Graham County was organized, they were doing without any kind of law.
“Just to show you how bad it is, Teddy,” Jed said, “last month, there was a scoundrel going to homesteads asking them to sign a temperance pledge, which the poor old sons-of-bitches were more than happy to do. Then he asked them to sign a second card for his records, and it was actually a sight note signing over all their land.”
“They couldn’t read what they was signing on them cards?”
“No,” Jed said. He was no stranger to injustice, but this was one of the most galling prices blacks had paid for illiteracy. Losing their land with a stroke of the pen. Hell, whites didn’t even have to use a gun out here. Rooks County was treating Graham County like an errant stepchild whose needs were met last. Sending the sheriff their way was one of them. Rooks County had its own problems to deal with.
“And the hell of it was, if they could read, the bastard stopped with the temperance card,” Jed said. “If they couldn’t, he tricked them into making their mark on the sight note. There was nothing anyone could do about it, since we’re in a territory that’s outside the law. In this case, crime was colorblind. In fact, about half the people who got taken were whites, because blacks are immediately suspicious when a white man asks them to sign anything.”
“Cold-hearted bastards,” blurted Teddy.
Queen Bess stopped paying attention when they started talking about the delay in electing township officers. Kulp and McBane were carrying on over it something terrible, because they spent most of their time traveling to Stockton and Topeka for all their fancy lawyering. Seemed like those two men were all Nicodemians could talk about, day and night. She was glad when they finally got to Stockton, and she didn’t have to study on politics no more.
The town had changed more than she thought would be possible in six months’ time. There was a millinery shop. Hats. Enough women here now to support a shop that made nothing but hats! A shop with real glass windows sparkling in the sunlight.
Queen Bess carried her bag over her shoulder, and as she passed the cobbler’s shop she stared wistfully at the soft leather boots within. She could never afford them, but there was nothing to stop her from wanting them. Her old shoes were nearly done for. The soles were paper thin now, and they couldn’t stand one more trip to town if she had to walk.
A cluster of smart-dressed white women came out of the mercantile store and were headed her way. They were all dolled up like they were coming home from some fancy doings. Another temperance meeting, she guessed, because Estelle Sinclair was in front of the group. Queen Bess kept her eyes down.
“Well, I do declare, Jessie, if it’s not the mother of the woman who killed that baby,” Estelle said. “Bold as you please.” Her eyes glittered with malice.
Queen Bess’s heart pounded. Her blood surged. She did not want trouble.
“Could have killed her faster if this one had of been there, from what I heard. She’s a witching woman, sure enough,” said a lady in blue calico.
“That’s the woman who cast the spell and cut that baby right out of that woman’s body.”
“Her?”
“Yes, her. She was trying to kill her, don’t you know. But God stayed her hand,” said Estelle.
Queen Bess raised her head. “I saved her,” she said quietly. “Warn’t trying to kill her. Trying to save her.”
“Don’t sass me, nigger,” Estelle said.
Queen Bess drew back. Other women had joined them now, coming out of
stores, gathering, gathering. She stepped backwards off the crude board walkway, stumbled, caught herself, and started backing toward the center of the street. It was littered with horse manure that eased over the top of her shabby, worn, mismatched shoes and leaked through her soles.
“Witching woman. Witching woman.”
Their words began as a soft chant, then rose in intensity. Her eyes widened with fright. Dolly Redgrave came up from the back. Relieved, Queen Bess dared to breathe again. Her own kind. A woman from Nicodemus.
“Oh, this here woman is evil, pure evil,” said Dolly. The freckles on her face deepened on her pale-tan skin. “Swear to God, ladies, I seed this myself, with my very own eyes.”
All the women turned to Dolly, the lovely little mulatto woman who already was known as the person to do their sewing. And was she not always clean and neatly attired? Not exactly one of their own, but someone they could understand. Someone who had signed the pledge that liquor would never cross her lips. Fine lips, they had all agreed, nearly white-shaped. Not thick at all.
“What I seed was”—Dolly twirled her little parasol and raised her chin—“I passed by that house the day after she cut that little dead baby out of that woman’s belly. And when that lady didn’t die right off, like this old granny wanted her to ’cause she was white, she sent the husband and children off to Nicodemus where they would be out of the way. And then, and then . . .”
Dolly paused for effect and cast her eyes toward the ground as though she were continuing with great reluctance. “And then she put maggots on that woman’s stomach.”
“Where she cut? Put bugs where she cut?”
“Yes. And then she covered them with a piece of purple taffeta so they wouldn’t get away.”
The women looked at Dolly incredulously, then looked back at Queen Bess. One of the women stooped and reached for a rock. Then another. The circle tightened.
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