“So what’s the point? What’s the point then in even trying?” Her voice caught. Jed gently smoothed away a tear from her cheek with the tip of his finger.
“I said most of them, not all of them. A few people can see, and they’re worth it. That’s what keeps me going. The few who can see beyond my skin and look at my heart. Those few people are going to see to it that blacks can hold office and have a fair say in this county. Important people. I believe that. Governor St. John is one of the finest men I’ve ever met, black or white.”
“I don’t care.”
“Ah, but you do care. You just don’t want to face up to everything that’s in your heart. That’s your trouble. You’re going to ruin yourself if you try to keep your heart from beating.”
“My heart was just fine a little while back,” she said. Her tears overflowed now, and she didn’t try to stop them. “For the first time since I was a little girl, my heart was just fine.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” He pulled her to his chest. “My darling Bethany, surely you know how I feel about you. Don’t you know you can trust me? I want to take care of you. Please let me.”
To his dismay, she began to sob.
“Don’t,” she said and pushed him away.
“What’s wrong, Bethany? Don’t you care for me at all? I think you owe me a bit of honesty. Is there someone else?”
Truth was, he had worried ever since Kulp and McBane came that she would choose one of those fine, quick-witted men. God knew he was resigned to the mystery of soul-matching, the unpredictability of the attraction between men and women. He knew they both admired her, and they brought out her rare streak of humor, which was almost as buried as the rest of her. But he had convinced himself there was no romance there. Perhaps he was mistaken.
“You’re right, Jed. I do owe you a little honesty. No, not a little.” She stared bleakly at the cold, distant moon. “Complete honesty. And no, there’s no one else.”
Jed slowly let out his breath.
“All right,” she said. “Here’s the whole truth. Unadorned. But I don’t think you’re going to like it much.”
He said nothing and waited, fearful of breaking the spell.
“It’s not you. It’s men, period. Not just white men but black men, too. You’re an educated man. You have to know what has happened to black women. In Africa, women’s chastity was honored and understood.”
“My God, Bethany, do you think I’m trying to treat you like some octoroon offered in a New Orleans whorehouse? You know I would never do that.” He ran his fingers through his hair. She turned and faced the wall, refusing to look at his face.
“I know you wouldn’t, Jed,” she said tersely. “But I’m trying to make you understand why I don’t want to have anything to do with you or any other man.”
He started to turn her around, but she kept her back toward him, then swayed against him, reached for his hands. They stood there pressed together, fingers interlaced, his breath harsh against her hair, the back of her neck.
“Jed. It’s not you.” Her voice trembled as though she could hardly bear to speak the words aloud. “It’s not you. But when a woman sees too much, knows too much, especially if she’s the wrong age, it does something to her. And I was just a little girl when I started following Momma around. So very, very little.”
She shuddered and then became very still. “I helped Momma doctor women who had been raped by white men, and black men, too. Black men who hated themselves and then set out to prove how bad they really were. I heard old white men who came calling on Sundays after church talk about breeding black people like we were a bunch of dogs.”
Her fingers tightened against his. A cloud moved over the moon, dimming the outline of the proud little pile of books, the rickety collection of boards set on stumps that served as desks for the children.
“You were never on a plantation,” she said flatly. “I heard those fine, white, Christian men talking to Master St. James. Making deals. Money passed between plantations when one had a man that was good stock and the other owned a vigorous woman. Didn’t matter if a woman had jumped the broom and loved her own man with every breath in her body. If the master said ‘breed,’ they had to breed.”
She started to shiver, and it took every bit of restraint he could muster to stay quiet.
“I’ve known women to kill themselves, Jed, before they would let that happen. Once I even knew a woman who killed her own little girl. Her own baby. Just because she loved her so much and was afraid she would grow up pretty.”
Jed set his jaw, vowing like a lover, not a lawyer, that he would make this town safe for all the women. Not just Bethany—all of them. Cold logic turned to hot fury.
Once the floodgates were open, the words jerked out of Bethany in tear-laced spasms. “You’re wrong in thinking I just want to fit in with white people. . . . God knows, I don’t . . . I don’t.” She drew a deep breath. “There was a special kind of meanness to those old white masters. They had to see our women as loose and whores to work their evil.”
Her heart beat like a wounded bird’s, and his broke with sorrow for all of them.
“And the white mistresses, they were half crazy with hate. Why wouldn’t they be? Seeing their husbands and sons slip off to the slave quarters. Seeing their own house servants gloat and smile, knowing their husbands loved them better. Why wouldn’t they be crazy? Why wouldn’t they be mean?”
“That’s white men, Bethany. White men.”
She yanked her intertwined fingers out of his and turned around. She poked at a tendril that had strayed from her schoolmarm bun.
“Black men have been ruined,” she said flatly. “Some of them would just slink away and let white men do whatever they wanted to the women. They had no way to intervene. How could they? They were powerless. They were beat to death if they tried.”
“That’s not true. We’re not ruined. Not all of us,” Jed said. “You know how many fine men have flocked to this town.”
She looked into his stunned, gray eyes. “I apologize,” she whispered. “Truly I do. It was uncalled for to lump all black men together. All of you here in Nicodemus are good men. All of you. I just can’t bear to see anything go bad for any of you. Teddy, Kulp, McBane, you. All the others. I just don’t want it all to go bad on account of me.”
“Bethany, what happened to you about a month ago? You changed. There’s no way you would have even talked to me like this before then. I may not like what I’m hearing, but at least you’re trying to make me understand. I don’t want you to change back now. Please don’t change back and shut me out.”
She looked down and bit her lip. “There’s something I’m doing that just Teddy knows about. It was really, really good for me. I thought it was good for all of us. Good for Nicodemus. But the wrong people started noticing us. I can’t talk about it right now,” she stammered. “Maybe never.”
“All right.” He carefully, tenderly, reached out and delicately touched her on her lips, slowly tracing the line as she shook like a fragile willow twig. Was accepting love going to be so very hard for this very difficult woman?
“All right. But I would like to know if there’s anything, anything at all, any steps I could possibly take to win your affection? To show you how much I care?”
“Yes.”
He blinked in surprise.
“If I haven’t scared you off. I would be willing to try,” she said shyly, her eyes cast down toward the floor. “What I’m trying to say is . . . I would like it very much, if we started keeping company.”
Jubilant, he squeezed her hand.
“But if you are so inclined, I would like a proper courtship.”
Giddy with delight that he had even coaxed out a teensy flash of her quiet humor, he started to respond in kind, but then when she raised her eyes and he saw her tears, he knew there was not a trace of levity in her mind. He took a deep breath and cast about for the proper words to say in this absurdly peculiar situation.
&nbs
p; “Miss Bethany, actually, one of the reasons I came over here tonight was to inform you of my intentions to call on your mother and beg her permission to begin courting you.”
It was a bald-faced lie, of course. He would just as soon ask a black bear for permission to take away its cub.
Bethany nodded. Regally, like this was to be expected. Encouraged that he had stumbled onto the fitting response, he decided he had better nevertheless get the hell out of there before he made a mistake.
“I wish you good evening, and, of course, I would like the honor of escorting you home.” As though she didn’t walk herself home every day of the world, he thought wryly. As though she didn’t roam half the countryside all on her own.
“Thank you, Mr. Talbot, but I prefer to wait until you’ve spoken to my mother.”
What the hell, he wondered. Where had she gotten such ideas? Had to come from all the novels she read. Then he was pierced to the core of his being with a flash of insight. She yearned for a tradition. Something more than just jumping the broom. Some sort of code honoring black women. Some sort of ritual.
This was the best she could do. She was raiding another culture, and an archaic one at that, because her own had been destroyed. There was a defiant tilt to Bethany’s chin, and although her eyes were clear now, he knew he was looking at a woman who could not take one more blow. His little willow twig would snap in half.
He kissed her hand, tipped his hat, and left. Tomorrow he would ride out to see Queen Bess.
Won’t that be a deal, now, he thought gloomily as he walked toward his soddy. Won’t that be a deal.
Three days later, Bethany walked over to Cedric Berlin’s homestead. She found Cedric sitting on a stump in the sunshine, rubbing a mixture of tallow and beeswax into a set of harnesses.
He nodded as she came up. He looked her over, carefully and impersonally, as she stood rigidly in the noonday light, but he did not speak.
“Mr. Berlin, I came over here to see if there is anything I can do for you.”
“No ma’am, there’s not.”
“And there’s something important I want to ask you. Do you blame me or my mother for your wife’s death?”
He set the harness aside and rigidly stared across the prairie, like he was being forced to look at sights he didn’t want to see. He placed his hands on his knees. “You’ve seen the editorial in the Wade City Chronicle, then?” he asked.
“Yes, I have. I want to know if you’re behind it?”
“No ma’am, I’m not. I’ve been thinking of nothing else ever since it came out. All kinds of people are asking me if I believe you and your mother killed my wife and my little baby girl.”
“Do you?” she persisted.
“No, I don’t. And I’m going to tell that lying son-of-a-bitch Sinclair so. He and that no-count woman of his probably won’t print it, so I’m going to tell Meissner, too. He’ll print the truth. Then I’m going to write to the Topeka Daily Capital.”
Tears welled up in Bethany’s eyes. “I’m so terribly sorry. Believe me.”
“I don’t blame you or your mother for what happened. The thing I had to get settled in my mind was, could someone else have done better? And I don’t think they could. That’s the point. Osborne had done too much damage already.”
“Way too much damage. Way too much.”
“I lost my father and my brother in the war.” Cedric propped his elbows on his knees and stared at the ground. His head drooped; his elbows stuck out from his folded-over body. “Amity lost people, too. That’s one of the reasons why we came here. We thought it would be easier where the country looked different. Maybe it would make people think different.”
He rose to his feet and looked blindly at the sun.
“Didn’t happen. None of it happened. Worse here than it was back home. Lost my wife. The baby we should have had. People are just the same. No matter where. But there’s one thing that’s different out here. Black folks are trying to make their own way.”
Bethany hid her hands in the folds of her dress and worked the cloth back and forth between her fingers. She waited for Cedric to go on.
“For some reason or another, the whole state is watching Nicodemus. If your people can’t make a living here, if you can’t make a life here, if things don’t work for you here . . .”
His voice broke then, and his shoulders shook as he started to cry. Bethany yearned to reach out and comfort him.
He wiped his arm across his face and got himself back under control. “If your town don’t make it, it will mean that it was all for nothing. My people died; their people died. All for nothing. Over a half million, I hear. Over a half million.”
The sun shone on her face, warming her, warming her, and she knew she was hearing the truth. People wanted Nicodemus to succeed, not because they just loved Negroes—in fact, most of them didn’t—not because of the kindness of their hearts. They wanted this because it would mean that all those poor soldier boys, both Union and Confederate, had not died in vain.
They actually cared and believed in what Lincoln had said when he prayed over the battlefield. If the war wasn’t sanctified, wasn’t hallowed by something good coming out of it, then it would mean their uncles’, their fathers’, their brothers’ blood had drained into the dirt for nothing.
Just nothing at all.
And the good that had to come out of it, had to come from their little town. Folks didn’t want it to get squashed.
Nicodemus.
That evening she sat outside her dugout until the moon rose high and white and looked at the woman in the moon that she had first spotted when she was just a little girl. Long before she knew about the man in the moon. It was a cool, clear night, and stars sparkled in the sky.
Inspired by Cedric’s courage, she knew she could live with her fears. She could take it. It wasn’t going to kill her. She rose, lit her kerosene lamp, removed a fresh sheet of the vellum stationery that she kept pressed between two books, and began the next letter from Sunflower.
As usual, she worked out the first draft on a tattered piece of Meissner’s discarded misprints and labored over the words for an hour. When she was finally satisfied with the tone, she carefully copied it onto her good paper. She wiped away a tear when she re-read the words of her last paragraph explaining how Nicodemus’s success would give meaning to the war.
She gave the letter to Teddy the next day.
That night, there was a meeting, and they gathered around the central campfire to hear Reverend Brown speak. He began with dark, haunting psalms before he even mentioned the deaths that were hovering over their little community.
Setting the stage, thought Bethany, with a bleak smile. Wanting to remind us that others have suffered also. More than my people, or maybe just like my people. That we are not alone. We have never been alone.
Dolly Redgrave sat toward the back of the gathering. She eased away from the circle while the group concentrated on Reverend Brown. In the daytime, there were always too many children around for her to get into Bethany’s house. Then, too, there were the unexpected comings and goings of Queen Bess.
She sneaked into Bethany’s dugout while everyone was clapping and carrying on and began riffling through books and materials.
She could not read, but the Sinclairs and Aaron Potroff eagerly pored over anything with writing she had taken from other houses. She took a long time poking around all the little bundles of herbs. She noticed the fine paper between the two books and turned all the sheets over. They were blank. Nevertheless, couldn’t hurt to take a couple.
She had turned to leave when she saw a scrap of paper lying in the bin containing hay cats and coal. She picked it up and turned it over. The page was covered with writing on both sides. There wasn’t another place to put a single word. She guessed that was the only reason it had been thrown away to begin with. She folded it and put it in her pocket.
Tomorrow when she went to Wade City she would give the wrinkled piece of newspaper an
d the two blank sheets of the fine stationery to Aaron Potroff.
Teddy didn’t like being out at night. But the train carrying the mail only came once a week, and he wanted to post Bethany’s letter. He was a poor rider at best. Despite the reputation mules had for being sure-footed and sensitive to dangers, sometimes he swore Sherman was the dumbest beast God had ever created.
There was a half moon, layered by clouds, and the stars were cold and distant. There was a natural cave up by the creek where some of the folks from Nicodemus stopped to spend the night. He rested there. He let Sherman graze, then dozed off himself.
He had been asleep for a long time when a sound jarred him awake. A sound or a feeling or a breath or a night bird or maybe just a deep knowing in his bones. All he really knew was that he woke up colder than he had ever been in his whole life. Cold, with his skin prickling and hairs rising on his arms. Cold, with his gut cramping in sheer terror.
One by one, they slipped out from the trees lining the Solomon. When he was able to breathe again, he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t scream.
The hooded men surrounded him.
“Y’all wouldn’t be up to no good, now would you?” one taunted. “Ferrying some fancy words from that little trouble-making nigger wench?”
Still he did not speak.
“I’m talking to you, nigger.”
Please deliver me, he prayed silently. Please, God. Deliver me. Please, please spare me.
“Boy, I’m talking to you,” the man yelled.
Teddy knew he had heard that voice before, but he also knew it didn’t matter. Nothing he could say or do would help.
The man who had been doing the talking suddenly slammed his fist into Teddy’s face, and he felt the bones in his old nose crunch. He started to lose consciousness from the excruciating pain.
“No, don’t make him pass out. We want him to remember this.”
They dragged him over to a cottonwood tree and looped a noose-ended rope over the branch. Two men hoisted him up and pulled the rope down right over his head. Another man walked up and yanked down his pants, then pulled his knife from his pocket. His laughter echoed through the still, cold night.
The Healer's Daughter Page 31
