Liza led John around to the rear of the house where there was a small henhouse with some chickens scratching nearby, an empty stable meant for one, perhaps two animals, and a pile of logs cut into six- to eight-foot lengths.
“Mr. Avery, from down the road a piece, sawed these up for us and said he’d be back to buck ’em and split ’em into firewood, but the poor man’s been ailin’ lately. It’s your job now if you be up to it.”
“I’m up to it,” John said. He removed his shirt so as not to get it sweatier than it already was. Liza looked at his broad chest and powerful physique with approval.
“You be a mighty fine specimen,” she said wistfully and returned to the garden.
He went to work. In an hour or so, he had all the logs bucked and some split when Liza instructed him to wash up at the well pump and join the sisters for supper.
He sat on a straight-backed chair at a table cobbled together from an old plank door, while Em served him generous portions of salt pork, black-eyed peas, and mashed potatoes. They did not take much for themselves and he hoped it was because they were light eaters and not because they were low on food supplies. Afterwards, over cups of sweet chamomile tea, Liza told John that her husband and Em’s had gone north during the last year of the war to fight for the Union.
“They ’scaped from Griffin’s plantation over yonder where we was slaves. Borrowed two of the master’s horses and rode away into the night. Believed they were obliged to help in the fight to free us, but they never come home. Been three years now, so I guess they ain’t never comin’.” Liza sighed at the idea of it, a deep sadness in her eyes. “Don’t even know where they’s buried, or even if they got a decent burial. Our children was sold off before that, taken somewhere in Looziana. I birthed two daughters and Em birthed three. A day don’t pass that we don’t hope to see ’em comin’ up our path.” She paused for a minute, as if to shake off the longing. “Anyway, the Federal soldiers come and occupied the town at the war’s end and brought some good things with ’em, but also a heap of confusion. This place here belonged to some poor white folks who up and left when the No’therners arrived. A lot of ’em did that. Didn’t like the changes that were happenin’. We found this un and moved in. It woulda been a cryin’ shame to let it go to waste, and the garden puts food on our plates.”
Em interjected. “A few white folks around the area don’t care much for us livin’ here. Ain’t none too happy that we took a white family’s house, never mind that we ain’t slaves no more.”
The sisters asked John about South Carolina and were curious about why he was going to Texas. “You lookin’ for kinfolk?” Liza asked.
He shook his head. “They’s spread out over half the country but I’m luckier than most ’cause I know where they live. A lotta the folks I pass on the road are like you—they can’t find the ones that mean the most to ’em. You can always tell because they’s the sad ones.”
He told them his reasons for going to Texas and asked about the lay of the land to the west.
“Don’t know much about it,” Liza said, “except that that Demopolis ain’t far down the road, sittin’ as pretty as you please on the banks of the Tombigbee River. Heard there’s a new railroad bridge that you can use to cross over. Not more’n a few miles from there to Mississip. Can’t say what that’s like ’cause I ain’t never been there, but I wouldn’t expect any welcoming committees for a coloured man unless they was holdin’ a rope with a noose at the end of it.”
John pushed his chair back from the table. “I should finish the job I started and maybe get across the river before sundown.”
The sisters looked appalled. Liza scolded him. “Why, you’ll do nothin’ of the sort, John Ware! It’s gettin’ too late to be out on the roads ’round here. The stable’s empty and clean enough to sleep in, but I’ll give it a good sweepin’ anyway. We got an extra blanket and pillow if you need it. It’ll probably be more comfortable than most places you slept in on your journey. In the mornin’, a belly full of grits’ll have you steppin’ down the road lively as a colt.”
John had hoped they would offer accommodations and was tired enough to accept. He split and piled the remainder of the wood before nightfall, then chatted with the sisters over more tea before turning in. They gave him a lantern, but he declined the blanket and pillow they offered and bade them goodnight.
The stable was not any hotel, but it was dry and clear of dust and cobwebs, which would not have mattered much anyway for he had indeed slept in worse places. He spread his tarp, pulled his blanket over him, and blew the lantern out. Exhausted from the day’s trek and toil, but content, he was asleep soon after that.
Sometime deep in the night, a racket awakened him. He sat up, trying to collect himself, as the door to the stable flew open. A tall man wearing a hood made from a gunnysack with eyeholes cut in it barged in carrying a lantern in one hand and a gun in the other.
“Get on your feet, nigger!” he snarled.
John’s mind was whirling. What was happening? Then he remembered Em’s comment about white folks not wanting the sisters around here and made the connection. He thought, You come in the dead of night wearing masks like the cowards you are. But as his father had, he figured that it was best to be subservient. “Yes, sir!” he said obsequiously as he rose to his feet. He looked for a way to disarm his captor, but there was too much room between them, which meant plenty of time for the man to get a shot off. The Klansman moved to one side and motioned John toward the house with the gun. John could hear the sound of things being smashed. He saw in the moonlight that someone had knocked down the woodpile and scattered it. He was frightened of what was awaiting him in the house; he feared for the sisters’ lives.
The man jammed the barrel of his gun into John’s back and shoved him into the house, where there were three more hooded men, all armed with pistols. The place was a mess, furniture broken, pieces of bowls, crushed pots, and tin cups and plates scattered around the floor. A single lantern flickered, and in its light he saw Liza and Em standing to one side, in nightgowns. Liza’s face was bloody and she moaned, “Oh, John, we’re so sorry . . .”
The man nearest to her raised his hand as if to hit her. “Shut up, you black bitch! Now you listen and listen good. If you value those scrawny arses of yours, you’d best pack up what you got left and get outta this house fast. This ain’t your place and it especially ain’t no place for uppity niggers. You’ll get clear out of the county if you know what’s good for you!”
He turned to John. “Don’t know where you’re from, boy, but you’re in the wrong place. Best you hightail it outta here at first light. We see you around and we’ll tear that black hide offa you and feed it and the rest of your ugliness to the pigs.”
To reinforce his point he strode over and struck John on the cheek with the butt of his revolver.
John reeled but did not go down. He felt no pain from the blow, only that hot rage flaring in his chest again. Had he been able, he would have ripped their hides off with great pleasure. But there was nothing he could do that wouldn’t result in his death, and the sisters’ too.
With that, the men went outside, mounted horses, and rode roughshod through the garden before galloping off down the moonlit road. Liza and Em burst into tears and John did his best to console them.
“You poor boy,” Liza said, sniffling and laying her hand on John’s cheek. “We didn’t tell ’em you was here, so they musta been watching.”
“We got you into this!” Em cried. “And it ain’t even your affair!”
John was still angry. “It’s gotta be my affair! Ain’t my skin black, too? We can’t let ’em get away with what they did to you and your house!”
“But they will get away with it,” Em said. “That’s the sad story of Alabama, and only God can say how it’ll end. Probably won’t do no good, but we’ll go see the soldiers in the mornin’ and let ’em know what’s happened. Maybe they’ll look in on us once in a while. Don’t matter though bec
ause we ain’t leavin’; this is our home now. Besides, we got nowhere else to go. But like I said, this ain’t your home, son, so you do as the man said and hightail it out of here at sun-up. Get yourself to Texas and make yourself a future. There ain’t nothin’ you can do here but get yourself hurt or maybe killed. We’ll be all right.”
John could see the determination and certitude deep in the sisters’ eyes and it should have made him feel better. Instead, it left him with the same feeling of powerlessness that he had felt as a slave, the same deep sense of frustration that stems from always being on the losing side and not having the means to turn it around.
As sleep was no longer possible, he fetched some water from the well so that Liza and Em could clean up while he set about restoring some order to the house, sweeping up the debris and doing his best to straighten the tin cups, plates, and pots. Later, Em made tea that they drank from battered cups. At dawn, while the sisters went to see what they could recover from their garden, he went outside and re-stacked the firewood, paying no mind to their urgings that he should leave immediately. When he finished, Liza served him grits that he devoured with relish, trying to ignore his sore jaw. He gathered up his bedroll from the stable and made to bid the women goodbye. They might look fragile, he told himself, but they’re tough old birds, really. They’ll be fine.
Outside, Liza hugged him and said, “Thank you, John. You takin’ the time to pile that firewood again, when you shoulda lit out of here, has only fixed our purpose more. We can’t let cowards tell us what to do so we’ll see this through, the good Lord willin’. You go safe as you can now, hear?”
John rarely had a shortage of words ready on his tongue but at that moment they deserted him. He did not know what to say, except to offer his thanks for the food and that he wished matters had been different. He would go safe and he hoped that they would stay safe.
Em also hugged him goodbye and said, “A woman could do worse than to birth a son like you, John Ware. That be the truth straight from the heart.”
He walked down the path, through what once had been a beautiful, productive garden, and felt optimistic that it would be again. As he turned onto the road, he looked back and saw the sisters, arms about each other’s waists, waving goodbye with their free hands. Liza held a handkerchief in hers. He waved back, and soon lost them behind some trees. He steeled his mind to go forward, because his heart was insisting that he turn back.
•
He kept alert as he moved farther westward, and in Mississippi he was surprised to find that conditions were not as bad as Liza thought. He found more than a few blacks working their own farms in the bottomlands and others doing well as sharecroppers. He was pleased for them but not the least bit tempted to settle, although he did stay for a while to help two families build their homes, carpetbaggers from up north come to take advantage of the cheap land prices. After that, he moved on.
At Vicksburg, besides the heavy presence of Union soldiers, John saw signs that a horrific battle had been waged there: shrapnel from burst bombs had been gathered and piled in places like giant iron anthills. He made his way to the docks, where a large crowd had gathered in anticipation of the arrival of a huge riverboat. John could see the vessel beating her way upstream, black smoke billowing from twin stacks. As her whistle sounded an intention to berth, her stern paddles began thrashing the water less vigorously. He asked a dockworker if there was anyone around who would be willing to take him across the river.
“There’s a ferry leaving once the riverboat’s unloaded,” the worker said. “It costs a dollar if there’s room. If you don’t want to wait or pay that much, you can talk to that fella over there.” He pointed to a thin man wearing a grey Confederate kepi and a black patch over his left eye, who was working with some ropes at the side of the dock. “He ain’t pretty to look at but he’ll probably take you over for a lot less.”
John approached the man. An ugly scar that turned his upper lip into a permanent sneer ran up the side of his face and disappeared beneath the patch. He had a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth. If the fellow were indeed a veteran and had received his injuries in the war, John wondered how willing he would be to row a black man across the river. But he hardly looked at John and said only, “Four bits’ll get you there.”
John paid and they climbed down a short ladder to a rowboat. When the wash from the riverboat subsided, the man let loose the painter and stabbed the oars into the river, aiming the vessel upstream so the sluggish current would direct it to the dock and road on the far side.
“It’s a upside-down world,” the man said, “when a white man goes to workin’ for a nigra.” He dipped his head toward Vicksburg. “But ten thousand Union boys died or give up some of their body parts just so’s I’d have the privilege.” He spat a gob of tobacco-stained saliva over the gunwale, adding, “I do it but I cain’t say I care for it much. The money is all I care about.”
John didn’t know his numbers but figured that ten thousand had to be at least a city’s worth of boys, too many to die in one place. Too many to die, period. He shrugged. “Well, there ain’t much I can do about you not likin’ it, but I suppose if a man don’t change with the times, the past is bound to render him bitter as vinegar. If he ain’t already bitter to begin with.”
“I ain’t bitter, leastways not real bitter. I give up one eye and got turned into a ugly sight by a grenade so’s everythin’d stay the same, but like you said, a man’s gotta keep up with the times.” He fixed his good eye on John. “Even if such times is contrary to what the bible says.”
John remembered all too well what the bible said; it had been rammed into his head every Sunday. And while he believed there was a God above, he had little faith in the bible. It was a hammer made of words that owners used to beat their slaves into submission. Still, John had to give the scarred man his due. The change that had come to his world was not sitting well with him, but he did not seem to be the type to hide behind a hood and terrorize innocent folk like Liza and Em. They were silent for a moment, the only sound the big riverboat’s engine and the creaking oars. John changed the subject. He mentioned the large piles of shrapnel in the city and since he knew little of what had happened there, he asked the vet about it.
“Lasted nearly two months.” The vet lay on the oars for a moment and then let the boat drift. “It was a war between smart rich men, and they got stupid poor men like me to fight it for ’em. You ask me if it was worth it, I’d have to ask you how could it be? Look at me. And all those dead boys just so’s I could row you across the Mississip. Don’t make no sense at all. No, sir, not one lick.”
He began rowing again and continued talking when John said nothing. “Well, that was four years ago but it don’t seem that long. The way it pictures in my mind it coulda been last week. Coulda been yesterday for all that matter.”
At the far shore, John climbed from the boat and hesitated for a moment. He was tempted to lift his shirt and show the vet the ugly scars across his back, tell him that maybe the Union boys’ dying had at least done some good. But he didn’t think the man was quite right in the head—the grenade seemed to have taken some of his senses along with an eye—and John figured such an exhibition would probably be wasted. He said goodbye and set off on the road through the swampy bottomlands beside the river.
The few words he had shared with the vet had served to arouse memories of Liza and Em. They would be pleasantly surprised if they knew he had reached Louisiana safely, that he was nearly on the doorstep of Texas. As he trudged on, into the rolling woodlands and prairie forming the northern part of the state, he wondered how they were doing.
Beyond Shreveport, numerous stagecoaches passed by on the Texas road, the busiest thoroughfare he had seen so far. He encountered more freedmen, some heading east, some still looking for kin, others bound for the East Texas town of Marshall, which was in the westernmost extension of the cotton belt and on his route.
When he arrived there in November, the weathe
r was unseasonably warm and humid. Marshall overflowed with blacks, many employed on the region’s numerous cotton plantations. John felt safer than he had in months. He went to the Freedmen’s Bureau, an agency set up to help freed slaves get a start in Reconstruction by finding them jobs and providing food to those passing through. He talked to one of several men working there and showed him the silver dollar–sized holes worn in the soles of his boots, saying he would be grateful if the bureau had anything to replace them. The man went into a back room and returned with a pair that was almost new, donated by a Union soldier. They pinched a bit, but as a big man with feet to match, John would have waited a long time for a pair the right size. He devoured the meal that the bureau provided, but declined the agent’s offer of a job picking cotton, even though he would be a “paid worker, not a slave.” Instead, he asked, “How far might it be to the nearest ranch?”
“Nearest ranch?” The agent looked surprised. “Don’t recollect bein’ asked that before. Out around Fort Worth, I suppose, but that’s a long way from here. Maybe two hundred miles. Can’t tell you if they’d be hirin’ freedmen or not. Don’t know but that you might even find a peck of trouble out that way. Heard they been murderin’ coloured men.”
“I’ll take my chances,” John said, “and I’m grateful for the food and boots.”
As he was leaving, he glanced at the bureau’s bulletin board, something he hadn’t paid attention to on his way in because of his inability to read. Messages and single-page news bulletins containing several items filled it. He did understand some words though and recognized one straight away because he had seen it on several signs: Demopolis. His curiosity got the better of him. He removed the bulletin and took it to the agent.
“Can you tell me what this says?” he asked.
The agent took a few moments to peruse the short article and then paraphrased. “It’s about a couple of murders near Demopolis, out Alabama way. Two coloured sisters, name of Elizabeth and Emma Adams, got beat to death in their home. No one knows who did it. That’s all it says, but it sounds to me like the Klan’s been busy.”
High Rider Page 3
