A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton

by Michael Phillips

  “You want me to come in with you, Miss Katie?” I asked when we stopped in front of Mrs. Hammond’s store for a second time. “To carry out what you’re buying? She’ll think it a mite strange if you carry it yourself.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought of that, Mayme,” she said.

  “Yes, come in with me.”

  We got down and walked into the shop. I kept a step or two behind Katie and kept my eyes down. I wanted to look around, and especially to get a good faceful of Mrs. Hammond, but I didn’t dare.

  “I see you’re back, Kathleen,” said Mrs. Hammond, glancing over at me for a second with a look like I had some kind of disease. “I have your mama’s things ready. Tell her to take them out,” she added, nodding her head in my direction.

  Katie looked over at me. “Take these things out to the buggy, Mayme,” she said.

  “Yes’m, Miz Katie,” I answered slowly, taking a step forward.

  At the words, Mrs. Hammond spun around with fire in her eye and glared at me.

  “Watch how you speak to your betters, girl!” she said, almost yelling at me. “Didn’t Mrs. Clairborne tell you how to address her daughter? You are to call her Miss Clairborne or Miss Kathleen.”

  “Yes’m,” I nodded, feeling stupid for forgetting something so simple.

  All of a sudden the door banged open behind us and a man stormed in. He walked straight up to the counter and started talking to Mrs. Hammond. I snuck a glance at him and his profile seemed familiar. And if there was a white man that I knew or that knew me, that couldn’t help be anything but bad. So I quickly turned away from him.

  “You seen a runaway nigger girl anywhere?” he said to Mrs. Hammond. “I figured you’d know if there’d been any talk.”

  “Why, no,” replied Mrs. Hammond, though I saw her hawk eyes dart my way and narrow slightly as she said it.

  “Whose is it?”

  “One of our brats is missing. She might have a baby with her.”

  At the word, I saw Katie start to glance my way, but then she stopped herself.

  “A baby—gracious,” said Mrs. Hammond. “Did she steal it?”

  “Naw—it’s her own. Since all this commotion with Lincoln’s proclamation …” he went on, then paused.

  Now for the first time he seemed to notice me standing on the other side of the store. I kept my head down but knew he was looking me over. Apparently satisfied because I had no baby and was too thin to be carrying one, he turned back to Mrs. Hammond.

  “You know how it is now,” he said. “The girl wouldn’t give me a day’s work, and now she’s up and disappeared.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Hammond. “I’ve heard nothing.”

  “All right then, guess I’ll be going. You keep your ears open, though, you hear.”

  He turned and walked out, throwing me a scowl as he went by that worried me a bit, like I might be familiar to him too but he didn’t know why. I let out a breath of air when the door closed. Whoever he was, I didn’t like him!

  As soon as he was gone, I walked forward and took the two packages off the counter and slowly walked toward the door. As I passed by her I saw that Katie’s eyes had gotten all wide again. She looked at me, and I looked at her, but neither of us said a word. I think we were both thinking, We’d better get out of here before anything worse happens!

  A minute later I walked back in and picked up the last of the three packages wrapped in brown paper. Then we left the shop together. I was conscious of Mrs. Hammond’s scowl staring at our backs the whole way out to the street.

  We were both mighty relieved to get up on that buggy and finally start back toward Katie’s home. We felt like laughing, but we couldn’t yet because we were still in town.

  “Hello, Reverend Hall,” said Katie as we passed the church at the edge of town.

  The minister, who was walking toward the church from town with his back toward us, turned and then when he saw who it was, beckoned toward Katie. At first Katie didn’t slow up, intending to keep on going. But he ran toward us and called out, so that Katie had to rein in the horses.

  “Good morning, Kathleen,” said the minister, walking up to the wagon, puffing a little. “I wanted to ask a favor of you—tell your mama to come see me, would you?”

  “Yes, Reverend Hall.”

  “Your father and brothers aren’t home yet?”

  “Uh … no, sir.”

  “Well, some of the men are having a hard time of it when they come home after so long at war. There’s a man on the other side of town who is drinking so much that his wife and daughter are sometimes terrified of him.”

  “My daddy doesn’t drink like that,” said Katie.

  “I’m sure not, Kathleen, and I am glad. But there are other problems too. Men change from war and I just want your mama to be prepared. Tell her to come see me when she can.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Katie, flicking the reins.

  Relieved again to be on our way, eventually the last of the houses disappeared out of sight behind us. What the minister had said sobered Katie for a minute. But pretty soon we both started thinking about Mrs. Hammond again.

  Finally we couldn’t help it. I started to giggle and Katie burst out laughing so hard I thought she was gonna scare the horses into a gallop.

  “That was the beatenest thing I ever saw!” I said.

  “—with Mrs. Hammond. You were acting like a regular grown-up back there in her store, Miss Katie.”

  Katie was still laughing too hard to say anything.

  “One thing for sure, you knocked poor old Mrs. Hammond into a cocked hat!”

  “What about you?” said Katie as she laughed. “Yes’m, Miz Katie,” she said in a gloomy voice, trying to imitate how I’d sounded. Then she started laughing again. “And with that long face and staring down at the ground. You were doing more playacting than I was!”

  “Except for my mistake of calling you Miss Katie! That just about put her on to us.”

  “It didn’t, though.”

  “But did you notice that look on that fellow Henry’s face? He didn’t seem too altogether pleased with your answer after he asked about your mama.”

  “He’s always been nice to me, nicer than just about anyone. But I didn’t really notice Henry too much with his son standing there. I can’t believe it. And to think that they haven’t seen each other in all those years.”

  I didn’t reply. I didn’t know what to say about Henry’s son. But there’s no use denying that I couldn’t help thinking about him for the rest of the day. But Katie’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

  “Do you think that man in the store was looking for Emma?” she asked.

  “I reckon,” I said. “Leastways, that seems likely.”

  “Should we tell her?”

  “That’s up to you, Miss Katie. But it’d likely set her into an almighty panic—as if she isn’t in enough a one all the time as it is.”

  “You’re right, Mayme. I don’t suppose there’s any reason to tell her … not unless something comes of it.”

  Neither of us said anything for a spell, then slowly a smile spread across Katie’s face as we rode along.

  “Mayme,” she said excitedly, “we did it!”

  “You did it mostly yourself, Miss Katie,” I said.

  The thought sobered her up some. She stopped laughing and got a funny look on her face, like she realized I was right and was almost proud of herself for it.

  Then she smiled. “I guess I did at that, didn’t I?”

  “You sure did, Miss Katie … I mean Miss Kathleen.”

  We both burst out laughing again.

  MAKING PLANS

  3

  WHEN WE GOT BACK TO KATIE’S MAMA AND papa’s house, Emma was in a fix of excitement and worry waiting for us. We’d been talking excitedly and laughing all the way back from town. Having Emma running outside the moment she saw us, going on and on about how she thought we were never going to come back, reminded us right quick that no matter
how much we might have fooled Mrs. Hammond, we still had problems of our own right here.

  By then we were tired and hungry. We went inside and sat down and tried to eat something while Emma kept talking without taking a breath.

  “William was fussin’ real bad, Miz Katie,” she said. “I cudn’t git him ter stop no how.”

  “What did you do?” asked Katie, speaking softly to calm her down.

  “I fed him, Miz Katie, an’ den he went ter sleep, but I thought you was neber gwine git back.”

  “Well, we’re back now, Emma,” said Katie. “And we won’t have to go back into town again for a good while yet.”

  After we’d had something to eat and drink, we set to unloading the supplies and taking care of the buggy and horses.

  “We gotta start making plans, Miss Katie,” I said later that day.

  “What kind of plans?” she asked.

  “We gotta figure this whole thing out and decide what’s to be done. We can’t do everything around here, so we gotta decide just what we can do and what we should do, which fields to tend and which parts of your mama’s plantation to keep up.”

  “But I don’t know anything about tending fields, Mayme.”

  “I do. I been working in the fields since I was eight. But besides the fields, we gotta tend to other stuff to make it look like your mama’s still running the place.”

  “Like what kind of other stuff?”

  “You gotta try to think back to everything your mama did.”

  “All right, I see what you mean.”

  “So tomorrow, Miss Katie,” I said, “here’s what I think we oughta do … that is, if it’s to your liking. I don’t want to tell you what to do, but—”

  “Mayme, please don’t talk like that,” interrupted Katie. “I could never do any of this without you. I’ve told you that before. You’re smart, Mayme, just like I told Mrs. Hammond. You have more common sense than me.”

  “You been showing a heap more smarts about Emma than me.”

  “I don’t know—we’ll help her out together. But I don’t know what to do about so many things. So I want you to just keep saying what you think and telling me what we ought to be doing.”

  “But it’s your plantation, Miss Katie. I don’t wanna be presuming too much and—”

  “For now, Mayme, it’s our plantation … yours and mine.”

  “That can’t hardly be, Miss Katie.”

  “If it’s mine, like you say, then right now I’m giving half of it to you.”

  Her words silenced me on the spot. I didn’t know what to say.

  “All … all right, then, Miss Katie,” I said, fumbling for words. “If that’s the way you want it, I don’t reckon I can keep arguing with you.”

  “It is the way I want it, Mayme. So what were you getting ready to tell me?”

  “What I was gonna say a minute ago is that I think you oughta show me all around to everything. We’ll saddle a couple of horses, and then we’ll ride everywhere and you can show me your mama’s plantation.”

  “Our plantation now.”

  “All right, then, our plantation … the fields, the slave cabins, what’s growing where … everything.”

  “I don’t know if I know where it all is, or exactly which fields were my mama and daddy’s.”

  “Well, do the best you can, and probably you’ll remember as you go places where you saw your papa or his slaves working at one time or another. But we gotta try to figure out what’s yours and what we oughta do with it.”

  ROSEWOOD

  4

  A FTER BREAKFAST THE NEXT MORNING, WHEN our chores with the cows and pigs and chickens were tended and we had Emma and William taken care of for a spell, we saddled up two horses. Then we set out for a ride around the farm, with Rusty and the other two dogs barking and chasing along with us.

  First Katie led me down the sloping hill toward the colored cabins about half a mile from the main house.

  “This is where our slaves lived,” she said as we rode up, then slowed to a stop.

  We sat on the horses for a few seconds just looking at it. Everything was so quiet. There wasn’t much to say. One colored village looked about the same as any other. This run-down collection of cabins could have been where I lived, or where any slaves lived. I had the feeling Katie was seeing it through different eyes now, after being to where I’d lived. It was probably hard for her to think that these shacks had once been people’s homes, people just like me, people that her own daddy had owned and who he had likely treated no better than my master had treated us.

  Both of us were looking at the world through different eyes than we had just a short time before. Just the fact of slavery was dawning on Katie more than ever, I think. And I was seeing things different too, ’cause now I wasn’t living in a place like this anymore.

  After a while we continued on.

  “That field there,” Katie said, pointing to the right, to a stretch of land behind the cabins. “I know that’s our main cotton field.”

  I looked where she was pointing. The field was full of growing cotton. It was just like our cotton fields, and I had hated them. The field was getting full of weeds between the rows too, now that there was no one to hoe and cut them down. How many hours had I spent in fields just like this, from when I was so young I could hardly remember.

  “I’m not sure about the one beyond it, over past those trees. But those woods over there,” she said, “that’s my secret place. I don’t think any of our fields are past it. I don’t remember ever seeing our slaves or mama going out past there.”

  We rode on to the second field Katie had pointed to beyond the one growing with cotton. It took us about five minutes to get there. It was full of stalks of green that were about three feet high by now. I figured it was probably wheat.

  We kept riding to the left, in the opposite direction from Katie’s woods. We crossed a little stream and then came to the river and passed along its bank on our right, which Katie said was one edge of Rosewood’s boundary.

  We crossed over the road leading toward town and gradually made a great big circle going to the left all the time. As we went Katie showed me several other fields—some large, some small—all with crops growing in them, mostly cotton.

  “I think I remember seeing our slaves working here,” she said. “And over there I went with my mama once when she had to talk to Mathias.”

  “That’s corn there,” I said. “We could pick that easy enough when it’s ripe and have plenty to eat for a long time.”

  “What’s that growing there?” asked Katie, pointing off in another direction.

  “I ain’t sure,” I said. “I don’t recognize it, though it might be tobacco. Your mama and daddy have a tobacco drying barn?”

  “I don’t think so. You mean a barn different than for cows?”

  I nodded. “I reckon you’d know if you had one. I ain’t seen anything that looks like one. It must be something else.

  Or maybe this field belongs to someone else.”

  That thought seemed to startle Katie and the two of us looked around, half expecting to see someone staring at us, wondering what two girls—and one of them colored—were doing in his field. But we saw no one.

  Eventually we came back behind the house from the opposite direction from where we’d started by the road leading to Mr. Thurston’s.

  “That’s one of the other fields where we take the cows,” said Katie, pointing off toward our right.

  “The grass is getting tall,” I said. “Doesn’t look like it’s been grazed for quite a spell. We’ll bring them over here tomorrow.”

  We got back to the house and walked around there. I wanted to see everything else I hadn’t noticed or paid attention to before.

  A well house sat to one side of the barn, though with the pump inside the kitchen, we only used the pump there to keep water in the troughs for the pigs and cows and horses. There were two wooden troughs connected to each other but angling off into two
different directions, one that the pigs could get to from their fenced-in pen, the other for the horses and cattle at the edge of the pasture that sat next to the barn. When the cattle were out grazing in the fields for the day, they drank from the stream that ran through it, the same stream that went through Katie’s woods on its way to the river.

  Besides the well house, there were several other little wood buildings and sheds I hadn’t paid much attention to—a tool house, a gardening shed, the smoke house, and a little shed that sat on top of the ice cellar. Besides the main big barn, there was a smaller barn that housed more tools and equipment and the blacksmith shop. Connected to the main barn were the stables for the horses. The horses came in and out by themselves, usually staying out in the field that the stables opened to when it was sunny, and coming in under cover of the stables and barn when it rained. The horses took care of themselves pretty much, though we fed them oats every day.

  There was so much equipment, and so many different parts to the plantation that neither of us knew about, I didn’t see how we could ever make it seem like things were really normal.

  EMMA’S STORY

  5

  I KNEW WHAT WE NEEDED TO DO WAS GET A WORK routine established to make it seem like Rosewood was really a plantation with folks running it and taking care of it. I doubted Emma would be much help, ’cause she needed all her strength just to keep her baby fed and cared for. So I figured me and Katie were likely gonna have to work the plantation ourselves.

  The next morning when I got up, I went outside and walked around for a bit, just looking at everything.

  Then something struck me. It was like one of those things you suddenly notice, and then you can’t think of anything else, and you can’t imagine why you didn’t see it before.

  This whole place didn’t look right. It looked run-down and abandoned. There was stuff lying around. Several windows of the house were broken—the one Katie’d shot out with the rifle and a few others that must have been broken by the marauders who had killed her family. There were a few boards lying around, and the pile of broken dishes I’d cleaned up that first day was still there on the ground outside the kitchen door. A little flower garden was growing beside the wall of the house, but it was getting full of weeds. Nothing looked kept up.