I had to split logs with a maul, carry pieces in, and get them lit, fry eggs my mother did not eat, and carry water for the washing up. Cream waited to be churned, but Creolia was the only one who did it well. It needed to be chilled but not too cold, so it would turn to butter and not hard as candle wax—but how did she know when it was right? She had never told anyone. The day was hot and the sky clouded over, threatening a thunderstorm, as I thumped the heavy wooden churn on the back porch. I kept on till my arms burned, but the cream refused to turn.
My mother brooded at the kitchen table, and she made no move to dress or start dinner. I saved the wasted cream for making cheese, caught a hen and wrung its neck, chopped off its head, hung it to drain, pulled all its feathers out, removed its guts, and washed it well before I cut it up, rolled each piece in flour, built up the fire, melted lard, and fried them brown by dinnertime. Today there’d be no biscuits, and last week’s butter was half-rancid.
But I walked into the field and plucked ears of corn and husked them, carried water for the pot and more logs for the stove, picked beans, and sliced tomatoes for each plate.
I had so much to do I almost didn’t notice hoofbeats thudding slowly to the kitchen door, but when my mother stood up suddenly, I turned and saw Tim outside, bareback on a strange mule. He slid to the ground and took off his hat, standing at the bottom of the steps, his shirt buttoned wrong as if he had been too excited to dress right. My mother opened the screen door, not seeming to care that he could see the hem of her nightgown and her long, unbound gray hair.
The porch was high, and he looked up at her with large kind eyes. “I’m sorry, Miz Cairnes. Now, we gone help you till you find yourself someone. But my army pay done come, and I found us a farm, not a big place but right pretty, not too far neither. Mama can come help you ever now and then.”
My mother’s face was pale gray, her voice a quaver. “Will Creolia have a house?”
“Yes, ma’am, right fine. No stove or nothing, but she’s got a garden and a spring. I spect she’s out there this minute, scrabbling in the dirt. Told her it was too late to plant ’tatoes, but she don’t hear good.” His smile flickered.
I took my mother’s arm, and she leaned heavily on me while my own head swirled. Was it because of Sophie that he was taking them away?
“Wait here,” I said to Tim, and helped my mother to the parlor sofa to lie down. Of course he had come for their wages, and I found my mother’s coin purse.
“When did she pay you last?” I asked, embarrassed, as I stood on the porch.
“Last Saturday, reckon.”
I was pretty sure my mother did not pay Sophie, at least nothing much. But to be sure I counted out a whole week’s pay for each of them. It seemed a great deal of money—more than $6—but I put it in his hand. He thanked me and swung up onto the mule’s back, as easily as if he had a saddle and stirrups.
Something in his cheerful look made a metallic taste pour in my mouth. The nerve of him, thinking he could just go—while I was rooted here with no more freedom than a tree. He had been born a slave. Wasn’t I ahead of him? Didn’t I deserve that much?
“Very fine for you,” I called. “And will you never come to help us anymore yourself?”
His smile faded, and he looked down from his perch up on the mule. “You need something, missy, I help you sometime. But just now I got to plow.”
“Plow?” I cried with scorn I didn’t know I felt. “Where did you get a plow?”
His eyes went on being kind. But he lifted a hand to wave, turned the rope on the mule’s neck, and tapped his heels into its flanks. The mule pointed its long ears forward and began to lumber across the lawn. I dashed after them and caught the halter.
“What will you eat this winter? It’s too late to plant. Can’t you wait till spring? It’s dangerous out there on your own. It’s too soon after the war. Please stay.”
I had just read an article about a former slave-owner who used a bullwhip on a freedman in the street, a man he did not even know.
Tim sighed. “I know, missy. But we be all right. Don’t make no nevermind.”
I bit my cheek. “Wait here a minute, I’ll be right back.”
Running into the house, I grabbed a sack of cornmeal and a slab of bacon—he would see he couldn’t just wash his hands of us. I would help him whether he liked it or not. Piling potatoes into an old pot, I bundled it all in a burlap sack and took it out and lifted it to him.
He wrapped his free arm around it. “Why, thank you, missy. You most kind.”
“I’m not kind,” I cried, exasperated, barely making sense. What I meant was, he was family—all of them were. They were ours. They could not just walk away.
He looked shy and stubborn both. “We be all right. Now don’t you nevermind.”
And the mule trotted smartly out the lane.
“YOU’VE GOT TO GET the law to bring them back,” one of our neighbors said in the parlor. He had ridden over as soon as he heard, and now he was closeted with Richard and four other neighbors behind a closed door, since this was men’s business and might lead to unpleasantness.
But I could hear them quite well from the hall, and though I held a tray of glasses, whiskey, and cigars, I put off going in there for a while.
“It’s illegal what they did,” an authoritative voice agreed. “They can’t leave jobs without permission, and the Orphan’s Court can indenture them to you, make sure they’re taken care of properly. Children especially, and I believe there was a half-grown girl with them?”
“If there was, you can get her bound to you tomorrow, and probably her family, too. They were once yours, or your father’s anyway, and that means you can keep them if you want to. Isn’t your mother’s brother a judge in Orphan’s Court? Just ask him. Course, the law says you have to feed and clothe them and maybe teach them how to read. But otherwise you own them, same as before, and their offspring, too. Right of chastisement and everything.”
I knew that meant the right to whip their naked backs, and impulsively I burst into the room, rattling the tray, trying to exert a moral influence.
At once they all went genial, smiling. “Nice fall weather, isn’t it, Miss Cairnes?”
“Caterpillars had a lot of wool this year. We could see some snow.”
Ignoring this, I said with special emphasis, “Winter doesn’t worry me, so long as we have peace, and I do mean peace with all of our neighbors.”
The men fell silent, and some glanced Richard’s way, as if in pity or reproach at his inability to curb his sister’s tongue.
But when I left, they resumed seamlessly, drowned out slightly by the clink of glassware, the striking of lucifers to light cigars.
“You have to bind them,” the first man’s voice repeated. “It’s the only decent thing. They don’t have the first idea of what’s good for them.”
A coarser voice broke in, probably the fat farmer who had lately bought a stretch of bottomland, having emigrated here from deeper south. “That’s damn right. Can’t just let ’em go. First bunch of niggers gets away with it, ever last nigger will go.”
Silence greeted this, maybe because hereabouts the polite terms were “Negro,” “African,” “colored,” “freedman,” and “black.”
When the air had cleared for a few beats, a calmer voice reset the tone. “I suppose we really ought to worry for their safety. Left to their own devices, some of them will do nothing but drink moonshine and lie about, while their children sicken and die. It’s such a waste.”
Richard’s reedy young voice quavered for the first time, singsong. “I know, I know.”
Another man agreed. “Seriously, young friend, you ought to get the sheriff. You know you got to bring them back. How you going to get your hogpen cleaned out now? And if you don’t mind me asking, what about your privy? Got to shovel that out, too, you know, from time to time. Can’t get no Irishmen to do that kind of work. Half the Negroes won’t now neither. Damn stupid thing to let them join the a
rmy. Army needed privies cleaned out, too, I guess, but they didn’t need to put them in those damn blue uniforms. Gives them damn airs.”
“I know, I know,” Richard almost moaned again, like that was all he knew to say.
Older voices rumbled over him, about how a Colored Church had started up with no white minister to sanction it. It even had a Sunday School, as if black men could teach the Word of God to black children. They seethed at the changes brought in by the military constitution.
“We’ve got to get the Black Code back, by God. Negroes roaming around free, reeling drunk, menacing decent women? We can’t have that here!”
“And the women are worse than the fellows. They’re degenerates, full of disease, corrupting our youth. Even the little girls, I swear.”
“That’s right, Negro girls can’t help themselves. They’re overheated by nature, worse than the fellows, I swear.”
A more refined voice said gently, “Some are not so bad. That one you had, Cairnes, what was her name? I suppose she ran off, too. Pity. She was a pretty little thing.”
“Taste for chocolate, have we?” a deep voice asked, and a few men laughed.
The authoritative neighbor’s voice broke in. “It’s not a laughing matter, gentlemen. There’s too much of that around already, mongrels everywhere you look. That girl just mentioned, she’s a mongrel herself, isn’t she? I’d say she’s too light by half.”
The refined voice broke in with a chuckle. “Did you hear what Winter Davis said? All those afraid they might marry a Negro should petition the courts to punish them before they succumb.”
A deep rumble of laughter followed, and the bottle clinked against glasses.
“Well, it isn’t marrying we’re speaking of, now, are we,” a man said flatly.
“All the more reason to keep them here,” the deepest voice put in. “Especially the comely ones. It isn’t only that they work for cheap. Takes the burden off of decent wives.”
Voices murmured in alarm. “But is it safe to let them so close to white women, degraded as they are and all? Might pass it on to wives and daughters. Think of that.”
A rumble of assent was followed by another voice. “Speaking of that, you know what Martin Jarrett said to me last week? Those foot-pedal sewing machines—have you seen them?”
“I just got one for my wife. She swears by it—”
“Well, you’d better watch her, man, I’ll tell you straight. He says we shouldn’t have them in the house. It’s the motion of the thing, you see. Don’t mean to be indelicate, but it works them up, and you know a real lady isn’t built for that, leads straight to insanity. It’s all right to let the black ones work it, when they’re like that already. But for God’s sake, keep your daughters off of it, and if your lady takes a little too much interest in, you know, the marriage bed, get the doctor right away. There’s things he can do. Nip it in the bud, so to speak. You’ll be glad you did.”
I listened, appalled. To think that men could talk like that, the way they spoke of cows ready to breed or stallions standing stud. They were all big white men with beards, waistcoats, and watch fobs—landowners, elders of the church, men who were always right.
Quickly I walked to the dining room, opened a window, and fanned my cheeks, though the day was cool. My mother had a foot-pedal machine, and I had used it to make my blue-moth dress. Worse, I often thought of how Nick kissed me in the loft and pressed into my skirts. And there were other things I could not even think about—things that happened in the dead of night, in my bed, in the dark, alone. Did that mean I was wanton, not a “real lady,” headed for insanity?
When the parlor finally opened and the men came rumbling out, I handed each his coat and hat, not meeting any eyes, as if cool spring water flowed in my veins.
“I WON’T HAVE THEM bound to us,” my mother announced at supper that evening. She had washed and dressed and seemed calmer, though her chin shook as she spoke. “Creolia will have to come back on her own. I won’t have her forced. We’ll let them be.”
Richard looked relieved, buttering his rolls, lank hair falling in his eyes. “That would serve them right, when they see how hard it is. They’ll soon appreciate what they had here.”
He and my mother exchanged a long look, which seemed to soothe them both. Chewing, they looked almost identical, noses turned up alike and heavy lids like hoods over their dark blue eyes. They seemed to lean together, murmuring as easily as breath.
“That is the last time I will say her name,” she said.
“Same here,” he agreed.
“We’re through with her.”
“We’re through with all of them.”
“And if any of the neighbors ask you, tell them not to be concerned.”
“Certainly it’s no concern of theirs,” Richard agreed.
She turned to me with tight lips, as if she knew I had overheard too much in recent days.
“And Martha Jane will recall that chastity begins in the mind. Never let yourself dwell on the sins of others. That’s a base unchastity.”
“A base unchastity,” Richard said, with a triumphant look.
For good measure he went to get the Bible and read it to us as he stood before the fire.
“But if this thing be true,” he read, “and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones until she die; because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: So shalt thou put evil away from among you.”
THAT NIGHT I DREAMED I was stark-naked and shackled in the stocks, my legs spread, on public view in front of our church, and I woke in terror. Getting out of bed, I lit a lamp and wrote to Nick, prudent enough for once not to say much, since letters can fall into the wrong hands.
“That plan we made won’t work. We need to meet in daylight, in public. Sometimes we can be alone, but not at night, not yet. We need to talk and get to know each other well.”
Next morning, before I changed my mind, I walked it to the Forest Hills post office, got it franked and sent. Too restless to attend to anything after that, I walked on to Isie’s place.
Sam was on the porch, and he seemed cheered, the crisper fall air easier for him to breathe. When I suggested an excursion in the wheeled chair, he stood up and walked to it alone.
I tucked a blanket around him.
“I feel as tight-packed as a cigar,” he protested.
“A fine Cuban, I hope,” I said and pushed him out the lane. “But oooff! You don’t feel like one. How many cigars would it take to be this heavy, I wonder? Next year when you’re well, I’ll make you push me all the way to Baltimore.”
“Don’t press your luck.” But even chuckling didn’t seem to make him cough.
The lane slanted up, but we soon reached the flatter road. Nick’s father’s place lay less than a mile west, in Black Horse, and it seemed harmless to head that way. Fall rains had settled the dust, and we passed woods with red and yellow maples, purple sassafras, and red sumac. At the crossroads in Shawsville, a black-and-white border collie came wagging from a house.
Sam freed a hand from the blanket to stroke its ears. “Good boy. Fine fellow.”
It was the most interest he had shown in anything for months, and, feeling cheered and optimistic, I turned us south toward Black Horse, the collie trailing along.
In the distance we could see two men riding north toward us. One was a tall, skinny man in black, on a big black horse. He might have been a brimstone preacher, bony and straight-backed and pale, with long white hair under his straight-brimmed hat, but he held a rifle on his lap. As he came near, I saw his eyes—clear and gray like Nick’s, unmistakable, but colder in his face, with the stern and righteous look of an Abolitionist. Could he be Nick’s father?
But I was distracted by the sight of the other man—a black man on a mule, legs flapping to the trot, also holding a rifle. Negroes cleaned guns but
had never been allowed to carry them. With a shock I saw his jacket, rusty black linen with mismatched tweed patches.
“What in tarnation?” Sam said from the chair.
Both of us gaped up as they trotted past.
What was Tim doing out riding with Nick’s father and a gun?
III.
Nicholas McComas
1865-1869
I WAS NOT A LEARNED MAN. Rumors of knowledge, that’s what I had. I read what I could get my hands on, asked other men to tell me what they knew, and listened to the preachers, who at least read Latin and Greek. I once heard a preacher say that the word “Secession” came from the Latin term for cutting your own throat—separating head from body, as it were. I did not know if it was true, but the one time I tried to call on Martha Jane, I ended up telling it to her mother, who was not amused. She met me on the lawn and turned me away as deftly as a collie turning sheep. Mrs. Cairnes was a fine figure of a woman, taller than her daughter and all in black mourning.
“We are not at home today, Mr. McComas,” she said in a voice so quiet I had to lean in to catch it, and it felt like something she did on purpose, to show that she could control me. She looked me up and down as if noting my frayed cuffs, only partly disguised by my mother’s perfect ironing. “We are quite occupied, working for the Southern Relief. You know very well the poor South has lost everything, when it never asked for it, and it’s distressing to see how some people prosper when they don’t deserve to. Good day.”
I don’t know what came over me, but when I gave her the preacher’s Latin lesson, she pulled herself up haughtily. “You have no right to refer in any way to the Confederacy, and I’ll thank you not to do so again. It is no fit subject for levity.”
With that she walked away, left me there, and firmly closed her big front door.
So I did not see Martha Jane that day and could only think of her wistfully. Unlike her mother, Martha Jane had more sense of humor than most women combined. She could laugh like a lunatic or like music, and when she let me hear it, it was as good as all the money I had in the world, though that wasn’t saying much. She never shrank from anything or stepped back modestly to let others speak. She was vivacious as a colt and just as gawky, and she was always as free and natural as any man, things women were not supposed to be. Though if my father was to be believed, we were all just higher monkeys, women as well as men, and if monkeys were not natural and free, hanging from trees and swinging limb to limb, I did not know what was.
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