‘‘We pik kottin!’’ chimed in William, and we all laughed.
‘‘Well, your niece is the expert,’’ said my papa. ‘‘She taught me what to do. We’ll let her give you a demonstration.’’
Uncle Ward glanced toward Katie.
‘‘No, I mean Mary Ann,’’ said my papa, ‘‘—your other niece.’’
‘‘Ah yes . . . right,’’ said Uncle Ward, smiling at me and waiting.
‘‘Henry’s better at it than I am,’’ I said, ‘‘but I suppose I can show you as well as anyone. I’ve picked enough of it, that’s for sure.’’
I walked over to the edge of a row.
‘‘We each pick a row,’’ I said. ‘‘You just work your way down it to the other end of the field. You get your fingers around the little clump of cotton and just pluck it out . . . like this . . . and put it in your satchel. The main thing is not to get too many leaves or bits of stalk in the bags with the cotton. If Mr. Watson at the mill in town—that’s who Jeremiah works for when he’s not at the livery—sees too many leaves, he won’t give us as good a price. But you can’t go too slow either or it’ll take too long. So you gotta try to pick fast but clean.’’
I stopped and looked around at everyone.
‘‘Then, let’s get started,’’ said the foreman enthusiastically. ‘‘Let the harvest begin!’’
We all spread out along the edge of the field and started at the beginning of our rows. Since we weren’t in such a big hurry this time—unless rain clouds suddenly appeared on the horizon!—I worked alongside Katie so we could talk. Josepha got tired pretty quickly and couldn’t work as long as the rest of us. But while she did I was amazed at her speed. It was obvious she’d picked lots of cotton in her life too before she became a house slave. She could almost keep up with Henry! The two of them worked alongside each other and chattered away in colored talk so fast sometimes that even I could hardly understand what they were saying.
Gradually Henry and Josepha moved out toward the middle of the field ahead of us in the two rows alongside each other. A little way back Katie and I came along in our two rows. Then farther back my papa and Uncle Ward went a lot slower but seemed to be enjoying themselves. Every once in a while I heard a great laugh from my papa, and it made my heart warm every time I heard it. Without knowing it, he had brought a whole new energy and optimism to Rosewood. He was so cheerful and pleasant to everyone, and excited about Rosewood’s possibilities, that his spirit infected us all in a good way.
Farther back, Emma walked along with little William, trying to show him what to do and talking to him like mothers do. They didn’t get much picked, but it was sure cute to watch.
Seeing Emma with William, seeing how she’d grown and changed from being a mother, and watching William gradually grow up himself, had made me start thinking for the first time in my life about what it would be like to actually have a baby of my own. Not that I was in any rush to get married. But it didn’t seem so fearsome a thought to me as it once had.
We only worked a couple of hours, then took a break for lunch, sweating and beginning to get tired but still enthusiastic. The talk around the table in the kitchen was more animated than anytime since we’d all been together, full of questions and stories, even Uncle Ward talking more than usual. A little while after lunch, Jeremiah came out to help.
We only worked another two or so hours in the afternoon. On the first day it’s best not to try to do too much. A harvest takes a long time. We didn’t have near as much land planted as some plantations, or as Rosewood once did. But we didn’t have that many people either. The cotton would take us two or three weeks to get in. So we knew it was best to start gradually and get used to it. Your muscles get sore, and it gets mighty tedious soon enough. After a while the daily rhythm of the harvest takes over and the days begin to flow one into the other and the cotton begins to pile up.
That’s how it was. Slowly we made progress, and Papa and Uncle Ward gradually got faster, and after a week we had one wagon piled high with hundred-pound bales, and we’d finished the first field and were starting on the second.
We took a day off the next week for my eighteenth birthday. Josepha made me a great big cake and we sang and Katie played the piano. We taught the two men some old slave revival songs, and now with more people we could dance better too. We moved the furniture in the parlor to one side and Katie taught everyone the minuet and then played the music for it on the piano while Henry and Josepha, Jeremiah and I, and Papa and Emma all tried to do it.
It was so much fun! Then we switched people so that Uncle Ward could try it, and by then we knew the music well enough that Emma and Josepha and I could sing it as we danced so that Katie didn’t have to play. With her dancing along with us, we had four couples dancing in the parlor.
We didn’t go to bed that night until hours after dark. We gradually got tired and sleepy, but no one wanted to leave the parlor and go upstairs to bed. The whole room got quiet for a spell, and I found myself starting to hum another one of the old songs that had always been so special to me. Before long, Katie and I were softly singing together:
‘‘Day is dying in the west, angels watching over me, my
Lord.
Sleep my child and take your rest, angels watching over me.
All night, all day, angels watching over me, my Lord.
All night, all day, angels watching over me.’’
Again it got quiet after we’d sung it through a couple times.
‘‘That was right pretty singing, Kathleen,’’ said Uncle Ward. ‘‘You two ladies sound mighty fine singing together, don’t they, Templeton?’’
‘‘They sure do.’’
Then my papa looked at me. ‘‘From everything that’s happened,’’ he said, ‘‘it sounds like you two have had angels watching over you, all right.’’
Katie and I looked at each other and smiled.
‘‘We sure have, Uncle Templeton,’’ said Katie, glancing at her two uncles. ‘‘And two of them are right here in this room with us.’’
That brought a chuckle out of both of them. Then Katie spoke to me again.
‘‘Tell them one of your black-uncle stories, Mayme,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m so sleepy, I’m in the mood to fall asleep with you telling a story.’’
I thought a minute, then started in with one I didn’t think I’d told Katie before.
‘‘Well, de animals en de creeturs ob da fores, dey wuz gittin on mighty well wid wunner nudder,’’ I began, ‘‘so well dat Brer Rabbit en Brer Fox en Brer Possum got tar sorter bunchin’ der perwishuns ter gedder in de same shanty. Atter w’ile de roof sorter ’gun ter leak, en one day Brer Rabbit en Brer Fox en Brer Possum, ’semble fer ter see ef dey can’t kinder patch er up. Dey had a big day’s work in front un um, en dey fotch der dinner wid up. . . .’’
I glanced over at Katie and Emma, and already I could see their eyelids drooping as I went on. I knew I’d better make it a short story! When I finished, by then we were finally ready to go to bed. Slowly we got up and all trudged upstairs.
A little while later, after the lanterns were all put out, I lay peacefully in my bed thinking. I could tell from her breathing that Katie was almost asleep.
The house was completely quiet. I breathed in a long sigh of satisfaction, and lay there in the silence a long time before I felt my own eyes getting heavy. I was so thankful to God for everything He had done for us, and especially for bringing the two men to be part of our lives.
It was just about the best way of turning eighteen I could imagine in all the world.
And maybe Katie was right. Maybe they were angels!
A LETTER
45
THE WEATHER HELD.
No storm came this time to interrupt the harvest. We took the first load into town, both the Daniels brothers sitting on the board seats holding the reins, Katie sitting beside Uncle Ward in one wagon, me beside my papa in the other.
I could tell he was proud as we ente
red town and clattered slowly along the street toward Mr. Watson’s mill. We may not have had the biggest cotton crop in Shenandoah County, or the prettiest bales. But it was our crop and we were proud of it!
Mrs. Hammond, as usual, heard us coming and came out of her shop to look. Everybody knew, of course, about me and Katie and about Katie’s two uncles on her mother’s side who had come and were now operating Rosewood. No one that he’d had dealings with in town had particularly liked Burchard Clairborne anyway, so that helped ‘‘the Daniels brothers,’’ as people called them, be accepted by most people. Whether all that would change if they knew that the white man and colored girl riding alongside each other in the first of Rosewood’s wagons that morning, and seeming so friendly with each other, were father and daughter, who could say. Even not knowing it, Mrs. Hammond had the same disapproving scowl on her face that she always did.
‘‘Morning, Mrs. Hammond!’’ called out my papa as we passed, nodding with a smile and tipping his hat. ‘‘Fine day, isn’t it?’’
I could almost hear her mutter as she turned back into her shop, Well I never! That ugly colored girl is going to get uppity, Mr. Daniels, if you let her take liberties and ride beside you like that!
But I didn’t care what she thought. I was about as happy as I could be.
My papa continued to greet other townspeople as we went. He’d already made a lot of friends in Greens Crossing because he was so friendly and personable. He’d even been to see Mr. Sneed in Oakwood a couple of times about legal things. That didn’t make Katie none too happy, but he just said you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and that it never hurt to be on the good side of folks like that. And maybe it’s good he did too, because that’s how we eventually found out a little more about some of Mr. Sneed’s conversations with Katie’s uncle Burchard.
As we continued on through town, there were two or three spinsters and a widow or two that watched my papa with even more interest than everyone else. Because he was handsome too.
We reached Mr. Watson’s mill. Papa bounded down and went inside. I searched high and low, hoping to catch sight of Jeremiah, but didn’t see him. A few minutes later Papa came out chatting and laughing with Mr. Watson.
‘‘ . . . wondered why their bales were so light,’’ Mr. Watson was saying. ‘‘But I’ve got to hand it to those girls, they picked a lot of cotton.’’
‘‘Well, our bales may not be very tight or very heavy either, Mr. Watson,’’ Papa said. ‘‘But our cotton is as good as anyone’s. And there is a lot more where this came from.’’
By then Uncle Ward had walked up.
‘‘I don’t think you’ve met my brother, Ward Daniels, Mr. Watson. Ward—say hello to Mr. Watson.’’
‘‘Pleased to meet you, Mr. Daniels,’’ said the mill owner. ‘‘So you’re Kathleen’s other uncle I’ve been hearing about.’’
‘‘I guess I’m the guilty party, all right.’’
‘‘Well. We’re glad to have you as part of our community.— I’ll get some of my men and we’ll get this cotton of yours unloaded.’’
By that same afternoon we were back from town and out in the fields again. We kept on working and the cotton bales continued to pile up. The total on the Rosewood page of Mr. Watson’s ledger mounted also as we took in a new load every time we had the wagons full.
Most of the big plantations around had their crops in by the first week of September. But we were still picking.
There was only one interruption to our harvest, though that was not one that slowed our work down.
During one of our trips to town we stopped at Mrs. Hammond’s store. Papa and I waited outside while Katie and Uncle Ward went in to get some coffee beans.
After Mrs. Hammond had given them the coffee and they’d paid for it, she handed Katie an envelope.
‘‘You’ve got a letter, Kathleen,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s addressed to you.’’
Katie took it, more than a little curious. It was the first time she had ever seen an envelope with her own name handwritten on the front: Miss Kathleen Clairborne.
‘‘Who’s it from, Kathleen?’’ asked Uncle Ward as they walked outside.
‘‘I don’t know,’’ replied Katie.
By the time she walked outside she knew who it was from.
‘‘What is it?’’ I asked when I saw her pulling out two sheets from the envelope and starting to read even while she was walking back to the wagon.
‘‘It’s . . . it’s a letter from Rob Paxton. You remember . . . from up north.’’
‘‘The deputy?’’ said my papa, glancing at me.
I nodded.
Katie climbed back on the wagon beside Uncle Ward without saying another word, her face buried in the letter. I jumped up and sat down beside her.
‘‘What does he say?’’ I asked finally as we got underway, my curiosity getting the better of me.
‘‘Here, you can read it when I’m finished,’’ she said, handing me the first page.
I started to take it, but then hesitated. ‘‘Uh, no . . . that’s okay,’’ I said. Even though I was curious, it didn’t seem right to read someone else’s letter.
‘‘Then I’ll just tell you what it says. It’s not, you know, personal or anything.’’ Her eyes scanning the letter, Katie said, ‘‘His parents send greetings and want us to know we are welcome to stay with them whenever we are next in Baltimore . . . which isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. And Rob writes, ‘Please give my warmest regards to your uncles and cousin Mayme—as well as to the other kind folks I met at Rosewood.’’’
Katie read to herself for a few moments. ‘‘Let’s see, then he goes on to tell about everything he’s been doing and about his family in Baltimore and things around Ellicott City. Oh!’’ Katie chuckled. ‘‘Listen to this: ‘I arrested a man twice my size a few days ago and ended up with a black eye as big as a flapjack. I’m glad this didn’t happen before you came here, or your uncles might have thought better of allowing me to escort you home. Too bad you’re not here to see my shiner.’’’
Uncle Ward winked at her. ‘‘I think someone’s taken a shine to you.’’
Katie’s cheeks turned pink, but she said nothing.
When we got home a couple hours later and by then I was again riding beside Papa, Katie was unusually quiet, and stayed that way for the rest of the day.
That night, after I’d gone to bed, she was still sitting at her writing desk with a small candle beside her and her pen in hand, writing page after page in reply.
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF
ROSEWOOD
46
KATIE AND I WERE IN THE BARN EARLY ONE MORNING milking the cows. Most of the time my papa helped, but on this day Katie and I were milking alone like we used to. We were so accustomed to the routine of getting up early, building a fire in the cook stove, and then heading out to the barn to take care of the cows, and we usually kept to that same pattern. As often as not, Josepha was already stirring in the kitchen. That was her special domain. But when we got up real early and the whole house was still asleep, sometimes it seemed as though we were still moving in a dream too.
We were gradually tiring out from the picking day after day. And so on this particular day, when morning came, we were practically asleep on our feet and went through the motions of the milking without saying a word. Then we opened the gate and let the cows out and slowly led them along the road toward the pasture.
Katie began to lag behind and soon the cows clomping slowly along began to pass her. After another minute or two I heard her starting to laugh. I glanced back and there she was surrounded by cows, doing her best to keep walking in the midst of them.
‘‘What are you doing back there?’’ I said.
Katie struggled her way forward, slapping a few of the cows on their sides and rumps to get by, until she had caught up with me again.
‘‘The funniest thing just happened,’’ she said. ‘‘I had a dream as we were walking.’’
‘‘A dream—are you still asleep?’’
‘‘I feel like it.’’
‘‘So do I!’’ I laughed. ‘‘I’m so tired.’’
‘‘But you know what I mean, don’t you?’’ said Katie. ‘‘It’s a sort of awake-dream that happens when everything around you automatically becomes part of a dream.’’
‘‘What was yours?’’
‘‘As we were walking along, suddenly I found myself dreaming that I was in Mrs. Hammond’s store. But she didn’t want me there.’’
‘‘That sounds like her all right! Then what happened?’’
‘‘She tried to make me leave,’’ said Katie. ‘‘But there were other customers in the store and she didn’t want them to see her being rude to me. So she silently inched over toward me and tried to bump me toward the door and outside.’’
‘‘Bump you out?’’ I laughed.
‘‘She pushed and shoved at me with her hips so that nobody would notice she was trying to knock me out the door. Then suddenly I woke up and realized I was surrounded by the cows bumping at me as we walked along.’’
‘‘Now, that’s a funny dream!’’ I laughed.
‘‘How did I get back there in the middle of the cows?’’ she asked.
‘‘You just gradually fell back,’’ I said. ‘‘I wasn’t really paying much attention. I was nearly asleep myself.’’
‘‘That must have been when I started thinking about Mrs. Hammond.’’
We were nearly to the pasture. We led the cows into the field, closed the gate behind them, and walked back to the house. By then we were good and awake, though still tired. Josepha and my papa had come down and were in the kitchen talking, Papa sitting at the table and Josepha bustling away at the counter. The smell of brewing coffee filled the room. Within an hour or two another day in the fields would begin.
Together is All We Need Page 20
