A Peach For Big Jim

by Lisa Belmont

  The mud was up to my ankles as I waded back to shore. I felt my heart beating faster than the way them swallows flew across the swamp. Caleb always told me that cattails mean peace and that’s what I wanted. Peace.

  My hand was trembling a little as I went up to Big Jim and handed it to him. I was surprised he took it so easily, holding it like it was an olive branch he didn’t know what to do with. I felt two hundred years of South Carolina history bursting at the seams.

  If I ever catch him so much as lookin’ at Chloe, Pa swore last night, I’ll make sure it’s the last thing he sees.

  I didn’t know how to make amends for all the thoughts running through my head. They weren’t mine, but still, I’d carried them a long way, so I figured I had to do something with them.

  “You didn’t have to save me, Big Jim. But you did, and I’m real grateful,” I said, giving voice to the one thing that was strongest in me.

  Big Jim had a gap-toothed smile that liked to shine brighter than Caleb’s lantern, but I noticed he wasn’t smiling. I was kinda hoping he would. I wanted him to say, You’re welcome, Miss Chloe or There wasn’t nothing to it.

  But he didn’t say any of those things. He just held that cattail, like a hot dog on a stick, bobbing it in the water.

  I got so exasperated, waiting for him to look at me or say something, that I crossed my arms.

  “Ain’t got nothin’ to say?” I said, getting more irritated by the minute. “I came all the way down here to give you that gall-darn cattail and this is how you treat me? Won’t even give me the courtesy of a ‘hello’?”

  Big Jim looked up at me with those pitiful brown eyes, the kind that ain’t got no meanness to them. I uncrossed my arms and felt like we were standing on a ledge, ready to fall into something muckier than swamp mud.

  “I was hopin’ you wasn’t gonna be mad.”

  “Mad?” I said, surprised at the way his voice sounded. It wasn’t as coarse as I thought it’d be. It was melodious and deep, sort of like Nat King Cole’s.

  “Why would I be mad?”

  “Cuz,” he pointed. “That sign says no Negroes allowed.”

  I looked in the direction of the sign. It was made of rickety wood and had been there a coon’s age. Joss Bleekman had put it up to scare folk. He didn’t own the property, but he liked to think he did. He was always making Mills Hollow out to be his. He even had a slave auction poster hanging up at the sawmill that advertised the sale of 250 Negroes in Charles-Town. The poster said: The utmost care has already been taken, and shall be continued, to keep these Negro slaves free from the least danger of being infected with the smallpox.

  That poster was from way back in 1789. A cargo of fine, healthy men, women, boys and girls, it said. Some of the slaves were sold to Joss’s ancestors. I wondered if Big Jim’s folks had been on that same boat from the rice coast of Africa. Sometimes, it didn’t seem like much had changed since those days. Here was Big Jim, still acting like he’s one of them slaves.

  “Widow Jones owns this land, Big Jim. She ain’t put up that sign.”

  “She ain’t?”

  “No,” I said, feeling a certain compassion rise up in me.

  I wondered what it must be like to be Big Jim. To feel inferior and know that even though Presidents have signed your freedom, you still ain’t free.

  “Widow Jones got powerful mad at Puddingtate for looking at her peach tree,” Big Jim said. “He’s the one who told me about the sign. Wouldn’t want to make her mad.”

  “You ain’t making Widow Jones mad. She likes you.”

  “She does?”

  “Yes, she told me herself. So, you ain’t gotta be feeling guilty for coming down here no more.”

  He looked out over the water, real serious like, and took it in. His expression softened, and he smiled, like something withheld had been given. Sometimes I think that was the look I was needing. Something that’d give me cause to rise up early and forge through muddy swamp water, no matter how many gators I had to face.

  I wondered if that’s what it was like for Briscoe Mason when he was fighting them Union Soldiers. Pa said he was willing to risk everything for the South. And that’s what he did. He got shot at Manassas and his leg turned gangrene. Pa said he got liquored up on whiskey before the doctor amputated it. That didn’t stop him none, though. He kept on fighting, through snow and rain, through cold and hunger. Most of his men had bloody stumps, whether an arm or a leg, but there wasn’t nothing that stopped Briscoe Mason from fighting for the South. Not until he got to Gettysburg. It was raining some, Pa said, and Briscoe was rallying his men when he was shot in the back by a sharpshooter.

  “Bloody cowards them Union soldiers,” Pa said. “Shootin’ him in the back like he’s a runaway slave.”

  Apparently, Briscoe’s men came to his side and said his last words were “Never surrender the South.”

  I think that summed up his life. He wasn’t never gonna quit.

  A branch from a decaying cypress broke from its trunk and fell in the water. It’d probably been there a long time. The tree was blacker than soot, just waiting to fall apart. I think that’s how everything was starting to feel, like things that’d been around a long time were near to collapsing.

  I looked over at Big Jim. Even though he was only sixteen, his hands were bigger than Pa’s, and his skin shone like blackstrap molasses. I figured it was the heat.

  He looked up at me with eyes as soft as them marshmallows that Caleb and I’d roast over hot coals. All at once, I realized I wouldn't mind sitting down with Big Jim and having a chat by the fire. Or putting on a kettle of sweet tea and frying up some hush puppies. It was a shame, I realized, that I was the only one in my family who’d ever said more than two words to him.

  “You come down here often?”

  “Yessum. It’s good fishin’.”

  “You ain’t afraid of them gators?”

  “No,” he said looking toward the cattails waving in the breeze. “I stay outta their way, and they stay outta mine.”

  I reckon that’s how Big Jim lived. Staying outta folks’ way.

  “Don’t it get lonely down here? All by yourself?”

  “No, ma’am. I gets to rest. Ain’t nothing more restful than the swamp.”

  I’d never heard anyone talk about Foxhole Swamp like that before. It was downright frightening to most folks. Not only was there a bona fide ghost that’d been seen on more than one occasion – and not just by Uncle Hickory after a bottle of moonshine – but there were water moccasins and copperheads. Lord, them snakes had more venom than you could shake a stick at. Not to mention them spiders. I nearly walked into a black widow’s web once when Caleb and I were looking for turkey tracks down by the water. No, sir. I’d never liked the swamp.

  But Big Jim wasn’t like most folks. That was getting clearer than a field of harvested tobacco.

  “Closest I usually like to get to a swamp is in my books,” I said.

  “Yessum,” Big Jim said, swirling the cattail so that it made little ripples in the water. “You like to read?”

  “I sure do. Mostly the classics cuz Miss Lilly teaches them real good. Pride and Prejudice is my favorite, then Great Expectations. I like to read about all them faraway places.”

  Everything got real quiet, and I said, “You like to read?”

  “No,” Big Jim said, lifting the cattail from the water. “Can’t read.”

  “Don’t you go to school?”

  “No.”

  “What about the colored school on Ashford?”

  “They say I’m too feebleminded.”

  Feebleminded meant you were dumber than a hollow log. Big Jim didn’t exactly strike me that way, though. He seemed real good at certain things.

  “Here, Miss Chloe,” he said, catching a mudfish and handing it to me like it was a real prize.

  I held the fish in my hand and watched it flop before going limp. Flies buzzed all around us and Big Jim said, “I wish I could read like you, Miss Chloe
. More than anything.”

  “Even more than candy from Uncle Hickory’s store or baseball cards like Caleb’s always collecting?”

  “Yessum,” he said. “More than all them things put together.”

  Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.

  Proverbs 3:27 KJV

  Chapter Eight

  I left Big Jim when it started to rain. I just let them big drops hit me without even caring. Granny always said that sitting under Spanish moss made you think better, so I pulled the eerie moss from an oak tree and draped it around my shoulders.

  I hoped it was true because there was nothing stranger than feeling like you did the right thing but feeling all torn up about it. Pa would skin me alive if he knew I’d sat with Big Jim down at the swamp.

  I held the net of moss snugly around my shoulders, remembering how Pa told me the legend when I was a little girl.

  “Why do they call it Spanish moss?” I’d asked.

  “Well, Buttercup,” he said, setting me on his knee. “There was once a Spanish pirate with a long flowing beard who wanted to marry a maiden. He chased her to a tree, but she climbed up into the branches. The pirate tried to climb after her, but the maiden jumped in the water and swam away. The pirate wasn’t going to lose his fair maiden, so he jumped in after her. When he did, his long flowing beard got caught in the branches. He pulled out a knife and cut himself free, leaving his flowing beard behind. To this day you can see Spanish moss from the pirate’s beard all over South Carolina.”

  I wondered if that’s how things started. A folktale here, a story there, and people started believing what they’d been told. I could feel it as I walked past the decaying wood sign that read NO NEGROES ALLOWED. That’s what we’d been told all our lives. Me and Caleb. You just stay away from them colored folk.

  The Bleekmans certainly held onto that belief. Joss Bleekman’s great-granddaddy was friends with Jefferson Davis at West Point and even conspired with him in the Eggnog Riot of 1826. The riot occurred on Christmas Eve at the Military Academy when several cadets were caught smuggling whiskey into the barracks to make eggnog for a party. Joss Bleekman’s great-granddaddy – along with nearly seventy other cadets, including Jefferson Davis – was implicated in the riot and put on house arrest.

  That didn’t keep Joss’s great-granddaddy from fighting for the South years later when Jefferson Davis was elected President of the Confederacy. That cause was greater than anything he’d ever known. Greater than what Pa and Joss could even put into words. It was something that ran deeper than hog gristle on a ham bone, you might say.

  When I got back to the garden, the turnip basket was gone. I went inside and found Momma chopping up carrots and stirring them into pork stew.

  “Ain’t no good to leave all them turnips for the crows.”

  Momma loved all animals, except crows. They went after little baby birds, sometimes eating them right out of the nest. Even ol’ Rufus wasn’t immune. They’d dive-bomb him from the roof and he’d take off howling like his tail was on fire.

  “Caleb says he’s going coonin’ later. You want to go with him?” Momma said, handing me a potato to slice.

  “No, thanks.”

  It wasn’t like me. I was always wanting to go with Caleb.

  “You got your mind on something, Miss Chloe?”

  Momma put her arm around me, and I didn’t even try to hide the fact that I liked it, even though Caleb said only babies hugged their mommas.

  “You remember Pa’s cousin, Doyle?” I asked, finally.

  “The one who’s feebleminded?”

  “He ever learn to read?”

  “Why, shore,” she said, sprinkling salt and pepper in the stew. “He works up at a little store in Asheville.”

  “How come they taught him? I mean, didn’t they think he’s too dumb?”

  “No, he could do some figuring and some reading,” Momma said. “A man ain’t hardly a man if he can’t read, Chloe.”

  Momma’s words got to ringing in my head. It didn’t seem right the colored school on Ashford wouldn’t teach Big Jim. It got me thinking maybe they’re the feebleminded ones.

  I started figuring what Miss Lilly said might apply to me, too. “If you want a job done well, then do it yourself.”

  It seemed I owed Big Jim that much. He’d risked his life to save me from that mean, old gator. The least I could do was teach him to read.

  “When’re we going to Widow Jones’ again?” I asked Momma.

  “Next week,” she said, stirring the stew. “And Widow Jones has a surprise for you.”

  “What is it?” I said, my eyes getting bigger than persimmons.

  “Can’t tell.”

  I hoped it wasn’t gonna be another one of them Emily Post books. The thought got me all tuckered out just thinking about it, but at least I had my little plan in place. Next week, when we went to Widow Jones’, I was gonna borrow some of the picture books in the easy reader section of her library. They’d be just the kind of books that’d help Big Jim learn to read.

  The following Wednesday, Momma and I walked through the swamp. I was glad someone had removed the poster from the willow oak. It gave me the willies just to think about a lynching.

  Hattie Mae greeted us at the door, and we were immediately enveloped in the scent of white gardenias. Widow Jones had potters on either side of her entryway that Puddingtate kept blooming real good.

  I wanted to make a quick getaway to the library, but Hattie Mae said, “Widow Jones is in the parlor. Best not keep her waiting.”

  I made the long journey down the wood-paneled hall. I couldn’t help but wonder if Widow Jones was gonna be upset that I’d let her hat get ruined. Caleb had fished it out of Foxhole Swamp, but the lavender ribbon had turned a hideous ashen color, and the whole thing smelled like rotten fish.

  Widow Jones was sitting on one of her fancy French sofas doing a cross-stitch of a little white church. She had on a butter-colored dress with ribbon embroidery in a honeycomb pattern. I thought them bees better not see her or they’ll think they’ve missed the hive. Not to mention, the little pillbox hat she was wearing. It was a buttery color with one of them delicate black-netted veils. It made her violet-blue eyes appear real mysterious when she looked up.

  “Come in, honey,” she said when she saw me standing in the doorway.

  She patted the cushion beside her, and I took a seat. I couldn’t place the scent she was wearing, but I figured it came from one of the fancy bottles she had on her vanity. She must’ve had every fragrance imaginable from them high-end stores in Charleston.

  “I’m real sorry about your hat, ma’am.”

  “Don’t worry about my hat, Chloe,” she said, giving me a little squeeze. “Your momma told me you fell in the swamp. I’m glad nothing happened to you.”

  “Widow Jones,” I said.

  “Yes, honey?”

  I wanted to tell her. I really did, but I knew I couldn’t. Pa’d whup my hide and Big Jim’s both if he knew we’d been together down at the swamp. It wouldn’t have mattered that he saved me from a gator. All that mattered was that – just like in Miss Priscilla and Moses’ day – Big Jim and I shouldn’t have had a thing to do with one another. No, sir. It was hopeless to tell anyone.

  I looked up at the chandelier, hoping it’d give me some answers. Pa talked about the chandeliers that Briscoe Mason had at Rosehill, and I wondered if they looked like this one. It had a gleaming silver finish with teardrop crystals that dangled from long sparkling strands of diamond-shaped beads. I counted twelve mock candles that I bet lit up the whole room at night. I’d never seen anything like it. It sure beat the heck out of them naked bulbs we had in our shotgun house.

  Sometimes I wondered what it must be like to be Widow Jones. To live in a home with crown molding and inlaid hardwoods that were milled just for Whitehall Plantation. To know slaves used to get the fires going and the bedpans changed. To look out across the grou
nds and imagine the field hands that once carried sacks around their necks for picking cotton. It was a strange feeling, all that past that seemed to echo in the halls.

  Her clocks got going real good and made a ruckus. I kept thinking about what Widow Jones said. How they reminded her what was important. Maybe that’s what I needed. A loud clock to drown out all them voices so that I could hear my own.

  “Momma said you had a surprise for me,” I said, finally.

  Widow Jones looked at me through her netted veil like she knew I had some secrets of my own and said, “Chloe Jane, I wanted to ask you if you’d like to come work for me.”

  “Me? Work at Whitehall?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard about your pa and figured it might help. You could help your momma do the laundry and help Hattie Mae do the cooking.”

  I didn’t have to think twice. I nearly knocked Widow Jones over hugging her and telling her I was the happiest girl on earth. A few extra dollars a week would mean new shoes and maybe even one of the velvet dresses I’d seen in a Christmas catalog. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things I’d buy.

  Widow Jones walked me down the hall and we told Momma the good news. She was putting some clothes in Widow Jones’ Maytag washer. I got so envious every time I’d see how easy it was for that washing machine to launder them clothes that I’d wish Pa would get a decent job so we could buy one. Widow Jones’ washer would move them clothes around in that sudsy water real good and Momma would pull them through the wringer. It wasn’t nothing like getting out the lye soap and scrubbing all them clothes on a washboard.

  “You can start by helping your momma. It’s laundry day and she’s got lots of work to do.”

  “Yessum,” I said, feeling real happy that I got to get started right away. I’d be getting me a new dress in no time.

  Momma and I went through all of Widow Jones’ laundry from her rayon undies to her washable print blouses. I’d never seen so many clothes in my life. I was lucky to get a new dress for Easter Sunday.