The Legacy of Beulah Land

by Lonnie Coleman

  “Something to think about.” Sarah knew better than to press. The idea had been given and accepted and she knew it. She rose from her chair. “I’ve about dried out, but I must smell of tomatoes. Better get home to Mr. Troy before he wonders if I went to join the gypsies.”

  Bessie followed her to the shaded horse and buggy. “You been a help, Miss Sarah, as always.”

  Sarah adjusted the bridle and straightened the reins. When left to stand where there were flies, her horse was a head shaker and tail switcher. Climbing into the buggy with her back to Bessie, she observed as if it were an afterthought, “Leon can stay with us while you’re gone—if you decide you want to go. Jane’s boys will be glad to have him.” She took up the reins.

  As the horse maneuvered the buggy across the shallow depression between yard and road, Bessie called, “Did you mean that fifty dollars, Miss Sarah?”

  “I did.”

  23

  Cant notwithstanding, it is as wholesome to eavesdrop as it is unnatural not to; and if the talk is about oneself, it may also provide instruction in survival. Leon had been asleep for an hour when his mother’s voice and Eugene Betchley’s laughter from the kitchen woke him. They were talking about Beulah Land and Sarah Troy. He knew she had been to the farm that afternoon; his mother had teased him at supper for missing her visit by going to the creek. He did not very much enjoy swimming by himself, but he did so every day because he knew that Eugene had never learned how and resented his doing it. He would do anything to aggravate Eugene, including calling him Eugene instead of Gene, which he preferred. He was drowsing again when he heard his name spoken. A few minutes later Eugene came into the bedroom with his mother, and their low voices indicated that they believed him asleep on the bed he used to share with his grandmother.

  “You know you don’t come in here,” Bessie said.

  “That was before I heard about my young’un. Fifty dollars! Never expected a Kendrick to pay me for my fucking.”

  “Better go.”

  “He’s asleep.”

  “She’s not a Kendrick, she’s Troy. Before that, Kendrick; and before that, I don’t recall her family name.”

  “Don’t matter,” Eugene said. “Females are whatever their men-folk are. Like you’ll be Bessie Betchley.”

  “Haven’t said, have I?”

  “You better, after I’ve give my back to this farm—”

  “Give your front somewheres else, didn’t you?”

  He snickered with her.

  Leon’s eyes were closed, and his back was to them, but presently his mother said, “Now stop it and go to your bed in the barn.”

  “Not unless you come with me.”

  “I like my own.”

  “You like mine sometimes,” he wooed her.

  “I’m tired and got things to think about.”

  “You got nothing to think about,” he said, “except fifty dollars and my baby in your belly. She’s a fool giving us fifty dollars now because she didn’t do right when you had him.”

  Leon lay rigid under the coarse gray sheet.

  “She’s not giving fifty dollars to us; she’s giving it to me.”

  “I still don’t know how come.”

  “Him.”

  “Him?”

  Leon figured them to be looking at him. He wanted to turn over or rub one foot with the other but made himself lie still.

  Bessie said, “Looks like Ben ain’t going to have any boys he can call his. Makes Leon special to them, don’t you see?”

  “That little dirt dauber,” Eugene said in exasperation. “You tell me—”

  Bessie yawned loudly. “You go to bed like I said.”

  “If they’re willing to give fifty dollars to keep him for us to go to Savannah, how much you reckon they’d give to keep him forever?”

  “I’m not giving him to them,” Bessie said.

  “I didn’t say give. How much would they pay?”

  After a moment Bessie said tersely, “Good much, I expect, and you can forget about it.”

  “It’s something to wonder. No need to spring the trap yet, is there? Wait for them to come beg. Of course, if old Ben put another young’un into that Sunday girl he’s married to, it might turn out a boy and they’d stop wanting this’n.”

  “I said forget it and go on to your room.”

  “I got a right here now we’re to marry.”

  “You got no rights I don’t give.”

  “I’m going nowhere.”

  No one spoke until Bessie whispered, “He’ll wake up.”

  “He’s just a young’un.”

  “I don’t care, I don’t want him hearing us.”

  “Maybe he’ll learn something. Has to find out somehow. Way I did hearing Ma and Pa. Remember waking my brother up to listen, and he tried to do it to me between the legs.”

  “Sh. I don’t think he’s asleep.” His mother’s whisper was betrayal, and he hated her even more when she continued in a coaxing tone, “Leon, are you awake?” There was a sound of cloth ripping. “Look what you done.”

  “Take it off.”

  “Won’t you go like I said, honey?”

  “No.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “Naw, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do,” she crooned coyly.

  Leon longed to be a grown man. He would kill them both.

  Eugene murmured, “I like knowing my sprout is in here. Let’s wake him up.” Bessie giggled and was quiet. Then she drew her breath hard, and Leon heard bed motion and knew what they were doing. He wanted to holler at them to stop, but he began to cry, keeping as quiet as he could. By then it wouldn’t have mattered to them if they’d known he was awake.

  24

  With a nod to propriety, but mainly for her own convenience, Bessie March married Eugene Betchley the day before they were to travel together to Savannah. Having long and sometimes bitterly considered the subject of marriage, Bessie viewed it now only as a thing to get done. On the last Sunday of September, between hot noon dinner and cold evening supper, the couple went by wagon to Preacher Paul’s country church. The only witnesses were Leon, Sarah and Casey Troy, and the preacher’s wife, Ona. Eugene did not want his father and brother, and Bessie did not want anyone at all; but she could not bar Miss Ona, and Sarah had insisted upon being present with Leon. Bessie would not allow Casey to photograph them because her pregnancy showed but said he might pose them at the station before they boarded the train, if he was intent on it, and she would hold her cloak in front of her.

  After the ceremony, which was as plain as the funeral of Mrs. Marsh, Sarah asked if Leon might go to Beulah Land with her and Casey. Bessie said that tomorrow was soon enough. Sarah had not yet given her the money; until it was in her hand she would withhold the boy. He wasn’t, however, obliged to hear the raptures of the wedding night, for there were none. When Eugene reached for her as his by right, she slapped him away, declaring that she had no intention of getting sweaty again after her bath. She had not bathed for the wedding, but as soon as supper was over, she filled a washtub on the kitchen floor and sent Leon out of the house. She then took off her clothes and scrubbed herself. When she was done, she ordered Eugene to wash himself in the same water and then to pour the dirty mess over the bare floor, which, she said, needed a douse as much as he did.

  The three rose early next morning, and Otis arrived on foot before they’d finished breakfast. Sarah had sent him over the week before to learn his duties. It had been settled that he would stay at the farm while they were away, sleeping in the barn. Bessie had agreed to the arrangement reluctantly and only because she was afraid lightning would strike in her absence and burn everything down. Eugene thought he would like being able to say in Savannah that they “had a nigger on the place tending to things.” By eight o’clock they were dressed in their best for traveling, and Bessie packed their other clothes in the carpetbag Sarah had given Leon. Leon put his own things into a basket to carry to Beulah Land.

>   Eugene hitched mule to wagon, and off they rode in silence. Otis had nothing to say, for Benjamin had warned him that Mr. Betchley and his bride might be uneasy with colored people. Leon was content to think of Beulah Land. To be sure of two weeks there was like a promise of life everlasting. Bessie and Eugene were mute with anticipation of their train journey and determination not to bend before the Negro man. Eugene drove the wagon, Bessie beside him. Otis sat with Leon behind them on the floor of the wagon.

  Dreaming of tomorrow and tomorrow, Leon became aware that Otis was studying him in a friendly way. He smiled. “How’ve you been, Uncle Otis?”

  “Tolerable,” Otis replied. “How ’bout you?”

  “Tolerable, I thank you.”

  His eyes on the child’s face, Otis said with artless admiration, “You sure remind me of Mister.”

  Leon’s finger went to his lips in a silencing gesture.

  “Oh-oh.” Otis was chastened for only a moment before he smiled again. Smile broadened to laughter without sound. Infected, the boy copied him. “You mawking me!” Otis accused. Man and boy shook their shoulders and rocked on their haunches with conspiratorial laughter as the two in front of them sat stiff as fence posts.

  They arrived at the station long before the train was due, but Sarah and Casey were there before them, as was a substantial representation of the families of the town and county. A modest crowd was a feature of the hour before train time twice a day in Highboro. Even if no letter, no visitor, no returning relative was expected, it was thought that someone should be there to observe and to relay what he had seen. If the crowd this morning was larger than usual, it was because word had spread of an additional diversion that might be expected, and of Sarah Troy’s part in it. Eugene had told Alf Crawford, who had told everyone else. The day was fair; the mood of those promenading cheerful and curious. The only frown was that of Brian Sullivan, who had enjoyed the favors of Bessie Marsh in exchange for shopping credit. He came out of his groceries-and-dry-goods store to glower and shake his head and to ask what the world was coming to when pigs were encouraged to fly. It happened that the only one in earshot was an idling Negro woman, who looked startled at being so addressed but laughed heartily to show her agreeableness. Mr. Sullivan retreated to his barrels of flour and bolts of calico, leaving events to go forward as they would.

  On the station platform Sarah’s eyebrows lifted as she recognized the carpetbag, but she greeted Bessie and Eugene with the kind of brisk kindness she used to keep a distance between herself and people she did not care about but was determined to treat fairly. Casey presented train tickets to Eugene, who put them into his pocket and bowed as importantly as a senator. Benjamin appeared to congratulate the couple, not on their marriage, which might have seemed tactless, but on their imminent journey, which he was certain they would enjoy, recommending particular sights to their attention and the names of eating houses that had given him satisfaction in the past. Summoned by Bessie, Otis returned to the platform to promise again to honor the instructions given him many times over concerning the farm and the care of its creatures. When he had done, Sarah told him he might go back to the farm with mule and wagon. If Mrs. Betchley had no further errand or use for them? Bessie allowed that she had not, and Otis went his way with a sigh of relief.

  Against her instincts, which were always to relieve and reassure, Sarah waited deliberately until Casey had posed the nervous couple and taken their photograph. By then a number of the strollers and idlers had paused on the platform to observe the central group. Sarah decided that was the moment to open her reticule and bring out the rolled bills she had counted when she took them from her office desk. With no reticence, as if she were merely an honest woman paying a debt, she said, “Here you are, Bessie Betchley. I said I’d give you fifty dollars, and I’m going to. I assure you these greenbacks are good as gold. Hold out your hand.”

  Bessie did so, as matter of fact as the donor. Of those watching, none watched more closely than Eugene Betchley. “Ten, twenty,” Sarah counted, “thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty dollars. Just as I promised. Do you want to count it back to me, or are you satisfied?”

  “I counted with you,” Bessie confirmed, “and I didn’t miss, though I never counted so high since I learned in school.”

  The little crowd laughed with the appreciation they might accord a sally by a favorite in a play, which encouraged Eugene to guffaw with sheer pride in having a wife who, although old, had brought him a farm and fifty dollars.

  Annabel Saxon and her two daughters-in-law had been parading the platform awaiting the train they expected would bring them letters. They paused now as Annabel proclaimed archly to Sarah, “Some fools and their money are soon parted.”

  “While others and theirs are never cleft,” Sarah replied in a parody of archness. Prudence giggled; Frankie smiled.

  Annabel shook her head as if at so many gnats, saying to Bessie, “There are wicked people in Savannah ready to snatch the purses of ignorant country folk.”

  “They’ll not snatch mine, Mrs. Saxon, for I shall sew it to my dress every morning with stout thread.”

  “See that you spend your dowry wisely,” Annabel advised.

  “A dollar is as slow leaving my hand as it is coming to it.”

  There were titters from the nearer women.

  “That’s all I have to say to you, Bessie Marsh.”

  “Betchley now,” Bessie corrected her.

  “To be sure,” Annabel agreed, “and not too soon either.” She stared at Bessie’s belly before turning to Leon, who stood between his mother and Sarah Troy. “You, boy. Will you be known to us hence as Leon Betchley and call him,” she nodded toward Eugene, “Pa?”

  Sarah opened her mouth to protest, but before she found words, Frankie Saxon said, “You forget the boy has a papa; haven’t you, Leon?”

  “So he has,” Benjamin said, emerging from the background where discretion had drawn him after his earlier words to the couple.

  Far from feeling embarrassed, Leon was glad to hear himself acknowledged publicly. Nor had he been shamed at the notion of being bought and sold; it was rather as if his freedom had been paid for. The exchange of money demonstrated that he had a value in all their eyes, and when the whistle sounded, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for Benjamin to lift his son to his shoulder to watch the train come in.

  Although it had long been part of their lives, no one considered that the train had become common. They came every day to look at it as they might marvel at any other wonderful thing, except that the train was unique in being personal to each of them. There was always the possibility, however unlikely, of its bringing a message from the bigger world, an item of wear or amusement with one’s name on it to indicate that far away it had been so intended. Those not leaving or arriving, nor there to say hail or farewell to others, yet felt that another time might find them the object of the conductor’s attention, the focal point of eyes on both sides of the train windows. Steam hissed, to vanish in air; pistons churned, and the great wheels slowed. Tomorrow or next week any of them might step up and aboard, to step down again in the great world of Savannah, and from there go anywhere.

  When the train stopped, passengers and mail and barrels of goods were given up and collected. Casey Troy helped to settle the Betchleys in their seats, and Leon stared through the window as if an ocean now divided him from them. The train started again with a creaking of iron and a leaking of water. Sarah Troy moved with it along the platform and waved; so did others. Those on the train, all strangers now and united, waved back; and then it was gone, leaving the crowd lonely for it, without reason to linger, and so they dispersed. (Perhaps another morning would bring, since this one had not, the waited word, the gift from the world yonder to surprise and delight one alone and particular.)

  “Let’s go home,” Sarah said with satisfaction.

  25

  Mabella was at the door
when the family group returned from Highboro, Sarah and Casey in their buggy, Benjamin trotting his horse alongside them, Leon in front of the saddle. With arms wide and a royal curtsy, Mabella welcomed her favorite; but as he slid down the horse’s side and acknowledged her greeting, Josephine appeared to tell her to get her uppity butt back to the kitchen. Sarah commended Josephine with a nod, because she wanted the boy’s stay at Beulah Land to be treated as a normal occurrence, not an event for celebration. For the same reason Benjamin went to his house in the Glade to take his noon meal, and Jane had warned her sons to stay at home until Leon came to find them. However, an Indian raid could not have prevented Mabella’s making Leon a chocolate pie, because she knew he preferred it to all other desserts. It was perfect, with thick, black chocolate and an egg meringue so high and golden it made Josephine’s eyes narrow, particularly as Mabella had made a secret of it and chose to present it immediately after Josephine had brought into the dining room her own offering of walnut cake. Setting it before him, Mabella whispered to Leon to share it with no one. Noting by his expression that he was disposed to follow her advice, Sarah cut a quarter of it for him and set the remainder on a shelf of the screened food safe for him to request as he pleased, which he was to do at the end of supper that evening and again before he went to bed, when he drank two glasses of milk. He took the last quarter at breakfast after consuming a piece of fried steak, three biscuits, and a helping of grits and gravy. He was like his father in more than the facial resemblance Otis had remarked.

  When he went to see Bobby Lee and Davy after noon dinner, they took him around to show him how everything had changed since he’d been there. That was four weeks ago to spend a couple of hours while his mother drove the wagon to town and back. Paths will waver, however slightly. Flowers fade or come on new. Last month’s frying-sized chicken, having escaped the skillet, flutters to the fence to practice his crowing. Everything on a farm grows or dies; nothing is constant. Bobby Lee knew two new riddles, but before Leon could try to guess them, Davy told him the answers. One thing had not altered. The weather was still sunny and hot, and the three boys and their two fathers enjoyed a swim in the creek toward the end of the day. Returning to the big house, they discovered Jane and Sarah in rocking chairs on the shady side of the porch.