Two of the duties she least enjoyed were the visits she made with Bruce to Priscilla and with Leon to Bessie, but she was conscientious about them. Only to Benjamin and Jane did she admit that she never left the Oglethorpe house in Highboro without anger and the Betchley farm without sadness. Yet once a week she attended both, varying the day and time so that the visits would appear to be less the obligation she considered them.
On the June morning she turned Buster into the road from Bessie’s front yard she sighed her usual relief, and when they made the first turning of the road that put them out of sight of the farmhouse, she settled herself to enjoy the drive and began to hum. Sarah never hummed a tune; the sound was rather her equivalent of a cat’s purring. The sun drew out the mellow leather smell of harness and buggy seat. Red dust rose from Buster’s hooves on the clay road. The week had been a dry one, but the air was clear, and the breeze carried scents of the country morning. She had all but forgotten her great-grandson until he spoke words that told her he was of uneasy mind.
“I feel sorry for her, but I can’t love her.”
“You ought to.”
“Well, I don’t,” he insisted mildly.
“She’s your mother.”
“Yes’m,” he agreed, “but she sold me to Pa.”
“Your father was always your father; there was no buying and selling about that.” The mule set his pace, the red dust rising and floating away as the wind took it. “It was to give you the Davis name legally; the blood was always yours.”
“Was it as simple as you make it sound?”
She smiled. “No. But one day Beulah Land, will come to you, and there can be no question about that now.”
He was thoughtful again. “It was so Gene Betchley couldn’t get at me, wasn’t it?” He put his hand into hers but withdrew it immediately. When he’d first come to live with them at Beulah Land he’d often needed to take his father’s or Sarah’s hand, but now as he went from boyhood through the long years that would bring him to manhood he avoided such gestures except at moments of special need or emotion. His love for Benjamin was absolute, but he’d got it into his head that a show of it was childish.
“What did you and Theodore do while I was visiting your mama in the kitchen?”
“I don’t like him much.”
“You’re as full of judgments this morning as a Baptist preacher.”
“He’s sly.”
“Maybe just shy. He doesn’t see other children now school is out.”
Leon shook his head in disagreement. “If I wasn’t older and bigger than him, he’d try something on me. He tripped me while ago and said he didn’t, but I knew he did.” Leon was quiet a moment. “He showed me a nest with five baby birds in the pecan tree. The mother made a fuss when we climbed up, so I wouldn’t let him touch the bough the nest was on, and he got mad about it.”
A bend of the road brought them face to face with a buggy driven by Eugene Betchley on his way to the farm they had just left. “A beautiful morning!” Sarah called in greeting when the buggies passed. Eugene jerked his head in a kind of bow without answering, and Leon stared into the blackberry bushes bordering the road.
Eugene found his wife drawing a bucket of water at the well in the back yard and thought briefly of the morning he had found her so, after running away from Benjamin Davis and leaving his traps in the woods of Beulah Land. Bessie paused at her task to stare at him, but neither spoke while he wrestled a barrel of feed mash from the back of the buggy into the barn. Returning, he wiped grease from his hands onto the weathered barn door and said he wanted some coffee. Carrying the full bucket, she followed him to the back porch and into the kitchen.
When she’d boiled the coffee and he’d drunk two cups of it, she asked, “Will you be staying the night?”
He looked at her and sucked his teeth. “Don’t see a thing to tempt me.”
Bessie pulled at her dress. “I don’t sit around combed and powdered, waiting for you to happen in.”
“May stay for dinner. Anything fit to eat?”
“I’m cooking some butter beans with a chunk of fatback.”
“Ain’t there no lean meat?” She shook her head. “Then kill a chicken and fry it. I don’t eat here every day.” She nodded as if glad of something to do. “Where’s the nigger at?”
“Hoeing grass out of the corn.” Removing one of the iron eyes of the cookstove, she set a kettle of water directly over the fire.
“Seen old lady Troy and your bastard. They been here, I reckon.” Bessie nodded. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“Didn’t get the chance.”
“What did she want?”
“Visiting as usual. Nobody comes except her, and I don’t go nowhere.”
“Don’t start about wanting to live with me in town, because I ain’t going to let you. Did she bring anything?”
“Pair of stockings too big for her. Nothing secondhand. She’d only tried them on and didn’t like to send them back, she said. Her legs are losing flesh as she gets old, but she don’t want to admit it.”
“Burn the stockings. I won’t have even you wearing their castoffs.”
She set her lips.
“You hear me, woman?”
“After I kill the chicken.”
He started to the door. “Going to check on the nigger. If I find him sitting down gazing at his feet, I’m going to kick the shit out of him.”
She followed him into the yard to see where the chickens had wandered to do their morning scratching. When she’d caught and wrung the neck of one of frying size, she went back into the house to see if the water was hot enough to scald him for plucking. Finding that it was not, she went into the bedroom. After examining them and holding them briefly against her face to feel their softness, she hid the stockings Sarah had given her in the toes of a pair of shoes. Then she slyly put a ragged scrap of an old petticoat into her dress pocket. She’d pop that into the stove when she heard Eugene returning, and he’d think the smell was that of the stockings.
She had browned the chicken pieces and put the lid on the skillet so that they’d cook through when she heard the voices of her husband and their son from the yard. When they did not come in and she had burned the scrap of cloth, she went to the porch to see what they were doing. They were busy with something over by the barn, and she couldn’t tell what it was until she shaded her eyes from the noonday sun. Spying her, Theodore called, “Pa brought me a slingshot one of the millhands made.”
She saw then, clearly. Theodore had taken the bird’s nest from the pecan tree and set the featherless baby birds on a board propped on two old bricks in front of the barn door. Frantic, the mother bird fluttered about them until Theodore shooed her away with his hands. Eugene fitted stones into the leather pouch of the slingshot. Taking careful aim, he said to his son, “This is how,” and splattered the infant birds one after the other against the hard barn door.
13
The hot summer days were upon them and there would be little respite until October other than the occasional storm of thunder and lightning that would astonish their senses and clear the air for only an hour. Everyone complained of the heat, but the young minded it hardly at all and the old kept to their houses with doors opened front and back or set a chair under a leafy tree. Except for the sick, they continued to eat heartily, for the work to be done each day was arduous. The young of both races and sexes went barefoot from April to October, as did many of the adult Negroes, while the adult whites envied them their comfort but did not take their example unless they lived in remoter country areas. There was visiting year-round, but in summer it became epidemic, for someone was always claiming that it was cooler here than there and, “Why don’t you come see us and stay a few days?”
Fanny and Luck had maintained their friendship, but since it was not acceptable for them to stay overnight with each other’s family, Sarah asked Fanny to be Bruce’s guest at Beulah Land for several weeks of June and July. Fanny was grateful, for sh
e loved the country, and she wanted to get away from her mother and stepfather. Blair Three stayed at home because no one asked him to visit, and he was content to flatter James into giving him bits of money and to be spoiled by Annabel in exchange for spying on his mother.
The three young girls often used the Glade as a shady shortcut between Beulah Land and the Elk house, stopping to idle an hour with Nancy if she gave them encouragement. They had been cautioned not to tire her, but they liked her and were curious about her and were sometimes able to tease her into confessions, albeit selective ones. They were much entertained by her manner of talking, which could make the ordinary lively and droll. The boys came to see her too, but less often than the girls, for most of their time was spent in the woods swimming and climbing trees and vines and fishing and exploring. No matter that they knew the woods as well as they knew the barns; there was always something that had changed overnight.
Rosalie had taken regular care of the house in the Glade against the day it would be used again, but she and Nancy left most of the dust-sheeted rooms closed. Because of its convenience to the kitchen, the center of activity for the two women, they turned the dining room into Nancy’s room, Benjamin himself helping them furnish it with a bed and wardrobe. The front and back porches came alive with plants in tubs and boxes. Nancy rescued the flower beds, wanting occasional work to pacify the restlessness of returning strength, and someone or other frequently brought her a root to set, a cutting or shoot to stick into the ground and water. On a trip to Savannah, Benjamin bought a covered hammock, and Zadok rigged it between two trees. Nancy spent many hours there resting and thinking, listening to the wind in the leaves and observing the sociability of birds and squirrels. There was even a family of rabbits that grew tame enough to feed on the farther grass beside the brook in the cool of morning and dusk. Old Mama would appear to be scratched and talked to, and one day a cat named Revelation followed Rosalie from her house, tired of the noise and hazards of living with Rosalie’s grandchildren. After carefully examining the Glade and its inhabitant, Revelation decided to stay. He fancied the hammock as much as Nancy did and, when allowed to, took a position on Nancy’s lap or stomach. Together they were so reclined on an afternoon late in June when Priscilla Davis and Ann Oglethorpe drove their buggy up the winding lane to the Glade house.
Revelation was first to hear their approach and indicated disapproval by flicking his ears and flexing his claws, which brought Nancy awake and to a sitting position. Slipping out of the hammock, she advanced to the buggy, guessing who its passengers were, although it was many years since she had seen Mrs. Oglethorpe, and she had never taken notice of Priscilla. With a polite curtsy she asked if they would get down. Not replying, they did so. Mrs. Oglethorpe slapped the buggy whip which she retained from driving against the top of her shoes. Priscilla said to Nancy, “Where is your master?”
“Mr. Davis, if you mean him, lives down at the big house, not up here, Mrs.”
Mother and daughter exchanged looks. “Who lives here then?” Mrs. Oglethorpe asked abruptly, facing Nancy. “Someone does, from the look of things.” She pointed with the whip, saying to Priscilla, “Look at those petunias, every color you can name. I don’t mind a fern; a fern is quiet and dignified. But petunias! Isn’t it just like a Nigra to have so many colors? Why, there’s a dog. You never used to allow dogs here, and I certainly saw a cat run away when we drove up.”
“You did, Mrs. Oglethorpe,” Nancy said. “The cat’s mine, much as a cat is anybody’s, named Revelation from the Bible.”
“I know where Revelation is, woman. So you know who I am?” She rested the whip on her shoulder, as a soldier shoulders arms.
“Yes, ma’am. Used to see you in town and thereabouts when I lived here as a girl. You were a few years younger too, if you don’t mind my saying so, but take a lady like you, she don’t change much over the years.” To Priscilla she said, “You’ll be Mrs. Ben Davis, I expect.”
“I was—yes, I am.”
“Nobody lives here but me,” Nancy said, “and I live in just a room or two. Rosalie and others are in and out, and Revelation; and that old hound dog that turned away when she saw you is called Old Mama. That’s on account she must have had a hundred or two puppies by now and is old in body if not in spirit. From the look of her dugs she might have mothered half the hound dogs in this county, and it’s a county full of hound dogs.”
“Are you telling us,” Mrs. Oglethorpe said skeptically, “you are allowed free run of the house as if it’s yours?”
“I don’t go poking around in other folks’ things, ma’am. Just in my own room or two.”
“What do you call your room or two?” Mrs. Oglethorpe asked, raising brows to her daughter.
“Well’m, I reckon nothing belongs to me but the air I breathe, and I give that right back again to where it came from.”
Mrs. Oglethorpe studied Nancy as she spoke. “You’re a peculiar woman,” she informed her.
“To some I might seem so, but to me I’m only me. Don’t you feel that way about yourself? If somebody was to come up to you and say, ‘You’re a peculiar woman,’ I bet you wouldn’t be too quick to agree, though there’s some might find you more peculiar than me.” Nancy winked.
“They told us you were sick and dying,” Priscilla said, as if she suspected that fraud was being perpetrated.
“They told a tale.”
“You don’t deny that you are diseased?” Mrs. Oglethorpe asked.
Priscilla began, “Doctor Rolfe’s wife says—”
“Still am,” Nancy admitted. “Consumption. If I commence to cough, you’ll want to stand away from me, for I never know what pus and corruption will be churned up. What we all got inside us is enough to give us bad dreams, and that’s the truth. Times, wouldn’t surprise me to see splinters of wood, way my throat grates. I get better and I get worse. And better again. Today I’m better, but so it goes.”
“All those pockmarks,” Mrs. Oglethorpe observed thoughtfully, “must come from something else. Did you have the fever? They say you were once a— Women of that kind often— Punishment of the Lord.” She turned to confer with her daughter but without lowering her voice. “I find it hard to entirely credit the reports. Surely no man, however depraved, would want such a creature as this one here. I know it is the curse of some men to possess a low animal nature. Even your poor father had an element of it. I had to battle it most earnestly. When it threatened to dominate him, I would pray to our Lord and Savior loud enough to lift the roof and reach His ear. I am thankful to say I was heard.”
“We all heard you, Mama,” Priscilla said without meaning to be facetious. “Elizabeth used to cry and wonder.”
“She should have been proud to hear her mother wrestle with the devil. But I fear she is lost. You, however, have confided some of the horrors of your own marriage bed, so you understand that I am talking about sin and wickedness.” She turned back to Nancy, scrutinizing her face so earnestly that she bent the whip in her hand double. “What have you to say?”
Nancy bowed her head. “I’m only what you see, ma’am, a sickly darky living by myself with a scaredy cat and a hound dog of frail character.”
Priscilla said, “I wonder if she’s a little touched in the head.”
“It may be so,” Mrs. Oglethorpe agreed, smoothing out the whip.
Nancy giggled foolishly, then covered her mouth like a schoolgirl abashed.
“A loony, or putting it on?” Mrs. Oglethorpe speculated.
“They say she gave good service to the family during and after the war. Mrs. Troy was over-tender to her Negroes. She may fancy a reason to show Christian charity where none is deserved.”
“It would not be the first time her actions sprung from bad judgment,” Mrs. Oglethorpe observed sourly. “Mrs. Rolfe says it isn’t certain whether this woman will live or die. With consumption they’ll seem better only to be put to their eternal rest a month later. It’s possible that it affects their minds.” She fr
owned ruthlessly upon Nancy. “You have an uncouth appearance and an ignorant manner of expressing yourself, but, whatever your past misdeeds have been, and I do not imagine they have been insignificant, I cannot believe you offer temptation now to any man.” She pointed to the ground with the whip. “Go down on your knees and ask the Lord to forgive your sins. Then we go, but not until then.”
Nancy sank to her knees, closing her eyes and folding her hands beneath her bowed head.
Benjamin had crept along through the trees intending to surprise Nancy in the hammock but paused to listen when he heard her in conversation and recognized the others present. His mother-in-law’s words, however, compelled him to step forth from the foliage that concealed him. “I am amazed to find you here,” he said to his wife.
Mrs. Oglethorpe started at sight of him, but collecting herself, addressed Priscilla. “I knew something was not right—it was the Lord trying to tell me. They saw us coming and decided upon a ruse. He was to hide and she to put on this crazy behavior to disarm our queries.” She nodded firmly. “That is how it is; mark my words. What we’ve heard is true. If there is one man in the world depraved enough to keep such a creature about him for loathsome purposes, that man is your husband, Benjamin Davis!”
Priscilla said to Benjamin, “They’ve told us in town of this woman living here. They say she was one of the low, selling herself to any who would buy her in Savannah. Is it so?”
The Legacy of Beulah Land Page 28
