The Legacy of Beulah Land

by Lonnie Coleman

  “I wish he had!”

  “You’d have abused him the rest of your life.”

  “I didn’t want to bother you, Sarah, but Pearl made me see there was nothing else we might do. I even considered the stage again, but—”

  “Pearl is right.”

  “I’m so glad you think so.” Lauretta brightened. “You say I’ve done right by coming?”

  “Of course.”

  “Wherever I’ve been, I’ve always known that you were here to catch me if I fell. You and Beulah Land, a haven.” Lauretta rose from her chair and went to look out the window. Presently she said in a strained voice, “There is Jane, dressed as if she’s going to town. I wonder if she’d have time to look for suitable buttons—” When she broke off, Sarah knew she was crying, though her back was to the room. “It’s so awful to be old and poor.”

  Sarah rose stiffly and went to her. “None of us can avoid getting old. As for ‘poor,’ you’ve come home, and you’ve no need to think yourself poor.”

  “I haven’t paid Pearl for a year.”

  “She will be paid,” Sarah promised.

  “I wish—I hate knowing they laugh at me up there and say to each other, ‘I told you so.’”

  “I’ll have Benjamin write to the lawyers.”

  “If you will only tell me when we may settle accounts, I’ll write to them myself.”

  “Let Benjamin do it. They’ll do things properly if they see they’re dealing with a man.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. I’d hoped we needn’t tell anyone else about it.”

  “Benjamin is master of Beulah Land. Nothing happens here without his knowledge.”

  “I thought you owned it all. One should never give away to children; if you do, they’ll treat you like a child.”

  “Good of you to advise me.”

  Lauretta laughed uncertainly and blew her nose. “I feel better. They say confession is good for the soul.”

  “Let’s go ask Jane about buttons.”

  9

  Frankie entered the sawmill office to find Eugene behind the desk staring with concentration at nothing. “What are you doing?”

  She had surprised him, and like a woods animal, he hated being surprised. “What does it look like?” He raised the revolver he held on his lap and aimed it at her head.

  She hesitated only a moment. “Go ahead. That would make your score three—that I know. I don’t count the darky you found with your wife, or say you found.”

  “You make bad jokes.” He blew his breath into the barrel tip, spun the bullet chamber with a flourish, and laid the revolver on its side in a desk drawer.

  “Like the time I walked in to find you fooling with yourself. You jumped like a little boy caught.” She laughed shortly and took two ledgers from the shelf behind the desk.

  “Better than fooling with your old bones.”

  “I bless the day I decided on separate rooms,” she said.

  “I get what I want.”

  She sat down at a side table and opened both ledgers flat, her back to him. “I don’t mind your nigger sluts.”

  “It’s only one until her tricks grow familiar—the way yours did. Then I have a new one. That’s a thing about this county—always a crop of poontang coming ripe, no matter the season or whether it rains or shines. They all like to feel a peter between their legs, or wherever I put it. I do it all whichaways, from the front, from the back, between the tits—you sing it, Mrs., I’ll dance to it.” She turned pages in a ledger, checking the arrival date of an order for cypress boarding against its delivery date. She might have forgotten him, but it suited him that morning not to let her do so. “For all your I-don’t-care, I reckon you miss it sometimes. I know I do it good; women can’t help let me know. Some squall like dying calves.”

  “Contrary to your country-boy thinking, women don’t enjoy that kind of talk.”

  His face assumed a laughter grimace, but he didn’t make a sound. He allowed her to turn a few more pages in the ledger before he said, “I wonder what Priscilla Davis would be like.”

  “Why don’t you ask her husband?” She closed both ledgers but continued to sit with her back to him, studying a wall calendar. “Are you thinking of wooing her to take my place? It occurs to me, not for the first time, that you make a habit of following after Ben Davis.”

  “Miss Priscilla is naught to me but a funnel for town opinion. She’s got nothing to tempt me.”

  Frankie faced her chair toward him, crossing her legs and swinging a foot in a way she knew irritated him. “No money, no property to speak of, and a vile old crow of a mother.” She nodded. “Besides, she has a husband. You might get away with killing me, although someone would be bound to remark on the coincidence in your luck; but Ben wouldn’t be as obliging as his father was.”

  He smiled at her. “Which did you like better, father or son?”

  “If it’s comparisons you want, you come a poor third.”

  “Not everybody has your experience. My own preference is for virgins.”

  “I’m surprised you know any.”

  “I do though. Got my eye on one in particular, a sweet and pretty heifer right down the hall from where I sleep.”

  She rose and came slowly toward him, her head trembling on her neck as she sought to control herself. “Don’t you dare think of her.”

  He winked. “Protective mother or jealous wife? Or only scared it’d drop her price when you’re ready to sell her to Beulah Land? Something in that. Davis men don’t always marry to get their stuff, as you know.”

  She returned to the side table and began to leaf through a letter file. “What is the gun for?”

  “I’m getting some convict help.”

  “We talked about it and decided not to. The town would be against it, to say nothing of our own men. I’m not sure they’d work with convicts; are you?”

  “They’re coming tomorrow, a dozen with a guard. We feed them slops twice a day and give a few dollars to the state. More money for us. That ought to appeal to you.”

  “Can we risk it?”

  “I stand good with people, better than you. If I tell them I have to hire such because the mill’s hard up, they’ll accept it.”

  “What kind of men will they be?”

  “Niggers mainly, a white or two—but they’d only put the worst in with niggers.”

  “Our men won’t stand for it.”

  “They’ll have to. I’m sending the big gang from here today up to my high thousand acres to cut pine and set turpentine troughs. They’ll be there a week before they start hauling down; and when they get back, they’ll find the convict gang. I’ll play it poor mouth, say I had to have help in a hurry with them gone and special orders. If they don’t like it, they can quit, and I’ll get me another gang of convicts.”

  “You’re asking for trouble,” she said.

  He nodded. “Got my reasons.”

  “What are they?”

  “Tell you sometime,” he said with another wink. Rising from his chair, he stretched and farted.

  “They won’t like it across the creek.”

  “I sure hope not.” He opened a drawer and took out the revolver. “Guard carries a shotgun, but I figure won’t hurt to have our own protection. You know how to use it?” She shook her head. He motioned her with the revolver. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  The sound of regularly spaced shots drew Davy and Abraham from the factory a few minutes later. Abraham had been in the office, Davy making rounds of the factory floor. They met at the front door and looked at each other questioningly. Sometimes they heard a shot from a hunter in the woods around them, but nothing like the sounds now. Stepping out, they saw across the creek Eugene Betchley standing close behind his wife, guiding her arm and holding it steady. Then they spied a puff of smoke an instant before hearing the report. They continued to watch until she had emptied the pistol. As he reloaded, Eugene glimpsed them out of the corner of his eye; he was expecting them to show themse
lves. When they did nothing but stare, he waved a hand, and after a moment both young men waved back, first Davy, then Abraham.

  Over the years, what had originally been the cotton mill and a few acres around it had become a settlement of cabins in which many, though far from all, of the millhands lived with their families. Such a thing had not been intended, but when one cabin was allowed, another followed and another until now there were two dozen, all small and crowded together because there was not enough land for them to spread out. The men and women who lived in these complained as soon as they saw the convicts, because of their children and old people. The day after, all the Negroes who worked at the mill were voicing objections to Davy and Abraham.

  No, they had not been bothered directly, but black men working in chains (all but two were Negro, as Eugene had predicted) made them feel low in their minds and was bad for the young ones to see. There was no way to forget them, for even when they were inside they could hear above the racket of their own work the rhythmic dirges the convicts made up to keep time as they sawed and toted.

  That evening when the convict gang left on the wagon, Davy crossed the creek to talk to Eugene Betchley. Eugene apologized and explained. His best men were off cutting and would be gone a week. When they came back, he probably wouldn’t need the convicts. He hadn’t thought about its making any difference to them at the cotton mill. Any time they had a complaint, Davy should come and say so and they would oblige, if they could, only this time they couldn’t—no hard feelings. Davy reported to Abraham, and they decided they would have to wait for the week to pass, appealing to their now-sullen work force to be patient.

  On the factory side of the creek outrage gave way inevitably to curiosity. At first the smaller children stood and stared, although they had been warned to keep back from the bank, not even to look across. One of the bolder, friendlier black men in chains called over. He enjoyed the indulgence of the guard because he worked hard and was always cheerful, thereby serving as both model and pacifier to the other convicts. Most of the children ran, but two stayed to answer, and the others crept back when they saw lightning didn’t strike. Next day there were brief exchanges between two or three of the black convicts and some of the adult cotton-mill workers. It was discovered that the convicts were only men, after all, black men like them and wanting to be friendly, not like the white sawmill workers now absent. Among the more eager were unattached females who were always curious about men forced to live without women and ready to show sympathy if only by a smile, a quick jest, a flirt of skirt. Abraham was troubled by the development but bided his time.

  Word of the convict gang at the sawmill had passed around Highboro as major news the first day they came to work, but utterance of disapproval dwindled to muttering by the second and third days because the convicts did not have to make wagon passage through Highboro to go between the sawmill and the jail at the county seat seven miles to the west. The townspeople were not directly involved, as they began to tell each other. Both sawmill and cotton mill were on the edge of the town anyway, not in it. The workers at the latter were all Negroes except for Davy Todd, who had chosen to work with them. The sawmill crew was made up normally of the town’s rougher element who didn’t matter much because they had tried every other way to make a living and failed at it before going to the lumber camp.

  The white work gang returned on Saturday, which was payday. Although the convicts received no pay, Frankie passed out plugs of chewing tobacco and small sacks of sugar, a thing they much craved. Eugene, who had already made his payment to the county jail office for the gang’s work, slipped five dollars to the guard. As if to seal the success of the venture, Priscilla Davis and Ann Oglethorpe were present to read aloud passages from the Bible and to distribute printed tracts to the convicts, none of whom, black or white, could read them. Their good work had not been solicited by Eugene Betchley; it was their own idea. But they would not have been inspired to do it had not Eugene established himself as a God-fearing man. In the present instance, they argued to their fellow citizens, he was doing positive good in employing heathenous villains outside prison walls where they might benefit from the sight and example of Christian folk.

  Eugene had not planned it so, but he was gratified, and he learned from it an essential factor in successful roguery: get right with those who monitor the morals of a community and the rest is easy. The white gang of regulars might be angry, but they hardly knew with whom. And so, as they had long done, as Eugene had conditioned them to do, they looked across the creek.

  10

  Of the trio who had carried out the firecracker raid on Luck and Abraham’s wedding, the youngest was Perry Mitchell. Since the morning he appeared asking for work, he had become something of a favorite with Eugene, because he reminded Eugene of himself when young. Eighteen, the red-haired, freckled farm boy had run away from what he called “a mean daddy” to try town life. Eugene took him in, and since he was the youngest at the camp, the men made a pet of him, as men often will the runt of a litter. He was ignorant and saw them as experienced, responding to their rowdy manners with eager amiability; but on the evening one of them playfully tried to take his tin plate of supper from him at the mess shack, Perry knocked him down and jumped on top of him. He had to be pulled off by Eugene himself. The scuffle earned him respect. “He’s no troublemaker,” they now said, “but if you step on his tail, he’s quick as a rattlesnake. See him?” To reward him and to confirm his manhood, they took him to a whore they all frequented and paid for his turn with her, standing around the couple to comment ribaldly on the progress of their exertions.

  On Monday evening after the Saturday return of the white crew to the sawmill, Eugene discovered Perry by himself, day’s work done and waiting for suppertime, sitting on the creek bank and staring across at the Negro workers drifting out of the cotton factory to go home. They exchanged no greeting, having seen each other a dozen times during the day, but Eugene’s pausing seemed an invitation to talk, and the boy had something on his mind.

  “Mr. Betchley, when I come begging work here, I thought them over there was as close as I’d have to work alongside niggers.”

  Eugene looked surprised and took a tin of cigarettes from his pocket. Putting a cigarette between his lips, he then offered Perry one, a rare and flattering gesture that disarmed the boy. Sharing a match, Eugene appeared to consider the remark. It was the first open criticism any of the regular crew had made on his hiring the convict gang, their initial displeasure having confined itself to oaths made to each other.

  “You got it wrong,” Eugene said, and sat down beside Perry. “Nobody telling you to work with niggers, is there? They do their job, you do yours—separate. I’d never mix and mingle my crews.”

  Perry stared down between his raised knees as if trying to appreciate Eugene’s reasoning. “Yes, sir,” he allowed finally, “but they nigh enough to stink.”

  “Keep on the windy side of them.”

  The boy nodded as if the suggestion was intended seriously.

  “Nothing to worry you. You-all are my regulars and I treat you good. The convicts work for no pay; pay goes to the state—to you and me, you might say, because we’re the state. When I’m through with them, I’ll be getting rid of them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Perry said, and took a long puff from his cigarette, carefully tapping ash into the creek afterwards.

  Eugene smiled his quick, deliberate smile. “Get your mind on something else. Like that over yonder. Know who she is?”

  Perry shifted his eyes to see a young Negro woman, smartly turned out, driving a trap into the factory grounds across the creek. “That nigger manager’s wife, I reckon.”

  “Ought to recognize her—it was you tried to liven up her wedding!” Eugene slapped the boy’s knee. “When I was your age, only black thing on my mind was black pussy. How’d you like to lay on that one and let her rock you off to dreamland?” Unwillingly, Perry smiled too. “Better than that old woman with washboard tit
s they took you to, wouldn’t you say?”

  Luck halted the trap and jumped down, leaving the horse to mind himself. A group of three men and two women were leaving the main building. She did not know their names but was certain they would know hers. “Where’s my good-looking husband? Any of you seen him, or has he already gone home to the wife he thinks is waiting?”

  As they laughed together, Abraham and Davy emerged from the building, Davy wheeling his bicycle, which he kept indoors out of the weather. “What are you doing here?” Abraham demanded of Luck.

  Instead of answering him, Luck continued her joke to the group of five. “Don’t sound to me like he’s as glad to see me as I’d hoped!” With appreciative whoops of laughter they went on their way.

  “Why don’t you answer me?” Abraham said peevishly.

  “Come to take you home.”

  One of the leaving women turned and cried, “Tell him!” to show she had heard.

  “Can’t you get it through your head you’re a married woman?”

  “Well, I sure had better be!” Luck declared. “How you, Davy?”

  Davy beamed at her. “Fat and sassy as a puppy dog teething. You’re looking fine!”

  “You too.”

  “Well, good night to you both.” Davy mounted his bicycle.

  “Want to hang on the side of my trap? We go straight by Beulah Land, you know.”

  Davy looked offended. “I’ll be home before you’re good started—make your horse look lame and blind and like every other wheel spoke is broke!”

  “Don’t let it rain on you—”

  Davy looked up anxiously. “Do you think it will?”

  “Never know about June evenings,” Luck teased. “They can bring surprises.” She laughed hugely.

  Davy began to pump the pedals, and the bicycle shot down the road as straight as a flying bird.

  When he was gone, Luck faced Abraham with her fists on her hips and a confident smile. “You mad with me, hubby?”

  Abraham returned from retrieving the reins Luck had let fall to the ground when she halted the trap. “No,” he said severely, his tone contradicting denial, “but you are thoughtless, you are spoiled, you act like you can say anything to anybody any time.”