The Legacy of Beulah Land

by Lonnie Coleman

  “Me?”

  “Don’t you know better than make fun of me with people that take my orders?”

  “I wasn’t,” Luck protested.

  “Making light; you sure were.”

  “I see.” She giggled. “They won’t respect you because they’ll think I henpeck you. Now, is that it?”

  “They know good and well your papa owns most of the mill.”

  “Then they ought to feel sorry for me having to buy a husband.”

  “I don’t think anybody’ll feel sorry for you, the way you behave.” His voice was not yet good-humored. “I’ve told you, honey—better you don’t come around here, or take me home. Especially now they got convicts working over there.”

  “They’re gone,” Luck said. “I passed their wagon on the road. They spoke up real nice to me, a lot nicer than you.”

  “You see?” he said, exasperated. “What am I supposed to do with my horse?”

  “Leave him for California.” California was the name of the man who swept out and locked up when everyone else had gone from the mill for the day.

  “What’ll he eat?”

  “Cotton thread. Give him his choice, black or white.”

  “See how fooling you are?”

  “Sure wish I had something to tell you to make your disposition sweet again. Let me see. Oh, yes, there was a thing, if I could only remember what. You put it right out of my mind.”

  “You made a new pink dress. You baked a cake and made pink icing to go on top.”

  “No, I remember. I’m making us a new pink and black baby.”

  “What’d you say?”

  She went to the trap and pulled herself up into it as if with great effort. As he joined her, she threw the reins into his lap. “You drive, Papa boy. I got to take care of myself and think over names to call him.”

  “Did you say what you said?” he insisted.

  “I sure did.”

  “Son of a gun.” He sounded out of breath.

  “Maybe daughter of a gun; won’t know for a while.”

  He put arms about her and hugged her. “You sure you’re not doing a Luck-joke? If you are, I’ll put you over my knee and spank you right here and now.”

  She held her head back to stare at him with satisfaction and interest. “Let’s go home,” she said finally. He picked up the reins, and as they trotted away, she leaned against him, sliding her arm about his waist.

  It was dusk. On the other side of the creek Perry Mitchell was alone. He had watched them without being aware of Eugene’s departure. The cigarette had gone out and he felt a little light-headed. Occasionally he chewed tobacco, but he seldom smoked. In the near distance one of the sawmill crew raised his voice.

  “Black-eyed peas again and the sow belly is fatter than ever!”

  “You want fried chicken; you have to cross the creek and work at the cotton mill!” The cook followed his answer with a high laugh.

  “Where’s the young’un?” the first voice asked, and another called, “Perry, come running! Where be ye, lonesome fucker?”

  11

  Old adversaries will sometimes relish their jousts as much as old friends their reunions. Annabel Saxon and Lauretta Varnedoe had, or fancied they had, adequate reason to dislike one another, but their not meeting for several weeks after Lauretta’s return was accident. Annabel paid few visits to the country, and Lauretta’s excursions into Highboro had not involved her in stops at the old Saxon mansion. It was not until late June that they came face to face.

  It was the afternoon of a fine, hot summer day. The air was alive with the ripeness of corn and melons in the fields. The eye was hypnotized by the endless rows of cotton, its tight bolls ready to burst, as they would in another week. The ear was charmed by the wind in the trees and the occasional buzz of all but satiated bees as they stumbled in and out of flowers like tipplers leaving a wine shop. The sweet-briny aroma from the kitchen quarters tickled nose and made tongue water, for Josephine was putting up cucumbers in quart and half-gallon jars for winter consumption.

  The four entertaining themselves on the shady side porch had gathered with no plan after rest followed noon dinner. Casual comment became reminiscence, and a reference to dancing sent Bruce to her room to fetch her guitar. She was playing it; Lauretta was clapping her hands; and Roman and Sarah were doing a sort of polka that took them from one end of the porch to the other, when Annabel arrived in her buggy. They continued while she handed over horse and buggy to Clarence, the stable boy who had come running, his ears catching the sound of strange wheels. Mounting the steps, Annabel glowered at the scene before her, and as Sarah and Roman swept past without so much as a nod to acknowledge her presence, she cried, “Unseemly!” and plunked herself into a rocking chair with one cracked rocker. It broke under her weight, and she listed like a sinking ship. Guitar, dancing, clapping stopped, laughter taking their place. Recollecting themselves, Sarah went to help Annabel to a sturdier chair beside Lauretta’s; Bruce offered to bring iced tea; and Roman announced solemnly that he must finish a poem he had begun that morning. Fixing Lauretta with challenging eyes, Annabel said, “Well, ma’am, I’d heard you were back again.”

  “Happily back,” Lauretta agreed, “with my dear sister who is pleased to call her great plantation my home too.”

  “Indeed.” Annabel laughed rudely. “I thought we’d seen the last of you when you married the enemy colonel and went North to live among them.”

  “During the years of my exile,” Lauretta confided, “the faces of old friends here would sometimes rise in memory to sadden me, but yours was not among them.”

  “I am glad you were spared the melancholy.”

  “I should never have recognized you, ma’am. You have altered beyond anything. Once so pretty, everyone said. And then what they called a handsome woman. But now—what tragedies we may live to see reflected in our own mirrors!”

  “I am astonished that age has left you vision enough to see the tragedies in yours.”

  “It has, dear madam; otherwise, how might I know what you have come to? Sarah dear, you might have warned me—”

  “You haven’t been to church since your descent upon us, or I’d have observed you. Are you very infirm?”

  “At my time one has little need of spiritual guidance. It is too late to ask the vital questions and too early to expect final answers.”

  Shifting her chair so that she sat between them, Sarah said, “I declare, you are better together than a play. What brings you, Annabel?”

  Annabel frowned and stirred the air with the palmetto fan she had found on the wide arm of her rocker. “What is Josephine cooking at such an hour? It smells horrendous.”

  “Cucumber pickles.”

  “Delia puts alum in mine. See that you give me a couple of jars when you have done turning them to the light to admire them!”

  Annabel laughed at her own wit, although neither of her companions did, and Bruce returned with a tray on which were glasses, a pitcher of iced tea, and a plate of sliced pound cake. She served her elders and excused herself, saying there was sewing she must attend to. Annabel and Sarah and Lauretta sipped their tea and nibbled their cake, and Annabel, who had watched the girl while she was present, observed, “The hot weather draws out the redness of her scar. Without it she would be almost pretty.”

  “She is pretty as she is,” Sarah declared firmly.

  Annabel continued. “A pity it isn’t the fashion for ladies to wear mustaches.”

  Through cake crumbs, a few of which took to the air, Lauretta said, “I knew a woman once whose beard was as heavy as Lincoln’s.”

  “All of us have not the advantage of your theatrical background.”

  “Nothing to do with my years on the boards,” Lauretta replied. “She was the widow of a senator and had a fortune in copper. The only disadvantage, she used to say, was that people couldn’t see her pearls for the beard.”

  “You don’t mean to say she appeared in public with it?”
>
  “What was she to do? She enjoyed society and disliked shaving. She solved it by parting the beard and wearing it in two plaits. You could see the pearls perfectly well then.”

  When Annabel stared at her wordless, Sarah said, “I think Lauretta is teasing us.”

  “What odd fancies possess the elderly,” Annabel said. Her tone was deceptively casual as she went on, “By the way, I understand from my husband that Benjamin recently transferred a sizable sum of money to a law firm in Maryland.” Facing Lauretta, she said, “That was your last roosting place, I believe, ma’am?”

  “Yes, I—Benjamin was settling a business affair for me. A temporary arrangement—”

  Sarah said, “Blair had no right to tell you that.”

  “My dear Auntie Sarah,” Annabel said placidly, “you well know there is little of importance at the bank I don’t hear of one way or another.”

  “I shall speak to him.”

  “It wipes you out of ready money, doesn’t it?”

  “Certainly not,” Sarah said, “as you would know if your spying had been really thorough.”

  “Don’t be offended, Auntie. I understand how rich you are in land and crops, and I’m not forgetting certain shares and bonds, but it would be madness to touch those. I hope you won’t have to.”

  “How is Blair Three progressing with his law studies?” Sarah asked, and Annabel launched enthusiastically into a preening of herself and her grandson. Lauretta nibbled her cake again, but in a troubled way. Sarah exerted herself to nod and smile. When the subjects of Blair Three’s brilliance and promise had been explored more thoroughly than her listeners cared about, Annabel asked, “What are you going to do about her?”

  Alert to defend the fortress again, Sarah said, “Who?”

  “Bruce, of course.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “She’s sixteen. Has she any prospects or offers?”

  “I hope not,” Sarah said.

  “You don’t know. That means there haven’t been any, for girls are always ready to boast of them. Well, she isn’t likely to be really pursued, even with Beulah Land behind her. Things are so peculiarly arranged among you all, it’s hard to know who owns what and holds the power.”

  “It isn’t a question that much concerns us,” Sarah said, “and there’s no reason it should concern you. Our only rule is that two of us must sign a document that binds us all.”

  “Now you’re huffing at me again when all I’ve done is express concern over the child’s prospects. Benjamin is your grandson; I think we are all agreed about that.” She smiled complacently, but Sarah and Lauretta exchanged a look. “Bruce is his daughter; no question there. But Leon is his son, not legitimate but legitimized. Where does that leave Bruce and her expectations? Any suitor will want to know.”

  “When she decides to marry, she will choose someone who won’t be looking at her chances of an inheritance. She isn’t likely to be the target of fortune hunters, and if she were, is too sensible to be deceived.”

  Lauretta, who was fond of matchmaking and had remained cautiously quiet for longer than she enjoyed, said, “It’s my belief she’ll choose someone close to home.”

  Ready to welcome even an unexpected ally, Annabel began to smile with gratification, then asked, “Who do you mean, ma’am?”

  “Both of Jane’s boys pay her particular attention.”

  “They’re close cousins, so that won’t do,” Annabel said. “Her looks would not be entirely against her as the wife of a politician or statesman. Indeed, it is better that a woman in such a position not be too pretty; it loses votes for the man. My Blair is a cousin too, but less close.”

  Lauretta had been pondering. “Davy and Bobby Lee aren’t all that close.”

  Annabel laughed indulgently. “Of course they are; you’re forgetting. My great-grandfather Benjamin Davis had two sons, Bonard and Bruce. You ran away to California with Uncle Bonard and let him die there, so you should remember him; and later you set your cap for my father Bruce, and you ought to remember him.”

  “He wasn’t interested in me,” Lauretta said. “It was Sarah he wanted to marry.”

  “No such thing!”

  “Tell her,” Lauretta urged Sarah.

  Sarah shrugged as if in apology. “I didn’t take it seriously. It was after Leon died and before Casey came back.”

  ’Well, I never knew!” Annabel exclaimed.

  “Now you do,” Lauretta said demurely. “Would you like us to go on explaining relationships?”

  “Thanks to you, Uncle Bonard had no children—”

  “Nothing to do with me,” Lauretta said. “I could have had children. In fact, did.”

  “None you can admit to, I’ll vow.”

  “Rachel was mine, wasn’t she, Sarah?”

  “You bore her, but she was mine,” Sarah said judiciously. “After all, Leon was her father.”

  Annabel closed her mouth, then opened it again to say, “There must have been scandal—”

  “Not much,” Sarah said. “Of course I was vexed for a while.”

  “I should think so!” Annabel turned belligerently upon Lauretta. “To continue: my mother had four of us. Doreen doesn’t count because she didn’t marry. Adam died young before he could. James married—Rachel.”

  “My daughter,” Lauretta said.

  “And mine,” Sarah repeated.

  “Well, you’re sisters, so let’s say it doesn’t matter to the bloodline. Then Rachel and James had two children, Benjamin and Jane.”

  Sarah choked on the cake she had begun to nibble again. When she could speak, she said gleefully, “You’re forgetting. Benjamin’s father wasn’t James, but Adam. So Jane and Benjamin are only half brother and sister like Bruce and Leon.”

  “But their fathers were brothers!” Annabel declared desperately. “That makes Bobby Lee and Davy and Bruce and Leon—oh, God in heaven!” She left her chair and began to shout through the open doorway for someone to send her buggy around.

  Lauretta and Sarah were silent until Sarah said, “Don’t forget my Fourth of July party—it’s a family reunion, you know.” The sisters dissolved in laughter as Annabel withdrew from the porch with what dignity she could assume to wait for her horse and buggy on the brick walk.

  When she had gone, they leaned their heads back in the rocking chairs and rested a little while. Sarah said, “Annabel always tires me out.”

  Lauretta asked, “Is it true about the money, Sarah? Have you enough? I’m so miserable about it—”

  “It’s nothing for you to worry about,” Sarah assured her. “Annabel just likes to talk. No good my speaking to Blair One. She could twist secrets out of Torquemada.”

  12

  For the first time anyone could remember it rained on the Fourth of July, not steadily but hard enough and often enough to keep the family party at Beulah Land under shelter. The house was large, with many rooms, and the porches were broad and long. The women and girls commanded the comforts of these; the men and boys had the excuse of dawdling in the barns, which they preferred anyway. Old Otis had, as usual, superintended the barbecuing even though he was ailing, but the two younger men who helped him this year had to rig a canvas roof over the smoldering pits when the rain began at dawn and looked likely to continue.

  As the guests arrived, Lauretta was made much of, to Annabel’s vast annoyance, for many of the young ones of the large family had never seen her at all, only heard hushed references to the adventures of the old lady who now sat in the midst of them so mild and twinkling. Annabel, counterattacking, bludgeoned everyone with details of her new Turkish Corner—actually a small room off her large living room. She and Blair Three had made two train journeys to Savannah already, first to ransack shops and pore over catalogues, second to inspect the furnishings ordered from New York when they finally arrived. Blair had, she boasted, done it all. It was, in fact, his idea, and with old Judge Meldrim in Atlanta for the summer (his married daughter), he was free of his law stu
dies to give the Turkish Corner his entire attention. The project had filled many happy hours for them both. Tiring of the recital of glories they might all be privileged to admire in the fullness of time, Lauretta declared after two vehement yawns that Turkish Corner had been “the thing” among her acquaintances in the East “a few years ago” but that she and they were now “quite bored by them,” and even the best of them had reminded her of nothing so much as “the parlor rooms of a nookie house.”

  Annabel broke the thrilled silence that followed this remark by stating that the elderly should not presume on the indulgence of their juniors to the point of arrogant coarseness and that perhaps the younger members of the company should be removed from Miss Lauretta’s influence for their own good. As for her—if Miss Lauretta meant what she thought she meant—she did not believe there was anyone present, male or female, who had the frame of reference to appreciate the comparison—save, evidently, Miss Lauretta herself. Sarah stood ready to douse any further fire, but that was as far as it went, Blair Three comforting Annabel with the whisper, “The old crone is really too grotesque for society.” There was, however, no more talk that day of Annabel’s Turkish Corner, and Lauretta did not suffer for want of an audience for her further anecdotes.

  Luck and Abraham and Roscoe attended the family celebration, Luck abloom with pride of pregnancy and begging everyone to tell her how big she was getting. They smiled and obliged her, although her figure was as yet no fuller than were those of her contemporaries who had nothing in the way of her expectations. Luck and Fanny and Bruce spent much of the day in Bruce’s room weaving small plans and big dreams in the way of women absorbed by samples and scraps of clothing materials and drawings illustrating the magazines they followed. The wetness of the windowpanes only reminded them of their snug isolation from the world.

  Roscoe and Abraham passed most of their day in one or another of the barns, not much attending the cattle they were pretending to inspect, or the hogs at whom they aimed occasional dry cobs but reviewing the affairs of the cotton gin and the cotton factory, in particular the way the factory was affected, indeed threatened, by the sawmill.