Belle City Page 4

  "People give you all this?" Big Si asked.

  Freeman shook his head. "Naw, they ain't give to me, not how you mean. They throwed it away. Told me to haul it off or left it on the trash heap."

  "But ain't nothin' wrong with these things," Big Si said, sifting through the pile of shoes and clothes. He picked up a book, turned it over in his big hands, and squinted as he tried to read the cover. He passed it to Nellie. "It's about some land," he said, and Freeman gasped.

  "You can read?"

  Big Si looked embarrassed and shook his head. "Naw. I know some letters and some numbers but naw, I can't read. Not like you mean."

  Freeman looked at the children who were looking at the pile of goods. "I ain't got no family, not no more. My wife, she been dead way long time ago. And I had four chil'ren. My three girls, they married and moved on away." He sighed deeply and shook his head. "I got me some grandchil'ren but I don't never see 'em. And my son, I don't reckon I know where he is." He sighed again. "I don't want Will mad at me. I ain't hardly got no friends left. The folks from the old days is mostly gone now. There's Will and me and Maisy Cooper and Zekiel Fordham—that's why I come over here so much, 'cause of Maisy and Zekiel. We all was raised up on the same farm and had the same name—Fordham it was—just like you and the Thatchers. Maisy Fordham she was 'fore she married with Sam Cooper, and Zekiel and a gal named Florence and one named Esther and a ol' boy named Fox, and me. We was all raised up together. Ain't nobody left from the Fordham place but me and Maisy and Zekiel, and Will's the only one left from Thatcher's." The old man sighed again and this time so deeply Nellie ran to the kitchen for a jug of water that had frozen. She poured a little of the coffee on top on the ice and was able to pour several inches of muddy but cool liquid into Freeman's cup. He drank it off and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "I hope Will let y'all keep these things." He looked at the goods in the rug like he was mad at them.

  "You children," Big Si said. "Tell Mr. First thank you, then get you some things."

  The children jumped up and down on First Freeman like he was a bed with big springs, then they pounced on the bounty, holding up articles of clothing and shoes to assess the fit. Nellie fought to keep the tears at bay. Her daughter had never owned a proper dress and none of her children had ever owned a whole pair of shoes—they always wore hand-me-down or, worse, cut down shoes. Big Si gazed in wonder at the pants, shirts and shoes that Nellie placed in his lap, and he laughed at a red Union suit that Nellie said would fit Uncle Will perfectly, along with two shirts and two pairs of pants. None of the clothes had holes or patches of different colors. Without these gifts from First Freeman, Nellie doubted her family ever would have had such nice clothes. Yes, they owned their own farm and most of the time they had more than enough to eat, but they did not have any money to go and buy things. And you couldn't grow clothes and shoes. You could trade greens and cabbage and tomatoes and turnips for a sack of flour or corn meal or a few eggs—or for somebody's old clothes. But nice almost new clothes like these?

  Nellie took the pots and pans into the kitchen and when she came back, their new rug was spread out in the middle of the parlor floor just like it belonged there, just like it always had been right there. And it was beautiful.

  ***

  – 1918 –

  The sweat ran off Jonas like somebody had poured a bucket of water on him, and he would swear on a whole stack of Bibles that he could hear a sizzle when the sweat drops hit the roof: That's how hot it was. He wished somebody would throw a bucket of water on him. He'd dearly love to be cool, even if it only lasted for a few seconds, because that's about how long the feeling would last given how hot it was. Just two days ago the wind was howling and the rain was coming down in sheets and his Ma was so chilly she had him lay a fire in the living room grate. He used the last of the wood trying to keep his Ma warm, which made Pa mad as hell. Then the wind ripped off a section of shingles on the roof causing a leak so bad his parents couldn't sleep in their bedroom, and that made Pa even madder. He stomped about the house and cussed and hollered until it stopped raining. Jonas didn't know who was more grateful—he or his ma. They both were pretty sick and tired of Zeb's ranting and raving though neither of them ever would express that thought, Ma because she knew it wouldn't do any good and Jonas because he could get slapped up side the head for no good reason at all, so no need to furnish a reason. With his sisters married and moved away and his brother over there in Europe fighting in the War, Jonas was home alone with his parents. It was not a comfortable state of affairs.

  The first thing Jonas had to do when it stopped raining was gather more fire wood. Not that any of the wood could be used because it was good and soaked, but he gathered it anyway and stacked it on the back porch, and then it was only pieces he could find in the woods that were the right length to fit in the stove or the fireplace grate. Pa had lost the axe—he didn't know where or when—and he couldn't beg, borrow or steal another one. At least he hadn't so far. Then Jonas had to dig around in the barn to find enough kindling and straw to light the stove so Ma could cook dinner. "I don't know what in the hell y'all were thinkin', burnin' up all that wood and ain't got none left to cook with," Pa yelled at them before he stomped out the back door, leaving it open, which the flies and mosquitoes took to be an invitation to come on in.

  "Oh, Jonas! Close the door!" His mother hated bugs. She called anything with more than four legs or anything that had wings a bug; snakes and frogs were in a hated category all their own. "And light a piece of that damp wood. The smoke'll chase the bugs back out."

  She was right about that; bugs didn't like smoke. People didn't, either, and, choking and coughing, Jonas headed outside too and up on the roof. His second task was to repair the hole in the roof and stop the leak in his parents' bedroom. He wasn't sure how to do that without shingles, tar and tools, for the axe wasn't the only item missing from the tool shed: The handsaw, the good hammer and chisel, and a carpentry knife also were gone. However, Jonas had no intention of asking about the tools or mentioning their absence. He'd make do with whatever was at hand—just as soon as he devised a plan for patching the roof that wouldn't require tools—and that could take awhile since he knew next to nothing about patching holes in roofs. In fact, according to his father, he was pretty useless all around since he didn't know anything about farming either. But he sure could hunt. And that thought gave Jonas an idea. He backed toward the edge of the roof and panicked until his feet found the ladder. He shimmied down and crept around the side of the house toward the back, careful not to let his father see him. He peeked around the house, toward the fields, and knew he didn't have to worry about Pa noticing him because Pa was too busy jumping up and down and waving his arms at the two Colored men he had just hired to work in the cotton fields. Jonas couldn't hear him, but he knew Pa was yelling and screaming at the two men. He also knew that sooner rather than later the two men would quit, no matter how broke they were, just like all the others before them, and Jonas didn't understand why his Pa didn't understand that you couldn't holler at people and call them stupid niggers and expect them to keep working for you.

  Jonas's shotgun was in the barn in a secret place. If asked, he couldn't have explained why he'd hidden his most prized possessions, but deep down inside he knew it had do with the way things disappeared, especially tools. There was a shelf in one corner of the barn—Pa probably didn't even know the shelf was there—and this is where Jonas kept his special things: His shotgun and his store of buckshot and his pocket knife and his writing tablet and the two books that he owned. He hadn't had much time lately to read or write; until his Pa had hired the new field workers last week, Jonas had been the field hand and he didn't know which was worse—pulling a plow or crawling along a row on scraped knees, pulling weeds and inhaling dust and being eaten alive by every bug God ever made. He found himself hating bugs too, just like his Ma, and he wasn't even from Scotland like she was, where, according to her, they didn't have bugs.


  Jonas grabbed his shotgun, buckshot, and a burlap sack that he had added a strap to and which he slung over his shoulder, and slipped through a gap in the planks of the barn's back wall. From there at a dead run, he was into the woods in less than a minute and almost immediately he was cooler. He stopped in his tracks and dropped to the ground. The forest floor was still damp from the rain and cool. Jonas lay flat on his back inhaling the musty scent of dead and rotting leaves. He loved the forest—its dimness after the glaring brightness of the sun, its coolness, and the privacy it provided. In here, he was away from his parents, away from his Pa's yelling and screaming and always being mad at everything and away from his Ma's sickness and sadness and always wishing they lived in a better place and had better things.

  Realizing that he was more than just cooled off, that he was wet, Jonas got up, wiped the leaves off his back, gathered his belongings and started through the forest. A game bird or a rabbit or a couple of squirrels sure would make the turnips taste better. "Hellfire and damnation," he cursed and stopped dead in his tracks. There wasn't enough wood to build a cook fire hot enough to stew an animal. "Hellfire and damnation," he said again as his shoulders drooped. No point in hunting now. May as well go on back home to the hole in the roof. He'd thought that if he took home fresh meat for dinner his Pa wouldn't be too mad that he didn't fix the roof. Now, though, he surely was asking for trouble. So why was he walking deeper into the forest instead of turning back and heading home with some idea in his mind about how to fix that hole in the roof? Thank goodness he didn't need to provide an answer anywhere but in his own mind. The real question for him, though, was why he was so fascinated by Ruthie's people's farm and what went on there. Yes, he was mesmerized by Ruthie, and Si was his best friend, but it was more than that, he just didn't know what to call it, and there was nobody he could ask.

  Jonas camouflaged himself high up in the pecan tree that provided him with a view of the Thatcher farm. He'd like to have been closer but that would be dangerous. He already was trespassing, and he also knew that the Thatcher's dogs patrolled the farm's boundaries in all directions, and if they got a scent of him they'd sound the alarm and he'd be in the same shape as a treed animal in a hunt: Caught.

  Funny how he always thought of this place as 'Thatcher's farm' but didn't think of his own homestead in those terms. Maybe because this place really looked like a farm. He could see the fields in the distance, could see how straight the rows were. He couldn't tell what was growing because the fields were too far away, stretching almost to the end of what Jonas knew to be their property, but it sure wasn't cotton. He'd probably never know what the Thatchers grew because he never had, never would, indeed never could venture that far away from where he lived to the area where, he knew, all the Colored people lived, an area that began at Thatcher's farm and extended he didn't know how far. He gazed at the fields in the distance and suddenly realized something he either hadn't noticed before or hadn't recognized the importance of: There were a least a dozen people working in Thatcher's fields! Jonas risked standing up on the thick bough of the tree to get a better view so that he could count them. He lost count at seventeen. Seventeen people. How was that possible? His Pa could barely afford to pay two workers. And there was something else. How could he have missed it? There was a mule. They had a mule.

  Jonas sat back down in the cradle the tree boughs made, comfortable and concealed, and thought about what he'd just seen. He could make no sense of it so he returned to watching the Thatcher house and saw in the near distance what he'd missed looking afar—Ruthie in the front yard of the house, but what in the world was she doing? There were pieces of wood and tree limbs spread all across the yard and Ruthie was turning them like pieces of bacon or corn fritters in a pan. Then he understood. She was drying the wood. He couldn't climb down out of the tree fast enough, and his hurry caused him to fall the last five or six feet. He hit the ground hard, and his shotgun landed on top of him. Good thing it wasn't loaded. By the time he got back home, the burlap bag on his back was filled with wood, and he carried an arm load. He was so busy imagining himself laying out the wood in the yard under the burning sun that he didn't see his pa bearing down on him.

  "Where the hell you been, Boy?" the old man roared.

  Jonas dropped the load of wood he was carrying, backing up and away from his father. "I went to shoot squirrels or birds." He was talking as fast as he could. "I thought you would like some meat for supper. Then I remembered that we didn't have enough wood to cook a stew. So I got all this wood and I'm gon' lay it out there in the yard under the sun and let it dry and I'll go huntin' tomorrow."

  Zeb looked hard at his youngest child—youngest living child—then looked at the wood on the ground and at the bulging burlap bag on the boy's back and finally up at the bright and burning sun. Then he nodded his head. "That's right good thinkin', Boy. Lay the wood out in the sun, let it dry. And these pieces of wood you got, they ain't too thick. They'll dry in right good time, I 'spect. By the time you get back from huntin' tomorrow with squirrels or rabbits or fowls, your Ma oughta be able to make a right good fire under that kettle." He walked away, back toward the field, and Jonas started laying the wood out like he was laying bacon out in the cast iron skillet. He wished he could tell Pa about what he saw from his perch in the pecan tree, but he knew that he could not. He watched his father walk away and realized for the first time that he was an old man; that he was old like Si and Ruthie's Uncle Will was old: His head hair and his beard were white. But Pa walked slow and stiff, Jonas thought, while Si and Ruthie's Uncle Will walked like he was in a hurry to get somewhere.

  ***

  Ruthie tried not to think about how she, too, was drying up from the heat of the sun as she moved the wood pieces around on the ground, turning them every half hour or so. There must be a thousand of them, she thought, maybe even a million. Uncle Will had said the storm a couple of days ago was a blessing, blowing all these good pieces of wood off the trees and down to the ground where she and Si could collect them. This was "free" wood, Uncle Will had said, a gift because it didn't have to be chopped before it could be stacked—and, best of all, he'd said—it meant they didn't have use their store of firewood for the weekend Juneteenth Celebration. All the wood that Ruthie was drying out would be used to cook the food they'd need, and there likely would be wood left over.

  The men had dug six firepits for the Celebration, and spits hung over four of them. The pits were behind the house so that the smoke would blow either north or east—away from Zeb Thatcher's place. Uncle Will knew, and he'd told Big Si and Nellie, that Zeb was in a bad way, that his farm was producing next to nothing and that he was so broke he was selling off his tools. Uncle Will felt no sympathy for Zeb Thatcher, but he couldn't help but wonder at the man's stupidity: He actually believed he could force people to work for him without pay; he really did believe that he was superior to Colored people and that they were obligated to do his bidding. He believed that the laws that had replaced slavery still enslaved. Those laws might make it near impossible for a Colored man to earn a living or buy land or goods in a store even if he had money, but the laws didn't make a Colored man a slave again no matter what Zeb Thatcher and others like him hoped for. That's why his farm was in ruins: Zeb was a worse farmer than Carney, his pa, and without Colored farmers who knew how to work the land, Zeb's farm would simply die.

  "And won't nobody stay there workin' for Zeb," Uncle Will had said. "That last fella who come through here, the one told me Zeb was sellin' off his tools, he said Zeb don't do nothin' but stomp up and down the rows, cussin' and yellin' and wavin' his arms all around. But what's so crazy, he said, is that Zeb is cussin' and yellin' at the cotton, mad 'cause it won't grow, cussin' at the weevils, mad 'cause they eatin' the cotton!"

  Ruthie looked up at Uncle Will who was staring at the dense forest as if he could see straight through the trees and all the way to Zeb Thatcher's farm. He wasn't thinking anymore about all the drying wood spread out
before them on the ground being a gift. He was, as her Ma would say, 'way back somewhere in his mind.' He did that a lot these days, and it worried her Ma and Pa. 'He's a old man,' her Pa would say, sounding sad. 'But he's still strong, Si,' Ma would say, sounding like she was praying it was true. Right now, though, Uncle Will didn't seem very strong; he seemed as if he had stopped being. He still stood beside her, but only his body was there; his mind was in a different place. Ruthie's Ma and Pa told the children not to worry, that what happened to Uncle Will happened to a lot of the old ones. It was a thing they couldn't help. They just, now and again, went to another time and place in their minds, in their memories, and when that happened it was best not to bother them, even if they seemed sad or mad. "Best thing we can do," said Pa, "is make sure they know they're in this time and place and not that other one, that bad one."

  "Uncle Will," Ruthie said, and the old man stirred. He inhaled deeply, and his eyes seemed to stop trying to look through the woods. His eyes looked all around until they looked down and found her. Then he smiled and put his big hand on her head. It always surprised her that his huge, rough hands could feel as light as her Ma's.

  "Did I tell you, Little Miss Ruth, what a good job you done dryin' out all this wood?" he asked, looking again at all the drying wood.

  "Yes, sir," Ruthie answered and leaned into him. Her head reached the middle of his chest, and she felt the hard knot of the leather pouch she knew that he wore around his neck—something his mother had given him when he was a boy. She didn't know what was in it, and she wasn't really sure what it looked like—she only got a glimpse of it in the hottest weather when Uncle Will and all the men removed their shirts, usually tying them around their heads to catch the sweat that poured off them like rain from the sky.