Belle City Page 6

  Beyond that, though, Jonas wondered why it seemed that Si and Ruthie's Pa wasn't ever mad at them, or why it seemed that their Ma never was sickly, and why there was a short-handled axe for Ruthie to bring into the forest to chop tree limbs, and why did Ruthie's and Si's clothes look new. And shoes. Why did they have shoes and he didn't? And why was Ruthie talking about going to college when Jonas's Pa had told him to "stop talkin' stupid" when Jonas said he wanted to go to Belle City to college? Jonas knew that he shouldn't but he couldn't help himself: Certain that Ruthie was long gone, and having forgotten what she'd said about the dogs, he hastily climbed the big pecan tree. He wouldn't stay long...

  "Hellfire and damnation!" The combination of fear, shock and amazement at the sight before him was overwhelming. Jonas lost his grip, and he crashed to the ground.

  Ruthie's breath caught in her throat when she emerged from the forest into the clearing that fronted her house, and it wasn't because she'd been running. She'd never seen anything like the sight before her: There were people everywhere, more than there had been when she left to go collect the firewood. Who were they? Where did they come from? She approached the open yard quickly but cautiously, eyes searching for someone familiar. The people she saw smiled and greeted her warmly, and she returned those greetings in kind, but she didn't know any of the people—had never seen them before, though they seemed to know who she was. Two of the women even stopped to help her lay her collected wood in the sun to dry, commenting on the wisdom of her action. "It's what my Ma and Pa told me to do," Ruthie said, unwilling to take credit.

  "Nellie and Silas your Ma and Pa, ain't they?" one of the women asked, and when Ruthie nodded, both women smiled widely and one of them hugged her.

  "If it ain't my friend Ruthie Thatcher." Ruthie pulled away from the woman stranger's embrace and jumped into First Freeman's arms. He whirled her around, then hurriedly returned her to earth with a grunt and a groan. "You done growed 'bout a foot and ten pounds since last time I seed you, Girl."

  "And I had a birthday, too, Mr. First. I'm thirteen years old. I'm almost grown up." Ruthie danced around him. "And I made you a pie, Mr. First. With them bitter apples you like, and lots of brown sugar and pecans and some of them chokecherries. I made it all by myself. Ma didn't have to help me at all."

  "And that's 'xactly why I drove that hoss and buggy all the way over here from Belle City, ridin' all night long, is to eat that pie."

  "No, it's not," Ruthie said. "You came 'cause it's Juneteenth."

  Freeman put his chin in his hand, deep in thought, then nodded. "You know, I had forgot all about Juneteenth, I was thinkin' so hard 'bout that pie." He looked all around, then at the two women strangers who had been enjoying the antics of the old man and the young girl. "What you Sisters, think: You come for the Juneteenth or for that pie?"

  The women grinned, pleased to play along. "Well, sir, we come first for the Juneteenth, but then we heard about that pie," one of the women said.

  "Yes, indeed." The other woman licked her lips. "That sounds like a mighty fine pie, Little Miss."

  Ruthie was so pleased and embarrassed by all the attention she could barely speak. "I made it for Mr. First but y'all can have some if he says it's all right." All three adults laughed a good, loud laugh, and the two women strangers waved their colored scarves as they walked away and blended into the crowd. "Who all these people, Mr. First? And where they come from?"

  "They come from 'round here, most of 'em," the old man said, looking around, touching the brim of his hat to women passersby and nodding greetings of recognition to almost all of the men. "Your Ma and Pa and Uncle Will'am know 'em."

  "Then how come I don't know 'em?"

  "Well, the men work in the fields together and the women tend to the houses and chil'ren together and cook together. What y'all need 'round here is a church. That way, people leastways could see one another on Sundays."

  "I been to church. A preacher comes sometimes, and we have church in a place on the road goin' to Belle City."

  Freeman nodded. "I know where 'bouts you mean, and I know the preacher you mean. He travels all 'round these parts—Stevensville and Belle City too—but that ain't the same as havin' regular church every Sunday and gettin' to know your neighbors." He surveyed the crowd, eyes squinting in the bright sun, nodding his head. "These good people. Some of 'em been 'round here long as your Uncle Will'am." Freeman removed his hat, wiped his face, head and neck with a big red kerchief, and set his hat back on his head and stuffed the kerchief back into his pocket. "I guess we better get to celebratin'," he said, heading toward the cooking area of firepits and roasting spits behind the house, Ruthie in his wake. The old man was tall and long-legged; so was the young girl, and she usually could keep up with him as they both were accustomed to her following him around. Today, however, First Freeman wasn't the most interesting thing in her orbit. All these people! She began counting them but quickly lost count; there were too many. Then she focused on the colors—bright, vibrant colors flying from sticks stuck in the ground, wrapped around heads as scarves and waists as skirts, sticking out the back pockets of overalls and work pants. This was a new thing for her.

  "Mr. First!" She called his name and, running a bit to catch up, pulled on his arm. He hadn't heard her call his name because he too was intent on taking in the sights, sounds and feel of so many of his people gathered in one place for the single purpose of enjoyment.

  He slowed his stride and turned to look down at her. "Yes, Missy?"

  "All the colors. Red and yellow and orange and purple: What do they mean? I never seen so many colors at one time."

  Freeman stopped walking and stood looking, squinting into the light despite the wide brim of his hat. Ruthie watched him, waiting for him to answer her question, for she never doubted that he had the answer. He stood frozen still, nothing moving but his eyes, and they darted from place to place—from color to color—as if he hadn't noticed them until Ruthie's question. Then his eyes stilled, and Ruthie knew that they were looking back, that First Freeman no longer was seeing the Juneteenth crowd that milled about in the yard surrounding Will Thatcher's house. She knew the look—the one that returned the old ones like Uncle Will to the remembrance of their painful past—and the feeling of stillness that settled over them, and the cloak of sadness that often accompanied it, and she regretted having asked about the colors. Then, as quickly as he'd gone, he was back. He looked down at her, his eyes seeing her, and said, "That's somethin' I hadn't thought on in quite a while." He was walking again, though slower, and Ruthie was able to keep up easily. "Back in the old days...you know when I mean, don't you, Missy?"

  "Yessir, Mr. First, I know."

  He nodded: Of course she did. Will and Big Si and Nellie taught their children the things that were important. "Back then, we couldn't have no clothes but what they give us, and they only give us homespun. Or worse: Cut up burlap sacks or flour sacks and we'd have to make pants or a dress from that. Ugly, they was, and we wasn't allowed to wear colors." He looked around him, at all the color, then took his big red kerchief from his pocket. He shook it out, then, holding both ends, twisted it into a scarf which he tied around his neck. Then he reached into another of the many pockets of his overalls and withdrew another kerchief, this one yellow, orange and green stripes, and he twisted it into a scarf too and tied it around Ruthie's neck. "Always wear pretty colors, Little Missy, just 'cause you can."

  Jonas groaned, rolled over, groaned again. He tried to sit up and was discouraged—from the pain in his shoulder and the low growling in his ear. He inhaled and lay still, aware of the dampness seeping into his clothes that he usually welcomed because it was cooling in the hot, heavy heat of the day, but which now made him shiver. The growling continued until a sharp, low whistle silenced it.

  "That's what you get for spyin' on folks. You shoulda broke your fool neck."

  Willing himself not to show his pain or his fear, Jonas rolled over and jumped to his feet in a single, if n
ot fluid, motion, and turned to find Si and Ruthie's big brother, Tobias, and two of their dogs, watching him. "I'm not spyin'."

  "You think we don't know you climb up in that tree and watch us?"

  Jonas didn't say anything. His arm and shoulder hurt from his fall. He wiggled his fingers to test for broken bones and the sharp pain that resulted suggested that, if not broken, his arm and shoulder would cause him misery for some time to come. "I won't do it no more."

  "Why you care so much 'bout what we do, Jonas?"

  He stopped himself from shrugging just in time: The pain would have pretty near killed him. He and Tobias, who was older, bigger and certainly stronger, stood staring at each other, separated by five or six feet of marshy forest land and a whole, wide world, one that Jonas struggled—and always failed—to understand. "I just—" There was no point in trying to explain himself to Tobias Thatcher, whom he knew disliked and distrusted him. Besides, if he couldn't explain himself to himself, how, then, could he put thoughts into words before a hostile boy and two equally hostile dogs?

  "You just trespassin' is what, Jonas Thatcher. Bad enough you spyin', but trespassin', too? If we was trespassin' on your land, your Pa would shoot us dead."

  Jonas knew he was right—or that he would be right if his Pa still owned a gun that would actually kill anything. Certainly he would make the effort. "You gonna shoot me?"

  Tobias sucked in air through his teeth. "If that's what I was gonna do, you'd already be shot. Anyway, that's the kinda thing y'all do, not us."

  Somewhere inside himself, Jonas knew he was right about that, too. "Why things got to be like they is between us? Between Colored and white?"

  Tobias looked at him long and hard, as if the answer might be written somewhere on the body of Jonas Thatcher, and when he spoke, it was without anger or hostility, but nor was it the voice of a boy; it was a man who said, "Why you askin' me? We ain't the ones made things the way they is." With a whistle for the dogs, he turned away and disappeared into the forest, still managing to have the last word. "Stay outta that tree, Jonas, and quit spyin' on us. Quit your trespassin'."

  Jonas heard the words long after Tobias and the dogs vanished from sight. All of the words that Tobias Thatcher had spoken thrummed in his head like rain water beating on a tin roof, loud and steady and insistent: The words and the meanings held within them, meanings that Jonas felt rather than knew or understood. One thing he did know, though, was that if he obeyed Tobias—obeyed his own father—he no longer would be able to hunt with Si, exploring the woods and creatures and critters that lived in the marshes and trees. More crucially, though, he would not be able to read with Ruthie in the pecan tree down by the wide part of the creek. Then he had another thought that pushed all the others from his head: How would he explain the injury to his arm and shoulder? He couldn't admit to having fallen out of a tree while watching the Thatcher place, and he certainly couldn't tell Pa that they were having some kinda big celebration.

  "Tobias, where you been?" Ruthie rushed to her brother, grabbed his hand, and began to pull him toward the sound of music. "You ever seen a real, live guitar, Toby? Or a fiddle? Or heard real, live music 'cept church singing?"

  Ruthie was hopping from foot to foot, pointing at Henry Childs playing his guitar and Riley Huston playing his fiddle. She didn't know—no way she could know—that all the men who worked in the fields heard one or the other of the musicians play practically every day, that the music was their way of mitigating the backbreaking, never-ending work of tilling, growing and harvesting that was necessary to keep them all from starving to death. "Music is a very wonderful thing, ain't it, Toby?"

  She was holding his arm out from his side like a streamer on a May pole, and twirling herself in circles beneath. "I 'spect you right about that, Little Sister," he said, but he wasn't looking at Ruthie or at the musicians. Instead, he was looking around, watching people enjoying themselves, and on the look-out for trouble, for there always seemed to be trouble whenever enough people gathered in the same place. His Ma had told everybody that there would be no spirits allowed and everybody had agreed that banning spirits was a good idea because usually it was the over-indulgence in them that caused the trouble, and Tobias had neither seen nor smelled any evidence that anybody was breaking the rules. Still...

  "I'm hungry, Toby. When can we eat?"

  Shading his eyes with the hand that Ruthie wasn't dancing with, he looked up at the sky, at where the sun was. "Soon, I 'spect. Let's go ask Ma."

  The area between the barn and the house, between the house and the fields, and behind all three was the site of the gathering, where people had set up tents and lean-tos and various other shelter from the sun, as well as comfortable places to rest and eat. The cooking area was adjacent to the fields—farthest away from where people were resting. Here the men were overseeing the turning of the spits on which roasted rabbits, chickens and a deer, and the roasting pits in which potatoes, turnips and ears of corn, mixed with onions and garlic bulbs and covered with hot rocks, sizzled and grew tender. On open fires women fried fish in kettles of oil—so much fish that Si had told Uncle Will that maybe it was too much. "Ain't no such thing as too much food to people who just got used to eatin' at all," the old man had replied, putting a quick end to that kind of talk.

  Uncle Will, years ago relieved of cooking duties, was content to enjoy the sight of all the food and all the people, and to have people know him, know that the land upon which they rested was his, and to know that they knew—that all these people whom he knew by name—also knew that as long as Will Thatcher had land to call his own, not one of them ever would be homeless. No matter what First Freeman and the folks who'd left the farms for the cities said, it was Will Thatcher's belief that a man who owned his own land was richer than any city folks with their banks and colleges and insurance companies and their painted houses.

  Will stood looking at his own house—the largest in this corner of Carrie's Crossing—and thought to himself that it indeed would look mighty fine painted white, with red and yellow and purple flowers in pots on the porch and grass in the yard instead of hard-packed dirt that turned to mud when it rained. He also thought that the satisfaction of knowing that his house was larger, and indeed better, than that of the man he once called Master was better than a coat of paint, especially since painting the house would draw attention to him, and that he didn't want.

  "Happy Juneteenth, Will." First Freeman was standing beside him, probably had been standing there for a while, as was his way: To be quiet and watchful. "You got ev'ry right to be proud of what you got here."

  "Even if it ain't in Belle City?" The humor a passer-by would have heard in Will's voice would have resided only on the surface, which his old friend very well knew.

  "Belle City ain't for ev'rybody. I know that, Will."

  Will Thatcher nodded his head, but he didn't speak. First Freeman waited for him "And farmin' ain't for ev'rybody, either, I reckon," Will said, then added, before Freeman could form a response, "though I do b'lieve bein' able to grow food to eat makes right good sense, 'specially for folks ain't got two nickels to rub together."

  Freeman chuckled. "You a stubborn man, Will'am Thatcher, but that's what makes you a man what can be counted on in the hard times, like these ones we havin' now."

  Will looked hard at Freeman. "Y'all havin' hard times over yonder in Belle City?"

  "Some folks is."

  "Is you?"

  "Naw, Will, thank you for askin', but I'm aw'right. Me and my mules and my wagons still make the rounds all over the city. Only diff'rence nowadays is that white folks ain't throwin' out as much as they used to, and what they do throw out is pretty well used up. I ain't seen a new pair of shoes or a suit or dress that wasn't wore shiny in quite a while now. Still," he said, managing another of his chuckles, "on the Colored side of town, ain't nobody throwin' nothin' away if it's any use at all. If it's on the curb on a Colored street, you can best b'lieve it's good for nothin' but the junk h
eap."

  The gentle laughter that the two old men shared was the humor born of the need to laugh oneself through troubled times because crying served no purpose. "Just so you know, we, all of us, is mighty grateful for all the things you bring over here, 'specially the chil'ren."

  Now First Freeman laughed out loud. "You mean Little Miss Ruth Thatcher." He shook his head, the laughter still rumbling deep inside him. "She is a stitch, she is."

  "She's a right piece of work, and that's the truth," Will said, laughing with Freeman, but only briefly. "Her Ma's worried 'bout her."

  Freeman's laugh caught in his throat. "How come?"

  "Cain't keep her outta them woods. She got all Nellie's Injun blood in her and she roams them woods like she's inside the house. And ain't scared of nothin'—snakes, spiders, wild cats, thunder and lightnin'. The other night when it stormed so bad...did it rain like the end of the world over yonder in Belle City? Then you know how it was coming down: In buckets. Little Miss Ruth was out there in it. Between the dark and the water you couldn't see your hand in front of your face and she was out here in the yard singin' and dancin'." He shook his head in amazed, though confused, wonderment. "She done even made friend with one o' them big hooty owls. Give him a name and all."

  "Made friends with a hooty owl and give him a name!" Freeman exclaimed. "I never heard of such a thing."

  "That ain't the worst of it." Will took a deep breath, blew it out, took another one and used it to speak the distasteful words he'd wanted to be rid of. "Half the time Little Si's with her and they meet up with Zeb Thatcher's baby boy. Claim they friends."

  "Good God! Friends? Cain't nobody Colored be friends with Zeb Thatcher nor anybody related to him." First Freeman thought about what he'd said, concluded that he was right and nodded. Then another thought intruded, a truly worrisome one. "Little Missy told me while ago that she just had herself a birthday. Says she's thirteen...?"