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I
Debbie sat on the floor of her mother’s bedroom, pulling through the tangles in Baby’s hair. The head of the rag doll jerked back with each tug of the comb. “Momma, when is Marnie having her baby?” Debbie asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Not for another month or so, I should think,” Mrs. Vreeland rolled her hair and pinned it in place above the nape of her neck. “Maybe another week or so,” she considered. To fill out the frame of her face, she stuffed two wads of hair, each the size of a small potato, beneath the tight strands covering each ear. She consulted the glass with two semi-turns of her head: yes, it is even, she whispered.
“I can’t wait. I love babies.” Debbie had named each new thing born: the calves, the foal and the chicks and the piglets. And she played with them as much as Poppa would allow. But somehow she missed out on naming Marnie’s first child. That baby was borne without anyone letting on. Marnie named the girl ‘Faith,’ a name Debbie didn’t much care for. But Faith was better than any animal baby. She was like a real, human baby, like a living doll. Debbie wanted to play with the baby when it got older but when it got older it never left her momma’s side. Faith always sat her bare bottom in the dirt while her momma worked her piece of the field. Debbie wanted to run into the fields and bring Faith out to play but Debbie’s father wouldn’t allow her in the fields and it just now occurred to Debbie that she hadn’t much seen Faith in the fields lately.
“Where’s Faith been?” Debbie wondered.
“Faith?” Mrs. Vreeland repeated softly. Mrs. Vreeland sprayed sugar water on her hair to hold it fast and added a few pins for safety’s sake.
“Yes, ma’am. I haven’t seen Faith around lately.”
“Well, I don’t know about Faith. You best ask your Poppa. Now, c’mon, child. It’s time we were setting out.”
Sundays were Mrs. Vreeland’s time. Mrs. Vreeland woke the house early and set them all, white and colored alike, to getting ready for service. Long ago, her husband had conceded one-seventh of his life to his wife and to his God. Sundays for him were an uneasy time. The rest that was the purpose of the day was set upon by anxiety about work undone.
The family traveled in the cart. Mr. Vreeland drove with Robbie and Mrs. Vreeland on the seat beside him. Ol’ Dawdy, M’uncle and the women slaves, Bridie, Lis’beth and Goanna, rode in the back, keeping their dangling feet clear of the wheels. Marnie held back this day, staying behind with Faith, who was sick.
When they arrived at the church, Vreeland left Ol’ Dawdy the reins. He ran the cart around the back of the church by the graveyard and he and the slaves and slaves from the other farms would sit in the grass outside the church windows. Mrs. Vreeland insisted they hear the Word of God and accordingly she arranged to have the windows left open for the instruction of the Negroes. In the winter, the pastor allowed only one window open, the window closest to the pulpit. On coldest days, all of the windows were closed and the Negroes were allowed to sit on the floor of the vestibule, before the doors of the nave, provided the kept respectfully silent and were gone before the end of the service.
The Negroes gathered beneath windows of stained glass. Dark, leaden strokes aimed to show something, a scene of some sort but the contrast between the glass and the outlines was not great. But Ol’ Dawdy had often rode Mrs. Vreeland to her errands at the church and he had experienced these awe-hued windows from the inside: Baby Moses at the rushes with the light-lit colors more vivid than life. Ol’ Dawdy stood agape that day as the fingers of the Lord tickled his face blue and red and yellow. The next window over showed the Slaughter of the Innocents in terrible reds and burnt yellows. Ol’ Dawdy tread in powerful silence and great awe in the church and was sorely glad to be back out of doors, where the sun shone brighter but more evenly upon both the good and the evil.
On the grass this morning, in the daylight with his brother slaves, Ol’ Dawdy tried to reconcile the leaden, inverted versions of these scenes with the awful beauty he knew them to be.
From the open window, the singing had ended and the scripture readings began. Ol’ Dawdy prepared to listen hard. He blessed himself and whispered a small prayer, asking the Lord to keep the Good News in his head so that it would find a place in his old heart. The pastor cleared his throat and read from Isaiah:
Let me now sing of my friend, my friend’s song concerning his vineyard. My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside;
He spaded it, cleared it of stones, and planted the choicest vines; within it he built a watchtower, and hewed out a wine press. Then he looked for the crop of grapes, but what it yielded was wild grapes.
Now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard:
What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done? Why, when I looked for the crop of grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?
Ol’ Dawdy, rocking softly on his knees with his eyelids pressed tight and his hands firmly clasped, whispered, “Why, Lord? Why?”
II
That afternoon the mare fell on her side and rolled in her hay and her own shit. Vreeland sent M’uncle off to find Dr. Hicks while he stayed with the mare through till Monday morning. It’s was colic, Vreeland knew. And he would have to put the horse down.
Early next morning, M’uncle rode into the barn and flew off the stallion in a single graceful motion. His momentum carried him forward and he stopped just short of Vreeland, who was squatting beside the sick mare. Vreeland spun around and thumped M’uncle in the chest with the palm of his hand.
“Get off me, nigger. What’s wrong with you?”
“Mighty sorry, Mar Vreeland,” M’uncle stuttered. “Doctor says he’s coming. He got an animal by the Webber’s place to attend and then he’s coming our way. He say meantime we oughta keep her up and moving so’s this colic don’t get twisted.”
Vreeland turned again to the mare and rubbed her belly. Beneath the skin, Vreeland thought he felt a small knot in her abdomen.
“Come, give me hand. Let’s get this animal on its feet.”
Vreeland took the mare’s head in his two hands. M’uncle moved around to the backside and tried to push the mare to her legs. Vreeland pulled up on the mare’s head. With considerable effort, the two of them managed to get the horse to stand. Vreeland put a harness on the mare.
“Go get a shovel and dig a ditch for this animal. I don’t think that the doctor will do much good, especially if he doesn’t get here soon,” Vreeland said.
“Where you want that ditch dug, Mar?”
“I don’t care. Anywhere out of the way.” Vreeland wondered if there was anyone interested in horse flesh. And how much could he get per pound? How many pounds did he reckon the mare weighed, minus hooves and head and such? The doctor would know if there was anything to this. In the meantime, it wouldn’t kill M’uncle to do some digging. If it came to it, it wouldn’t kill him to do some undigging neither.
M’uncle grabbed a spade and marched out into the late spring sunshine. He had seen this sort of thing with horses before and he knew that there was nothing to worry about. This horse would live. Still, M’uncle did what he was told: he looked around for a good place to bury a live horse. He thought about going out behind the barn since that would be out of the way but it was too sunny and it was liable to be hot in the digging out there. Over by the fencing was a nicely sized tree with long, shady branches. That would be a nice spot: under the tree, between the fencing and the road. It was out of the way and it wouldn’t be terrible to dig up some dirt over there out of the sun.
M’uncle walked over to the tree by the fence and propped the spade against the tree. He dangled his arms over the fence and rested his armpits on the rail. There was only a handful of Negroes in the field. Mar Vreeland didn’t own many, just enough to handle the work on the small farm. There were just two men folk—M’uncle and Ol’ Dawdy—and four women, Bridie, who worked the house, and Marnie, Lis’beth, and Goanna, who were in the field. Marnie was pretty far along with her second child, due any day.
Faith, Marnie’s first child, wasn’t in the field. Faith usually padded behind Marnie or played close by, sitting in the dirt in a short shift and no shoes. M’uncle remembered that Faith was sick, too, like the mare. Faith had something wrong in her belly, too, he remembered. He didn’t know what it was but heard Bridie in the house talking to the Missus about it. M’uncle thought it would be a good idea to talk to the doctor about Faith when he came by for the mare. ‘I got to remember that,’ he said to himself. ‘Got to remember.’
Mar Robbie was in the rocky field, the stretch of land just west of the growing fields. He was Mar Vreeland’s youngest boy and the only one who hadn’t signed up. Two older boys joined the rebels against their father’s prohibition and were fighting in east Tennessee with Commander Forrest.
Mar Robbie was working for a year or more clearing that field of the rocks and roots and stumps that kept that rocky field from being a part of the growing fields. It was a woody area that turned swampy in the rain. Mar Robbie had cleared the standing trees and this day he was working with a borrowed mule and Ol’ Dawdy on pulling a stump from the roots.
With the heel of his shoe, M’uncle traced a large rectangle in the dirt: a box big enough for a horse. And he began to dig and as he dug he thought about the taste of horse flesh and how he ‘never did eat no horse flesh but prob’ly horse flesh muss tas’e like deer or cow on accoun’a theys bofe eat grais.’ M’uncle had a theory that all grass-eating animals tasted like grass-eating animals and that all feed-eating animals tasted like chicken.
Dr. Hicks had arrived in the meantime and was talking with Mr. Vreeland in the barn. An examination of the mare confirmed what Vreeland expected. Dr. Hicks said that the mare had an abdominal torsion, a complication of colic.
“Horses are damn stupid animals,” the doctor said, rolling up his sleeves. “They’ll eat until they burst and then they’ll keep on eating. It’s not like they don’t know any better but they keep on doing the same stupid thing. I’m going to need some muscle here to hold her down,”
Vreeland shouted out the door to the barn to M’uncle and told him to come along and fetch Ol’ Dawdy and Robbie, too. In the meantime, the doctor made a poultice out of some gauze and a cream he made from powder and spit and some water fetched from the pump. He stuck the poultice on the mare’s belly and wrapped a few turns of gauze around the belly to keep it in place.
“Let that set for a spell. That’ll help relax her muscles and help numb the pain,” the doctor said at last. The doctor then took a large funnel with a short hose attached to the end. “I’m going to force some oil into this mare’s belly. You’re going to have to hold her as still as you can.”
Vreeland stepped up to the horse with a bit and bridle.
“What’s that for?” Dr. Hicks asked.
“It’s for holding this animal in place while you give her the castor oil.”
“I can’t give her castor oil with a bit in her mouth.” Vreeland tossed the bit and bridle in the corner.
While Vreeland and the doctor were talking, Ol’ Dawdy and M’uncle had looped a pair of ropes around the mare’s neck, one rope to each side. They pushed the mare against the barn wall. With the weight of their whole bodies they leaned into her side, holding her against the wall. M’uncle told Robbie to take the ropes and lean back on the ground with all his weight. Dr. Hicks looked approvingly. “That’ll do. Good work, boys. Hold on now.”
Dr. Hicks snaked the hose into the horse’s mouth. She drew back and tried to rear. Robbie held fast and the Negro men shifted their footing and renewed their push. “Hold her neck still,” the doctor shouted to Vreeland.
As quickly as he was able the doctor positioned the hose and the funnel and began to empty the entire contents of a large bottle of castor oil into the mouth of the funnel. Holding the funnel in his left hand, Dr. Hicks discarded the empty bottle and reached for another, which he had opened before. When that bottle was empty, he removed the hose.
“Watch out now, boys. She’s awful angry. Mind her kick.”
All of the men leaped away from the animal at once, except for Robbie who sat in the dirt, leaning his weight against the pull of the horse. He let go and scurried back, dragging his backside through the dust. “No! Don’t let go,” M’uncle shouted. He grabbed the end of the rope and pulled it taught. Slowly, hand over hand, he climbed the rope to the horse’s neck. “There you go. There you go, old girl. S’all over.”
Vreeland was looking at his mare. In his head, he was calculating how much he paid for the mare and wondered about the cost of this doctor’s visit. He reckoned she was five or seven years old. M’uncle would know for sure. The doctor asked if there wasn’t a place he could wash up. Vreeland led Dr. Hicks to the wash basin in the kitchen.
“It’s looking pretty bad,” the doctor said as he dried his hands.
“You think we’ll have to put her down?” Vreeland said.
“What? The mare? No, she’ll be fine,” the doctor replied. “I was talking about this war. It’s looking pretty bad for our boys. Since Nashville fell, they’ve moved the governor to Memphis. It’ll only be a matter of time till Memphis is gone, too.”
Vreeland said nothing. To Vreeland the war was a distraction. He was only worried about control of the river and the rails. Harvest was but a few months away. He could carry his crop to town but if the rails were tore up or in Yankee hands, the crop couldn’t move to the Mississippi. And if the Yanks controlled the river, the rails wouldn’t matter. Vreeland couldn’t afford another lean year.
The doctor settled in at the kitchen table. Bridie prepared a plate of eggs and bacon meat and filled a cup with coffee. All the while, the doctor continued to speak to Vreeland, who was lost in concerns of his own.
Vreeland considered adding more Negro help and had been running the cost in his head for a few weeks now. Acquiring slaves took money Vreeland did not have. He has his youngest clearing a new field, hoping to expand his crop, but this money won’t be realized for another year or so. In the meantime, there was the normal upkeep of the slaves and the livestock and the running of the household. Vreeland asked his wife to take in laundry or sewing from the neighboring houses. She reluctantly agreed but was slow to do anything more than agree. And now the sick mare is costing Vreeland. He would have to pay for treatment that might not work and then he would have to pay to replace the animal. All this and having to feed the good doctor, who was now pressing Bridie to refill his cup.
“I heard of a trader speculating in Negroes. He comes ’round the farms just ahead of the Union army and convinces the owners that their slaves are about to be freed by approaching troops. He buys up any Negroes he can for almost no money, arguing that pennies on the dollar is a lot better than the nothing they’ll be worth when Grant’s boys come by.”
“Well, then, this trader will be stuck with a bunch of worthless niggers,” Vreeland said. “Sounds like a fairly foolish plan to me.”
“This fellow is counting on a rebel victory. He thinks that our boys will ultimately win the day and that leave him suddenly in possession of a large army of labor that he can then resell at a higher margin. It is genius, I think,” the doctor said.
“It’s only genius if it works. You just finished telling me how the Union is in control of Tennessee. I am worried about their control of the river. I got a harvest due soon and I need to get these crops to market or this year is a bust for me. If the boats can’t get through the Mississippi, then I won’t be able to sell this season. I can’t afford that.”
“Maybe you should start speculating in Negroes as a hedge against an injury to your personal economy.”
“More corncake, doctor?” Bridie asked.
“And some coffee, too,” the doctor replied.
“You really shouldn’t be sending your boy out to fetch me, Vreeland,” the doctor said. “That’s fine, Bridie. Thank you very much.”
“What boy? M’uncle?”
“Yes, sir. You shouldn’t let your Negroes run around the countryside. Giving your Negro a horse to ride the county is a sure way of having them run off. What is stopping M’uncle from passing my office and keep heading north? Bit of a risk, to my mind.”
“North where? To Kentucky? You think there is a place for him to run in Kentucky? Kentucky is worse than here for a nigger, especially a runaway.”
“These coons are pretty resourceful. They can find a way. There is always some sympathetic soul wanting to help them. Plenty of runaways make it through, some even to Canada. They really only need to get as far as Ohio, though. That isn’t too difficult to do on horseback. Cincinnati is just over the river.”
“There’s a war on, doctor. It’s not safe for white or black out there. Someone’s sure to notice a darkie on a horse.”
“That’s true. What if one of those patrols catches him.”
“There ain’t many patrols running these days. The war has put these men to work. And it doesn’t matter to M’uncle anyway. I have given him a signed pass. You worry about too much, doctor.”
“Yes, sir. And I worry about the rifle you leave on your rack in the barn. Nothing is preventing your Negroes from getting into your gun rack. You are too trusting of your niggers.”
“I treat my niggers well, better’n most. I don’t beat them any more than I beat my horses or mules. They won’t have it better anywhere else. In general, we treat our niggers better in Tennessee than they do anywhere else in the country.”
“Well, when emancipation comes, don’t be surprised if your treasured darkies decide to leave you for other accommodations.”
“When emancipation comes,” Vreeland said dismissively.
“Lincoln has signed the order. Come January the first your niggers become persons. You’ll have to start paying them or letting them go.”
“I am not running a plantation. I am running a farm. I have farmhands that I pay what the law allows: nothing. If the rules change and they tell me I got to pay my Negroes, I’ll pay them. I don’t care a lick. But I’ll take their cost out of their pay first. The Yankees think that slave labor is free labor. They cost, sir. They cost plenty. To me, the Negro is like an ox or a workhorse. These animals don’t come free neither. They cost for the buying of them and for the keeping of them. And these niggers can eat almost as much as any of my other animals if I let them,” Vreeland said.
III
In the barn, the mare was lying on its side. Dr. Hicks removed the gauze and began to press gently on the horse’s abdomen with is fingertips. Finding the spot, he began to rub harder with his fingers and then with the heel of his hand. He tested the spot again with his fingers and reapplied the heel of his hand. He did this several times until finally he stroked the mare with the palm of his hand, making sure that the knot had come undone and that the torsion was relieved.
“Should be good as new,” the doctor said.
“Well I’ll be,” M’uncle said. He stood in the entrance of the barn leaning on the long handle of the spade. “Suppose we won’t be needing that hole no more.”
“I suppose not,” the doctor said as he rose, wiping his hand on a rag.
“Afore you go, doc, I think you should see to Marnie’s chile. Faith is in a bad way, too, with pains in her belly so bad she cain’t set up or walk about or sleep neither.”
“I don’t know,” the doctor said. “It this alright with you, Dan?”
“I suppose so. Go get the child and don’t be long, M’uncle.”
“Faith’s in the quarters, Mar. It’d be better if y’all come to see her there. She cain’t walk, like I told you.”
“Then carry her here and be quick.”
“Yes, sir,” M’uncle said. He moved quickly across the space between the barn and the quarters. As he moved, Marnie was watching him from the field. It occurred to her instantly that he was going to gather up her daughter and that he was taking her away. She knew somehow that Faith was already dead. Instinctively, Marnie’s arms and her big hands cupped her belly and the child inside. She dropped her work and began to cry softly. She simply had to meet M’uncle in the quarters, to intercept him, to intervene. But she was kept in place by two sharp syllables from Mar Robbie, who had noticed what was happening. Marnie watched the door of the quarters left ajar by M’uncle’s entering. It seemed to hang in the air, not open, not closed; expectant, until M’uncle stepped out of the shack into the light. He paused a moment and felt Marnie’s gaze. He looked briefly up from the bundle in his arms to Marnie and his eyes told Marnie what she already knew.
M’uncle brought little Faith to the barn. Holding the child in his left arm, he swept aside the tools and objects on the worktable with his right. He laid her on the worktable. Her short shirt barely covered her swollen belly. The doctor stepped over to the body and turned to Vreeland and said, “Too late for this one, I’m afraid.”
Vreeland swore under his breath, calculating the loss. “What’d she die from?” he asked.
“Worms, likely. See the belly here. It’s all distended. She’s got worms.” The doctor took out a pocket knife and poked Faith’s belly. He sliced the knife into the roundness and pulled back the skin with his blade. A wet, living knot tumbled off the table onto the dirt. The doctor spread the lump with the tip of his boot. “Yep. Worms,” he pronounced.
“Shit,” Vreeland said. “M’uncle, get rid of this.”
M’uncle stepped forward, and stopped. Did he mean the child? “Whaddo I do wit’ her?”
“I don’t care. Put her in the hole you dug.”
M’uncle considered the hole he dug and knew that he hadn’t dug much of a hole at all. It could barely be called shallow. “Sure thing,” M’uncle said.
He put his arm under the child’s head and thought it would be better to put the child in a sack so she won’t fall apart in the carrying. He found an empty feed bag and put as much of the girl as he could into the bag. Her head and shoulders stuck out the top but the gash in her belly and the worms were hid and that was enough for M’uncle. He gathered her up and took care to the shade tree and the shallow ditch, knowing that Marnie’s gaze followed his steps.
Marnie had stopped her work and Lis’beth and Goanna stopped their working, too. Robbie dropped his jaw to shout an admonition at Marnie and at the others but the combined sudden stillness of the crew struck him dumb. He followed their eyes to M’uncle and his mournful work of deepening the hole. M’uncle hummed quietly and less quiet in time with each thrust of the spade into the dust.
Marnie’s knees buckled and she fell, caught by Lis’beth beside her. Goanna held her on her other side and the two of them helped Marnie to the fence, taking up M’uncle’s tune, adding words as they knew them. They propped Marnie’s arms on the split rail and she hung there numb and nearly motionless.
The women huddled around Marnie, rubbing her back, stroking her short hair. Ol’ Dawdy left the mule and the tree stump and came around on the road side of the grave. Ol’ Dawdy watched in silence. When the hole was well-enough dug, M’uncle straightened up and surveyed his work. A horse-sized area had been cut into the earth about a foot deep. A child-sized corner of this had been deepened and squared off. M’uncle climbed out and the singing ceased. Everyone looked expectantly at Ol’ Dawdy.
Ol’ Dawdy began to speak. Though he couldn’t read, he had managed to catch some scripture and song from the Sunday mornings at the church window and he strung together some phrases from the Christian and the Hebrew books. Most of his teeth had long ago left him and his lips slipped and sank around his gums as he spoke.
M’uncle lifted Faith from the grass and carried her to her mother. Marnie wailed, threw her arms up and, her mooring gone, she fell away from the fence. On her knees, she flailed like a shook rag doll. She slapped her head and tore at her shirt. Marnie snatched her baby from M’uncle and engulfed Faith in her arms, squeezing her into the feed bag. Marnie cried over the child, covered her in kisses and tears. The womenfolk around her coaxed her and soothed her and encouraged her to pour out all her grief over the child. They clacked their tongues and issued short commiserating phrases while M’uncle struggled to keep the slipping burlap in place.
M’uncle took Faith from Marnie. Between the mother’s lips and the child’s brow broke a catenary of spittle. Lis’beth tied a bandana around the baby’s head. Goanna crossed Faith’s hands over her chest. Half-shrouded in burlap, Faith was gently laid in the grave. Ol’ Dawdy spoke some and M’uncle used the spade to return the dust to its hole. The company began again to sing.
In the meantime, having dispatched the doctor, Vreeland’s attention was drawn to gathering by the shade tree. It wasn’t the singing. Vreeland had heard the field hands sing through their work before, though never quite as dolefully. It was an empty field at midday that angered him, an empty field with Robbie in the middle of it, leaning on the iron bar he had been using to pry the tree stump. He was watching the ceremony by the shade tree.
Taking long, imperative strides, his father strode quickly to the middle of the field. Vreeland’s voice booming from behind startled his idle son. “What the hell is going on here?” Vreeland shouted.
“Marnie’s child is dead,” the son replied. “The coloreds are burying her.”
Vreeland snatched the rod from his son and rushed to the fence. He swung the rod hard as he stepped closer, stepping into his swing and applying the full force of his anger to the stroke. The rod smacked across Marnie’s spine and she collapsed. Vreeland kicked Marnie in the dirt. He shouted and swung the rod again, hitting Lis’beth as she helped Marnie to her feet.
“Get back to work, you fucking animals! Get moving!” Vreeland waved the rod in the air as he screamed. It was heavier than he expected and began to fall almost as soon as he lifted it up. The Negroes hurried back to the field. Marnie stood slowly and hobbled back to work, held up by Lis’beth and Goanna on either side.
IV
That evening, after the cooking things had been scrubbed and dried and put away, after the floors had been swept and mopped, after the stove and the tables had been cleaned, Bridie gathered up some chicken and gravy and some biscuits and set off for the quarters in darkness. The quarters were housed in one building: a large, simple, wood-frame shack with a corrugated tin roof. Wadded up newspapers were forced into the cracks in the walls and in the spaces along the floor edge. The floors were dirt, packed down to a stone firmness. The furnishings were used: a few chairs, a table, some castoff furniture, and palettes with straw and old couch cushions for bedding.
Candles cast the room in a wavering gloom. Bridie placed her package on the center table and stepped over to Marnie, who lay on her side in the palette in the corner. She was quiet, just recently asleep. Now and again she sighed or moaned. Bridie put her hand on Marnie’s round belly, feeling for signs of life. Bridie had known women to lose their babies in the last days of carrying, especially after a beating or the stress of field work. Bridie snuffed out the candle at Marnie’s bedside.
“She’ll be alright,” M’uncle said. He lay in the corner on his back. Ol’ Dawdy slept inverted beside him. Lis’beth and Goanna shared a palette in the opposite corner.
“’Lo, Uncle,” Bridie said. “When did Marnie get to sleep? Did she eat?”
“She et though not much. Prob’ly should wake her and give her more.”
Bridie rubbed Marnie’s swollen belly. She considered waking her but let her sleep. “Did you eat? Did the reverend?” she asked, referring to Ol’ Dawdy.
“We et but I could always eat more.” M’uncle rose and took a seat at the table. Bridie found some plates and a spoon and served M’uncle.
“That old horse doctor says we are gonna be free,” Bridie said.
“That right?” M’uncle said calmly.
“Seems like the Yankees signed a law that says they got to let us go. The doctor was telling Mar Vreeland all about it. Miss’er Lincoln told Miss’er Davis that he has to let all us go free.”
“Miss’er Davis doesn’t pay Miss’er Lincoln much mind. That’s why they’s fighting, ’cause Miss’er Davis don’t like taking orders from a Yankee,” M’uncle said.
“So you don’t believe we’ll be free?”
“I don’t think I’ll live to see it. If I am gonna be free it’s ’cause I done something about it. No one is free just on a say-so.”
“Dat aint true. White folk are freeing black folk all the time.”
“All the time?” M’uncle interrupted.
“Sure. Some black folk are living free in the north. That’s what this fighting is all about.”
“This fighting is about who’s head mar. White folk are always fighting over who’s the mar. If it wadn’t about freeing Negroes it would be about something else entire.”
“This war is about freeing Negroes,” Ol’ Dawdy spoke up suddenly. A fading candle struggled in the center of the room. Bridie and M’uncle sat in its glow. Ol’ Dawdy’s words came as a shock from the darkness. Bridie and M’uncle assumed that Ol’ Dawdy was asleep.
“Aint you ’cited, rev’rend?” M’uncle asked. “Bridie says that they declared us free. We just have to wait for the Yankees to tell ol’ Mar Vreeland.”
“Don’t mock me, boy. I know what I heard,” Bridie raised her voice.
“What did you hear?” Ol’ Dawdy asked.
“I was in the kitchen and heard the doctor and Mar Vreeland talking about the war and about us Negroes and about how Miss’er Lincoln signed a paper telling the rebels to let us go free by January next.”
“Well that’s good news, aint it?” Ol’ Dawdy said in the dark.
“Suppose so,” M’uncle said. “But unless someone shoots Mar Vreeland dead and his son the same, we aint going no where but here.”
“Well, we aint never anywhere but where we are.” Ol’ Dawdy said.
“Damn you, rev’rend,” Bridie said. “Aint you never serious?” M’uncle was uneasy with the way Bridie spoke to Ol’ Dawdy. He was the oldest thing M’uncle ever seen and M’uncle felt a bit of quiet respect toward old things. But Bridie was older than M’uncle, too, and it was probably okay for Bridie to talk to Ol’ Dawdy like that.
“What are you on about, woman?” Ol’ Dawdy said. “You sit and talk of freedom like it should make a difference. What does it matter if we work here for Mar Vreeland or we work out there for someone else? Free or no freedom, we are going have to work for somebody.”
“When I am free, I am not working for no one. I am tired. I am old and I am tired.” Bridie said.
“And who is gonna feed your tired belly? Who is gonna put shoes on your tired feet? You need to work for someone to get just enough.”
“Well, I aint gonna give away my life like I been doing. Any piecework I do is gonna get me some money for myself that I can do with what I like.”
“Me, too,” M’uncle said.
“Y’all should be careful what you wish for, they say. The white folk been free since Eden and they aint much more happier for it. Look it Mar Vreeland. He’s a miserable soul, always poor in spirit and nasty. That’s ’cause he’s not free. He’s not really free. He got to slave away at making his living and feeding his family and his hogs and us Negroes and keeping the roof over ever’s head. He’s got mas’ers, too, just like we do only you can’t see them mas’ers. They want they crop and they money and Mar Vreeland does what he can to ‘pease these folks. Even Mar Lincoln serves someone. And on down the line until we all serve the Lord.”
Bridie and M’uncle sat in silence. A tiny ball of flame clung to the wick in the middle of a pool of wax. Bridie and M’uncle still believed that they wanted freedom and that freedom wasn’t a bad thing at all. Ol’ Dawdy, too, wanted freedom and he knew that freedom was a good thing. But Ol’ Dawdy believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the wisdom of Providence and he knew that everything would work out for the best regardless of the disagreements between Miss’ers Lincoln and Davis because God is in his heaven and He watches o’er all his children, slave and free, Jew or Greek.
“Well, white folk ain’t never whipped. They can’t whip a free woman. Once I is free, they can’t lay no hand on me even if I don’t work.”
Ol’ Dawdy listened in the dark with his eyes shut. He started to drift off and his thoughts fell back to one beating among the many he had received over the course of his long life. He called upon the Lord to push the memory from his mind but it was powerful and it persisted. He thought on the Lord’s Prayer, overlaying the words onto the memory, over the feelings, hoping to smother the emotion and the recollection.
They had ripped his shirt from him. They pushed his face and his bare chest into the bark. His mouth was sore and tasted of blood where they knocked in his teeth. He found a socket with his tongue, found nearby the base of a tooth, its crown broken and lost. They secured him with a rope looped around the back of the tree and knotted at each of his wrists. They loosed his pants with a hunting knife and his pants collected around his ankles. The men noticed a brand on Dawdy’s right thigh, just below his buttocks.
“What’s that say?” one of them said.
“What?”
“That brand. Who’s he belong to?”
One of them peered in. With the flat of a knife blade, he held Dawdy’s butt cheek away from the mark, as though it were somehow casting a shadow. “Don’t know. Never seen it before.” Then, to Dawdy, “Who you belong to, boy?”
“Mar Dunleavy in Carroll County,” Dawdy said.
“Dunleavy? Who’s that?”
“I know Dunleavy,” one of them said. “The nigger’s right: Dunleavy’s place is outside of Bethel, in Carroll County. He comes to the store a few times a year. Sometimes makes an order from the catalog.”
“You know Dunleavy, then?”
“Sure I do. But I don’t think that’s Dunleavy’s mark.”
Turning to Dawdy, one of them asked: “Is this Dunleavy’s mark?”
“No, sir,” Dawdy said. It was difficult to speak. “That mark was done before Mar Dunleavy.”
“Well, then, that mark don’t apply anymore, does it?”
“No, sir,” Dawdy said.
The man dragged his hunting knife across the mark. The gash slowly bloomed and bright red flowed down the length of Dawdy’s leg. The tip of the knife sliced a semicircle around the brand and then sliced its complement. The man traced and retraced the lines, working a divot of flesh from Dawdy’s leg.
“Hold him still,” another man said.
One of them moved around to the back of the tree and took hold of the rope. He put his foot on the tree and leaned back, drawing Dawdy into the tree. The one brandishing the whip let it sing through the air once and then once again, testing his stroke. And then he applied it to Dawdy’s bare skin.
They did not count out the strokes but they were thorough. They striped every inch of Dawdy’s brown skin, from the nape of his neck to the back of his knee. When one was tired, another took up the task. When they were done, they let the holding rope go slack and Dawdy slid slowly a short distance down the rough trunk.
“Let’s do the front of him,” someone suggested.
“Nah, just let him be.”
They had started about midday and it was now approaching evening. The sun was setting through the trees. They built a small fire in the clearing. They cooked and ate, leaving Dawdy attached to the tree. After an hour or so, it occurred to them that they would have to deliver this slave to Dunleavy in Carroll County, about two hours away. They argued about this. They needn’t all go. One of them kicked some dirt into the fire. Another cut Dawdy down and dumped him in the wagon.
“There was one time,” Ol’ Dawdy said in the darkness, “when I was accidentally free.”
There was silence in response. Ol’ Dawdy let the last phrase hang, teasingly in the air.
“It was ‘round Christmas time and I thought it would be nice to have a chicken for Christmas supper. There was this girl at a neighbor’s place. I got a pass to see her on Sundays. Her people was raising chickens and I knew where they were kep’ and how to get in. The night before Christmas I snuck over to her people’s place and snuck into they coop. It was dark and I must’ve spooked the chickens ’cause they started making a fuss. I saw a light go on in the house and I heard the mar of the house shoutin’ out the back door. He let his hounds out. I saw them running at me so I panicked and run and kept running. By the time I turned around, I didn’t know where I was. I run in the wrong way. I run away from my girl’s place and away from my place.
“I kept circling and circling, trying to find something that looked like I knew. After a day or so, I gave up trying to find home ’cause I knew that I’d be whooped when I showed and I thought I oughta see about getting north, hoping that I could get to the part that let nigras alone. I knew Kentucky was up north and Cincinnata, too. I was hoping maybe to get to Cincinnata. I kept in the woods and by the rivers. I didn’t stay near the roads or anywhere I could be found.
“It was terrible being free. I didn’t have no place to eat, no place to sleep. I couldn’t keep my thinking right. I was circling ’round the countryside, never getting anywhere straight. And inside my head was circling ’round, too. I was always worried about being found. I was eating burries and grais. After a few days, I was real hungry and snuck over a fence to look around for something to eat. I swore there was no one around but I got caught. They strung me to a tree and beat me raw before taking me back to Mar Dunleavy’s.
“Mar Dunleavy yelled at the man what brung me for beating me so and for bringing me back without a stitch on me with his young girls about. (Though, truth was he didn’t have no girls. Just him and his wife and some boys. And it was very late, too late for girls to be about anyhow even if he had any.) They got into an argument. The man that brung me wanted some money for his trouble but Mar said that he was lucky he didn’t ask for money himself for the damage he done to me. Mar said that it would be some time before I could work again on account of I was damaged.
“The man was run off without any money for the trouble of bringing me back. I was sent to bed but in the morning I was beat again by Mar Dunleavy’s man. He smacked my hands real hard with a pipe and put me back in the field.
“A day or so later I realized that during that whole time I had been free. I didn’t know I was free when I was free but I knew it when I was back in Mar Dunleavy’s fields.
“Freedom is a rough thing. It ain’t much easier being free than not. Sometimes it’s just better to stay put and keep yourself and make no trouble than to try to do all of that for yourself.”
“Seems like it wadn’t freedom what gave you trouble,” M’uncle said. “Seems like it was worrying about not being free that gave you trouble.”
“Same thing to me,” Ol’ Dawdy said. “Being free is the same as worrying about not being free.”
At just that moment, a profound moan punctuated the shack. Bridie rushed to where Marnie lay. M’uncle lit another candle and stood beside Bridie. Marnie convulsed upright, wrapping her arm around the pain in her belly. She probed the wetness between her legs. In the dim light, Marnie held her fingertips to her eyes and recognized the wetness as blood.
V
Through the shared wall, Debbie heard her father’s deep, sonorous drone and her mother’s buzzing reply. Her father sounded angry, he often sounded angry. In the murmur, Debbie made out ‘Marnie’ and ‘baby.’ She sprang from her bed and ran to the kitchen.
“Is it true? Is it true, Bridie?” Debbie shouted. “Did Marnie have her baby?”
“What’s got into you, child? Running around the house in your night things,” Bridie said. “You run upstairs and put on some decent clothes.”
“But I got to know, Bridie. Is there a new child on the farm?”
“Yes,” Bridie sighed. “Marnie had a child very early this morning, a poor, young thing, a girl. Name’s ‘Hope.’”
“Hope?” Debbie said with slight annoyance. “I don’t much like that name. I’ll name her ‘Bessie.’”
Debbie wanted to run out to the quarters where the colored folks stayed but she wasn’t allowed back there without her Poppa or one of her brothers. Debbie did what Bridie told her to do: she went back to her bedroom to dress.
Poppa was gone for most of the day, only coming in with her brother, Robbie, around supper and then again later when it got dusk. Each time she saw him, Debbie begged him to take her over to the colored quarters.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Today is not time for a new momma to be bothered with you.”
Debbie really couldn’t wait. Each moment from when she first woke in the morning to when her Poppa came in for the evening, Debbie couldn’t stop thinking of the new baby. Whenever she saw her Poppa, she pestered him to bring her over to the quarters to see it. She pestered Bridie, too, but Bridie knew better than to take Mar’s daughter to the quarters. Debbie was already calling the baby ‘Bessie’ and thought of dressing her up and playing with her and teaching her colors and the names of the animals and the sounds they make.
About three days or so after Bessie was born, Debbie forced herself to wake early. She dressed and went down to the kitchen to wait for her Poppa. She wanted this to be the day when she finally got to see the new baby. Bridie was already at the stove brewing coffee and preparing a light meal for the men.
“G’mornin’, Miss Debbie. You’re up mighty early this day. Can I get you something to eat?”
“No, Bridie. I’m waiting for Poppa. I’m gonna make him take me to see Marnie and her new baby.”
Bridie brought Debbie a small corncake and poured her a glass of milk. Bridie sat at the table beside Debbie and covered the small, pink hand with her own. Bridie’s hand was overly warm and heavy and the palm and pads on her fingers were rough and scratchy and full of grown-up words.
“Chile, Hope has passed on,” Bridie said softly.
“…passed on?”
“Yes, chile. Marnie’s baby didn’t make it to see this day.”
Debbie was momentarily disoriented. “Hope? Do you mean Bessie?”
“Yes. The baby was born sick and stayed sick and never got much better. She is at peace now with the Lord.”
Faith had died and Hope was born the following day. Marnie’s insides cramped up and bled. Bridie had stayed with Marnie the entire night giving her water to drink and spearmint leaves to chew. There was a lot of blood, too much blood, fluid and viscous, stringy, fleshy and finally, painfully human: a baby that did not cry from a mother happy to be rid of it for the pain it brought. Hope sputtered for three days and died. She was wrapped in a rose-colored sheet recently washed of blood and was buried in the horse pit atop her sister.
All of this was fine with Mr. Vreeland. Undressing for bed, he had ranted to his wife: “Marnie always had such sickly babies. It was better off she never bothered carrying a baby that does little more then live a little and die. And give her reason to slack off. Marnie used to be one of our best. But once she gets in a family way, she is useless. I swear I ought to cut off every nigger dick in that shack.”
“Daniel!” Mrs. Vreeland protested.
“I swear, Iris. If I find the nigger that keeps putting his seed in that woman…”
Vreeland was loath to waste much of anything on a Negro child. Women tended to be better pickers than men and there may be some resale value in having another female but Vreeland had enough Negro women already. What he needed were more broad-backed men.
“That nigger girl is good for nothing but nigger girls. Can’t run a farm on the backs of a bunch of girls.
“…And she called this new one ‘Hope.’ Can you believe that?” Mrs. Vreeland was sitting at her dresser mirror brushing her hair. “I can’t have a nigger around my farm called ‘Hope.’ Hope is the last thing I want around those quarters.”
“You are making too much of this, Daniel.”
“Thank God this new one didn’t make it either. Nothing but sickly girls from Marnie. Bury it beside the last one.”
“Daniel. You ought to be careful…”
“And I am going to forbid you from taking the coloreds with you to Sunday service. This is all your doing.”
“These poor souls need some attention in this regard. They need some religion,” Mrs. Vreeland said calmly.
“Why? What do they need from religion? They aren’t getting to Heaven. They’ve no need to be God-fearing. God doesn’t give a shit about these people.”
“God loves these souls just as much as he loves you, Daniel. They need to hear the Word as much as you do. It wouldn’t hurt you to be a bit more open to the Word of the Lord. It would make you more patient with these people in your care.”
“I can’t say that I like the tone of your voice, Mrs. Vreeland. My mother never dared preach to my father.”
VI
M’uncle was squatting at the water barrel, sipping from the scoop, when a tumult by the pig pen brought him to his feet. Across Mar Vreeland’s yard two soldiers were pulling from his keep a squealer, who was kicking and protesting his removal. A third soldier, named Tracy, stood outside the sty holding the end of a rope that was looped around the neck of a pig. The pig sat like a dog beside his new master.
A fourth soldier was leaning against the gate to the sty, intent on the workings of a pistol. He pulled a pin and removed the barrel, which held a single ball and cap. He replaced the barrel and the pin. He pulled the hammer back, watching the action of the barrel, hoping to align the hammer with the cylinder.
“Stand back! Stand back!” He took aim at the pig, squinting his left eye to focus his right. He squeezed the trigger and heard a disappointing click. He moved the cylinder by hand just a judicious bit. He aimed and pulled the trigger again and was again disappointed by an impotent click.
M’uncle ran over and challenged the soldiers: “What are y’all doing? Mar Vreeland ain’t gonna like you stealing his pigs.”
“Look here, boy,” the soldier said. “Take this here pistol. It might come in handy. You might want to blow your master’s brains out the back of his head someday.” And the soldier placed the weight into the palms of M’uncle’s two suddenly outstretched hands.
While in the sty, one soldier clubbed the frantic pig with a tree branch while his comrade tried to hold its back legs. The pig squealed and broke free and the two soldiers—one now with a knife and the other with a branch—fell about the pen landing careless blows or wildly slashing at the pig. Tracy wrapped the end of the rope around his wrist and took out his pistol. He shot at the squealer. He wounded it and shot again. Four shots in all before the pig was finally brought down.
“Nice shot, Tracy,” the soldier with the branch looked up from the mud. “Are you trying to kill us? And look at what you’ve done to this animal. She’s unfit for eating now.”
“Wadn’t going to be much use anyhow with knife cuts and bruises all up and down. You’d hardly think the good Lord gave you a share of brains between you.”
“There might be some meat there after all,” The soldier with the knife poked the pig with the tip of his boot. “C’mon, let’s take it with us.”
“Nah, leave it,” Tracy said. “What a pair of fools y’all are.” With a tug on the rope, Tracy led their sole prize away. The pig followed his new master without complaint just as young Mar Vreeland ran up with Ol’ Dawdy behind him.
“Requisitioning this livestock for the war effort,” Tracy told Mar Robbie.
“Brigadier General Forrest thanks you for your contribution,” said another.
“Thank you very much, sir,” the last soldier grunted with a smile.
VII
Vreeland’s first cotton harvest produced roughly eight thousand pounds of cotton from thirty acres. The year before Vreeland bought a rig on credit in Knoxville, but no horses. Dr. Hicks, who seemed to know everyone in the county, made the arrangements for the rental of four horses. Vreeland sent M’uncle and Robbie with Dr. Hicks to two separate farms to pick them up. There was a fee for this, of course, due Dr. Hicks as well as the unseen neighbors. Using rented horses, he carted the cotton about five miles east for ginning and baling and carted the finished bales back to his place.
If he were to continue this business in the future, Vreeland would have to see about getting a gin and a baler of his own. He would have to build a structure to house these machines. A mule-driven baler would take up a bit of space, with a bolt mounted in the roof and enough room for a mule to make a circuit around the baler. He would put it about a hundred yards from the western side of the barn. He cursed himself for not beginning the work on the baling house, as he was calling this unbuilt building. The frame of the building and some grommetted tarpaulins nailed in place could have served as temporary storage for the finished bales.
M’uncle parked the rig, which held about twenty bales, about a hundred yards from the western side of the barn. He unhitched the horses, watered and fed then and tied them outside the barn. Tomorrow they would drive M’uncle, Ol’ Dawdy, Robbie, Mar Vreeland and the cotton to Grand Junction.
Before the war, cotton was fetching anywhere from ten to fifteen cents per pound. Vreeland had taken Dr. Hicks up on his offer to negotiate a price for the cotton in Grand Junction. Grand Junction was lousy with Union soldiers and agents who were shipping as much cotton as they could out of the South. In these frenzied times, cotton was selling for more than a quarter of a dollar per pound, if Hicks was to be believed. Plus, the Yankees were paying gold or U.S. greenbacks, which were much better than Confederate script. A Confederate note was well-nigh worthless. It was a bet against a Northern victory, unredeemable unless the South won.
Vreeland stepped back and took in the rig and the cotton bales and the barn and his house and the colored quarters. Mentally, he totaled the price of the rig, the cost of renting the horses, and the fee Dr. Hicks expected for his agency. He was risking his farm on this harvest and on the veracity of Dr. Hicks’s reports. Eight thousand pounds of cotton at thirty cents a pound would be $240,000. Was that right? The figure astounded Vreeland. He thought about paying off the loan for the rig and about the price of four horses. He thought about the cost of a baling house and a gin and a baler. He would need a new mule, too. Perhaps he could rent out the baler and the gin to neighboring cotton farmers. (How much had he paid to have his cotton ginned and baled?) Setting up his own baling operation could add up to a nice supplemental business for him.
The sky looked heavy. Vreeland saw M’uncle come away from the barn after tending the horses. He told M’uncle to cover the bales against the coming rain and went in the house for supper and a smoke before heading off to bed.
A teamster and a rig would meet Vreeland the next morning at the farm. They would load the bales on the rig and head west to Grand Junction, a ride of about a half day each direction. Vreeland insisted on going, though there was no need. He would bring his son, M’uncle, and Dawdy with him to help unload the cotton. He would bring a rifle to protect his cotton.
The next morning Vreeland was up well before dawn. He woke his son and went into the kitchen to heat the pot of coffee Bridie had left for him. Vreeland burned the coffee and thought about waking Bridie to fix another pot when Robbie came into the kitchen. Without a word, the two of them headed out to the bales of cotton, stopping first at the barn to pick up the rifle. Cotton was contraband and Vreeland figured on needing the rifle to protect the delivery from cotton burners who’d rather destroy the crop than have it profit the Northern cause. It had rained, as Vreeland expected. The bales were uncovered and the cotton was wet from the night’s rain.
M’uncle and Ol’ Dawdy walked along edge of the stubble field toward Vreeland and the cotton. Vreeland’s eyes followed M’uncle’s progress with patience.
“’Mornin’, Mar Vreeland,” M’uncle said with a toadying cheerfulness. Vreeland slapped M’uncle’s face. M’uncle’s expression conveyed a sort of perplexed innocence that Vreeland took as a reproach. Vreeland advanced and smashed the butt of the rifle into M’uncle’s teeth, knocking him on his back. M’uncle’s mouth filled with his blood. He spit out a wet, red yowl: the small of his back had fallen on the pistol that had come loose from the waist of his pants.
“What did I tell you?! I told you to cover these bales!” Vreeland yelled. “You stupid nigger!” Vreeland raised his fist and took a step forward. M’uncle scooted backward on his elbows and backside, trying to keep the pistol hidden beneath his buttocks. “These bales are ruined!” Vreeland screamed.
M’uncle was a being of mud and clay in which an impatient seed had been set, waiting for time and the proper elements to set it free. The pistol was one thing. M’uncle knew someday he could find use for the pistol. But this trip to Grand Junction was something else altogether. It brought an unsettling surge of thinking to his mind that had upset his last night’s sleep.
“I’d be driving away from Vreeland farm,” was one of his thoughts, “and for sure I could drive on. The horses and the rig are sure better ’an my feet. But horses and a rig are also more likely noticed. A rig has got to stay to the roads and sure someone would notice a nigra driving a team of horses. Though I do have the pass Mar Vreeland give me.
“Better I unhitch one of them horses and ride the back of her north through woods and away from roads and people but she wouldn’t have a saddle and I never rode without no saddle but I could manage it. I’d run the horse as far as she would go, run her tired and tucker’d, and run off on foot from where she drop.
“Or maybe get myself lost in Gran’ Union. They be Lincoln’s men about who don’t care a lick about who a black man belong to. As long as I could get wandered a bit from Mar Vreeland, I’d be good as gone. Maybe even volunteer with the Union Army doing whatever needs doing. But white folk are fickle. You cain’t say what they do.”
Still, passively slipping into freedom didn’t seem to satisfy M’uncle. His thoughts, however far they wandered through the alternatives, returned to the same set of facts. He thought that there must be a reason the Lord give him that pistol. He knew without saying it to himself that he would need to kill Mar Vreeland and maybe even Mar Robbie in order to be really free. He considered his pistol and he considered Vreeland’s rifle. The pistol had only one shot. And Mar Vreeland had his rifle that he would be keeping that close by. Or his son, one. M’uncle would have to shoot the one with the rifle and snatch the rifle quick-like and maybe put the rifle to use on Mar Robbie, though he always did like Mar Robbie. Mar Robbie never done much of anything to M’uncle.
M’uncle decided he wouldn’t take action until they were making their way back. Mar Vreeland would have money on the way back that he wouldn’t have on the way going. Lord willing, a lot of money. The night prior, as heavy drops first began to beat on the tin roof, M’uncle was suddenly inspired to remove the tarp with which he had covered the cotton only hours before. M’uncle knew soggy cotton bales weigh more than dry cotton bales. Heavy cotton bales would fetch a greater price than plain cotton bales. And M’uncle needed Mar Vreeland to get as much money as he could for his cotton.
M’uncle felt the ache in the small of his back, imagined it pistol-shaped. His tongue gently tested the jagged crown of broken incisor. He spit blood. As M’uncle re-covered the bales with tarpaulin, preparing to start off for Grand Junction, he took solace in the plan he drafted in the night. M’uncle reviewed it, repeated it to himself like an incantation: he would use the single shot to kill Mar Vreeland and take his rifle. He would use the rifle to kill Mar Robbie, if need be. He would take their rifle and their money. He would unhitch a horse and ride her as far north as her life would allow and from the place of her death he would carry on as quickly as his feet and his lungs would go, not stopping until Ohio or farther, until he was free. With his freedom and Vreeland’s money, he would settle down and work no more until Jesus called him home.
VIII
Vreeland had been to Grand Junction once since he moved to Tennessee from North Carolina. He knew which road ran generally west and which therefore led generally in the direction of Grand Junction but Vreeland was feeling his way. He knew, or thought he remembered, that the roads leading to Grand Junction progressed, each road meeting a wider road at a junction and each fork decided in favor of the southern tine. He sat on the bench beside Ol’ Dawdy. Robbie and M’uncle sat on the back edge of the rig, facing whence they had come, with their backs leaning into the damp bales and their feet hanging loosely over the dry road. At no time did Vreeland feel lost but neither did he always feel sure of his way.
After two or three hours of riding, coming to an intersection of a road and a wider road, Vreeland spotted a soldier cradled in the large roots of a tree. His gray kepi covered his face and his arms were folded around his chest and his weapon. Vreeland thought briefly about waking the soldier to confirm his direction, but his pride held him in check. The rattle of the rig, however, and the clop of the hooves were sufficient to rouse the soldier. When he saw Vreeland and the rig, he hurriedly took to his feet and ran off into the trees. Vreeland led the horses to the left, onto the wider road.
About a mile into the road, a disturbance appeared in the distance, what Vreeland took as a trick of his vision. As it took shape, Vreeland made out a small squad of about eight men on horseback coming toward him. He thought of his two boys, who were riding somewhere in Tennessee with the Confederate Army. He hadn’t heard from them and wondered if they could be among the group that was now approaching. (Vreeland was could not know that both of his sons had been killed only days before.) Though the road was wide enough for them to pass, Vreeland pulled his rig as far right as he could without rolling into the slight embankment.
The squad did not pass. Vreeland looked on each soldier separately. This squad was haphazardly dressed, as though there were only five uniforms divided among the eight or so men. A few of the men wore gray kepis; only one wore a slouch hat rounded by a yellow cord. This one also wore a double-breasted butternut jacket with a gold collar and a gold soutache on the sleeves. None of these men was his son.
The soldier in the slouch hat advanced on Vreeland and pronounced:
“We are Lieutenant Richard Talbot of the Army of the Confederate States of America and we are declaring your cotton contraband and confiscating your cotton under General Order No. 17 issued by Major General M. Lovell under the direction of Secretary of War George Randolph.”
Vreeland reached secretly for his rifle but was checked by a chorus of metallic clicks. A soldier dismounted and walked his horse to the back of the rig. There he tied the horse to a metal loop.
“General Order No. 17? I haven’t heard of this? What is this about? I am a southerner. I am on the side of the Confederacy. What is the meaning of this? Why…?” Vreeland stammered questions at the officer.
“Would you please come down from the wagon, sir,” one of the soldiers spoke to Vreeland.
“What? I don’t understand…” Vreeland stammered.
The dismounted soldier waited for Vreeland and Ol’ Dawdy to climb down before climbing onto the rig and taking the reins. He also took Vreeland’s rifle and tossed it to a mounted comrade some feet away.
“The rig and horses, too?” Vreeland was enraged. “This is outrageous. Clearly this must be illegal! The horses aren’t even mine. You can’t take this, too. Take the cotton. Okay. I can… But leave us the horses. How will we get back? Let us unload the cotton. You can have the cotton but give us the rest. The rig isn’t mine. Don’t you see?!”
The soldiers ignored Vreeland and went about the business of confiscating Vreeland’s cotton. “Let us unload it first. Then, you can do whatever you like. M’uncle,… Dawdy,… you, too, boy. Let’s get this cotton unloaded…”
But the soldier snapped the reins and the rig lurched forward. The squad turned and headed back in the direction they had come. Robbie, Ol’ Dawdy, and M’uncle simply stood and watched. Vreeland ran up the road to chase them, then stopped and seemed to vibrate in place. He turned on his son and his Negroes. He swore at them. “How could you just stand there?! What is wrong with the lot of you?” Vreeland stared again into the distance at the rebel squad receding slowly, dissolving like a mist. He took a few steps up the road, a few steps back. Robbie, Ol’ Dawdy, and M’uncle quietly witnessed his disjointed, spastic dance of fury.
IX
Vreeland grumbled as he walked beside his son. Robbie stood close enough to appear to be listening. Vreeland was reciting numbers almost inaudibly, occasionally muttering Robbie’s name as though for some corroboration of a figure or an estimate. Vreeland was bankrupt. He was ruined. His entire fortune had rested on the shipment and sale of twenty bales of soggy cotton, which a squad of Confederate soldiers somewhere in Tennessee was now struggling to burn.
For his part, M’uncle was also cursing his misfortune. His plans had also collapsed. He had still had the pistol but no plan. Purposefully, he fell back, enlarging the distance between himself and his master. He would salvage this adventure yet. He waited, sure of Vreeland’s preoccupation with his recent injury; waited for the distance to give him courage. Each bush he passed on the side of the road, each side road he crossed was another opportunity missed. Without a count, without a warning even to himself, M’uncle turned around and ran in the opposite direction.
“Wha…? Where you goin’?” Ol’ Dawdy asked but M’uncle was already out of earshot. Robbie turned around, disturbing his father’s mussitations. “Stop! Stop!” Vreeland screamed. “Don’t stand there, you imbecile! Stop that nigger!” Vreeland smacked his son in the back of his head and pushed him toward the escaping man. Vreeland himself gave chase. “Dawdy! Dawdy, you black ape! Stop that nigger!”
And all three ran back down the road. M’uncle was fairly far away, farther from the white men than from Dawdy, but Dawdy was fast for an old man and was keeping up. He wasn’t gaining much on M’uncle but he was holding his own. M’uncle stumbled but quickly got on his feet and starting again, he felt a bit lighter and realized that his pistol had fallen with him. M’uncle stopped short, sliding on the dust, nearly falling again. He doubled back and scooped up the pistol and ran off. Dawdy was catching up. M’uncle abandoned the road and dove into a small thicket and ran into the brush. Dawdy immediately did the same from his position in the road, running on an angle that he estimated would take him to M’uncle.
M’uncle tried to hide himself. He had wadded and tossed himself into a copse growing at the base of four poplar trees but the year was late and most of the leaves had abandoned their branches. Dawdy had caught up. He stopped and surveyed the area. M’uncle was not in the distance. Dawdy was relieved: M’uncle had escaped. Dawdy doubled over, panting with his hands on his knees when an unnatural motion of some branches betrayed M’uncle’s hiding place. Dawdy stepped over and saw M’uncle through the branches. M’uncle looked up and smiled. Dawdy smiled back.
“Howdy, Dawdy,” M’uncle whispered. “Look, man. You don’t want to give me up. You know what they do to me if’n they catch me. C’mon, man. Have mercy on your brother.” But it was too late. Robbie had caught up and stood beside Dawdy, staring into the bushes. M’uncle smiled, pleadingly, at Robbie. He was about to speak when he heard Vreeland shouting from a short distance away.
“What’s all this? Get a move on,” Vreeland shouted. “He won’t be found standing around here…” His voice trailed off. There was something artificial about the way Robbie and Ol’ Dawdy stared into the shrubs that skirted the poplar trees. As Vreeland approached, Ol’ Dawdy slowly stepped between Robbie and the trees. Robbie stood there dumbly. Slowly, he, too, turned to his father and the two men stood one in front of the other in front of the trees.
“Get out of my way,” Vreeland said, pushing aside first his son, then Ol’ Dawdy. “Careful. He’s got a gun,” Robbie said calmly.
Vreeland saw the pistol, saw its shaking hand. He grabbed M’uncle’s wrist and pulled him through the thickest part of the branches. He seized the man’s shirt with both fists, catching cloth and pinches of M’uncle’s skin in his clenched fingers. Holding him high, Vreeland unfurled M’uncle, unrolled him like a sheet, shook and thrashed him and shook him some more. M’uncle’s limbs flapped about like a doll. Vreeland punched the head and punched the head again. He pushed the man to the ground and gave him a kick and landed the sole of his boot hard on the man’s chest. Looking about, Vreeland grabbed a rock a little larger than his hand and wielded it like a calcified extension of himself. He grabbed the body by the shirt and brought it up to meet the downswing of the rock, which caught the forehead square before rising again and pushing itself into the center of the man’s face. Vreeland let go his grasp and the body crumpled on the ground. Vreeland dropped the rock on the body and foraged the forest floor for another weapon. Incredibly, M’uncle had not dropped the pistol. He raised it wobbly and put all of his effort into firing. He turned his head, bracing himself for the report. He felt the trigger yield and heard the sharp click of an unshot ball. Vreeland had found a branch meanwhile and struck the man’s head once and then retraced the blurred arc again and once more again and stumbled, stung by a burning pain.
Smoke rose lazily from the barrel of M’uncle’s pistol and M’uncle was happy. Exhausted from his body’s last effort, M’uncle lay quietly on his back and he was happy; happy just to rest there on the forest floor among the freshly dead and dying leaves. The sun winked at him through the high boughs which shook against the cold. ‘It was a good life,’ he smiled. ‘I’m almost there.’
Vreeland cried, not in pain, but in anger. A bullet had grazed his calf. He flung the branch sidelong into the trees and held wide his gritted fists. He screamed to the tops of the trees and the unblinking sun. On his knees, Vreeland picked up the red-scabbed rock and drove it through the dying man’s face. He found a nearby stone and slammed it into the head and another stone and another and slammed them each into the skull, the ribs, the cracking bones. Sticks and branches and every specimen of nature his anger could possibly repurpose, these he brought down hard upon his victim. He scratched up clods of dust and clumps of grass and hurled them at the corpse. He let fall his fists, beating the life-lost man into a ribbon of meat until his rage, no longer satisfied with the other man, began to bloody his own knuckles and bruise his own hands.
Vreeland limped home alone, about a barn’s length ahead of Ol’ Dawdy and Robbie.
“Why, Dawdy?” Robbie asked. “Why did he run?”
Dawdy was quiet. The question annoyed him.
“I mean, M’uncle had plenty of chances to run if he wanted. My father trusted him. Why did he run now?”
It was very late, creeping upon morning, when Vreeland approached his home. By the side of the road, he saw his mare among the thistles eating the tall grass. “Damn stupid animal,” he muttered.
He washed himself at the pump, soaking his head and running cold water over his battered hands. Ol’ Dawdy passed him and Robbie passed him, each to his own place.
“Go fetch that animal,” Vreeland grunted. Ol’ Dawdy complied. Robbie continued on into the house.
Vreeland ran his hand through his wet hair and stretched his neck to the sky. The unblinking moon was not full but it was nearly so, hanging low in the lightening sky.
Vreeland stole into his bedroom. Sitting on the bench at the foot of the bed, he slipped off his boots and eased them onto the carpet. His wife stirred and sat up.
“Daniel?” she said. “Daniel, what has happened to you? Where have you been? You should have been home hours ago.” She lit a lamp and carried it to her husband. She sat beside him on the bench and wrapped her free arm around him. “Good Lord, Daniel. You’re all wet.”
“I don’t know what to do anymore,” Vreeland muttered. “It’s all gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean?”
“Gone,” he repeated. “We have nothing.” His thumb found a flap of skin hanging from his knuckle. He fingered with it idly, pulling it away from his fist and pressing it back in place.
“Nothing?” his wife repeated.
“The rules have changed. I don’t know the rules anymore. It should all work. It should have all worked. I did the right thing. I did everything right. I worked hard. I… I did the right thing.”
“Of course, you did, Daniel,” his wife said. “Of course, you did.”
“What is the right thing? What was the right thing to do? I don’t know anymore.”
“Everything happens for a reason, Daniel. You only need to trust in the Lord. Jesus speaks to you all the time through every created thing. You only need to listen.”
She put his head on her bosom and stroked his wet hair, humming these verses from Proverbs:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight.
Do not be wise in your own eyes;
Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
After a pause, she whispered: “You’re a good man, Daniel. You will do fine.” And she rocked him gently. “You’re a good man.”
Vreeland smiled sadly and knew he was trapped. His wife was such a simple soul. But he was tired, too tired to be cross with her.
“I am a good man,” he said finally.
The bedroom door swung open and Debbie flew in. “Did you hear? Did you hear, Momma?”
Bridie stood in the doorway in her night things. “I tole her not to bother you, Ma’am.”
“Did you hear, Poppa? Marnie is having another baby!”
“I tole her,” Bridie repeated from the doorway. She dared not enter the bedroom. “Come here, chile. You leave your poppa be…”
“It’s true, Daniel,” Mrs. Vreeland confirmed. “We found out today while you were gone.”
