The Land (17 page)

Mitchell could hang.

All that flashed through my mind as I stared out at my daddy. Then Mitchell gave me a poke, nudging me on, and I seared forever into my memory the picture of my daddy standing on that platform, and walked on. When we reached the women's car, the silver-haired woman motioned us to put the baggage on two sets of seats facing each other. As we did so, she leaned toward us and whispered, “You boys pretend to be arranging the baggage underneath the seats, but leave the bags out, and when I say so, the two of you slip under the seats yourselves. Pull what bags you can in front of you.” The woman and her daughters then took up their hatboxes and their cloaks and began putting them in the overhead rack.

There were only a few people in the car, and I noticed that everyone was busy putting away luggage and preparing for the journey. No one was paying attention to Mitchell and me. They were concerned with their own matters. I hoped none of them would notice if Mitchell and I had come or gone. I suppose that's what the silver-haired woman was counting on. As she and her daughters placed their belongings overhead, a man stopped and offered his assistance. The women accepted. One of the younger women at this point stepped back between the seats, partially concealing Mitchell and me, while the others remained in the aisle. The man arranged the boxes and the cloaks, then asked if he could be of further assistance. The women thanked him graciously and said they could manage now. The man touched his hat in respect to them, then walked on toward the next car. If he had seen Mitchell and me, he paid us no attention.

The women continued to stand, as if postponing sitting for a long journey that would see them seated most of the way. They took out fans from their purses and began gently fanning themselves. After a few minutes the older woman glanced casually around the car and, turning toward one of her daughters in the aisle, smiled at her, then glanced down at Mitchell and me. “Now,” she said. With that, Mitchell and I each scooted underneath a set of the wooden seats. The women still didn't seat themselves as they talked about casual matters, while Mitchell and I, stuffed under the seats, tried to adjust to our discomfort. I looked across at Mitchell and met his eyes. There could be no more words said.

After several minutes the women took their seats and arranged their luggage around themselves. Then they hid us from all view with their tremendous skirts. I was shrouded in darkness. I couldn't see Mitchell underneath the seat opposite, and certainly we couldn't talk. It was hot and suffocating as we faced the unknown; but it got worse. Men searching for Mitchell and me had now boarded the train, and Ray Sutcliffe was one of them.

So was my daddy.

I heard my daddy's voice, and I wanted to cry out to him. I heard someone who identified himself as the conductor explain to the four ladies hiding us that a search was being conducted for two boys, one black, one who looked white. The conductor politely asked if they had seen either of us. The older woman politely said they hadn't. The conductor thanked them, and the men moved on—all the men, including my daddy. As they left, I found myself crying. No sound came, just tears. I couldn't afford to be heard; still, I cried. I knew a part of my life was passing now, a part of my life I would never know again, the part of my life that was my daddy.

Some while later the train began to move. I lay still and tense waiting for a sudden halt, waiting for the women to betray Mitchell and me, waiting for us suddenly to be yanked from our hiding places and lynched from the nearest tree. I waited, but the women remained true to their word. When one of them left her seat, the others rearranged their skirts so that they covered any sight of Mitchell or me; no one ever knew we were there.

So that's how Mitchell and I left East Texas, underneath the seats of a train, hidden by the skirts of four white women. It was a long, cramped, uncomfortable journey, but we endured it. We had to. Only thing was, we were on the wrong train. Mitchell and I were headed not toward the Great Plains and the mountains of the West I had envisioned, but east, back into the Deep South.

MANHOOD

“ 'Ey, you boy! Get up from there!”

I looked sleepily at the white boss man who kicked at my bedding, nicking me in the side, and got up. I wasn't happy about it.

The boss man was called by the name of Jessup, and he had a high-pitched voice that rose higher now as he spoke again. “Where's that worthless nigger you always with? That boy Mitchell!” he shouted. All the men who had not yet come out of their slumber began to waken. “Where's he at?”

I glanced down at the bedding beside my own. Only blankets lay there on the dirt floor. The next man over looked at the pile of bedding too, while all up and down the line, sleepy-eyed men stirred with no words said.

“Well?” demanded Jessup.

“I don't know,” I told him. “Maybe he stepped outside to relieve himself.”

“That boy been gone since midnight check. Seein' you two always together, he gone off, you gotta know 'bout it.”

“I'm not his keeper,” I said. “Mitchell's a man grown, and if he decides to go off, he doesn't check with me about it.” Now, I shouldn't have said that, I know. But I had been roused from my sleep by this coarse man and I hadn't yet reined in my temper. Fortunately for me, Jessup chose to be tolerant, at least tolerant for a white man.

“So, you got a smart mouth on you this mornin', huh, nigger?” he said. “Well, I got somethin' to cut that smartness right outa ya. Seein' you and that Mitchell come in this camp t'gether, you can just do his workload and yours too for the day. That boy ain't back 'fore the day be out and you ain't got your share and his of timber cut, I'm gonna turn you and your smart mouth over to the sheriff. And don't you think of runnin' off on me, 'cause I'm gonna have my eye on you, and my men will too. Now get movin'!” Jessup then turned and looked down the long rows of men bedded on the ground. “All you other niggers, y'all get on up too! The day's a-waitin'!”

The boss man walked to the shanty opening covered only with a sheet of tarp to keep out the damp and cold, then looked back and pointed a finger at us. “And not one of you is t' help that boy there! Today he work alone, less'n that boy Mitchell show up!” He lifted the tarp flap and left as the men began to rise. Several of the men eyed me but didn't speak. I looked back at them in silence, knowing that the boss man had had no need to warn them not to help me, for even without his warning they wouldn't have lifted a finger, not for me.

I turned back to my bedding. I rolled up my gear inside the blankets and tied the roll with a rope. I did the same with Mitchell's gear, then I pulled my pants over my long johns, put on a shirt, coat, and boots, all while the other men milled around tending to themselves and eyeing me still. Their watching made me uneasy. I had spent a lot of my time in the Mississippi lumber camps and this was a particularly rough one. Both the men and the boss, Jessup, were rough. It was known for a fact that Jessup had been the operator of a turpentine camp, a camp set up to drain all the resin from the pines, and many of those bosses could be brutal. It was also known that Jessup had brought some of his turpentine overseers and workers to this camp. Had I known all this when Mitchell and I joined up, I never would have done so, for both Mitchell and I knew about the turpentine camps. We'd been there.

I stepped outside. The dawn had not yet broken. Fog misted through the trees holding the blackness of the night. It was early spring and it was cold. I shivered as I took a deep breath of the damp air and went off to take care of my morning necessities down near the creek. By the time I returned to the camp, the cook had a fire going and pots of chicory brewing and grits boiling. I took a tin and finished off my breakfast before the other men were out. Then, as they emerged from the shanty, I set out up the hillside with my axe to start the day.

Working alone was a weary load. Now, I was considered a good chopper, a man who could chop up to fifteen trees a day, and if I set my mind to it, I could chop twenty. Mitchell could do the same, and for that, we received better pay than for most other kind of work we took on. Thing was, each man had so many trees he had to cut a day and I knew there was no way that alone I could cut the number of trees by day's end as Mitchell and I could cut together, and I understood the consequence of that. But even as the men from the camp joined me in the dense forest and sniggered about my progress, I didn't worry. I figured Mitchell had gone off to give his attentions to some young woman, but I knew he'd be here as soon as he realized the dawn was breaking. He'd never let me down yet.

I was right.

Mitchell joined me just as the fog began to clear. He whacked his axe into a nearby tree without a word, then said, “Heard down the row you was gonna hafta do my work and yours too, I didn't show up.”

I finished notching the side of a tree, then walked to the other side of it to hack at the tree until it fell. “I wasn't worried,” I said. Before I swung my axe again, I grinned at Mitchell. “Hope she was worth it.”

Mitchell looked back at me and grinned too. After that we had no more words as we chopped in rhythm with the sound of my axe against the one tree, then the sound of Mitchell's against the other. We paced ourselves that way until the trees fell. Then we went to work on two more. By midday when the cook's bell rang for dinner, Mitchell and I were already caught up. By quitting time we had chopped our day's worth of trees. That's when the boss man came down on me hard.

“Where y'all boys think ya headed?” he asked as we came from the slopes.

“The bell rung,” said Mitchell. “It's quittin' time.”

“Oh, yeah, that's right,” said Jessup as if he didn't know. “Quittin' time on a Saturday night. Well, boy, you go on and get your pay wit' the rest of 'em. I wanna talk t' this white nigger friend of yours.”

Mitchell looked at the boss man, then at me, without moving. I met his eyes, and he walked slowly on, leaving the boss man and me.

“So,” said Jessup, “y'all managed to cut all your trees for the day, I see.”

“Same as always,” I replied.

Jessup spat at my feet. “You know, you one lucky nigger that boy Mitchell showin' up when he did. I was kinda lookin' forward t' callin' the sheriff on you.”

I stood there saying nothing, taking the boss man's insults, and knowing he was leading up to something. From the first day I had come into the camp, Jessup had disliked me, and I understood the reason. It was the same reason why the men of color disliked me. I looked too white. Mitchell's being absent in the night gave Jessup another excuse to strike out at me, as if he needed one. He'd said not one word to Mitchell about his absence. He didn't have it in for Mitchell.

Jessup looked up the darkening slope. “You know, Paul Logan, I don't like you. You come in this here camp lookin' and talkin' like a white man and callin' yo'self colored.” He looked back at me. “Now, one thing I can't stand is a uppity nigger, nigger thinkin' he good as white folks. Oh, I can tell it in you. You the kind think you good as any white man walkin'. These other boys round here, they don't act that way, none 'ceptin' maybe that boy Mitchell. Leastways he keeps shut, not talkin' citified like you. Well, I figure to teach you a white man's in charge here. I figure you got such a smart attitude, you can just take your white self on back up that slope tomorrow and put yourself in another day's work.”

I stared at the boss man, knowing full well he knew the next day coming was Sunday, the only day the camp shut down, but I didn't question him on it; I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

“And don't think you gettin' paid for any Sunday workin' neither. You gonna put this day in for my satisfaction, and if you don't, I'll make you the same promise I made you this mornin'. I'll call the sheriff on you. You hear me?”

My blood shot hot, but I didn't say the words that were boiling up inside me. All I said was “I hear.”

“You best do, 'cause I'm gonna be checkin' on you come first light. And, oh yeah, by the way, I'm jus' gonna keep your week's pay 'til your Sunday workin' time is done.” Then, that said, the boss man Jessup turned his back on me and strode toward the camp.

I watched him go, then sat down on a stump, closed my eyes, and tried to take hold of my fury. Ever since I had left my daddy's house, I had been learning and relearning that harsh lesson my daddy had whipped into me when I was fourteen. It was a white man's world, and I had to survive in it. But always constant with me was relearning how to hold my temper. When I had gotten on that train in East Texas, I had decided that I was going to survive, and surviving meant holding my temper. I wasn't going to let this white man beat me down.