The Land (44 page)

Caroline nodded to that, and we smiled at each other across the fire.

 

Later, Nathan played and Caroline sang, then we rose and tended to the brush. I lit the fire myself. As the fire burned, we threw on more branches. Nathan brought more water. We kept the fire in check with long poles whenever branches fell too close to the edge of the circle. There was a bit of wind rising, but we didn't worry about it. The fire was well within the circle. On most nights it took us a couple of hours to burn all the branches we'd cut during the day. This night seemed no different. As the branches became ash and the fire lowered, Nathan ran off to the outhouse. “Boy, we need more water!” Caroline called after him.

“Gotta go!” he cried.

“Boy—”

“I'll get it,” I said, and took up the buckets.

Caroline shook her head, as if at the ways of men, then she laughed good-naturedly. “Well, go on,” she said.

Once again I headed for the creek. As I filled the buckets, I heard Caroline scream. I looked back up toward the brush and saw the flames rising, just as Nathan came running from the outhouse. Then I saw Caroline.

She sprang from the other side of the circle, running toward the creek. Her skirts were on fire. I leaped from the bank and raced toward her. I reached her before she was midway to the water. I pulled her to the ground and rolled her fast over the dirt, smothering out the flames. Then I tore off the long skirt she wore and the cotton petticoat beneath, so that her legs were bare. I picked her up and carried her quick to the creek, with Nathan hurrying behind. I immersed Caroline in the water, and she moaned with pain.

“Nathan,” I said in a steady voice, “go get Ma Jones.”

“But Caroline—” mumbled Nathan.

“Now!”

Nathan ran off. For several minutes I kept Caroline in the water, then took her back to the cabin, and carefully laid her on the bed. She continued to moan, and when I called her name, she could only look at me. The pain in her eyes frightened me more than I could have imagined. I couldn't lose her. “I think the baby's all right,” I said softly, trying to comfort her. “We got the fire out before it got above your knees. Your baby wasn't touched.”

Somehow I think my words must have reached Caroline, for her hands went to her stomach and she stroked it before she closed her eyes again. I got some of the salve Caroline had made for our many cuts and scrapes when she first had come to the forty, and rubbed it over her legs. Caroline cringed, but I managed to cover her legs with the salve. Then I waited.

When Ma Jones arrived with Nathan, first thing she did was put her hand on Caroline's stomach. She waited, and Nathan and I did too. Ma Jones nodded. “Good. Baby still kickin'.” She asked me what I had done for Caroline. I told her. She nodded, then she ordered Nathan and me to leave the cabin. “I'll take care of her now,” she said.

Outside, Nathan and I sat on the stumps. Fortunately for us, the wind had died and the fire from the brush had burned itself out. “What ya think, Paul?” Nathan asked fearfully. “Caroline, she gonna be all right?”

I looked at him and tried to reassure him. “She's strong,” I said. “She'll be fine. She's got to be.”

Ma Jones stayed on in that cabin day after day as Caroline fought back her pain, and all Nathan and I could do was keep on working and pray we didn't lose Caroline as well as her baby. Tom Bee came, and Horace Avery, and we kept on cutting trees and praying. I saw Caroline each day before I set out to work at the dawn. I checked on her when I came from chopping, and each night before I went to the shed I looked in on her once more. But each time I did, she looked at me with glazed-over eyes without recognition. Each night when I settled upon my straw cot, I said a prayer for Caroline and her child, and she stayed on my mind until I fell asleep, then filled my dreams. Finally, one day, Ma Jones called me to the cabin and she said to me, “Look like she comin' outa it.”

I went in, and Caroline turned her head to me. I went closer and knelt beside her bed. “Maybe you'll listen to me now,” I said softly. “Told you a long time ago, Caroline Perry Thomas, to stop doing all this hard work. I won't have you dying on me. I can't hardly carry on for both you and Mitchell.”

Caroline's eyes smiled at my chiding, and her lips did the same. Then she put out her hand and took mine.

 

It was more than a month before Caroline was up again. Her baby was expected in less than five weeks, but once she was able to walk, she insisted on being up and doing, even though we could tell she was still in pain. Ma Jones had sent her grand-daughter to stay with Caroline during her healing time, and once Caroline decided she was able to do for herself, she sent the girl home along with several bushels of corn and other vegetables from the garden, as well as two of our chickens. She didn't ask my permission about sending any of the vegetables with the girl; she did ask, however, about the chickens. She'd planted and worked most of the garden herself, so I guess she figured the vegetables were hers to give; the chickens she must have figured belonged in part to me, since hers had bred with the ones I had bought. I was happy to give the girl the chickens. Fact, if Caroline had asked for them, I would have given the girl all the chickens.

September had come, and with Caroline doing better and the baby soon due, I looked forward to receiving my ownership papers on the forty from Filmore Granger, for all the trees I had agreed to cut had been run down the creek. As soon as I had title to the forty, I could get my money from John Lawes and seal my deal with J. T. Hollenbeck. In the meantime, Nathan and I had begun to pick the cotton. We had started picking in August, and I had sold a bale of the cotton along with the plow to pay the last monthly note. I intended to sell the rest as soon as I could. Whatever cotton was left unpicked, John Lawes had agreed to purchase. He had also agreed to purchase two of my mules, and I had found another buyer for the third mule I intended to sell. Soon I figured to have all the money I needed to own the land. We were within two weeks of seeing all our hard work pay off when Filmore Granger came to see me. I figured he had brought the papers to the forty.

I found out differently.

“Paul,” Filmore Granger said when he had dismounted, “I hear you trying to buy land J. T. Hollenbeck's selling.”

I wasn't sure where this was leading. “We have a contract,” I replied cautiously.

“J. T. Hollenbeck bought that land from my daddy, land my daddy had to sell for taxes after the war. Now you're trying to buy it?”

I didn't say anything. I just waited for him to get on with what was on his mind.

He looked around. “You've got yourself a lot of land cleared here. Sizeable amount of cotton planted.”

“As we agreed,” I said, taking note of Caroline, who had come from the garden and stopped near the cabin with a basket loaded with vegetables. “Any land I cleared, I could plant.”

Filmore Granger ignored my words, looked back at me, and went on. “Heard you planning to sell these forty acres of mine to help pay for that land Hollenbeck's selling. That right?”

Now, I didn't figure that was any of Filmore Granger's business, what I was doing with land that was now rightfully mine, but I couldn't say that to him outright. I knew I had to watch my words. “Well, you know, Mister Granger, our agreement was that after I'd cut all the trees for you, the land became mine. That means I can sell it, if I choose.”

“Ah, naw! Not as you choose!” he thundered, the soft words now gone. “This here is not your land yet! Now, I told you the first day you come riding up here that I wasn't going to stand for any pilfering of my trees, but I see you been helping yourself to them anyway! You've been helping yourself to plenty of my good trees not on this forty acres!”

I stared at Filmore Granger, then I glanced over at Caroline, watching, and I tried to hold on to my temper, to do what was best for her. I didn't want to let my words spew out like I felt like doing. I thought on my daddy. “Mister Granger,” I said, meeting his eyes, “I was very careful about the tree line we marked. All the cutting was done on the forty. We never stepped a foot off it.”

Filmore Granger's temper grew even more fiery. “You calling me a liar?”

“I'm not calling you anything,” I said, knowing my words were too loose in talking to a white man, but my temper was up too. “I'm just telling you we never cut off the forty. I know just where Mitchell and I chopped and where that boy Nathan and I chopped, know where the other men chopped too. We never chopped outside the forty.”

Filmore Granger stared at me. I stared him back. “Maybe it was all a mistake,” he said in a voice that mocked at me. “Maybe y'all done some cutting by mistake.”

“We never set foot off the forty.”

He glared angrily at me, then turned and walked back to his horse. He didn't mount but faced me again. “I've decided to keep this land here.”

“What—”

“You want land so bad from J. T. Hollenbeck, you go chopping trees don't belong to you to pay for it! Well, you don't go chopping down my trees trying to sell them—”

“I never did—”

“Now, you can stay on and sharecrop, if you want. I'm being as fair as I can be with you, considering what you gone and done. You don't want to sharecrop, then I want you and yours gone from here before the month's out.”

“That's not what we agreed! Mitchell and I, we cut those trees for you, every one you said, and had them ready on time—”

“Cut yourselves some trees too—”

“Only what you told us—”

“You disputing with me?”

Those were dangerous words, mighty dangerous words, and I knew it. I let the silence settle and tried to catch hold of my temper again. Finally, in a steady voice, I said, “We have a paper.”

Filmore Granger stepped back to me and faced me close. “You think I care about a paper signed with a nigger? Well, let me tell you something, boy. There was a time I owned hundreds of you people. I clothed you, fed you, tended you when you were sick, and I buried you. Then everything got changed all round, and here niggers got to thinking they're as good as white people, can talk the same as white people, live the same as white people, have the same kind of land. Ones like you think they as smart as white people too. Well, I'm here to tell you there hasn't been a nigger born can outsmart Filmore Granger. Not a one, no matter how white he looks.” He pointed his finger in my face for emphasis, then turned and started for his horse. Once he was mounted, he looked down at me. “That crop in the ground, it's mine too. You try and harvest any of it without staying on, I'll have the sheriff after you. Same goes for any you already picked. I know you've sold one bale, but you try selling any more, you'll find yourself in jail.” Then Filmore Granger spurred his horse and rode away, down the road I had cleared.

I walked over to Caroline at the side of the cabin. Her basket was filled with tomatoes, butter beans, cucumbers, and corn for dinner. She looked at me in silence.

“You hear?” I said.

“Heard enough.” She slowly shook her head. “He can't do this thing.”

“He's white,” I said. “He can do what he wants.”

“But you gots a paper—”

I repeated, “He can do what he wants.”

She was silent a moment before she asked, “Well, what you gonna do?”

“I don't know.” I looked out across the clearing to the field. “Only thing I know is, I'm not going to sharecrop my own land.”

She nodded to that. “Well, one thing I know too. He ain't gettin' my garden.”

 

All the rest of that day I walked the forty, thinking on what I should do. Most of the land was cleared, a field plowed, and a crop in. Filmore Granger had himself a real money property now, not to mention the money he'd already made from selling off the timber. It pained me more than I can say, all that work Mitchell and I had done, Caroline and Nathan too, all the nights with not enough sleep, all the sacrifices we had made, and for what? To end up with nothing. What pained me most, though, was that I had let Caroline down, and Mitchell.

I figured Filmore Granger had played me for the fool. I knew he hadn't just now heard about my intention to buy J. T. Hollenbeck's land. Too many people knew about it for him not to have heard before. He'd heard about it, all right, a good while back no doubt, but he'd kept his silence to keep his timber coming. He had kept his silence until now so he could take back his land, with all the timber he wanted cut, and a lie spread so I could buy no more land, land that once was his. I ended the day at Mitchell's grave and just sat there under the oak, talking to my friend, as if he could hear, and pondering what I should do. Night came and I did not even go in for supper when Caroline called.

 

The next morning, early, I set out for Strawberry, and Caroline with Nathan started gleaning the garden. Caroline figured to pick her garden clean and preserve every single vegetable that wouldn't keep. I figured to go see the banker in Strawberry, then continue on to Vicksburg to see B. R. Tillman again and the other bankers. Though I figured it was useless, I had to try. I didn't hold out much hope of getting a loan, but I couldn't think of much else to do. The banker in Strawberry turned me down flat, pretty much as I'd expected, and the bankers in Vicksburg did the same.

The last banker I saw was B. R. Tillman, who sat back in his big banker's chair and said to me: “Paul, I know about that deal you were trying to make to sell Mister Granger's forty acres. Also know what Mister Granger's been saying about you cutting down his trees. Know too you don't have the money to buy that forty acres of Mister Granger's and certainly not that two hundred from Mister Hollenbeck. Now, I told J. T. Hollenbeck he wasn't using good business sense in the first place to let you have it, but him being a Yankee, he agreed to sell it to you anyway. Now, here you come to me again trying to borrow money to pay him for it.”