The Soldier's Lady (15 page)

“I've already forgotten you were here at all,” replied the sheriff.

S
OMETIMES
I
T
H
URTS TO
B
E
B
LACK

13

A
fter Jeremiah and Henry had come to live in the cabin at Rosewood, and all that Jeremiah and I had been through together and the promises we'd made to each other, I felt a little funny about going down to his and Henry's cabin alone. Somehow it didn't really seem right, things being the way they were between us and all.

So for some time Emma had been in the habit of cleaning up their place once a week and gathering up the laundry and tidying the place up. At first, after Micah Duff came, she seemed a little reluctant but she kept going down and cleaning up as usual.

That was what she was doing late one morning the day after our return from the city. Lunch was ready and the men were all back from town and chores.

“Where's Emma an' William?” asked Josepha as she set a beef roast on the table.

“She's down at the cabins, remember, Josepha?” I said.

“Somebody go fetch her,” said Josepha. “She must not hab heard da bell, an' dis meat'll git cold effen we wait
too
long.”

“I'll go,” said Jeremiah. He was through the door before I had a chance to ask if he wanted me to go with him.

It was five or six minutes later when Jeremiah and Emma came walking back to the house together. But the sound I heard was little William's voice, not theirs. He was giggling and laughing so hard you could hear him from a hundred yards away.

I looked out one of the kitchen windows. There were Emma and Jeremiah walking back from the cabins, talking freely and with smiles on their faces. William was between them and they each had hold of one of his hands. They were swinging him back and forth in the air and he was laughing with glee.

Suddenly a voice sounded beside me.

“That little boy needs somebody like Jeremiah,” it said.

It was Micah. I hadn't heard him walk up beside me.

“He's a good little boy,” he added, “but he needs a father.”

“Uh . . . yes, he loves black men, that's for sure. He lit up the day you got here.”

“Yeah,” smiled Micah, “I remember. But you can tell he's especially close to Jeremiah.”

I didn't say anything more. What was there to
say? Micah was right. Emma, William, and Jeremiah did look awfully good together.

When lunch was over I wandered away from the house. A lot of mixed-up feelings were stirring around inside me. I walked toward the woods. I didn't realize that someone was watching me go.

It was about thirty minutes later when I heard footsteps. I expected to see Katie. No one else knew about this place. I wiped at my eyes and turned around. The smile I'd tried to force onto my face for Katie disappeared.

There stood Micah Duff.

“I, uh . . . I'm sorry,” he said. “I followed you. I could tell at lunch that something was wrong. I've seen it all day. If you would rather be alone, just tell me and I'll go . . . but I thought maybe you would like to talk.”

I tried to work the smile back onto my face and tell him it was all right if he stayed and to ask him if he wanted to sit down. But trying to smile just made my eyes fill up. And as for saying anything, my voice came out in a croak, and I started crying again.

Micah walked over and sat down beside me. He put his hand on my arm.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” he said softly.

“I don't know,” I said, half sobbing. “I'm sorry . . . I don't usually cry . . . I don't ever cry . . . but it's just—”

I started in again. This was mortifying, to bawl like a baby in front of a man I'd only known a few weeks!

“Just what, Mayme?” said Micah. His voice was so tender and compassionate that just the sound of it calmed me down a little.

I tried to breathe in and out a time or two. But my breaths came in jerks.

“I suppose I can tell you,” I said after a minute. “You would . . . probably understand . . . but I can't even tell Katie. . . . That's the worst of it, not being able to tell her . . . she and I tell each other everything, but . . . she just couldn't understand this.”

“Did something happen on the trip to Charlotte?” he asked.

“Yes,” I whimpered.

“Was it about the hotel?”

“Yes!” I answered, starting to cry again. “It was so awful . . . I spoiled it for them . . . but there was nothing I could do—all those people looking at them and then glancing over at me and then their faces getting such looks of disgust on them, like I was . . . like I was I don't know what! Oh, Micah—it was so humiliating. But I felt so bad for Katie and Papa and Uncle Ward. They had wanted to have a good time in the city, but they couldn't with me along. I've never felt so low, so dirty, so worthless in my life. Living at Rosewood . . . I'd forgotten how mean people can be . . . but . . .”

I turned away sobbing.

“You don't really think you spoiled it for them, Mayme . . . do you?” asked Micah.

“I don't know . . . it seemed like it. They were so disappointed.”

“Don't you think they were disappointed for how you were being treated more than for themselves?”

“I'm sure you're right. Actually, after the third or fourth hotel turned us away, Papa started to get really angry at the way people were treating me.”

“Have you talked to him about it?”

“No—I've been too embarrassed . . . and afraid I'd start crying,” I added, looking up at Micah with a faint smile. “I didn't want anyone to see me cry. I hadn't counted on being followed!”

Micah smiled. “Sorry. I didn't know.”

“I'm the strong one around here,” I said. “If they saw me crying, they would think . . . well, I don't know what they would think! But yes, you're right, they were more embarrassed for me, and I suppose I was more embarrassed for them. It was so awful. Poor Katie—she felt so bad for me.”

We sat for a few minutes in silence, just watching the little brook go by in front of us. I took two or three deep breaths and gradually felt myself coming back to my normal self.

“Do you know those kinds of looks white people give you?” I asked after a while. “Do you get them too?”

“All the time,” replied Micah.

“Even in the North?”

“Not so much. But after the war it's been worse.”

“What do you do?” I asked.

“Ignore them. What else can you do?”

“But how can you—it makes you feel so worthless to have people look at you with disgust like that.”

“You have to ignore it and just be who you are.”

“But how can you feel good about yourself when your skin is brown, when the whole world is looking at you in the same way they would look at a dog?”

“The whole world isn't looking at you that way,” said Micah, “only ignorant, foolish people. What should you care what they think?”

“But it still sometimes hurts to be black.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Micah nodded. “I know the feeling, but a long time ago I had to decide what it meant to be me, just me, not white, black, not what anyone else says or thinks I should be . . . but just me. Who I thought I was, who I really was, who God wanted me to be—that was all that mattered. Once I came to terms and made my peace with that, then I was able to live with myself no matter what anyone thought.”

“But doing that's not so easy.”

“No, not easy at all,” nodded Micah. “But if you're black, or brown like you say, or different in any way, you've got no choice. You've got to ignore the looks and just be who you are. Otherwise you'll get angry and bitter yourself and then you're no better than they are. An angry black person is just as bad as an arrogant white person. I wouldn't want to be either.”

Sam Jenkins had been giving a lot of thought to the
conversation in his office three days earlier with William McSimmons.

Something peculiar was going on. What . . . he couldn't be sure.

But he had the feeling McSimmons had more on his mind than what he'd said. And it wouldn't do anyone in this town any harm to be on William McSimmons' good side if he got lucky and made it to Congress.

He didn't know what kind of men Congress wanted. Sam Jenkins could think of a dozen men within ten miles that had twice the intelligence and three times the horse sense of William McSimmons, including the boy's father.

Old man McSimmons was a straight-talking, hardworking, good, fair man. His son was a hothead and an idiot. But he had married an heiress and social climber who had dressed him up in a three-piece suit and shoved him into politics. Maybe that was the kind of man they wanted in Washington. It didn't matter anyway. Nothing Washington did made any difference in a little place like Oakwood.

The “New South” the papers were calling it. Probably William McSimmons would fit in with the carpetbaggers and everybody else swarming into the region. Maybe William McSimmons would wear that suit long enough for his wife to turn him into a respectable Southern gentleman. Jenkins doubted it, but you could never tell.

In the meantime, it wouldn't hurt to be on the man's good side . . . just in case. That's what he wanted to talk to his son about.

“Weed,” said the sheriff when he and his son were alone, “I got something I want you to do. Might be some money in it. I can't tell yet. We'll have to see what turns up first.”

S
TORM AND
S
TORIES
, L
AUGHTER AND
T
EARS

14

S
ometimes the rain could come on without warning. The storm that broke on us in May of 1869 reminded me of the time the flood had surrounded us and turned Rosewood into an island.

Katie, my papa, and Uncle Ward had all gone into town for some business at the bank that had something to do with the changes and the lawyer in Charlotte. They wanted me to go too, but after what had happened in the city, I was still a little shy about going into town. I'd had enough looks from Mrs. Hammond and Mr. Taylor at the bank, I didn't want anyone looking at me funny right now. So I stayed home.

All of us but Josepha and William were out at the pasture where Jeremiah and Micah were putting in the new fence. Henry hadn't gone into town that day, so he was helping them string wire along the new posts and pull it tight. Emma and I had just tagged
along for fun. Even hard work is fun when you're working with people you love and you're all working together. We were trying to help but I don't think we did much. Pulling fence wire taut takes more strength than we girls had. But we were pretending to help anyway!