Let the Circle Be Unbroken

by Mildred D. Taylor

  14

  We sped through the darkness, the car’s headlights the only light anywhere. Stones hit noisily against the car’s underbelly and dust swirled around us as the lights cast an eerie glow, making the trees and bushes along the road loom larger than they were. A little past midnight we reached Shokesville. The town was almost as dark as the countryside, and had we not seen a sign hanging from a post which read, “Shokesville Farming Supplies,” we would not have known it was even there.

  We passed through looking for the sheriff’s office, but were unable to find it in the dark. Knowing that it would be closed by now anyway, Mama, Papa, and Uncle Hammer decided there was nothing to do but wait until morning, and we drove on. About a mile outside the town, Uncle Hammer pulled onto a side road and stopped out of view of the main road. “Let’s just hope,” he said as he turned off the engine, “we ain’t sitting in some cracker’s driveway. Too blasted black out there to see.”

  He switched off the lights, then he and Papa got out to stretch. Mama stayed with me urging me to sleep and when she thought I had drifted off, she joined Papa and Uncle Hammer. For a long time I lay very still concentrating hard on Stacey, willing him to be one of the boys in the jail, then tried to sleep so that morning would arrive quicker. But sleep wouldn’t come and after a while I too got out of the car.

  “Cassie, girl, ain’t you tired?” Papa asked. His voice was soft and low.

  “Yes, sir, but I’d rather be out here with y’all.”

  “Come on then,” he said, extending his hand to me. “Button up your coat and we’ll keep watch for the sunrise together.”

  When the dawn came, we freshened up as best we could, waited anxiously for eight o’clock, then said a prayer and went back into Shokesville. We easily found the sheriff’s office, but when Uncle Hammer had parked the car, we sat unmoving, staring at the building. Finally Papa took a deep breath and opened his door. Mama and Uncle Hammer followed him out. I remained behind, thinking Papa would not let me go inside.

  “Ain’t you coming?” Papa said, holding the door open.

  I looked at him eagerly. “Can I?”

  “You done come this far. Might as well.”

  Inside, the sheriff of Shokesville listened quietly to Papa as he told him why we had come; then, unexpectedly, stood and pulled some keys from his desk and tossed them to another man tending to paperwork. “J.C., go bring the boy that’s feeling some better on up.” The deputy took up the keys and went through the ring to find the right one before standing. Our eyes followed him anxiously down a dark corridor to a stairway leading to the basement.

  “Been expecting y’all,” the sheriff said as we waited for the deputy to reappear. “Got a call at home early this morning from outa Vicksburg from a lawyer fella—a Mr. Jamison, I believe—said y’all was on y’all’s way. Like I told him, there ain’t no charges ’gainst these here boys. What happened was we’d gotten notice here ’bout some boys stealing money from the owner of a cane plantation farther south, and when we found these boys a couple weeks ago and one of ’em was carrying papers come from that plantation, we figured we had the ones done the stealing. One look at them hands and we knew they’d been cuttin’ cane.”

  He rolled himself a cigarette as he talked. “Ain’t found no money on any of ’em, but we figured maybe they’d hid it and would’ve sent them on back south if they hadn’t’ve been so sick—they’s doing pretty good now,” he took the time to assure us. “Old colored woman been in seein’ ’bout ’em every day. Aunt Mattie Jones. She good as any doctor I ever seen.” He shook his head as a compliment to Aunt Mattie, and lit his cigarette. “Myself, I was gone most of Christmas week and I come back yesterday to find that they had done caught the boy done the stealing clear over to the Texas border. Money still on him.”

  “The boys you got here in the jail,” Papa said, “their names Stacey Logan and Moe Turner?”

  The sheriff waved a languid hand toward the doorway. “Ya’ll can see for ya’selves.”

  We heard the echo of footsteps on the stairs. Our eyes focused on the corridor. I could hardly breathe.

  “Now, technically, I’m s’pose to send these here boys back ’cause they run off and ain’t finished their contracts—”

  The deputy appeared at the end of the corridor. Someone was with him; it was too dark to see his face.

  “But me, I ain’t never cared much for the way them kinda plantations are run and I got no sympathy for the most of these owners when their workers run off—”

  The boy came slowly down the corridor beside the deputy. Light filtered in from the doorway, allowing us to see his form. He looked too tall for Stacey, too gaunt, and he was limping.

  “So I ain’t gonna send ’em back. Them boys yours, ya can take ’em on home.”

  Halfway up the corridor the boy stopped, the darkness still keeping him from us. My heart raced ahead of itself, pounding like a hammer.

  “Come on,” ordered the deputy with a tug to his arm, and he came forward. Near the doorway he stopped once more, and the deputy allowed him to take the last steps alone.

  One step. Then two.

  He reached the doorway, hesitated, and stepped silently into the room. The light played across his face as he stared out, his eyes blinking as they adjusted to the light. There was no movement from any of us.

  Then he smiled.

  “Mama . . . Papa,” he said weakly, and Stacey fell into our arms.

  * * *

  There was a round of hugging and crying and kissing like I had never seen before: Mama crying and holding Stacey to her, not wanting to let him go; Papa holding them both; and Uncle Hammer standing silently by grinning, just grinning. As for me, I was jumping all over the place, laughing, crying, going crazy as I hung on to Stacey and followed his every move. I had never been so happy.

  Stacey grinned down at me. “Lord, Cassie, you’ve grown!”

  “So’ve you! Even got your little mustache growing.”

  He laughed a lovely, deep laugh. His eyes went over us all. “Lord, it’s so good to see all of y’all! What ’bout Big Ma and Christopher-John and Man and Mr. Morrison? How they doing?”

  “Oh, they’re just fine!” Mama said. “And just wait until they see you!” She squeezed his arm joyously.

  “And Uncle Hammer! Lord, it’s good to see you!”

  Uncle Hammer’s voice went husky. “Seem you done had yourself quite a time.”

  Stacey managed a dry laugh. “Yes, sir . . . that’s a fact.” Uncle Hammer looked closely at him, then nodded, as if understanding a meaning deeper than the words.

  There were so many questions to ask, so many to be answered, but first there was Moe to think about. Stacey said that Moe was too weak to make it up alone, so while Stacey stayed with Mama and me, Papa and Uncle Hammer followed the deputy back to the cellar. As we waited, sitting on a bench by the window where the light fell full upon Stacey, I realized just how thin he had become. Both the confinement and the illness had worn at him, making his eyes look large in his face and giving his skin a dull cast. As I stared at him a jab of pain went through me at what he and Moe must have suffered.

  He felt my eyes on him and looked around. “Guess I must look and smell something terrible, huh?” He ran his hand over his uncombed hair, then lowered his voice so that the sheriff, writing at his desk, couldn’t hear. “’Fraid we couldn’t much keep clean down there. Miz Mattie—she the one nursed us, fed us—she brought us some soap and water when she come, but still it was hard . . . living down in that filth.”

  “I don’t know ’bout all that,” I said, “but you sure look good to me.”

  And again he laughed that laugh that was so good to hear again.

  A few minutes later, Papa and Uncle Hammer returned, supporting Moe between them. Even thinner than Stacey, Moe blinked into the unaccustomed light as Stacey had done, then smiled in that gentle way of his, and a new round of hugging began. Shortly afterward we left the jail, and as soon as we stepp
ed outside, Stacey stopped and took in a deep breath. It had been three weeks since either he or Moe had breathed the air of the outdoors or felt the sun warm upon their faces, and as Stacey took in the day, clear blue and fresh with just a touch of winter frost, he seemed amazed by the beauty of it all, even in this squalid town.

  “Never knew before,” he said, “how T.J. had to feel, locked up like that.”

  “Lord, me neither,” said Moe, leaning on Uncle Hammer. “And for a while there I thought for sure we was gonna end up like him.”

  “Well, I ’spect,” said Papa, “you’ve both learned a lot. Maybe learned it ain’t so easy out here in this world.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s a fact,” Stacey admitted. He shifted his eyes from Papa’s, seemingly unable to meet them at first, then looked straight at him. “Papa, you and Mama, y’all upset with me, I reckon.”

  “You done wrong, son, going off like you done. Had your mama, me, everybody worried to death ’bout you.” Papa’s voice was unexpectedly harsh.

  “I know. I never meant for y’all to worry though. I never meant that. . . .” Moe looked at Stacey, then lowered his head. A look of shared guilt was on both their faces.

  Mama saw the look and her glance at Papa said she did not wish this to be pursued now. “There’ll be plenty of time for talking about all this later,” she said.

  Stacey waited for Papa to speak again. Papa gazed at him in momentary silence, then put his arm around him. “I gotta admit, son, that for a while there I had in mind to give you a hug first when you come home then wear you out with one good whippin’. Truth is though, I forgot all ’bout that whippin’ a long time ago.”

  “Lord, sure am glad!” Stacey admitted with a spirited laugh, and we all laughed with him.

  As soon as we were in the car we went searching for Mrs. Mattie Jones and soon found her in a house at the edge of town. An elderly woman, small, wiry, and weathered looking, Mrs. Mattie Jones was overjoyed to see Stacey and Moe. It took her awhile to get over the fact that they were really out of jail, but once she had, she said, “Now I knows y’all’s anxious to get on home with these here younguns, but y’all owes me to stay jus’ a while longer and sit here ’round my table. All my younguns gone, husband gone. Them two boys there, they feels jus’ a bit like mine.”

  Mama and Papa tried to thank her for all she had done, but Mrs. Mattie Jones dismissed her deeds with a happy grin. “Ah, jus’ done the Lord’s work. Jus’ the Lord’s work, sho’ did . . . Wish I coulda gotten word to y’all though. Them boys, they asked me ’bout writin’ y’all, but like I told ’em, ain’t no colored folks ’round here can halfway read or write. School’s clear way over to the next town. Got paper to the younguns there one time, but that ole deputy took the letter from me, wouldn’t let me send it. And that ole sheriff told me not to be sneakin’ nothin’ else in or outa there. Told me not to mess in it.” She shook her head peevishly at the order. “Well, wasn’t no white folks I coulda asked ’bout phonin’ or writin’ the sheriff wouldn’t’a knew ’bout, so’s I was thinkin’ to get me a ride up to Baton Rouge to send y’all some word.” Once again, she shook her head. “Yes, indeed, sho’ wish I coulda gotten some word to y’all.”

  “Believe me,” Mama said, “you did more than enough and we’ll never forget you for it. Never.”

  Mrs. Mattie Jones let out another happy laugh, then set about fixing breakfast. Mama helped her, while outside Papa and Uncle Hammer began chopping a fallen yard tree to replenish Mrs. Jones’s dwindling firewood supply. Moe, feeling cold and weak, remained inside by the fire, but Stacey preferred to be outdoors where he washed his face in the bright sunlight, then cleaned his teeth with a sweet gum stick.

  I stayed with him, not wanting to leave him for even a minute. I wanted to help him if he needed me but at the same time I felt somewhat shy of him. I couldn’t get over how adultlike he had become, and that bothered me. It bothered me as well that there was a large chunk in his life now that I could never share. But I guessed there was nothing I could do about that, that it was all a part of that thing called change.

  “Cassie, how come you so quiet?” he said as he wiped his face. “You ain’t gone and changed on me, have ya?”

  “I don’t ’spect so.”

  He looked at me. “Or maybe you thinking . . . I’m the one changed. That’s what you thinking?”

  “Ain’t you?” I accused.

  He pursed his lips and was thoughtful “Guess I have . . . but that ain’t necessarily bad.”

  I looked at him warily.

  “It ain’t, Cassie. Really. Why, if we don’t change, things don’t change, we might as well stay babies all the time. ’cause when we grow, we bound to change. You eleven now, you oughta understand that.”

  “And I s’pose you do, huh?” I questioned, growing just a bit tired of his attitude of adult superiority. “You ain’t grown yet, ya know.”

  He grinned at me. “Now you sounding more like Cassie.”

  I grinned too, then laughed, as I remembered what Mama had said before Stacey had even gone away, that one day we would be better friends than we had ever been before. I could feel the truth in that now.

  Stacey finished washing his hair and I passed him a comb, all the while continuing to study him, how thin he had become and how scarred his hands were. Finally, I said what had been on my mind for so long. “What was it like, Stacey? The cane fields?”

  A pained look came into his eyes and he stopped combing.

  “Stacey, what happened out there?”

  “It was awful, Cassie. It was jus’ so awful. . . .”

  * * *

  “They brung us down from Mississippi, crowding us into that truck like cows,” Stacey said when we all sat before Mrs. Mattie’s fire. “Picked up workers all ’long the way, and when we got deep into Louisiana the truck started stopping at farms and plantations letting off workers. Me and Moe, we got taken all the way to the Troussant plantation ’long with a whole lotta others.”

  “That plantation was some kinda big,” put in Moe. “Must’ve been larger than Mr. Granger’s even. Mostly planted in cane.”

  Stacey emphasized Moe’s statement with a nod and went on. “We stayed in a shack. Dirt floor . . . holes in the roof . . . rats all over. We were crowded in there too, each of us with just a little spot to sleep. Weren’t no beds. No chairs. Nothin’ ’cepting some kinda shelves ’long the walls. And they didn’t give us anything. They said we wanted blankets, we could sign for ’em up at the plantation store and they’d be charged to our pay. Said we could charge other things too. Clothes and such. Then they told us we had to have a machete and said we could charge it like everything else.”

  He bowed his head and looked at his hands, then spread them open so that we could see the palms, scarred deep with dark welts. Mama took one of his hands and held it between her own.

  “Never knew chopping cane could be so hard. Sunup to sundown. And them cane leaves, they cut up our hands something terrible. Some of the workers, they got gloves from the store, but it didn’t do much good. Still cut through.”

  Moe shook his head, remembering.

  “Worked six days in the fields,” Stacey said, “raining or shining, we worked till we was bone tired. Then come one full week of work and we didn’t get paid. We was kinda upset ’bout that, but then we figured we was to get paid every two weeks. But then that next week we still didn’t get paid, so all of us there talked it over and finally got up the nerve to ask the boss man ’bout our pay. Well, he told us that we was under contract to work till the cane was all cut. Said if we was paid every week, we’d run off after we got a little money, and the plantation, it just couldn’t function that way, they had to go out and get new workers every week. Said we’d get paid when all the cane was chopped, not before. Well, we didn’t much like it, not getting paid till then, but what he said made some sense ’cause there were some men talking ’bout quitting, and couldn’t nobody fault ’em the way we had to work. So, anyway,
we went on back to work, figuring to get our money come December.” He looked at Papa. “Me, I figured to bring back enough money for taxes. Figured to bring back over a hundred dollars and I didn’t care how hard I had to work to get it. Thought of that money was what kept me going.”

  “Me, too,” Moe laughed curtly. “Kept thinking how that money was gonna help get us off Mr. Montier’s place. Figured to have plenty of money ’cause all me and Stacey charged up at that store was for a blanket and a knife, and some writing paper and stamps. Come every Sunday, we wrote letters to y’all and come every Monday, we mailed ’em up at that store, thinking y’all was gettin’ ’em. Wasn’t ’spectin’ none back ’cause we ain’t put no addresses on ’em. ’fraid y’all’d come get us.”

  “Guess them plantation folks, they was ’fraid of the same thing,” said Stacey, “’cause they musta not sent ’em.”

  Moe shook his head wearily. “Lord, my poor papa . . .”

  Stacey glanced at Moe and went on. “Come December and some of us got fever. The boss man, he said he was gonna get us a doctor but in the meantime, he ’spected anybody who could walk to work. Well, me and Moe, we were feeling sick, but we went on out working anyway. Second day we worked that way we was loading cane onto a wagon and the cane got loose and rolled off on my foot.

  “Moe, he went for the boss man. Said we had to have a doctor for my foot, but the boss man, he just said for Moe to get back to work and that he’d come see ’bout it. Well, I waited, all that evening and that night, and I was paining something awful. Next morning the overseer he come and he called himself checking my foot. Said it was just sprained, but I figured there was bones broke in it and I got scared . . . scared I could lose my foot if it didn’t get treated.

  “So I told Moe I was gonna go. I couldn’t work no way with my foot broke and I figured they was bound to give me my money, me being sick and all. I figured to get my pay, get a bus and come on home. Moe, he said, if I was going, he was going too. There was another boy name of Charlie Davies said the same thing, so we went to talk to the boss man. Mr. Troussant, the owner of that place, he was there in the office, and when we told ’em we were sick and we wanted to get our pay and leave, they said we couldn’t leave. Said we owed them money ’cause of all the cost of transporting us down, and food and housing and everything we charged at the store. Said we had to work out our time till all them charges was paid, and what was left, they’d pay it to us come the last of the cane.