Tainted Harvest

by E. Denise Billups

  Joe peeks around at Sissy with worry.

  Delphine glances around the wagon at the sacks and the trunk, understanding Joe’s alarm as soldier’s approach the wagon. Sliding her hand inside her bag, she removes the quarter eagle and Missus Lorelei’s silverware, sitting on the coin and stashing the silverware between her back and the cart wall.

  “Names, plantation, owner?” the soldier in charge asks as he did with the others. Joe replies, “Dis my family,” giving his wife and children’s names, plantation, and master in a steady voice.

  “You two?” the soldier asks, ambling behind the wagon.

  “Ben and dis my sis, Delphine. We’s from Magnolia Sunrise, owned by Massa Henry Randolph.”

  Delphine stares at Ben alarmed, wondering why they need their owner’s name, fearing they’ll send them back or alert Massa Henry to their whereabouts.

  One soldier studies Joe’s worn-out horse, deeming it too old for the Union, while two colored soldiers drag the trunk and sacks from the wagon. Burlaps contain beans, flour, corn, flax, and cotton Joe brought from his plantation. Inside the trunk lay clothing, bedding, and a jiggling pouch.

  “Dat money’s mine. I’s work hard foe it. Massa and I’s had an arrangement. He’s paid me foe my work,” Joe says, growing angry.

  “It belongs to the quartermaster now.”

  They return the trunk back to the wagon, keeping the burlap sacks and money.

  Sissy grips Joe’s arm as he rises with anger, pulling him back onto the seat. “Let it be, Joe.”

  Tight-lipped, hands fisted, Joe stares at his wife, mumbling, “Dat’s our security north, Siss.”

  The soldier steps toward the spinning wheel. “Please, my mama left me dat,” Sissy pleads.

  “You a seamstress?”

  “Yassa. I’s make and mend clothes.”

  “You’ll will come in handy here,” he says, stepping off the wagon.

  “What you got in the satchel?” the soldier asks Delphine.

  “Juz food and medicine foe my baby, sah,” she says, rubbing her belly.

  “When’s the child due,” he asks, searching through her bag.

  “December, sah.”

  His dark-eyed gaze travels from her face to her breast and belly with an expression she’d seen in Massa Henry’s hungry eyes. She frowns and wraps her arms around her belly, lowering her gaze to the soldier’s hands, which search her and Benoit’s bags but find nothing for the quartermaster.

  Delphine’s thankful the coin and silverware weren’t discovered, but suppresses her relief, mindful of Joe’s misfortune.

  The soldier shakes Anabelle and the child with no response.

  “Deys tired, sah. Been on deys feet foe hours. Names Anabelle and Georgia, from my plantation,” Joe lies.

  The soldier drops his head, studying the sleeping child lying face down on the wagon, her face obscured in her mother’s side. Anabelle opens her eyes. Startled, she sits upright, inching away from the man like a frightened child, lifting her collar to her chin as though in modesty.

  Delphine has seen that look before. She imagines it is the same expression she herself wore when Massa trapped her in the garden. Someone’s hurt Anabelle too. Or she woke from a frightful dream.

  “I won’t bite you, girl,” the soldier says.

  Delphine parts her lips, ready to tell the soldier the child’s sick, then stops, catching Anabelle’s slight headshake. Anabelle doesn’t ask for medical aid even though the child burns with fever and needs immediate help. Delphine frowns, perceiving there’s a reason she’s afraid and silent. Given Sissy’s fear of contagion, she’s surprised she hasn’t screamed out to the soldier that they are diseased. With the same worried expression, Sissy sits tight-lipped in the corner. Her behavior reminds Delphine of the many times slaves on the plantation protected each other whenever one committed a misdeed.

  The soldier scribbles something on his pad, pauses a moment gazing at Anabelle and the child as though a flitting thought were crossing his mind, then proceeds to the next wagon.

  Several hours later, soldiers guide the caravan away from the encampment, circling the caravan back in the direction they came. The soldiers keep many of the freedmen, leading them inside the camp and away from their families.

  “Why’s we’s turnin’? We’s can’t go back dat way.” She yanks her bag from the floor, tugging on Ben’s arm. “Let’s get off now.”

  Ben grasps Delphine’s arm and leans over the side, looking ahead at the curving convoy. “Wat’s happenin’, Joe?”

  “Y’all settle down. Deys takin’ us to another Union camp.”

  “We’s be fine, Delphie,” Ben says, releasing her arm.

  Ten minutes pass before the wagon heads west to a steep, terraced descent under the bluffs. The caravan inches alongside the wharf where steamers and flatboats unload cargo and passengers. In the gray light of twilight, Delphine recognizes the place where she arrived as a child with other slaves and the sharp ascent they marched toward Forks.

  Deys takin’ us ‘cross da river, she thinks as the wagon winds near the waterfront past a cluster of shacks and a saloon, tavern, and trading post built on stilts. When the caravan moves from the water, moving west through a wooded trail, she grows anxious again. A sweet scent fills the air, emanating from a thicket of trees. Peach trees. But the branches are bare from harvest. The sugary essence emanates from fallen, rotting peach carcasses picked over by birds and other scavengers on the ground. Is this what Maw saw? As they crossed the river from ole Massa’s plantation from Louisiana to Natchez, she’d overheard the slave trader speak of wild peach groves Indians planted under the bluff years ago before they were enslaved or run off their land.

  Delphine’s gaze climbs the steep semicircular bluff with an eerie chill coursing through her body. Quickly her eyes descend to the basin floor and toward the approaching wooden fence guarded by colored soldiers.

  “We’ll assign able-bodied men and women work as long as you remain in the camp,” a soldier yells. “Men report to this post for jobs in the mornin'.”

  “Claim yo Sibley,” another soldier yells as they continue through the gate.

  Delphine’s brows arch. “Sibley?”

  “Tents. I’s overheard soldiers above say there ain’t enough Sibley tents. Dats why dey kept men at da camp above.”

  “Ben, I didn’t leave Magnolia to work foe Union soldiers.”

  “Deys pay, Delphie. We’s earn money foe our work. With baby, work won’t be hard labor.”

  “Any work is labor with child, Ben. And I ain’t no cook, seamstress, or laundress. I ain’t cleanin’ no filthy clothes.”

  “Girl, youse won’t survive a day a freed woman with dat thinkin’. Juz remember wat Massa done to yo body for two years. We’s leavin’ slavery behind and startin’ a new life as free people, Delphie. It’ won’t be easy.”

  Delphine nods, knowing he’s right. She’s gotta fight for her people and her unborn child’s freedom just as the soldiers do.

  The wagon rolls inside an encampment much like the Union camp above the bluff. But the tents are larger and conical. A few slab shanties placed side by side in rows line the soggy grounds.

  “Soldiers left des tents?”

  “Or died,” Ben adds.

  “Dat ain’t right, placin’ us in dirty tents where wounded and ill soldiers died.”

  “Dirty, secondhand tents better than sleepin’ outdoors,” Ben scoffs, throwing her a sharp stare. “Youse spoiled in Massa’s big house. Dat life long gone now.”

  Ben knows nothing of the abuse she lived daily, Missus Lorelei’s bitter ways, or Massa’s groping when she didn’t want it. She deserved every ounce of pampering, but it didn’t mend her pains.

  Past the entrance, a dreary scene unfolds. “Ben, we’s can’t stay here.” Delphine eyes what looks like a purgatory for lost souls not a passage of hope, a prison granting freedom only through life’s ultimate escape, death. Magnolia’s slave quarters’ neatly lined cabins sha
ded under rows of live oaks and Spanish moss look like heaven compared to this place. Pots, kettles, crates, barrels, and clotheslines dangle beside uncomely tents. Lopsided chimneys beside makeshift shanties flank the main path that cuts through the center of the camp. On the outskirts, a trench surrounded by shovels and two carts sends a shiver down her spine.

  She pinches her nose against the acrid stench of urine and human refuse emanating from muddy puddles beneath the wagon wheels which is made sharper by her heightened sense of smell. Human waste, charred food, faint smoke from shoddy chimneys, and the rot of disease and death she’d detected as a child when smallpox infested ole Massa’s plantation across the river.

  “Dis place ain’t good, Ben.”

  “Dis temporay, Delphie, juz till youse have yo child . . .”

  “Wat in God’s name youse thinkin’, Ben. I ain’t havin’ my child in dis place.”

  “Shush, Delphie. Youse loud as a horn.”

  Delphine pushes Ben away with a scowl and whips her head around to a disturbing scene of tired, sick, and injured people relieved to find refuge after a long journey from distant plantations. She catches sight of a man's tattered, blood-soaked sleeve and winces at the glistening bone-deep gash running from his forearm to his wrist. The ripped shirt reminds her of runaways returned to Magnolia, clothes bitten to shreds by slave patroller’s tracking dogs.

  She sighs in thought. Freedmen marchin’ to dey’s final journey.

  But dis ain’t her final stop.

  She takes a deep breath and glances at Ben, hoping to persuade him one last time. “The baby ain’t safe here with sick folks. We’s in danger da longer we’s stay. And only miles from Magnolia, Massa bound to come foe my baby. We’s need to leave now.” The unborn child kicks and flutters, sending a sharp pain from her belly to her hipbones. She sucks in a sharp breath to conceal pain from Ben but worries something’s wrong with the unborn as she rubs the child twisting beneath her undulating belly.

  “Delphie, stop whinin’. We’s as needy as des folks. Got no way but our feet and no guide north. I’s promised Maw to keep y’all safe and dis place safe from paddy rollers and Confederates till we’s leave. B’sides, we get payin’ Union jobs, money foe food, clothes, and a way north.”

  She stops nagging Ben. His instincts are always right. But her mind won’t relinquish the grim image of the trench and shovels.

  “We’s stay with Joe and his family. Deys good folks,” Ben says.

  Joe brings the wagon to a stop in front of a wide tent, dismounts, and pats the tired horse. “I’s find water for y’all and da animal,” he says, wandering toward the main path and glancing around the camp.

  Willy and Ben step off the wagon and inspect the tent. Delphine follows behind Sissy and Beth, leaving Anabelle asleep on the sack, wheezing troubled breaths next to the tranquil child.

  She lifts her skirt and treks through deep muck inside the canvas where several women and children sprawl on makeshift beds built on wooden stilts a few inches above the damp earth floor. Underneath beds lie protective rubber sheets for their belongings. Embers in a small firepit peter out with a plume of smoke rising to the ventilation hole where a tripod keeps the tent upright. Ten empty beds circle the tent. Delphine wonders why they’re unused. Did other people sleep there? Did they leave the camp or die?

  “Beg pardon,” Ben says, backing toward the entrance, bumping into Willy and Sissy. “We’s thought dis tent empty.”

  A young woman, no more than nineteen, lifts her head from a rolled blanket used as a pillow and rubs her eyes, peering at the group. “Ain’t no rules in dis place. Youse sleep wherever a bed is free. Youse welcome to dose,” she says, pointing at the empty beds. “Others gone,” she explains.

  “Deys leave da camp?” Delphine asks.

  The girl’s face drops. “Not the way deys came.” She turns and lies on the bed again.

  Ben glances at Delphine’s sour face. “We’s stay here,” he says.

  “Dis our home foe now,” Sissy says to Willy and Beth. Undoubtedly it would be their home for much longer than they’d planned, given their pilfered savings.

  “It ain’t no home, but it’ll do till we make moe money,” Willy says, stepping toward an unoccupied bed.

  Delphine catches her breath when multiple pinpricking pains roll across her abdomen.

  Sissy notices Delphine’s wince and strolls toward her. “Youse in pain?”

  “Juz da baby kickin’.”

  Sissy’s eyes narrow. “I’s a midwife on the plantation and knows pain when I’s see it.”

  “Thought youse a seamstress.”

  “Dat a big old lie to save my mamma’s spinnin’ wheel from da quartermaster. It b’longs to my family. I’s brought many babies in da world, not clothes,” she says, placing a firm hand on Delphine’s belly. The baby moves with her touch. “Heed dose pains.”

  Delphine nods and smiles. “I’s will ma’am.” She escapes Sissy’s studious eyes and exits the tent, gazing above the circular bluff to the Union soldier’s fort.

  Why’s da lawd bring us here? Dis ain’t no place to be.

  Regret grows with her hasty decision. Before running, she should have stayed at Magnolia till the baby came. The longer they stay in Natchez, the more likely that Massa would find them here. He won’t give up till he brings Missus Lorelei her baby, my baby. By now she’d be miles away if they hadn’t gotten on Joe’s wagon. She sighs, glancing around the dismal grounds. Maybe Ben’s right. Dis place safe from paddy rollers foe a few days.

  More freed people arrive at the gate. Massa could charge through on his horse, searching every tent until he finds her. Will soldiers let him drag her back to Magnolia even though Lincoln freed them?

  She gazes around the encampment for an escape, stopping at an opening in the fence beside a wide A-shaped tent. She breathes more calmly, noticing stars fading in the periwinkle sky, reminding her of the trip from Louisiana across the river on a flatboat with Maw and Ben. Another pain rolls across her abdomen.

  Da lawd punishin’ me foe leavin’ my chillun. I’s know it.

  She breathes deeper, imagining rocking the twins in the nursery with bluebirds and butterflies on yellow walls until the pain subsides.

  Flies rise above a fetid puddle like a cattle’s hind. She gags and moves toward the wagon, catching Anabelle’s blank gaze across the way staring at but not seeing her with reddish eyes worse than the night before. She slumps in slow motion beside the sleeping child, shutting her eyes.

  Women and children emerge from tents, beginning morning rituals around smoky firepits. Steam rises from boiling kettles and cooked pork wafts from skillets, fusing with rancid smells over the grounds. Delphine’s stomach growls. She retrieves her bag and unwraps Maw’s hotcakes, glancing at Georgia and Anabelle, still asleep on the wagon, wondering when they last ate. Deys be hungry when deys wake, she thinks, placing two wrapped cakes by their sides. Maw made moe than enough. Soldiers give ‘em rations soon.

  Though hungry, the overpowering stench of human feces subdues her appetite. Eat foe da little one. She forces several bites, reaches for the canteen at her waist, then realizes it’s gone. It’s not in the wagon or her bags. Da burrow. She’d removed it from her waist and placed it by her side. In her alarm over the snake, she’d left it inside the mossy tunnel. The horse laps at a pail of water Joe collected moments ago, making her thirstier. Ahead, a woman empties water from a pail into a wide barrel under a wall-less shed with a sloping roof. Delphine trudges across the swampy grounds, pausing under the shed. “Is dis water foe da camp?”

  “Yes, foe everybody.”

  “Where’s it come from?”

  “Yonda, from da creek,” she says, gazing beyond the barricade toward the underbrush. “It’s our drinkin’, cookin’ and washin’ water” she explains, lifting the empty pail.

  Delphine dips the scoop, swallowing several gulps. Wiping water from her mouth, she glances around the camp full of women and children, noticing only a ha
ndful of men. “Where all da men?”

  The woman lifts her gaze toward the bluff. “My paw and brothers work above foe soldiers. Dey keep men separate from women and chillun, except ole and sick men,” she says with a stricken expression as a crippled man hobbles toward them.

  A woman’s frightful screech pulls Delphine’s attention toward the wagon.

  Anabelle.

  She races toward the wagon, slowing when Sissy and Beth exit the tent with frightened faces, and then stares at Anabelle slumped over on her knees, her sobs that of a wounded animal. A scene she’d seen often in the slave’s quarters, the wail of loss, pain, and rage.

  “We’s goin’ die! Deys cursed us with disease. Joe, I’s told youse b’foe deys got on da wagon!”

  “Mama, stop,” Beth says, pulling Sissy away from the wagon.

  Delphine perceives Anabelle’s agony, clutching her heart as she reaches the rear of the cart. “No, lawd,” she pleads under her breath.

  Splayed on her back, the child stares at the sky, unblinking. A place her eyes no longer perceive. Unconcerned for her safety, Delphine pulls herself onto the cart and drops to her knees, wanting to comfort Anabelle, but there’s no consoling a mother who’s lost a child.

  Georgia’s outstretched arm, hot with fever hours ago, extends from Anabelle’s waist, cool to the touch. Her soul departed while she lie motionless on the wagon floor without a sound or whimper of pain. Has she been dead since they boarded the caravan?

  Anabelle’s sobs shift to a fit of coughing, contagious hacks like those she’d heard many nights coming from Missus Lorelei. She coughs again, splattering Delphine’s hand and Georgia’s dingy gray dress with crimson specks.

  Alarmed, Ben races toward the wagon, notices the child, and yells toward the camp, “We’s need a docta!”

  Anabelle collapses on top of Georgia, refusing to leave her side.

  “We’s need a docta,” Ben screams again.

  “Dey ain’t no docta here, juz Miss May. She’s a nuss,” the limping man Delphine had seen moments ago replies, pointing at the large A-shaped tent near the abandoned wooden barracks. “Doctas don’t come down here. Dey only above at Fort McPherson.”