“Stubborn as ever,” he wants to say, but says instead, “He put up a new roof on the church last week.”
“And the school?” she asks.
“Hasn’t got to the colored school yet.” Jackson knows Widow Cruikshank is sympathetic to the idea of educating colored children, but still, it is a mistake to volunteer too much information.
“I know it was a great blow to him when Green passed. That takes the wind out, a child going before the parent. You tell him for me to keep his faith about the school.” Again she waits for Jackson to initiate the reason for his visit. “What can I do for you today?” she finally says.
“I come to talk land,” Jackson blurts out. “The piece along Walden Bayou. Assuming you still ready to sell.”
“It is for sale,” she says. “Sitting idle for three years, since the ’83 hailstorm. I’d let it go for five hundred dollars. Let’s go on the back porch and see what you got.”
“Not five hundred dollars,” says Jackson.
“There’s a hundred acres, a clean bayou full of fish, good planting land for a man willing to work. A good place to raise a family.”
“Yes, ma’am, but it flood every year or two, regular. Got to figure on losing some crops, moving the family in and out whenever the water come.”
“We all got to live with that,” Widow Cruikshank says. “You wouldn’t be here at all if you couldn’t. Land goes for eight to ten dollars an acre. I’m offering it to you for five because of your family.”
“I got two hundred now,” Jackson says. He doesn’t reach into his pants to pull the folding money out, but the weight and bulk reassure him. “The rest I work off over time.”
“That sit fine with me. You not afraid of honest labor. There’s even some things around here needs doing, odd jobs. And Amy can wash and cook.”
Jackson smooths himself out before opening his mouth. “Yes, ma’am, any work here I can do, just let me know, I be here. I’m looking to move my family soon, so I can still plant for the season.”
“If you come up with three hundred by the end of the year, I’ll take the note at eight percent, another hundred payable the end of ’87, and a final payment of a hundred the end of ’88.”
Jackson makes calculations in his head. He has to buy seed, keep his family and his animals going, risk a bad crop year, maybe two, borrow equipment from his father. He is already plowing his field close to home by the moonlight and entangled in countless Tademy projects. Where will the hours come from? Widow Cruikshank is no nonsense when it comes to her land and her finances, but Jackson knows he is getting as good a deal as he is likely to get. And she is willing to loan him the money over time and give him work around her place.
“Yes, ma’am. Three hundred by the end of the year. How soon I can move?”
“Soon’s I draw the papers,” she says. “And thanks for the pie. You be sure to give my regards to Amy, you hear?”
Chapter
23
1891
On a hot, bright Sunday in June 1891, Jackson Tademy finishes his early-morning chores around the farm and joins his family for a breakfast of biscuits, ham, and eggs. Amy gathers the boys, and they set out for the short walk to Mount Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church, just past the last bridge straddling Walden Bayou. Jackson’s youngest brother is pastor and Jackson serves as deacon, teaching Bible lessons in the small clapboard building erected by Sam Tademy. It seems everyone is out and about in The Bottom at nine o’clock in the morning, young and old, most on their way to one church or another, or coming back from the bayou with a bamboo pole and a bucket of fresh-caught fish. Others settle on their front porches in advance of the worst of the heat, keeping their hands useful, shelling peas for dinner and swatting flies.
There is a sameness to the weeks and months in The Bottom for most all of the families living there, varied only by change in season and change in crop. For Jackson Tademy, the midweek’s backbreak is punctuated by Saturdays spent laboring on his father’s farm, and Sunday church service that stretches from early morning into early afternoon.
Soon it will be time to make the trip into Colfax to pay property taxes at the courthouse before they go past due. Each of the past five years, as land registered under his name has increased, Jackson has retrieved an ever larger fistful of coins from the tin can buried in the back under the crepe myrtle tree to satisfy the assessor. In town, he counts out the coins and drops them into the white man’s waiting hand, lingering at the side counter for the precious receipt that proves the land belongs to him and no one else for yet another year. On his 142 acres, he oversees two mules, two colts, two yoke oxen, twenty-seven cattle, assorted chickens and pigs, and not only one but two wagons for transport and hauling.
Week in and week out, month after month, Jackson toils in his growing expanse of cotton and cornfields, harvests the grove of pecan trees growing wild on his property, cultivates his vegetable gardens, attempts to keep pace with the ongoing upkeep of the farmhouse by reinforcing a leaking roof, shoring up the sagging porch, or stabilizing the hardpan foundation threatening to sink one corner of the modest four-room cabin he has erected on the southernmost triangle of his land. Without complaint, he contributes his dollars, ingenuity, and sweat in service to the omnipresent parade of communal Tademy projects.
Jackson tends his stock and takes on as many odd jobs for cash, barter, or goodwill as he can squeeze into the day. He often works so long and late that he leaves Amy at the kitchen stove in her nightdress in the morning, and by the time he drags his tired body through the front door at night, she has already changed back into the nightdress for bed. But he is a young man, strong and determined, and no one’s life is easy in The Bottom. He has fathered three healthy children, all boys, and planted a fourth due before the end of the year, just beginning to show in the thickening of Amy’s waist and the by-now recognizable change in her walk.
Jackson and Amy never miss a Sunday in the small white one-room building at the edge of a clearing in the center of The Bottom. The building smells of dampness, whether summer or winter, equally capable of holding on to the heat and humidity on the hot days or a moist chill on the cold ones, but none among them can imagine spending their Sunday anywhere other than inside the cramped room. All the Tademys worship there, each of Sam Tademy’s children and their families. The communal center provides religious, spiritual, creative, and social interaction.
The church is one large unpartitioned space with several rows of long benches and a pine table and single chair for the pastor’s corner. Sam insisted the two small windows under the eaves be located high above eye level, so the church is often dim even when the sun is at its brightest outside, both because of the positioning of the building east to west and because the only other opening that admits light is the single door, if open. Jackson would have preferred more windows, both larger so more sunshine could find its way into the room and lower so those inside could look out onto the flat landscape of the Louisiana bottomlands, but Sam was adamant that no such thing take place. “We do God’s work inside and out,” said Sam, “but while we in the Lord’s house, no reason to let the mind stray and be tempted to forget why we come here.”
Jackson worries they are late and quickens his step, not wanting to deal with the silent scowl his father reserves each week for whoever is the last of the Tademy brothers to arrive. Jackson carries their youngest boy in his arms so Amy won’t have to. She says she feels fine, that it is too early in the pregnancy to make a fuss, and what does he think she does when he isn’t there during the other days of the week? But it makes Jackson feel good to lead his family to the church on Sunday, the five of them a unit, healthy and full of vitality, for the entire world to see. Sam Tademy is always first to the church on Sunday mornings, greeting each arriving member as if he is the pastor of Mount Pilgrim Rest, not his son James, welcoming and shaking hands before they pass through the door to go inside.
Jackson rounds the corner of the church, but instead of Sam at th
e front door, three of his brothers wait outside in the heat, scanning the landscape.
“Papa not here yet,” James says. Worry lines the smooth features of the preacher’s face. “We send Billy off to fetch him.”
No sooner has he finished speaking than they hear the commotion of a wagon, with Billy at the reins and Sam and Polly sitting behind. Sam usually takes pride in walking the ten minutes to the church from his farmhouse, regardless of weather. The wagon rolls to a stop at the front door, and Jackson and James take care in helping Sam down. Sam winces but doesn’t complain when touched. His bronzy-brown skin seems grayish and drained of color, and he sweats profusely even though the day hasn’t yet heated to its full potential. When Jackson takes hold of Sam’s arm, he notices pinhead-sized red spots under the skin on the backs of his father’s callused hands, and a small bruise the size of a copper penny at his wrist, just below the sleeve of his jacket. Lately, it seems any contact at all leaves Sam damaged and discolored.
“Church won’t wait,” Sam says, blinking, his eyes watery and irritated by the sun’s glare. This last bout of flu and fever, or whatever it is, has lingered more than a month, and they all worry, but no one can convince Sam to stay in bed.
The brothers help Sam inside the church. They move the lone straight-backed chair, usually reserved for the preacher, alongside the first narrow bench and sit him at the end of the front pew, closest to the pulpit-table. Jackson sits on the bench next to Polly. The church can accommodate forty men, women, and children, if they squeeze in close on the five long pine benches. A flat table covered with a length of cotton material angles the wall farthest from the front door, serving as preaching space and pulpit.
There is Sunday school for the children first, and then they all move into the singing, preaching, and praying. Reverend James delivers a sermon on the wages of sin, coming in at just under an hour, cut short out of deference to Sam’s stamina. Shortly after noon, they bow their heads for a final prayer and prepare to return home for dinner. Jackson tries to help Sam outside to the wagon, but his father waves him off.
“Come ’round the house next week before Saturday,” Sam says to Jackson. “The gristmill broke again.”
“I’ll come by today,” says Jackson. He thinks of the backlog of chores around his own farm and when he can possibly get to them.
“I’m a little peaked today,” Sam says. “Next week good enough.”
Jackson is relieved. He still has to lip up the soil in the cotton in the north field, reshoe one of the horses, and mend the fence where it is down in two places, chores that will take the better part of the afternoon and much of the evening.
His relief is short-lived.
“You and me got serious talking to do,” Sam says.
Late that afternoon, after the long church services all over The Bottom are finished, Jackson struggles with the plow in the near field while Amy fixes supper. A clattering buckboard wagon approaches the farm in a cloud of dust. It is his friend Noby, wife and five children in tow. Jackson has barely seen Noby, except in passing, for almost two months. Jackson makes a quick calculation. Tomorrow he must clean up the spent cornstalks at Widow Cruikshank’s, and unless he finishes plowing the north field before then, he will fall more hopelessly behind. The moon is due to be full tonight, so he decides to take the mule out later in the evening and plow. Jackson untethers himself from his ox and guides the beast back toward the house.
“It’s been too long,” Jackson says in greeting, clapping Noby on the back.
Between planting, harvesting, hustling work for cash, laboring at the church, and family obligations, Jackson hardly has time to miss Noby Smith, but miss him he does. He and Amy are never at a want for company in The Bottom, surrounded as they are with so many members of his family. Since Noby threw his lot in with his brother David and moved east to Bayou Darrow to jointly farm forty acres, Jackson and Noby have drifted apart unwillingly, two men with good intentions staggering under the weight of making a respectable life, even though they live less than two miles from each other. They attend different churches now, concentrating on their own families and their own business. A conspicuous absence remains, like a missing tooth, an untold joke, or an unshared story, a withered connection.
Noby, rail-thin as he has been since boyhood, grins. “The ride between my place and yours must be shorter in my direction,” he says, “since I’m the one broke down to make the trip.”
The four older Smith children, nine to two years old, scramble from the wagon, jostling one another, already trying to figure out what there is to do that might prove interesting during the visit. They linger by the side of the wagon, trained to wait for their elders to release them to go off on their own. Emma is the last to climb down, a baby in one arm and a pecan pie in the other.
“She’s precious,” says Amy, staring for too long a time at Noby and Emma’s youngest baby girl.
Amy’s wistful glances aren’t lost on Jackson. His wife wants their upcoming child to be a girl, since there are so many males in the family.
Amy pulls back the thin gray baby blanket for a better look at little Lenora. “Put on good growth since last we seen her,” she says approvingly. “Keep the buttermilk color too.”
Emma transfers the loosely bundled girl to Amy, who scrunches her face into a series of poses, almost touching her nose to Lenora’s and then lifting away to get the baby to react. “Got your mama’s eyes, yes, you do,” Amy croons. Little Lenora responds, waving her arms as if she is trying to take flight, sharing quick flashes of a toothless grin.
“Our boys down to the bayou,” Amy says to Emma, still able to lose herself in the uniqueness of baby smell and motion, even after three of her own. Amy stares into the dramatic upward tilt of Lenora’s narrow brown eyes.
“You hear Mrs. Tademy,” Emma says to her brood. “Shoo. Go on down to the bayou with the others while we here, and don’t be tearing up nothing.”
“I stay with you, Mama,” Gertrude says, pressing into Emma’s long skirt. The little girl isn’t yet three, bold and clearly competing for attention. “You and Lenora.”
Amy laughs. “She talking early.”
“Early and often,” says Emma, shaking her head. “Gertrude got the stubborn thread.”
“Just like my Andrew,” Amy says. “Got his mind made up about everything and aim to move it in that direction.”
“Go on, so adults can visit,” says Emma, addressing herself to the small girl, untangling Gertrude from where she clings to her mother’s skirt. “Take her hand, L’il Hansom.”
L’il Hansom claims his younger sister’s small fist, and the three children skip along the worn path, eight-year-old Hansom in the lead. Gertrude gives darting glances back toward the adults to display her displeasure at being banished, and the middle Smith boy follows half a step behind. The children wait until they are almost out of sight before they break into a run, disappearing into the thatch of trees.
“You staying for supper?” Amy asks Noby and Emma.
“We brought too many mouths to feed for that,” says Emma.
“Easy to wring another chicken’s neck and add more gravy to the pot,” says Amy. “’Course you’ll stay.”
“’Course you’ll stay,” repeats Jackson. “We got too much to catch up on for a short visit.”
Emma looks to Noby, and he nods. “Well, let me help, then,” says Emma. “Give me a apron.”
Noby and Jackson leave the women and take a walk to the mule shed to smoke. Noby brings out his brown tobacco pouch, the soft, worn material thin from use. He shakes out a thimbleful of coarse tobacco and stuffs the bowl of his corncob pipe.
“Hear there was a meeting last Wednesday night,” says Jackson. “I couldn’t break away.”
In the four square miles of The Bottom, it is possible during the busiest times of the year for faraway neighbors to go without catching sight of one another for days or weeks or sometimes months at a stretch. Nonetheless, detailed goings-on within ea
ch family unit, whether of critical consequence like birth, death, or illness, or the not so essential, such as the misdeeds of a wayward child or philandering husband, or successes or failures in dealing with the white man, are preserved and passed along from one household to the next, reported and repeated, absorbed and commented upon as the glue and currency of the community. Out of sight does not equate to out of mind, but firsthand improves the flavor of gossip.
“Come join the brotherhood we putting together,” Noby says. “We doing like the whites. Like colored men in New Orleans and other places. There’s strength in colored men with character banded together.”
“You like a brother already,” Jackson says. “If I come to you in need, you surely give, same as the other way around. I got church, I take care of my family. That’s enough.”
“Still the same old Jackson, keeping to yourself,” says Noby. “I know what your father would say if he was here.” Noby arranges his face into a serious, intense expression, imitating Sam Tademy. “‘A man refusing to step up to his community responsibilities ain’t no man at all,’” he says, deepening his voice. He returns to his normal tone. “How your papa getting on?”
“Saw him this morning. From bad to worse,” says Jackson. “Don’t got good color, bruise too easy, slow getting around. Flu won’t go away, but sick or no, he still determined everything happen his way, how he want.”
“I got to get over to see Sam Tademy,” says Noby. “You lucky to still have him.”
“Come back to Mount Pilgrim Rest, you see him every week,” says Jackson. “He there each Sunday with the rest of us.”
“Emma and me getting used to the little church on Bayou Darrow. Fine enough, but ain’t the same as Mount Pilgrim Rest.”
“And how Miss Lucy?” asks Jackson.
“Mama’s good. Don’t seem to age.” Noby puffs on his pipe, relaxed. “Remember when we pick up and go, anytime? Spend the whole day hunting? Get harder with six to look after.”
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