She looks flustered for a moment but quickly regains her composure. “Noby,” she says. “It’s been such a long time.” She smiles a small smile, but it is clearly strained, encased in embarrassment.
They are stiff and reserved with each other, neither wanting to say too much, but the next move is his. He is the one who is forcing this.
“Yes,” says Noby. It isn’t her fault, and she doesn’t deserve the brusqueness, but he can barely tolerate standing on David’s land. Looking his brother’s wife in the face reminds him of David’s deceit. Her only crime is to have married David, but still.
“Mama Lucy inside, but she sleeping.”
“How she be? She didn’t come out to church last week.”
“Don’t worry, she just under the weather,” says Susanna. “Eighty-five, and except for a touch of catarrh, she stronger than you or me. Cough be gone in a day or two, and she be up and around and in the front pew again Sunday coming.”
“David here?” Noby asks.
“In the pecan grove,” she says, a little too fast, obviously relieved that he will leave her alone and go to his brother.
Noby touches his hat. “I’ll find him,” he says.
He knows the layout of the parcel, has studied it on the surveyor’s map in the courthouse and walked the length and breadth when he knew David wasn’t there. Almost three hundred acres, land that should have been his. Land purchased only because of Noby’s crushing debt, not David’s, debt that still holds him in its grip.
Just beyond a clearing east of the farmhouse, David and his four boys harvest pecans, shaking the trees until the nuts fall and then collecting them from the ground. David looks older but retains the slim, fit build he has had since he was a child. The chronic paleness of his skin has turned slightly muddy in the sun. David isn’t afraid to work, Noby will give him that, but the sight of him sweating on his own land, able to bear the fruits of his labor, is almost more than Noby can stand. Noby is tempted to turn around and ride home. What good can this do?
David looks up, holds a hand up to protect his light gray eyes from the glare of the sun, coolly registers Noby on the ice wagon. He doesn’t wave or smile, just drops his corner of the burlap sheet, motions to one of his sons to take his place, and walks over to where Noby waits.
“Noby,” David says, tight-lipped. He is still a handsome man, even with his strange eyes. He is in his early fifties, two years older than Noby, and his face is unwrinkled, though he spends so much time in the sun.
“I come to see about you helping pay down the debt,” says Noby.
“It’s not my debt, Brother,” David says.
“We was both on the land, not just me.”
“That’s not what the courthouse say,” says David.
Now Noby rents back the small plot where he lives, not big enough to farm, barely adequate to reside. He was forced to raise his children on diminishing land, foreclosed a piece at a time, paying back what debts he could, since he held the paper and the obligation. David walked away, leaving Noby to succumb to the creditors alone. Noby and Emma still have four children at home, three girls and a boy, the youngest only eight.
“This the last time I ask. You doing good now. Do right by me,” says Noby.
“This a old argument, and I got work,” says David.
David stands for a moment, staring at Noby, his face unyielding, and finally turns to walk toward his sons and his pecan harvest.
“You dead to me,” Noby calls out to his brother’s back.
Figure 17. Noby Smith
Chapter
29
1918
Noby positions his wagon at the back of the long waiting line for loading at the quarry. He has already spent the better part of the early afternoon shoveling the first load of gravel into the wagon bed, delivering it out near The Bottom, and getting back to the quarry for another load. After this run, he can call it quits for the day. The pains between his shoulder blades and shooting down his legs are forceful reminders of the fact Noby isn’t so young anymore, but he is dependable, and white men still come to him when they want a job done right. Today is good work. He has already finished his ice deliveries, and the extra dollar will come in handy.
Up ahead, four wagons wait to dump and weigh, three driven by white men he has seen around town or at the quarry before. The fourth wagon is driven by Jupiter Hall, a colored man from The Bottom. Noby and Jupiter have worked side by side for years, on one project or another, for farmers who can afford to hire out help.
“Slow today,” the farmer in the wagon directly in front of Noby says, making conversation to pass the time. Wash Honeycutt has a small place south of Colfax, and Noby helped him once in the difficult birth of a calf.
Noby smiles and tips his hat. “Yes, sir, Mr. Honeycutt.”
“Who you hauling for this time?”
“Mr. Swafford,” Noby answers.
Noby starts to cramp, and he decides to walk a little to stretch out his muscles. The line won’t move forward until the men ahead finish their shoveling. The circulation comes back into his legs, and he stands by the side of the wagon, eating the last of the dinner Emma packed for him when he left the house that morning. The cold biscuit and ham take away his hunger but do nothing to help him endure the merciless heat.
The long line of wagons inches forward for the better part of two hours. While he waits his turn in the full force of the sun, Noby maps out the rest of the day in his head, his wide-brimmed straw hat pulled low over his forehead. Once he shovels the gravel into his wagon, it will take maybe thirty minutes to get back to Swafford’s, and then he can head home to Emma with the dollar in his pocket. She will have chicory coffee for him, and he will sit down for a leisurely read of yesterday’s newspaper. A day well worth the sore muscles.
Up ahead, Wash Honeycutt throws the last bits of gravel into the bed of his wagon and pulls off the wagon brake. Noby is next.
“All yours,” Honeycutt says to Noby, snapping the reins. The horse strains under the heavy load, and for a moment Honeycutt can’t get him moving. Noby grabs hold of the horse’s harness, leading him while Honeycutt prods again with the reins. The heavy wagon lurches forward just as another wagon arrives at the quarry. The white man at the reins doesn’t stop at the end of the line but drives his wagon directly to the front, closest to the pile of gravel, Noby’s spot.
“Move aside, coon,” he says.
Noby recognizes the man as one of the many Hadnots around the area. Noby always has trouble keeping himself in check around a Hadnot.
“Excuse me, sir, I am next,” says Noby. He steadies his voice to strike the balance of claiming his rights without provoking a white man.
Wash Honeycutt, not yet clear of the quarry, pulls his horse to a stop, still partially blocking the way. Now there are three wagons in the logjam, and none has clear access. “No call to cut line, Simon. We all waited our turn,” says Honeycutt to Hadnot.
It is a generous gesture, and Noby senses the mood of the waiting men on his side, colored and white. There is a workman’s code that lies beneath their dealings with one another at the gravel pit.
“No son of Canaan going before me,” says Simon Hadnot. He flicks the tip of his whip across his horse’s back and maneuvers his wagon around Honeycutt’s.
Wash Honeycutt remains where he is, outmatched, his heavy wagon at an awkward angle. He doesn’t drive away, but he doesn’t challenge Simon Hadnot again either.
“Yield,” says Hadnot to Noby.
The familiar red begins to take form in Noby’s mind, radiating out until his skin tingles with the rage. He climbs back up on the seat of his wagon and takes the reins in his hands.
“No, sir,” says Noby. “I been waiting ’most two hours. My turn next.”
“You back-talking me?” Simon Hadnot is honestly surprised. “Best get out my way, boy, ’less you don’t mind leaving this life early.”
There are about a dozen white men at the gravel pit, loading, un
loading, and loitering. Hadnot turns to them, plays to a larger stage. “This boy going against a white man. What this parish coming to? Who’s with me?”
The response is mixed. Some are ready for a confrontation under the hot sun, but others just want to load their gravel and be done with it. Noby no longer tries to calibrate the tempo of the crowd. The red has already staked its claim, taken hold of him. His mind, body, and senses pulse to their own beat.
“Move aside, boy. Don’t make me get down,” says Hadnot.
“I will not,” says Noby. The muscles in his face are so taut he can hardly move his jaw to speak, his body coiled in intense concentration. He sees the insult of Simon Hadnot’s slouch hat, the entitled, sun-chapped face, the big rabbitlike teeth. Everything else recedes, noise and onlookers and quarry.
Hadnot jumps down in one agile, fluid motion, seeming to cover the short distance between the two wagons in less than a blink. He yanks Noby by the arm of his shirt, jerking him from his perch on the wagon seat, and Noby finds himself looking up at Hadnot from the ground. He isn’t quite quick enough to roll away as Hadnot brings his boot to Noby’s ribs.
“Enough,” cries Wash Honeycutt, but Hadnot kicks again.
The sharp edge of the pain sharpens Noby’s senses, the power of red coursing through his brain and body, focusing him on the easy target that is Simon Hadnot. He springs up from the ground, sore ribs forgotten, and flies at Hadnot, tackling him around the middle, bringing him down onto the sharp stones and dirt of the quarry. He briefly registers the astonishment on Hadnot’s face and, with all his might, slams his fist into the center of the remnants of Hadnot’s smug smirk. Noby hears the crunch of bone, the surprisingly soft give of facial structure, and he draws his fist back and punches Simon Hadnot again, harder, not sure if the vivid scarlet swimming in front of his eyes is the man’s blood or a reflected manifestation of his rage. Noby’s hand stings, gashed raw by something sharp. The stinging brings Noby back to himself, enables him to see the scene as others will. Simon Hadnot, a white man of Colfax, lies on the ground writhing, moaning, his face a bloodied mass, teeth broken and spilled on the ground like discarded wood chips, and a colored man delivered the blows. A hand at Noby’s back jerks him up by the neck of his shirt and away from Hadnot on the ground.
A circle of white men surrounds Noby. Even those who were indifferent or sympathetic toward him when Hadnot began his bullying are outraged now. Beyond the close-in circle of hostile white faces, Noby sees Jupiter Hall, the only other colored man at the quarry, still at the reins of his wagon, his dark face a mask of passivity. Noby reads more from Jupiter’s demeanor than in the anger of the men closer by. Jupiter’s situation is precarious. He can’t call attention to himself by leaving, and he can’t rush to Noby’s defense or the same fate will fall to both of them. All Jupiter can do is wait and see what happens, where the white men will take the situation next. All Jupiter, one of his colored Mason brothers sworn by the secret ceremonies of fraternity to come to Noby’s defense, can do is wait and see if he can pick up the pieces, if there are any pieces to pick up.
The circle of white men tightens, not a single friendly face among them, and with a quick seizing of his stomach, Noby realizes he is done for. They will never allow this affront to the race, a white man down on the ground at the hand of a colored, no matter what the provocation. The fight seeps from Noby then, not only because he is outnumbered or because the flood of red rage fueling him has dissipated, leaving a bad taste of inevitability in his mouth, but because he carries forward the cautionary weight of over a hundred years of conditioning deep in the marrow of his bones. Like Jupiter, he waits, and the wait is short.
Simon Hadnot stumbles up from the filth of the gravel pit and breaks through the knot of white men. The lower part of his face is smeared with blood, some congealed already, and some sprouting fresh rivulets over his chin and down the front of his shirt.
“Now it’s your turn, boy,” Hadnot says, his eyes wild with fury.
The snaking menace in the white man’s voice sends shivers through Noby, and he tenses his body for the blows. Softly, he recites the Twenty-third Psalm.
Hadnot pummels Noby, bare knuckles to his face, his stomach, fists to his kidneys. When Noby falls, Hadnot kicks at him, and Noby instinctively curls himself in a ball until he is hoisted upright and straightened out by other men so Hadnot can come at him again. Strangely, there isn’t much yelling or noise of any kind, not by the crowd of men or from the surroundings, only the dull thuds of landed punches, as if the birds and insects have stopped what they were doing until the beating is finished.
Noby loses touch with the present and stops cataloging his injuries. His broken nose and cracked ribs are the least of the pain. He just hangs on. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil . . . thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. He loses track of who hits him, his eyes swollen so shut he can barely see. Noby thinks suddenly of his father, of Israel Smith, how he hobbled around the cabin on his one good leg in his last years, broken in body and spirit, and he realizes what a luxury that was, to still be alive under any circumstances. He will not be so lucky. Already he feels his life force leaking away.
“If he not dead yet, I’ma finish him,” Noby hears Simon Hadnot say. “He’s mine. I got to wash this blood off. Watch him till I get back.”
The successive waves of new pain stop, and the tight squeeze of sweating bodies pressing in on him thins. There are no blows or kicks or jabs to his body for another minute, and then another, and Noby almost slips into unconsciousness from the unexpected dearth of bright explosions to his face, his groin, his back.
“Might’s well stay down.” Wash Honeycutt leans close to Noby’s ear, his voice a whispering buzz. “Hadnot hurting too, gone to patch himself up before he come back to see if you really dead. Why you gotta hit him?”
Noby drifts, his mind not quite able to put everything together. He is still alive, but when they come back, they will finish him for sure. If he doesn’t get out beyond the reach of Hadnot now, he is as good as dead. Noby tries to pull himself up but can’t balance himself sitting, let alone standing. He grabs the hand of the man leaning over him and gives him the sign, pushes the blood out of his throat so he can say the password.
Wash Honeycutt stares at Noby, first in surprise and wonder, then in anger and confusion. Noby has given the Masonic distress signal to a white man, as if they are brothers. The white men have their lodge of brotherhood but don’t acknowledge the right of colored to conduct the same practices, even in secret. A brother is bound to help a brother, but not across race lines.
Noby makes one last desperate gamble. “Jupiter,” he says. He points weakly in the direction of Jupiter Hall, still in the quarry with his horse and wagon. “He a colored brother.”
Honeycutt struggles with conflicting emotions. “Simon Hadnot a hothead fool,” he says finally. He rises and walks to Jupiter’s wagon. Noby can’t hear the conversation, but Wash Honeycutt and Jupiter Hall lean in close, conferring, before Honeycutt walks off in the opposite direction.
Jupiter pulls his rig near Noby, looks around warily. Everyone is in the quarry shed, including Honeycutt. “Can you get in back, Brother?” he asks.
When he moves, Noby is so nauseated and dizzy he can hardly stand, but he manages to stumble to his feet. “I need help,” he says.
Jupiter gets down and drags, pulls, and pushes Noby into the bed of the wagon, laying him flat on the planks, throwing a filthy horse blanket over him. “Hold the sides,” Jupiter says.
Jupiter scrambles to recover the reins and gives the horse a guarded gee to get him going. Caution for the battered man’s condition comes second to the need for a rushed retreat. Once they are about two hundred yards away from the gravel pit, Jupiter picks up the pace, brings the horse to first a full trot and then a gallop, and heads for The Bottom.
Noby aches, the pain coming in waves so intense at times that all he can do is close hi
s eyes and pray as he grips the crossbars of the wagon to prevent himself from crashing into the sides. The bumps and pitch of the wagon toss him about, reopening wounds and inflicting new ones, made worse by rolling on the sharp edges of loose gravel that bore into his exposed skin. The next hour is critical. It is too risky to take Noby to his own house, the first place the white men will look. Instead, Jupiter makes a beeline for Jackson Tademy’s farm. It is only a matter of time before the search begins and The Bottom is crawling with white men set on retribution.
Noby can’t prevent the avalanche of random thoughts and memories that come to him unbidden, feeding the crushing fear of his impending death at the hands of a white mob. Noby hears his father’s voice deep inside his head, giving conflicting commands: A man control himself; then he don’t have nothing to pay for later, but also Don’t never let them put their hands on you.
Noby doesn’t want to die. His mother, Lucy, says he knows how to cheat death, but this time he doesn’t have the physical strength to escape. One eye is swollen totally shut, and he can barely see from the other. Mercifully, the wagon stops at last. Noby hears voices, then feels familiar hands on him, pulling him upright out of the muck of gravel and blood that has become his refuge. There are four who help him climb from the wagon bed, buttressing him upright between them so they can walk and drag him to shelter. It takes his daughter Lenora, Amy Tademy, Polly Tademy, and Jupiter to get him into the mule shed, propped up against a bale of hay. The house, any house, is too dangerous, and this is only the first stop of many if he is to survive the long night.
“White men come soon,” says Jupiter. “This wagon got to get hid.”
“I take the wagon to the woods,” Amy says. “Jupiter, you take the horse and go tell Emma we got Noby here, safe. She got to stay put.”
“What Noby do?” asks Polly.
Red River Page 27