It always took a little while to get our momentum going. We didn’t seem to make much progress in the first few days. But pretty soon the cotton began to pile up faster and faster in the backs of the wagons.
A TALK ABOUT THE FUTURE
45
The night Rob arrived, Katie and I were together in Katie’s room. Katie was in such a state like I’d never seen her. Rob was downstairs with her aunt and two uncles. We strained to listen but couldn’t make out their words.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” I said with a mischievous smile.
“Oh . . . I don’t know!” wailed Katie, though she had been beaming ever since she’d heard Rob say at supper that he had something important to talk over with Aunt Nelda and the two men.
Finally we heard a voice from below.
“Why don’t you two girls come down here?” It was Papa calling at us up the stairs. “That giggling is driving us crazy! You sound like a couple of schoolgirls!”
Katie didn’t need to be told twice. She flew down the stairs three at a time!
“Rob here’s been talking to us about a few things,” said Papa. “The first, like he told us before, is that he has taken a leave of absence from his job for a month or so to pitch in and help us with our harvest. We said we were grateful for his help and told him that he is welcome as long as he wants to stay.”
He paused and glanced around at the rest of us.
“Then there was one other thing he wanted to talk over with us, didn’t he, Ward?”
“That he did.”
“You want to tell them about it?” Papa asked.
“No, you tell them.”
“I’m not sure I’d be comfortable . . . kind of personal.”
“What about you, Nelda?” asked Uncle Ward. “You want to tell them?”
“Not me,” said Aunt Nelda with a smile.
“Hmm . . . actually, why don’t you tell them about it, Rob,” said my papa, throwing Rob one of his famous winks.
Rob smiled and looked at Katie.
“How’d you like to go for a walk?” he said. “It’s a nice evening. I think there might even be a moon up by now.”
He led the way toward the door and they left the house together.
I stood staring at Papa and Uncle Ward and Aunt Nelda.
“Well!” I said.
“Well . . . what?” said Papa.
“Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Papa! Whatever it is that Rob talked to you about!”
“I think that’s something you had better ask Katie.”
Katie and Rob walked out into the peaceful evening. As they left the house and barn for the fields, the night sounds of the chickens and cows and pigs faded. The stillness of the night descended over them. All they could hear was the hum of crickets in the direction of the trees bordering the river.
As they walked Rob took Katie’s hand in his.
“Your hands are rough,” he said.
“Sorry . . . that’s the cotton.”
“Nothing to apologize for—I think it’s wonderful. I admire you all—especially you and Mayme—for your hard work.”
“Your hands will be dry and rough and broken and blistered within a week too.”
“I will consider them a badge of honor to help get Rosewood’s taxes paid.”
“Did Uncle Templeton tell you about that?” asked Katie.
Rob nodded.
“Those two dear men . . . they’re remarkable,” said Katie. “They’ve grown to love this place as much as I do.”
“I can tell.”
“When I think of everything that’s happened since Mayme first came, I can hardly believe all the changes. We were hardly more than girls then. Now . . . well, I suppose we’re almost women.”
“You are indeed . . . though without the almost.”
“Maybe. But does one ever really feel grown-up?”
“I guess I’m still too young to know the answer to that myself.”
“You’re older than me.”
“Only twenty-three.”
“That’s still older than me. And you’ve done some brave and exciting things.”
“You don’t consider what you and Mayme did here brave and exciting?”
“I don’t know,” said Katie with a smile. “Maybe bravery is easier to see in other people. When Mayme and I did what we did, I felt more scared than brave. When I read your letter, I thought you were so brave. Not only in the things you did, but also in the way you thought and the way you talked to God about wanting to live like He wants you to, and the way you prayed for Mr. Teague. At least . . . I don’t know, don’t you think thinking can be a brave thing too?”
“I never thought about that before,” said Rob. “But now that you put it like that . . . yes, I do think so. I suppose it does take courage to think boldly about certain types of things.”
Katie breathed in deeply. “It smells so nice, doesn’t it? There’s nothing like a summer evening.”
“I can see why you all love it here. This is quite a place. So peaceful.”
“At times like this,” said Katie. “But it’s not always so quiet and peaceful. We’ve had trouble with the people in the community—some of them, I should say.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“There is a lot of resistance to what we’ve done.”
“You mentioned the Ku Klux Klan before. I’ve heard of it. But do they really do things like burn crosses on lawns and hang people? Nothing like that happens up where I live.”
“Mayme has a scar on her neck where some men tried to hang her. Jeremiah was taken from our barn in front of us all and almost hung. It was a terrible night I’ll never forget. Papa and Uncle Ward just barely got there in time to save him. I could show you where they burned a cross in the grass in front of our home. Emma’s poor little boy was drowned by men who work for one of the most important plantation owners in the county. Henry almost died last year when they burned the livery stable down. And like I told you, the local sheriff is part of it. It’s terrible what they do.”
“Why do you stay?”
“Because this is home. Where would we go? I’ve never thought about being anyplace else. I’ve lived my whole life at Rosewood.” Katie sighed. “After what happened to Mayme on the way up to Aunt Nelda’s, I have to admit that I sometimes wonder why we stay. Why should we put up with it? I mean . . . I suppose it might be all right for the rest of us . . . but poor Mayme and Jeremiah and Henry and Josepha. Sometimes they are treated so awful if makes me furious. What kind of future can they have here knowing that people despise them just because they aren’t white? Mayme is so wonderful—I want better than that for her. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it, trying so hard to make things work here when people are probably never going to change. It seems to be getting worse. There’s such hate in their hearts. I don’t understand it.”
“Have . . . you ever thought of living anyplace else?” asked Rob.
“You mean . . . just me, without Mayme and the others?”
“Yes.”
“No, I don’t suppose I have. Why would I?”
“Because . . . what if your life and Mayme’s . . . I mean, up till now you’ve shared everything, shared every moment . . . but what if it can’t be that way forever? What if a time comes when God has something different for each of you? What will you do then?”
“Different . . . how?”
“I mean . . . families, husbands . . . different lives.”
Katie’s heart began to pound.
“What I’m trying to say,” Rob went on, “is that I want to spend my life with you . . . that I love you and want you to be my wife.”
A gasp left Katie’s lips.
“Katie, I’m asking you if you’ll marry me.”
“Oh, Rob!”
Tears flooded Katie’s eyes. Rob stretched his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.
“Is that what yo
u were talking to Uncle Templeton and Uncle Ward and Aunt Nelda about?” asked Katie when she had recovered herself a little.
“They are your guardians now. I had to get their permission.”
“What did they say?”
“They gave me their blessing . . . they gave us their blessing.”
“I’m glad. I know they like you.”
“I asked you when we were at my parents’ home to be patient with me. And you have been. I told you then that I was very fond of you. Now I want to say with all my heart, I love you, Kathleen Clairborne. Will you be my wife?”
“Oh, Rob . . . of course I will marry you!”
How long they walked without any more words passing between them, neither of them thought about. The moon, which had only been up past the horizon when they set out from the house was now well up into the sky. The crickets had gotten louder as they approached the river, then faded again as they turned toward the woods. At last it was Katie who broke the blissful silence.
“Is that why you were asking me about Rosewood and the future and if I could be happy somewhere else?” she said.
“Sure,” replied Rob. “It’s been on my mind all this time. We do live several states apart. We have lives that are different and completely separate. What are we going to do?”
“Remember when you asked what I thought about being a sheriff’s wife?”
“Of course.”
“Maybe I should ask what you think about being a plantation owner’s husband?”
“You mean . . . me . . . make this cotton harvesting and cow milking and all the rest a lifetime occupation?” Rob seemed stunned by the thought. Katie laughed. “It’s a good life,” she said. “Do you really own Rosewood?”
“Not exactly. My parents did, of course, but my mother signed it over to Uncle Ward and he split it up between the four of us—he and Uncle Templeton and Mayme and me. So eventually, I suppose, it will belong to Mayme and me. I always assumed when we married that we would build another house and that both of our families would stay at Rosewood.”
“But don’t you see, the danger would always be there—two families, one black . . . how could it ever work?”
“I thought that it would eventually get better. I guess I figured that it was because of the war and that eventually things would settle down.”
“You said yourself that it’s getting worse.”
“I suppose you’re right. That doesn’t agree with what I said before, does it? But who says a girl has to make sense at a time like this!”
“What if white Southerners never accept that blacks are free, and never accept them as equal citizens? The things you tell me about what life is like here worry me. I’m not sure I would want to raise a family in such an atmosphere of animosity between races.”
“So what do you think we should do, Rob?”
“I don’t know, Katie. I would never like to take you away from your family. At the same time, I would do everything in my power to protect you from danger. How Rosewood and our own future fit into that . . . I can’t say. And whether I could be content being a cotton plantation husband,” he added with a smile, “—I suppose that’s something I’m going to have to think about too! What if after this harvest, I hate the whole thing!”
Katie laughed. “You won’t, Rob,” she said. “I promise. You will love it. There is nothing so satisfying as getting in a harvest! I mean, you will hate it. We all hate it. You sweat and your muscles ache and it seems like the rows will never end. It is so boring and tedious! And every little ball of cotton seems so insignificant. Yet all taken together, pretty soon you’ve picked a whole pound . . . and then the individual pounds become a hundred pounds . . . and then a whole wagon is full . . . and gradually the field is finished and you move on and start in on the next . . . and it seems like it will never end. Yet when it is all done, you’ve got such a feeling of happiness and contentment and satisfaction to have planted something and watched it grow and mature and then bear fruit. And that’s when you say, I love this place, I love this life!”
Rob turned and gazed at Katie’s face beaming in the moonlight.
“Wow,” he said, “you are a plantation owner! You do love this, don’t you?”
“I do, Rob. And you will too. Earning your life, producing your own bread and cheese and vegetables straight out of God’s earth . . . it must be how God intended man to live. It’s such a pure life.”
“Then perhaps, Miss Clairborne, the important thing now is the harvest. I’ll get my hands rough like yours, and I’ll learn to hate it, and maybe love it too . . . and then we’ll worry about our future.”
He bent down and kissed her tenderly.
“I love you, Katie. You have made me a happy man tonight.”
“How could anyone be happier than I am at this moment?” sighed Katie. “I love you too, Rob.”
COTTON AND OMENS
46
It was probably after eleven when Katie burst into the house, and Rob walked in the moonlight back toward Jeremiah’s cabin.
We were all in bed and the lights were out. Whether anyone else was asleep I don’t know. I wasn’t. And once Katie dashed up the stairs and into my room yelling excitedly that Rob had proposed to her, lanterns went back on all through the house and whoever was asleep wasn’t anymore!
Five minutes later Katie and I were in Aunt Nelda’s room sitting on her bed and Katie was telling us all about it. Aunt Nelda was just as excited as we were. We were like three girls chattering away together. A few minutes later we heard footsteps in the hall, and then Papa and Uncle Ward knocked and popped their heads in and that’s how they got the news.
Papa came over to where we sat on the bed and congratulated Katie and gave her a kiss, then turned to go downstairs.
“This is news that can’t keep,” he said. “I’m going down to Henry and Josepha’s.”
“But, Templeton,” said Aunt Nelda, “it’s the middle of the night!”
“If we don’t tell them now, Nelda,” he said, “even if I have to wake them up to do it, we’ll get a dreadful scolding from Josepha at breakfast.”
Katie and Uncle Ward and I laughed so hard. We knew he was right!
“Hold on, brother Templeton!” said Uncle Ward. “I’ll join you.”
A few minutes later we heard a few hoots and laughs and Praise da Lawds! from off in the distance, and we laughed again. When we finally got sleepy, Katie asked me to come sleep with her and I did. We talked quietly in her bed for another hour. That’s when I first told her that Jeremiah and I had been talking about possibly marrying after the harvest.
“Oh, Mayme . . . that’s wonderful!” she exclaimed. “You’ve waited so long and patiently.”
But then gradually I could tell the news began to work on Katie in another way too. Funny as it seems to say it, telling her what I did made us both sad in a way. We both realized that the time of our special friendship, when we could be together completely and didn’t have to share each other with anyone, was coming to an end. We both wanted to be married. But we didn’t want to lose this part of our lives either. It was a consequence of falling in love neither of us had anticipated.
And then I told Katie that Jeremiah and I had talked about staying in Jeremiah’s cabin and fixing it up. I thought it would make her glad that we would be staying so close and wouldn’t be leaving Rosewood. And I think that part of it did make her glad at first.
But then she got quiet. She was realizing for the first time, I guess you’d say, that there weren’t enough houses at Rosewood to go around. Henry and Josepha now had their place. Jeremiah and I would fix up Jeremiah’s cabin. That left only the big house and it was only right that Papa and Uncle Ward keep living there. At least that’s how I knew Katie would think. There would be no place left for her and Rob!
They could build a new house, of course. But right now there wasn’t money enough, and that’s when the idea came into Katie’s head that maybe she was going to be the one to leave Rosewood
, and how could that not make her sad, even if she would be with Rob? She didn’t want to leave here and go to some little town in Pennsylvania and sit at home all by herself with nothing to do and be the wife of a sheriff’s deputy. She didn’t tell me all this that night, but over the next few days, from things she said, I figured out what was worrying her.
That didn’t keep her from being happy. Part of her was ecstatic about really belonging to Rob. But being spoken for suddenly makes you start thinking about things in a whole new way, and some of those new things you have to think about can be a little fearsome. Being engaged means change. And sometimes change is hard.
We didn’t make it out into the fields quite so early the next morning! But the whole place was abuzz and excited over the news about Katie and Rob. I don’t know if anyone else besides Katie was wondering what it might mean, and whether it meant that Katie would leave Rosewood. If so, no one mentioned it. I suppose it was something we would have to think about sometime, just like Rob and Katie would have to think about it. Katie was the life and soul of Rosewood. How could there even be a Rosewood without Katie? No one wanted to think about such things now.
Katie didn’t get much cotton picked that day. She was too busy looking at Rob and the two of them talking and smiling. It was only Rob’s second day and Katie was supposed to be teaching him, yet she was distracted as she could be! But the next day they did a little more, and by then the rest of us were going pretty good, and Henry was whizzing up and down the rows as if the rest of us were standing still.
The days passed and the piles of cotton mounted.
The conversations shifted as we moved along and passed each other in our rows. One day Katie and I found ourselves together again and were talking away like we always did. We looked up and saw Rob and Jeremiah in the distance also working together and laughing and talking. They spent the rest of the day working together and soon were becoming the best of friends. By then Rob could just about keep up with Jeremiah too.
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