“I can’t help it, Mr. Slater. I said from the very first that I did not want to sell this valuable piece of cotton land!” Lucy Hightower’s slender face was set and she braced herself by her grip on the table edge, bending forward in her determination.
“But, Mrs. Hightower, Mr. Lincoln simply can’t agree to that exemption!” Slater continued to look at her firmly for several moments. He leaned back in his chair then and turned to the banker. “Now we have a counter proposal, Mr. Littleton, which I hope you will consider. . . .It would, we believe, obtain all of Mrs. Hightower’s purposes for her just as well.” He glanced about him, pausing dramatically. “We will lease this field—either to you, Mrs. Hightower, or to anyone you designate—for ten years, with an option to renew, for the aggregate sum of one hundred dollars!” He beamed on her a little like a magician who has pulled a rabbit out of a hat. “Now, will that satisfy you?”
Littleton nodded and looked at Mrs. Hightower, as if to speak. But she either did not see him, or ignored him. Staring at the table top dubiously, her head weaving a little from side to side, she considered the proposal with absorption. Still ignoring the banker she turned to the colored man, a little way down the table from her. “What do you think of it, Adam?” She waited, but seeing resistance on his face, she added, “You brought the Wyche field back. And Mr. Hightower told you then you could tend it as long as you liked. I want you to be satisfied?”
“Yessum,” he said, in clipped, tense stammering.
“I might die. I want you to have the use of that field, regardless.” She lifted her chin. “I’ll have them lease it to you, if you want me to? . . . How’s that, Adam?”
He dropped his head, and he stared at the table with equal absorption, under a different urge. He released his words with difficulty, but he managed to keep his voice from breaking. “H-hit look like the best kin be done. I sho’ couldn’t ask no mo’ from you, Mrs. Hightower! I’d be real grateful to git that lease for a hundred dollars!” He lifted his face, but his jaw was jerking so convulsively that he turned away in his chair, without trying to say any more. He kept nodding his head.
Mrs. Hightower got up abruptly, and Slater rose, too. The banker moved the legs of his chair, shifting his bulk as if to rise, then leaned over the table to Adam. “Any word about that nigger, Kiger? Ain’t his body come up yet? It’s been nearly ten days—well, anyhow, a week of August weather!”
“Yessuh,” Adam said, his face smoothing out, as he turned to him guardedly. “H-hit do seem long!. . .I-I couldn’t, myself, say whut holdin’ Kiger’s body down!” He got up and followed Mrs. Hightower out of the bank.
Not yet raising her sunshade, Mrs. Hightower halted under the big oak by the grated drain at the bank corner. She turned back to Adam, a few yards behind her on the sidewalk, and he approached her. As he drew near, she balanced the tip of the black and white parasol on one of the iron slats of the grating. “Do, Adam!” she began, in a voice a little lowered, her face repressing scandalized amusement. “You sounded to me like you were playing”—she paused over this, as too frivolous a word—“well, not quite serious with Mr. Littleton, in there just now about Kiger’s body!”
Adam shook his head apologetically, his countenance noncommittal. “Yessum,” he said.
She examined his face searchingly, an expression of light, reproachful suspicion coming over her own. “I don’t know myself what to think of that story,” she said finally. “Marse has dropped me two or three dark hints!”
“H-has he?” Adam said with perfunctory surprise. He looked up and, meeting her gaze, his eye glimmered briefly.
“Yessum,” he said “I ‘spect he has!”
She balanced the sunshade perpendicularly before her and said firmly. “Adam, what does all of this mean?”
“Whut do hit mean?” he echoed, lifting the black hat at his knee. He righted it, as he took it between his hands. He spoke in a quiet, but carrying voice. “Mrs. Hightower, hit better for me and hit better for the Land Deal, right now, that Kiger stay in the bottom of the river.” He seemed to muse on the crown of his hat. “Me and Marse, we kain’t git you into our trouble.”
“Marse!” she exclaimed, in motherly alarm. “What is Marse into?”
“Well, he ain’t into it, sho’ nuff,” Adam reassured, with an air of responsible guardianship. “But he knows ‘bout hit. And he kin holp me.”
“Hum-m!” said Mrs. Hightower dubiously, but more willingly, shifting her parasol.
Adam added, with pride, “T-that boy, young as he is, kin keep his mouth shut!”
“Yes,” she answered ambiguously, “I’m finding that out!” But she nodded after a moment. “Nevertheless, it’s of elemental importance in this world.”
“Mrs. Hightower.”
“Yes, Adam?”
His hands at either side of his hat became rigid, as he stared at it fixedly. His mouth bunched in a hard knot and allowed his words to escape precariously, under the convulsive action of his jaw. “I—just—wanted—to say ag’in—I’m grateful—the way you stood up so long and stout—for me a-gittin’ the Wyche field!”
She had lowered her gaze against the pain of watching, until he got it out. Then she lifted a face touched by the strain, and a shy smile. “Thank you, Adam, thank you! But you have no more reason to be grateful to me, than I have to you!”
“Miz Hightower!” Adam cut her off. “Whut wuz it the lawyer called the shenanigans in the land deal, he say need not to’ve happened?”
She blinked at him then lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “You mean, Comedy of Errors?”
“Yessum. That’s hit! That’s hit!” He shook his head several times, a fumbling embarrassment coming over him. Finally, he said “B-banker Littleton admit he acted the fool. W-well ‘m, Adam did too, along the way! You don’t know ‘bout it, but I’m c-confessin’ that he did—big fool!”
“How was that, Adam? What do you mean?”
He looked away. “Old Mr. Adam Atwell, the white man who raised me, used to say—the way he put it wuz”—Adam adopted the voice of his recollection—“‘Son, you kain’t countenance the devil.’” He shook his head. “I come mighty nigh bein’ taken in by that black devil, Kiger Steele. And I want to apologize to you, too!”
With a dim apprehension of the truth, Mrs. Hightower said, “Well, I have no idea what this is all about, but I accept your apology. We are all susceptible to the devil’s wiles.”
He eyed the hat as he turned it upside down. “But there wuz one thing I got out’n hit. . .Them letters the land buyer’s lawyer give you ain’t all the letters in the case. I knows where they some mo’. And they be here when we need ‘em!”
Mrs. Hightower frowned. “What are you talking about now, Adam?”
He nodded reassuringly, going on. “One of these letters—I got ‘em from Kiger—hit signed, ‘Archibald Lincoln.’ I had Marse to read hit over to me three times. He say to Paley, something like this. ‘We won’t talk to you ‘bout yo’ proposition til after we close the Land Deal. But come to us then and’—I got his words here—‘We will not be unmindful of your previous negotiations.’ That’s whut hit said!”
“Humm-m!” said Mrs. Hightower again, frowning and making cross hatches on the ground. “I wondered at the time!”
“Miz Hightower,” Adam broke in, “we got a good case ag’in this low-down Paley boy!”
She looked up, her face flushing a little and her eyes warm. “Yes, it seems so!” she said. Then, a restraining compunction came upon her. “But we won’t do anything about it now. . . .We’ll see after we close the deal, next week.”
“Hit’s a good case! And maybe that sneaking Hinshaw Slappy, too!”
She frowned, turning away. “We’ll talk about it later.” She looked back with an ambiguous smile on her face. “But I was almost embarrassed at the cool cucumber you gave Mr. Littleton!”
Adam swallowed and lowered his hat. “Miz Hightower, banker Littleton waun’t plumb taken by that.” He looked off toward th
e iron grating. “They’s things, at times, better not be nosed about too plain—specially where a colored man’s mixed in hit.”
She looked from the drain to his face, frowning a little, mystified, but knowing, too, in a shadowy way. “Yes,” she agreed.
Adam went on. “Now you take that city lawyer in there, awhile ago.” He spoke with a touch of indulgent sympathy in his voice “H-hit all legal or un-legal to him. He see whut he see, plain. But whut all do he see? Yeah.”
Beyond the tip of her parasol, Mrs. Hightower gazed at the storm drain again, becoming conscious, as she reflected on Adam’s words, of the low sound of running water far below the grating. . . His voice was farther away now. “Kiger’s body, h-hit’ll rise, when the time come.”
She looked up to see him moving off along the walk.
24.
ADAM, SITTING IN THE STERN of the bateau, lifted his head to look at Marse the second time. Then he shifted his gaze to the middle of the river, where pale light from the sky still made a glint on the dim current-roughened water, and on across to the far bank, where dark was creeping out of the high trees and sifting down from the gray trails of Spanish moss. He said, “I don’t ‘spect Mr. Jawn had nothin’ to do with it—why?”
Marse, in front of the boat, raised the run cord of the trotline so that the baited hook on a drop line would not catch on the gunwale as it passed over. “He acted just like he was pleased to see me,” Marse said, his attention on what he was doing. “He got out of the buggy and came up on the porch of the commissary there at Adair to speak to me.”
“I ‘spect they just used him,” Adam reiterated in a tone of voice that reflected a limited interest in the subject.
Marse, sitting astride his seat, halted the passage of the run cord across the nose of the boat to bait a line. “Now, David Bright stayed in the buggy,” he said, wrinkling up his nose and glancing at Adam. “This beef heart’s pretty high!” He picked up a cube of meat to put on the hook. “He just nodded at me. Course I reckon Uncle John was coming in anyhow to get him some tobacco.”
Adam shifted his paddle in the water to keep the stern from swinging too far out. He frowned and spat in the river, as if in distaste for the subject of their conversation. “I reckon Hinshaw come to Mr. Peter with their plot. But Mr. Pete, he waun’t about to git mixed up in no drownin’! He made out he’d go a little way with ‘em. But when the time come, he worked it so it would be Mr. Jawn there by the cut. And him off at a good safe distance—case something’ went wrong.”
Marse straightened up to grin at Adam. He remained hesitantly staring off into space, an uneasy look clouding his brow.
“Better make haste!” Adam said, “or dark going to ketch us here.” He scrutinized again the boy’s face, speckled and pale, with the cave eyes. What was Marse uneasy about? And why was he talking around about it? Adam had found him on the place, waiting for him when he got back from Deadman’s. He said he was up at Adair, to spend the night with Mrs. Adair’s nephews. But why did he come on down by himself? It must be to tell him, Adam, something. “Whur the Haden boys?” he asked, in a voice inviting confidence.
Marse came to with a start, settling down on his perch and pulling at the trotline, but he added a postscript to their discussion. “I reckon I can’t help but hope he wasn’t in on it and him being my uncle.” After he had baited another hook he said, responding to Adam’s question: “Jeb and Ray had to help with the milking.” He drew the boat on to another drop line, then added with resolution, “But I picked a time when they couldn’t come with me to leave.” He pressed the point of the hook through a hunk of the tough meat and dropped it into the water. “I got to talk to you about a thing, again, Adam.” He lifted the run cord to be sure there were no more drop lines to bait, then he lowered it into the river and turned around on his seat to face Adam. “Regardless of who was or wasn’t in on the plot, I think you ought to tell Mother about it now!”
Adam, his face growing impassive and a little stiff, backed water with his paddle and swung the nose of the bateau downstream to return to the old ferry landing. “They ain’t no need to put hit on her—like I said befo’, they just ain’t no need!”
Marse raised his voice. “Well, I tell you there is, now, Adam—there is, if you expect her to prosecute Oswald Paley!”
“Yo’ ma got a real tender conscience. She liable to go right down to the bank and jump banker Littleton ‘bout it. And git me shot at, in these piney woods!” Adam eyed Marse closely in the swamp twilight. He hoped he hadn’t done wrong to take the boy into his confidence!
Marse leaned forward, a look of grave reasonableness sharpening his high-cheekboned face. “No, she won’t! She’ll have a better thing to do—prosecute Paley.”
Adam nodded agreement. “And when she prosecutes Paley’ll be time enough to tell ‘er!”
Marse was shaking his head. “You don’t have to tell her where Kiger is. That’s not necessary.”
Paddling on, Adam felt annoyed and was impelled to retort that he had told one person too many already, but he only said, changing his tone, “Whut time you want to come back and fish this trotline?”
Shaking off the question, Marse went on. “You’ve got to at least tell her about Kiger trying to drown you in the river and the real facts about the half of the hundred-dollar bill!”
Adam spat at the darkening surface on which they glided, then lifted a dry visage and paddled swiftly for the landing. He would not discuss it further.
Marse took hold of the gunwales, pressing toward him, off the seat, squatting, raising his voice. “I tell you, Adam, she’s not going to prosecute Paley unless she knows about his trying to have you drowned! She won’t prosecute him just for trying to steal her clay.”
Marse came closer. “She’s mentioned it every day this week at evening prayers, mentioned it in a way that I know she don’t want to prosecute.”
Adam stilled his paddle. “Nobody want to prosecute, son.”
The urgency of Marse’s tone increased. “Just let me tell her, if you don’t want to do it. I tell you, you’d better!”
Adam repeated, “How kin you know?”
“Well, I do,” Marse said sharply, “I know! I know more about it than I can tell you!” He checked himself and resumed his seat, straightening up. After a moment’s silence he added, in temperate positiveness, “I would be against prosecuting Paley, too, except for what he did to you, Adam.”
Ha! Adam thrust his blade into the water deep. That was what he had suspected. He had been noticing a difference in Marse lately. Those revival preachers had softened him up, got a sugar teat between his teeth! Adam examined the look of conviction in his owl’s eyes. Was this the Colonel’s coming man? Why should he want to put all of the responsibility for prosecuting Paley on him, Adam? Breaking the pause, Adam began speaking reminiscently, mellowly, only a hint of vindictiveness in his voice. “Son, you too little to know whut he done to your pa. He ruined him! Kept the railroad from coming through by his sneakin’, tattlin’, and lyin’. That wrecked the plans for the clay works. And all the other things your pa and Mr. Christian DeBow aimed to do!”
“Yes. I know. I know about that!” The small unblinking eyes kept staring at Adam, and through him. “I’ve thought about it, all right. Many times. Burning and hurting inside. Against Oswald Paley.”
Adam shrugged, frowning. “But, son, you kain’t know! What that Paley did to yo’ pa.” His nostrils hardened. “Did to the straightest man I ever had dealings with! And, him educatin’ that little puke and givin’ his folks help and all, for years. Whut that damned copperhead did amounted to killin’ the Colonel!”
“I know that, too, Adam,” Marse said, still not blinking, staring, as if he had been sitting with it a long time. “I know that, too. I used to have nightmares about it—that I wasn’t equal to killing him, or that he got away from me. But not always. I’ve killed him a thousand times—in my imagination!” As he spoke these words, Marse had grown tense, thrusting out his
feet and hands to his sides of the boat, and Adam thought that, in the dimness, he looked like a frog on a fork. Marse relaxed. “But I don’t do it any more, Adam. I don’t. Now I realize it’s up to God to settle with Paley.”
“But, son, God works through human bein’s.” Adam’s voice rose, in remonstrance. “And now’s our chance!. . .God’s chance, I mean—by our hands!”
“No, Adam.” Marse was silhouetted like a frog on a fork again. “I know I’m just a boy, but I’ve been praying about it some, too.”
“But Marse, that slick, eelie, son-of-a-bitch is too mean for the Lord to have to keep on being troubled with him!”
Marse drew in his arms, folding his hands on his chest—as Adam had seen his mother do—and lifted his chin and smiled. An unfeathered bird in the nest, but sure, sure with an unquestioning inner certainty. “Adam, you’re in slavery to your hate for Paley—in slavery,” he said. “I’m free!”
Adam did not reply. His hands, holding the boat paddle across his knees, were suddenly cramped by some frantic cross purpose in his muscles and his throat ached. A few moments later, the boat floating on in the dimness, grounded on the black bank at the Landing. Wheeling about, Marse leaped ashore to secure it and Adam stood up in the stern.
25.
ADAM’S RAP ON THE STEPS that Saturday morning was impatient. But he had scarcely got his Barlow back in his pocket, when the widow appeared in the doorway. And he hadn’t got the frown off his face. For her first question was, “Why, what’s the matter, Adam?” She was smiling, in her quiet way.
It had been raining earlier, soaking the heavy boughs of the chinaberry trees—where already, scattered leaves were yellowing—and the sun now stirred up a stench. He was scarcely conscious of this, but it was one more thing added to the conspiracy against him—of everybody and everything, it seemed.
She thrust her hand in the pocket of her plaid cotton house dress and moved nearer the edge of the porch. “Has something gone wrong about the lease?”
This is Adam (Lightwood History Collection Book 4) Page 28