Bear them to what place? They went squeaking down the lane, the blacks waved and jigged and shouted, Coffee announced that he knew which side of his bread had the grease on it, he wasn’t going Savannah or no such place. Orphan Dick tried to run after the cart, and was brought back by Pet and jailed; but still he screamed; he thought that Extra was his mother, he remembered no other mother. . . . Bear them to a gaunt freedom wherein the free were never fed, wherein the free suffered a captivity worse than the worst of slavery itself? Again Ira thought of slums in long-ago New York, he was forced to close his eyes against the thought, fling it out of his brain.
Man in blue coat, he got gold buttons on he coat, ha, ha, ha; he got that jubilee money for every day we slaves. Mistuh Soldier Man, you tell me where I find Linkum, like folks say? Please, Mistuh White Man, sir, this here road take us Savannah? . . . No, I ain’t run off—I walk off—my own mastah, he Mistuh Ira Claffey, I got paper say so right here.
What protection, what interest, what provender? The storm of May might rage . . . but where would they be when June thunders came booming?
I try not to think of them, said Lucy.
But they would go.
Shouldn’t you have held them here?
How?
Of course you could not. . . . Extra tattled to Ninny, Poppy. She told her that if they found short commons, they’d be back. She’d counseled Jonas so.
And would they find the way?
Poppy, let me work with you today. There’s much to do within doors as always; but somehow I just naturally can’t direct Ninny and Pet and Naomi today. Are you killing plum beetles again? Let me put on my old gown and help you.
Very well. I shall save the fattest Conotrachelus Nenuphar for you.
Ugh.
And mind, Miss—excuse me, Mrs.—Florence Nightmare, you’re not to doctor wounded weevils.
Oh, Poppy, I’ll squash them.
The sudden departure of his daughter Extra was the finish of Old Leander. He mumbled gloomily about it, refused food, tried to walk down the road in his shirt-tail, was helped back tottering and soon lay unconscious. He died quickly. They buried him in the slaves’ plot adjoining the Claffey graveyard, the first free Negro to lie there.
LIX
Captain Ox Puckett gone, everybody gone; the engines of passing trains operated by strangers who did not know the Widow Tebbs, who sent no jovial whistle toots piercing in salutation through walls of the house. Hulsey gone, Quillian gone, Wingo gone, Camp gone, Isbell gone, all the Confederate soldiers paroled and gone off to their homes. The memory of the Widow Tebbs was confused but it was thronged, her past was a pushing active mingling of male feet kicking high, thin or fleshy male arms gripping, some of them hurting her (her standard objection and warning to such customers as these was, Now, Mister, you please to take it more easy. You’re a-hurting me, and if you don’t quit a-hurting me I’m a-going to kick you, and I surely do know where to kick). She did remember how she used to call Isbell Is-a-belle; it was a joke between them, a small joke which her small mind could enjoy. Middlebrooks gone, Deadwyler gone, Strozier gone, Judge gone. The nameless gone, the ones she addressed merely as Bob, Jo, Fat, Bully, Baby, Frankie, Freck, Goose, Pop, Dick (he liked to have her call him Dick, but she did so with reluctance because the use of the name reminded her of her long-dead husband, Dickwood Tebbs, and she had no jolly memories of Dick Tebbs). Gone and paroled, trudged off with tattered haversacks swinging, gone away gun-less, saying that it was a hundred and seventy miles to Home and by God they surely did wish they could catch a ride on a wagon. Defeat and emptiness and neglect and loneliness and defeat and improvidence and defeat and defeat pounded hard against the ragged landscape, no matter how porcelain blue the sky on some fair days, how tender green the pines.
Listlessly Marget Tebbs stirred at her pot of stockpeas, and she felt a drudgery in even the simple unrewarding task of searching bare or littered shelves, hunting for salt, finding no salt.
I do wish, she said to Coral.
Huh?
Wish we had a chunk of meat to put into this mess of peas. Misfortune that we ate up all the chickens already.
Coral was out on the porch, Flory was gone to the depot to try to beg tobacco from passing Unionists. Flory had learned to chew while he was with the Reserves; now he had no tobacco, and there was no money in the house. Zoral was playing train in the yard. Coral came clump, step, thud, step, clump across the warped flooring and halted in the doorway.
You mean to say all that there fat-back is gone?
Twasn’t much left, sonny. Flory and I had it to our breakfast.
Whilst I was a-hunting, and you didn’t save me a smidgin!
I did trust, Coral, that you’d fetch home some game.
God damn, I never met up with no game.
I smell something awful, the widow said, wrinkling her plump little nose.
By gum, so do I. Coral went outside to investigate and a moment later hooted with rage and disgust, and there sounded a scream from Zoral. Coral shouted, I’m throwing it over behind them bushes, and don’t you dast bring it back! Zoral crawled to his den under the house and lay kicking in fury.
He had him an old possum, Coral reported when he came back. Like he’s always hauling them dead chickens around, playing like they’re cars and he’s a engineer.
Dead possum? The widow clucked, angry yells still rose through the floor boards, and finally she was compelled to stamp heavily to claim the child’s attention. You Zoral! You stop that caterwauling right this minute or I’ll throw water on you like I done the other day.
Zoral stopped.
Dead possum! Hell, he was fat as a skinned horse two days in the sun. Wish I could have met up with a live possum.
Well, said Mag in resignation, least the meat would be stringy at this season.
Coral said, I swear he’s Satan cut to size.
Who, sonny? That there possum?
Possum, hell! That blame Zoral of your’n. Know what he done this very morning? I come out: there he was, big as life, standing on the well-curb, peeing down the well. I give him a lick he won’t forget.
Oh, sonny! The widow added musingly, but I’m truly glad you done it, for he might have fell in and drownded himself.
I wasn’t agonizing about that no way! I just don’t want to drink no Zoral pee.
The Widow Tebbs sighed. Guess we can’t blame poor little Zoral too much. You know, sonny, the gentleman caller I always took to be his daddy— He was a queer piece sure enough. I don’t mind his name now, but he tolt me he used to work in a circus; and first off I liked that, count of all the red and spangles and solid gold carriages and truck. But guess what he done. He said he bit the heads right off of chickens. It fair to turned my stomach, but he just laughed.
She found a few splintery scraps of cinnamon on a high shelf where they had lain long forgotten behind a dusty bottle half full of castor oil and another of coal oil. She stirred cinnamon among the bubbling cowpeas, it would give the vegetables flavor of a sort.
This was not a fair day, clouds were solid above but creased and rolled, turning from tannish to ugly brown beyond the somber tree-swept horizon. Coral returned to the door and sniffed the breeze darkly. Dad burn, I just fear for a whirlwind, day like this.
Don’t talk so, sonny. I mind how a hurricane took the roof plumb off our house when I was a girl.
I said whirlwind. Hain’t no hurricanes in Maytime.
Well, maybe twas a whirlwind. I wasn’t more’n six at the time.
Hadn’t never lain with your first man, said Coral in good humor. Not till you was seven.
Coral, that hain’t no way for a young man to address his Ma!
Well, maybe not till you was eight. He said suddenly and in a strictly different tone, Reckon I’ll walk over Claffey way.
He loved to say, I’ll walk, walk here,
walk there. The meager squeezed but determined face of Naz Stricker rose before him each time he said the word walk. He thought of Naz Stricker, laboring doggedly off into black space, into the sky itself, into strange Northern cities and villages, walking solitary on a homeward path past overhanging barns. Maybe one day Naz would write him a letter, and Coral could read a little, maybe he could read the letter. If not, maybe his mother could spell it out for him. If she couldn’t, Mr. Claffey would read the letter.
Why you going over to Claffeys’, Coral?
Oh, I want to talk some business. I been pondering it.
The widow said, My, I just don’t cipher no way what business you could be speaking to Mr. Ira Claffey.
There was a note like eagerness in Coral’s voice, that tone usually so disapproving, grim, strung with bitterness. Might as well tell you what I got on my mind. Some of Mr. Claffey’s niggers have gone off already, though they might come back; but that leaves him short of hands. And you know Old Leander died, for I tolt you I walked past whilst they was a-burying him. Well. Mr. Claffey’s got all that big garden in, like he always has planted, with just plain oceans of collards and carrots and onions and yams and Christ knows what all.
Mag smiled happily at the mere mention of these delectable things. You mean maybe you might ask him for a mite of garden truck?
God damn, old lady, did you hear me say ask? By God I’m a man, and by God I hain’t no beggar like that little Joe-Brown’s-Pet-Snot-Nosed Flory of your’n. I can work for what I fetch home.
Coral! You mean—work on his land? Like one of his niggers been doing all the while?
Reckon I could wield a hoe if’n he showed me what he wanted hoed up or down. And lots of raising of garden truck you got to do hunched on your marrow-bones.
I never! Just like a nigger—
Plenty white folks got to get out and dig, these days. I seen that nephew of the old Biles a-raking and a-digging, and he was a officer in Cobb’s Legion.
Mag imagined a good stew, vegetables bouncing and turning in broth, and plenty of salt and pepper; and she thought of vinegar to put on greens, too, for she despised greens without vinegar. You know, Coral, we been faring just like them Yankees what was in the stockade, ever since the soldiers was sent away. Scarcely nothing to bite nor break.
Well I know, old lady.
He sighed, he thought of days of plenty, winter days, he thought of ham. So I reckon I’ll walk over and put it to him boldly.
You might even be keeping us—
She sighed. Stead of me a-keeping us. Putting victuals on our table for us, Coral! And Zoral’s so puny all the while, just punier and punier.
Mag added brightly, You know, Mr. Ira Claffey is a real gentleman and kindly too. If’n it struck his fancy he might give you a mite of meat to go along with what garden truck you earnt.
If I go to doing a nigger’s work on the Claffey place, said Coral ominously, that God damn Flory is going to perform his share of toil. I don’t aim to feed him free out of hand.
Reckon Flory’d be willing. But you’d have to set him to the task and keep him to it.
By God. The boy spoke with relish. I’d admire to do that.
He went clump-stepping across the porch, stepping across the yard. Mag stiffened when he was near the railway, for sound of his whistling came floating back to her. Vaguely she was amazed, she thought a stranger must be there, she was not accustomed to hearing Coral whistle. He had whistled constantly, with little birdy warbles, before he went to war. He had whistled a time or two in the winter, when she thought he was keeping a black girl in the woods. She thought, I do love pretty music, and had a wish to go to The Crib and turn on the music box; then she remembered sadly that the music box was broken at last.
Pursley gone, Carden gone, Almond gone, Swancey gone. Mag owned a soiled cloth purse decorated with glass beads and dried melon seeds strung together in a manner she thought beautiful. In this purse she had kept money, hiding the purse in various places about the house during those seasons when she possessed greenbacks and scrip. But the ragged bauble mocked her now, empty and cast aside beneath a bed, Zoral had played with it, the beads and seeds were coming off. It was not solely empty purse and destitution which taunted. It was the loneliness, the rust of the machine in which she was dressed, the bones and tissues and fluids surrounding her spirit, the body—so active and abused by over-employment. Yet abuse became a long necessity, and Mag had thrived on the juices (clean or tainted, and so all the clean were tainted eventually) poured within her.
She looked through the open door and saw her youngest child streaking across the yard. Cunningly he had come out from under the house and sought to retrieve the dead possum and resume his freighting, his imaginary railroad play, once Coral was departed. Either Coral was returning without ever having reached the Claffey place, or else a stranger approached; nothing else could have caused Zoral to scoot to refuge with such celerity.
Mag stepped into open air and saw not one stranger but two. They were in uniform, they wore blue pants with yellow stripes, short jackets piped with yellow. They sauntered between wheel ruts, glancing up at threatening clouds; one man was smoking his pipe, one carried a tough green weed in his hand and flicked this switch idly against his leg as he strolled.
The widow wished that she were properly dressed. She wished that she was wearing her poplin gown, her blue one, she wished even that she was wearing her wrapper with torn ribbon bows. Hastily she touched her hair.
Howdy, she said from the doorway when the soldiers were a rod away and still coming closer.
Hello, lady. . . . Good day. . . .
It does look like rain. Maybe like we might get a whirlwind?
The taller of the two was chuckling. He said, Guess we scairt your little boy, lady. He went under your house, hot blocks, minute he saw us coming.
They were slender, tight belted, they were young but not too young, caps were worn at jaunty angles on the close trimmed brown head and the longer-haired yellow head, the men walked with the leisurely grace of assured people enjoying a moment of holiday. They were well fed, well booted, the great flaps of their holsters curled beside their belts, one wore a haversack slung from his shoulder, he had a wide sliced scar on his cheekbone and bending down into his neck, the other man affected a well brushed mustache, they were young, not too young.
Mag let her hand steal across her faded calico bosom. My, I wasn’t expecting no company. Would have tidied myself.
Lady, we ain’t company. Just a couple of old coffee coolers and blackberry pickers spreeing around for a couple hours!
Said the widow, I do believe you two are Yankees. You talk so queerlike.
Ain’t nothing else, lady. Fourth U.S. Cavalry.
What we want, missis—
They said that to put it baldly they were skirmishing for a bottle of liquor. They had been working hard and traveling far, and they didn’t have to report to Captain Noyes until five o’clock, and what about a bottle of mountain dew?
Hain’t no mountains hereabouts. Mag’s loose soft mouth was smiling, and a slow dream began to occupy her eyes.
Oh, call it bog juice, bug juice, bull juice, mule juice, white mule or brown mule or red-eye or forty-rod: it was all the same. But not like we got up in Macon, said the sharp rapid voice of Corporal Nevis, the man with the scar. I vow you could taste the feet of the boy that plowed the corn twas made from. Feet of the boy? repeated Private Ewing with emphasis. Goll, you could taste the feet of the mule that pulled the plow. . . . Nope, nothing like that; but just a little something to smooth the hair on their backs. They’d pay well for it, too. Tried to buy some from that old man down there near the depot, man who ran that little store down there, but great Scott, he gave them a regular Cold Water Army sermon for their pains.
The widow’s heart was weakening. I’m just plain sorry but I hain’t got ary drop o
f anything.
But they’d pay well.
But she didn’t have a drop of anything. She was mighty sorry. Times were hard, she’d been awful tight run.
They laughed sardonically. Tight run as the prisoners over in that stockade?
I never did know any of those. I heard tell they was mighty sickly. But I knowed some of the men a-guarding them.
Well, well, too bad, can’t even get our whiskers wet. Lady, is your respected husband to home?
Hain’t got no husband. He’s long dead.
Five minutes later the pea pot had been moved from the fire, and water began to heat in its place. From his haversack Private Ewing produced a small sack of coffee, and he offered it to the widow with gallantry; he could get more; what was a little coffee? In the bedroom Mag changed hastily into her wrapper, but she called animated pleasantries to her guests while she changed, while she loosened her hair and rearranged it and pinned it, while she hunted for red candy and moistened the candy and colored her round cheeks. I got a nicer place than this to entertain folks in, she cried. Just over yonder behind the house. Tis called The Crib; and I did have me a music box but it’s busted. And I got a real nice soft bed, she concluded with mischief, and felt a glowing pleasure through her flesh as she heard vigorous Yankee laughter which rang when she said that.
It was a good day for every member of the Tebbs clan. Had the others but known it, Laurel received the gift of an apron from Mrs. Dillard in Americus. Coral was engaged as an apprentice gardener by Ira Claffey, and there would be work for Floral as well, if he stood willing to perform it. There were other cavalrymen idling at Anderson Station. From these soldiers Flory was successful in begging more tobacco than he could chew in three days, and he traded some of it to Uncle Arch Yeoman for the last scraps of candy in the horehound jar. Corporal Nevis and Private Ewing matched quarters to see who should first enjoy the favors of the widow; Ewing won. Rain came but lightly, the tornado did not strike, it struck Macon County instead. Mag put not two but four greenbacks into her purse, and her body was blissful, and so was her shallow thin soul, and she planned to send Flory back to Uncle Arch’s for salt and pork and many other things as soon as Flory reappeared. Zoral found a freshly dead mole under the house.
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