The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson

by Nancy Peacock

  Sedge reached up and shook my hand. “Pleased to meet you. Mistah Tilly give you that bullshit about Indians not likin’ nigger hair?”

  “He has.”

  “Don’t believe it.”

  “Don’t flow purty on they shields,” Mo said.

  “Put it in they shields. Stop bullets,” Sedge answered.

  “You had any trouble with ’em lately?”

  “Not lately. It been quiet here, mostly. Attack a few counties up, I heard. Man and his son out wintering with they cattle got kilt.”

  “Scalped?”

  “Yassuh.”

  Mo shook his head, gave a mandatory spit. “White, I bet.” Then he changed the subject. “Persy signin’ up with us. Cain’t do shit though.”

  Sedge looked up at me. “Why’d you hire him on, then?”

  “I got a soft spot in my heart fo’ him. Prob’ly regret it. Thought we’d teach him a little ’bout breakin’ horses.”

  Sedge grinned. “Yassuh. He gonna need somethin’ to know.”

  Just then, a decrepit voice, long and stringy, drizzled out to us from inside the cabin. “Sedge. Who’s out there? Who you talking to?”

  “It’s all right, Mizz Doreen. They friends of mine.”

  “You don’t have any friends.”

  “Yesem.”

  “Don’t you be jabbering all day long. There’s work to be done.”

  “Yesem,” Sedge called. Then he turned back to Mo, slapped him again on the back, and said, “Don’t pay her no mind. She stuck back in slavery day, but she won’t cause no trouble. That voice be the only strong thing she got no mo’. ’Sides me.”

  Mo looked down at his boots and kicked at the dirt. “You still the only one here?”

  Sedge nodded. “All the rest took off. Never came back.”

  “Who gonna take care of her after you go, Sedge?” Mo asked.

  “She don’t own me no mo’,” Sedge said. “I go where I want.”

  “I know that.”

  “Take care of herself, fo’ a change.” Sedge looked at one of the horses circling a corral. “She dyin’, Mistah Tilly. Takin’ everything down with her. This whole place dyin’. We runnin’ outta feed. Horses gonna die if we don’t turn ’em out to graze.” He turned his face to look at Mo. “I ain’t goin’ down too. Them horses means too much to me. I broke every one of ’em. I let ’em go befo’ I let ’em die.”

  “I don’t jedge you fo’ it,” Mo said.

  “Nawsuh. I don’t reckon you do.” Sedge looked down into the dirt. “I’s hopin’ she die befo’ you get here, but she ain’t. It sho woulda made it easier.”

  Mo nodded. “We stay a little while, Sedge. She prob’ly die befo’ we leave.” Sedge bobbed his head and swallowed hard. His mouth opened as if he wished to say more, but he closed it. Mo reached up and patted him on the shoulder. “We got a little while. Couple of weeks, maybe. Grain hold out that long?”

  “Yassuh, I think so.”

  “We gotta get there well befo’ winter though. I ain’t seed the place. We might not have us a bunkhouse. Might have to build one. Corrals too.” Mo spat again, this time into a clump of weeds, and looked at the corrals and the barns. “Plenty of lumber here,” he said.

  “Yassuh. I reckon we could take some with us.” I thought I heard doubt in Sedge’s voice.

  “Wagon?”

  “We got a wagon,” Sedge said in the same tone.

  “All right. Get this one unhitched. Put the mules up.”

  “Yassuh.”

  Sedge and I unhitched the mules and gave them some grain before leading them into one of the crumbling barns. If Mo was concerned about timbers falling on his animals, he did not show it.

  I followed Mo and Sedge toward one of the corrals, and as I did so, I turned to look back at the house. It could not have been more than two rooms. The front door was flung open. A chicken pecked in the dirt, and then hopped the step and strutted its way inside. “Sedge,” the stringy voice called. “Sedge, come get this damn chicken outta here.”

  “Hold on a minute, Mistah Tilly.” Sedge returned to the cabin, and soon walked out holding the squawking bird, which he tossed in the yard, closing the door behind him. I could hear her before the door shut. “Who’s out there? Don’t you be jabbering all day long. You got work to do.”

  “Don’t pay her no mind,” Sedge said again. “It like this all day long. As weak as she is, I don’t see how she got the energy to complain so much. Sometime I think that the very thing what keepin’ her alive.” And then Sedge did a perfect imitation of the voice inside the cabin. “ ‘Sedge, don’t you be thinkin’ jest ’cause the war over, I don’t own you. I own you top to bottom, jest like I owned yo’ daddy, and yo’ mama, and my daddy owned yo’ daddy’s mama, and all the way on back to the little nigger Adam and Eve.’

  “That on a good day, Mistah Tilly, when she know the war be over. Mostly she think it still goin’ on and Massuh Hill gonna come back home one day. I don’t even tell her no mo’ he done come home and shot hisself in the head.”

  Mo kicked at a small stone and sent it tumbling across the yard. “She do anythin’ fo’ herself?” he asked.

  “Nawsuh. She bedridden.”

  “Well,” Mo said. “Maybe she die befo’ we go.”

  “Yassuh, I hope so.”

  “If we got to leave her here, then we got to leave her here. I don’t jedge you fo’ it.”

  “Nawsuh.”

  “What kind of horses you got?”

  Sedge perked up at the mention of horses. “Lot of horses, Mistah Tilly. We catched ’em back when we had a crew here. We find out we free, and everyone go, but the horses too wild fo’ anyone to take with ’em. I work on gettin’ ’em broke. Then I trade ’em fo’ mo’ wild ones. I always get mo’ wild ones than I trade out broke ones.”

  I could hear the pride in Sedge’s voice over this enterprise.

  “Way I figure it,” he said, “I break ’em, they mine. That right?”

  Mo nodded.

  “This one I want to show you, she a purty girl. Green-broke.”

  “Ain’t quite got her trained, eh?”

  “Nawsuh. She be good one fo’ Persy to ride.”

  We approached a corral in which a single horse circled, stomping and neighing, tossing her mane. As she went around and around she eyed us suspiciously.

  “Named her Spring Dance,” Sedge said. “She in one of the last herds I trade fo’.”

  “She don’t look green-broke to me. She look like an outlaw.”

  “Nawsuh. She like me purty good.”

  “She take a saddle?” Mo asked.

  “Yassuh, I get a saddle on her.”

  I watched as somehow Sedge coaxed a blanket and a saddle onto this horse, and cinched it up tight, and added the reins and bit in her mouth. She allowed him that, and he held out his hand to give her a treat, although what treat, I could not guess, for I had yet to see a garden on the Double H Ranch. But it must have pleased her, for Spring Dance nuzzled Sedge’s armpit and let him lead her into a chute. Once Sedge closed the gate behind her, she could move neither backward, nor forward, nor sideways. No longer Sedge’s friend, she now stomped and neighed and snapped her teeth in the air.

  “Sedge always did have a way with horses,” Mo said admiringly.

  “Is he going to break her?” I asked.

  “Naw. You are.”

  “I don’t know anything about breaking horses.”

  “We gonna teach you.”

  “No sir, I ride just fine once they’re broke.”

  “You ’bout thickheaded, Persy. What the hell you think I been tellin’ you all this time? That you need yo’sef a skill. And this here the skill we gonna teach you.”

  “Mr. Tilly, sir . . .”

  “Aw, crap,” Mo said, and he spat again, this time close to the edge of my boot, a little puff of dust rising up where he hit his mark.

  “I have a skill, sir. I can read and write.”

  “Ain’
t no little schoolhouse where we goin’. Ain’t no little chirren needin’ no lessons.”

  “I wished I could read and write,” Sedge interjected.

  “Well, good,” Mo said. “Y’all trade off. Sedge teach you to break horses, and you teach him to read and write. In my ’pinion you gettin’ the better end of the deal, Persy. Now get on.”

  I hesitated.

  “Get on, or you can stay here with Mizz Doreen.”

  Still, I did not move to mount Spring Dance.

  “Persy,” Mo said, a tinge of forced patience in his voice. “I don’t know if you aware of this, but you a nigger. Sedge a nigger. All the other hands gonna be white. They gonna be a rough bunch. They jest lost a war. They gonna hate you, mark my words. They gonna be havin’ breakfast while you and Sedge be toppin’ off six or seven broncos. That jest the way it is. I didn’t make the rules.”

  “Topping off?” I turned to Sedge.

  “Breakin’ the horses,” Sedge provided. “Mistah Tilly right. White man don’t have to be as good as a black man. White man white. That good enough fo’ most of ’em.”

  “So you see . . .” Mo spat. I jumped back and his brown tobacco juice hit the dirt where my boot had been. “I tryin’ to make it better on you. Now, get on the damn horse or else go in there and carry out Mizz Doreen’s slop, and wipe her ass while you at it. We gonna break you and the horse together.”

  “Spring Dance a good girl,” Sedge said. “Jest a little spirited is all.”

  I fingered Chloe’s button and climbed over the fence and lowered myself into the saddle. Spring Dance threw her head back and snapped the air, as close as she could get to my flesh. I grasped the reins and held on to the saddle horn. Her muscles rippled beneath my legs, and I could feel her wanting to buck. Sedge opened the gate, and as soon as she had room to move I was pitched off and onto the ground, rolling away from Spring Dance’s stomping hooves and snapping teeth, escaping under the fence.

  I tried once more, with the same results, before Sedge said, “Let me show you somethin’. You gotta let yo’ body go with what she doin’. Be a part of her. Don’t be a man tryin’ to hang on to a horse. Be the horse. Let yo’ spine go loose or else you gonna break yo’ back. Dig yo’ legs around her, hang on there too.” He climbed onto Spring Dance, and Mo let the chute open and I watched Sedge ride her. She bucked as badly as she had with me, but Sedge gripped the saddle horn and reins, and wrapped his legs around her tightly. His spine was pure poetry. Even Sedge’s hat stayed on until he was thrown. But Spring Dance did not stomp around him and take nips at him the way she had me. Instead she leaned down and nuzzled his neck.

  “I believe she sparkin’ with you, Sedge,” Mo said.

  Sedge got up and leaned over to grab his hat and dust off the knees of his britches, and as he did so Spring Dance butted her snout against his rear.

  I climbed onto this horse three more times that day. I learned to hold tight with my legs, and to loosen my back so that it felt like we were one, bucking together. Each time I mounted Spring Dance, I stayed on a little longer, until finally she accepted me and we rode around the corral. When I dismounted, Sedge slipped me a sugar cube and I held it out in the palm of my hand to her, and rubbed her nose. And then he led Spring Dance away and brought out another wild horse. He’d named this one Cups, for the blaze of white teacup shapes across her shank. I fared a little better with Cups, and after only two rides she calmly walked around the corral.

  “I believe you gonna do,” Sedge said as we put up the saddle and curried the horses together. “Cups be yo’ horse now.”

  “I think she likes you better.”

  “They all like me better. She warm up to you.”

  That night I eased myself down on my bedroll beside Mo in the yard, a fire prickling in front of us. I felt as sore and stiff as if I had worked a long day of cutting cane. Every one of my bones felt as if it wanted to break loose from the cartilage that held it in place, as though my own skeleton had turned on me for doing this, and now wanted a more trustworthy human to reside in. Besides that, I was dizzy from the jolts of being thrown, and I lay down with a wet bandana across my eyes. “You meant it when you said you were breaking me,” I said to Mo.

  “You get used to it.”

  I groaned.

  “Man been whipped like you been can take on a few wild horses.”

  Once he’d tended to his charge inside the cabin, Sedge came out to join us. I kept the bandana over my eyes and listened to him spreading his bedroll out beside mine. “Don’t you have to stay inside with her?” I asked.

  “I go back in directly. She sleepin’ now.”

  “We stay awhile, Sedge,” Mo said. “She die, we bury her, and then you can move on. Don’t be worryin’ ’bout it.”

  “Thank you Mistah Tilly. I much obliged.”

  “Eh.” I heard Mo spitting off. “From what you tell me, she die any minute now. Ain’t nothin’ to stay and wait it out.”

  “That what I been tellin’ myself fo’ over a month now.”

  “You keepin’ her too well fed, Sedge. Now listen, Persy here lookin’ fo’ a gal.”

  “We ain’t got many gals out here, lest you want the one in there.”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “He lookin’ fo’ a gal named Chloe. Light-skinned. Long brown hair. Short, but not as short as me. Belonged to a man name of Joseph Wilson.”

  “Wilson,” I heard Sedge say. “Name kinda ring a bell.”

  I sat up and let the bandana slide from my eyes.

  “Years back a man come through name of Wilson. War ain’t been goin’ on long. He come through here with a messa slaves. He and his wife stay in the cabin with Mizz Doreen. Overseer stay in the barn with the slaves. I took some food out to ’em, but I ain’t seen no light-skinned gal.”

  “Wilson wasn’t married,” I said. “His wife died before they left.”

  “Well, maybe it ain’t him. Or maybe he pick him up a wife ’long the way. She a good bit younger than he. Seem a little unsure of herself. Never talked.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “He didn’t have a wife.”

  “Shit, Persy,” Mo said. “You know how some men cain’t get ’long without a woman. He prob’ly like that. First one die, he got to go get another. Like goin’ to the sto’ fo’ another block of tombaccer after you done chewed yo’s up. That jest the way some men be.”

  “He didn’t need a wife,” I said. “He had Chloe to . . .” I could not finish my sentence.

  “Sound to me like he didn’t have Chloe,” Mo said. “Sound to me like she ’scaped.”

  “No light-skinned girl with the slaves?” I asked Sedge. “Pretty. Prettiest one there.”

  “I’d of noticed purty. Warn’t no slave like you describin’. I heard him say he done lost some ’long the way. Some died. A few more made off in the night. They was gonna settle here, but he decide to move on up north. Mizz Doreen told ’em not to. Told ’em the Indians bad up there. He won’t listen. Had him some idea ’bout a ranch up there.”

  I lay back on my bedroll and raised my hand to finger Chloe’s button. “He didn’t have a wife,” I said again.

  “Must notta been him, then.” Sedge shook his head and looked back toward the house, where a dim light shone from one of the tiny windows. “She don’t die, I ain’t never gonna be free. War never be over fo’ ol’ Sedge.”

  “Here, Sedge. Have some tombaccer. Make you feel better.” Mo reached over to his haversack and shaved off a plug, the first time I’d seen him offer any of his precious “tombaccer” to anyone.

  Sedge accepted the plug and popped it in his mouth, and through moiling it around he said, “Folks act like the niggers ’sponsible fo’ keepin’ all the white folk alive, and niggers dyin’ all the time tryin’ to take care of these buckras.”

  “We have you outta here in a few days,” Mo said mildly.

  “What ’bout her?” Sedge asked, cocking his head toward the cabin.

  “She die. E
verybody die ’ventually.”

  “What if she don’t die? What if we jest leave? You reckon they could hang me fo’ murder if I jest left her here?”

  “Prob’ly. They hang a nigger fo’ less than that.”

  Sedge spat, and Mo spat, and the fire spat, and I sat up and laid another piece of wood across it.

  “It be pretty cold leavin’ her here,” Sedge said. “She jest starve to death. I feed her by the spoonful. I wipe her ass. Who gonna do that after I gone?”

  “Nobody,” Mo said.

  They talked some more. I vaguely listened, but I could not pay much attention. My thoughts were too strong on Chloe. My fingers worried at the button, and then, after a while, for some reason that I do not know and cannot explain, my hand left my throat and wandered into my pocket to extract the little noose. I rubbed it and turned it over and over, occasionally pulling it tight on my finger and loosening it. Mo pulled the plug out of his jug and passed it to me. I propped myself up and took a swig and passed it to Sedge. I looked at the sky. It seemed so unfair that these stars, these cold points of light that cared nothing for Chloe, knew exactly where she was.

  THE NEXT DAY we broke more horses. Sedge had an endless supply, it seemed, of green-broke horses, horses he could get a saddle on but could not always ride. I rode them. I rode them that day and the next and the next as we waited for Miss Doreen to pass her last breath so we could put her in the ground.

  Sedge divided his time between answering Miss Doreen’s calls, getting saddles on and off the horses I was intended to ride, and a never-ending list of chores. Over the time we stayed there I saw him hunting, cooking, boiling laundry and hanging it out, washing dishes, watering the pitiful garden out back of the barns, emptying Miss Doreen’s chamber pot, feeding the chickens, and feeding and grooming the horses. Occasionally I caught him standing still, looking out toward the horizon with a bucket in his hand or a saddle in his arms, just staring out into the scrubby flatlands that surrounded the Double H Ranch, looking, I thought, to anything that might hold a different life for him.