The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  The girl took a bite. She gave the spoon to Rabbit and pointed at a pot. It was an offering, and because of the girl’s clear loneliness, Rabbit did not tell her she needed no bribing. If she’d wanted to taste a dish, she could have used her own cook’s spoon.

  At the end of the meal, the girl asked once more: “You ain’t g’wan tell on me, is you?”

  “Ain’t nothing to tell.”

  Rabbit gave the spoon back.

  The Death of Carson Franklin

  A year after Nick had run away, Carson Franklin died, bringing more change to Wood Place. It was astounding that Carson lasted as slave overseer for so long. He had been working for Samuel for decades.

  Carson was buried in the Wood Place cemetery, in the area designated for whites. Although Samuel did not think Carson was worthy of this place—after all, he was a tenant farmer and owned no slaves—it would not have been proper to bury him in the area for Negroes. Carson’s son Jeremiah took over his father’s position and had assumed he would continue permanently as overseer. To his surprise and hurt, Samuel would hire another man, an itinerant traveler who would inquire about the job.

  And Jeremiah’s pain would feed the resentment, which had traveled through his blood. The Franklins despised Samuel: he had taken advantage of Aidan in a difficult time, dangling pennies for Aidan’s land, instead of helping him like a friend should. Yet there was a grudging admiration of Samuel, too, for here was a man who had come up from two hundred and two and a half acres to own a thousand acres. And if a man such as Samuel could evolve from a common, working man into a wealthy landowner, there was hope for anyone, provided he was white, for Negroes didn’t count, and Indians were dead men walking.

  It was this hope for his own land that fueled Jeremiah, along with his hatred of the mound that shadowed the cabins where his extended family lived. He nursed an obsession to erode the mound one day. This hatred was like milk, bread, and meat to him.

  The New Overseer

  The man who would be hired as the new overseer of Wood Place was not what he appeared, but few on the plantation would know this, as he was a quiet man who kept his thoughts to himself. His name was Holcomb Byrd James and he would sire a family with many descendants on our land. But we are not in that time, not yet. We are only at the day of his romantic undoing.

  Holcomb hadn’t been seeking a job, only passing through Chicasetta, when he saw a flyer advertising for an overseer at Wood Place at the general store. He inquired of the young man standing behind the counter, Victor, who pointed to his father’s office in the back of the store. Samuel hired Holcomb right on the spot, offering him the top pay of fifteen dollars a month, three dollars more than the going rate: Samuel liked the man’s sturdy, upright carriage, as well as his dark-haired handsomeness. And he liked the fact of hiring someone else other than a Franklin. We already know that hurting people gave Samuel much satisfaction, feeding his mean spirit for weeks to come. However, Samuel also wanted to alert the Franklins that the privilege of Grace’s new, elevated position as the wife of Victor did not extend special favors to her natal brood.

  Samuel told Holcomb to head up to the big house he had passed on his journey to the general store. In the kitchen house, the cook would give him a proper meal.

  While speaking to Samuel, Holcomb didn’t let the white man know that he didn’t like to stay in any one place too long. He did odd work here and there for his survival. He definitely wasn’t going to inform Samuel that he was a Cherokee man. His mother had not given him a middle name, but Holcomb honored her by taking the name of her clan—she was of the Birds—though he changed the spelling to keep from attention. Yet when he entered the kitchen, there was Venie. She appeared to be crying, and something in her face paired with the tears that streamed, touched him, even when he noticed that she held an onion in her hand. And then the first crack in his façade: he doffed his hat, pressing it to his chest.

  Venie leaned back. She’d seen other white men perform the same ritual, but never with a Negro woman, slave or free.

  “Did you eat yet, suh?”

  She wiped her face with her forearm, as Holcomb worriedly watched. The forearm was attached to a hand that held a knife, which was hovering close by her eyes. He touched her hand softly, then took the knife away.

  “No’m,” he said. “I have not ate. Much obliged for the meal.”

  Venie had been a child, perhaps twelve or thirteen, when purchased by Samuel—not a “young woman,” the way some would describe slave girls in a future time, calling them hastily into a realm of knowing.

  Her previous owner had given Venie, a child mulatta and the by-blow of his older brother, as a present one night to a close comrade. It had been the comrade’s birthday, coming two weeks before his wedding. The comrade was not repelled by her thin child’s body: Venie’s owner had assured him of her precocity. By grace, Venie’s ordeal had lasted but a short while. The comrade had passed out after minutes into the painful act, but not before vomiting on the nightgown and several locks of Venie’s hair, which the maid of her owner’s wife had loosed from her braids. She did not know what was worse, the sharp pains when she walked or her forgetting to wash the blood and vomit from her nightgown. She was punished by her owner for her inability to please his comrade and for ruining the nightgown.

  When Samuel had purchased Venie, he’d been bothered by her crying, when it would have pleased him with another child. After a month, he’d thrown her into the fields, but when Tut had died, Samuel remembered that Venie’s skills as an apprentice cook had come recommended by the trader. Thus, Samuel relocated Venie to the kitchen, bringing in a boy to carry the water and bigger pots. Upon tasting her peach cobbler made with a butter crust, Samuel congratulated himself for his unexpected boon.

  Venie was a grown woman when Holcomb Byrd James was hired, and in her twenty-some years, she’d never known a man in the voluntary sense, or loved one, and she had no desire to do so. Yet here she was, concerned for Holcomb: He needed training to break him of chivalry toward Negro women. If Samuel heard him “ma’am-ing” her, the man would be sent on his way. And she had taken a liking to the new overseer, seeing his fear for her eyes.

  She served him leftovers from Samuel’s lunch, but she made him fresh biscuits with butter pats inside. On the pine table, the other meal she’d made for Rabbit, Pompey, and herself. Rabbit was in the corner of the kitchen house, busy plucking a scalded chicken for supper. Neither of these three ate rich food during the day, as that courted drowsiness: there was only a pan of corn bread, a bowl of greens revealing hints of pork, and slices of red tomato on a tin plate. The greens and tomatoes had been picked by Pompey from the garden only hours before.

  In weeks, when Holcomb would ask permission for and receive a kiss from Venie, he would bemoan his missed corn bread that day. And Venie would tell him that he should have asked. There had been plenty, and she would make it for him every evening, and in the mornings, hominy porridge, if he were so inclined.

  That first day Holcomb had looked to Venie like a white man who’d want high-toned food. Yet the day of their kiss, Holcomb would tell Venie that his parents were pale mestizos who’d insisted on holding on to their old ways. As proof of his love, he’d shown Venie the medicine pouch he wore around his neck covered by a shirt. It was the most precious thing he owned.

  The Taking of a Side

  Though Jeremiah Franklin remained obsequiously respectful to his landlord, he continued to be angry that his position as overseer had been usurped, even after a year, and then two, passed. And he noticed that Samuel Pinchard did not seem vigorous anymore, but instead was settling into his dotage, putting on weight, and losing his mental sharpness. Yet this diminishing of the man did not give the Franklins an advantage, for Samuel’s son began to take on the master’s mantle.

  When the new overseer had arrived, he had taken up residence with Pompey in the barn. Holcomb washed at the pump, along with the Negro, and ate his meals in the kitchen house. The overs
eer did not voice any complaint about this situation. However, within a year—and without asking his father—Victor had ordered the Franklin clan out of their cabins. Then Victor had ordered Quarters-men to burn all but one of the cabins—and he moved the overseer into the remaining structure. Thus, the entire Franklin clan—men, wives, and their many children—relocated to the south side of the plantation, with only a stingy twenty-acre plot to farm. They had to build new cabins from the ground up. There, they were far away from the big house, which relieved Victor’s wife, for Grace was tired of the many machinations required to avoid her poorer relatives; their presence now greatly embarrassed her, and she had voiced these feelings to Victor. He did not love Grace and never would, but he tried his best to make her happy within reason, since he rarely visited her bed.

  But Jeremiah and his brothers were not about to let things go that easily. At night, they began to watch the Quarters, waiting for one of the folks to visit the community outhouse. They would catch someone coming out after relief, grab them, and beat them. Because the Franklin brothers wore cloth masks with holes for the eyes and mouth and did not speak, none of the folks who were assaulted could identify their attackers, but in the Quarters, it was assumed who the nighttime predators were.

  If Jeremiah and his brothers had kept to the night, their actions might have been tolerated. When Quarters-men limped to the fields in the morning with bruises on their faces, and when Quarters-women wore the tragic expressions of those who had been ravished—and later when their wombs swelled with Franklin seed—the folks would keep their own sad counsels. This was the lot of Negroes, and they didn’t expect any better, though their resentment fumed in the sun. Jeremiah and his brothers’ mistake was bringing their violence out into the open. It was on a morning when the weeds were to be chopped in the fields. Instead of tending to their own patch of cotton and vegetables, the Franklin brothers walked the long distance from the south side of the plantation up to the master’s fields. The Franklins were a group of six, but because they were white men confronting Negroes, they believed their strength to be magnified. Each Franklin moved into the huge cotton field, grabbed someone at random—a man, a woman, a child—and began to choke and slap.

  Holcomb was on his horse that day, riding slowly around the fields, and he clearly saw the Franklins’ melee. He shouted, but the Franklins didn’t stop. When he turned the horse around and headed back to the north side of the plantation, the Quarters-folks despaired: they were on their own. White men always took each other’s side. Yet in a few minutes, there was the sound of a gun blasting as Holcomb rode the edge of the field close to a Franklin brother. Holcomb was an excellent shot: when he pointed the gun again, the ground beside the Franklin brother’s foot exploded. He did this another time, and like skulking animals, Jeremiah and his brothers ran away back south.

  Not only was Holcomb expert with his gun, he didn’t let time pass: that very evening, after eating the dinner Venie had prepared (with an extra pan of corn bread for him), Holcomb waited for his landlord. When Victor came back to the kitchen, instead of his father, Holcomb looked at Venie, who nodded. Then he explained the situation, what the Franklins had done that day, and what he suspected had been happening at night for weeks as well. Holcomb insisted this wasn’t his taking the Negroes’ side. This was about growing cotton. And the Franklins were getting in the way of that. As overseer, Holcomb couldn’t have a ruckus in the fields slowing down work. Victor nodded and left the kitchen house, and within moments, Holcomb apologized to Venie. He hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings, with what he’d said about Negroes. And Venie told him he needed to hush. She knew where Holcomb stood already—didn’t she bake him corn bread every day? Venie kissed the top of his head.

  The next day, the Franklin brothers were absent in the master’s fields, and when night came, the dark path to the outhouse in the Quarters had become safe.

  A Kind of Peace

  In his first year at Wood Place, Holcomb bonded with Aggie. His beloved Venie already adored her, and Holcomb had come to feel the same. Though the Creek and the Cherokee had been enemies at times, the new overseer was grateful that some of the people of our land had remained there. On Sundays, after the light died down, he and Venie would slip through the back door of Aggie’s cabin. There, they would speak quietly, and the woman would have a bit of joy at speaking with one of the people.

  This man came at a necessary time, for even Pop George had not been able to console his family of women over the hurting of Eliza Two and the loss of Nick. Aggie had turned grim, her lips pressed into a forbidding road. In the cotton fields, Tess stood on her row with no interest. Often, Holcomb found her sitting on the earth, gone somewhere in her mind. He left her there with no bother. At night, Tess would walk to the pecan tree that stood a few feet from Samuel’s general store. She would sit under the tree and talk for long hours, crying and wrapping her arms around the thick trunk.

  And though Rabbit had found the company of Leena, her twin continued to ache. Eliza Two still grieved for her face, her lost beauty, and her lost innocence. This girl might have disappeared into blood, a new trail made by the edge of a second knife cutting open a vein. So many slaves like her were lost in these ways. Eliza Two might have traveled into madness or sorrow, had it not been for Holcomb. Though he was nearly as quiet as Eliza Two, he was as watchful as Rabbit. And he saw Eliza Two’s disharmony up close, on those Sundays when Venie and he joined the family at dinner.

  One of those evenings, Eliza Two sat in the yard in front of her cabin alone. Her twin had taken a tray to the left cabin, for Leena didn’t have anyone to spend this day with. There, Rabbit and she would sit on a quilt in the grass with a lantern, for Leena was afraid of the dark. Holcomb came outside and sat on the log with Eliza Two. He wasn’t frightened of being seen, for the occupants of the big house were in their place, and the Quarters-folks liked him enough to put off curiosity. The girl was perched on one of the logs upon which the smallest children would sit during the days when Pop George and Aggie tended them.

  Holcomb sat down, and he didn’t speak for a while. Then he began to tell Eliza Two about his brothers and sisters. He had been the youngest child, and every Sunday the seven of them would enjoy a dinner with his parents and grandmother. He had a great-aunt who lived deep in the woods, so connected was she to the land. As the descendants of white men, this mixed-blood Cherokee family had enjoyed a measure of financial security. Their house had four bedrooms, and a kitchen structure out back, on twenty-five acres. They lived adjoining the farm of their full-white relatives, yet in spite of having white men’s blood, Holcomb’s family kept to many of the old ways of their people. Alongside their Christian beliefs that had come from the white men, they had their stories of how the earth had been formed, how corn had been gifted to the people. They wore clothes like their white relatives, but deerskin moccasins on their feet. And here, Holcomb Byrd pulled at the pouch from inside his shirt: all members of his Cherokee family had a pouch like this, filled with medicine, meant to keep the wearer safe.

  Eliza Two was silent, but she was listening closely to this gentle-spoken man. Months before, her twin had reported about the day Holcomb arrived on the plantation. Rabbit had been in the kitchen watching, her sensitive nature attuned. She liked this man. Though she had thought he was white, she knew immediately he was not like the others. She had never seen Venie smile at a man before, not even Pompey.

  Holcomb was confiding in Eliza Two dangerous knowledge, for even she was aware that Indians were despised in Georgia; only the Negro was lower than the people. Holcomb was trusting her to keep his secret. He thought her worthy of keeping it, despite the scars on her face. He didn’t view her with pity, but as someone he could talk to. His kindness reminded her of her father’s and Pop George’s.

  Then he told her of the saddest night of his life, when white men had given his family a choice: die or leave their land. The group of men had included Holcomb’s white relatives. They had grim f
aces—like the Franklins—and when Holcomb’s grandmother had called to their white kin with the authority of an elder, one of them had walked up to her and slapped her to the ground. His parents had asked to pack belongings into the wagon, but the white men would not give them that chance. They went into the house, tossing things outside. Holcomb had been hiding and watching this scene, but at this, he had run to his great-aunt in the woods. He only had been six, and he was afraid that he would get lost, but finally he saw her cabin. There he lived with her for ten years until she’d died. He believed she’d been covered by a blessing, and that this had extended to him as well, for white men had come through the woods many times, but never barged into his great-aunt’s little cabin. When she passed away, he burned the cabin to the ground as she had asked him to do, and began a life of travel. And for years, he had roamed, unable to settle, until the day he’d ridden his horse to Wood Place. Until he’d met Venie in the kitchen house. Yet Holcomb never had forgotten the pain of seeing his family loaded onto a wagon by those white men and sent on their way out west. Every morning that he rose, he thought of his family. Every night before he went to bed, he did the same. He knew that he would not stop missing them, for kin was a line that never snapped.

  From his pocket, Holcomb pulled a leather pouch like the one from around his neck. He told Eliza Two that he had made this pouch for her. It was filled with tiny things, and he had said a medicine prayer of healing over this pouch, in both the old words and those of Jesus, and it would give Holcomb much happiness if Eliza Two would wear it. When she placed the tied strings over her head and tucked the pouch inside her bodice, there was no miraculous feeling. She did not experience instant joy, but when she looked in the distance toward the direction of the left cabin—when she saw the light of Rabbit’s lantern—she experienced a longing to be with her sister, one that she had not felt since the night their father had left. She rose, looking down at Holcomb, but he told her, go ahead. And Eliza Two walked toward the left cabin until she was at the fence and called through the spires. At the sound of her twin’s voice, known from within the womb, Rabbit gave a cry. She ran to the fence and unlocked the gate. They held each other for some time, and then Rabbit led her to where Leena sat on the quilt.