by Joyce Hansen
“Easter, now I have the seven acres me and Rayford work for—thanks to you—plus the farm I buyin’. I givin’ you two acres.”
“I don’t want anything, Rosie. I work those field to help you, not to get land.”
“I didn’t ask what you want, I tellin’ you what I givin’. Finish lookin’ for Obi now, if you have to, but you know you have somewhere to live. We sisters, even though we don’t have the same mama or papa.”
“You still need help, you know,” Easter said.
Rose waved her hand. “I have Virginia and George to help me with the farm. Easter, I think you should go on up to that Philadelphia school or marry Julius. Don’t spend your whole life lookin’ for something that ain’t there.”
Easter took a sip of tea. “When I think of Virginia an’ George that make me really not want to go north.”
Virginia, George, and their sons had gotten as far north as Richmond and had to return to the plantation hungry and destitute. “We can’t find work in the cities, not enough for a family, and there’s the black codes, so you ain’t free to go where you want and do what you want. It no different from slavery times,” George had said.
Easter sometimes felt as if she were in a tiny box. When she was with Miss Fortune, she felt that she should finish school. Then when she saw Julius working hard with the other men, building a cabin, she thought that maybe she should marry and raise her own family. Then she’d think of Obi.
Rose interrupted her thoughts. “You know, seem like if Obi was lookin’ for you, he’d have found you by now.”
“How? How he find me, Rose?”
“Seems to me he’d go to the Bureau like you been doin’. That’s all he have to do.”
“I know he’s lookin’ for me.”
“Well, Easter, Miss Fortune is a nice woman, but it wouldn’t be like havin’ you for our real teacher. You one of us—sometime Miss Fortune too much like a Yankee woman. She ain’t stayin’ down here forever.” Rose fastened her eyes on Easter. “Well, I guess you goin’ to be in them fields forever, though, waitin’ for Obi. But you know, things change anyhow, even though we don’t even do nothing.”
The next morning Easter and Jason picked the last of the cotton. Easter walked over to the sheet spread at the edge of the field and dumped the bolls on it to dry in the sun a bit before one of the children carried the full sheet to the cotton house. Stretching her arms and gazing toward the orchards, she saw a tall figure in a black suit and a large black slouch hat. As he drew closer, she saw that the man had a full, brown mustache. Suddenly Jason raced from the field and took off toward the man. Easter ran behind Jason as he yelled, “Dr. Taylor!”
Oh no, Easter said to herself, Jason lose his wits now.
Dr. Taylor smiled, removing his hat and bowing in her direction. “Girlie, I come to ask if the little chap could travel with me for a spell.”
“Please, Easter? Let me go,” Jason asked before she could answer the man. “I write to you. And I be good, Easter.”
As she watched Jason, she remembered everything. His life flashed before her—his mother, his birth, the years they’d spent together, the way he cried when she and Obi left him. Now he was almost a man, wanting to leave—twelve years old, no longer a baby. She had to let go.
“Easter, I come back to see you. I write, and we never be apart the way we was because I can write to you.” He stared at her with that new adult look in his eyes. “I ain’t no farmer, Easter. I goin’ in the man’s show,” he told her.
She hugged him. “You know how to get back home, don’t you, Jason?”
“Yes. And you always be in my mind.”
Dr. Taylor smiled and nodded. She turned to him. “He can go. And, mister, you take good care of my Jason, hear?”
March 31, 1866
Dear Miss Grantley,
I hope this letter finds you enjoying the best of health. Please forgive me for taking so long to write to you, but it took me this long to make another decision. First, let me tell you how our town is coming along. We call it New Canaan. We have a church, a school, and we are building a molasses mill and a general store. Some of the people still work for the Williams family to make extra money for the land they purchased.
Miss Fortune moved to the cabin that was built next to the school especially for the teacher. We call it the teacher’s house. The men and women take turns keeping guard, though, to make certain that the buckra don’t come and burn down our school as they try to do last week. Miss Fortune smelled the smoke and saw the men who set the fire riding away. She say it look like they was wearing some kind of hood. Thank God we put the fire out before it made much damage. And to think we told her to come and live among us because we thought she would be safer with us than in the cottage near the big house!
Some bad news. Miriam and several other children died from a terrible fever. Brother Thomas still cannot talk and cannot walk by himself. But we pray that one day he’ll be better.
Now for me and my life. I have decided, first, not to marry Julius but to go back to the old Rebel camp and find Mariah and Gabriel. Remember I tell you about them? If Obi is searching for me, he’ll go to them because that’s where he last left me. I went to the Freedmen’s Bureau even though I said I wasn’t going again, and I was told that they have a list from a colored regiment. They will write to me when they get more information.
Jason joined a medicine show. I got a letter from him and he says he is happy and fine. I miss him so much.
Now for the big news and decision: I want to go to the school in Philadelphia. We don’t have enough schools or teachers to go around. Our small schoolhouse is full to overflowing, with some of the children coming from the Riverview plantation. Rose and Miss Fortune helped me to make up my mind to go to Philadelphia. Also, Miss Fortune said that I could live with her family while I attended the school. That made me feel less afraid about going. I have a welcome letter from her family already saying that I do not have to worry about my room or board.
So, my dear Miss Grantley, I hope you are as happy and excited about my decision as I am. I hope it’s not too late for me to attend the school. I saved a little bit of money, and Rose and a few of the other people want to help pay some of the costs too. I look forward to hearing from you soon. I am, as always,
Your Friend and Student,
Easter
Epilogue
March 1866
The tall young man gazed at the still waters gleaming in the sun. He’d found a quiet spot on the deck of the ship, away from the other soldiers. He removed his army jacket and pulled his cap over his deep-set eyes to shade them from the sun’s glare.
He was glad to be coming home to South Carolina. A lone sea gull flew overhead, a sign that they would soon be nearing land. He closed his eyes and saw her little brown, heart-shaped face and her lively eyes. He wondered how much she’d changed these past few years and how long it would take to find her.
First he’d go to the Freedmen’s Bureau in Charleston, and then to the old Confederate camp, where he had left her with Mariah and Gabriel. She may even have gone back to the Jennings farm, their former home. He would find her, though. No matter how long it took, he would find her.
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Author’s Note
The people and events in Out From This Place are fictional but are based on incidents that occurred during the end of the Civil War, the turbulent period that witnessed the beginnings of a new people, not quite African after the two-hundred-year sojourn in the New World, not yet Americans. Only after the passage of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution were people of African descent accorded citizenship under the law.
In 1861, when the Union army gained control of the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina, most of the planters fled to the mainland. Blacks became contraband, passing along with other confiscated Confederate property into the hands of the army. They continued to labor on the abandoned plantations working, for wages, for the federal government.
In January of 1865, General William T. Sherman ordered that the newly freed men and women should be settled on tracts of land on the islands off the Carolina coast extending to the “country bordering the St. Johns River, Florida.” Forty thousand people were relocated in this region and were given temporary title to the abandoned lands formerly held by the Confederates. No more than forty acres of land were to be given to a family.
In May of the same year, President Andrew Johnson changed this policy, and the land was returned to the former owners. Some blacks, refusing to give back their acreage, armed themselves and fought to keep the land until they were forcibly removed by the army.
There were cases, especially in South Carolina, where freedmen were able to purchase land, when someone was willing to sell to them or when the South Carolina Land Commission made plots available for sale, and form their own communities. New Canaan, in Out From This Place, is based on an all-black community in South Carolina, developed after the Civil War.
Other Avon Camelot Books by
Joyce Hansen
Which Way Freedom?
Joyce Hansen teaches special education and enjoys photography when she isn’t writing for young people. Winner of the Spirit of Detroit Award, the author’s other titles include The Gift Giver, Home Boy, and Which Way Freedom? Ms. Hansen lives with her husband in New York City.
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Copyright © 1988 by Joyce Hansen
All rights reserved.
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
First published in the United States of America in 1998
by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.
E-book edition published in February 2013
www.bloomsbury.com
For information about permission to reproduce selections from his book, write to
Permissions, Walker BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 88-5594
RL: 5.1
ISBN 978-0-8027-3552-2 (e-book)