There was nothing here. Absolutely nothing here, yet these grateful souls saw homes and buildings and a chance for real freedom. The cry, the yearning since creation, was for a place of one’s own.
They wanted the reality and the paper. That blessed piece of paper printed in Topeka, which took money after all. The money paid to print the certificate made it official somehow that someone, somewhere, was willing to invest in them.
Someone was willing to take a chance.
Teddy walked over to Bethany. “You want to help the others get signed up, or you want me to do it? Some of them just going to be able to make their mark.”
“You do it. I don’t want any part of this . . . this sham.”
“Yes, you do,” he said sharply. “Better be glad these folks seeing what they see. It’s all we’ve got.”
“Do you still believe, Teddy?” Her words were careful, even, but she looked straight ahead as though she couldn’t bear to hear the answer.
“God help me, I do,” said Teddy. “I surely do. Not all the time, but most of the time. Ain’t no good for nobody these days when I don’t. But I knows this for a fact. There’s some things about white people that our folks gotta start thinking like. Been studying on that some. Our people usually see what’s there, and white folks think about what oughta be there. Our people’s smarter, right enough, but white folks are the ones who gets ahead.”
Bethany nodded. “We’re only capable of imagining when it comes to Heaven.” She turned and looked Teddy fully in the face.
“Well, we’re here,” she said grimly. “And now we’ll all have a piece of paper saying here’s where we belong. We will just have to make the best of it.”
Teddy stepped forward and helped sign names for people who could just make their mark. By full nightfall, every family had their certificate, and as the emigrants built a central campfire for the night, a sense of anticipation. They were here. They would no longer have to think about loading up again.
They were home in Nicodemus.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning, directed by the five black founders of the Nicodemus Town Company, the men started staking out lots in the town. The women began setting up a semi-permanent camp.
Bethany stood beside Teddy as he rested his sledgehammer on the ground.
“How big are these lots?” she asked.
“Don’t rightly know.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “I do know that most folks starting a town company get a whole square mile.”
“How much does it cost them?”
“About eight hundred dollars.”
“So figuring six hundred forty acres and eight lots to the acre, that would be . . . ?”
“Be 5,120 lots,” Teddy said quickly. “In some places they’re getting $100 a lot. That’s a hell of a lot of money. About a half million.”
“But not here,” said Bethany. “Not here. At five dollars a share, that’s just a little over twenty-five thousand dollars for this sorry place, and then they loaned us the money to boot.”
“That’s still what’s bothering me. Folks gots to be figuring to make money off us, but I can’t see how.” He stared into the distance.
Bethany fingered her skirt. “Where are we supposed to live? They can’t be expecting us to build frame houses, because there aren’t any trees. And all the fine stones I’ve been hearing about. The ones that are supposed to be so easy to carve. Where are they? They’re not just lying around on top of the ground like the circulars said.”
Teddy shook his head. “Don’t know.”
“I’ll ask one of our esteemed town sponsors,” she said bitterly.
“Morning, ma’am,” said Jones as she approached.
“Good morning, Mr. Jones. Some of us women were wondering about our new homes.”
“Reckon you are,” he said easily. “Going to show you my place. Gather up the womenfolk, then come along with me.”
He led them toward the Solomon River and talked constantly as they walked. “Those trees there are cottonwoods.”
“They’re beautiful,” Bethany said. “And huge.”
“Yes ma’am, they are. They spring up natural along the creeks out here. Nothing can kill them. They bend, and they break, but they still keep going. Kind of like us.” He led them over the next rise and pointed to a door built into the side of the hill.
“That’s a dugout,” he said. “That’s how y’all will be starting out. I’ve lived here for three years.”
“You expect us to live in a hole in the side of the hill? Where it’s dark as a dungeon?” shrieked Dolly Redgrave. The other women were shocked into silence.
“I’m a seamstress. Gotta be able to see. Can’t sew in no hole in the side of a hill.”
“It’s where you going to have to live to start out,” Jones said flatly.
One of the women, Sister Liza Stover, stepped forward. She had joined the group when they passed through Topeka.
“It ain’t so bad. Not as good as I was used to in Kentuck, but better than what I had in Topeka. Filth there and disease. Thought I was going to die. I truly did.”
Beside her was an old woman stooped from field work. “They cool,” she said. “Cooler than picking cotton. Supposed to be warm in winter. Don’t know. Ain’t tried that yet. Just know they cooler than picking cotton. But it a fact that only the worse masters made his niggers sleep on the floor. Now you trying to tell us we is blessed.”
“Don’t care how cool it is.” Dolly’s voice was shrill above the creek. “I won’t live in a hole like a spider.”
Jones held open the rickety door and gestured toward the interior. “You’re welcome to look. It’s right homey inside. Best we can do for y’all until we can put up soddies.”
Bethany was small enough to enter without stooping through the doorway. It was dark and dingy but indeed cool, just as the old woman had said.
She felt safe in this peculiar earth dwelling. There was no window, but there could be one in front. She could sleep with her back against the far wall and never ever worry again about someone slipping up behind her. No more would she ever fear that hands—black or white—could invade her bed in the middle of the night. There would just be a front door.
“Wanted to live in a cave, I’d never have left Kentucky,” said Dolly. “Wanted to live in a hole, I’d have stayed where the hole was high and dry and the floor was stone.”
“Won’t be this way forever,” Jones said. “Just till you get going.”
“I won’t live in such a no-count trashy place,” Dolly said flatly. She whirled around and walked off with a few like-minded women trailing behind her.
The next day Dolly found three men to help build a lean-to. Some of the women had located a scant pile of wood. Dolly grabbed an axe and cut down small striplings to weave a top for the roof.
There was no siding to cover the framework of small branches she tied to the four corner logs. But she wove together small cottonwood strips and covered them on one side with an old sheet. When she finished, everyone clustered around and admired her ingenuity except for Sister Liza Stover, who hung back in polite silence.
Two days later, a high wind came, ripped the sheet from the framework, and sent it sailing. Then all the woven branches skittered across the prairie like fall leaves.
“Tried to tell her,” Sister Liza Stover muttered. “Heard folks talk about this wind.”
Dolly ran off to the creek bank, threw herself on the ground, and sobbed. Bethany watched in dismay but decided it was better to say nothing.
Several days later, after she had a chance to think, Bethany took Dolly aside.
“We’ll start a dugout for you and your children right away. At least part of it will be above the ground. Even though we all need a place, we sure don’t want wind or rain to spoil all the supplies and cloths you brought.”
“Knew someone would surely come to their senses. Stop lumping us all together. Do a little sorting.”
“Make no mistake,” Bethany s
aid coldly. “Everyone is equal out here. It’s just that you might be able to provide a little income for Nicodemus. The whole community. We’d be foolish not to protect your goods.”
Dolly said nothing.
“Now please pull yourself together and show a little appreciation.”
The next day, five men left off staking lots and came to build Dolly’s home. They staked off a fourteen by fifteen-foot area at the top of the edge of a ravine formed from an ancient creek that had once flowed through the soil. Then they dug a six-foot hole. A large group watched the building progress. Some worked from the bottom and some worked from the top of the ground. They dug out steps descending to the bottom and constructed a front wall of sod bricks. Bare earth formed the back and sides.
They set a ridge pole and carefully covered the roof with woven branches from cottonwoods. They covered the branches with a little layer of sod, then another heavier layer, going in the opposite direction. The roof soon supported a heavy layer of sod.
If any of them resented the least grateful and congenial among them being the first to get a new home, no one said so.
One of the women, Carrie Williams, who would be delivering in a couple of months, watched every step of the process. Bethany walked over to ask if she was still troubled by heartburn. She clutched Bethany’s arm like they were best friends.
“Miss Bethany, my baby’s going to have a real home,” Carrie said eagerly. She was a small, mahogany-colored woman with narrow bones and frizzy, wooly hair neatly covered with a kerchief. “They said so. Mr. Jones and Mr. Tripp and Mr. Harrington. They’se all promised. Soon as they can get their hands on a sod cutter, they going to build an above-ground house just for us in honor of our new baby.”
“That’s just wonderful,” said Bethany. More promises, she thought grimly.
They had been there five days, living in tents just as they had done on the trip out. Several more days of relentless heat had given way to a couple of cooler ones. Rather than comforting them, the variation kept them on edge. They never knew what to expect.
“Do you think I’ll have any trouble?”
Bethany quickly looked at the ground. She had a sour taste in her mouth. She was terrified at the coming birth, but she didn’t want Carrie to know. Every day since they arrived, she went out on the prairie looking for plants. She couldn’t find the ones she needed and didn’t recognize the ones she did see. Truth was, she no longer had plants to stop pain or bleeding.
“You’ll be just fine,” she said. “Just fine. Now go home and rest while you have a chance. After the little one gets here, sleep will be hard to come by.”
Carrie’s face brightened. Bethany mashed her fist against her mouth as she watched Carrie lumber toward her tent. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths.
She was running out of medicine. People’s trust was as important as the medicinal properties of the plants themselves. Without that, she was nothing.
She stared at the prairie. The shimmering waves of grass. The land promised and then withheld. One minute it seemed to teem with everything they needed, and in an instant, the same landscape appeared bleak, stingy with its favors.
Then she caught her breath. Far away, she could see a herd of wild horses. They’re real, she thought with wonder. They were coal black with huge manes and tails that touched the ground. The herd whirled and pounded away as if hearing a distant signal.
“We can’t catch them,” she whispered. “Never, never.” The three sorry nags they had arrived with certainly wouldn’t be up to chasing down wild horses.
What in the world were they supposed to do for food? They were all skilled people. When they had lived on plantations, like most slaves who were not field hands, they all had some trade, but there wasn’t a farmer among them. She was struck with the irony that there wasn’t one single person among them who knew a thing about growing food.
Land was there for the taking. Land for crops and cattle spread out so far they couldn’t see the end of it, yet there wasn’t a person here who knew a thing about growing a variety of food crops from start to finish. A few knew a little bit about growing tobacco. A few knew a little bit about growing cotton.
Couldn’t eat tobacco. Couldn’t eat cotton.
They were a collection of people who had been worth their weight in gold on plantations and whose value had plummeted when poverty-stricken Southern whites ruined by the war suddenly started competing for the jobs blacks once had to themselves.
She sighed. Even if someone among them did know how to farm, they didn’t have the tools to do it with.
“Miss Bethany?”
She turned. Teddy gestured for her to come look at a piece of paper. His hands shook as he wordlessly handed her a circular.
“ ‘To the Colored Citizens of the United States,’ ” she read. “ ‘We, the Town Company of Nicodemus, Kansas, are now in possession of our lands.’ ”
She skimmed through the rest but faltered when she read about members being permanently located on claims and that there were “ample provisions for them all.”
“Are they out of their minds?” she cried. “We can’t even take care of the people who are already here.”
“That’s not the worst of it,” Teddy said. “Here’s another one.” He shoved another piece of paper at her. The wind whipped her skirt, and she turned her back to read the circular.
“ ‘All colored people that want to go to Kansas on September 5th, 1877, can do so for $5.00.’ ” Her eyes raced over the page. The Nicodemus Town Company had consolidated with another colony in Kentucky that was bound for Kansas.
“This can’t be, Teddy. There can’t be more people coming.”
Bethany’s stomach plummeted as she stared at a jack rabbit in the distance. Food. Food aplenty, but could they catch it? Where was the easy game that was supposed to be available?
In the middle of September, there was a subtle vibration in the earth. The ground trembled and throbbed with a pulsating beat. The day was Kansas blue, crystal clear air shimmering with anticipation. The townspeople heard the singing-chanting before they even saw them.
There were some three hundred people making their way across the prairie. There were goats and chickens and little children hopping around and dogs barking and old mules and cobbled-together wagons with mismatched wheels and spokes spliced together.
There were women in white turbans and bonnets and a few women balancing hats they had made themselves, and they would have made them tall enough to touch the sky if they could have found enough red. They came with drums and anvils and musical instruments and washboards and all manner of tools and the expertise to use them.
What there was not, was farmers. What there was not, was horses and plows and mules and food and fuel and seed. There was hope, and that in abundance.
When they saw the cluster of black people standing on the prairie, they shouted in relief. Then some of the group began running. Several knelt down and began to pray. Some just stopped and looked as though they were seeing a mirage. One of the women saw her cousin and gave a cry, and they stumbled toward one another.
Bethany immediately counted fourteen pregnant women. Fear swept over her like the tricking wind blowing across Kansas. Fear had been pushing at every crack and cranny of her soul, looking for a place to shove through ever since she left the South. Now fear plucked at her openings until she could no longer keep it out of her terrified heart.
Dear God, she didn’t know enough. Her lips trembled until her teeth chattered, but there was too much joyful excitement for anyone to notice a small black woman shaking in the wind.
Pull yourself together, girl. Her mother’s words echoed in her mind as surely as if she had been standing by her side. Pull yourself together. Bethany eyed the crowd. They looked healthy, well-fed. Good thing, she thought grimly. That wouldn’t last long.
Reverend Harrington stepped out to meet the new arrivals.
A large man stepped forward. He had a sleek, small head
atop a neck so long it made him look like a gleaming eel. “Where is we? Who might you be?”
“Welcome. Welcome to Nicodemus. I’m the Reverend Harrington.”
“Name’s Henry. Henry Partridge.” He added his surname with the clumsiness of a man not used to using it. His scarred hands trembled as he reverently held out a varnished print. Bethany was close enough to see the image. It was a chromolithograph. She had seen one once when she was tending to a wealthy lawyer’s wife in Lexington.
It was cruder than most chromos—the vivid colors had been inked and stamped with a stone—but the meaning was clear and geared to slaves who couldn’t read.
It was titled “The Freedman’s Home.” There was a Negro man in a charming cottage looking out floor-length French windows and relaxing in the rosy haze of the Kansas sunset. His wife played the piano. Deer, there for the taking, grazed outside the window in a grove of shade trees. Turkeys flew past the window.
“This ain’t what we was promised,” Partridge mumbled, looking around at the barren prairie. “This here can’t be Nicodemus.” Partridge had three fingers missing from his right hand. The little finger and thumb formed a crude claw, and he rubbed the scarred center as though wishing and rubbing could make fingers sprout. As though wishing and rubbing would make a town appear.
Stunned, the people looked around.
“Where is Mister Wade?” a man called from back of the group. “He’s the lying bastard who promised us the freight would be paid to Ellis from Wyandotte.”
A tall, gangly man stepped forward. “Name’s Earl Gray,” he announced to Harrington. “Don’t suppose you care much who I is, but they is plenty of people here who will be happy to tell you. I sold a right smart parcel of land to get here. Was starting to get a hold on things back in Kentucky.”
Gray wore overshoes without any boots underneath and a tattered blue hat without a bill. His face was hard, lean as a worn-out mule, the whites of his eyes mottled cream and yellow.
He punched his fist into the palm of his right hand. “Wade was supposed to pay our freight. That’s what he promised, all right,” he called back to the crowd. “Didn’t he?”
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