Behold, This Dreamer

by Charlotte Miller

  Then he saw. And he knew.

  Sweat poured down his face and into his eyes to mingle with the tears already there. Burning pieces of flying lint singed his face and hands, the thick smoke choking his lungs, the strong odor of gasoline coming to him from the burning field—but still he saw clearly as the black car turned around in the road and started away. He saw clearly. And he knew.

  It was the black, 1915 Cadillac touring car.

  It belonged to Walter Eason.

  The glow of fire in the night sky soon brought neighbors and kin from nearby farms to help fight the blaze. As soon as Janson knew the fire was out and his mother safe, the church women and Gran’ma with her, he knew he would go after Walter Eason, would go after him to make him pay for what he had done, what he had caused—but his grandfather would not allow it, pulling him up short as he started to leave the blackened fields, as if the older man knew what it was he intended to do: Nell Sanders had already lost one man this night, his grandfather told him; she would not lose two.

  Janson stood to himself in one corner of a chill room in his parents’ home hours later that night, tears rolling from his eyes and down his cheeks as he watched his mother, his grandmother, and his aunts bathe and dress his father for the last time, preparing him for the burial that would come. His mother had not spoken for hours now, not since the moment Gran’ma had knelt beside her, one arm around her slender shoulders, tears streaming from her own eyes as she stared down into the face of her son.

  “He’s gone, child. He’s with th’ Lord now. Henry’s done gone—”

  Janson did not sleep at all that night. He lay awake in the darkness, remembering the big man with the gentle and calloused hands, thinking of all the things he would have liked to have said, all the things he would have liked to have told him—as dawn came he dressed and went out onto the front porch of the house, wanting to be alone, wanting to avoid the grieving and sympathetic looks of the kin and neighbors who had spent the night on chairs and pallets throughout the house, or who had sat up in respectful silence by the body of his father. He sat on the wooden steps that descended to the bare yard, staring out across red land burned black by fire, ruined fields, the destroyed crop, and it seemed to him as if the land was mourning as well.

  The screen door creaked open behind him, and he turned to find his mother staring out across the fields as well, a distant and hurting look in her dark eyes. He rose out of respect as she moved toward him a moment later, stepping up onto the porch to take her hands in his, hands that suddenly seemed so small, and so very frail.

  Her eyes were red and weak from crying, her face washed white with tears, her lips pale, their lines indistinct. He had never before looked into the face of loss, of grief such as she felt, and he knew somehow that her grief went much deeper than did his own, much deeper than even he could understand.

  He held her hands tightly in his, searching in his mind for the words to tell her what it was he felt, somehow knowing all the while there was nothing he could do, nothing he could say, that might help to lessen her loss—but her voice came before he could speak, her words strong, determined, a fierceness in them as he stared down at her that he had never before seen in anyone in all his life.

  “Your pa loved this land, and he loved me, and he loved you—and you make him proud—” she said, her hands squeezing his until his fingers ached. “Don’t you let them take this land away from you, and don’t you let them get the best of you—you’re my and Henry’s son; you’re half him, and half me, and don’t you ever forget that. Don’t you ever forget it.” She stared up at him, the strength in her matched only by her loss as she swayed slightly on her feet, her dark eyes never once leaving his face. “As long as they never beat you, they’ll never beat him, and they’ll never kill his dream. It’s inside of you, part of you—and don’t you ever let them touch it. You hold onto this place, and you be the man he taught you to be—and don’t you ever let them beat you. As long as you live, don’t you ever once in your life let them beat you—”

  Henry Sanders was laid to rest in the quiet of the small country cemetery just beyond the Holiness church he had attended since Janson had been a small boy, laid to rest beside two brothers who had gone before him, and a great-grandfather Janson had never known. Within months of his death, Nell Sanders went to join him, laid to rest at his side, taken by the influenza in the cold winter months, even after having survived the epidemic that had taken so many in the years of the World War—but Janson knew the truth; he knew she died simply because she no longer wanted to live, no longer wanted to exist in a world where Henry Sanders was no more. Her spirit had given in, and the influenza had taken her—and, even as Janson sat beside the two bare, unmarked graves in the small cemetery, the tears running down his cheeks and dripping onto the red earth, he knew his mother was where she wanted to be, beside his father again.

  He and his gran’pa had gone to the sheriff with what he had seen the night of the fire, but, even these months later, nothing had been done about it, as he had known nothing would be done—there had been too many witnesses to say Walter Eason had not left his home the night of the fire, and that the Cadillac had never once left the carriage house. It had been a heart attack that had taken Henry Sanders’ life, a heart attack brought on by the stress of trying to fight the fire, and it had been both the influenza and grief that had taken Nell Sanders—but still Janson knew the Easons were responsible. The Easons had set the fire that had taken more than half the cotton crop as it still stood in the fields, or had caused it to be set—Janson knew that; there was no doubt: the car, there where it should not have been; the fire, when there had been no cloud in the sky, no lightning that might have started the blaze; and the strong odor of gasoline in the burned fields—there was no doubt.

  But, still, nothing would be done. Nothing in Eason County.

  Time and again he started toward Pine in the weeks and months after his father’s, and then his mother’s, deaths, determined to make Walter Eason pay for what he had done, what he had caused. He knew the man could never have known the high price the fire would exact that night—but still he should pay, still he should—

  But time and again he turned back. His mother’s words would not leave him—“. . . don’t you let them get the best of you—you’re my and Henry’s son; you’re half him, and half me . . . As long as they never beat you, they’ll never beat him, and they’ll never kill his dream . . . don’t you ever let them beat you. As long as you live, don’t you ever once in your life let them beat you—”

  He could not allow himself to kill Walter Eason, though he wanted to badly. He was Henry and Nell Sanders’ son, and they had raised no murderer. He would hold onto the land, and he would make his parents proud, and he would see to it that the dream they had held for so many years would never die—the Easons had never defeated Henry or Nell Sanders once in their lives, and they would not defeat their son even now. Henry Sanders had dreamed too long, had worked too hard, for land of his own, a crop all his own, a better way of life for his son and for grandsons he would never know—Janson would not lose that now.

  But he was alone, eighteen, and with a farm to tend, a farm with fields devastated by the fire that had devastated his own life those months ago. He had picked what had been left of the cotton after the fire—prices were the lowest they had been all season, and over half the crop had been lost, but still he would not give up. He had taken the cotton out of the County for sale, and no attempt had been made to stop him—no words had been spoken, no threats made, but still Janson had carried a rifle beside him on the seat of one of the borrowed trucks that had been used to take the crop out of the County. He would have shot the first man who had attempted to interfere. He had already made that decision.

  When spring came, he began to break up the red land again, working alone behind mule and plow from just after sunup each morning to the last minutes of light. He planted the fi
elds, tended them, chopped out the weeds with a hoe when they appeared; worked and worried and sweated from well before daybreak until long after dark each day. He fended for himself, alone for the first time in his life, as often as not eating cornbread and turnip greens, or whatever else he could find left over from what his gran’ma or his Aunt Rachel, or one of the ladies from the church, had brought over days before, sometimes too tired at the end of the day to even bother to heat it up on the old wood stove, and often too hungry to really care what it was that he ate. The preacher had suggested to him that he marry, that he take one of the girls from the church as his wife, someone to take care of the house and look after him, to cook his meals and mend his clothes, and maybe even give him a son or daughter in the year ahead—but Janson could not consider that. There were nice girls in the church, pretty girls, and he knew there were one or two who might even have taken a fancy to him—but he could not think about marrying now. He lay awake often in the night, tired and sore from the hours of work in the fields, lonely in the old house, missing his parents, and remembering how they had been. It would have been nice to have a woman beside him, someone he could touch and pleasure with and talk to—but all he could think about now was the land. All he could think about was the home he felt each day that he was losing.

  Somehow late each Saturday he found the time to wash his overalls, dungarees, and workshirts in the wash tub in the back yard, using hot water from the black pot on the wood stove, and strong lye soap his mother had boiled down the year before from hog renderings and potash dripped from the ash hopper in the back yard. He beat the clothes on the battling block out by the kitchen door, boiling the sheets and his two good white shirts in the huge black pot there, scrubbing his work clothes on the rub board until his fingers hurt and his knuckles were raw—and often doing it all by the light of the fire beneath the wash pot, the one kerosene lamp he had brought out from the house, and the light falling from the windows of the separate kitchen where he would go for supper when the work was finished. The clean clothes would hang on the wash line overnight, and would often still be damp the next morning when he would take down one of the two good shirts and his Sunday trousers, press them as best he could using the old black flat iron he heated on the back of the wood stove, and would often still be damp even hours later as he walked toward church in them, the old Bible with its cracked leather cover in one hand, and the only pair of shoes he owned in the other.

  There was always more work than he could do in the days, and never enough hours to do it in, no matter how hard he tried. So he spent even more hours, worked even later into the darkness each day, refusing to give up, refusing to even acknowledge that defeat could exist—and he lay awake at night and worried, and listened for someone to come again this year to try to destroy the crop, to take the last hope there was left. To take his land.

  But this year there was no interference, no broken windows, no killed animals. When fall came, his kin helped as best they could, spending hours in his fields in addition to their own, his grandparents, his Uncle Wayne, and several of his cousins, picking his cotton as well as their own, trying to help him hold onto the land—but cotton was bringing less per pound of lint this year than it had in any year since 1921, less than he could ever remember it bringing before. There was a good crop, more cotton than the land had ever grown before—surely, even with the current prices, it would be enough to let him hold onto the land once it was sold. Surely—

  When the cotton was at last picked, filling the bins in the barn, filling the two old sharecropper shacks on the land, filling even the spaces boarded in on either side of the front and back porches of the house with only narrow walkways left in between, Janson looked at it, and he worried all the more. Many farmers were saying their crops were going for less this year than it had cost to grow them—and there was the mortgage payment to meet, as well as the credit he had found it necessary to run at the store. His pa had always warned him against using credit—but even Henry Sanders had been forced to use credit from time to time. That was how they had gotten the land in the first place, the same damned mortgage that threatened to take it even now.

  The cotton was loaded onto borrowed wagons this year for the trip out of the County. Janson knew any trouble they might find would come before they could reach the County line, and he was already prepared to meet it—the old rifle rested against his thigh this year as it had the last. The Easons would not take his land. Not even if he had to use the rifle. Not even if he had to kill someone.

  It was not long after they left the land that morning, the wagons loaded heavy with cotton, that the black car began to follow them, always staying at a distance, never coming any closer, never any farther away; making no attempt to pass them on the narrow dirt roads, or to not be seen—but, as they reached the County line, it turned back, never once having attempted to stop them, or to halt their progress. The crop was sold, and Janson returned to Eason County—but he already knew it was lost. The cotton had not brought the money he needed. He was losing the land.

  In the next days he sold off everything he could—two iron bedsteads; the sofa, upholstered chairs and centertable from the parlor; the hog he had been fattening for slaughter; the milk cow—anything he could find that might bring him some little money, until all there was left were the things he could never sell: the rocking chair he and his father together had bottomed with smooth white oak splits for his mother, the foot-treadle sewing machine she had worked over on so many evenings, the old rope bed his parents had shared since their marriage, the chifforobe that had sat in one corner of their bedroom all his life, the old wood stove, the leaky icebox. He took every cent he could gather from the sale of the furniture and the crop, and he gave it to the bank, knowing it was not enough, but praying—He kept telling himself that it could not end this easily, not after all his parents’ dreams, his own. Not after all the years that Henry and Nell Sanders had worked and saved to have this land, and to hold onto it for him. Not after his entire life spent here on this red earth, working these fields, not after seeing his parents die—not after the past year, after all the hard work, the long hours in the fields, plowing and planting and chopping the cotton; not after the work and the worry and the days upon days of picking the fields until his back ached and his fingers bled. Not after—

  But the foreclosure notice came, the notice of auction—he did not have to be able to read them to know what they said. They meant he land was no longer his. His father’s dream. His mother’s. His own—he had lost the land.

  It was only a few days later that Walter Eason came to the land, a cold, gray day with a heavy, damp chill in the air that clung to the skin like a wet coat. Janson had been working in another man’s fields since before sunup that morning, clearing land for the next year’s planting, earning the little money the work might bring him, for there was still the store charge to pay, as well as a long winter ahead, a long winter when he knew he would not be on the land. He was tired and hungry as he walked toward home late that afternoon, the money from the work now earned and in his pocket, but those few coins were soon forgotten as he rounded the side of the house to find the black Cadillac touring car pulled up into the front yard.

  He stopped where he was just short of the front porch and stared, watching as the car door opened and Walter Eason got out, the old man’s white hair a stark contrast to the gray and threatening sky behind him—for a moment Janson felt a muscle clench tightly in his jaw, his hands tightening into fists at his sides as he fought to control the rage that built inside of him at the sight of the man. Walter Eason stared at him for a long moment, as if he were assessing the situation, and the young man who stood before him, then he closed the door of the touring car, and made his way toward where Janson stood before the house.

  It seemed a long time before either man spoke, as Walter Eason and Janson Sanders met each other’s eyes over the short distance between them. A wind blown up by the lowered
clouds and the threatening sky stirred the old man’s white hair—but still he looked somehow unmoved as he met Janson’s gaze. At last he spoke, his face seeming still unchanged. “I hear you’ve lost this place.”

  Janson did not answer, but only continued to stare, somehow remembering the words his mother had spoken to him on the old porch behind him those months ago—and also a day, over two years past now, when Walter Eason had stopped him and his father in town. He could almost taste the red dust the cars along Main Street had kicked up that morning, almost hear the horns of the Model T’s, the Chevrolets, and the Buicks—and this old man before him, this old man who dared to come to the land even now.

  “You’ll have to be leaving here soon,” Walter Eason was saying, staring at him now. “I want you to know there’ll be a place for you in the mill, and in the village, if you want it.” He paused for a moment, seeming to be waiting. “There’s always work in the cotton mill for a good, hard-working boy like you—”

  For a long moment, Janson said nothing. When he at last spoke, his voice was quiet, but filled with anger. “Get th’ hell off my land—” he said, and Walter Eason’s face changed almost imperceptibly. “This place may not be mine much longer, but, while it is, I want you th’ hell off it—” He stared at the old man a moment longer, then turned and walked up onto the porch and in through the front door of the house he had lived in all his life, leaving Walter Eason standing alone in the front yard. It was then that Janson Sanders knew he had to leave Eason County.

  He had not once thought of what he would do once the land was gone, once the farm was sold on the auction block, for that had seemed such an impossibility, even as he had held the notice of foreclosure in his hand—but now he knew it was a reality as unstoppable as fire or death or falling cotton prices had ever been. He knew he could not stay here now to see his home sold to another man, to see another man work the fields that had once been his own—he had to go somewhere else, to find work that could earn the money he would need to get his land back someday. The Easons had not beaten him, as they had never once beaten Henry or Nell Sanders in all their lives—Janson would return here; he would buy back his land, and he would pass his dream, his parents’ dream, on to sons and grandsons of his own someday.