Michener, James A.

by Texas

  But now he had his own problem. From his tireless work swimming the bales across the Rio Grande, he had accumulated more than a hundred dollars, and he knew that if he appeared at the plantation with such funds, he would be accused of having stolen them. So he asked Komax if he, Panther, would write him out a statement explaining that the money really was his. i cain't write,' Panther said, but he found one of his men who could, and the precious document was executed:

  Brownsville, Texas 9 November 1863

  To Who It Concerns:

  This sertificate pruves the Slave Known as Trajan erned $139.40 by swiming cotton acrost the Ruy Grandee. The money is his, duttifully erned, and I sware to said.

  Johnson Carver Confederate Army

  Trajan had been so preoccupied with financial arrangements for himself and the boys that he failed to notice a development in his group. Now Jaxifer came to him, no longer the noisy young clown whom Trajan had met on the approach to Social Circle, but a powerful man, mature and thoughtful: 'Micah, he done gone.' And Trajan realized that Micah had found the temptation of freedom in Mexico too powerful to resist, and was no doubt already in Monterrey.

  This presented difficult choices for the three remaining Lammermoor slaves, who discussed them, using the deepest Gullah. When such slaves used their fragmentary English they came up with constructions which sounded funny, like He done gone, but when they spoke in Gullah they had a complete language for the expression of complete thoughts, and there was nothing amusing about it.

  'Why should we three go back to slavery?' Jaxifer asked.

  'Micah did no wrong,' Trajan replied evasively, if he felt he had to be free . . .'

  'How about us?'

  'There Mexico is, spit across the river. You'll never be closer '

  'If I go, will you try to stop me?' Jaxifer asked, for it was obvious that the third slave, Oliver, would not make the attempt

  Trajan pondered Jaxifer's question a long time, for it cut to the heart of black-white relations, and also to the core of his own behavior: 'A man wants to be free, that's maybe the biggest thing in life. If you feel it in your heart, Jaxifer, go.'

  'How about you?'

  'Well, now. No man wants freedom more than I do. I lost my son because people knew they could steal from a slave, no trouble. I lost my wife, worked to death.'

  'Then join me.'

  'No, I want to be free, more than any of you. But freedom is surely coming in Texas.' He hesitated before making a point which for him weighed most heavily: 'Better to work hard for freedom in a good place like Texas than accept it easy in a place not so good like Mexico.' Before Jaxifer could respond, he added. At night I say to myself: "Trajan, you built Lammermoor as much as any Cobbs. It's your place too." I do not want to give up a place I built.'

  'But up there you'll always be a slave.'

  'Not always.'

  'Do you believe that?'

  if I didn't, I would cut my throat.'

  Jaxifer asked: 'If I cross the river, will you send soldiers after me?'

  'Oh, Jaxifer! How can you ask?'

  'Then why don't you come with me?'

  Again Trajan thought a long time before answering: 'I promised Miss Prue and the old man— I'd get the cotton south, I'd collect the money, and I'd bring it home.'

  'But it went home by the bank, you said so.'

  'The money's home, yes. But now I have to go. Jefferson is where I belong.'

  At the edge of the Rio Grande, Jaxifer stared in silence at his longtime friends Trajan and Oliver. Then, turning his back upon them, he strode to where bales waited and pushed one into the river. Terrified though he was, he plunged in, grasping a corner of the bale with both arms and kicking his feet frantically as the cotton carried him to freedom.

  It was chance, an intervention of fate, which led Panther Komax to get his homebound convoy on the road when he did, because in early November, Federal troops launched a determined

  invasion that captured Brownsville, thus terminating the Matamoros-Bagdad trade. To prove that they meant business, the troops also ranged inland at isolated spots, attacking any southbound convoys and burning the cotton, or bursting the bales and scattering it across the landscape until snow seemed to be falling on the brushy plains.

  One evening such a foraging party came upon Komax and his stragglers. Panther shouted to the slaves and the boys: 'Run! Hide!' but when he and his men turned back to fight off the attackers, a sudden fusillade of Union bullets ended his violent life.

  Major Somerset Cobb did not return to Lammermoor until after Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Then, his left arm gone, his weight not more than a hundred and twenty, he came up the Red River from the hospital at New Orleans, with the doctor's benediction: 'God must have saved you, Cobb. We did damned little.'

  At Shreveport he was pleased to see that the Great Raft was still in place, and his heart expanded and he felt something close to joy when the limping steamer, one boiler gone, edged into Lake Caddo and he saw once more the knobby cypresses and the Spanish moss hanging in lovely festoons from the live oaks that crowded the shore.

  As always, the steamer sounded its whistle as it approached Lammermoor, and he saw with fresh pleasure that slaves aboard the craft were preparing to unload at that wharf called the Ace of Hearts. With pulsating enthusiasm he explained to a first-time passenger: 'Our slaves can't read, you know. We mark shipments Spades or Clubs, showing where parcels go. We're Ace of Hearts.'

  The little vessel docked and the pain of return took command. He saw fields rotten with weeds, buildings unpainted. But the mill still stood, and here came Trajan, best slave a man ever had. Cobb leaped ashore, his empty left coat sleeve pinned up, and embraced him.

  'It's good to be home, Trajan.'

  'Been a long war, master.'

  Slowly, for Sett was very tired, they walked up the slope toward his house, and now a small, fearfully thin woman came to greet him. It was Petty Prue, much smaller than he remembered, much more worn by the last years of war than he could have imagined.

  Reaching for his one hand, she said: it was always stupid to have two plantations here. I've joined them, Sett.'

  She had joined not only the land, but also their lives.

  On 23 June 1865 there was great excitement in Jefferson, for a Union captain attended by fourteen soldiers inarched in, ordered a bugle to be sounded, and informed the white citizens who assembled: 'I am here to address your former slaves, them.' Stiffly he waited till the latter were gathered, then signaled for another blast on the bugle. A sergeant shouted 'Silence!' and the fateful words were spoken:

  'Citizens of Jefferson! On the nineteenth of June instant, General Gordon Granger of the United States Army issued at his headquarters in Galveston General Orders Number Three All slaves are free Tins involves an absolute equality between former masters and their slaves The new connection between white and black is that of employer and hired workman.' (Here he turned specifically to the Negroes.) 'You freedmen are advised to stay at your present homes and work for wages You arc informed, and most strongly, that you will not be allowed to collect at military posts and you will not he supported in idleness You must find work to do, and it would be best if you continue to work for wages at your present jobs.'

  The captain stepped back, pleased with the impression he had made, then signaled his sergeant, who cried: 'Former slaves! You are free!'

  There was a rustle, more of confusion than of comment.

  'Slaves, you are no longer slaves,' the captain said. 'You are as free as I am or. . .' He looked about for some white person, spotted Cobb, and pointed at him: 'As free as this man.'

  An old slave in the front rank fell to his knees, raised his hands over his head, and shouted in a feeble voice, i lived to see it. Praise God A'mighty, I lived to see it.'

  When the reality of what had been announced struck home, there was no wild outcry, no jubilant dancing in the square, and white men were surprised that the former slaves took word of their freed
om with such composure. But there were scenes which epitomized that crucial day in Jefferson history. One black woman, obedient to impulses no one could later explain, grabbed her seven-year-old boy and shook him violently, shouting at him: 'You ain't no more slave. Now will you mind?' And she wept.

  Major Cobb had come to the meeting anticipating what might happen, and he moved among his former slaves, assuring them that what the stranger said was true: 'Yes, you're free,' but his attempt at conciliation failed when Big Matthew ran up to him, shook a fist in his face, and shouted: 'Don't work for you no more.' When a laundry woman asked Matthew: 'What I do wid your

  clothes?' he roared: 'Burn 'em.' And again he shook his fist at Cobb: 'Don't work for you no more. Don't work for your bitch no more.'

  Instinctively, Cobb raised his right arm, but a Union soldier prevented any further action.

  The meaning of true emancipation—not President Lincoln's false gesture of some years before—was brought home to Lammermoor the next afternoon when amidst the clamor about freedom, Trajan appeared at the mansion, a place he had rarely entered, knocked politely at the door, and asked to see the master. Standing respectfully, he said: 'Major Cobb, you got the plantation under control, I'se leavin'.'

  'What?' The statement was like the explosion of a bomb.

  'I wants a place of my own. I got no more taste for livin' in slave quarters here at Lammermoor.'

  'But you helped build this place. You're part of it.'

  'Always I builds for someone else. Now I wants to work for myself.'

  Cobb called for his wife, and when Petty Prue heard of the former slave's unexpected announcement, she echoed Sett's reaction: 'Haven't we always treated you decently?'

  Trajan would not be sidetracked by any discussion of past conditions. Standing very erect, as he had been taught to do when reporting to a master, he said: 'I come home from Mexico, two years ago, money I earned swimmin' the river.'

  When he saw incomprehension on the faces of the Cobbs, he produced the paper signed by Johnson Carver during those days of high adventure with the two boys. And there in the silent room, when he thought of those daring lads, so like his son, he hung his head and the terrible grief of this war and these tangled years overcame him. He could not present his case, and the Cobbs let him go, thinking that emancipation had unsettled him.

  Next day Major Cobb and his wife invited their former slave to meet with them, in the same room, and this time they asked him to sit down. 'Trajan, we suppose that with your money . . . And congratulations on having so much. I know many white families who would—'

  Petty Prue, suddenly the more masterful of the Cobbs, broke in: 'Don't spend your money on land. You've been so faithful and we appreciate you so profoundly . . .' She choked and seemed not so masterful after all.

  'What we propose,' her husband said, 'is to give you five acres of your own. That land against the oak trees.'

  Trajan rose: 'All these years 1 got 1 >n a nice strip of land,

  edge of Jefferson. Last night I bought it.'

  'A slave? Buying land 7 ' The words had slipped away from Petty Prue, who was immediately sorry she had said them.

  'I bought it. I paid dollars and I'm leavin' this mornin', and maid, Pansy, wants to go with me.'

  'But, Trajan,' Petty Prue cried in real confusion "You were so wonderful, helping me. Taking that cotton down to Mexico and coming back home.' She looked at him in near-despair: 'We thought you liked it here.'

  Trajan moved to the door, determined not to be swayed by any argument these good people might advance. With tall dignity he told them: 'You can say I was faithful, because I was. And von can say I come back when I could of run away, because 1 did And von can say I was respectful, because I liked the way you handled this plantation with the men gone, Miss Prue. I tried to be a good slave, but don't never say I liked it.' And he was gone.

  Not long after, Major Cobb and his new bride entered their carriage, old now and needing refurbishing, and rode in to Jefferson, where on the edge of town they found the small cottage for which their former slave Trajan had paid twenty-two dollars and fifty cents, including an acre of land. The spring flowers were fading, but the Cobbs could see where the summer beauties would soon be peeking out.

  'We've come to make you a proposition, Trajan.'

  'I been expectin' you.'

  'How so?' Petty Prue asked, accepting the chair her former maid Pansy offered. The others would stand, for there was only the one

  'Because you need me. You goin' to need me bad, to run your gin, your mills.'

  'You're right,' Cobb said. 'We do need y<

  'We miss you,' Petty Prue said, 'and we trust you.'

  'What I'd be willing to do,' Cobb said enthusiastically, 'is buy this house from you. Give you the land I spoke of, and you could—'

  'This is my house,' Trajan said. 'Pansy and I, we live here. You want us to work for you, we walk to work. But when work's over, we come back here.' He said this so forcefully that the Cobbs were stunned; they could not imagine that a black man would surrender such an obvious financial advantage in defense of a principle.

  There was silence, broken by a practical suggestion from the major: 'We'll give you a mule so that you can ride to the mill '

  i would like that,' Trajan said. Then he added a suggestion of his own: 'To run the mill right, we ought to have Big Matthew back.'

  Cobb noticed Trajan's use of we, as if he were once more in charge of things, but the suggestion that Big Matthew be forgiven for his intemperate behavior was too much. 'No,' Cobb said gravely. 'Matthew tried to strike me, and that I cannot forgive.'

  'Don't you think he got a lot to forgive?'

  Cobb studied this sensible question for some moments, then asked: 'Will he work?'

  'He ain't been workin' and he ain't been eatin'. Big Matthew, he ain't dumb.'

  When Cobb reluctantly agreed to hire the big man, Trajan brought forth a most unexpected request. 'Major Cobb, Miss Prue, I knowed you would be comin' and I knowed what you was goin' to propose this mornin'. And I knowed 1 would accept, because I loves Lammermoor. But I had to jump the gun a little.'

  'You borrowed money?'

  'No!' He broke into an easy laugh. 'Smart man like me don't throw money around. I still got all but what I paid for the land.'

  'What then?'

  'Union officers been houndin' us. In a nice way, but they say all us former slaves got to take last names. They come to me yesterday, very forceful. This is the one they give me'—he hesitated— 'at my suggestion, if you ain't mad?'

  He presented the Cobbs with a card bearing his new name: trajan cobb, and Petty Prue said: 'We welcome you to freedom.'

  . . . TASK FORCE

  The Washington Insider almost wrecked our two-day May meeting in which we were to discuss the effect on Texas history of Southern immigration from states like Georgia and Alabama. Three days prior to our session the magazine revealed in a long think-piece the secret deliberations of a committee that had been assigned the task of selecting a new director of the Smithsonian Institution. The names of the four finalists were disclosed not in alphabetical order but according to their position in the betting, and the committee was astonished to find my name given last but

  with the notation 'May be the dark horse. Apparent favorite of the board's intellectuals.'

  Before we could open our meeting in Dallas, a pulsating city whose vitality excited me, members of the press wanted to interview me, and when they were through, our own committee took over.

  it's a big job,' I said, but immediately I corrected my phrasing: 'Make that 'it would be a big job . . for whoever gets it."

  'What are your chances 7 ' Rusk asked, cutting as usual to the crucial question.

  'You saw the story. Last in line but still fighting '

  'Do you want it?'

  'Anyone like me would want it, Ransom. Best job of its kind in the nation. But my chances—'

  He cut me off, asked for a phone, and withi
n eight minutes had spoken to his Texas friends serving in Congress, telling them, not asking, to get on the ball and see that I got the appointment He put in a special call to Jim Wright, the representative from Fort Worth, majority whip in the House, asking him for special help.

  Much of our first day was wasted in aimless discussion about the possibility of my going to Washington, but the situation was placed in its proper perspective by the arrival in the late afternoon of a senior editor from the Insider, who asked to have cocktails with us and who divulged in the course of our chatting the actual situation: 'I hate to say this, Barlow, but I have reason to believe that the selection committee threw your name in the hopper only to avoid the charge of parochialism. Most of the leading candidates were from the Northern and California establishments and they wanted the news stories to carry at least one Southern or Western name, and you covered both Texas and Colorado. To provide a respectable balance.'

  'Wait a minute!' Rusk protested with that automatic defense of Texas which made men like him so abrasive. 'You don't use a Texan for window dressing. Damnit, we'll soon be the most powerful state in the Union—'

  'But the University of Texas! A national committee would never—'

  Now Quimper broke in to defend the school on whose board of regents he sat: 'Our university takes a back seat to no one.'

  in academic circles it does. That miserable show you people put on some years back, that regent Quimper going around firing everyone he didn't like.'

  That was my father,' Quimper exploded, 'and you're right. Some people condemned him as a meddler. Those who knew him

  considered him a genius. At any rate, Texas now has two first-class public institutions.'

  'Which two?' the visitor asked, and I was astonished by Quimper's answer: Texas and A&M' Often at our meetings he had joked about the latter school, denigrating it horribly, but now he was defending it; the difference was that when he joked, he was doing so to fellow Texans; when an outsider presumed to criticize, he became defensive.