“Lord, you know what’s happening, but more important, you know what’s going to happen. Please protect us and give us courage to do what needs to be done.”
He paused for a moment, aware of what he should say next, but resisting for a moment before proceeding.
“Father, I also offer prayers for the white men who want to do us harm. Please help them see the mistakes they’re about to make. Let Your will be done, Lord. Not my will, not their will, but Your will. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
Harvester felt the peacefulness that always came with prayer. Returning his attention to the road, he remembered something else.
“And Father, if it’s in your plans, please let one of the Dobson or Cornish girls be right for me. It’s kind of lonely out here sometimes, and I’m not getting any younger.”
###
Six miles from the Grebey Island Bridge, Harvester spotted a familiar vehicle on the side of the road, its left front tire flattened. He drove another mile before he saw the car’s owner, sweating profusely as he struggled eastward on the hot macadam.
Keep on going, he thought. This man wants to hurt you. He is not your friend.
In a week, he and those other crackers will be standing guard at the bridge, intending to harm your people.
Don’t trust him.
Don’t help him.
But just as clear, his father’s calm and steady voice.
Love your enemies. Do good to them which hate you.
Harvester downshifted as pulled alongside Archie Mueller.
“Mr. Mueller, do you need a ride, sir?”
Recognition registered on the man’s ruddy face, then something between shock and fear. Of course he needed help, but would have preferred it come from anyone else.
“Nah, boy, I’ll be fine.”
Let him walk if he’s too good to take your ride.
“Really sir, you should get in. I’m going your way and it’s too hot to be walking.”
Mueller scanned the road in both directions, hopeful someone else would come along. Not much chance of that. Cars were rare this far out in the country.
“Well,” Mueller flashed a smile, or maybe a grimace. “Yeah, I think I do... uh... need a ride, uh... what’s your name again, boy?”
Harvester reached across and pushed open the door. “Harvester, sir. Harvester Stanley.”
The fifteen-minute ride back to the island was awkward. Mueller asked about the Stanley’s melon crop. Harvester asked how Mueller’s mule had been doing since taking ill last fall, feigning remorse when hearing of its demise. Finally, to the relief of both, they crossed the rickety bridge to the island.
“Let me out at Mauck’s store, boy, uh... Harvester,” Mueller said uncertainly. “That tire’s been ready to blow for a month. Silas ordered me a new one. I’ll pick it up and head home.”
“Yessir.” Harvester would be happy to get rid of him. When he pulled to a stop in front of the store, Mueller opened the door, then turned and looked back. Remembering Daddy’s encounter with the Adair City Marshal, Harvester returned his gaze. Mueller spoke first.
“Thank you... Harvester.”
Harvester watched Mueller approach the general store.
Head home. You’ve done enough.
Love your enemies...
“Mr. Mueller?
“Get your tire, sir. We’ll go back and put it on.”
SIX
The path through the woods was overgrown and hard to navigate, but Levi didn’t care.
“C’mon boy, keep up. This ain’t no place for sissies.”
He glanced over his shoulder. The boy was thirty paces back and breathing hard.
“Keep an eye out for snakes,” Levi sniggered. “They’ll jump up and grab a runt like you.”
Earl’s face went white, but the ploy worked. He moved quicker, trying to catch up, too stupid to know that snakes don’t move around much on hot days. If they did, Levi wouldn’t be out there either.
Levi had told Cora time and again not to take it so easy on the boy, but she wouldn’t listen. He would be the puniest kid at Adair School when he started first grade in a few weeks. Scrawny and pale, catching pretty much anything that went around. Probably still wet the bed, Levi thought, knowing that even if he did, Cora would take care of it without saying anything.
There were times, lots of them, when he wished he was rid of both of them. Cora was big-boned and ugly, like the rest of the Tasbys. He’d married her eight years earlier, three weeks after Lena died. Too soon, folks said, but Levi knew all along that Lena didn’t have much time left, the way the cancer was eating her insides. He’d left the gun loaded and within reach, just in case she didn’t want to suffer anymore. She decided she didn’t and that was that. It was just as well. He had already grown tired of her.
If he had it to do over again, he wouldn’t have married Cora. She was always a plain woman, and was getting broader and plainer every year. There’d been prettier women out there looking for husbands, war widows with farms and money. He could’ve had his choice if he wasn’t in such a rush. But he had rushed, and here he was, waking up every morning next to a big ugly woman who’d given him a sickly, dull-witted kid.
They made their way through the woods and down the hill to the river. Bass were biting around the brush, and Levi thought bass sounded real good for supper. As always, he’d brought his rifle just in case he spotted one of the island’s few remaining deer. There weren’t many left anywhere in Missouri, and hunting them had been outlawed several years before. Still, nothing tasted better than fresh venison. Levi leaned the rifle against a tree, baited his hook, and tossed it in. Sitting a few feet away, the boy did the same, silently watching his line float with the current.
The south end of Grebey Island had been in Levi’s family since the 1840’s. As a boy, he loved listening to Grandfather Manning’s stories about chasing off the island’s few remaining Indians, and about how Levi’s Great-Great Grandfather, the well-to-do owner of a St. Louis haberdashery, bought eight hundred and fifty acres, sight unseen, with plans to move his family to the island and take up the life of a gentleman farmer, only to find out that his purchase, the island’s entire south end, was overrun with ticks and snakes. Great-Great Grandfather Manning ran through most of his life savings clearing the land and building a house that burned to the ground twice in five years.
“There’s two types of farmers,” he remembered Grandfather Manning laughing. “Them that’s poor and them that’s gonna be.” Five generations of Mannings proved that statement to be true. Two floods, the first a year after the Mannings settled on the island, and the second in 1871 hadn’t helped. The near miss back in ’27 ran off most of the few remaining farmers. Levi would have left too if he could. He’d tried once, at the back end of the Great War. He lied about his age, saying he was seventeen so he could join the Army and see the world. While nobody checked his birth certificate, they did check his eyesight. “Blind as a bat and scrawny as a stick,” the Army doctor said. He was home in a week.
Today, though he owned almost a third of the island, Levi farmed a small fraction of it. The rest had become overrun with prairie grass and tree saplings. Occasionally he’d rotate his few skinny cows to the overgrown areas, but more often he did just enough to keep his belly full. He had thought about selling the land, but then the Depression hit and nobody was buying.
Except the coons.
Thinking about them made his stomach roil. What would Grandfather Manning have said? ‘Animals,’ he used to call ‘em. “One step above a horse. Good for nothing except tending a white man’s fields.” Levi saw the loads of melons that uppity nigra boy took off the island. Archie had heard they were building a dock so barges could be loaded with produce for trips up and down river. They thought they were so much better than everybody else. Trading at Mauck’s Store, getting their coon friends to buy white land. It made Levi sick to think about it.
But all that was about to stop. He would see to that. People far
and wide would again know and respect the Manning name. Levi Manning, the man that drove the nigras out of Saxon County. There would be people visiting and writing letters, asking how he did it and if he would help them with their nigra problems. Some would probably pay good money for the services of a man as smart and brave as Levi Manning. Maybe he’d sell this place and live like a gentleman. No more sweating his way through long days in the fields. He would wear good suits, even better than Finley Hatcher at the Building and Loan. He’d get himself a big house, probably in St. Louis. And a pretty new wife; one who bore kids that wasn’t scared of their own shadow.
He was pulled from his reverie by the sight of the boy removing a catfish from his line and dropping it into a bucket.
“Boy we ain’t eating no catfish. It’s bass we’re here for. Throw that back.”
The boy looked at him stupidly, before picking up the basket and preparing to dump it back into the river. Levi felt his stomach growl.
“Caught anything else?”
The boy shook his head.
“Well keep it then. Catfish be better than nothing.” The boy put the bucket down and went back to fishing.
“Boy, you ever run into them coons living up north?”
Earl looked at him blankly, seeming to not understand the question. Cora’s bloodline showing through again.
“Coons... nigras. You ever see any of ‘em?”
“Raccoons?”
“Oh, for the love of...” Levi shook his head in amazement. “You’d probably get lost if you got that far from home anyway.”
An hour later, the catfish their only catch of the afternoon, they retraced their path through the woods. Levi was eyeing the clearing ahead when he realized he wasn’t hearing footsteps behind him. He turned and saw the boy, forty yards back, gazing into a deeper area of the woods. Exasperated, Levi moved back down the path.
“Boy, what are you—” The boy put his finger to his lips, an attempt to silence his father that angered Levi.
“You don’t tell me to—” That’s when he saw it. A magnificent buck with a full rack, not more than fifty feet off the trail. The buck also spotted him. Their eyes locked for a second before it darted away. Levi didn’t have time to take aim.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was a deer?” he said hotly. The boy didn’t respond, his gaze still on the spot the majestic creature had vacated.
“We coulda had us some venison if you wasn’t so dumb!”
The boy’s head jerked around, as if aware for the first time that his father was standing beside him.
“Wasn’t me that spooked him.”
###
Cora was at the stove when Levi noisily entered the house.
“Supper’s almost ready. I went on and cooked some pork, thinking you wasn’t gonna—” Cora’s voice trailed off when their eyes met.
“Where’s Earl?”
“Outside, where he belongs. We’d be eating venison if he wasn’t so—”
“What’d you do to him?” Her voice rose as she looked past him toward the screen door and the yard beyond.
“I gave him what he deserves,” he replied angrily. “And if you don’t stop treating him like a prissy little girl, you’ll get some of the same.” She didn’t stay long enough to hear the rest. Levi put the gun in a corner and moved into the living room, sitting heavily on the worn sofa. Five minutes passed before he heard the screen door open and smack shut. The sight of Cora cradling the boy against her chest made him sick.
“There you go, carrying him around like a little baby. You need your mama, little baby?” The boy turned away, burrowing into his mother. She had removed his shirt, and the marks across his back were deeper than Levi thought they would be.
Maybe the gun stock wasn’t such a good idea.
He’d go back to a switch next time.
SEVEN
The setting sun was in their eyes, making it impossible to see and snuffing out any lingering enthusiasm.
“They ain’t gonna be showing up this late.” The farmer’s voice was strained. “Spooks know better than to travel after nightfall.”
Levi picked up a jar from the bed of the wagon and took a swig of clear liquid. He’d been itching for confrontation since they’d set up the roadblock at sunrise the day before. He told the others he felt obligated as Grand Knight to serve on each shift. Truth was, he badly wanted to be there for the moment of truth. He’d dreamed about it. Colored families showing up with all their possessions, begging to cross the bridge. In the dream, he’d pulled out Grandfather Manning’s Colt pocket pistol and shot it just over the head of the coon in charge, scaring the whole bunch of ‘em back to wherever they came from.
He hadn’t gotten the chance. The spooks never showed up and the Colt stayed in his pocket. Over the past two days, his mood had regressed from excited to bored. Now he was mad. And drunk.
“I’m heading home,” a fellow Knight said, lifting his heavy frame from the wagon. “Mary’s got ham and beans cooking.”
“Me too,” another said. “Nothing happening here tonight.”
A shopkeeper heading for his truck nodded at Levi. “We’ll regroup and try again,” he said. “Don’t let it get you down, Levi.”
Levi took another swig from the jar as he watched them depart. He considered calling them out for their lack of dedication, but what good would it do?
Besides, he might get to be the hero all by himself.
###
Could there be too much of a good thing?
Harvester’s prayers that their new neighbors might have a daughter close to his age had been answered.
It turned out they had two. Three actually, if you counted Thomasena Dobson. She was several years older, but something wasn’t right with Thomasena. Mama said she’d been born that way, said that happened sometimes. Her left arm didn’t work very well and she spoke like a five-year-old.
That left Barbara Cornish and Charlene Dobson. Barbara was sixteen and acted younger. Charlene was fourteen and acted older. Barbara was tall and light-skinned. Charlene was shorter, darker, and a little chubby. Harvester favored Charlene. She was more outgoing, her laughter echoed across the fields.
He wished he could spend more of the afternoon behind the house with Barbara, Charlene, and the others. It was crazy back there; all those kids darting about while the women rekindled old friendships. Harvester still had enough kid in him to want to be part of it, but that wasn’t to be.
He was a man now.
Like two weeks earlier, the men were gathered on the front porch, rocking and fanning in the dwindling daylight. There were six now, counting Harvester, Mr. Dobson’s son Granville, and Mr. Cornish’s son Depriest. Both were married men in their early twenties. Granville had two children; Depriest and his pretty wife, Naomi had a tiny baby girl.
Harvester continued to serve as their eyes and ears, making covert trips across the island to a spot where he could observe the white men serving sentry duty on the bridge. He watched their morale sink with each passing hour. Men would report for their shifts full of enthusiasm, only to leave disappointed. No one thought to visit the north end of the island to see if the new families might have arrived early.
Which made the scene playing out behind the house almost comical.
Each of the men sitting on the porch had, at one point or another over the last few hours, excused himself to venture to the back yard.
“Gotta tell the wife something.”
“Checking on the kids.”
“Making sure my littlest one ain’t causing trouble.”
But Harvester knew that wasn’t the real reason. Shoot, they all knew.
They wanted to get an eyeful of all those kids.
Eating, running, and playing.
With the little white boy.
His arrival was barely noticed. He wasn’t there, then he was. He’d fallen into their games of hide-and-seek like he’d been around forever. Unlike many white folks, he didn’t mind touching or being to
uched by the Negro kids. He’d eaten a slice of mince pie and downed it with a glass of lemonade the women poured for him. There was an innocence about him that belied the tough existence he faced at home.
Then, as the last remnants of daylight disappeared to the west, the men watched the little white boy head toward the dirt road, setting off for his home across the island.
“You say he belongs to the crazy one?”
“Yeah, the leader of their group.”
“Think he knows his boy’s over here? Maybe he’s keeping an eye on us.”
Harvester’s daddy shook his head. “The last thing Manning would do is let his boy play with ours.”
“But there he is.” Mr. Cornish’s quiet observation brought the men to laughter like they’d not experienced in days.
###
At the crossroads in front of Mauck’s Store, Levi made a last minute change in direction, turning left and heading north. He had stuck around for an hour after the others left, just in case. It was dark now, and the combination of the bootleg hooch and a burnt-out headlamp on the Model T made it hard to see the road. He relied on memory more than visibility. It had been months since he’d taken the north road any further than Archie Mueller’s place, but he had to know. He had no idea what he’d do if he found they’d snuck by him and the Knights, but emboldened by liquid courage, he knew he’d do something.
The north road was rutted and washed out in places. The county graded the south road, but had stopped providing service past Archie’s place after Stanley and his brood moved in. Grebey Island was a strip of land a mile and a half wide and three miles from north to south. Not very large, but still it was rare for Levi to venture so far north.
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