There Is a River

by Charlotte Miller

  “I hear Janson Sanders is trying to buy land from you, a farm you bought a few years ago.” Buddy had had the man brought here, and, now that he was here, he saw no need to waste time.

  “Yes, sir. Used to belong to his daddy years back. He—”

  “You haven’t closed the deal with him yet?”

  “No, sir. We talked and came to an understanding. I got a tenant on it now, so we’ve got to wait for him to get his crop picked and sold, and then—”

  “Good.” Buddy had paid little attention to the man’s words beyond the confirmation that the land did not belong to Sanders yet—and it never would, he told himself as a smile came to his face. “I’ll buy it instead, and pay you cash for it right now.”

  “I can’t see how you can do that, Mr. Eason.” The old farmer turned his hat before him. “I’ve already shook hands with Janson on it.”

  “Goddamn your handshake!” Buddy shouted, taking a step toward Harper—how dare the man think his handshake with that half-breed was more important than an offer made by Buddy Eason. “I said cash money, up front. Your tenant can get out now. I’ll even buy what crop he has left in the fields. I want that land!”

  The farmer just stared at him, not speaking—more money, that was what he wanted, Buddy told himself. Well, all right. He would have the land, and he would go back later and teach this old man some respect for the Eason name when he had the time. It would be worth the extra money anyway just to see the look on Sanders’s face when Buddy burned the entire place to the ground and razed the trees and made certain the bastard would never get his hands on it again—a first step, and so many things more that he had planned for Janson Sanders and his family. When he was through with them—

  “I’ll pay you twice what he offered,” Buddy said. “Double.” The excitement was now apparent in his voice. The farmer’s eyes widened—twice the price, you bet he’s excited, Buddy thought. Only a matter of time now. “Now, you go on home and think about what you’re going to do with all that money. I’ll send my lawyers out to see you tomorrow with a check and with the papers for you to sign.”

  “Well, I—”

  “Go on. The lawyers will see you tomorrow—boys, take him back.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Eason,” the man who had been driving the car said, and the old farmer looked at him warily, the hat brim now crushed in his hands—at least the old bastard will be able to buy a new hat after tomorrow, Buddy thought.

  He watched from the window again as the farmer got into the back seat of the Chrysler, the old man’s eyes coming back to the house one last time before the car started down the drive—this was the first day, Buddy told himself. Before he was through, what was left of the Sanders family would beg for mercy.

  Before he was through, he would watch every one of them bleed.

  Janson was bent among cotton plants the next afternoon, the weight of a long pick sack dragging at his shoulder. His hip hurt like hell, but on this day even the pain could not touch him. He had sworn that he would never work another man’s fields again when he left Stubblefield’s, but that did not matter now. This was only temporary work to occupy his mind and his hands, and to give them the money they would need to live on. This would last only until his own land could be picked and was free for them to move onto.

  His own land—not yet, but soon. Just as soon as those rows of cotton plants, whiter and taller than these, he was certain, were picked. The current tenant would then be moving on to work in the orange groves of Florida. Janson had found a rented place for them to live and work he could do, and he counted himself lucky. There were so many men coming back from the military or from work in the war plants in the big cities, and they were sometimes returning to find there were few houses to be had, and, at times, even fewer jobs. Old Mr. Webber, who attended the Holiness church Janson had attended as a boy, had a three-room house empty on his place and needed help picking his cotton. Janson had happened by at just the right time.

  By the time he came home with the news, Elise had the family packed up and the mill house scrubbed down—it might belong to Buddy Eason now, but the new tenants would come upon it even cleaner than the day the Sanders had moved there. They moved out to Webber’s place that next day, including Stan, who had been promptly fired from the mill by Buddy Eason the afternoon of his grandfather’s funeral—so much for mill tradition and the old man’s word, Janson thought, for the loss of Stan’s arm in the card room should have guaranteed him a job in the mill for the remainder of his life.

  Janson and Stan had been going to the cotton fields on Webber’s place early each morning, and Stan picked a remarkable amount of cotton for a man with only one hand. Henry joined them in the evenings, as did Judith for a short time, though her sister had flatly refused for fear that someone she knew might see her; and Elise was sewing—they would make it until the land was free. Janson had made arrangements to start clearing new fields on his land in any time he might find free from Webber’s fields—the land might not be his yet, but he did not want to waste any time when there was so much work to be done. There was land to clear, fields to get ready, work to do on the house and barn. He would plant a bigger crop of cotton on the land than it had ever seen before, and raise vegetables, not for their use alone, for they could sell those as well. He had dreamed and planned for so long, and it was so close now that he could not waste a moment.

  He lifted his eyes and saw Elise coming across the field from the direction of the house. She looked so pretty, with the sun turning her hair copper and the wind whipping her skirt about her legs—nice legs, he thought, and smiled to himself.

  “Mr. Harper called and left a message with Mr. Webber. He wants us to stop by and see him tomorrow sometime after church,” she called, coming down a row of cotton to him.

  Mr. Harper, the man who owned the land—it had to be good news. Maybe the tenant’s crop would be picked sooner than they had expected. Maybe Harper knew when the deal could be closed. Janson grabbed Elise, ignoring the heavy cotton sack hanging by a strap across his chest and shoulder, ignoring the ache in his hip, and hugged her close. He kissed her and smiled down into her blue eyes. “I bet you they’re gonna have that crop picked pretty quick.”

  “You think so?” She was smiling, pretty, as she looked up at him.

  “It cain’t be anythin’ else,” he said. “I’ll go help him pick it myself if it’ll get him hurried up, an’ he won’t even have t’ pay me t’ do it.” She laughed and he hugged her again, then danced her a jig until they got tangled up in the pick sack and fell to the ground between the cotton rows. She looked at him, concern on her face, and he knew she was thinking about his hip, but he only laughed and kissed her again, lying there on the red earth with the cotton plants to either side of them—all their dreams were coming true, he told himself. No one could stop them now.

  The parlor of Inge Harper’s house was unbearably warm that next afternoon. Elise knew that it might be from the fire that burned in the hearth across the room, but she thought it was more from anger as she sat beside her husband there on the parlor sofa. She watched Janson’s profile—he looked as if he could do murder. His left hand was a tight fist on his knee, his jaw set, a hardness in his expression she had seen there only in matters concerning Buddy Eason.

  “Buddy Eason did what?” he asked in a quiet tone that sent a chill through her even before Mr. Harper could repeat what he had already told them.

  “He sent a couple of men for me yesterday, brought me up to his place. He offered me twice what we agreed on for the land.”

  A muscle worked in Janson’s jaw as he stared at the fireplace across the room. After a moment he brought his eyes back to Harper. “I don’t have any more’n we talked about, but maybe I can borrow—”

  “No, Janson.”

  No—the word made Elise feel as if her heart would break. The muscle worked again in Janson’s jaw. After so much wo
rk. After so many years. Starting again and again, dreaming all that time, and now—

  “I’ll tell you like I told Mr. Eason’s lawyers this morning,” Harper said, but Elise did not want to hear him. She just wished they were away from here. She just wished she did not have to see what she could see on Janson’s face even now. She just wished—

  But Mr. Harper was saying something altogether different, and Elise dragged her attention back to him.

  “That land is meant to be worked—I don’t know what Mr. Eason wants with it, but it ain’t to farm it. Besides, you and me had a understanding and we shook hands on it. I’m a man of my word, just like anybody in this county can tell you—that land’s yours, ’cause that’s what we agreed—” Elise felt such relief that she barely heard the remainder of the words. Something about having his lawyer go ahead and draw up the papers. The tenant would get his crop picked and then would move on—but none of that mattered.

  As soon as they left Mr. Harper’s house, Janson drove her in the old jalopy to the land and parked so they could look out over the fields of tall cotton waiting to be picked, to the white house where he had born and where his parents had died. His home. It had always been his home, even when he had been far away from it. And soon it would be theirs.

  “It’s gonna be ours, Elise,” was all he seemed to be able to say. “It’s really gonna be ours—”

  There was nothing she could want more in that moment than the look on his face.

  He had finally gotten what he had dreamed toward for so long.

  Always Janson Sanders. Anytime things had gone wrong in Buddy Eason’s life, it had always been due to Janson Sanders.

  Buddy paced furiously over the rug in the living room of his home. His lawyer, old Porter, had come by no more than an hour before—that old bastard out in the country would not sell the land to him at any price. Buddy had even had Porter call back, doubling the price again—no, the land belonged to Janson Sanders, or would, once the formalities could take place.

  Sanders—always Janson Sanders. For twenty-one years now he had done nothing but try to destroy Buddy’s life.

  There was a noise on the stairs, the sound of a child crying, the front door opening and then slamming shut. Cassandra had overheard his conversation with Porter, and she had laughed in his face that he had not been able to buy the land—he had slapped her hard just to shut her mouth.

  She would go crying home to her mother and dragging the twins with her, but Buddy did not care. Old Helene would listen to her complain and then send her back. That was what she had done every other time.

  Goddamn it!—Buddy jerked up the phone from the table nearby, yanked its cord from the wall, and slung it across the room to crash against the cold marble of the fireplace. Goddamn it!—he had sworn Sanders would not win! He had sworn it! Goddamn Sanders and his entire family. Goddamn—!

  He stood there for a long time, staring across the room to where the telephone now lay on its side before the fireplace, its receiver skewed out from it but attached still by its cord. If he had been able to stop the sale of the land, it would have hurt Sanders, he told himself, but if he lost after he had gotten it back—

  Buddy picked up the telephone and slowly wound the cord around one hand until it was taut and he could yank it free from the base—it came loose with a satisfying feeling of separation, allowing Buddy to sling the base away. He smiled at the dangling bit of wire hanging from his hand—separation hurt so much worse once you were attached, he told himself.

  Janson Sanders would still lose his land.

  And then Buddy would make certain he would lose his life.

  14

  Janson had at last come home. There were long hours of hard work during the first months they were on the land—work clearing fields, breaking soil, plowing, readying the earth to plant, putting the seed into the ground—long hours that left the body tired but the soul satisfied. The days began before light and ended often long after dark. They worsened the ache in his hip, but they were good days, days that ended in a satisfying supper, the quiet of the house in sleep, their soft bed, and time alone with Elise.

  Janson made a partial payment on an old tractor and a used truck, then traded out work for the balance owed. The trade created additional work, but the tractor and truck were beyond value on the place and Janson took great pride in them. He marveled to see fields broken up and laid ready in hours, when the same work would have taken days with a mule and plow.

  He was contented, at last having regained the land he had been born to, what he had dreamed of for so long—at last having given Elise what he had promised so many years before. But the feeling would not leave him that the struggle had only just begun. He feared that holding to the land could be more difficult than regaining it had been. He had lost it before, had struggled years to get it back—he would sooner die than lose it again.

  Working with Henry in the fields brought Janson to realize what his own father must have felt, why Henry Sanders had been willing to fight, even to die, to hold onto the land. The girls would never stay on the farm; Janson already knew that. They dreamed of other and, perhaps to them, bigger and better things. But as the late spring of 1946 came, and Janson stood at an outdoor ceremony and saw his son receive a high school diploma, he knew he had not dreamed for twenty years to have accomplished nothing. Janson had barely been able to read or write when he married Elise, and to him the land had been the only way he could see to have his pride. But so much else was open to Henry. No man would ever own Janson Sanders’s son. No man would ever work him into premature old age in a cotton mill or on a sharecropped farm. No man would ever determine who or what Henry Sanders would be—the high school diploma guaranteed him that. Henry, who was not quite eighteen, would not need the land to guarantee his pride. Yet Janson could tell it was in Henry’s blood, as much a part of him as it had ever been a part of his father. Janson had seen him come to life over the past months on the place, and he had known—Henry Sanders was a farmer, and none short of God could ever change that.

  When laying-by and the swelter of dog days came that first year on the land, the fields were lush with cotton—his fields, Janson kept reminding himself. A quiet peace settled over the place and Janson had time to work on the house or to tend the vegetable garden, to take Elise for a picnic, to go fishing with Henry and Stan, and, on occasion, to treat the family to the picture show.

  But the nagging worry that had been within Janson for months grew. Trouble was coming; he could feel it. Buddy Eason had tried everything to keep the land from Janson, had offered Mr. Harper twice what it was worth, and still Janson had won. But Buddy would not give up while Janson remained alive and held the land.

  There was no doubt within Janson of that.

  Still, he told himself daily, it’s over. We have the land. It can’t happen again.

  He only wished he could believe it.

  On a quiet Saturday afternoon, Henry had driven his sisters into Pine to leave them at the picture show before going to spend his own afternoon with Olivia Morgan. The old house was filled with the sound of Elise’s sewing machine, mounds of bridal white at her feet, the date for some young couple’s wedding fast approaching. When Janson walked off the porch, Stan had been seated in its shade, a book in his hands, his mind so wrapped up in the story that he barely noticed when Janson crossed the yard toward the fields.

  Janson walked the fields, impatient for the fat green bolls to open and the wispy white squares of cotton to appear. It seemed as if the weeks of lessened work would wear on forever. He had been in the vegetable garden all morning, had done some chores around the house, until there seemed nothing left for him to do. He did not like being idle and he had never liked waiting.

  The late summer sun was hot on his face. There was the sound of birds, and the stir of a slight breeze down the rows of cotton plants, even of the sewing machine over the distance f
rom the house. It was only a matter of time. The bolls would burst open and the fields would turn white. The work would resume. Then money would be coming to them from their effort, from their land, from the crop that belonged to them alone. They would have money to see them through the winter, money to reduce the mortgage, money that would guarantee the land would be theirs again the next year and the year after. There might even be enough to put aside for the expanded dream he had nowadays, of hoping, in the coming years, to buy the next farm over. There would be more fields to plant then, and a house to tenant out, or perhaps that house would be for Henry and Olivia, if they married, as Janson suspected would happen before long. He could be a grandfather in a few years. He was only thirty-nine, and Elise was only thirty-five, but he already thought how it would be when they had grandsons and granddaughters, could not help but dream about the world they would have, and all he would want for them. Perhaps one of his grandsons would also want the land, would also be quieted and contented by walking the fields.

  Janson’s reverie was interrupted by the sound of a car coming up the road, slowing as it came alongside the field where he stood among the rows. He looked in that direction, thinking it might be a neighboring farmer, or maybe Henry and the girls returning early from town—but his eyes came to rest on a large, dark car as it slowed, coming almost to a standstill as the window lowered. Janson stared at the vehicle, finding Buddy Eason staring back.

  Their eyes met over the distance, and Janson knew the waiting was over. He knew that if he intended to keep the land for himself and for his son and for grandsons he hoped to someday know, he would have to fight harder than ever. He understood clearly the hold this place had held on his father and now on him—it was something inside that had been bred from generations of men who had lived out their lives working the fields of other men while knowing that a man had a right to something that was his own. A man had a right to his dreams, and to pride.