by Jane Gill
“Honey, you remember little Luella, don’t you?
“Yes’m.” He nodded. Lu stepped around the coffee table.
She could see in Jerome that his father must have been a handsome man. His age was evident in his face, but his mannerisms were still those she had known as a child. She gently placed her hands on his shoulders and purposely looked him in the eye. “Oh, it’s so good to see you,” she said. “I have missed you so much!” She was careful to hug him only lightly.
He accepted her embrace, and mumbled a quiet, “I miss you, too, little Miss Luella,” over her shoulder.
She blinked back the moisture in her eyes as she turned toward Susan. “Jerome, this is my daughter, Susan.” Susan started to put her hand out to shake his, but when Jerome averted his gaze to the floor, she quickly rested her arm at her side. “Hello, Jerome, I’m glad to meet you.” She smiled and moved close to her mother.
“Yes’m, glad to meet you, too,” he said without raising his eyes.
“Jerome has brought us our lunch! Lookie here!” Miss Pearl proudly held out the tomatoes. “These here are from Jerome’s garden just this mornin’! I’m gonna fix us some tomato sandwiches for lunch.”
Susan squatted down to pet the dog, who eagerly licked her hand. He tried hard to sit, but his excitement kept forcing him to his feet.
“Thank you for the tomatoes, Jerome. Lunch is going to be special,” Luella said. “When did you get the dog?”
“Aw, he’s just a little old thaing. Name’s Porkie,” Jerome responded. “When the big storms come through, Mr. Ralph, down at the market, he give Porkie to me.”
“Oh, was his name already Porkie, or did you name him?” she asked.
Jerome responded thoughtfully. “I give him that name. He was just a little bitty pup then. He was the runt. That’s what Mr. Ralph say, and didn’t nobody want him. Lotsa folks don’t never want the runt,” Jerome explained. “But Mr. Ralph say I can have him for my own, so I got him.”
“Jerome named him Porkie Pig.” Miss Pearl chuckled. “Because when he first brought him home, ‘bout the only sound he ever made was like a little ol’ pig.”
“I call him Porkie Pig because he sound just like a pig,” Jerome reiterated. “Me and him, we goes everywhere together. He’s a good boy. But he ain’t no runt no more!”
“No, he certainly isn’t.” Lu squatted down. Porkie, on his back, permitted her to rub his very round belly. “It looks like you feed him real good, Jerome.”
“Yes’m, I takes good care of him,” he assured her. “Momma, I got tuh go now. They be waitin’ on me.” His voice held a hint of anxiety.
“I know, son. Here’s your lunch,” she said as she retrieved a small plastic lunch cooler from the kitchen. “You and Porkie go on now, and I’ll see you at supper time.”
He gave his mother a quick peck on the cheek and turned toward the door. Porkie was immediately at his heels.
“Now say good-bye to Miss Luella and Susan, honey,” Miss Pearl reminded him.
He looked toward Susan first. “Good-bye, Miss,” he said, his eyes downcast. Then he turned to Luella with obvious affection. “It was shore nice seein’ you agin’, little Miss,” he said, opening the door. Porkie clamored out ahead of him.
“It was good to see you too, Jerome,” Lu called after him.
Her eyes were misty. “He hasn’t changed a bit!”
“No, Jerome, he don’t ever change. He’s a good boy. I don’t know what I’d done all these years without him. If he’d been different, he woulda’ probably run off and left his old momma by now!” Miss Pearl said happily, affirming her awareness of his disabilities.
“Ya’ll gonna stay awhile and visit some—aren’t you?” she asked eagerly.
“Yes, I planned on visiting! Susan can stay a little bit, but she wants to run off to do a little sight-seeing, if that’s okay.”
“That’s just fine! We’ll fix a nice lunch, too!” She turned to Susan. “What you gonna sight-see around here, honey?”
“I’m going to drive over to Barberville, if I can find it,” Susan replied. “We, uh, I heard there was a Pioneer Settlement over there, and Mom suggested that I go over there while you two visit.”
“Yes, um, mmm,” Miss Pearl responded thoughtfully, motioning them to take a seat in her living room. “I heard they built a place over there awhile back. You won’t have no trouble finding it. They ain’t too much else around here to see!” She nodded agreeably. “But why you want to go way out there?”
“Susan’s very interested in history, Miss Pearl,” Lu spoke up. “She read about turpentine camps, and Dwight was telling us last night that the only genuine turpentine still in Florida that’s open to the public is over there. She wants to see it, that’s all.”
“I’m just always full of questions when it comes to history, I guess,” Susan interjected.
“Oh, I see. Well, honey, if you want to know about history,” Miss Pearl said, carefully lowering herself into a blue swivel rocker, “you gotta talk to a lot of us old folks. We’re the ones that know about history, darlin’,” she offered.
Susan spoke rapidly. “I can stay for a while. I’d love for you tell me about what it was like growing up here. I mean, if you want to, of course.”
Miss Pearl’s eyes grew pensive. She looked at Lu, and then down at her hands, gently working a thin gold wedding band around her finger. She inhaled deeply. “Well, we don’t always get to pick the time, I guess,” she said, almost as if she were talking to herself. Lu watched carefully as Miss Pearl raised her eyes toward Susan, who had taken a seat on the sofa. She followed Susan’s lead and sat beside her. “I knew when I met you at the service you was a smart girl. You so much like your momma. She always had to know about everything.” She looked fondly at Lu. “Remember, Luella? You were always askin’ why this and why not that! Used to drive your poor old Grammy Mayetta crazy, you had so many questions. Um, mmm. And I seen that in you right off, Susan. You hungry to know all the answers they is to know.”
Lu saw Susan look quickly at her, and she waggled her head slightly, indicating she did not know what Miss Pearl was alluding to.
Miss Pearl heaved a deep sigh and continued, “I done worried on it and worried on it. See, I ain’t getting’ no younger,” she announced. “And I been lookin’ for your momma to come and visit for a long time so’s I could tell her some things.”
She rocked slowly and began. “Preacher Parker and I talked about this awhile back and he told me that the time for tellin’ the truth had come.”
Lu looked quickly at Susan with concern.
“He said the Lord chooses the time for these things. So I guess now’s the time. Um, mmm,” she nodded to herself.
Lu noticed that Miss Pearl suddenly looked old.
She looked directly at Susan. “You goin’ on over to Barberville to see a turpentine still?” Miss Pearl asked. “Mmm, well, I was raised in a turp’tine camp myself. I can tell you about turpentine,” she said with conviction. “Turpentine used to be a big business in the south, ‘specially after the War Between the States when so many folks didn’t have no way to make a livin’. See, all these pine trees you see down here, they full of pitch, I guess like maple syrup is up north. Lotsa things get made out of the pitch, not just turpentine, but glue, varnish, even medicines.
“So anyway, the big companies, what own all the land, they built these camps and held the jobs out. The pay wasn’t all that good, but they gave you a place to live and work, and back in those days, that was a lot. Even in the Great Depression, why folks in the camps had work and food while other folks was goin’ hungry.” She smiled, showing her authority on the subject.
“Now, they’re a lot of jobs in a camp. My daddy was what they call a woodsrider up in, ah, let me think now, it was up in Treutlen County, Georgia. The woodsrider was a real good job at a camp. He was like the foreman, keeping everybody working all through the woods, in the ‘gum patch’, that’s what they called it. The bossman
trust him, so he got to ride around on a horse and see that nobody was slackin’ off.”
Lu and Susan nodded their heads. Miss Pearl leaned forward, eager to share her knowledge. “So it was a big business with lots a jobs for everybody. The strong young mens, why they had long sharp knives, and they make marks in the trees, in the bark, like in a ‘v’, ‘cat’s face’ is what they called it. They need to be strong to slash those big cuts to get the sap to run,” she explained. “That was called ‘bleedin’ the tree. They call the sap ‘rosin’. Then, they hang a ‘herdy’ cup at the bottom of the ‘v’ to collect the sap. A herdy cup looked like a clay flowerpot with a hole in the side instead of in the bottom, you know, for the nail to go through to hold it to the tree.”
Lu interrupted her, “Miss Pearl, was that like the pot I found in the woods once and brought you as a flower pot?” Lu remembered her excitement when she found it. She was certain Miss Pearl would love it for her flowers, but Miss Pearl had seemed shocked when Lu handed it to her. She dropped it on the ground where it broke into pieces.
“Yes,” Miss Pearl nodded. “What you brought me that day was a herdy cup, not a flower pot. But you had no way of knowin’ that then.” She moved along with her explanation of the different jobs on the camp. “Now, there’s other jobs on a camp too. The woods jobs is like gawn out and getting the rosin outa those cups and puttin’ it in the barrels that was on the wagons. That’s called dippin’, and it’s mostly done by the little boys. Then, why the barrels is hauled back to the still where it would get cooked down into turpentine.” She pursed her lips. “Yas, my daddy had a good job up there in Georgia, and we was raised with plenty of food, and there was always lots a little kids to play with. Them folks what run that camp was nice, real nice. They took care of everybody what worked for them. We had a school, a church, and a commissary and doctorin’—everything.
“Now, when I was just about seventeen, I met Samuel. Oh, my, my, he was a handsome man.” A bashful grin flitted across her lips. “Luella, I wished you coulda knowed him, mmm hmm. Well, he put the swoon on me and that was that!”
Lu noticed that Miss Pearl’s eyes were still those of the young girl she’d been. That made her happy, but she was anxious to hear the rest of the story. No doubt it was the story Dwight had mentioned the night before.
“Next thaing we knows, Samuel done heard about better money down south in another camp. So he quit that camp where my momma and daddy was, and we come on down here. Now, you wouldn’t know this today, honey, but I was just a little ol’ bitty thing back then. Not like now!” She looked down at her round figure, her hands on her knees, and chuckled to herself.
“Well, it wasn’t long and I was gonna have the baby. Oh, my Samuel, he was so proud! He wouldn’t hardly let me do nothing. He treat me so fine. Sometimes, I didn’t feel so good, you know, so Samuel, he sing to that baby and me till he make me laugh. Lawdie, what a man! He could sure sing, too.” She looked conspiratorial. “He used to sing sometimes way back in the jook, you know?” Lu saw her look at Susan.”You don’t know about the jook, do you?” she asked.
“No,” Susan said.
“Well, the jook joints was usually hidden way out in the woods. On Saturday nights, why we’d all go out there for a good time. See, that’s where you got the ‘jukebox’, from those jook joints.” She clearly enjoyed instructing Susan. “Some of the mens would bring in some moonshine and they’d start to play their music and ever’body would sing and dance. It could be a fine time, yes, just a fine time.” She brought herself back to the present, “You see Jerome? He look so much like his daddy. Uh, huh” She hesitated, her eyes refoucsing once again on her memories.
“So, we was livin’ on the camp. Samuel started out as a chipper—bleedin’ the trees, ‘course. He was tall and strong. Oh, my goodness, he was strong. He had 2,000 trees to hisself he had to work.” Her eyes darkened. “But them folks what run this camp, they wasn’t like the folks my daddy worked for up in Georgia. These folks was hard. Well, maybe the folks that own the place wasn’t, but the bossman, he was a hard man. Mean, he was—mean as a poked snake.” She shook her head, a look of distaste on her face.
“The pay was good, real good. And the thing was, if you was a turpentiner, first off you had to live in the camp. But they give you your quarters, and so we lived there, in a little tiny house.” She again directed her attention to Susan. “It was out in the piney woods, not too far from here. Course, it’s all gone now, but it was all there back then. And it came on to Christmastime. I made some glue from flour and water, and we put colored pictures up on the walls, over the newspaper, you know, to celebrate. We had the two rooms and a front porch. The rooms was little, maybe ten feet, one was the front room where we ate and all, the one behind that was where we slept. ‘Course, we had a little tiny room on the back too, that was where the stove was for heatin’ and cookin’. That room was real little bitty though. I mean it was like a kitchen—‘cept there wasn’t no place where you could set. Anyhow, Samuel kept sayin’ how things would get better, and I just knew they would, too! Now, I was such a young thing back then, I just knew in my heart that if Samuel done good, then he would be a woodsrider like my daddy real soon.”
“Of course,” Lu agreed.
Miss Pearl grew quiet and a deep sorrow came over her. She worried the wedding band around her finger. “So,” Miss Pearl sighed at last. “It come on spring and here I had this little baby growin’ inside and the world was a fine place. But then, see, we got lots and lots of rain. It rain so much I think old Noah gonna show up any day! We didn’t pay no never mind to the boss, you know? But the rain kept on a-comin’ and kept on a-comin’, and Samuel and me was holed up in that little house, just watchin the rain, day after day. So was everybody else, too. But the boss, it was a-makin’ him mad. He say that us niggers was just layin’ around costin’ him money. ‘Course, it was a-costin’ us money, too!” she pointed out.
After another long pause, Miss Pearl folded her hands in her lap, her sadness almost palpable. “That’s the onlyist thing I regret. All these years, I regret it so bad.” She shook her head, her lips tight. “You know, I had some schoolin’, but Samuel, he didn’t have none. And I was just so full of myself. I was so proud of my schoolin’ that I just had to show off, and I was figgerin’ out the scrip. That’s how Samuel got paid, with the scrip, you know? It was like money but it wasn’t real money, it was company money. Well, it seem like every time we go to the commissary we didn’t get the right change back. I mean, in scrip, you know? I shoulda never said nothin’, but I made how I kept thinkin’ we was bein’ cheated! And I knowed they was cheatin’ us. Well, what with the rain and all, we owed the commissary money purty quick, because you got to eat, even if you ain’t workin, you know?”
She looked at Lu to explain. “And that would mean that Samuel’s pay be less, see? My Samuel was a good man, but he was quick to git mad, and I knowed it. I knowed it, like the young girl I was, I knowed it, and so I let him get mad. I kept on and kept on until he got real mad. And he finally stormed on outta’ the house and went on down to that commissary in the rain, and he say he gonna’ straighten it out. And I was glad to see him go. Can you believe that? I was glad. Oh, my, my.” She lowered her head again and stared at her hands as she wrung them in her lap.
“Oh, Lawd, why ever did I do such a thing, I don’t know.” Miss Pearl’s drawl increased as she told more of her story. “I was glad he went on down there to the store. Glad, like the foolish girl I was! Well, with the rain, I guess the bossman was down there settin’ on the porch. What wif’ nothin’ to do, you know? And my Samuel, he went on in there and started fussin’ with the man what run the commissary about the scrip. So he musta’ said somthin’ and the man, he was white, too, he done told Samuel to get on out the place and go back to his ‘nigger girl’ and tell her she didn’t know who she was messin’ wit! So one thing and another, you know how mens is? And purty soon, why Samuel was back and he was yellin’ and hollerin’ a
bout how we was gonna pack up and ‘gwan back up to Georgia.
“I was throwin’ all our stuff together in the bed sheet and he was just goin’ on and on, he was so mad! I was a hurryin’ all I could, with the big belly and it was gettin’ on dark-time. I was wonderin’ how we was gonna get out in the mud and the rain and the dark, when the bossman showed up. He called Samuel out the house. ‘You get yore lazy black ass out here, nigger,’ he hollers. I can still hear him, the meanness in him!”
She looked up, panic in her eyes. “I was so scared. I knew I had gone and done made all that trouble, and I was so scared. Samuel, he opened the door, and there was the bossman and some of his friends. He cracked his whip, and he say he gonna teach Samuel a lesson. And he holler for everybody else to come out and watch.
“Oh, my heart was breakin’. I had never seen such goin’s on—never!”
Lu put her hand out. She wanted to tell Miss Pearl that she didn’t have to go on, but Miss Pearl waved it away.
“Samuel, he say to me, ‘You stay in this house and don’t you come out—understand me girl? Don’t you come out no matter what!’ So I stayed in the house, I was so scared I just set down on the bed and cry and pray to Jesus that I was so sorry for what I done and even if He couldn’t forgive me for bein’ so prideful, ifn’ he’d just take care of my Samuel.”
Lu and Susan sat on the sofa, afraid to move.
Miss Pearl continued to gaze afar off, not meeting their eyes. “I could hear all the folks what come out, like the boss say to. They came out in that awful rain, with thunder rumblin’ in the sky. I could hear them, but they was scared, too. And the boss, he was hollerin’ and carryin’ on somthin’ awful. And then I could hear the whip. I could hear what made a whistle sound and then like a crack, just a pop you know? And I knew he was whippin’ my Samuel for something I done. I got off the bed and pulled open the door, and there was Samuel layin’ on the ground in all that mud. His shirt and pants was all bloody and ripped. And that big bossman, he was standin’ there grinnin’ with that whip in his hand.”