This was the beginning of Stamford Crow Blueberry, the man who went on with his wife to found the Richmond Home for Colored Orphans. In 1909 the colored people in Richmond unofficially renamed a very long street for him and his wife, and year after year for decades those people petitioned the white people who ran the government of Richmond to make the name official. In 1987, after a renewed drive for renaming led by one of Delphie’s great-granddaughters, the city of Richmond relented, and it put up new signs all along the way to prove that it was official.
Stamford walked back to the bucket of blueberries and knelt and immediately began to feel that maybe the bucket didn’t have enough. But the children had been waiting a long time and he didn’t want to disappoint them. He shook the bucket, thinking that might make it look fuller. It helped, but not by much. Maybe the boy might be fooled that it was a full bucket, but the girl knew things and she would know he had failed to bring a full bucket. His shoulders sagged, and the rain continued. He saw one blueberry rolling down a little hill in the bucket and he caught it. He held the berry between his fingers, began to squeeze it. It bled a little juice. The blueberry was now no good for any child and he regretted having squeezed it. Not to let it go to waste, he put it in his mouth. It wasn’t bad but he could never make a life of eating the things-God had given him a head full of good teeth, but not a one of them was sweet. What the hell had happened to that full bucket? He chewed and swallowed the blueberry, and then he raised his eyes to see a cabin flying his way through the rainy air. It was not moving in any threatening way and so Stamford was not afraid. But he did stand up.
The cabin continued on and settled itself on the ground not ten feet from him. The door opened and Delores was standing in the doorway, her hands behind her back, quite pleased with herself in that way of little girls who had a secret they were dying to tell. She opened her mouth, her teeth and tongue stained blue, a girl happy with her blueberries. Her brother Patrick appeared beside her and he opened his blue mouth to show his happiness as well. Then, just like that, the boy shut the door hard. It wasn’t a comment on Stamford: Despite what his sister always said about him, he didn’t need to be told something three times. The cabin rose and rose and went back the way it had come. The closed door must have acted like a kind of eye because the cabin turned around so the door could see the way back to the quarters.
In 1987, the city of Richmond had just hired a young woman from Holy Cross College and that woman’s first assignment was to design a sign that could contain the names of Mr. and Mrs. Blueberry. Delphie’s great-granddaughter, who was on the city council, wanted both names on the street signs, not just something like “Blueberry Street.” The black woman from Holy Cross did well, and the night of the day she completed her task, she called her mother in Washington, D.C., and read to her what she had managed to fit on one sign-Stamford and Delphie Crow Blueberry Street.
After he had given the bucket to Delores and Patrick, Stamford stood in the lane in the mud and the rain and counted the doors to the cabins where children lived. He left out the ones with infants because he knew they weren’t old enough to bite down and enjoy blueberries. And he had never heard of a sugar tit laced with blueberries. He kept counting wrong and he had to do it over several times. Once that was done, he knew he had a new problem-how to find enough buckets for all those damn blueberries.
The rain stopped the next day, but it came back three days later. It was far worse and anyone walking in it felt the sting. “It was a very painful rain,” K. Woodford, a historian from Lynchburg College, wrote in 1952. The rain led to great flooding, and the Lynchburg historian noted, without hyperbole, that it may well have been the worst any county had suffered since Virginia became a state. Twenty-one human beings lost their lives, including eight adult slaves, five men and three women. All the children, whether white or black or Indian, free or in bondage, were spared. No one counted the livestock and the dogs and the cats that were killed because there were so many. The land was covered with animal bodies for weeks and weeks.
Three weeks to the day after Clement beat Stamford, the man from Atlas Life, Casualty and Assurance came back for the third time in his rented buggy and was told by Caldonia that she wanted no insurance. Maude was looking over her shoulder, sighing with displeasure.
”Good morning, Mrs. Townsend,” the white man said to Caldonia before she sent him away, the big book in one hand and his hat in the other hand. It was his first chance to speak to her directly. “We are pained at your unfortunate loss. My company, Atlas Life, Casualty and Assurance, and all its employees send their everlasting condolences.”
Caring for Stamford after he was beaten convinced Caldonia to try to put her grief aside as much as she could and get to the business of the plantation. She decided, after hearing from Celeste and Gloria and Clement, that Clement would not be punished. She sent word by Moses to Stamford that he was to mind what he was doing from now on. “No more fighting, from anyone,” she told Moses, though it was many days before Stamford obeyed, after the crows, after the blueberries and the cabin.
Moses did, on his own, require that Stamford and Clement work a few hours on three Sundays. They could have appealed to Caldonia, but they thought everything he did came on orders from her. The first Sunday was one not long after Stamford had gone back to the fields after the beating, and Elias worked for him after Celeste said she did not think Stamford could do seven days in a row.
In the wake of the beating, Caldonia now had Moses come and report to her each evening after all work was done. He stood in the parlor and told her all that had happened during the day, from the moment just after breakfast when he met the slaves in the lane until the moment in the evening when he told them their day was done. At first, the report was over and done with in a matter of minutes. But as the days since Henry’s death piled up, he would talk longer and longer, for he had come to sense that Caldonia wanted his words. Maude, and sometimes Fern, would peel away before he was done, but Caldonia and Calvin listened to every word. And when Caldonia was finally alone in the house and her mother and brother and Fern had gone away, she continued to listen and his report became even longer, sometimes as much as an hour. Soon, he began to leave off from talking about the work of the day and create stories out of nothing about the slaves. Loretta sat in a chair in a corner, knowing what was true and what was not but never telling her mistress.
The evening of the day Fern left, Caldonia told Moses to sit down. He looked over at Loretta in her chair, and after a long minute’s hesitation, he sat down. Caldonia told Loretta that she could retire for the evening and Loretta left.
“You were here from the beginning, weren’t you?” Caldonia said.
“Ma’am?”
“You were here with Henry in the beginning, from that first day?”
“Yessum, I was.”
“What did you do?”
Moses took his eyes from his lap and began to invent some early days when they were building the house and there was not much on the land except what God had put there. Caldonia was at the edge of the settee, in her mourning dress. “Now Masta Henry always knowed what kinda house he wanted to build, Mistress. I don’t even think he even knowed about you at that particular time, but he musta had some idea that you was out there somewhere waitin in your own kinda way, cause he set about buildin a house that you would want. He built it up from nothin. I was there but I wasn’t there like he was there. He said to me that first day, he said, ‘Moses, we gon start with the kitchen. A wife needs a place to fix her meals for her family. Thas where we gon start.’ And he bent down and Masta drove in that first nail. Bam! That was a Monday, Mistress, cause Masta Henry didn’t believe in startin somethin on a Sunday, God’s day.”
Caldonia, her hands clasped in her lap, leaned back and closed her eyes. The story about the first nail came a little more than a month after Henry had been in his grave. It was gospel among slaves that one of the quickest ways to hell was to tell lies about dead people, but
Moses did not think about that as he spoke of the first nail, did not think about the dead needing the truth to be told about them. He did not think about it until that day Oden Peoples, the Cherokee patroller, said to the men around him about Moses, “Heft him on up here. I’ll take him in. He ain’t gon bleed for long.”
Barnum Kinsey, the patroller and the poorest white man in Manchester County, was quite sober when he met up with Harvey Travis and Travis’s brother-in-law, Oden Peoples, one night in early September a little more than five weeks after Henry Townsend died. Barnum had been sober for three and a half weeks, and he knew from experience that if he could survive the fourth-maybe even the fifth-week without drinking, he could move through the rest of the year without the craving that had often seized him in those first weeks, the craving that was gnawing at him even as he rode to meet up with Travis and Oden under the brightest moon he had seen in some time. After that fifth week of being sober, he would be able to look the craving full in the eye and say no and tell it to get on away from him. Then, with renewed strength, he could harvest whatever his land would give him that fall and for the rest of the year he could hire himself out so he and his family could make it with a little comfort through the winter.
He was desperately afraid of being without in the winter, saw the winter ahead as God’s challenge for him to pick himself up from drink and walk on two legs without tottering. His grandfather, who had also been a drinker, had died in the winter, gone out for a drink and froze to death on the fourth-coldest night of that winter. Barnum’s father had not been a drinker, so Barnum had been thinking for a long time that the curse tended to skip generations, for not one of his sons from his first marriage showed a need for the stuff. The boys from the second marriage had yet to smell themselves so drink wasn’t yet a problem. As for the women through the generations in his family, the curse had avoided all of them, and they moved through the world unsoiled, their minds clear without a need for a challenge every winter God sent.
The three of them, Barnum, Travis and Oden, were nearing ten o’clock when Augustus Townsend came up the road on his wagon pulled by a mule who was as tired as his owner. The mule was older than the other one Augustus had and he didn’t work him as much as the younger one, but every now and then he would take him out to show the mule that he still had faith in him. The mule and his man had delivered a chest and a chair and a walking stick to a man two counties away, a white man who had recently married off the last of his three daughters and so had a little money to spend on himself. “Make me happy with somethin,” he had told Augustus, “before that next grandchild pops into my world.” Augustus, as usual, had underestimated the time for the trip there and back and so he and the mule were about a day late getting home to his wife Mildred. Augustus had been thinking of Henry all day and all day he had been trying not to.
“Just hold up there,” Travis told Augustus. “Just hold up there and show who you are.” Augustus’s wagon carried a lantern hoisted up from the seat. The mule liked having the light. It seemed to provide him some peace of mind as he went about his work. The lantern and the moon offered enough light for Travis to see Augustus was someone he had stopped so many times before.
Augustus stopped and brought out his free papers. He was too tired to talk, but he also knew words would be wasted on them, at least with the white man Travis and probably with the Cherokee Oden.
“Evenin, Augustus,” Barnum said. Augustus had not seen him at first.
“Mr. Barnum, evenin. How your family?”
“They be good, as the Lord keeps them.”
“This ain’t no damn church social,” Travis said, grabbing the free papers from Augustus. “This is the law’s business.” Travis could read and he held the papers up and borrowed light from Augustus’s lantern as he turned the papers over and over. He did not read them, because he had read them many times before. You and me, Augustus thought watching the white man, know them word by word now. Unable to read himself, Augustus, early in his freedom, had given a free colored man a walking stick just to read the papers to him five times a day for two weeks and in the course of all the listening had memorized every word.
“They be good papers,” Augustus said. “I’ve been a free man for a long time, Mr. Travis.”
“You ain’t free less me and the law say you free,” Travis said.
“Now, Harvey, we been knowin Augustus many a year,” Barnum said.
“Don’t tell me what I know and don’t know. You keep your potato trap shut. Tell what you know to the bottle if it has a mind to listen to you. Ain’t that right, Oden?”
“I’ll stand with you,” Oden said, “if thas what you sayin. Barnum, John wouldn’t want us to let just anybody pass just cause we done it many times before. That ain’t legal.”
Travis waved the papers about and said to Augustus, “I hate the way you just ride up and down these roads without a care, without a ‘Yes sir, ain’t it a good day, sir?’ Without any kinda ‘May I kiss your sweet ass today, sir.’ ”
“I’m only doin what I got a right to do,” Augustus said.
Travis began eating the papers, starting at the bottom right corners, chewed the corners up and swallowed. “Thas what I think a your right to do anything you got a right to do.”
“Now wait a minute,” Augustus said. “You stop right now.” He stood up in the wagon, the reins in his left hand. The mule had never moved since Augustus had stopped him.
Travis began to eat the rest of the papers, making a loud show of it, and when he was done eating he licked his fingers. “You sho you know where them fingers been?” Oden said. Travis laughed and belched.
“Harvey, for God sakes, them papers belong to him,” Barnum said. “What he gon do?” He looked beyond Augustus and saw something making its way toward them. He hoped it was Skiffington. “That ain’t right, Harvey. This just ain’t right.”
Travis wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Right ain’t got nothin to do with it,” he said. “Best meal I’ve had in many Sundays.” Some of the paper was stuck in his teeth and he sucked on his teeth, and the paper came easily away.
“I wouldn’t wanna be you in the mornin when you have to shit that out,” Oden said.
“I don’t know,” Travis said, “it might make for a smooth run off. Couldn’t be no worse than what collard greens do to me.”
A wagon twice as large as Augustus’s came up to the four men. Driving it was a large black man and beside him was a much smaller white man covered in beaver pelts. The heat of September didn’t seem to bother him. In the back of the wagon were four black adults and a black child. The white man in the wagon took two beaver feet and sniffed them deeply. “There ain’t nothin like the smell of Tennessee,” he said.
“Darcy, Darcy,” Travis said. “Where you goin? Off to get married again? You wear out women faster than I wear out my welcome.”
“Just passin through with me and mine before your sheriff gets sight of me and puts too much of his snout in my business. John Skiffington shoulda been named John Sniffington.” Darcy was forty-two, but with the unkempt beard that went to his knees and with much of his body covered in pelts, he could have gone for seventy-five.
Travis laughed and Oden followed. Barnum was silent. The child in the back of the wagon coughed.
“As it is, Darcy,” Travis said, “I think you come along at just the right time. I didn’t think you ever knew what time it was, but tonight, without knowin it, you look to be on time. God works in mysterious ways.”
“Praise his name. I was born with a clock in my head,” Darcy said. “Tick tock. Tick tock. Nighttime headin for more nighttime. Tick tock.”
“Well, this ain’t exactly what I had in mind when I stopped this nigger, but this here will do just the same,” Travis said.
“Whatcha got for me, Harvey?”
“A nigger who didn’t know what to do with his freedom. Thought it meant he was free.”
“That one there,” and Darcy pointed to Oden. D
arcy laughed and elbowed the black man beside him. “It’s been a long time since I sold an Indian. Maybe five months. Didn’t bring me the money I was hopin. Remember that one, Stennis?” and he elbowed the black man again.
“Bought anough if I recall correctly, Masta,” Stennis said.
“Well, I’ll bow to your recall cause yours has always been better than mine. That clock in my head don’t like to share it with no memory power. Selfish somebitch. I’ll take the Indian and the nigger both.”
“Not him,” Travis said of Oden. “We’s kin. We’s family. You know Oden. I’m talkin bout the nigger in the wagon.”
Barnum said to Darcy, “Mister, that Augustus Townsend is a free man. You can’t buy him. Just leave him be.”
Travis leaned over and pushed Barnum and spat at him. “ ‘That Augustus is a free man. That Augustus is a free man.’ I liked you better when you was so likkered up you could barely stand, Barnum. You made more sense then. A nigger’s for sale if I say he’s for sale, and this one’s for sale.”
“Mister,” Augustus said to Darcy, “I am a free man and been that way for a lotta years. Freed from Mr. William Robbins.”
“Yes yes yes. Happy Christmas happy Christmas,” Darcy said. “What you askin tonight, Harvey?”
“I tell you he’s free,” Barnum said.
“Gimme two hundred and I’ll sleep good tonight,” Travis said and pointed his pistol at Barnum.
The Known World Page 22