by Jay, Karla M
I step forward. “Tuck says he wasn’t looking where he was going. ’Member, we need all the convicts working. Just two days more and you prob’ly be getting a bonus.”
He sends me a stink eye, but I know how much he likes making more money. He throws the axe at the convict’s feet and walks away.
I let out a long breath, happy not to see another killing. I’m so tired of hate. Of violence caused by lack of understanding. Of loud men with weak morals.
Hoping the rest of the day will move along smooth, I should’ve been more careful with that cock strut.
It’s near suppertime. Back in the tent area, the washing up begins. I don’t see Taggert at first but believe he’s in his tent. Always a relief to have the man outta sight.
Scuffle sounds come from behind one of the moveable cages. Taggert’s raising Cain ’bout someone stealing from the cook. I shake my head. What doggone convict decided to get hisself in a fix now?
“Don’t give a shit, boy.” Taggert’s pulling someone backwards by their shirt. The small man is backstepping to keep himself from being dragged on his ass in the dirt. “You under arrest for thinking ’bout stealing from the state of Georgia.”
My breath leaves my chest like I been punched. It’s Ilya. What is the kid doing back up here? He had a nice setup for weeks, in and round the cave.
“I talk to Ray now.” Ilya looks round the camp area. I’m off to the side, and he don’t see me yet.
“There’s no Ray here, you Russian traitor.” He shoves Ilya to the ground, but the boy pops right back up.
In my head, I yell for him to stop talking. If’n Taggert learns I helped Ilya and his brother, I’m done for. Might even get shot. Taggert don’t know I told the boy my name is Ray, but I still need to act fast. I got to get him to be quiet while finding out what he needs.
“Let me take him.” I rush forward and grab the boy’s arm. “I’ll get him in his work clothes and bring him back to you.”
“R—” Ilya starts to say, but I cover his mouth and drag him backward, rougher than I want, but I need to put on a show for Taggert.
When we’re in the woods near the cages, I let him go and spin him around.
“Don’t tell him you know me,” I say with a hiss. “He’ll shoot me, and you’ll be on this work gang forever.”
“Okay. My brother still sick. I come for help from doctor.”
“You should’ve gone to Euharlee.”
“But no money.”
Hellfire and damnation! I should’ve told the kid where I kept the money or left him with some.
“Look. You got to work on this gang till I can figure out how to get you outta here. Do not talk back to this boss. He’s a snake waiting to strike.”
I enter the storage room and bring out his convict clothes.
“Put these on.”
“But…my brother?”
This is bad news all around. Ilya did nothing to warrant a workday of fourteen hours, and his brother is alone and needs help. A mistake repeated more than once is a decision, so I reckon I’m deciding to help this boy again.
“In a few days, I’ll check on him when I go to Cartersville.” With Tuck mending, I’m sure Taggert will send me again. He’s gotten over his anger about me coming back late last time. “I’ll carry him to the doctor if need be.”
Tears are welling. “Zank you.”
“You won’t be thanking me when you learn what life is like up here.” I gather his threadbare clothes and put them back in the storage cage under a poke of blue work clothes. He’ll need ’em again one day. “I have to treat you like a criminal when the boss is around. Sorry.”
I walk him back to where the convicts are all seated round the table, eating. I push him onto a seat at the end.
“Shut up and eat what we put in front of you,” I say, harshlike.
The cook slides a tin plate and silverware in front of Ilya and ladles out vittles. Timid, the boy picks up the spoon and eats, cutting his eyes to the other convicts at the table.
They ignore him. The lesson that we borrow trouble for ourselves, but there ain’t no reason to take on another feller’s misfortune, is a warning they have all learned.
I shy away from Ilya, acting like I don’t know him any better than Adam and Eve’s housecat. But the boy is all I can think of. A heavy sack of worry drops on my back. How long can Cy stay in that cave with no help? Is he too weak to get himself out in the sunshine? Everybody knows the healing nature of the warm rays.
Later that evening, guilt storms in my guts as I lock Ilya in a mobile cage. His eyes are filled with confusion. He’s scared to death. I thought about pleading with Taggert to let the young feller go and shackling Ilya with the lie that he’s only thirteen. With fear marked on his face and his small size, boy looks much younger than his fifteen years. Before I lock the cage, I send him a tiny smile I hope says I’m on his side.
In my tent, I listen to the peepers and crickets as dark drops in round our camp. How am I gonna sneak back to Saltpeter Cave and not get in trouble?
I bet Taggert returns the Colored boy that hit Tuck, accident or not, to County prison. My stomach sours at the idea the feller will end up dead and buried behind the secret shed.
And another trustee will be with me to protect the new workers and the girls coming back to the mountain from Miss Lily’s Threads & Things. How do I get him on my side to let me slip away and help Cy? I got to figure something by morning light. Worrying tonight won’t empty tomorrow of its trouble, but it will sap me of my strength. And I’m gonna need all I can hold on to.
As I done since my arrest, I push my concerns way deep inside. They’ll be back and I’ll be ready for ’em.
I’m thinking of Mama. She loves watching the rising sun. On mornings like this, she thanks the good Lord for brushing the sky with pinks and yellows. The colors of promise and hope, she says.
The silence of the woods blesses the men with a moment of peace before they’re forced and pushed through another day of hard labor.
The ideas I come to over the last few days don’t seem so worthy in the bright on this traveling day. I juggle them now.
I’d convince Taggert that the new kid should be in the County Prison Camp.
But, I’d drop him off at the front steps of that orphanage in Cartersville.
Then, at the prison camp, me and the other trustee would ask for a more hefty worker, and none of that would make Taggert think I pulled a fast one. Trading one little kid for a strong feller.
Of course, I’d leave Ilya with how to find my money. Carrie Smith 1896 is watching over my secret stash. And eight miles ain’t far from Cartersville to the cave. Ilya could leave the orphanage steps and be there in a couple hours. Next day, he can head into Euharlee with some money to ask the doctor for help. After some full workdays in these here pines, Ilya recollects why I told him to stay away from our work gang. The boy as droopy as a picked tobacco leaf.
Just gotta make sure Ilya knows to say he’s only thirteen when I pitch the idea to Taggert. It’s a year below legal working age in Georgia, so a fair and reasonable request.
Fingers of daylight creep through the forest floor while we finish up breakfast.
Tuck’s face is still swollen and plum-colored round his eyes. He looks like a turnip two donkeys been fighting over.
“You getting any better?” I say.
“Glad I got a mouth to breathe through. Nose ain’t working worth a damn.”
He sounds like he got a cold. Nose all stopped up.
“Hurt much?” I ain’t never had my nose busted, but one time I healed from a split lip that hurt like a hundred bee stings.
“Up through my head and back”—he slowly touches his ears—“and these have a powerful ringing going on inside.”
“You think you’ll be up to making the ride into town later? Mi
ghty bumpy out there.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “Taggert’s talking ’bout going now.”
“Now?” I ain’t had time to talk to Taggert ’bout Ilya leaving the work gang. I wanted to get Ilya alone to tell him how he can get back to the cave and find my money.
“He’s all set on getting girls up here since he missed last month.”
I set off and soon find him.
Can’t hardly stand to look at him. That big ol’ belly’s sitting on his lap. His face is redder than a crawdad. Most likely from holding his breath whilst he leans over to tie his work boots’ strings.
“You sending workers into town this morning?”
He sits up, face still red and sweat dripping off it, and shrugs.
“You wanna go? With Tuck messed up I need somebody now.”
“Sure thing.” This is good news. Just what I hoped for. “I want to ask something.”
“What?” He stands and hooks his thumbs in his belt.
“That new kid. He’s a mite young for this type of work, ain’t he? Says he’s just thirteen. What say I take him back and get us a big feller?”
“Thirteen?” He itches his left arm. “Seen eleven-year-olds get time for breaking the law. Why you think he’s so special?”
“Don’t think that. Just wanna make sure we show ourselves as able. We work the pines like the company asks, and we get to stay out here longer”—I shrug—“I think you agree. You’re the only boss man in these forests with no one to answer to.”
He searches the area for Ilya. The kid’s been put on the job of setting the cups below the cuts.
Taggert’s one of those men that their thinking shows on their face. As for him, his eyebrows come together in a mess of wrinkles above his nose, and his eyes get all catawampus.
“Not yet,” he says, coming back to the moment. “Kid was slinking around. Needs a lesson.” He straightens. “He can give us two weeks’ worth before we trade him out.”
Now I got to come up with a new plan and think out how to reach the cave with no one knowing.
“Okay. I’ll get my things. Sounds like it’s a trip in to get supplies and the girls. No new workers?”
“Naw. We’re making out okay with these S-O-Bs, though I thought about losing the one that hit Tuck.”
I nod, not wanting to rile him. Need to keep the man thinking I’m on his side.
“I can handle that. You got the list for supplies?”
His mouth jerks up into a sneer.
“You must be outside your mind, boy. You ain’t going alone.”
My hopes drop a mite. “Okay.” I can probably convince another trustee to look the other way when I ride to the cave and back. “Who you want me to take?”
He laughs. It’s a nasty sound, like rusty gears.
“Me.”
I swallow hard. No way I can help Cy now, and it’s two weeks till the next chance. Might mean the death of that child. And Ilya? He’ll go off his rocker with worry. May even blurt out his dilemma. Our dilemma.
“Glad for the company.” I force myself to meet his mean stare. “I’ll hitch the wagon.”
Once on the trail, Taggert smokes and relaxes in the seat next to me.
My mind is circling like a hawk round a mouse for another way to help Ilya’s brother. Taggert startles me with a question.
“You from round here, ain’t you? Some peckerwood town to the east?”
No way I’m telling him anything more than what’s most likely in my arrest record.
“Was. Town upside of Helen. Nothing much left for me there. Brother died in the mines. Pa come home broken from the war. I left coupla years back.”
“Who are your people? You mentioned a ten-year-old sister.”
“Aw. Got none that care.” I shake my head, adding truth to the lie. “Happens more often than not, I learned.” I need to get the subject off me. “Where you from?”
“Burton. You heard of the Tallulah Gorge?”
“Yup.” I’m extra careful steering the mule down the trail. The empty wagon has a mind all its own back there, jumping and bucking like a spring foal.
“Sure you have. Called the Niagara of the South. Wife writes that people are coming from all around to see it.”
“That so?” With him away from the homestead, bet his wife’s happy enough to be twins.
“Old town of Burton I grew up in sets at the bottom of the lake now. Since 1919. That’s when the Georgia Railway and Electric Company bought Burton, built a dam ’cross the Tallulah River, and the deep valley flooded.”
“Heard the whole town’s underwater.” When we read about it in the newspaper, I remember trying to picture a city in the wavering deep. Creepy is what came to mind.
“Yeah, but everyone had warning and moved up to the ridgeline, now lakefront.” He chuckles. “The lake is haunted they say.”
“They do?” Haunted ain’t something to take lightly.
“The lake filled faster than the smartass dam builders said. All the graves were supposed to be raised and moved uphill, but some got missed. All them dead people left below aren’t too happy.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts, sounds like?”
“When a man gives up the ghost, it shoots straight heavenward. Got no desire to turn back to this ugly place.” He flicks his cigarette butt into the trees. “A white man’s soul, that is. Just like animals, Negroes and Indians weren’t given one.”
I can’t let that go. “Indians have powerful beliefs about their dead folk and their souls. Very protective of their burial grounds.” I think of the Indian mound coming up once we cross the river.
“Bunch of horseshit to get attention and try to take land from farmers round here.”
I shut up. Arguing with him is kin to spitting into a hurricane. Gonna get the bad end of it with no reward.
We reach the flats and come to a small lake where a flat-bottom boat is tied to a crooked gray dock. A slight wind sends tiny ripples ’cross the water, making shivers of silver in the late day sun. A dozen geese swim in circles in the middle. It paints a right nice picture of peacefulness. Frogs add their agreeing croaks along grassy banks.
We’re heading to the Etowah River when a strange sight boils up in the road ahead. A swirling circle of black feathers and legs.
“The hell’s that?” Taggert says.
We draw closer, and although some crows fly off, hundreds stay, walking round the body of a dead one.
“Crows at a funeral.” I heard Pa speak of it but never seen it myself. Said magpies do the same ceremony.
They each have bits of grass or twigs and drop them next to the body, the front row moving out while the next row moves forward.
Chills skitter up my neck. Not that long ago, as in one hour past, I thought my luck had hit rock bottom. Ilya showing up. Taggert coming along with me. But with crows at a funeral, rock bottom seems to have more layers to its undersides I wasn’t aware of.
Taggert pulls his gun and aims.
“Don’t!” I yell. “They recollect faces, ’specially those that harm ’em.”
“They’re stupid birds.” He squeezes the trigger.
The blast splits the air, and the crows take flight, blacking the sky for a moment.
He holsters his weapon and scowls my way.
“You getting too smart for your situation. Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Yessir.”
We don’t talk the rest of the way into Cartersville. I park at the mercantile with the list, while he walks one street over, heading to Miss Lily’s Threads & Things.
How can he talk about his wife while drooling over the newest gals he plans to have his way with?
I pull the items from the shelf and pay. Many trips later, I have the back of the wagon filled. Now to wait for Taggert, and then I start
wondering.
What happened in these young girls’ lives so they end up here, rented out to menfolk? They sure must have kin who care ’bout ’em. I swear, people raised in the mountains know ’bout loyalty. Even though Pa told me to leave, I could’ve stayed up on the mountain, built my own homestead. Mama begged me to. But his words cut clean through me when he swore nobody loved me but Jesus. So’s it was my choice to leave, to try to hurt him back with my absence. But, if’n I knew him or any of them was in trouble, I’d be back there, fighting whatever brought them harm.
“Hey, Stewart!” Taggert is behind two gals, both with their heads down, dressed up in frilly dresses and floppy hats. “Guess what?”
“What?” If’n he’s offering me a gal, he’ll soon learn I ain’t interested.
“Seems you got your sentence shortened”—he laughs like he’s fit to bust. “You’re getting out in two months now.”
What? How did he come up with that from a visit to the secret prostitution house?
“You jawing nonsense. What you mean reduced?”
“Seems you do have family that cares. Someone’s working off two months of your time.”
“Who?” My throat hitches. For sure, it ain’t Pa that’s come looking for me.
Then one gal lifts her head. Red hair frames a pale white face full of freckles. It’s Willow! Spots float in and out of my vision. I can’t believe it’s her. How did she get here?
Then fear takes over when it hits me what’s about to happen to her.
Ardith Dobbs
Baby Katherine wants to make her entrance earlier than expected. It was only yesterday Dr. Grange drove the drugged-up Josephine to the police station to have her declared crazy. Then she’d be sent to the insane asylum. The doctor said he asked that she be admitted to a locked-down unit, with neurosis due to depression. She has the option to wet-nurse the babies at the attached foundling home. I think that will do her a lot of good. Dr. Grange also let us know she didn’t go inside the jailhouse willingly. I’m glad we weren’t there to witness that.
The doctor called William to let him know. Not long after, William and I drove her dead baby to the Colored cemetery behind the Piney Grove Missionary Baptist Church. William paid the pastor the burial fees and we drove home.