by Jay, Karla M
“I’ll do anything,” Briar says.
“Your sister was arrested outside Atlanta. Judge sentenced her to two months. This place or another.”
“Where’s the other?” Briar says, his voice rough, navy blue like Poppy’s gets at times. Full of heart.
“A woman in Marietta,” I sign. “Dobbs.” Now that mean woman don’t seem half bad.
“Knock it off! I’m sick of you two talking like that.” The man lets out a long breath. “Okay, Stewart, but you gonna pay. You been pushing my patience for weeks now anyways. And this time, you went too damn far…and you know it.”
The boss guides the other girl up into the wagon. He points to Briar and the girl.
“Don’t move. I’ll shoot you both if I have to hunt you down.”
He walks me back inside, and none too kindly. I stumble into a chair at the table. Rivers of cold fear run through me. What will happen to Briar now? He’s made some deal with his boss, but everything says me showing up has made things worse for my brother.
“Change of plans. I’m taking the other gal, but call Sheriff Withington and get this one reassigned.” His nostrils flare like an angry horse’s. “And never bring me a mute girl again. Shit! Half the fun is listening to ’em scream.”
Within an hour, I’m in the back seat of a police car and heading to Marietta. The two policemen up front ignore me, and that’s fine with me. When they picked me up at Miss Lily’s Threads & Things, the woman never said goodbye. She made me change back into my dirty riding dress, which suited me just fine too. All those dolly skirts of lace and satin were wrong on me, like trying to dress up a pig. A pig for the slaughter it seems.
The policemen stopped at a small glass enclosure along the street with a telephone inside. One dropped a nickel in the telephone and talked for a few minutes before writing something down.
My insides are still all aquiver. I can’t help fretting about what’s next for me, but I’m more scared for Briar. The boss threatened to shoot him. Could that even happen? Oh, I have the card from Miss Burns on the train. Her beau is a lawyer and helps people in trouble. Maybe I could write to her. The girls who work for Miss Lily need help and so does Briar.
About thirty minutes later, the car pulls down a pretty street with huge houses. We stop in front of one grander than the rest. It has stately pillars and a first and second floor porch. Domed shade trees line both sides of the long drive.
“I’ll walk her inside,” the one who made the call says.
At the door with the pretty brass knocker, he finally speaks to me.
“You’ll work off your two months here. Maybe you’ll want to stay longer as a paid maid.” He shrugs. “This is an important family in Marietta.”
The door opens, and a handsome man stands there with a question-marked smile on his lips.
“Yes? May I help you?”
“Sheriff Withington says you’re looking for a nanny, and this girl became available in the penal system.”
“Oh.” He steps back and motions for me to come inside. His voice is smooth, like polished brass. “That was fast. And just in time. My wife is barely home from the hospital with our newborn son.”
“Congratulations, Mr. Dobbs.” They shake hands. “You shouldn’t have any trouble but call us or the sheriff if you do.”
“I’m sure we will be fine here.” He smiles at me and starts to close the door.
“One more thing.” He hands Mr. Dobbs my arrest paper. “She can’t talk, but we hear she can read some and write a few words.”
Mr. Dobbs startles for a minute but recovers his manners. “Well, Mrs. Dobbs likes a quiet house. This might suit her just fine.”
I think to argue, but then reckon it might benefit me to have them think less of my reading and writing skills.
He closes the door, and his eyes roam around the paper.
“Ah. You are Willow Stewart. Welcome. My name is William, my wife is Ardith, and we have Oliver, who’s five…and a newborn yet to be named.”
I smile. Tears are coming, but I fight not to cry. This man is the nicest person I’ve run into since Miss Burns on the train.
The inside of this house might as well be a princess palace. Oh-so-large rooms and high ceilings with flower patterns stamped into them. Shiny doodads decorating tables and shelves are aplenty. Mama would’ve loved walking through this house just to see it.
“Everyone is napping right now, but I’ll show you to your room.”
He leads me along a hallway with the softest carpet, like thick moss underfoot. Past the kitchen, he pulls open a small door. He closes it, and we walk out of the house.
“You will use the washroom and toilet out here.”
I’m living outside?
“Here we are.” He stops in front of a small one-story building fixed onto the house and pulls the door open. “I think you’ll find it comfortable. Our last nanny said she was happy out here.” His voice changes to rusty orange with those words.
With the way the nanny was screaming in jail about them killing her baby, I doubt she found any comfort in this little house.
I settle in. It’s nicer than my room back home. The cover on the bed is so pretty and kind of matches the red roses on the tiny window’s curtains. Hmm. Wonder if they got the cover from Miss Lily’s sinful place. Everybody seems to know each other in these parts. There’s a white wood chair, which’ll be nice for reading if I’m allowed books, and a shelf with a few pegs underneath. A beautiful washstand. An indoor toilet. I set my new Red Chief notebook and pencil on the shelf and want so much to lie on the bed. But my riding dress is so dirty. Guess the rag rug will have to do till I get something clean to put on.
Mama always told us your best teacher is your last mistake. But, Mama, what does it mean when I’ve made so many? If I had just gone for the preacher and turned home, I wouldn’t have been arrested. And I wouldn’t be confined to this home, leaving my family short one soul to work the crops this summer. Worse still, Briar is now in a heap of trouble for protecting me.
I curl up on my side on the rug. The dam that held back all the pain, starting with losing Baby Luther right up till now, cracks wide open. The gush of tears comes.
Briar Stewart
“You ain’t driving,” Taggert growled. “Git in the wagon with the girl and the grub.”
“These mules handle hard up that mountainside,” I say. “No reason to change me out just yet.” Relief and woe twist together in my mind. Willow will work in a woman’s home, and I’m back to what’s left of my four months. Or I think that’s the deal I made. I was ready to kill Taggert if he’d taken Willow. Don’t care if someone had killed me back. She don’t deserve any ugliness in this world.
“You ain’t going up the mountainside either.” He waggles his thick fingers. “Gimme the reins and get in the back, boy.”
While I hand them over, Taggert hits me with a full fist in the side of my head.
Can’t see straight, so I grab the side of the wagon for balance. I shake away the blurring, climb into the back, and sit on a bag of potatoes.
The girl’s neck is blotchy. She looks ’bout to cry. Her next few days will be hell, and there’s no way to comfort her. No way for me to stop it. Unless. I could kill Taggert. Even if he got the law behind his actions, he’s full of evilness. How he murders the workers with ease. Rapes young girls.
But they know who Willow is now. Where they can find her. Another crony of Taggert’s might seek revenge after I’m dead. For sure I will be if I do something like that.
I have to finish out my time, knowing I saved Willow. Or did I? Dobbs is the name she spelled. Working for a woman has to be safe, right? And Mama had a baby boy that died? One thing for sure, she would’ve named him Luther II, which makes it all the sadder. And I know Willow. There was something she ain’t tell me. Has Pa been beset with depression again, lo
sing another Luther? Then they’d really need me home to plow and help out with summer chores so there’s food through winter.
Taggert got the mules moving but in the wrong direction. He winds through the streets before heading up to the prison on the hill. A dark shadow descends on my soul. I’m ’bout to find myself back in black and white stripes, a slave to the state once again.
Should’ve known that crows at a funeral meant a helping of extra bad luck.
From the prison, things happened mighty fast. I was driven to the courthouse and ushered in front of the judge.
He smiles, but it’s slippery as a boiled onion.
“You’re going to be staying with us a while longer I hear, helping out south of here in Cobb County. Atlanta has been built to a spectacular showpiece by convicts the likes of you. You’ve seen the signs along the roads. ‘Bad Boys Make Good Buildings.’ Well, we need all the bricks we can get, and you’re going to have a hand in that.” He takes off his glasses and sets them on the raised platform he sits behind. “I sentence you to a year this round.”
Good God Almighty! A year? I’ve done most of my time already. He’s talking plumb through to next summer. This craziness can’t be legal. A deputy steps to me to guide me to the door where the criminals exit. I dodge his reach.
“Your Honor. I got to be home just north of Helen to help my father with our homestead. My sentence was up end of August when I could help with harvest season.” My mind is swirling. I’ll tell any lie now to try to reduce my time.
“Son.” Judge Markum’s face is flushed two shades redder than when I first walked in. “You’ve seen my pleasant side. You don’t want to rile me up.”
There’s no difference between a hornet and a honeybee if it’s in your britches. My innards feel like I ate a bucket of lard, heavy and ’bout ready to come up.
The deputy digs his fingers into my arm and leads me to the side door. Time gets muddy.
I’m hustled into a police truck, with standing room only, chock-full of men. Another vehicle is loaded with Negroes. The whole county is as crooked as a barrel full of fishhooks. I know from my first arrest outside of this town, if you’re walking the streets free as a breeze, you gonna get arrested.
The truck’s metal door clanks shut, and it shivers through my boots all the way up to my back teeth.
My new sentence is bad enough, but what’s to become of Ilya’s brother left alone in the cave? I made a promise to Ilya I’d check on Cy. If’n Ilya don’t see me come back today, he’s gonna be broken. And Taggert could end up working Ilya to death out of spite just ’cause he’s Russian. Damn. A year in prison working to build more fine buildings in Atlanta. Fear and shame wrestle my mind and make me dizzy. Lord, everything’s gone wrong.
Two guards stand on the running boards of the paddy wagon. One slaps the roof, signaling the driver. The vehicle takes off, and I fall against two other men and quickly right myself when I see the hate in one feller’s eyes.
I worry ’bout Willow. Will she get taken to Marietta, or was that just a trick to get rid of me? Sickness rises in the back of my throat when I think ’bout her innocence. She’s grown into a pretty young lady since I last laid eyes on her. And she never did say how she got herself in trouble. I’m sure it points back to her setting out to find me. That don’t sit well in my heart, like so many other wrongs I done.
We bounce along the roads, and I try to stay upright as the truck takes corners. Can’t see enough outside to know where they’re taking us. We soon head on down a bumpy back road. Dust stirs up and fills the truck bed, so I close my eyes and choke on the fine red powder.
“Chattahoochee Brick!” a guard calls from the front cab.
I try to see through the wire mesh, but all the men have their faces pressed there. A stringy feller says, “I hear it’s got ghosts, so many have died here.”
Men groan. This can’t be good.
We unload, and the guards push us to rundown wood buildings, one story high. Once inside, they prod us past cots with thin mattresses along each side of the room. The inside is shacky, with rough boards for walls and a few iron-barred windows. We pass through the johnny where a dozen open toilets swamp the room with the stink of old shit and piss.
The men who designed the prison camps must’ve used a single plan. This is pert near the layout of Cartersville.
The next room is made of cinder blocks, with one door and no windows. In the center is a wooden board on uprights, akin to a hitching post. The whipping pole. A guard with a mighty mean squint stands with his hand on his gun belt. Not only does he have a pistol, but he carries a snaked bullwhip.
Sweat runs down my back. Is he gonna start right off by tearing the hide off one of us?
“Welcome to Chattahoochee Brick Company, your home for the duration of your sentence.” He smiles, clasps his hands in the air in front of him, and cracks his knuckles. Confound it! That sounded like a gunshot in this shut room. “I’m Warden Rourke. Your time here will go easy if you follow the rules.” He walks a few feet to the left and stops. “And they are simple. Number one. The only response you will ever utter is ‘Yessir.’ Is that clear?”
A handful of us mumble the response.
“That’s disheartening,” Rourke says. “You sons of bitches can muster a better reply than that.” His face is red. His jaw tightens. “Let’s try it again. Is that clear?”
I add my voice with the others this time round.
“Better. Number two rule. You do everything you are told to do. Since you broke the law in our fair state, you will work from sunup to sundown to make up for your disobedience. And number three. If you try to escape, you will be killed. Everyone from the governor on down agrees with these rules. You’ve had your say at the trial. There’s no one to go bawling to. Do your time for your crime.” He turned to the four guards surrounding us. “Get them into their stripes.”
I swore I’d never be back in them dirty rags again. But if there ever was any reason worth going backwards, saving Willow would be just that.
Now if I can figure out how to get Ilya and Cy out of their binds.
The brickyard is sweltering hot. Full of red dust. The stripes they give me barely fit. The shirt could fit two men and the pants are too short. This wheelbarrow duty they got me on must be a devil-created hell chore. Load hot bricks from the kiln and run them across the way to the stacking yard. Yes. Run, or a feller hits you on the back with a stick.
That this is a place of torture became clear with my first step in the huge brickworks. Off to the side of our running trail, a man is wrapped and chained round a pickaxe, doubled in half, feet to face. He was moaning at first but in the last while fell silent.
I asked what he done, and someone said the man dropped a warm brick on accident and dented the corner. The Stamper, who puts a number 1 at the bottom of each brick, tried to help out and hide the flaw but wasn’t fast enough. The inspector saw it.
The other inmates answered my questions while we loaded the bricks. The warden don’t tolerate much. Men get whipped with wide leather straps like I saw at the quarry. And another torture called “getting the watering hole” I ain’t heard tell of before. A man is laid back with a cloth over his nose and mouth, and a guard pours water over his face. Sometimes they don’t let up in time and the feller drowns on dry land.
There’s a hotbox in the full sun. And the doctor would just as soon cut off a bad hurt body part than try to doctor it. But what makes our days worse, the prison docs appointed by the state are lied to when they come by to check on the abuse of us convicts.
Nothing but Lord-awful news.
But even a barren apple tree gives up some shade. Our shade is we work with no shackles or chains.
The sun’s beating down. My mouth feels dust dry. My heart pounds. ’Course, they will offer us water and vittles. We’d die out here. Even that old bastard Taggert understood
that. But if I need to stop to wipe my sweat, I must ask permission by calling out, “Wipe it off, sir.” I daresn’t lift a hand till a guard calls back, “Wipe it off.”
A truck thunders toward us, kicking up clouds of chalky dust behind it. A cough is pestering at the back of my throat, but I fight it, not knowing if I first need permission.
The prayer I send heavenward asks that God either grant me the might to keep going or send a plague of locusts to stop the work altogether.
I can accept either one.
A year of this. I could try to work my way up to trustee again, but I bet my new paperwork warns against it. No way I’m doing my full sentence. I’ll figure out a way to get outta here and see that Willow is safe. Try to help Ilya and his brother.
Or die trying.
Ardith Dobbs
Sheriff Withington worked fast. Nancy probably pushed him, knowing my dilemma with bringing a baby home and no one to help with Oliver. A runaway gal named Willow is here—got here just a day after I brought baby boy home. A mute! Who would’ve thought of that being a good thing, but it is. I get no sass back. To be honest, she seems sad but is remarkably good-natured for one so disadvantaged. I can’t imagine not talking. They say God is the friend of silence. Look at nature. The trees, flowers, grass—they all grow in silence. The stars, the moon, and the sun. They move in silence. These aren’t my thoughts, although I wish they were. I read them in a poetry book when I was in Atlanta, trying to lose my hick way of talking. Before meeting William.
Willow reminds me a bit of myself. A mountain gal who got herself into some trouble and was arrested. They assure me she isn’t dangerous. Her mother is dead, she writes, although she isn’t much for reading or writing. She’s teaching us some hand signs. Oliver is thrilled. I admit I’m surprised a girl with her handicap is doing so well out on her own. I had a younger sister, Mable, who went missing when she was seven. Pa said he lost her while she rode along into Patch Hog to buy salt. Said she wandered off in the thick of the woods. But Clem and I always suspected he’d sold her. She had a slow mind and a crooked leg and could hardly help around the homestead. Pa came home with food aplenty that trip and never seemed too energized to go look for her, although neighbors offered for a respectful time.