by Lisa Belmont
I didn’t answer. I just kept walking until I came to the row of little houses on the water that’d been dubbed the “river shacks.” There wasn’t much to them, maybe a room or two. Sometimes they were just little cabins that were tied up to trees, floating on the water. They nestled real good into the watery coves of South Carolina, but Caleb said the people out here used the river as a toilet.
I had an uncertain feeling as I walked under the great oaks that surrounded the river shacks. They looked tall and menacing like I was intruding somehow.
A few colored children were playing down by the water, and an old Negro was fishing off his back porch. Just about every shack had a rickety wooden dock and a laundry line.
A few shacks were in pretty good shape, looking like they’d keep the rain out, but some were downright ready to fall in the river and get carried out to sea.
I didn’t know which one was Hattie Mae’s, so I just stood there a minute, looking from one shack to the next. A couple of Negroes came out of their houses and tried to shoo me away.
“We don’t want no crackers here,” they said.
Crackers. Caleb told me a while back that white folks were sometimes called crackers because they were the ones who used to crack the whips on the plantations.
I guess it should’ve scared me, so I moved along, acting like I was heeding their warning. I was wearing my cardigan sweater over a faded pink dress and figured I must’ve stuck out like a sore thumb. Some of the children down by the water saw me and started pointing. A couple little girls with their hair in cornrows came up to me and smiled real big. One had a gap between her teeth like Big Jim, and I asked her if she’d seen him. She shook her head as more folks came out on their porches. It seemed like the entire river shack community was giving me the once-over, like didn’t I know I was in the Negro section?
I kept moving toward the river, hoping to avoid their glare, when I saw Big Jim sitting under a tree. I took off toward him, knowing that’d start some gossip, but when you can’t wait to see someone, everything else kind of falls away.
“Big Jim,” I hollered, but he didn’t look up.
He was tossing stones in the water, and I hollered again. I felt like I was making a fool of myself as I came up behind him, panting like there’s no tomorrow.
“Why didn’t you answer me?”
He didn’t look up, so I sat down beside him.
It was real peaceful down by the water. The children had scattered, and there wasn’t anyone else in sight. I was glad for that.
“I’m sorry ‘bout what happened last night, Big Jim. All them men are hateful and mean.”
Big Jim looked out over the water, watching a long-legged crane. It moved from one rock to another, gracefully dipping its beak in the water and grabbing a fish. Its feathers were like snow, and it struck me how beautiful it was, completely undaunted by the gator sunning itself on shore. The crane flapped its wings, as if to say this is my territory, and the gator splashed in the water. I’d never seen anything like it. I suppose that crane was tougher than it looked.
“How’s your leg?” I said, hoping Big Jim would look at me.
He didn’t answer. He just picked up another rock and tossed it in the water.
“I ain’t going back.”
“To Widow Jones’?”
“No. The tree fort.”
I looked down at his foot. It was swollen pretty good, and there was a crusty ring around his ankle.
“I know, Big Jim. I’m scared too. Real scared,” I said, piling my hair on top of my head. “Here, feel this,” I said, bringing his hand up to the back of my head. “Some knot, huh?”
He nodded like he ain’t never seen a goose egg before.
“I got it last night,” I said, letting my hair fall all around my shoulders.
“This ain’t no good, Miss Chloe. Too many people getting hurt. Momma scared to walk to Widow Jones’ now. She goes when Puddingtate goes. Says she won’t come back lessen he’s with her.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt like this whole thing was my fault.
“It ain’t right you and your momma’s scared. You ain’t done nothin’ wrong,” I said, watching the mist rise through the witch hazel fringing the water.
“But what if we did it here?” I said. “What if I taught you how to read by the river?”
“No, Miss Chloe. Don’t want to.”
He looked down at his ankle, and I could tell he was powerful tired.
I couldn’t explain the way my heart was breaking. I put my arm around him, hoping it’d do some good.
“Big Jim, you’ve come so far, though. You’re reading on a second or third grade level at least. Caleb wasn’t doing that until the fourth grade.”
He looked up at me with those deep brown eyes that ain’t got no meanness to them and said, “Why they hate me, Miss Chloe?”
I felt something downright collapse. All I wanted was for me and Big Jim to go to our tree fort and pretend like we were Huck Finn, floating down the river. Free of cares.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just said the closest thing that I could figure.
“Big Jim, they just ain’t right in the head.”
It sounded so strange to say it. After all the times I’d heard Joss and Pa say it about Big Jim.
“Don’t matter. They want me to stay away from Whitehall, and I’m staying away.”
“That don’t mean you got to stay away from me, too.”
“Yes, it do. Got to.”
“Why? You ain’t even close to done learning.”
“Why you want me to learn anyway?” he said. “You feel sorry for me?”
“No, that ain’t it.”
“Then why, Miss Chloe?”
“Cuz I owe you. You saved me.”
“Well, debt been paid. You ain’t gotta do nothin’ for me no more.”
“Well, I want to, Big Jim. I want to help you. You’re ‘bout the best person I know. Besides, you’re the only friend I got.”
“Well, get to know somebody else.”
He gathered his crutches and got to one foot, looking more helpless than I’d ever seen him.
“Go be with your kin,” he said.
“I don’t wanna be with them. I wanna be with you.”
“Ain’t nothin’ for us. Don’t you see?”
I did see. That was the problem. I saw the whip marks on his back and the ring around his ankle, the knot on my head and the look on Joss's face when he came to Widow Jones' last night. Big Jim was right. There wasn’t nothing for us. Just a bluish cast to the air that foretold of rain.
Big Jim turned on his crutches and hobbled away. I felt like a part of me was going inside that little river shack with Big Jim. Like it was gonna stay holed-up in there and never come out.
“Big Jim,” I hollered.
He stopped dead in his tracks but didn’t turn around.
I was scared to say it, but knew it had to be said.
“I love you, and I’m as white as they are. Don’t that count for something?”
He didn’t move, and I just stood there, listening to the katydids. They were singing to each other, real joyful like, and I hoped some of that joy would drip over onto him.
But after a moment, he turned and said, “Ain’t enough, Miss Chloe. It just ain’t enough.”
“Is so,” I said, reaching into my satchel. I took out the peach and held it up, letting it gleam in the early afternoon light as Big Jim’s eyes got real big. It might as well have been the Holy Grail cuz Big Jim couldn’t help but focus on all that downy peach fuzz. It was real soft and wispy like it was protecting all that sweet nectar inside. I’d never seen anything so beautiful in all my life. I turned it over, and there wasn’t a single hole that’d been gnawed through. Not a one. Them birds and squirrels hadn’t touched it at all.
I held it out to him, and he said, “Is that from Widow Jones’ tree?”
“Ain’t nothing I’ve ever stole before,” I said, feeling a tremble
go all through me. “Except gum from Caleb’s drawer.”
“Lord, Miss Chloe. You gonna be in a heap of trouble.”
“Nobody’s gotta know. Just take it.”
“Moses took it. Look what happened to him.”
That liked to make me feel real bad, but I kept my hand out. “That was a long time ago. Ain’t nothing like that gonna happen to us.”
He stared at me, probably thinking I oughta have my head examined.
“Lord, Big Jim, you ain’t scared of a little ol’ peach, are you?”
He didn’t say nothing, but I could see everything between us. Everything that stood in our way. Pa’s buggy whip and Joss’s bear trap. The noose that all them folk would like to see Big Jim hanging from. They were all there. All of them stirring like Spanish moss in the breeze, reminding Big Jim he oughta hightail it inside.
I got downright exasperated and said, “If this don’t mean nothing to you, then you ain’t never been my friend.”
That liked to get him to let out one of them real deep sighs.
“Miss Chloe.”
“What?”
He hobbled over and cupped his hand on the peach. For a moment, I thought that meant we were all right. That he was gonna say he didn’t have to stay away, but as he took the peach, he nodded to the woods and said, “You best be going.”
I’d given him the most vulnerable part of myself, that soft place that no one hardly ever got to, and here he was – dropping me like I was rotten to the core.
I didn’t want to, but as he hobbled to the door of the river shack, I hollered, “I’m still going to the tree fort.”
He shut the door, and I ran. The river shacks were fuzzy at the edge of my vision, and the trees blurred. I kept going, tripping on a hollow log by the creek. I skinned my knee and got up, feeling utterly out of sorts. I looked back to the river shacks, just wanting to dive headlong into the Ashley and let the current sweep me away.
I moped around our little shotgun house for the next few days. I’d pick up a book here and there but couldn’t get my mind settled on anything. I wanted to talk to Big Jim, watch him catch fish down by the swamp. See him stick his hand in a beehive and come out without a single sting. He wasn’t like anybody else. He was kinder than folks I knew. I never really thought about it before, but when you got right down to it, Big Jim was fragile. Like Little Chirpie. As big as he was, he needed someone to scoop him up and hold him. To protect him from all the danger that lurked in the world.
That's why I figured he didn't want to see me; Hattie Mae told him I'd end up treating him like all the other white folks in Mills Hollow. I got to thinking maybe I could convince Hattie Mae otherwise and then she’d make Big Jim see me.
The next morning, I found Hattie Mae flouring her buttermilk chicken, smothering it real good with all them herbs and spices in Widow Jones’ kitchen. I sat across from her at the long oak table and took a goose-pimply chicken leg from the pan. I dipped it in the buttermilk batter and dunked it in the flour mixture.
“Needs more than that,” she said, taking it from me and rolling it in the herb mixture.
Deflated, I sat back and watched her coat every last leg in more spices than you could shake a stick at.
“Ain’t you got work to do?” she said.
“You gotta say something to him, Hattie Mae.”
At that, she raised a brow and put her hands on her hips. “No, Miss Chloe. I ain’t gotta do nothin’.”
“But…”
“If Big Jim’s made up his mind he don’t want to see you, then you’d best listen.”
“How can you say that? He’s my friend.”
She just looked at me liked I’d gone out of my cotton-picking mind.
“Listen to me, Miss Chloe,” she said, wiping flour from her hands. “I’ve been working for Mrs. Jones for nearly twenty years now. I’ve ironed her Sunday dresses and starched them little crinoline skirts she likes to wear. I’ve grown collard greens and served them with bacon and onions just like she likes ‘em. I’ve plucked chickens and I’ve fed hogs. I’ve made her favorite chestnut soup jes’ so she’d eat something when she’s tore up about Mr. Jones passing. And you want to know something, Miss Chloe?”
“What?” I said, my voice sounding very small.
“We ain’t never been friends.”
I looked out the window, the slave cabins gleaming in the distance. The tree where Joss said he’d lynch Big Jim was standing just off the kitchen. Who was I kidding? It was downright crazy to think Big Jim and I could be friends. To think we could just sneak off to the tree fort and pretend we weren’t a part of Mills Hollow.
“I know you’ve got a good heart, Miss Chloe,” Hattie Mae said, opening the door to the oven. “But good hearts can get folk in a heap of trouble.”
Hattie Mae slid the chicken in the oven and wiped her hands on her apron. A cough rumbled from her chest and she shot me a glare.
“See what you’ve done? Got me into a coughing fit.”
It went on a good thirty seconds, a raspy sort of cough. She held a hand to her chest and went to the pantry.
“Black pepper and honey,” she mumbled to herself. “That’ll do the trick.”
Hattie Mae was always good at mixing up herbs for healing.
Some folks said she practiced hoodoo, but I think that was just folks’ imaginations getting the best of them.
“I ain’t no root doctor,” she’d said when I’d asked about her Gullah heritage.
She’d been mixing up a tonic of black cohosh and shepherd’s purse and got downright spiritual about it. “I may be descended from slaves, Miss Chloe, but the Good Lord’s my healer,” she said, with a raised brow. “Don’t you go spreading no rumors that I’m up to no juju.”
I knew she wasn’t practicing no witchcraft, but Joss thought so. He liked to tell folks that she put mugwort under Widow Jones’ pillow to give her nightmares.
“You get some rest, Hattie Mae.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, eyeing me funny.
Pa always liked to suck on a lemon when he got to coughing, but I didn’t tell her that.
I went to the library, just wanting to get lost in a book. I ran my hand along the spines of Dickens and Bronte, Shakespeare and Tolstoy. Nothing sounded even remotely interesting.
I think I was feeling utterly defeated. Pa and Joss had already won if Big Jim wouldn’t even put up a fight. He might not have been a slave like Moses, but his mind was chained. I wondered if that’s how Ruth, Moses’ wife, felt. Like she was about as used up and depleted as a body could get. Her husband had been killed, her master sold her, and she couldn’t do nothing about it.
I got to looking around for that second ledger that Widow Jones talked about and found it stuck between a couple of old plantation journals. It had a musty smell, and a few pages looked like they were ready to fall out, but I found the spot where Drayton Jones listed the marriages, births, and deaths of his slaves at Whitehall. Ruth and Moses were married on March 7, 1856, and Moses was recorded as deceased on July 17, 1858. It said that Ruth was then sold to Rosehill Plantation, to her new owner, Col. Briscoe Mason.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised me. There were only so many plantations around these parts and Rosehill was one of the biggest. Drayton Jones probably knew old Briscoe Mason. Probably bought and sold slaves from him all the time.
It wasn’t like Ruth had any say in it. She just had to go along with what she was told. Otherwise, like Hattie Mae said, there’d be a heap of trouble.
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Henry Stanley Haskins
Chapter Thirty
The first thing I did when I got home was go looking for Dolly Mason’s diary. Pa was always trying to get me to read it, but now I was actually interested.
I’d nearly torn the house apart when Pa came in the front door.
“What in tarnation are you up to?”
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My head was stuck in the pantry. I’d stacked all kinds of jars and canned goods on the rough-hewn table.
“I’m looking for Dolly Mason’s diary,” I said, real sweet like. “I’ve got a hankering to read it.”
“Well, if this ain’t a switch,” Pa said.
He hadn’t fully recovered from Widow Jones’ when I spoke out against Joss, but I knew if anything would soften him up, it’d be me wanting to read Dolly Mason’s diary.
He crossed the room and unlocked the liquor cabinet. There might be an entire mob that gathered outside Widow Jones’ house, ready to storm it with their Winchester rifles, but there wasn’t a robber who could break in our house and steal Pa’s whiskey. He kept it under lock and key.
Behind a few colored bottles, Pa pulled out Dolly Mason’s diary. It was a green leather-bound journal, and he handed it to me.
“I knew you wasn’t feeling sorry for that nigger. Caleb said you was, but I knew different.”
He popped the cork off his jug of moonshine and took a swig.
“Here’s to you, Blackie Sullivan,” he belched.
I didn’t wait around for Pa to start singing. I went straight to my room and read until supper. I was glad Pa hadn’t ever read none of what she wrote. It was awful personal. I got halfway through the yellowed pages when I found the place where she’d written about Ruth coming to Rosehill.
August 1858 I have been in bad humor of late. Briscoe bought a housegirl from Charleston this week. Her name is Ruth and she comes from Drayton Jones’ plantation. I inspected her hands when she first arrived. Good sturdy hands for fetching and mending and bringing my tea in the morning. She is a light coffee complexioned Negra bought for $1,100. She was spared the auction block and sold directly from Whitehall. Not for the charge of laziness, Drayton tells us. No, she is a good nigger, he said and will work hard.
May 1859 I sit by the fire most nights, reading my Bible and knitting. Briscoe is distant lately. I think it’s talk of war. If he has to march off and fight the Yankees, I pray the good Lord brings him home safely.
December 1859 Christmas evening and it’s cold outside. We had turkey with all the trimmings for supper. Briscoe and I read by the fire while Ashton played by the tree. He enjoys his little rocking horse and his tin soldiers. Often, Ashton plays in the parlor while Ruth fixes breakfast. She gives him cane sugar when he’s fussy.