The Legacy of Beulah Land

by Lonnie Coleman

  Because Priscilla was sleeping, he and Rosalie did not speak until she followed him into the hallway. “You’ve been up all night,” he said.

  “Soon as Almeda comes I’ll go home. She’s better with babies than I am.”

  He went to the kitchen to find that Freda had breakfast ready for him. Sarah and Jane arrived while he was eating. Although they had breakfasted at home, they sat with him and drank coffee. As they talked, Mrs. Oglethorpe entered the dining room. Her glance acknowledged them when Sarah and Jane murmured good morning, but she greeted no one. She sat down, and Freda placed the glass of milk before her which was all the breakfast she took. After a slow sip of it she declared, “One thing is certain. You cannot call the unfortunate creature Bruce.”

  Benjamin continued to eat, spearing dripping egg onto, a piece of fried pork chop and following it with a whole fig preserve. When he’d swallowed, he said, “That is her name, Bruce Davis.”

  “It is not a proper female name.”

  “It will be hers.”

  Mrs. Oglethorpe shook her head. “Cannot.”

  In the silence Jane said, “Call her Bruce Priscilla.”

  “Brucilla,” Freda suggested, pouring more coffee. “I woke up with it in front of my mind.”

  Jane and Sarah smiled encouragingly at Freda, and then at Mrs. Oglethorpe without getting any response. Exchanging eye signals, they rose. “Let us ask the mother, if she is awake,” Sarah said.

  “I don’t approve of made-up names,” Mrs. Oglethorpe said. “They always sound niggery.”

  Benjamin said, “I will call my daughter Bruce, and people will get used to it.”

  Sarah and Jane left the dining room and went upstairs. Freda returned to the kitchen, where Benjamin presently heard her talking to her sister Almeda. Benjamin was aware that Mrs. Oglethorpe was staring at him and waited for her to make up her mind to speak. “You know why she is malformed,” she stated.

  “I’m going to Savannah to see what can be done.“

  “It is the Lord’s punishment for your licentious youth. I hope it will weigh on your soul and be a lesson to others. The sins of the fathers are always evident in their children.”

  He sat very still. “I’ll ask Zadok to bring the buggy for you this morning. Your visit is at an end. Please be packed and ready to go with him no later than noon.”

  “I have no intention of leaving my daughter.”

  “You will go if I have to carry you.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Try me and see.”

  She studied him; her face grim. “No. I am one woman you’ll not defile with your touch.”

  “You’re welcome to the distinction.”

  “I shall tell everyone.”

  “You may visit Priscilla, but for no more than an hour a day until she is well enough to visit you.”

  “You will live to regret this.”

  He rose from the table, bowed, and went out.

  Sarah had made inquiries before the baby was born about possible wet nurses if one was needed, and it was soon apparent that one was, for Priscilla, when she began to produce milk, did not have enough to nourish the child. Doctor Platt was no help in the matter, considering his responsibility finished when he spanked air into a babe and drugged its mother to forgetfulness. Leaving Jane to calm Priscilla, who was in tears after Mrs. Oglethorpe recited the details of Benjamin Davis’s “callous and heartless” command, Sarah took her buggy and went from farmhouse to farmhouse. It was not until the middle of the afternoon that she found what was needed.

  Velma would do, she decided, looking the girl over not unkindly but yet with the eye she might have used to calculate qualities, good and bad, of a farm animal. Velma was sixteen years old; her body was mature. She was not coal black, but her white blood must have come into the strain a couple of generations back and combined again with colored. She had borne a child the week before, and the child had died, but not before her mistress reckoned that its father—Velma was neither married nor mated—was her own husband. Velma had been ordered to leave the farm that very day, and she was ready to go with Sarah five minutes after Sarah had offered her wages.

  As Sarah drove back to the Glade, Velma beside her with a bundle of clothes on her lap, she told her about Benjamin’s household. The girl was not nervous; she seemed pleased with the turn her life was taking. She appeared, if anything, too relaxed, which decided Sarah to say, “They will be good to you, but you must not lie or steal, because if you do, Rosalie will beat the tar out of you.”

  “Who this Rosalie?”

  Sarah explained.

  “She bigger than I be?”

  “Considerably,” Sarah said, although she judged them to be about the same size. “She has a husband and three sons and two daughters, all grown. They are good people, and no one will mistreat you as long as you behave yourself.”

  “I’ll run off if they don’t suit me.”

  “They’ll run you off if you don’t do your job.”

  Sarah explained then about the newborn child’s harelip and asked the girl if she’d ever seen one.

  Velma replied that she had, and that she had also seen albinos.

  Sarah asked the whereabouts of her family. Velma became vague about their moving “somewhere down in Lowndes County,” and wasn’t sure they’d stayed when they got there.

  Finally Sarah asked, as if it had just occurred to her, “What is the family name?”

  Velma rattled the names of her mother and brothers, there being no living father or sisters.

  “No,” Sarah said. “I mean last name. The way my name is Sarah Troy, yours is Velma what?”

  Velma looked offended and did not answer. Sarah let her sulk for a mile before saying, “Would you like to be called Velma Kendrick?”

  “Don’t know,” the girl mumbled.

  “Kendrick was the name of my first husband’s family, the old family of Beulah Land, although now we are Troys and Davises and Todds.”

  “I know about y’all,” she asserted with a toss of her head; but the frown she’d worn suddenly faded and her face cracked in two. “Velma Kendrick!” Quiet for a few moments, she repeated the name and began to giggle. “Hee, hee, hee—”

  Sarah drove her buggy directly to Zadok’s house, where Rosalie took charge of Velma. While she heated a tub of water on the kitchen stove, she ruthlessly inspected the girl’s head and body hair for lice, finding none. Velma looked murderous but submitted, remembering perhaps Sarah’s threat of a beating. Rosalie then ordered Velma to bathe herself all over. Velma protested that she was clean. Rosalie picked up a stick of stove wood, and Velma stepped into the tub.

  Clean and dressed again, she was escorted to the house in the Glade and introduced to the mother and the child. When she saw Bruce, her anger died. “Po’ young’un,” she crooned, and reached for the fretting baby, who took her nipple hungrily and began to feed. Looking down at her, Velma said, “Your name’s Bruce Davis, so they tell me. Well, mine’s Velma Kendrick. Howdy-do.”

  It had been thought to have Velma serve only as wet nurse, while Almeda continued to see to the child in other ways. But Velma was possessive and a quick learner, and she had taken over the nursery entirely before the week was out.

  10

  “Yes, she may,” Sarah admitted. “On the other hand, she may live another hundred years. You mustn’t wait on that account. If you can take the time, go now. When you were at the hospital in March, they told you as much as they could without seeing the child; so don’t wait. And for what? There’s never any knowing.” Benjamin appeared to consider what she said. She smiled. “I remember telling you once long ago when you asked my advice that you never asked anybody anything until you’d made up your mind what you were going to do. You were a stubborn boy, and you’re a stubborn man.”

  “And you love me.”

  “I love you.”

  He rose from his chair. Hands flat on the desk, he leaned across it to kiss her. “Come to Savanna
h with us.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not what it was when I was a girl. A lot of fat men looking important and spitting tobacco juice. Jane said she’d go with you.”

  He paced the length of the office twice, pausing to look out the door, which was open to the broad veranda that wrapped around three sides of the big house at Beulah Land. “Beginning to rain.” Whatever else occupied his mind, the concerns of a farmer were always there, and weather was remarked on. He returned to his chair. “Bruce is two months old and fat as a kettle. I’ll talk to Jane tonight and see when Daniel and the boys can spare her.”

  “Priscilla hasn’t changed her thinking?” Sarah asked. She knew what the answer would be, but much of conversation is taken up asking familiar questions and receiving expected answers.

  Benjamin gave a sharp shake of the head. “Mrs. Oglethorpe knows she can’t forbid my going, but she threatens never to speak to Priscilla again if she goes with me.”

  “What a blessing it would be if she went with you, and Mrs. Oglethorpe kept her word, and Priscilla didn’t care.”

  “But she does care.”

  Sarah shook her head. “It does no good to be facetious. I’m sorry. Priscilla doesn’t actually oppose you in this?”

  “She says little. She’ll pick Bruce up, but never hold her more than a minute. She hates to look at her.”

  “It takes some women that way, they say. Hers was a long pregnancy and a difficult delivery. She’ll find her way to the child.”

  Benjamin said, “Her mother comes every day now the weather’s fine and takes her for a buggy ride; but she won’t set foot in the house. She won’t even step down from the buggy and holds her whip up ready for attack.”

  “You did forbid her.”

  “I told her she could visit an hour a day.”

  “She’d die before she abided by any rule you set, my dear. You know that.”

  “The more Priscilla sees her, the less she’ll talk to me. Sometimes I have to sit her down in front of me and make her talk. Then she cries and says things I know her mother has put into her head. Mrs. Oglethorpe believes it is defiance of God’s will to try to change Bruce’s lip. She says the Lord punishes vanity, and the mark is His warning to me to repent my sins; that it should always be there for me to see and be reminded of Judgment Day.” He traced a figure eight with his forefinger on the back of a closed ledger. “I would verily like to take a pitchfork to that woman.”

  “So would I,” Sarah agreed.

  “They’d hang us.”

  “Not if the judge had ever spent an hour with her.”

  “I want you to do something for me while I’m gone.” She watched him and waited. “Go to Bessie Marsh’s and see how Leon is.”

  “Gene Betchley’s still there, last I heard.”

  “I want to know how he treats my son.”

  She looked alarmed but nodded.

  And so one April morning they took what the town called the Down Train to Savannah; Benjamin and Jane and Bruce, attended by Velma, whose joyful anticipation of the journey excited such envy in Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis Todd that they cried lustily. Sarah said to Jane, “You see how they will miss you.”

  “Not at all,” Jane replied. “They’re simply angry at not being allowed to go.” By the time the train pulled away, Bobby Lee and Davy had wheedled her into promising additional lead soldiers. Sarah took the boys back to Beulah Land, where they were to spend the day. Later, the three walked to the Glade to tell Priscilla of the party’s departure, but they did not stay long because Priscilla found their liveliness wearing. Before leaving, Sarah asked if she would like to accompany them into Highboro the day after, but Priscilla, hesitating and sighing, refused, saying that her mother was coming to the Glade. At three o’clock the next afternoon they stood on the splintery wooden platform to watch the Up Train come in from Savannah, after which Sarah took Davy and Bobby Lee to Sullivan’s Dry Goods store to wait until the mail was sorted in the post office next door. They begged for sweet johnnycake and cheese, which they never had at home, and she obliged them with a small order to Mr. Sullivan.

  As Benjamin had promised, letters arrived. There were three, one from Jane to her husband and two from Benjamin, for Priscilla and Sarah. Putting the others away, Sarah read hers quickly, standing at the front window of the post office for better light.

  Benjamin told of an easy journey: Bruce did not cry, and Velma did not want to get off the train when they got there, partly because she had never before been on one and partly because she was suddenly opposed to the idea of giving “her baby” into the hands of strangers at a hospital. He had settled for Velma to remain with Bruce while she was at the hospital, and she had vowed not to sleep a wink, lest they cut off her leg in the night. Benjamin and Jane had rooms at the boardinghouse where she and Daniel sometimes stayed. Bruce was to have the lip sewn the next day. “Today,” Sarah thought. “Already it is done.”

  She drove the buggy directly to the Glade to deliver Priscilla’s letter. Mrs. Oglethorpe was cold and watchful with the boys. In his friendly way of sharing, Davy asked if she would like to hold the snail he’d found in the yard. She told him he was disgusting and ordered him to remove it from the house instantly. Priscilla read her letter in silence and murmured that there was nothing to add to the brief news Sarah had conveyed from her own. Given no encouragement, Sarah made it another short visit. Daniel came to Beulah Land for supper that evening and read his letter from Jane aloud. The boys were disappointed not to hear mention of the lead soldiers and implored their father to remind her of them when he wrote lest she forget them. But Jane had written graphically of the speed of the train, which made them squirm with pleasure and ask for the letter to be read twice again. Then they all had a visit with Nell, who welcomed them eagerly and just as eagerly urged them to leave her shortly thereafter. The boys were yawning, so Daniel put one over each shoulder and went home, Sarah and Casey walking with them part of the way.

  In the morning, after she and Zadok had seen the day’s work started, Sarah and Casey took the buggy and went to Bessie Marsh’s. Sarah had no reason for the visit and did not bother to invent one, putting it simply that she and her husband were driving about the country and decided to stop. Bessie was civil enough and a little amused as she saw Sarah’s eyes go toward the man working in the field nearby, who lifted his head once to stare at the visitors. There was no sign of Leon, and when Sarah asked about him, Bessie said he’d gone with his grandmother to graze the cow. There was new grass over yonder after the recent rain. Could they see? This side of the woods. There he was! No, he was gone again, that quick. Old cow wasn’t worth much; still, as long as she gave them a splash of milk and a pat of butter—

  Bessie was making soap in the black wash pot, and she continued with the work. “Stinks, don’t it?” she said. “Otherwise, I’d ask you to stay awhile.” Casey said they must be getting on home.

  Turning in her seat after Casey had picked up the reins and flicked the horse’s back, Sarah called, “Is that Gene Betchley helping you out?”

  “Yes’m.” Bessie was openly amused. “He’s a right smart of help too, so he tells me. Trying to talk me into us getting married. Beats all, don’t it, such a young fellow after an old woman like me? You mightn’t agree, ma’am, seeing you married younger than yourself!”

  Sarah did not open her mouth to speak for five minutes, but her lips worked busily. Finally she said, “Turn this buggy around.”

  “Road’s too narrow,” Casey said. “I’d spill us.”

  “I want to go back and tell that slut what I think of her.”

  Casey hugged her with one arm, but she shrugged away.

  “She usen’t to be sly-uppity. He’s put mischief into her. And I didn’t find out about Leon for Ben!”

  “The boy’s all right or you’d have known.”

  “How would I?” she said crossly.

  “Because you know everything.” His eyes danced. “Because you’re my o
ld woman.”

  She swung her reticule, landing it squarely on his head. Laughing he drew on the reins, halting horse and buggy. “Sarah,” he said, taking her hands. When she tried to twist free, he held her firmly. When she was still, he kissed her. She smiled at last, and he said, “Don’t be a fool, girl.” He kissed her again more slowly and whispered, although they were alone in the middle of nowhere, “Let’s go home and pull the curtains and go to bed.” She touched him at the crotch with gentle familiarity, and he caught his breath.

  11

  The cloud was so low she thought it smoke from a fire in the woods until it lifted and drifted away without dispersing.

  “Thinking about me?” Eugene said. “Standing there with your arms folded, dreaming.”

  “Dreaming of nothing. Would that be you?”

  “You’re some woman, Mrs. Betchley.”

  “Marsh,” she corrected him. She had been cooking supper, but the kitchen was close and smelly, and she’d come to the door for a breath of air. The cloud had given her pause.

  “Get used to your new name.”

  “Waste of time.”

  “Be plum mean to keep me working and waiting unless you’re making your mind up to be good to Gene.”

  “You’re free to go.”

  “I’m not, as you well know.” He honeyed his voice with insinuation. “You’re good enough to eat, Bess, and I’ve a mind to start on you here and now.” He watched as the blood rose under her skin and spread its flush up her neck and over her face. Snaking his arm about her waist, his hand caught a breast and then sought buttons to undo.

  Leon came around the house and, seeing them, stopped. Bessie shook her head, more at herself than at either of them, and stepped back into the kitchen.

  “What are you gawking at?” Eugene demanded of the dumbstruck boy before he followed Bessie. “Your son needs to learn respect.”

  “Don’t mind him.”

  “Hates the sight of me, and so does your old ma.”

  “They’re jealous.”

  “A ma jealous of a daughter? A young’un jealous of his ma?”