The Legacy of Beulah Land

by Lonnie Coleman

  No one said what he was to call Benjamin, so he settled for “sir.” It was, Benjamin reasoned, better than being called Mr. Davis by his son, but he wanted to acknowledge their relationship and was stayed only by Sarah’s cautioning him to go slowly, for the boy’s sake as well as his own. He spent time with him when he could, and when there was no time to spare, he set Leon in front of his saddle to ride the fields with him as he checked the progress of work. Leon understood that it was a proud thing to ride so, and for the first time he allowed himself to believe that he was the son of the man he’d been told was his father. Benjamin’s arm around him holding the reins was certainty; and now and then Benjamin gave him the reins when he reached down to accept something being shown him by a man or woman on the ground.

  The event Leon most looked forward to came in late afternoon when, the sun still hot but work done for the day, Benjamin dismissed the field hands, and he and Daniel called Leon and Davy and Bobby Lee to come with them to the creek for a swim. They carried fresh clothes to change into, for the swim was a way of bathing, and they’d have sweated many times through everything they wore in a day. The boys went barefoot. Neither men nor boys wore underclothes, only cotton shirt and trousers.

  Daniel Todd was quiet almost to solemn, and this brought out in Benjamin a humorousness Leon liked. Davy and Bobby Lee were very free with their father and clearly worshipped him. Leon envied them the ease with which one or the other would take his hand when he wanted to. Only now and then would the man pick up and set aside one who had become a nuisance by climbing over him when he sat or lay on the ground, which was enough to sober even the livelier Davy. One day watching them with their father, Leon took Benjamin’s hand. Benjamin looked down at him, surprised and friendly, but then Leon didn’t know when to let go, so he did it awkwardly. He’d had no experience of touching those he liked and being touched by them.

  He couldn’t swim. They all taught him with such enthusiasm they almost drowned him, but he learned to dog-paddle and was never again to fear water the way some country boys unaccountably did. Swimming seemed to run, or not, in families. After swimming—and Davy at two was as independent in water as he was out of it—they sat on the bank to dry themselves before dressing. There was a large holly tree they used to drape their clothes upon, because it was known to be free (they didn’t know why) of the red bugs that got into seams and bit and were hard to get rid of. Leon learned to hang his things on the holly so that they would neither rip nor be blown into the creek.

  Finally they dressed and walked back through the woods, quieter as the creek was quieter too, nothing stirring in it, something thoughtful in the gentle movement of men and water at the end of the day. The boys broke free and ran ahead or made sorties into the woods on either side of the path. The best part of the day was followed by the worst, when they parted in the yard, his uncle Daniel taking his cousins home, his father sending him into the house to his great-grandmother while he went on to the house in the Glade.

  Leon was never taken there, and he knew that it had to do with the woman who was married to his father. Once Benjamin brought down a Negro woman he called Velma and a baby he said was his daughter Bruce. He wondered about the scar on her lip, but no one mentioned it.

  Leon did not miss his mother. She had never paid him much attention, and she’d given him none since Eugene Betchley attached himself to the farm. Now and then he thought of his grandmother, who had been his companion more than anyone else and whose bed he had shared. He’d hated it and felt smothered by the sour odor of her through the worn petticoat she never removed. Sometimes he remembered the smell with pity and a stir of guilt at not being there to help her, for how could she get around without him? She had not been affectionate, but a child will love someone if he can, and Leon had attached himself to the grandmother.

  One morning when Leon was at the Todd house, Bessie came to Beulah Land. Happening to be on the porch, Sarah saw her approaching and stepped down into the yard to greet her as Bessie jerked the mule to a halt. “Get down and come in,” Sarah invited.

  “I won’t do that, Mrs. Troy, for I’m in a big hurry for town. Got a heap of tomatoes and butter beans to sell. Wondered if you wasn’t tired of my young’un. He must have been here three weeks, I reckon.”

  It was nearer five, as Sarah knew to the day, but she managed to say with a vagueness as unconvincing as it was uncharacteristic, “Long as that? We’re not a bit tired of him. Since he’s been out of bed, he’s never underfoot, usually off with Mrs. Todd’s two. We hardly know he’s on the place.”

  “He could be a right smart of use if you told him what to do.”

  “He hasn’t been strong enough to do other than traipse around with the children and watch them play,” Sarah lied.

  “Look out he don’t possum you. You sent word he was over the chills and fever.”

  “You know how it is with malaria. Free of it a month, then back it can come to nearly kill you.”

  Bessie said agreeably enough, “Well, I spect you better have him ready to go home with me when I stop after town. That’s why I come, to tell you.”

  With an exertion of will Sarah forced a smile for the country woman, who had taken off her sunbonnet to wipe her forehead. “Let him stay a week longer to be sure. You don’t want a sick child when crops are coming in. How’s your corn?”

  “Pretty good, better later. Big crop of garden stuff; that’s why I’m wanting to sell some.”

  “Gene Betchley still helping you?”

  “I owe a lot to Gene,” Bessie said, reserve entering her voice. “He’s a real worker.”

  Sarah nodded. “He’s better off helping you farm than he was setting traps in our woods.”

  “Your grandson told you that?”

  “Everybody knows what Gene was doing before he settled down at your place. How do you pay him?”

  It was Bessie’s turn to smile. “You have the boy ready when I come back,” she said, but her voice was less assured than it had been. Knowing her advantage, Sarah spent another five minutes coaxing with forced good nature, attacking and withdrawing, her smile as fixed as a smile on a statue. In the end she won; but when she stood on the porch watching the wagon disappear through the orchard on its way to the main road, she wondered if the encounter had not gone as Bessie wanted it to go.

  18

  When he was not with Davy and Bobby Lee, or asleep at night, he was with his father. Shyness had given way to trust on both sides, and it now seemed to Benjamin the most natural thing in the world to say, “Come on, Leon.” The invitation might take them no further than the melon patch or the hog barn, but the boy’s eagerness to accompany him no matter where gave Benjamin pleasure every time it happened. Together they rode into the fields, sometimes into town to pick up the mail or to see Dr. Platt, who finally said Leon was cured. Once Benjamin took him to see his aunt Doreen and Miss Kilmer. After a moment’s consternation, as much at the idea of “entertaining two gentlemen” as at the identity of the younger, they made a party of the half-hour visit. There was tea and cake and much ado about the several house cats who, usually aloof, took it into their heads to parade and be admired. The ladies were completely won when the usually bad-tempered, all-white Toby sat at the boy’s feet for five minutes gazing at him with adoration that would have shamed the shepherds in the manger.

  Another time they went to the cotton gin, which Isaac was making ready for the late-summer ginning. And one day on impulse Benjamin stopped at the sawmill where the blind James Davis turned blood red when Benjamin told him, “Papa, I’ve brought my son Leon to meet you.” It was some years before Leon understood what the moment held, for Benjamin had been sired by James’s brother Adam, dead of yellow fever when James married Benjamin’s mother Rachel. The only quarrel Benjamin and James ever had was on the day Benjamin discovered this, when James had determined to sell the war-ruined Davis plantation, and Benjamin felt that it was his birthright. Subsequently, James married and fathered three daugh
ters, removing himself from his old family by starting a new one.

  Benjamin himself could not have said why he followed impulse and stopped at the sawmill. Perhaps he was saying to one man what he could not say to the world: “I claim my son.”

  Benjamin’s taking Leon around with him caused gossip in the town, usually disguised as expressions of sympathy for Priscilla Davis. “Poor woman,” it was said, “not only is she afflicted with a marked child, but she must suffer her husband’s display of his sinful past.” Ann Oglethorpe paid one of her rare visits to the Glade, where she shouted at her daughter and urged her to action. Priscilla grew pale and tempered her mother’s fury the best she could, begging that she be permitted to pray over the matter, a plea Mrs. Oglethorpe could hardly deny. That evening Priscilla charged her husband with bringing disgrace upon her and upon himself. He told her that she could stop public comment simply by going with him and Leon to town tomorrow morning and being seen by the promenaders of the main street. She said earnestly, “It would not be right,” and doubtless believed it. He then told her she might do as she pleased, but that it pleased him to take his son about with him. Troubled time though it was, Benjamin could not remember being happy before, and this in turn troubled Sarah, for Sarah knew Bessie would use Leon as power over them.

  It was a week to the hour she came to take Leon back. This time she got down from the wagon to wait on the porch for Mabella to make the boy ready. She refused refreshment, but otherwise was smiling courtesy, her eyes hard and bright as glass in the sun. Sarah was glad that Benjamin was in the fields with Daniel and Zadok. Mabella was sent to fetch Leon from the Todd house, where he was playing marbles with Bobby Lee and Davy. When she’d washed his face and hands, she brought him to the porch with the carpetbag Sarah had provided for his new clothes and toys.

  “I’m ready, Ma,” was Leon’s greeting to Bessie after not seeing her for six weeks.

  Bessie nodded; they did not touch.

  Indicating the bag, Sarah said, “Things we sewed for him. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Bessie assured her she did not. “I brought him to you all but naked. You’ve given so much; how can I say give no more, for I see it’s your pleasure to do it, ma’am, as it is ours to receive. Has he thanked you? If he hasn’t, I’ll cut the blood out of him when I get him home. I’ve got the best tree for growing switches in the county.” Her eyes glittered as her mouth smiled to indicate a jest.

  “Having him here has been our pleasure,” Sarah said. “I hoped you’d leave him until the Fourth of July. We have a family get-together every year. That’s what it is, more than to celebrate the event.” She made the near apology because observance of the holiday was considered misplaced patriotism by many of those Southerners who had suffered least from the preservation of the Union. “They’ve talked about it, Leon and Mrs. Todd’s boys. The Saxons and Davises will come out from town—and all over,” she finished quietly, afraid that her tone sounded like begging.

  “Shouldn’t think they’d all care to eat barbecue with my young’un—no need to nudge you, ma’am, your memory being as good as mine! But if you’ve set your heart on having him, I’ll lend him to you for the day. Not to make a habit, just a favor to you this time. I know how folks can look forward to a thing that don’t matter one bit to others. If he’s a good boy, I’ll spare him from farm work long as he’s home by night.” She shifted the rockers of her chair so that she faced the boy. “You going to be good?” Leon nodded. “Now say ‘goodbye’ and ‘much obliged’ like the little gentleman I can see you’ve become. Lots waiting to be done at home, and your granny needs you.”

  Leon went to Sarah. “Goodbye, Grandma, and I thank you.”

  Bessie chortled. “Calling you his granny!”

  “It was simpler,” Sarah explained. “That’s what the other children call me.” She kissed him quickly on the forehead and smoothed his hair with her palm, as she’d done his father’s a thousand times. “Come back when you can.”

  “Yes’m.”

  It was only when he turned to Mabella that he broke down, for Mabella opened her arms to take him and howled her grief. They hugged each other until Sarah said, “Now, Mabella.”

  Mabella let him go and both wiped their tears and pretended to laugh, which only broke their hearts again and led to another mournful embrace, ended at last by Bessie’s relentless good humor. “Mercy, if he ain’t plum took to your nigger gal! What’s her name?”

  “Mabella!” the girl wailed.

  “I never seen him carry on so. You must have been mighty good to him one way and another.” She turned to Sarah. “You’ve always been a fool about your niggers, ain’t you? Come on, son,” she ordered briskly.

  Mabella could not witness the scene of departure; she turned and fled. Leon dried his tears with the backs of his hands and picked up the carpetbag, Sarah helping him and his burden into the wagon. Already seated, Bessie took reins in hand and slapped the mule’s rump. “Bye, Mrs. Kendrick—I mean Troy. Always think of you-all as Kendricks.”

  Leon set his face and did not speak as his mother turned the wagon over the corner of a bed of zinnias and walked the mule down the carriageway, through the orchard to the main road. Sarah watched until they were out of sight. When she moved, she discovered that her hands were clenched. Going to her office, she opened a box in a desk drawer and took out a silver dollar. She found Mabella in the kitchen and gave her the money.

  “What for, missy?” The girl lifted her eyes from the coin to stare at the back of her retreating mistress. Shaking her head, she said, “Never understand white folks if I lives to be a hundred and twenty.”

  Josephine cuffed her on the shoulder. “Won’t live to twenty if you don’t get the lumps out of them potatoes. You’re done playing mammy.”

  Bessie and Leon did not talk during the journey to the Marsh farm. They never talked in a merely social way. Indeed, Leon had no experience of such a thing before his stay at Beulah Land, where Negroes as well as whites laced the hours with talk for the sake of talk. When they came to the farm and turned into the back yard, they found Gene Betchley at the well drinking water from the side of the draw bucket. He had just stopped work for the noon dinner Bessie had left boiling on the kitchen stove. He’d leaned his hoe against the side of the well, and his naked back was rivuleted with sweat. The still air held his smell, which Leon decided was like that of the soured wet sawdust he remembered from the mill.

  Man and boy stared at each other until Gene dropped the bucket, spilling water and laughing. “If you ain’t a pretty thing!” he exclaimed. “Clean as a cloud and stiff as a cake of salt.”

  Leon hopped down from the wagon and then stepped up on a wheel spoke to reach for the carpetbag.

  “What you got there?” Gene asked.

  “Help me unharness,” Bessie told him.

  “I want to see what he’s got.” Gene snatched the bag out of the boy’s arms and opened the top of it; pulling clothes out with mock daintiness. “Fitten for the son of the Pres-i-dent!” he joked before wadding a shirt blouse to wipe sweat from his armpits.

  “I’ll have to wash and iron it,” Bessie complained. “Leave them things alone.”

  Gene reached into the bag again and brought forth a hand-toy cart. He spun the wheels and ran the cart up his sweat-wet arm as if the arm were a path. Maneuvering the cart playfully around the back of his neck to run it down the other arm, he let it slip and stepped on it with his bare feet. Leon had stood quietly; now he attacked, kicking and butting the man. Gene stepped back and slapped him. Leon fell, muddying his knees where Gene had spilled water on the ground. As he retrieved his broken toy and got up, his mother was saying, “See to the mule like I said.”

  “Learn him some respect!” Gene commanded.

  “You act more like a young’un than him.”

  “If you don’t, I will,” Gene threatened.

  “Take that bag in,” Bessie told Leon, and as he reached for it, his grandmother came out through
the kitchen door.

  “You back, Bessie, I heard you. You got the boy?”

  “I’m here, Gran,” Leon said.

  “There’s a heap of things I want you to do for me,” she announced. He went past her into the house and through the kitchen. She followed him. “Want you first to cut me a new toothbrush for my snuff. From that sweet gum. I can’t find it, and Bess won’t bother. Been doing with plain sticks. Peel the bark and chew the end till it’s soft for my old gums. You hear? Where are you?”

  “Yes’m, I hear.” He had hidden the carpetbag as best he could behind the bed they shared.

  Finding him by his voice, she grabbed him close and whispered, “Gene wants me dead.”

  “Why, what’s he done, Gran?”

  “May not be able to see, but I feel things.” She let him go and sighed. “Lord, sometimes I don’t care. Go get my toothbrush, so I can push my snuff proper. Your ma brought me a new can.”