“What is your offer?” she challenged him.
“A hundred dollars more than Gene’s.”
“The price is rising. Perhaps I should hold it for auction to the highest bidder—”
James said gravely, “You will surely sell it to the cotton mill, Miss Frankie.”
Frankie smiled. “Mr. Betchley was first to ask me, and if I dispose of it to others, will he not be disappointed, perhaps angry?”
Benjamin said, “Leave me to deal with his anger.”
“We don’t want to offend him, do we, uncle? He is too valuable to the sawmill. But I am forgetting. The sawmill is nothing to me now, is it? Nothing is as it was while Bonard lived.”
“I don’t want us to offend Betchley,” James said temperately.
“Do you trust him?” Sarah asked.
“I must, for there is no other way.”
“Surely another might learn to do his work,” Jane suggested to her father.
Frankie reached to put a hand on his arm. “Why not I, uncle? You and Papa Blair both say I have a mind for the business!” She shook her head. “And yet you left me to discover the extent of my estate from the man who works for you.”
“I wish,” James said, “you would not make a joke of these things, ma’am. It pains me to have you believe I have anything but your best interests at heart.”
“I know that, sir, and am grateful. Maybe, Ben, you will decide not to expand the cotton mill; I should then feel compelled to sell to no one. But there is no profit for me in such a course, and I am deplorably poor. My mother-in-law is forever telling me so.”
Daniel, who had listened quietly, now said to James, “Benjamin and I know sawmill work, Mr. Davis. We have good reason to, don’t we, brother Ben? One or both of us could surely help you for a time, should you want to run the mill without Gene Betchley.”
James colored. “As a matter of true fact, though I had no plan to announce it—but we are all family, and it will go no further—”
“Look at what happened to my little secret!” Frankie said.
James continued uncomfortably, “I have been talking to Gene about his becoming a partner—in a gradual way. He came to me. That would be after he spoke to you, Miss Frankie.”
Benjamin said, “Do you mean to let him have a share of your interest?”
James shook his head. “I’ve discussed it with Blair and Annabel. Since Bonard died, they see no reason to hold on to their quarter part. I’ve offered to buy it from them and allow Gene to pay me for it as he can.”
“Well, Papa!” Jane said. “It is a day for revelations. Do you really mean to take Gene Betchley as a partner?”
“I know no better way to keep him and to make him feel responsible to the sawmill. It’s true when they say if you want a man’s loyalty, you must buy it.”
Hands tense on the arms of her chair, Sarah pushed herself up as she saw and heard a wagon coming along the carriageway. “Here are Tom and Betty with their brood—Josephine is in her glory with such a party, saying it is like the old days.”
The group on the porch began to rise to greet the new arrivals. The Coopers were man and wife and five boys, all laughing and shouting and seeming to fill the wagon to overflow. Tom’s father had died, but the young family now crowded the old Cooper house and farm. Attracted by the general din, the other children returned. As the two parties converged in the front yard, Frankie drew her daughter aside. “Did you listen to my conversation with Eugene Betchley the other Saturday?”
“I could not help hearing.”
Frankie gripped the girl’s wrist. “Who did you tell?”
“Only Luck when she brought me the violets yesterday.”
“Luck Elk! And she went directly and told her father and Abraham. So that was the way of it.”
“Luck is my friend, Mama.”
“But only a Negro.”
“What Mr. Betchley said was against her papa and Abraham.”
“You might have left it to me to do what is right.” When Fanny’s only response was a stubborn look, Frankie let go her wrist and slapped her. It happened and was over so quickly that no one saw except Leon. Frankie immediately pulled her daughter against her so that they moved forward together.
Kissing Fanny on the cheek, Elizabeth Cooper complained laughingly, “Why was I not given one pretty girl to dress up and keep me company? Look at my scamps and scalawags!”
Such was the clamor that when Josephine rang the bell, no one heard it, and Velma came running to tell them dinner was ready. Two tables had been set in the dining room. As dinner progressed, they were alternately gay with talk and silent with appreciative eating. Sarah sat at one end of the main table and Benjamin at the other; between them were James Davis and Frankie Saxon, Jane and Daniel Todd, and Tom and Elizabeth Cooper, who held her youngest, Jeremiah, on her lap. At the other table a few feet away Leon sat at one end with Bruce at the other; between them were Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis Todd, Fanny and Blair Saxon, and the four older Cooper sons: Jesse, Jacob, Marvin, and Garvin.
Their nineteen mouths had been fed and their nineteen voices heard in various degrees of eloquence and foolery. Hunger satisfied, the young ones were sleepy or restless, while their elders grew more studiedly polite with satiety and boredom, for everything had been said that would be said, and more than once. Josephine and Mabella and Velma had come and gone unnumbered times. Sarah, who had attended to everyone and everything, wanted suddenly to be alone, or rather to be alone with Casey until, remembering she never again could be, she allowed herself briefly to hate everyone present for living and smiling and chattering while her dearly beloved was lost, lost forever.
Even as she fixed her face to listen to Elizabeth Cooper tell how well her dried peaches had lasted through the winter without molding, she was aware that Josephine had come to the door wearing her important frown. She hesitated, turned away, and returned almost immediately. Sarah’s eyes met the woman’s and invited her to come and say whatever was on her mind. Josephine came, leaned, whispered.
“Benjamin!”
At the sound of his grandmother’s voice Benjamin rose from his chair and Jane from hers, alert to crisis. Without asking leave or pardon, they hurried with Sarah and Josephine out the door, leaving the guests to stare and murmur. Daniel started after them but stayed to calm the children instead.
Opening the door to the office, they entered to find the thin figure of a woman crouched, almost cowering in a chair. She raised her head when Benjamin said, “Nancy?”
Trying to smile, she wept instead. “I’ve come home to die!”
7
Trying to rise, she fell to the floor. Benjamin picked her up and carried her directly to the room they still maintained for farm accidents and minor illnesses. Josephine surged ahead to uncover the bed; together, she and Sarah undressed Nancy and put her into it. Benjamin left to fetch Dr. Rolfe, and Jane, seeing that she was not needed, remembered the houseful of guests her brother and grandmother had forgotten. Returning to the dining room, she found only Velma clearing the tables and was told by her that Mr. Daniel had herded everybody out to the front porch when they commenced to mill around. It was there she found them a minute later.
The adults had been scraping their rocking chairs restlessly into and out of the sun and wanting either to face the light wind to cool off from the dining room or to put their backs to it to avoid it. Grouped on the long shallow steps, the children giggled themselves through the game of changing places in order to sit beside this one or to escape that one, finally settling to tease Davy. Jane appeared just as he realized he was shunned by all and raised his voice to tell them they needn’t be so hateful, for he didn’t have the itch and hadn’t pooted. Daniel gave him a light passing kick as he turned to his wife; and when everyone was looking at her, Jane explained that a woman loved by all at Beulah Land and many years absent had just come home and was, they feared, ill.
Frankie said, “We wondered why Benjamin rode away in
such a hurry without even a wave.”
“Can you mean Miss Sarah’s sister?” Elizabeth asked. “Miss Lauretta—that was her name, although I was no more than born when she married the Yankee colonel and went up North to live. I’ve always thought she must have been jolly because Mama disapproved of her.”
Jane shook her head. “This one went no further than Savannah. She was born here, one of our people, and stayed with us through the war and after.”
Tom Cooper said, “A slave, you mean?”
“You’ve all heard about Nancy,” Jane said to the children on the steps.
But it was Frankie who replied first. “Indeed we have.” Her quick laugh surprised Jane into a questioning look, which Frankie ignored.
Bobby Lee said, “I have!”
Davy said, “I have too!”
Jane smiled at them and then at their seniors, as if that ended the matter. “Bobby Lee, you and Davy and all the rest of you, run out now and play. Otherwise you’ll have bad dreams tonight after those rich victuals you stuffed yourselves with. Greedy-guts, that’s what you are. Scat. Scoot.”
They went, Davy first, racing toward a cedar tree as if he intended to smash himself to smithereens, to miss it by an inch and continue around the house and into the farther reaches of the back yards. Leon and Bobby Lee gave chase from habit, and the Cooper boys charged after them, Blair Saxon dawdling along with Fanny and Bruce until they began to skip. He paused to pick up a feather from the grass, pretending to examine it, convinced because he wanted to be that he was watched by every eye on the porch. Then heaving such a sigh as might have served a saint renouncing the world, he dropped the feather and skipped out of sight after the others.
He found them on a fence enclosing the pigpens, the girls just climbing up to join the boys, some of whom were perched on the top board like roosting chickens while others twined arms and legs in and out lower boards as if they were growing vines. Blair stared at them with disapproval. As the girls reached the top where space was made for them, he said, “Bruce, you’re ugly.”
Bruce looked down at him and said, “I know it.”
Unsatisfied by her easy answer, he continued, “That old scar of yours gets worse every time I see you.”
Leon said, “You shut your mouth before I throw you in the pen to that big mean sow.”
Blair put his hands on his hips to jeer. “You know what my grandma says you are? A bastard!”
Quick as gravity, Leon fell on him, not bothering to fight him, content to hold him to the ground and sit on him. Blair pretended great hurt. “Ooey, ooey, ooey, you’ve broke something! I think my arm is broke, look how limp it is. I think my ankle’s broke; I can’t move my foot!” Leon got off him, and Blair made as if to stand, hopping and hobbling. “Ooey, ooey, ooey, ooey!”
“You sound like a pig,” Jacob Cooper said.
“Mama!” Blair wailed commandingly as he went off. “Send for the doctor for me—Leon tried to kill me!”
They forgot him instantly. Davy said, “Mama wanted to get rid of us so they could talk about Nancy.”
“I reckon so,” Bobby Lee agreed.
“I never heard of Nancy,” Bruce protested.
Davy looked at her, incredulous.
Bobby Lee said, “She saved Mama from being ravaged by the Yankee raiders when Sherman came through. Nancy laid right down on the floor and let them ravage her instead, so they left Mama alone. But they dug up Uncle Ezra’s grave looking for silver and gold, and they killed poor Lovey with an ax.”
“I hate a Yankee worse than anything,” Jesse Cooper said.
“You never saw one,” Jacob said.
Familiar with stories about the war, Bruce only said, “What does it mean, ‘ravage’?”
“Means they fucked her,” Davy said.
As the Cooper boys giggled, Bobby Lee hit his brother on the arm with his fist, but it was so common a blow between them Davy hardly blinked. “You don’t say it in front of girls.”
“They’re only cousins,” Davy pointed out.
“They’re girls,” Leon said severely.
“Girls know what it means,” Davy insisted, and his brother hit him again.
Fanny said, “I think it was brave of Nancy to do that.”
Bobby Lee said, “I remember Aunt Nell asked for Nancy to come hold her hand one day before she died. She sure loved Nancy.”
“What you reckon she’s sick with?” Leon said.
“I don’t know,” Bobby Lee said angrily, as if he had been unreasonably expected to.
“I bet a rattlesnake bit her,” Marvin Cooper said.
“That’s right,” said his twin Garvin.
“Yellow fever,” Jesse offered.
Leon said, “Wrong time of year. Besides, she couldn’t have come all the way from Savannah with it. Haven’t you heard that old saying about the fever? ‘After twelve hours a body is ready for his cook or his coffin.’”
Davy, who had been plunged in thought, surfaced, “I’m mighty glad nobody ravaged Mama! God bless Nancy!”
Marvin said, “Let’s play. I’m tired of hanging on this old fence.”
Garvin said, “We got fences at home good as this one.”
The Todd boys hinted to Bruce and Fanny that there were a lot more games boys could play with boys than they could play with girls and maybe they’d like to go sit on the porch and rest. Fanny and Bruce shook their heads, so it was decided to play hide-and-go-seek. Davy was elected to be the one to close his eyes and count to a hundred while the others hid. Instead of protesting, he began to count so rapidly the others scampered away in all directions.
Presently, as if by accident, Leon discovered Fanny behind a door in the cow barn. “I reckon I better go hide someplace else,” he said with unconvincing surprise.
“Maybe you had,” Fanny said.
“I hope you’re not mad because I sat on your brother.”
“You didn’t hurt him,” she said.
Leon looked exaggeratedly relieved. “I sure am glad you’re not mad. Do you know why?”
“Well, why?”
Leon blushed. “I want you to be my sweetheart.”
“Why do you?”
“Because I love you.”
“You do?”
He nodded.
“Well,” she said, “all right.” She put out her hand, and he shook it.
8
Since the near-fatal beating of Leon brought him there seven years ago, Rolfe was the doctor summoned to Beulah Land for illness or accident. He spoke his mind directly when he was certain, and he wasn’t afraid to say, “I don’t know,” when he was not. About Nancy he was in no doubt.
“Consumption,” he told Sarah and Benjamin after his examination.
“Can she get well?” Benjamin asked.
“I don’t know her strength, never having treated her. She won’t say how long she’s been sick, and maybe she doesn’t remember. You saw the pox scars?” They nodded. “She had that five years ago and has worked as a washwoman since.”
Sarah told him something of her history.
“I’m glad you engage to take care of her,” he said, “for she’ll surely die if nobody does, and she may anyway.”
Although they sat with her when Mabella spooned food into her that evening, Benjamin and Sarah said nothing of the future until the next morning. After breakfast they went together to see her. Sarah told her the truth, but less than Rolfe had said at the end of his first visit.
“Shut the door and let me die here. That’s all I want.”
“We aren’t going to let you die at all if we can help it,” Sarah said.
“I never thought about children. I shouldn’t have come.”
Benjamin said, “They won’t get it. They’re strong as bulldogs. In a few days I’m going to move you up to my house in the Glade.” Nancy looked alarmed, but Sarah nodded to assure her it was already decided.
“What of Mrs.?”
“Mrs. lives in town with her ma, and I live h
ere with my boy Leon and my girl Bruce.”
“Mabella told me about them.”
“The Glade house has been empty,” Sarah said. “You’ll be quiet when you want to be, but Rosalie will take care of you. Now her children are all married, she doesn’t have enough to do, and it will stop her grumbling. Well be in and out.”
Nancy’s eyes were closed, but her frown registered protest.
Benjamin said, “You’ll do what you’re told, for once.”
“The main thing,” Sarah said, “is rest.” She patted her hand. “We’ll leave you now. Try to sleep and ring the bell on the table if you need anybody.”
At the door Benjamin said, “You’re home, Nancy.”
Frankie Saxon had been thinking about Nancy that Monday morning as she waited for James Davis to come to her. When Jane revealed yesterday whose arrival had claimed the attention of host and hostess, Frankie’s mind had gone back to the morning she and Benjamin had last spoken of Nancy in the little room at the cotton gin where they met. It was their first time together after Bonard’s death, and they’d commented on the fact that it was different for them. They hadn’t realized how different it was to be, she mused, wondering if it could have happened then. That was the earliest it could have happened, she calculated. They had lain together on four occasions since that meeting. She asked herself with exasperation: Why, after being together so many times over the years, had she become pregnant now?
She must have a husband, and soon. However sympathetic the town customarily was to widows; they would not understand Frankie Saxon’s having a baby ten months after her husband died following a long illness. So she would get a husband, and she knew who he would be and how she would get him. She had long been aware that James Davis wanted her. She might regret the loss of Benjamin, and he would never be reconciled to her marrying his father; but there were advantages to such a match, and not a little amusement. She would never again have to worry about money, and Annabel Saxon would be outraged.
The moment she heard the knock at the door and hastened to answer it, the hallway clock struck ten. She had told her one remaining house servant, Molly, to keep to the back of the house, where she was washing clothes that morning. When she and James were seated alone in her private parlor, they spoke of the fine weather. She told him how reluctant the children had been to go to school after their pleasurable visit to Beulah Land. He asked her if Annabel had yet paid her usual morning visit.
The Legacy of Beulah Land Page 25