“She is a whore,” Mrs. Oglethorpe declared, bringing out the final word triumphantly. “And you, sir, should be whipped in public. By giving her the shelter of your house, you admit yourself to be the whore’s monger!”
“Get into your buggy and go—or I’ll take the whip out of your hand, Mrs. Oglethorpe, and thrash the pair of you. That will give the town something new to gossip about.”
From the ground Nancy begged, “Just let them go Ben—”
“You see how she calls him?” Mrs. Oglethorpe marveled eagerly even as she hurried after her daughter to the buggy. When they were safely seated, the older woman took reins in one hand and lifted whip in the other. “May the Lord have mercy on you if He dare, you son and daughter of Lucifer! I shall have none!” She landed the leather smartly on the horse’s rump, and the buggy jolted away.
When they were gone, Nancy got to her feet. “Laws, Mr. Ben, don’t know what I’d done if you hadn’t come when you did! Dem women’s been calling me bad names! Thankee, Mr. Ben!” He stepped back in surprise until she continued in her natural voice. “I don’t care what they say about me—I’d have sent them off satisfied if you’d kept your big feet off this place another five minutes! Now they’ll do everything they can to cause trouble.” She stumbled to the hammock and fell into it wearily, closing her eyes.
He watched her for a minute from where he stood and then went and sat on the ground a few feet away from her but with his head at a level with hers. When she opened her eyes and saw him, she turned on her side. The gesture told him to go, but he remained; and when she looked again and found him there, he said, “I’m sorry. I ought to have let you do it your way, but when I heard what she was saying, I got so mad—”
Her stern expression relaxed into sadness. “They only say true.”
“Will you make me fight you too?”
“No use, Ben. I won’t get better, for I’ve no reason.”
He took a breath like taking a decision. “I’ll give you one. Get well so I can go to bed with you.”
“A pretty way to talk to a dying woman—”
“I’ll tell you when you can die, and don’t you do it before.”
“Listen to bossy you.” Her smile was weak.
“I mean it, Nancy.”
“Look at me,” she said. They studied each other before she continued. “The first time we messed around you were—ten or eleven? I was thirteen. I’ve always been older than you. Now I’m a hundred years old. I’m marked with the pox. I worked in that house in Savannah till I was too ugly for even what they call ‘the most depraved.’ Nobody got drunk enough to ask my price the last few years.”
“You were my first girl,” he said.
“You were not my first boy, nor my last. I didn’t drift into the business. I knew what I was doing, and I enjoyed it when I could. Now I’ve got no feelings left. I’m what they see, if you don’t: a worn-out whore dying of consumption.”
“Shut up, if that’s all you can say.”
“Look at me until you see the truth.”
“I’ll give you a truth,” he said softly. “Don’t you know I’ve been aching to fuck you ever since you got home?” She stared at him. “I’m going in the house and upstairs to what used to be my room. I’m going to get in bed. Come up soon, because I’m going to wait until you do.” He rose from the ground and crossed the grove to the house.
In his old room he opened a window and turned back the dust sheet before stripping his clothes off and lying down on the bare mattress. It was half an hour before she came, but she came; and when she reached the door, she entered directly and closed it behind her. He watched her as she undressed, and when she came to the bed, his whole body rose to claim her. With a groan she closed arms and legs about him, and they loved each other as if bent on self-destruction. When they came, their bodies were wet with sweat and their faces wet with tears. Exhausted, she slept. He kept watch, and she woke an hour later to the tickle of his forefinger under her chin.
“Long time,” he said.
She turned; a bone snapped. “Years for me,” she said ruefully.
“I meant since we’ve been together.”
“Didn’t imagine it was a long time since you’d had a woman.”
“That’s been a good while too.”
He told her about the affair with Frankie, and about her becoming pregnant after Bonard died, and about her marrying James Davis.
“Godalmighty. You’re in worse trouble than I am.”
He shook his head. “I’ve got you again. The happiest time in my life was the days we spent together in Savannah when I was nineteen.”
“That was good,” she agreed.
“I didn’t want anybody after you sent me away.”
“For a week or two?”
“More like three.” She slapped him on his naked shoulder. “Ah, Nancy—what mistakes you’d have saved us both if you’d only come with me the way I begged you.”
“It would have buried you as well as me.”
“Don’t talk of dying and burying now.”
“I’m not going to die yet,” she conceded. “But don’t expect me to be a muley-cow, always waiting for you.”
He stroked her back and thighs, and after a minute she pressed against him. “Your feelings are over and done. That’s what you said.”
She lifted her face to look at him. “You’ve got a gift.” He smiled, and she marveled how a smile could light the world.
14
Two decades after the war the all-day party at Beulah Land on the Fourth of July was still thought of as a family affair rather than a celebration of the birth of the Union. Annabel Saxon considered challenging Sarah’s claim on the day by selecting it for the unveiling of the new Confederate memorial; but realizing that no one connected with Beulah Land would attend the event if there was such a choice, she settled upon July 2 to harangue fellow citizens with a speech extolling her efforts on behalf of their common heritage. Annabel got her crowd, even Sarah deciding that it was unpolitic not to go. Elk Institute, because of Annabel’s occasional sponsorship, provided a contingent of its Negro pupils enthusiastically waving Confederate flags and singing “Dixie.” Annabel enjoyed her day in the sun, and Sarah enjoyed hers in the shade, the old trees of Beulah Land providing a thick cover to the annual feast and feasters.
Benjamin escorted Bruce and Fanny Saxon to Annabel’s program in Highboro, Leon and Sarah going separately in her buggy and the Todd family in theirs. Afterwards, on impulse, Sarah stopped at the Betchley farm to ask Bessie if she would join them at Beulah Land two days hence. Bessie declined, but Sarah promised to send her a sampling of the victuals. So that it would not have the appearance of leftovers, she made up a basket early in the morning of the Fourth and deputized Leon to deliver it. The prospect of driving the buggy only partially overcame Leon’s disinclination to see his mother alone. Bobby Lee and Davy scorned his invitation to share the adventure, for there was much of interest going on at Beulah Land. On visits to the farm Leon was ill at ease because he didn’t want to be there; he had not been alone with his mother since he was carried unconscious to Beulah Land after his beating by Eugene. If Theodore was with her instead of in the woods or fields, he could hand over the basket and leave, saying he was needed at the plantation to help with other matters. But when he arrived, he found Bessie in the kitchen washing a greasy skillet from breakfast. As she dried her hands to accept the basket, both were dumb until she cleared her throat to say, “Miss Sarah didn’t come?” She provided her own answer. “Too busy, I expect. I don’t know where Theodore—he’s somewhere.”
“Well’m.” He stepped back to the door. “I have to get on.”
“Dipper of water? Early though it is, it’s a day to scorch your hide. I don’t reckon you’d be hungry?” She was not eager for him to stay but resented his look of wanting to escape.
To reply, “No, ma’am,” seemed not enough, so he added, “I had a big breakfast,” and then unnecessarily, “on t
he porch with Grandma and Pa.”
Taking his elaboration for brag, she hardened her voice to mockery. “Did you? Waited on by a whole gaggle of niggers, I’ll vow.”
He gestured toward the basket she had placed on the table in the middle of the kitchen. He would never see the table without remembering spilling coffee and Gene’s slapping him. “There’s some of everything,” he explained. “I watched Grandma pack it. Barbecued pig and goat—”
“None of us’ll touch goat.”
“A whole cake, a gallon of Brunswick Stew, and a jar of—”
“You’re good as the bill of fare in a dining room in Savannah; but I don’t have to be told Miss Sarah spreads a rich table.”
“Well’m. I just better go now.”
She repeated the motion of wiping her hands on her dress front, although they were dry. “I’ll walk out with you. I have to go to the privy. How’d you come—nigger bring you in a wagon or did they make you tote that basket all this way?”
“Grandma let me drive her buggy. Buster’s used to me. He’s a good old mule.”
She eyed Buster critically as they approached the buggy. “Fat as lard from eating too much and working too little. You tell Miss Sarah I’m obliged, you hear, and she needn’t fear for her dishes, though I don’t imagine she sent her best. They’ll be safe till she comes for them.”
“I’ll tell her.”
She laughed shortly. “Brunswick Stew ’minds me of the time—” Color rose under the coarse skin of her neck. “I was going to say when you went first to their family party and come home with a basket of victuals for your Granny Marsh, Lord rest her soul.”
“That’s some while ago,” he reminded her, fiddling with Buster’s harness merely to be doing something. He knew it was all right; Wally had watched him hitch the mule to the buggy and said so.
“Expect it seems longer to you than to me. Time don’t mean a thing to me, because I don’t go nowhere, just set here ignorant of everything but the past.”
He longed to leave but knew her tempers. “I take flowers and put them on Granny Marsh’s grave.”
“Lord, I miss her so. You and Miss Sarah have time to think of doing them things.”
He pulled himself into the seat of the buggy and took reins in hand, moving deliberately to show no haste.
She smiled tightly, reading his mind. “Think you’re grown sitting up there, don’t you? You’re a lot like your pa. He was a good-looking boy when he used to sneak around here after me.” His embarrassment fed her anger. “Just wa a minute, boy, for I haven’t said you could go. Got a thing to ask you been on my mind. It’s about that night long back, you know the one. What made you accuse Gene of doing what you said? ”
“It just came into my head.” He hesitated. “When we were by ourself once Granny Marsh told me she was scared of him because he wanted her dead.”
“The imagination of the old—and the young! I reckon you’re making that up.”
“I’m not. But you claimed you saw it all happen and it wasn’t that way.”
“That’s right,” she agreed flatly. “Want you to hear something else I never had the chance to say. Reason I sold you was your pa’s folks could do better for you than me.” He lifted the reins. “Don’t drive off till I say! You’re telling yourself what you’ve all told one another, that I done it ’cause Gene made me. That’s a story. You’re still the burden I toted in my belly for nine long months while ever’body laughed. Nobody on this earth wanted you. Not till Ben Davis decided he couldn’t get a son no other way than taking you from me. That’s how you got the name I wasn’t good enough for. Don’t think it was you he wanted. To my dying day I’ll remember the look on his face when I told him I was going to have you. If you’d seen that, you wouldn’t think he wanted you.” He started the mule and managed to turn the buggy in time to conceal his tears of mortification. “No matter whose fat mule you drive, you’re common as the dirt farm you was born on, and don’t you forget it, little bastard!”
On his way from Beulah Land that morning he had thought to ride back up the carriageway with head high as they exclaimed over his easy handling of mule and buggy; but when he got home, the large party had begun to assemble and spread indoors and out, populating the porches and yards. Sarah saw him but paused only to ask if his mother had been pleased with the basket before hurrying to the kitchen to cajole Josephine into allowing some of the servants brought by family visitors to help her serve. Josephine did not want people in her kitchen talking and laughing, or even smiling until she said “smile,” and anyone with heavier tread than tiptoe was banished when meringue and custard were in the ovens. Entering, Sarah cried, “Josephine, you are my best friend, so I know I can count on you to be good-natured about something!” Josephine scowled at her suspiciously.
Leon found Wally and the stable boy comparing the horses and mules brought by visitors, so he unhitched Buster and wheeled the empty buggy into its stall. Davy and Bobby Lee, who often gave the impression of being everywhere simultaneously, were nowhere to be seen, having sworn to ignore their cousin’s privilege and elevation. As Davy put it to his brother, “Bad enough he can come, and we can’t. Now he’s took Grandma’s buggy out, he’ll act like King Shit. I wish to God I was eighteen years old and had curly hair and wasn’t freckle-faced. I’d come a hundred times a day, I bet you!”
Bobby Lee corrected him automatically. “Hush your dirty talk. If you say ‘shit’ in front of Aunt Doreen and upset her, I’ll skin you like a rabbit and drop you in a barrel of brine. I reckon he’s strutting like a banty rooster learning how to crow.”
In truth, Leon was glad not to draw attention, for he was certain that if anyone looked at him, they’d see no more than his mother saw: a no-good, dirt-farm, boughten bastard. He slumped, he slunk in the shadows; and when any called his name that day, his heart shrank in apprehension. Finally becoming aware that their cousin was in no fettle to play cock of the walk, Bobby Lee and his brother sought him out. “Did you run it in a ditch and crook the wheels?” Bobby Lee asked.
“No!” Leon retorted furiously.
“You musta done something,” Davy observed, “else you wouldn’t skunk around looking so dumpsy.” His eyes brightened. “Did you try to come and couldn’t?”
Leon stamped away in his misery, leaving the cousins puzzled and pondering the mystery.
So occupied was everyone, he managed to avoid more than brief contact with guests for most of the day; but at noon when he was glumly consuming a plate of barbecued pig, Fanny’s voice broke his isolation. “I pure despise that old man.”
Curiosity made him search around to see who she meant, and when he discovered the object of her glare, she nodded confirmation.
“He’s my grandpa,” he objected mildly.
She shrugged. “You all at Beulah Land are so mixed up in your relations I don’t try to sort it out. All I know, and that’s enough, is he’s my stepdaddy. You ought to see how Blair shines up to him, hoping to get a quarter, and he usually does. I hate men and boys. Luck feels the same. We aren’t going to have anything to do with them from now on.” Lured out of self-absorption, he studied her determined face. “I wish there was another war. I’d go be a nurse like Clara Barton.”
“Then you’d have to have do with men,” he pointed out.
“Only when they were dying,” she said with satisfaction. “Why are you feeling sorry for yourself today? You’ve got a face as long as Buster’s, and I haven’t heard you laugh once, even when Abraham told his story about the goat in Philadelphia that could trot backward. I think goats are smart, unlike some people. Just remember—you’re lucky to live at Beulah Land.”
“You mean I don’t belong here,” he mumbled.
She sighed impatiently. “Where else do you belong? I mean I don’t, and I wish I did.” She brooded, watching him eat. “I don’t like Mama much better than I do him. Do you like her? If you do, just say so. She thinks everybody in britches ought to, so go ahead if you can’t
help yourself.”
“Why should I like her or not? She’s just Aunt Frankie.”
“That means you like her.”
“You’re crazy with the heat today.”
Deciding not to take offense, Fanny continued, “She’s stuck-up and greedy, and now she says she’s tired all the time. She blames it on this baby she’ll have. I think it’s all disgusting, but I bide my time. When I get old enough, I’m going to shake her till her joints squeak and then I’m going to throw her powder puff and all her jars of stuff in the creek. Then she’ll look like everybody else, and we can all relax. Grandma Annabel says you eat enough for a dozen darkies picking cotton fourteen hours a day. Wherever do you put it all?” She let her gaze wander back to James Davis, who managed to sit so that one knee bore into his wife’s thigh as they ate side by side in the shade. “He’s dirty.”
Leon’s eyes followed hers again. “Maybe he misses places when he washes because he’s blind.”
“I don’t mean dirty like that, I mean dirty-dirty.” Looking at his grandfather, Leon blushed, telling himself he must never touch his own peter again except to pee. “Mama says I have to go home in a week or two or I’ll outstay my welcome.”
“Nobody cares how long you stay,” he said, meaning to comfort her.
“I don’t want to go home. I hate it at night, because I can hear him through the halls and walls.”
Memory and sympathy stirred in Leon. “Some people haven’t any gumption,” he said placatingly.
“If that’s all you can say, I’ll find Bruce and talk to her. She’s got more sense for her age than anybody I know anyway.” She flounced away.
He took his empty plate to one of the long tables laden with food. Mabella greeted him with a friendly smirk. “You back? You’ll grow a belly big as Sandy Claus.”
“I’ll have that pulley bone,” he said with dignity, “and some potato salad, if you please, and a spoonful of roasting ears.”
The Legacy of Beulah Land Page 29