“I’ll earn a good deal more than that,” he said bluntly.
She leaned forward in her chair. “What if I don’t agree?”
“Then we can’t go along as partners,” he said carefully. “One of us must sell his share to the other. Are you prepared to buy back mine?”
“You take me by surprise,” she said after a moment. “I suppose I might ask the bank to lend me enough to pay for your share, if that’s what you want. Am I to understand, Mr. Betchley—?” She paused to study his face. “What will you do if I buy your share?”
“To begin—I’ll ask more than you’ll say it’s worth. Then, if you pay it, I’ll buy my own sawmill and put yours out of business, because I know the work, and you only imagine you do. I’ve put my back and mind into it, and I’ve learned it, Mrs. I can run a mill by myself. I’ve been doing it for a year, and longer too, for Bonard Saxon passed most of the work to me before he got sick and had to stay home.”
“I shall talk with both Mr. Saxons at the bank, and when I’ve had their advice, I shall take my decision.”
“Meantime?”
“Meantime, what?”
“How is the mill to run, or is it?”
“It will run the way it has run.”
“No, ma’am. I don’t leave here tonight until I know where my future lies.”
“Mr. Betchley, I am being reasonable, and you must be. I own three quarters of the mill. Since I do, three quarters of the profits are reasonably mine. Very well. For the time I shall be unable to take active part in the operation, you will do the whole thing, reporting here to me. You say you don’t want a salary. We are both familiar with the accounts. I am willing to let you have thirty-five per cent of the profits, keeping only sixty-five for my poor family.”
“Your family is not poor, ma’am.”
“Then we are agreed.”
“I didn’t say so.”
“What will you have?”
“We must expand the business. I know the Highboro end and the Savannah end, and I know where and how I can get more business. Let’s say this: If I keep the business the first year I run it only the same as it made the year before, I take forty per cent and you take sixty. For everything above last year’s profit, we share fifty-fifty.”
“I am not the helpless victim you may have fancied me, Mr. Betchley. I know you now for a conniving rascal, and I’ll ask you to get out of my house instantly.”
“Not with my tail between my legs. When you think it over, you’ll come to terms.” He got up from his chair. “One other thing. I know about your meetings in the woods near the old Marsh farm. My boy found a letter you dropped when you were there one day and a shirt stud I’d seen on Ben Davis. That put me curious, so I did some looking and asking without letting on how come. I found out about the winter place at the cotton gin. You don’t want anybody else in on your secrets. I’ll come again in the morning after I put the men to work. We mustn’t miss a day if we’re to show the kind of profits I think we can.”
As he reached the door, she said, “You must have enjoyed the funeral, Mr. Betchley.”
He looked shocked. “I thought it was really nice.”
17
The following morning Sarah and Jane drove into Highboro to call on Frankie. “We must strike a new note,” Sarah said, slapping the reins to encourage Buster into a brisker trot. “People crowd around a grave and call it sympathy, but they forget before the wreaths are brown. Like her or not, Frankie merits our attention.”
They found her in a state of agitation, Eugene Betchley having just taken his leave with a signed agreement to his conditions for working the sawmill. As they offered comfort, accepting her fresh tears as continued mourning, Sarah renewed the invitation to Beulah Land. “Oh, ma’am,” Frankie cried, “there is nothing I should like better!” It was settled that they would return for her and the children tomorrow, bringing Wally with a wagon for their trunks. When they had gone, Frankie told herself it was the very thing. Surrounded by those who must now wish her well, she would be safe. She would have time to think, and she would be away from Annabel, for Annabel was never eager to pose her dignity against Sarah’s wit, and so her forays on the plantation house were infrequent.
Having only Molly to look after the house in town, Frankie left her there; and Sarah decided that she would need someone to attend her during her visit. On her regular daily walk to the Glade, she mentioned the fact to Nancy. “What with getting the last crops in, I’ve nothing at my disposal but girls and grannies, and neither will do. Something in between is required.”
“Is she going to be here till she has it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let me look after her.”
“You, Nancy?”
“I’ll be no danger to her,” Nancy said ambiguously.
Taking one meaning, Sarah agreed. “You’re as healthy as I am; but you aren’t one of the maids, you’re one of us. You live here.”
“Let me.”
Sarah considered the offer. “There’d be no need to do the common things, of course. The girls can do those well enough, but she’ll want a woman near her who understands the problem of dressing, someone who knows more than just to scream and watch if she’s taken suddenly.”
Frankie was pleased, for she had been curious about Nancy. It was in her nature to try to charm and patronize her, but when Nancy only smiled at her efforts, she dropped her tricks, and the two got on well enough. If their feelings were less than affectionate, each found the other interesting and even, on occasion, amusing. It was the first time since her return to Beulah Land that Nancy had been regularly in and out of the big house. She still spent most of her day at the Glade, but she came down mornings and evenings to help Frankie with her clothes, and finding her grateful, began to look for other things to do to make the time an easier one for the pregnant woman.
“You’re good to her, Nancy,” Benjamin said during one of their hours alone at the Glade.
Nancy looked puzzled. “Why do I feel sorry for her?”
He pulled off his shirt and slung it over the back of a chair. “Because you’ve got me, I reckon.”
“She’s had you.”
He took her hand and pulled her down beside him on the bed. “Not the way you have. How come you’re kinky down there?”
“How come you’re not?”
Hands moved, his on her, hers on him. “I’ve missed my kinky-haired girl.”
“Harvest time.” Presently she lured him softly: “Give me, give me, give me.”
He watched her face as he entered her, his eyes searching hers for the secrets they held.
When they were resting later, he said, “I see a gray hair.”
“Getting old.”
“That’s not what you’re supposed to say.” Their heads were close, and he blew his breath against her brow to make her frown. “You say, ‘Get your big butt out of my bed and back to the fields—’”
She broke in to finish it for him. “—so’s I can make up my bed. Made up this bed one time today, and now got to do it again!”
He smiled. “You remember the day I rode home ahead of Daniel and Floyd? We’d been off to get that Yankee—Sergeant Smede was his name—for what he did to you and Lotus and Lovey and Grandpa. Found you standing there on Aunt Nell’s old bench waiting for me. You said, ‘You have revenged my honor!’”
“So you had.”
“That night was our first time.”
“I just about had to make you do it,” she gibed mildly, enjoying the familiar story as much as he did. “You were scared and eleven years old. Slow-maturing.”
He cupped the side of her face with a hand. “If we’d found the others with Smede that hurt you, I’d have butchered every mother’s whelp of them.”
“You don’t have to kill nobody for me.”
Annabel did not come to Beulah Land because she had no new threat to make, her husband Blair having ordered her to mind her own affairs and leave those of her son�
��s and brother’s widow alone. He assured her obedience by telling her that if she stirred up the lawyers, he’d side with Frankie. Annabel had to content herself with blackening Frankie’s name with her female acquaintances, but their response was disappointing. They couldn’t believe anyone they knew capable of the sins Annabel said were Frankie’s, though everyone happened to be true in fact if not in the wicked intention Annabel ascribed to her. They’d have been more shocked to be told that she stinted butter and eggs to her cook.
Although Annabel stayed away, Eugene Betchley came every other day to report on the operation of the sawmill, as he’d promised he would. Frankie met him alone, Nancy stationed at the door both to act as chaperon and to see that they were not interrupted. The meetings were brief and businesslike, with Frankie listening closely to details and checking the ledgers he brought along. Eugene was getting the new orders he’d predicted he would, and from farther afield. She began to think she’d made no bad bargain, forgetting she’d had no choice in the matter.
For Eugene, coming to Beulah Land “by the front way,” as he put it, was instructive. He watched to see how everything was done, how everything was kept; and one morning in the second week of his visits he paused where the carriageway turned to reveal the avenue of oaks with the big house at the end. “I want it,” he said to himself, and smiled to be thinking such a thing. But he was reminded of another morning when he’d looked at Bessie’s poor farm as a possible prize to be taken. “Yes,” the inner voice told him, “but this is Beulah Land.” The very name was enough to weaken the knees of every poor white in the county, with awe and envy. Well? He was used to feeling that he was a man chosen, and the future might open a way.
If he was one to dream, he also worked and figured and schemed. Since he’d lived in town at the boardinghouse he’d made it part of his business to attend St. Thomas’s Church. Quietly, meekly, he became a familiar presence to the Annabels and Doreens and Priscillas. The big, crude young man began to appear, if not yet one of them, still a man who wanted to improve himself, one eager to learn their ways and abide by their rules.
On a Sunday morning in October he waited after the service at the foot of the church steps for Mrs. Oglethorpe and Priscilla to beg their advice on a delicate family matter. Priscilla looked alarmed; the word “delicate” was enough to send the blood to her head; but Mrs. Oglethorpe fixed him with a fearless eye and bade him explain. He wanted to bring his son Theodore to live in town so that he might attend school more conveniently and benefit from town associations. The lodging house where he himself found bed and board did not seem the right thing, for there were traveling men in and out, and the language, if they would forgive him for saying so, was not always such as to set the highest Christian example.
Priscilla ventured the opinion that his mother would miss him, at which Eugene put on a confusion of manner calculated to sharpen Mrs. Oglethorpe’s curiosity. Did he, she asked with a penetrating stare, have another problem that had led to his decision to move his son to town?
Eugene hesitated, he swallowed, he shook his head, he took a big breath they might interpret as resignation. He admitted that he had become worried about the influence of Mrs. Betchley.
Aaah! Mother and daughter exchanged looks.
Having begun to tell them, he broke off with another shaking of the head, until he saw from the disappointment in Mrs. Oglethorpe’s eyes that he might proceed a little further without fearing a reprimand. Glancing about as if to assure that he was not overheard—and indeed Annabel was watching the group with increasing interest—he mumbled phrases about past frailties, of his not having understood her thoroughly when he married her, of his having been hardly more than a boy and she an older woman with, he added haltingly, “a certain range of experience.” He hinted at last that he feared for her very sanity.
Mrs. Oglethorpe would have verification. “In what way does she show herself daft?”
“Ma’am—” He hung his head. “She drinks.” Mrs. Oglethorpe’s eyes indicated that she was prepared to hear worse, and he hastened to supply it. “One time—I hate to tell this on her—I came home unexpected and found her eating supper at the kitchen table with the hired man.”
“A nigger?” Priscilla asked breathlessly.
Eugene nodded.
“With her at the table?” Mrs. Oglethorpe wanted to make sure.
“Yes’m. I dumped him out of his chair and told him to get off to the field where he belonged.”
“I should think so,” Mrs. Oglethorpe agreed warmly.
“Mrs. Troy goes to see her, I believe.” Priscilla sighed. “She always had easy ways with her coloreds, and Mrs. Betchley may have been influenced.”
“My boy was upset, I may tell you,” Eugene said.
“Poor child,” Priscilla murmured.
Mrs. Oglethorpe squared her shoulders. “You’ve done well to come to us, Mr. Betchley, and I shall think over what you’ve told us and let you know what I advise. The boy must be got away from the mother; that much is clear.”
Eugene was humble in his gratitude for their kindness in offering to help him with his problem. As soon as he’d excused himself, Annabel joined Priscilla and Mrs. Oglethorpe with such determination they were not long able to keep the confidence they had just received. Ready for a new project, Annabel said instantly, “You must take the boy in, Mrs. Oglethorpe.”
“A boy?” Ann Oglethorpe shuddered as she pronounced the word. “In my house?”
“He won’t eat you,” Annabel promised her. “I am perfectly aware that those old railroad shares of yours stretch only so far and no further. The boy’s board will provide you with a little extra incoming. Haven’t you always said, both of you, that you’ve been deprived of the little girl? Well, take what the Lord sends; and I give you my word He has sent Eugene Betchley to you. If you don’t take the Betchley boy, I’ll hear no more from you of Christian duty. Think of it this way: you’ll be doing the Lord’s will and earning a profit for your goodness. And what better influence might a growing boy have than you, Miss Ann?”
Within the week Eugene Betchley had taken his son to the barbershop to rid him of his country look and settled him into a plainly furnished room at the Oglethorpe house, which appeared luxurious to both, compared to the old farmhouse. Every child likes to make a drama around himself, and Theodore needed only a hint from his father to supply substance to Ann Oglethorpe’s dark imaginings of what his life on the farm had been. Since Ann and Priscilla did not expect any child to be good, and Theodore did not hope for any adult to be kind, they were not disappointed in one another.
18
Without reason, Sarah took alarm at the new development, sensing that more was involved than appeared to be. Annabel told her of it when they happened to meet at the bank. Delighted at Sarah’s consternation, she boasted that it was her own idea. “So you see, Auntie Sarah, you are not the only one who can offer haven to Fate’s unfortunates!”
“But why? Bessie will be alone out there—”
“Surely you see her often enough on your guardian visits to know she drinks?”
“Not a drop!”
Annabel sniffed. “You always believe what you like, naturally. Oh yes, it is all over town. Drinks. And she eats her meals with the nigger Gene Betchley hired to help run the farm. I don’t know where it will end; it’s a scandal, you see. But then scandal to the rest of us is something you’ve often had to take for granted. It’s warped your judgment, as I’ve observed before.”
Without stopping to argue, Sarah concluded her business at the bank and drove her buggy directly to the Marsh farm. She found Bessie listless and uncaring.
“Yes’m, well, Gene wanted to do it, and the boy wanted to go, so what could I do? With school started, he wasn’t no help nor company to me, away all day. Maybe Mrs. Oglethorpe can make something out of him. She’s welcome to try. He’s got to where he don’t mind me.”
When Sarah mentioned the gossip about drinking, Bessie was amused. “No
, ma’am, but maybe I should. Might keep me from getting that lonesome sometimes I could die.” She spoke the words without self-pity, as a hard fact.
Sarah decided not to mention what had been said about her and the hired man. She said as if asking a favor, “I wish you’d come see me when you feel like company.”
Bessie laughed. “Lordy, Miss Sarah, you don’t need me around with all your bunch of folks!”
“Any time you can come, know you’ll be welcome. Plan to spend a whole day. Remember now, you hear?”
“Yes’m,” Bessie said vaguely. “But I don’t go nowhere. Never have, never will. Just wait for everybody to come see me.” She smirked ironically, but when Sarah made ready to leave a few minutes later, she became humble and eager. “I sure thank you for stopping by. Mama always said you was the best woman she knew.”
Despondent as she felt on going, Sarah realized there was nothing more she could do, except continue her visits. Next time she came she’d bring Bessie a present, nothing to eat, nothing to wear, something pretty and bought especially for her.
As spring had been late coming, harvest was late finishing, and the opening of school was delayed. But now the children were settling down, beginning new friendships and rivalries to last the year or a lifetime, fixing on new teachers to love and to hate. Leon was given the responsibility of driving the wagon needed to transport the six and their books. He was easy but watchful with the reins, never trotting the mule or turning into the side roads Davy urged him to explore, as if they did not already know where everyone would lead—usually nowhere, straggling to a halt in an opening in the woods. Bobby Lee sat beside Leon as suited his nearly equal status. Fanny and Bruce and Blair sat in short-legged cane chairs behind them, the girls with parasols opened, no matter the weather. Davy scrambled about, often leaving the wagon to dart into a field or wood branch and rejoin them with a stalk, stone, or feather no one considered a prize but him.
Unlike most of the children, who hurried to school but dawdled their way home, they were eager to get back to Beulah Land and its manifold life. The old mule, bored with waiting all day, often of his own accord broke into a trot as they bragged and joked and quarreled and sang.
The Legacy of Beulah Land Page 32