On Thursday of the first week in November they returned to find a new living soul, bright red, sucking her mother’s breast, and already provided with a name. When she was born, Nancy asked Frankie what to call her, and Frankie replied with no hesitation, “Edna May Davis. May for my grandmother and Edna for James’s.”
“She was my best friend!” Sarah told her happily, almost liking Frankie before wondering if there was calculation in the choice.
“Yes’m,” Frankie said. “Benjamin told me so; I forget when.”
Annabel arrived the next morning with a rattle and a ribboned cap she said Bonard had worn as a baby. “She’s awfully red,” she complained. “Red hair too, which is a handicap for a girl because it means freckles. It will be interesting to see who she favors as she grows.”
Sarah said sharply, “Young children seldom look like anyone. People only say they do for want of anything more sensible to say.”
“Nonsense, Auntie. Blood shows. The timing is so peculiar we all may be forgiven a little speculation.”
Frankie regained her strength quickly, and after a week Nancy no longer came down from the Glade to attend her. Sarah did not ask why, but Benjamin did in one of their times alone.
“Because I don’t want to love that baby,” Nancy answered readily. “Because she’s yours and I wish she was mine.” Benjamin left her, knowing better than to touch her or say anything more.
It was as if Frankie willed herself to strength, having been helpless against pregnancy for so long. Suddenly she wanted to be in her own house again. She was tired of people in and out all day long, of the lack of any sort of privacy. Forgetting how gratefully she had come; she was impatient to go. She was unburdened, she wanted to reach ahead; and the thing she wanted to grasp was management of the sawmill. Eugene Betchley had seen his advantage and taken it. She vowed that she would now work to win back what was her own.
Fanny had hoped the baby would never come, because she wanted to stay at Beulah Land forever, or at least through Christmas; but she knew better than to question her mother’s determination and had to be content with Sarah’s invitation to come back whenever she could and to stay as long as she pleased. What Sarah could not feel for Frankie, she felt for her older daughter, and Fanny found in Sarah someone finally to admire without reserve.
Eugene continued to wait upon Frankie at Beulah Land; but when she returned to town, she also returned to the mill for the sessions that had been interrupted by widowhood and pregnancy. She went every day and usually remained the entire day, having her dinner sent to her. Molly grumbled at first, and the women of the town gossiped. A few said they admired her for trying to shoulder a man’s work; a few said they pitied her. The majority condemned her, seeing her industry as a betrayal of their sex. Frankie ignored them. She no longer fed Edna from her own breast but hired a nurse to take care of her.
Fanny adopted the infant, allowing the nurse to do for her during the hours she was away at school but taking over her care the remainder of the time. Frankie made a joke of Fanny’s devotion but seldom interfered, not caring about either girl. When Blair was out of school, he was most often with Annabel. As Fanny gradually took upon herself the management of the house, Molly more and more often asked her for opinions and decisions. Frankie encouraged Fanny’s assumption of responsibility because it left her free. Luck came to see her every chance she got, always seeming to know when anyone at Elk Institute was going into town for a few hours. She teased Fanny, warning her not to become proud and bossy, and Fanny promised she wouldn’t. Both were tired of dolls and playing house and found satisfaction in the real thing.
Eugene was too much involved in working the mill to show resentment of Frankie’s regular attendance. Having won his terms, he was willing to use her when he could, but ready when she tired of routine to do without her. But as she persisted, he became accustomed to her and talked more easily about daily matters as they came up; and presently she knew, if he did not admit it, that he had begun to value and use her judgment. No fool, Eugene was aware that Frankie was none either. She had never in her maturity been more beautiful than she was now in her independence. Without the trouble of a husband—and having had two, she knew what trouble husbands may be—she owned a house and a profitable business. She bloomed with health and satisfaction. She was thirty-two and confident. He was twenty-five and ambitious; and he knew what he was going to do next.
Although they never talked of personal affairs, each was nervously alive to the other. One evening they strolled together along the creek, on the way back to the office after inspecting a load of pine that had been hauled to the mill; and Eugene found it natural to say with a nod toward the new buildings across the water, “If you hadn’t given them that land, they couldn’t have built and would’ve had to move, leaving more room on both banks for us. We’re going to need it, and every drop of creek water too.”
She found it natural to answer, “I didn’t know then what I do now.”
That was as close as they came to intimacy, but it was a kind of intimacy that enforced mutual understanding of their business. Frankie was too long accustomed to having her way with men not to consider the chances of bringing Eugene under her control, however careful she was in their daily dealings not to rely on anything but her eyes and understanding. If Eugene was crude, he was learning. One of the things he did now he used never to do was to smile. He smiled often and in a purely mechanical way. No one took it for good humor, but though it was not true coin, it smoothed his way. Unlike Frankie, he knew he must have the good opinion of the townspeople. His acceptance by Ann Oglethorpe and Annabel Saxon had been the beginning, and now he was ready for the next step of the ladder.
19
Petey was a man in his late fifties, neither dull nor bright. He’d work if watched, not quickly or well, but he would go through the motions of working. Picking cotton, he’d miss a few ripe bolls. Milking a cow, he’d never finish the job but leave a quarter of the yield in the bag. Chopping weeds, he’d miss enough to allow them to replenish themselves with the first rain. But when Eugene hired him two years ago to work on the farm, he’d been willing to accept the isolation of the place, and the wage he asked was almost as low as Eugene had in mind to pay. Critical of him when he came, Bessie had learned to tolerate him. As long as she didn’t catch him resting from his work too often, she didn’t berate him. Let him plow a little, draw the water, chop the wood, and never mind the hogs and chickens; she’d attend to them. Eugene expected more of him, and Bessie found herself in the position of defending the hired man, making his excuses. All Petey wanted was a peaceful life. There was, she told herself and her husband, no harm in him. And hadn’t he gone and killed that big rattlesnake she saw down where the creek dried to a trickle every August? Why, if he hadn’t done that, she’d have been afraid to walk there again. Or she might have been bit to death in her bed one night and nobody around to help her. The reminder that she had to live by herself was generally enough to silence Eugene.
Oh, she’d been wary of him at first. She despised Negroes and was afraid of them. But Petey went about the farm as if he didn’t see her, unless she was standing right in front of him, and he always ate every scrap she put on his plate. In those days the boy Theodore was with her, and often, then sometimes—now never—Eugene; so how could she be afraid of the ugly black man who walked with a sort of twitch in his left leg she hadn’t even noticed till he’d worked there half a year? It was worse in cold weather, and sometimes in the morning when she’d lit a fire in the cookstove and the kitchen was warming up, she let him stand a while after bringing in the milk. He slept in the barn and ate from a special plate by himself on the back doorsteps. The special thing about the plate was that it had a crack right across it and she never used it for anything but to feed him. He also had a special cup to drink out of and his own knife and spoon.
Bessie had never talked much to the man, nor asked about his folks, didn’t even know if he had any, though she see
med to remember Eugene telling her he didn’t. It was none of her business anyway. But now that she was alone with not another living soul to say boo to, no dog to kick, no cat to scat, she’d taken sometimes to talking at him. He said nothing, but he appeared to listen, and sometimes he nodded. Once or twice he’d laughed when she hit on a funny turn of words, or one he seemed to think funny. Lately, she’d found herself wondering what he liked best to eat, and on a Sunday, if she felt like it, she’d bake a little two-layer cake with plain icing. She told herself she was doing it in case Theodore came to see her, but he never did, and Eugene never said a word about bringing him. Of course, she could have gone to see him, she supposed. She knew Miss Sarah went to that house in town, taking Ben’s other child to visit with her ma and grandma. But, well, she never got around to it, and the Lord’s truth was she didn’t think she wanted the trouble. It would be like begging; and wouldn’t she look a fool if she happened to pick a day when nobody was home.
Now as the days shortened, it seemed to Bessie the nights were everlasting. Times she’d sit in her chair by the kitchen stove with it gone to ash and throwing no warmth, not bothering to build a fire in the one fireplace; or lie in her bed wondering what the hour was, not knowing because there was no clock. What did she need a clock for? She dreaded nights worst of all, for they’d get longer and colder before they got short and warm again and she could throw the quilts off and stretch herself, not have to scrunch up into a ball to warm her lone self.
She’d had no near neighbor since Preacher Paul and Miss Ona left. Little as they needed, they couldn’t scratch even that from the country church, so they’d nailed the door shut and gone away. She’d walked over there one time to sit in the graveyard and found nobody. She wondered when Miss Sarah would come again. There was never any telling; she didn’t keep to a regular day. One thing Bessie did was keep track of what day of the week it was.
Petey’s leg twitch had come back bad with the cold weather. She hated to admit it, but she had to say she dreaded his finishing his supper and going off to the barn. Not that he was that much company, but he was somebody there, and it gave her satisfaction to see the way he ate everything she put on his plate. One night was windy and rainy as well as cold, and she let him eat his victuals sitting on the wood box by her stove. He looked grateful, and she told him he could go on doing it long as nobody else was there.
So what she’d do was cook supper and dish up her plate and eat it by herself at the table. Then she’d fix his plate and go to the door and call him from the barn. It got to where it seemed more awkward to her to have two sittings, so she began to fix his and hers at the same time and let him come in and sit on the wood box while she sat at the table. She showed him he wasn’t to take it as a familiarity by never addressing a word to him while they ate. He respected that, she thought. But then one time she said absently—she’d forgot what—just something about the cold weather or when he reckoned the Plymouth Rock rooster ought to be killed lest he get too old and tough to eat. Something like that, nothing at all personal.
It was the middle of December, a bitter black night when they sat together for the last time. She’d pondered aloud on whether she wanted to change the place she had her chicken house because it seemed like the wind was more and more from that direction and some days last summer she couldn’t stand the smell. He’d answered nothing, as usual, nodding a time or two. They were just sitting, she at the table, he on his wood box, each with a spoon at the mouth, when the door flew open and there, bless God, stood Gene coming at them with an ax in his hands. She knew, she’d always known after what he did to her ma; but she asked as if she didn’t: “Gene, what are you going to do?”
20
“Have you heard, have you heard the terrible thing?”
“What? Tell me!”
“That poor man, oh that poor man! His own wife! What a thing for him to see!”
Not only the drifters about town and the idlers on the steps of the train depot, but the most respectable of women and estimable of men pitied the murderer and excoriated his victims.
“Caught them at it, him with his britches down and her with her dress up. Sheriff said long after he was dead his dick was hard as hickory.”
“Smell of liquor ever’wheres.”
“Bad enough with a white man, and she was never particular who. Ben Davis wasn’t the only one to wash his feet in that spring. Matter of fact, though I hate to admit it,” sly wink and a wait for laughter, “but to do it with a nigger.”
“Where are they, have you seen ’em?”
“Hauled them in town on his wagon, sheriff did. They say Gene split the nigger’s skull in two and she don’t look much better.”
“Lost his mind when he saw them, I expect.”
“No wonder—”
“What else? Tell all!”
“Well, when he seen what he’d done, poor man rode in town and found the sheriff and told him. Together they went back. Was just like he’d said—her and him on the floor side by side.”
“Ought to drug ’em into the road and waited till the buzzards took and et ’em.”
“Mighty right.”
“What’ll happen to Gene?”
“Sheriff ain’t holding Gene.”
“I should reckon not! Ought to put up a statue to him like we done for our soldiers.”
“Old lady Troy and her Ben-boy come and got the woman. That rich darky Elk from over at the Institute come and took the buck. Shamed of his race, reckon; wants to get him under the ground so ever’body will forget.”
“I for one ain’t going to forget.”
“Niggers all lying low, you notice. Not a one out of doors lessen they been sent on a job, and then they’re hurrying right smart.”
All manner of things were said, few of them close to truth, which none but Eugene could know for certain. Even at Beulah Land the supposition of what had happened was admitted only between Benjamin and Sarah in the privacy of her office. Together they told Leon the facts, knowing he would hear them anyway, but stating their belief that his mother was innocent of wrongdoing. When Leon said, “He killed her like he did Granny Marsh,” Sarah responded more temperately than she felt, “No one ever can know.”
To Benjamin she confided, “I meant to take her something pretty, but I put it off because Leon was in school and I didn’t want to go back. It was always easy to find something else that had to be done. The only thing I can give her now is a pretty coffin. I hate pretty coffins!”
They bought her one though, together, and Jane and Nancy washed and dressed Bessie’s butchered body and put her into it. The Reverend Horace Quarterman of St. Thomas’s refused to conduct a funeral in his church, but Tom and Elizabeth brought over to Beulah Land the country parson who had married them, and he officiated at a short ceremony in the churchyard in Highboro. Sarah insisted that Bessie be buried in the part of the graveyard reserved for Beulah Land’s dead, although everyone said it was a scandalous thing to do, if not blasphemous; and Annabel Saxon declared her intention of spitting on the grave every time she passed it. The sidewalks and front porches were empty at the hour the funeral party of three buggies and a wagon carrying the coffin made its way through the town to the graveyard. Besides the clergyman, who rode with Wally and the corpse, there were only the Todd family, the Cooper adults, Sarah, Benjamin, Bruce, and Leon. As they were about to begin, Fanny Saxon came running, out of breath, and joined them without a word. The preacher spoke simply and recited the Twenty-third Psalm. Together they sang “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere,” Benjamin clutching Leon’s hand, and that was all.
While the funeral was going on, Eugene Betchley and Frankie Saxon sat together in the office of the sawmill. She had expressed her shock and sympathy the day before when the news of what had occurred was told her. Since then the sheriff had passed word that Eugene Betchley was by no scales of justice to be faulted for what he’d done. It was the act of any honorable man. Since the woman was beyond redemption and the m
an beyond damnation, the matter was best concluded as it had been. Let it be a lesson to all, Negro and white.
Eugene had not hidden himself but arrived at the sawmill as was usual. No Negro now worked at the sawmill, and the white laborers lined up to shake him by the hand. Frankie watched the scene through the window, and when Eugene entered the office, she made a casual business about an order she’d found on the desk when she came that morning for a thousand feet of unsealed half-inch pine. From that they proceeded to discuss other orders. Only when he said he would go out to check the work did she venture a more personal remark to the effect that she trusted he would put the past out of his mind and think only of the future.
“I have already done so,” he said.
She waited for him to leave or continue, and when he did neither, said, “I am glad.”
He nodded. “Yes, and you are in it.”
“I expect we shall continue to work as partners, with mutual interests as such.”
“I think we had better be more than that.”
“Do you?” she said, her voice sharp with surprise.
“Man and wife.”
She stared at him.
“Yes, Miss Frankie.”
“That is out of the question,” she said coldly. “I suppose to be courteous I should thank you for the offer, but I am not flattered.”
“That is a shame,” he said slowly, “for it will be so.”
“I say it will not be.”
“Why else do you think I did it?”
Her offended look gave way to one of incredulity. “We’ll never speak of it again. I promise you I shall never think of what you’ve said.”
“Not next week, or next month. Even you must not have three husbands in one year. Let’s say: May to marry.”
“No.”
The Legacy of Beulah Land Page 33