At the Elk house Roxanne had been cooking for a week, and Claribell was firmly in control. A shy, retiring woman as long as Roscoe’s housekeeper Geraldine had lived, she had, since Geraldine’s death a year before, become mistress of her own house to the surprise of her husband and daughter, who had hitherto accepted her acceptance of the situation she had married into. Today she was wearing peach-colored muslin, and the flow and flair of it was everywhere. Sarah greeted her warmly, but before she could word a compliment, Claribell was gone, so she made it to Roscoe, who laughed indulgently.
“You’re very pleased with life these days,” she said with a warning smile. “How is the bride?”
“Claribell talked her out of pink.”
“Fanny told me about the dress she’s to wear. Bruce was enchanted, but I’m afraid I got little from the description except that it’s long and of an ivory shade.”
“Just about everything else is pink,” Roscoe said, “including the canopy over the altar she talked me into rigging. She said she wanted a frame around her and Abraham like a picture.”
“I wish Casey were here to do pictures.” She sighed, but not sadly. “Is she nervous?”
“Not a bit. She says why should she be, for she’s planned the whole thing, including the songs and some new words she found in a book for the preacher. Whatever happens won’t surprise me. She may come down the aisle leading a goat dyed pink.”
Benjamin and Leon joined them. “Everything I smell, smells good,” Leon said.
“Today you don’t know whether it’s victuals or people,” Roscoe said, looking at his watch as Bruce approached.
Bruce said to Roscoe, “Fanny sent me to say you’re to come. She’s ready and it’s almost time.” Bruce beamed as she added triumphantly, “She’s getting nervous!”
“Praise God,” Roscoe said, and they laughed. He looked at his watch again in the bleak way of a man for whom time has run out.
Sarah leaned close and said, “Courage, my friend,” which made him smile as he left them.
Sarah and Benjamin, Bruce and Leon made their way to the school building and to the door of the packed, buzzing auditorium. Many of the school’s pupils stood on the sides and at the back to make room for other guests. Usually reluctant to enter the building, they had today needed no bell to command their attendance. They were encouraging and even politely chivvying latecomers to sit down and settle themselves. A young man acting as usher was trying to hurry Pauline and Nancy along the aisle. Pauline said, “I’m the groom’s aunt, and this lady with me was his mammy. A swarm of bees couldn’t make me move any faster.”
With Roman, Pauline had shared the headship of the school since it had become Elk Institute, both stepping down only recently. Sarah caught herself thinking that Pauline was a very old woman and reminded herself that Pauline was but a year older than she. The usher who had led Nancy and Pauline to the front row on the right side of the auditorium returned and guided the party from Beulah Land to places beside Pauline and Nancy. Behind them sat Jane and Daniel and Bobby Lee, with Annabel and Blair Three. Blair was looking about indulgently and tapped Bruce on the shoulder when she seated herself in front of him. She turned, and he arched an eyebrow as if to say, “What amusing children they all are.”
Seeing Sarah plunk in front of her, Annabel coughed disapprovingly. “A mistake surely,” she said when Sarah looked around. “I am the school’s sponsor.”
Sarah nodded agreeably. “But we are the bridegroom’s family. He is the youngest Kendrick, you know.” Craning her neck frankly, she swept her eyes over the assembly. She did not know them all, but they knew her, and she guessed who they were. Everyone from the cotton mill who had worked there five years or more had been asked to come. Zadok and his family were there (Velma was pregnant again, and Rosalie kept her beside her) as well as the Beulah Land servants who had known Luck and Abraham longest and best. Old Otis, twin brother of Abraham’s mother Lotus, sat with Wally, who liked better than anything else to ride or drive the horses too fast but who this morning looked as still as marble. Across the aisle sat Claribell, saving the place beside her for Roscoe. Beyond her were Roman and her old friend and mentor from the teaching staff, Mathilda Boland. Other teachers, male and female, young and old, surrounded them, giving the occasion an air of graduation day as much as a wedding.
On the stage above the altar was the battered school piano, newly polished and tuned, and a chorus of thirty schoolgirls. Led by the music teacher, a Miss Flutie Pierce, whose name delighted Sarah, they now sang “Abide with Me” and “Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming,” selected by the bride because she liked them. The preacher stood behind the pink-canopied altar frowning through rimless glasses at words on a piece of paper. Presently the singing finished, and the pianist struck the chords of the wedding march.
Fanny, the only attendant Luck would have, entered alone, carrying an armful of pink roses. Sarah turned her head, looking past Benjamin to see Leon’s eyes shining with pleasure when he saw the girl. Abraham stepped out from the side with his chosen best man, Davy Todd. Sarah’s heart caught when she saw them. “Floyd,” she thought, “if you could see him, how handsome he is, how happy—” Benjamin was closer to her than anyone else living, but he could only imagine her thoughts and be a little surprised at her show of feeling.
Every head turned to see Luck come down the aisle. She was clutching Roscoe’s arm as if she needed it. The proud, self-confident girl looked ready to weep or faint. At the altar, Roscoe responded to the preacher’s ritual question and gave Luck over to Abraham. He then joined Claribell, and both of them sat rigidly attentive. As the preacher continued, the chorus of schoolgirls, cued by Miss Flutie, began a soft humming.
“Will you, Abraham, have this woman to be your wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance, in the holy estate of matrimony, to love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as you both shall live?”
“I will,” Abraham answered loudly.
“Will you, Luck, have this man to be your wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance, in the holy estate of matrimony, to love, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as you both shall live?”
“Yes, sir,” she whispered, “I will.”
Before the preacher could ask for it, Davy held up the ring, and in the second row Blair Three guffawed until he was silenced by a look from Bruce. The ceremony was soon concluded.
“... By this act of joining hands you do take upon yourselves the relation of husband and wife, and solemnly promise and engage, in the presence of these witnesses, to love and honor, comfort and cherish each other as such, as long as you both shall live; therefore, in accordance with the laws of the State of Georgia, I do hereby pronounce you husband and wife.”
For a second, such was its timing, Sarah wondered if the explosive sound was a part of Luck’s program for the wedding, but the look of her frightened face as she twisted about told her that it was not. After the explosion there was silence. Brain lagged behind action, as Benjamin and Leon raced up the center aisle. Standing, as most of the others in the auditorium cowered in their seats, some beginning to scream, Sarah saw that the door leading into the auditorium was wide open. A white man unknown to her stood there laughing. Even as he drew back his hand to throw, Leon was upon him, and then Benjamin upon them both. But the man managed to fling the string of lighted firecrackers, and they exploded loudly one after the other, triggering a new burst of screams.
Davy and Roscoe were beside her when Sarah reached the front door, where the crowd, released from its first freezing fear, gathered thickly to watch the scene in the yard. Leon and Benjamin were fighting two white men in rough work clothes, the four of them rolling and pitching and pummeling, while a third man standing in an open wagon whipped the mule into a run. As the wagon rolled more rapidly, he dropped a lighted corn shuck into a b
arrel and rolled it over the side. It hit the ground smoking and exploding, and Davy jumped from the school porch onto the man’s back and threw him off the other side of the wagon, falling upon him. Mule and wagon ran free as Leon and Benjamin and Davy fought the three strange men. The fireworks had by now all exploded or fizzled out.
Dazed by his leap and fall, Davy caught a fist on the side of his head. Ear bleeding and glassy-eyed, he sat alone on the ground until Bruce—where had she come from so quickly? Sarah wondered—knelt by him. The man Davy had attacked was helping one of his fellows to get free of Benjamin, and together they freed the third. All then ran after the wagon, the unattended mule slowing as they called to him, until they were able to hoist themselves up over the tailgate. As they looked back to see if they were pursued, their bodies heaved for air. Seeing they were in the clear, one of them whipped the mule into a fast trot while another yelled back: “Ass-kissing niggers! Nigger whores! Motherfucking-niggerloving-sonabitches!” With bold whoops of triumph they were gone.
Daniel and Bobby Lee were near Sarah, working their way through the crowd to reach Davy. “Where’s Jane?” Sarah called.
“Taking care of Miss Annabel. She fainted.”
“She has Blair to take care of her, doesn’t she?”
“He fainted too.” Daniel and Bobby Lee were gone, and Sarah inched her way back into the schoolhouse and auditorium. Presently, she found Roscoe holding Luck in his arms. It was Abraham who walked about trying to calm people, helped by the recovered Davy. Benjamin was tending a bleeding lip, and Leon asked across the intervening heads, “Have you seen Fanny? I’m looking for Fanny!”
Realizing that no one needed her, Sarah gave up struggling. Let everyone find each other, she decided. Abraham and Davy had become the center of the crowd, as any will who seem to supply information and calm in a time of panic. “It’s all right now. Nobody’s hurt. We know the men. Sawmill workers. That’s right, we know them from seeing them across the creek. No, we don’t know their names. Do any of you know their names? Their idea of a joke.”
With the explanation came indignation and condemnation, but eventually relief. The guests remembered the bride and bridegroom and the purpose of the day for which they had gathered together. By twos and threes and straggling lines they made their way from the schoolhouse to Roscoe’s house beyond the japonicas he had planted long ago to make for himself a little screen of privacy. In time they were able to eat the food that Claribell and Roxanne urged upon them, and to drink the sweet, cool, pink wedding punch, to hug and laugh and, confidence returning, make their own jokes, feeble at first but growing in good humor. The event continued much as it had been planned; but there was not the same free and easy spirit there had been at the beginning of the day, not quite the same.
Sarah and Benjamin met briefly with Roscoe in his office, and while they were talking, Abraham entered without knocking. After working to calm others, he let his fury break with these he trusted. It was Roscoe who finally insisted that they not report the incident to the sheriff, reasoning that it would do no good. Even if the three men could be identified—and no one would swear to the name of a single man—they’d pass off their intrusion as a prank. There were always pranks before or after, and sometimes during, country weddings. There would be no charges and no arrests, only a stirring up of the bad feeling that already existed between those who worked at the sawmill on one side of the creek and those who worked at the cotton mill on the other.
It was late in the day the family party returned to Beulah Land, tired and thoughtful and glad to be home. Everyone went off to his room to find comfortable, common clothes, the women performing personal and household routine while the men went about the barns and cabins to witness end-of-day care of livestock and to speak about the wedding they had attended, which everyone who had not attended was eager to hear about.
The Todds kept to their house that evening, and Josephine, knowing the wedding feast, however rich, would have been mainly cold, prepared a plain hot meal of fried ham, rice and ham gravy, baked sweet potatoes, stewed tomatoes from a jar, spring greens boiled with hock, chowchow and beet relish, biscuits and thin corn bread, pitchers of fresh milk and buttermilk, and pound cake topped with custard into which Mabella had stirred peach preserves. At the supper table Sarah, observing the scratches and bruises Benjamin and Leon bore, suggested that they make a home day of tomorrow and not attend church, to which all thankfully agreed. Leon said after supper that he would go over and tell the Todds and asked Fanny if she would walk with him.
During the afternoon the weather had cleared and warmed, the wind stilled until no leaf moved, spring trying on summer manners. Leon and Fanny found the adult Coopers at the Todd house. Elizabeth had wanted to hear how fancy a wedding it had been. Having enjoyed only a simple one of her own, she was doubly fascinated by the show others made. Tom Cooper talked with Daniel and Leon about the larger acreage of tobacco he was setting and netting, wanting their assurance that he was not overextending himself.
The night was dark when Fanny and Leon took the shortest way back to the big house and they walked close as if afraid of night presences, Leon slipping his arm naturally about the girl’s waist. At the little graveyard they surprised a figure in white leaning upon the headstone of one of the graves.
“Grandma!”
Sarah turned; statue made living. “Leon? Fanny, is that you too? I’m just going in to bed. I was already in my room when something told me the day wasn’t over and I remembered I hadn’t been here. Abraham married, you know, and no one had come to tell his mother and father and grandmother and grandfather.”
“We’ll walk you to the house,” Fanny said.
“No, let me go alone; you stay. There is no place as peaceful as a graveyard at night.”
5
Although the raid on the wedding party had not been Eugene’s idea, he had not discouraged it when Stacy Winn proposed it to Perry Mitchell and Elmo Pitts, and his smiling had been taken as sanction. Certainly he was quick to see advantage in it. On Saturday night, following the common custom of walking about town to exchange news and views, he heard several versions of the event and by repeating what he’d heard, or said he’d heard, lent credence to the interpretation that it was a joke on the highfalutin Negroes, no meanness intended any more than there’d been other times in trying to spook the darkies about graveyards at midnight or laughing at their dancing at baptisms. He regretted that it had been taken in the wrong spirit, for it was further said, and he’d seen all the proof he needed, the jokers had been set upon by members of the wedding party, black and white, as if they’d been caught doing something they were ashamed of.
He had to admit that his own stepdaughter was there—but what could be done with young people these days who had little respect for authority and ignored the advice of their elders? Annabel Saxon did not join the Saturday-night walking and talking, and when queried at church the next morning stated that she had seen nothing of the disturbance, having fainted at the sound of the first explosion. By noon Sunday it was fixed to the general satisfaction that a vicious attack by Negroes upon innocent whites had been led by Benjamin Davis and his son.
“Is it true what we’ve heard?” Ann Oglethorpe asked gravely after the sermon.
With equal solemnity Eugene replied that he feared her son-in-law (with a bow of the head to Miss Priscilla) had been involved and that he knew no reason to doubt the facts as he’d heard them. They affirmed that it was a disgrace for white people to side with colored against their own kind, and that no good came of mixing and mingling, for it only led to debauchery and mongrelization of the white race.
Eugene Betchley had maintained and compounded the friendship begun when the Oglethorpe mother and daughter offered to take in his son Theodore. Theodore, under paternal threat, had behaved cautiously during the months he lived at the Oglethorpe house before joining his father at Frankie’s after their marriage. Deception is easy enough when there is acquiescence on both s
ides.
“I don’t believe I have seen Mrs. Betchley this morning?” Priscilla said in the cold bright tone she used in speaking of Frankie.
“A headache,” Eugene announced with a sigh.
“Ah.” Mrs. Oglethorpe sneered openly and invited Eugene and Theodore to take Sunday dinner with them. “I would include Edna May, but she will want to attend her mother.”
Having sometimes taken a meal at Mrs. Oglethorpe’s table, Eugene knew what he was in for, but self-interest dictated that he accept with a show of gratitude.
At Beulah Land it was a day of quiet enjoyment, a day none would have remembered but for the visit that capped its routine events. After the usual large noon dinner, members of the family dispersed severally. Late afternoon found Nancy, after a conference with Josephine in the kitchen, pausing to pass time with Roman, who had been reading and dozing on the warm west porch. With much coming and going all day, they did not turn immediately upon hearing a buggy on the carriageway to discover who were its occupants. When they did, Nancy rose from her chair to usher the two visitors into the broad central hallway. She invited them to sit, but they were still standing when she went to fetch Sarah Troy and Benjamin Davis as she had been directed to do.
“Mrs. Oglethorpe and Mr. Betchley!” Sarah exclaimed.
“The two,” Nancy emphasized.
“Put them in the office and say I’ll be right along.”
A few minutes later Sarah found Benjamin already there, the three sitting in silence as they waited for her to join them. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Oglethorpe. Afternoon, Mr. Betchley; and how is Miss Frankie?”
“Keeping to her room with a headache.”
“I’m sorry. And Edna May?”
“Misses her sister.”
“I wish you’d brought her with you to stay a few days.”
The Legacy of Beulah Land Page 36