The Legacy of Beulah Land

by Lonnie Coleman

  Sarah and Benjamin were waiting in the office at Beulah Land, and Leon quickly told them Eugene Betchley’s terms.

  “The whole parcel isn’t worth five hundred,” Benjamin said.

  “He knows how much we want it,” Sarah said. “Frankie will have told him that, if he needed telling. What must we do?”

  “Tell him to keep his land,” Leon suggested.

  Sarah sighed unhappily. “If only Lauretta’s debt hadn’t come the same year. That’s twelve thousand dollars cash, and cotton bringing the lowest price I can remember.”

  “You’re not even considering it, are you, Grandma?”

  “We’ve gone this far. If we can do so much for Lauretta, we must do it for Abraham.”

  “Aunt Lauretta’s us,” Benjamin said. “It’s a question of family pride.”

  “Abraham is family too,” Sarah said. “Floyd was his father, and we owe Floyd’s son anything we can give him.”

  “If he understood it, he wouldn’t let you do it,” Leon said.

  “Then we mustn’t let him know.”

  “It means tight living for a long time and watching every penny.”

  “We’ve done that before. It also means being rid of Eugene Betchley. How dare that scoundrel even talk of taking a part of Beulah Land!”

  Benjamin said, “Grandma, I don’t think we can do it. After Aunt Lauretta’s debt, we’re short. We’ve got a lot of cotton nobody wants to pay even what it cost us to grow it.”

  “We’ll find a way. We’ve been worse off than now.”

  “Not since the war,” Benjamin said.

  “Without Floyd we’d not have survived that.”

  They sat quietly until Leon said, “All we’ve talked about is Abraham. I know how you feel about him and Uncle Floyd, Grandma. We all know, and we all feel that way. But if we do this thing, I don’t think it should be just for Abraham.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Sarah asked.

  “That Davy should own a part.”

  “Davy’s just a—”

  “Davy’s a man,” Leon said, “and he’s our family too. Bobby Lee will come into his papa’s lot one day, so Davy has to be thought about.”

  His father and his great-grandmother looked at each other with surprise before they smiled.

  14

  The heat of early September was no letup on that of August; but as the days passed, there was a gradual relaxing of harvest fever. Except for a scattering, the cotton was picked and ginned, with many bales still stored at the gin because no one was eager to buy, and the warehouse was full. Nights became a little cooler, and the younger folk turned their minds to the country frolicking there would be when the sugarcane was cut in quantity and its juice boiled into syrup.

  Annabel Saxon held a series of social evenings to show off the completed Turkish Corner, managing frugally by serving sugarcane juice and thin dry cakes, the recipe for which, she claimed, had come to her “almost directly” from Byzantium. When inviting those at Beulah Land, she employed exaggerated winks and a voice to trumpet the dead awake on Resurrection Day: “Of course, those who have seen so many Turkish Corners, however inferior, and care to see no more may not feel any compulsion to attend!” In the event, Lauretta begged Sarah to say she was too engrossed in rereading Deuteronomy to set foot out of the house. She spent the evening playing cards with Roman, cheating and losing.

  Annabel’s final entertainment honored those acquaintances nearest Blair Three’s age. In spite of the enjoyment of his grandmother’s company during the summer months, Blair had been lonely for his own kind. Despairing of discovering a patrician soul among the plebeians of Highboro, he had written desperate letters to former college friends, receiving few replies, for all their shared allegiance to the spirit of Pater and Wilde. Warmed by Annabel’s confidence that any suit of his would be met by a grateful response, look where he might, he had determined to ask Bruce Davis to become his wife. He was not inspired by passion but had decided with his grandmother’s encouragement to settle himself in anticipation of rising into the majestic realms of the law. He did not look to an early marriage but saw a long engagement to his young cousin at Beulah Land as a step toward independence and consequence.

  He and Annabel had thought of this final party as the occasion of his making his proposal. The guests duly arrived. Hands respectfully behind backs, they inspected the wonderful room. The low seating, the prevalence of velvet and abundance of cushions, the brass trays and ornamental tapestries were much admired, as was the dying palmetto wrenched from its swamp home and transplanted to an urn to pose as palm. The long blade displayed on one wall discreetly in shadow, Annabel called a scimitar, although it was no more curved than any common sword and the initials of the Confederate States of America might be seen on its hilt by any who leaned and squinted. However, the whole effect was declared a marvel, the young party subsequently repairing to the dining room to find there a supply of thin cakes and cane juice.

  They were fifteen altogether, mainly family connections, for Blair Three was not popular with his local contemporaries. There were, however, a sprinkle of those not kin interspersed with the familiar presences of Bruce and Leon Davis, the Todd brothers, Fanny Saxon and Edna May Davis, and the daughters of Prudence and Blair Two Saxon, whose names were Clementine and Amaryllis. They were not so few then as to make a mean gathering nor so many as to become careless and destructive. They fidgeted more than they might have done elsewhere and tended to laugh at anything that could be thought even remotely amusing. They looked furtively at clocks and wondered when they might take their leave and who would dare be first to break free. Neither Annabel nor Blair Three possessed the happy gift of making a guest feel welcome. With his mission in mind, Blair was less talkative than usual and stayed close to Bruce, which made her nervous and Davy Todd suspicious. When the host, flatly and without finesse, invited Bruce to return to the Turkish Corner for reasons that would become clear to her, Davy slipped after them.

  The sliding doors between living room and Turkish Corner had been removed and standing screens substituted, the panels of which showed infidels gushing with blood as they toppled off minarets at the moment of capture by Christian knights accompanied by languid greyhounds. Davy kept a distance while Blair directed Bruce to compose herself on a nest of cushions for the most important occasion of her life. When he set the screens as a wall between them and the world, Davy crept closer and, concealed by the screens, heard all.

  “Is it some kind of new game?” Bruce asked, surprise veering to concern.

  “No,” said Blair Three. “I am about to offer you the most precious gift a man may offer a woman.” Bruce stared at him. “My name.”

  “Thank you,” Bruce said, “but I have a perfectly good one myself. All things considered, including the fact that ‘Bruce’ generally indicates a man or boy, I like it because Papa insisted on giving it to me. You’ve probably never known a girl before who likes her name, have you? Most of them say they hate theirs so that whoever hears will tell them how pretty it is, like birdsong, or bees in clover, or faraway bells—”

  “You don’t understand,” Blair interrupted her. “The thing I am about to propose is one we both shall remember forever. I have made up my mind to marriage. That is, I do not plan or desire to be married soon, but Grandmother and I have talked it over and decided the time has come to settle the future. You will agree and be flattered by the confidence when I tell you I am certain to rise from the law into politics, eventually perhaps to be—”

  “But you’ve only begun to read the law with Judge Meldrim. Must you plan so far in advance?”

  “I daresay most young men would not; the wiser do. I do not profess a great love for you, the sort the poets rhyme, the stuff of troubadours. Nor, possibly, do you entertain such a regard, as yet, for me. Nevertheless, an alliance between us would emphatically be to your advantage. You are, after all, a girl. That is to say, unlike your half-brother Leon, you are not going to inherit very much,
although it is no bad thing to have what Beulah Land stands for behind you. Then too, there is your disfiguration, no trifle if you were to count solely upon charm of appearance to win a place in life. But Grandmother and I, Grandmother particularly, see some virtue even in that flaw, for plain ladies, so she tells me, are assumed to be above reproach and that will be advantageous in the wife of a governor, or even—who is to say not?—a senator or cabinet minister, even if the presidency is too much to hope for a Southerner nowadays.”

  “Stop, Blair.”

  “How you blush! That is a sign of virtue too, we think. You are obviously overcome by what I have suggested.”

  “I am flabbergasted.”

  “I understand. Let me tell you that I should not have thought of you at all if Grandmother had not—”

  Blair was again stopped in mid-thought, not this time by words, nor by the action of one hand, or even two, but by four. In front of him, Bruce picked up a brass tray as she rose and brought it down smartly upon Blair’s head as she attained elevation. Behind him, Davy abandoned subterfuge and tipped over the screens. Hands grasped both shoulders to spin Blair around, and not tenderly either.

  “Saracen!” Davy called him and smacked him on the jaw.

  Not given to endure alone and suffer in silence, Blair screamed, and the trio was almost instantly joined by the entire company from the dining room, led by Annabel with a grandmother’s anxiety for the cry of her innocent.

  Consternation was followed by contradictory half explanations from Bruce and Davy and Blair, but the essentials of the situation which had brought them all together so quickly were comprehended. Blair was comforted and led away by Annabel while the others stole guiltily but delightedly back into the dining room, where they had abandoned their Byzantine cakes and half-drunk sugarcane juice. In a little while Annabel returned, but Blair Three did not. The hostess told the guests coldly that her grandson was unwell and that the party was over. Meekly, they spoke their thanks and regrets and left the house.

  Bruce, who might have claimed some justification for mild hysteria, was furiously calm. Davy was puzzled and garrulous, but some deeper instinct kept him at Bruce’s side, and when Leon, who had driven her to the party in his buggy, said he would take her home, Davy announced curtly that Leon might attend Fanny and Edna May if he so pleased and that he would see that Bruce returned home safely and with no more ado. Leon pointed out that he had only his bicycle, whereupon Bruce declared that she had ridden many times on the handlebars and that she should like nothing better than to do so at this moment.

  To the further astonishment of the little party sidling about indecisively on the boardwalk in front of the Saxon mansion, she proceeded to do just that, sitting the bars as graciously as another might have sat the tamest mare, while, chest high with pride and importance, Davy spun the wheels through town toward the road to Beulah Land. Bruce wore a hat which their propulsion forced her to hold with one hand, but they pedaled along prettily enough, to the amusement of the many they passed, who told each other what several generations of the town had told one another, that there was no accounting for the behavior of anyone who lived at Beulah Land.

  When they had left Highboro behind, Davy, who had not spoken a word since the beginning of the ride, said simply, “The cur.” Bruce nodded; that much could he tell from the bobbing of her hat. And suddenly, hat ribbons in his face, it was as though his whole life became clear to Davy, for he then discovered and proclaimed, “You are going to marry me and nobody else. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

  Bruce turned to give him a wrathful look.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Davy asked.

  “You’re a silly little boy,” she answered.

  “I’m eighteen, and Uncle Ben and Grandmama have promised me all their share of the cotton mill when I’m twenty-one if I turn out well. So I’m not a boy, I’m a man, you see.” He continued with exhilaration: “What a good thing it happened so! I’ve always dreaded the idea of growing up and having to think about some girl to marry—and then do the courting, you know, not knowing if she’d say no and it would all have gone for nothing. Ugh! What a waste of time it would be! So I’m glad it’s all settled, I sure am. I’d have just plain hated to go through all that with some stranger, but you’re just Bruce, just old Bruce that used to smell of milk—”

  “What do I smell of now, I’d like to know?”

  “Nothing, thank the Lord, absolutely nothing!”

  “Well, let me tell you something, you factory hand—I wouldn’t marry you or anybody else if I was promised ambrosia every meal the rest of my life! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

  “You’ll see,” he said cheerfully. “You’ll marry me when I’m twenty-one and you’re—what’ll you be?—nineteen.”

  “Great businessman you are!”

  “Don’t you worry,” he said, and actually began to chuckle, making much the sound of barnyard fowls when they have discovered pickings that please them. “Imagine—married to old Bruce!” He couldn’t get over the wonder of it and laughed all the way home.

  15

  It was not until the third week of October that papers were signed, and payment made—“cash money” as had been demanded; but that done, the sawmill began to move immediately to its new quarters. The sidetrack was laid to the main railway line, and the chain gang was employed for most of the clearing and burning, while the main body of the white work force, under Eugene’s supervision, set up the new yard and began operations there. Eugene had promised that, once things were right, the convicts would be dismissed, and he’d put Perry Mitchell in charge of a smaller crew of whites to complete the abandonment of the old campsite.

  Eugene had watched Perry over the summer and autumn months and knew the boy still had Luck Kendrick on his mind. She did not come every day, and sometimes nearly a week passed without her visiting the cotton factory, but Perry always’ noted her comings and goings. Eugene teased him a little but did not discourage him. “You won’t be seeing her when we get finally moved; reckon you’ll miss her?” Another time he said, “Maybe you ought to catch her on the road one day. She’s never known anything, but nigger dick and she’d drop her drawers in a second if you asked her, I bet. They all want it white.”

  Twice after that, Perry, seeing her arrive across the creek and knowing she never stayed long, left his men with the excuse of having to go into the woods and shit. Instead, he went up the creek on the sawmill side, wading across at the shallows, and hid in the bushes beside the narrow woods road to watch her leave. The second time he did so, she paused at the bend as if she guessed his presence and stared into the woods. His heart pounding, he touched himself to encourage a hardening and might have called out, but she suddenly slapped the mare’s rump with reins and was gone.

  Eugene was in his glory. He boasted of his triumph over Beulah Land, wanting everyone to know, and he was the hero of the town idlers. “Got the best of old lady Troy and her pet coons, he did! Why, Gene hates niggers same as me and you, pure despises ’em—” Theodore too took on some of his father’s glory and was made much of by the loungers as he took his strutting, crowing way to the depot twice a day to watch the trains come and go. He had been put to no regular work, although he’d done occasional jobs at the sawmill during the long summer break from school.

  If Eugene was gratified by events, Frankie was less so. She had insisted that the sale money be deposited in a new bank account neither she nor Eugene could draw upon without the other’s countersignature; but at the time the final papers were drawn, she was confined to her room for three days with one of her worst headaches. When she emerged still weak and trembly, she discovered that Eugene had put the new site in his own name and that she owned nothing. They quarreled, she with bitterness, he with pretended surprise that she could object to having the business bear her husband’s name. She wavered and gave way only when he threatened to cancel the agreement. Eugene had already signed, and so had each of the triumvirate o
f Beulah Land. She added her name reluctantly to the documents, and the sale was accomplished.

  With the harvest all but over, Leon brought a work crew from the plantation to build a bridge across the creek where the cotton factory faced the old sawmill site. It was during his work there he became aware of Perry Mitchell’s interest in Luck. It appeared plain to him, although no one else seemed to notice it. Perhaps being in love with Fanny made him more sensitive to the other young man’s obsession with the Negro girl. At first he thought Perry stared at her with the resentment poor whites felt for any Negro who had risen above a menial station; but though Perry frowned, his intensity was not one of hatred. That too was plain; there was a burning constancy, almost dedication in the steady gaze.

  Eugene knew that Perry was drawing out the cleanup of the old site and let him do it. For the last few days Perry had gone alone on one of the mules. Eugene was about to stop him altogether, but when the boy begged, gave in, saying, “Only till the end of the week. You want any of that stuff, move fast, you hear?” With a wink and a laugh he let him go.

  Perry watched desperately for any chance. It came at the very last, on Saturday about eleven-thirty in the morning. He had given up hope, knowing his work was over and that he could make no further excuse to return to the site. He saw too that Leon Davis had become aware of his deliberate lingering. Mounting the mule, he rode up the creek bank and crossed the shallows into the woods road. With the diversion he’d be only a little late getting to the new yard to line up for his week’s pay with the other men. Slumped on the tired mule, he heard suddenly the clatter of approaching wheels on the rough-rutted roadway, a turning of which brought him face to face with Luck Kendrick. It was like a dream. He slid off the mule’s back and grabbed the harness of the mare Luck drove. She was as startled as he and did nothing at first as he led her trap off the roadway into the underbrush. It happened suddenly and quickly, and by the time Luck realized, still without understanding, what had happened, she jumped out of the trap. Perry grabbed her by the arm, and she began to strike him about the head any way, anywhere she was able, speechless with agitation.