|
Prologue
1935
Come closer. This is not a story to go down easy, and the backwash still got hold of us today. The history of a family. The history of a country. From bondage to the joy of freedom, and almost ten hopeful years drinking up the promise of Reconstruction, and then back into the darkness, so fearsome don't nobody want to talk about the scary time. Don't nobody want to remember even now, decades removed, now things better some. Why stir up all that old mess from way back in 1873? I don't hold with that point of view. I was there, watching, like all the women done, up close some of the time but mostways from a distance. They all dead and buried now. I outlast each one, using up my time on earth and some of theirs too. One hundred last birthday, trapped in this wasted body. All I do now is remember and pray the story don't get lost forever. It woulda suit Lucy fine, everybody forgetting. Lucy and me, that the only thing we usta argue about, when we was both clear-minded and had more juice to work up, but those talks never last too long. She just shut her mouth and shut her mind, refusing the truth. I still got heat around the subject, but where to put it now? Lucy gone last year. She turn one hundred five before she left this earth. Was two of us held on for such a long time, me and Lucy. Outlasting our men-our husbands, our sons, even some grandsons. We all had it hard, but the men, they had it worse, 'specially those what come up on life from the front. Women is the long-livers at the base of the Tademy family tree.
They don't teach 1873 at the colored school. Wasn't for my husband, wouldn't be no colored school for Colfax, Louisiana. That the kind of man Sam Tademy was. Could carry a vision in his head and stick to it no matter what the discouragement. Some men good providers, got a way with the soil or a trade. Some men been given a singing voice take you to glory, or magic in they bodies to move in dance and make you feel alive. Some men so pretty you gaze on them with hunger, or so smooth they get hold of words and make you believe any nonsense come out they mouth. Some got the gift to make you laugh out loud, and others preach strong and spread the word of God. My man, Sam, he quiet after his own way, look after his family, not afraid of the tug of the plow. He done some preaching, and some teaching, but always thinking about the rest of the colored. Not wanting to get too far ahead without pulling forward everyone else willing to work hard at the same time. Education mean everything to that man. Once he set his head on a colored school in Colfax, wasn't nothing could crush the notion. He mortgage his own sons to the plan, and it come to pass.
We been writ out the history of this town. They got a metal marker down to the courthouse tell a crazy twisting of what really happen Easter Sunday sixty year ago. The ones with the upper hand make a story fit how they want, and tell it so loud people tricked to thinking it real, but writing down don't make it so. The littlest colored child in Colfax, Louisiana, know better than to speak the truth of that time out loud, but the real stories somehow carry forward, generation to generation. Those of us what was there catch a retold whisper, and just the mention got the power to stir up those old troubles in our minds again like they fresh, and the remembering lay a clamp over our hearts. But we need to remember. Truth matters. What our colored men try to do for the rest of us in Colfax matter. They daren't be forgot. We women keep the wheel spinning, birthing the babies and holding together a decent home to raise them in. We take care of them what too young or too old to take care of theyself, while our menfolks does battle how they got to in a world want to see them broke down and tame.
Was a time we thought we was free and moving up. When forty acres and a mule seem not only possible but due. First we was slave, then we was free, and the white call it Reconstruction. We had colored politicians. Yes, we did. It was our men vote them in, before the voting right get snatched away. We losing that sense of history, and it seem wrong to me. Young ones today, they don't carry memory of our colored men voting. Like those ten years of fiery promise burn down and only leave a small gray pile of ash under the fireplace grate, and don't nobody remember the flame. Not like the locals made it easy, but we had our rights then, by law. We was gonna change the South, be a part of the rebuilding after the War Between the States. We owned ourself and was finding our voice to speak up. Some on both sides of the color line talked about us going too fast. No matter how hard times got then, when wasn't food enough for the table and the debt growed too fast to pay off at the general store, or a homegrown pack of the White League terrorize us or string up one of our men to keep us in our place, still our hearts and heads swole up with the possibilities of Reconstruction. Our men was citizens. We had the prospect of owning a piece of land for ourself. Ten years. Don't seem so long when you reach over one hundred years in your own life, but more hope and dreams in those ten years than the slave years come before or the terror years after. Back then hope was a personal friend, close to hand. Seem anything could happen. Seem we was on a road to be a real part of America at last.
I think on those colored men in the courthouse every day. They was brave, from my way of seeing, dog-bone set to fight for a idea, no matter the risk. Not all the old ones see it the same. Lucy used to say by stepping up, the colored courthouse men bring the white man down on us, but what foolishness is that? Some white folks never change from thinking on us as they own personal beasts of burden, even after freedom. Those ones down on us already.
But we got the strength to outlast whatever trials is put before us. We proved it. There a special way of seeing come with age and distance, a kind of knowing how things happen even without knowing why. Seeing what show up one or two generations removed, from a father to a son or grandson, like repeating threads weaving through the same bolt of cloth. Repeating scraps at the foot and the head of a quilt. How two men never set eyes on each other before, and, different as sun and moon, each journey from Alabama to Louisiana and come to form a friendship so deep they families twine together long after they dead. How one set of brothers like hand and glove, but two others at each other throats like jealous pups fighting for the last teat. How two brothers from the same house marry two sisters, sets of bold and meek. How men come at a thing nothing like what a woman do, under the names dignity, pride, survival. The words alike, but the path not even close between man and woman, no matter they both trying to get to the same place. Making a better way for the children. In the end, making a better life for our children what we all want.
Eighteen seventy-three. Wasn't no riot like they say. We was close enough to see how it play out. It was a massacre. Back in 1873, if I was a man, I'da lift my head up too and make the same choice as my Sam and Israel Smith and the others, but there was children to feed and keep healthy and fields to harvest and goats to milk. Those things don't wait for history or nothing else. But I saw. I cleaned up after. I watch how 1873 carry through in the children that was there, and then in they children years later.
My name is Polly. I come to the Tademys not by blood but by choice. Not all family got to draw from the bloodline. I claim the Tademys and they claim me. We a community, in one another business for better or worse. How else we expect to get through the trials of this earth before the rewards of heaven?
Chapter One
Lucy pushes herself up from their bed an hour earlier than
usual, quiet and purposeful. Off to start the cooking fire,
Israel thinks, fully awake now, but he says nothing. The
sleeping room of the small cabin borders on pitch-dark, with only a
hint of the moon's light coming from a single small window. He
intended to be first up this morning, and gone before the inevitable
rehash of last night's quarrel and resulting standoff, but that's no
longer an option. The Bottom is calm the way only early morning
brings, before the rooster's crow, and Israel's mind races, thinking
about going into town, into Colfax. Yesterday he heard from a neighbor
sharecropping the next plot that the last steamship from New
Orleans had come and gone, with no Federal troops on board. The
new officeholders arriving today would need local protection from
the colored men of Colfax.
Lucy pauses to smooth the quilt over their boys, still asleep on
their shared moss-filled mattress, and then slowly pads her way
toward the front of the cabin. Her step is heavy with the additional
weight of the new baby she carries inside her, a soft, rhythmic
waddle as her wide feet slide across the planked floor, oddly
reassuring. Israel assumes she knows he is awake. Lucy always recognizes
his moods and his habits, and he follows her unspoken signal
and gets up too, drawing his cotton shirt and pants on over his
sleeping union suit, and gathers up his worn leather boots from the
corner. He stops at another bed in the room to shake two of the
boys awake. He lets the younger children sleep.
"David, Noby, get on up, you covering my chores today,"
Israel whispers.
Since he has missed his early getaway, he heads out to the shed
in the darkness to relieve the cow of her morning's milk. By the
time he enters the cooking room of the cabin with a half-filled
pail, the fire is lit and starting to blaze up in the fireplace, and Lucy
has already pulled on her faded housedress and wrapped her hair
in a tight kerchief. She is packing up cold foods for him to carry
away in a bucket, an acknowledgment that she has lost the argument.
Deep circles under her eyes give away her exhaustion.
"Pone, tack, and taters," she says. "Three days' worth."
"More than enough," Israel replies. "Might be home tonight."
He pulls the straight-back chair to the old traveling trunk that
serves as their eating table and begins to eat the biscuit and fried
chicken's egg Lucy lays out for him. "Soon's the Federals come, I
hightail it back, least in time to preach Sunday's sermon. You'll
see."
"Can't nothing but grief come from you showing yourself like
this."
"We been over this, Lucy. I'm going." Absently, with his
thumb, Israel rubs the length of an old scar like a question mark
split deep along his cheek and down to his jaw, lighter in color and
raised like a welt.
"We free and movin' up, Israel, and you throwing away our
work of the last seven years." She whispers, but her tone is urgent.
"We come from nothing, less than nothing, and now we owns our
own wagon, and the cow. We got the Reconstruction, and laws be
on our side. Colored politicians sitting side by side with white
down in New Orleans, and our colored men up here vote different-thinking
men in to Colfax, fair and square too. We might could
own this land one day if we keeps low, but not if you go down to
the courthouse and rub the white man's nose into the politics.
Stay home. This not like you."
Israel doesn't look forward to confrontation, either at the
courthouse or in his own home. Against his better judgment, he
steps into the carryover of last night's row.
"Why the colored man risk everything to vote if the Republicans
we vote in just be turned back when the time come to take
office? That's all we trying to do. Get the old guard in Colfax to
stand down long enough for the new appointees to catch hold."
"This not like you," Lucy says again. "Mixing in white man's
business. We done fine by keeping out the gaze of white. Let the
new sheriff handle it."
"We got a sheriff coming in today, elected, but they got a sheriff
too, don't want to give up his place. Colored men meeting at
the courthouse 'cause we got a job to do till the Federals come.
White business and colored business not so separate no more."
David and Noby shuffle barefoot into the cooking room, still
sleepy-eyed, dressed in the shabby mismatch of their everyday
homespun shirt and trousers. David is two years older and over a
head taller than his younger brother, rail-thin legs too long for an
eleven-year-old boy. His skin is pale and heavily freckled, and the
light sandy hair falling into his face without curl or nap makes it
seem he has been accidentally left with the wrong brown-hued
family. His fierce gray eyes, so light as to be mistaken sometimes
for blue or green, scrutinize and judge everything around him, and
never seem to leave Israel's face, as if searching for clues. Noby, at
nine, is somewhere between the caramel color of his mother and
the walnut tinge of Israel, and although it is difficult to know
when the growth spurts will start and stop, he seems to be a little
replica of his father, brooding brown eyes, high forehead, nappyheaded,
sturdy of body.
The boys approach cautiously, waiting in the morning chill to
see which way the household wind is blowing. Not once last night
or this morning have they heard their parents' voices rise above a
regular speaking tone, but there is a tautness in the air of unresolved
difference. Their mother almost never answers back against
the wishes of their father, and they have seldom heard so many
words at once from their father unless it is Sunday and he is delivering
a sermon. Despite the tension, David separates himself from
Noby and steps forward.
"Papa, if you go to town, can I come too?" he asks.
Finished, Israel pushes his tin plate aside and jams his hat on
his head. "Noby might's well come with me," he says.
"Why take the boys?" Lucy asks.
"This a man's job, a citizen's job," Israel pronounces carefully.
"Noby need to understand."
"Then take David." Lucy moves quickly toward the two boys
and throws her fleshy arm around David's shoulder. "David the
oldest."
"David need to stay and cover the chores," says Israel. He
motions to Noby, and when the smaller boy comes to stand near
his side, Israel touches him lightly at the neck to shepherd him
outside. David's pale face flushes deep red, and he flinches as if
struck, but Israel is already on the move away from the table.
"That's settled," Israel says, satisfied. "We be gone, then."
Lucy keeps her arm around David, but he shakes her off and
trails behind Israel and Noby for a few steps as they move toward
the front door of the cabin.
"All right," Lucy says. "We watch over things here till you
home again." Suddenly, she seeks out the straight-back chair at
the table and sits down hard, as if her wind has given out.
"You see us soon," Israel says. He lifts both his and Noby's
jacket from the wall hook, and the two of them head off down the
twisting, mud-crusted road on foot.
David shadows his father and his brother as far as the edge of
the yard in front of the cabin, near the vegetable patch, staring at
their backs until they are obscured from view by the thick of pine
trees to the north. Neither father nor son looks back.
The steely sky with its dark-tinged clouds feels heavy, and for
Israel it is almost as if he carries an extra burden, like a woman
balancing a heavy wash basket on her head as she walks. The sun
struggles to punch through, and intermittently succeeds, but Israel
and Noby get caught in several brief showers, only enough wetness
to damp down the dust and muddy the cow and horse trails. In
long-leaf Pine Hills country, they pass a small cluster of naked
cypress trees, the spindly, brittle branches seemingly dead, used up,
bare and sheathed in gray, with a few curled brown leaves that still
refuse to drop. Spanish moss hangs from the gray trees like rotting
flesh from a skeleton, ghostlike.
"Spring coming," Israel tells Noby. "Them Resurrection trees
gonna get green again soon."
They walk in silence, and when they come to Red River, Israel
and Noby follow the bank, paralleling the course of the water
through the bottomlands on their way to Colfax. A large brown
heron begins flight at the river's edge, outstretched wings so heavy
they bat the water several times before the bird gains the air, creating
brief ripples before settling. Noby runs to the bank, picks up
a rock, and skips it along the river's surface.
Some of the good cropland they pass remains fallow, not
planted out since the last flood, but of the land in cultivation,
most is in cotton and corn, the rest in sugarcane. It is unusual to
head into the village for a purpose other than to bring back supplies
from the general store. Colfax isn't such a far distance from
The Bottom, but Israel makes the journey to town only two or
maybe three times a year, a few more if you count the visiting trips
to nearby Smithfield Quarter.
"How long to Easter, Papa?" asks Noby.
"Go look at that pecan tree, tell me what you see."
Noby races to a twenty-foot tree in the direction of the river,
studies it, and runs back to where Israel waits. "The tree got buds,
and little leaves starting."
"How big the leaves?"
"Size of my thumbnail."
"Spring don't come to Louisiana till the pecan trees leaf out,
leaves at least big as that quarter dollar we got buried in the backyard,"
replies Israel. "Easter come about the same time. We got
almost three weeks till it safe to plant new in the garden, otherwise
late frost likely come and steal up all our labor."
They make good time, less than ninety minutes through the
woods on the walk from The Bottom, past Calhoun's Sugarhouse
and into Colfax's center. They hurry to the hub of the small town,
the courthouse, a dusty-red wood and brick structure that squats on
its designated patch of land, blocking the view of the Red River.
Israel and Noby arrive unobserved and slip to the rear of a
clutch of two dozen or so colored men standing around in front of
the courthouse doors. Noby doesn't recognize many of the men,
particularly the handful of whites at the front doing most of the
talking, but Isaac McCullen is well known around Colfax, and
stands toe-to-toe with one of the white men.
The large colored man takes off his trademark slouch hat, a
weather-beaten wreck of a fedora that at one time must have been
sleek and velvety brown but now is faded blotchy and dull. A
small but showy blue-gray heron feather is tucked securely into the
wide band above the brim, and the man waves the hat in an arc
above the ground with a flourish. "My name be Isaac McCullen,
but just call me McCully," he says to the sheriff. "Only problem we
got is getting in, but someone small slip right through that side
window."
McCully turns to the waiting men, scrutinizing them like a
bloodhound on the scent. Noby Smith freezes in the oversize
man's critical gaze. His hand-me-down shirt, torn through at the
elbows and threadbare after so many seasons of use, barely keeps
out the early-spring dampness. There is only one other boy among
the townspeople gathered, smaller and shorter than Noby.
"Sheriff Nash carry the key, but that don't mean we stuck outside,"
McCully says.
"Ex-sheriff Nash," says the white man. "I'm sheriff of Colfax now."
Most of the men nod in agreement, but some shake their
heads, resisting the notion of breaking any parts of the law even if
the new replacement sheriff, white and seemingly in charge,
stands in front of them encouraging them to do just that.
Noby takes notice of everything around him, as his father has
taught him to do when navigating the woods. He observes the
beginnings of the white sheriff's impatience, the crowd's shifting
mood, Mr. McCullen's confidence, his father's scowl, the nervousness
of the new men in town declaring themselves friends of Colfax
coloreds, the long white-pine crates of guns that the strangers
brought with them into the parish on the steamboat this morning,
stacked like coffins in front of the locked double doors of the Colfax
courthouse.
Noby swallows hard and steps away from his father. "I can do
it, Mr. McCullen, sir," he says. Noby is uncertain whether to try to
look smaller than his nine years, so they will believe he can fit
through the half-open courthouse window; or bigger, so they think
he is up to the task.
"Go on, then, boy," says the sheriff. "Sooner we get inside,
sooner we establish Republican rule and stand up for our rights."
He has a tarnished silver star on the lapel of his jacket and a small
pistol firmly seated in a worn leather holster at his hip, sheriff for
only a few hours. He waves a folded piece of paper he says is from
the governor of Louisiana.
Noby stands still, looks back to his father and Mr. McCullen.
Israel doesn't make eye contact, with Noby or anyone else, staring
down at the ground as if there is a secret hidden in the dirt at his
feet. Israel Smith is not a man to act in haste, especially with
whites around. Several long moments pass.
"A good choice," McCully says into the awkward silence. Out
of respect, he waits for Israel to give a sign. The two colored men
stand with Noby between them.
Outside of the protection of his own home, Israel Smith has
an odd, almost hypnotic way of pausing before he speaks, signaling
his desire to make a pronouncement, as if asking permission.
He loosens and tightens the muscles around his lips, building up
the required momentum for the thought to be delivered, giving
the impression that the journey from thought to speech is dangerous,
weighed down by the boundless possibilities of ominous and
unforeseen penalties. But Israel doesn't speak. He only catches
Noby's eye, briefly, and then nods, a slight tilt of the head. The
crowd waits to see if there is more.
Israel lets his gaze fall downward, and Noby knows his father
has resigned himself to the outcome. Noby has given him no
option, no real decision to make. Israel Smith would have to go
against the wishes of a white man to speak his true mind. His
father, like a possum. Laying low in public, going limp in the face
of danger.
Noby sprints toward the window, and McCully follows behind
to the side of the courthouse at a measured pace. Effortlessly, the
thickset man lifts the boy up on his shoulders until Noby's chin is
even with the middle of the tiny window. Noby snugs the callused
soles of his bare feet on Mr. McCullen's shoulders and finds his
center of balance. He feels for the reassuring stiffness of the hidden
reading primer tucked securely in his waistband before reaching
out to establish a toehold on the high windowsill above.
Noby's palm rests on McCully's coarse hair, just the briefest
moment of contact. The big man's fiercely tight hair twists are
slightly damp from scalp sweat, giving off the flat scent of yesterday's
farm chores and dotted with as much gray as black. Not like
Israel's hair, nappy but inky black all the way through, with a softness
that yields easily under Noby's fingers.
The men watch the surety of Noby's movements, all eyes on
him. Adrenaline pushes Noby forward, but another, more cautious
part of him registers the colored men he doesn't know, has never
seen. Not to mention the handful of too cordial, unfamiliar white
men, as suspect as old, gamy pork.
Noby anchors his bare foot on the ledge, wiggles it through the
opening, and contorts his body to follow. He drops down inside
the courthouse, out of his father's sight. Later, for his refusal to
seek permission first, will come the strap or extra chores, maybe
both, Noby's refusal to cry, his mother sneaking him a biscuit or a
cold bit of ham if there is any left.
Noby makes his way to a room dominated by a high pinewood
counter, with oversize bound books squeezed so tightly along the
walls they look like cut logs stacked on end. He is tempted to
linger in a place that holds so many books, as if being in such close
proximity will help him understand the wonder of the words they
contain. One day, he tells himself, he will be able to read these
books. Already he can write the year, tracing it in the dirt with a
stick, following the swirls and shapes of each of the four parts to
form 1-8-7-3, 1873. Already he can write his own name, first and
last, Noby Smith. Hansom Brisco, his godfather and owner of the
land his father sharecrops, is teaching him how to read and write
in the woods, wrapping his big, blistered farmer's hands around
Noby's small, eager ones, first guiding the stick and then expecting
him to repeat the motion on his own, smiling at the boy's
keenness to learn, calling him a natural. Already Noby has mastered
some of the sentences in the primer tucked into his waistband.
This is a fat cat on a mat.
Noby follows the darkened hall past several rooms, some with
long pine or oak tables and rows of mismatched chairs, stacked
and pushed to the side. The air inside the courthouse smells musty
with what Noby assumes is the potent combination of paper and
power. He continues around toward the front of the building,
where the double doors stand locked, but when he tries to turn
one of the knobs from the inside, the door won't open.
"Twist the bolt, boy," a voice calls from outside.
Noby twists and turns metal in random order until the doorknob
spins, and then he opens the double doors to both the men
and the stacked gun crates outside.
They are in.
The building seems bigger inside than it looked from outside.
Israel enters the wide double doors along with the others, unsure
what they will do next. He makes sure Noby is safe, watching
from the corner of his eye as his son settles himself in a corner.
Noby sits small, curling himself into invisibility while the men
debate what to do now that they have possession of the courthouse.
Though Israel can see Lucy in the boy, her quietness, her
reserve, her competence even under crisis, he sees himself in larger
measure, not only physically but in the occasional mirrored image
of his own moodiness staring back at him, and the impending
menace of the red rages. Noby is so obviously from his seed, and
David is so obviously not. Noby, his stolen child. Stolen from slavery.
Stolen from death. The first of his seed to live with him in
freedom.
The sublime blessing of freedom is exacting its price, is
demanding his participation here today, and he wants his son to
see his bravery. Lucy and Israel came together from Alabama into
Louisiana during the War Between the States, during an era when
bravery wasn't much of an option. They didn't start out as a couple
but came together at the same time, brought in by the same
master. Lucy was newly pregnant with David then, but she didn't
tell anyone until much later. Israel and Lucy's pairing made sense.
Her man was left behind, as were Israel's woman and the children
they had together who hadn't already been sold away. The plantation
where they lived and worked was put up for sale along with
everyone on it, and the slaves went out in all directions, to other
parts of Alabama, to North Carolina, to Louisiana, and down deep
into Mississippi.
No explanation was given for why they didn't sell Lucy and
her man as a pair, but Israel knew he was younger by quite a few
years. Maybe the new master thought there was more work left in
Israel. Lucy and Israel traveled into central Louisiana by wagon
with their new master, a hard, stingy man. By the time they had
made the trip and settled into their new surroundings, Lucy and
Israel considered themselves together, a pair, making do the best
they knew how. They were like-minded enough to be all right
with each other.
David was born while most of the white men were away fighting
for the Confederacy. Israel thought he was fully prepared to
embrace Lucy's child as his own when David came, even though
he was the issue of Lucy's other man. But Israel was sickened when
he saw the boy-child for the first time; he had felt his insides
become a hard knot of disgust and rage. The boy Lucy named
David was pale as dried hay, with deep-set eyes an unnatural, grayish
color, and wisps of straight, light brown hair on his head. He
even smelled different. In between the normal baby smells of milk
and spit-up and night soil, Israel thought he sniffed out a thin,
sharp odor of ruin, a sullied stink. For Lucy's sake, Israel tried to
interest himself in little David, to hold him close, but all he could
think about was which white man on the old place had forced
himself on Lucy and planted this child. Lucy never apologized or
made excuses, and Israel never asked who or what or when. He
tried hard to swallow back the revulsion he felt for the boy who
grew up to call him Papa, who stared at him with those strange,
begging eyes.
Noby was born two years later, after the domination of the
North ushered in the miracle of freedom in Louisiana and swept
along with it the promise of a new kind of life. Israel was relieved
to see his nappy-headed brown son, although the baby was puny
and sickly from the start. Lucy did what she could for Noby, but
the boy seemed always to be crying or choking or both. There was
no medicine, only what an old black nurse-woman on the place
could do with herbs while Lucy and Israel worked the field. More
important, there wasn't enough food. Sickly babies didn't have
much chance to survive, and Lucy was already heavy with
another. The war was all but over, and the land in disarray. White
men came back from the front, some in anger, most in defeat, and
colored men were on the move too. With the children in tow,
Lucy and Israel set out from the hill country down toward Alexandria
and got work on one of the Calhoun plantations.
Israel remembers the Sunday in the middle of that sweltering
summer when they gave up hope for little Noby, the baby listless
for several days already, barely responding. Together, Israel and
Lucy laid the child out in the back of a wagon, knowing he wouldn't
live another week, maybe not another day.
Israel sat vigil alone with Noby, checking to see if he still drew
air, trying to get him to drink a drop or two of water, wiping him
down. It was the least he could do for the boy, the first son he and
Lucy had made together. Noby was lethargic, his breathing dangerously
thin, and Israel rigged a shade blanket over his head to
mute the sun. Wrapped in his own waiting and grief, Israel was
startled when a colored man on a sorrel bay mare passed.
"What you got in the wagon?" the man asked. He was a working
farmer with calm brown eyes, fit and well fed, dressed in dirty
overalls and a rough homespun shirt, a little younger than Israel.
"This my son, taking his last breaths," Israel said. His tongue
worked against him around strangers, and he had to push at the
words to make them come out. "We laying him out for the Lord."
"What's wrong with him?" the man asked. He spoke almost
like a white man.
Again, Israel tried to judge the man who talked to him from a
high perch on his horse, to assess if he posed any danger. "Don't
know what he got. He weak-like from the day he born."
The man dismounted and came closer to the wagon. He lifted
the thin burial cloth tucked around the lower part of Noby's body.
"Skin and bones," he observed.
"Don't none of us have too much to eat," said Israel. "I done
lost every son of my flesh before they was ten, from either them or
me being sold, and now we got freedom, my boy getting ready to
be snatched away before he turn two."
The man reached out to feel the baby's forehead, then took
one of Noby's small hands into his own.
Weakly, the tiny baby curled his small fist around the
stranger's finger. The man looked surprised. "Can't eat, you say?"
"We got lots of mouths to feed. Noby get his share, but there's
not much."
"He got any catching disease?"
"No, sir. None of the rest of the children got this."
"You work here on the Calhoun place?"
"Yes, sir."
"My name is Hansom Brisco. You let him, this baby gonna die
right here. Why not give him a chance? My wife will look after him."
Israel didn't understand. "Pardon me, Mr. Brisco?"
"Let me take the boy and see if we can help him."
"The Lord ready to take this boy for His own, sir. What you be
wanting with him?"
"Might be nothing wrong but not enough to eat." Brisco
sounded angry. "There's enough senseless death to last a lifetime
around here."
"Why my boy?"
"Why not?" The anger drained out of Brisco's voice and was
replaced by a bargaining tone. Brisco ran his thick and callused
hand, the one Noby didn't have hold of, slowly across the smooth
cheek of his sunbaked face, buying time. "Look, there's nothing to
lose. If the boy dies, I bring him back and you bury him, like you
planned. If he lives, in a few days or weeks or months, I return him
to you healthy. I'm less than half hour's ride from here."
"Don't seem natural, taking a dying boy from his mama and
daddy."
"What they call you?"
"Israel. Israel Smith."
"All right, Israel, who take care of the boy tomorrow while you
in the field if he don't oblige and die today? You let me try to save
this boy's life, I'll pack up food for you and your family, whether he
makes it or not, and deliver it to you here tomorrow."
Israel felt cornered. Hansom Brisco seemed well intentioned,
and the rest of the family could use the extra food. They were all
hungry. Maybe the man really could save Noby. Israel wanted to
believe things like this could happen. "You bring back his body?"
he asked.
"Yes. But I hope to bring back a boy made well."
They wrapped Noby tighter in the blanket and transferred him
from the back of the wagon to a spot Hansom Brisco made in front
of him on his horse.
Israel watched the small trail of dust that swirled behind them
as Hansom Brisco rode off with his son.
True to his word, Hansom Brisco brought food for the family
and came to visit with periodic reports of Noby's good progress.
Two months later, he delivered to Israel and Lucy a vigorous baby
boy, strong of lungs, with flesh filled out around his ribs.
"He's your son, always be yours, but they belong to all of us,"
said Hansom Brisco. "We can't spare a single one. I be watching
this boy, not only for health but for what use he put it to."
"You give me back my son. I can't never pay you back
enough," Israel said. "But anything in my power I can ever do for
you, just ask and it be done. Anything."
"Then let's start now," said Hansom. "I'd like to be godfather
to this child, see him to manhood."
Israel, grateful for this unexpected smile of fortune, was thankful
to comply. Noby Smith had been stolen for the first time from
death.
The courthouse smells stale and damp but protects them from
the nipping cold of the wind. The men set about the business of
organizing themselves, and the newcomers bark out orders to the
colored volunteers, breaking them into groups. There are three
white officeholders-the wiry sheriff, with deep lines grooved in
his forehead from too much time in the sun; a pasty-faced judge
with a thin nose and wide belly; and a small, runtish tax collector.
The sheriff takes the lead, and the tax collector sets off down a
hallway looking for an office, while the judge keeps taking off his
black hat and running his hand over his thinning hair before
replacing the hat on his head. The three colored men with the
newcomers aren't officeholders and have lived in Colfax two or
three years, ex-soldiers in the United States Army in the War
Between the States.
Israel is assigned with two others to pry open the wooden
crates outside so rifles can be distributed, then joins the rest of the
men digging a long trench for a barricade about forty feet in front
of the courthouse. Within two hours, the sweat-sheened men have
a good start in hollowing out the reddish soil in sections around
the courthouse, digging up slimy mud to form a series of trenches
that look like a series of narrow, shallow graves. Noby makes himself
useful by running water to the men outside and carrying off
displaced dirt and mud.
In the early afternoon, they halt to eat, and Israel shares the
contents of his dinner bucket with Noby.
"Time for you to go on home now, son," Israel says. He mentions
nothing about Noby's part in the morning break-in. "You
able to find the way. Follow Red River and then Bayou Darrow."
"Can't I stay with you?" Noby asks.
"Too many guns here. This not a place for a boy after all. Tell
your mama I might be staying longer than I thought."
A good number of the men have finished eating and are
already back to work, stabbing at the hard ground with pickaxes
and shovels. With all the movement, the square has the feel of a
disrupted anthill. Noby says goodbye to his father and sets off,
alone this time. Retracing the same path in reverse of the morning,
Noby pictures his mother in their small cabin, what she is
likely to be doing right now. Lucy is always in motion, scrubbing,
cooking, cleaning, or sewing. Tending and mending, his father
says, and there is fondness to it.
Last Easter, his mother made a new collar for his father's Sunday
shirt and passed the old frayed collar down to David. There are
too many sons and daughters in their family for his mother to
manage new clothes for everyone, or more than a mending and
pressing of her own Sunday dress, but she sees to it that each one
sports something white.
Lucy Smith is soft-spoken, yielding, always in some stage of
creating babies. Unlike this morning, she usually defers, with a
calm acceptance demonstrating her unshakable belief in the
inevitability of life. She delivers the most baffling answers to questions
that explode in Noby's head all day long. She doesn't shush
him or shoo him away, but her answers seldom fit the questions he
asks. The serenity of her voice soothes him nonetheless.
"Mind your father," she says after Noby asks if he can go off to
school in Montgomery when he gets older. "God is great," she says
when asked why possum tastes different than chicken. "The husband
shall rule over the wife" is her response when Noby asks if
she tires of wearing the same faded dress four seasons in a row.
Lucy Smith and the other women in The Bottom will make
sure there is plenty of food Easter Sunday. Noby assumes Mr.
McCullen and his father and the rest of the colored men of Colfax
at the courthouse will be finished standing up for their rights
by then.
It is only the third week of March.
Chapter Two
In the calming stillness of Tuesday's earliest morning hours,
Israel Smith wrestles with how much time has passed in this
place. Today marks the first day of April. It is a full week since
the takeover began, and the defenders dwindle. Not all at once, in a
mad rush of panic or confusion, but in an unremitting seeping away,
hour by hour. Colored men throw off the cause and go back to their
homes to try to catch up on farmwork they have missed, or jobs where
they have been too long absent, or simply to check that their families
are safe. Most have slipped off in the last two days, open in their dismay
that the Federals haven't yet arrived in Colfax, and that no one seems
to know when they will.
Prior mornings, waking to the foreignness of the courthouse,
Israel has risen after waking and stumbled outside to relieve himself.
Years of habit have conditioned him to be firmly entrenched
in his day's work by sunup, but not today. Reluctantly, he throws
aside the blanket and unballs the old homespun jacket serving as
his night pillow. He forces himself to his feet and draws the jacket
around his shoulders, a comforting warmth against the morning's
chill. Mindful of the men still sleeping on the floor around him in
the cramped room, he rolls the blanket and stuffs it into a corner
before grabbing up his tin cup and boots. It is already light outside,
and others are stirring. He stops on the front steps to pull on his
boots, not sure whether he should wait for the day's courthouse
assignments or just turn in the borrowed rifle and start the long
walk home.
Instead, he follows his nose to the coffee, already boiling, and
a small group of volunteers, idling. Sam Tademy and McCully are
deep in conversation, already on their second cup.
"Brother Sam, when you get here?" asks Israel.
"He set out before daylight, just walk in this morning,"
McCully answers for Sam. "Musta knowed how much we need
more men."
"Polly too sick for me to come earlier," adds Sam. "But I check
on Lucy yesterday. They doing all right."
"Thanks to you, Brother Sam," says Israel. Lucy and Sam's
wife, Polly, often fish on Walden Bayou together in the early
morning before the men go off to tend crops on their different
farm sites, and Israel receives, secondhand, much of his neighborhood
news from those exchanges.
"You think the Federals come today?" Sam asks. "I don't fancy
leaving Polly and the children too long alone on the farm." Sam
is short and slight, with carved features. He too is a preacher, with
a small congregation in The Bottom.
"We all just waiting," says Israel. "Bad situation, us here, families
there. I hope The Bottom far enough away."
"Leastways in town we got guns and numbers on our side," says
McCully. "But it not clear how long these men gonna hold. More
coming in, but more leaving every day too."
Israel nods and drinks his coffee. While hot enough to be helpful, the foul-tasting liquid is both sour and weak, as if someone has
neglected to clean out the pot from the days before. Lucy would
never serve such poor coffee. His wife masks the flavor of even the
greenest or the oldest beans with chicory or sage, if they are lucky,
or at least willow leaves if not. Still, Israel is glad to be out of the
close confines of the courthouse and out in the open air, away
from the invasive, lingering smells of too many men forced
together for too long.
Lucy won't be able to make do without him forever on their
rented farm. The crop work has surely fallen behind. Just a day or
two more, he tells himself, and one way or the other, he will go
back home.
"How the day pass here?" asks Sam.
"I do lookout from the roof, and Brother Israel here patrol
around town," McCully says.
Sam looks up. "What they doing putting you on the roof?"
"The roof where I ask to be," says McCully. He walks, surprisingly
graceful for such a big man, uncoiling like an oversize spring,
full of energy, his dirt-caked overalls stiff with ground-in grime.
McCully motions for Sam to follow. "Come up. See for yourself.
You might's well come too, Israel."
The two men follow McCully up the pine ladder leaning
against the side of the east courthouse wall up to the flat roof.
"Fine day to take the courthouse," McCully says with a grin
when they get there.
"This not a game," Sam snaps, his voice testy. He is angry
about leaving Polly and his boys alone with the farm, angry that
he's jeopardizing not only his job overseeing old man Swafford's
place but his hard-won reputation for dependability, angry that all
he has to show for eight years of freedom is more children, a mule
and wagon that aren't yet his, a few saved coins buried beneath the
live-oak tree by the smokehouse, and a stumbling dream on which
he has yet to make good.
"No, 'cept for us voting Republicans in office in the first place,
this here the most real thing this town done, far as I remember."
McCully chooses his words deliberately, chews on each one. The
grin never leaves his face, and his eyes never leave Sam's.
Sam looks away first. "We put everybody at risk coming here."
"Name a time we not at risk." McCully looks at Sam as if sizing
him for a new suit of clothes. "You a front man, Sam. Some
born to follow, but your ideas put you in front, no matter that's
where you wanna be or not."
Sam gestures to the rifle McCully holds close and easy by his
side, gun barrel down. "That's not the way," he says.
"Now, that's a conversation worth our time. Way I see it, this
here the only way to get to those things you always talking about."
McCully warms up to his subject. "You don't demand what's yours,
you live with nothing or with leftover. White man won't give us
nothing worth having if we won't fight for it ourselves. Don't
expect nothing, don't get nothing. We the ones gonna change the
South. We need the Federals for now so white men pay attention,
but we got the equal rights."
"Not all white men bad, McCully. Look at the ones in the
fight with us."
"Why everybody talk about good white men and bad white
men? I'm here because it supposed to be my boy Spenser or one
day your boy Green or Israel's boy Noby holding papers from the
governor, giving orders. Folks need to get used to Republicans in
Colfax, so next we get us colored Republicans for the big jobs.
Your sons or my son."
"You too impatient, McCully," says Israel. "It take time."
"How long you think we got to wait? We three men already
old."
"Just 'cause we over fifty don't mean we too old to know what
we up against here," Sam replies.
"You deny we need to keep the courthouse for the Republicans
we elected till troops come from New Orleans?" McCully closes
the distance between himself and Sam, enough so Sam can feel
the heat of his breath. There is an intentional intimidation to the
man, as if McCully purposely leans into his weight to give Sam
less room to move. "You saying if the colored man don't step up to
claim our rights, those rights still be there next time we go look for
them?"
"I come. I'm here," Sam says wearily.
"Why?"
"Why what?" asks Sam.
"Only a handful of colored Colfax citizens backing what we
doing here. The rest going about their business just hoping for the
best." McCully drops his teasing tone. "You coulda stay out to Mr.
Swafford's, running his place, without coming to town and showing
your hand. Why you here?"
Sam hesitates. "I tell you why, Brother McCully," he says carefully.
"I walk all the way out of Alabama into Louisiana on a barebone
hope to find some better way to live free, make a family and
keep them close, work hard enough to sweat on my own piece of
land, and pass what I earn to my children when my time on earth
is done. Before, I get sold from place to place whenever it suit
somebody else. Pick up and go without no notice, no reason why,
follow some new master, one more place worse than the last. Not
supposed to be no thought of who's left behind." Sam takes off his
hat, delaying the words. "I'm home now. Colfax and The Bottom
my home. Hard and slow and ugly sometimes, but this mine, and
I got the duty to make this town a place easier for my children
than it be for you or for me. I'm here because it late in life, and you
right. We getting old, and it up to us to move the race forward
whenever and however we able."
"Amen, Brother Sam," McCully says, nodding slowly in agreement.
"You preach the truth."
"How long you think we be here?" Sam asks.
"Until these new Republicans make peace with the old guard,
or Federals come from New Orleans to force the law. Whichever
come first."
Sam looks doubtful. "These old boys around here used to giving
the orders. Sheriff Nash not gonna step to the side for a new
sheriff just because colored vote him out. And Federals not gonna
stay in town forever."
McCully removes his brown fedora, extends it like a live, fragile
thing, runs his fingers along the feather in the brim, holds it out
to Sam for inspection. "See this here hat?" he says. "This my voting
hat. I wear it the day we vote them men in, and I keep on
wearing it till they take up the office for good. Just like this here
phoenix feather, we gonna get stronger and stronger and rise from
the ashes where we been."
"What you talking now, McCully?" asks Sam. "That feather
come from one of the birds common as dirt around here."
"I'm disappointed in you, Sam," says McCully. "You showing a
terrible failure of imagination. This here a rare feather from the
phoenix bird what lived in the desert for five hundred years, go up
in flames, and raise itself up brand-new from the ashes."
Sam is used to McCully, doesn't contradict him, and McCully
returns the hat to his head. "We got to protect the Republicans
until the Federals get here," McCully says. "I don't care nothing
about them white officials, but I care about the Republican Party.
They set us free, and I vote with them every time. I glad to die on
top of the party if it come to it. After the Federals leave, then we
deal with whatever the good colored citizens of Colfax got to do.
We prove they can't scare us off from voting. Now we got to protect
our choice. There's more of us colored than there is white
around Colfax. We got the majority."
From the vantage point of the courthouse roof, Colfax lies
neatly below. There are five or six dwelling houses in Colfax
proper, spaced far apart, to house a population of only seventy-five
that includes several outlying sections. Not far from the courthouse
is the general store.
"Look yonder," says McCully. "A perfect view of Smithfield
Quarter." He points northeast to the closely packed colored settlement
directly outside the town. "From here," he goes on, "I
almost can look into my house and see what my wife got cooking
in the pot for supper."
"It is a good lookout point," Sam agrees. "And you got your
fair share of kin down there."
"Over this way, Mirabeau Woods." McCully turns north and
gives a broad sweep of his arm. "Clear line of sight all the way to
the trees." He turns toward the river. "Only thing I can't see is the
river side, between the oaks and cypress, and the drop-off to the
Red River bank. Too overgrown."
Sam takes it all in. "They tell you what you supposed to do
from up here?"
"Look for trouble," McCully says, and laughs. Several men
below look up. The laugh is too loud and too long. "I gets the easiest
job," McCully goes on. "Trouble never too hard to find."
Sam changes the subject. "I just come to be useful."
"First thing is get you one of these rifles they pass out. That old
worn-out shotgun you dragging probably fire once and blow up."
"They passing out shotguns?"
"Not shotguns. Almost-new Enfield rifles, left over from the
war, if you serious about staying. Can pick out a man almost from
here to Smithfield Quarter. I got some pull. I get you one before
they run out."
"I wouldn't hardly know how to use a rifle that shot straight."
Sam gives McCully another look. "What you up to, McCully?
What you want?"
McCully acts hurt. "Why so suspicious, Sam? We been friends
a long time."
Sam doesn't answer, just continues to give McCully the fish-eye.
"Plain said," McCully finally says, "it too late for my boy
Spenser. But I been thinking about my younger ones. I want to
send them to your colored school."
"You know good and well there ain't no school yet. Not till we
get land and a building and a teacher. No matter if you get me a rifle
or not, if I start a colored school, Amy and the others be welcome."
"There'll be a school, all right, assuming we get you out of here
in one piece," McCully says. "You a front man, Sam."
All three men climb down from the roof to find an Enfield rifle
for Sam. Once again, as he has each morning for over a week, Israel
decides to stay another day to defend the Republican officials.
They drill for almost an hour before setting off on morning
patrols. Those with Enfields watch their assigned group leader
demonstrate the thirteen steps of loading and reloading the rifle.
Levi Allen, a colored war veteran, carries himself in such a way that
his clothes seem clean and ironed even though, like everyone else,
he has slept in them for almost a week. He has a square-shouldered
look about him, so full of discipline that the other men appear lax
and unkempt in comparison. In order to preserve powder and
cartridges, none of the men actually fires or loads. Mostly, they
practice as units, marching together in assigned groups back and
forth in front of the courthouse with their weapons drawn or
hoisted onto their shoulders.
Levi divides them into three groups, with ten to fifteen colored
men of Colfax in each, and assigns another half dozen to stay
on the grounds around the building with their weapons visible.
McCully remains overhead, spotter on the courthouse roof.
Sam Tademy joins Israel's unit, and they cut back behind the
courthouse to begin the day's patrol, footslogging along the bank
of the Red River, past the Pecan Tree, around to the northern tip
of Mirabeau Woods, east to Smithfield Quarter, almost down to
Calhoun's Sugarhouse, and back to the courthouse again. "Sweeping the perimeter," Levi Allen calls it. They can't cover as much
distance on foot as the mounted men. Those few who have horses
form a separate patrol that ventures out in a wider arc to check the
entrances to Colfax, displaying their strength to the townspeople,
white and black.
They make their first wide loop, through piney woods and
riverbanks, across the one well-traveled wide road but more often
over dirt trails, patrolling single file or by sloppy pairs in lazy circles
around the town. Every man on patrol is required to carry a firearm,
but the unfamiliar weight feels all wrong to Israel, not centering
wide across the back as with the plow, or through the middle as
when lovemaking, or through the shoulders as while fishing.
On their third elliptical march around town, just past the old
Pecan Tree, they hear a warning signal from the direction of the
courthouse, two pistol shots in succession. Levi holds up one hand,
stopping the men in their tracks, and waves them into position,
spreading them in a loose ring across the field. There is minor confusion,
since they have never practiced this maneuver. It doesn't
take long for the white men to make themselves visible, riding in
along the riverside, coming out of the woods almost right on top
of the patrol.
Israel counts nine on horseback, advancing slowly down the
wide dusty road. The white men have been caught off guard, the
surprise on their faces easy to read. There are more colored men
on foot than white horsemen, but that gives Israel small comfort.
To Israel's right, Sam Tademy tightens his grip on his Enfield,
and Israel follows suit. This is uncharted territory. There is no reliable
script for how the two opposing groups are supposed to act
toward each other if the colored men refuse to give way.
"I'm J. W. Hadnot, from Montgomery," the lead white man
says. "We got business at the courthouse."
Israel recognizes this man and hopes the memory is not
mutual. There are Hadnots spread from Montgomery to Alexandria, in the towns and in the backcountry, known for both their
political connections and their commitment to white supremacy.
This particular Hadnot's name is Smokin' Jimmy, presumably for
the pipe he keeps clenched between his teeth, lit or not, and he is
high up in the ranks of the White League. In the woods outside of
the polling place last year, Smokin' Jimmy Hadnot and a handful
of others in the White League intercepted and challenged every
one of the hundred colored men traveling to Montgomery to vote,
threatening to kill them on the spot if they didn't turn back before
casting their ballot. A majority of the colored men traveled in
armed groups, and although most were intimidated, they were not
deterred. It is well known that the main job of the White League
is to terrorize white and black Republicans, to keep them away
from polling places, but the organization has obviously expanded
its charter.
"Only Republicans got business in the courthouse today," says
Levi.
Smokin' Jimmy Hadnot regards him quizzically, as if Levi is a
pet dog that suddenly knows how to talk.
"Who are you, boy?" he asks.
"My name is Levi Allen. Captain Levi Allen."
Smokin' Jimmy Hadnot pointedly ignores Levi. He eyes the
other men of the foot patrol one by one, willing them to acknowledge
his authority.
"Most of you are good boys," Hadnot says, barely shifting in
the saddle. He delivers his words with the sluggish, thin-lipped
smile all of them recognize as threat. "You don't want to be throwing
in your lot with carpetbaggers."
He takes his time, removes the pipe from his mouth, leans to
the side of his horse, and spits at the base of the trunk of the Pecan
Tree. Israel holds his breath, knowing better than to meet the
white man's cocksure gaze. He is just one of the faceless colored
men he hopes Hadnot won't remember.
"Time to get back to your own concerns while you still got the
chance, go back to your homes. You know better. You dealing with
something you can't understand here. Let us take care of the politics."
Levi stands his ground. "We got the right to be here. We hold
the courthouse for officers duly appointed by the governor of the
state of Louisiana."
Once again, Hadnot ignores Levi. "What you boys think you
doing with those weapons, scaring all the decent people in town?"
he asks.
"We ask you to turn around and go back to Montgomery,"
Levi says.
Hadnot finally turns to Levi, his eyes a searing blue buried
deep under hooded lids. "You in over your head, boy."
"These townspeople protect the appointed officers and the
courthouse, sir." Levi seems unruffled, his body all but hidden from
view by the massive bulk of his sky-blue military greatcoat, which
makes him look bigger than he is. Israel, on the other hand, feels
the runoff of sweat from his scalp and the widening dampness
around his armpits. He doesn't want to call attention to himself by
wiping his face, so he lets the sweat run off the slick surface of his
skin to splatter in little droplets to the ground.
"I wanna talk to someone in charge," Hadnot says. "Are the
white men at the courthouse?"
"We can't allow you further into town. We ask you to turn
around and ride out. Those are our orders."
Hadnot's face turns a mottled red, as if someone has hands
around his throat, choking him.
"Who you think you talking to, boy?" he sputters. He has a
long-nose pistol tucked in the side of his saddle, and reaches to
draw it out.
The other men on horseback reach for their guns too, as if it
is an orchestrated, singular move. They carry an assortment of
weapons, mostly pistols and shotguns, although two of the men on
horseback are armed with nothing more than the long-standing
assumption of privilege.
"Trouble's not what we want," Levi says evenly, "but each of us
ready for it." He brings his Enfield rifle to his shoulder, pointing it
directly at Hadnot's chest, with his finger on the trigger lock.
The colored men follow Levi's lead. Israel lifts the heavy
weight of his rifle, hoping the shaking of his arms and legs isn't
noticeable, to either the men on horseback or the men on the
ground. He hears heavy drags of breath coming from men on
both sides as he points the gun in the general direction of the
horses.
Hadnot pauses, assessing the situation. "Bring me the one calls
himself the new sheriff," he says finally. "I won't waste my time
talking to a colored boy."
"Unless you got special business in Colfax, no one comes in,"
Levi says.
"Only business with you got a bullet or rope connected."
Smokin' Jimmy Hadnot waves a piece of paper over his head.
"This a warrant for the arrest of the black radicals. That include
you. Go get me the new sheriff. His scrap of paper don't make him
legitimate, but least he's white."
"The Republicans won on Election Day, and they in office
now," Levi says, as if explaining a simple lesson to a dull-witted
child. "A warrant from Montgomery is no good here. We asking
you to turn around and go on your way, peaceable."
Hadnot turns halfway in his saddle so the men on horseback
can hear. "Carpetbaggers," he says with disgust, shaking his head.
The other men nod in agreement and laugh, but there is tentativeness
in it.
"You from Montgomery, Mr. Hadnot, not Colfax." Israel sees
Levi steady the angle of the Enfield rifle, tightening his index finger
around the trigger as he talks. "I been appointed by the governor
of the state of Louisiana."
"We don't accept you or the governor, neither one. We run
Grant Parish without outside meddling. You leading these local
boys someplace they be sorry to find themselves later."
"These men plenty capable to protect their own rights," says Levi.
"These boys can't do their own thinking, we all know that.
And you can't stay forever. You gonna give them work too, after
you gone? Shelter their families?"
"The party in office changed, Mr. Hadnot," Levi says. "Time to
turn around."
Neither Hadnot nor Levi moves for several long seconds, and
the men on both sides wait. At last, Hadnot gives a firm squeeze
of his heels, unhurriedly, edging the dapple-gray mare toward the
ragged line of men on the ground.
Levi fires once, a quick shot gotten off just in front of Hadnot's
mare, and Hadnot pulls back sharply on the reins. The mare
prances nervously, whinnying and snorting, but Hadnot quickly
gets her under control. It is all heavy breathing and hearts pounding,
but no one else fires.
"Time to turn around, Mr. Hadnot." There isn't a quiver in
Levi's voice. He brings a pistol out from under his coat and aims it
squarely at Hadnot's head. "The next one won't miss."
Israel feels a sickness in his stomach. He would rather strain
against the plow in hard labor, ass side of a mule, than bear the
self-defining weight of his gun for one minute more, but he forces
himself to pull up on his rifle as well. All the men on the ground
do the same.
Hadnot's barely disguised rage hardens into stony resolve. He
gives a signal to the men on horseback, an abrupt wave of his
hand. "You not worth the bullet to put you in your place, and you
don't understand how we do things here. Yet." With exaggerated,
careful movements, Hadnot tugs on the reins to turn his horse.
"Sheriff Christopher Columbus Nash is the real sheriff of Colfax,
and he won't like this one bit. Count on us coming back."
The other mounted men turn in a wary arc away from the center
of town.
After the white men retreat, the colored men look nervously
at one another. Israel isn't sure who delivers the first big whoop,
but before long, they all let loose in an excited churn of voices.
"They know we mean business," says McCully's son, Spenser,
bringing the sight of his rifle to his eye and aiming the long
barrel in the direction the horsemen just rode. "This our town
now."
"Settle down," Levi says, not only to Spenser but to all of the
men, and there is a startling quiet as the adrenaline begins to drain
away. In contrast to the rest, Levi's voice seems infinitely sad. "It's
only the beginning."
Even before Levi finishes the words, Israel knows what he says
is true.
As soon as the patrol reports back to the courthouse, the new
sheriff holds a general meeting in the area surrounding the giant
Pecan Tree.
"I'm calling for deputies," he says. Sheriff Shaw's pale face is
flushed, haggard and drooped as a hound's. Rigid muscles around
his thin lips do little to hide his anger. His entourage, including
Levi Allen, moves close together behind him in a show of solidarity.
"We got word a group out of Montgomery planning to attack
Colfax tomorrow. They threatening to replace all the Republican
appointees with their own party and hang the black radicals. Two
things we need. We need to hold the courthouse to protect the
lawful appointed Republican officers, and we need to keep the
peace."
Sam Tademy steps forward. "Where the Federals at?" he asks.
"The Federals supposed to be here if the election men have trouble
taking office. That be the understanding."
As the colored men talk among themselves, uncertain,
McCully elbows his way forward in the crowd, his brown fedora
jammed down low on his head.
"I voted Republican last November," he proclaims loudly, his
voice at full pitch. He goes quiet until he reaches a spot directly
opposite the sheriff, not over three feet from the politicians standing
near the base of the Pecan Tree. "You might could say it was me
voted you folks here in the first place." McCully holds himself very
straight, towering over the men around him, refusing to be either
dismissed or ignored. "Where you from, Sheriff Shaw?"
The sheriff's face tightens, and he makes no attempt to hide
either his puzzlement or his annoyance. "Philadelphia, by birth,"
he says reluctantly.
"I don't know how it be where you from, but any colored man
vote Republican in Colfax may as well walk up to the devil, introduce
himself, and slip his own neck into the hanging noose."
McCully stretches out one arm and waves it in a broad motion,
indicating everyone present. "Every man here got a story, but I'ma
tell you about my family. We got more than a few McCullens
around Colfax.
"The white man at the livery stable tell my brother Eli he see
him in hell 'fore he let him vote Republican, but Eli vote anyhow.
Next day no more job. After five years doing whatever that white
man ask. Best livery hand this town ever seen, but Eli don't get no
more work from any white man in Colfax."
The crowd responds. "Amen, Brother McCully."
"My brother Abe vote, get his ribs kicked in behind his shed
the next night by three white men don't even bother to hide they
faces. In front of his woman and children. Nothing happen to
those men. They brag on it and come out meaner the next time."
"Preach on."
"Instead of marching together right up the road to Mr. Calhoun's
plantation to vote, like we done in 1868, last year the
polling place move way out almost to Montgomery, where we
couldn't hardly get to it. The few colored could get hold of a mule
or horse carried others out with them, and the rest of us walked,
took near the whole day. We put our votes through."
"What's your point, McCully?" asks the sheriff, barely keeping
his tone level as he clenches and unclenches his fists at his sides.
"White men here in Louisiana determined. You got a letter
from the governor in your pocket, don't mean we won much of
nothing yet. Colored men here already prove we able to protect
the courthouse and the Republican Party. But keep the peace?
That a whole different bucket of slop, unless you talking about
things going backwards to how they was before. That the only
peace we likely to get. The colored citizens of Colfax gone too far
down the road now to give up that ground."
There are a few echoes of "That's right," but most of the men
stay quiet and uncommitted, tracking the exchange between
McCully and the sheriff like a horse race, not yet choosing sides.
"You can't protect the courthouse and keep peace at the same
time," McCully says. "Sam's right. We need the Federals, but we
need Colfax colored men even more to force change on this town.
We risking everything, but long as we got guns, we at the level of
the white man. We got majority. We got right on our side. We got
law. Even if they bring in every white man from Grant Parish."
"We Republicans too, me, the judge, the tax assessor, throwing
our lot in for change," says the sheriff. "We got plenty to lose.
This don't go down easy for any Republican, white or colored."
Irritation settles along the deep creases of his face. He lets go of a
bit of the tobacco juice he holds in his cheek, spitting it out in the
dirt. "You volunteering for deputy or not?" he asks McCully.
McCully takes off his fedora and, in an exaggerated, theatrical
gesture, raises it above his head. The light plays off the colors of
the heron feather, from blue to gray and back again. "I volunteers,"
he says. "And my son gonna volunteer too."
The sign-ups go slowly at first, but before long, there are sixteen
new deputies sworn in among the colored men of Colfax.
Israel packs his dinner pail and his other belongings into the
blanket, balls it tight, twists a knot, and flings his possessions over
his shoulder. One last look around the room convinces him he has
left nothing behind. As he prepares to leave, he almost collides
with McCully and Sam.
McCully eyes his bundle. "You not doing your children no
favor, quitting now."
When McCully comes around, Israel feels small, as if he has
something to apologize for. "We in too deep. Lucy alone on the
place. I got to go back."
"You call one thing right," McCully says. He enters the room
and leans his weight against a heavy oak table. His beard is thick
and full, dotted with gray, his hair uncombed, and his clothes
filthy from a week's worth of tar and grime on the roof. "What you
call right is, we in too deep to back down now," he says. "This a
test. Because of this morning, they see us now. We visible. You
know what that is, Brother Israel, how important that is, to be visible?
It mean now we something they got to deal with."
Israel comes back sharply: "I know visible, McCully. You not
the only one know some big words. I got to think of my own."
"True again. Lucy and the children the reason you need to stay."
"What good it do if we dead?" Israel wishes he had slipped
away sooner, without the need to explain himself.
"There's worse than dead." McCully steps closer. "Look here,
Brother Israel, nobody talking dead but you."
"You think the Federals still coming?" Israel asks.
"We got to get more men to stand up. That way, when troops
come or troops leave, the old guard know they can't mess with the
colored men of Colfax, like before. Us men here, right now, got to
break that way of thinking. Break that way of living."
"We only sign on to hold the courthouse for a day or two. Now
there's shooting, going head-to-head with white men, and promise
of more. We running out of men and food. This can only go one
way."
"Don't know no such thing," says McCully. "When we ever
stand together as men and ask for what's coming to us? Food be
scarce now, but food easier to come by than men. Yes, some don't
want nothing to do with us courthouse men, don't want to be seen
drinking out the same cup, like we dogs gone mad. Looking over
they shoulders like they afraid the white man see us talking and
think they one of us. Why a few white men getting run off more
important than all the colored shot and hung? Time to think a
new way, Brother Israel."
"A few days or weeks marching around town don't make us
ready."
"What example you putting forward to your sons?" McCully
says. "First scuffle, and you ready to go off with your tail between
your legs."
"Nothing but words. Still got to think about Lucy and the
children."
McCully doesn't hesitate. "Sam and me just been talking. He
gonna bring his family up from The Bottom to stay with my
brother in Smithfield Quarter, where we able to watch over them.
And my wife happy to make room for Lucy and your children till
this thing over."
Israel wavers. He thinks about the patrols, the unwashed men
in the courthouse, the shacks filled with defenseless women and
children on the farms that ring the borders of Colfax. He thinks of
his sons Noby and David and what sort of future they have in
Louisiana.
"We doing this for the children," says McCully, as if reading
Israel's thoughts and giving a final push. "You come this far. What
say you now, Brother Israel?"
Israel looks to Sam Tademy, standing quiet behind McCully.
Sam nods.
Everything suddenly seems too heavy, and Israel drops his
rolled blanket in the corner of the courtroom.
"I hope you right, Brother McCully," Israel says.
Israel Smith bears the added weight of his new Enfield rifle as
he trudges along the last bit of the road home. Under different circumstances,
the novelty of today's warm spring sun would coax a
more hopeful mood, but even the respite from the gloom of winter
and the promise of increasing green in the landscape do nothing
to calm his nerves. At his first glimpse of his cabin, the ragged
brick of the fireplace, the familiar contours of the sloped log walls,
his reaction is a sharp, euphoric rush. He is tempted to run
through the field, burst through the door, find Lucy, and kiss her
square on the lips in broad daylight. As if miraculously bidden outside
by his need, she comes out of the cabin with a tin of slops and
dirty wash-water to throw to the pig. Intent on her task, she doesn't
see Israel at first, and he studies his wife as if he has been away
years, not a single week.
Lucy has gone stouter with each successive baby. She is significantly
shorter than he is, so short he can look down on the top of
her kerchief when they stand side by side. She has a broad, agreeable
face and thick, powerful arms equally adept at cradling a baby
or splitting logs for the fire, and the early graying of the hair around
her temples somehow softens her. She carries this baby low, and
Israel knows this one has made her movements slower than usual,
her hand often at her back as a counterbalancing weight. In the
courthouse, even the quietest men have taken to talking about
their wives aloud, longingly, even those whose wives are known to
be scolds. None of the volunteers is a stranger to crowded living
and crowded sleeping quarters, but at home they are surrounded by
the rhythms and habits of their own families, not jammed tight
into small courthouse rooms, set adrift among nervous, snoring
men with personal habits as annoying as their own.
Israel keeps the run out of his step but fast-walks toward the
cabin, and when Lucy finally catches sight of him, she hastily
throws the slops toward the pig and waits on him in the front yard.
"You back," she says, relief so evident in her face that Israel
feels a stab of guilt at leaving her alone for so long. She looks him
up and down to assure herself he is the same as when he left.
"Not to stay," says Israel.
Lucy stands still for a moment, then turns her back to Israel and
moves toward the cabin. "You'll be wanting to eat," she says.
Israel follows her inside. While Lucy spoons up a thin stew
from the kettle in the fireplace and cuts him a wedge of two-dayold
corn bread, Israel breathes in the familiarity and comfort of his
cabin. He eats, comforted by the familiarity of his wife's cooking.
"Where the boys?" he asks.
"'Round back cleaning out the barn. We hard pressed to keep
things going without you here. They working sunup to sundown."
Israel nods, continues to eat the tepid fish stew, unwilling to
begin.
"I seen Polly Tademy just this morning, down to Walden
Bayou," says Lucy. "Polly say Sam swallowed up by the courthouse
too, same as you. Say we got to keep each other strong while our
men stand up. Say if she wasn't a woman, she be down to the courthouse
with the rest of you."
"Polly speak out too much like a man to suit me," says Israel.
When Lucy doesn't respond and the silence threatens to go stony
between them, he adds, "But I know how tight the two of you is."
Lucy dishes up more stew for Israel, and he eats this helping at
a more leisurely pace. Finally, he makes a start. "This afternoon
the new sheriff put the call out for deputies."
Lucy drops all pretense of calm, unable to mask the alarm in
her voice. "You didn't step forward, did you, Israel?"
"Nah. McCully and one of his sons signed up, but Sam and me
didn't."
"Praise be."
"Sixteen colored men official deputies now."
"When you home for good, Israel?" Lucy asks. "Supposed to be
the Federals defending the election men."
"I only come back today to carry you all to Smithfield Quarter,"
says Israel. He doesn't look Lucy in the eye. "We can't leave
go of the courthouse till the Federals come, and the ugly got a face
to it now. Smokin' Jimmy Hadnot the one intending to take the
courthouse back."
"The head of the White League? How a sprinkling of colored
farmers gonna hold off the White League?"
"We almost sixty men strong, with guns." Israel doesn't admit
to the dwindling numbers of the last few days. "Smithfield Quarter
closer to Colfax, closer to our patrols and our rifles. You safer
staying with McCully's wife in Smithfield Quarter than out here
alone. Some of the others moving they families too."
"Polly don't say nothing this morning about moving."
"Sam coming for her today, same as me for you," Israel says.
"Our life is out here in The Bottom, Israel. We got crops in the
field and animals to tend. What you thinking?"
"Hansom Brisco refuse to join with us at the courthouse, but
he gonna look after our place here best he can while we gone. I
talk to him just before coming. We packing up what we can and
bringing the cow. This the way it gonna be, Lucy."
Lucy only stares at her husband for a moment, enough to come
to terms with the hardness of his face and the resolve rooted in his
eyes, then gives a small, resigned shrug. She calls for the children
and begins to pack up the few belongings they will need for their
journey into town.
Excerpted from RED RIVER © Copyright 2008 by Lalita Tademy. Reprinted with permission by Warner Books, a division of Hachette Book Group USA. All rights reserved.
 Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.
Back to top.
|
