“How you and David working out?” asks Jackson.
“Only time gonna sort that out. So far, so good, but he already pushing Hansom Brisco to sell us more land, dragging me in because I’m the one got a little cash.”
“Family,” said Jackson, in a “what can you do?” tone.
“Family works in the Tademys’ favor,” says Noby. “Each a you got property.”
Jackson’s first purchase had been the most momentous, the watershed acquisition that had sealed a mutually satisfying and ongoing land-for-money-and-labor relationship with Widow Cruikshank. No sooner did Jackson pay off one deed in full than he would jump back into the jaws of debt for the opportunity to purchase another small parcel of adjoining land. Sometimes he bought to increase his own holdings, and sometimes to get his brothers set up on their own plots.
“My father skin us alive if we don’t do for each other,” Jackson says.
“Sam Tademy like a father to me since mine pass,” says Noby. “Since before.”
“He always glad to see you,” says Jackson.
Noby smokes, and Jackson pulls out a nub of pine and a pocketknife and begins to whittle, unable to keep his hands unoccupied. The silence wraps itself around them. Nearby, the voices of the children drift, laughing and playing.
“Don’t feel right without Green around to wake us up in the middle of the night to go hunting,” Noby says.
Jackson is saved from the need to reply by the sharp clink of the plantation bell at the house. He rigged the bell so Amy can call him in for dinner or supper from one of the far fields, or if there is an emergency. Noby and Jackson don’t move to go back to the house right away.
Five boys and two girls come running from the direction of the far field, where a cow just calved, beyond the bayou. L’il Hansom Smith is the oldest, and the biggest in terms of height, but Andrew Tademy runs ahead of the others, outstripping both of the older boys, including his brother Nathan-Green and, of course, all of the smaller children who straggle behind, trying to catch up. Gertrude Smith is the youngest in the pack, since Lenora isn’t included. She runs as fast as her chubby little legs will carry her, trying to hold her own, but she falls twice and can’t keep up. She doesn’t cry, just picks herself up and flings herself in the direction of the house, at the tail end.
Jackson and Noby watch with amusement as the children snake their way to the cabin.
“‘Be fruitful, and multiply.’ Genesis chapter 1, verse 22. As usual, I got to lead the way,” brags Noby, drawing on his pipe, letting the smoke play at his lips and settle deep in his lungs.
“I didn’t know we was in a race,” says Jackson.
“Who we leave behind what count,” says Noby. “That the race that matter. And don’t think I gonna let the Freemason idea alone just ’cause you don’t understand how important it is yet.”
It turns out to be a fine supper. Amy and Emma have laid out a Sunday spread of fried chicken, rice and gravy, butter beans, and pecan pie, the portions stretched to accommodate both families. Jackson and Amy and Noby and Emma sit at the main table, catching up with community happenings and gossip, enjoying one another’s company, while the clump of seven children, L’il Hansom Smith, Nathan-Green Tademy, Oncy Smith, Andrew Tademy, Roger Tademy, Jane Smith, and Gertrude Smith, sit at a makeshift table off to the side in the corner, arranging themselves by age and sex. They are expected to be seen and not heard, and for most of the meal, they manage to keep themselves quiet and beyond the attention of the adults. Only Lenora Smith is exempt from the strict segregation of children from adults, placed in a basket at her mother’s side, too young to feed herself and too small to be set adrift in the sea of children.
The conversation meanders, relaxed and unhurried, until, in a temporary lull at the big table, when mouths are full, everyone falls silent at once.
“What’s wrong with your sister’s eyes, scrunched up like that?” Nathan-Green asks L’il Hansom. His timing is unfortunate. The eight-year-old’s voice, though soft, slices through the small room, carrying beyond the intent and anticipated audience. Unfortunately, they all hear, and an awkwardness descends on the room.
“Nathan-Green,” scolds Amy. “Come over here right now and apologize to Mr. and Mrs. Smith. A proper little man don’t talk about other people.”
Nathan-Green pads over to the big table. “I’m sorry,” he says. He hangs his head, appropriately chastened and contrite, although he doesn’t understand what he did wrong or why he has been singled out, other than having attracted the attention of adults, always a tricky business.
“You excused. Go back to your seat,” says Amy.
Nathan-Green rejoins the other children, ashamed by having been called out. He is silent for the rest of the time the Smiths spend at Jackson and Amy’s farmhouse, not joining in the children’s conversation, throwing an occasional glance in Lenora’s direction and the mystery of her slanted eyes, his curiosity aroused, not diminished.
When supper is over, Noby retires to the front porch with Jackson, and Emma helps Amy clean up in the kitchen. Noby and Emma stay so long that most of the smaller children fall asleep curled on the floor in the front room. By seven, when they are ready to leave—a remarkably late end for a farmer’s visit—they have to carry sleepy children out in shifts to the waiting wagon.
The adults say their goodbyes, Jackson walks the Smith family out, and they all promise not to let so much time pass before the next visit. Noby, Emma, and their children ride off in the direction of Bayou Darrow. Jackson doesn’t wait for them to disappear down the path before turning toward the mule shed. There is still a little daylight he can use for plowing.
Jackson carves out time to go to his father’s farmhouse on Tuesday, and together they tackle the gristmill. It is a hot day, humidity clinging to them like hungry ticks, and Sam has his shirtsleeves rolled above his elbows. Jackson counts three large bruises, purple, spread like spilled ink across his father’s forearms. The bruises are new, not yet faded like the others. His father doesn’t look well, his movements slow and crablike. He tires between every two or three steps and needs to regroup.
“Sit down, Papa,” Jackson says. “I do the patch-up myself.”
Surprisingly, Sam doesn’t argue, his breathing shallow. He sits heavily on a bale of hay pushed against the side wall of the barn.
“Children around here need school,” says Sam when his breathing steadies, as if he is continuing on with a conversation, not initiating a new one. “We start small and build from there.”
“Take more than yearning to start a school,” replies Jackson. “Take a plan. Money to draw and pay a real teacher, some schoolbooks, paper and pencils and chalk and supplies, a steady building to find and keep up. And then how many from Colfax gonna spare their children from the field for months or even days out the year? We start up, all talk, but don’t mean what we put in motion got the chance to last.”
“Why you fight this so?” Sam asks. “Stop fighting, and we make this school happen. You too young to understand what last and what can’t. Green understood.”
“I is twenty-nine years old,” Jackson says. “Got three children of my own to look out for.” The old argument takes on a new edge. “I is not Green. I is Jackson Tademy standing here in front of you.”
Sam doesn’t respond right away, sizing up his son as if he has stumbled across a foreign, unfamiliar creature. A flinty silence grows between them.
“You think I don’t know the difference between my sons?” Sam says at last.
“You blame me for Green,” Jackson replies.
Something ugly between them unfolds. Again Sam breaks the silence first. “Son, I only wants you to live up to your potential.”
Sam looks old. Old and tired. Have the swollen bags under his eyes always been so heavy, the thickening around his jawline so pronounced? If Jackson met his father on the road for the first time, at this moment, he would see him as nothing more than a worn-down old man of indeterminate age, short a
nd slight of build, for whom you tip your hat out of respect to a long life lived. It is as if Sam’s shield of infallibility has evaporated, exposing this ordinary, frail-looking man.
“You want me to live up to Green’s potential,” says Jackson quietly.
“The Lord give you a gift, and you responsible to use it.”
“What gift is that?” Jackson asks, knowing the answer but delaying to allow himself to cool down. His father will say the same thing everyone says, using the “gift” as a club. That Jackson is smart and steady, as if those traits obligate him to everyone else’s cause, indebt him to carry his father’s dreams as his own.
“Once you set your mind, tighten down on a notion, you don’t let go. Green, God rest his soul, had the gift of dream, to catch a glimpse how the small could be big, and people believed and followed. But you the one know how to plot a course through the impossible. You the stronger one. You a man won’t stop until you arrive at the purpose. I knowed that since you was a boy.”
Jackson stands mute, blinking back his confusion. He searches his father’s face for mockery or, barring that, for a negating comment laced with paternal disappointment. He finds nothing but an old man serving up an observation.
“Time to give you what someone give me at a turning point, so you don’t forget how you tied to everybody else,” says Sam. “My funeral hat be yours when I’m gone. May be some day it be a voting hat again.”
“Yes, Papa.” Jackson shows the proper deference, but he takes no pleasure in the idea of owning an ancient hat that has seen better days. He gives the stone wheel a small kick. “I need to come back later in the week to finish patching the mill. Just leave it till I come back.”
Sam nods. “Too many give too much already for you to let the gift lie fallow, son,” he says.
On Thursday, Jackson is on his own farm putting in posts for a garden fence when his youngest brother gallops onto his land in a panic to tell him that their father has collapsed at the gristmill. Jackson drops everything and takes off at a run. Not ten minutes elapse before he bursts into the yard surrounding his father’s farmhouse, winded, races up the steps of the porch and on into the back room of the house, but he can tell immediately by the look on Polly’s face that he is too late. Three of his brothers are already there, standing around Sam’s motionless body laid out on the narrow double bed he shared for twenty-six years with Polly.
With two fingers, Polly leans over and lightly flicks Sam’s eyelids shut. She takes her time, smooths back his hair, runs her thumb down the hollow of his cheek, stares at the grizzled old face as if memorizing every detail. She stands this way for a long time, and no one feels the right to intrude. Finally, she collects herself and looks up to see Jackson.
“The man just too stubborn to wait,” Polly says.
Jackson isn’t sure if she refers to Sam waiting for him to fix the gristmill or waiting for the few minutes it took him to get to the farm.
“I told him I fix the mill this week,” Jackson says.
“I know you did, baby,” Polly says.
Jackson wishes she would wrap her arms around him now, make even the worst thing tolerable the way she always has, but she doesn’t move away from the body, and Jackson finds he cannot initiate the contact. The day is hot and humid, but Polly begins to tremble as if it is the cold of winter.
“We been getting signs for a while now that his time was coming soon. Wasn’t nothing you done or didn’t do. Mr. Tademy squeeze everything he could from this life. Wasn’t no shame in any parts of it,” she says.
“What can I do now, Mama?” Jackson asks.
“Fetch me my shawl, Jackson,” she says. “Seem the cold just snuck up in here of a sudden.”
Jackson is glad to have some action to take, some excuse to get closer to both his father’s body and Polly. He brings the ragged shawl back and places it around Polly’s shoulders. She won’t leave the body, but he guides her to a chair and she sits.
“You does me a service to go fetch Miz Amy and carry her back to me,” says Polly. “I needs a little woman comfort, but I be myself again soon’s I catch my breath.”
They schedule Sam Tademy for burial on the following Sunday. Before the service, Jackson rides out to his father’s farm to fetch Polly in the wagon. She keeps him waiting in the front room, and he hears her rummaging in the back of the house. When she comes out in her black funeral dress, she carries Sam’s brown fedora. It looks even more shabby up close than Jackson remembers. The blue-gray heron feather in the brim is stiff and brittle with age and leans tiredly in toward the hat’s dome.
“Sam tell me he want to pass this on to you,” Polly says, “the same as McCully pass it to him. Sam always say this hat he wear on the outside remind him what he carry on the inside, but it the Tademy name what make him strong.” She fingers the splotchy nap of the fedora. “This hat belong to men could stand up to anything life throw at them. It’s fitting to go to you now.”
Polly has to stand on tiptoe to remove Jackson’s cap. She replaces it with the brown fedora and steps back to take measure of her son. The hat is too big, and it has a slightly gamy smell of sweat, but immediately, Jackson finds a certain comfort in wearing it.
“Now we ready to go,” Polly says.
She leads the way out to the wagon and helps herself up onto the buckboard without waiting for Jackson.
Jackson barely absorbs the events of the funeral. People force him to relive his father’s final moments in the telling of how he died, even though he wasn’t there. Amy never leaves Jackson’s side, squeezing his hand at the exact moment he begins to think he can’t bear any more. He stands as straight as he can as the new elder of the Tademy clan in his funeral hat, symbolic in his place, this time without his father. It seems the entire town has turned out. Sam has attended almost every funeral in The Bottom, and now that the tables have turned, they flood out to honor him. Jackson sees neighbors he hasn’t seen in months, sometimes years. The press of so many well-wishers reduces the impact any one of them can make, and it is all Jackson can do to woodenly acknowledge the condolences and move on to the next. Midway through, he registers his friend Noby standing at the outskirts of the crowd with David, both of their faces contorted and swollen with anger, arguing. Noby shakes David’s hand from his shoulder in a brusque gesture before leaving his brother to come forward and join the long line of supportive friends and neighbors.
Jackson sleepwalks, dutifully, during the funeral day but wakes, suddenly alert, later that night. He thinks he hears a cow horn blow, but the sensation evaporates, swallowed up by the stillness of the night. The last remnants of a dream float away, but he is unable to reconstruct it. The moon is full, at its zenith, and the room almost glows with the warm light. Jackson sits up, puts two layers of clothes on over his union suit, pulls on his boots.
“Where you going?” asks Amy. Her sleepy voice at his back is soft, like the calming temperature of bathwater heated on the stove, but Jackson hears the worry.
“Go back to sleep,” Jackson says. “There’s plowing got to be done.”
“You ain’t never gonna be Green, and you ain’t never gonna be your father,” says Amy. “That’s all right. You meant to be Jackson.”
She doesn’t try to stop him from going out of the house, and he walks into the darkness, thankful to be enveloped in the great expanse of the impersonal night. He hitches the small mule, uncharacteristically docile, as if it senses his need; it doesn’t fight him, allowing the leather and bit to slip over the slope of its nose and into its mouth.
Jackson plows close to the house, keeping himself steady, turning over row after row, creating deep furrows in the earth.
Green and his father are no longer there, either to lead him or for him to defy. Jackson has spent his life leaning, trying to provide a counterweight to the enormous pull of both Green and Sam. As long as he could respond to either of them, could push back, his life was understandable. Like walking on a stormy day, leaning forward into
the wind just to walk upright. What happens when the wind stops? Without them, Jackson isn’t sure how he fits into this world. Can he strap on the harness of someone else’s hopes?
Jackson pulls back on the leather strap, stops the mule, and listens. Night sounds, nature’s sounds. Hooting from the trees, skittering in the underbrush, splashing from the direction of the bayou, hoarse breathing from the mule. Jackson sweats, drenched under the layers of his clothes, and it feels good.
His father talked for years about a commissary for The Bottom, a local store for basic items so the Tademys and their colored neighbors wouldn’t have to travel all the way into Colfax. A modest general store on Jackson’s property could also serve double duty as a first schoolhouse until they could manage to build a dedicated place for the children. He could begin a colored school, the same way Sam brought the church and gristmill to The Bottom. Jackson could teach, as could others.
They are untrained, but an imperfect beginning is better than a perfect plan that never materializes. No one of them in The Bottom can afford to devote full-time at the start, but with enough hands and enough hearts, it could work.
Jackson gives a soft git to the mule, urging her forward again. In the reflective glow of moonlight, he sees the blade of the plow pierce the resistant soil, feels the tug in his shoulders at the kickback of overturned rocks. Jackson keeps at the plowing for an hour more, then two. His mind quiets, and his body numbs to the consistent strain, settling into a repetitive routine. Finally, he believes sleep possible. He releases the tired mule from the harness, puts her up in the shed for the second time that day, and walks back toward his farmhouse.
Chapter
24
1896
N oby Smith purposely comes early, is the first to arrive on Jackson Tademy’s property far in advance of the meeting. Noby loves the sharp but musty smells of Jackson’s commissary-smokehouse-school, the contrasting and startling odors of disparate purposes. Mingling scents of rawhide and tanning solutions compete with the strong perfumes of tobacco, salves, curing hams, and hard candies. A hint of chalk dust always seems to linger in the air. Four benches are crammed in toward the back of the commissary for children engaged in learning words and numbers during the weekday, and one evening a month, the benches bear the weight of men during the secret ceremonies of Colfax’s colored Freemasons.