Chapter 14

Things ain’t been the same since Dehaunting Day. The day ended well enough. The visitors ate, sang, celebrated. They knew it would take another miracle for them to step foot on Walker land and didn’t know what it would take for any of us to get off it. When the celebrating was over, they gathered their belongings and hugged Mama and us tight. The men went to the back door to gather the passes and be counted. According to James, between men coming up twice and women sending kids up that ain’t never been counted, some of them was counted two and three times. Wasn’t until Master Kirk come back late that night talking about you one short, that they noticed Watson was gone. Dogs been barking for three days straight.

“Don’t let on you sweet on him,” Mama says.

“What you mean, sweet on him?” I ask.

I ain’t never told nobody about Watson and me. I’m promised to him and nobody, including him, seem to know. Mama just looks at me and I know she knows exactly how I feel. She holds me. She smells like cinnamon, lilac, hyacinth, and jasmine. I breathe her in.

“I tried to tell you, you should be getting to know one of them hands,” Tempe says, “least they free.”

I wait for Mama to tell her it don’t make no difference what he do as long as he can take care of me.

“Loving a slave is hard work,” is all she says.

It seems like everything changes when Watson runs off. Walker starts sending for me or Tempe to come up to the house. Don’t matter which one he sends for, Mama sends us both. Whether we’re scrubbing floorboards, beating rugs, soaking drapes, or darning socks, it seems like he ain’t never too far off. Watching. Since Old Missus passed, Missus been visiting with her sister up north. She took Ivy with her. The more she’s away, the more Walker want me or Tempe around. As long as she can help it, Mama don’t let that happen. When she can, she goes in our place. The more Walker send for us, the more Mama sends us down to help the hired hands instead. She says we need to learn a skill so we can make money. She works it out so we make little trinkets and the hired hands sell them for us in town.

The first time I get a silver coin I about die. Tempe and I add it to our collection: newspaper clippings, teeth, feathers, shells, and then coins of all shapes and colors. We need to find someplace to keep our treasures. The bundles are fraying. There’s no telling how long they’ll keep. Since we’ve been doing more around the place, Mama lets Tempe and me sleep in the tiny shack by the river. The floorboards underneath start to sink in but we don’t mind. The dirt’s a good hiding place until the river coughs it up.

It’s been raining for weeks. The fields are flooding. The cabins are flooding. Even Walker House is flooding. Walker’s got hands from three towns helping the slaves pick soggy berries, bloated cabbages, and anything worth saving. Even Old James and Old Samantha are out there slipping in mud, wrestling with limp branches. The whole place is underwater. Can’t walk from one side to the next without being knee deep in it. That’s why I don’t notice the river swelling and spilling. It bleeds clear over the bank. It flows and flows like ain’t no stopping it. Swallows the shack, the path. The river, the rain, or both, fills up the ditch all the way on the other side of Walker. We collect bones and bundles long after the river seeps back and the mud dries. We make up stories for each one. Each piece is remembered. Out of sweet cherrywood, we carve our very own book. The hands bring us paper. We stitch them together. Stuff the newspapers, like bookmarks, in between. Though neither one of us can read or write, each page holds a story. We remember.

Thanks to the flooding, Walker hires hands to help fix the place up while me and Tempe seem to be doing twice as much. They don’t seem to be helping much. At least, not at first.

“Edward?” Buddy clears his throat, raises his voice and calls up to his friend’s sweating back. “Seems to me you done developed one of them afflictions,” he says. He wipes the sweat from his eyes with the back of one hand and holds the thick rope with the other. He lowers his voice. “What you think, Brother?”

“’Bout what?” Franklin asks.

I know he knows just what Buddy’s talking about cuz I know it too and I’m clear on the other side of the barn. Without looking up, Franklin bundles four planks of wood together, ties the thick rope around them and tugs. On his signal, Buddy pulls the rope to send the pile up to Edward. I sure wish Tempe would hurry up. All she has to do is bring supper from the house. I’ve been sweeping and piling, lugging and listening to them speculate on which one Edward should take for his wife.

“Seem like Edward done caught something from round here,” Buddy continues.

Every time we get there with supper, Buddy and Franklin get to teasing Edward about being sweet on Tempe.

“Don’t think it’s catching, do ya?” Franklin glances at his friend and back to his brother. “I don’t want nothing from here I can’t give back.”

Edward unties the planks, halves two-by-fours, and gets to knocking them together.

“You might like what he done caught.” Buddy unrigs the rope and throws it into a wheelbarrow stuffed with nails, debris, and rags. “’Cept it seem to make whoever catch it clumsier than a mule in a cane field.”

“That don’t make no kind of sense,” Edward calls down.

“Can’t seem to keep a shirt on neither,” Buddy continues.

“Always walking around bare-chested. It must be something fierce. Soon’s he step one foot on Walker land that shirt must get to itching and scratching cuz seem like he get to ripping it off, buttons popping everywhere.”

“Too much starch probably,” Franklin says. “Not saying nothing ’bout your mama, Edward.”

“If you ask me,” Buddy continues, “whatever he caught he got right here. Seems like the same thing you was trying to catch not too long ago, Brother.”

“Don’t seem likely,” Franklin replies. “Although now that you mention it, he has been a mite bit clumsy. Wasn’t you trying to catch the very same thing then too? That’s how I remember it. Edward, don’t you go bustin’ up nothing up there again.” Franklin runs inside the drafty barn and hoists himself up the repaired ladder.

“He break anything yet?”

“Nah, just fumbling with an old rickety piece of something he done made to look ’bout to fall apart, I swear before God.”

“It ain’t finished yet,” Edward says. “I’m planning.”

“Your planning got us mending and remending the same drafty holes for near two months since you been here,” Buddy yells up. “Done seen more fixed up, broke, and fixed again now than ever before. New roof, near about, new hatch, new beams, and a window with a ledge for mice.”

“It’s for birds, for watching and feeding birds,” Edward interrupts.

“Walker don’t seem like the bird-feeding type, you ask me,” Franklin says. “From here you can see clear cross the fields to the house. Man like Walker might like to come up here time and again to see what his people get up to. And what’s that? You done made him a little bed for—” he stops.

The air in the barn seems to pop. I don’t hear Edward’s answer and I don’t need to.

I been sweeping the same spot for the past hour. Still clutching the broom, I run to beneath the ladder. Mama will kill me if I go up there by myself. “Y’all need a broom up there?” I call.

Thankfully, they laugh.

“How long you hired here for?” Buddy asks.

Edward has more talent than anyone, white or black, this side of the Chesapeake. Master said it at least a hundred times. Since he’s been here he’s patched and fixed the slave cabins, plugged leaks, patched walls, stained floors, and rebuilt the barn from the beams up. Don’t seem to be anything that man can’t do, except talk to Tempe.

“Till the work run out,” he says.

“Sampson hired us out for two seasons before we go on home,” Franklin says.

“I hire my own self out,” Edward answers. “I says what I can do and what I can’t and someone like Walker says what they can pay and what they can’t and we strike up a sort of deal.”

“And he pay you your money just like that?” Buddy’s thick fingers snap.

“Don’t usually have no trouble ’bout getting paid. I heard ’bout some workers doing all sorts of work and when it comes time to get paid, the person say they ain’t gonna pay ’em.”

“I do believe Sampson would kill Walker if he don’t pay.”

“Ain’t that easy. I ain’t got no Sampson or such. I’m free. I’m my own man. I can say I done the work. White man say ‘I ain’t gonna pay.’ What can I do? If I take down all I put up the sheriff come around saying I destroyed something wasn’t mine. I can’t hardly take him to court. Alls I can do is wish real hard that something bad happen to him.”

“That work? Cuz it don’t work for me,” Buddy says.

“I didn’t say it works; just said that’s all I can do. I can get mad but don’t nobody care ’bout me getting mad. I got myself real good at a whole lot of things. Ain’t much I can’t do. People think twice before not paying me. Never know when they need me for something else.”

“What you gonna do when the work dry up here? Sooner or later Walker’s gonna realize on account of you he got more things that need doing than that’s getting fixed,” Buddy says.

“I been thinking on that.”

“He ain’t never gonna let Tempe go. It ain’t his way. I can’t think of no one that left this place that didn’t leave dead or end up that way.”

He can’t be talking about my Watson. Buddy’s just trying to rile me up.

“Maybe for enough money he’d have to,” Edward says. Edward buy Tempe? What about me and Mama?

“You know it don’t work like that,” Franklin says. “How long did it take you to buy yourself free?”

“A long, long time. You planning on buying you and your brother free?”

“Don’t know. Don’t see no difference in the way they treat you and the way they treat me.”

For a few minutes, alls I can hear is scraping. “Who this belong to?” Edward asks.

“It’s yourn,” Buddy says. “You made it.”

“Right, that’s being free. Buy your freedom. Don’t matter how long it takes to get it.”

A little something comes falling down. I snatch it up. Two strands of straw knotted together and braided into a tight ring. I slip it onto my finger. Finally, Tempe comes trudging in dripping a bucket of water and carrying a satchel around her chest. She smells of cornbread and Mama’s greens. I slip the ring into my pocket.

“Y’all gonna have to come down if you want to eat!” Tempe yells.

The men scramble to their feet. Edward swears as he bumps into the ladder and nearly topples down.

“There’s plenty to eat, no rush,” Tempe says. “Mama made enough for all y’all.” She nods her head toward the ladder as Buddy and Franklin make their way down.

“Tempe,” they mumble.

“Boys.”

Edward grunts and lifts the water bucket from her hands. He peers inside. I wait for him to ask where the rest of the water gone. He don’t. He nods his head at Tempe, dips the drinking spoon in the bucket and drinks. Water slides down his chin. Tempe takes a long time deciding where to unwrap the satchel of food Mama sent.

“Why don’t you take it upstairs?” Buddy suggests.

“Go on up there first,” she says.

“Gal, ain’t nothing up there gonna bite you,” Franklin says.

“If it do I bet you I’ll—”

“What you gonna do, Little Bit?” Buddy interrupts.

“I’ll be sure to tell my mama you don’t want none of her buttered biscuits, collard greens and neckbones, or fried chicken gizzards to cross your lips.” Tempe snatches the bundle and turns to go.

“I didn’t say that,” Buddy says. He reaches for the kerchief as if he don’t know better.

Tempe’s thin foot shoots out and catches him in the knee. “Don’t you put your dirty hands on nothing I got. I done told you that long time ago.”

“And I done told you,” Buddy begins. He lowers his eyes and steps toward Tempe. Franklin rushes from behind. I stand in between the two; both panting and staring holes through me. “I wouldn’t say no to whatever you got in that bundle, Ms. Tempe,” Edward says. His soft voice makes both Buddy and Tempe jump. He edges my body out of the way and stands in front of Tempe, his back to Buddy. “Can I carry that up to the loft for you?”

“I got it.” The words barely push through Tempe’s clenched lips.

“I can see that, ma’am, just wanting to help. I wouldn’t want to miss none of your mama’s cooking, good as it is.” He licks his lips.

“I helped,” Tempe lies.

The smell of supper trails behind her as she nears the steps. She hands the bundle to Edward before climbing the ladder. Edward, Buddy, and Franklin follow her upstairs. I count to five, waiting on her to get down like she got some sense. What’s she doing up there with three grown men? Even if two are almost like brothers, they’re grown men now. Heavy footsteps stomp above my head. Tempe’s light feet flitter across the loft followed by her coos of delight as if the whole thing has been done up just for her. I sit on the bottom rung of the ladder, swirling my dirty finger in the water bucket. The ice had melted long ago. Fat drops of rain hit the dust outside the open barn door. Even with Buddy and Franklin there to look after her, Mama will kill me if I leave her alone.

“For me?” Tempe crows in surprise. As if we hadn’t just last night crept up to the loft. There were little pictures scrawled in corners, in between crevices, in places most people—except Tempe—wouldn’t bother looking. Tempe said they were flowers; they looked like legs to me.

“Sister, you really should come see what they’ve done up here. It looks like a little house. All that’s missing is—”

“You want me to bring the bucket up there? You gotta go or something?”

The men whoop above. Their foot stomping and backslapping put an end to her sashaying and high stepping. She’s downstairs faster than I would have thought. Seems like her feet don’t hardly touch the ladder at all.

“You heifer.” Her hot words scorch the back of my neck.

“I ain’t jealous,” I whisper between panting.

I’m out of breath. Tempe’s too far ahead to hear me. I can’t catch up even if I want to. She runs out of the barn leaving me to gather the empty wrappings and cloths, bucket, even one of Edward’s ripped shirts for Mama to mend. For a while she stalks down the path swinging her arms in wide, angry circles, every so often chopping at the sky with her hand or punching with a clenched fist. “Hussy, wide-hipped heifer.” Snatches of words drift behind her as if even the burden of holding her tongue is too much. As if she’s the one gonna be left behind. She slows as she nears the river, allowing me to catch up. I walk slower. She stops walking when she reaches the deepest end, where the reeds are tall and thick in the air and tangled in a jumble of roots below the surface from what I’ve heard.

“Ain’t got no sense at all, do you?” she hisses. How she can get words out of her mouth with her lips so tight shut I would never know.

With her hands on her bony hips, her feet planted on either side of the path, her cheeks puffed out and her mouth wide open, she blocks my way.

“Mama said not to go upstairs,” I remind her.

Her eyes close into brown slits.

“She did.”

Tempe steps toward me.

I take a step backward. “She just don’t want you to be fast.”

She takes a big step forward.

My heart jumps. I take a bigger step back. “Besides, Walker said he’ll get you a baby. What you want with Edward?” My heart beats so loud she seems to hear it. She stares at my chest, mesmerized. I’m too close. Mud sucks at my feet. She pulls me close, like she’s going to hug me, spins, and pushes me. I can’t catch my breath or close my mouth or think of nothing but dying.