Chapter Twenty-eight

Murphy named the baby Samuel Spencer Murphy after his pa. “They called him Smokie,” Murphy said. “Far back as I remember.”

“Did he smoke a lot?”

“Hams. Best this side of the mountain. Story was you could smell him coming from here to west Texas.” He placed his finger against the baby’s palm, and he grabbed hold tight. Murphy sported the first real smile I’d seen in days.

“Guess we’ll call this little fella Sam. What do you think, Adie?”

I picked up the baby and tucked him in my arms. He curled into a little ball. He weighed five pounds. He had Murphy’s strong chin and the same eyes the size of lakes, only smaller ones, is all. His hair was light brown fuzz, the color of Margaret Mary’s, but there wasn’t much of it.

“He didn’t get her hair,” Murphy said. “Her hair was real pretty. Like yours, Adie,” he said. “Been nice he got her hair.”

“Oh, this’ll all fall out,” I said. “It’s baby down. Then he’ll grow a fine head of hair his mama’d be proud of.” I carried Sam out to the truck while Murphy paid the hospital bill.

“Hey, little Sam,” I said. He was wide awake and searching for the sound of my voice, like he could see it if he tried hard enough.

“It’s a fine name, Murphy,” I said. “Margaret Mary’d be right pleased.” Murphy drove us back to the cabin. I held Sam tight when we hit the potholes. He fit in my arms like he belonged there, safe and snug, not aware he had a mama he’d never see, never know. A sadness grabbed hold of me, one mixed with shame. Why was I here with her baby? I had one of my own. And her man? I had one of them, too, at least one that was showing promise of becoming one.

Still, me and Murphy had an easy way of speaking to each other, sometimes with words, other times with looks, maybe a nod, or a grin. It was a friendship the likes of which I’d never had before. There was love involved, sure, but it was the kind that has no beginning. The kind birthed in a circle, so there’s never an end.

Murphy was headed to Tybee Island to get Willa Mae. Guess her gentleman friend would have to wait. I asked Murphy to drop me off at the doctor’s. “I’m having some female troubles,” I said. “Miz Jenkins will bring me home.”

“Nothing serious, is it?” he asked, his voice full of concern. He opened the passenger door and helped me into the truck.

“Surely not,” I said, glad he hadn’t guessed what the real nature of the visit was. I didn’t want him to know that I was most likely having another baby when he’d just lost Margaret Mary having his.

“Think you could help Margaret Mary’s folks finish making the funeral arrangements while I’m gone?”

“Of course I can,” I said. I was more than agreeable to helping out in any way I could; anything to make them feel a bit better. We were all in a sorrowful state, but they’d lost their only child, so naturally it was worse on them. Having lost Grace—for the time being at least—gave me a taste of how painful that could be. “What did you tell Willa Mae?” I asked.

“Just said, ‘the baby’s here and we need you.’ No reason to give her a fright,” he said. “She’s got a bad ticker.” Murphy tapped on his chest.

“She does?” I said, chewing on my lower lip.

“You didn’t know?”

I shook my head. “Only thing I know about her heart is how big it is.”

“That’s just it,” Murphy said. “It’s too big.”

I looked at him, my mouth twisted like a question mark.

“Enlarged,” he added.

“For sure?”

“What the doc says.” He paused and got real quiet. “Funny thing about hearts, they can cause all sorts of problems.” His eyes, those pretty lakes he watched the world through, grabbed mine. “Nothing worse than a big ol’ aching heart, Adie.”

I got lost in Murphy’s eyes when he said that, knowing I was sure to drown in those lakes if I wasn’t careful.

“Especially one that’s got no cure,” he said.

I snapped my eyes shut. His were trying to tell me something it would be better for me if mine didn’t hear.

I handed Murphy the sack lunch I’d packed for him to take on the drive down to Tybee. “It’s egg salad,” I told him. “Don’t let it sit too long or it might give you a bellyache.”

He took the bag and motioned for Worry to get in the truck. “What am I gonna do, Adie?” he said. “What in God’s good heaven am I gonna—”

“Sometimes all a body can do, Murphy, is breathe in and breathe out,” I said. “How about you just do that for the time being?”

He nodded sadly and drove off. I watched till he was out of sight.

He called Margaret Mary’s folks Wednesday morning to say that he and Willa Mae were in Savannah and on their way back. I finished the arrangements for Margaret Mary’s funeral. Mama stayed on and baked enough pecan pies to stock a bakery.

“Can’t never have enough pecan pie when sorrow comes calling,” she said. “Folks need something sweet to swallow when times is hurtful.” Between the two of us, we had everything in place by the time Murphy and Willa Mae got back. The weather was so nice it was irritating. Strange, how the best kind will show up for the saddest of times. The dogwoods and azaleas were in bloom. The poplars, elms, maples, and chinaberry trees were different shades of green and full. Not much moisture hung in the air, so our lungs breathed good for a change. About lulled me into thinking we’d recover. Such perfect weather for a swim in the creek, a picnic in the woods, maybe a hike up the mountain, a wedding—anything except a funeral. But Margaret Mary was laid out fit for heaven, wasn’t anything going to change that. So, a funeral it was.

I put Grace Annie and Sam to bed and sat down to watch television. We had two stations to choose from. The Danny Thomas Show was on. It was a good one to watch. Any problems they had were solved in half an hour, and there were good laughs while they fixed them. The Dick Van Dyke Show was next. Rob and Laura Petrie’s troubles were over in thirty minutes, too. Later the news came on. The weatherman said no rain was in sight. Maybe it was better sending Margaret Mary off on a day so pretty you couldn’t doubt God or His talents. Gray-black rainy days were sad enough. Why add the memory of burying someone you loved into the mix?

Mama stayed on with me and Grace Annie and baby Sam. Clarissa came with her, and did they spoil those babies! It did give me a lot of time to myself since they wouldn’t let me get near the one of them. While I waited on Murphy and Willa Mae, I got out Tempe’s journal. Getting lost in Tempe’s life was a good way to get my mind off mine. I heard Sam let out a wail. The little guy had powerful good lungs. He sucked the formula down every three hours like he’d never have another go at it.

“Mama?” I said, a bit too loud.

“I got him,” Mama said. “Stay put.”

“It’s my turn!” Clarissa shot back.

“You fix Grace Annie’s supper and give her a bath,” Mama said.

“But Mama!” Clarissa said.

“You kin take the night feedings. I need my beauty sleep,” Mama said. “And Adie’s been sickly. I want her to get some rest.”

I poured myself a tall glass of lemonade and went out on the back porch Murphy had built onto the cabin last month while Margaret Mary and I baked the pies for the fair. Oh Margaret Mary—one month you’re here and the next one, you’re not.

You left us too soon…you should be here with Sam…you should…be here with Murphy.

I looked out at the azaleas Buck had planted and let my eyes get lost in their dark pink blooms. The journal rested in my lap. Sifting through the pages I’d grown attached to, I quickly found the marker I’d placed in its folds and started to read, not knowing it would be quite a spell before I was able to do so again. There was more trouble aimed at us. It would hit its mark before I ever got back to reading the journal.

• • •

We was working in the fields. The year be 1865 bes’ I remember. The conch shell blows and Johnson yells for all us to drop our hoes and go to the big house. “Massah got sumpin’ he gwine say!” When we gits to the porch, Massah is standing on the steps.

“Y’all listen good. The damn Yankees has freed your black asses,” he says. Jis’ like dat! Thas what ol’ Massah say.

“You’re as free as me, but that don’t make you white and it don’t make you equal. Any you want to stay and work I’ll give you five bushels of corn and six gallons of molasses and a side a’ meat when the crops come in. You’ll get your eats and your clothes while you work for me.” Das what he say.

“You can work, you can leave, you can starve. Don’t make no difference to me. I’m not responsible for the one of you no more.”

Mistress on the porch with Massah and she jis’ stares down at us. Then Massah say, “But ain’t the one of you to leave till the man comes with the writ that says you’re free to go.”

Soon the soldiers come and the little chilluns run under the beds and hide and the Yankee soldiers bend down under the beds and pokes in their faces and says to come out from under there. “You are free. You are free!” Weren’t none them chilluns understood what it meant. “All yous are free,” they says.

When they’s gone, Massah reminds for us to stay ’til it be announced with the paper writ we kin go, so we stay on and work ’til this man come with a paper from the Pres’dent Lincoln lives in the North and he says we’s free and not to work no more if we don’t git paid. Soon, the man what got that paper tells us we be free, be gone. Mistress come and speaks to us. I still hears her all these years later like she jis’ say it.

“Ain’t nobody gonna take care of you anymore. Lord have mercy on you!” she say. “What’re you gonna eat? Not one of you has money for clothes. Those you got on will rot off your back in six months. You leave, you will starve on the streets or die in the poorhouse,” she say. “Take your pick.” Somes is plenty skeered and stays on, but I not be’s one of ’em. I’s free and I’s going.

Once we wuz free, the law say the slaves wuz married by jumping the brooms all gots to be married agin. Somes ’cide not to be and jis’ quit. They say they’s free and they is staying that way! Clyde neber come back from the war. Weeks go by so I figure he be killed. I wouldn’ta quit Clyde. He be’s a good husband and I would marries him over, so long as he say it be fine we go look for them chilluns be mine. Likely he would, seeing we never had no chilluns of our own. Somes of the other black mens who went off to fight in that war for the south made it home, but Clyde not be with any of them, so I left that plantation and never looked back on it. I start walking and the roads was full of black people making their way to where they thought freedom be waiting, lak they was sposed to pick it up somewhere and take it wid’em. Everybody say, “Where you be going?” Some says, “I don’t know. I’s following yous.” Another say, “Maybe dat Carolina place what got da cool breeze in da ebe’ning.” And I say, “Mebbe I goes dere along wid you.” But ol’ mistress be wrong about us left to starve and have nothing to eat.

All along them roads the white farmers stops us and say, “How you like to come works for me? I gives you a piece a ground and what you grows you give me half. The rest be yours.” And one say, “I got two piece of the same size ground for you. Come work for me, you got two shares.” Land sakes! They’s fighting over us! I took work with one farmer through Christmas ’til the crop be lay and din’t go to that Carolina place. He paid good wages, too. Said I was one the bes’ workers he seen and he say for me to stay on. I tells him I am headed to da places to find my chilluns. I shows him the map I keeped had all the places marked down.

“You come back when you want to,” he say. His place be near Macon, not far from Atlanta where I be heading next. I went back many a time and work for him to gets money to keep looking for Thomas and LuLu and James. I went to all them places be on that map I keeps wid me, and I goes back and keeps going back to them places. Each time I goes, I can’t find da chilluns. The hard part be thinking on where they was. The other hard part be figuring how old they was and what they might could look like. When I sees plenty chillun might could be mine I’m looking at dese little ones and I think they kinda look like they’s maybe mine. Then I realize, no, mine’s much bigger now, but my mind plays tricks and I sees my little chilluns in my head like dey looks to me when da speculator men takes ’em way, all dem years before. I never did get me a good picture in my head what they might could look like now. Twenty years go by maybe. I think by then I ’bout thirty-five years old and I be’s so tired of looking, ’cause it break my heart neber finding dem babies be mine.

Once agin I goes back to the Macon place and work for the white farmer be so kind to me. He be John Evans and he got a good wife called Mary Katherine. When I am there that las’ time I meets Tom Barber who be raised on Marse Barber’s plantation near Savannah. Marse Barber is the meanest Massah there eber was, Tom say, and he run off many a time and got the scars clear down his back to show for it. The scars have ridges so deep his back be like a tree and them scars be dat tree’s thick ol’ branches. Tom Barber is working five acres for John Evans and needs help with the crop and ask me to joins in. They’s good white folks and work right long side us when the crop grow too big for us to handle. Still they gives Tom half, and they pays me out of their half. Tom be tall and real light skinned and he sure be’s handsome. I be’s thinking he gots a white pappy, and he say probably he do, but he ain’t never know his mammy or pappy, so hows he gwine know? He’s sold ’fore he’s old enough to remember, he say.

Tom be’s younger than me, but he say I looks real fine for a woman and how a body gwine tell. And if a body see’s dat I be’s older, he say he wouldn’t kere none, ’gardless. The years go by and Tom say, “Hows ’bout we’s git married?” And I say, “We kin do’s dat.” So we gits married in this church was built in Macon for all the Negroes want to be Methodists. Then I be’s a Methodist and we haves a wedding and I be’s Mrs. Tom Barber and pretty much happy for a time, till Tom gits to liking the corn likker. That corn likker never do him no good. That stuff mostly make a man crazy. And dat’s a truth.