Harvesttime of 1921 saw plenty of work on the plantation. The men and women were in the fields before dawn, ready to work. The work in the Big House began before dawn, too, and I was given added chores. Carrying water to the overseers in the fields was the hardest. I tried hard not to spill as I climbed the hill and stumbled along the uneven dirt paths the quarter of a mile or more to the overseers, but more often than not water spilled out of the pails and I would be punished.
When I arrived at my destination, breathless and dripping wet with sweat, with the heavy two-gallon buckets, Thrasher would sometimes tip them over, dumping the water on the ground, and order me to go and fill them up again. “Don’t spill any this time!” he would cackle.
I’d fight tears of anger as I struggled toting those buckets. It was a job I had for nearly three years.
I had eaten my supper one night when an awful pain in my jaw made me gasp. “You ailin, boy?” Big Mac asked, without looking up from his dish.
“I believe my tooth is ailin.”
And ail it did. In a week’s time my face was swollen twice its normal size, and I was dizzy with pain. Big Mac told Master Beal about it, and he came into the kitchen to see it.
“Ain’t nothin I can do except take you to the dentist in Anderson, I reckon,” he said. To the dentist! It sounded so wonderful to me, I wanted to throw my hands in the air and shout for joy. That meant a trip in the buggy, or possibly the new car! I hadn’t been off the plantation since I had been bought by Master Beal.
He called me the next morning after he had been to the field for a couple of hours. “Git in the buggy,” he commanded. I hurried outside, fetched the horse, hitched her up to the buggy, and then climbed aboard and waited. Master Beal came out soon, and we started on the journey to Anderson. I stayed near him because the road was filled with holes and very bumpy. When it got really bad, I took hold of his coattail and hung on for dear life. He never did slap my hand away. This simple gesture of holding his coattail meant as much to me as a warm embrace and a kiss. After all, he didn’t push me away from him, and he was taking me to the dentist! Maybe he cared about me!
The town of Anderson bristled with activity. I gazed with wide eyes at the store-lined Market Street. The sun shone on the low buildings as we drove up the sloping hill and pulled in front of a large, white corner building.
The dentist was a young white man with what seemed to be a kindly face.
“Well, where’s the Hudson today, Sam?”
“My man is picking cotton,” Master explained. “Need him more in the field than in the car.”
The dentist smiled and nodded his head in understanding.
“What have we here?” he asked.
“This here boy got a toothache, Doc, and I’d like you to fix him up.”
“Sure enough, Sam. Come here, boy.”
I went into a small room with a window that overlooked a grassy empty lot. “Open your mouth,” the dentist told me.
“Uh oh. You got yorself an abscess. I’ll have to pull out the tooth and let the poison drain out.”
He strapped my arms to the chair and then he took a tool like a blacksmith’s pliers from his drawer, clamped hold of my tooth, and began to yank. It was a chipping and yanking and grinding process and I screamed and howled and wailed miserably until he finally got the tooth out. Master Beal had told him he didn’t have more money for a pain killer because, after all, I was a nigger.
I hobbled out of the office somehow with cotton wadding stuffed into my mouth to catch the blood and pus. Master Beal did consent to some medication for me, but with great reluctance. “If he doesn’t take this, the poison could spread through his body and then you’ll have a bigger problem on yor hands,” the dentist explained.
“All right, give me the stuff. I’ll see that he takes it.”
The ride home was agony. I wept bitterly in the back of the buggy. This pain was worse than a hundred whuppings with the cow lash.
Once back at the plantation, Master ordered me to get the water to the men in the field. My face was fiery hot, and my entire body ached. I couldn’t speak at all. I wouldn’t even try to form words in my mouth.
Thrasher saw my face and laughed his mean laugh. “Somebody ought to shoot you and put you out of your misery.”
“Yeah,” mocked one of the drivers, “why don’t you shoot him right through the haid now?”
“Maybe this boy would like a bullet through the head; would you, boy?”
“Oh, come on now, Thrasher,” jibed the driver. “Give him a chance! Let him at least run for his life!”
Thrasher laughed, “Yeah!” He pulled his rifle out of the saddle and cocked it.
“OK, Robert, get runnin! Let’s see if you can outrun this bullet!”
I twirled around, grabbing the buckets, and began to run with every bit of strength I had. I heard the gun fire, and I screamed and threw myself on the ground between cotton plants, sending the buckets tumbling. I heard their laughter.
“Git going!” Thrasher shouted. I began to crawl frantically toward the buckets. I couldn’t lose those. When I had retrieved them, I tried crawling in the direction of the trees at the edge of the field. Thrasher fired again. I was almost insane with terror, and it was only after about six shots were fired that I realized he was shooting into the air. The cruel laughter rang across the field. I felt like a fool. I rose to my feet and ran for all I was worth, and when I was safe in the trees, I fell on the ground and lay there until I had regained enough strength to continue back.
As I lay in the shade of the trees, I remembered Miss Ceily praying for John Henry when he was sick and how the Lord had answered her prayer. I looked up into the leaves of the trees. “Lord,” I prayed, “plee—” I wanted so badly for the pain to subside. I was dizzy and nauseous and could not form words.
A few minutes later a tiny, cool breeze blew across my face. It was so refreshing and sweet that I wanted to smile. I sat up, feeling a little better. By the time I got back to the Big House, the pain was almost gone.
When Master Beal came in from the field that day, the swelling had vanished from my face, and I was suffering no pain at all.
“Take your medicine, boy,” Master called to me when he saw me bringing a load of clean towels upstairs. I stopped on the stairs and smiled broadly. “Oh, suh,” I exclaimed, “I was in sech terrible pain I thought I was dyin for sure. Then I looked up to the Lord, and I begged Him to take the pain away an heal me.”
Master Beal grunted.
I continued. “They won’t be no need for the medicine from the dentist, suh. I got the medicine straight from the Lord!”
Master Beal’s eyes narrowed, and he drew closer to the stairs.
“Come here,” he ordered. I obeyed and jumped down to where he could see my face better.
The look on him was one of complete consternation.
“Open your mouth.”
In the place where the tooth had been pulled, there was a smooth, gaping hole with no sign of swelling or infection.
“Well, I’ll be damned—”
“Oh, suh!”
“I’ll be—”
“The Lord done it, suh, sure enough! I prayed and ast Him to heal me! A breeze come over me from yonder, and He healed me!”
Master Beal stared at me for a few seconds, and then with a grunt said, “That dentist is better’n I thought.”