The morning heat gave an indication that the day would ripen into broiling heat.
Ned Sawyer walked out of the front door of his tannery, lit a corncob pipe, and took his first long draw of the day. As he was wont to do at ten o’clock each workday morning, he’d take a break from the smell of the tannins to read the newspaper.
With the pipe dangling from his thin lips, he reached into his breast pocket and retrieved the newspaper. With his head low as he read, he sauntered to a bench located twenty feet from the front door of his tannery.
He removed the pipe from his mouth and emitted a harrumph.
As he didn’t get a response, he tapped John on the shoulder as John sat slumped on the bench, asleep next to Douglas, who was also asleep.
John popped up from the bench and peered at Sawyer with saggy eyes. Sawyer had small, soft eyes, an aquiline nose, and a thick white horseshoe mustache.
John reached for his haversack on the ground, then awakened Douglas, who rose slowly.
This was their first encounter with a white man, or anyone for that matter, since they’d set out on their trek from Richmond several weeks ago.
Their first instinct was to run. But their legs were too wayworn. They had made it to Raleigh, North Carolina, overcoming oppressive heat and fitful snatches of sleep. But it wasn’t easy. Their food supply didn’t last long. Instead of pacing themselves with their meat and peaches, they had eaten much of it within a few days after they had removed the meat from the smokehouse. Other than the squirrel that Douglas trapped and skinned with his bowie knife, they ate timothy like ruminants. John later slowed their trek when he was down for about eighteen hours after being bitten by a recluse spider. Douglas fed him clay dirt in effort to ease the pain and to speed his recovery.
Sawyer spoke first. “This is my tannery,” he said, pointing to the large wooden sign—SAWYER TANNERY—affixed to the front of the building. “You boys looking for work?”
John’s stomach gurgled, and his head roiled with pain as he pondered whether to keep moving or talk to a potential benefactor. He thought he had come too close to death at least twice on his uncertain and increasingly dangerous trek—when he covered himself with a shroud under an elm tree several weeks ago, and when he was bitten by the spider. If death hadn’t claimed him yet, perhaps he had gained a reprieve of sorts. Although he did a lot of things by himself, he generally liked people, liked studying them as he acquired more knowledge and wisdom. He had Douglas, but he was famished for more human contact.
But Douglas, who was itinerant by nature, did not need much human contact to survive. As he had been entrusted by Ann to shepherd John to Alabama, he said, “We just traveling through, sir.”
“You boys not from here?”
Before Douglas could find an answer, Sawyer saw Rick, one of his workers, come out of the tannery. Sawyer waved Rick over to him. Rick had soft eyes, but John would have to warm up to him a little before determining whether danger potentially lurked underneath.
John and Douglas stood silent as Rick strode to Sawyer. Rick was a lanky colored man with russet-colored skin, dark brown hair, and waffle-sized ears. A black tanner’s apron covered his blue overalls.
Sawyer pressed his mustache with his left hand. “Rick, show these boys around our operation,” Sawyer ordered.
“I was on my way to pick up some lunch, Boss.”
“That can wait,” Sawyer snapped.
Douglas interjected. “That won’t be necessary. We best be moving on.”
Sawyer looked skyward and found the rising sun. “In this heat? Where you boys going?”
“Like I said, sir, just traveling though,” Douglas said.
John stepped slightly in front of Douglas. “Maybe we can stay a while longer,” John said as his stern eyes locked with Douglas’s nonplussed eyes.
Rick slung his head forward and John followed in tow. Douglas, still nonplussed, hesitated before joining them. It was the first time either had seen the inside of a manufacturing company. Rick explained Sawyer’s operations from beginning to end: workers were needed to unload the hides coming in by rail, to peel the bark from hemlock to release the tannin properties, to organize and treat the hide with lime to loosen the hair, to put the hide in a scrub house and later a drying room.
After the twenty-minute tour of the tannery, Rick stopped and leaned against a rail. “Boys, this is what we do.”
John curled his nose at the smell of the tannin.
Rick said, “You’ll get used to that smell.” He paused, then added: “We turn this stuff”—he pointed to a pile of rawhide, “into something people want—bags, clothes, shoes, you name it. If you want the job, you boys will do most of the lifting and sorting. It’s hard work, but you boys’re young; you’ll catch on quick. I’ll help you along the way. Sawyer’ll pay you a decent wage. And as you can tell, he don’t mind hiring colored folk.”
Cogs in John’s head turned. His mind was addled with a mixture of possible good fortune and the need to continue on to Alabama. While they were a good distance from Richmond—and thus Billingsly—he couldn’t quite shake the feeling of hearing Billingsly’s menacing footsteps behind him. But a respite from the hostile world John and Douglas had witnessed on their trek, along with a chance to make some money, would be good, John thought.
Just as John nodded slightly, Rick then asked presumptuously, “Can you start tomorrow?”
Douglas resumed his leading role and spoke first for the duo. He had given in to John by touring the tannery, but he was now listening to his internal clock. “We don’t live here; we don’t have a place to stay. All we have in the world is what’s on our backs.”
“How long you boys been on the road?” Rick asked.
“Early May,” Douglas said.
“It’s now the middle of June. No doubt you boys need a break,” Rick said.
John and Douglas locked eyes again.
Douglas caved. They needed food in their bellies.
“Y’all stay with me and my wife. But first, let’s go get you something to eat.”
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Even during the four short weeks Douglas and John toiled in Sawyer’s windowless tannery, the tannery blew through working men; the men came and went. The work was drudgery—constantly picking up and walking with heavy loads. Douglas and John didn’t quit because of the work as much as because they knew it was time to move on, to get to Alabama before the shadows from the sun grew longer.
They were pleased to have acquired a bit of money from Sawyer’s tannery. They bought denim pants and flannel shirts in anticipation of the cooler weather that was soon to come. John bought a blanket for his bedding. Their faces sparkled with tremendous elation when Rick gave them two large beige leather knapsacks he made especially for them, each embroidered with their name on the flap.
Carrie cooked a feast the night before Douglas and John were set to go on the road again. Carrie and Rick lived in a middling, two-story, seven-room white clapboard house. Rick was a hunter, and the walls of the house were adorned with animal parts from some of his catches—an elk’s head with palmate antlers on one wall in the dining room, a moose’s head on the wall of the living room, a black bear skin attached to the wall in the living room. He once had many more heads and skins and other animal body parts in his house, but Carrie made him get rid of some of them, telling him that she wanted to live in a house, not in the woods.
Dinner was almost ready. Rick sat in his favorite oversized tattered sofa chair and Douglas and John sat on an equally tattered Queen Anne sofa in the living room while Carrie prepared dinner.
Carrie walked to the opening between the dining room and the living room. She was a petite woman with an hourglass figure, smooth caramel-colored skin, and whiskey-colored eyes. She wore a chic red and white tignon that mostly covered her thick black hair, and was dressed in green form-fitting dress that was covered by a long white percale apron. “You boys’re hungry, I bet,” Carrie said revealing straight bone-colored teeth as she smiled.
Rick rose and strode to the dinner table. Douglas and John quickly followed.
John surveyed the fixings—venison, trotters, green beans, sweet potatoes, rabbit salad, pemmican.
As Douglas and John sat still, Rick said, “You boys, don’t be shy. Dig in.”
Carrie interjected, “Someone gonna need to bless this here food.”
After an awkward pause, John spoke. He spoke at length, first thanking Rick and Carrie for putting up with two strangers. As his mother had instilled in him since he was a moppet, he gave thanks to the Lord for being alive and the good fortune that had befallen them by meeting Rick and Carrie. He ended by saying, “And please, Lord, bless this banquet Miss Carrie prepared.”
Carrie emitted a slight smile, and said, “John, you sure have a way with words.”
After Douglas had gulped his tea, Rick said, “Honey, can’t you see Douglas needs some more tea?”
Carrie went to the kitchen and returned with a carafe of cinnamon tea, which she poured for Douglas and John.
“Thank you, Miss Carrie. Rick’s a lucky man to have someone like you,” John said.
“Don’t I know it,” Rick said while smacking on rabbit salad.
“Maybe I’ll find someone like you one day,” John said his eyes fixed on Carrie’s eyes. Carrie smiled again, reached over and gently squeezed John’s hand with a tender touch, reminding him of his mother’s warm caresses.
“Ain’t you sweet. I wish both you boys well. If y’all come by this way again, y’all come by and see us, you hear?”
Their bellies were swollen, and they could eat no more. Carrie gathered the dishes and piled them in the kitchen sink and tended to the business of cleaning up. The men returned to their seats in the living room and Rick provided a discourse on hunting and trapping, something he’d figured could prove useful on the long trek ahead of Douglas and John.
Douglas told Rick that they’d leave first thing tomorrow morning. “You’ll leave first thing after you eat breakfast,” Rick said correcting Douglas. Douglas and John smiled, happy to know that Rick had taken care of them.
“Why’re you heading to Alabama?” Rick asked as he sucked his teeth trying to remove the fibrous venison that was lodged there.
“We both got family there,” Douglas said.
“Do you know the way to Alabama?” John asked.
“I don’t know the way to Alabama. Never been. Just know that it’s west of Atlanta. If you pass through Atlanta on your way to Alabama, try to stop by to see my cousin. He’s a professor of some kind at Atlanta University. His name is Thomas Bodie. Tell him Cousin Rick sent you his way. He’ll take care of you.”
“Do you know how to get to Atlanta?” Douglas asked.
Rick had gone there a few years ago to see his cousin receive a literary award for his writings dealing with Black economics. Rick told them which routes to take, to generally travel in a southwesterly direction. Rick drew up his body laden with food, walked to the mantle above the hearth, and picked up a compass. “Here,” Rick said handing Douglas a compass, “this should come in handy to get you to Atlanta.”
Carrie finished washing the dishes, cleaning the kitchen and dining room, and put large plates of food on the dining table. “You boys come here,” she said, interrupting their conversation with Rick. “You’re going to need to take some food with you. We got plenty.”
Quite a spread lay before them. They looked at red and green apples, carrots, peaches, smoked bacon and ham, pemmican, soda bread, pocket soup … “Take what you want. Use this wax paper,” she said pointing, “to wrap some of your food.”
“Thank you, Miss Carrie,” John said.
“You boys’re welcome. Now you boys go to bed now. You’ll need your rest before heading out tomorrow.”
“See you boys tomorrow morning at breakfast,” Rick said as Douglas and John climbed the steps to the guest bedroom.