“Stop right there!” a freedwoman ordered, pointing an old muzzle-loader at me as I approached the door of her cabin. She stepped out into the moonlight followed by three children, two young girls and an older boy who held a lantern high.
The woman was a teeny little thing, down to gristle and grit, eyes big and wild as a cornered possum. It was no trick seeing that she’d been beat down hard by slavery and even harder by life after Sheridan burned the plantation house and the crops and the white folks fled, leaving her to fend for herself and her little ones. I could appreciate that she was ready to blow the next person who did her wrong to kingdom come.
“Ma’am,” I said, kindly as could be, “I don’t want nothin’ from you. I got a man here gone just now to where the woodbine twineth. A good man. Needs a peaceful spot to take his eternal rest. That’s all I’m asking of you. Just let me bury him here.”
She didn’t answer.
“I’ll pay you.”
“How much?”
“Four bits.”
“Lemme see.”
I counted out a few of the coins I had taken from Solomon’s pocket. She snatched them away and tucked them into her bodice without ever lowering the barrel of her muzzleloader. For another two cents, she let me have the use of a half-burned shovel that turned my palms black when I held it. Her boy, Tad, led us around back. The youngest girl, Bethany, followed.
I picked a spot beneath a tall willow with branches long enough that they’d stroke Solomon’s grave when a south wind blew. The digging felt good. Stabbing the shovel into the earth hard and regular held off the sadness. Clemmie offered to spell me, but it seemed I couldn’t pry my fingers from the handle, so she sat holding Matildy who was chittering with nervousness.
“She’th thcared,” said young Bethany, a round-headed child who was missing her two front teeth along with the fear of strangers that kept her mother at the open door, firearm trained on us.
“You wanna hold her?” Clemmie asked.
The girl had a gentle touch that calmed Matildy until Solomon’s pet was all but purring in her lap.
With help from the boy, Tad, I worked steady through the night, Bethany chatting away the whole time. “We been livin’ on flour dust,” she informed us, seeming to speak mostly to Matildy, as though she’d been waiting her whole life for a creature to come along who’d listen to her and her alone. “I’s the onliest one small enough to crawl up into the bolting chest after the white folk done locked up the mill and refugeed off down to Richmond. I swept up near three bushel!” she bragged to Matildy. “I picked out the worms and Mammie been baking us up real bread. Leastwise until we run out. We were gon starve so Mammie kilt our mule, Carl, and we ate off him until he went bad cuz we don’t have no salt and the Yanks burnt up the smokehouse.”
Near dawn I hit rock and asked for a pickax to finish the job, but Tad said the Yankees had not only burned the plantation and the crops, and carried off the livestock, they’d smelted down every plow, harrow, spade, pickax, and anything on the place could be used for bullets. The boy had scavenged the shovel, a plow, and some nails from the ashes of another place been burned out. But no pickax. “Yanks even took our daddy,” he finished mournfully.
I didn’t mind Sheridan doing the Rebs that way, but he ought to of spared those who were never with them and already been punished more severe than need be.
With no further digging to be done, Clemmie and I said the prayers for the dead that Mama and Iyaiya had taught us. I took what I found in Solomon’s pocket: his broken pocket watch, a small button-polishing card, his folding knife, and pipe. Soon as I could, I would get a personal effects box from the graves detail and have them store his things in a pretty little pine container for when Solomon’s kin came looking for him. I promised Solomon that I would see him soon in my dreams and in the times when I missed him and in all the moments when I went to ask him something and he wouldn’t be there.
When we finished, Clemmie told me, “My unit’s moving out at daybreak. They’ll take you on. Always need another washerwoman.”
I said nothing.
“Cathy, you can’t go out West now. Not by yourself. Not without a man to protect you. Come with me. Least we’ll be together.”
I saw myself scrubbing my life away, my hands chapped and burning from lye soap, no more count to anyone than a draft horse. Or having some ruttish stranger work me over top a barrel for a couple of taters. Or even a sparkly pair of earbobs. Both prospects made me feel like crawling in next to Solomon.
“Cathy, you hear me? We runnin’ outta time.”
The long night’s weariness fell on me heavy as a wet quilt.
“What other choice do you have?” she asked. “These are lawless times. Woman without a man to protect her? No telling. They’ll kill you, Cathy. Or worse. Come with me. We’ll find you a decent man, get you married off, you’ll do all right. Stay alive. Aren’t you gon say something?”
When I spoke, my own words startled me for they came out of a place deeper inside of me than I even knew was there. I said, “Mama didn’t put me on this earth to be some man’s brood sow or work ox.”
Then I fell so silent and so still that Clemmie said, “Cathy, you scaring me. You have that Africa look in your eyes. You talking to Iyaiya?”
“I’m talking,” I finally said, “but she ain’t answering.”
“Well, I’m answering and I’m telling you for true, you have no choice. Now let’s light a shuck.”
My head knew she was right, but I couldn’t convince my legs she was right and I remained planted next to Solomon’s grave. Bethany was beside me cooing to Matildy and feeding her night crawlers been turned up by the digging. My fingers finally turned loose of the shovel and I sagged onto the ground. I was whipped. As a strip of pink cracked across the far horizon, I accepted the truth: I would be a washerwoman. I would be the lowest of the low, a woman bent over a black cauldron, stirring dirty rags with a stick. I had no other choice.
I was about to follow Clemmie when two lonely figures appeared, silhouetted against the early dawn sky. It took me a minute to credit what I was seeing: the boy and his mother were plowing, furrowing the earth in a desperate attempt to get a crop in before the weather turned. The plow was too tall for Tad, but he held the forked handles strong and sure as a grown man. Up ahead, wearing the harness and pulling the plow, was his little bitty slip of a mother. Head down, she dragged the iron tool through the earth with will more than strength.
Clemmie was boarding the wagon when I told her to go on ahead without me.
“I am not leaving without you, sister,” she yelled down at me. “I leave you here and you’ll for God sure die then Iyaiya’ll haunt me forever and I am not having that. Come on with me now,” she ordered. “At least you be alive.”
“And spend this one life the ancestors gave me scrubbing the shit stains out some man’s dirty drawers? That’s not my idea of living.”
Clemmie stared hard, fixing to put up a fuss. But I was still the big sister, so instead, she moaned, “Oh, Lord, you got that look again means there’s no talking to you anymore.”
“My mind is made up.”
“Damn, girl, you stubborn as a cross-eyed mule. Always were.” Clemmie heaved a deep sigh, turned to bend into the wagon bed where she retrieved my yagger, climbed down off the wagon, and held it out to me. “Here. Take it. You be needing this a damn sight more than me.”
I waved away the offer. “Naw, you keep it. Wagon, too. Needs to be returned to Sheridan. I can’t be sashaying about with no weapon out in the open. We ain’t that free yet.”
Clemmie plunged her hand between her bosoms, and plucked out a little box-lock pistol. “Here, take my pepper pot then. Woman alone.” She tsk-tsked and shook her head in despair. “You better have something to protect yourself with.”
I fished out some of Solomon’s bills and forced Clemmie to take them, saying, “Get you another little gun. Something you can always have ready to hand. Whether you got a man or not, a woman’s always alone. Always needs to be ready to stand up for herself.” I gently traced the round of her plump cheek. She dropped her head low, throwing her arms around me, so that the top of her head was a bouquet beneath my nose, and I whispered into it, “Be strong, little sister.”
Clemmie hugged me ferocious tight, muttering, “Damn you, damn you, damn you. Damn your stubbornness.” She turned me loose and pivoted quickly away so I couldn’t see her face, but my dress was wet where she’d buried her face.
The light of the new day shone on Clemmie’s back as she drove away from me. In spite of how she’d plumped up, given herself more padding against a world she’d learned too young was wicked and mean, her shoulders were stooped again, like she was trying to crawl inside herself and hide, the way she had after Old Mister took her. We were both pretending to be tougher than we really were, but Clemmie had a natural sight more tenderness to cover up than I ever did. She couldn’t do what I saw I was called to do. She couldn’t be a woman alone amongst men.
After watching until she turned off and disappeared behind a low rise, I called out to the little girl, “Bethany, come here.” The little girl approached reluctantly, cradling Matildy in her arms, not wanting to give her new friend back.
“You, too,” I hollered to her shy big sister. The sister peered back over her shoulder like I was hailing someone behind her. Finally, she crept out of the shadows of the front door holding a skimpy bag of seed, clearly meant for planting as soon as the sun was full up.
“How you call your name?” I asked her. Though she was but a young girl, I saw that she was someone to be trusted.
“Mercy Jane,” she answered.
“All right then, Mercy Jane, I want you to take this.” Solemnly, I placed most of what remained of Solomon’s money in her hand. “Tuck it away,” I added when she didn’t pull her hand back. “Now, I want you to give that to your mother and tell her to pack all y’all up and leave this place. Go with the Yankees. Follow them back up North. Ain’t nothing here for y’all but hunger and heartache. Never will be. Go on, now,” I ordered. “Tell her.”
Though so skinny you’d of thought her bones would clatter like a skeleton’s when she ran, the girl took off running with a heavy, serious step that made me trust her even more.
Bethany held Matildy up to me and, though I longed for the comfort of the creature’s silky body and the feel of Solomon’s presence it carried, she could not come with me where I had to go. I asked the little girl, “Do you want to keep her?”
Bethany nodded and answered solemnly, “Yeth.”
“Can you take care of her? Keep her safe?” She reminded me of Clemmie when she was young. Clemmie, too, had been the sort of girl who was born yearning for something small and soft to care for. Who, if she had a scrap of cloth and a walnut, would turn it into a baby doll and glue moss to it for hair. Me? I’d blow my nose on the scrap of cloth, crack the walnut open and eat it. So, when I said, “Like a mama with her baby?” Bethany’s eyes lit up and I knew no harm would ever come to Solomon’s friend.
“Her name’s Matildy,” I said as I started down the road.
I watched Bethany caper away to join her siblings who were all gathered up around their mama, a tight little tribe who had each other. I thought of how I’d of had that with Solomon and something twisted inside of me so hard I stopped dead and didn’t believe I could go on. Not alone.
But the rising sun was as warm on my back as a hand pushing me toward what I intended to do and I set off again. I hastened my step until I was running. My mind was made up: what the world wouldn’t give Cathy Williams, Cathy Williams was bound to take.