The Land Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  CHILDHOOD

  Mitchell

  The Stallion

  Family

  Betrayal

  East Texas

  MANHOOD

  The Land

  Caroline

  The Bargain

  The Promise

  Family

  LEGACY (Epilogue)

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  BOOKS BY MILDRED D. TAYLOR

  Published by Phyllis Fogelman Books

  An imprint of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2001 by Mildred D. Taylor

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Taylor, Mildred D.

  The land / by Mildred D. Taylor.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Paul-Edward, son of a white plantation owner and a slave mother

  of African-Indian heritage, follows his dream of owning his

  own land through hard work and determination.

  ISBN : 978-1-4406-5084-0

  1. Racially mixed people—Juvenile fiction. [1. Racially mixed people—Fiction.

  2. Afro-Americans—Fiction. 3. Prejudices—Fiction. 4. Race relations—Fiction.

  5. Southern States—Fiction.] I. Title

  PZ7.T21723 Lan 2001 [Fic]—dc21 00-039329

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To my family, past, present, and future, and to the memory of my beloved father, the storyteller, for without his words, my words would not have been

  Acknowledgements

  Five years ago when I was in the early stages of writing The Land, my two uncles came to visit. As I cooked breakfast one morning, they and other family members gathered in the kitchen and soon, as always happens when my family gets together, the stories began. There were hilarious stories about my father, my uncles, and my aunts growing up on the family land in Mississippi. There were stories about my grandparents and great-uncles, and there were stories about my great-grandparents. Most of the stories I had heard many times before, but they were so freshly and wonderfully told that I pulled out my tape recorder and began to record them. As my uncles spoke, I knew I had all the rich material I would need to finish The Land.

  Once again my uncles had come to my aid.

  When I first started writing, I had always gone to my father concerning family history. Since his death in 1976 I have relied on my uncles, Mr. James E. Taylor and Mr. Eugene Taylor, for that history and they, like my father, have never failed to supply the information I have needed. I am deeply indebted to them and I thank them for helping to make so many of my books possible.

  I am indebted to many others as well, including Mr. Jan Raynak, Ms. Linda Brown, and Mr. Keith Brown, for answering my many questions during my research for The Land, and I thank them for their time and interest. I am also indebted to all the family and friends who encouraged me throughout the many years of my writing The Land and who provided me on so many occasions with countless hours of child care so that I could write uninterrupted.

  My last words of thanks are to Ms. Phyllis J. Fogelman, my editor and publisher for more than twenty-five years. As always, Phyllis’s belief in my writing and in the stories I have to tell urged me forward. Even when the writing became so difficult, I was ready to stop working on the book, Phyllis’s quiet insistence that The Land was a story I had to write, for no one else could, kept me writing. Finally, after three years I considered the story finished. Phyllis did not agree. It’s a great beginning, she said, but it could be better. Now, four years later, I believe it is. Thank you, Phyllis.

  A Note to the Reader

  All of my books are based on stories told by my family, and on the history of the United States. In my writing I have attempted to be true to those stories and the history. I have included characters, incidents, and language that present life as it was in many parts of the United States before the Civil Rights Movement. Although there are those who wish to ban my books because I have used language that is painful, I have chosen to use the language that was spoken during the period, for I refuse to whitewash history. The language was painful and life was painful for many African Americans, including my family.

  I remember the pain.

  Since writing my first book, Song of the Trees, it has been my wish to have readers walk in the shoes of the Logan family, who are based on my family, and to feel what they felt. It has been my wish that by understanding this family and what they endured, there would be a further understanding of what millions of families endured, and there would also be a further understanding of why there was a Civil Rights Movement, a movement that changed our nation.

  CHILDHOOD

  Mitchell

  I loved my daddy. I loved my brothers too. But in the end it was Mitchell Thomas and I who were most like brothers, with a bond that couldn’t be broken. The two of us came into Mississippi together by way of East Texas, and that was when we were still boys, long after we had come to our understanding of each other. Seeing that we were a long way from our Georgia home and both of us being strangers here in Mississippi, the two of us depended on each other and became as family.

  But it wasn’t always that way.

  In the beginning the two of us didn’t get along at all. Fact to business, there was a time it seemed like to me Mitchell Thomas lived just to taunt me. There were other boys too who picked on me, but Mitchell was the worst. I recall one time in particular when I was about nine or so and I was reading beside a creek on my daddy’s land, and Mitchell came up from behind me and just whopped me on the head. For no reason. Just whopped me on the head! Course I jumped up mad. “What ya do that for?” I cried.

  “Felt like it,” he said. That’s all; he felt like it. “Ya wanna do somethin’ ’bout it?”

  But I said nothing. Sure, I wanted to do something about it, all right, but I was no fool. Besides the fact I was a small-built boy, Mitchell was a year and some months older than me, a big boy too, stronger than most boys his age, and he could’ve broken me in two if he’d had the mind. Mitchell stared at me and I stared at him, then he turned and walked away. He didn’t laugh, he didn’t gloat; he just walked away, but I knew he’d be back.

  And he was. Time and time again.

  At first I just tried to stay out of Mitchell’s way, but that didn’t solve the problem. So I went to my sister, Cassie, about Mitchell. Now, my sister was a beautiful girl and I knew even Mitchell had eyes for her. But Cassie was not only beautiful, she was tough, smart, and just a bit cocky. She was six years older than I was and pretty much like a mother hen when it came to me; I knew she’d take my part. “Cassie, you know ’bout Mitchell?” I asked her.

  “Course I know about Mitchell,” she answered. “Why’re you letting him beat up on you?”

  “I’m not letting him!” I exclaimed in outrage. “You thinking I’m liking him beating up on me?”

  “Well, if you’re not, you’d better make him stop.”

  “Well, I’m trying.”

  “Well, you’d better try harder.”

  “I’ve tried fighting back, but he’s too strong. Thing is, I don’t know how to stop him.”

  “You’d better figure a way,” she said matter-of-factly, then looked me in the eyes. “You want me to talk to him?”

  I didn’t even need to think on that. “Naw, course not! You did, then they’d all be saying I had my sister fighting my battles!”

  Cassie shrugged. “Then you’d better figure something out quick.”

  Well, I didn’t figure anything out quick enough before Mitchell whalloped me again. And again. F
inally things got so bad, I told my daddy about Mitchell and about how he and other boys too were always picking on me. Now, the thing was, Mitchell and his family and the other boys lived on my daddy’s land, and I figured my daddy with one word could put a stop to Mitchell and the rest. But my daddy said, “What you expect me to do about it?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, even though I knew exactly what I wanted him to do about it.

  “You expect me to stop this boy Mitchell and the others from messing with you?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You want it stopped, Paul,” he said, “then you stop it. This here is between you and Mitchell and whatever other boys. I’m not getting into it.”

  My daddy was true to his word too. More than one time he saw me with a busted lip or a bruised eye, but he showed me no sympathy. He just looked at me and said, “See you didn’t stop it yet.” After a while, though, he said, “Paul, you don’t stop this soon, those boys are going to kill you.”

  “Well, they’re bigger and stronger’n me!” I protested.

  “Then you use what you strongest at, boy! You use your head. Now take care of it.”

  I took care of it, all right. I enlisted the aid of my brothers, Hammond, George, and Robert. I figured Hammond and George could sure enough stop Mitchell. Course, they already knew of my troubles. They’d seen my busted lip and bruises too, but they had been away at school during most of the time Mitchell had been beating on me, and I hadn’t been able to turn to them for my rescue. Robert, of course, had wanted to help me out, but there hadn’t been much he could do. He was as small as I was. Now Hammond and George were back home and I figured to settle this thing.

  “So what do you want us to do?” Hammond asked.

  I was looking for complete and absolute revenge, and I figured Hammond at eighteen and George at sixteen could provide that for me. “Put the fear of God into ’em!” I declared.

  Hammond smiled; so did George. Robert, though, nodded solemnly. “We can do that.” Robert was nine, same age as me. Of my brothers, I was closest with Robert. I suppose, in part, being the same year’s children made us close, but there were other things too. We had been together practically since birth, and we always took care of each other. When I got into trouble, Robert was there to pull me out of it if he could, or at least to see me through it, and I did the same for him. More than one time when one of us would be getting a licking from either my mama or our daddy, the other would jump in to try to stop it and we’d both get whipped. We shared everything together. Back then, Robert was always on my side. “They got no business beating on you,” Robert said, expressing my sentiments exactly.

  “That’s what I figure too,” I said.

  “We’ll take care of ’em tomorrow,” Robert promised.

  “Now wait a minute,” said Hammond. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

  “What’s not good about it?” I asked. “Mitchell and those other boys been beating on me for the longest time, so y’all go beat on them awhile and they’ll stop.”

  Hammond was quiet a moment, then said, “Well, I don’t know if that’s quite fair.”

  “Sounds fair to me.”

  “Me too,” said Robert.

  “But George and I are older than Mitchell and those other boys, and we’d have the advantage,” said Hammond.

  “Well, that’s the point of the thing!” I said.

  Hammond shook his head. “’Sides that, they live here on our place, and if we get into it with them, it’ll look like we’re bullying them—”

  “Well, they’ve been bullying me!”

  George looked at me dead center. “You tell our daddy about this?” One thing I liked about my brother George was that he laid things right on the line; he said exactly what was on his mind. On the surface he was an easygoing sort of boy with a body that seemed to hang in a lazy fashion, such as always having one leg dangling over the arm of a chair when our daddy wasn’t around. But the truth was, he had himself a fierce kind of temper when baited and a steely right hand to match. He had never used either against me. I always told him the truth. “I told him, all right,” I replied in answer to his question.

  “Well, what’d he say?”

  I didn’t speak right up.

  “Well? I know he said something.”

  “He told me he wasn’t getting into it. He told me to stop it, so that’s what I’m trying to do.”

  George laughed. “Yeah, you trying to stop it, all right. You trying to get us to stop it for you.”

  “Same thing,” said Robert. Those were my thoughts exactly.

  “Look, Paul,” said Hammond. “I’ll have a talk with Mitchell, but I’m not going to go beating up on him for you. Understood?”

  I looked at Hammond and nodded solemnly, but I was figuring the only thing Mitchell Thomas would ever understand was a good whipping.

  That very next morning Robert and I, sitting behind Hammond and George on their bays, went over to the patch of ground Mitchell’s family tended. Now, the Thomases, like all the other families who lived on my daddy’s land, were sharecroppers, and because of that fact, they were obliged to take heed of whatever my daddy or my brothers said. Miz Thomas was sure enough taking heed right now.

  “Edna,” said Hammond as Mitchell’s mother stood in her dark doorway, “where’s Willie?” Willie Thomas was Mitchell’s daddy. “He gone off already?’

  “Yes, suh,” answered Miz Thomas. “He in the fields.”

  “Well, doesn’t matter. We come to see Mitchell. He with his daddy?”

  “Mitchell?” questioned Miz Thomas. “Well, suh, he’s out in them woods yonder choppin’ wood for the fire.”

  Hammond nodded. “Whereabout?”

  “North yonder . . . by the creek.”

  “All right,” said Hammond. “We’ll find him.”

  We turned to go, but then Miz Thomas said, “That Mitchell, he done somethin’? He in trouble?”

  “We just want to talk to him, Edna,” Hammond assured her. Still, though, as we rode away, I saw Miz Thomas frown, and young as I was, I knew she was worried. She was worried because my brothers had come. My brothers had come asking about Mitchell, and my brothers were white.

  The Georgia sun was blazing by the time my brothers and I located Mitchell chopping wood on the north bank of the creek. Two of his younger brothers were with him, stacking the logs he split. As we dismounted, Mitchell struck his axe into a fallen log, then yanked it out again and held it across his chest. To tell the truth, I’d have preferred it if we had found him tending some other chore. I for one knew that Mitchell had a hot temper, and there was no telling what he might take a notion to do with that axe. Hammond, though, seemed to take no notice of the axe as he and George walked over to Mitchell. Robert and I stayed by the horses.

  “See you got quite a woodpile there, Mitchell,” said Hammond cordially.

  Mitchell glanced over at me, then back at Hammond before he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. His brothers were silent and still.

  “Well, now, Mitchell,” Hammond went on, “we rode over because we wanted to have a little talk with you.”

  “That’s right,” said George. “We understand that you been beating up on Paul there.” I appreciated the fact that George was getting right to the heart of this matter. “Quite often, as a matter of fact.”

  Mitchell’s grip tightened on the axe, but he said nothing.

  “We’d like to know why,” said Hammond.

  I kept my eyes on the axe. I felt like I needed to warn Hammond and George. They didn’t know how crazy Mitchell could be.

  “We’d like to know why you have it in for Paul,” Hammond went on. “Did he do something to you?’

  Mitchell eyed his axe and didn’t speak.

  Hammond and George waited; then George grew impatient. “Well? Don’t you have anything to say? Did Paul do something to you or not?” Mitchell kept on looking at that axe. “Speak up!”

  Mitchell then
shook his head. “Naw,” he mumbled, but I could see his fingers tightening on the handle.

  “Well, if Paul hasn’t done anything to you,” said Hammond, “then I see no reason for you to be continuously picking on him. You’re older than him, bigger than him, and it’s certainly not a fair kind of thing.”

  “We want it stopped,” said George, as if that should put an end to the matter right there, and I thought, Good. Now we’re getting to the point of this thing.

  Hammond continued to be diplomatic. “We want you two to try to be friends, Mitchell. We’re all living here on the same land, and we all have to work together, so I don’t want to hear of any more fights between the two of you. Understood?”

  Mitchell once again had nothing to say. George lost patience and grasped the handle of Mitchell’s axe. “Boy, you better answer!” he demanded, but Mitchell in a dangerous move yanked on the axe. George too yanked on the axe in an attempt to twist it from Mitchell’s grasp, but then Hammond intervened, stepping between George and Mitchell. George’s hand slipped from the axe, but he still tried to get at Mitchell.

  Hammond pushed him back. “Stop it, George!” he ordered. Then he turned to Mitchell. “Now, you, boy, you put that axe down.” There was a moment when I didn’t know if Mitchell would obey. Hammond didn’t waver. “I said put it down! Now!” Mitchell looked at George, at Hammond, then slammed the axe into a log. Hammond stepped back calmly. “There’s to be no more of that.”

  George shoved past Hammond and pointed his finger right in Mitchell’s face. “You try that on me again and I’ll have your head, boy! You hear me? You best be remembering I’m not Paul!”

  I was afraid Mitchell was going to slap George’s hand away and the two of them would get into it right there, but Mitchell only glared at George and kept his silence. Hammond eyed the both of them and said to Mitchell, “There’s to be no more fighting with Paul.”