The Land Read online

  “Course.”

  “What about your daddy? Don’t you think your daddy loves you?”

  “I suppose . . .”

  “You suppose? Why else you think he did what he did for us? You expect he would have brought us up like he did, taking us into his house, bringing us up with Hammond and George and Robert, if he didn’t care about us? You think he would’ve seen to it we wore clothes as good as our brothers’ and that we never went raggedy or hungry? What they ate, we ate too. You forgetting that? You think our daddy would have seen to our book learning, even teaching us himself how to read and write and figure, when it was against the law and he could have been jailed for it, if he didn’t care about us? I suppose his taking you all around with him, same as he does Hammond, George, and Robert, so you can learn how to handle business, same as them, that’s because he doesn’t care about you either!”

  “I never said he didn’t care,” I mumbled.

  “Well, you’ve said just about that.”

  “Well, maybe it would have been better if our daddy hadn’t treated us so well. Maybe it would have been better if we’d grown up hating him and Hammond and George and Robert rather than caring about them. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel like I do, like our daddy put a big shiny box all wrapped out there in front of us, making us feel we were the same as his white boys, then just when we reached to open it up, he snatched it away.”

  “You know what?” said Cassie. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe our daddy has made us feel too special, too accepted. I grew up on this place feeling pretty good about who I was and figuring I’d do all right if I ever left here. Then I went off to Atlanta and found I couldn’t hardly find a place to fit there until I met Howard. That must have been our daddy’s fault. You know our daddy had me staying with that colored preacher and his family, but they weren’t accepting of me because I was too white. They treated me nice enough, but they never really warmed to me. I was always a stranger, as far as they were concerned, and they treated me that way. They never treated me like family. In fact, as soon as I’d walk into a room, they’d stop their talking and have little to say to me. Other colored folks weren’t that polite. They’d talk about me behind my back and in front of my face too. Things were really awkward and it didn’t help matters that our daddy would show up whenever he was in Atlanta.

  “Then there were those times the white folks mistook me for white and would act really friendly until they found out who I was. Then they treated me like a leper, worse than they’d have treated a person obviously of color. It was like they had contaminated themselves by treating me the same as one of them. I was trapped there, Paul, between two worlds, a white one and a black one, and neither one accepting me. I even passed a few times—”

  “You what?”

  “Yes, that’s right, I did it!” she declared defiantly. “And you know why? Just so I could feel good about myself again! Just so somebody would be accepting of me. I’d walk into stores or in the white part of the city and folks would treat me with respect, white folks and colored folks too, because they thought they knew who I was. That respect they showed, it made me feel good for the moment, but it was all false because it was for who they thought I was, not for who I really am, Cassie Logan. I was miserable, and I was just like you. I got to blaming our mama and our daddy for my misery. Well, not so much our mama, but our daddy. I blamed him for treating me like I was somebody, like I would be treated the same away from this place as he’d treated me here. I was his daughter, but I could never be a part of his world off this place. I was pretty bitter the way I turned my resentment on him, and every time he came to see me, I let him know it too. Then I met Howard at a church social.”

  “Talking about me?” Howard Milhouse had come in the back door. He had a broken bridle in his hands. Howard was a good-looking young man of medium height and yellow-hued skin. He was quiet-spoken, yet a perfect match to Cassie’s outspokenness. Cassie said that in any dispute Howard would sit back quietly while she ranted her views, and once she was tired of talking to herself, he would settle the argument with just a few words spoken. The two of them smiled at each other as only lovers do, and I was happy for my sister.

  “Just looking for some leather to tie this together,” he said, holding out the bridle. “Figured maybe I could mend it.”

  Howard liked to keep busy when he came, and was always looking for something to do. He couldn’t sit idle. Maybe that’s what made him such a good businessman.

  “I was just telling Paul about when I first went to Atlanta,” said Cassie. “About how folks treated me up there.”

  Howard nodded as he looked through an open tin of odds and ends my mama kept on a shelf. “You tell him that’s how we come to meet?”

  “Told him where we met. At that church social.”

  Howard glanced back at Cassie. “But you didn’t tell him why I got my courage up and came over to talk to you?”

  “Well, no. I didn’t go into all that.”

  “Well, Paul,” said Howard, still looking through the tin, “there were some ladies who were saying some unkind things about our Cassie—mean little jealous kinds of things. They weren’t saying them to Cassie, but within her hearing. I took one look at Cassie, and I knew she was about to explode. So, before hair got to flying and clothes got to ripping right there in the Lord’s house, I went over and started talking to her. I calmed her down and got her out of there.”

  “He did that, all right,” confirmed Cassie, “and just in time too. I was about to let those girls have it, Lord’s house or not, ’cause of what they were saying about our mama and our daddy and how I came to be.”

  “Lucky for me you did come to be,” said Howard with a grin, then held up a piece of leather string he’d found in the tin as if it were a prize, and went back out.

  “I like him,” I said.

  Cassie smiled. “So do I.”

  “Things are better for you now in Atlanta, right?”

  “Oh, yes. Not perfect, but better. Folks who don’t know about me still shy away if they’re colored, and if they’re white, I don’t try to pass. It’s always awkward with them, but they’re the ones who have to live with it. Now I’ve got Howard and his family, and they love me and I love them. Folks are getting to know who I am, and I’ve made friends.”

  I nodded. “Still, what you had to go through, the way I’m being treated now, if our mama and daddy hadn’t been together, things would be different.”

  “Yeah, a whole lot different,” Cassie agreed with a laugh. “We wouldn’t be here!”

  I didn’t laugh. I frowned at her. “You know what I mean.”

  Cassie studied me. “When you were a little boy, you never thought this way.”

  “When I was a little boy, I still had a lot to learn.”

  “And you still do. You’ve got a lot to learn about a man and a woman and what goes on between them. You’ve got a lot to learn about love and and how folks show it. Kisses and hugs aren’t all there is when folks are raising their younguns. Spankings and scoldings are about it too. Just because you’ve had to go up against a few fists over the years doesn’t give you the right to blame all your troubles on our mama and our daddy and to go judging them. Didn’t give me the right either. I figure they’ve done what they could, and I’m not faulting them for anything anymore. I’ve gotten past that.”

  “I thought you would have understood.”

  “I understand, all right. I understand you’re angry right now because the world doesn’t seem to be treating you right. I understand too that anger you’ve got will pass one day, and maybe then you can see what I see.”

  “Well, Cassie, I’ll tell you this true,” I said, meeting my sister’s eyes.

  “And what’s that, Paul?”

  “I ever have a daughter, I’ll never let her take up with a white man. I never will.” I said that, and I’ve kept that opinion.

  “Could be that’s the best thing,” said my mama. Cassie and I both turned; neither of
us had heard her come in. “Long as you talking about me and your daddy, I’m going to tell you a couple of things. First off, I’m not going to apologize to you or nobody else ’bout my life. There’s folks who talk about me behind my back, but then grin in my face when they see me coming. I might’ve been too young to know much of anything what I really wanted when I came into my womanhood but what happened; still, though, I been with one man ever since, and that man has been good to me and to my children. All those folks talking behind my back can’t say the same.”

  Cassie got up and went over to her. “We didn’t mean any disrespect, Mama,” she said.

  I kept my silence.

  My mama looked at me. “No matter.” She turned slightly as Cassie put her arm around her shoulders. “I’m glad you come home, Cassie. I’m glad I’ve got both my children here together. There’s things I wanna tell you case anything happen to me.”

  “What do you mean?” Cassie asked. “Something the matter, Mama?”

  Now I got up. “Are you sick?”

  My mama shook her head. “Just want you to know some things. Y’all all I got, and what little I got belongs to you.”

  I remember my mama left us then and went off to her room, and when she returned, she was carrying a blue wooden box decorated with bright paintings of all kinds of flowers. She sat down with that box in her hands in the rocker my daddy had given her. She placed the box on her lap and held it close, but she didn’t open it. “Old Josh made this box for me,” she said softly. “You know, he was like a daddy to me.”

  Cassie and I both nodded, even though we had never known Old Josh, for he had died before either of us was born.

  “All these years I been putting my treasures in it, and that includes whatever little money I could save. You know, ever since I was a girl and first had you, Cassie, I was earning me a little money of my own, not much, but a few pennies here and there, doing extra work. Then that war came and there wasn’t much money for anybody, but after that, when things started settling down again, I began receiving wages for keeping your daddy’s house and cooking. I also had my garden and a crop of my own. Had some hens and guineas and such, and I sold their eggs in town. Your daddy was always taking care of you, but I done my share as well. It wasn’t just your daddy buying all your things. It’s not much, but mostly I been saving what pennies I could so there would be something for us, case we need it. Your daddy, he’s been good to us, but I never figured to depend on any man. I figured it best I have something of my own.

  “Now, that little money I saved, it’s right in here.” My mama patted the lid of the box. “Another thing in here is a big old watch and chain your daddy gave me long time ago, before the war. He taught me to tell time on it, same while he was teaching me to read and write and figure. Paul, I want that for you. There’s a gold locket he gave me, and that’s for you, Cassie. Got some other bits and ends in here, things my sweet mama, Emmaline, made me, things not worth anything ’cept to me—little straw bag, a handkerchief she sewed me, a seed bracelet Old Josh made for me when I was little—that sort of thing.”

  She rubbed her hand across the box. “You know, I never knew my own daddy, ’cause he wasn’t bound to nobody like my mama was. He was from the Nation, and he went off with his people. But anyway, Old Josh was pretty much my daddy, and, like I said, he made this box for me. He painted the flowers on it, even put the lock on. He made it for me soon after I came into my womanhood and your daddy started coming around. He told me not to cry about it and to lock my thoughts and my tears and my treasures inside this box. I’ve done that ever since.”

  My mama looked at us then, and her voice was soft. “You know I’ve always wanted both of you to have something of your own. Cassie, you’ve got your husband, and soon there’ll be babies on the way. You’ve got the beginnings of a good life with Howard and your store and all. I don’t worry about you. Paul, you still got your deciding what you want. There’s time enough. But whatever you decide on, I want you to have something of your own. That’s important. You gotta have something of your own.” She rubbed her hand across the box once more, then rose and took it away without ever opening it.

  Betrayal

  When the fall came, my daddy, true to his word, sent both Robert and me off to school. He sent Robert to the boys’ school in Savannah and me to Macon, where I could go to a colored school and study furniture making. He took me himself. On the journey my daddy said to me, “This man I’m taking you to, he’s a decent man, but don’t expect him to treat you the same as I do. He’s already told me he’ll keep you as long as you do the work and don’t cause any trouble. He said too he doesn’t want you around his family. He’s got three girls, and I know that’s what’s on his mind, so you stay clear of them. Worst thing you could ever do is to go eyeing a white girl.”

  I looked at my daddy, thinking he had done just the opposite to my mama.

  “You understand me, Paul?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll be able to go to school and learn a trade as long as you follow his rules, so you make sure you do. It might not be the best living conditions for you, but you’ll learn plenty from this man. He’s a man of few words, but you listen to everything he says.”

  My daddy was right. Josiah Pinter was a man of few words, but every word he uttered was direct and to the point. “I know about you,” he said when my daddy was gone. “I know about you and your daddy. He never spoke it to me, but folks know, and if a man wants to do that sort of thing, that’s his business long as it doesn’t get in the way of mine. I’ve done a lot of business with your daddy, but you lay one eye on any one of my girls, I’ll have your hide, your daddy notwithstanding. That understood?”

  I looked him straight in the eyes. “It’s understood.”

  He nodded. “You smart as I hear you are, we ought to get along just fine.” Then he put me to work.

  Now, my daddy was right about another thing: Josiah Pinter certainly did know his trade, and he wasn’t stingy in teaching it to me. I put in my morning hours of school each day, and the rest of the daylight hours I studied under Josiah Pinter. He worked me hard and he worked me long, and my school studying had to wait until the late hours after Josiah Pinter had retired for the night. I slept in the shed behind his house and I ate alone; but the man treated me fair. He was one of the best furniture makers around, and I learned what I was sent to learn. I figured I didn’t need to sit at his table.

  I was a quick study, and I soon was making lamp tables and other small pieces of furniture. In fact, before I left Josiah Pinter’s tutorage, I could make just about anything. I had a knack for looking at something and figuring out how to put it together, whether I had been taught how to do it or not. I was still considered an apprentice, but folks said my work was of journeyman quality, and some even said it was more than that. I did well in my school studies too, even though I wasn’t decided on how I was going to put all my book learning to use. I was told I could teach or I could go into some kind of colored business, but the truth about the thing was that I wasn’t sure what I really wanted. I still had to figure that out.

  Though my sleep was little with all the studying and work I had to do, I had no complaints about that; I didn’t need that much sleep and I was learning much, both in school and with the carpentry. What bothered me, though, was one of Josiah Pinter’s daughters—his middle daughter, girl called by the name of Jessie—and the way she was always looking at me and following me around when her daddy wasn’t near. Now, I was coming into my teenage years and this girl Jessie was doing the same, and even though her daddy had told her I was a colored boy, she seemed not to care.

  “Doesn’t make sense to me,” she said. “You’re a person, I’m a person. Why can’t we be friends?”

  I said nothing to that. I didn’t want to take the time to tell her.

  When I went back home and Robert was there, I told him about Jessie and how she was always trying to talk to me, even though her daddy
had said she shouldn’t.

  “You think she’s trying to get you in trouble?” Robert asked. “You know, some girls do that.”

  “No. No, I don’t think that,” I answered.

  “Well, then, you just got to tell her what’ll happen to you if she doesn’t stop it,” advised Robert. “Tell her exactly what her daddy told you. That he’ll have your hide.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything.

  Robert studied me. “Or maybe you like her talking to you?’

  “She’s been the only friend I’ve made there.”

  “Believe me,” said Robert, “last thing you need is a white female friend. Why, I’ve heard stories at school that’d make you puke. Some of those fellas love to talk about what their families have done to Negroes like they were talking about going fishing. One of those boys told me about how his daddy and kin caught a Negro near the outhouse when a white woman was in there. The Negro, he said he was just passing through the field, but the woman came out and said he was peeping at her through the boards, and you know they strung him up right then and there! That’s what they’ll do, Paul. You looking white won’t stop that, they know you got colored in you. That white boy, he bragged on hanging that man and he laughed about it too. That’s what they’ll do, all right, so, Paul, you be careful with that girl.”

  I nodded. Robert was quiet a few moments, then said, “You know, I told you Christian and Percy Waverly go to school up there with me. They go along with the rest of those boys’ talk about colored folks.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, they got their stories too.”

  “Not surprised.”

  “Well, me neither. . . . Thing is, though . . . they know about you . . . and sometimes they give me a hard time about it.”