“So I comes back this way, y’see, Miss, and I sees this here place and I decides that sooner or later somebody gonna come back to work it. Can’t work no farm without you have folks to plow and plant, y’see. Mebbe with some luck I own the place m’self.” He grinned, his white teeth a flash of lightning across his hairless black face.
“How many are you?” Cass asked gently; and when Judah’s face remained blank, she smiled. “Let me tell you something, Mr. White,” she said. “These people here,” and she gestured toward the Vesslers and Alice, “they’re my friends. But two of them are city. I am not. I know a country kitchen, Mr. White, and I know country men. And no man keeps this room the way it is, no man made the stitching on that tear in your pants.”
Judah looked involuntarily down at his lap, looked up grinning. “Twelve, mebbe fifteen if’n you count the childs.”
“How many men?” David asked.
“Eight.”
“You got a midwife, a scrubber, a seamstress, a cook?” Alice said from behind him. Judah nodded without turning around. “That’s an awful lot of people, Mrs. Roe,” she said then.
Cass was thinking furiously. Her initial fright at seeing Judah in the doorway had faded once the others had arrived and David’s instant wary reaction had been calmed. She knew she did not have enough money to keep them all on, and knew too that she would never have the heart to turn any of them away to suffer, perhaps even fatally, at the hands of those rebels who were, as Judah had said, still fighting the war, though it had been over for nearly a year. By the same token, there was no possible way she could hope to set Riverrun back on its feet with only the four of them. David would be needed as much in town as in the fields, and Alice’s obvious independent streak would sooner or later bring them to clashing if in any way Cass inadvertently treated her as if she were still in the position she’d once been in. Melissa was David’s problem.
She stared at Judah for several silent minutes. David coughed into his fist but kept his peace. Alice moved to the back window and stared out at the night. Judah did nothing.
“All right,” Cass said suddenly, startling them all. “Judah, I am not a rich woman, though I know you think otherwise. It took nearly all I have to get Riverrun for my own, and I would have absolutely nothing if it weren’t for Mr. Vessler’s keen mind and legal knowledge. The way I see it, you need me as much as I need you. I offer you this, then: stay on with me, you and however many of your people will agree, and I won’t charge you rent or board. In return, I want you to help prepare the place for spring planting. We have to clear the fields, clean up this house, stake out gardens, build curing barns, everything that goes with putting this place back on its feet. We’ll have to grow our own food, we’ll eat damned meagerly for the next few months. But once the first crops come in, I’ll see to it that all of you share equally in Riverrun’s profits.”
“In other words,” David said, coming to the table when Judah’s face wrinkled into a puzzled frown, “each time we sell something, we take a certain amount of the money and that pays for our expenses—what it cost us to bring the crop in. What’s left over, the profit, we divide between Mrs. Roe, the owner, and your people, the workers. That isn’t the same as a regular wage. You won’t get money every month. And how much you get when the crops are sold depends on how hard you work to make the crops successful.”
“No money,” Judah said, trying to absorb this new offer of work. “Food?”
“You said you were a hunter,” Cass smiled broadly. “This place is filthy,” Melissa whispered to her husband.
“I’m not leaving,” Cass said, without turning around. “Well, Judah? Do you understand the terms? Do you want to talk to your people?”
A log snapped; no one moved.
“I don’ have to,” he said. “I speak for them.”
Cass stretched out her hand over the lantern, her face solemn. Judah watched her, flicked his gaze to the Vesslers, back to the table before nodding, to himself, and offering his own hand.
“Done,” Cass said, rising immediately. “Sleep hard, Judah White. We have a lot of work to do in the morning.”
“Sleep?” Melissa said, shocked. “You mean here? But there aren’t any beds, Cass!”
“I’ve slept on a floor before, I’ll do it again. If you want to take that long, dark ride back to Meridine, that’s your problem.”
“David!”
“Oh hush, Missy,” he said, though his tone indicated he was just as unhappy. “You can have the table here, all right?”
“T
here aren’t enough of us to do everything at once,” she said the following morning to Judah’s people crowded into the kitchen. “So we’ll tackle one thing at a time. I have my list and it will go as I say. The first thing we do is make this house beautiful again.”
Straw and grass brooms raised dust storms in the hallways while two of the women—Melody and Rachel—stayed in the kitchen with needle, thread, and cloth Cass had bargained for in Meridine. Loose boards that were not frail with dry rot were set back into place, broken panes were replaced, steps were repaired, floors scrubbed, doors that had lost their hinges were aligned and rehung. Pine was felled and those rooms that needed it were repaneled. Walls were washed, ceilings blown clear of cobwebs and dirt. Three of the children and a yellow mongrel prowled the cellars in search of rats and swept through the attic in search of bats. The grounds, too, were attacked as four winters’ damage was piled in front of the house and burned each night to applause and music. Saplings too close to the walls were uprooted, sickle and scythe leveled the backyard to a lawn again and cleared the garden maze of obstacles. The ivy was torn down. The chimneys were repaired. The wells were tested, the water found clear; rain barrels were emptied and scraped and repositioned; the stable was torn down and rebuilt in a week; the servants’ shacks were torn down and burned and one-room cottages were built for the field hands; the house servants were given the empty rooms at the back and they were baptized with a birthday party for a beaming Alice Jordan.
One thing at a time.
“Now you listen to me, Proctor Johnson, you promised me that bedding by the first of the month and here it is almost Christmas. I’ve already had my people finish off your back room, and it’s about time to keep your side of the bargain. If you don’t, I’m just going to take my lumber back and you can freeze your—you can freeze when the snow comes, for all I care!”
“Mr. Craymore, I appreciate your concern for the construction of my chair, but I’ve got every cabinetmaker and carpenter in this town working for me now, and if you can’t do the job I’ll go all the way to Richmond to get what I want, if I have to. Do I have to, Mr. Craymore, or can I count on you before Christmas? I mean, after all, sir, how long do you expect me to serve dinner on barrels?”
“Mr. Vessler, I tell you frankly that woman has charmed the pants off everyone in this town—if you’ll excuse the expression—but can’t you do somethin’ about her temper? She came in here this morning as beautiful as ever, if you don’t mind me saying so, wantin’ to know where the plows were. Now, really, ain’t no one in this here town ever say Billy Henshaw don’t run a fine forge, but I’m only human, Mr. Vessler, and it’s barely into the new year. She ain’t gonna be able t’use them things for another two, three months anyway. Can’t you do somethin’ about her, Mr. Vessler? She comes in here so often, my wife’s beginnin’ to think I’m up to somethin’,”
Judah shook his head slowly as he watched Cassandra ride off toward the fields for the fourth time in as many days to inspect the reconstruction of the new curing sheds. If she don’ kill herself by spring, he thought sadly, she surely gonna die by fall. Don’t trust no one to do nothin’ right, not even me. But his admiration for her stamina far outweighed his fears for her health, and he turned back to directing a new clearing of timber—and grinned. Uppity Alice was riding the buckboard with lemon water from the house. Cold as a bitch and she brings lemon water instead of tea. He sighed and walked toward her. She was a beautiful woman, he thought, but too much of her mind was her own, and that made him nervous. Especially when she brushed up against him, and he was never sure whether or not it was accidental. The fact that she appeared to do the same to Vessler was also disturbing. Judah knew what she wanted: money, fine clothes, and a fine man to keep her. And in this day and age, the only ones able to do something like that were the whites, not the blacks. Vessler, he was sure, was going to do something stupid.
Owen Garvey leaned against the hitching rail and waited until Cass came out of the grain and feed store. She was smiling, radiant almost, he thought with admiration, and he blushed when he realized he was staring far too long at her lean, full figure.
“Mrs. Roe,” he said, stepping forward as she moved to her buckboard. He tipped his bowler quickly, then put a hand on her elbow and assisted her into the seat. Then he pulled back his black frock jacket to expose a gaudy red vest stretched across a paunch straining to be released.
“Sheriff Garvey,” she said, her smile unwavering. “A bit chilly for March, don’t you think?”
“It’ll get warm again, don’t you fear,” he said, and rubbed a thick finger alongside an equally thick nose. “I just wanted to be sure you got the word, so’s you’d know.” When she looked puzzled, he cleared his throat apologetically. “Sorry, ma’am, I thought Mayor Oliver got the word to you. He was supposed to, y’know. Sorry.”
“What word, Sheriff?” she asked patiently. “Are my creditors threatening to burn me down?”
He laughed loudly, took off his hat, and ran his hand over a thoroughly bald pate. Creditors? That’d be the day. There wasn’t a man or woman in Meridine who didn’t appreciate what Mrs. Roe was doing out at Riverrun, and didn’t admire her for it once they saw that she had made it through the winter with nothing more serious happening than a broken window during one of the unpredictable February storms. Creditors? They all would give her five hundred years if she asked it, as long as she gave them in return one of her green-eyed smiles and a toss of that hair. There were only a handful left, in fact, who doubted at all that she wouldn’t be making substantial repayments by the end of the first growing season.
“No,” he said, “not burn you down. It’s … well, it’s like this, Mrs. Roe. We got some troops around the hills here—”
Cass frowned.
“No,” he said, shaking his head, moving aside as a dray filled with barrels lumbered past. “Not those kind. Not real ones. These, they got sixes-and-sevens running with them, you know what I mean. Nothin’ to do, no place to go. Not many, but they cause a lot of trouble. Nothin’ serious, only with niggers mostly, but they do hassle folks now and then. Got word yesterday they was over to the Quinlans’ farm, run off some beef.”
“So do something about it,” she said simply.
Garvey shrugged elaborately. “Hard to, Mrs. Roe. They move fast, and lots of folks hereabouts figure they’re owed somethin’, y’know? Long as they don’t do much, we just let folks know they’re about. Your, uh, your hands should keep an eye out, Mrs. Roe.”
Cass pulled the whip from its socket and picked up the reins. “Why? Because I’m a woman, or because they’re black?”
“Both,” he said, seeing the slight amusement tug at the corners of her mouth and becoming angry for it. “They ain’t friendly.”
“Well,” she said, backing the wagon slightly so that he had to step away quickly, “that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”
“I
t’s filthy!”
“Missy, you’re being unreasonable. A speck of dust wouldn’t dare get into this house now, not the way Cass chases after them.”
“It’s filthy. David, I want to go home. I don’t like it here. That—that black man looks at me and my skin crawls. And Alice is so goddamned high and mighty the way she struts around, my God, you’d think she owns the place.”
“Alice is working her head off, Missy, which is more than I can say for you.”
“But I’m sick!”
David glared at the figure of his wife lying on the bed, fully dressed but pressed deep into the coverlet as if a weight were lying on her chest. They’d been arguing for several days now, each battle worse than the last, the clearer it became that he had no intention of leaving Meridine, or Riverrun. He had already picked up a few clients in the town, real estate deals and wills mostly, but he was sure it was only a matter of time before he would be arguing a case before the justice in the courthouse. He was becoming respected, and he would be damned if Melissa was going to take that respect from him.
“All right,” he said wearily, “I’ll send for Doc Butler.”
But as he closed the door behind him, he heard Melissa shout, “I’d rather go home! I want to go home!”
Placing a hand to the back of his head, he walked down the staircase and made his way back into the kitchen. Cassandra hadn’t yet returned from the field, and the only one in the room now was Alice. He stopped and leaned against the doorjamb, smiling. She was, he had to admit, a damned attractive woman even with her hair falling down over her eyes. She brushed it back irritably, turned to carry a heavy black pot to the fireplace, and froze when she saw him.
“Let me help you,” he said, took the pot from her hands and hung it on the cradle over the fire. He leaned over and sniffed. “Stew, or washing water?” he asked with a grin.
Alice slapped him across the back and he jumped away, laughing, his palms out as she advanced on him with a large wooden ladle. When he reached the back door, he put a hand out to the knob and held up a fist. “Touch me,” he said, “and I’ll tell Judah.”
She hesitated just long enough for him to snatch the ladle away and give her a swipe across her buttocks. She yelped, flashed an open palm toward his cheek and he grabbed her wrist, yanked her close to his chest. He could feel her breath on his neck, her breasts flattened against his open white shirt stained with perspiration. His hand left the doorknob and touched her cheek. “I’ll see you tonight,” he whispered.
“Come near me any time,” she said, “and I’ll geld you.”
His laugh was weak this time, and he fairly pushed her away as he spun outside and strode quickly across the yard toward the stable. His hands were trembling, and a throbbing passed over the small of his back. It was crazy. He shuddered. She was black, little better than a slave, and here he was a married man reacting to her like a buck in rutting season. He stopped at the well and cranked up a bucket, plunged his hands into the cold water and doused himself heavily. Insane. He didn’t need another woman; Melissa was always ready—or had been before she’d begun this campaign to send them back to Philadelphia. Waited on hand and foot, catered to even by Cassandra, she was growing unbearable. That little-girl quality he’d once loved so much was now transforming itself into the image of a shrew. It certainly wasn’t his fault he had so much work to do—haggling with the merchants all morning before coming back to strip to the waist and play at being carpenter or field hand; it wasn’t his fault he fell into bed each night exhausted and unwilling to listen to Missy’s eternal whining. She should understand better. Christ, even Judah once told him he was working too hard!