Together is All We Need (26 page)

‘‘Where are you going?'' she whispered behind me.

‘‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you,'' I said. ‘‘I was just going to check on the cotton.''

‘‘I was already awake,'' said Katie, sitting up in her bed. ‘‘I'll go with you.''

A few minutes later we tiptoed downstairs and outside. The sun was just coming up. It must have been around five-thirty, and it was cool and still. There wasn't a breath of wind, and the delicious smell of a multitude of growing things hovered in the air. It was so nice, just like a perfect summer morning. But you could tell that by noon it was going to be sweltering and that the sweat would be dripping from you.

We walked out into the fields together. It was a good feeling, so much different than when we'd done this the first time. Then Katie had been so inexperienced and hardly knew what a cotton boll was. Now she and I were seventeen, and I'd be eighteen in another week. We weren't exactly grown-up yet, but we were a
little
grown-up. And we knew what we needed to do. This would be our third harvest.

Maybe what we felt as we walked out to the fields that morning was confidence or something like that. We walked beside each other like two young
women,
not like two little girls. Growth is one of those things you can't see up close. You have to stand back to see how something or someone has changed as time has passed. And on that morning, I saw how different Katie and I were from the day we'd met, devastated and alone. We had run a plantation, and now we were going out to check to see if it was time to start another harvest. Our own harvest. A black girl and a white girl making a big decision like that . . . all by
ourselves
. What an amazing thing it was. God had been so good to us!

We didn't stop until we were standing in the middle of one of the fields of green, with tiny explosive little bursts of white all around us. We each picked at several plants, plucking the tiny round fluffy balls, holding them in our hands, examining them, like each one held a little unseen mystery inside, as I reckon they did. I suppose all growing things have a mystery inside them—the mystery of life.

We looked at each other, holding some cotton in our hands. We didn't say anything but just nodded.

We both knew the day had come. I could see in her eyes that Katie was excited too.

As we turned back toward the house, we saw a figure coming toward us. We paused as he approached.

‘‘Good morning, ladies!'' he said. ‘‘Up early, I see.''

He opened his arms and took us in them. The three of us stood a few seconds in each other's arms, then stepped back.

‘‘What are you doing up so early, Papa?'' I said.

‘‘I woke up with the sun,'' he answered. ‘‘It's the farmer's blood in me, I guess. What about you two?''

‘‘We were checking on the cotton, Uncle Templeton,'' said Katie.

He glanced behind us toward the field we had just come from, like he was looking to see something he couldn't quite make out with his earthly vision, almost like he was peering into what that expanse of growing cotton might
mean
.

Leaving us where we were, he slowly began walking toward it. We turned and followed him with our eyes as he walked into the long rows. He stooped down and tried to pluck at a few of the bolls.

After a few minutes he came back toward us, holding several clumps of white in his hand.

‘‘And what did you conclude?'' he said.

Katie and I looked at each other, then back at him.

‘‘I think it's ready, Uncle Templeton,'' said Katie, then glanced at me with just a hint of question in her eyes.

I nodded. ‘‘It's time,'' I said.

By the middle of that morning we had the two wagons out of the barn and the baling boxes and satchels ready and loaded into the first wagon. Then Josepha began carting out jugs of water and milk and baskets of bread and dried meat and cheese.

Sometime about eleven we all climbed into the wagon. Henry clicked the reins, and we were off. Everyone was excited and talking and we bounced along, Henry flicking the reins occasionally to keep the horse slowly plodding along. We tried to explain to Uncle Ward what to do as we walked and rode out to get started. Even little William was babbling away like he couldn't wait to get to picking along with us. I couldn't even imagine what it was going to be like for him to grow up never having been a slave!

Josepha had packed up water and more food than twice this many people would need, especially since the house wasn't that far away and we could just walk back for lunch. I think one of Josepha's goals in life was to try to make everyone else as fat as she was, so she tried to feed anyone who'd eat as much as she could get down them.

Henry reined in beside the closest field. ‘‘Here we be!'' he said.

We all piled out. While Henry unhitched the horse, Katie and Emma and I took satchels and slung them over our shoulders. My papa and Uncle Ward watched. Even after all we'd been talking about, Uncle Ward seemed a little bewildered about the proceedings.

Papa got two more satchels out of the wagon and handed one to his brother. Unconsciously everyone glanced at Uncle Ward.

‘‘Hey, don't look at me!'' he laughed. ‘‘I may be the owner of this place, at least that's what some people keep telling me, but I know less about this than William!''

‘‘We pik kottin!'' chimed in William, and we all laughed.

‘‘Well, your niece is the expert,'' said my papa. ‘‘She taught me what to do. We'll let her give you a demonstration.''

Uncle Ward glanced toward Katie.

‘‘No, I mean Mary Ann,'' said my papa, ‘‘—your other niece.''

‘‘Ah yes . . . right,'' said Uncle Ward, smiling at me and waiting.

‘‘Henry's better at it than I am,'' I said, ‘‘but I suppose I can show you as well as anyone. I've picked enough of it, that's for sure.''

I walked over to the edge of a row.

‘‘We each pick a row,'' I said. ‘‘You just work your way down it to the other end of the field. You get your fingers around the little clump of cotton and just pluck it out . . . like this . . . and put it in your satchel. The main thing is not to get too many leaves or bits of stalk in the bags with the cotton. If Mr. Watson at the mill in town—that's who Jeremiah works for when he's not at the livery—sees too many leaves, he won't give us as good a price. But you can't go too slow either or it'll take too long. So you gotta try to pick fast but clean.''

I stopped and looked around at everyone.

‘‘Then, let's get started,'' said the foreman enthusiastically. ‘‘Let the harvest begin!''

We all spread out along the edge of the field and started at the beginning of our rows. Since we weren't in such a big hurry this time—unless rain clouds suddenly appeared on the horizon!—I worked alongside Katie so we could talk. Josepha got tired pretty quickly and couldn't work as long as the rest of us. But while she did I was amazed at her speed. It was obvious she'd picked lots of cotton in her life too before she became a house slave. She could almost keep up with Henry! The two of them worked alongside each other and chattered away in colored talk so fast sometimes that even I could hardly understand what they were saying.

Gradually Henry and Josepha moved out toward the middle of the field ahead of us in the two rows alongside each other. A little way back Katie and I came along in our two rows. Then farther back my papa and Uncle Ward went a lot slower but seemed to be enjoying themselves. Every once in a while I heard a great laugh from my papa, and it made my heart warm every time I heard it. Without knowing it, he had brought a whole new energy and optimism to Rosewood. He was so cheerful and pleasant to everyone, and excited about Rosewood's possibilities, that his spirit infected us all in a good way.

Farther back, Emma walked along with little William, trying to show him what to do and talking to him like mothers do. They didn't get much picked, but it was sure cute to watch.

Seeing Emma with William, seeing how she'd grown and changed from being a mother, and watching William gradually grow up himself, had made me start thinking for the first time in my life about what it would be like to actually have a baby of my own. Not that I was in any rush to get married. But it didn't seem so fearsome a thought to me as it once had.

We only worked a couple of hours, then took a break for lunch, sweating and beginning to get tired but still enthusiastic. The talk around the table in the kitchen was more animated than anytime since we'd all been together, full of questions and stories, even Uncle Ward talking more than usual. A little while after lunch, Jeremiah came out to help.

We only worked another two or so hours in the afternoon. On the first day it's best not to try to do too much. A harvest takes a long time. We didn't have near as much land planted as some plantations, or as Rosewood once did. But we didn't have that many people either. The cotton would take us two or three weeks to get in. So we knew it was best to start gradually and get used to it. Your muscles get sore, and it gets mighty tedious soon enough. After a while the daily rhythm of the harvest takes over and the days begin to flow one into the other and the cotton begins to pile up.

That's how it was. Slowly we made progress, and Papa and Uncle Ward gradually got faster, and after a week we had one wagon piled high with hundred-pound bales, and we'd finished the first field and were starting on the second.

We took a day off the next week for my eighteenth birthday. Josepha made me a great big cake and we sang and Katie played the piano. We taught the two men some old slave revival songs, and now with more people we could dance better too. We moved the furniture in the parlor to one side and Katie taught everyone the minuet and then played the music for it on the piano while Henry and Josepha, Jeremiah and I, and Papa and Emma all tried to do it.

It was so much fun! Then we switched people so that Uncle Ward could try it, and by then we knew the music well enough that Emma and Josepha and I could sing it as we danced so that Katie didn't have to play. With her dancing along with us, we had four couples dancing in the parlor.

We didn't go to bed that night until hours after dark. We gradually got tired and sleepy, but no one wanted to leave the parlor and go upstairs to bed. The whole room got quiet for a spell, and I found myself starting to hum another one of the old songs that had always been so special to me. Before long, Katie and I were softly singing together:

‘‘Day is dying in the west, angels watching over me, my
          
Lord.

Sleep my child and take your rest, angels watching over me.

All night, all day, angels watching over me, my Lord.

All night, all day, angels watching over me.''

Again it got quiet after we'd sung it through a couple times.

‘‘That was right pretty singing, Kathleen,'' said Uncle Ward. ‘‘You two ladies sound mighty fine singing together, don't they, Templeton?''

‘‘They sure do.''

Then my papa looked at me. ‘‘From everything that's happened,'' he said, ‘‘it sounds like you two have had angels watching over you, all right.''

Katie and I looked at each other and smiled.

‘‘We sure have, Uncle Templeton,'' said Katie, glancing at her two uncles. ‘‘And two of them are right here in this room with us.''

That brought a chuckle out of both of them. Then Katie spoke to me again.

‘‘Tell them one of your black-uncle stories, Mayme,'' she said. ‘‘I'm so sleepy, I'm in the mood to fall asleep with you telling a story.''

I thought a minute, then started in with one I didn't think I'd told Katie before.

‘‘Well, de animals en de creeturs ob da fores, dey wuz gittin on mighty well wid wunner nudder,'' I began, ‘‘so well dat Brer Rabbit en Brer Fox en Brer Possum got tar sorter bunchin' der perwishuns ter gedder in de same shanty. Atter w'ile de roof sorter 'gun ter leak, en one day Brer Rabbit en Brer Fox en Brer Possum, 'semble fer ter see ef dey can't kinder patch er up. Dey had a big day's work in front un um, en dey fotch der dinner wid up. . . .''

I glanced over at Katie and Emma, and already I could see their eyelids drooping as I went on. I knew I'd better make it a short story! When I finished, by then we were finally ready to go to bed. Slowly we got up and all trudged upstairs.

A little while later, after the lanterns were all put out, I lay peacefully in my bed thinking. I could tell from her breathing that Katie was almost asleep.

The house was completely quiet. I breathed in a long sigh of satisfaction, and lay there in the silence a long time before I felt my own eyes getting heavy. I was so thankful to God for everything He had done for us, and especially for bringing the two men to be part of our lives.

It was just about the best way of turning eighteen I could imagine in all the world.

And maybe Katie was right. Maybe they were angels!

A L
ETTER
45

T
HE WEATHER HELD
.

No storm came this time to interrupt the harvest. We took the first load into town, both the Daniels brothers sitting on the board seats holding the reins, Katie sitting beside Uncle Ward in one wagon, me beside my papa in the other.

I could tell he was proud as we entered town and clattered slowly along the street toward Mr. Watson's mill. We may not have had the biggest cotton crop in Shenandoah County, or the prettiest bales. But it was
our
crop and we were proud of it!

Mrs. Hammond, as usual, heard us coming and came out of her shop to look. Everybody knew, of course, about me and Katie and about Katie's two uncles on her mother's side who had come and were now operating Rosewood. No one that he'd had dealings with in town had particularly liked Burchard Clairborne anyway, so that helped ‘‘the Daniels brothers,'' as people called them, be accepted by most people. Whether all that would change if they knew that the white man and colored girl riding alongside each other in the first of Rosewood's wagons that morning, and seeming so friendly with each other, were father and daughter, who could say. Even not knowing it, Mrs. Hammond had the same disapproving scowl on her face that she always did.