Abbie Harden was tall and slim, she never got heavy like her sisters, and she had them nice manners that she learned in Key West convent school. You might recall her helpin out at some of your daddy’s parties, makin sure that everything looked nice. A lot of local boys was after her but she weren’t interested, she had her own romantical ideas.
“Abbie took after her brother Earl, she was ashamed of the dark ones in the family. Probably it was Earl taught her to think that way. Whenever she went up to Chokoloskee, folks would find ways to humiliate her because her sister had married Henry Short, and she was furious because her own family saw nothing wrong in that. ‘It’s not bad enough,’ she screeched, ‘that we’re called mulattas up and down the coast, without Libby marrying up with some darned nigger?’ Well, Grandmother Maisie grabbed her daughter by the scruff of her white neck and washed her mouth out with lye soap. Yelled, ‘Girl, are you fool enough to listen to them mean-mouth hypocrites up on the Bay? Didn’t Henry tell us he was part Indian, the same as us? He is a good Christian man and would not lie about it!’ And she told Abbie she should count her blessins, having such a fine man in the family, told her she didn’t care to hear no more about it.
“You recall my grandma, Mister Colonel? From her Seminole side, Grandma Maisie was darker than anybody in her family except Uncle Webster, but because her daddy was John Weeks, the first pioneer to settle Chokoloskee, she was a white woman and that was that. She never paid her own color no attention, so nobody else did neither, only Earl and Abbie. Abbie Harden vowed she would never forgive her family, she was out to spite them. And what she done, she run off with the Storters’ man Dab Rowland, from Grand Cayman Island. This young Carribean man at Everglade was the only other black person around the Bay, and he weren’t wheat color like Henry, he was black—”
“Other black person?” Sally looked cross. “You’re saying Henry Short was black?”
“In them days Dab was fishing with Claude Storter, and he played the banjo for our Harden parties. Well, one night Abbie drank too much, which she weren’t used to, and she grabbed that banjo picker and run off with him and got married by the Cape Sable constable, same way Aunt Libby done. Maybe she told Dab she would holler rape and see him lynched if he didn’t go along, because Abbie was as headstrong as the rest of ’em. If Abbie had married out of love instead of spite, things might been different, but Dab was so black that it seems like she picked him out for his wrong color. Poor feller must of woke up in the mornin and knew he was fixin to get lynched no matter what. Some folks wondered why that nigra would let that wild young woman risk his life, but one way or another, I don’t reckon he had no say about it.
“Aunt Abbie announced that marryin Dab Rowland was all she could think of to get even with her family for ruinin her life by lettin Libby marry Henry. Because, said she, Henry Short was a nigger just as much as Dab, a nigger was a nigger, there weren’t one speck of difference between niggers.”
Andy said sorrowfully, “That’s the way folks seen it—there weren’t no difference between Henry and Dab.”
“Whatever he was, Granddad Robert disowned her, not so much for marryin a black man as for marryin him out of spite to wreck her family. Granddad Robert knew who he liked and who he didn’t, and family had damned little to do with it. He never liked his oldest boy and never pretended that he did, which is probably why Uncle Earl always lived near that old man hopin to change his daddy’s poor opinion of him.
“Dab and Abbie went to Key West for a trip, then back to Everglade, where Dab had some protection from the Storters. But Earl believed that Abbie was flauntin her black husband on the Bay to pay back her family for disowning her, and some of our Weeks and Daniels cousins came over from Marco with a plan to string Dab from the big mahogany out front of the trading post, same ol’ tree that is standin there today.
“My pa was about the only one took up for Abbie. When his brother Earl was fixin to join up with the lynchin party, he stepped in. He told him, ‘That man’s wife is our little sister, so Hardens will stand by ’em.’ And Earl paid some attention, too, because Pa was very strong, with that fiery temper. If Lee Harden give you his word, you could lay your life on it, men always said, so I guess Earl figured if he took a part, he could lay his life on his brother’s promise he would kill him. Earl Harden never forgive his brother for makin him back down about Dab Rowland.
“Course the Bay families liked Earl better’n Lee because he was more like them. Earl was friends with the same folks who became Hardens’ worst enemies and whenever my pa run into trouble, it always seemed like Old Man Earl was hid behind it.