The Land(104)
I hired back Tom Bee for a few days each week during that late summer and early fall as we settled into what would become our life on the forty. Things looked good for us, and I gave no worry to getting the rest of the trees felled. We worked hard as always, chopping the trees and now even pulling up more of the stumps, but with more than twenty acres cleared and part of it ready for plowing, I knew that by the next fall, the acreage would be ours. We took time for a bit more leisure.
Caroline, who believed in keeping the Sabbath, refused to work on that day, outside of making sure the animals were fed and we were too. There was no colored church building close by, but folks met down by the Creek Rosa Lee for church services about twice a month, and Caroline always went to join in. Sometimes she even got Mitchell to go with her and saw to it that Nathan did as well. But I never did. On those days I took the time to do my woodworking or write to Cassie. My not going to church, however, didn’t keep a little bit of church from coming to me. Caroline brought it to the forty when several of her new acquaintances, young women about her age, came to join Caroline in Bible reading on the Sundays when there was no service at the Rosa Lee. One of the young women was a Miss Etta Greene. She was pretty, kind of quiet, and seemed to take a liking to me, and with Caroline’s urgings, I saw her home several times from those meetings, and even upon occasion went to call on her. Mitchell teased me that it looked like it wouldn’t be long before I too would be hitched. “Yeah,” he said, “Miss Etta got wedding plans for you, boy!”
Nathan laughed and I smiled as we sat around the night fire at the end of the day when the brush had been burned. Caroline, sitting close to Mitchell, pushed him gently in reproach. “Now, you stop that, Mitchell! What’s between Etta and Paul-Edward is they business.”
Mitchell turned and stared at her. “They business? Who been puttin’ ’em t’gether?”
“All I done was introduce ’em t’ one ’nother. They becomin’ friends was they idea.”
“Um-hum,” murmured Mitchell with a grin. “Paul, ya might’s well start plannin’ on it now. Caroline ain’t gonna be satisfied ’til she got another woman on this place.”
Caroline cut her eyes at Mitchell, and I said, “Well, I’m afraid that’s going to be a while yet. I’ve got some more things I want to get done before I go commit to marrying somebody.”
“So you saying Miss Etta ain’t the one, huh?” questioned Mitchell.
“Well, she’s nice enough,” I hedged.
“But she ain’t the one! ’Cause if she was the one, you couldn’t hardly wait t’ get hitched, plans or no plans. Jus’ look at me. Here I was thinkin’ I’d go t’ my grave single and free, and here comes Miz Caroline into my life and changes all that right quick.” Mitchell turned to her. “Gone and changed that forever.”
Caroline smiled at Mitchell and slipped her arm around his.
“Thing that gets me, though, Paul,” Mitchell said, turning back to me, “is you was the one talkin’ marriage long ’fore me. I was the one declarin’ I wasn’t never gonna marry, but you was sayin’ it was time you got yo’self a family. Now, here I am married for life and here ya puttin’ it off.”
“You leave him be,” ordered Caroline. “He ain’t ready t’ get married, then don’t be pushin’ him ’bout it.”
“But he the one—”
“Leave him be!”
“Thank you, Caroline,” I said.
“You welcome,” she said.
“Well, ain’t this somethin’!” cried Mitchell. “You two done joined up against me! My wife and my friend!”
Caroline, Nathan, and I laughed. So did Mitchell.
“What I’d like t’ know,” said Caroline, nudging closer to Mitchell, “is how the two of y’all come t’ be such good friends in the first place.”
“Didn’t he tell you?” I asked.
Caroline made a guttural sound feigning exasperation with her new husband. “This man, he don’t tell me nothin’!”
“Now, woman, you know that ain’t true,” denied Mitchell. “Thing is, this here wife of mine just after me all the time t’ tell her everythin’ from the moment I was born, and I keep tellin’ her I ain’t keepin’ track of things like her.”
“Gotta keep track, I keep tellin’ you,” said Caroline in a business kind of way before she smiled her love at Mitchell. “How we gonna pass things on t’ our children, we don’t keep track? I wanna know everything.”