The Land(109)
I watched him go, then rode on. When I reached the cabin, Tom Bee was there, but was preparing to leave as I rode up. “Jus’ come by t’ let y’all know I done seen that Digger back round these parts,” he told me. “That John Wallace boy, he come by on his way t’ Vicksburg. Said he was goin’ t’ find a job up there. Said Digger, he come back wit’ him and he still round.”
“I know,” I said, dismounting from Thunder. “I just saw him.”
“Did?” asked Mitchell. “Wish he’d show his face to me.”
“Ah, he ain’t gon’ do that,” declared Tom Bee. “Not less’n he got a whole buncha other white men wit’ him, and he be too shamed t’ tell ’em what ya done t’ him t’ bring ’em round. I figures y’all best be keepin’ an eye out for Digger, though. He’s a scound’!”
“S’pose we know that already,” said Mitchell.
“Then ya watch out for him!” Tom Bee warned, and walked away.
As he left, I said to Mitchell, “You worried?”
“What ’bout?”
“Digger being back.”
Mitchell just looked at me and laughed. He was being truthful with that laugh. I knew he wasn’t afraid of Digger. But I was.
“So ya back,” said Caroline, smiling at me as she came to the doorway of the cabin holding a stack of plates in her hands. “We was wonderin’ what done happened to you.”
“Yeah,” said Mitchell. “I was ’bout t’ come lookin’ for you. You decided to give yourself a day off, huh?”
I just smiled, and Caroline said, “He work hard ’nough. He deserve his day. Now both of y’all get washed up for supper. I’m ’bout to set it on the table.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Mitchell exclaimed, and grinned at her before she turned back into the room. Then he and I went to the side of the cabin where we kept the water barrel, and poured water into the two washbowls. “Well, you gonna tell me where you gone off to?” asked Mitchell as he lathered with soap Caroline had made while still at her parents’ house. He grinned again. “Maybe to pay a call on Miss Etta?”
“No,” I said. “Better than that.”
“Better?”
Now it was I who grinned. “I went to see J. T. Hollenbeck.”
Mitchell sobered. “J. T. Hollenbeck? Now, just what business you got with that white man?”
“What you think?” I leaned toward him. “The land, Mitchell, the land. He’s ready to sell.”
“And you figure you can buy it?”
“I figure to try.”
“How much he askin’?”
“Was asking fifteen an acre. Got him down to ten.”
“How many acres?”
“Four hundred.”
At another time in his life, Mitchell would have laughed. He didn’t now. He frowned instead. “Four hundred? You got that much money?”
“Figure to get it.”
Mitchell grew quiet, then said, “You plannin’ on askin’ yo’ daddy?”
I met Mitchell’s eyes. “You know better.”
Mitchell nodded. “Then what ya gonna do?”
“Going to see if I can borrow it from a bank.”
Mitchell was again silent before he spoke. “You plannin’ on going up to Jackson and passin’?”
“I’m going to Vicksburg.”
“They know you there.”
“Good, because I don’t plan to pass.”
“Then you can forget ’bout that loan. You think one of them crackers gonna loan a colored man money for a prime piece of land like that?”
“J. T. Hollenbeck said he’d sell it to me. That’s my chance. I’ll get the money somehow.”
Mitchell just looked at me.
“I’ll be heading for Vicksburg before light in the morning.”
Mitchell grunted.
I laughed. “Trouble with you, Mitchell, is you’ve got no faith.”
Mitchell too laughed. “Well, you and Caroline, y’all both carry enough between y’all to carry me too.” Caroline called us in for supper and the two of us went in still laughing.
Much later that evening after the brush had been burned and both Caroline and Nathan had gone inside the cabin, Mitchell and I sat by the outside fire talking, and sipping at some chicory. “You know, Paul,” Mitchell said, as it grew late, “I got me some good news too.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
Mitchell grinned wide. “Caroline’s gonna have a baby.”
For a moment I was silenced.
“You heard me right.”
“You? Somebody’s daddy?”