The Land(111)

I didn’t like standing before this man, hat in my hand, but I said clearly what I had to say. “I’ve come about seeking a loan on a piece of land I’m interested in buying. It’s four hundred acres and located near Strawberry.”

B. R. Tillman straightened in his chair. “That wouldn’t be J. T. Hollenbeck’s land you’re talking about?”

“That’s right,” I said. “It is.”

“Four hundred acres?”

“That’s right.”

He got up from his chair, came to the front of his desk, and leaned against it. He folded his arms across his chest and fixed his eyes on me. “That’s some mighty impressive land.”

I nodded in agreement.

“Yes, it’s good land, all right. Used to be Granger land, one of the finest plantations in this part of the state.”

“I understand that,” I said.

B. R. Tillman looked at me over gold-edged spectacles. “Now here you looking to buy it?”

I knew what he was thinking as soon as he said that, but I figured he could think what he wanted. “Yes, but I’m going to need a loan to do it,” I continued. “The section’ll cost four thousand dollars, and I’m looking to borrow thirty-two hundred of that amount.”

“Thirty-two hundred? What about the other eight?”

I looked straight into B. R. Tillman’s eyes. “I’ll provide that myself.”

“You?” He looked at me with disbelief. “Most colored folks don’t have two nickels to rub together. They’re lucky if they even see a hundred dollars in a year, and here you’re talking about you’ve got eight hundred to put on some land? Just where did you get that kind of money?”

I took my time before I answered. It was true that most colored folks, at least the ones I knew, and white folks too, for that matter, didn’t see a hundred dollars in cash money in a year, and folks sharecropping mostly saw none at all. But I had lumbered and I had trained and raced horses and I had made quality furniture. I had received fair money for all that work, and I had saved the most of it. Adding to that, I had made my deals with Luke Sawyer. I could have told B. R. Tillman all that, but I figured he would still have questioned me more, and I had no intention of disclosing my arrangements with Luke Sawyer. We were keeping that to ourselves. “I saved it,” was all I told B. R. Tillman.

“Saved it?” He smirked. “Young fella like you?”

I just looked at him and he didn’t press me further.

“So, you want to borrow thirty-two hundred dollars. How you expect to pay it back?”

“The same way I earned the eight hundred dollars to put down on it,” I said, maybe too cockily, being a man of color talking to a white man. I attempted to correct myself. “I still will be doing work for Mister Luke Sawyer and I’ll be selling the forty acres I’ve contracted to clear for Mister Filmore Granger down near Strawberry. After the first year, I’ll have crops I can sell. I was figuring cotton, corn, sugarcane.”

B. R. Tillman walked back around his desk and sat down. “So, what are you proposing to me then, Paul? Even if you sell those forty acres of Mister Granger’s for, say, four hundred dollars—and that’s high figuring—that still leaves a lot of money owing. If you want the bank to loan you money to buy this land, what do you have to give us in collateral?”

To me the answer was obvious. I expected it was obvious to B. R. Tillman as well, or would have been if I hadn’t been a man of color. “The land,” I said.

“The land?” he questioned. “The land? And what’s on it? There a house? Crops? What? How will you farm all that acreage? You got money to take on sharecroppers? What other kind of collateral are you offering me besides that land if I make you this loan?”

“A house in one year,” I answered. “Crops in one year. In addition, as you know, I’m a woodworker. Anything in wood anybody wants made, I can most likely make it. I’ve got an understanding with Mister Luke Sawyer concerning that. Whatever I make from my woodworking I can pledge to this bank. When I get my crops in, I can pledge them to the bank as well . . . then, of course, there’s always the land itself. As you said, it’s good land, and I figure it can stand as its own collateral.”

B. R. Tillman stared at me. “Now, why you want four hundred acres of land you can’t afford when you already got yourself forty acres contracted? If you could produce a crop yearly on this here four hundred acres for a number of years and sell that crop at a price equal to pay your debt to this bank, plus all your taxes, then I’d consider making you a loan. But, Paul, I know there is no way in hell that you can do that. I know this payback notion of yours is all in your head. You have no financial record here. You have no farming background here. That four hundred acres is good land, all right, but it’s a white man’s kind of land, too expensive for you. Why, it wasn’t so long ago it was against the law for a negra, I don’t care how white-looking, to even own farmland in the state of Mississippi, and here you are talking about buying Hollenbeck land?” He shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to say no. It’s too much for you to take on, and we have no desire to have to come take that land from you when you’re not able to meet your payments. If you were talking about twenty or forty acres like what you’re working now, maybe we could work something out. No, my advice to you is keep working that forty acres you got and be satisfied. It’ll make you a good living.”