The Land(132)

I turned the envelope over again and looked directly at Robert. “Cassie tell you why she wanted you to bring me this?”

“Just before she left, she asked me if I could make the trip for her here. You most likely know she’s expecting again—”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Anyway, she couldn’t make the trip herself, and she couldn’t send her husband, Howard, because of his business. She said it was important that you have this before tomorrow, and she didn’t trust the banks to see that you got it. So she asked me to bring it to you. She didn’t tell me anything else, but she’d told me enough. I took a train, hired a buggy, made inquiries how to get here, and here I am.”

I was silent before I asked, “You tell our daddy what Cassie asked?”

Robert met my eyes. “No. That was between Cassie and me. She asked me not to tell him. All I told him was I had some business to take care of.”

I looked again at the envelope.

“Aren’t you going to open it?”

I slapped the envelope against the palm of my hand and gazed into the fire. Robert glanced at me, then got up, stretched, and without another word walked away toward the creek. For several minutes after he was gone, I stared at that envelope.

Finally, I opened it.

Inside was a bank draft for eleven hundred dollars, all the money I needed, plus some. Also inside were two letters. One was from Cassie. The other was from my mama. I opened Cassie’s letter first.

Cassie wrote that she had sold our mama’s land. She said she’d sold what few things our mama had left that she figured would bring some money too, all except for a broach with our mama’s picture in it and her own, which she was sending along with Robert. She said the rest of the money came from her and Howard’s savings and from what they could borrow against their business. She said she knew how important this land was to me, and she wasn’t worried about getting her money back. She said anything she had done was what our mama would have wanted. She said our mama had told her to sell that bit of land of hers when the time was right and to give the money to me. She said she figured the time was right now.

My hands trembled as I opened my mama’s letter. I tore open the envelope, and five bills fell out. They were all twenty-dollar bills. I picked them up in wonder, folded them, and put them back in the envelope. The letter itself was faded, and it was dated on Christmas Day the year Robert had betrayed me. I stared at my mama’s letter, saw her words, so carefully and painstakingly written, but as I read, I heard her voice too, every sound of it. It was a letter that made me weep.




I aint wanted you to see this til you was full grown. Wanted you to know more of life than you do now. Right now, you feelin you know everythin there is to know, but you don’t. You just know a spec of what life gonna bring. Now, I always done told you, I wanted you to have something of your own. That there’s one reason I bought myself this bit of land from your daddy. Other reason was selfish. I wanted something of my own too.

Reason I aint told you bout this land is cause right now you still thinking as a child. You love this here place and you love your daddy, no matter what the hardships are. That’s all right, I suppose, but the way you thinking now, if you know bout this spec of land belonging to us, you won’t probably never leave this place, and I wants you to leave. I wants you to leave this place and make yourself a new life, just like Cassie done.

Paul-Edward, this here land is all I got of worth ceptin these few bills I’m going to leave you. I done put my watch in my box for you to have later on, but I decided with what done just happened between you and Robert and your daddy to go on and give it to you this Christmas Day. Now I’m giving you this land. Cassie got her start. Her daddy gave it to her when she got married and I gave her what I could. But this here land, son, it’s yours. I always wanted it for your use—not for you to stay on it, mind you—just so you could use it to give yourself a new life. Cassie know all about it. I told her not to tell you nothing until the time was right. When that time comes, she’ll let you know bout everything. What I got to leave you aint much, son, but least maybe it give you a start. Maybe you use it smart, you be able to get something of your own. Maybe you be happy.





Now, I can’t express how I was feeling about then. There aren’t words to say my feelings. When I finished the letter, I read it again. I heard Robert returning and I put the money and both letters in my pocket. I wanted to go into the cabin to tell Caroline the news Robert had brought, but I stayed myself from that. I wanted to have J. T. Hollenbeck’s papers of ownership of the two hundred acres before I told Caroline anything.