The Georgia sun was blazing by the time my brothers and I located Mitchell chopping wood on the north bank of the creek. Two of his younger brothers were with him, stacking the logs he split. As we dismounted, Mitchell struck his axe into a fallen log, then yanked it out again and held it across his chest. To tell the truth, I’d have preferred it if we had found him tending some other chore. I for one knew that Mitchell had a hot temper, and there was no telling what he might take a notion to do with that axe. Hammond, though, seemed to take no notice of the axe as he and George walked over to Mitchell. Robert and I stayed by the horses.
“See you got quite a woodpile there, Mitchell,” said Hammond cordially.
Mitchell glanced over at me, then back at Hammond before he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. His brothers were silent and still.
“Well, now, Mitchell,” Hammond went on, “we rode over because we wanted to have a little talk with you.”
“That’s right,” said George. “We understand that you been beating up on Paul there.” I appreciated the fact that George was getting right to the heart of this matter. “Quite often, as a matter of fact.”
Mitchell’s grip tightened on the axe, but he said nothing.
“We’d like to know why,” said Hammond.
I kept my eyes on the axe. I felt like I needed to warn Hammond and George. They didn’t know how crazy Mitchell could be.
“We’d like to know why you have it in for Paul,” Hammond went on. “Did he do something to you?’
Mitchell eyed his axe and didn’t speak.
Hammond and George waited; then George grew impatient. “Well? Don’t you have anything to say? Did Paul do something to you or not?” Mitchell kept on looking at that axe. “Speak up!”
Mitchell then shook his head. “Naw,” he mumbled, but I could see his fingers tightening on the handle.
“Well, if Paul hasn’t done anything to you,” said Hammond, “then I see no reason for you to be continuously picking on him. You’re older than him, bigger than him, and it’s certainly not a fair kind of thing.”
“We want it stopped,” said George, as if that should put an end to the matter right there, and I thought, Good. Now we’re getting to the point of this thing.
Hammond continued to be diplomatic. “We want you two to try to be friends, Mitchell. We’re all living here on the same land, and we all have to work together, so I don’t want to hear of any more fights between the two of you. Understood?”
Mitchell once again had nothing to say. George lost patience and grasped the handle of Mitchell’s axe. “Boy, you better answer!” he demanded, but Mitchell in a dangerous move yanked on the axe. George too yanked on the axe in an attempt to twist it from Mitchell’s grasp, but then Hammond intervened, stepping between George and Mitchell. George’s hand slipped from the axe, but he still tried to get at Mitchell.
Hammond pushed him back. “Stop it, George!” he ordered. Then he turned to Mitchell. “Now, you, boy, you put that axe down.” There was a moment when I didn’t know if Mitchell would obey. Hammond didn’t waver. “I said put it down! Now!” Mitchell looked at George, at Hammond, then slammed the axe into a log. Hammond stepped back calmly. “There’s to be no more of that.”
George shoved past Hammond and pointed his finger right in Mitchell’s face. “You try that on me again and I’ll have your head, boy! You hear me? You best be remembering I’m not Paul!”
I was afraid Mitchell was going to slap George’s hand away and the two of them would get into it right there, but Mitchell only glared at George and kept his silence. Hammond eyed the both of them and said to Mitchell, “There’s to be no more fighting with Paul.”
Mitchell looked at the ground.
“Is that understood?”
Mitchell looked up, first at Hammond, then at me, and I felt my knees go weak. “Yeah,” he mumbled, his eyes fixed on me, and at that moment I knew that my troubles with Mitchell were far from over.
And I was right.
The next time Mitchell Thomas caught up with me alone, he near to whipped the living daylights out of me. “Now, go tell your brothers ’bout this beatin’, you white nigger!” he cried as he pummeled me. “For all I care, you can tell yo’ white daddy ’bout it too!”
But after Mitchell got finished beating on me, I told no one. Instead, I made my way over to the creek and sat on its bank, looked out over my daddy’s land, and pondered why Mitchell and the other boys hated me so. Now, what Mitchell said was true: I did have a white daddy. My daddy was Edward Logan, and Edward Logan was a much-respected man. He was a prosperous man too, or at least he had been before the war had come in 1861, and still now that the war was over by several years, he was doing better than most. He owned a lot of land, and until a few years back he had owned his share of slaves too.