So that’s how Mitchell and I left East Texas, underneath the seats of a train, hidden by the skirts of four white women. It was a long, cramped, uncomfortable journey, but we endured it. We had to. Only thing was, we were on the wrong train. Mitchell and I were headed not toward the Great Plains and the mountains of the West I had envisioned, but east, back into the Deep South.
MANHOOD
The Land
“ ’Ey, you boy! Get up from there!”
I looked sleepily at the white boss man who kicked at my bedding, nicking me in the side, and got up. I wasn’t happy about it.
The boss man was called by the name of Jessup, and he had a high-pitched voice that rose higher now as he spoke again. “Where’s that worthless nigger you always with? That boy Mitchell!” he shouted. All the men who had not yet come out of their slumber began to waken. “Where’s he at?”
I glanced down at the bedding beside my own. Only blankets lay there on the dirt floor. The next man over looked at the pile of bedding too, while all up and down the line, sleepy-eyed men stirred with no words said.
“Well?” demanded Jessup.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “Maybe he stepped outside to relieve himself.”
“That boy been gone since midnight check. Seein’ you two always together, he gone off, you gotta know ’bout it.”
“I’m not his keeper,” I said. “Mitchell’s a man grown, and if he decides to go off, he doesn’t check with me about it.” Now, I shouldn’t have said that, I know. But I had been roused from my sleep by this coarse man and I hadn’t yet reined in my temper. Fortunately for me, Jessup chose to be tolerant, at least tolerant for a white man.
“So, you got a smart mouth on you this mornin’, huh, nigger?” he said. “Well, I got somethin’ to cut that smartness right outa ya. Seein’ you and that Mitchell come in this camp t’gether, you can just do his workload and yours too for the day. That boy ain’t back ’fore the day be out and you ain’t got your share and his of timber cut, I’m gonna turn you and your smart mouth over to the sheriff. And don’t you think of runnin’ off on me, ’cause I’m gonna have my eye on you, and my men will too. Now get movin’!” Jessup then turned and looked down the long rows of men bedded on the ground. “All you other niggers, y’all get on up too! The day’s a-waitin’!”
The boss man walked to the shanty opening covered only with a sheet of tarp to keep out the damp and cold, then looked back and pointed a finger at us. “And not one of you is t’ help that boy there! Today he work alone, less’n that boy Mitchell show up!” He lifted the tarp flap and left as the men began to rise. Several of the men eyed me but didn’t speak. I looked back at them in silence, knowing that the boss man had had no need to warn them not to help me, for even without his warning they wouldn’t have lifted a finger, not for me.
I turned back to my bedding. I rolled up my gear inside the blankets and tied the roll with a rope. I did the same with Mitchell’s gear, then I pulled my pants over my long johns, put on a shirt, coat, and boots, all while the other men milled around tending to themselves and eyeing me still. Their watching made me uneasy. I had spent a lot of my time in the Mississippi lumber camps and this was a particularly rough one. Both the men and the boss, Jessup, were rough. It was known for a fact that Jessup had been the operator of a turpentine camp, a camp set up to drain all the resin from the pines, and many of those bosses could be brutal. It was also known that Jessup had brought some of his turpentine overseers and workers to this camp. Had I known all this when Mitchell and I joined up, I never would have done so, for both Mitchell and I knew about the turpentine camps. We’d been there.
I stepped outside. The dawn had not yet broken. Fog misted through the trees holding the blackness of the night. It was early spring and it was cold. I shivered as I took a deep breath of the damp air and went off to take care of my morning necessities down near the creek. By the time I returned to the camp, the cook had a fire going and pots of chicory brewing and grits boiling. I took a tin and finished off my breakfast before the other men were out. Then, as they emerged from the shanty, I set out up the hillside with my axe to start the day.
Working alone was a weary load. Now, I was considered a good chopper, a man who could chop up to fifteen trees a day, and if I set my mind to it, I could chop twenty. Mitchell could do the same, and for that, we received better pay than for most other kind of work we took on. Thing was, each man had so many trees he had to cut a day and I knew there was no way that alone I could cut the number of trees by day’s end as Mitchell and I could cut together, and I understood the consequence of that. But even as the men from the camp joined me in the dense forest and sniggered about my progress, I didn’t worry. I figured Mitchell had gone off to give his attentions to some young woman, but I knew he’d be here as soon as he realized the dawn was breaking. He’d never let me down yet.