I was right.
Mitchell joined me just as the fog began to clear. He whacked his axe into a nearby tree without a word, then said, “Heard down the row you was gonna hafta do my work and yours too, I didn’t show up.”
I finished notching the side of a tree, then walked to the other side of it to hack at the tree until it fell. “I wasn’t worried,” I said. Before I swung my axe again, I grinned at Mitchell. “Hope she was worth it.”
Mitchell looked back at me and grinned too. After that we had no more words as we chopped in rhythm with the sound of my axe against the one tree, then the sound of Mitchell’s against the other. We paced ourselves that way until the trees fell. Then we went to work on two more. By midday when the cook’s bell rang for dinner, Mitchell and I were already caught up. By quitting time we had chopped our day’s worth of trees. That’s when the boss man came down on me hard.
“Where y’all boys think ya headed?” he asked as we came from the slopes.
“The bell rung,” said Mitchell. “It’s quittin’ time.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” said Jessup as if he didn’t know. “Quittin’ time on a Saturday night. Well, boy, you go on and get your pay wit’ the rest of ’em. I wanna talk t’ this white nigger friend of yours.”
Mitchell looked at the boss man, then at me, without moving. I met his eyes, and he walked slowly on, leaving the boss man and me.
“So,” said Jessup, “y’all managed to cut all your trees for the day, I see.”
“Same as always,” I replied.
Jessup spat at my feet. “You know, you one lucky nigger that boy Mitchell showin’ up when he did. I was kinda lookin’ forward t’ callin’ the sheriff on you.”
I stood there saying nothing, taking the boss man’s insults, and knowing he was leading up to something. From the first day I had come into the camp, Jessup had disliked me, and I understood the reason. It was the same reason why the men of color disliked me. I looked too white. Mitchell’s being absent in the night gave Jessup another excuse to strike out at me, as if he needed one. He’d said not one word to Mitchell about his absence. He didn’t have it in for Mitchell.
Jessup looked up the darkening slope. “You know, Paul Logan, I don’t like you. You come in this here camp lookin’ and talkin’ like a white man and callin’ yo’self colored.” He looked back at me. “Now, one thing I can’t stand is a uppity nigger, nigger thinkin’ he good as white folks. Oh, I can tell it in you. You the kind think you good as any white man walkin’. These other boys round here, they don’t act that way, none ’ceptin’ maybe that boy Mitchell. Leastways he keeps shut, not talkin’ citified like you. Well, I figure to teach you a white man’s in charge here. I figure you got such a smart attitude, you can just take your white self on back up that slope tomorrow and put yourself in another day’s work.”
I stared at the boss man, knowing full well he knew the next day coming was Sunday, the only day the camp shut down, but I didn’t question him on it; I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“And don’t think you gettin’ paid for any Sunday workin’ neither. You gonna put this day in for my satisfaction, and if you don’t, I’ll make you the same promise I made you this mornin’. I’ll call the sheriff on you. You hear me?”
My blood shot hot, but I didn’t say the words that were boiling up inside me. All I said was “I hear.”
“You best do, ’cause I’m gonna be checkin’ on you come first light. And, oh yeah, by the way, I’m jus’ gonna keep your week’s pay ’til your Sunday workin’ time is done.” Then, that said, the boss man Jessup turned his back on me and strode toward the camp.
I watched him go, then sat down on a stump, closed my eyes, and tried to take hold of my fury. Ever since I had left my daddy’s house, I had been learning and relearning that harsh lesson my daddy had whipped into me when I was fourteen. It was a white man’s world, and I had to survive in it. But always constant with me was relearning how to hold my temper. When I had gotten on that train in East Texas, I had decided that I was going to survive, and surviving meant holding my temper. I wasn’t going to let this white man beat me down.
“So, Paul, what that ole Jessup want?”
I opened my eyes. Mitchell was walking toward me. “Said I have to work tomorrow.”
“On Sunday?”
“On Sunday.”
Mitchell cursed. “He done had it in for you since we first stepped foot in this camp, and we both know why.”