There was again, for a moment, silence at Miz Mary’s.
Johnny B. broke it. “Well, he still ain’t like he one of us!”
“That’s sho’ right!” one of the other loggers spoke up. “Set-tin’ over there in that corner, too good t’ socialize!”
I challenged the man. “Why’d you come here from the camp?” I asked.
The man seemed taken aback for a moment. “What’s that?”
“I came here to get away from the camp after a week’s work. Figure maybe you did the same.”
“Yeah,” said Johnny B. “But all you doin’ is sittin’ up there in that corner, all to yo’self!”
“No,” I said quietly. “I wasn’t all to myself. Miss Maylene there was sitting with me, keeping me company.”
Maylene laughed at that, angering Johnny B. further, and he suddenly hauled off and slapped her so hard, she fell back against the barrel upon which I’d been writing. Mitchell grabbed Johnny B. and knocked him down. I helped Maylene up, then looked around just in time to see a man coming behind Mitchell with a broken bottle. I jumped the man and knocked the bottle from his grip. Mitchell turned at the commotion, but then had his hands full again as Johnny B. got up and lunged at him. The two of them then went at it. Another fellow came at me, but I held my own. Two more of the men from the camp jumped into the fray; the rest stayed out of it. Miz Mary herself broke it up. She fired off a shotgun. She ordered Mitchell and me out. Maylene went with us. The rest, Miz Mary said, had better stay put and not follow us if they wanted to set foot in her place again.
Once we were down the road, Mitchell went off with Maylene. I returned to the camp, but I didn’t go directly to the sleeping quarters. Instead, I walked the wooded slopes. Even though I figured the shanty to be empty most of the night, I didn’t want to be cooped up inside. I hurt from the fight and I moved slowly, but I needed to be in the open, where the chill of the night and the cleanliness of it could clear my head. After a while I sat upon a stump, breathed deep of the night air, and stared out at the clouds drifting across a full moon. I felt the cold beginning to shroud me, but I stayed where I was. I figured to stay there all night in the cold, if I had to. I had a lot of thinking to do.
Back when Mitchell and I had first left out of East Texas on that train, I had it in my mind that one day I’d go west. Mitchell didn’t much care where he went, and when Miz Hattie Crenshaw, the woman who with her daughters had hidden us with their skirts on the train, offered us work and a place to stay, we took it. I figured we could save a little money while with them, then move on. But as it turned out, we ended up staying on at Miz Crenshaw’s place near Laurel for almost two years. I trained Miz Crenshaw’s horses, took care of them, and sometimes raced them, while Mitchell mainly did whatever needed doing around the place.
Now, I’ve got to admit that Miz Crenshaw was always fair by me, even though she had plenty of questions to ask. Mitchell and I, however, never told Miz Crenshaw or anybody else much about ourselves. We’d decided from the beginning to keep what was past to ourselves; we didn’t want folks, including our daddies, coming after us. When we first started staying with the Crenshaws, they all seemed a bit curious about us, as they had a right to be, and Miz Creshaw was one of the most curious. Once, in fact, she said to me, “That gentleman you were working for, Paul, the one you came with to East Texas, were you with him long?”
I remember looking at Miz Crenshaw and wondering why she was asking me that. I replied to her, “I was born on his place.”
“He’s the one responsible for having educated you?”
I answered her brusquely. “He saw to it.”
“That was mighty generous of him,” Miz Crenshaw observed. “Almost like a daddy.” She then studied me without speaking further, but I knew she sensed the connection between my daddy and me. After all, she’d seen us together, and except for the differences in our height, I greatly favored my daddy.
“Miz Crenshaw,” I said, deciding on a sudden to confide one thing to her, “you ever see him again, I mean like at a horse fair or anything, he can’t know where I am. Mitchell either.”
Miz Crenshaw kept her eyes on me, then slowly nodded. “If that’s what you want, Paul, you needn’t worry. My girls and I won’t say a thing.” That’s all she said and she didn’t ask me anything more about my daddy, not then or later.
Though Mitchell and I otherwise remained pretty closemouthed, Miz Crenshaw seemed not to take offense and was always giving us her advice, and particularly to me, since Mitchell showed no interest whatsoever in following any she gave him. When she discovered I had book learning, she encouraged me to read and was always bringing books she thought would be good for me. Later on she arranged for me to do some teaching to other folks of color in the area, and when she learned of my carpentry skills, she took that in hand too. She had some carpentry tools she let me use, and I built her two small lamp tables. She paid me extra to fix things for her, and even sent me up to a man in the area to do further apprenticing.