The Land(58)

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Getting ready to move out of here.”

“Tired as we are?”

“I suddenly got myself some new energy.”

Mitchell stuck his gun into the waist of his pants. “’Spect I have too.”

After he’d packed his gear, Mitchell said, “Ya know, Paul, I ’spect we best be splittin’ up.”

I glanced over at Mitchell, reading him before he said his next words; still, I asked, “Why’s that?”

“You know why. You lookin’ white in the night done saved us this time, but them men catch a white-lookin’ man and a black one for sure on the road walkin’ t’gether come light, they might have theyselves a change of mind ’bout our thievin’. We be separated and they come on us, they won’t remember one of us from anybody else. Same goes if the lumbermen got folks after us. We travel t’gether, folks take too much notice.”

I knew Mitchell was right. I had already thought it myself. “I could help get us out of a mess, though, we get stopped.”

“Can’t help me, you swingin’ from a tree yo’ own self.”

I sighed.

“They figure you got colored in ya, Paul, that’s what’s gonna happen sure. You be swingin’ ’fore I do.”

“All right,” I said, not liking the truth of any of this but knowing it was so. “You going to head on up to the camp?”

“Yeah, figure t’ do so.”

“I’ll be going to that Luke Sawyer’s store.”

“We can meet up there. Say, in a month or so?”

I nodded, and the matter was settled. “But you send me word before then,” I said, “and I’ll do the same.” Mitchell agreed to that. We figured it would ease both our minds to know that the other hadn’t gotten caught by Jessup or been mistaken again for a chicken thief.

We stayed on by the campsite awhile after that, waiting for the men to move farther away from us. But before the morning came, we took to the trail again, still headed due north. Couple hours after the dawn we went our separate ways.





I was dead tired; still, I walked all that day. Mitchell and I had split the last of Maylene’s food, and I ate the final piece of chicken for my dinner shortly past noon. I figured to save the corn bread for my supper. By nightfall I was looking for a place to lay my head in some kind of peace. The moon was rising and I still hadn’t found a spot. The darkness came, followed by a full moon. The land opened up into meadow, and I left the trail, crossed the meadow in part, and found myself a hillside to climb. There were some trees, but no dense brush. Out beyond the slope I could see the outline of a forest in the moonlight. There was no man-made light, and I took solace from that. I took off my gear and set it on the ground beside a good-sized rock and wondered how far Mitchell had gotten in his travel. Then, without rolling out my bedroll or checking around that rock for rattlers or any other such thing, I lay down and went to sleep.





Next morning when I woke, the sun was already high, shining bright in my eyes. Having not had much sleep in the past days, on this morning I had slept long, and even peacefully, despite being in a place I didn’t know and without Mitchell to keep watch with me. I shielded my eyes from the sun, gave them a rub, then looked out upon the day.

I was awed by what I saw.

All around me was emerald green, and above that, God’s own bluest skies, blessed only with two or three perfect rolls of pillow-like clouds. A meadow lay all around me, and a forest of longleaf pine dotted with oak and hickory circled the meadow. Gazing from the slope where I sat beside the rock, I felt I was sitting where God Himself must have once sat and been pleased with Himself.

I got up and began to walk the land. I trod down the slope, circled the meadow, and lastly went into the forest along a cow trail laden with dung, to a glade that held a pond as its center. A fallen tree lay beside the pond, and I sat upon it as the morning light slit through the trees and shone everything golden. For the first time since I’d left my daddy’s land, my heart soared, higher than any mountain I’d ever imagined, up to God’s own perfect clouds, and I felt a peace come over me.





“ ’Ey, boy! Whatcha doin’ here?”

I turned, startled, and stood quickly. I’d been sitting on the log for some time and the sun was now directly overhead.

“I say, whatcha doin’ here?”

An old man stood before me, a stick in his hand for support. He was a man of color.

“Just sitting,” I said.

“You ain’t from round here, is ya? Ain’t seen ya before.”

“No, sir. Just came here this morning. Slept up on the slope yonder last night.”