Caroline halted and laughed outright. “You was there? You seen that?” She sounded somewhat embarrassed; then, if there was embarrassment, it fled quickly. “Yeah, Henry, he enjoyed that pie, all right.”
“But what about you? What did your mama have to say about her pie when you got home?”
“Don’t tell me you done heard that too? You heard me and Callie talkin’ ’bout Mama and that whippin’ I was sure t’ get?”
I nodded. “Anybody standing near heard it.”
She laughed again. “’Spect you right. Well, I gotta admit I worried a bit all the way home ’bout how Mama was gonna get after me, but when I got back, she wasn’t so bad. She fussed a lot, mind ya, but then again she always fussin’ ’bout how I’m too much like my papa, always givin’ stuff away and how we never gonna have nothin’ ’cause we ain’t got the good sense t’ realize we poor.” Caroline was still laughing as she ushered me out of the henhouse.
I gazed out across the pasture, west of the barn, at the cluster of animals. “I’d hardly call you poor.”
“Well, when it come t’ money we ain’t got much. But we thankful for what we got. What you see out in that there pasture, though, is ’cause of my daddy’s healin’ hands and God’s grace.”
I nodded, understanding from Mister Perry’s words what she meant.
“God give him the power in his mind and in his hands t’ heal critters when he was in slavery, and that blessin’ made his life and ours some easier. Fact, his knowin’ healin’ saved him from hangin’ during slavery days.”
“How was that?” I asked.
“Well, seems like there was a time my papa tried runnin’ away from that man called hisself his master. He done already run away two times before then when he was still a boy and was so-called belongin’ t’ another man. But he was now property of this man called Perry, and he ain’t run off on him before. Now, this Perry fella thought well of my papa ’cause of all he knew ’bout healin’, and he let my daddy go off his place t’ court my mama, who was livin’ on somebody else’s plantation. Well, on one of those times my daddy went off courtin’, he run away. He was figurin’ t’ get hisself free, then get my mama free. But then the white folks caught up with him and they was ready to hang him, but that ole master wouldn’t let them do it. He said, ‘I need this here boy. He more’n valuable t’ me. He got the healin’ in his hands.’ So them white men whipped my papa, but they ain’t hung him.”
Caroline looked at me and gave a nod. “That’s a fact. Tell ya somethin’ else ’bout names too. In them slavery days my papa got called by the name of Sam for Samson ’cause he was so strong. White folks, they call him that still, and when he doin’ business, he go by that. But he had hisself a Christian name of Luke, like Jesus’ disciple, and his folks and all the colored folks called him by that, and my mama, when she and my papa was courtin’, she called him Luke too. My papa, he liked that. My mama says my papa’s a healer and he got the blessin’, and she’s right proud of that. Well, what I’m right proud of is, my daddy say of all his younguns, I got the blessin’ too and he be teachin’ me.”
“You like the healing?”
“I surely do,” she admitted. “May be selfish of me t’ say so, but I’m glad, of all my daddy’s children, I was the one got the gift.”
I knew Caroline was saying exactly what she felt. I had nothing to say in return to her honesty. I just smiled as I opened the gate.
When I left the Perry farm, it was almost sunset. As I mounted Thunder, I had with me not only the eggs Caroline had given me but a helping of food for my supper and for my breakfast too. All the Perrys saw me off, including Miz Rachel Perry. I thanked her for having me and for the wondrous food she had cooked. All she gave me for my words was a nod in return, and as I rode off, I realized that during all the hours I had spent at the Perry home, Miz Rachel Perry had not spoken one word to me.
It was in the next month that Sam Perry brought Caroline to the shed to paint her flowers on the rocker. Nathan was with her. Sam Perry left them both while he went off to tend some ailing horses on the other side of town. I felt a bit awkward at first, having the brother and sister in my work space, but when Caroline saw the rocker, she put me at ease. “Oh, Mister Paul Logan, it’s lookin’ mighty fine!” she declared as she slowly slid her fingers along the sanded grain of the chair’s rounded back, then rocked it gently. “Oh, it’s just so fine!”