The Land(97)

I frowned. “He’d be wanting cash money.”

“Wouldn’t you?” admonished Mitchell.

I eyed Mitchell and did some figures in my head.

“You got that kind of money?” Mitchell questioned.

“Well, I hadn’t figured on having to pay out cash for workers,” I said. “I had other plans for my money.”

“’Spect ya did,” said Mitchell. “But you wanna give this man Filmore Granger what he want, how you ’spect t’ cut all them trees without some more help? I ain’t got much, ’ceptin’ part of that last month’s pay from the camp, but what I got, I’ll put in. You know I bought my wedding suit already.”

I considered and gave up on my figures. “All right,” I said. “But this Tom Bee, he best be up to working longer hours than he’s ever seen in a lumber camp.”

“Same pay as there?”

I met Mitchell’s eyes and agreed. “I’m not about to cheat any man when it comes to his work. I figure to pay him according to how many trees he cuts, that and meals.”

Mitchell nodded. “All right then, Paul, I’ll go see if I can’t find him first thing come light in the morning. You oughtta know, though, he’s a talker, so don’t go blamin’ me for that.”

Mitchell caught up with Tom Bee, all right, and later that same day Tom Bee showed up ready to work. Problem was, he had a white boy with him. The boy looked to be in his mid teens, and he seemed mighty familiar to me.

“What’s he doing here?” demanded Mitchell as soon as he saw him.

“Name’s John Wallace and he jus’ like my shadow,” said the talkative Tom Bee with the boy standing right in hearing distance. “Come on him ’bout a year ago ’bout t’ drown in swampland when that foolish boy done tried t’ cross it. I come on him and I says t’ myself, ‘Lord have mercy! That boy ’bout t’ drown!’ An’ I ain’t thought nothin’ ’bout nothin’ ’ceptin’ some poor fool was ’bout t’ go down. Ain’t thought nothin’ ’bout no color, nothin’ like that. Lord jus’ done throwed all that out my mind and I gone flyin’ int’ that there swamp and I done dragged that boy out. Boy so grateful, he done been wit’ me ’bout ever since. Come outa Alabama where his folks is, but he left them and met up with a no ’count brother of his round Biloxi, stayed wit’ him awhile, then was headed on up this way when I gone and pulled him outa that swamp. That brother of his, he come round sometime and sometime that boy go off with him, then he come on back. When John round here, where I go, he pretty much do the same.”

I looked again at the boy, and it came to me where I’d seen him before. He had been the boy on the ridge, the same boy who had come with that group of men looking for the chicken thieves. The boy looked at me too and said, “Ain’t I seen you b’fore?”

“Not that I recollect,” I answered.

He took a closer look at me. “Ya seems familiar somehow.”

“We’d met, I’d know it,” I said.

“But seem like—”

“Hush up, boy!” ordered Tom Bee. “Now, you stop botherin’ this man and get on over there yonder ’bout yo’ business so we can talk here!” The boy took another look at me, then obeyed Tom Bee and moved away toward the creek.

Mitchell eyed the distant boy with suspicion. “What you bring him ’long for? What you ’spectin’ him t’ be doin’ here?”

“Same as me,” answered Tom Bee. “Cuttin’ this here timber.”

I shook my head. “I only figured pay for one man.”

“Ain’t gotta pay him no extra. Jus’ meals. He stay up at my place most the time anyways. He work or he don’t, that there be up t’ him. He don’t work, then he go off this place. He work cuttin’ them trees, then I figure he be payin’ me for all I be doin’ for him. He won’t be no trouble.”

Mitchell shook his head. “I ain’t likin’ this.”

I agreed. “Me neither. I can’t have a white boy working on this place.”

Tom Bee nodded and looked out to the slope. “Seem like t’ me, ya already got one.

I followed his gaze. There at the top of the slope was Wade Jamison hauling brush. I sighed. “That boy,” I said, “he just keeps coming back.”

“So what ’bout that boy John?” asked Tom Bee. “Where I go, he jus’ go. He won’t be no trouble,” he repeated. “I see t’ that.”