The Land(98)

I glanced across at Mitchell, then answered Tom Bee. “What he does, that’s going to be up to you and him. You want to pay him wages out of your wages, then that’s up to you, but I don’t intend to pay wages for another hand.”

Tom Bee nodded. “Me and John, we work it out.”

“Fine,” I said.

But Mitchell grunted and got up. “Look like t’ me we gettin’ too many white folks on this place.” He looked at me and walked away. I didn’t give him any retort. I was feeling the same way.

I got up and followed Mitchell. When we were alone, I said, “That boy yonder was on the ridge that night.”

Mitchell turned and stared at John Wallace now talking with Tom Bee by the creek. “Then I know he best go. White boy round here anyways gonna only mean trouble. He seemed t’ done recognized you.”

“Well, he sure looked at me rather curiously.”

Mitchell laughed. “Who don’t? Most likely, he was tryin’ to figure out just what you are.”

I didn’t laugh. “Tom Bee’s set on looking out for this John Wallace, and the boy wants to be with him. If we tell Tom Bee that John Wallace has to go, the boy might get more suspicious of me.”

“But he don’t know for sure it was you on that ridge. He stay round here, he might get sure.”

“I figure we’ll have to take that chance.”

Mitchell shrugged. “Well, it’s up t’ you, but I got my eye on him. He do one thing don’t look right t’ me, we won’t hafta worry ’bout him again. I’ll take care of it.”

I stared hard at Mitchell. “Don’t you touch him,” I warned. “That boy gets hurt, who do you think they’ll come looking for?”

Mitchell eyed me and looked away. From that moment, I stayed worried.





We settled down to work, the five of us, Mitchell, Nathan, Tom Bee, me, and John Wallace. John Wallace continued to bother me. I knew that if he could place me clear, he could bring everything crashing down around us because of that one time I’d assumed to try and pass the color line. But though he was on my mind each day, he made no trouble while he worked with us. Except for words passed during the course of logging, Mitchell and I didn’t have many words with him. Neither did Nathan, and I found that somewhat surprising since they were close in age. All of us pretty much just let John Wallace be and he seemed satisfied with that.

Summer came and the heat began to settle. The insects came too, and so did the rain and the snakes. We were drenched from our own sweat and we itched from insect bites. Living became miserable. The land began to muddy and the mules had a hard time of it pulling the logs through the muck. I began to think that maybe I had been wrong about buying the mules instead of oxen. Oxen with their short legs would have held in this kind of weather. Maybe I’d thought myself too smart. I just prayed that none of the mules broke their legs. But I didn’t pray about the snakes, and that was a mistake. One of them bit a mule and one bit Nathan. Fortunately, neither snake was a rattler, because if it had been, we would have had to shoot the mule and we might have lost Nathan. The Lord blessed us on that.

For more than two months the five of us kept up a pace that would have felled weaker men, men with less determination than Mitchell and me, and though Tom Bee did his share of complaining, he worked hard, and so did Nathan and John Wallace. As the time drew near to meeting Filmore Granger’s latest timber orders, we cut our sleep back even more, working the full seven days of the week, and all the days felt blended together. We worked such long hours that Mitchell grew concerned about the time needed to build a house for Caroline. “You know her daddy put almost a year on us before we could marry. Well, that time’s about up, and I don’t intend to wait one day longer. I gotta figure out how I’m gonna build that house.”

“Well, you bring her on here,” I said, “and you two take the cabin. Rest of us can stay in the shed. Soon as we get all the acreage cleared, there’ll be time enough to build the house you want.”

Mitchell agreed to that. “S’pose that’s all we can do.”





Within two weeks of our finishing the cutting of Filmore Granger’s first twenty acres, it began to storm daily, and we were forced to stop our work. There was nothing we could do in the face of it. Even Mitchell and I, who kept the work going in rainy weather, were forced inside as the brunt of the storms brought winds so hard, we couldn’t even see what was before us. The storms kept up for the better part of a week, putting us behind in the number of trees left to cut to fulfill our agreement with Filmore Granger. As soon as the storms cleared, we were at the trees, chopping even through the night by lantern light.