A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton (23 page)
“No, sir. I was just curious.”
The man eyed her carefully.
“Well, just the same,” he said. “I’ll be back in a day or two to talk to your ma. We’re trying to spread the word roundabout to be on the lookout for girls with babies so we can help them and put a stop to this thing.”
“What happens if you don’t?” asked Katie.
“The disease is fatal, miss. If they don’t get to us for help, the babies will die.”
Katie drew in a sharp breath of shock at the words. The man turned to go.
“I’ll be back to see your ma,” he said. “You tell her I’m coming and I’ll explain to her all about it.”
“But I told you,” said Katie, trying to recover her composure, “we’ve got no baby here.”
“I’m under orders to tell everyone, miss. So tell your ma I’ll be back.”
By the time I was walking up from the slave cabin, the man was coming around back on his horse on the road north. I kept my head down and shuffled slowly by, but I don’t think he even noticed. I’m not sure he saw the smoke from the fire either. As soon as he was past me I picked up my pace and hurried back to the house. Katie was hurrying out toward me at the same time.
“What did he want?” I asked.
“Where are Emma and William?” she asked excitedly, answering my question with a question of her own.
“Back there in the cabin,” I said. “They’re hiding. He won’t see them.”
Finally Katie started to calm down. Then she told me everything the man had said.
I thought about it for a minute. “I don’t know,” I said. “It sounds a mite suspicious to me.”
“Why?” asked Katie.
“Because of everything Emma said about those men chasing her and trying to kill her. It sounds to me like somebody’s trying to find her baby.”
“But what if there really is a disease? Should we tell Emma what the man said? What if William is in danger?”
I thought for a minute more.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t like the thought of her getting all upset. I wish we could find out more about it first.” As I said it, I glanced along the road to see which way the man had gone.
“We could go ask the doctor in town,” suggested Katie.
“And call more attention to ourselves at the same time,” I said. “I’d rather know more about this thing before we did that. If William really is in danger, why didn’t that fellow say anything about a doctor?”
“That’s right,” said Katie, “he didn’t.”
“And if they’re just after Emma, then we have to be careful because anything we do could put her in danger.”
I glanced down the road again. The man was just disappearing from sight.
“Miss Katie,” I said suddenly, “I’m going to go saddle two horses. We’ve got to follow him!”
“Why … you mean you and me?”
“Yep,” I said, then I turned and ran for the barn.
“What about Emma and Aleta?” called Katie after me.
“They’ll have to take care of themselves. You talk to them. We’ve got to know what’s going on. But don’t tell Emma why. She’d come orful streaked if she knew. Just tell them we’ll be gone for a few hours.”
W
E KNEWWE WERE TAKING A BIG RISK TOLEAVE
Aleta and Emma alone. I’d gotten the horses ready in less than five minutes. Katie told Aleta and Emma just to be careful and on the lookout if anyone came, and to hide down in the cellar if they did. With Aleta there with her, even though she was just a girl, Emma didn’t seem to be as afraid to be left alone as before.
We rode off quickly in the direction the man had gone until, about ten minutes later, we saw him in the distance. Then we slowed. He stopped at several other places along the way while we waited out of sight.
After his third stop, Katie had an idea.
“You wait here, Mayme,” she said once he was out of sight again. “I’m going to go ask Mrs. Travis what he said.”
“You know her?” I asked.
Katie nodded and rode off in the direction of the farmhouse. She dismounted and walked up to the door.
“Hello, Mrs. Travis,” she said when the woman answered, “I don’t know if you remember me—I’m Kathleen Clairborne, from over at Rosewood.”
“Yes, hello, Kathleen,” she said. “You’ve certainly grown since the last time I saw you. How is your mother?”
“Uh … not too well, ma’am,” said Katie. “She wanted me to ask you if there has been a strange man about recently asking you questions.”
“Why, yes, there has … he just left. He was asking if we had seen any coloreds with infants about.”
“Did he say anything more?”
“Only that there was some disease going about and that they had to find all the colored babies in the area.—Why, Kathleen?”
“She just thought it seemed a little strange, that’s all,” said Katie, “and she wanted me to see if he had told you the same thing. Good-bye, Mrs. Travis.”
“Just a minute, Kathleen,” the lady called after her as Katie turned to go. “I have a question for you.—That strange fellow asking about colored babies isn’t the only man who has been asking questions. Has the reverend been out to your place?”
“Reverend Hall … why, no, ma’am,” said Katie, “—what about?”
“He was here just two days ago asking about some lady and her little girl. And you say he wasn’t out to Rosewood?”
Katie shook her head.
“I don’t know what it’s all about. He wouldn’t tell me who it was or why he was interested in them, but he had a serious expression on his face. Just seems like a strange coincidence, that’s all.”
Katie turned and walked back to her horse, leaving the bewildered woman staring after her, not sure what to make of Katie’s visit after the other two she had had recently.
Katie rode back to where I was waiting for her out of sight and told me what she had heard.
“Do you think the minister’s looking for Aleta?” I asked.
“I don’t know. We’ll have to worry about that later,” said Katie. “What should we do now?”
“I guess there’s nothing else for us to do,” I said, “but to keep following him, that is if we want to know what he was doing.”
After a few more stops, the man rode off in a direction that at first seemed to be toward Greens Crossing. As he got closer, Katie began wondering what we would do when he got into town. We couldn’t follow him up close, or let people see us.
But then at the fork in the road, he turned off in the direction of Oakwood.
By now we had been gone more than an hour. We looked at each other, wondering what to do. But we had come this far without finding anything out. If we turned around now, we would know nothing. So we continued to follow.
But then suddenly everything changed when he turned off the road at the sign leading to the McSimmons plantation and my old home—and Emma’s too, as we now realized.
Again we stopped. But by now our curiosity was so high it didn’t take us long to decide to keep going. After all Emma had said and what I knew myself, I was beginning to have even stronger suspicions than before. As we drew closer, we let the man get out of sight, and I began to get nervous all over again. I tried to tell myself that I had nothing to worry about and that I was free now and just like anyone else—white or black. But it didn’t help. Because I knew there was still a difference, and I was on the bottom end of it.
“What are we going to do when we get there?” asked Katie as we rode. “We can’t just go in and say we were following that man.”
“First we have to find out if he’s just coming here to ask about black babies like everywhere else,” I said. “If so, then I reckon the McSimmons haven’t got anything to do with him and then we ought to go up to him and tell him about Emma. But we have to find that out first.”
“What will we say when we get there?”
“I thought we would just pretend to be paying Josepha a visit,” I said.
“But what if they do something to you, Mayme?” Katie said in a worried tone.
“What can they do? I’m not their slave anymore, remember?”
“I know … but I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”
As we rode into the plantation and toward the big house, there was a lot more activity than the last time I was there. People and men and animals and wagons were all moving about. It reminded me of how it used to be, though I didn’t see too many coloreds around.
We stopped and tied up our horses in front of the house. A few people looked at us, but no one said anything. I could tell Katie was nervous. I whispered to her that she didn’t need to be, since no one knew her. But I guess I was nervous too. Having a secret, I suppose, always makes you nervous.
I led her around to the back of the house to the kitchen door, where I figured to find Josepha. I didn’t see any sign of the man we’d been following.
The door was a little way open. I peeked in. Josepha stood with her back to me on the other side of the room. I walked in and Katie followed.
“Hello, Josepha!” I said, walking up to her.
Startled, she turned around. But when she saw me, the look on her face was completely different than the last time when she had been so happy to see me. I could see anxiety in her eyes.
“Mayme, chil’,” she exclaimed, “wha’chu doin’ here?”
“I came … for a visit, Josepha,” I answered. “I wanted you to meet the mistress of the place where I’m staying now … I mean it’s her mother and father’s plantation.—This is Miss Katie Clairborne.”
“I’m pleased ter mee’chu, Miz Clairborne,” said Josepha, “—but chil’,” she added, turning to me again, “you shouldna come.”
“Why not?”
“Things is a heap different now wiff der old master gone.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He be dead, chil’. Da poor old master, he died. An’ now der young master William, he be married an’ da new mistress, she don’ like coloreds none, an’ she an’ he’s different dan his daddy. An’ effen she fin’ me jabberin’ wiff you, I’s git a whuppin’ fo’ sho’.”
“But you said you’re not a slave anymore. How can they whip you?”
“Dey whips who’s dey likes,” she answered, shaking her head. “I may not be no slave, but dey act like dey neber heard ob no Lincoln or no ’mancipation proklimation or nuthin’. So you two’s better skedaddle afore she sees you here.”
“We wanted to know if a man’s come around here asking about colored babies,” I said.
Josepha’s eyes narrowed. “What’s all dis talk ’bout colored babies?”
“He says there’s some disease only colored babies have.”
“Who’s dis man yo’s talkin ’bout?”
“He came to Miss Katie’s asking if we’d seen any black babies around.”
“An’ what did you tell him?” she said, her eyes squinting all the more.
“Uh, nothing,” I answered. “But it just struck me as a mite curious that he’d be asking, that’s all.”
“Well, dere’s black babies an’ den dere’s black babies,” said Josepha cryptically, “an’ some ob ’em ain’t as black as dey seem, dat’s all I be sayin’. An’ dere ain’ nuthin’ I can tell you ’bout it, ’cause I ain’t seen no sech man askin’ no sech questions,” she added.
“Do you mean—” I began, but she interrupted me with a wave of her big fleshy hand.
“I don’ mean nuthin’ mo dan da speculations ob some ole black folks what used ter be slaves dat oughta learn ter keep dere moufs shut. Ain’t no black baby roun’ here gwine come ter no good no how.”
Suddenly a voice startled us all into silence. “Josepha!”
We turned to see a tall white lady walking into the room. How much of Josepha’s previous speech she had heard, I don’t know, but her eyes were on fire. She had a long thin face and wasn’t pretty to my eyes. But Josepha was obviously cowed by the sight of her. Seeing Katie, she turned temporarily from the tongue-lashing she had apparently been about to deliver.
“Who are you?” she said abruptly.
“Uh, Kathleen, ma’am,” mumbled Katie.
“What do you want … what are you doing in my home?”
“I, uh … we just came for a visit, ma’am,” said Katie hesitantly.
“A visit—who are you visiting? I have never seen you before.”
“No, ma’am. We were visiting Josepha.”
“Josepha? What could you possibly want with her? She works for me, and it’s precious little work I get out of her too, especially as long as she is standing here wagging her fat tongue to the likes of you. Well, speak up, girl—I asked you a question. What do you want with Josepha?”
“I don’t … I mean, Mayme used to live here, ma’am … and she wanted to visit.”
For the first time the woman now seemed to notice me. She turned and glared at me, sending her eyes up and down my front as if I was an object of scorn.
“
You
… used to live here?” she said, her voice suddenly very much changed.
“Yes’m,” I said. “My family was all killed in the colored town yonder.”
“Yes, the massacre—I’m aware of that. Why weren’t you killed?”
“I escaped, ma’am.”
“How?”
“I hid.”
“And then what did you do?”
“I ran away.”
She seemed to be thinking for a second, and after the way she’d been eyeing me as she drilled me with questions, I probably should have contemplated a little more directly what she might have been thinking about.