A Perilous Proposal (26 page)

He stood there stunned, his eyes wide, his face white. After a few minutes, Katie put her hand in his and led him in the direction of where she and I had buried her family. I followed them, but from a distance.

Katie took him to the spot, then stopped. They just stood there looking down at the graves, not saying a
word. Slowly her uncle stretched one of his arms around Katie's shoulders and pulled her to his side. She leaned her head against his chest and shoulders and again began to cry. I figured they needed to be alone and didn't need prying eyes staring at their backs. As I turned and walked away, I took one last look back. Seeing Katie leaning into her uncle's arms, I knew my life was about to change forever.

Katie's kinfolk knew. Everything was bound to change because of that. Without even consciously trying, my brain was working hard to brace itself for whatever this was going to mean, even if it meant that in a few days I'd be gone from Rosewood and might not ever see Katie again.

After a while, I saw Katie and her uncle walk slowly back from the graves and into the house together. He still had his arm around her, and she was leaning against his side as she walked, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. As nervous as I was about what all this might mean, it warmed my heart to see them together like that.

When I entered the kitchen a short time later, Katie and her uncle were both seated at the table quietly talking. Katie's eyes were red. She glanced up at me and tried to smile.

“Hi, Mayme,” she said. Her voice was still husky from crying.

“Hi,” I said.

“I told him everything, Mayme . . . I couldn't help it. I hope you're not mad at me.”

“Of course not, Katie,” I said, glancing toward her uncle. “You had to . . . he's your kin.”

As her uncle watched, he seemed moved by our obvious love for each other. But I could see he was looking strangely at me, just as he had in the field. I was
used to that. White folks always look different at blacks than they do their own kind. But something about the way Katie's uncle did it was strange. It made me feel funny in a different kind of way than any feeling I'd ever had.

“This is Mayme, Uncle Templeton . . . Mayme Jukes,” said Katie. “She's the best friend I've ever had.”

My eyes started blinking fast to hear Katie's words. I knew it wouldn't do much good for me to start crying too. But it was all I could do to keep from it.

“I am happy to know you, Mayme Jukes,” said Katie's uncle. “My name is Templeton Daniels, and from what Katie has told me, I suppose I owe you my thanks—for helping look after her, for helping look after the place . . . and for helping bury my sister and her family.”

I nodded and forced a smile. I didn't know what to say.

At last Katie broke the silence by jumping straight into the middle of it.

“Does Rosewood belong to you now, Uncle Templeton?” she asked.

Katie's words seemed to sober her uncle all the more. I reckoned the poor man was having a lot thrown at him at once. He'd just found out that his sister was dead and that his niece had been running the plantation with an assortment of colored kids. And now suddenly his own future had changed as much as ours
.

Mr. Daniels looked at the two of us staring at him, then chuckled a little nervously.

“I don't see how that could be, Kathleen,” he said. “I'm no kin to your pa.”

“Does it belong to Uncle Burchard, then?” Katie asked. “You won't tell him, will you, Uncle Templeton?”

“I've never met your father's brother. I only heard
Rosalind mention him a time or two.”

“I don't want to go live with him.”

“We're not going to do anything until we have a chance to think this thing over a bit.”

Katie looked up at me. “I told him about the gold, Mayme. And about the men who came here looking for it. He says the gold was Uncle Ward's—that's Mama's other brother.”

“And do you know if he's coming back for it, sir?” I asked, finally sitting down with them.

“Naw . . . Ward's dead, as far as I know,” he replied. “At least that's what I heard. I haven't seen him in years, and the last time I did there were men after him. I tried to pick up his trail several times, but it always went cold. Take the gold and use it, I say. He's never coming back.”

“We already did,” said Katie. “But it was only about fifty dollars. That wasn't enough to pay off Mama's loan.”

“Hmm . . . I thought there was more. Those men sure think there is more,” he added.

“Why, do you know them, Uncle Templeton?”

“I've run into them a time or two—that is, if it's the same bunch. They're convinced I was in on it with Ward.”

“If there'd been more, we wouldn't have had to pick the cotton,” said Katie. “But we earned over three hundred dollars, didn't we, Mayme?”

Mr. Daniels whistled in astonishment. “That is a lot of money! It must have been hard work.”

“It was. We paid off the first loan, but there's still one more loan to pay off. That's why we're still picking cotton.”

We talked a bit more, but I soon excused myself and went upstairs to my room, feeling downcast and
wondering what was to become of Emma and me.

Suddenly a sound disturbed my thoughts. I turned around and there was Mr. Daniels standing in the doorway looking at me.

“I was just—” I started to say. But the sudden look that came over his face silenced me. His face went white and he gasped. It was such an odd expression that I couldn't take my eyes off him either. The two of us just stood there for a minute, staring at each other. Suddenly, he turned and stumbled away and down the stairs. But just before he turned away, I thought I saw tears in his eyes.

Some time later, I was outside hanging some wash on the line when I heard footsteps behind me.

I turned and there stood Mr. Daniels only a few feet away. Again he was staring at me strangely.

“Hello, Mary Ann,” he said. “I'm sorry . . . didn't mean to startle you.”

“How did you know my name?” I asked, trying to hide that he had startled me and that I'd nearly jumped out of my skin to see him standing there so close.

“I asked Emma,” he said with a smile. “She told me.”

“Nobody calls me that,” I said, going on with the laundry. “Nobody except Katie when she's funning me.”

“It's a nice name,” he said. “A pretty name.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I meant it,” he said.

“It ain't like a white man to think kindly about coloreds,” I said. I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. It was probably a stupid thing to say to a white man I hardly knew, though it was true enough.

Mr. Daniels chuckled lightly. “You're right about that,” he said. “But I've always been a little different
than other white men in that regard.”

“Why's that?” I asked, starting to relax a little.

“I reckon because that's how my mama taught me—that's Kathleen's grandmother, her mama's mother. Eliza Jane Daniels, that was her name. She taught Rosalind and Ward and Nelda and me that everyone was equal in God's sight, and that if God had seen fit to make people with different-colored skin, then the least we could do was treat everyone equal.”

“Lots of white men go to church but are as mean as can be to coloreds.”

“I reckon that's so,” he said. “But our mama taught us different.” He paused, then looked at me closely. “Mary Ann,” he said, “would you mind . . . mind telling me . . . what was your mama's name?”

His words were so unexpected that I just stood there staring back at him. What could he possibly care about that?

“I don't know why—” I began.

“Please, I know you may not understand,” he said, and his voice sounded almost urgent, “but it is important to me.”

“All right, then. I don't reckon there'd be any harm in it,” I said. “Her name was Lemuela . . . Lemuela Jukes.”

The instant I said the word, his face showed a momentary look of shock, as if I'd slapped him across the mouth. He took a step back, still staring at me with an expression stranger than all the rest. His mouth seemed to go dry and his face was pale.

“And . . . and she was killed along with everyone else?” he asked, his voice low and husky-like.

“Yes, sir,” I said, suddenly feeling very strange.

Mr. Daniels said nothing more. He just turned and walked slowly away.

The next morning when we got up, Templeton Daniels was gone.

“Do you think he'll be back?” I asked Katie when I found her in the kitchen.

“I don't know,” Katie replied. “With Uncle Templeton . . . you never know.” She sighed and squared her shoulders. “Well, uncle or no uncle, we have more cotton to pick.”

C
OTTON
-P
ICKIN
' H
ENRY

37

O
nce we had milked the cows and tended the other animals, we went back out in the field to work again. It was tedious, especially without Jeremiah's company, and we worked slower and went along in rows next to each other. We had been working two or three hours and the weariness had begun to set in.

Katie sighed and said, “I think these rows are getting longer every time we turn around.”

“That's the way cotton is,” I laughed. “It seems like it's never going to end!”

When Katie suggested it was time for a water break, no one argued with her.

We walked toward the wagon where William was sleeping and where we had jugs of water and milk. As we walked, Emma asked why we had to keep picking cotton, since we had already given the man at the bank his money. Katie began explaining how her mama owed the bank a lot of money and they still had another loan to pay, when all of a sudden she stopped talking right in the middle of a sentence.

I looked over at her. She was standing still as a statue. I turned around in the direction she was
looking. There was a tall black man walking slowly toward us from between the long rows of cotton.

It was Henry!

Suddenly we forgot all about water! We just stood there stock-still as he walked toward us. I was sure that Jeremiah hadn't told him. But there was no way around his papa finding out now more than we'd wanted to tell him. It seemed like our secret was suddenly spilling out all over the place.

Henry sauntered up and stopped and just looked us over one at a time. I figured we were in big trouble now and that the worst of it'd come on me. But Henry just stood there a few seconds. Then he finally spoke, and it wasn't what I had expected.

“Y'all got anudder satchel a feller cud use?” he said, as if there wasn't anything unusual going on at all.

I took mine off and handed it to him. I wasn't quite sure what he wanted it for, but I figured I could use the big pockets in my dress for a while.

He slung it over his shoulder, then stooped down and started picking away on the next row beside mine. Katie looked over at me, and we all looked at each other, and then started slowly in again, none of us saying a word.