Horrible Harvest

Trigger warning: This is a highly offensive passage. I know this because I wrote it, and the story about the baby in the coffle is based on a true story. It’s horrific and hard to read. In addition, this has that dehumanizing word that gives me no pleasure using, but unfortunately it’s necessary for tone and authenticity.

When the broadcasting was done, we packed away our bags, and sprint like ponies to the house. I was done over from chin to toe in a paste of pluff mud, and Momma weren’t having none of it. I wasn’t allowed to set foot inside her tiny but tidy house. I was given breakfast enough for two helpings and directed to eat outside. When I’d et’ it all up, then I was to wash up before coming back into get some shut eye. Charles did not get the same direction since he’d only gone knee-deep in the sludge. He was made to take his trousers off before entering the house, and enter he did to feast at the table with the rest of the family.

I was tickled to near death at my banishment because it saved me from sneaking food out the house. I bolted toward the riverbank, careful not to drop any food nor spill my cup of milk. Over the knoll, I stopped dead in my tracks. The girl wasn’t perched underneath the willows as I’d instructed her. I scanned up and down the river’s edge. Looked as far into the marsh as I could see. She was nowhere. I was just about to give into the notion that a gator or water had taken her when she stepped out from behind one of the willows. Seeing her standing full and in unobstructed view, I was amazed and scared stupid by how small she was.

I ran to her, happy as I’ve ever been at the sight of another human being. “I got a mess of food for you.”

She stepped back as I approached, not knowing what to make of my excitement.

“Pork and potatoes. Buttered bread. Beans. Goat’s milk.” I held it out for her to see. “There’s enough for two, but you can have it all. Momma always makes more than our bellies can take when we’ve been on our travels.”

She didn’t approach.

“Here.” I careful-like placed the plate and cup on the ground and then took a few steps back.

She looked from me to the food to the knoll and then back to the food. Before I could tell her everything was okay, she lurched forward and dived towards the plate, grabbing up the bread, all in the blink of an eye.

“I guess you were hungry,” I said as she tore into the bread with her teeth.

She scooped up a handful of beans and packed as much as she could into her mouth.

“Hold up,” I said, pulling a spoon from my pocket.

She snatched it out of my hand and dug into the beans again.

I sat ten feet from her. “You gotta name?”

She looked at me with a mouthful of food and said, “Virginia.”

“That where you’re from? That why they named you that?”

She chewed on a hunk of pork and nodded. “Master says I’m a Virginia nigger. Top notch. Top price. Give me a high dollar name, so people put in high dollar bids.”

“How old are you?”

She considered my question. “Don’t know. How old are you?”

“Ten.”

“Then I’ll be ten, too.”

“You’re too small to be ten.”

“How big am I then?” she asked after gulping down some milk.

“I’d say you’re seven or eight, maybe.”

She shrugged. “Don’t matter to me.”

“That woman. The one back yonder. The one in the woods. That your Momma?”

She shook her head as she continued to attack her food. “That’s Miss Dana. You see her?”

I nodded.

“Mr. Benny caught hold of her. I seen it. Mr. Darnell punched her up pretty good.”

“How’d you get away?”

“Hid up in the treetops. They couldn’t see nothing of me. I can climb good and high.”

“You have any place in particular you were running?”

She stopped mid-chew and nodded. “We was off to find Miss Dana’s baby.”

“Off where?”

“Back the way we come. Miss Dana’s baby was named Frances, and they got bought up together. Only Frances got sick along the way. Little thing couldn’t stop crying. Cried an awful lot, she did. Mr. Stanley, he said, ‘Shut that little nigger up!’ about a hundred times before he couldn’t take it no more. There was nothing Miss Dana could do. That baby of hers was just sick and had a trough load of tears in her. When he saw we was passing this one house, he grabbed little Frances away from Miss Dana and carried that teeny-tiny crying baby to that house by her legs, and he told the woman who answered the door, he told her, ‘Here woman, this nigger baby is yours. Free of charge.’ That woman took little Frances and smiled like the Devil had just handed her a bucket of gold.”

I wished straight away I hadn’t heard a story such as the one she told, but Davidson had spoke of similar occurrences. Traders didn’t much care for mothers with babies because they slowed down coffles. Davidson even told of some coffle managers leaving babies in the woods just to be rid of them. Davidson would claim only God knows what become of them, but I knew, too, and it ain’t something I like to think about.

“What’re you going to do now?” I asked.

She wiped the remnants of beans from her mouth with her forearm. “I can’t say. Haven’t thought of nothing but food for the longest of time. Couldn’t think of nothing else.”

“You hear of freedman?”

“Heard of it plenty. Ain’t a slave alive that ain’t heard of it. Don’t none of us know if it’s for true real, but we heard of it. Got a fine far walk ahead of me just to find out if such a thing is for real true, too. Might as well make a trip to heaven. I ain’t got no idea if that’s a real place or not neither.”

“Davidson,” I said. “He’s this slave from the Stephen’s plantation that passes through our property on his way running errands in town. He’s says freedman are real. He had the notion they even got a tolerance for them up north.”

“Like I said, that’s a fine far walk.” Before taking another bite out of the bread, she looked at me. “What’s your family like? They like you?”

“What do you mean, like me?”

“I mean nice.”

I thought about Miss Dana laying on the couch back at the old Pritchard plantation. “I ain’t – nice.”

“You brung me food enough for two to eat.”

“Yeah, but I’ve done other things. Anyway, the rest of the family ain’t like me. My Brother Charles – He’s not a bad sort, but he can be scared into anything. Momma’s not nice nor mean. She’s just Momma. Daddy and Brother Douglas are just plain nasty-mean.”

“Still, they might could use me. I’ve helped out in the kitchen and other household doings.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I ain’t no trouble. I mean, I ran, I did, but I let Miss Dana’s sad talk of her baby get to me. I can’t be swayed by that kind of thing no more. I swear.”

“You want to – Bondage yourself to our rice farm? To my Daddy?”

“I’ll be on my best.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking. My Daddy wouldn’t take you, and that’d be your best day. I can promise you that. He’s not a gentle man. He’s not a decent man. He’s not fit for fathering, let alone slave owning. I tell you true, if ol’ Horace Tennyson finds out about you skirting around his property, he’ll tie you up and let our hogs nibble on you before delivering you back to Mr. Miller’s advance man. That’s just the way of things.”

She held me in a sorrowful gaze before she moved her hands to her face to cover her eyes while she let out a good cry.

I was taken aback by her tears. “Oh, I didn’t mean to make you cry. I was just trying to make you see that binding yourself to my daddy is not a thing that can nor should happen. I’m his boy, and I don’t much care being bound to him.”

“I ain’t gotta place to go.”

I give the matter some thought and then did my best to console her. “That ain’t true. The way I see it, you got this whole world full of places you can go.”

She snorted back a bubble of snot coming out of her nose. “Only white folk would think a thing like that. I ain’t but seven or eight or ten, maybe, and even I know black as I am I can’t go nowhere where folks can lay eyes on me. I shoun’t ever run. I shoun’t let Miss Dana’s crying get to me. Mind my own. That’s what Mrs. Drake told me. She says, ‘Virginia, you got a long walk. You don’t be no trouble, and trouble won’t visit you.’ What’d I do? I was trouble and now I ain’t got nothing but trouble.”

I watched her cry a few minutes more and searched for an answer to give her some hope. “I say you head north. Davidson, he’s smart. If he says there’re freedmen up north, there’re freedmen up north…” I snapped my fingers and said with a bark, “Davidson! He’s overdue.”

“Wha-choo mean?”

“Mr. Stephens says Davidson ain’t come back yet. He was due back two – Nah, three days, it is now.”

“So?”

“So, that means he’s due to come through here any time now. He always comes through our property ‘cause he knows us.”

“But he’s late coming back.”

“That don’t mean nothing. Mrs. Stephens says the boat was most likely late. That kind of thing happens all the time. She says there ain’t no need to worry.”

Virginia shrugged. “Maybe, but Master Drake says a late nigger is a dead nigger. That’s what he says.”

“Well, I don’t know your Master Drake well enough to call him a fool, but that’s how I’m leaning towards my thoughts on him.”

“Momma liked him enough. She was scared of him, but she liked him anyways. Didn’t have no choice, I reckon. Says he was good to her at times. Better than anyone had been to her. Set her up nice-like in the basement of the house. He brought her gifts and such. He’d take up with her whenever Mrs. Drake had one of her spells. She had a lot of them spells. Sickly woman she was. Babies all died at birth.” She paused before saying, “He was my daddy, Mr. Drake, but I wasn’t to call him that. Not never. Wasn’t never to tell no one neither. Guess I shoun’t told you.”

“Telling me don’t matter,” I said. “I ain’t nobody.”

She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “This Davidson, you really think he’ll come through here?”

“I got a pretty good idea he will, and he always takes the same path around our property. I’ll just plop myself down there and wait for him. If he’s to come, today will be the day. It has to be.”

“And if he don’t come?”

Standing, I said, “We’ll think on that when we have to.” I looked down at the half-empty plate. “I’ll get you a sack for the remainders there, so you’ll have something for later. I started back toward the knoll.”

She called out to me. “Wha-chore name?”

I stopped and looked back at her. “Augustus. Augustus Tennyson.”

She smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Augustus. I wished your family was nice, like you. I do. Stay here forever, I would.”

With a smile, I said, “I wish the same thing. But Momma says God doesn’t always give you doors to walk through. Sometimes, he gives you walls to climb. ‘Course she’s not big on religion and such, but I guess she likes the sentiment of the saying. We’re going to get you over that wall, Virginia. Just you wait.”