29 Again green pastures

Life broke in strange and complex patterns. Papa had the wanderlust again. He had been receiving glowing letters from my eldest brother, who, after knocking about the sea, had settled in the south. I suspect that, like dear papa, this light-hearted brother saw everything in brighter colours than is given to more cautious souls to see. At any rate, papa took such a fancy to the picture he painted of life in Mississippi that, against every one’s counsel, and to mamma’s heartbreak, he sold the house and everything else that mamma’s economy had made possible, and off we went on the mad adventure.

What was to become of my higher education? What of the normal course my hope was set upon as the first step to glory? Oh well, there were schools everywhere, said he. If not, I might find a rich husband. Anything was likely to happen in the paradise he envisioned. Mamma, a little grim, devoutly hoped that, at least, we’d find something to eat, and a roof to shelter us.

The journey down the Mississippi valley was not without interest. Those interminable miles through black plains vast as the sea; through strange cities and towns, so different from anything I had seen before, stirring the liveliest speculations, and somewhat reviving my sinking hopes. Perhaps we were not heading into sheer disaster, as mamma predicted.

When we crossed the Mason and Dixon line, coming to a stop at a station where hundreds of coal-black faces stared up from the station platform, I lost sight of worry. What a spectacle that was! Never had I dreamt that so many black people could congregate! Never had I seen so many wide grins, such gleaming teeth, such multi-coloured, billowing skirts, and bright turbans. While at every window, black hands offered snowy baskets of fried chicken, golden brown, and irresistible.

What supersedes every other memory, however, was our first view of an immense cotton-field. Acres of bursting cotton, that seemed to float in the coral light of a setting sun, like so many millions of ghostly roses. Of all the beauty to come, the most beautiful, thought I. Yet when the field lay at our backs we found ourselves streaming through a pine forest that must have stood tall and stately when the world was young.

I had thought the Minnesota pines grand beyond dreaming. I had watched them felled in a lumber camp with a constriction of the heart as each giant fell, so convinced was I that something superlative and irreplacable was being stripped from the earth. But here were trees that soared up into the blue with the proud elation of creative thought. Pillars of living grace, to bring the heart of man to the dust in worship of the lovely earth that bore such beauty in her breast.

But, at last, the long lap of the journey ended. We came to a stop in the midst of what seemed empty wilderness, and, stiff and dirty, piled off bag and baggage. Not quite empty, we perceived—some yards away stood an unpainted shack, the station, towards which we stumbled in quest of information. Entering the gloomy box, I looked around, perplexed. Where was the station-master, I wondered.

Whereupon, a panel slid open in the dirty wall, and a rusty voice barked at me: ‘You-all can’t stay there, Missy! Come round, Missy, come round.’

‘I only want to ask —’ I began, and was interrupted sharply.

‘Cain’t you-all read?’ the worthy ancient queried indignantly, pointing to a sign I had failed to see in the murk: ‘COLOURED WAITING-ROOM.’

Meek as milk, I trotted round to a twin cell reserved for the exalted white race, and forthwith was informed that a jitney would come in due course barring acts of God or other violence. ‘Bout an hour, he guessed. The freedom of the field was ours, and right welcome we were in these parts.

Mamma settled down on a box with the baby. The children scampered off like kittens. Papa strolled sedately, inhaling with audible relish the remarkable air. Such fragrance! cried he. Such soft, sweet ozone! He felt another man. How warm it was! Warm as a summer’s day, and this October. Imagine how we’d feel stranded in the open at such an hour by the shores of Lake Superior!

Our jitney joggled into view, and, with the patience of Griselda, set off again through the wood, fetching up at last before a rambling, unpainted structure in the village of Buckatunna. We had arrived.

This dusty road, solitary building, and a gloomy bulk beyond a clump of trees, was all the town we could see. Mamma’s face set in a bleak mask that not even my brother’s fond greeting could melt.

We cheered somewhat after a good wash, and the dinner Minty’s southern wife had thoughtfully prepared. In the evening we drifted to the porch and tried to get our bearings. In the white moonlight the road turned silver, and the shadows cast by the great trees were more purple than black, except where huge masses formed midnight banks against the sky.

The town, we now perceived, was a scattering of houses on either side the most crooked river in the world. Houses all alike, tossed up for temporary use in this temporary town, which depended on the mills for its living. A few homes on the other side of the Chickasahay had been built with some better end in view, but those on our side were nothing but ugly boxes, without conveniences of any kind. There were no industries, nothing but the mills, and, beyond the town, small planters, who lived from hand to mouth. Not a promising prospect for papa, who, I imagined, had laboured some hope of starting a harness shop.

There was charm here for the poet. A sort of sleepy grace enfolded the ramshackle town. At midday the sandy road which was its main artery lay softly golden in the glittering light, and over it ambled many a darky wench in bright green petticoat, and basket on her head. Strings of oxen slept before the store—long teams of them, with sometimes an old blind beast for leader. Now and then a horseman cantered by, raising a fine amber cloud, and making scarcely a sound in the soft dust. And everywhere were fierce razor-back pigs that streaked along on incredibly nimble legs from one unseemly rooting place to another. Built in an hour, destined for a day, the village had something primeval about it. Something old as time, and imperturbable as the trees whose death song hummed all day long from the greedy mills.

Of the people I shall have more to say by and by. My first impression was confined to the strict divisions imposed. The same division of sheep from goats everywhere accepted as right and proper, but here more noticeable, because more honestly and openly avowed than in sophisticated society. It seemed that quite respectable but less highly paid mortals lived on our side of the river; the gentry of the mills on the other. At a nice distance from the respectability sprawled ‘Hell’s Half-Acre,’ the dubious district dedicated to the misfits and the disreputable. Beyond that, again, lay the Negro quarter, where some two thousand cheery black folk disported themselves in their own fashion. I think, if I remember rightly, that the white population numbered about eight hundred.

Of course, I got into trouble right away. Always accustomed to ramble about the hills at home, I set off one late afternoon on a tour of discovery, only to reach home long after dark to find mamma almost in tears, and my brother in a nervous rage. He had always been very dear to me, this brother who had cared for me so often when I was little and mamma was working elsewhere. His anger was prompted by genuine anxiety. A sound riot act he served on me!

Women did not run about the woods down here. They went nowhere unescorted after dark. Only a few days since a negro had been lynched for a brutal assault upon a white woman! I was to behave myself, henceforth, and if I must traipse about the countryside I should have to wait until some nice young man offered to satisfy my curiosity.

My next misdemeanour was to offend such a nice young man. There was a good band in the village, led by my brother, and one of the boys very courteously sent me a note by a little black messenger proposing a drive through the country. Well, we youngsters back home were not very formal. Certainly I’d like to go, said I to the piccaninny, and left it at that.

The young man did not arrive. He was deeply insulted. I should have replied in kind, not trusting such a personal letter to a coloured boy.

I was rescued from the threat of oblivion by a personable individual who was bookkeeper at the general store. Which, in a manner of speaking, brings me to my first serious love affair—never an easy subject. Complete evasion of intimate experiences would scarcely be honest. On the other hand, there is an element of unkindness in exploiting the feeling of others for which I have little taste.

However, a casual survey of the women men presumably love and marry, poor darlings, reveals an amazing democracy and forbearance—sufficiently astonishing to lead one to believe that any female clothed in a whole skin must have had a lover. Toss in a bit of whimsy and humour, and the possibilities are boundless. This precious fact must serve as my defence. My relationships with men have been extremely fortunate. For which I thank a plain face and a sense of humour. Safe as a salt block from the purely predatory male, I should, none the less, fall short of truth contending that masculine charity had passed me by. Life is not so cruel as that!

To continue: Bob duly presented himself, and carried me off to some sort of party on the elect side of the river. He was an amiable sort, and took no offence when his best friend whisked me off his hands. This high-handed individual had an impish eye, devilry all over him, and a most engaging manner. Not handsome, except for those brown, mischievous eyes and a lighting of his face when he laughed—the kind of laugh that puts you in mind of music, and moonlight, and spangled Christmas trees.

Every one grinned at the mere mention of Gordon Bannister. A likeable rapscallion, said the villagers. A rapscallion, none the less. Unconscionable flirt, he spent his money like water, had no serious thought in his head, and for all that any one knew he might have a brace of wives in Mobile, he flittered thither so often. What was even more reprehensible, not being a native of these parts, but a suspect product of Little Rock, Arkansas, he was callously indifferent to the hopes he raised in palpitating country bosoms.

This charming plague took it into his head to herd me out of that party into the silken treachery of moonlight and leafy lane, so dear to the heart of poets brewing doom for guileless females. As if that were not enough, the mad young man raved like a book, expertly exploiting every shade of sentiment and all the gradations of a fluent voice. For a mile or more I stood the strain of it without breaking. Then, I’m sorry to say, the humour of it ran away with me.

Midways of a most romantic bridge that spanned the sleepiest of serpentine rivers, I—to quote the wounded gentleman—threw a fit: shrieked with laughter to the shuddering skies, and to the disquiet of every self-respecting water snake and slumberous alligator. Presently, we were both hanging helplessly over the rail, poor poetry dead as a smoked herring.

‘You’re a nasty creature,’ said the young man, when breath permitted. ‘Nasty, unfeeling little friend. How about it—shall we be friends, you monkey?’

‘Why not? I want to see the country, and I can’t run about with my shadow.’

‘That’s what I call a noble spirit,’ quoth he. ‘But what a disappointing audience! Here I strain my heart putting up a good show, and what do I get for it? Not a gentle twitter! What was wrong with it, pray?’

‘Just everything. A good show works up to the climax—or hadn’t you thought of that?’ said I, glad of the chatter. There would be more than enough of monotony when I got back to the cluttered rooms we called home. It was lovely, being there, where the moonlight played whitely over the opaque waters of the slow, coiling river moving soundlessly under the black shadows of the heavy trees. And what girl of seventeen can fail to be a little thrilled at the pleasant lies of a gay young man with the gleam of devilry in his eyes?

‘Oh, I see,’ he retorted. ‘You have a nice taste in conquest. Well, I shall mend my manners, I promise you. I’ll map out a plan in easy stages before asking you to come for a drive. Now tell me, what on earth brought you to this God-forsaken place?’

That was not for me to explain to a stranger so I changed the subject, switching to my curiosity about the country, the mills that were devouring a sea of timber, the little sprawling village, and the people, whose way of life was so strange. So we hung there, upon the splintered rail, for how long only the stars knew, while Bannister told me how northern capital was financing the timber operations in this most backward of southern states. Poverty and inertia were the curse of Mississippi, said he. The last state to be laid waste by the Civil War, it had not yet gained a normal rhythm of existence—quite possibly would never gain its former peace and security.

Some day, he would take me to see an old ruined plantation that would tell the tale better than words. For himself, he was here for the time being, because he made a good living. When he had saved a little money he was going back where he’d never see another confounded mill, and where you could think of trees in better terms than so many feet of boarding. If it wasn’t for the occasional jamboree in Mobile, that kept him from going crazy, he’d never have stuck it this long. Why, the highlights of existence here were wakes and christenings—and of neither enough to wear out a pair of shoes!

Hardly enheartening, yet when I slipped into the silent house it was not to envision wakes but to wonder if I should hear again that easy voice juggling truth and fancy under the stars. He was going to Mobile for the week-end, he said, but promised to redeem a bad beginning when he came back. What was a promise to a lunatic young man who lied like a poet, and cheerfully admitted the fact, thought I gloomily, braiding my hair for the night. Was it conceivable that nothing more entrancing than city lights prompted those weekly flights into Alabama? No, not likely, I told myself sensibly, and decided to make my peace with Bob.