There was a quarter-mile race track without a hoofprint on it yet and a white, freshly painted grandstand ready to be filled that evening for the first time. Behind the grandstand were ten or twelve long, low barns for livestock, and beyond the barns was a pair of fenced circles with stone boats, where ox and horse-pulling contests were already under way. Beyond these were several large exhibition halls for showing and judging produce and crafts, and then rows of small, canvas-sided booths where shifty-eyed characters plied the crowd with games of chance and sold cheap novelties and gew-gaws. Nearby, clouds of fragrant smoke poured from pit-fires where flocks of chickens were grilled and whole hogs roasted on spits and potatoes and unshucked ears of corn cooked in the ashes.
We registered our livestock and installed them in the barns and pitched our camp alongside several other families from North Elba, in a grove of low pines directly behind the sheep barn, and in short order we all separated from one another, each to follow his or her particular interest. Father headed straight for the sheep barn and, of course, very soon found himself lecturing on the proper care of sheep and wool to anyone willing to listen, a sizeable number of farmers and sheepmen, in fact, who had on their own gathered around the box-stalls where he had installed his merinos, for the large, healthy, heavy-fleeced animals were an excellent advertisement of Father’s skills and knowledge. Ruth went off in search of Henry Thompson, who was not at his family’s camp; Mary and the girls, Annie and Sarah, disappeared in the direction of the exhibition halls; and the boys, Watson, Salmon, and Oliver, raced away with a gang of young fellows from North Elba, leaving me to wander the fairgrounds alone.
I saw her almost at once. I had lingered in the sheep barn, listening to the Old Man hold forth for a few moments, and then, when I caught myself saying his sentences silently ahead of him, had drifted away, and as I passed out of the low shed and made my way towards the booths on the midway — suddenly, there she was. She was a considerable distance away but glinting brightly in the crowd, like gold in gravel, outside one of the exhibition halls — she was the only Negro in a group of white women and girls that included my stepmother, Mary, and sisters Annie and Sarah. Susan’s pale gray bonnet hid her face from my view, but I knew instantly, from her posture and the precise tilt of her head and the easy gestures of her hands, that it was she, and my heart leapt up.
She and Mary talked together for a few minutes longer, and then Mary embraced her and, with the other girls and women, drew away and strolled inside the hall, leaving her to stand alone outside with a characteristically bemused expression on her face. She was wearing a red and white plaid dress, which I recognized as one that Ruth had given her last winter, and carried a wicker basket, over which she had draped her shawl. For a moment, she seemed unsure of which direction to go, but finally she turned to her left and made her way towards the fairway.
I followed at a discreet distance, until she turned into a narrow, shaded space between the second and third exhibition halls. No one else was there, and I quickened my pace and came up behind her and said her name.
She turned abruptly, her dark eyes open wide, frightened to see a man suddenly this close to her, for I had come to within a few feet of her before speaking. Then she recognized me, and the fear left her face, replaced at once by a heaviness — a sadness, as I saw it, which produced in me a corresponding sadness and made me wish to embrace her, but I withheld myself and in a trembling voice said that I was happy to see her.
“It’s been a long while, Mister Brown,” she answered. “I was pleased to see your mother looking so strong again. And Annie and little Sarah.”
“Yes. We all miss you, Susan.”
“Well. That’s nice, Mister Brown. Thank you.”
We made light, nervous conversation for a few moments, asking after each other’s health, speaking of the weather, the surprising size of the fairgrounds, the great number of people, and so on — until I suddenly heard myself blurt, “Susan, I must tell you, Susan, that in his heart my father has replaced me. He’s replaced me with Lyman.”
“What… what do you mean?”
“I bear Lyman no resentment for this, but it’s hurt me, Susan.”
She appeared shocked and said that it could not be true. “You shouldn’t be envious of Lyman. He loves and admires your father over all other men,” she said. “But you, you’re your father’s son, Mister Brown. And your father, he loves you for that, I know. More than he can ever love Lyman.”
“No! You don’t understand. You see, Lyman is more important to him than I am. And with good reason.”
She sighed heavily. “What are you wanting me to say to you, Mister Brown?”
I was silent for a moment. Finally, I said, “Please, just tell me why you’ve moved away from us.”
For the first time, she shifted her eyes away from mine. “Well, I explained it to your mother and your sister back then, back when we first decided. It was due to Lyman wanting to farm his own land and to live in his own house. That’s all. We been with you all for a long time.”
“No, not Lyman! I know why he left, and I know the real reason, too! I’m the cause of that. No, I want you to tell me why you left us.”
“It’s very simple, Mister Brown. I went where my husband said. That’s the whole of it. And you’re not the cause of anything Lyman done, Mister Brown,” she declared. Then she lifted herself to her full height and said, “This is not a right conversation for us to be having.”
“Yes, it is, because we need to talk. I need you to hear me. Even though you’ll despise me, because it’s… it’s a sin for me to feel for you as I do, and I have no right to say anything about it to you, because—”
She placed her hand gently on my arm and stopped me. “Mister Brown, please, sir, I know you’re a decent man. You are. But you are all mixed up” she declared, looking straight at me. “I’m saying this to you, Mister Brown, because I like you, I truly do, and I know you don’t mean me no harm. But Lyman, he told me what happened last winter between you and him, when you come back from all your travels to England and you beat on him out there in the barn that day. So I know things, Mister Brown. Maybe more even than Lyman knows, since he is a man and is a little mixed up about these same things, too. But I’ve watched you, Mister Brown, and felt sorry for you, because I can see that you are all confused and mixed up and angered. Maybe due to your father. Who is a strong, good man doing good works, and he believes that he needs your help, so he won’t send you off from him. Mainly that, I think. That, and us being coloreds and you wanting to help our people like you do. It’s the two things. They make you think about Lyman too much, which is how you come now to be thinking about me too much.”
“No;’ I said. “It’s not that. None of it.”
“Just stop that now! Stop. I’m not angry with you, Mister Brown, because I know you don’t mean any harm. But I’m a colored woman, and my husband is a colored man. And we wouldn’t be having this conversation, you know, not a word of it, if my husband and I was white people.”
I stepped back from her. “Yes. You’re right. Please, then, please tell me what should I do.”
“Do? Not for me to say, Mister Brown,” she said tenderly. “I know you want to be natural and peaceful and respectful with colored folks. But if you can’t, well, maybe you should stick to your own kind. Lots of good folks, white and colored alike, that’s what they do. Go away from your father and live amongst white people. Why not go out there to Ohio, Mister Brown, where your other brothers are, and find yourself a wife and settle down with her?”