What Page didn’t give, the land provide. See, in Rains County, the earth give off a deep redness. If you know how, you can dig down into the dirt and put a little sugar in it. Taste jus like cake.
Yuck. She had never heard of nobody eatin dirt.
Bout any food you imagine flow from the red of that land. Peaches, watermelon, strawberries—
Porsha closed her inky eyes and created night. Sketched places and faces in the black lands of her mind. Going there to know there.
— raspberries, celery, orange, grapefruit, cabbage, sweet corn, squash, turnips, cucumbers, collard greens and mustard, too, pumpkins—
Pumpkins? You mean like Halloween? You carved and Uncle John carved. The smooth orange head felt like a warm belly in your hands.
Yes. And string beans and butter, garden peas and black-eye, tomatoes, beets, tobacca, rice, lemon, cane, and sorghum. Pecans and walnuts sprouted up wild, papershell so soft you can crack them with finger and thumb. And green apples.
In August, you hang up yo tobacca to dry. Put the peanuts on a white cloth to dry in the sun.
Each word was a perfect jewel in the open light.
But hard work to eat. Even though Page buy every labor-saving machine and then some. Sometimes the soil baked hard enough to break hoe, pick, or shovel.
All dem pretty girls will be there
Shuck that corn befo you eat
They will fix it for us rare
Shuck that corn befo you eat
I know that supper will be big
Shuck that corn befo you eat
I think I smell a fine roast pig
And plenty of ponds, rivers, and lakes. Catfish, perch, trout, eel, cooter, gator, and what have you.
Gator?
You bet gator. Whole Daddy go git a ax handle and chase a gator when one come floppin up past de chinaberry trees at the front gate. And forests with coon and deer and possum and rabbit to hunt. You been hunting yet?
No. I’m a girl.
A girl? You mean Junior ain’t learn you to hunt?
No.
A girl or no girl. Ain’t nothin like it.
You learn Inez?
You watch the bird on the branch. The bird gets sharper by your watching and the bird not knowing.
You learn Georgiana?
Quiet and careful. What will it do? A hen you know. How it moves, how it eats, how it lays eggs, how it sleep. But a bird on a branch …
WHOLE DADDY WAS JUS TEN OR ELEVEN when he came to Sabine Hall — bout your age — and he spent forty-four or forty-five years there. Came when Cuthbert Page was leaving for the war. Last time Whole Daddy saw him live or dead. Night before Page left, Whole Daddy dreamed of him counting money. The next morning, Page gathered up his traveling shoes. And left them unworn, cause it seemed he wasn’t gone but a quick minute when the letter arrived, He dead.
Ten or eleven when he came, but his memory already long. No day dawned befo he came to Sabine Hall. He often told about his firs job where he lay on the cold floor next to his master and mistress bed. Wake them at the proper hour. Help them bathe and dress. Check they commode. Smell their waste to see if it healthy. Clean and wash the commode. When he got a lil muscle, they sent him to work the fields. He slept in a lil hut-shack. No window in his hut-shack. The only light get in when you come in or leave out the open door. Wind and rain come in and the cooking smoke won’t go out. A lil hut-shack to worry the head down on the bare floor, beaten earth, perhaps a toss or two of straw, but don’t worry that. So tired usually you eat dinner raw and sleep befo you rest yo eyes and befo yo feet member if it’s Monday or Friday. But he was honery. After they work him hard, he’d run off and hide out in the woods a few days. Then he’d come back and take his whooping. Traded him in when they got tired of whooping him. Like I said, he was honery. He never found a place to rest his hat. Farm to farm, bent over in the fields season to season, sun to sun, seasoned on one farm or another, farm to farm, a new master each year, workin side by side wit his master in the field, farms so po and shabby he be lucky if nother nigga there to pass time wit. Farm to farm, field to field, till he landed at Sabine Hall.
Cuthbert Page was the most famous man in Rains County. He once traded with this judge in Yawkatukchie a passel of crazy niggas fo a passel of uncrazy ones. The uncrazy niggas carried him home on their backs. Burpin drunk and laughin.
He work fast and hard like a reborn man. Ran rough and smooth over raw country people. From where? Rumored London, Scotland, Wales, Ireland.
She knew those places from maps.
Niggas taught him his daily bath. He repaid in kind. Any nigga could go to his back door, plate in hand. And he learned them to speak the English language without corruption. I don’t want no dummies round my son, he said. What he hear, see, speak, he learn.
Then he ran off to Greek.
Massa and Missus have gon far away
Gone on they honeymoon a long time to stay
And while they’s gone on that lil spree
I’se gon down to Memphis pretty girl to see
Greece, she said. I know where that is. Geography was her favorite and best subject. She pondered the globes of people’s eyes. Studied longitude and latitude, the lined bottoms of feet and the palms of hands, measuring degrees.
Said one or two words to his son, the mamma being still and dead, and no more turn his head, and run off to war. Stabbed to death wit an ear of corn.
Three days after he died, a hailstorm hit the county. Fist-sized ice fell from the sky and knocked out the windows, punched holes in the roof. A storm came every day at noon fo three days and lasted exactly three minutes. (Whole Daddy timed it.) Calhoun Page the son took it as a sign. He wrapped himself in mystery, devoting his time to fasting and praying.
He decided to free any nigga wanna be free. By county law, he couldn’t free no nigga. So he offer to buy them safe passage to Canady or Library.
Canada? Liberia? she said. I know where they are. I can show you on the map up there. Pointing to the red-tacked map nailed to the wood-eyed wall.
Some niggas went. Whole Daddy stayed on. Canady and Library, them jus words.
Page drew up a deed so if he died the niggas would own some land. Everything legal. Written in stone.
Page opened his front door to any nigga who wanted to sup at his table. And that ain’t all. Built two or three lil red schoolhouses, learned over by the best teachers in the county. Teach the niggas figgas along wit words. He built fifteen chapels with the best wood, full of preachers of strong lungs and learning. He prayed with the niggas, led them in song, caught the motion of their bodies and did as they did. Preach in any pulpit that grant him privilege. Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that ye also have a master in heaven. And he wrote letters to the newspapers.
Always I felt the moral guilt of it, felt how impossible it must be for a master of men and an owner of souls to win his way to heaven. I must give an account of my stewardship. My sins form a part of those hidden things of darkness, which are linked by a chain into the deepest realms of hell.