“That’s the first thing I thought of, I tell you frankly. Then I had a better idea.” Pleasants smiled foxily. “You know the old saying, ‘Living well is the best revenge’? The railroad paid me good money, and I never did get around to buying that house down in Wilmington, so I have a tidy sum in a bank there. I was thinking of moving up here to Nash County, buying myself a farm, and working it with free labor, white and black both. How does that strike you?”
“Your new neighbors may not like it—”
“Along with the farm, I’ll buy a rifle,” Pleasants said, looking very much like a man who had commanded a Union regiment.
“—but if anybody can make a go of it, I expect you’re the fellow,” Caudell finished. He meant it. If ever he’d met an all-around competent man, Henry Pleasants was the one. “Come to think about it, folks hereabouts will likely give you more leeway than they would somebody who was born in North Carolina. They’ll reckon you’re a damnfool crazy Yankee who doesn’t know any better.”
“I love you too, Nate.” Pleasants snorted in suppressed mirth. “Maybe I am a damnfool crazy Yankee. If I had any sense, I would go back to the United States, you know? But letting a bunch of rich peckerheads in embroidered waistcoats run me out of here just sticks in my craw. So I figure I’ll stay around and show ‘em.”
“You’re stubborn enough to make a Southern man, that’s certain.” Caudell cocked his head to one side.” You aim to buy a farm up here, you say? Why not down around Wilmington? The land is better there. You could raise rice or indigo, make more than you would here at tobacco and corn.”
“The delta land is richer, but it costs more, too. And besides—” Pleasants paused to clap Caudell on the back. “I thought I’d sooner live close by a friend.”
“Thank you, Henry.” They walked along in companionable silence for several steps. Caudell tried to remember if he’d ever had a finer compliment. He couldn’t think of one. A few stars poked through the clouds that drifted by overhead. The evening, he realized, was getting chilly. It had a habit of doing that in fall, even if one tended to forget about such things during the seemingly endless days of summer. Which reminded him—”Do you have a place to stay in town?”
“Yes, I’ve hired a room over the Liberty Bell tavern, thanks—the same as we did in Rocky Mount, that first day we met.”
“Ah.” The neutral noise covered a certain amount of relief. Caudell would gladly have shared his room with his friend, but he was far from sure Barbara Bissett would have been glad about having an unexpected guest. And while Pleasants would have to endure her gimlet gaze for only one day, he himself might never hear the end of her complaints.
Pleasants said, “Do you remember what else we did in Rocky Mount that day?”
“Pieces of it, anyhow,” Caudell said, smiling reminiscently.
“Shall we go and do it again?”
“Don’t know if I want to get that drunk. I have to teach tomorrow, and I’d sort of like to be able to know who I am and what I’m doing. But I wouldn’t say no to a drink or three.” Caudell and Pleasants both turned around in the road. The not-so-bright lights of the not-so-big city lay ahead. They hurried toward them.
Raeford Liles was putting boxes of cloves and peppercorns on a shelf in a back corner of his general store when Nate Caudell came in. Behind the counter, a gray-haired Negro made change for a woman buying a thimble. She put money and thimble into her handbag, nodded to Caudell as she headed for the door.
“Morning, Mrs. Moye,” he told her. She nodded again. The bell jingled to signal her departure. Caudell said, “I didn’t know you’d finally bought yourself a nigger, Mr. Liles.”
“Who, Israel there?” Liles turned around, shook his head. “Didn’t buy him, Nate—ain’t you seen niggers too high for the likes of me? He’s a free nigger, new in town just a couple days and lookin’ for work, so I done hired him. He’s right sharp, Israel is. Israel, this here’s Nate Caudell, the schoolteacher. “
“I’s pleased to make your ‘quaintance, suh,” Israel said.
“Where’d you come from, Israel?” Caudell asked.
“Las’ few years, suh, I been livin’ ovah in New Berne, an’ in the Hayti—the colored folks’ town—across the Trent from it.”
“Have you?” Caudell eyed the black man with new curiosity. New Berne had been in Federal hands from early 1862 to the end of the war, and served as a mecca for escaped slaves from all over North Carolina. Colored regiments recruited there had raided the northeastern part of the state, and more blacks in the area labored to support the Union war effort. Some of them had left with the withdrawing Yankees, but not all. Caudell wondered if Israel’s freedom papers were genuine—and if Raeford Liles had bothered asking to see them.
The Negro reached under the counter. “If you Nate Caudell, suh, you gots a letter here.”
He gave Caudell an envelope which, sure enough, was addressed to him. He recognized Mollie Bean’s handwriting. For a moment, that was all he noticed. Then he blurted, “You can read!”
“Yes, suh, so I can,” Israel admitted. He sounded anxious; teaching blacks their letters was against the law in North Carolina. Defensively, he went on, “The Yankees, they had schools there, an’ they learned lots of us to read. Now they showed me, don’ reckon I can jus’ go an’ forget it again.”
“I hired him on account of he reads,” Raeford Liles said. “You’re one who’s always been talkin’ about changin’ times, Nate, an’ I reckon maybe you’re right, at least partways—like Israel said, he ain’t gonna forget what he learned. The damnyankees messed with niggers for years at New Berne, an’ at Beaufort an’ Carolina City an’ Washington an’ Plymouth, too. There’s probably thousands and thousands o’ niggers in the state with their letters now, goddamn it. Shootin’ ‘em’d be purely a waste; might as well get the most use we can out of ‘em.”
Israel waited to hear how Caudell would answer. More than a few North Carolinians, Caudell thought, would cheerfully have shot thousands of black men. But as Henry Pleasants had said, he couldn’t stomach a massacre. “I think you’ve done well, Mr. Liles,” he said. “No matter how much we wish they could, things aren’t going back to just like they were before the war. Wars tear things up; that’s what they’re all about. One way or another, though, I expect we’ll get along.”
“You got pretty good sense, Nate,” Liles said.
“Yes, suh,” Israel agreed softly. “Tha’s all I try to do, is git along.”
Caudell shrugged. “If I’m so all-fired smart, why aren’t I rich?” He took the letter and walked out into the street. Once out there, he used his free hand to jam his hat as far down over his ears as he could. The trees that lined Washington and Alston were bare-branched now; snow had fallen once or twice. This Saturday afternoon was clear enough, but Caudell’s breath puffed out in a smoky cloud.
He opened the envelope as he walked back to the widow Bissett’s house. “Dear Nate,” he read, “the big thing hear in Rivington to day is skandul. A nigger went name of Josefeen wich belonged to one of the Rivington men called Peet Hardy has gon and hung her self. I seen her oncet or twice in town and its a shaym on a count of she was a bout the purttiest gal black or wite I ever seen. But I reckon I aynt serprized on a count of I went to Peet Hardys hous oncet and I aynt never going back a gain not for all the gold in the woreld he is that crool. The Rivington men is hard on there niggers weve noed that sins we was in the army to gether but even the rest of them has bad things to say a bout Feet Hardy. Non of the girls wil go to him no more Im not the onely one. I no you dont like me to tawk a bout wat I am and wat I do but Nate to day I cant help it I feel so bad for that Josefeen. If you are my true frend I no you will understand. Yor true trend al ways, M. Bean, 47NC.”