A black man carrying a jar of whiskey and two glasses came out of the farmhouse. “Thank you, Israel,” Pleasants said.
“I knew I hadn’t seen you around the general store lately, Israel,” Caudell said. “When did you start working for Henry here?”
“Two—three weeks ago, suh,” The Negro answered. “Mistuh Pleasants, he pay as good as Mistuh Liles, an’ he got mo’ books to read, too. Now I learned how, I surely do love to read, suh, that I do. Mistuh Liles, he fuss some when I go, but it weren’t like he own me.”
“Only trouble I have with Israel is getting his nose out of a book when I need him for something,” Pleasants said. “If I can teach him ciphering, maybe I ‘II make him my bookkeeper, Nate, since you don’t want the job.” He spoke jocularly, but then turned and gave Israel a careful once-over. “Maybe I will at that, by God. I wonder if he could learn? Israel, do you want to try to learn arithmetic? If you can do it, it would mean more money for you.”
“I likes to learn, suh, an’ I likes money might well. You want to show me, reckon I try.”
“You’re a hard worker, Israel. Maybe you will learn. If you do, you can keep books for a lot of people in town, too, you know, not just for me,” Pleasants said. “Keep at it and you’ll end up with a fine house of your own one day.”
Caudell almost smiled at that, but at the last minute kept his face straight. It could happen. Thanks to the war, things were looser these days than they ever had been. A free Negro sensible enough to stay out of trouble might come a long way without a lot of people noticing.
“You want to show me, suh, reckon I try,” Israel repeated. “I got no place better to go than here, looks like. I’s jus’ glad I didn’t head No’th when the bluecoats sail away. By what the papers say, it’s rougher bein’ a nigger up there than down here—they hangs you to a lamp post jus’ fo’ walkin’ down the street.”
“You might be right, Israel, though I’m embarrassed to admit it,” Pleasants said.
Caudell nodded. “White men up North blame Negroes for the war, seems like.” Savage antiblack riots had convulsed New York and Philadelphia within days of each other, as if word of one triggered the next. In Washington, Confederate pickets across the Potomac watched Federal troops battle arsonists intent on burning down the colored part of town. And along the Ohio River, white men with guns turned away slaves fleeing across from Kentucky, saying, “This ain’t your country”—and opened fire if the Negroes would not go back. Southern papers reported every atrocity, every upheaval in the United States in loving detail, as if to warn blacks they could expect no warm reception if they ran away.
Israel heaved a long sigh. “Ain’t easy bein’ a nigger, no matter where you is.”
That, Caudell thought, was no doubt true. Israel set down the whiskey jar and went back into the house. Caudell swigged from his glass. He coughed, got it down. The fire in his throat fumed to warmth in his belly, warmth that spread through him. Pleasants raised his glass. “Here’s to a free-labor farm.”
“A free-labor farm,” Caudell echoed. He drank again; the warmth intensified. He looked around. The impression he’d had as he walked up to the farmhouse persisted.” A free-labor farm that’s doing right well for itself.”
“If the weather stays close to decent and prices hold up, I’ll get by,” Pleasants answered. He was new to farming, but seemed to have already picked up the man of the land’s ingrained aversion to sounding too optimistic. He went on, “By what the papers say, weather’s even worse farther south and west. I hate to see anyone else hurt, but it may help me.”
“How many hands do you have working for you?”
“Seven men—three free blacks, two Irishmen—”
“I saw one of them in your vegetable patch.” Caudel, lowered his voice.” Maybe you ought to know he ran off from my regiment.”
“Who, John? Did he?” Pleasants frowned. “I’ll keep a close eye on him, then, though he’s given me no trouble so far. Anyway, I also have a couple of local white men here, and Tom—he’s one of the blacks—bought his wife Hattie free a couple of ‘years ago, and she does the cooking for us.” As if the words were a cue, a long, unmelodious horn blast sounded from the back of the house. Pleasants grinned. “There’s dinner now. Come on, Nate.”
Dinner—fried ham, sweet potatoes, and corn bread—was served outdoors, in back of the house behind the kitchen. Hattie, a very large, very brown woman, seemed personally offended unless everyone who ate from her table stuffed himself until incapable of moving. Caudell was more than willing to oblige her. Happily replete, he leaned back on his bench and joined in the byplay between Pleasants and the farm hands.
Besides John Moring, Caudell also knew Bill Wells, who had joined his company not long before the last year’s campaign started. Wells had been only eighteen then; twenty now, he still looked years younger. “You better not send me out to fill canteens, Mr. First Sergeant, sir,” he said with a grin.
“I’ll let Henry here give you your fatigues now,” Caudell retorted, which made Wells duck as if a bullet had cracked past him.
Hattie’s husband Tom, Israel, and the other “colored man, whose name was Joseph, sat together. They were quieter than the whites, and took little part in the banter that flew around the rest of the table—though at liberty, free Negroes had to be leery about taking liberties. But when Israel started boasting about how he was going to learn arithmetic, Tom raised an eyebrow and said, “If you de man who do my pay, Israel, I gwine count it twice when I gits it, an’ that a fac’.”
“You couldn’t even count it oncet, nigger,” Israel said loftily.
“Marse Henry, I know he pay me right,” Tom said. “You—”
His pause carried a world of meaning. After a while, Henry Pleasants looked at his pocket watch and said, “Time to get back to it.” The workers got up and headed past the old overseer’s cabin toward the fields. Joseph reached out and snagged a sweet potato so he would have something to munch on if—unlikely as the notion seemed to Caudell—he got hungry in the middle of the afternoon.
“This is very fine, Henry,” Caudell said as Hattie cleared away the plates. “You’ve done well for yourself, as usual.”
Instead of cheering Pleasants, the praise made him melancholy. He sighed, looked down at the planks of the table, ran a hand through his dark, wavy hair. In a low voice, he said, “If only Sallie could see this farm.”
“Sallie?” Caudell peered at his friend. In all the time he’d known Pleasants, he’d never heard him mention a woman’s name. He tried to figure out why, picked the most likely reason he could think of: “Didn’t she want to come South with you, Henry?”
Pleasants turned to stare at him; the pain in his eyes told Caudell at once that he’d made a mistake. “She would have come anywhere with me. But—oh, hell.” Pleasants shook his head. “Even now, how hard this is! We were married, Sallie and I, just at the start of 1860; I would take oath we were the happiest couple in Pottsville. Around Christmas, she would have borne my child.”
“Would have?” Caudell knew a sinking sensation. Gently, he asked, “Did you lose her in childbed, Henry?”
“I didn’t even have her so long.” Unshed tears glistened in Pleasants’s eyes. “She started to moan—God, such dreadful moans may I never hear again!—before dawn one October morning. She blazed with fever. The doctor lived only a couple of blocks away. I ran through the darkness to his house, fetched him back still in his nightshirt. He did all he could, I know that, but Sallie…Sallie died the ‘Same day.”
“May she have gone to a better world, as I’m sure she has.” The words felt flat and empty to Caudell, but he had none better to offer. Doctors could do so little—but he wondered, just for a futile moment, if a Rivington man could have saved her.”