Hardie threw back his head and laughed uproariously. “What the bleeding hell do you think I’m going to do with her, sir? The same thing you’d have done if you’d bought her.”
The Alabama man laughed, too, ruefully. Caudell happened to be watching Josephine’s face. It congealed like cooling fat. She must have hoped the Rivington man would differ from others in more ways than his dress. Finding out so harshly that he did not could only be a cruel disappointment.
“For a very reasonable price, gentlemen, I can supply shackles, to ensure that your animate property doesn’t become more animated than you’d care for.” Josiah Beard chortled at his own wit. Several men came up to purchase restraints.
Caudell drifted away from the town square. For him, the slave auction had been nothing more than a way to pass part of a long Saturday afternoon. He could not even dream of owning a slave, especially in summer with his school closed. Tutoring, writing letters for illiterate townsfolk, and neatly transcribing county records gave him income sufficient to keep from starving, but not much more.
George Lewis fell into step beside him. “How are you today, Nate?”
“Well enough, thank you, sir.” Though captain no longer, Lewis was a big enough man in Nash County for Caudell to keep on giving him the title of respect. “I see you didn’t buy any niggers today.”
“Didn’t plan to; I have enough for the tobacco acreage I grow—maybe even too many. More than anything else, I came to see what prices were like, in case I decide to sell a couple.”
“Oh.” Caudell had known for a good many years now that he would never be a wealthy man. The knowledge no longer bothered him. Sometimes, as now, he derived a certain amusement from listening to the things wealthy men had to worry about. Do I have too many slaves for my land? Should I sell a few? No, that was a problem which would never trouble him.
Some of his thoughts must have shown on his face. George Lewis clapped him on the back and said, “If you’re having trouble, Nate, you just let me know. I don’t aim to let anybody who served in my company do without so long as I can help it.”
With stubborn pride, Caudell answered: “That’s right kind of you, but I’m doing well enough, sir.” Lewis raised a politely dubious eyebrow. “There’s plenty worse off than I am,” Caudell insisted.
“Most of ‘em have farms, though, to keep food on their tables”‘ Lewis said. On the edge of anger now, Caudell shook his head. Lewis shrugged. “All right, Nate, if that’s how you want it, that’s how it’ll be. You ever change your mind, all you ever need do is let me know about it.”
“I will,” Caudell said, knowing he wouldn’t. Lewis’s concern touched him all the same, The captain’s children did not attend his school; Lewis could afford better. But he looked out for rich and poor in the country. Caudell had voted for him without hesitation last fall and was ready to do it again if he stood for reelection.
Lewis made his good-byes and went off. Caudell was about to head back to his room when Raeford Liles called after him, “Got a letter for you, Nate. Let me open up again.” Caudell trotted back to the general store. Liles worked the key, threw the front door wide. He went behind the counter. “Here y’are: from that gal o’ yours Up Rivington way.”
“She’s not my gal,” Caudell said, as he still did whenever he got a letter from Mollie Bean or sent her one.
“Too bad for her if she’s not, on account of I wish everything and everybody in Rivington’d get blown to hell and gone, and if she was your gal I’d leave her out of that there wishin’.”
“I wish you would do that, Mr. Liles,” Caudell said.
“Only since it’s you as asks me, Nate.” Liles proceeded to curse the town of Rivington and its inhabitants with vigor and inventive wit whose like Caudell had not heard since an army mule driver tried to flay the hides off his beasts with his tongue one afternoon when they bogged down in a road a week of rain had converted into a true bog. “An’ the worst of it is, they all got money fallin’ out their backsides like it was turds. Three thousand one hundred fifty mortal dollars for that there mulatto wench? The devil fry me for bacon in the mornin’, Nate, what the hell’s he gonna get from her he couldn’t go down to the whorehouse an’ have for a few beans? It don’t feel no better on account of it’s expensive, now does it?”
“I don’t suppose so,” Caudell said, after a small hesitation brought on by thinking of Mollie and of the trade she plied in Rivington.
The storekeeper never noticed that his answer came a beat late. Liles was in full spate, like the Mississippi in flood season. He was also getting to what really bothered him: “Or that griffe Westly or that nigger Anderson, almost two thousand for the one and twenty-seven hundred for the other, by Jesus! I been to other auctions, too, and had the same thing happen to me. How’s a man supposed to get the help he needs when he can’t noways afford to buy it? Niggers is gettin’ so dear, it’s damn near cheaper to do without ‘em. An’ them Rivington men is a big part o’ runnin’ the prices up, ‘cause they just don’t give a damn how much they spend. What’s an honest man supposed to do?”
“Go on as best you can the way you are—what else can you do?” Caudell said. Liles was not a wealthy man like George Lewis, but he was a long way from poor. Caudell had trouble sympathizing with his complaints, not when his own chief worry was figuring out how to stretch his summer money so he could pay the widow Bissett for his room and eat anything better than corn bread and beans.
But Liles glared at him over the tops of his half-glasses. “Younger folks these days hasn’t got no respect for their elders.”
Caudell glared back. At thirty-four, he hardly felt himself still wet behind the ears. And Raeford Liles, with his store full of good things and getting fuller every day now that the war and the blockade no longer pinched him, might have spoken a little more kindly to someone who’d fought to keep him in the storekeeping business. Allison High had been right—with the war over, memories of what it meant were short. He wondered how Allison was getting along, down in Wilson County, and realized guiltily that he hadn’t thought about him in weeks. Memories were short, all right.
He said, “Never mind, Mr. Liles—we all have to go on as best we can the way we are, I expect.” Without waiting for an answer, he went back out into the baking sunshine of the town square. The bell over the front door jingled when he shut it.
He walked slowly back to the widow Bissett’s house; moving any way but slowly would have invited heatstroke. He took off his black felt hat and fanned himself with it. The moving air briefly cooled the sweat that ran down his face and trickled through his beard, but the sun smote the top of his head with savage heat. He hastily replaced the hat.
He’d baked outdoors, but found himself poaching instead when he went into his upstairs room. He did not stay long enough even to open Mollie’s letter. Grabbing a length of line and a couple of hooks, he headed for Stony Creek, north of town. Sitting on the bank under a tree—maybe taking off his shoes and letting his feet trail in the water—was the best way he could think of to fight the heat of a summer day. He might even catch his own supper, too, which would save him some money.
He used his clasp knife to dig worms out of the soft soil, baited the hooks, and tossed them into the water. Then he lit a cigar, blew a ragged smoke ring, and, as near content as he could be in such weather, pulled the letter from his pocket once more and used the knife again, this time to do a neat job of slitting the envelope.
Mollie went on for most of two pages. After nearly a year of correspondence with him, her handwriting was better than that of some of the twelve-year-olds he taught. Her spelling remained wildly erratic, but most of those twelve-year-olds had that problem too, Old Blue Back notwithstanding.