“Like Barker O.?” The little boy named the slave in charge of driving, the driving horses, and plow horses at Cloverfields.
Bettina laughed. “JohnJohn, Barker O. and DoRe have been competing against each other for years. When the weather is good and each man is up, oh, my, what a show.”
DoRe blushed a bit. “Now, now.”
Seeing that Catherine was in the room, Barker O. burst in, slapped his rival and friend on the back. Jeddie, Ralston, and Tulli squeezed in. Everybody wanted to say a word to DoRe. Everyone had known Moses. DoRe didn’t know that Ailee had hidden on Cloverfields with Moses. He only knew that somehow, he didn’t know how, the white folks got his boy to York, Pennsylvania, to a safe place, a job, good people. Nor did he know Ailee killed herself. No one would tell, and even if they could, they wouldn’t. Why spread sorrows? But DoRe was a respected man and no one could figure out how he could stand Maureen, but what could he do? She owned every hair on his head.
Everyone was talking at once. Talking about the weather. Talking about Yancy Grant babbling about running his horse, Dark Knight, when spring came. Talking even more about how Yancy Grant hated Jeffrey Holloway because he, Grant, wanted that rich widow for himself. He had debts to pay plus her fortune would raise him up, he believed he belonged on top. Catherine listened intently because slaves knew more than the white people. And the slaves at Big Rawly watched Maureen with the searching eye, as the old phrase goes. Soon as they were at another plantation the gossip would fly.
Then John, Charles, and Karl Ix piled in. The room, small, was jammed. The only person missing was Ewing himself, buried under paperwork in his office. The good fellow didn’t know there was an impromptu party.
Rachel walked in, squeezed next to her sister.
DoRe, properly, said, “You two beautiful girls take my seat. You’re both small enough to sit side by side.”
“Rachel, sit here.” Bettina stood.
Catherine, knowing Bettina was sweet on DoRe, she’d known it since Francisco was murdered, ribbed her sister. “Actually, we just wanted to say hello. We’d better get back to our tasks before the snow decides to come down.”
“Well, I’d better be going, too.” DoRe smiled.
“Jeddie, hitch up the Charleston green carriage for DoRe.” Catherine looked at the man. “I noticed you rode one horse and brought the other. Good thing. Carriage needs two horses.” She smiled. “But then you remember everything.”
“I do try, Miss Catherine. I do try.”
Catherine inclined her head to her husband, who got the message, and one by one the folks filed out.
As the carriage was being hitched up, the brass on the trappings shining like gold, Bettina wrapped food in dish towels, her tried-and-true method, put all in a large basket, and covered that with another towel.
“You are trying to fatten me up.” He smiled at her, then said low, “I thank you and I will do what I can to warn you about Sheba. She’s up to no good. Blaming little birdy-boned Mignon for stealing jewelry and ribbons. Says she took the pearl necklace, too. I wonder where that witch has hidden that necklace?”
“No one has seen Mignon, so maybe she made it.”
“I hope so. If that little lady spotted a penny in the dust she’d try to find the owner. We all know how honest Mignon was. Sheba has Mrs. Selisse, somehow she has her.”
“I think we have a good idea what she’s holding over Maureen’s head,” Bettina remarked.
“Sheba knows what really happened with Francisco, but there’s not one thing we can do about it. Not one thing.” DoRe shrugged.
“Well, you can keep clear of her.”
Jeddie knocked on the door. “Ready, DoRe.”
“Be right there, boy.” He took the offered basket, cleared his throat again. “Bettina, if it’s fine with you, I would like to call upon you when I can.”
“Oh, my, yes.” Impulsively she kissed him.
She couldn’t believe she did it.
DoRe was glad she did and felt that kiss on his cheek the whole way home.
November 5, 2016 Saturday
Harry cut the motor on her lightest tractor, the John Deere forty-horsepower, already twenty-three years old. She turned around in the seat, satisfied with how straight the rows were. Then she cut the motor on, lifted the disc attachment, drove out of the large garden, and cut the motor again. She swung down.
“Straight as an arrow.” Cooper admired Harry’s work.
Like most farmers and gardeners in the Mid-Atlantic, Harry prepared the ground for spring in the late fall. Usually mid-October proved ideal, but the unusual warmth pushed the discing, harrowing, dragging chains to the first week of November. Get the timing wrong and shoots will pop up only to be killed by frost. Do the prep work too late and the fertilizer and winter seed, if planted, don’t properly work into the soil.
Harry loved trying to figure it out. Cooper, bravely attempting to garden, loved it less. Harry, knowing this and that Cooper wasn’t a country girl, took over.
Harry brought over equipment plus saved horse manure to make a rich mixture of commercial fertilizer, manure, and old straw.
Cooper observed all this, making a mental note to do her part in the spring and get the jump on weeding.
“Let’s unhook this and hook up the manure spreader. Oh, pour some bagged fertilizer into the manure, will you?”
“How many bags?” Cooper asked as they unhooked the disc and hooked up the manure spreader, a sturdy cart.
“Mmm.” Harry eyed the twenty-five-pound bags leaned up against the big tree. “Let’s start with five and see how it goes. You were smart to buy the lighter bags, by the way. We have nothing to prove by toting fifty-pound bags of fertilizer. That’s what my husband is for.” Harry laughed.
“That man could toss one hundred pounds like a basketball.” Cooper knew how strong Fair Haristeen was.
“Could.” Harry smiled.
Like many women, she appreciated a super-strong man.
The two cats and dog watched the humans work from the well-kept Jones family graveyard not far from Cooper’s large garden.
“Her garden is twice as big as Mom’s,” Pewter noted. “She must be feeding half the sheriff’s department.”
“Ha.” Mrs. Murphy flicked her tail. “When she paced out this garden in the spring, she had no idea what she was getting into. The good thing is, Mom didn’t have to do her garden. There was enough in Cooper’s.”
The three laughed. Cooper did overdo and Harry knew the tall deputy would never be able to keep up with even the tomatoes, much less the rest of her sprawling, ambitious garden. So Harry would help her weed, attack the beetles, pull up the okra, really good okra. The two women liked working together and having a friend to pull weeds with and chatter about this and that. And Cooper learned, yes, she did.
“Okay.” Harry turned around. “Two more bags and we’ve got it. Stuff is mixing in just great.”
Cooper opened two bags, pouring them in, Harry started the PTO again and the manure spreader churned out the cooked straw, old manure and the fertilizer producing an odor, not offensive yet most distinctive. Harry, smart, used what she had on the farm. Every three years she’d call up Rachel at Southern States and do an extensive fertilizer spread on her acreage, depending on the crops. Fertilizer prices could fluctuate with gasoline prices. Last year, Rachel convinced her to try carbon packing which added $58 per acre. Best thing Harry ever did. Her pastures, good, became spectacular. So she paid the money for another packing, this would be two years in a row. Then she thought she’d wait and see how many years the process held before doing it again.