When Sam returned to the fields the next day he put himself back into his labors as if his life was at stake. No one was laughing at him by the time the sun went down on that day. In a week they had all legitimate respect for him, as he stripped stack after stack of the broad green leaves, and by the end of the month they allowed he might even have a fair chance at the coin.
The only man among them who begrudged these efforts was one called Angus Carson, who had won the prize the year before, and was counting on winning the money again to see his family through the winter. “He’ll win it over my dead body,” Carson said, once he saw the threat from Sam Day was real. “It will be the same day he takes food from my little ones’ mouths.”
As they went into the final week of harvest, which according to the ledger Magnus kept was a fortnight earlier than the year before, the other men around them had all chosen sides and laid wagers as to which of these two headstrong men would win the prize. At supper each night that week the contestants would occupy opposite ends of the table, with his followers seated beside him, attending to his needs. In the middle of the bench were two empty chairs to keep distance between the two camps, and they hectored each other from across the divide.
At his end of the table Angus sat bare-chested, drinking bock and otherwise silent as his men boasted of his exploits.
“Angus Carson is the strongest man in all His Majesty’s realm,” they taunted. “He’s also the fastest and will never lose, especially not to the likes of one like you. It’s folly, Sam Day — nay, madness’s mischief, if not the thing itself — to think ye can compete against him.”
Sam Day governed the other end of the board, looking to all like a leader among his men, but he too was silent, allowing them to speak their minds on his behalf.
“Sam Day has been blessed with the gift of fore prophecy and can see well into the future,” they called and countered. “What he saw there last time he looked was Angus Carson coming to borrow a shilling.”
Thus were all the men in good spirits as the autumn rain started to come in and they hurried to draw the harvest to a close. Each could look forward then not only to his pay but also his profit from betting, as none imagined losing what he had wagered, and they boasted of it each chance they got.
Such was not the case for the chief adversaries, who eyed each other stealthily around camp, each trying to measure his opponent. Angus, at first, had thought Sam Day all blowhard and nothing hale about him, due to the slightness of his physique. Then he saw the work the man did and thought perhaps he was aided by the harpies and demons it was said he could conjure at his beckon and call.
Sam Day, on his end, had seen men bigger than Angus Carson, and he would even bet half the men in the barracks of Stonehouses were stronger than his foe, but he had never seen a man want something so bad as Carson seemed to when his fingers reached out to harvest the plants. Even his own friends said of him, “He’s stubborn as he is mean, and the only thing that loves him, besides his wife and children, seems to be tobaccy leaves.” For no sooner had he fingered one than it seemed to be in his stack, as he moved down the rows like a drowning man who had figured out a way to harvest air.
Despite their different styles, the two men were dead even in the counting when they rose the last morning of the harvest.
It was an hour ahead of the sun when they came to the communal table, where all the men ate before heading into the fields. That morning, in place of hominy, the table was piled high with bacon and biscuits for each of them to take and eat his fill, but instead of feeding their own gnawing hunger all the others held back and let Sam and Angus in front of them — even the men who herded the cattle or worked the rice deferred.
Magnus and Caleum, who always ate with the men on the final day of the cropping, were the only others seated at the table besides the two contestants.
“I looked at the ledger this morning,” said Magnus, who always loved being among the men in the fields at that time of year. “This looks to be the best reaping we had all decade, if we gather just a bit more.”
“How far short are we?” asked Caleum.
“Only a couple hundred pounds off four years ago.”
“I remember that year. It would be something to outdo.”
“It sure would, and if it happens I think I might just make the harvest prize double,” Magnus went on, looking at Caleum but speaking so all could hear. “What would you think of that, Sam?”
From his side of the table Sam stopped chewing and looked toward Magnus. If he had heard the same thing only a month before he would have thought Magnus was funning him, but now he thought only of the gold and let another coin settle beside the first in his mind’s eye. “I think we better get to reaping.”
Dawn had broken by then and stood rosy and mysterious at the edge of the horizon. As it spread, it grew bright and golden, touching everything at Stonehouses evenly and portending well for the final gathering of the year.
After breakfast the men all stood from where they sat and looked out at the neat, even rows of plants, which were nearly bare from earlier pickings — except the tender leaves at their tips that are always last to ripen.
Angus Carson looked out over the rows, thought of the new prize, and said to one of his men, “It’s not so much a doubling the old one as it is that I’m going to whup his arse twice now.”
The two rivals then started at opposite sides of a single row; they could have looked each other in the eyes over the tops of the plants, if they had so chosen. Each man’s hand went out and each retrieved a leaf, being careful not to harm it, then stacked it in a cart that went alongside each of them to keep the new leaf from getting bruised; nor did they look up from their work.
By the time they were halfway down the row, both men were covered with sweat and each forgot about the other. They concentrated on the bright green plants and thought about the weight of gold that would rest in his hand at the end of the day.
Nor did they stop to eat at lunchtime, but merely called to have water brought out to them. By three in the afternoon the heat of August was unbearable, and no one would have been surprised to see them both fall down from exhaustion. They kept at their work, though, determined to have both prize and the honor that would go with it.
At six o’clock everyone else came in from the fields, and the plants themselves stood bare — save the final two rows, which were still divided between the two, but no longer evenly as before. While Angus Carson started at the top of one, Sam Day was already midway down the other.
Angus, drenched in sweat, saw him in the far distance and began to quicken his pace, though where he found the energy and stamina no one could tell, but as he looked at Sam’s back he hated all he saw and worked as if moving through the plants quickly would bring him closer to annihilating the object of his ire. As he worked his rage grew, until he found himself inventing new categories of it to indulge his intemperate passion. I hate the African, he began. I have always hated his tongue, his dress, his manner. Nay, he has no manners. I detest men who eat their corn in rows instead of columns, he added, until he could truthfully say the problem with the world was Africans who ate their corn lengthwise instead of going all the way round as was proper.
Sam in his row could sense Angus gaining, but from pride refused to turn around and look. Nor did he have the energy to spare. He willed his hands to keep moving, though they were already cut and bleeding from his efforts.
A gold coin for Sam Day, he said to himself to heal the pain, and the other I’ll spend just on Effie.
He could see the last tobacco leaf at the end of the row and willed himself to keep moving. He thought of the freedom he would gain with it — to be master and overlord of his self unbound. He thought of the land he would buy and the house he would put up there. He thought of the crops he would grow, one field just for the herbs he used in the practice of his religion and medicine. He thought of the first home he lost and what it would be never to stand in danger of losing so again.