She continued rocking for a long minute, then in a toneless voice began her story.
“It must a been about three days ‘fore General Sherman and his troops got to Columbia. I was setting here on the porch when these men come riding up. They was at least six of ‘em, all dirty and ragged with bushy beards and pistols shoved in they belts. Your momma, she wouldn’t never a let men of that low caliber step foot in the front yard, but she weren’t here. Thank the Lord she didn’t live to see this.”
Buck sat quietly, waiting for her to continue. After a time she did.
“The leader, a scruffy man with a fat belly and a mean mouth, he rode right up to the front steps and yelled ‘Anybody home?’ like he was calling some Jezebel down in a holler. Your poppa, he comes out the door, walking proud like he always do. ‘I’s Raleigh Thomson, sir,’ he say real genteel, like they was gentlemen stopped by for a afternoon a lucre, ‘at your service.’ ‘Anybody else home?’ the fat man say. ‘No sir,’ Mr. Raleigh say back. ‘My wife’s passed and my two boys is . . . away.’ ‘Away fighting with them other Rebs, huh?’ ‘They with the Confederate army,’ your poppa say, standing up straight.”
She rested her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes, as if she were reliving the sadness of that day.
‘Got any liquor in the house?’ one man yell. Your poppa, he say, ‘No sir, nothing left but a little wine for medicine.’ ‘Well Mr. Reb,’ that fat man say, ‘you set on this here porch while we see what we can find.’ He told one of the men to point a gun on Mr. Raleigh while they went inside. ‘I expect them men was in there over an hour tearing up the place, but they didn’t find nothing they wanted.”
She clamped her jaw at the memory. “So they went and poured coal oil in the house and set it on fire. Oh, Lordy, it blaze up like a pine tree. And Mr. Raleigh, your poppa, he was just standing in the yard with the men watching his house burn—” her voice tightened, as if in misery “—then all sudden-like, he run up the steps and into that fire. I don’t know why he done that, what he was trying to get. I bust out crying then.”
She cried again, a soft keen of pain.
“That fat man, he rode over to where a bunch of us black folk was standing, scared to death, and he yell, ‘You people, get out of here now. You’re free. Understand me? You’re free. Free to go.” Emma sobbed. “One of our men go up to him and say, ‘Yes, sir, but where it is we suppose to go?’”
Tears trickled down the old woman’s wrinkled face as she finished her story. She wiped her eyes on her apron, then cleared her throat and leaned forward again.
“You know, Mr. Buck, things changed ‘round here after your momma passed, and ‘specially after you left. Mr. Raleigh, he lost interest in most everything.” Her tone hardened. “He even bring back that overseer Snead and his brood.”
“Brought Snead back!” Buck exclaimed, barely controlling his rage. “Whatever possessed him to do that?”
She shook her head. “Mr. Raleigh, he needed somebody to run the place. After the fighting started, the new overseer joined the army, and some of the black folks, they just up and left. Your pa knowed Mr. Saul wouldn’t let no more of them run off, so he bring him back, along with them sons of his. Sometime his wife and daughter come here too. They was stealing the place blind, Mr. Buck. That Snead cheated us on weighing our cotton and didn’t credit us like he should. That devil was stealing cotton, selling it hisself and keeping the money that belonged to your poppa. When one of us said he was gonna tell Mr. Raleigh what him and them boys of his was doing, that’s when the bad whippings commenced. I wish you was here to take care of the folks like you done before.”
“But what about Clay?” Buck asked. “Where was he?”
“Oh. He love the place, but he was too young to be running it. Your poppa used to get mad ‘cause he spent most of his time riding that big black horse of his and jumping over them fences . . . and chasing girls.”
She continued to rock back and forth, her lips tightened, and Buck realized she was angry.
“Now that Snead girl, Sally Mae,” the old woman snarled, “she had her eye on him from the minute she got here, pestering him all the time about giving her a ride on that horse. Finally, the day of the big barbecue, after he’d had a bit more whiskey than was fitting a man of his position, well, he swung her up onto the back of that saddle and took off laughing down the avenue, that yellow hair of his streaming out behind him. Must’ve taken her nearabouts to Columbia, ‘cause they don’t come back for more’n a hour. Your pa, he wasn’t happy about such behavior, but that Saul Snead he just grinned.”
“I didn’t even know Saul had a daughter.” Buck shrugged, then asked, “What happened to his family anyhow?”
“Oh, Lordy. Ain’t nothing good happened around here in a long time. Old Saul, he used to beat them sons of his unmerciful, and his wife too. When he found out Sally Mae was with child he commenced beating on her. Rufus tried to protect that poor girl, but old Saul, he turned on the boy with his belt and blinded him in one eye. Rufus was mean before that happened. He was meaner after.”
“What about the girl? What happened to her?”
Emma took a deep breath. “She was carrying that baby inside her, Mr. Buck, but she was doing poorly across the river. One night, real late, I gets a pounding on my door and it’s Rufus, and he’s got the girl in the back of a wagon. From what he said his momma was out somewheres doing Lord knows what, and his poppa, well, he was probably passed out drunk.” All at once Emma’s voice softened.
“Anyways, Rufus, he done seen his sister was getting the pains real bad and he knowed I birthed most all the black babies hereabouts. So he puts her in that wagon and drags her twenty miles to me. Well, that young child, she was already bleeding bad. I done all I knowed how to do, but it wasn’t no good. I got that baby out and breathing, but I couldn’t do nothing for his momma. Rufus, he was real broke up. I reckon Sally Mae was the only person he ever cared about. He took her body back to Lexington that night to bury, but he left the child with me. Before he gone, though, he swore he was gonna kill the man who done that to her.”
“Did he know who it was?”
The old woman turned her head and gazed off into the distance. “There ain’t no telling, Mr. Buck.”
“What happened after that?”
“I heared Mr. Saul’s skinny wife, she run off one night while he was drunk. Nobody seen the boys after that neither. I’m sure glad all of them no-good Sneads is gone.”
“And the baby, Emma? What happened to the baby?”
“Well, sir, I still gots it. Named him Job, since he be having a world of trouble afore him. But I’s raising him best I can.”
Buck remembered then the words in his father’s letter to Clay that he was leaving money for faithful Emma and the child. He hadn’t thought about it at the time. He’d been focused on his father’s affection for his brother, when all he’d had for Buck was respect. Buck would have to take consolation in that.
A scuffling sound came from within the dilapidated cabin.
“Em-ma? Em-ma?” a childish voice called out. A moment later a little white boy appeared in the doorway wearing a much-patched, wrinkled cotton gown and rubbing his eyes. He toddled out onto the porch. The old black woman scooped him up onto her lap with one arm. The child snuggled up against her skinny body, stuck a finger in his mouth and closed his eyes.
Buck saw the genuine affection that passed between them, a child of less than two years and a woman well into old age, though she probably wasn’t more than sixty, rocking contentedly.
“You raising that boy all by yourself, Emma?”
“With the good Lord’s help and my sister’s girl. She done had a baby ‘bout the time this one was born, moved in with me and nursed both of ‘em till it was time for weaning. Then I feeds him soft food.” She cackled. “That weren’t no trouble, since I ain’t got enough teeth left to eat much else. And he sure do like that pot liquor when I cooks greens. Lordy, that’s where all the goodness is. What else was I to do, Mr. Buck? Ain’t nobody else wanted this poor tyke. He ain’t no bother.”