While true that such profoundly sustaining traditions, hidden under the guise of the imposed religion, managed to survive centuries of slavery and subjugation, we should not therefore suppose that ancient African beliefs suffered no sea changes. Of course they did. ‘The Devil’ in Africa had been capricious, a trickster, and if cruel, only insomuch as bored young children, amoral and at loose ends, may be crueclass="underline" seeking merely to provoke an interesting event at any cost, to cause some disruption of the tedious status quo. For the Devil in America, however, malice itself was the end, and temptation a means only to destroy. Here, the Devil would pursue the righteous and the wicked, alike and implacably, to their everlasting doom…
1871 August 2
The end begins after Providence loses all wiggle room, and the outcome becomes hopeless and fixed. That moment had already happened, Ma’am would have said. It had happened long before either one of them were born. Ma’am would have assured Easter that the end began way back in slavery times, and far across the ocean, when that great-grandfather got snatched from his home and the old wisdom was lost.
Easter knew better, though. A chance for grace and new wisdom had always persisted, and doom never been assured… right up until, six years old, Easter did what she did one August day out in the tobacco fields.
On that morning of bright skies, Pa headed out to pick more leaves and Easter wanted to come along. He said, Let’s ask your mama.
“But he said, Wilbur.” Ma’am looked surprised. “He told us, You ain’t to take the baby out there, no time, no way.”
Pa hefted Easter up in his arms, and kissed her cheek, saying, “Well, it’s going on three years now since he ain’t been here to say Bet not or say Yep, go ’head. So I wonder how long we suppose to go on doing everything just the way he said, way back when. Forever? And the baby wants to go…” Pa set her down and she grabbed a handful of his pants leg and leaned against him. “But, darling, if you say not to, then we won’t. Just that simple.”
Most men hardly paid their wives much mind at all, but Pa would listen to any little thing Ma’am said. She, though, hated to tell a man what he could and couldn’t do—some woman just snapping her fingers, and the man running lickety-split here and there. Ma’am said that wasn’t right. So she crossed her arms and hugged herself, frowning unhappily. “Well…” Ma’am said. “Can you just wait a hot minute there with the mule, Wilbur? Let me say something to the baby.” Ma’am unfolded her arms and reached out a hand. “Come here, girl.”
Easter came up the porch steps and took the hand—swept along in Ma’am’s powerful grip, through the open door, into the house. “Set.” Ma’am pointed to a chair. Easter climbed and sat down. Ma’am knelt on the floor. They were eye-to-eye. She grasped Easter’s chin and pulled her close. “Tell me, Easter—what you do, if some lady in a red silk dress come trying to talk to you?”
“I shake my head no, Ma’am, and turn my back on her. Then the lady have to go away.”
“That’s right! But what if that strange lady in the red dress say, Want me to open up St. Peter’s door, and show you heaven? What if she say to you, See them birds flying there? Do me one itsy bitsy favor, and you could be in the sky flying too. What then, Easter? Tell me what you do.”
“Same thing, Ma’am.” She knew her mother wasn’t angry with her, but Ma’am’s hot glare—the hard grip on her chin—made tears prick Easter’s eyes. “I turn my back, Ma’am. She have to go, if I just turn my back away.”
“Yes! And will you promise, Easter? Christ is your Savior, will you swear to turn your back, if that lady in the pretty red dress come talking to you?”
Easter swore up and down, and she meant every word too. Ma’am let her go back out to her father, and he set her up on the mule. They went round the house and down the other way, on the trail through woods behind Ma’am’s back garden that led to the tobacco fields. Pa answered every question Easter asked about the work he had to do there.
That woman in the red dress was a sneaky liar. She was ‘that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world…’ Warned by Ma’am, Easter guarded night and day against a glimpse of any such person. In her whole life, though, Easter never did see that lady dressed all in red silk. Easter knew nothing about her. She only knew about the angels.
She didn’t see them, either, just felt touches like feathers in the air—two or three angels, rarely more—or heard sounds like birds taking off, a flutter of wings. The angels spoke to her, once in a while, in whispering soft harmony. They never said anything bad, just helpful little things. Watch out, Easter—gon’ rain cats and dogs once that cloud there starts looking purplish. Your folks sure would appreciate a little while by theyself in the house. Why not be nice? Ma’am’s worried sick about Pa over in Greenville, with those white folks, so you’d do best to keep your voice down, and tiptoe extra quiet, else you ’bout to get slapped into tomorrow. And, Easter, don’t tell nobody, all right? Let’s us just be secret friends.
All right, Easter said. The angels were nice, anyway, and it felt good keeping them to herself, having a secret. No need to tell anybody. Or just Brother, when he came out the woods to play with her in the front yard, or when Ma’am let her go walking in the deep woods with him. But in those days Brother used to wander far and wide, and was gone from home far more often than he was around.
The tobacco fields were full of angels.
Ever run, some time, straight through a flock of grounded birds, and ten thousand wings just rushed up flapping into the air all around you? In the tobacco fields it was like that. And every angel there stayed busy, so the tobacco leaves grew huge and whole, untroubled by flea-beetles or cutworms, weeds or weather. But the angels didn’t do all the work.
Pa and a friend of his from St. Louis days, Señor, dug up the whole south field every spring, mounding up little knee-high hills all over it. Then they had to transplant each and every little tabacky plant from the flat dirt in the north field to a hill down south. It was back-breaking work, all May long, from sunup to sundown. Afterwards, Pa and Señor had only small jobs, until now—time to cut the leaves, hang and cure them in the barn. Señor had taught Pa everything there was to know about choosing which leaf when, and how to roll the excellent criollito tabacky into the world’s best cigars. What they got out of one field sold plenty well enough to white folks over in Greenville to keep two families in good clothes, ample food, and some comforts.
A grandfather oaktree grew between the fields, south and north. Pa agreed with Easter. “That big ole thing is in the way, ain’t it? But your brother always used to say, Don’t you never, never cut down that tree, Wilbur. And it do make a nice shady spot to rest, anyway. Why don’t you go set over there for a while, baby child?”