At Christmas, which I spent alone, I was given a real hog-bristle toothbrush, a bar of brown Octagon soap, and a hand-me-down outfit of spare clothes, including a warm jacket from the Colonel. Winter passed. Imagining unfriendliness in their closed faces, I grew ever more removed from my Clouds Creek kin. In certain weathers, out of loneliness as much as cold, I piled up clean straw and slept in my own corner of my hog pen.
In March, the Colonel hired me for the spring planting so that I might put aside a little cash. The other hands were nigras, all but a newcomer who turned up one day in the next row and kept watching me as we were planting peas. Distracted, I worked sloppily, and finally the other pointed at my “crookedy rows,” saying he would not share the blame for such poor work so I’d better do them over. I asked him who he thought he was, giving orders to Colonel Watson’s kin, and he just sneered. “That makes two of us,” he said.
Rudely I said, “You are no kin to me. I have never seen you around here.” “No?” he said. “My daddy is ol’ Elijah D. You kin to him?” Angry, I called him a damned liar. “Elijah D. Watson has one son,” I said, “and that is me.” He laughed at me, having known who I was right from the start.
“Your daddy has two blueeyed boys,” he baited me. “One has a shadow in his blood, that’s all.” And he pinched the tanned skin of his cheek so hard that it went white. I had noticed his use of crookedy, a darkie word, and now I knew.
“You’re a damned mulatta, then? That what you’re saying?”
“Yassuh, massuh.” He leered into my face. He had blue eyes, all right, but I could see the shadow in the skin.
“Better watch out, telling lies on white men. You best stay clear of me.”
“Brother Edgar.” He stopped smiling. “Just you plant them fuckin peas straight like I told you, Brother Edgar.” He spat those bad words at my eyes like venom.
I threw the hoe aside and went for him. He was ready for me, as furious as I was. In our struggle, rolling in the furrows, he glimpsed Colonel Robert at the field edge and hissed a warning to let go. Drenched in sweat, we went back to our peas.
As it turned out, this angry youth was already in danger from the Regulators, the Colonel said. Jack would have to be sent away for his own safety. “He’s too outspoken. Jack knows the Yankees will betray their own Reconstruction Act and the freedmen with it. He is angry and bitter. I have full rights as a citizen, he says, the law is the law. But the law is no longer the law, alas, in Edgefield District.”
“Jack?” I said. I could scarcely believe it.
“Jacob Watson. From Augusta. Hates the name Jacob because he hates the man who gave it to him.”
Stupidly jealous of the Colonel’s concern for this mongrel Watson, I felt threatened. “This Jack Watson doesn’t know his place, sir. That what you mean?”
“That’s what you mean, Edgar.” The Colonel measured me from beneath his heavy brows. “Sooner or later, they will come for him-those who judge that he does not know his place,” he said.
“The Regulators?” I stood up, hot. My heart was pounding. “I didn’t mean-”
Jacob’s mother, he explained, was a light-skinned slave girl who had worked in this house until she became pregnant. After she was sold away, it was put about by the ladies of the family that she had been raped by some white drifter, but the family knew that a young Watson was the father.
I nodded and got up and went away.
By 1870, when Elijah D. Watson and his son were listed in the census as “farm laborers,” my father had sold off everything he could lay hands on save his horse and rifle. A few bits of hidden jewelry were his wife’s last tokens of her family past. Mama was listed no longer as “Mrs.” but as plain Ellen Watson, which signified that she was no longer a gentlewoman in our community. For a Daughter of Edgefield, that humiliation confirmed the ruin of her husband’s reputation and the loss of our good name.
One Sunday, Tap rode to Clouds Creek on his mule, bringing word that Mama wished to see me. I rode the mule with the colored man up behind, grumbling about his crotch when the mule trotted. At Edgefield, Mama came running out to meet me, scarcely able to contain her happy news.
The previous year, Great-Aunt Tabitha Watson and her daughter Laura, who was Mama’s childhood friend, had journeyed to north Florida to see to the plantation of Laura’s deceased husband, William Myers. In a letter to Laura, Mama had revealed her unhappy marriage to Elijah Watson, which Aunt Tabitha had famously advocated and supported. Requesting shelter, Laura’s old friend mentioned that her strong and willing son was held in high esteem by Colonel R. B. Watson as a very promising farmer: surely this young man would be an asset on her Florida plantation.
Mama told no one what she’d done. A few months later, when her prayers were answered in a return letter sent in care of her brother, she began her preparations for departure. We were to leave in the next days on a cotton cart bound for Augusta, where we would join other pioneers in a wagon train on the old Woodpecker Trail south across Georgia. Asked how she would manage without Cindy, Mama looked surprised. “She will go, too, of course.” And Lulalie? And Tap? Mama waved away these complications. Her servant’s domestic arrangements were her own affair, Mama said blithely. No doubt Cindy’s people would follow when they could.
In her excitement, Mama had never considered my situation either but simply assumed that her son would abandon those dull Watsons to escort his family on this journey. I was silent awhile, not knowing what to say. I felt vaguely homesick for some reason, but whether for Mama’s household or Clouds Creek, I was not sure. I had been so excited by my plan to slaughter one of my young pigs and bring my first ham to Edgefield as a Christmas present.
When I told Mama I would not be going, she became exceptionally vexed. “But I promised them! They may not want us there if you don’t come!” When I stood unmoved, she pled. “This is a long perilous journey, Edgar. Who will protect us?” Next, she said, “You are my son! And your sister needs you!”
But Mama was ever practical, and seeing my expression, soon gave up. With or without me, she would make good her escape, there was no stopping her. She mustered a sort of smile. “Your heart lies at Clouds Creek, I see,” she said in a sincere manner. “I understand. We shall miss you, Edgar, of course we shall,” she continued briskly, attention already shifting as the next thing to be taken care of came to mind, “but no doubt we shall get on fine without you.”
I could not help wishing that she had entreated me. To stay was my choice and yet, ridiculously, I felt abandoned and even a bit hurt that my family would leave home forever without appreciating Edgar’s Christmas ham. I tried to laugh at my bruised feelings but could not. Yet walking home that afternoon and evening, I cheered up a good deal, as my disappointment turned to admiration. “Well, now, Aunt Sophia,” I could say to that old blunderbuss, “it looks like ‘that spoiled Addison girl’ has some grit and spirit!”
At Clouds Creek, Colonel Robert, too tactful to say I had made the right decision, awarded me a rare smile of fond pride: Cousin Edgar knew where Watson duty lay and had the character to make this sacrifice. The good man took me by both shoulders, saying, “I have full confidence in your abilities, Edgar; I have come to cherish the belief that one day you will indeed redeem your family property.” And he quoted that notable Edgefieldian, the former governor James Hammond: Sir, what is it that constitutes character, popularity, and power in the United States? Sir, it is property, and that only!
All my life, I would be guided by those ringing words.