Spring Will Come (73 page)

             
“I pray every day I won’t let that happen,” Carrie whispered.

             
“Your heart is too tender to ever become hardened,” Janie said firmly.

             
“I hope so,” Carrie responded.  Sometimes she wasn’t so sure.  There were so many times she yearned for her heart to grow hard so she wouldn’t feel any more hurt.  “I hope so,” she repeated, wondering if she really meant it.  She had discovered in the last week or so that she was trying to push pictures of Robert out of her mind.  If she didn’t think about him so much, surely she wouldn’t hurt so badly.  Thoughts and memories were being pushed aside to make room for the present.  Carrie felt herself clutching at the wall forming around her heart. 

             
Sam knocked at the door and unknowingly offered her yet another escape from her thoughts.  Carrie hauled in the second bucket of hot water.  Soon both she and Janie were luxuriating in the warm baths and allowing the hours of cold travel to be soothed away.  A crackling fire sent fingers of warmth into the room and wrapped Carrie in a blanket of comfort.  With a contented sigh, she laid her head back against the tub and watched the glow of golden flames chase black shadows across the ceiling.  Outside, the gentle breeze had turned into a stiff wind, making the window panes rattle in protest.  Carrie sank deeper into the water and closed her eyes. 

“Opal, you’ve prepared a feast,” Janie cried.

              “She’s right,” Carrie said gratefully.  “How did you pull this off so quickly?”
              “It’s not anything like you’re used to eating around here,” Opal protested, laughing.

             
“You don’t know how fortunate you are to be on the farm,” Carrie said seriously.  “The food shortages in the city are becoming quite severe.  Many people are going hungry, and there is still a lot of winter left.”

             
“You going hungry in there, Miss Carrie?”  Sam asked, frowning.

             
“No,” she hastened to assure him.  “Our diet is repetitive, but we have plenty.  Thankfully, my father still has enough money to pay the exorbitant prices.  I just hurt for the other people.”

             
“I wonder how Pastor Anthony is,” Opal said.  “I hate to think of that good man suffering.”

             
“Pastor Anthony is doing extremely well,” Carrie smiled at Opal’s look of astonishment; then Carrie told about her and Janie’s work in his hospital.

             
“I declare,” Opal said wonderingly.  “The Lord do know how to make all the pieces fit together, don’t he?”

             
“That he do,” Sam interjected.  “And I bet the piece he’s interested in right now is getting this meal et while it’s still hot.”

             
Carrie laughed and slipped into her seat.  “I won’t argue with that bit of wisdom.”  She gazed hungrily at the ham and sweet potatoes.  Mounds of cornbread were piled on a platter, with a pitcher of buttermilk resting beside it.  A bowl of hot green beans was still sending wafts of steam into the air.  “I haven’t eaten like this in a long time.”

             
“If I’d known we could eat like this, I’d have made you bring me out here months ago,” Janie laughed. 

             
Carrie was eating her last piece of cornbread before she was willing to interrupt her meal with a question.  “How are you doing this?  I thought the Yankees took everything.  The vegetables I can understand, but what about the ham and milk?”

             
Sam grinned.  “Them soldiers done took everything, but they had a harder time
controlling
it all.  Some of them pigs and cows they took just plumb didn’t want to cooperate.  I’s out in the woods a couple weeks after them soldiers come through and found two pigs and a good-sized heifer roaming around.  I didn’t recognize ‘em as Cromwell stock, but I didn’t reckon nobody else gonna find ‘em.  Them pigs already give us a good-sized litter, and that cow turn out to be a mama.”

             
“He even found a bull roaming around out there,” Opal laughed.  “Not nobody around here eating ham on a regular basis, but we put one aside for when you or your daddy come home.”  She paused.  “He know about what you’ve done yet?”

             
“With all his people?  He knows.”  Carrie grew thoughtful.  “I’m sorry I lied to him as long as I did, but I don’t regret my actions.  He’s grateful to all of you who have chosen to stay and keep the place up, but he knows I’ve told everyone they can go.”

             
“And he ain’t real mad?”  Sam asked incredulously.

             
“Well,” Carrie smiled.  “He wasn’t real happy, but he realizes more and more slaves are simply walking off from plantations all over the South.”

             
“Especially since the Emancipation Proclamation,” Sam said proudly. 

             
“You know about that?”  Janie asked in astonishment.

             
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam replied.  “The grapevine works real good out here.  It be the only way we had to communicate for a long time.”

             
“And yet you choose to remain?”  Janie asked.

             
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said firmly.  “Now that my people be free I reckon we can do whatever we wants.  I wants to be a butler and I likes being here just fine.  I reckon when this war be over Mr. Cromwell still gonna need a butler.  I just be paid for it then - that’s all.”

             
“How are the slaves in the area feeling about it?”  Carrie asked.

             
“Oh, they’s feeling different things.  Some are just crazy with happiness - making all kinds of plans for what they gonna do.  Others be plenty scared.  They ain’t never knowed nothing but somebody takin’ care of them.  They’ve got real used to it. The idea of being on they own is makin’ them right nervous.  And I guess some just ain’t feelin’ nothing.  They figures they ain’t free till this war be over - they ain’t gonna get in a tizzy about it now.” 

             
“What are you going to do, Opal?”

             
“I’m going to take care of these children, Miss Carrie.  Least till Eddie gets out of prison.  Even then I figure he’ll need some help with them.  And I aim to start a restaurant,” she said firmly.

             
Susie walked in with a warm sweet potato pie.  “Opal is one of the best cooks I’ve ever seen.  I think she’ll do real good.”

             
Opal reddened.  “I’m hoping I’ll do all right.  I don’t reckon there’s nothing else I want to do.”

             
“Do you want your restaurant in Richmond?”  Janie asked.

             
Opal shrugged.  “I’ve always dreamed about going north, but the South is my home.  I’m just not so sure I want to stay down here.  That paper Lincoln signed may make all the slaves free, but that don’t mean white people won’t see us as anything but niggers,” she said contemptuously.  Her voice grew thoughtful.  “I reckon I want to live where I got the greatest chance of other folks just seeing me as a person.  Just a woman who wants to make a living cooking.  I guess I’ll figure it out when that time comes.”

             
“How you think your daddy going to take not having a passel of slaves?” Sam asked.

             
Carrie shook her head.  “I don’t know, Sam.  It’s all he’s ever known.  I know owning slaves is wrong, but my father is not a bad man.”

             
“I know that for sure,” Sam said quickly. 

             
Carrie smiled.  “There’s no telling what the South will be like when this war is over.  So much has already changed.  I don’t think my father holds much hope he’ll be coming back to the way things were before the war started.  She paused, “Sometimes people are so caught up in what is happening right now, they simply have no time to worry about the future.  And then sometimes the future looks so grim, you convince yourself what you imagine could never really happen.  The only way to know how you’ll respond is to be in the middle of it with nothing to do
but
respond.”  She laughed shortly.  “Am I making any sense at all?”

             
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam answered.  “The future be too dark for your daddy to see too clear, so he just ain’t looking too hard right now.”

             
Carrie laughed.  “I wish I could see things as perceptively as you.”

             
“It always easier to see other folks’ lives clear.  What’s hard be trying to figure out your own.  That’s when the seein’ gets hard.”

             
“Amen,” Janie said softly.  “It’s easy to
think
you’d know how you would respond to a certain situation - being in the middle of it is a different story.”

             
“I reckon it be like living in this house,” Sam said slowly, almost reluctantly.  “I’s always think white people’s evil for wantin’ to own slaves.  Now, I don’t own any slaves,” he said quickly, “but I’s kinda the head slave around here.  I gets to live in this here house.  I gets to tell all the other slaves what to do.  I’s always warm and dry and I eats whatever I wants to.  I’s don’t got to answer to nobody when it’s just me and the slaves here.”  He paused for a long moment.

             
Carrie gazed at him thoughtfully.  It took a lot of courage for Sam to be so honest. 

             
“I’s reckon if I’s a white man,” he continued, “I’d be a slave owner.  I hates to think that way, but I sees how much I likes being in control.  I guess it’s just a human thing to want to have power over other folks.”  He shook his head heavily.  “I reckon what I’s trying to say be that it real easy to judge folks when you ain’t in the position to do the same sin.  But all of a sudden, when you there, you realizes you’d do the same thing.”  He sighed.  “I ain’t proud of it, but it be the truth.  It makes me understand Marse Cromwell a whole lot better.” 

             
A long silence fell on the room.  Opal was the first to break it.  “I reckon I know what you mean.  You remember Gilbert Hunt, that man who saved so many white folks during the theater fire so many years back?”

             
Carrie nodded.  “Miles told me about him one day when we were in Richmond.  He was a slave, but he finally was able to buy his freedom.  Doesn’t he own a blacksmith shop down in the black part of the city?”

             
“Yep.  But that ain’t all he owns.  That black man owns slaves.”

             
“A black man owns slaves?” Janie gasped.  “How can he do that?”

             
“I reckon it’s like what Sam said.  He had the chance to have power over someone, and he took it.  I’ve heard about several black people who own slaves.  I couldn’t believe it at first.  Them people had come out of slavery theyselves.  They knew how bad it was.  They worked hard to buy they own freedom - or they folks before them did.”  Opal paused.  “I don’t reckon owning slaves is a white thing.  I reckon it’s a power thing.  People wants someone else to make life easier for them - even if it means stealing someone’s freedom.”   She shook her head.  “Anyway, it’s made it a lot easier for me not to hate white folks.  I figure if black people had been the first ones to America, they might have brought white people over as slaves.”

             
Susie passed out the pieces of pie.  Everyone was silent as they contemplated the complexities of humanity.  The wintry wind continued to batter the house and brought with it a fresh white blanket of snow.