The Land (29 page)

I nodded. “It's all right,” I said, and turned away, feeling a lump rising in my throat. I climbed onto the wagon.

Sam Perry took note and came over. “Now, get on down from there, Mister Logan, and stay for supper!”

“I thank you,” I said, “but I've got a lot of work still, and Luke Sawyer'll be looking for his wagon and mules back soon.”

“Well, you know you're welcome.”

“I believe that,” I said, then put my hand to the brim of my hat in good-bye and quickly backed up the mules and headed out. I didn't want to stay longer. I was an outsider in a family time, and I didn't want to spoil that. I didn't belong there among the Perrys in all their warmth and love. I was alone, and as I thought of Caroline's words to me, I felt something I hadn't felt since my mama had died. Throughout the time I had been making the rocker for Miz Rachel Perry, I had thought about my mama and her rocking chair. I had thought about my daddy too, because he had given it to her. Now, after Caroline's words, I thought on them again and I realized just how alone I was and, among all this family, how much I missed my family. I missed Cassie. I missed my daddy. I missed Hammond and George, and even Robert. But I could never return to them. My life was here now, and as I rode back to Vicksburg, I decided it was time for me to settle. It was time for me to buy land. It was time for me to buy land, settle down, and have a family of my own.

I asked Luke Sawyer about land. I figured what with his being a businessman and knowing just about everyone there was to know in and around Vicksburg, he'd know what land was for sale, or at least who was willing to sell, and at what terms. I told him too about my interest in J. T. Hollenbeck's land. Luke Sawyer stroked at his neatly trimmed beard as I broached the subject with him. “You planning to quit on me already?” he said.

“I told you I'd stay a year, and it's past that now. I figure it's time for me to go looking for land.”

“And you want me to help you?” He laughed. “Want me to shoot my own self in the foot?”

I shook my head, giving him no smile in return. “Just want to know where maybe I can look.”

Luke Sawyer sighed and turned away from trying to cajole me into furthering our bargain. I had kept my agreements with him, about making the furniture and about the horses. Luke Sawyer had sold five of the horses and received offers on the black stallion, though he still talked of keeping the stallion for himself. He had received offers on Thunder too, but he had been true to his word. He said Thunder was spoken for. All the sales had been at the price Luke Sawyer had set and now the palomino was mine. Luke Sawyer had signed papers saying so. “You've done some mighty good work,” he said, “and you've been a good man to work with, but you set on having land, Paul Logan, I'll think on it and check around. You realize, though, not just everybody would sell to you, once they know you're a man of color.”

“I know,” I said.

“Long's you do,” Luke Sawyer finished, and no more words about land were said between him and me for several weeks. Then came one day in late August when he brought a man and his young son back to the toolshed. The man's name was Charles Jamison, and his boy was called Wade. “Fella I was telling you about, Mister Jamison,” said Luke Sawyer.

“Yes. I've seen him ride. That's one fine horse you have, Paul Logan.”

“Thank you,” was all I said.

“You interested in selling him? Luke Sawyer tells me he's signed his interest in that palomino over to you.”

I glanced over at Luke Sawyer, then back to Charles Jamison. “Not at this time.”

Charles Jamison nodded to that in acceptance and walked around the shed, looking at the finished pieces and the ones on which I was still working. His son, ten or so, followed him, touching the wood in quiet wonder much as Nathan had done. “I can indeed see,” said Charles Jamison when he'd made his way around the room, “that you weren't exaggerating about his work, Mister Sawyer.” He looked directly at me. “It's fine work.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“But I understand you're interested in something besides horses and woodworking. Understand you're interested in buying some land.”

I nodded. “That's right.”

“Understand too you've seen some of J. T. Hollenbeck's land that you'd like to buy. Well, that's good land. My family lives here in Vicksburg, but we also have a small place near Mister Hollenbeck, so I know the area quite well. In fact, I've got an interest in that land myself.”

I guarded my words, but I had to know. “Is Mr. Hollenbeck thinking of selling now?”

“He's talked about it. His wife, who was a Southerner, died recently and their children died before her, so he no longer feels obliged to hold on to that piece of land, or to stay here, for that matter. But if he sells, I figure it won't be for a while yet.” Charles Jamison studied me. “You willing to wait awhile for Hollenbeck land?”

I took a moment before I answered. “I'd be willing to wait a spell for the piece of land I saw, and if the price was right. In the meanwhile, I'd like to get some land to work now.”

“One thing I know. When and if J. T. Hollenbeck decides to sell, he'll be wanting cash. You ready to pay cash for some land now?”

“Rather not,” I replied. “Not if there's another way.”

“Well, there's another way, all right, if you're willing to put in some mighty hard, bone-breaking work.”

“And what would that be?”

“Clearing land in return for the title to it. You willing to do that and work out terms for it, you can go see a man name of Filmore Granger.”

“I've heard that name before.”

“You've been here a year, then you should have. The Grangers own the biggest section of land around the town of Strawberry. In fact, at least half the land J. T. Hollenbeck now owns once belonged to the Grangers.”

I received that information as if learning a new fact. I said nothing about the old man Elijah, who had already told me the same.

“You willing to put in the time and the work, if you want land, Filmore Granger is the man you want to see. Just remember, though, if you do business with him, he can be a hard man.”

I thanked Charles Jamison, and after he and his son were gone, I mulled over his words and slept on them. That next morning I mounted Thunder and headed south to talk to Filmore Granger. I figured if Filmore Granger had land to sell in exchange for the work of clearing it, I had the strength and the will to do it. As for J. T. Hollenbeck's land, I figured I'd bide my time about that, and if the Lord was willing, I figured to one day have that too.

 

I found Filmore Granger and his boy, along with a colored workman, grooming horses in the Granger stables. I told Filmore Granger who I was and why I had come.

“Land, you say?” Filmore Granger glanced at me and went on tending one of his mares. “What makes you think I'm interested in selling any of my land? Harlan,” he said, addressing the boy before I had time to answer, “bring me that brush.” The boy looked at me, then hurried to do his father's bidding.

“Well,” I said, “I spoke to Mister J. T. Hollenbeck and Mister Charles Jamison, and both of them mentioned you might have land for sale. They suggested I come see you.”

“They did, did they?”

“Yes, sir, they did. I'm interested in thirty or forty acres to get myself started and settle down, but seeing that I'm a man of color, it might be difficult for me to get a bank loan to buy a parcel.”

“You mean to say you're a nigger?” exclaimed the boy. Filmore Granger said nothing. The workman looked at me now and met my eyes.

I ignored the boy and went on as if I had said nothing amiss, though I felt my anger rising at his using that word to me.

“Both Mister Hollenbeck and Mister Jamison said maybe you'd be willing to work something out with me. Mister Jamison said you might consider exchanging the land for clearing it.”

Filmore Granger glanced my way, then took his time about speaking again. When he finished with the mare, he gave me his attention. “You ever thought about sharecropping? There's an advantage in that for you. I supply all the seed, animals you need. I take all the risk. You just put in the labor. We share the crop.”

I guarded my words in my answer to him. “Mister Granger, I wouldn't own the land if I were to sharecrop, and it's land I want.”

Filmore Granger studied me a moment. “So you know what land of mine you want?”

“No, sir,” I said. “I didn't know what land might be for sale.”

“Well, I got a piece of land in mind. You want to see it, I'll show it to you.”

“I'd be obliged,” I said.

Filmore Granger then turned the remainder of the grooming over to the workman, and saddled the mare. He told the boy to saddle a bay, then the two led the horses outside. As I untied the reins to Thunder, the boy suddenly stopped. “Where'd you get this horse?” he demanded.

“It's a fine-looking horse, all right,” said Filmore Granger, eyeing me as if I had no business with Thunder. “What are you doing with him?”

“He's my horse.”

“Yours?” questioned Filmore Granger. I'd seen that look before. “Who'd you get him from?”

“Mister Luke Sawyer. He owns a mercantile up in Vicksburg.” I told him that truth and no more.

“He know you got him?” asked the boy.

I stared coldly at him. “He knows,” I said.

Filmore Granger nodded. “Then get on him and let's go.” Filmore Granger then mounted the mare and started off. The boy quickly mounted his bay and did the same. I followed them.

For nearly an hour we traveled over a rutted road, which finally meandered off into a trail in the middle of the forest. Filmore Granger halted his horse and got down. “This way,” he commanded, and started down a footpath too narrow for the horses. I dismounted and once again followed him and his son. The trail led to a small glade near a creek, where the Grangers stopped. “This here's the center of this section,” Filmore Granger said. “You want, a house could go right up there on that slope, and then you'd have your water just a few feet away.”

I looked around. It was a land dense with trees and brush, dark, with little light shining through. There was no magic here.

“Now, a good part of this land would have to be cleared to get yourself a crop. My family's owned this land the last sixty-odd years, and far's I know, none of these timbers have been cut. It'd be a lot of hard work, and I'd be expecting no less than seven hundred trees a month until it's cleared. You got somebody to help you?”

“Well, I've never been afraid of hard work,” I said truthfully. “As for help, I've got somebody in mind.” I was figuring that Mitchell and I together could turn this place into something. Later on, after we'd cleared the place and put in a few years of crops, we could sell it and buy something better.

“What about oxen?” Filmore Granger said. “You'd have to supply your own. You got that kind of money?”

“I was figuring on mules.”

“Oxen are better for logging.”

I knew he was right. But when Filmore Granger said this to me, I had already thought about what animal I would use to help in the logging. I had done enough logging to know that oxen were sturdier and that their short legs were less likely to break than the legs of a mule. They had an even temperament, unlike some mules who could be as stubborn as any man, and they had the strength to pull logs through mud and rain. Still, I figured a mule could hold its own on this kind of land. I didn't figure the soil to become too sodden, not by the moisture I saw now at the end of what had been a rainy few weeks, and it looked to me a mule could manage logs across it. Besides that, I was thinking about after the logging was over. A mule could travel as fast as a decent horse, so therefore was good for riding. Mules could pull a plow and they could pull a stump; oxen could as well, but most farmers preferred mules over oxen, so I figured to buy four mules, then sell three of them without much trouble when the logging was over. That was my thinking. I just hoped I wouldn't regret it.

I met Filmore Granger's eyes. “I can manage with the mules,” I answered quietly, without addressing his question about my money.

Filmore Granger pursed his lips, eyeing me again, and after a moment went on.

“Now, you say you're interested in thirty or forty acres. Well, it would have to be forty. But you'll have to chop all the trees that are at least sixteen inches in diameter at the smaller end, that's sixteen or more straight across the tree. The lumber company won't take any trees less than that. The rest you leave in the ground.”

I nodded my understanding as my eyes took in the forest of virgin longleaf pines and white oaks. While Filmore Granger talked, I was figuring how many acres Mitchell and I could clear in a year.

“You clear all the trees I want,” Filmore Granger went on, “all forty acres become yours. You don't, you forfeit the whole forty. Now, all the timber you cut is mine. I expect that timber to be stripped of branches and stacked here along by this creek.”

“Who'd take it out of here?” I asked.

“I'll take care of that. I'll bring up a crew of rafters each month and run the logs down creek. You just chop the trees and get them to that bank yonder.”

“What about crops?”

“I'm not interested in your crops, just these trees. Whatever else is in the ground is yours. Once the land is yours, you can clear all the rest of the trees, for all I care. You do after a few years, give them a chance to grow, then you'll have yourself some good cash money.”