“…you have been designated Godfather of the… of the National Newspaper of Peru (“The Voice of the People… is the Voice of God”)… in merit to your fine virtues and profession of service that you have shown throughout your exemplary life that everybody appreciates, admires, and exalts.
Director, Apolinario Mayta Inga & Manager Rivera Flores, October 7, 2009
The Cotton Belt
(A Novelette)
(A story of the Cotton Belt, Slavery, Sharecropper;
and, the last days of the Civil War)
Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.
Andean Scholar, and Three Times Poet Laureate
In English and Spanish/Illustrated
The Cotton Belt
(A Novelette and Three Short Stories)
Copyright © 2010 by Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.
Dedicated to: Sister
Any and all translations in Spanish by Rosa Peñaloza de Siluk
Front Cover and all other art work in this book was
done by the Author
Author’s Notes on the Story and it’s English
I’d like to express, American English continues to fluctuate, in that a word my be spelled in two different ways, or in more than one way, even in the same text, meaning the same thing. The comma often used to express movement of voice, or the period that stops a sentence (and can make for a smoother flow without its use), or capitals, which are used to give significance to a word… (commonly used in poetry, and usually not in prose), since standardization would eliminate such special effects, this author reserves the right in this book (as he has in his previous books) to use such spellings, punctuations, and wordings.
Further more, the old Negro language of the south, in the 1800s, were quite different than modern times, the salve days, in this book here the author has tried to bring out a little of the essence of those days, in the bits of dialogue, fragments of poems (explanations and descriptions), and relationships with “White folks.” He has caught some of the humor, tragedy, kindliness, brutality, wisdom, deep religious mysticism and remarkable reality.
This story shows a little of the influence of slavery, the dread of the overseer—the Civil War in the background, the cotton pickers, and sharecroppers, the Cotton Belt.
The dialect is of course English, shot though and influenced by traditions and sentiments of the slaves. The author realized most often the words of the slaves were undistinguishable, here he has corrected that and only left a marked influence of this past. Dlsiluk
Chapter One
A Sack of Fish
The Hightower Plantation, in Ozark, Alabama
about seventeen-miles outside of town…
Josh Washington Jefferson (Old Josh, to everyone that knew him), trudged across the open fields of the Jacob Smiley and Charles T. Hightower’s plantations, coming back from Goose Creek, he saw Silas and Jordon (his two sons), helping with the spring planting of cotton on the Hightower plantation. He had a sack of fish thrown over his right shoulder, he had spent all morning catching the fish, and part of it laying around; it was a long slothful and enduring walk for the old man back to the plantation, he liked crossing the fields instead of the old trodden-down dirt Ozark Road, that led along four plantations, and seventeen-miles or so down to the city of Ozark, too many Confederate soldiers on it, and at times a few platoons of Yankees.
The day before, Josh had heard Amos Jackson (a thin and wiry kind of fellow, talkative, big ears, always his shirts unbuttoned—unkempt like, and appearing too big for him; a receding forehead, sprinkled white and gray hair with just enough black to cover those parts on his head that were starting to get bald) say: the Confederates, some of General Bragg’s, caught a few niggers coming down the road, heading back to Shantytown, three miles outside of Ozark, and fourteen-miles from Goose Creek, they were forced into the Confederate Army—even at this late date, or face hanging. So Josh had started out early to do his fishing, and was coming back early, so he’d not bump into any such troubles; Goose Creek was about two miles across the fields, and then some.
(While down at Goose Creek trying to rest and fish—after he had already caught what he wanted to bring back—fishing now with a string tied around his ankle, which he flung into the water with a hook on it, Josh often fell to sleep thereafter, listening to the hummingbirds, watching with his peripheral vision, from the side of one eye, the black sparrows on the branches, or cuckoos washing their wings in the water of the creek, and at times the circling crows that came down from the cotton-fields —he didn’t like the pigeons though, they always shit on him, and the woodpeckers kept him awake, but somehow, just being there with all those birds around him was a psychological benefit, and today they got bothering him some, “Yessum,” he said, “I’d sure be pleased,” he told the woodpecker, and the pigeon who just dropped a load, right on the back of his head, “I’d be pleased something powerful to make youall go away, you ain’t doing me any favors by sticking around here. That is if-in you and I can make a deal, I don’t throw stones if-youall don’t make noise and drop your load. I come here to fish, and rest, and maybe have a little nip of Granny Mae’s moonshine—by gosh and by Jesus, be gone, all you damn –blasted trouble makers!”)
Josh had put his sack of fish down to rest a bit—a big fish was in that sack, you could tell it, it sunk headfirst within the sack creating a bulge at the bottom of the sack from the head of the fish, extending beyond the other fish within the sack and quite noticeable—and Todd took note of that, and the more he looked, the more he wanted that old worn-out big potato sack of fish, and Silas, Jordon, Amos, Toby Brown whom were all there too, were all doing the spring planting (Toby was a short kind of fellow, with a corncob pipe in his hands usually, coil type wrists, beady eyes, always squinting as if he was thinking of something evil or shrewd, noticeable hair on his forearms and chest, his son Todd about the same, with long thick fingernails, and a mad look on his face, never smiling much, bony shoulders), both Toby and his son Todd were watching Josh, now he was a few hundred feet from them.
Ella and her daughter Emma Hightower, were bringing out early lunch to the workers, and Frank had just joined the Confederates, he was gone now the only son of the Hightower’s, and Charles T. Hightower, had gone to Ozark to get supplies.
Josh had kept his distance, he didn’t want Todd, or Toby, or Amos to get too close to his fish, and kept a wide, and what he felt, safe distance from them in fear they’d try to swindle him out of his catfish. But he wanted to speak to Toby about something of a serious matter to him. So he stepped a dash closer to them.
Silas (the older brother of Josh’s two boys, had thick big lips, bald as a china soup bowl, as his younger brother Jordon by two years was nearly bald but not as strikingly as Silas, and had thin lips, buckteeth likened to his mother, who was a pretty and petite gal, except for those teeth, crooked—big and bulky. Silas also had big popping out eyeballs inside that head of his, that looked like kerosene lanterns; Jordon had little eyes and a little nose; Silas had a wide nose looked smashed, as if it might had been hard for him to breath through. Silas was more the farmer, like his pa was, and Jordon more like his mother, the thinker, but both liked their corn whiskey the same), and Jordon’s mother, whom was called Sweet-pea, her real name being: Rebecca Boston Jefferson, she had left Josh years ago, Josh had raised the two boys by himself, he had married her at fourteen years old—let me rephrase that, it was a common-law marriage, and she hightailed it down to New Orleans the first chance she got, found herself a man, and last anyone had heard she was someplace between New Orleans and Minnesota. She was hard to keep track of, no one really knew for sure where she was, and she never sent anyone any mail. And officially, they had never gotten married, they just unofficially lived together in Josh’s little shack in back of the Hightower mansion, which was in back of the corral. And in back of Josh’s hut, were several slave huts, now mostly empty, except for Granny Mae Walsh’s hut, which was the first cabin, after Josh’s, and the last one with some old cottager in it, who was good for nothing, so everyone said, and was left to die there, but just wouldn’t die for some reason, they called him the Ghost (back in Shep Hightower’s younger day—Charles Hightower’s father—he was traveling in the west central regions of Alabama, which was then dominated by thickets, commonly called cane, or bamboo, he had found a young man, who could hardly speak any kind of language, perhaps left there among the forgotten, he named him the Ghost, no slave papers no name, no anything, and he took him to work on his plantation, he was for all intent and purposes, what you called a cane breaker or cane cutter—according to Shep Hightower, all such folks were simply swamp rabbits).
Toby watched Josh closely while he foot by foot, step by step, inched his way over to them, while they stood in the cotton field, the spring plowing was over, and the ground was warm and dry, and a bit brittle, the weather had warmed up and Mr. Charles Terrance Hightower, the boss and owner of the plantation, figured the last day of freezing was a week or so ago, and the winter rains had stopped, and he knew the spring rains were about to start, or hoped they would, the spring skies indicated such, a soft breeze filled the air, and there was moisture in the ground. He didn’t want to risk planting too soon, or too late, like in June, April would be good, and it was late March now, which would be better. And so today everyone was planting, about a half inch into the moist soil, or thereabouts. It was usually between that and you can add an inch to that, but Hightower was like his father and his grandfather, he liked planting shallow, even to the point of seeing his seeds, perhaps an old man’s way of thinking but it was how he liked it, learned his trade. He’d say to his friends down at Hobby’s store, where Jordon Jefferson worked on and off, when he wasn’t needed on the farm, he’d tell the new farmers, “Cotton’s not all that strong, better to leave it planted shallow,” and his old-timer friends would all agree with him, and he’d add “It’s risky to plant cotton too deep…” and the old timers would agree with him again. They planted the cotton forty-inches wide due to the mules they had. Plus the cotton pickers needed room to move about.
The Smiley’s and Elmer Barchans who also were undertaking to raise a crop of cotton this year had finished their plowing already. With such an early start, they were hoping—like Hightower was—hoping they’d have enough hot weather to boot, if so, it seemed safe enough to assume they’d all have reason enough to think, or believe it would yield a bale of cotton per acre in the fall, and that was good.
The end of the Civil War was near—around the corner you might say—and, pert near everyone around Ozark knew this, and they also knew, sharecropping would have to replace slavery, meaning, chopping cotton on rented land, Hightower and the Smiley’s had already started that, giving fifty-percent to the Negros, knowing if they hadn’t, or wouldn’t they’d end up doing the work of hoeing and planting, and picking cotton themselves, plus after they were hired to work as labors for them, at a very minimal price, they’d get the money back one way or the other, it’s called the cost of living (along with the supply and demand concept). By and large, it was a fixed rent contract, and they had to pay for their housing, and so forth, so at the end of the month (or season—depending) when they got paid, it wouldn’t look much different, that is to say, it wouldn’t be much different than slavery anyhow.
The south was about to go into a reconstruction era. Hightower, like most of his kind, had the land but little money for wages, but Hightower still had rigid supervision. Josh’s basic contract read: he could rent a plot of land, and keep the whole crop, or he could work the land and earn a fixed wage, but not keep the crop, or they could share equally in the crop he planted and harvested; Hightower left all options open for him, but his first crop was based on a fixed wage, and that entailed helping Hightower with his crop.
And now Josh had made so many steps towards Toby he was face to face, near shoulder to shoulder with him. He now grasped the sack of fish with two hands. Silas and Jordon were surprised to see their pa hadn’t run off to the shanty house to fry those fish, because Ella and Emma were coming their way, and he liked to dodge work as much as he could, playing the old man role, which he was, but he was as able, and fit as Amos, who was in his late seventies. But when Josh stopped, he had a good enough reason for doing so, otherwise, he’d had hightailed it right to his hut, without even a glance, or blink of an eye towards them. He wanted to speak to Toby about a box Mr. Hightower hid in his bedroom; he saw where it had been hidden a few days ago.
Josh told Toby in a whisper, on the sly, Hightower had a box of gold coins in his room, under a rug, under a wooded board, and he wanted him to help him filch it and head on up north. Toby would not talk to him about it, tried not to listen. He would not say a word, no mater how persuasive he was, he just shook his head: no, no, no…, watched Emma and Ella come nearer, and was frightened that they might even have overheard Josh’s whispers, which was doubtful. Toby tried to be polite, not angry, but he was, he even turned his back from Josh, and he pulled away from Josh’s grasp and moved over towards the donkey’s and some left over broom-sedge grass, it was bright yellow and a foot or two high, patches here and there, parts of land, uncultivated.
Mirabel Smiley, of Ozark in her
younger day…
Ashley Walsh, worked for the Smiley family (Mr. Jacob Smiley, 72-years old, born 1790, and his wife Mirabel Smiley who always sat in the window looking out and at whatever, and seemingly had a mustache, that everyone made fun of but not to her face, and at times it was hard for the Hightower kids when playing with Clara and Dennis, the Smiley children, not to laugh when they looked her in the face, and the black folk they giggled behind her back, and really didn’t care if she overheard them because every one thought they were giggling over something else anyhow, because they seldom paid any attention to white folks; the Smiley Family, came from an old southern family, in North Carolina, who came from upper New York State, back in 1650 or so, and were involved with tobacco growing) (Mr. and Mrs. Smiley, lived next to the Hightower’s, and like the Hightower’s, had about a 1200-acres farm); Ashley worked more as a servant maid than anything else for them, she was the daughter of the cook, Granny Mae Walsh, who worked for the Hightower’s, and now she was pulling out the pale yellow to copper colored broom-sedge grass, it had coved over untilled, scraps of the field with its high growth, it would grow back in early summer, and she used it, as all the households used it in that area, for brush-like brooms, on the hearths and floors. It was a hairy like brush, the tips cut off, and she had now a handful.
Ashley sometimes would sneak out in the high grass—only fourteen, and have a time with Silas, ain’t no one knew about it—she figured, and they’d stayed out there in the broom-sedge all night long, sometimes, with a jug of Granny Mae’s corn mash whiskey that she hid under one of the kitchen counters and sold it to Josh and anybody who wanted it down in Shantytown who had a half dollar or so (she had a still someplace, nobody knew where and I guess nobody cared as long as she sold them the liquor), or Silas would take Josh’s moonshine hidden under the porch and they’d have a party in the high grass, it didn’t matter who they got it from really, Josh bought it from Mae anyhow.
Ashley never said much, but she had a lot on her mind, she wanted to go to New Orleans, and said she would as soon as the Civil War was won by the Yankees, and that looked like it was pretty soon. She even had a toss in the hay with Frank Hightower, now a soldier in the Confederate Army someplace over in Texas she ain’t never heard of, and to be honest, I think the Armies on both sides of the fence forgot about that place; Frank was but seventeen years old, had been in the Army going on a year now and was already a sergeant.
When she was at the Smiley’s she never let onto her plans, the only ones that knew, was Frank, and perhaps Dennis and Clare Smiley, the two kids of the Smiley’s—Dennis was her age, and they fooled around in the late evenings like she did with Silas, but perhaps not as serious, other than that, she didn’t dare tell Silas, but Silas was pert near forty years old, and Jordon, a few years younger.
(There weren’t any dogs anymore at the Smiley plantation—or any plantations in that that area, during this time—some wild dogs back in the thicket, perhaps one of those dogs were the offspring to Tabasco, the last dog—I should say, hound Jacob Smiley ever had. Although, Dennis Smiley treated him as his own, and Jacob Smiley took him when he hunted some, his pa, and one day it happened, Jacob didn’t know how it happened—when it did. Dennis and Ashley—about the same age—were the same age, told the hound to wait at the hog bin, as the boy and Ashley ran into house to get a bite to eat—they must had been twelve then, Jacob knew he had a liking for her, so he let it be as long as it didn’t get out of hand, and there wasn’t a whole lot of kids he could play with, Frank or Dennis’ sister Clara who liked to go along with Ashley now and then, also—Emma never did, she was more her mother’s sidekick—and anyhow, the dog was waiting at the bin with the hogs squealing mad, hungry, the boy and Ashley didn’t feed the hogs as were instructed, big hogs, one seven hundred pounds, and Tabasco bellowed at that old fat big hog, a spot on rabbit dog, some hound he was, a good deal of hound too, maybe mostly hound, hard boned, saber like teeth—lion hound, Jacob raised him from a pup, he called for his dog, he didn’t come, and he said to Ashley, eating some honeycomb chicken in the kitchen, “Where’s my pot-licker, nigger hound?” Having taken one glance to see if he was outside, and now inside, and had called him. And Dennis went looking for him, and that big hog had broken the wooden fence—the middle flat piece of timber between the five planks, pulled old Tabasco through it by the neck, and his hunting days were over. Submerged in muck, the hog clinging to his leg, pulling it away from the other hogs, and Jacob looked at Dennis and Ashley, knowing the boy obviously didn’t feed the hogs, and Ashley, she wasn’t phased one iota by what they called Big Ben, the hog’s action—she wasn’t taken back at all, not one bit, not one morsel, no worse than winging a chicken’s neck, Dennis was horrified, and old Jacob Smiley rammed a pole into the pig’s guts, not to kill him but to let him know, although it didn’t break the hold Big Ben had on the hound’s leg.)
Silas asked a lot of questions—feeling the war was coming to its four-year end, he kicked around trying to find out what she was going to do after the war had ended. She was a pretty little girl, with blue eyes, and mahogany skin, and her hair was not as kinky as all the other Negress’ were, they say Granny had a toss in the hay with old man Shep Hightower, Charles’ father, who had died a decade or so earlier. Who’s to say, nobody really knew, only God and Granny? But Ashley had different features that might have indicated she was more like Frank than even Emma was, except for the hair and skin color. She slept a lot; she seemed to be depressed, if not moody most of the times; sore at the whole world that she had to endure Ozark, Alabama and its Cotton Belt, the bondage she was in, and taking orders because she was born into slavery.
Josh had spoken to Toby several times before about wanting to get out of Alabama, and he didn’t, or couldn’t figure out why Toby didn’t want to. And there they stood, looking at one another, as Ella and Emma neared their location step by step, they now could see their whole frames clearly. Ashley remained untalkative, Todd moved over closer to the sack of fish, as Josh had lowered it, and left it by his side as to follow Toby a few steps more to persuade him to steal the gold coins with him and head on north to that upper cold territory, known as the middle west, perhaps Minnesota.
“To my way of thinking, sometimes I think the old devil got into you somehow brother, you gotta take chances unless you want to be under the heel of the white man all your life!” said Josh.
“Maybe Josh, you ain’t satisfied—if-in that be the case then youall should do what you got to do, but don’t bring me into you plans. I done lived in Alabama all my life—or pert near, my boy lives here, and now we’ll have some money coming in, come harvest time, some food, snuff and freedom to be.” And then Josh looked at Ashley, and Toby quickly said, “Josh, you know she’s too young to be doing what you’re thinking.”
“Yaw,” Josh said to Toby, “I expect she’s too young, but she ain’t too young for nothing else.”
“What you mean pa by saying that?” said Silas.
“She ain’t grown up yet, but I know she goes into the high grass in the night, because you don’t come home until morning sometimes. She doesn’t even look like a woman yet, got nothing to move up or down when she walks, but she sure is pretty though.” And Ashley took a long look at Josh, it was perhaps the first time someone said she was pretty. Everyone else just wanted to have her, like they had her mother. Plus, she was listening to what Josh was telling Toby, she just couldn’t overhear all of it, and she couldn’t put the puzzle quite all together—yet!
“If I had knowed you were going to be like this pa, I’d not have had Ashley come on out here to help us today.”
Josh was getting angry, he didn’t want to talk about Ashley, or anything else, he came to talk about getting them gold coins he had seen Mr. Hightower counting one night a week past, in his bedroom. Josh had just got through fixing a new mirror on the wall for Emma’s room, and on his way out, and down the second floor of stairs, he had stopped for a moment, just a moment, when he had heard motion in one of the bedrooms, and there was Charles counting his gold coins, one by one: “…one, two…ten…twenty…thirty…” and a plank in the floor had been brought upwards.
“Well,” said Josh, “I guess I got to go milk the cows,” and as he was about to pick up his sack of fish, it was gone, and Todd was running across the field faster than a jackrabbit, and a hound chasing him. Josh’s pale dark eyes looked angrily at Toby, “If I knewen Toby was going to be like that, I’d not put down my fish,” then he looked at Silas, said, “She’s sure a pretty one though,” referring to Ashley.
Chapter Two
Josh’s Makings
Abraham Boston
Josh had gone back to his shack for a time sat in a chair on his porch—a wooden rocking chair, picked up a jug of his corn mash whisky that Granny Mae had made, got thinking… (He had often asked her how she made her so called White Lightening, or Corn mash whiskey, or Moonshine—all the same: commonly know as illicitly-distilled whiskey—; she was of course evasive, and would say—the few times she was willing to explain it that is—, say: “I don’t rightly know, it’s just something, sometimes I just gotta do by myself, and de recipe just pops into mi mind, but if´-in you want to know, it goes something like this: water, patience, smashed corn, crack the kernels, poor into the fermenter, seal, more patience, then I use a pillowcase for filtering, and then you got what youall like to drink!”) and then after his thinking, Josh took a long and deep gulp, made no sign to letup, took a second gulp of the corn whisky, then Josh sniffed the cork hole of the jug, full of spirits, took a handful of Minnie’s homemade cornbread, in his mouth, leaned back in that old wooden rocketing chair, and went to do some more thinkin’ in the shady part of his dimly lit porch, ‘That’s a heap of money to steal,’ he told himself, and then thought on what he would spend it on, almost ready to go up those stairs by his lonesome and do whatever necessary to get those gold coins, and mentally he found himself—in some kind of daydream—walking up the narrow stairway and found them coins in the now dusty and misty room, he had half a dozen in his hands…(he had fallen into a half-sleep, and now had woken himself completely up)
Josh was a tall broad man, deep pitted eyes, wide forehead, big hands, square jaw, a good weight for his size and a little more for his iron like old and aging bones. What Josh wanted was for Toby to sneak in the house, because he was light on his feet, not a big person, and would be less noticeable, and he’d be the lookout person, and they’d get the gold coins and he’d head on north, up to that Minnesota, where his brother-in-law, Abram Boston lived and had a small business. He had come down some years prior and tried to talk him into escaping with him back up to Minnesota, or perhaps Hightower would sell him his freedom, but Josh never did go—couldn’t leave his boys: he had come on a spotted horse, stayed the night, got boozed up, fell to sleep on the porch and rode off the next morning.
He was a good man, more than he could say about his sister—Sweet-pea, his ex-wife. Josh was never sure why he came all that way down to Alabama to try and persuade him to go up North with him, maybe because he felt obliged being Sweet-pea’s older brother, and he was old and he was trying to even things up with the Lord before he passed on, but he hadn’t passed on yet, or at lest he hadn’t gotten word that he had.
Today Josh figured, was a good day to steal the gold coins, to do it because Hightower was in Ozark most likely over at the local bar having a drink with a few of his friends, such as: Otis Fargo, the bartender and owner of the saloon, the “Do Drop Inn Saloon,” and perhaps J.R. Ritt, the bank owner in Ozark was there also, and Yancy Yankcavick the stable owner chummed around with that crowd; if one wanted to take a broad view of things, everyone that drank together with J.R. Ritt or Hightower—the so called Ozark Bunch, except for Yancy was a Southerner, it was a source of shame to some members of the families in Ozark, that he hadn’t any recorded ancestors on either side of the great battles of the Civil War, and before, a kind of irritated spot for the new arising rednecks—those so called low life southerners, who cared little about the land, per se, but Yancy kept clear of politics; to Hightower and J.R., there was, better put, they would have regarded with high impotency, any disturbance between the two armies now in battle gear, as it left their descendants, or were about to—stripped of everything but their land—and to the negro living on the land remained nearly unbroken, and would until the next century—
(The Ritt family went back to the late 1770s, to Hank Ritt, first Banker of Ozark, and land owner and lawyer; Mary Ritt who, died of a mysterious poison right after the end of the Civil War, John R. Ritt then became complete owner of the bank, known as J.R. Ritt)(matter-of-fact the history of the Hightower’s and the Ritt’s go back pretty far, that is to say: the first known Hightower, Myron Shep Charles Hightower, who came over to America in A.D., 1650, who built a brand-new plantation in Virginia, as settlements took over Indian lands, brought with him twenty-Englishmen, and bought forty-slaves along the way, to do one thing, and one thing only—some miles outside of Jamestown, and it was to create a private enterprise, backed up by rich and private financial backers, who were bankers in England—capitalists, and grow as much tobacco as possible, to sell back to the English people.
The Settlement, 1650s-1770s
There is a painting that shows Myron Hightower, kept high on the wall in Charles Terrence Hightower’s plantation mansion as you walk up the stairs to the second floor—on the left side of the wall along the stairway—being the first Hightower that came to America, and had a son Eugene Shep Hightower, his portrait is next to Myron’s. And alongside that is Charles Shep Hightower born 1734 died 1800. Charles Terrence Hightower, born 1789 is also on that same wall, he had fought in the War of 1812, and his son Frank, his painting was most recently added to the others on the wall, in his full decorative Confederate uniform.)) and Miles Hobby (a short redhead man, about in his late 40s, stringy like and uncoordinated, of Irish linkage, thin as a been) was normally with Hightower when he went on his drinking binges, so he was most likely with that bunch; Hobby being the main grocery story (and drugstore all in one) owner, where Jordon worked part-time when he wasn’t needed on the farm, allowing the Hightower’s 20% discount on their supplies; Jordon would sleep in the backroom on a cot, and served two purposes: a night watchman, and a janitor of sorts during the day, an all around handyman—you might say.
(Ozark was a lazy kind of town, and slow moving town, people usually didn’t rush across the square, just moseyed on into and out of stores and the red and white school house—at the end of town, the saloon and stable, the bank, and the courthouse, took their time about everything, there was no hurry, other than finishing up with the war, not much really to buy, and little money to buy it with, if at all—except for the howling of the dogs, and the noise in the stables at night, and the bar stuff, nothing to see outside of the city limits, but cotton, and cotton pickers, but for some there was what they called unclear if not fussy, optimism over the horizon, J.R. Ritt, Hightower, and the Negros—all anticipating.
As for Josh—for the most part—had never looked forward more to anything in his life, than the end to this war, it meant his freedom. But he had a faint distaste—perhaps more like a fear, of how he was going to deal with it when it became a reality, a palm full of gold coins would lighten the threat he felt; he was for the most part illiterate, as was his boys, but somehow, Ashley had picked up on the learning’s of Clara and Dennis, a trifle anyways, and her future looked brighter because of that.)
Josh had told everyone he needed to go milk the cows but he didn’t really, he wanted to go and think, fresh and new thinking about those gold pieces; next to wanting to run out of Alabama, and perhaps talk to Molly Benton, it was those shinny and glittering gold pieces (Molly and Josh had some history, and she was a nurse of some kind and when Josh had gotten sick a few times in the past she came over and nursed him along, and no sooner had he gotten better, Josh followed her around like a mule in heat); anyhow, Molly lived over by Goose Creek. But with all said and done, he wanted those gold pieces. And he was fixing to get them. And although he didn’t really want to leave his boys, he knew if he took the gold pieces he’d have to leave and that bothered him some, and kind of set his mood lopsided; he’d be forced to leave, and that is what he felt he needed to do, to be force to leave Alabama once and for all, otherwise he never would, or could. And now Ashley had seeped into the cavities of his mind.
Chapter Three
The Spoke and Wheel
Silas and Jordon Jefferson
Of Ozark, Alabama
Josh was mumbling to himself, he didn’t realize anyone was talking to him, he was working on fixing a spoke on an old ox-wagon, one Charles Hightower had given him, one of the rods extending from the center of the wheel hub where the axle connects, connecting the hub were splitting; he had a spokeshave, a tool made for that, to reshape the rod (a knife shaped object) that was also used for fixing chairs and so forth, talking to himself for the most part, he was also becoming more interested now in Ashley, thinking how pretty she was. But he also remembered the ordeal she had to go through some years back, back in 1862, when she was just eleven years old.
“Ashley’s going to fall over on Josh,” said Toby standing in back of Ashley, “if-in you don’t stand back a bit.”
Silas, Jordon, Toby, and Ashley (Todd was now on the porch several yards away, waiting for them) they were all standing to the side of Josh watching Ashley watching Josh, she had become most interested in Josh, who was sitting on a stool, by the ox-wagon, next to the side of his hut (Ashley had overheard Josh talking to Toby about the gold coins and was interested in finding more out on the matter, perhaps her way out of Alabama).
“You’re apt to bust a gut Ashley, if you don’t move on back from pa!” said Silas.
The whole metal tyre (metal plating from around the wheel, instead of a rubber tire), Josh had attempted to hammer it back into place; it was on the verge of collapse. The wooden frame was even more rotted than the spokes. To be truthful, they all looked at Josh a little peculiar except Ashley, thinking the appearance of the wheel didn’t look any better because of his improvements. Ashley Walsh had moved herself even closer to Josh now, she was now within reaching distance, and within whispering distance if indeed she needed to whisper, and listening distance, she was bolder than everyone had known—folks had thought the rape had silenced her, that took place in 1862, and perhaps it did, but it was thawing out now. Josh turned about, looked at her unequal parts, her heel to the top of her head.
“What youall doing just standing and watching me?” he asked.
Toby smiled, his upper gums red as a fire, half his teeth in his head missing, “I see you got around to fixing that darn wheel, it done took you two years!” and he laughed, Amos behind him, he didn’t laugh, he was more the serious type.
Ashley picked up a piece of tall grass by the corner of his hut, put it in her mouth, and never once took her gaze from Josh Jefferson, and Silas never took his off of her.
“What youall want now?” said Josh.
“What’s the matter with you pa, wes jes’ come to say hi and have some of that corn whiskey you got hidden under the porch, and we done finished our work in the field today. And Ashley, she’s just a-horsing around.”
“Go find it then,” said Josh, he had other things on his mind.
Granny Mae Walsh (born around 1790, cook for the Hightower Family, she liked old Josh at one time—in years past and took Ashley I suppose as a threat, although it really wasn’t, Josh never had much to do with her but eat her grits and eggs, and buy her white lightening; she came from New Orleans, in 1800, brought to Ozark, Alabama, and never recollected anything else) was hiding behind a cluster of small sand pine trees, more on the shrubbery side of life, but it covered her and she blended into the trunks and bark as she kneeled down, resting on her heels, and needle like leaves pinching her, here and there. She had ugly ears and no one really took a serious look at her, or wanted to marry her, she was a single woman all her life, those ears—those funny looking deformed ears from birth, once seen, never forgotten. They were both loped ears; they were like bent wings, nearly touching the side of her upper cheek bones. It could be surgically corrected, but no one at the plantation took interest in her cosmetic needs, and now she was old, older than Josh by ten years, and Josh was right next to sixty.
Folks thought it funny that she could hear anything at all with those ears, and sometimes she had to hold those floppy ears back to get the proper instructions from Ella for dinner, pretending she was sweating and moving her hands slowly from her nose backwards over those elephant like floppy forward ears.
“I reckon,” Mae mumbled to herself behind those pines, looking at Ashley and how she was playing up to Josh, “she wants to be heading someday down to New Orleans, and she thinks Josh got some treasure hidden. She ain’t like me, because I think more stability, keeping a job and eating and sleeping a sound sleep, none of this sleeping in the durn cotton fields all night in the high grasses and all. The Lord doesn’t take a liking for such playing around.”
“People have told me about the gold, that you know where it’s hidden Josh; I want to get some of it with you, if you’ll share it with me!” said Ashley to Josh.
“What people you talking about?” asked Josh?
“I don’t rightly know how many people, just you I guess—, heard you say it today when you were talking to Toby.”
Toby, Todd, Silas and Jordon were on the porch drinking now, they had found Josh’s stashed corn mash whiskey.
Josh wiped his forehead, he could feel the cool wind fresh on his face, all the way down to his belly and then to his feet.
“I reckon I just overheard you and I got thinking, why not me, if Toby doesn’t want to help yaw none, I will,” said Ashley, adding “something wrong with your belly Josh?”
“There wasn’t but I guess there is now…the spring planting here on the farms is going to need you.” He said.
“It looks to me Josh, you’re all fed up with plantation life, and I want to leave before I get all fed up with it like you, that’s because I don’t want to get old like you having stayed here all my days on this earth, knowing I’m all fed up and don’t do a thing about it. I know God made the land, and folk like you and Hightower and Silas and the Smiley’s they ain’t ever going to leave, so I gotta do my thinking and planning for myself, if-in I’m going to do anything at all in this life.”
Josh got thinking, that Silas had felt he had a wife in the basket, but he hadn’t, and if she’s thinking of going to New Orleans, perhaps she’s smarter than all of us had given her credit for, ‘Yessum, she’ll be gone before summer comes, faster than the winter crows,’ Josh got a thinking as she was leaning over him, almost on top of him.
“So you think God made a place for you down in Orleans, haw girl?”
“Well, you said I’m pretty, and you like me, and maybe someone will like me down yonder in New Orleans and say I’m pretty like you say, and Silas likes me, even if I don’t have all the stuff a woman is suppose to have like you said, and you still think I’m pretty, then I got a chance to make something of myself, more than a worn out wife up here picking balls off of stems called cotton balls, that ain’t no life for a pretty girl like me, now is it Josh? And those white boys that raped me some years back, they liked me too!
“And I hear New Orleans is a fine place,” she said. “All those people there just like us. Except they is rich, but that don’t make no difference to me, I like everybody nowadays, and why can’t I get rich? If they can I can. So that where I’m goin’ soon as I can. I know I can find a place to sleep, even if I got to sleep in the back of a store like your son Jordon does, down in Ozark—ain’t that what I ought to do, Josh?”
Josh conjured up a big mouthful of tobacco and saliva, and spit into the weeds (clearing his throat, Ashley by him, he could not see anyone else his head bent downward, he could hear her foot moving, sliding over towards his, he knew what she wanted with him), and got thinking of just what did happen back in 1862, about Miss Ashley Walsh, eleven-years old at the time, something about her, the young Negress, that some white boys attacked and assaulted her, someone mentioned rapped her, and because she said she was rapped, but was unsure of whom it was, who assaulted her, attacked her—just unsure of who the rapists were in total but rumor said it was those two young Ritt boys, and there was more than one—alleged rapists.
No one claimed the rape, none of them Ozark boys anyhow, no one wanted to admit doing it to a nigger, so Tom Banister said; and Ashley wasn’t really that black, prettier than most white girls.
Tom Banister, the city’s Post Officer, supervisor, suggested we ponder on it, if indeed it was necessary or worth pondering on, and he really didn’t think it was necessary, but we all did.
Then some voice said “Let’s go on home, I had enough, we ain’t getting anywhere but insulting one another now!”
And Tom Banister went home, and shot himself in the head.
“I see your mama—Ashley,” said Josh suddenly, without knowing how it happened, as if he had just woken up from having his head in the clouds (Ashley had tightly moved her foot against his, that he could not move his in any direction, her thigh to his thigh, which made him look up), “she’s hiding behind those pines, over yonder there, she’s fixing to fall on her face if-in she leans anymore forward. Maybe God intended for you to go on down to that sin city, you seem to know more about it than I. You goin’ to fool Silas, he thinks you want to marry him.”
“And what do you think?” she questioned Josh.
Mr. Charles Hightower, 1813
(23-years old, In New Orleans)
“That’s why I ain’t gone down to New Orleans in over twenty-years with Mr. Hightower; he and I last time I was there, I ended up with a slut, and she stole all the money I had, and she gave me a pill in my whiskey and I got sick, and ended up sitting the next day in the park, yellow like the tall grass here: the money was supposed to have bought some tools for the farm, and all I gits for the money was a headache and a toss in the hay I can’t rightly remember all the details—if you know what I mean, and Mr. Hightower he done told me if-in I ever did that again, he’d strike me dead; God might get mad, but Hightower’s down here, and He’s up yonder, and not sure if He’s all that happy with me lately besides. He jes’ lets me think about it all the time, guessing kind of…”
“Silas,” said Toby, “look at the horsing around Ashley is doing with your pa; I reckon she’s up to something. God knows what. I wonder if she overheard your pa.”
“Overheard what?” asked Jordon (Amos looking at Josh and Ashley in a solemn and grave way).
“Nothin’, just about wanting to go up north to Minnesota or some place up there I ain’t never heard of—called Pig’s Eye…he’s always talking like that.”
“If pa hadn’t signed that contract with Hightower for sharecropping, I’d think he might be on his way soon,” said Jordon, “but he did.
The Slave Ship 1813 “The Monk”
“Pa ain’t going to leave this plantation, he’s just talking to talk, he’s been on here since 1813, when he was just ten-years old, came from the Congo with his mother on some slave ship called the Monk, his paw got killed by some great white gorilla, and all he remembers are those drums and natives dancing about in the village, and the suffocating in the hole of that ship that had some five-hundred natives on it, and he said they threw a few overboard because they were foaming from the mouth, and they got separated from each other down around Bourbon Street, in New Orleans, during a storm, and Mr. Hightower, who was just twenty-three at the time, he done found the boy wondering about, and he was called Zam,
Zam, the Congo Boy
and he took him to Ozark here—gave him a new name Josh Washington Jefferson, and he’s been here ever since, He ain’t going to leave. It was all so suffocating, people of all ages and sexes, children, women, men, old men and so forth, they all came onto deck like a storm of bees, and he was with his mother, that is what he remembered, and he looked up to her, proud he had somebody, but how did they get into this mess, he couldn’t figure it out. And he ain’t going to leave, he ain’t been no other place but here and in that Congo area, and a few trips down to New Orleans.
Zam’s Village in the African, Congo
“He told me many a-times, especially when the war broke out some years back, there wasn’t any sense in leaving, trying to run away from a farm, and starve to death in doing it or fighting for the Confederates and getting killed, there was no sense to it, pa said. And there wasn’t any money, they never pay you in the Confederate Army, and if they do, you could count a month wages on one hand in Confederate notes from a Georgia Bank that is only good in Georgia. Plus none of those soldiers had snuff, and I like snuff and tobacco and snuff…you know what I mean,” said Jordon.
“Silas got one of those big fat toads, a brown toad, ugly as you’re mother’s ears, and he’s going to race him in a toad race come Sunday, if-in you wants to talk more about that gold, and stuff, and maybe go to the toad race, come on over tonight and have some white lightening, and we’ll talk. But I know you don’t like talking.”
“You still have that sharp pain in your belly, Josh,” asked Ashley.
“You know, I think you ain’t going to have any trouble in New Orleans at all. You got a powerful little smile, and the right way to talk, you’ve been saving all that talk stuff for now I guess, when you got something to talk about, something worth saying.”
“I see you’ve been paying attention to me Josh, I guess I don’t need all those other things women folk have, do I?” asked Ashley.
“Besides what you said, I can’t see any difference between your ways and the ways of those gals in New Orleans. Except you be younger and prettier; you just like the other women, you like pretty things, dresses and all that kind of stuff, and this plantation life, and Ozark is kind of a dead end, and Shantytown, the only thing they got there is those horse races at Leastways Downs, and that’s just one straight stretch (a narrow piece of land cut out at the edge of Shantytown, and the woods beyond) except for the toad races now and then.”
Chapter Four
Granny Mae’s beef
Granny (Minnie) Mae Walsh
Josh did not look up, lest he give himself away to those looking at him from the porch, he pretended to be fooling about with that spoke cutter. The old cook came hobbling out from behind those pines, with a hand full of loose twigs as if she was going to use them for the hearth inside her cabin later, or bring them down to the Ghost, who lived in the last shelter in the row of huts behind Josh’s. But it was just pretend.
She kicked her feet as she approached Josh, like a heavy bull. The high grass and the loose sand in the yard made the dust puff up around her. “Here’s a load for your hearth tonight Josh,” and she dropped the twigs in front of him, pert near on his toes. Letting out a deep sigh, she was heedless about the folks on the porch, puzzlingly not noticing them—or at least not caring if they notice her, “So what’s on you mind ma?” asked Ashley.
“Why you fooling around with this old gravel eating gizzard, he can’t do anything for yaw?” said Mae.
Todd watched from the corner of his eye to see if Josh was mad at him for taking his fish and running back behind the Smiley house and cooking them on a spit: right then and there, and saving one for his paw, and none for anyone else, although if he was mad, he was several yards away and his mind was on something else, and now Todd was half loaded with corn squeezin’s.
“Well,” said Mae, “what you reckon you going to do with this old rooster? Maybe you going to take him down to New Orleans with you someday and show him off to all the fancy folk down there, show them what you got!” And she laughed so hard she had to hold her belly in place.
Ella, who had been standing behind a window all this time looking at what was going on outside her living room, stood motionless, night was coming on, and the wind, was picking up, and the coolness of near twilight was fresh. Ella had been somewhat ill, perhaps more depressed than anything, Charles had been gone a lot since the war had started, doing a lot of drinking in Ozark, and now Frank was a soldier, and she was always nervous about both of them.
“Someday ma, I’m going to have money, lots of money, and I ain’t goin’ to give you one red cent,” said Ashley.
“Why you say that?” asked Mae, “I’ve been a good mother to you!”
“You can go to hell for all I care!” said Ashley.
And with a smile of incredulity, and make-believe as if to wipe the sweat off her forehead, Granny Mae moved her hands backwards, pushing those elephant type ears flipside, and said, “Say that again.”
“I done told you already what I said, and mean, I ain’t saying it again,” said Ashley.
“By gosh, and by God, I have never heard my daughter talk back to me like this before, before you got into this somehow Josh!”
“You ain’t ever let me get close to anyone I want, mama; you think I gotta save myself for someone special, and I ain’t ever seen anyone special out here, or in Ozark,” said Ashley looking dead face at her mother.
“That’s because you don’t like anyone’s looks but Silas’!” she said.
“How do you know that?” replied Ashley.
“Well, he’s the only one paying you any mind, isn’t he?”
“I bet he don’t know what I know,” said Ashley.
“I bet I know,” said Josh, and Ashley laughed.
“By gosh, and by God, what youall talking about,” exclaimed Mae. And then there was a long silence, no one said a word, “Well, all I got to say,” Mae had stated, “is that it’s a shame God didn’t make you with these here ears of mine instead of me (looking at Ashley, and seeing how pretty she was). A woman like me ain’t got no business looking like I do, with these ears. A woman ain’t good for anything but making babies and cooking, and cotton pickin’, jes’ working for a man, and there ain’t no man I ever seen of who’s going to like marring me with these ears. Men ain’t noticed as much in the face as women is, noway.”
But Josh and Ashley was indifferent towards Granny Mae’s need for understanding, or compassion. There was no need for that in his life, he was just like her—no different as most of the slaves were, oppressed with servitude, and he had no more rights or liberties or could determine his course of action or way of life just like all the other slaves. And now she was old, and that one thing Josh and her knew was farming, of the land. That’s all they knew. There had been barely a moment in his or her life during the past there or for decades, that they had thought about freedom, now it was nearing reality, and they were old, and Ashley was trying to discover someway by which she could secure a handsome way of life, beyond raising cotton for someone else—it was her time, and she knew it. And as far as Ashley could but it together, their time was coming to an end, that they did the best they could—they were two who survived. And that was saying something.
Several white folks had stopped out in front at the Hightower plantation house, Charles was with them. They were several hundred feet from Josh’s shanty. When they stopped laughing, they looked towards the Negroes sitting on Josh’s porch, slowed down a tinge before entering the mansion, standing still.
One of them hollered at them, “What you niggers doing!” but no one answered them. They just went on drinking, and Jordon playing the banjo, and Josh listening to Ashley, and her mama. “I said Howdy, Josh!” That time it was Mr. Hobby from the grocery store, and Josh turned about, waved his hand.
Jordon was just about ready to read one of his poems—he was a kind of backyard poet and he wrote this poem while resting one evening in the back of the store on his cot, and he’s reading it now to his company on the porch:
Sounds of Ozark at Night
By Jordon Jefferson
I work in this Ozark grocery store
Looking out at its wooden doors
Its walls and brick thick hearth
Its roof and rafters, makeshift bed
As the hounds and drunkards
Howl, all night long, moan and
Grown, as if-in they all be a dying…
Down the road a bit, is a stable
I hear the horse weep and wailin’
The place is called, “Yankcavick’s”
Sounds like I’m back—with pa,
I guess, and my brother Silas
On that old Cotton-picking plantation
Again, playing the Banjo, drinking
Moonshine (ole mash whiskey), from
Granny Mae and singing songs
Of way down yonder in Alabam’
While ole Pa Josh, is drinking and
Thinking, of to-morrow’s fishin’
Poem No: 2640 6-17-2009
The boys on the porch did not hear Mr. Hobby.
“Damn niggers sit around all day long doing as little as they can,” said J. R. Ritt, passing into the house, and Mr. Hobby behind him, and behind Mr. Hobby, Otis from the bar, and behind him, Sally Ann Abernathy (in her mid 40s, a blondish gal, a bookworm as they say, with a healthy looking body, and eyes on the dollar), the schoolmaster, who taught in what used to be an old barn at the end of town, turned into a school room, and painted red and white, with a built-in steeple with a bell that could be rung with a rope that extended from the bell to near ground level. Three windows were built into the side of the old barn, and the window sills painted white, and there was a hearth built at the backend of the school for winter classes. She was something like a tomboy, and old man Ritt had a crush on her (and most everyone reckoned he was the one who put up the money to revamp that old barn). And she was last to enter the premises.
(When Hightower was around, and he wasn’t around much those last months, weeks and days before the end of the Civil War—if not, he was waiting for another drink down at Otis’ saloon, in Ozark)(But if he was at the Plantation, he was there checking things out, waiting. He was the first one, to see Josh lounging, trying to look occupied or at least innocent, near his shanty, or standing in front of the barn, in front of the closed doors, or fence, or outhouse: you were less likely to see him if or rather when he crossed the fields towards that Goose Creek he loved so very much. But Charles knew Josh Jefferson too—as well that is as any white person knew a black person, a Negro slave that is, or could know. And his mind was preoccupied in these days, and the days of slavery were pretty much over.)
Therefore, among themselves—lounging about in the suite or small state room in the Hightower Mansion—somewhat lavishly decorated with a few pieces of art work which had once entertained the Governor of the State— with a drink in their hands, they talked about the Negros and the planting of cotton, and Ritt’s boys at Harvard, and laughed about themselves, spoke to one another about the war ending and having to do sharecropping contracts instead of slavery. And Ritt who liked to talk, and could talk a person to sleep, reminded everyone who owed him money for buying slaves in the past, needed to make good of it. They talked until their voices got rusty, cracked. And Granny Mae had gone back to the kitchen, as Ashley whispered, “Where’s the gold?” And Josh whispered back, “In time I’ll tell you, but not right this moment.”
Todd sitting on Josh’s Steps
“When then?” she asked.
“When we got an agreement between each other!” he commented, adding, “the last time I trusted someone, they stole my fish.” And he looked over at Todd. “I reckon the best thing to do is throw this old wheel over Todd’s head, and see if he’s ever going to steal again.” Todd kept Old Josh within sight, knowing he was thinking up something to get even with him for; Josh had thrown the spoke cutter aside, and stood up, he was a big man, towering over little Ashley, by a few feet, and over Todd by a foot and a half.
“Todd,” Josh said out loud—in a near hoarse voice, “I’m going to chop you up, like they do to the lumber down at that old sawmill, up by Big Creek, and send you floating down the Chattahoochee River for eating my fish—they were some nice fish too; took me all morning at Goose Creek to catch them Blue Catfish, and Flathead Catfish, one as big as my forearm—and as long as your nose (and he laughed), caught him hiding in a log, and that Blue one, he was eating a frog, and I got him with my bare hands—just like I’m going to do with your skinny neck (and he laughed again), and I know their secret, that’s why I gits them all, you niggers that go onto Bear Creek, or Beaver Creek or Whitewater Creek don’t catch a damn thing, not worthwhile anyhow, I use chicken bones and soap—I done found out their recipe—took me all these years, but I found out their recipe, and I look in the murky waters, and find the mild current and a rock bottom—or one nice and sandy bottom in the creek, and then I fetch my bamboo pole or my pine stick—all depending on how I feel for the fish, cuz I got two fishing poles, and like lightening pull them up like the sinners the preacher down in shantytown, near Ozark, that young preacher fellow—Reverent Hickman Jr. who uses all those big words, ain’t no one ever heard, or can make sense out of, but he gets his fish—just like I get my fish, he catches them and pulls them in through those doors cuz he’s a handsome fish himself, not ugly like the flathead catfish, and you go and take my fish as if it belongs to you, youall best pray fast as you can—and there ain’t no preacher can help you now, only the Good Lord, and I reckon he knows I’m fed up with you, so I hopes he’s a sleeping, cuz I’m going to hook me a fish right quick. That there one, blue one, must a weighted near ten-pounds if anything, nobody fools around with my fish.”
Aint nobody knowen what Todd was thinking but I reckon he didn’t stick around to explain to Josh, he was sorry. And Toby just said, “I’m no sinner Josh, I just ate one—that big one you is all talking about, but I didn’t steal from you.” And Josh recognized that as having a clear conscious, and he would had done the same had Silas stole fish from Toby—and had he eaten the fish Silas would have given him—which he would have, and he would not have done a thing to help Silas either like Toby didn’t lift his voice or a hand to save Todd. What was wrong was wrong.
And then Josh grabbed the jug and took a big swig, and started talking about the time he and Sweet-pea, his ex wife, were in the swamp picking berries, and they come across an old road, near twilight, and Josh looked at Silas, and he said “What about it pa?”
“I looked here and there,” said Josh, now looking at Silas and Toby, “What is that I say to Sweet-pea, and she is this kind of nigger, she liked to show off and say to me, ‘it ain’t nothin’ and it ain’t make a difference ef she know what it is or not, and she hauled off and kick it, thinking it was a rotten log, but I couldn’t tell, and that there log was a ‘gator and it done grabbed her dress—and she’s as naked as a jaybird, and I had to saddle it like a hoss, and I says to her ‘that knife, give me that there knife I use for fishing, and I reckon I could make out with it, and once I got that knife it was too late for de ‘gator, and I rode the ‘gator and banging that knife into him, like cutting butter, around he neck and eyes and under he arm, and I says ‘Lord, don’t let de ‘gator bite me,’ and he was glad to get on back home to his corner in the swamp.”
“You sure is lucky to have that knife!” said Toby.
“I reckon some folks might think it luck, but I save your mama boys.” said Josh, looking at Silas.
“You ain’t no better off for savin’ her,” said Silas.
“What make you say that?” said Josh.
“You ain’t never known what kinds of notion she got, cuz she up and left you paw!”
“That’s all right, it ain’t make too much of a difference, I thinks I knows so much about women folk back then, and I ain’t known nothin’. Yessum, womens I find out I ain’t know nothin’.”
“Want some moonshine, Ashley?” asked Silas.
“No, I don’t want nothing to do with that kind of stuff Silas,” said Ashley, “if ma ever ketch me drinking I’ll be thrown much like his alligator,” and everyone laughed. But that really wasn’t the case, she just wanted to be sober, she had plans.
Chapter Five
The Civil War Ends
Confederate Soldiers in Alabama
It was just down three miles from where the Hightower plantation was, every man who could bear arms was still firm and ready to carry on a new battle, but General Robert E. Lee and General Grant were talking about a surrender; the Confederates were in such bad shape, that in due time General Grant would order rations for twenty-five thousand Confederates. Most of the Confederate Army was enfeebled by hunger, wasted by sickness, foot diseases, from the constant marching, it was more than a hardship it was stifling ((wholly unfit for duty) (formal surrender would come on April 9, 1865, and although the last shot would be fired, it would not come until sometime in May or June)). It now was the first week of April, 1865.
And almost immediately, Charles began talking to everyone that Frank was coming home, and Frank was expected to be coming home soon, and he was down some place in Texas, by the Rio Grande. And he was telling everybody, “It feels to me like it’s going to be a good year, the crops look good, and the war is ending and the weather is fine, and we had plenty of cotton-seed.”
He was so happy he wanted to go down to see the Ghost, the old man in the last shanty ((in the row of huts behind Josh’s)(perhaps do some fixing on his old shelter, he knew sometimes in the middle of the night when a rainstorm came up abruptly, the old man would wake up to find his bed wet, water pouring down through holes in the roof, Ella had heard him cussing a few times at the roof—and mentioned it to Charles—cussing as if it was alive with evil spirits, with evil intentions, but he never asked to stay in any other of the huts, had he, Ella had no qualms of allowing it)), the old man had worked for Charles Hightower and his father for near seventy-five years who was also from the Congo, and had not worked for the last twenty-five years, just sat in that back shed, and never complained to anybody, about anything; how he ate, and what he ate, never coming to anybodies mind, but now, today, Hightower wanted to celebrate and check on his needs, but he didn’t go down there, taking advantage of the opportunity, he considered it though, but nothing more.
Chapter Six
Sergeant Frank Hightower
Confederate Negro Soldier
Although the war was officially over, the battles were not. Sergeant Frank Hightower propped his feet and leaned against the rotten wood of the buckboard to wait for the onset of the battle, the battle of Palmito Ranch, fought on May 12th and 13th, 1865 (it was to be the last battle of the Civil War). The battle was fought on the banks of the Rio Grande about twelve miles east of Brownsville, Texas. In the large scope of events following the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Army on April 9th, Palmito Ranch was nearly ignored. This would be the last major clash of arms in the war. A skirmish had killed him, killed Sergeant Frank Hightower. While fighting had stopped for the night, and both sides went for reinforcements, Barrett came with the 62nd United States Colored Troops and 2nd Texas Cavalry; it was one of those bullets that killed Frank. From where Charles Hightower stood, he just couldn’t understand any of it. The war was over, the planting was good, the harvest would be good, and a colored soldier on the last day of all the battles to be (perhaps even from Alabama, who’s to say), out of the 620,000-soldiers that would die in the Civil War, he was the last of the numbers making it: 620,000; thus, Charles looked stirringly out his window, he couldn’t see anything—it was like he was blinded (perhaps in state of disassociating), yet in full view was a new harvest to be, Ella and Emma saw him standing there, there was nothing for him to do now but die, so he felt, Ella was moving towards him closer and closer (remaining in this state of frozen anger) as he held his chest, and dropped to his knees, and tried to catch his breath, and lost all the oxygen to his brain (it was as if a shutoff valve locked up) —becoming unconscious, and hence, never waking up. They had a double funeral that spring.
The Battle:
The Battle near White Ranch
At about 2:00 a.m., May 12th, 1865, the Union forces had surrounded the suspected Rebel outpost (this would be the last battle of the Civil War), known as White’s Ranch, but no one was there. Realizing this, the commander of the Union forces had his men rest and sleep among the weeds on the banks of the Rio Grande. Then at around 8:30 a.m., Mexicans on the other side of the river informed the Rebels of the Union force’s position. Consequently, this was reason enough for the Union Commander to attack the Confederate camp at Palmito Ranch, this scattered the Confederates. The Union forces were reinforced at daybreak on the 13th, with two-hundred men, and more skirmishing took place—seemingly, both sides forced into a firefight, and on the Tulosa River, Union troops met with Confederate cavalry forces, led by Col. Rip, and fighting continued. The Union forces ordered a retreat ((this was when Sergeant Frank Hightower, of the Confederate Army, was shot and killed) (118-Union forces perished in this battle, unknown account for the Confederates)), although the retreat was orderly and successful in holding the Rebels at bay.
It was said, the Imperial Mexican forces on the other side of the river, these soldiers crossed the Rio Grande into the United States, although they did not participate in the battle, they provoked it (with having shot the first shot in the ongoing battle for the two days), although the validity of this report remains in question.
Chapter Seven
Molly Benton and Ashley Walsh
Ashley Walsh, of Ozark, Alabama
Ashley was very much like her mother Granny Mae Walsh, not at all in appearance though, but in behavior; had you known them both, there was no mistaken it. Granny Mae, told Ashley, Molly Benton was kind of Josh’s girl, or at least Josh pretended she was, and Molly, a middle aged slut from Fayetteville, North Carolina, had moved into her little log cabin, some years back, after becoming a free slave over an occurrence in the Abernathy Family, she was paid to move on by and to be quiet of her affair, and with the money she had, she did just that. Pretty and a full woman, and thirty years Josh’s junior or thereabouts, he had a liking for her, and you might say, so did Silas (and a few confederate soldiers that visited her apartment in Fayetteville prior to her leaving the city, soldiers her white lover never knew about, by the name of Abernathy), whom was close to thirty and Molly, on top of forty.
She didn’t want to marry anyone, just have them run after her, or have someone on the side, lest they marry and she was afraid they’d take what little she had—although she had a lot more than what a lot of black folks had, plus papers to say she was a free woman, no longer a slave. At the moment, Josh was not interested in Molly, rather, Ashley. He did not know what happened to him, but she was too young for him of course, but not too young to understand the things she wanted in life, and how to get them, and Josh had something she wanted.
Josh was in his hut—alone, thinking on Ashley, the doors were closed, it was dark, and Silas was in the barn working, and Jordon was in town working at the store, and Emma and Ella in the house. And there seemed to creep into his body an agonizing feeling of strangulation, Josh thought, this was all something to do with his mind, not his body parts, it was a natural feeling of course, the truth was Ashley had far more sense than her mother, no one knew the man who fathered her, but it was alleged in the black queues of Ozark, and Shantytown and its surroundings, perhaps it was old Shep Hightower: he was smart and shrewd, she must had gotten his inners, Josh thought, and his spirit, inherited them. And by-and-by Ashley was becoming braver, more and more as the days went on—as this day went on, and gradually more fearless of the world around her. She had something they wanted, and she wanted something in return, and it seemed she was willing to barter for it, at any cost—even if she had to sell her soul. The thought of the gold, had gotten to her. Freedom had set in, but there was no freedom if you had to starve to death to keep it, use it. The white man still had his hold on the south, like it or not, like a bulldog to his meaty bone. The dusty black hold was still there; Josh stood up, pushed himself erect from the table and walked outside the door, slowly across the yard, looking at the several old huts, and knowing the old man was in the last one, he must had been a hundred if not more, the Ghost everyone called him.
He crept down the path, and then he saw Ashley, what was she doing there he thought?
Halfway down the path she waved at him, noiselessly he caught up to her, creeping up to her, “Hush,” she said, “the old man’s sleeping, I brought him some watermelon, nice and fresh on a day like this, you cant feel anything better.”
Josh looked at her strangely, and Ashley affirmed, “I didn’t tell you no lie about the old man, did I?” she asked. “Go ask him?” Then she whispered something, asked, “Did you hear what I said?”
“What you tell me?” said Josh.
“When you all dressed up on Sunday’s and shave, I look at you and say: you sho’ Josh is a good looking man. You the best looking man I ever see.”
“You think so, Ashley?”
“You sho’ is. I reckon the reason why maybe I think so is you most usually looks so wise.”
“What does you mama say?” asked Josh.
“She ain’t say nothing, but she look like somebody give her a spell of your mind.”
Josh spit some wet tobacco out of his mouth, to his left side, wiped his mouth and chin, with his sleeve. His eyes were big as owls, and she grabbed his hand, “Didn’t I tell you…” and she hushed up, and they went into the high grass and lay back, and he, Josh grew with enthusiasm, and she asked, “Now will you tell me where the gold is?”
Heretofore, they were in the undergrowth, hidden from the house and the open fields, part of the broom-sedge that had not been cut for farming, and his conscience began to bother him, but it didn’t seem to bother her none, and he figured let it bother him temporarily, he could live with it and ask for forgiveness later on, he was hungry for the little tempest, even if it all sickened his soul, his body was roaring to go—and somehow the devil had wiggled his way in, and Josh simply paid him no attention.
Sometimes he and Molly could do this in a few minutes, and at other times it took hours if not days, and he was just hoping it wasn’t days this evening, before he was satisfied, and he had to do what he was going to do, that she wanted him to do, before God punished him, otherwise not do it at all, and have to think about it all next week. And she knew if she didn’t cooperate, the gold would vanish, if it hadn’t already, but knowing Mr. Charles Hightower had died already (and quite suddenly), chances were it was still available for the pickings.
There was now a dead silence, a hollow silence in the high grass, as he lay back he could see the roof of the mansion, and the side porch of his shanty. “Hey!” she said, “you’re not as rusty as I thought!” Then he jumped up and left her standing there, putting on her slipover clothing. Silas saw him from the barn for a moment, and saw Ashley walking the other way to the Smiley plantation. Silas stopped working in the barn and waited for Josh to reach him. With outstretched hands they greeted one another, there were no hard feelings.
The Smiley Plantation, Ozark, Alabama
“I don’t know son, what made me do what I did, but I did it,” said Josh.
“You is only one man, pa” said Silas, “the old snake had his time with me and you both,” and they laughed.
“The Good Lord, he’s against such things,” Josh said. “I gotta be looking out for myself for in the after-life thing, now I gotta get right with the Lord and confess my sins. I done wrong, and Jesus don’t take much notice to sinners that keep doing the same sin, over and over, like I do with Molly and you know who else now.”
“Hell,” Silas said, “you say that every time you come back from Goose Creek after visiting Molly, but you don’t never stop going over to Molly’s, you just keep asking for the Lord to forgive you.”
“I reckon you is right son, let’s go get some moonshine so I can lay back and think about this some.”
“You smell like you already had a good share of moonshine, pa?”
They started both walking alongside the barn to the shanty, Silas thrust his hand over his paw’s shoulder, although he had to lift it a foot or so up to do it, “I guess women folk get hungry, too,” he said.
Josh sat down in his rocking chair on the porch, clinging to the frame with both hands, he sat swaying back and forth, rocking, and rocking, and humming an old church hymn.
Chapter Eight
The Fire and Gold
Old Josh sitting in his Shanty
“You clean forgot to see Molly, it seems like,” Silas told Josh the following morning. “She’s been asking for yaw pa.” Josh jumped up from his chair at the table, and hurried on over to the doorway where Silas was standing, and said, “You’ve been talking to Molly…” then clutched Silas’ hand pulling him into the shack, near dragging him.
“Pa you shouldn’t be doing that,” Silas said.
Josh looked him in the face, he pleaded convincingly enough for Silas not to tell Molly what he had done, lest she up and leave him, if he should.
“I ain’t said nothin’, and don’t intend to pa, don’t fret over it,” twisting his arm loose, trying to get it away from Josh’s grip.
“I’ve been praying over this matter with the Lord about Ashley,” Josh commented. Silas chuckled a bit.
“There ain’t’ nothing about prayer to laugh about,” said Josh, seriously, “we all got to pray sometime, even you Silas.”
“I reckon so pa, but you did the wrong, not me.” Silas said. Josh put his arms around Silas’ shoulder, “Maybe we both should pray son?”
“Hell, I gotta work pa, ain’t got no time for prayer now, and gotta do your job as well as mine.”
“I know you’d want me to pray for ya, so I’ll pray for both of us,” said Josh.
The Old Man called Ghost
Josh didn’t go down to see Molly; he was tired, and wanted to rest. Neither did he go down to Goose Creek to do some fishing, or to the fields to see his boy Silas. And in the meantime, Ashley had some well developed plans being worked out in her mind: matter-of-fact, they were already worked out, only to be implemented. And that now was in the makings.
It had been for her, one thought led to the next, and the more she thought about what she had to do the easier it became to do it, and waiting for the right time was not on her schedule, to-day was just as good as to-morrow for her, and Mr. Hightower was dead, and Ella and Emma were visiting at the Smiley’s (but even at best it was a good while until daylight when she had intentions to leave, or perhaps even this evening if all things work out according to her plan, she was in some kind of night dress and she with a sort of weary remorseless patience, just about worn out herself from thinking and planning and digging inside her nerves then turning the go-ahead button on, and she was jumping ahead of what at one time seemed hopeless, she had really never hoped for, not really and truly, but now seemingly attainable, and available, so why not try and reach it, and this is what she was thinking, and now doing, even if it involved a little brutality). I guess you could say things were going along in an easy way, perhaps too easy, but easy nonetheless, and to Ashley, all the better for it. To her little lifetime, it was now.
Josh had fallen to sleep on the cot by the window—he done prayed so hard so long, and drank so much whiskey, he fell sound to sleep—likened to a hibernating bear; Ashley had crept, tiptoed into his shanty, his room to see ((it was as if she knew he’d fall into a deep sleep, perhaps she had put something in that jug of his, who’s to say, but she could have recalled the story Josh had told her earlier on, what had taken place in New Orleans, when Josh got sick and yellowish, after he woke up, and found all his money gone, and perhaps the Ghost had a formula for just that kind of sleeping)(rumor had said, back in the early days, when the Ghost was more youthful, he’d be back in the thicket—the dense stand of trees and tall shrubs behind his hut making voodoo like recipes for magic spells, and potions, etc.)) And then she went down the path that led to the Ghost’s shack. The old man, in the shack had gotten ready, having a work to act upon.
In the course of the following hour, Ashley had reached the bedroom of Mr. Charles T. Hightower, pulled back the rug, pulled up the board that hid the gold coins, her sole intention of having all of them but one, her mother in the kitchen, unaware of what was going on—had she known, she might have stopped her, or joined her to go with her daughter to New Orleans, and in either case, Ashley wanted no part of that. And after counting the thirty or more twenty-dollar gold pieces, she wrapped them in a pillow sheet, and returned to the old man’s cabin, the undertaking accomplished, dropped a twenty-dollar gold piece on his table, her thinking was now different, and forever would be: she said no goodbyes to anybody, she just up and left—just like that, prepared to find her way to New Orleans—come hell or high-water, she was a free woman, as was ever black man and black woman in America now. And she’d not have to remain hidden, because no one knew it was her, and by the time Mrs. Hightower found out the gold was gone, who’s to say when that would be. And who’s to say she knew it was there in the first place? It didn’t matter one way or the other. To her, it wasn’t any sin to take from people that enslaved you and your mother all their lives and made them work for nothing. She came into the world a slave, and that wasn’t the way she was leaving. She called it retribution, with a tribute.
Josh Jefferson’s Shanty
Josh was still sleeping, and it still was not too late to do what had to be done, Josh was the only one that could point a finger at Ashley, or the Ghost, should the law ask, but no one would believe the old Ghost anyhow plus he was part of the scheme, and he hardly could walk to do what he needed to do, so it would seem to the law—if it came to an investigation, it wasn’t him. But he still could hobble forward to the back of the house, take some dry cotton from last years crop (that was left by Ashley for him in back of Josh’s shanty) along with some dry blackjack oak —found in the dense undergrowth, nearby, beyond the last of the cabins, and with a lit lantern, he lit it on fire, in hopes that it would burn fast enough to collapse the house onto Josh—while he was sleeping, in that momentary hibernation—and kill him.
It seemed like God sent someone to make sure the harvest went well, but no one to watch that old man, called Ghost. It was late afternoon, the sun was warm, and the air was pleasant. And there was a light breeze, and the old man lit the cotton with his oil lamp and hobbled back to his shanty, and took his gold piece off the table and hid it under a floorboard. The breeze was blowing onto the back of the house, blowing the cotton that was on fire and now the blackjack against the house, and it seemed the devil had cultivated this perfectly; the old wood went ablaze quickly. The fiery, yellow, red and blue flames, went sky high in a matter of minutes, and it was warm and the fire crackled and popped, and sparks from the wood on fire went everywhichway—like lightening bugs, the side of the wall burned upward in a matter of seconds; burning like a crawling snake onto the roof caving it in, and onto Josh below, spinning a heap of wood everywhichway.
The Smiley’s saw the fire (as did the visiting Ella and Emma) and so did Silas, the old Ghost didn’t come out of his hut; he just sat back on his chair——that was over the floorboard where the coin was hidden, and there he sat, as if someone had turned off a switch, to an engine.
It was not to be realized how fast a fire could spread, with the perfect conditions—it wouldn’t take long before the hut burned down to the ground no different than a pile of dry autumn leaves, with Josh in it, looking like a burnt heap, crooked like a fetus. Ashes all about, Even Molly came running from two miles away and by the time she got to the Hightower plantation, it was all over, not much more to be said, and no one noticed the Ghost was gone or Ashley. I reckon no one cared. Molly cried on Silas’ shoulder. The only thing left to be seen of the old shanty was the beat-up old brick chimney standing parched—dry to the bone of life, twilight being the only thing that outlined its horn like appearance.
After Silas buried his pa that evening, he went to Molly’s house to comfort her, and he’d end up living there. And Jordon never did return back to the Hightower plantation after he gave the elegy for his pa, he stayed in Ozark working at the store living in the back and sleeping on the cot—the very same one he had for years, and the boll-weevils and weeds and Cotton wilt (a fungus plague) destroyed the cotton harvest, and Ella and Emma were left at their mansion alone, as two spinsters. And thus, started the reconstruction era of the south; as for Ashley, she made it to New Orleans and Granny Mae never heard from her again, although rumor said she was doing well, was in partnership with someone in a brothel.
Elegy for Josh
by Jordon Jefferson
Asleep in the old Rocking ChairAbove him the mockingbird singsFree of the world below—,Old Josh is dead and gone;He at rest, asleep and free,Born a child, yet a slave;Guided by the conscience,Loved by those he loved—From the cotton fields of earthTo the mansion in the sky.And the white robes of JesusAnd the black face of time—Yes, o yes, in the arms of GodHis sins are forgiven, Paid in repentance fullSing to the soul that is flown.(#1686 2-7-2007)
No: 595 Written between February 2nd and the 8th, 2010
Books by the Author
Books Out of Print
The Other Door (Poems- Volume I, 1981)
Willie the Humpback Whale (poetic tale)
(1982; 1983, 2008, four printings (forth in Spanish & English)
The Tale of Freddy the Foolish Frog (1982)
The Tale of Teddy and His Magical Plant (1983)
The Tale of the Little Rose’s Smile (1983)
The Tale of Alex’s Mysterious Pot (1984)
Two Modern Short Stories of Immigrant life [1984]
The Safe Child/the Unsafe Child [1985] (for teachers, of Minnesota Schools)
Presently In Print
The Last Trumpet and the Woodbridge Demon (2002) Visions
Angelic Renegades & Raphaim Giants (2002) Visions
Tales of the Tiamat [trilogy]
Tiamat, Mother of Demon I (2002)
Gwyllion, Daughter of the Tiamat II (2002)
Revenge of the Tiamat III (2002)
Unusual Books (no category)
Every day’s Adventure (2002) Pot Luck
Islam, In Search of Satan’s Rib (2002) Opinion
The Addiction Books of D.L. Siluk:
A Path to Sobriety I (2002)
A Path to Relapse Prevention II (2003)
Aftercare: Chemical Dependency Recovery III (2004)
Autobiographical
A Romance in Augsburg I “2003)
Romancing San Francisco II (2003)
Where the Birds Don’t Sing III (2003)
Stay Down, Old Abram IV (2004)
Chasing the Sun [Travels of D.L Siluk] (2002)
Romance and/or Tragedy:
The Rape of Angelina of Glastonbury 1199 AD (2002) Novelette
Perhaps it’s Love (Minnesota to Seattle) 2004 Novel
Cold Kindness (Dieburg, Germany) 2005 Novelette
The Suspense short stories, Novels and Novelettes:
Death on Demand [Seven Suspenseful Short Stories] 2003 Vol: I
Dracula’s Ghost [And other Peculiar stories] 2003 Vol: II
The Jumping Serpents of Bosnia (suspenseful short stories) 2008 Vol: III
The Mumbler [psychological] 2003 (Novel)
After Eve [a prehistoric adventure] (2004) Novel
Mantic ore: Day of the Beast ((2002) (Novelette)) supernatural
The Poetry of D.L. Siluk
General Poetry
The Other Door (Poems- Volume I, 1981)
Willie the Humpback Whale (poetic tale)
(1982; 1983, 2008, four printings (the forth in Spanish & English)
Sirens [Poems-Volume II, 2003]
The Macabre Poems [Poems-Volume III, 2004]
Minnesota Poetry
Last Autumn and Winter [Minnesota poems, 2006]
Peruvian Poetry
Spell of the Andes [2005]
Peruvian Poems [2005]
Poetic Images Out of Peru [And other poems, 2006]
The Magic of the Avelinos (Poems on the Mantaro Valley, book One; 2006)
The Road to Unishcoto (Poems on the Mantaro Valley, Book Two, 2007)
The Poetry of Stone Forest (Cerro de Pasco, 2007)
The Windmills (Poetry of Juan Parra del Riego) 2009
The Natural Writings of D.L. Siluk
(To include the Shannon O’Day in four Volumes Trilogy) In English and Spanish
Cornfield Laughter (and the unpublished collected stories…) 2009 (Vol. 1)
Men with Torrent Women (Two Short Novelettes and Sixteen Short stories) 2009 (Vol.II)
A Leaf and a Rose (a comprehensive library of new writings…) 2009, (Vol. III)
Donkeyland, Minnesota (Stories of Everyday life of a Neighborhood) (Vol .VI)) 2011
A Midwinter Soldier (... and other selected unpublished stories…) 2011 Vol.V
The Cotton Belt (A Novelette about: Slavery, Sharecropping, and the Civil War)
Back of Book
The story “The Cotton Belt,” is about slave families living in the south trying to outwait the times, as well as the plantation owners and the city folks of Ozark, Alabama (while trying to produce a crop of Cotton, avoiding tragedy. The main character is old Josh Jefferson, near sixty; Ashley Walsh takes over the leading role, becomes perhaps the first black revolutionist of the near new Reconstruction Era.
The old Negro language of the south, in the 1800s, were quite different than modern times, the salve days, the author has tried to bring out a little of the essence of those days, in its dialogue, fragments of poems (explanations and descriptions), and relationships with “White folks.” He has caught some of the humor, tragedy, compassion, brutality, wisdom, deep religious mysticism and remarkable veracity.
This story shows a little of the influence of slavery, the dread of the overseer—the Civil War in the background, cotton pickers, and sharecroppers.
The dialect, being English, shot though and influenced by traditions and sentiments of the slaves. The author realized most often the words of the slaves were undistinguishable, here he has corrected that and only left a marked influence of this past.
This is the author’s 44th book, and most versatile, resourceful. He lives in Minnesota and Peru with his wife Rosa. Back picture of the author with Garrison Keillor National Radiobroadcaster, author, poet, and storyteller; they met at the World Theater during a poetry reading, February, 2005, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
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