A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton - Michael R. Phillips [27]
I walked back up the hill to the road, then back toward the house, hoping against hope that this time when I got there I’d see Katie waiting for me. But I didn’t.
Now I was downright worried.
I frantically ran everywhere all about the place, into every building, all through the house and barn. But she just wasn’t anywhere.
What could have happened to her?
Suddenly I remembered Katie’s secret place in the woods. That had to be where she was!
I tore off running and didn’t stop till I was standing there in the little wood with the stream running past my feet.
But it was completely quiet. There wasn’t any sign of Katie or the dogs.
“God,” I prayed, and I was more than nervous now, I was really scared, “please help me find them.”
I ran back to the house, again hoping that somehow she would have appeared while I was gone to the woods.
But Katie was still gone. There was no sign of her anywhere.
Again I walked back through the house. I stopped in the middle of the parlor and sort of half cried out, half said to myself, “Oh, Miss Katie … where’d you go?”
All of a sudden I heard a noise like a stick rapping against something. Then I heard a muffled voice.
It was coming from the cellar right below me!
I stepped away, pulled back the carpet, and opened the trapdoor in the floor. A flicker of light came from below. Then I heard the sound of a baby and a familiar voice.
“Dat be you, Miz Mayme? Please, God, I hope dat’s you!”
“It’s me, Emma … it’s me!” I called down the hole. “But what’s going on? Where’s Katie?”
Emma’s face now appeared in the thin, flickering light, looking up at me from down in the cellar.
“She put me an’ William down here, Miz Mayme,” she said. “Somebody came an’ she had ter go wiff dem an’ she put us down here so nuthin’ would happen ter us or nobody fin’ me.”
“Who came, Emma … who was it?”
“I don’ know, Miz Mayme. But look what I foun’ down here.” She came a few steps up the ladder and held up her hand. “What is it, Miz Mayme?”
I saw a sparkle of color in her palm and reached down and took what she was holding—three heavy coins. I expect my eyes got as big as Katie’s sometimes did.
“It’s gold, Emma,” I said. “I think these are gold.”
Now I figure I oughta tell you what had happened while I was away.
ALONE AT ROSEWOOD
15
THE NIGHT BEFORE I LEFT, I TOLD KATIE I’D STAY to help get the cows milked before leaving in the morning. But she said she wanted to try to do it all herself. She might have to learn sometime, she said, and she wanted to see if she could do it. At first I’d had my doubts. But then I realized she was probably right. The more she could do for herself, the better, in case someday something happened to me.
After I left the next morning, Katie had gone to the barn first thing to get started. It took her a lot longer than it did me, two hours to get them all milked. But she did it, and I think she was proud of herself.
Then she opened the gate and led the cows out onto the road and into the pasture where we were taking them for grazing. Once cows learn a routine of doing something, they keep doing it over and over. Those cows knew to follow along right behind her out to whichever of the grazing pastures she led them. When they were in the field, she closed the gate behind them and walked back to the house. I can just imagine that she had a smile on her face too. She was all alone at Rosewood—well, Emma was still back in the house, but alone without me—and she was taking care of things!
She said she was already a little tired from the milking. So she took off her milking boots and went into the kitchen to have some breakfast bread and milk. She built a fire in the cook stove, then boiled some water and made a batch of corn mush for herself and Emma, who was up with William by then.
After they had cleaned William up and Emma had fed him and eaten her own breakfast, Katie then set about the morning’s chores that she and I usually did ourselves. She went back out to the barn, got oats for the horses,