A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton - Michael R. Phillips [8]
The next morning when I got up, I went outside and walked around for a bit, just looking at everything.
Then something struck me. It was like one of those things you suddenly notice, and then you can’t think of anything else, and you can’t imagine why you didn’t see it before.
This whole place didn’t look right. It looked run-down and abandoned. There was stuff lying around. Several windows of the house were broken—the one Katie’d shot out with the rifle and a few others that must have been broken by the marauders who had killed her family. There were a few boards lying around, and the pile of broken dishes I’d cleaned up that first day was still there on the ground outside the kitchen door. A little flower garden was growing beside the wall of the house, but it was getting full of weeds. Nothing looked kept up.
And it was too quiet. Except for baby noises coming from the house every once in a while, it all seemed deserted. If anybody was to come and take a look around, they’d figure nobody lived here, though having Emma around would keep it from ever being altogether quiet!
We had to figure out a way to make it look more full of life. Somebody would come again as sure as anything, and we had to make it seem like a normal place where people lived and were doing things.
After Katie and Emma were up and as we fixed our breakfast, I told Katie what I’d been thinking.
“We gotta make the plantation look right, Miss Katie,” I said. “Sometime more people are gonna come, and eventually somebody’s gonna realize it feels all wrong.”
Talking about people coming around set Emma right off.
“Dey be lookin’ fer me too, sure as sin! What’s gwine become ob me when dey come?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you, Emma,” said Katie. “We’ll hide you if we have to.”
“Who do you think’s gonna come for you, Emma?” I asked, still hoping to get to the bottom of what her predicament was all about. We’d asked her questions about it several times, but she hadn’t ever been too eager to tell us much. But for some reason, on this day she started talking more than before.
“Some frien’s er da master’s son.”
“Was one of them the father of your baby?” I asked.
“No, none er dem. It was der master’s son himse’f.
When he come back from da war an’ foun’ me fat wiff his baby from wen he’d come visitin’ one time, he took one look at me an’ I knew what he wuz thinkin’, ’cause he was ’gaged ter be married ter some rich white lady from some plantation roun’ ’bout dere somewheres. An’ I knew dat da wedding wuz supposed ter be soon ’cause everyone wuz talkin’ ’bout it in da big house. I don’ know what dey thought ’bout me gettin’ so fleshy, but nobody said nuthin’ till he came home.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
“He figgered me fer a loose-tongued fice, dat’s what I heard him say ter his frien’s. He said dat if his father—dat’s da master—wuz ter fin’ out, he’d cut him off wiff no money or lan’ nohow, dat’s what he said, an’ dat dere’d likely be no weddin’ either. So he tol’ his frien’s ter git rid er me. He said not ter hurt me none, but I knew dose frien’s er his wuz bad. But all dere talk din’t matter, ’cause den da master, he foun’ out anyway. Somebody musta tol’ him I was fat wiff his son’s baby. He dun flew inter a wrathy rage. Dey din’t know I wuz listn’n, but I heard ’em from da other room. Dat’s when I heard what dey wuz fixin’ t’do ter me.”
“What did they say?” asked Katie, her eyes getting big as she listened.
“Der master, he was shoutin’ at his son, callin’ him a fool fer rapin’ a dumb nigger girl, an’ den he say, ‘You git rid ob dat nigger an’ her bastard baby!’ Wen I heard dat, I got plumb skeered outta my wits.”
“What were they going to do to you?” asked Katie.
“I listened real careful da next day, skeered fit ter faint,” said Emma. “I wuz in da house ’cause I wuz a house slave, an’ I heard William say dey gwine