O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [122]
As masters of survival, the Nebo families knew their reality. The “Big Mosquito,” Sheriff Charlie Bugg, was reality, and the tithe he received from Nebo kept his larder full. Most troubles never got to court and no prisoner from Nebo had ever been sold into contract labor. It was a livable arrangement.
The ghost of Matthew Fancy never entirely left Horace Kerr alone. After his death, Laveda and Willow continued a somewhat mystical relationship at Inverness. Now and again, during slavery, a slave-master relationship grew close and continued after emancipation. Matthew Fancy had been Horace’s most trusted assistant and one of the brightest men he had ever known. Laveda oversaw Inverness with great skill and had a strong bond with Daisy, her former owner.
Amanda and Willow were like sisters.
Laveda was drawn to the consuming beauty of the tans and coppers and browns and rusts and flares of orange of the Eastern Shore.
As a respite from Baltimore, she built Veda’s Cottage, as it was called, on Ned Green’s land and sponsored a one-room schoolhouse, the only black school in the county, and named it for Matthew, and kept its shelves filled with books.
After a bit of grumbling and hemming and hawing, and after close personal inspection, Horace allowed Amanda to spend some of the springtime and autumn in Nebo with Willow. Amanda’s visits were golden times for the girls from the ages of ten until their cotillion.
They were maudlin that last year in Nebo over the inevitable drift into separate lives. The flame of their friendship would remain, but it flickered. Horace and Daisy were not all that sad because there came a time when black-and-white intimacy needed to diminish.
Directly after Willow’s debut, she was courted by her escort, Jefferson Templeton, a nicely cut fellow in his late twenties.
Willow had lived in the comfort of a white mansion, inherited her father’s lawyering mind, and dared dream bright dreams.
Wise old Laveda realized Jeff Templeton would be as much as Willow could hope for. A single black girl was the lowest coin in the Republic. Willow’s gifted mind was rented by white law firms, but never mentioned.
Slowly but surely, ambition oozed from Willow in the face of grim reality and she gave up her dream.
The Templeton family, named for their former owners, were stalwarts in Baltimore’s black community, building on a skill learned in slavery. The family patriarch, Josh, had become a master leather craftsman on a large horse ranch. His work was so fine that owning a “Templeton saddle” became like owning a rare orchid. An entire generation rode to the hounds with their white asses bouncing up and down on their Templetons.
Old Josh was clever, making enough prized saddles to be able to build a small leather factory that crafted a full line of tack, harnesses, running martingales, and farm leather.
Jefferson and his three brothers inherited a rare enterprise. The money came mostly from white folks and Jeff knew how to josh with them and let them believe they had outfoxed him.
But Jeff and his brothers still had one foot stuck in slavery, as would his entire generation and generations to follow. The barking hound was never far behind and life meant getting through without pissing off the white folks.
Ned and Pearly Green waited anxiously at the farm gate. They could hear Jeff Templeton’s wagon chiming before they saw it, and their hearts ran fast.
How long had it been? Four years since they had last seen Amanda Kerr. Ned tugged the rope and the gate swung open and Jefferson lifted the women down.
They stared.
Pearly had shrunk some. Her face was clear, saintly, and beautified by life on the Eastern Shore. Ned’s hair was all white, and though he was bent, he was still a power of a man.
They came together and held their girl wordlessly and tight.
“My, my, you has done some growing up,” Ned said.
And they jabbered atop of one another up the path to the house. It would take time before Amanda would be able to clearly pick up the