Olivia, Mourning (23 page)

“He’s making a big thick crossbar for the door, if you think that will make me any safer,” Olivia said. Then she smiled and rose to pour coffee.

“Well, it might that, but it still ain’t
right
.”

“No coffee for me,” Filmore said, obviously uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. “Think I’ll go take a look at that team of yours.” He rose. “Could use some power in front of that plow. Ground’s gotten so rooty, you practically got to chop the seed into it with an ax. I’ll be outside, Iola,” he said, pronouncing his wife’s name “Yoo-la,” rather than “Eye-o-la,” as Norma Gay had. “But take your time. I’ll go lend the nigger boy a hand.”

Once Filmore was gone, Iola hunkered down, as if she and Olivia were old friends who had only been waiting for a stranger to leave the room. “Now, child, tell me how you came to be out here all on your own.”

“There isn’t much to tell,” Olivia said. “I inherited this piece of land and decided to come see what I could make of it.”

“But dear, you’ll never find a suitable husband around these parts. Oh there’s plenty of unmarried men all right, but none you’d want in your parlor, let alone marching down the aisle with you.”

“I’m not in any hurry to get married.”

“You don’t want to wait too long. Best to be having your children while you’re young.”

“I’m not in any hurry for that either.”

“Shame on you! Shame! Why you never want to say such a thing! Children are what we all pray to Jesus for. Filmore and I haven’t been blessed yet, but I’ve known from the minute I married him why the good Lord put me on earth. To bear seed. Why, what else makes a woman a woman? God made you capable of creating life. That’s a privilege
and
a duty. Every Christian child you bring into this world is a blessing. The most wonderful blessing!”

Olivia’s response had been intentionally contrary. She was anxious to have children, many children, but she resented Iola’s intrusiveness and being told that her only goal in life should be finding a husband. She knew there was no small truth in what folks said: “Choose a husband, choose a life.” Marry a farmer, you might get hauled off to Michigan. Marry a storekeeper and you’d have a whole different life. Don’t marry at all, you’re a pathetic old maid. Sometimes it seemed to Olivia that the only way a woman could walk around in the world and just be herself was to marry someone and then have him die on her.

“Yes, I know, of course you’re right. Children are a great blessing.” Olivia tried to make peace with her neighbor and then changed the subject. “Thank you again for the eggs. I forgot what they taste like. Tell me, is it hard to keep chickens?”

“Lord, no. There ain’t nothing easier. Ain’t what to do but toss grain out in the yard and pick up the eggs. Twist the head off one and throw it in a pot for your Sunday dinner.” Iola leaned back and took a sip of her coffee.

“Don’t you have to build them a coop or something?” Olivia asked, relieved that Iola’s tone was once again neighborly.

See
, Olivia thought,
if you make the effort to get along with people, they’re all right
.

“Well of course you got to put a roof over them in the winter, but they ain’t about to run off into the woods. Not as long as you keep feeding them. Folks out here don’t bother fencing in any of their barnyard animals. Let the cows graze free and call them in at night. I’ll tell you a trick.” She leaned forward. “Once it gets hot and the mosquitoes are out strong, you keep a smudge pot burning right close by the house. ’Fore long you’ll see all your animals standing in a circle around it, never have to go round them up at all. They learn real fast to stay by the smoke, so they don’t get bit. Never have to go chasing after them during mosquito season.”

“How do you make a smudge pot?”

“Get some wood chips burning real good and throw a handful of dirt on ’em. Or if you got coals, burn a little sugar over ’em. Couple of weeks or so, them mosquitoes will be out something fierce.”

“I’m so lucky to have a neighbor like you, who knows how to do everything.” Olivia rose to pour them both more coffee and apologized for not having any milk to offer her.

“I’ll have to bring you some, next time I come visiting.” Iola smiled.

“So you keep a cow?”

“Yes, we do. But that’s a lot more work than chickens. You got to milk it every day, morning and night. Then you got all that milk you got to do something with. I can show you how to make butter and cheese you can sell to Norma Gay, but I don’t know if a young girl like you wants to take that on. Specially if you’re going to be out there working in the field like a plantation hand.” She sniffed.

Filmore reappeared in the doorway, but remained silent, just stooping there, looking in.

“There’s easier ways to make money,” Iola said.

“Like what?”

“Well, if your boy’s any kind of shot, you can get between two fifty and five dollars for a deer in Detroit. I seen you got a wagon, so you ain’t got no problem getting it there. You ever making a trip like that, we’ll be glad to share it with you. Pay our way. Filmore’s been chopping cord wood to sell to the railroad.”

“They pay money for wood?” Olivia asked.

“Seven shillings a cord, but you got to get it to the depot office in Detroit. But they pay in Michigan state scrip, which is only good for its face to pay your state taxes. You want real money, you got to sell it for six shillings on a dollar. Man can still make two dollars a day chopping wood, but sure is easier to shoot a deer.” She took a sip of her coffee and sighed before going on.

“Too bad for us, my Filmore ain’t never been much of a hunter. Can’t follow a blood trail for his life, not even in snow, bless him. But them niggers are good at it. It’s in their African blood. And if your boy sees any coons, their skins go for a dollar apiece. But there ain’t no better money than getting a wolf in your sights. Got a bounty on those devils – 25 dollars each. Nobody gives a hoot what shape the pelt’s in neither. All they want is proof that the mangy critter is dead. You take the skin to Squire Goodel in Detroit, down by the river.”

“Are there a lot of wolves around here?”

“Sometimes I think they eat more of my chickens than we do. Folks say that if they keep laying railroad track and blowing them whistles, time’ll come soon we ain’t gonna have to worry about no wolves no more. But for now they’re still a worry.”

“I’m surprised nobody’s penned them up for breeding, if they’re worth that much.”

Iola slapped the table and cackled. “Now, there’s a thought. Folks would just about kill anyone tried that. Ain’t nothing they hate more than a wolf. You’re looking a little peeked, child. That time of the month?”

This question sent Filmore backing out of the cabin again.

“No, I’m just tired,” Olivia said. “It’s been a long week.”

“Aren’t they all? But listen child, next time you got the curse coming on you, you drink some of this special tea of mine.” She pulled a small packet out of her pocket. “You make yourself three cups a day, you won’t have no pains at all.”

They sat talking for another half-hour. Iola tried to pry more information out of Olivia, but Olivia politely avoided answering the questions that were too personal. But Iola’s nosiness no longer angered Olivia. Wasn’t that the way women were? Wasn’t that how they made friends? It made Olivia feel grown up to be chatting with another woman. When Iola touched her and called her “dear” and “child,” she felt less lonely.

“Yula, we got us a long walk home.” Filmore appeared in the doorway again. “That boy of yours seems to know what he’s doing all right,” he said to Olivia. “I told him I’ll be more than glad to have the use of them oxen. Whoever trained ’em made a good job of it. Hope you got what to do with lots of Yula’s eggs and butter. And I’ll give your boy a day of my sweat, keep us quits. We’ll come back for them next week.”

“Oh, I’m glad,” Olivia said, giving Iola’s arm a pat. “That way we’ll have all the more reason to visit with one another.”

“Praise the Lord. You’re going to be just like a little sister to me.” Iola gave Olivia a hug. “I told you. We’re like family now.”

She pulled back and looked Olivia up and down in a manner that was unsettling. But Olivia was willing to ignore these strange quirks. She was glad to have neighbors.

Mourning paused to watch Olivia watering her garden with a tin cup.

“Which a them seeds you been plantin’?” he asked.

“Onions, peas, beans, and turnips.” She pointed at the rows. “Now I’m putting in tomatoes, summer squash, greens, and watermelon.”

“Watermelon? Don’t remember buyin’ no seeds for no watermelon.”

“Mrs. Stubblefield gave me some before they left. Says you can sell the melons in Detroit for a shilling apiece.”

“You like her pretty good?”

“I’d like her more if she weren’t as old as a rock, but she seems all right.”

Olivia almost mentioned the way their neighbors had spoken about coloreds, but bit those words back. Why make him uncomfortable? She did tell him what Iola had said about selling deer in Detroit.

“Okay. You get out there and shoot three deer, we take ’em to Detroit. We could stay over a night, take that ferry south to Canada.”

She smiled, appreciative that he had remembered, and changed the subject. “I think tomorrow I’m going to try chopping down some of those.” She pointed at the stand of young trees a few yards from her garden.

He nodded. “Start out with them soft little maples. They ain’t gonna break your head, they fall on it. And once you decide you a tree-chopping expert, we can always use more punk wood. Can’t never have too much a that.”

“We still have lots of matches.”

He shook his head. “Don’t matter. You always gotta keep some punk wood in your pocket or in that possibles bag you carry ’round, ’long with a flint and a knife. You ever get yourself lost and havin’ to spend the night in the woods, fire gonna be your best protection.”

“How do you find punk wood?” Olivia asked.

“Cut down an old tree what got black knots near the top. Saw it off above and below them knots, and you most likely gonna find it full a punk. Look all brown and wrinkled like. Feel like you pullin’ a wad a cloth out a that tree. One good tree can do you for a year or two, but you gotta keep it dry.”

Mourning jealously guarded their lucifer matches. He had wrapped some of them in bark coverings and buried them at the edge of the farm, so that even if both the cabin and barn burned to the ground, they wouldn’t be left without the means to start a fire. After a long argument, he also convinced Olivia to let him hide her Hawken rifle in the woods.

“You gotta be plannin’ for the worst,” he said. “Spose I be out in the farm and you be down by the river when a band of Indians be comin’ up on us? What we gonna do? Even if you be near the cabin, rifle ain’t gonna do you no good in there. It ain’t got no window to shoot from. Ain’t gonna take wild Indians five minutes to burn you out a there. Best we be runnin’ into the woods, have a rifle waiting on us there.”

“There aren’t any wild Indians around here.”

“Robbers, then.”

“If you’re so worried about robbers, why don’t you keep the rifle with you? I wouldn’t mind that. But I’m not about to leave it hanging in some tree, out in the rain, where anyone could walk off with it.”

“It be fine. I’m a cover it with bark, and you gonna go out there regular and clean and oil it.”

Olivia finally agreed to relinquish her precious Hawken. She kept the shotgun loaded by the door and the pistol hidden down in the cellar.

“She brought us four eggs,” Olivia said. “I thought we’d each have one for breakfast and I’d use the other two to bake a cake. We ought to get a couple of chickens of our own. It’d be nice having eggs.”

“Good with me. Next time we see them, I ask Mr. Stubblefield if it suit him to pay us in chickens for usin’ the oxen.”

“What did you think of them?”

“White folks.” He shrugged and turned to go back to work. Then he stopped and added, “Ain’t no friends of the colored man.”

“How do you know that? Did he say something mean to you?”

“Don’t gotta. I can tell.”

Later, when they were drinking coffee by the fire, she asked him again about the Stubblefields. He avoided answering.

He doesn’t want to talk about it because I’m white
, she thought.
That’s what I am to him. White. Not his friend.

She tried another subject. “What was it like? Growing up without a family?”

“Can’t tell you nothing ’bout that. I ain’t never growed up with no family, so I guess I don’t know the difference.”

She looked up at the stars coming out and then back at him. “It’s amazing when you think of it. Here we lived in the same town all our lives, but we might as well have been on different planets, for all one of us can understand what it would be like to be the other.”

He took his time answering. “I figure you can say that ’bout any two peoples. Folks think they understand each other, but they ain’t none of ’em do. Ain’t nobody knows what it be like to be nobody else.” He got to his feet while he was talking. That seemed to be all the conversation he could tolerate.

“Do you think a man and a woman ever understand each other?” She looked up at him.

“They don’t gotta understand each other. They gotta need each other.”

“What’s a man need a woman for, if not understanding? Companionship?”

“Man need a woman plenty and I don’t mean just for … you know. Not ever body be like your daddy, can bring anything he want home from his store, pay that Mrs. Hardaway to keep his house. Look at the way things use to be, ’fore they had ever thing in stores. Man could grow all the wheat in the world, but if his wife ain’t been grindin’ the flour and bakin’ the bread, he warn’t eatin’. That the way things still be for folks what ain’t got no money.”

Olivia smiled. “That isn’t what Lady Grody says. She says a woman’s job is to create a retreat of peace and quiet for her husband.”

“Ain’t so quiet if his stomach be howlin’. She best be makin’ a racket in the kitchen.”

“When I was a little girl I used to daydream about how I would keep house for my husband. Keep his shoes shined and his collars pressed. I even imagined the wood box next to the stove, the way I’d have all the sticks of wood in neat rows, all the same length.”

“That be crazy women stuff you gonna do for you, not him. He know a short crooked stick burn as hot as a long straight one.” Mourning turned to retreat to the barn, muttering about something he had forgotten to do.

Left alone with her thoughts, Olivia’s mind kept running in circles around Jeremy Kincaid. Maybe she should take him a loaf of bread. He’d brought them that tin of coffee, hadn’t he? What was wrong with a neighborly gift? But how would she find her way to his cabin, knowing only the general direction? She rose and began throwing dirt on the fire.
He knows exactly where to find me
, she thought,
and hasn’t come within a hundred paces. He isn’t sitting around hoping to see me coming up the trail. He plain doesn’t care one whit about seeing me
.

But what if something’s happened to him? What if he stepped in a gopher hole and broke his ankle? Or was on his way to pay me a call when Ernest got spooked and threw him? He could be lying somewhere in the woods right now. Shouldn’t good neighbors check in on one another from time to time, make sure everything is all right?

She scolded herself again.
Put out the fire, get ready for bed, and think about something else. Tomorrow is going to be a long day. The Stubblefields are coming to take the oxen and I guess I ought to invite them to stay for dinner
.

“They should be here soon,” Olivia said the next day when Mourning walked in from the farm to help her carry a tub of wet wash up to the line. “After I hang these, I’m going to start getting the meal on the table. I’ll bang two pots together when it’s time to wash your hands.”

“You go ’head and eat. I get something later, after they gone.”

Olivia wrinkled her forehead. “Why would you say that?”

“I told you ’bout them.”

“You can’t know what they think about coloreds.”

“I know what I know.”

“Well even if you’re right, who cares? This is my cabin and it’s where you break your bread, long as you’re working for me. They don’t like it, they don’t have to accept any more invitations. What do you think I’d do, if you and I went over to their place and they invited me in for something to eat and not you?”

He shrugged.

“Well of course I would decline the invitation. I’ve always said a person can’t fight the whole world, but this isn’t the whole world. This is my place. I sure have the say about what goes on in my own home. That’s the way things will change – when people start behaving right to the people standing next to them.”

The Stubblefields soon arrived. Olivia saw them exchange glances when Mourning took his place on one of the stump chairs, but they settled into conversation quickly enough, as if they sat to table with negroes every day.

“You got to put in some Indian corn, boy,” Filmore said. “Not this year. Too late. But come the end of next May. You ain’t had good eating till you had Michigan sweet corn. It’ll grow most anywhere, but you got to eat it fresh. Course you also gotta put in some other strains what keep better. We just about live on meal. Why Yula here –”

“That’s right.” Iola broke in. “I make a right tasty mush and I’ll have to teach you how to make my ashcake.” She turned toward Olivia. “I’ll bring you over some of my corn pone and hominy.”

“I see you’re clearing more trees ’round the cabin,” Filmore said. “That’s good. Land out here is rich, but it’s got too darn much shade.” He clapped his hands at a mosquito. “You get your land ditched and a lot of those will disappear. You don’t, they’ll eat you alive.”

“Your meat came out quite tasty,” Iola said as she took a bite of venison. “Few more weeks the mushrooms will be out. I’ll show you how to find the right kind, make a catsup sauce. It’s right delicious with fish and meat. Even on a spud.”

“Have you ever seen any Indians?” Olivia asked Filmore.

“None that would bother you. Only heard of one ever killing a white man and that was for chopping down his bee tree. But they can scare the bejeesus out of you –”

“Filmore! I will not have you taking our Lord’s name in vain,” Iola said.

He flinched and apologized, like a small boy to his mother, then continued. “But it’s true. Injun will waltz right into your cabin, real quiet like, without so much as a howdy-do or knock on the door. See, the way they do is, if they put a stick lying on the ground across the entrance to their wigwam, you ain’t supposed to go in. So if you ain’t got no stick, they feel welcome to sashay right in. Course most of ’em around here don’t live in no wigwams. They got houses like us, except a whole mess of families live in the same one together. Still savages, but they farm the same as white folk.”

During the meal Mourning kept his eyes on his food and did not speak unless asked a direct question. When Filmore’s plate was clean, he pushed back and removed his pipe from his pocket.

“You get on outside with that filthy thing.” His wife batted a hand at him.

Mourning followed him. As soon as the men were out the door Iola leaned over and adopted her cozy “girl talk” tone, passing on harmless gossip about people in town that Olivia had never heard of. Olivia did her best to hide her boredom, wearing a strained smile and nodding. Iola seemed to especially enjoy telling her about all the diseases folks were afflicted with and the remedies she could have brewed up for them, if they only had the good sense to ask. Then she began quizzing Olivia again about her time of the month.

“Did that tea I gave you help?”

“Yes, it did. I usually get real uncomfortable right before and on the first day, but this month I hauled water and chopped wood, just like any other day.”

“And how long ago was that?”

Olivia didn’t want to answer and looked away.

“I’m only asking so I can bring you some more tea. I do it up different, depending on what time of the month a woman gets the curse.”

“Well, yesterday, actually.”

“You started bleeding yesterday?” This somehow seemed to cause concern to Iola.

“Yes,” Olivia said stiffly.

“Well, it’s good for me to know.” Iola patted Olivia’s arm. “When Filmore brings them oxen back, I’ll send some tea with him for next month.”

“That’s kind of you.” Olivia’s tone was cold.

Iola turned her gaze on a pair of trousers that hung on the nail Olivia had pounded into the back wall. “You still traipsing around in them? It ain’t right, you know.” Iola seemed oblivious to Olivia’s obvious resentment of her prying. “I don’t care if you are all alone, with no one but a colored to see you. It still ain’t right. Ain’t Christian. Bible says a woman shouldn’t wear a man’s clothing. And here you are, in togs that belong to a nigger man.”

“It’s much easier to work in them.” Olivia spoke through a forced smile and clenched teeth. “How’s your garden doing, Iola?”

Olivia was relieved when they finally walked off with Dixby and Dougan. Maybe having neighbors wasn’t so wonderful after all. She’d begun to harbor a creeping misgiving – perhaps coming to Michigan had been a mistake. Not because they couldn’t harvest a crop; she knew they could. So far things had gone better than she’d dared hope. The fears that had begun to plague her had nothing to do with money and property.