Elysium: The Plantation Series Book IV (32 page)

The dugout he’d left under a hanging
willow waited for him like he’d told it to. He got in and shoved into the black
waters. Flavian’s camp was miles back in the swamp and Hector knew he’d never find
it in the dark. He paddled and poled in the general direction, best he could
tell from what stars he could see through the tree tops. When the sun sent a
suggestion of gray light into the sky, he got his bearings.

People were up and stirring when he
dragged the dugout up the bank. Still a little mist coming off the water, the
heat holding off for another hour or so. Bacon scented the air and Birdie’s two
younguns were running around like wild Indians, but quiet like. Maroon children
learned quick not to hoot and holler and carry on loud enough to bring the
slave hunters down on them.

Flavian himself stood in the yard with
his hands on his hips, waiting for him.

“How’s it look?” Flavian asked.

Hector thought Flavian was the best man
he knew, but he wadn’t much to look at. Not puny, but kind of slight, not much
meat on his bones. So Hector and the others didn’t listen to him cause he was
big and strong, and not really cause he was the smartest. Hector figured that
was him, the smartest. What Flavian had was something else, a quiet something
he carried with him.

“Look like the only one coming  be this
man Adam from the Bissell place.”

“Well. It gone take time, that’s all. And
too many run off at once, that just stir everybody up. You got to remember too
that everybody come out here got to be fed.”

“I know it.” Hector went on to see if he
could get Birdie to feed him.

Early morning, Zeb stepped onto the porch
bare-chested to greet the dawn. Sunrise was his favorite time of day, the sun
still out of sight but coloring the sky with yellow and pink. The birds trilled
in celebration that they’d lived through another night, didn’t get eaten up by
an owl or a snake. “The sun, the sun!” they sang.

He reached his arms up to touch the porch
eaves, stretching out the night’s kinks. His mattress had gotten so thin, the
ropes underneath bit into his back. Gone have to get him some more corn husks
from the shed and re-stuff it.

Across the lane and three houses down,
Livy stood on her porch openly staring at him. He grinned at her, she looked
away. He knew he was a good-looking man – he’d had enough women prove to him
that’s what they thought. He hoped Livy would let him prove to her that she was
a good-looking woman.

“Zeb, Mama Minnie say can you tie my
hair.”

“Sit down right here,” he said. He sat on
the top step and set his niece between his knees. His sister and her man both
died when the cholera swept through last year. Zeb, his mama Minnie and his
grandma, Eva lived in the same cabin, raising Faith and Hope.

Faith’s hair was softer than wool, softer
than cotton. He tied six knobs of hair with strips of  calico, then pulled
softly on one of them. “Ain’t you the big girl? Pretty soon you have enough
hair to braid.”

“Mama Eva say she could braid it now
would I sit still long enough.” Faith heaved a sigh. “But I cain’t.”

He laughed and said, “Let’s go eat.”

With grits and bacon and fresh peaches in
his belly, he worked steadily all morning, just one more hand out in the field,
chopping weeds so they didn’t drink up all the goodness in the soil before the
cane got to it. Mr. Benning, the overseer, assigned each of them as many rows
to hoe as he thought they could do in a day, then ambled off on his horse to
oversee other crews felling trees or sawing wood or digging drainage ditches.
Zeb had worked on all those crews. He didn’t see much difference. Whatever the
job, he bent his back and worked the live long day. Except sometimes felling trees
you got to work in the shade.

He took off his straw hat and wiped his
face with his sleeve. He looked for Livy and saw her the other side of the
field, bent over her hoe. All she had on her head was an old red rag. She
didn’t wear a hat, she was gone get sun stroke. Before it got dark tonight,
he’d cut some straw and make her one.

A swarm of colored dragonflies surrounded
him all of a sudden. “Where you come from?” he murmured. There were blue ones,
and green ones, and red ones. And oh lord there was one as purple as a morning
glory.

Zeb smiled. They made the day worth
living, a sight like that.

Behind him he heard Mr. Benning giving
somebody a tongue-lashing. He’d ridden back to the fields to check on them,
then.

“You can’t hoe any faster than that, I’ll
have you cleaning out the privies. Get at it.”

It was Noah getting the scold this time.
He was old enough the rheumatism had started creeping into his joints. Likely
he was working fast as he ought to. They was all in this field for the long
haul, anyway. Wadn’t no point in hurrying through it.

Zeb finished his row and stepped over to
the one Noah was working up. He started in and met Noah half-way.

“Thank you, Zebediah,” Noah said. “Hot
one, ain’t it?”

Zeb fanned his face with his hat. “What
you think, Noah? It better out here in this field in the summer, the sun
cooking our brains, or out here in February, the north wind chilling us to the
bone?”

“Well, Zeb. That’s a question. I guess I
rather be sweating out here in the sun than shivering in the cold.”

Zeb grinned at him. “Me, too, old man.
Let me do a couple more of my rows, then I come over and help you with yours.”

“Your mama raised a good man,” Noah said.

Zeb laughed. “I tell her you say so.” He
glanced up to see if Benning had seen him hoeing Noah’s row. He’d holler at
Noah again and likely give Zeb a whole acre to work. Zeb could hear the
overseer’s high nasal twang in his head: I’d known you could work that fast,
Zebediah, I’d have given you a bigger chunk of this field for your own.

Wadn’t nothing out here his own. But he
pushed the thought away. Didn’t do no good fretting over something you couldn’t
change. Better to notice the dragonflies and be happy.

With determined cheer, he started on his
next row and sang the first line of one of their favorites. Noah took it up,
then Rachel, and Charlie, till high voices and low voices and the ones in
between filled the air.

When the dinner wagon came, everyone left
their hoe on the ground so they could find where to start up after they ate.
They took their beans and greens and cornbread, all piled on top of each other
in a tin bucket, to the shade of the wind break.

Zeb found Livy sitting by herself a
little way off from the others. He took his bucket and sat down next to her.
“Food ain’t bad, is it?” he said.

She fished the spoon out of her bucket.
“It ain’t bad.”

“You ever wish you worked in the cook
house?” he said around a mouthful of beans.

“I did that, for a while. But they didn’t
like my face up there.”

He looked at her, appraising the clear
skin, the high forehead, the dark luminous eyes. “That hard to believe. What’s
wrong with your face?”

“It don’t smile.”

He drank from his water jug. “I seen
that. What you saving ’em up for?”

When she didn’t answer him, he glanced at
her. She was staring into her bucket, her spoon idle in her hand.

“You got a bug in there?”

She looked at him then. “What you got to
smile about?”

Zeb thought a minute. “I don’t hurt
nowhere. I got all my teeth. And this morning, I seen a swarm of dragonflies,
all colors, even purple.”

“Um” was all the answer he got.

“How about you, Livy? You got all your
teeth?”

She gave him a nasty look. “What kind of question
that for a man to ask a woman?”

He grinned and leaned over with a mock
leer on his face. “You noticed I a man and you a woman, eh?” The grin faded
though when she looked him in the eye.

He felt caught, her gaze full of
resentful awareness and heat. She looked away first, and he felt the air whoosh
out of his lungs.

“Why you do that man Noah’s work for
him?” she asked.

He looked at her, wondering why she
needed to ask a thing like that. “Noah getting old, his bones don’t move so
easy anymore. Maybe someday, my bones get old and achy, and somebody come help
me with my row.”

“And you gone keep smiling till then,
till your bones ache, smiling all the time.”

He stared at her, the bitterness in her
tone sad and ugly. “Don’t see no better way,” he said softly.

That afternoon a patch of clouds floated
between them and the sun, bringing a little relief. A light shower was even
more welcome, but of course, afterwards, the ground steamed and the sun worked
extra hard to suck up that little bit of rain.

Late in the day, Zeb had finished his
rows and was working on Noah’s when Mr. Benning came back. He sat on his horse
and surveyed the field, seeing who was putting some elbow behind the hoe and
who was just shoving at the weeds in the ground.

Zeb knew when Benning focused on him. It
felt like his eyes were hot coals on the back of his neck. Maybe the overseer
wouldn’t notice who was hoeing what row, might not think about who he had
assigned to which row. But, of course, he did.

He directed his horse between the rows
until he came up to Zeb, Noah just a few yards away.

“Afternoon, Boss,” Zeb said.

“You don’t got enough work of your own,
boy?”

Zeb turned an innocent face up and said,
“What’s that, Boss?”

How could Benning possibly be sure which
rows belonged to him? They were in the middle of several acres of cane rows.
Even he had trouble knowing which ones he was supposed to work, and what
difference did it make anyway?

“You look like you helping work Noah’s
rows. That right, Zebediah?” 

Zeb looked around him, trying to look
puzzled, if not downright stupid.

“This not my row?” Zeb said and raised
his brows in surprise to see Noah nearby. “Noah, you working my row?”

Benning spat in disgust. “Tomorrow you
got yourself  two more rows.” He looked at Noah. “You, old man, better put some
hustle behind that hoe in the morning.”

As Benning clucked to his horse to move
on, he deliberately stuck his foot out so that his boot and the stirrup caught
Zeb right in the ribs.

Zeb stumbled back and grabbed at his
side. Benning rode his horse on down the row, his fist resting on his hip, his
gaze roving over the field hands.

Zeb couldn’t breathe for a moment.

“I is sorry to see that, Zebediah,” Noah
said.

Zeb grinned at him, pain shooting through
his side and around his heart and up his throat. “It ain’t no bother. You just
tell your littlest grandson, some day, he got to help out old Zeb.”

That evening, after he’d had his supper
and a wash, Zeb sauntered over to Livy’s cabin, not feeling as easy as he hoped
he looked. His ribs ached and he had to be careful not to take any deep
breaths.

Livy was sitting on the porch stoop. He
sat one step below her so their faces were about level.

“Evening, Livy.”

She sighed audibly. “Good evening, Zeb.”

“Thought I’d sit with you a while.”

She nodded.

They watched the last of the sunset, then
the purple moving in. “Be a dark night tonight.”

She glanced up. “Yeah.”

“I like a starry night. So many stars,
you couldn’t see all of them if you had a hundred eyes.”

Livy looked at him. “A hundred eyes?”

“You ain’t never seen nobody got a
hundred eyes?”

“No, I ain’t never seen nobody got a
hundred eyes.”

“Well, maybe tomorrow you come across
somebody like that.”

“Yeah. I maybe see a blue snake, too.”

He touched her bare foot. “Now you know
you ain’t gone see no blue snake, Livy.”

She moved her foot away. They sat for a
while, watching the dark push away the last glow in the sky.

“If you was mad at that Benning this
afternoon, I couldn’t see it.”

“Cause I wadn’t mad.”

“Why not? You wasn’t doing no harm, and I
seen him kick you in the ribs.”

Zeb shrugged. “No point in getting mad.”

She stared at him until he felt her gaze
and turned to look at her.

“You know what I think?”

“What you think,” he said, smiling.

“I think you too scared to get mad.”

Zeb’s shoulders tightened. “That’s what
you think, huh?” he said softly.

She nodded at him. He stared at her a
moment, then unfolded himself from the steps.

“I’ll go on and give you back your
stoop,” he said, and walked off into the dark.

Gretchen Craig's lush, sweeping tales deliver edgy, compelling characters who test the boundaries of integrity, strength, and love. Told with sensitivity, the novels realistically portray the raw suffering of people in times of great upheaval. Having lived in diverse climates and terrains, Gretchen infuses her novels with a strong sense of place. The best-selling
PLANTATION SERIES
brings to the reader the smell of Louisiana's bayous and of New Orleans' gumbo, but most of all, these novels show the full scope of human suffering and triumph. Visit Gretchen's Amazon Author Page at
www.gretchencraig.com
.