I look out the window of my home outside of Dallas. We built the house ourselves. It's a one-story home built of trees and rocks what formerly dotted our fields. There are, tacked above the open window, two rolls of paper. One is of cracked tar-paper, another made from hog-fat impregnated newspaper. The first is to cover the window on cold nights, the other will let sunlight through in case it rains. We're too poor to afford glass.
Right now the year is 1919 and it’s time to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of our freedom. It was a long, long road from Alabama in mid 1869.
Every year we celebrate the Lord’s holidays: Christmas, the Beginning of a New Year for all, and Our Freedom. We’re settled down now, even landowners ourselves.
At first it was just the four of us: Ma, Pa, Jennie and me. Since then, Ma and Pa had six more whelps -- Jackie, and Jezzie, and four more. Then they, in turn, dropped a bunch’a suckers who dropped even more. Course, cause’a moving around, not all of them will be here to celebrate.
The women and girls have taken over the kitchen and half the backyard to fix food, driving everyone else out front for games and talk. For myself, I chased them damned women out of my corner of the living room. That corner is mine, mine alone. Nobody invades the space of my rocking chair, homemade bureau, pipe stand ... and memories.
My gaze leaves the window, where I see children playing that new Batsball or something game, and falls on my beloved Mary’s daguerreotype picture. It’s all I have left of her.
Although my family’s mildly successful, we're not so to the point of not reusing a dead woman’s goods. All I have left is the picture a traveling picture-maker made for us a good many years ago. As an old man’s mind is wont to do, it travels back in time, to 1865....
***
“We’s free. We’s free!” Pa came running into our room at Master Lester's home.
Ma looked over from where she was ironing Miss Lester's wool dancin' skirt. Despite the spring heat, Ma had the littlest stove going full force. She needed it hot to heat the trio of cast-iron clothes irons.
Using one at a time, the hottest, she'd pick it up by a cracked wooden handle, using a rag to keep from burning her hand. Then she'd take the five-pound piece of iron to smooth out wrinkles, turn the skirt, replace the iron on top of the wood-burning stove, pick up another and repeat the process. It was a heavy task, and one that would only get worse come really hot weather in Georgia. Still, it beat the hell out of fieldwork.
Me, I was sitting in a corner with a bucket’a water, cleaning and shining Master's boots.
“Free for what? What you mean, Tom?” Ma answered, calmly continuing with her task, a fresh iron sending steam off dampened cloth.
“Free to leave here. We’s slaves no more. What you think I mean, woman?”
I’ll always remember the twinkle in his eye, more expressive than the smile on his face. He seemed to bounce at his own joyful revelation. “You put down that thing. Come on, woman, let's get to a plannin’, a packin’, an a movin’.”
“Planning what? Planning how to starve us and the kids?” Ma didn’t miss a beat in her iron switching, just kept on a going. “We ain’t got nowhere to go, not no money neither. What we do got is something to eat and a place to sleep ... right here and now.”
I was about ten years old at the time, and Jennie seven. Ma being the sewer and ironer of the household, we had it pretty good at Master Lester's. She was so good at it that Master Lester took in laundry from town residents for her to do.
Pa, he worked as a helper in one of the stables downtown. He was a slave officially but, with his skills and knowledge of horseflesh, that made little difference. He was treated well. White folk often asked his advice and he even had white Joshua, a dumbie, working under him.
I helped Ma Lester in keeping the house clean and Jennie helped with some stuff. Slavery wasn't all that bad for us. Of course, our biggest fear was that me and Jennie would be sold. In those times a war, you just never knew. Nothing was certain for sure. Though the Lesters was doing pretty good right then, you just never knew.
We did know the Lincolns was coming. Though none of us, outside'a Master Lester, could read, the word was all over. Talk was that they was gonna kill all the slaves to keep the Lincolns from taking us up north. If not, that we was to be taken there and just a‘gived to rich northerners to work in factories.
Things, as I remember, was getting bad in Macon. A lot of the rich people was heading west, taking everything they had with them. Factories was closing. I didn't know, but thought farmers would stay. Where would they go? I mean, would they leave their land? Anyways, a lot of the others was a going.
The Master and Mrs was kinda wealthy, as I recall, but not really rich. They had us and maybe another half-dozen Negroes. Most was rented out for labor, though some of us was living on the few acres of land the Master owned. I was pretty young and couldn't count too good, so I'm not sure of the figures.
Anyway, Mr. Lester worked as an accountant downtown somewhere, keeping the books for some company.
He saved up his money to buy Ma for old Grandma Lester and his wife. Then, when he had a couple of good years, he bought Pa to help him out and be a breeder. Course, at the time I didn’t know what a breeder was ceptin' to have kids. I didn’t know it was to raise Jennie and me to sell. Then, whenever he could, the Master bought him another slave to rent out.
As an adult, I can see it was probably a good investment ceptin' for selling us kids, of course. I wouldn't have liked that part. But, then, he might have kept us to rent out? Again, who knows? We didn't got no say in it.
Anyway, we had it pretty easy, specially after that loud and nasty Grandma Lester passed away. She'd mostly ignore Jennie and me, but always gave Ma hell.
Well, anyway, Ma and Pa lit into each other. Pa wanted to pack up and leave, right that minute. Ma was more sensible. Sure, she was glad to not be a slave no more, but she knew it would be bad to just run around the countryside with no money or place to go. Every day, it seemed, we'd hear about the town hanging or shooting thieves, mostly but not always black ones, that was running around and stealing from citizens.
The only other place they, either one of them, knew was where they grew up, and those places was a lot worser than working for Master Lester. Finally, Ma got him to agree to a compromise.
“You wait till tomorrow, when you get shuck of some of that excitement, then see Mr. Lester about wages. We’ll save our money, let things settle on the road awhile, then leave,” she insisted.
So that’s what we did. Master Lester didn’t pay much and Pa didn’t know much about money, anyway. He was probably gypped and didn’t even know it. I didn’t know anything about money either at that age and time. I knew it didn’t build up very fast. Pa was always bitching about how slow the money grew.
About the only things I remember about the next few years was that Jennie and I had to take on more work ourselves as we grew older, and that we was, all’a us, treated better by the Lester family than before. Probably, I think now, because our whole family leaving would have hurt them real bad in the purse. Master Lester got himself down to only us and one other black woman. The rest done took off but she, like Mama, had more sense.
I recall that there was a lot of Yankees around, though it didn't affect us a whole lot. Master, now Mr, Lester still had his accounting job. Ma still took in and did laundry for mostly the same families, only she got paid for it. Pa still worked at that stable as a blacksmith. The Yankees didn't change much for us. It did change others, though.
Most of the ex-slaves at the farms quit, from what I heard, specially from the bigger ones. Those that was treated badly. With no one to work that land, crops rotted in the fields, what wasn't simply stole by people walking by. Those people was mostly broke and had to have something to eat. And it wasn't only Negroes, but also a lot of whites. Soldiers from our side was also wanderin’ back an forth, looking for work. Many of them had kept their muskets from the war an wasn’t too picky on using them. A deer, a cow, or a dog means no whit'a difference when you’re hungry.
When the Yankees won, all those Confederate soldiers was without no pay coming in, and a long way from home with no way to get back exceptin' to walk. They was a stealing and robbing along the way.
We, living in town, were pretty safe, though. Everyone in town had guns, so it was the farmers that suffered. I heard things like the town government having troubles but, as a kid, I don't remember any. Guess I wasn't too interested.
Anyway, the next year didn't bring many crops and, not having much money -- either us or the Lesters -- we didn't eat too good. A lot of the fields only grew weeds. From the back of Mr. Lester's land, I could stand on a rise and see the main road from Mobile to Hattiesburg. It seemed there was always strings of people walking and riding on wagons, some pushing little carts. They was a lot of them going both ways, probably looking for a good place to light. Nobody seemed to want to stay in one place.
Me and Jennie, once we got big enough, had the job of trying to keep looters off the fields of one of the local farmers, Mr. Travis's. I liked riding an old plow horse named "Emily" but Jennie didn’t like that mule "Junior" she was given to ride. Least until she learned how to make it move. She was too small to get her legs around the bare back of a horse an a’hold on'ta it. Pa, he fixed up a little padded seat on top'a Junior. It also made her seem taller at’a distance to chase out thieves.
We’d spend most of our time just riding back and forth in the fields, wearing men’s clothes and hats. Pa carved us some sticks to look like guns. It was usually enough to scare looters away, least from a’far. If they didn't leave, we'd go back and get Farmer Travis, with his real gun. It was easy work, sort'a like being moving scarecrows, but hard on your behind. They'd see us and leave Farmer Travis's fields alone. Still, looters was the big problem that I recall.
We stayed until I was about fifteen, and the people on the road seemed to get a lot fewer. By that time, some of the other farms was also doing better. One reason was most likely all that cheap labor. Mr. Travis had himself no problem getting good workers for only the cost of upkeep and a little tobacy money. Some'a those travelers would be glad to sit and work a spell before going on.
When we finally left, it was a sad occasion. All the women hugging and the rest of us packing up a used buckboard wagon we'd bought for the occasion.
With over fifty Union Dollars in his pocket, Pa was anxious to get going while Ma seemed sorry to leave the familiar surroundings. Mr. Lester was pretty sad. I guess it was because he had to go back to living off his accounting pay. Of course, all his other ex-slaves had took off long a’fore. So we finally left Mobile, headed for Baton Rouge.
Again, there was an argument. Pa wanted to go to New Orleans but Ma figured the big city would be more expensive and maybe harder to find work. So we went west to Baton Rouge, or around there somewhere. I don’t think we went to the city itself, though. My memory isn’t so good no more, but I don’t remember any big city until we got here to Texas.
We passed a passel of farms, some running, a lot just bare or weed-covered fields. I noticed plenty’a white folks walking along with us. It seems they lost everything in the war. The states wanted taxes to fix things up agin’ and people just didn’t have any cash money to pay them. Some lost farms, others their jobs. So we was a mixed mob as we traveled the roads through Louisiana.
I was old enough to understand that our original fifty dollars went down, a penny and a nickel at a time. Now, we was the ones stealing from the working farms, and I could see other kids riding horses and mules to stop us. The trouble was that at a distance you didn’t know if it was a kid or an adult with a real gun what could knock you on your a*s.
There was also gangs of white men on the road. We had to hide our money because some was thieves, while others was lawmen. Guess we looked pretty lean, cause they usually left us alone.
Some of the travelers had real fancy horses and wagons. There was enough of them that the thieves left our family be. It was still scary, though, to have to ride by them, watching the hoodlums stare as though wondering if it was worth their while to stop us.
Pa would sort of try to shrink away when we passed gangs of thieves and lawmen. It was hard to tell which was which and sometimes they was the same brighans.
There was also Bluecoats on the road. Once in a while some would ride by, lording it over the rest a us. They either sat straight in their saddles or laughed and joked, according to whether they was an officer in charge or not. We liked to follow behind them, knowing the thieves would be gone at least for a while.
***
Well, we walked and rode all the way through Louisiana, stealing food when we had to, paying when we could. We made it to Texas, tired a the whole thing by that time.
Both Pa and Ma wanted to settle down. We figured we'd have to probably try for farm work, though none of knew a whole lot about farming. There was still more people than jobs, though the farther west we went, the less crowded the roads was.
Outside Beaumont, we heard about and found some Yankee thing about giving land to ex-slaves. Texas was also a friendlier place. It had been a Reb state in the war, but still had a lot of scalawags in it. It was one of the states that voted on slavery, which won by a small bit. Alabama had been a dyed-in-the-wool Reb state.
The Federals had this program to give us land for nothing. We just had to build a house and live there. One thing Texas has is one hell of a lot of land. Scrub land, but still it growed some things.
Ma an Pa got some that way and we settled down. At first, we joined with another couple of Negro families and worked together. I remember I was mad cause me and Jennie had to go to school. It was our first time in one, since Alabama didn’t allow slaves to learn to read or write.
We was older than most of the Texans in our classes in school, and big enough to kick a*s if they messed with us. We learned and the farm done fairly good. First Jennie got herself married to this Texan named Harry, then I met my Mary and, in turn, got me hitched.
The rest is history. We stayed home and raised families, who in turn raised more little pickaninnies, he-he, an the clan multiplied. The War is long forgotten, ceptin' by me and Jennie. Yes, she’s still around. Now everyone’s worried about the Mex’s instead.
It weren’t easy, but we survived to the Day of Jubilee.
The end.
Oscar Rat
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