Part 6 (2/2)

”You see them steps?” he said, pointing behind me. ”Go right on back down, march round that house and knock on that back door. That or catch up with Job.”

I went round the back but I didn't knock. I figured since he already knowed I was there, there was no need to knock. I stood there and stood there and stood there, but he never showed up. But soon as I knocked he opened the door and told me to come in.

”What you want?” he said.

”Mr. Bone live here?” I asked him.

He went up to the front. Little while later a white man came back in the kitchen. He was a big man with a red beard and blue eyes. And he had the biggest pair of hands I had ever seen.

”You too spare,” he said, looking down at me and shaking his head. He looked at Ned standing behind me. ”That one over there ain't weaned yet. I ain't running no nursery here, I'm running a plantation. Y'all can stay here tonight and I'll get somebody to take you to town in the morning. I can't use you.”

”You mean work?” I said.

”That's what I mean,” he said.

”I might be little and spare, but I can do any work them others can do,” I said.

”I got women in that field eat more for breakfast than you and that boy weigh together,” he said. ”First thing y'all die on me and I have to answer to the beero.”

”I don't mean to be disrespectful,” I said. ”But if we was ready to die we would have been dead long before we got here.”

”You ain't been out there yet,” he said.

”That's the only place I been,” I said.

”Yes?” he said.

”Yes sir,” I said. ”Me and this little fellow here ain't been doing nothing but walking and walking and walking ever since we heard of our freedom. Any of them out there can do more walking than that I like to see them.”

”You got to do more than just walk out in that field,” Bone said.

”I done pulled my share before,” I said.

”Tell me about it,” he said.

I told him.

”Your walking too,” he said.

I told him.

”All right, I'll give you a try,” he said. ”But you still spare and I won't pay you more than six a month. Take it or leave it.”

”I don't mean to be disrespectful again,” I said. ”What you paying them other women?”

Bone eyes opened just a little bit wider. Like he was ready to tell me, before he remembered I was nothing but a child, and a little black one at that. But if I was go'n work for him, maybe it was right for me to know.

”Ten,” he said. ”But they happen to be women.”

”I'm a woman,” I said.

”Prove it out there,” Bone said. ”Not in here. Fifty cents of that coming back to me to school that boy over there-if he wake up long enough. What he carrying them rocks for?”

”Secesh killed his mama. That's what's left.”

”Fifty cents to school him,” Bone said.

”If I keep up with the other women, I can get much as they get?” I asked him.

”Sure,” he said.

He went in the front and came back with a feather and a sheet of paper. He handed me the feather and laid the sheet of paper on the table.

”Put a cross there,” he said, pointing at the paper. ”One time that way, one time that way.”

”I know what a cross is,” I said. ”What it's for?”

Bone was still looking at the paper, but I knowed he wasn't reading it, because I was looking up at his eyes and I could see they wasn't moving. He was probably thinking he ought to take me by the neck and throw me outside. Then his eyes s.h.i.+fted from the paper to me. But he just looked at me like he was still thinking about something else.

”So I'll know you somewhere in my field even if I can't find you,” he said. ”You'll know I owe you five dollars and fifty cents.”

”Six dollars, Mr. Bone,” I said. ”Then I give you back fifty cents.”

I stuck the point of the feather in my mouth and leaned on the table to make my cross. After I made it it looked so correct I just stood there looking at it a long time. I started to add another little curve or a dot or something, but Bone took the feather and paper from me.

”I said a mark, not a book.”

Bone called that n.i.g.g.e.r who had let us in the back door and told him to find somebody else to show us to the cabin. All we found in that cabin was two little beds and a firehalf. Beds was two wide boards nailed against the wall like a shelf. Mattress was dry gra.s.s sewed in ticking. We had no table, no chairs, no benches-you sat down on your bed or you sat down on the bare ground. After I had been there awhile I got the carpenter to make me a bench. Then I got him to make me a table. That was the only furniture I had for the next ten, twelve years.

We was clearing off the land. The land hadn't been 'tended since the war, and weeds and shrubs covered everything. The women used axes and hoes, the men did the plowing and hauling. After I had been there about a month, Bone came out there and told me he was paying me ten dollars a month like he was paying the rest of the women because he didn't want me killing myself. I wasn't but 'leven or twelve, but I could do much work as any of them. And the ones who beat me had to do a lot of sweating to stay up there.

BOOK II.

RECONSTRUCTION.

A Flicker of Light; and Again Darkness.

For a while there looked like everything was go'n be good for us. We had a little school on the place, the first cabin on your left when you came in the quarters. All the small children went to school in the day, the big children and the grown people who had to go in the field went to school at night. The teacher was a young colored man from the North. A good-looking brown-skin man, very good manners. The grown people just like the children all loved him. One day a week we had a special Teacher's Day. When he went to somebody's house and took dinner with them. Everybody tried to out-do everybody else. I didn't have a chair in my house-the bench wasn't good enough for the teacher to sit on-so I sent Ned out to borrow me a chair. When he got back with the chair I sent him out to borrow a fork and a plate. I got the fork and plate from the woman who worked at the big house, and she told Ned to tell me don't be surprised if the teacher recognized them. Everybody else on the place had borrowed that same fork and that same plate before. Well, if he recognized them his manners kept him from saying he did. I didn't eat with him and Ned, I was too 'shame to do so. I pretended I had some work to do, but all the time he was eating I was looking at him to see how he liked the food. After they got through eating he asked Ned if he wanted to read something for me. He got the book out his pocket-the only book they had at school-and Ned had to stand side him. And while he pointed to the words Ned spoke them out. I stood there listening and smiling. Before then I doubt if I had ever looked at Ned like he was my own. I had always looked at him like he was a little boy that needed me. But listening to him read I knowed if it wasn't for me Ned wouldn't be here now. And I felt I hadn't just kept Ned from getting killed, I felt like I had born him out of my own body. After he went to bed that night, me and the teacher sat by the firehalf talking. He asked me why I didn't come to school like the rest of the people. I told him when I came out the field at night I was tired, and long as Ned was getting a learning I was satisfied. We talked and talked. He had very good manners and everybody liked him-'specially the ladies. I liked him, too, and I went to school couple times just to be near him. But I told myself I had no business thinking about somebody like that, and after I had gone there maybe three times I didn't go no more.

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