Mankillers

“But what about Clay?” Buck asked. “Where was he?”

“Oh. He love the place, but he was too young to be ru

She continued to rock back and forth, her lips tightened, and Buck realized she was angry.

“Now that Snead girl, Sally Mae,” the old woman snarled, “she had her eye on him from the minute she got here, pestering him all the time about giving her a ride on that horse. Finally, the day of the big barbecue, after he’d had a bit more whiskey than was fitting a man of his position, well, he swung her up onto the back of that saddle and took off laughing down the avenue, that yellow hair of his streaming out behind him. Must’ve taken her nearabouts to Columbia, ‘cause they don’t come back for more’n a hour. Your pa, he wasn’t happy about such behavior, but that Saul Snead he just gri

“I didn’t even know Saul had a daughter.” Buck shrugged, then asked, “What happened to his family anyhow?”

“Oh, Lordy. Ain’t nothing good happened around here in a long time. Old Saul, he used to beat them sons of his unmerciful, and his wife too. When he found out Sally Mae was with child he commenced beating on her. Rufus tried to protect that poor girl, but old Saul, he turned on the boy with his belt and blinded him in one eye. Rufus was mean before that happened. He was meaner after.”

“What about the girl? What happened to her?”

Emma took a deep breath. “She was carrying that baby inside her, Mr. Buck, but she was doing poorly across the river. One night, real late, I gets a pounding on my door and it’s Rufus, and he’s got the girl in the back of a wagon. From what he said his momma was out somewheres doing Lord knows what, and his poppa, well, he was probably passed out drunk.” All at once Emma’s voice softened.

“Anyways, Rufus, he done seen his sister was getting the pains real bad and he knowed I birthed most all the black babies hereabouts. So he puts her in that wagon and drags her twenty miles to me. Well, that young child, she was already bleeding bad. I done all I knowed how to do, but it wasn’t no good. I got that baby out and breathing, but I couldn’t do nothing for his momma. Rufus, he was real broke up. I reckon Sally Mae was the only person he ever cared about. He took her body back to Lexington that night to bury, but he left the child with me. Before he gone, though, he swore he was go

“Did he know who it was?”

The old woman turned her head and gazed off into the distance. “There ain’t no telling, Mr. Buck.”

“What happened after that?”

“I heared Mr. Saul’s ski

“And the baby, Emma? What happened to the baby?”

“Well, sir, I still gots it. Named him Job, since he be having a world of trouble afore him. But I’s raising him best I can.”

Buck remembered then the words in his father’s letter to Clay that he was leaving money for faithful Emma and the child. He hadn’t thought about it at the time. He’d been focused on his father’s affection for his brother, when all he’d had for Buck was respect. Buck would have to take consolation in that.

A scuffling sound came from within the dilapidated cabin.

“Em-ma? Em-ma?” a childish voice called out. A moment later a little white boy appeared in the doorway wearing a much-patched, wrinkled cotton gown and rubbing his eyes. He toddled out onto the porch. The old black woman scooped him up onto her lap with one arm. The child snuggled up against her ski

Buck saw the genuine affection that passed between them, a child of less than two years and a woman well into old age, though she probably wasn’t more than sixty, rocking contentedly.

“You raising that boy all by yourself, Emma?”

“With the good Lord’s help and my sister’s girl. She done had a baby ‘bout the time this one was born, moved in with me and nursed both of ‘em till it was time for weaning. Then I feeds him soft food.” She cackled. “That weren’t no trouble, since I ain’t got enough teeth left to eat much else. And he sure do like that pot liquor when I cooks greens. Lordy, that’s where all the goodness is. What else was I to do, Mr. Buck? Ain’t nobody else wanted this poor tyke. He ain’t no bother.”

Chapter TWELVE

Buck trotted Gypsy down the familiar sandy road to St Paul’s, the family’s Episcopal Church. His head was reeling with images and recollections of the many hours he’d spent here as a young parishioner and later as an acolyte. In his mind he could see his smiling, animated mother, holding her prayer book, wearing a stylishly elegant wide-hoop skirt and beribboned bo

This had been part of the world Buck once called home.

The white clapboard church with its stained-glass crusader windows and single towering spire had been built in the 20s, after its predecessor had been destroyed by fire. It needed a fresh coat of whitewash now, but otherwise the provincial house of worship and the rectory a hundred yards to its right appeared to have been spared the ravages of war and foreign invasion. Buck saw no one around, for which he was grateful. He was in no mood for “visiting,” even with old friends. What, after all, would they talk about but casualties, the loss or maiming of brothers, fathers, husbands and other male relations and friends? He’d seen enough of death and mutilation and felt responsible for more than his share of both.

He dismounted and tied Gypsy’s reins to a hitching post, then strode self-consciously to the graveyard between the church and vicarage. He passed by old tombstones with all too familiar names carved into them. Many plots were weed-choked, yet there were several bare mounds scattered about the fenced-in cemetery. Fresh graves. He didn’t bother to read the names on the stakes that served as temporary markers until the ground settled enough for granite stones to be set.

He passed by the Lynch enclosure, noting the names of his mother’s parents, as well as several aunts and uncles and a few cousins who’d died young from whooping cough or measles, but mostly from yellow fever. Proud people who carried themselves with dignity and an inborn sense of noblesse oblige.

He trekked on to the Thomson family enclosure.

Here less pleasant associations crowded his mind . . . poisoned it. The long funeral cortege from Jasmine for his mother’s burial, the lines of black folks, mourning her passing, and crowding up into the gallery of the small church, the unaccustomed smell of whiskey on his father’s breath, eight-year-old Clay crying because his mommy wasn’t with them today.