Chapter 21: Content

1874

In mid-March with the wind playing tricks in the bare-limbed trees, Caroline, Johnny and Seth rode out the Pike in the Williams' farm wagon and found Zedediah Snowden at his small home in the black section of Rockville, an area called various demeaning names by the local whites but most generally referred to as "the run." Zed put down his hoe and welcomed Caroline with a smile, and then he shook Seth's hand.

"Too soon to dig nohow," he said, wiping his hands on his heavy thighs. "Just making clods."

"We want to go out to Minnie Tucker's place, your Aunt Minnie's," Caroline said. She had almost jumped down and hugged Zed, but saw him shy away so stayed on the wagon seat.

"All right," Zed said. "Mind if I ast what for?"

"It's her idea," Seth said, looking put upon. "Got a bee in her bonnet."

"I saw that big garden of hers last year, after the accident. You remember; you took me out there." Caroline forced herself to be calm. She took a deep breath and thought of the wheel rim hanging from the tree limb, wondered if it was still up there, hoped it was not.

"Yes'm, Miz Caroline," Zed said, impressed with her stoic attitude, seeing her dead husband in his son's curious look.

"Well," said Caroline, looking over Zed's white head and biting back her agony, "the rent's all paid for the next few years."

"I'd plumb forgot that. Mr. Robert, he done tole me, but I forgot."

"So why not grow things there, things we can sell?" Caroline smiled, ignoring tears at the corner of her eyes. "The Williams' farm is played out, pretty near at least, and Seth is using the best land for apple trees. As I recall, Miz Minnie's garden surely looked healthy, bean poles taller than either of us and squash leaves big enough to hide my children under."

"Oh that's good dirt, yes'um," agreed Zedediah, "it sure is, like bottom land 'long that crick. An' that ole lady, she gets more out a piece a'ground than anybody 'round here."

"Climb on up," Seth said, offering his hand.

"I'll jus' get in the back. Maybe this here boy'll keep me company."

Johnny jumped down by the big, black man and sat with his back to the driver's seat as they crossed the tracks where his father had died and turned toward the rented land. The six-year-old looked at the big man's broken shoes and compared them with his nearly new pair. He wondered if his feet would ever get that big or his legs that long.

A few rows of tiny greens showed in the big garden, herbs for the most part and some hardy greens, but the three-acre patch out nearest the tracks was still empty except for a few wooden stakes and rusting rolls of wire fencing. Two small, shirtless children and a brown-skinned woman in a faded sun bonnet were walking down the furrows near the house, obviously planting seeds. Seth stopped the wagon and everyone disembarked and waited for the trio to finish a row.

"Aunt Minnie," Zed cried, and the woman looked up and shaded her eyes. She sent the children off to play, and they galloped toward a set of ropes dangling from a thick tree limb. They had been patiently following her down the row, one kicking dirt over the seeds and the other pressing it down with his feet, going along with arms outstretched like a tight-rope walkers.

"Mr. Snowden, yessuh, it is Mr. Zay-dee-dy-ah Snow-den hissef," she said, bobbing her head as she wiped her hands on her long apron.

Zed introduced Caroline and Seth and then Johnny who grinned up at the bent old woman. She gave him back a nearly-toothless smile. "They was thinking on doin' some gardening," Zed told her.

"We could use your advice," Seth said.

"Sure am sorry 'bout your man." Minnie Tucker ignored the men and fixing her attention on Caroline. "I been a widder more'n once, still hurts."

Caroline nodded, looking into the deepset eyes in the wrinkled face.

"You know this land," Seth said. "What to plant and what to avoid."

"Don't try no root crops, now, no carrots or such like, y'hear. Dirt's too heavy for 'em. I does some taters, but thas' all. Most anything else 'cept corn's good. Too durn much corn growin' round these parts now. Never make a red cent with corn. No sir, not a cent."

"How about beans?" Caroline asked.

"Oh, yes honey," the old lady said. "Lord, yes, any kind a'beans. I was plantin' peas t'day, but I grows all sorts a'beans, 'specially pole beans. Too soon t'plant them yet. Ground's still cole as January."

"I put aside some fertilizer you kin have," Zed said. "Kind'a lef'over from the store." He smiled.

"That's good," Seth said. "How about water, Miz Minnie?"

"I got a good well an' you're surely welcome t'use it. Never run dry, that ole well, not even back there in '64 when it stopped raining for a month or so." She pointed to an iron pump near the back of her ramshackle house.

"Could we borrow your plow so I wouldn't have to haul one out from home?" Seth asked.

"Of course, my lan', hep y'sef," Minnie Tucker said. "Use my mule too or this here ole man's." She jerked her thumb as Zed. "His is a might younger."

"Can we start tomorrow?" Caroline asked, keeping her chin high, trying to be hopeful for a change since it was her idea.

"Honey," said the old black woman, "you might as well start today. Y'know, make hay in the sunshine. Get y'sef some plans made. Think on how t'use that little ole piece a'the Lord's land. Mark your corners. Turn over some dirt. Get y'sef started."

Toward the end of March the Williams family sold off the right to cut timber in half of their woodlot to pay for the coming wedding. Annie had been right: her beau had proposed on Christmas night and had given her a pair of diamond earrings to mark the event. She wore them to bed for a week and nearly panicked when one came off during the night, disappeared into the bed clothes, and seemed to have vanished until a prowling housecat was discovered playing with it. The cat got chicken liver for her supper, and Annie put her earbobs away.

By the time the almanac said that the danger of frost had passed, Caroline's garden was in good shape, spread with bone fertilizer, deep plowed and carefully cultivated by many hours of hoeing and raking. Like the woman who owned the land, Caroline wore a poke bonnet when she worked, but her arms had burned to a deep tan, the hairs on them bleached white and her hands were as hard as boards.

It had been a gentle spring with soaking rains, and the fruit trees were blazing with pale colors when she and her young son came to plant their first row of bush beans and hills of squash. By then her once-sore muscles were strong and supple and her oft-bleeding hands and developed the typical pads of yellowed flesh every farmer knew.

With a pointed stick Caroline traced a generally straight trench the whole length of her fence, about a hundred yards. Then she walked backwards down the row, dropping in the beans one by one and kicking dirt over the deeply planted seeds. Johnny came along with her and tramped down the dirt with his bare feet, his head almost bumping into his mother's as she bent to her task, careful not to waste a seed, leaving a hand's-width or so between each of the white beans.

When she finished the long row, she stood up straight and rubbed at the small of her back. She looked over her wire fence and frowned. The old lady and her children were also sowing seeds, but they were walking along a string line. Caroline took Johnny by the hand and, careful to step over each planted row and raised hillock, they went to see what was going on.

Miss Minnie smiled at her question. "Keeps the row straight, honey," she said. "Ain' you never done this a'fore?"

Caroline shook her head. "I'll learn. With your help, I'll learn."

"Don't plant no more a'them for a week or two," the old woman said. "You don' want the whole crop a'comin' in at once."

Annie's wedding took place at the Epiphany Episcopal Church on G Street in Washington City, a parish that had been ripped apart by discord early in the Civil War and then used as a hospital for Union wounded. The young bride's dress was very plain in the front with a high collar and festooned with ropes of small pearls in the back where there was an ornate bustle.

Johnny, proudly wearing the suit his grandmother had made for him from Seth's old Sunday clothes and his shiny new shoes, followed Annie down the long aisle, holding up the end of her satin train and trying not to smile or trip. In front of the bride came Patricia, the four-year-old, strewing rose petals right and left and nearly skipping from time to time, smiling at everyone. And in front of Patricia marched Caroline in a slightly out-dated dress with a pink lace overskirt and puffy sleeves, her hair twisted up by her ears and wearing her precious pearls.

Seth, in his dark suit and high stiff collar, served as one of Michael's groomsmen, feeling a bit like a poor relation amid the splendid clothes worn by the other young men. Half of Grant's cabinet was in attendance as well as several ambassadors and dozens of portly businessmen and government contractors. Wedding presents were still pouring in, and the young couple received more than two thousand dollars in cash and cheques on their wedding day.