Chapter 11: Sorting Out

When Diane Rawlings looked back on her teaching day for her nightly prayer in the first school day of 1869, she gave thanks for sorting out of the youngest children.

Most of the beginning bench were six-year-olds. Almost no children were starting school as much as a year late. Most of her best bench were eight-year-olds who had been with the school nearly since it began.

It was true that she had four benches and only three years. It was true that the middle two benches sat a good many children who had started too late. Still, this promised that her class, at least, could look like a school in any other part of the country in another two years.

One of her night classes, not the one that had begun that night, would probably be full of adult illiterates. Still, those were eager to learn.

When Deborah had been young, her father had set a problem for her of a farmer crossing a stream with a fox and a goose in a rowboat which could not hold all three. She was reminded of that whenever she had to get Sam and herself to different places.

Sam had to get on a train this morning for Montgomery. She had to be back at the house caring for Tertius and with the shay available. Sam’s solution was that he would walk to the railroad carrying his carpet bag. It was raining, though, and he would have to wear his good coat in the state senate. It wouldn’t do for it to begin spattered with mud.

She fixed a dinner and packed enough for him to eat on the train. She got Tertius wrapped up and held him under her coat. She got through the small distance to the store without his getting wet, if not quite without her getting wet.

“Can you watch Tertius while I get the general to the station?” she asked Juliet. “Try to keep him from crawling on the floor, and be certain to keep him from crawling off the counter.”

“Okay, Tertius. Come to Aunt Juliet.” She started off with a gospel song while swaying to the rhythm.

Sam, who had been giving Juliet last minute instructions, got his dinner and his carpet bag to the shay and Stepper in the traces. He came back to the store for her, and she kissed Tertius goodbye and got in the shay.

“There are dry days in Alabama,” she told Sam. “I can remember some.”

“But not in January or when you need to get somewhere.”

“Don’t come in,” Sam said at the station. They shared a dry kiss in the carriage. He got out, retrieved his bag and dinner, and ran in.

She returned, unhitched Stepper, and led him to his stall, petted Doris on the nose, and got to the store.

“I’m sorry, Teacher,” Juliet said. Tertius was crawling around exploring the store.

“I can’t control him most of the time. Come to Mama!”

Tertius wasn’t interested until she picked him up, but then he began rooting.

She got him covered with her coat and then got home. She nursed him for an hour, changed him, and put him down before sitting down to her own cold dinner.

She hoped the rain would stop before it was time to milk Doris.

Sam had already arranged for a room in a whites-only rooming house. More than two thirds of the space available to legislators was only available to white ones, and fewer than one half of the legislators had been white last term. There would be more Negroes this term, but he was not yet certain of the numbers.

The next day, the lieutenant governor called the senate into session and immediately called a recess so that the parties should caucus.

Sam was surprised when he was nominated for majority leader.

“When I spoke about running for office with Speaker Lincoln,” he told them. “He made it clear that people don’t support you against a man who holds the office and has done a satisfactory job. Now, some of you might have been friends with Hastings, but many were dissatisfied with him. Most people in this room were dissatisfied with the previous majority leader, but my impression is that Cal Johnson did a fine job as Republican leader. I decline, and I speak for the election of Cal Johnson.”

There wasn’t a third nomination, and Johnson was elected -- actually nominated -- unanimously. When the entire senate met, he was elected 29-22.

After the senate adjourned for the night, Sam approached Ted Russel, the man who had nominated him, and invited him to supper.

“Are you satisfied with Cal Johnson?” he asked.

“He’s not a bad nigger, but there’s too many niggers in this government. Cal, Tom, Gabe Lincoln. This state was more than half white last time they counted.”

“Well, there won’t be, next time they count. I’ve talked to MacGregor. Point is, the whites may be a huge share of the state, but we’re not a huge share of the Unionists in the state.” Sam read Russel as someone who had fought for the Union, not necessarily someone who cared about the Republican Party. “Now, you and I are different. Your voters chose you because they think you are a leader. my voters chose me because they think I’ll stand up for them, and they don’t think that they are ready for the legislature themselves, yet.”

“What happens when my voters find out I have to bargain with niggers?”

“Well, tell them you have to bargain with state government. Whoever is in state government, you have to deal with them. That’s why they elected you, so that they wouldn’t have to. Republicans stand for schools and roads. Support us, and your county will get its share.”

“Schools, roads, and taxes,” Russel said.

“Well, yes. Those aren’t free. How were taxes under the Confederates before the war?”

“Two questions. Before the war, we paid more than our share of taxes, because land was taxed higher than slaves. Of course, now, slaves aren’t taxed at all.”

“Had the government let us alone,” Sam said, “we would have fined the big planters enough to make up for missed taxes. Then they reopened the federal courts.”

“Nobody in the northeast counties are crying for the big planters. Anyway, your second question. The Confederate government took all that they could -- money taxes, taxes in kind, levies from the cavalry paid for with scrip. After a while, we just didn’t pay. Tax collector needed the army to back him, and jeff Davis needed the army for other things.”

The next day, Sam spoke to Cal Johnson before the senate convened: “I need to talk with you and Speaker Lincoln over dinner, but I don’t know where.”

“I know a place.”

When they had collected Lincoln and Johnson had led them to a rough restaurant, Lincoln spoke first, “Look, general, I was happy to talk to you last year, when I hadn’t seen you for so long. I have business to do after sessions, and I can’t break it off many times to talk to you.”

“I’ll see that you don’t have to. This, however, is important. Mr. Johnson will back me up. We need at least one vote from the northwest counties to pass anything more than gas. I would bet that we’d find it easier to keep all four than to split them.”

“I’ll back him on that, too,” Johnson said. “Those crackers rode together in the war.”

“That means that we have to give them something. We have to give them more than the Democrats can. There are what? a dozen lily-white counties up there.”

“Fewer than that,” Lincoln said. “The Bureau was granting farther north last year. Only half the counties voted for senator.”

Sam said, “Even so, it’s a solid chunk of the state, and we don’t owe the rest of them shit. We can give the northeast what it wants, or much of what it wants. Are you with me?”

“It sticks in my craw. They are as racist as the Democrats.” Johnson said.

“They don’t want you to call them ‘Massa,’” Lincoln said. “They just want you to stay away. Let’s let the chairman of the Party deal with them.”

“I’d be happy to,” Sam said.

They were all served the same food, and Sam found it surprisingly good.

Ab rode over to the school in the early afternoon. The teachers were with the children, but he found Messalina in the cookhouse.

“Could I leave my mule in the school stables?” he asked her. “I’ll pick it up this evening.”

Messalina knew that he’d eaten with the teachers. She gave the permission that a student probably didn’t have to ask.

That night, Ab joined the group walking to school at the southwest corner of his land.

“I don’t like people walking over soil I have planted,” he said loud enough for the group to hear him.

“We ain’t, Ab,” said Max, a neighbor from close to the store.

“Everybody has to get their cotton to the gin, but I don’t like people doing it across planted land, especially when it breaks the branches of cotton plants.” This kept any bolls that hadn’t opened from ever developing their cotton.

“I told you, we ain’t. You ain’t even plowed yet.”

“He never said you was,” Cellus boomed out. “Can’t you listen to the man, Max?”

Ab said almost immediately, “As Max said, people don’t walk on my plowed land. That’s because Cellus and I leave an unplowed strip which is wide enough for even a cart to get through. It works for us. Maybe you could think of doing the same come plowing time.”

“Grow less cotton?” somebody asked.

“Less planted, less stepped on, almost as many plants. Little fewer plants. less broken branches, maybe more cotton.”

He answered a few more questions before they got to the school.

On the way home, he saddled Martha and rode fast until he caught up with the first group heading his direction. He repeated his comments and answered some similar questions. Then he lagged until another group caught up with him and repeated the story. The riders didn’t clump together like the walkers did, and the second group had split several times before they reached him.

Still, a fair number of people had heard his story just before plowing season. He would see how many took his advice.

“Maybe we can do it,” Jeff Ralston said to his wife, Vickie.

“Really?” She didn’t ask what “it” was. She had been after him to move south for years.

“Not really; maybe. The house was my own design, and I built it myself to have a house on a lot I could afford. Nobody has ever asked me to build another. Well, if we could sell the house to somebody for a reasonable price, we could afford to move to Alabama and set up business there. The problem is that I don’t know what anyone would pay for the house.”

“Still, it is a start,” Vickie said. “Why don’t you write General Warren and list it on the market?”

He wrote the general, and he put a “for sale”” sign in front of his house.

The next night after supper, he answered a knock on the door. It was a man who lived a few doors down and across the street. Everybody lived across the street fronting his house; nobody else had built on the steep hill.

“Mr. Smithers?”

“Jeff, I see that your house is for sale. What are you charging for it?”

Jeff had a range, and he told him the high end.

“A man who would pay that would want to drive a carriage,” Mr. Smithers said. “Where would he put it?”

“Well, that got me the lot cheaper, and I put that problem into my price. Thing is, I’m thinking of moving, and I can’t afford to if I don’t get most of that.”

Mr. Smithers asked to see the place, and Jeff took him around. He still wasn’t sure that he was a customer; Mr. Smithers owned a house.

“You can’t sell it to a man without stable space,” Mr. Smithers said when they were back in the parlor. He made an offer. It was too low, but Jeff came down. They finally were closer, but Jeff wouldn’t come down any more.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Smithers, “I’ll pay that under two conditions. One is that you take half in cash and half over the next two years. The other condition is that you’re gone within the week. You said that you want to move away; move away. My brother in law is coming to town, and I don’t want him in my house; I don’t mind him in my stable. Plenty of horse shit there, anyway. My wife and he grew up in the part of Virginia between here and Ohio. He sees that a black man built the place, and there will be hell to pay.”

So the letter he had started was revised to, “We’re coming.”

At that time, there were three railroad lines all the way from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Even so, a long journey would have stressed adults conscious that they could only eat and relieve themselves at long stops.

A rail journey from north to south meant, in addition, frequent shifts from one line to another, which meant not only changing from one carriage to another, but travel -- with all their luggage -- from one station to another. That meant purchase of four tickets when they changed lines, and no attempt to coordinate schedules. Their route led from Pennsylvania to Ohio, to Kentucky, to Tennessee, to Georgia, to Alabama.

By the time they arrived at Warren station, Jeff was eager to find a rooming house; Vickie was desperate to find one.

General Warren’s description of all the openings available in Lowndes County had neglected to say that they had no rooming houses that would accept Negroes; indeed, Warren station had no rooming houses at all. The station and its water tower were the only buildings close to where the train had stopped. When the stationmaster, who seemed to be alone, shrugged off their problem, Jeff left Vickie in charge of two children who had tired of sitting down days before and set off towards a tiny farmhouse.

There, his luck changed. A woman answered his call. and he explained his situation.

“Dare,” she called out, “take this man to the general, and if you ask him to buy you candy, you ain’t going to sit down before picking.”

A boy a little older than Carl would have been came out of the shack.

“Go on,” Said the woman, “I’ll see to the missus. She must be starving.”

The boy led him across some fields to a road. He set a good pace on the road, but Jeff wanted to stretch his legs after the cramped railroad cars. He kept up.

After a while, they reached a store. The boy went right in.

“Where’s the General, Jul?” he asked.

“Montgomery,” a girl answered, “and that’s Miss Juliet to you. Come in here, and you have to buy something.”

“Man here wants the general. He came in on the train, and the next one doesn’t stop until tomorrow. Mama said I can’t ask him to buy candy. You do it.”

“I’m sorry, sir. The general isn’t here. Maybe you should talk to Teacher Warren; that’s his wife.”

She directed him to the house, which would have been hard to miss.

A white woman came to the door when he knocked, and a baby crawled after her. She looked concerned when he explained his predicament.

“You say your family. How many of you are there?”

When he explained, she said, “Well, you won’t all fit in the shay.”

She left the baby at the store and hitched up the carriage. Her first stop was at another farm. A man had a mule cart, and he followed her. She drove to the station, and he directed her to the farm.

Vickie was there, and she expressed deep gratitude to the woman. They got their luggage in the cart, and Mrs. Warren invited Vickie an Anne to ride with her. They all proceeded to a plantation big house. From the wagon, he could see Vickie stiffen, and Mrs. Warren said something.

The shay stopped a little way from the front door.

“We’re a little early,” Mrs. Warren said, “If Junior or Anne needs to use one, there are outhouses around that side of the building. There are separate ones for boys and girls.” The children didn’t respond, but Jeff did.

When he got back to the wagon, both the kids were standing on the ground. He stayed on his feet, too. A little later, a huge crowd of children of all ages poured out the front door of the house. They were already shouting, but they exclaimed more about the carriage.

Three white women came out somewhat later. “Deborah,” one of them said, “what is the occasion?”

Mrs. Warren told them all of his problems, except that the letter had been from “Sam.” She ended with, “I know you aren’t using my old bedroom.”

“Well, we couldn’t put all four of them in there.”

A lot of jawing back and forth resulted in the agreement that Junior would go home with Mrs. Warren, and the rest of them would stay at “The School.”

The shortest white woman knelt beside Anne and asked her, “Wouldn’t you like to sit in my class with the other boys and girls?” That was the first time any of the family had been consulted.

Mrs. Warren seemed to finally notice that. She got him and Vickie together and said, “Look, I know this isn’t very good, but it’s the best answer that I can see. Most of the grants have one-room cabins. Even if the family would be willing to take you in, you wouldn’t have any privacy. This way, your son will have to share a room with my baby, but it’s a large room. If, when you get to know people, you can find arrangements you like better, nobody will mind if you change.”

Jeff said, “Well, General Warren did say you needed some carpenters.”

“Some days, I’m surprised that anybody got out of Andersonville.”

Vickie had Junior’s clothes in one carpet bag, and she got the things of Anne’s out of that bag and put it in Mrs. Warren’s carriage. He took the other luggage including his toolbox out of the mule cart. He saw Mrs. Warren pay the driver. One of the teachers led them up the stairs to what would be their room.

The room looked luxurious, with a carpet on the floor. That was fortunate because there was nowhere else for Anne to sleep.

If the teachers hadn’t been happy with their showing up, they were gracious once they were there. The cook ate supper with them. Not long after, a stream of adult students started arriving for their lessons.

He noticed some repairs that the room needed, most obvious that the wardrobe sagged n a slant.

“Would you mind if I did a few repairs to the room?” he asked at breakfast. “I have my toolbox with me.”

“That would be marvelous,” Miss Purcell said. “I’m certain that the place hasn’t had a repair since ‘65, maybe not since 61.”

Jeff Junior found himself in the shay next to a strange white woman. He hadn’t been asked if he wanted to go with her. He hadn’t been asked if he wanted to leave Pittsburgh. Nobody ever asked him what he thought about anything.

“So, Jeffery Ralston, Junior, you can call me Mrs. Warren,” the white woman said.

“The woman at the store called you ‘Teacher.’”

“So she did. When we met, I was teaching at the school we just left. You saw the children as they poured out. People around here often address those teachers as ‘Teacher Nelson’ or ‘Teacher Purcell.’ I was ‘Teacher Kendrick’ before I got married. Anyway, what do I call you? Junior? Jeffery?”

“I’m Jeff.” And he thawed a bit towards the white woman who asked what he wanted.

It was the baby who persuaded him that this wouldn’t be torture. He could still remember when Anne had been fun. (Then, she had grown into a girl, and a pesky one.) Tertius was that age. When she had nursed him and changed him, Mrs. Warren set him on the floor.

Jeff dropped to hand and knees to make things equal and confronted him. Tertius laughed and dodged; Jeff chased him.

“Watch him, will you, Jeff? I have chores to do. This room is supposed to be safe,” Mrs. Warren said. She left them.

Before she came back, Tertius had collapsed in sleep on the floor. Mrs. Warren scooped him up and put him in the crib.

“Let me show you around the place,” she said. there were only four rooms in the house, much fewer than inn their house in Pittsburgh. They were all on one floor, although land around them explained that.

She just waved at the store, but she brought him into the stable to meet Doris and her calf. He’d seen stepper, but only in harness.

“When the general gets back, he can teach you how to milk Doris,” Mrs. Warren said.

Meanwhile, Sam, unaware of the promises being made in his name, was dealing with a piece of legislative trivia. The privies on capitol grounds had been white-only. The house had passed a bill integrating them. He thought that the legislature had more important issues before it, but he could understand why the Negro members thought otherwise. He even spoke on the issue.

“Now, I’m a Methodist. Raised Lutheran but married Methodist. If I don’t want to have anything to do with Baptists, nobody is making me. If, when my son is older, I don’t want him going to school with Baptist boys, the law doesn’t make him. If I don’t even want to shit where Baptists shit, I don’t have to. But the state doesn’t pay for that. Now, if somebody here doesn’t want to shit where Negroes shit, nobody is going to make them. But It’s awfully arrogant of them to demand that the state appropriate money to provide them privies for their personal taste.”

“Will the gentleman from Lowndes County answer a question?”

“Gladly.”

“Is he aware that, however they do things in Ohio, we have never done it this way in Alabama?”

“I’ve never been to Ohio. I suppose that they do it squatting down just like we do. More to the point, I suppose that the gentleman from Henry is drawing his pay like the rest of us. That pay is for passing laws, and almost all laws create something new. If this is something new, that is what we are paid to do. The question is not whether it is new; the question is whether it is good.”

The bill passed 25-22.

When Sam got to the station, Deb wasn’t there. He could walk, and the day was dry.

Outside his door, he heard Tertius babbling, and somebody answering him. When he went in, there was a kid on the floor with Tertius. He scrambled to his feet.

“I’m Jeff Ralston, sir.”

“Thought you’d be older.”

“That’s my father. Mrs. Warren will explain.” And Deb did explain. She explained that the whole situation was his fault. She explained that he was going to teach Jeff to milk a cow. She explained that night that they couldn’t possibly have sex while Jeff was in the next room

He taught young Jeff to milk that night and Sunday morning. Jeff would need a little more practice before he was as good as Deb was, and that was setting a low bar. Tertius liked the kid, though, and that was a real advantage. Tertius, these days, was often bored. Jeff responded to babbling with connected, if repetitive, conversation, and the two of them could hold dialogues of impressive length.

He talked to Jeff, Senior, after Dinner on Sunday. They decided that the best chance was for the Ralstons to find a lot and some assistant carpenters. He would build a house for his family first. He accompanied Sam into Montgomery Sunday night