Chapter 1: Terms

The census of 1870 found more females in the United States than males by an unprecedented proportion. Alabama was the only state east of the Mississippi with more men than women. The War explains both facts. Of the men in the country in 1860, a huge number had died in the War; tens of thousands of Colored Troops enlisted elsewhere had been discharged in Alabama, and many of them stayed. The influx of Negro veterans overmatched the number of Confederate deaths in that one state.

Black Industry in Alabama 1913
W. E. B. DuBois

When Pearl Burton was in the Second Weaving Mill and looked at the rows of girls tending the machines, she sometimes thought that every girl in the township worked for Old Mister Green.

This morning, walking with those going to school from the grants near hers, it seemed as if nobody else did. She was the only person headed for the mills, though two of the boys would go there after they got out of Teacher Nelson’s class.

They thought that being in Teacher Nelson’s morning class while she was in Teacher Nelson’s afternoon class made them the same age. This morning, they tried to flirt with her.

They were a lot younger, though. The younger of the two had been born nearly a year after she had. Somehow, even boys her age seemed a lot younger than she was.

As the oldest one in the group, she was responsible for the rest, not only the littles. Tony tried to act as if he was responsible and she was one of the crowd. Well, let him take responsibility. They would come soon enough to the road where she would go left and the ones heading to school would go right.

There was a path between grants coming up on her left. She couldn’t see how far it led but walking across a grant wouldn’t be bad; nobody was plowing, yet.

“You all go on,” she said. “I’m going to try this way.” They had to go on. Following her would take them away from school. So, even Tony followed her directions.

You could tell that people had followed this path before; you could also tell that not many people had followed it. Not knowing what problems might be ahead and not having any littles with her that would have to keep up, she strode ahead.

The path didn’t get any better, but neither did it get worse. When she had gone past a grant on either side, the next grants had their cotton bushes away from the path, too. She followed her shadow and strode along.

Then, on her right, she saw a man plowing behind a mule with one ear hanging down.

“Planting a little early, aren’t you?” she called.

“Not planting yet, young miss,” he answered. “Just plowing up some more ground. Last year, I plowed another grant, too.” She was moving faster than the mule, and she was catching up to him.

When she caught up with him, he looked over at her. He took one hand off the plow long enough to tip his hat.

“Jonah Douglass,” he said.

“Pearl Burton.”

“Nice to make your acquaintance, Miz Burton.” Suddenly, she had moved from the schoolgirl Tony had been trying to flirt with to a woman that a grant-holding adult was tipping his hat to.

“Does this path continue to the road?” she asked. She slowed her pace so that they were going the same pace.

“It does, but the school is behind you.”

Did he think that she was one of the littles in Teacher Purcell’s class? No, she decided. He simply didn’t know how the day school was organized. He didn’t look old enough to have a child in even Teacher Rawlings’ class.

“I know,” she said. “I work at the mill mornings and go to Teacher Nelson’s class afternoons.”

“With a walk instead of a dinner?”

“We get enough time to do both.” As a matter of fact, the girls -- who came to the class which was tolerant of lateness after dinner -- had an easier time than the boys -- who came to the mill which docked them for lateness.

“Seems to me,” he said, “that you could eat dinner anywhere on that route. It would still be as much time for walking, maybe a little less time if you got a rest in the middle.”

“Maybe.” Both the boys and the girls who worked at the mill ate on the schoolgrounds. The girls after their walk, and the boys before theirs. The schoolground was just a nicer place to eat.

“if you came here to eat, I would welcome you. There is a branch a little farther along. It would be a good place to eat dinner.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “I have to be going now.” She increased her pace again. So, he had been flirting with her after all. Still, a man’s flirting was more welcome than a little boy’s.

“Nice to have met you, Miss Burton,” Jonah called. And, even if he would have liked her to stay longer, it was nice to watch her ass swing as she strode away.

Most of the females he met attended night school with him, and those were taken. Even if a girl left the day school without getting married, she already knew more than she could learn in night school.

Before Pearl got to the branch, another path between grants went off to her left. There didn’t seem to be an interruption in the fields to her right.

That didn’t prove anything, but Douglass might be a veteran with a double-sized grant. Pearl was too old to skip, but her heart skipped at having an older man, maybe rich, maybe a soldier hero, interested in her. She waded the branch.

The path really was a shortcut, if not much of one, and she got to the mill well before the whistle blew.

If it was a shortcut between the mill and her house, it was a longer route to the school. Besides, all the girls except a few who had married without quitting the mill were walking together in a long string. Pearl hadn’t decided whether to go eat her dinner on the bank of Douglass’s branch until she saw the turn-off. She was with the ones walking fastest, and she slowed a little until she was at the end of that group.

She turned to her right and went down the path.

“Pearl,” somebody called, but she didn’t answer.

When she got to the branch, she saw that it must be Douglass’s grant. It was all plowed right up to the branch. When she saw Douglass, he was plowing away from her and a long distance away.

“Mr. Douglass,” she called. He waved. He left the plow where it was but unhitched the mule and led him towards her.

“If you wade the branch now,” he said when he got near, “your feet will be dry when it’s time to head for school.” He was right, and walking with wet feet could get them muddy, more on the road than on this path. There was a tree on her bank with a branch crossing to his side. He tied the mule’s reins to that branch and took a sack down from its back.

“Want to add a bit of pork to your dinner?” he asked when she was beside him.

“Pork?”

“It’s sort of fresh ham. I have my own smoke house, but I always cut a little fresh pork from one pig before I smoke the ham.”

“You raise pigs?” she asked. The pork tasted good. She could tell that it was like ham, but it didn’t taste quite the same.

“Have to do something. Not even the best of you can pick eighty acres by himself.”

“You by yourself?”

“When I got out and got my grant, I went to the general to write my girl. She wrote back that she was somebody else’s girl then.”

“I’m sorry.” That’s what she said, but she didn’t feel at all sorry. He was free, and he seemed interested in her. He was a veteran, and he was built like a man, not a weedy boy. The man had 80 acres, a plow, a mule, and some pigs. There was every reason she should be interested in him.

As they kept talking, she learned more about him. He grew about 30 acres of cotton and 20 of corn. “You raise pigs, you have to feed them some corn. but I have that corner,” he gestured across the branch, “fenced off. They can’t cross the branch. They mostly find their own food there.”

They talked for a while. He asked about both her work and her classes. The last reminded her that she must be late. She rushed away with him watching her go.

“Pearl,” Teacher said when she got to class, “Class starts at one o’clock. It is nearly a quarter after.”

“Yes, Teacher Nelson.”

Teacher had a rule that she didn’t ask for excuses, didn’t even accept excuses. You had violated a rule, and she told you so.

The other girls didn’t follow that rule. On the first part of the way home, the girls from the mill asked where she had gone. They soon went their way, and she went hers, but that was her sister’s way, too. She had expected Pearl to eat her dinner where they could see each other even if she never delayed her own meal. Nattie got hungry often.

When they got to where she had turned off that morning, Nattie asked whether she had taken that path again from the other side.

“Yes. And there is a delightful place there by the side of a branch and shaded by a tree. I decided to eat my dinner there.” If the weather had been a little warmer, Nattie might have believed her. Probably not, though. Sisters don’t believe you.

She and Nattie washed dishes that night, and Nattie stopped working as soon as Mama left the room. “All right,” Pearl said, “but this is all you get.” If Nattie told tomorrow, Mama would ask why she had waited.

She took the same path to the mill for more than a week, but she didn’t see Jonah. Once she saw some pigs when she had waded across the branch. The fields looked as though they had all been plowed.

On Monday, Tony was helping his father plant. There were other absences from the group that walked together, and Pearl thought she should walk the littles to the road. They went off to the school, and Pearl passed several groups going that way as she walked to the mill.

When she got off at noon, though, and walked with the other girls towards the school, Douglass was waiting at the turn off.

“Miss Burton,” he said, “will you eat dinner with me again?”

She turned off without a word. When they got to the branch, she waded across. He took a run and leaped it. He was wearing boots, and he had been the last time. His dinner was hanging from the same tree, and he gave her a slice of ham.

“You shouldn’t have waited on me,” she said. Now, this would be the talk of Miss Nelson’s class this noon and the entire school before dark.

“I find that an honest hour’s break at dinner time means I can put in a full day’s work. The sergeants gave us breaks, and they got more out of us than the overseers did.”

She noticed that he only thought about what his problems might be, not hers. On the other hand, she had spoken from what her problems were, and he thought she was concerned for him. Maybe she should have been; he was working hard a full day, and she was working -- and not even sweating -- a half day.

While they ate, he asked her about her work in the mill. He had never seen a power loom and knew little about cloth except to wear it.

“You probably should start towards school, now,” he said in the middle of their talk. “You going to come by tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

He turned out to be right about the time, and she was in the tail end of the students getting into Teacher Nelson’s class.

She had already known that she would be flooded with questions once class broke. She told the truth before the girls took their charges their different ways.

“He’s a veteran. His name is Douglass for the Marshall of Washington. He plants cotton, but he finds he can do as much work in a day if he rests on his dinner hour. We just talk, well, talk and eat. Yes, I think he’s good looking, too. Georgia. He doesn’t talk about the War.”

When she had gathered her group and they had gone past the path that led to Douglass’s place, she spoke to Nattie. The boys had been racing around, and they hadn’t heard all the questions the other girls had asked her.

“I’ll tell Mama. You don’t have to.”

“And Papa?” Titus was Nattie’s Papa, the boys’ papa, too. He wasn’t Pearl’s. And though neither he nor Pearl ever made a point of it, Nattie sometimes worried that they might.

“I’ll tell Mama at supper.” Some things you tell your Papa, and some things you tell your Mama.

“Well, Pearl, be careful, I’ve told you how men are,” Mama said when she had told her story. She didn’t want to be more specific in front of the boys; she had a faint hope that they would turn out different. It was probably too soon for Nattie to get that talk, too. “What did you say his name was?”

“It’s Jonah Douglass.” She hadn’t said, and Mama knew she hadn’t said. “It’s not like that. I merely sit with him on the edge of his land and eat my dinner.”

“A veteran? I think he’s in class. A good-looking man.”

“You only see one good-looking man in that class,” Papa said.

“Oh, Tie! I’m thinking of him for my daughter. Another man your age would be a problem.”

“Well, he isn’t her age, either. Why is he still single? What’s wrong with Tony?”

“Don’t ask about Tony when the littles will hear,” Pearl said. “He had a girl in Georgia and wrote her. She was with somebody else.”

“And it’s ‘not like that,’” Papa said, “but you happen to know why he’s free.”

“Now Papa! We eat outside when anybody can come by, and all that we do is eat and talk.”

“Can happen outside easy enough, I can remember...”

“Now, Tie!” Mama said.

Later, Mama took her for a short walk, though. You could hear anything which was said in the cabin.

“Your Papa was right, though he shouldn’t have said it then,” Mama said. “It can happen outside, and getting busted on a bed is hard enough. I like Jonah, but be very careful of him.”

“I will be, Mama.” But she hadn’t been told to stop seeing him,

So she kept stopping by for dinner. The first day it rained when she got out of the mill, she hurried to school, instead. During actual rainstorms, the teachers let them eat in the classrooms.

She apologized the next day, “You don’t want to eat in my cabin?” Jonah asked. She shook her head no. Mama had told her that it could happen outside, but going into a man’s cabin looked like she was asking for it. She hadn’t been busted; she hadn’t even played around like some girls talked about. She might start with Jonah, but he was going to be serious about her if she did.

“Then if it’s raining, I won’t look for you,” he said.

A few days later, when she got home, little Abe, who was too young to go to school, had some sickness.

“You go, Tie,” Mama said when it was time to leave for night school. “I’m going to stay with Abe.” Pearl was happy about that. She might be able to do anything for Abe that Mama could, but Mama could be more comfort when he felt bad. Besides, if he got worse when Pearl was watching him, she’d think the others were blaming her.

“What did you tell your papa about me?” Jonah asked the next noon.

“I told them I was eating dinners on your land. Should I have kept it secret?”

“He asked me the damnedest questions last night.”

“Well, he didn’t want to do it when Mama was there. They think all bucks are going to behave like they were back on the plantation.”

“But you trust me, don’t you?”

“I know you are a good man,” she said. And, as long as they were by the side of the path, although few people used it, he was good. They had not even kissed.

Wednesday the next week, it was threatening rain when she got to the mill in the morning. She wouldn’t be eating dinner with Jonah that day.

When she got out at noon, the rain was still threatening. It could go on like this for days, and she didn’t want to miss her talk with Jonah. She decided to see if he was at their meeting place.

He was there, carrying his dinner -- and a bit of meat for her -- in one hand and a hoe in the other. Planting time was over, and he’d been chopping weeds just like everybody else.

“When I looked out this morning,” he said, “I was sure that I wouldn’t see you today.”

He wondered about her first thing in the morning, and he came down to the path even when he had doubts. “Well, here I am,” she said.

They had just sat down, though, when lightning flashed right over their heads. Rain started pouring down.

Jonah threw down his hoe and scooped up both their dinners. “Follow me,” he said. He set off across the land he had planted.

She followed him. Soon, he turned right and ran along a furrow. She was panting when she saw him head into a cabin.

He closed the door behind her and handed her a piece of sacking. She wiped off her face and hands.

He was taking off his shirt and hanging it on a hook. Her dress was wet and clinging to her, but she didn’t have anything to put on. She handed him the towel, and he wiped not only his face and arms but his upper body, too.

He pulled out a chair from the table and gestured for her to sit. She did before she saw that it was the only chair in the cabin.

She looked around the cabin while he got the fire going again in the Franklin stove. She had been warm before the rain, but it was probably cooler, and the wet clothes made her shiver.

There was a door in the middle of one wall and a chimney in the middle of the wall next to that. The other two walls contained a window each. The kitchen was larger than the one in the Burton cabin, but the kitchen was the entire cabin. There was a Franklin stove by the chimney. The bed was against the other wall, and it looked big. The bed Mama and Papa shared wasn’t that big.

With the fire crackling merrily in the stove, if not yet warming the cabin, Jonah brought a pot over to the table.

“Do you like rice?” he asked.

“Rice?”

“It’s what Georgia produces instead of cotton. It costs a lot here. Even slaves eat it there, though, when they grow it.”

It was soft without grinding it and white, and it tasted bland to a girl used to corn. When you ate it with ham, though, the taste of the ham really came through.

After they had eaten their dinners, Jonah said, “You still look cold. Come over to the stove.”

It was odd for him to be shirtless and warm when she was fully dressed and shivering. He was dry above the waist, though, and her dress was wet and cold.

He brought her over to the Franklin stove and stood behind her. The heat of the stove started to dry her dress and warm her. His body, if not as hot as the stove, was also warming her. He put his arm around her shoulders, and that helped, too.

She felt his lips brush against the side of her head as gently as Mama’s lips ever had.

“Jonah?”

“Yes, Pearl. That’s a pretty name, Pearl. It fits you, a pretty name for a pretty girl.”

“I don’t think we should be doing this.”

Jonah noticed two things. We shouldn’t be doing this, meant that whatever was wrong to do was something that we were doing. Second, Pearl was talking instead of screaming. She might not be persuaded, but she was signaling that she could be persuaded.

“Definitely not. I should be chopping weeds, and you should be shivering in the schoolroom, which doesn’t have a stove. But the rain is coming down heavily. I’m not going out in this to chop weeds. Are you going to the school?”

“That doesn’t mean that you should be kissing me,” Pearl said.

“What should we be doing, instead?”

Jonah could think of a better thing for Pearl’s lips to be doing instead of arguing with him. On the other hand, he had this pretty girl in his arms talking about how far they could go.

He was standing behind her and to her left. His right arm was around her shoulders. While she was pondering his question, he brought his left hand up to gently stroke her right cheek. His forearm brushed lightly across the front of her wet dress when he did.

“Besides,” he added when she said nothing, “that is not really kissing.”

“What...” she began. Then, seeing the trap a little late, she stopped. Still, she had asked.

He pressed her chin toward him and moved his head around hers. Their mouths just met. She was resisting, but not very hard.

Pearl felt the soft brush of his lips against hers. She tried to turn away, but his hand held her there. Then, her heart was soaring, and she was no longer trying to escape.

She turned in his arms. The fire was heating her side, and the kiss was burning her lips. she grabbed his head and pressed her lips harder to his.

He softly stroked her teat through the dress. Tony had grabbed her teats; so, more forgivably, had Abe. Nobody before had stroked them. He shouldn’t, but she was not going to stop him. This felt too exciting.

She eased up on her grip on Jonah’s head, and he moved to kiss all over her face. This was pleasant, even if he’d said that they weren’t real kisses. It gave her, though, time to remember Melly.

When Pearl had been one of the youngest girls in the oldest class, Melly had been one of the oldest. Before the soldiers came, Melly had been busted by her master as Pearl had not, and the girls had already agreed that this was the major division between them.

Melly, though, married Jebu Burton, who lived near and whom Pearl had known on the plantation. When Melly had a child, Pearl visited her often. Melly told her about things when there were only three of them in the house and baby Lissa couldn’t understand.

“I’m not interested in those things,” Pearl had said.

“You will be,” Melly had said. “Boys can give you as much pleasure as you can give yourself. Give them some in return. But, if you let them bust you, it will hurt -- hurt awful. Now, Jeb gives me pleasure that Massa wouldn’t, but how long is some boy going to give you pleasure? You want the pain of being busted for that?”

Now, Jonah was unbuttoning her dress. If he was going to see her teats, why leave the uncomfortable dress on?

When Jonah felt Pearl lose her tension, he turned her again. He pulled her dress collar back so his lips could go to her shoulder. He kissed and licked the point where her neck joined her shoulder. He slipped his left hand into her dress and cupped her teat. It was a girl’s teat, filling his hand. It was soft and smooth, but firm

When he stroked his fingers across the peaks, they firmed and stuck out and a little up. At the same time, he gently bit the part of her shoulder he was kissing, and she shivered. He figured that was a sexy shiver. It sure felt sexy in his arms. Mostly to hear her say it, he asked “You still cold?”

“A little. The dress chills me.”

“Well, get the rest of the buttons.” The row of buttons went all the way down the front, and he had undone all he could reach like that. He let her go to fetch his old uniform shirt. It had too many holes to wear in front of people, but it still kept him warm while plowing some days. It would be perfect for wiping her off. The towel was a little wet, still.

Pearl watched him hang up her dress on a hook attached to the chimney. The back of the stove would heat it, and the chimney bricks would warm it a little. It would be dry before the weather was.

While he was across the stove from her, she made her decision. She wouldn’t let him bust her, not that that was a new decision. Everybody agreed that that hurt, and -- anyway -- he wasn’t some new Massa to take from her what Massa took from mama.

On the other hand, he seemed to give her pleasure. She would allow him to give her as much as Melly had told her men could, and she would give him pleasure back, the way Melly had described.

He wiped off her back with a scratchy cloth. He knelt, and the cloth was scratchy against the outsides of her legs. On the insides, though, the cloth was ticklish. It was even more ticklish on her teats, especially their peaks.

When he stood behind her, the cloth was gone. The ticklishness was his tongue on the back of her ear and behind it. He held a teat in each hand, and he stroked each peak with a finger.

Mostly, she thrilled to the new sensations Jonah was bringing her, Pearl was slightly amused by the elaborate care he was taking to ease her along a route she had already decided to take. Still, she was enjoying the care.

He suddenly picked her up and strode with her. When he lay her down, she felt that it was a feather mattress, much softer than the straw one on Mama’s bed. She sometimes sat on that when Mama wanted to talk to her.

He was kissing her and stroking her, and she was hot despite the day. He kissed her throat and then her teats. When he kissed the tips of her teats, licking them and sucking them, she was a bundle of fire with sparks shooting up.

She felt her belly tense as it did while she was bringing herself pleasure. Then, his mouth left her teats and traveled down her belly. The excitement was different, but it was just as exciting.

Pearl felt herself climbing the peak. Mellie had told her how to bring herself to the pleasure, and she’d told her that men could bring her as much.

Then she felt Jonah pushing her drawers down. She needed that protection! She looked over at his pants, and she saw that they were still buttoned. She couldn’t have brought herself pleasure with her drawers still on; why did she think Jonah could? She relaxed and raised her hips.

He kissed her deeply, and their tongues wrestled. He stroked his hand up between her legs. tickling both legs. She felt the excitement rise, and she tensed.

He held all of her between her legs in his great hand. He left her lips to kiss and nibble a path down her neck.

“Pearl,” he whispered into her neck, “so warm.” He kissed down to her left teat and stroked a finger between those lips. “So wet.”

Just as he stroked the finger across the sensitive button between the tops of those lips, he licked the peak of her teat. She stiffened so much she almost rose off the bed.

“Yesss!” she said.

“Yes,” he answered. “Little Pearl’s little pearl. You respond so well.”

He returned his mouth where it belonged, and he began sucking the peak between licks. She began to climb the mountain, and she felt his chest rub over the peak of her other teat. Melly had told her that men could give her as much pleasure as she could give herself, but Melly hadn’t mentioned the mouth working along with the hand. She couldn’t do that for herself.

She was almost there.

And then Jonah moved his finger off the button and his mouth off the peak. He was still stroking the lips, but the sensation was not quite so arousing. He was kissing her teat, but not the peak. She felt like whimpering.

She may have actually whimpered, because he answered her.

“Not yet. It will feel even better for a little build up.”

He repeated everything except that he was kissing her right teat again. She tensed, every muscle tightened impossibly, and something pushed her mound up into his hand. She grabbed his wrist with one hand and his hair with the other to keep him right there. She tightened again; she was quivering.

A cannon went off in her belly, and she could feel herself thrashing around. “Aaah,” she said.

He kept stroking and sucking, and she kept rolling around.

Finally, she couldn’t feel any more. She collapsed, and he finally stopped stroking her. He raised one of her hands to his lips for a kiss while she lay there gasping and trembling.

Something roused her by dropping to the floor. She looked over, and he was naked and jutting out.

“No!” she cried. She roused herself and rolled off the bed on the other side. “Toss me my drawers.”

He held them out across the bed dangling from his hand. She grabbed them and got them on without taking her eyes off him.

“I took care of you,” Jonah said.

“And I’ll take care of you. Get over by the stove -- facing it.”

He did as he was told. She walked up behind him until her soft teats with their hard-again tips pressed into his back.

She reached around him and took his cock in her right hand. It was hot, and she could feel its hardness under the soft skin. When she put her hand round it, it jumped.

“Now, tell me what to do,” Pearl said.

“This was your idea.”

“Melly told me, but I have never done it. She told me that you would tell me how.”

“Okay,” Jonah said. “When I say, ‘up and down,’ I mean towards the tip and back towards my body. Now, move your hand up and down. Tighter. No, that butterfly touch was sexy as hell; loose as you were before...
Slower, not quite to the tip...
Now, a little faster...
Tighter and all the way to the tip.”

She stepped back a little and held her left hand under his balls until they were just touching lightly.

Jonah said, “Damn!” His cock pulsed in her hand. Something shot out of it and sizzled on the Franklin stove. A second pulse sizzled lower; a third hit the floor; a fourth just oozed out onto her fingers. She let go.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome.” She soaked her hand in the water bucket and then dried it off on the piece of sacking. She took her dress down off the hook and put it on. The back was dry and warm; the front was warm but still a little wet. It was a little stiff where it had dried into folds.

“You don’t have to do that. You look even prettier without it.”