When people began to wake up in the morning, before the rooster crowed, they found her still in silent vigil with her Bible.
She stayed in her trance, weeping quietly, until some of Noah Leon’s people arrived from Louisiana. They wanted to take his body back home to be buried, but she wouldn’t hear any of it. Finally, she allowed him to be buried on a little hill by the creek. She put up a wooden cross. That way she could see him every day and take food and flowers to his grave. That was the way she wanted it, and no one could change her mind. Noah Leon’s people went home without him.
When Ol’ Mastuh Sanders came back, weeks, maybe months later, it wasn’t to see Great-Grandmama Laura Mae. It was to introduce Mr. Slim Hawkins to everyone as the new overseer for the plantation. That time Great-Grandmama Laura Mae never came out of the house. Ol’ Mastuh Sanders waited for her a long time, but she never came out. He stood around his horse and the trough looking and just waiting. After that, he came to the Old Homestead to talk to Slim about the crops and to discuss planting, but he never came to “worry” Great-Grandmama Laura Mae again. Those days were over when Noah Leon died.
Nothing much was ever said of Noah Leon’s death. No questions, no investigations, no detectives, no county sheriffs, no coroner’s report, no trial. That’s what I remember most about my mother’s telling of Great-Grandmama Laura Mae’s story. Everybody knew something, and nobody said anything.
How long it took before things returned to normal, nobody knew. It just happened.
Laura Mae’s third daughter, my Grandmama Minnie, bore six children: Lula Bea, Abraham, my mother Inez Delois, Catherine, Minnie Laura, and Levi. All these babies were left in the country with their grandmother while Minnie went to town to earn money as a domestic for white folks. Minnie had married Saul Scarborough when she was fifteen, and she bore him those six children before he lost his mind.
When I was a child, Granddaddy Saul did little except sit in the old rocking chair and dip snuff or chew tobacco. He wore the same weathered overalls every single day until he had to get a new pair. By the time I was three years old, he was already using a cane to get around. I remember him telling me that the cane could talk. When we were alone, the cane would tell me fanciful stories of raccoon hunting and catfish fetching down by the creek. Granddaddy Saul’s arthritis and rheumatism bothered him most of the time, and he had frequent migraine headaches, but nothing seemed to bother him when we went walking in the woods and that cane was busy talking. As we walked out beyond the hedges and down by the fields, he would hold my hand for a while. Then he would let me hold onto the side of his overalls so I could keep up. He seemed just like everyone else to me; he always seemed fine.
Every morning when I woke up, I’d go looking for him. I’d always find him sitting and rocking by himself or staring off into space or talking with the chickens in the yard. When I found him, I would stand by him and talk to the chickens too. After a time, we would go off walking together.
All the big people who came to the house were bossy to me and said that I was kin to all of them. Even when they came from far away and I didn’t know them, they said I had some of their blood. Then they would hug me and kiss me and call me Little Angel and Little Buttercup, as if they knew me. I didn’t like that.
If I could find Granddaddy Saul, we would go out walking for a long time. I would stay with him until the big strangers left. When we’d come back, it would be after dark and the dogs would bark and jump up, licking and greeting us. Everybody would fuss at Granddaddy Saul for keeping me away so long. I never complained because he fed me corn bread and sorghum from a can, and we talked to the cane. When I told my brother Willie Jr. that the cane could talk, he said it wasn’t true because Granddaddy Saul never asked the cane to talk to him.
At night, while I lay on my pallet, I could hear my Great-Grandmama Laura Mae fussing at him about that talking cane and those tales he told. She said she knew he wasn’t telling the truth and shouldn’t be fooling me like that. That was when I had the revelation that Granddaddy Saul hadn’t told Great-Grandmama Laura Mae or Willie Jr. or my mother that the cane could talk. This was a deep secret between him and me.
Granddaddy Saul taught me that to hear the cane talk, we had to be quiet. Sometimes we were quiet for so long that I fell asleep. Granddaddy Saul would wake me up to tell me that I’d missed the talking. I didn’t like it that I had fallen asleep under a shady tree in the midday sun and had missed my important encounter with the talking cane. I would promise Granddaddy Saul and myself that I wouldn’t fall asleep again.
When I managed to stay awake, the cane would tell me of clever animals that lived in the woods and outfoxed the old plantation master and ate his chickens. It told me about the deer and the rabbit and the fox, the bear and the coyote, the turtle, and the grasshopper that lived deep in the woods. I’d listen anxiously, hardly blinking my eyes and holding my breath.
Sometimes Granddaddy Saul and I would sing songs with the cane. We’d sing about flying, fishing, marching, and stealing honey from the bees. It never occurred to me that the cane wasn’t singing when Granddaddy Saul was singing.
One day when we were out walking and I wanted the cane to talk, we waited a long time. After a while, we sat down by the banks of the Wateechee Creek and continued to wait and listen. Finally, Granddaddy Saul told me to hold the tips of my thumb and index finger together in each hand, close my eyes real tight, and make a wish that the cane would talk to us. I closed my eyes, and slowly the cane began to talk.
It told me of kings and queens who were my oldest kin, peoples in an ancient civilization called Afrique. The cane talked about tropical jungle places and described strange, ferocious, growling animals large enough to eat the fox and possum and jackrabbit and deer and me. The cane talked of a great Afrique warrior who was strong enough to kill the big animals with a spear and knife. He would skin and cook them over a fire. Then he would eat them and share them with his kinfolk. He wasn’t afraid and would protect me from the big animals. The warrior, a mighty leader who was loved by his people, was named Shakti Binge. I told Granddaddy Saul that one day I would take him with me to Afrique. He smiled and rubbed my head and said that he would wait.
One day, my mother called me in from chasing the chickens and told me to stay in the house. It had been raining all day, letting up only for brief moments. There was water everywhere, and we all huddled under quilts and kept our socks on to try to stay warm. The rain continued steadily, and the pounding of the water on the roof and the wind battering the side of the house made us look at each other in fear. I stood between Great-Grandmama Laura Mae and Granddaddy Saul. My brother and Mr. Slim Hawkins stood behind Mama Inez and my daddy, Willie Son. Cousin Dina Mae and her four kids and Lula Bea and her six kids were all huddled nearby looking out the window and wondering like the rest of us. It had been raining off and on for well over a week. The rain was affecting everything. Daddy said that the factory didn’t have any work for him.
Grandmama Minnie Green arrived home from town soaking wet. I heard her voice before I actually saw her. She said that everybody in town was talking about the rising water and the rain. Her feet were muddy, and she was carrying her shoes. She said that she’d had to walk the last five miles because Ol’ Mr. Carmichael was afraid his mules and wagon wouldn’t make it through the waterlogged roads. There were snakes everywhere, she said. She was almost bitten when she accidentally stepped on a rattler.
That whole day, the men huddled and smoked, and they checked on the animals in the barn so many times I knew it was a way to get away from the houseful of ladies and kids. They grumbled and hunched over as they walked through the rain, reaching in their pockets for their matches, pipes, tobacco, and snuff. Nobody had a good feeling about this water. The men had to mull over what to do if the rain got worse. There were few choices because there was no higher ground anywhere.
Mr. Elijah Sanders Jr., Ol’ Mastuh Sanders’s
