then—but he could never have left Elise behind in Georgia, could never have left her behind in her beautiful house and gone on to any kind of life of his own.
Now she was his responsibility, she, and the baby she carried—he was a husband now, and in a number of months would be a father. For the first time he understood how his own father must have felt, in struggling so long, and in finally dying, to try to give his son something that would have been his own. Now that son would have a son or daughter of his own—what could he give his child? And, what could he give Elise? In bringing her here, he had not allowed himself to think beyond the very fact of their being together, trusting that he would find a way for them to build a life—but he had to think beyond that fact now. He had to put a roof of their own over their heads, had to put his own food on their table, had to be the husband and father and man that his parents had raised him to be.
Elise moved slightly in her sleep, curling closer to him as she lay on her side, her soft hair brushing his neck as she settled again, sighing softly in her sleep before becoming quiet. He pulled the patchwork quilts closer about her, for the room was cold still in spite of the fire he had gotten up to put wood on twice already in the night. He moved to press a cheek to her hair, closing his eyes, and losing himself for a moment in the warm feel of her against him—but the thoughts would not go away. He owed her so much more than he was giving her now, so much, in light of all she had given up to become his wife. Elise Whitley’s children were meant to be born to wealth and luxury, to a fine home, to a world of electricity and running water, of motor cars and radio and more money than you could ever need—not the things he could give them.
But she had chosen him, and now he had a choice to make, a choice he had never thought to be brought to, but a choice he could no longer see a way around.
He woke her gently in the hour before dawn, and loved her with his body for a time before they rose from the bed to go into this world he had brought her to. He could not help but to watch her as she helped his Gran’ma prepare breakfast that morning, realizing that she had probably never before cooked anything in her life—there were a great many firsts ahead for both of them, he realized.
He was not surprised when, as that day wore on, he found his steps leading him toward a path through the winter-quiet woods, and toward the land that he had been born to, toward the home he had known for the first nineteen years of his life, and the dream that both his parents had given their lives to have. The sky to the west was low and gray as he broke free of the woods at the edge of the winter-dead cotton fields, the air heavy with moisture. It would rain before this day was over, a hard, cold rain that would sit on the red land for days before seeping in.
His steps finally stopped as he reached a rise, where he could see the small, white house where it sat beyond the apple orchard and the clay road. He stood beneath the barren branches of the old oak tree that he had played in as a child, staring at the house where his mother had given him life, and where his father had given him a dream. He was unmindful of the threatening sky or the cold wind that whipped about him as his eyes moved over the yard and toward the Model T car that now sat pulled up before the front steps, his eyes coming to rest on the wide porch and the door to what had been his home. For a moment, he could almost hear the sound of an old, foot-treadle sewing machine, the sound of a woman’s voice singing, the creak of a rocking chair, and feel the warmth of a fireplace and a time he knew would never be again. For a moment he could almost feel the presence of the tall, strong man, and the small, dark woman who had once been his world, and the little boy who had lived in their hearts and had somehow carried on their dreams. He stared toward the house, remembering all his father had told him about the struggle and saving, of all the hard work and worry, to have this land and to hold onto it—land that Janson had lost to the auction block.
He stared toward the fields, now barren, the dry cotton plants waiting to be turned under for the new year’s cotton crop—fields that had once been burned black in a gasoline-ignited fire that had ended a part of Janson’s life forever. He stared toward the edge of the field to the place where his father had died in his mother’s arms in the midst of that hellish night, and he could almost smell the smoke, could almost feel the heat, could almost still choke on the smell of the burning lint and the taste of his own hatred as he remembered.
He stared toward the front of the house to the place where Walter Eason had stood little more than a year later, after those months of Janson struggling to try to hold onto the land, after Janson having seen his mother die the winter after his father, after the notice of foreclosure had finally been received—Walter Eason had offered him a job in the cotton mill in town, had told him there would always be a place for him there, for a “good, hardworking boy” like him.
Janson could remember that day so well, could feel the lowered, darkened sky, so like this day, and the hatred as he had stared at the man he knew was responsible for both his parents’ deaths, and for his loss of the land. Henry Sanders had refused to sell his cotton crop in the county at the Easons’ prices, for he had known that to do so would have meant the loss of the land—but they had lost the land anyway, and Janson had lost both his parents as well. He had thrown Walter Eason off the land that day, and had left Eason County shortly thereafter, knowing he could never work for the Easons, for Henry Sanders had worked and slaved and sworn never to see his son within the walls of that cotton mill, never to see him owned and sweated into old age for someone like the Easons.
Henry Sanders had worked in that cotton mill; he and his wife had saved and dreamed and done without until they could guarantee their son a better life. Janson had grown up with the red land beneath his feet, the first in his family ever born to his own land in a line of Irish tenant farmers, Southern sharecroppers, and dispossessed Cherokee. Janson had never once worked indoors, had never thought to work where he could not see the sun or sky, for he was a farmer, and that was all he had ever wanted to be.
But now there was something he wanted more. Now there was something that meant more to him than the red earth, more even than the dream of owning something that was his own—Elise. Elise and their baby. Now he had a reason to want the land more than for himself alone. Now he had a reason to want it more than as a home he could give Elise—it would one day belong to his son, to grandsons he would someday know. Now there was a reason to accept a roof and walls to work within, as his own father had done. He could not take Elise to a sharecropped farm, for that would be a life far worse than any in town, losing half a crop each year for use of mules and plow and earth, watching their own half eaten up by a store charge they would be forced to run, taking her to live in a drafty shack, for most sharecropped farms were far worse than the one his grandparents cropped on halves—no, that was no life for Elise, or for their children. The choice was made, a choice he would have to live with, a choice he had no alternative to.
He knelt and picked up a winter-brown leaf that had fallen from the branches of the oak tree, then straightened to stare toward the house again—this would be theirs again, one day, no matter how long it took him; one day he would give this to Elise, and to their sons and daughters. Until then he would work, he would slave, he would be sweated into old age if he had to—but this would be theirs.
He crushed the leaf in his hand as he took one last look at the land he had dreamed of through the last year, the way of life he had always known—at the red earth, the tall pines, the all-seeing sky. It was a way of life he would not know again for a very long time, locked within the walls and ceiling of a cotton mill, owned and worked by men he would forever hate. He looked, and he remembered. Then he turned his back and walked away.
“It’ll kill him,” Deborah Sanders said as she pounded the wash that lay on the battling block, using the heavy stick she held in both hands. “He ain’t a man for workin’ indoors—it’ll kill him, sure as I’m standin’ here.” She pounded the wash even harder, staring across
