Blood on the Forge Read online

  He hitched up the mule while Mat was getting an old quid loose from his pocket. It was almost white from chewing. Mat stood there, rolling it around in his jaws to get it so it would chew without powdering up. He saw the plow was ready.

  “Whyn’t you go help Maw in the back-door garden?”

  “Two do more work out here.”

  “She gittin’ old. Set the turnips for her.”

  Melody didn’t leave right away. He went with Big Mat to the one good strip of the farm, heavy muck land next to the bottoms. He walked behind him on the first row, breaking the cool clods with his bare feet. At the turn Mat stopped to shift his chew and spit a long, juicy stream. They stood ankle-deep in the broken muck and sniffed the air that blew in from the bottoms. Right then Melody was feeling the earth like a good thing in his heart.

  “Make you forgit you just a nigger, workin’ the white man’s ground,” he said.

  “This little strip of ground grow anythin’,” said Mat.

  Melody picked up a clod and tasted it.

  “ ’Member how we used to eat dirt when we was little scapers? It still taste good.”

  “Muck ground git big every year jest like a woman oughta.”

  “Mat, I got a big feelin’ like the ground don’t belong to the white boss—not to nobody.”

  “Maybe muck ground my woman.”

  Melody began to feel sad but he didn’t want his guitar to do anything about it. Every once in a while he would get filled up like this with a feeling that was too big to turn into any kind of music.

  “You know, Mat—wish I’d ’a’ had a chance to sit at a schoolhouse like white kids—all the year round.”

  “Muck ground jest a woman.”

  “Man had oughta know book learnin’——”

  “Only muck ground never fail if you plows it——”

  “. . . so’s he kin know how to say what he’s feelin’.”

  “Git big if you plows it.”

  “Guess I oughta been white.”

  “Jest as well I was born a nigger. Got more misery than a white man could stand.”

  Melody had to look at him.

  His voice was so deep it was like a slow roll on a drum.

  Melody came back from that long-gone day, and Hattie was talking. . . .

  “Mat . . .”

  “Huh?”

  “Maybe it’s gonna be different. I—I feels funny—like every time it’s gonna happen.”

  “It ain’t never happened so late.”

  “I ought to know—six times—I ought to know.”

  “How you know?”

  “Six times I feels funny. Now I feels funny.”

  “Keep shut, woman.” He was looking around, as though there were a stranger to hear. Hattie’s eyes rolled in her head as she followed his fearful glances. The Bible shut with a snap. She jumped. He said, half ashamed, “Damn a woman who can’t even keep the pot astirrin’.”

  “Mat . . .”

  “Huh?”

  “You reckon six is enough for the curse?”

  “I don’t reckon nothin’. The Lawd don’t love no child of sin. That’s why he don’t love me. That’s why he put the curse on me.”

  “You reckon the curse on Melody and Chinatown too. They wasn’t studded right.”

  “The Lawd jest pick on the first born.”

  “Why that?”

  “That always the way. The curse on me for them too. I try to be a good man—but he don’t care nothin’ ’bout that.”

  “Lawd, Lawd, the curse on us for always?”

  “I got to preach the gospel—that the only way.”

  “Mat, maybe if you preaches on Sundays from now on—maybe this time ever’thin’ be all right.”

  “I can’t preach to nobody.”

  “But you studies the Bible.”

  “I can’t preach, no matter how much it’s inside me.”

  “But, Mat, you kin try—jest so’s ever’thin’ be all right jest this one time.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Mat——”

  “If I trys to preach ’fore folks it all jest hits against the stopper in my throat and build up and build up till I fit to bust with wild words that ain’t comin’ out.”

  The firelight was doing crazy things to his face.

  “Mat——”

  “Keep shut!”

  He struck her across the mouth with the back of his hand. The blow didn’t make any noise. Hattie didn’t make any noise.

  “Damn . . . damn . . .” he was muttering. He went out through the open door. “Damn a woman who can’t even keep a pot astirrin’,” he groaned, half ashamed, in the night.

  Melody went to sleep.

  Hattie’s voice woke him a second later, but hours had passed. The gray was in the doorway. Chinatown was stirring.

  “Up now, you lazy scapers. They’s done!”

  The air was steamy with a hot-manure smell, done-chitterling smell.

  The sun was coming up. Nine white carcasses gleamed, gaping open, split down the middle, head and feet gone. They were like nine small human bodies. Big Mat worked as fast as he could. There were hams to be sugar-cured, sides of white fat meat to be brined in kegs, shoulders to be kept fresh in a hillside cave, ends to be pickled, scraps to be thrown in the hog slops. He cut the meat and stacked it neatly.

  The sun was overhead when he wiped the knives and cleavers and got to his feet. The work was finished. This was the day Mr Johnston was going to give him a mule. In his pocket was a length of rawhide. He would use it to lead the animal home. If he hurried there would be time to break a little ground before dark. He thought of the little strip of muck next to the bottoms. He would walk behind the plow. The soil would be damp. It was a good thing to break the ground for seeding and watch the land get big. Field, animal or man—the seed should be sunk in the spring for a good crop. Maybe this time Hattie would not drop his child dead. Seven was a lucky number.

  When he came to the back door of the big house he took off his hat to twist in his hands. Mrs Johnston came to the back-door screen. Mr Johnston was in town, she told him—had left before daybreak. No, she didn’t know anything about a mule. But the riding boss would know. He was somewhere in the fields. She hurried back to her kitchen duties.

  He stood awhile, then he followed the split-rail fence where it wound over the hills.

  Big Mat sat on the split-rail fence and looked at the three mules. They stood together, so they could fan the flies from one another’s faces. Two were young and fat. They would make a fine team. The third was old and rawboned. That would be the one Mr Johnston meant to give him. Still, that old mule would outwork a horse twice his weight. For a long time Big Mat sat trying to imagine himself owning the brace of young mules, working every acre of the farm, combing down their coats until they were smooth as smooth. He would hitch them to a two-wheel wagon and drive Hattie to church every Sunday. Chinatown and Melody could sit astride those mules and make every church picnic in the county. His face did not change with those thoughts, but his eyes were alive.

  A sweat bee buzzed over the mules’ backs. They started a nervous kicking.

  “Git away from my two mules,” said his mind.

  He climbed down the fence. Snatching off his hat, he struck at the sweat bee. The mules kicked up their heels and ran to the middle of the field.

  “What the hell you doin’ to them mules, boy?”

  It was the riding boss. Galloping up to the fence, he held a short quirt ready in his hand.

  “It was a sweat bee,” said Big Mat.

  “Be damned to that!” said the riding boss. “Git on back to your work.”

  “Work all done.”

  “Well, git on home.”

  “Mr Johnston said I could have a mule.”

  The riding boss turned red in the face. His neck swelled. Stiff legged, he dismounted. He walked up to Big Mat.

  “Maybe you don’t know who you talkin’ to, boy— givin’ me short talk.”
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br />   Big Mat did not answer.

  “Say, ’suh,’ ” ordered the riding boss.

  “Yessuh.”

  The riding boss started to turn away.

  “Got to keep steppin’ on you niggers, or you git outa hand—forgit jest who you talkin’ to.”

  “Nosuh, I ain’t forgot,” said Big Mat. “Us used to play together when your folks was sharecroppin’ next to mine.”

  The riding boss turned and slashed the quirt across Big Mat’s face. He felt like he had struck unfeeling, dead flesh.

  “Damn fool!” he muttered. “Don’t even know enough to back offen a whip.”

  Big Mat looked out of dull eyes, watching the quirt from a great distance within himself. A picture of the unplowed land came into his mind. When the land was not being worked folks were hungry. Maybe after this trouble Mr Johnston would take back all he had promised. Hattie and the boys should not have to go hungry when they were not to fault. He wondered why he had talked up to the riding boss. He had known what would happen.

  “Well, what you waitin’ for? Git!” snapped the riding boss.

  “I’m sorry for what I done,” muttered Big Mat. “If I could wait around for my mule I could git in some plowin’ ’fore dark.”

  “If Mr Johnston got good sense you won’t never git another mule,” said the riding boss. “You’d be run off the land if I had my say. Killin’ a animal worth forty dollars, ’cause a nigger woman got dragged over the rocks——”

  The riding boss fell to the ground, blood streaming from his smashed face. He struggled to get to his feet. A heavy foot caught him in the side of his neck. His head hung over his shoulder at an odd angle. The quirt remained in his hand, standing upright. Then the hand opened, and the quirt fell out on the ground.

  Big Mat stood over the unconscious man, eyes almost crossed by inner disturbance. Then the red mist fell away from his vision. He saw the riding boss. For a minute he did not connect the fallen man with himself. Then he knew what he had done. “A dead one,” was his first frightened thought. Then he saw the uneven movement of the red throat, the fluttering blood bubbles at the nose. The riding boss would live to lead the lynch mob against him. That thought shot through him, shaking him loose. In a panic he started to lope across the meadow. His feet, like his mind, led him aimlessly in a crisscross pattern. One of the mules began to cry. The sound echoed in a grove of willows far off in the hills. Big Mat stopped. He looked at the mules. They stared. He ran back and tied the length of rawhide around the old mule’s lower jaw. Then he was leading the animal away to the hills. There was no good reason for it. But this was the day he was supposed to get a mule.

  Big Mat knew the red hills as though they were his own back yard. But this day every place was strange. He was hunted.

  Pushing his great muscles beyond their power, he yanked the mule over the hills. Every crooked crab-apple branch seemed to menace, sending him onward. But his aimlessness could not throw him out of an inner groove. He moved within a great circle. And when evening came he found himself at no great distance from his farm.

  A great calm settled on him.

  Noise carries a long way in the hills. Chinatown and Melody raised their heads to listen. Stuffed with chitterlings, they had been dozing in the sun, waiting for Big Mat to come back with the mule. It wasn’t Mat, they decided; this noise was the shuffle-clop of an old horse trotting way in the rear of the sound he was making. Like dry-land turtles, they waited, with their heads off the ground, to see who would come jogging along the road.

  “Can’t be anybody avisitin’,” Melody said.

  The shuffle-clop was just around the far elbow of the road. They got set to wave.

  “Headed for town,” remarked Chinatown.

  A stranger, a white man in a flapping black hat, astride a black nag. They stopped their hands in mid-air.

  “Well, look yonder!” breathed Chinatown.

  Strangers never passed by their house; they were too far back in the hills.

  The stranger saw them in the dust and raised his reins. They got to their feet. Chinatown took off his old hat and knucked at his forehead. The stranger rode near. Chinatown began to grin. He wasn’t tickled. He always bent his back and grinned a little for white folks.

  “Hallo, boys.”

  “Howdy, suh.”

  “Howdy, Cap’n.”

  Hattie was in the doorway.

  “Afternoon, ma’am,” said the stranger.

  Hattie looked scared.

  Chinatown looked out of the corners of his eyes. Melody was already on guard. The man had not called her “A’nty,” as white folks did when they didn’t know her first name. What kind of trick was this man up to?

  “What we kin do for you, Cap’n?” asked Chinatown.

  “You the Moss boys, ain’t you?” said the man.

  “We the Moss boys, Cap’n.”

  “I was told there was three of you.”

  “They’s three of us, Cap’n—only one ain’t here.”

  “Which one of you is called Big Mat?”

  “He the one ain’t here, Cap’n.”

  “He’s the head of this family, I was told.”

  “That’s right, Cap’n.”

  “Then he’s the one I wanted to see.”

  Hattie spoke from the doorway.

  “We ain’t seen hide or hair of Big Mat for a long, long spell, suh.”

  “That there the truth,” spoke up Chinatown. “He a good-for-nothing—always run off when it come time to make up the ground for crop.”

  The man smiled. “It’s all right. Black George, down the way, told me to see you boys.”

  “Black George . . . Black George . . .” pondered Chinatown.

  “Said he was a friend of yours.”

  Chinatown turned to Melody.

  “You ever hear of anybody down the way name Black George?” he asked.

  “Cain’t say as I have.”

  The white man turned to Melody.

  “Look here,” he said, “I ain’t got all day. You think you can deliver a straight story?”

  “Reckon I kin, suh.”

  “Can you keep your mouth shut too?”

  “Reckon so, suh.”

  The man gave a broad look around the yard.

  “I’m from up North,” he said.

  Chinatown and Melody stared. This was the first real jackleg they had ever seen.

  “They need men up there—good men—all they can get. If Big Mat speaks for this family tell him they can use him and all the other able menfolks in his house.”

  “If I see him I tell him,” said Melody.

  “Dammit!” cried the man, “you don’t have to be cagey with me. I’m your friend.”

  “Sure, Cap’n.” Chinatown grinned.

  “Look here, are you boys satisfied with the way You’re getting on around here?”

  “Oh, yessuh, we satisfied,” cried Chinatown warily.

  “Yessuh, they ain’t kickin’ none,” came Hattie’s warning voice from the doorway.

  “How much crop you make last year?” asked the man.

  “Put in nigh thirty acres,” Melody told him.

  “That’s good,” said the man. “Must have made yourself a couple hundred dollars or so.”

  “Reckon that’s right, but Mr Johnston keeps the book. He don’t let us see what’s writ in it.”

  “Well, don’t you know how much he gave you?”

  “Nosuh, he say what we made, and what’s writ against us leaves us owin’ him.”

  “It don’t make any difference,” said the man. “Just suppose you made two hundred dollars. Up North in the mills you three would make more ’n that much in a month.”

  Chinatown grinned his disbelief. Hattie gave a little snort and went into the house.

  “You boys want to make that kind of money, don’t you?”

  “Sure do, Cap’n.” And Chinatown grinned behind his hand.

  The man reached back in his pocket and pulled out a r
oll of bills. It was more money than Chinatown had ever thought was in the world. The permanent grin almost left his face as the man shucked off a ten-dollar bill and gave it to him.

  “Now you think I’m on the level?”

  “Yessuh—yessuh, Cap’n,” stuttered Chinatown.

  “The freight train will stop at Masonville Junction at midnight. That’s tonight. That’s where you boys board her for the North.”

  “But there be trouble if we tries to leave,” said Melody.

  “Won’t nobody see you if you look spry,” said the man. “Then You’re in a sealed boxcar that won’t be opened until You’re out of the state.”

  “Maybe Big Mat won’t come,” Melody told him.

  “He’ll come if you tell him the thing straight, like I told you.”

  “What about Hattie?” Melody asked. “That’s his wife.”

  “He can send for her later. Can’t transport no women.”

  “Yessuh.”

  The man climbed back onto his horse.

  “Now don’t forget—tonight—Masonville Junction. I’ll be there to put you on board.”

  A white man in a flapping black hat, astride a black nag—he was gone. They stood looking after him full twenty minutes after the hills had muffled the sound of the black nag’s hoofs. Then Chinatown gave a whoop and waved the ten-dollar bill high in the air.

  “Lawd! And I thought only niggers was dumb.”

  Hattie came flying to the doorway.

  “What the fuss?”

  “That jackleg give us this here for foolin’ him.”

  “Lawd-a-mercy!” cried Hattie. “Lemme git a tin can and bury that money back in the hills.”

  “I’m keepin’ this in my pocket, woman,” cried China.

  “Fool! He come back for it sure,” said Hattie.

  “Let him come back,” said China. “When I hear him comin’ I’m off to the hills.”

  Chinatown danced around until he wore himself out. Then he dropped, puffing and blowing, to the ground.

  “Must be a lot of that kind of up-North money,” said Melody.

  “Glad some of it stray off down this way.” Chinatown grinned.

  “You reckon that white man tellin’ the facts?”

  “Don’t know.”