Israel is assigned with two others to pry open the wooden crates outside so rifles can be distributed, then joins the rest of the men digging a long trench for a barricade about forty feet in front of the courthouse. Within two hours, the sweat-sheened men have a good start in hollowing out the reddish soil in sections around the courthouse, digging up slimy mud to form a series of trenches that look like a series of narrow, shallow graves. Noby makes himself useful by running water to the men outside and carrying off displaced dirt and mud.
In the early afternoon, they halt to eat, and Israel shares the contents of his dinner bucket with Noby.
“Time for you to go on home now, son,” Israel says. He mentions nothing about Noby’s part in the morning break-in. “You able to find the way. Follow Red River and then Bayou Darrow.”
“Can’t I stay with you?” Noby asks.
“Too many guns here. This not a place for a boy after all. Tell your mama I might be staying longer than I thought.”
A good number of the men have finished eating and are already back to work, stabbing at the hard ground with pickaxes and shovels. With all the movement, the square has the feel of a disrupted anthill. Noby says goodbye to his father and sets off, alone this time. Retracing the same path in reverse of the morning, Noby pictures his mother in their small cabin, what she is likely to be doing right now. Lucy is always in motion, scrubbing, cooking, cleaning, or sewing. Tending and mending, his father says, and there is fondness to it.
Last Easter, his mother made a new collar for his father’s Sunday shirt and passed the old frayed collar down to David. There are too many sons and daughters in their family for his mother to manage new clothes for everyone, or more than a mending and pressing of her own Sunday dress, but she sees to it that each one sports something white.
Lucy Smith is soft-spoken, yielding, always in some stage of creating babies. Unlike this morning, she usually defers, with a calm acceptance demonstrating her unshakable belief in the inevitability of life. She delivers the most baffling answers to questions that explode in Noby’s head all day long. She doesn’t shush him or shoo him away, but her answers seldom fit the questions he asks. The serenity of her voice soothes him nonetheless.
Figure 2. Map of Colfax and surrounding areas
“Mind your father,” she says after Noby asks if he can go off to school in Montgomery when he gets older. “God is great,” she says when asked why possum tastes different than chicken. “The husband shall rule over the wife” is her response when Noby asks if she tires of wearing the same faded dress four seasons in a row.
Lucy Smith and the other women in The Bottom will make sure there is plenty of food Easter Sunday. Noby assumes Mr. McCullen and his father and the rest of the colored men of Colfax at the courthouse will be finished standing up for their rights by then.
It is only the third week of March.
Chapter
2
In the calming stillness of Tuesday’s earliest morning hours, Israel Smith wrestles with how much time has passed in this place. Today marks the first day of April. It is a full week since the takeover began, and the defenders dwindle. Not all at once, in a mad rush of panic or confusion, but in an unremitting seeping away, hour by hour. Colored men throw off the cause and go back to their homes to try to catch up on farmwork they have missed, or jobs where they have been too long absent, or simply to check that their families are safe. Most have slipped off in the last two days, open in their dismay that the Federals haven’t yet arrived in Colfax, and that no one seems to know when they will.
Prior mornings, waking to the foreignness of the courthouse, Israel has risen after waking and stumbled outside to relieve himself. Years of habit have conditioned him to be firmly entrenched in his day’s work by sunup, but not today. Reluctantly, he throws aside the blanket and unballs the old homespun jacket serving as his night pillow. He forces himself to his feet and draws the jacket around his shoulders, a comforting warmth against the morning’s chill. Mindful of the men still sleeping on the floor around him in the cramped room, he rolls the blanket and stuffs it into a corner before grabbing up his tin cup and boots. It is already light outside, and others are stirring. He stops on the front steps to pull on his boots, not sure whether he should wait for the day’s courthouse assignments or just turn in the borrowed rifle and start the long walk home.
Instead, he follows his nose to the coffee, already boiling, and a small group of volunteers, idling. Sam Tademy and McCully are deep in conversation, already on their second cup.
“Brother Sam, when you get here?” asks Israel.
“He set out before daylight, just walk in this morning,” McCully answers for Sam. “Musta knowed how much we need more men.”
“Polly too sick for me to come earlier,” adds Sam. “But I check on Lucy yesterday. They doing all right.”
“Thanks to you, Brother Sam,” says Israel. Lucy and Sam’s wife, Polly, often fish on Walden Bayou together in the early morning before the men go off to tend crops on their different farm sites, and Israel receives, secondhand, much of his neighborhood news from those exchanges.
“You think the Federals come today?” Sam asks. “I don’t fancy leaving Polly and the children too long alone on the farm.” Sam is short and slight, with carved features. He too is a preacher, with a small congregation in The Bottom.
“We all just waiting,” says Israel. “Bad situation, us here, families there. I hope The Bottom far enough away.”
“Leastways in town we got guns and numbers on our side,” says McCully. “But it not clear how long these men gonna hold. More coming in, but more leaving every day too.”
Israel nods and drinks his coffee. While hot enough to be helpful, the foul-tasting liquid is both sour and weak, as if someone has neglected to clean out the pot from the days before. Lucy would never serve such poor coffee. His wife masks the flavor of even the greenest or the oldest beans with chicory or sage, if they are lucky, or at least willow leaves if not. Still, Israel is glad to be out of the close confines of the courthouse and out in the open air, away from the invasive, lingering smells of too many men forced together for too long.
Lucy won’t be able to make do without him forever on their rented farm. The crop work has surely fallen behind. Just a day or two more, he tells himself, and one way or the other, he will go back home.
“How the day pass here?” asks Sam.
“I do lookout from the roof, and Brother Israel here patrol around town,” McCully says.
Sam looks up. “What they doing putting you on the roof?”
“The roof where I ask to be,” says McCully. He walks, surprisingly graceful for such a big man, uncoiling like an oversize spring, full of energy, his dirt-caked overalls stiff with ground-in grime. McCully motions for Sam to follow. “Come up. See for yourself. You might’s well come too, Israel.”
The two men follow McCully up the pine ladder leaning against the side of the east courthouse wall up to the flat roof.
“Fine day to take the courthouse,” McCully says with a grin when they get there.
“This not a game,” Sam snaps, his voice testy. He is angry about leaving Polly and his boys alone with the farm, angry that he’s jeopardizing not only his job overseeing old man Swafford’s place but his hard-won reputation for dependability, angry that all he has to show for eight years of freedom is more children, a mule and wagon that aren’t yet his, a few saved coins buried beneath the live-oak tree by the smokehouse, and a stumbling dream on which he has yet to make good.
“No, ’cept for us voting Republicans in office in the first place, this here the most real thing this town done, far as I remember.” McCully chooses his words deliberately, chews on each one. The grin never leaves his face, and his eyes never leave Sam’s.
Sam looks away first. “We put everybody at risk coming here.”
“Name a time we not at risk.” McCully looks at Sam as if sizing him for a new suit of clothes. “You a front man, Sam. S
ome born to follow, but your ideas put you in front, no matter that’s where you wanna be or not.”
Sam gestures to the rifle McCully holds close and easy by his side, gun barrel down. “That’s not the way,” he says.
“Now, that’s a conversation worth our time. Way I see it, this here the only way to get to those things you always talking about.” McCully warms up to his subject. “You don’t demand what’s yours, you live with nothing or with leftover. White man won’t give us nothing worth having if we won’t fight for it ourselves. Don’t expect nothing, don’t get nothing. We the ones gonna change the South. We need the Federals for now so white men pay attention, but we got the equal rights.”
“Not all white men bad, McCully. Look at the ones in the fight with us.”
“Why everybody talk about good white men and bad white men? I’m here because it supposed to be my boy Spenser or one day your boy Green or Israel’s boy Noby holding papers from the governor, giving orders. Folks need to get used to Republicans in Colfax, so next we get us colored Republicans for the big jobs. Your sons or my son.”
“You too impatient, McCully,” says Israel. “It take time.”
“How long you think we got to wait? We three men already old.”
“Just ’cause we over fifty don’t mean we too old to know what we up against here,” Sam replies.
“You deny we need to keep the courthouse for the Republicans we elected till troops come from New Orleans?” McCully closes the distance between himself and Sam, enough so Sam can feel the heat of his breath. There is an intentional intimidation to the man, as if McCully purposely leans into his weight to give Sam less room to move. “You saying if the colored man don’t step up to claim our rights, those rights still be there next time we go look for them?”
“I come. I’m here,” Sam says wearily.
“Why?”
“Why what?” asks Sam.
“Only a handful of colored Colfax citizens backing what we doing here. The rest going about their business just hoping for the best.” McCully drops his teasing tone. “You coulda stay out to Mr. Swafford’s, running his place, without coming to town and showing your hand. Why you here?”
Sam hesitates. “I tell you why, Brother McCully,” he says carefully. “I walk all the way out of Alabama into Louisiana on a bare-bone hope to find some better way to live free, make a family and keep them close, work hard enough to sweat on my own piece of land, and pass what I earn to my children when my time on earth is done. Before, I get sold from place to place whenever it suit somebody else. Pick up and go without no notice, no reason why, follow some new master, one more place worse than the last. Not supposed to be no thought of who’s left behind.” Sam takes off his hat, delaying the words. “I’m home now. Colfax and The Bottom my home. Hard and slow and ugly sometimes, but this mine, and I got the duty to make this town a place easier for my children than it be for you or for me. I’m here because it late in life, and you right. We getting old, and it up to us to move the race forward whenever and however we able.”
“Amen, Brother Sam,” McCully says, nodding slowly in agreement. “You preach the truth.”
“How long you think we be here?” Sam asks.
“Until these new Republicans make peace with the old guard, or Federals come from New Orleans to force the law. Whichever come first.”
Sam looks doubtful. “These old boys around here used to giving the orders. Sheriff Nash not gonna step to the side for a new sheriff just because colored vote him out. And Federals not gonna stay in town forever.”
McCully removes his brown fedora, extends it like a live, fragile thing, runs his fingers along the feather in the brim, holds it out to Sam for inspection. “See this here hat?” he says. “This my voting hat. I wear it the day we vote them men in, and I keep on wearing it till they take up the office for good. Just like this here phoenix feather, we gonna get stronger and stronger and rise from the ashes where we been.”
“What you talking now, McCully?” asks Sam. “That feather come from one of the birds common as dirt around here.”
“I’m disappointed in you, Sam,” says McCully. “You showing a terrible failure of imagination. This here a rare feather from the phoenix bird what lived in the desert for five hundred years, go up in flames, and raise itself up brand-new from the ashes.”
Sam is used to McCully, doesn’t contradict him, and McCully returns the hat to his head. “We got to protect the Republicans until the Federals get here,” McCully says. “I don’t care nothing about them white officials, but I care about the Republican Party. They set us free, and I vote with them every time. I glad to die on top of the party if it come to it. After the Federals leave, then we deal with whatever the good colored citizens of Colfax got to do. We prove they can’t scare us off from voting. Now we got to protect our choice. There’s more of us colored than there is white around Colfax. We got the majority.”
From the vantage point of the courthouse roof, Colfax lies neatly below. There are five or six dwelling houses in Colfax proper, spaced far apart, to house a population of only seventy-five that includes several outlying sections. Not far from the courthouse is the general store.
“Look yonder,” says McCully. “A perfect view of Smithfield Quarter.” He points northeast to the closely packed colored settlement directly outside the town. “From here,” he goes on, “I almost can look into my house and see what my wife got cooking in the pot for supper.”
“It is a good lookout point,” Sam agrees. “And you got your fair share of kin down there.”
“Over this way, Mirabeau Woods.” McCully turns north and gives a broad sweep of his arm. “Clear line of sight all the way to the trees.” He turns toward the river. “Only thing I can’t see is the river side, between the oaks and cypress, and the drop-off to the Red River bank. Too overgrown.”
Sam takes it all in. “They tell you what you supposed to do from up here?”
“Look for trouble,” McCully says, and laughs. Several men below look up. The laugh is too loud and too long. “I gets the easiest job,” McCully goes on. “Trouble never too hard to find.”
Sam changes the subject. “I just come to be useful.”
“First thing is get you one of these rifles they pass out. That old worn-out shotgun you dragging probably fire once and blow up.”
“They passing out shotguns?”
“Not shotguns. Almost-new Enfield rifles, left over from the war, if you serious about staying. Can pick out a man almost from here to Smithfield Quarter. I got some pull. I get you one before they run out.”
“I wouldn’t hardly know how to use a rifle that shot straight.” Sam gives McCully another look. “What you up to, McCully? What you want?”
McCully acts hurt. “Why so suspicious, Sam? We been friends a long time.”
Sam doesn’t answer, just continues to give McCully the fish-eye.
“Plain said,” McCully finally says, “it too late for my boy Spenser. But I been thinking about my younger ones. I want to send them to your colored school.”
“You know good and well there ain’t no school yet. Not till we get land and a building and a teacher. No matter if you get me a rifle or not, if I start a colored school, Amy and the others be welcome.”
“There’ll be a school, all right, assuming we get you out of here in one piece,” McCully says. “You a front man, Sam.”
All three men climb down from the roof to find an Enfield rifle for Sam. Once again, as he has each morning for over a week, Israel decides to stay another day to defend the Republican officials.
They drill for almost an hour before setting off on morning patrols. Those with Enfields watch their assigned group leader demonstrate the thirteen steps of loading and reloading the rifle. Levi Allen, a colored war veteran, carries himself in such a way that his clothes seem clean and ironed even though, like everyone else, he has slept in them for almost a week. He has a square-shouldered look about him, so full of discipline that t
he other men appear lax and unkempt in comparison. In order to preserve powder and cartridges, none of the men actually fires or loads. Mostly, they practice as units, marching together in assigned groups back and forth in front of the courthouse with their weapons drawn or hoisted onto their shoulders.
Levi divides them into three groups, with ten to fifteen colored men of Colfax in each, and assigns another half dozen to stay on the grounds around the building with their weapons visible. McCully remains overhead, spotter on the courthouse roof.
Sam Tademy joins Israel’s unit, and they cut back behind the courthouse to begin the day’s patrol, footslogging along the bank of the Red River, past the Pecan Tree, around to the northern tip of Mirabeau Woods, east to Smithfield Quarter, almost down to Calhoun’s Sugarhouse, and back to the courthouse again. “Sweeping the perimeter,” Levi Allen calls it. They can’t cover as much distance on foot as the mounted men. Those few who have horses form a separate patrol that ventures out in a wider arc to check the entrances to Colfax, displaying their strength to the townspeople, white and black.
They make their first wide loop, through piney woods and riverbanks, across the one well-traveled wide road but more often over dirt trails, patrolling single file or by sloppy pairs in lazy circles around the town. Every man on patrol is required to carry a firearm, but the unfamiliar weight feels all wrong to Israel, not centering wide across the back as with the plow, or through the middle as when lovemaking, or through the shoulders as while fishing.
On their third elliptical march around town, just past the old Pecan Tree, they hear a warning signal from the direction of the courthouse, two pistol shots in succession. Levi holds up one hand, stopping the men in their tracks, and waves them into position, spreading them in a loose ring across the field. There is minor confusion, since they have never practiced this maneuver. It doesn’t take long for the white men to make themselves visible, riding in along the riverside, coming out of the woods almost right on top of the patrol.