Her Own Place Read online

  Mae Lee’s daddy was determined not to let the crabgrass and jimsonweeds overtake his cotton crop, and, as in the year before, he had his daughter’s help. Only now there was more farm work to do. His newly married daughter had insisted on her own additional farm crops. She had talked with her father long into the night about the best cash crops to plant. When she decided she would also farm sweet potatoes and peanuts in addition to her few acres of cotton, her daddy forewarned she’d have a hard time with the hoeing to keep the grass out of all those crops.

  In the early spring, with her daddy’s help, she’d bedded her seed sweet potatoes for plants and had plants ready to transplant into the fields as soon as they had late spring and early summer rains.

  While his daughter hoed, Sam Hudson plowed. He worked his mule Maude in the morning, Molly in the afternoon. When he caught up with the plowing, he helped his daughter. They hoed from early dawn to sundown, stopping only for a noonday dinner break to eat the food that Vergie Hudson cooked before going to her job in the munitions plant. At day’s end, Mae Lee would milk Starlight and help her daddy feed and water the livestock.

  Mae Lee was always sure to be home around noontime. That was when the mailman usually arrived. Every day for almost a month she’d rushed to the mailbox hoping there would be a letter, a postcard, some word from her husband. After the first postcard giving her his address, there was nothing. Her heart always began to race when she saw the mailman’s car, barely visible in a cloud of dust, rounding the curve on the dry dirt road. As he slowed to a stop she closed her eyes against the dust that surrounded her.

  “Got some important mail today,” the mailman called out. Her heart leaped. Her eyes registered her happiness.

  “It’s your application for ration book number three,” he said and handed her a brownish yellow envelope.

  Mae Lee’s heart sank. Just another book filled with page after page of ration stamps, printed with pictures of fighter planes, aircraft carriers, army tanks, howitzers, and then pages of numbered and lettered ration stamps. Stamps allowing them to buy foods they couldn’t afford in the first place. To families like hers they didn’t need to say, “Give your whole support to rationing and thereby conserve our vital goods. If you don’t need it, DONT BUY IT.”

  The heat had gotten to her that day, and rushing to the mailbox hadn’t helped. The world swirled around her. Mr. Wesley, the mailman, was only a blur. He reached for the envelope in her hand, and read from it as if she could not read. True, at the time she couldn’t.

  “This application must be mailed between June 1 and June 10, 1943. Applications will not be accepted after August 1. Affix postage before mailing.”

  He turned the form over and read on. “It’s only two cents postage if it’s mailed in Charlotte, North Carolina, but from here it will be three cents. Now remember, Mae Lee, you are not in Charlotte, North Carolina. You are in South Carolina. If y’all need stamps, put your pennies in the mailbox and I’ll put them on.”

  Mae Lee’s daddy saw her slump by the mailbox. He rushed to help her inside the house. He was worried. “I must find somebody to work in your place, Mae Lee. You’ve got to stop working in the hot sun. It’s too hot out there. I’m going to try and get you on at the munitions plant where your mama works. If you are not with child. Are you?”

  Mae Lee wasn’t. She got a job at the plant. She worked her shifts and wrote letters to her husband. It hurt that he didn’t answer, but she wrote him anyway. She wrote about everything from old man Cooper’s bout with lumbago to radio announcer Grady Cole’s new slant on Hadacol, “the cure-all bottled remedy.” Some folks said the true name should have been “alcohol remedy.” And in every letter she sent a folded piece of white paper with blotted kisses of love in the ever-popular blackberry shade of lipstick. Her letters always ended with “Forever yours.” She didn’t scold him for not writing. If he happened not to make it through, she didn’t want him to die angry with her. She never mentioned that she was working or saving to buy a piece of land. Their land. That was going to be the big surprise.

  She stayed on with her mama and daddy, sleeping in the same cramped bedroom she had slept in as a child. When and if her husband came home from the war for good, she wanted them to move into their very own house on their own land.

  The work at the munitions plant was hard. Hardest of all was changing shifts. There were three shifts. The first was from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., the second from 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., and the third from 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Mae Lee would work one of the day shifts for two weeks then switch to the next shift for two weeks. Sometimes she worked in the paint division, painting shells. She stood on her feet during all her hours of work, but the pay was good.

  Every payday after work she pulled out a small tin bucket with a thin wire handle, pried open the recessed lid, and put her money inside. Her daddy had bought the little bucket for her; he called it her money safe.

  Mae Lee saved almost every penny she earned. The few pieces of clothing she bought were all black, just in case. Over and over the radio told about the soldiers killed in the war. If anything should happen to Jeff, she believed she would wear black mourning clothes for as long as she lived.

  One day in midsummer Mae Lee had time off from work. Her daddy had finished the final plowing for all his crops and didn’t need her help. She went over to visit her friend Ella-belle. As they sat chatting out on the porch, a car drove up. It was painted olive drab, the army color. Mae Lee got up to leave, but Ellabelle begged her to stay. “You never know what they might be up to,” she whispered.

  They watched the two men start up the narrow path to the little house. One of them carried a briefcase.

  “Ellabelle Ellis?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s me.” Ellabelle stood up.

  The officer spoke in soft tones, his face drawn with traces of sadness, yet official and stern. “We have a telegram for you,” he said.

  Ellabelle started shaking her head as he read, “We regret to inform you that your husband, Will Leroy Ellis, a rifleman in the Forty-fourth Infantry Division, has been killed in action.”

  The officers helped Ellabelle inside her house after she slumped to the floor. Mae Lee watched, speechless and helpless. How many messages had they delivered like that one? If her own husband realized how much she needed to hear from him to be assured he was safe, then surely he would write.

  After Ellabelle received her husband’s GI insurance check from the army, she and her parents moved away. As much as Mae Lee hated to see them go, the thoughts of the house they left, and the farmland the Grangers might be persuaded to sell along with it, helped ease the loneliness.

  Late one Saturday night in the spring of 1945, Mae Lee and her parents took the money she had saved and spread it out on the kitchen table to count. Mae Lee’s daddy broke into a joyous laugh. “My baby girl has a few thousand dollars here. I’m going to see Mr. Granger about that land and empty house on the hill first thing Monday morning. There is way more than twenty acres there.”

  Mae Lee was anxious and worried. “Maybe he might not even want to sell it.”

  “Oh, he’ll let us buy it, since it’s near to the land he sold your mama years ago. He probably won’t even ask too much for it. Only about ten acres or so right alongside the road is decent farmland. Most of the ground all along Catfish Creek is bottomland, too wet for cotton, but, oh Lord, it’ll grow sugarcane and late corn.”

  Sam Hudson pulled a cotton drawstring tobacco pouch from his pocket and emptied its contents on the table. Mae Lee stared at the pile of carefully folded money. “It’s your share of the cotton crop, honey. Without your help the grass would have eaten it up.” Her mama added a small wad of crumpled bills. “Since I didn’t help this year, I’m giving you the share your daddy gave me,” she said. “Now you and your husband will have a little farm to start out with.”

  The morning the papers were to be signed, Mae Lee was up early. When she got to the kitchen she was surprised to see th
at her daddy wasn’t dressed and ready to go with her to buy the property. He was in his work clothes sitting at the table and drinking coffee.

  “I guess you wouldn’t want to wear your Sunday suit on a weekday, Daddy, but it seems like you would at least wear a white shirt and necktie and the clean, creased overalls Mama starched and ironed,” his daughter said. She glanced nervously at the clock. “Oh,” she said, “we have plenty of time. I got ready early, I was afraid I’d be late. It’s over an hour before nine o’clock.”

  Her daddy made some makeshift excuse that the gout was settling in on his big toe again, and he needed to use what little strength he had to string his newly planted watermelon patch. The old crows had made friends with the scarecrow he put up and, row by row, were digging up and eating his watermelon seeds, he said. “Besides,” he added, “you ended up not needing me after all to get that paying job of yours over at the munitions plant. You’ll be able to handle this land deal; you will be fine.”

  Mae Lee was near tears. “But, Daddy, Mr. Jay Granger’s not just another white man. This is big business. I won’t know how to deal with him.”

  Her daddy set his coffee cup down and slapped his hand against the table. “I clean forgot to tell you, you won’t be dealing with Jay Granger. He and Mrs. Granger’s moving to Florida. He’s turned everything over to his son Church. You’ll get a fair deal from Church Granger; can’t say he’s a chip off the old block.”

  Sam Hudson got up to pour another cup of coffee. His face grew serious. “Let me tell you, child, if it was Jay Granger you were dealing with, I’d be right there at your side. Jay Granger can find a way to cheat a dead man. I never will forget how he tried to cheat poor old Jonah Walker out of his entire cotton crop one year, a full year’s work. Down to this day I do believe that Jay Granger still thinks he cheated old Jonah that year.” A pleased grin crossed her daddy’s face. He leaned back in his chair, his coffee cup cradled in his hands. He loved to tell a good story.

  “It had been almost time for the county fair. I was loading up a bale of cotton on my old pickup to take to the cotton gin when Jonah Walker hurried across the cotton field. He pulled a crumpled paper poke from under his arm. He pointed to a pint glass jar inside. ‘Want a little nip?’ I shook my head. ‘What’s the trouble, Jonah?’ I said.

  “Jonah’s hand was trembling, but he held on to his jar. ‘I went over to Mr. Jay Granger’s this morning to check out with him. My wife was after me to start handing her a little piece of money to start buying the winter shoes and clothes for the children. She’d tried to buy a bolt of cotton flannel down at the general store on time but old man Falls say he didn’t like to give credit when the cotton season was about over.

  “‘Well,’ he continued, ‘Mr. Granger commenced a-figuring. After a long time he looked at me, took a long draw on his hand-rolled Prince Albert cigarette and leaned back in his chair. He blew smoke into the air.’ Jonah leaned close to me, too close, his stale moonshine breath right in my face. ‘I swear, Sam,’ he said, ‘every puff of smoke old man Granger blew formed a ring, every single time.’ I held my breath and stepped back.

  “Jonah went on. ‘“Jonah,” Mr. Granger says to me, “seems like we got bad news. From what I figure, and I’ve never been wrong as I know of, it’s going to take you a few more bales of cotton, and even then I won’t promise you that you’ll break even with your debts this year.”’

  “Jonah wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘“Mr. Granger,” I said, “how much do you figure I’ll end up getting?” He sat there and flicked small pieces of tobacco from his rolled cigarette off his tongue. “Nothing, Jonah. Nothing. Maybe next year will be better.”’

  “Jonah’s voice choked. He wiped his eyes again. He was crying. ‘I tried to tell him he was wrong, Sam. That my cotton crop had been the best I’d ever had, but he out-figured me. He just plumb out-figured me.’

  “Then he leaned against the truck fender and unscrewed the lid off the little jar and took a nip. Then a few swallows. He turned the jar to its side. He tilted his head to look at the white lightning that was still left. ‘At least I have a corner left,’ he said. Then a short time later he brightened. ‘I’ve got a plan in my head that I think will put shoes and clothes on my children and something on the table for the winter.’ His voice dropped to a tremor, and he peeped up at me shyly. ‘Mr. Granger may out-figure me on paper but there is no way a white man who ain’t never picked a boll of cotton in his life can out-figure me in the cotton field. I can skim off a couple of light bales of cotton and he’ll never know it.’ Then Jonah looked at me. ‘But I can’t do it without you, Sam. Since you own your land, with your help we can pull it off.’

  “And so Jonah picked two sacks of cotton for the master and one for his family. Jonah hid the cotton in the woods for me to pick up at night. And when there was enough for a bale I took the cotton to the gin. Jay Granger’s gin, mind you,” he chuckled, “and had the cotton ginned for my own. Let me tell you, Mae Lee, even half full of moonshine and tipsy, Jonah Walker could outwit most of the white people in Rising Ridge, South Carolina.”

  When her daddy told her that he had already talked over the land deal with Church Granger, she felt better. All that was needed now was her signature and the money. A pleased grin spread over her daddy’s face when she put on her new navy straw hat with red cherries and stood before him for his approval. “Mama said, ‘A real businesswoman always wears a hat,’” she said. Her daddy shook his head. “You are so much like your mama,” he said. “Now, little girl, you are sure you have all the money we counted out again last night? Sure you didn’t ease a little of it out of the paper poke?”

  Mae Lee laughed. “I did take a little,” she teased, taking her daddy’s straw hat off his head and putting it back on. “Took one penny and I need it back. Bet you a penny you’ll touch your hat?”

  “Bet you a penny I won’t.”

  Then, as always, in their old childhood game, he reached and adjusted his hat. His daughter collected and left.

  Church Granger had asked her to come to his house, so she took the shortcut through the woods, then headed up the road toward the big house.

  She didn’t notice the mud on her shoes until she was almost up to his front porch. Why hadn’t she taken the long way there, along the hard-surfaced highway? But maybe it was good she hadn’t. Her new hat might have been blown off by a passing big truck and crushed under its wheels.

  After she had wiped her shoes as clean as she could on the lawn, she made her way to the front door. She knocked, then stepped back from the door to wait. It was shady on the long, wide porch, with its huge columns and white wicker chairs. It was the finest house in the whole world.

  It struck her that maybe she should have gone to the back door. She knew Lula Jane would have gone to the back door. But that’s where the kitchen was, and Lula Jane would have been coming to cook. She was here for business, to buy land. She was dressed up in silk stockings and a hat. Mae Lee smoothed the edges of her brown hair swept up in a pompadour. Men respected women in hats. She stood tall and straight. She deserved respect, she thought to herself. She painted gun shells at the munitions plant.

  Church Granger answered the door. “Hey, Mae Lee,” he said. He led her into a room off the long hallway. A quick glance at the desk in the book-lined room made her think his wife, Liddie, had just left the room. On the desk, a gold-rimmed cup with a matching saucer was half-filled with tea. Roses in a heavy white flowered vase had been cut by someone that morning. It was surely Liddie Granger’s desk. Mae Lee imagined she was upstairs getting dressed to go out. A clock, with pale flowers in the center of the face, stood in a glass case. Old books in washed out maroons, reds, and grays, with deep-rose satin ribbons hanging out of them, were stacked here and there on the desk. A bundle of letters tied with matching ribbons lay on top of one stack, near a beautiful white feather pen and a fancy inkwell. A speckled, dark blue fountain pen trimmed in gold lay across an unfinished letter—a le
tter that Mae Lee thought had to be in a woman’s handwriting. There was no way a man could write that fancy. Mae Lee’s eyes slid around the room. She wanted to have the good manners not to stare, but couldn’t help it when there was that portrait staring down at her, the face looking like some man who’d had his land given to him by land grant, she thought. Hanging there over the high carved mantlepiece, he looked out at the rows of richly colored books, the wide-back chairs, and the big table that was polished to such a high shine that it reflected the stained-glass colors of the tall reading lamp like a mirror. Mae Lee wanted to take in every detail so she’d never forget it.

  She had stared so long and hard at the desk she hadn’t noticed that there was someone else in the room. A well-dressed man was standing by the long, fabric-draped window near the corner of the room. She didn’t know him. She was uncomfortable. When she’d passed a mirror in the entrance hall, she noticed that her hat was a little crooked. Her hat pin had worked loose, but she was too embarrassed to try and pin it, so she left it alone.

  At Church’s invitation to sit down, Mae Lee perched on the seat edge of a big wine-colored leather armchair and crossed her ankles. Mae Lee was more nervous than she’d ever been in her life. Liddie came in to say good-bye to her husband. She brightened when she saw Mae Lee and apologized to her for having to leave. Mae Lee felt briefly reassured by her warmth, but then Liddie left the room.

  Church Granger didn’t seem in any hurry. He talked with the man by the window about cotton and cottonseed oil before turning to her.

  “This young lady wants to buy some land,” he announced half-jokingly.

  “Yes, sir, I do,” she confirmed in a serious voice.

  Church Granger grew serious too. “Save for just a little over ten acres alongside that back road, most of the land is bottomland.” He eyed her closely. “Guess you didn’t know that, did you, Mae Lee?”

  She thought about how her daddy would have answered, what he would have said. “Always remember,” her daddy had said, “they will never sell you their best, so take what you can get and make it good.” So she just sat there with her eyes glued to the floor, studying the pattern in the rug.