Let the Circle Be Unbroken: Chapters 11–14

Miss Crocker looked somewhat askance at both of us, as if we were taking advantage of her sympathetic gesture, and agreed.

“You can’t keep blaming him, Mary,” Big Ma chided when they both were gone.

Mr. Jamison had provided the stationery, his own letterhead, and the letters had been written in his name as well.

I looked down at the bushels of apples, pears, and peaches still waiting to be pared and felt suddenly tired.

Under normal circumstances I would have vigorously protested being put to bed, but at this particular moment bed seemed a very good place to be.

He said I was just too uppity for my own good and he better just chop me down to size.

I felt a little wobbly at first, but as soon as I was dressed I hurried out the front door and down the softness of the lawn to the road, where Wordell had already taken up his morning vigil.

The dreams had lingered with me, like a ghostly foreboding about which I had been unable to speak.

He delegated the job of picking the meat off the head to Christopher-John, Little Man, and me, while he chopped the sausage.

After his usual lengthy stay in the pulpit, Reverend Gabson ended the service with a powerful prayer asking God to bless all those families who had suffered the sorrow of losing a loved one during the year and then asked a special blessing for Stacey and Moe that they might return to us, well and unharmed.

After a round of “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” followed by the benediction, the congregation left to go to their own or neighbors’ houses for Christmas dinner.

For a fleeting second the grin left Jake Willis’s face and the eyes went mean. Just as quickly the smile returned, but the change had not been lost on Uncle Hammer, who got up from his chair and leaned against the fireplace.

Say they can’t make no money with a quarter of the land fallow.

“Well, well. So this is the boy who sired a pretty thing like you.”

A woman sitting at a typewriter, her fingers busy at the keys, glanced up as we entered, then back at the sheaf of papers from which she was typing.

Mama did not reply, but animosity sparked her eyes.

“Even forgiven y’all for supportin’ that wagoning business up to Vicksburg a while back,” he noted, continuing to laud his goodness, “and this here’s how y’all pays me for my trouble..."

Mr. Boudein’s brow went up quizzically after several long minutes, then he slammed the poll ledger shut, took out a book, a sheet of paper, and a pencil, and handed them to Mrs. Lee Annie.

A mighty clamoring rose from the crowd. The sheriff held up his hands signaling for quiet, but several minutes passed before he could be heard again.

With these words, the noise grew so tumultuous that Stuart’s words were lost, dead, unheard as the crowd shut him out, refusing to listen.

The roar continued for several minutes; then someone started shouting, “Dollar fifty a day! Don’t take our farms away!” The chant caught on, and the disorganized onslaught of noise took on one voice and there was nothing Stuart could do against it.

But someone heated up enough to take on even Harlan Granger started the chant up once more and the crowd grew boisterous again.

Harlan Granger, however, was a formidable adversary; he outwaited them.

Harlan Granger, however, was a formidable adversary; he outwaited them.

When silence reigned, and not before, Harlan Granger spoke: “I take it y'all's for the union!” he said glibly.

On the street people were trying to move themselves and their possessions out of the congestion, but there seemed nowhere to go.

But then I saw Wordell, coming from nowhere, his lithe body slitting razorlike through the congested street.

Russell’s head was bandaged with what looked to be part of a cotton slip, the eyelets giving it a decorative effect.

Suddenly a lone voice rose above the din of moving things and we looked back toward the courthouse.

He looked too tall for Stacey, too gaunt, and he was limping.

It had been three weeks since either he or Moe had breathed the air of the outdoors or felt the sun warm upon their faces, and as Stacey took in the day, clear blue and fresh with just a touch of winter frost, he seemed amazed by the beauty of it all, even in this squalid town.

An elderly woman, small, wiry, and weathered looking, Mrs. Mattie Jones was overjoyed to see Stacey and Moe.

"...And that ole sheriff told me not to be sneakin’ nothin’ else in or outa there. Told me not to mess in it.” She shook her head peevishly at the order.

Mama helped her, while outside Papa and Uncle Hammer began chopping a fallen yard tree to replenish Mrs. Jones’s dwindling firewood supply.

He bowed his head and looked at his hands, then spread them open so that we could see the palms, scarred deep with dark welts.