North and South Trilogy by John Jakes Page B

lay fields long ago reclaimed from the marshlands by the hard work of Cooper’s forebears. The banks themselves were a key part of the operation of the complex agricultural machine that was a rice plantation.
    At regular intervals the banks were pierced by rectangular wood culverts called trunks. The trunks had gates at both ends. By means of these gates the water of the river was carefully admitted to, or drained from, the fields where the rice grew. That is, the rice grew if Tillet Main’s people did their work properly and on time. It grew if the May birds and the rice birds weren’t too numerous. It grew if autumn storms didn’t poison the river with salt.
    There were all sorts of variables, and endless risks. Many disappointments and few absolute triumphs. The life of a rice planter taught a healthy respect for the elements, and it frequently gave Cooper the feeling that the Mains should be in some less capricious, more modern business.
    A hail from the wheel lifted him from his reverie. They had come in sight of the landing, and he hadn’t even realized it. All at once he felt strangely sad. Better keep your mouth shut about the things you saw up North.
    He doubted he could, though.
    Soon he was striding up the path through the formal garden that overlooked the river. The air smelled of violets and jasmine, of crab apple and roses. On the second-floor piazza of the great house, his mother, Clarissa Gault Main, was supervising some of the house slaves in the work of closing off the upper rooms. She spied him, ran to the railing, called down with a greeting. Cooper waved and blew her kisses. He loved her very much.
    He didn’t enter the house but instead circled one end, saying hello to each of the Negroes coming and going around the separate kitchen building. From this spot he could enjoy the pleasing view down the half-mile lane that ran between giant live oaks to the little-used river road. A sultry breeze had sprung up; gray beards of Spanish moss stirred on the trees.
    At the head of the lane he saw two little girls. His younger sisters, scrapping as usual; one was chasing the other. Of that rascally Cousin Charles there was no sign.
    Mont Royal’s business headquarters was another small building beyond the kitchen. Cooper mounted the steps and heard the voice of Rambo, one of the plantation’s most experienced drivers.
    “They’s pipped in South Square, Mr. Main. Landing Square, too.” He was referring to fields, each of which had a name.
    Tillet Main hedged his bets every year by planting a third of his land during the late season in early June, when the resulting crop would be less likely to be damaged. The driver was telling Cooper’s father that the seed in those late-planted areas had put out shoots from beneath the water of the sprout flow. Soon those fields would be drained by means of their trunks, and the long period of dry growth would begin.
    “Good news, Rambo. Does Mr. Jones know?”
    “He there with me to see it, sir.”
    “I want you and Mr. Jones to inform all the people who need to be told.”
    “Yes, sir. Surely will.”
    Cooper opened the door and said hello to the big gray-haired black man just leaving. Everyone else in the family called the Negroes Tillet’s people, people being a traditional term that was somehow supposed to soften or obscure the truth. To Cooper it seemed less onerous—though not much—to be honest in one’s thinking. He mentally referred to the Negroes by one word only: slaves.
    “Thought the Yankees had kidnapped you,” Tillet Main said from within the cloud of pipe tobacco hanging over his desk. He quirked the corners of his mouth—which would be all the affection he would display this morning, Cooper suspected.
    “I took a day to visit Orry. He’s getting along just fine.”
    “I expect him to get along just fine. I’m more interested in what you found out.”
    Cooper eased himself into an old rocker beside his father’s ledger-littered desk.