The moment they stepped outdoors their feet went down into the mire. It was an ordeal tramping across the muddy yard to the outhouse. Nothing depressed Mrs. Taylor quite as much. Professor Taylor built a board walk, but it soon sank into the mire. The mire drew all things down.
Then the water became polluted, and before they discovered it all of them took sick. They had to haul drinking water from their neighbors. The rain wate: caught so much filth only occasionally could they drink it.
The students were used to the climate. They sloughed through the mud, tracking gobs of it into the classrooms and dormitories with no concern. Out in the barns and corrals they tramped barefooted through the wet manure to save their shoes and laughed at the fastidiousness of their professors.
“Am’ nuttin’ but muleshit, fess. Won’t hurt yuh.”
Then after the rains the sun grew hot. In the rich steaming soil, seeds germinated like magic. Corn grew three inches overnight. You could sit in the early sun and watch the grass come up.
“Mo’ rain mo’ rest,” a student joked.
“W’ut dat you say, boy?” another cued.
“Mo’ rain mo’ grass grow, massa,” the joke concluded.
The trees budded and leaved. And as the sunshine heated, the shade grew cool. Fruit trees over the rolling two-hundred-acre orchard blossomed in rotation, apple and plum and peach and cherry, covering the landscape as far as the eye could see with a profusion of pink and white. Brier patches, where all winter long the rabbits had escaped the hunters’ hounds, miraculously became dark green jungles of blackberry bushes, thick with copperheads and rattlesnakes. All day long the young black men, eager, earnest seekers of that vaunted education, could be seen plowing the tireless mules, turning long yellow furrows in the ceaseless race against the swiftly growing weeds.
Honeysuckle and rambling roses, buttercups and black-eyed Susans, purple irises and swamp lilies grew like wild, and marigolds raised their yellow heads. Dogwood trees in bloom and the marble-white magnolia blossoms added their pristine touches to this fantastic panorama. All of nature ran wild.
Yet Mrs. Taylor, in her own implacable way, sought to change all this and bring order to this chaos. She ordered packages of flower seeds and planted them in neat rows in her flower garden, and was startled when their sudden lush growth seemed to envelop her. She was exasperated.
7
T OM CAME HOME THAT SUMMER , the family met him at the dreary station. When the train came hurtling in, William broke from his father’s grasp and ran screaming. His father caught him halfway across the road and held him in his arms until his trembling stopped. Charles had been as frightened as his brother. But he’d stood rigid in defiance. Both children gave their mother pause, but Charles’s reaction worried her the more. She couldn’t understand what was in the child; what was hurting him, what was he holding himself against?
Then sight of Tom claimed her attention as he stepped from the Jim-Crow coach. He’d grown as tall as his father and was dressed in city clothes. He looked strange and foreign and aloof in that bleak, dilapidated, sun-baked hamlet. The white men lounging about the station platform stared at him. Then they saw his mother and their eyes drew up short as if they’d been struck blind; their faces got that blank, malignant look that presages violence in a childish mind. But one of them recognized Professor Taylor and called, “Hiya, Willie,” and the tension eased. Professor Taylor lifted a hand in salute.
Mrs. Taylor hadn’t noticed. She was never a demonstrative person, but now tears flooded her eyes as she embraced her son.
“Thomas, Thomas, my, how you have grown,” she sang. Her voice was so filled with pride and affection it embarrassed him.
“Hello, Mother,” he said with self-conscious affectation.
He shook hands with his father. “How are you, Dad.”
His father
Then the water became polluted, and before they discovered it all of them took sick. They had to haul drinking water from their neighbors. The rain wate: caught so much filth only occasionally could they drink it.
The students were used to the climate. They sloughed through the mud, tracking gobs of it into the classrooms and dormitories with no concern. Out in the barns and corrals they tramped barefooted through the wet manure to save their shoes and laughed at the fastidiousness of their professors.
“Am’ nuttin’ but muleshit, fess. Won’t hurt yuh.”
Then after the rains the sun grew hot. In the rich steaming soil, seeds germinated like magic. Corn grew three inches overnight. You could sit in the early sun and watch the grass come up.
“Mo’ rain mo’ rest,” a student joked.
“W’ut dat you say, boy?” another cued.
“Mo’ rain mo’ grass grow, massa,” the joke concluded.
The trees budded and leaved. And as the sunshine heated, the shade grew cool. Fruit trees over the rolling two-hundred-acre orchard blossomed in rotation, apple and plum and peach and cherry, covering the landscape as far as the eye could see with a profusion of pink and white. Brier patches, where all winter long the rabbits had escaped the hunters’ hounds, miraculously became dark green jungles of blackberry bushes, thick with copperheads and rattlesnakes. All day long the young black men, eager, earnest seekers of that vaunted education, could be seen plowing the tireless mules, turning long yellow furrows in the ceaseless race against the swiftly growing weeds.
Honeysuckle and rambling roses, buttercups and black-eyed Susans, purple irises and swamp lilies grew like wild, and marigolds raised their yellow heads. Dogwood trees in bloom and the marble-white magnolia blossoms added their pristine touches to this fantastic panorama. All of nature ran wild.
Yet Mrs. Taylor, in her own implacable way, sought to change all this and bring order to this chaos. She ordered packages of flower seeds and planted them in neat rows in her flower garden, and was startled when their sudden lush growth seemed to envelop her. She was exasperated.
7
T OM CAME HOME THAT SUMMER , the family met him at the dreary station. When the train came hurtling in, William broke from his father’s grasp and ran screaming. His father caught him halfway across the road and held him in his arms until his trembling stopped. Charles had been as frightened as his brother. But he’d stood rigid in defiance. Both children gave their mother pause, but Charles’s reaction worried her the more. She couldn’t understand what was in the child; what was hurting him, what was he holding himself against?
Then sight of Tom claimed her attention as he stepped from the Jim-Crow coach. He’d grown as tall as his father and was dressed in city clothes. He looked strange and foreign and aloof in that bleak, dilapidated, sun-baked hamlet. The white men lounging about the station platform stared at him. Then they saw his mother and their eyes drew up short as if they’d been struck blind; their faces got that blank, malignant look that presages violence in a childish mind. But one of them recognized Professor Taylor and called, “Hiya, Willie,” and the tension eased. Professor Taylor lifted a hand in salute.
Mrs. Taylor hadn’t noticed. She was never a demonstrative person, but now tears flooded her eyes as she embraced her son.
“Thomas, Thomas, my, how you have grown,” she sang. Her voice was so filled with pride and affection it embarrassed him.
“Hello, Mother,” he said with self-conscious affectation.
He shook hands with his father. “How are you, Dad.”
His father
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