Chapter Seven

A light mist fell as Beatrice Corrigan sat in her barouche in Greenpoole's driveway, staring at the deserted looking house. Strange that the place was so quiet, and there had not been a sharecropper in sight along the river or in the fields as she passed, nor did their offspring play on the old ship replica at the end of the peer, as they often did, even in the cold, rain or shine. Where was everybody? Usually, when rain kept workers away from their field chores, they could be seen dragging their trot lines in the river, hoping to catch the gigantic mud cats and hardheads which were as plentiful as mosquitoes this far upriver.

She pursed her lips, and wagged her head; her little pancake straw doing its customary bobble. Ella's sharecroppers were gone. Gone like all the others! Who could blame them? Sharecropping was too much like the drudgery of slavery had been—even now, with a share of the profits--only this time, it was the physiological challenges that went with freedom that were the back breakers.

Beatrice continued to look all around her. Where was her great-grandson? Adam was usually the first out the door when she came for a visit. She tightened her collar against the cold drizzle, and then shifted on the buggy seat to gaze fore and aft again. Several times in the past weeks, she wondered why Ella had not come to town on Saturday, as was her custom, nor had Gentry.

Now she began to worry. She tapped at the pinching sensation in her chest, annoyed that her indigestion came and went with much greater ado lately. She fished in her reticule for a sprig of mint, and was about to pop it into her mouth when a screeching scraping sound—like heavy iron rasping against a surface that was just as unyielding—stopped her. With a puzzled grunt, she climbed down as quickly as her lumbago allowed, and hurried up Greenpoole's twelve slate steps. The metallic screeching grew louder as she crossed the veranda and approached the massive double doors, one of which stood slightly ajar. Was no one interested in keeping out the cold? She swung it open, and then stared, her face instantly transforming into an unlikely mask of shock. Her hand flew to her chest and then to her gaping mouth.

She gawked at her nearly unrecognizable granddaughter. Ella was bent nearly double, her long, mud-streaked hair swinging heavily to and fro in front of her, as, with one arm stretched far behind her; she laboriously dragged a long iron cot across the colossal marble-floored entry hall. Beatrice continued to stare. Had Ella's mind escaped her? Dear God! She looked positively wild! Demented even! Beatrice swallowed hard and called out to her.

Ella raised her head then dropped it again, but not before Beatrice took in the frightening sight of her face, pale and thin, as if she had not eaten in days, her wide blue-green eyes strangely haunted, as they stared back at her for a only an instant. As Ella moved slowly forward, the cot screeching along the floor, Beatrice continued to examine the disturbing spectacle. Ella's sleeves and skirt were heavy with caked mud, grass, and twigs, as if she had been sloshing around in a swamp hole. She is near soaked to the waist! She must be freezing! What on earth-?

"My God, Ella...! What has happened?! What are you doing?!"

Ella stopped, but did not look up or straighten from her humped position.

"What has happened, child?" Beatrice managed to sound calm.

Ella released the cot, and straightened. "You know what has happened, or you should know—you being my husband's confidant, his friend and adviser. She turned back to the cot. "You know what's happened," she added, dully.

Beatrice felt a moment of relief—at least Ella had not lost her mind." I do not know what has happened, Ella. How would I?"

"Didn't he stop to tell you goodbye, Grandmother, after he stole my son, and left me?"

"Oh, Ella. Do you mean that he-?"

"Yes. He stole my son and crawled away in the dead of night like the snake he is, Hannah, with him. She betrayed me."

"Oh, Ella..."The flatness of her granddaughter's tone was as alarming as her appearance.

"Baker Ben said Hannah went because she didn't want Adam to be frightened, but she should have told me. I trusted her. All my life I trusted her." She slumped against the cot's iron foot post.

Beatrice moved forward and reached out, stroking at the mud in her hair. "Oh, my child, I would not have encouraged him to such an act. Surely you know I would not." But then, Beatrice gasped, her stare leveling on the lengthy form that lie wrapped in a patchwork quilt atop the cot ... a long, thin foot, encased in a red woolen sock, protruded from the end of the blanket.

"Oh my ... oh my. Poor old Baker Ben is gone," Beatrice whispered, not realizing she had spoken aloud until Ella nodded, and snapped one side of her wet hair out of Beatrice's grasp.

"He died four days ago. I couldn't bury him because of the rain ... ground too wet to dig a grave. It's been unusually cold and he hasn't begun to..." She tightened the blanket over his exposed foot. "I ... finished digging last night or...close to daybreak, " she said, haltingly, pressing her muddy hair away from her face, then slid her palms down her soiled skirt, as if to dry them. "I pulled a tarp over the grave should it rain again ... staked it down with boards and scraps from the barn."

"You poor child," Beatrice whispered, touching Ella's shoulder tenderly before she lifted the blanket from Baker Ben's face for a farewell look. She nodded, noting, without surprise, how natural he looked—as visibly unperturbed by death as he had been by life. She patted his bony shoulder, encased in his "burying finery"—the bright red coachman's garb with braided epaulets that he wore forty-five years ago when driving her and her husband around Savannah in their luxurious old barouche.

"You dressed him in these?" Beatrice said, softly.

"It was his wish. He kept them so neat all these years just for this occasion. He often reminded me of their purpose and that he was to be buried in the rose garden near Father and Mother, not in the quarters."

"It was your father's wish, also."

"There's no coffin been built—Meshach and Cricket are in Atlanta looking for sharecroppers—the others left."

Beatrice nodded. "I am certain old Baker would put up a hellacious fuss about it, but the blanket will have to do." She removed her hat and short black jacket and rolled up the sleeves of her lacy white blouse. "Between the two of us, we should be able to carry him."

But she was weaker than she cared to admit, and Ella's strength, like her spirit, was spent. They eased Baker Ben's narrow mattress to the floor and dragged him on it to his final resting place, careful to maneuver him gently down Greenpoole's twelve steps.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, as they hauled the tarp aside and lowered him, atop his mattress, as gently as possible into the hole and began the chore of covering him. An hour later, exhausted from wielding the heavy shovel full of damp earth, and oblivious to the fresh drizzle that pelted them without letup, Ella dragged the tarp back over Baker Ben's grave to keep the fresh mound of dirt from melting away in the rain. Finished, she dropped to her knees beside Beatrice, who was asking God to give old Baker Ben his place in heaven.

Ella join her elder's plea. Her eyes burned and rain merged with the hot tears streaming down her cheeks, as she mourned yet another loss—the old ex slave who had nurtured her and her sister along side Hannah, since birth. She closed her eyes against the rain, seeing Baker Ben as clearly as she had seen him beside Corrigans' pool that day long ago when he casually revealed the pool's secret cave to her, then smugly explained how Victor's slaves escaped without a trace. "I ain't lied, Missy—them Moss Oak niggers what escape ain't on the place, they is under the place."

Before helping Beatrice to her feet, Ella gave the tarp a final gentle pat, her sad thoughts skipping from memory to memory, as she looked around her at the other graves—her dead parents, Andy, her precious little Seth, all of whom lay nearby. Greenpoole continued to slip away from her, death by death, soul by soul. She stumbled away from the tarp-covered mound, and moved among the gravestones. She would get her son back! And when she did, she would think of a way to hurt Gentry Garland the way he had hurt her—she would not rest until she had done both!