A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton Read online

  A DAY TO PICK YOUR

  OWN COTTON

  Books by Michael Phillips

  * * *

  Is Jesus Coming Back As Soon As We Think?

  Destiny Junction • Kings Crossroads

  Make Me Like Jesus • God, A Good Father

  Jesus, An Obedient Son

  Best Friends for Life (with Judy Phillips)

  George MacDonald: Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller

  Rift in Time • Hidden in Time

  Your Life in Christ (George MacDonald)

  The Truth in Jesus (George MacDonald)

  AMERICAN DREAMS

  Dream of Freedom • Dream of Life • Dream of Love

  THE SECRET OF THE ROSE

  The Eleventh Hour • A Rose Remembered

  Escape to Freedom • Dawn of Liberty

  SHENANDOAH SISTERS

  Angels Watching Over Me

  A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton

  The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart

  Together Is All We Need

  CAROLINA COUSINS

  A Perilous Proposal • The Soldier ’s Lady

  Never Too Late • Miss Katie’s Rosewood

  A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton

  Copyright © 2003

  Michael Phillips

  Cover photo of girls by David Bailey

  Cover design by The DesignWorks Group

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Uncle Remus stories are the creation of Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908).

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-0-7642-2701-1

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Phillips, Michael R., 1946–

  A day to pick your own cotton / by Michael Phillips.

  p. cm. — (Shenandoah sisters)

  ISBN 0-7642-2706-8 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7642-2701-7 (pbk.)

  1. North Carolina—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction. 3. Plantation life— Fiction. 4. Race relations—Fiction. 5. Teenage girls—Fiction. 6. Reconstruction— Fiction. 7. Orphans—Fiction. I. Title. II. Series: Phillips, Michael R., 1946- , Shenandoah sisters.

  PS3566.H492D396 2003

  813'.52—dc21 2003001434

  * * *

  MICHAEL PHILLIPS is one of the premier fiction authors publishing in the CBA marketplace. He has authored more than fifty books, with total sales exceeding six million copies. He is also well known as the editor of the popular George MacDonald Classics series. Michael and his wife, Judy, have three grown sons and make their home in Eureka, California.

  Contents

  1. CIVIL WAR SISTERS

  2. THE FIRST TEST

  3. MAKING PLANS

  4. ROSEWOOD

  5. EMMA’S STORY

  6. MAKING ROSEWOOD LOOK RIGHT

  7. THE OLD PAGES

  8. PUTTING OUR PLAN TO WORK

  9. A TALK ABOUT GOD

  10. BACK HOME

  11. A REMEMBRANCE OF FREEDOM

  12. SIGN IN A WINDOW

  13. DECISION

  14. SURPRISE AT ROSEWOOD

  15. ALONE AT ROSEWOOD

  16. ALETA

  17. HARSH WORDS

  18. TREASURE HUNT

  19. AWKWARD DAYS

  20. CLEARING OFF A BILL

  21. THE TEARDROP

  22. RESPECT

  23. BEDTIME STORIES

  24. WASHDAY

  25. NEW WINDOWS

  26. A REQUEST

  27. QUESTIONS IN TOWN

  28. MAKING CHEESE

  29. INTERRUPTION

  30. THE REST OF THE WORLD

  31. ALONE WITH MY THOUGHTS

  32. A SPECIAL BIRTHDAY

  33. SUSPICIOUS CALLER

  34. ON THE HEELS OF DANGER

  35. CAPTURED

  36. INTERROGATION

  37. KATIE AND ALETA

  38. NIGHTMARE UPON NIGHTMARE

  39. RESOLVE

  40. RESCUE PARTY

  41. THE BIG OAK

  42. FOUR SISTERS AND A FRIEND

  43. A NEW CRISIS

  44. I HAVE AN IDEA

  45. MORNING IN THE FIELD

  46. KING COTTON

  47. DIRE NOTICE

  48. PAYOFF

  49. HOME AGAIN

  Epilogue

  CIVIL WAR SISTERS

  1

  IRECKON IT’D BE ALMIGHTY PRESUMING OF ME TO guess what was going on inside the brain of the lady who ran the general store and post office in the town of Greens Crossing in Shenandoah County, North Carolina. But I do know what was going on inside mine. If we can’t fool Mrs. Hammond, we’ll go hungry. Or worse—they’ll come and take us away.

  Elfrida Hammond wasn’t the kind of lady a body could draw a good bead on just from looking at her. Except for one thing, that is. She had a grum expression set permanent-like on her face. Suspicious, that’s what I’d call the lady, her eyes a little squinty. I’d only seen her once before, and that was from an upstairs window, where I hid when she came to the house. But just from listening I could tell that hers wasn’t a cheerful kind of voice.

  It wasn’t my house. I’ll explain that later. But what I was about to say was that she wasn’t smiling then, so I doubted she was smiling today. Fact is, I don’t know if Elfrida Hammond ever smiled.

  Who can say what she was thinking, or whether she saw the wagon pull up in front of her store, or what went through her mind when the door opened and the little bell above it tinkled to announce that she had a customer. But I do know that when she turned to greet the young lady who had just walked in, her eyes narrowed yet a little more.

  “Kathleen …” she said in a slow, worrisome tone that trailed off and then went up at the end like a question.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Hammond,” said the girl. She was only fifteen, and had only turned that about a month before. But she had a special reason for trying to sound more grown up than her age.

  “I see your mama’s not with you.”

  “No, ma’am. She couldn’t come to town today. So I came instead. I want to get some supplies, Mrs. Hammond. Here’s the list of what we need.”

  She handed a piece of paper over the counter. The lady took it and looked it over like a schoolmarm grading a test.

  “There are a lot of things here, Kathleen,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Did you tell your mother what I told you about her account?”

  “We talked about it, ma’am. She said to tell you she promised she’d get it taken care of real soon, and asked if you could just help her out a little longer.”

  “I declare,” said the lady, “I don’t know what she expects me to do.”

  Mrs. Hammond looked at the list again, then at Katie, then glanced outside her shop where the wagon sat. Her eyes narrowed a little more.

  “Who’s that darkie you got with you?” she asked.

  “She’s my—er, one of our house slaves.”

  “I’ve never seen her before. Is she Beulah’s pickaninny?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “She’s ugly as sin.”

  “Not when you get to know her, ma’am. And she’s real s
mart.”

  “Well, she doesn’t look any smarter than she does comely,” huffed Mrs. Hammond, who didn’t like anyone telling her anything, especially a young girl. She took any statement by someone else, especially if it expressed an opinion on just about any topic under the sun, as grounds for contradiction. “No, she doesn’t look like she has a single brain in that little black head of hers,” she added after a minute. “I’m not sure I like the sound of it one bit.”

  “We’ll be back when we’ve done our other errands,” said Katie, “when you’ve got our order ready.” Then she turned and walked back outside.

  The black girl they were talking about, sitting in the wagon outside, was me. ’Course I couldn’t hear everything from where I was sitting, but Katie told me all about it later. This is our story. Hers and mine together.

  I’m Mary Ann Jukes. But folks call me Mayme, which I figure you might as well too. The girl inside the general store and post office was named Kathleen Clairborne. Folks called her Katie, at least her friends did. That’s what I called her, or Miss Katie.

  Katie and me were in a pretty bad fix ’cause the war had left us all alone in the world. That’s what we were doing together.

  I reckon I ought to tell you a little about it.

  You see, Katie and me had found ourselves together about a month and a half before, when some real bad men called Bilsby’s Marauders had come through Shenandoah County after deserting from the army.

  When the marauders came through, they killed people at both my master’s plantation and at Katie’s. I’d been fetching water and was away, and that’s why I didn’t get shot. And Katie’s mama had hidden her in the cellar of their house, so they didn’t find her either. But they killed both of our families.

  I left as soon as I’d finished the burying. After wandering a spell, I found myself at Katie’s plantation. When we first saw each other, neither of us knew what to do. But gradually we started talking. I spent the rest of the day there, figuring at first that Katie needed someone to take care of her for a spell until she got used to what had happened. But she wanted me to keep staying. So I did, and gradually a week, then two, then finally three passed.

  All that time the two of us just lived there in that great big plantation house all alone, milking the cows and making bread and taking care of ourselves. Katie showed me books and gave me one of her dolls and taught me how to read better. And I taught her how to do things like chop wood and sing slave revival songs. She read me stories from books, and I told her stories from memory.

  But all the while I knew I needed to be getting away from Rosewood—that’s what Katie’s folks’ plantation was called. If anybody found me, a colored girl and a runaway, sleeping in a white man’s bed, I knew they’d skin my hide or hang me from a tree or something else pretty bad. I didn’t know what had happened to my own master. He might be alive or dead for all I knew. But mostly I was worried about what would happen to Katie. I tried to get her to think about her own future and what she oughta do. She had three uncles and an aunt. The aunt lived up north somewhere, but Katie had never seen her. One of her uncles lived not too far away, and after Katie told me about him, I was afraid he might try to get his hands on the plantation. Another of them had gone to California hoping to find gold, and Katie figured him for dead. The third was a ne’er-do-well that came around sometimes when he needed money from his sister—which was Katie’s ma. Katie didn’t seem to like any of them and didn’t cotton much to the notion of going to live with any of them either.

  One day some rough men came looking for one of Katie’s uncles. We hid and managed to scare them away by shooting guns over their heads. After that, I knew Katie was in danger and that she had to do something. Eventually I figured it was the best thing for her if I left. And I did leave, too, but not for long, because Katie came after me and begged me to come back. She had just discovered a girl hiding in the barn! The girl was about to have a baby and Katie needed my help with the birthing.

  That girl was Emma, a halfwit slave girl who was running away from some trouble we couldn’t get her to tell us about.

  It was while we were trying to figure out what to do with Emma and the newborn baby, and when I was thinking about leaving again, that Katie came up with her crazy scheme.

  Her scheme was just this—for us to keep living at Rosewood alone like we had been, but to pretend that we weren’t alone, to make like her father and brothers hadn’t come back from the war and that her mama and the slaves were still there.

  And that’s why we were together that day, orphans and Civil War sisters you might say. This trip into town, leaving Emma and her little baby boy, William, alone at Katie’s house, was our first try to see if we could make people believe everything was normal and how it should be back at Rosewood.

  THE FIRST TEST

  2

  K ATIE CAME OUT OF THE STORE AND WALKED toward the wagon, glancing up at me with a little smile on her face. Behind her I saw the hawk eyes of Mrs. Hammond staring at us through the open window.

  “Don’t say nothing, Miss Katie,” I whispered, trying to keep my lips from moving. “She’s watching!”

  Katie started to turn around.

  “Don’t look!” I said.

  Katie turned back toward me. As she climbed up and sat down, I stared straight ahead, trying to keep the kind of look on my face that white folks expected out of colored slaves—dull and expressionless, like they aren’t thinking of anything, like they don’t even know how to think.

  But inside, my mind was racing. If we can make Mrs. Hammond believe everything is fine, I thought, we oughta be able to make anybody believe it!

  Katie took the leather, released the wheel brake, then flicked the reins, and we bounced into motion along the street. I knew we were both dying of curiosity to look back. But we couldn’t yet, ’cause we both knew Mrs. Hammond was likely still watching us.

  “I did it, Mayme!” Katie finally said softly. “I think I made her believe Mama sent me into town.”

  “Don’t forget, Miss Katie,” I said, “we gotta go back and see her again.”

  Suddenly I heard someone speaking to us. I nearly jumped out of my skin!

  “Mo’nin’ to you, Miz Kathleen,” called out a friendly voice.

  I turned to see a tall, lanky black man on the side of the street tipping his hat and smiling broadly.

  “Hello, Henry,” said Katie, pulling back on the reins, then stopping the horses.

  The man approached. I saw his eyes flit toward me for a second. But I still kept looking straight ahead. It was a little hard, though, ’cause sauntering up beside him a couple steps behind was a black boy just about as tall who looked about the same age as Katie and me. I could feel his eyes glancing my way too.

  “How’s yo mama, Miz Kathleen?” he said.

  “Uh … everything’s just fine, Henry.”

  A funny expression came over his face, like he’d noticed Katie’s stepping sideways to avoid answering his question directly. But before he could say any more, Katie spoke up again.

  “This is Mayme, Henry. She’s going to … uh, work for us.”

  “Dat right nice—how ’do, Miz Mayme. Ah’s pleased ter make yo ’quaintance.”

  He paused briefly, then looked to his side and then back. “I don’ bleeve you two ladies has eber made ’quaintance wiff my son Jeremiah.—Jeremiah,” he added, looking at the boy, “say hello ter Miz Kathleen an’ Miz Mayme.”

  The young man took off the ragged hat he was wearing, glancing down at the ground and kind of shuffling like he was embarrassed, then looked up at the wagon.

  “How ’do,” he said. “Glad t’ know you both.”

  “I … I never knew you had a son, Henry,” said Katie as the boy looked down again. “Did … I mean, does my mama know?”

  “Can’t ermagine she could, Miz Kathleen,” replied Henry. “I neber talked ’bout him much on account ob how much it hurt ter ’member him. ’Twas all I could do ter keep from cryi
n’ downright like er baby. Him an’ his mama, dey was sol’ away from me, you see. Dat be when Jeremiah bin jes’ a young’un. An’ after I bought my freedom, I dun search high an’ low ter fin’ ’em, but I neber foun’ so much as a tiny noshun where dey might hab git to. But after der proklimashun, Jeremiah dun come a-lookin’ fer me. His mama, she dun tol’ him enuf where fer him ter make his way here ter Greens Crossing.”

  Once or twice while he was talking, I could tell that Henry’s son was looking at me out of the corner of his eye. I could feel my neck and face getting hot all over, but I just kept staring down at my lap and pretended I didn’t notice.

  “Is your wife here too?” asked Katie.

  “I’m sorry t’ say she ain’t, Miz Kathleen. She din’t make it through der war.”

  “Oh … I’m sorry.”

  “Dat’s right kind er you t’ say, Miz Kathleen.—Say, hit seems ter me dat bridle er yers is frayin’ an’ ’bout ter break. You don’ want ter hab no horse runnin’ loose wifout a good bit in his mouf. Why don’ you two come ter da livery an’ let me an’ Jeremiah put on a new piece er leather? Won’ take but er jiffy.”

  “Uh, we don’t have time just now. We’ve got to get back. Well … good-bye, Henry,” said Katie, giving the horses a swat with the reins.

  We continued on again, and for some reason I was glad to be done with Henry and his son. As we rode off down the street I was dying to glance up, and I almost did too. But I’m glad I didn’t, because I could feel that he was looking at us and watching us ride away.

  We didn’t have anything else to do in town, but when we’d made our plans to come in, we thought it might be good for folks to see me and Katie, just to get used to the idea of seeing us together. So in spite of what she’d just said to Henry, Katie led the team through town, greeting a few people she saw that she knew, pretending to be about some business or other, though we weren’t. Then when we reached the end of the street, we went around behind a few houses and headed back the way we’d come.