Solomon. Marilyn Bishop Shaw
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and recoiled it. “Think you’d like to learn to do that, Solomon?” asked Mr. Harker.
“Yes, sir, I sure would.” His excitement waned, and he stepped closer to his father. “But I ain’t got money for a thing like that. I shore liked seeing yours though. Thank you, sir.”
“Mr. Freeman, that’s a fine-mannered boy you have there. You must be very proud of him.” Harker had a faraway look in his eyes as he spoke.
“That I am, Mr. Harker, that I am.” Moses still wasn’t sure about Harker, but he didn’t seem so bad. “What brings you this way, mister? We ain’t had a visitor since we got here four month ago.”
Moses shifted nervously. Mr. Harker, in no hurry to ride on, fastened his whip back into its place on his saddle and tied Diamond. “I’ve been in the saddle this long day. Would you mind me biding here until I work the kinks out of my back?”
“Guess you can set a spell while we dig a couple more cats out of the river,” Moses offered after a pause.
Harker lowered his long, lean body onto the bluff, flexed one part of his body at a time, and tried to relax. He told them that he was scouting the area for woods cows, hoping to gather up a small herd to sell over at the coast. “I’m still pretty new to Florida and haven’t been this way, so I thought I’d just light out and ramble a little.”
“Yessir, I’d say they’s some cows, but you got work comin’ if you plan to do any roundin’ up.” Amused, Moses didn’t think Mr. Harker had any idea how scattered and skittish those animals were. Or how rough the land could be. Moses also knew he was just beginning to learn those things for himself.
A half hour later Moses looked skyward and started pulling in their string of fish. “Old sun tell me we best head in or Miss Lela won’t cook these cats, and I’d hate to miss that supper,” he said.
“With a feast like that, you’ll sleep mighty soundly tonight.” Harker knew not to wear out a welcome. He added, “It’s been good resting a mite and visiting with you. I nearly lost track of time myself. I’ve got some more miles to cover before dark.” He found himself in a situation he’d never before faced. He wasn’t sure how to part with these two, but it seemed right that he extend his hand. Moses hesitated, then looked Pete straight in the eye and gave a firm handshake, holding his breath the whole time. “Mr. Freeman,” Pete said. Then he turned to Solomon and became the first man ever to shake his hand. “Solomon, it’s been a real pleasure. I apologize for interrupting your fishing and thank you for letting me sit a while with you. I hope our paths cross again sometime.”
“Mayhap they will, Mr. Harker,” answered Moses as he and his son turned toward the woods and home, “mayhap so.” A little whirlwind twisted around them and spiraled skyward, sending them separate ways.
2
The Freeman family spent the next few weeks toiling through long, back-breaking days. They had only been on their homestead for a few months and it wasn’t what any of them would call a proper home yet. Lela and a downcast Moses were making trip after trip carrying water from the nearby spring to their water barrel when she reminded her husband, “It’s ours, Moses. I know that trip to the land office wasn’t easy and none of those people wanted us to have any kind of a homestead at all. Oh,” Lela shuddered, “I’ll never forget what a sight you were when you got home. And that was two days after the beating. I almost wished you hadn’t gone.”
Moses shook his head slowly, remembering how humiliating it had been trying to do business with men who obviously didn’t think he deserved to do business. “I was shore stove up some after that. Lela, them men didn’t want to do no business, but they knew the law said they had to do business. Even with a colored man. Days is gettin’ different now, and them that beat me up are gonna just have to see that.”
“You signed up like they said and long as we keep building and working it . . . ” Lela drew in a breath to continue.
“I know what yore gonna say, Miz Freeman, and yore right. We got it so good next to some.” Moses stopped at the edge of the water and leaned against a tree that slanted toward the water’s edge. “Lela, I weren’t the only colored down there. Have to come to Gain’ville from all ’round these parts. They ain’t many land offices and lots of folks come longer ways.”
Lela cooled her feet in the water and looked closely at Moses as he told her the parts he hadn’t told her before. She knew her man; he had never intended to tell her these things. “Were those people beaten, too, Moses?”
“I ’magine but I couldn’t swear it. But, Lela, some of them people didn’t have nothing. They didn’t know nothing neither. Thought they was gettin’ full hundert and sixty acres just to find out they could only get eighty. Them men tried to make ’em pay to sign up, too. An’ it weren’t just colored folks, neither. They was white folks there in same shape as us.”
“What happened to them if they couldn’t pay to register a piece of land?”
“They left. For where I don’t know, but they left.” Moses sat down next to his wife. “We got lucky stars, Lela, comin’ from Hill’s Run. An’ we both know he favored us. Not ever’body left there outfitted as good as us.”
“True enough, Moses, and I’ll never forget that or stop being grateful for it.” Lela popped to her feet and brightened the sunny day. “Just think—eighty whole acres! We treat it proper, and it’ll take care of us. Five years and it’ll be ours clear and all!” Picking up her heavy buckets, she laughed, “Now, Mr. Freeman, we better get to workin’!”
It seemed like everything had to be done at once. The wagon in which they traveled from north Georgia to their Florida homestead was adequate for camping out. Moses and Lela slept in the bed of the wagon and Solomon had a cozy but relatively cool hammock strung between the front and rear axles.
Their place was about six miles southwest of New Troy in Lafayette County, Florida. They were purposely distant from other settlers, hoping they could live peaceably by staying to themselves. Moses laughed about the little hill they chose for their homesite. “Georgia ’least had hills you could tell was hills. Slick as lightnin’ when it were wet and hard packed as bricks when it were dry, that ol’ Georgia clay could do some growin’. Here it hard to see a rise in the land atall.”
It was a dry spot, though, and a fair-sized natural clearing only a short walk to the spring run. That made the choice much easier since they’d have spots to build on without much clearing. Within a half-day’s journey they had found oak hammocks, cypress swamps, spring banks, and river bluffs. There were spots so full of sugar sand, a man could hardly walk through them. Others were springy muck that turned to sucking swamp in a good rain. Every inch was abundant with its own plant and animal life.
The wagon wasn’t much shelter against the erratic climate they found. The weather here could change mood like a lightning bolt. Summer heat with its still, stifling stickiness could turn into a blowing rainstorm. Almost every day through late July and August, there came a thunderstorm. There would be a strong breeze and a muffled rumble of thunder, followed by the summer shower. In just a few minutes, it would taper off and stop, leaves dripping fresh rain. The rain did little more than fill the rain barrel and make the hot air stickier than ever. Solomon observed that they had no need for clocks in summer since the rain always told them when it was three o’clock.
Still sluggish from the heat and humidity, they knew they would soon need real protection from the winter. Without money for materials and hands for heavy labor, a lean-to with blankets covering the opening would see them through a winter or two. It would have to.
There were always wood to be chopped, land to clear, and stumps to dig out. If this was to be a farm, crops had to be planted but that couldn’t be done before the clearing. Moses counted on Sunny and Sudie to pull the plow and drag logs and fat lightered stumps. He fretted that they would only get in a small planting this year, but Lela reassured him, “Moses, you can only do what one man can do. We’ll have a little corn for