Before they returned, Aggie uncorked the jug and began to walk, sprinkling along her way. She saved her nighttime water for many purposes. This time, she hoped that when Samuel sent word to the patrollers, their hounds would run in confusion. The scent of wild onions and night water were obfuscation enough, but the rain was the final blessing.
A Marriage
Samuel was disappointed that Nick could not be found, but he kept Jeremiah Franklin on a monthly retainer of ten dollars; perhaps there would be a breakthrough. Jeremiah warned Samuel that the trail was gone, but he took the money with no contrition on his trips to Samuel’s store, where he picked up supplies for his farm. Often times, he brought his baby sister. Approaching seventeen, and exceedingly buxom, Grace Franklin was too mature to catch Samuel’s eye. Grace was unremarkable in looks, but Samuel spoke to her as if she were most splendid. He gave her an extra yard of calico for free on one of her visits and a small package of candy on another. He advised her to place strips of linsey-woolsey inside her shoes. The extra layer would warm her feet in the wintertime and keep her soles from blistering. Confused by his employer’s conduct, Jeremiah reminded his sister that Samuel was a married man. She could take his calico and candy, but she should stop letting him hold her hand for so long.
Like his father, Jeremiah knew about the little girls that Samuel imprisoned in the left cabin. He did not feel sorry for the little girls, however, any more than he felt sorry for a pig, a dog, a horse, or a cow. He had very little compassion to begin with, and certainly he could not waste it on a Negress, and a child at that. So neither Jeremiah nor his father were bothered when his landlord proposed to his overseer there should be a marriage. Carson readily agreed.
Though it was walking distance, Samuel had ridden his horse to Carson’s cabin, sat down to accept the barebones hospitality of the overseer’s wife, and then quickly offered the proposal. His son was back from the university. Victor was of an age to marry, but too shy for sparking. Perhaps Carson might speak to Grace on his behalf?
“I’m gone have to ask her,” Carson said.
He was lying. Grace would do as she was told. Carson had his eye on buying back his father’s original parcel of land, and what better way to do that than to marry his daughter to his landlord’s son? And after he bought back the land, he would attend to the destruction of the mound. Not only did Carson not warn Grace about the goings-on with little girls in their landlord’s left cabin, he didn’t tell her that her intended groom didn’t like to lie with females: Carson had seen Victor in the midst with the now-dead Quarters-boy.
Samuel was unaware that his son’s secret was known. He thought he’d been careful by sending Victor to the university in North Carolina. There hadn’t been any romantic scandals, however. Claudius had started a business at the university, amassing a nest egg by writing poems for Victor’s classmates to send to their （female） sweethearts. They’d paid Claudius a dime apiece to write his quixotic verses, and before Victor had graduated, Claudius had slipped away in the night, never to be heard from again, aided by his store of dimes.
As for Grace, she was thrilled about the prospect of being married into the Pinchard family. Her life was not fearful. Her brothers did not abuse her or try to catch glimpses of her as she undressed in the one room her younger, unmarried siblings shared. Yet like Gideon, her long-ago ancestor, Grace saw how the rich men in her sights lived, how their wives were dressed in finery when they visited Samuel Pinchard’s general store. Even the wives of the yeomen who patronized the store were better off than the Franklins, for they had somehow hung on to the acres they’d won in the land lottery and owned one or two slaves.
The wedding of Victor and Grace was unimpressive, much to Samuel’s dismay. He had invited the two other richest men in the county, along with their wives, but both couples had sent their social regrets along with two silver platters, beautiful and redundant. The only guests were the region’s yeomen, their wives, and the Franklin clan, all of whom were dressed in church clothes a mere step above their daily rags. However, Grace was ecstatic, in the green everyday dress and matching shoes that Samuel had purchased, which was fancier than anything she’d ever owned.
After her wedding, Grace began to comprehend that she’d been given a pig in a poke. One fine day, when she sat alone in a rocking chair on the second-floor gallery, she caught a look over the left cabin’s fence, where she saw Samuel bend down and kiss a luxuriously clothed pickaninny full on the mouth. And most nights, she slept alone in the bed she should have shared with Victor, if he had not made a pallet elsewhere. Yet Grace was reconciled, in part because her mother-in-law embraced her with fervor.