The day that the link between Rabbit and Leena was forged occurred a week before Christmas. Samuel walked back to the kitchen house to discuss the special menu for the left cabin and found Venie ill. He called to Rabbit, ordering her to cook the meals for the left cabin. And he sent Venie to the place where she slept, the tiny cabin out back of the kitchen house.
When Pompey let her through the left cabin’s gate, Rabbit found Leena outside, sitting on the grass, where the sun warmed the chilled air. She had dressed herself in her winter frock and pantaloons, cap and bonnet, as if she were still a child. Over these was a fur-lined blanket that Samuel had ordered from the north and for which he had paid far too much money. Rabbit carried a silver tray supporting small crockery wrapped with gingham. The other girl sat on several layers of quilts. Her hands and head were visible, and, covered as she was by the dark fur blanket, only her pale face kept her from looking like Tar Baby, as in the funny story Pop George told.
Rabbit spoke a greeting, but receiving no answer, she placed the tray on the quilts and turned.
“My doll’s name be Agnes,” the girl called.
“Is that right?”
There was no doll in sight, not on the quilt or on the ground.
“I got three more inside my cabin. One be name Beth. One be name Amy. The last one be name Sally. But this one be name Agnes.” A rustling. She pulled a doll through the narrow enclosure of the fur blanket.
The doll had an ivory bisque face, with golden curls and blue-painted eyes. She was clothed in a maroon dress with blue ribbon fringe, a waistcoat of the same material, and under layers of petticoats trimmed with ribbons, white pantaloons. The tiny shoes were made of silk the same color as the dress. Because the Young Friend was hidden, Rabbit could not know that underneath the fur blanket, her outfit was identical to the doll’s.
“And what might be your name?” Rabbit asked.
“My name be Leena. That’s what my mama name me, but she dead.”
She offered the doll, but Rabbit told her she could not take it.
The girl pulled the doll back under her dark cover. “But I ain’t got nothing else to give you.”
“Why you got to give me something?”
“’Cause I want me a friend. And I ain’t got nobody else but Pompey and that white man. And I doesn’t like that white man. You ain’t g’wan tell on me, is you?”
Rabbit lowered herself to the quilts. There was one napkin, and that contained a spoon but no fork or knife. She offered that to Leena, who emerged from her blanket to take the napkin. Rabbit untied the gingham from around each of the little pots. Inside one were chicken and dumplings, another held sweet potatoes cooked down with butter, and the last contained greens and ham hocks cut up in tiny pieces as if to feed a toddler. There was no dessert or bread, nor would there be. Samuel did not like his Young Friends plump.
The girl took a bite. She gave the spoon to Rabbit and pointed at a pot. It was an offering, and because of the girl’s clear loneliness, Rabbit did not tell her she needed no bribing. If she’d wanted to taste a dish, she could have used her own cook’s spoon.
At the end of the meal, the girl asked once more: “You ain’t g’wan tell on me, is you?”
“Ain’t nothing to tell.”
Rabbit gave the spoon back.
The Death of Carson Franklin
A year after Nick had run away, Carson Franklin died, bringing more change to Wood Place. It was astounding that Carson lasted as slave overseer for so long. He had been working for Samuel for decades.
Carson was buried in the Wood Place cemetery, in the area designated for whites. Although Samuel did not think Carson was worthy of this place—after all, he was a tenant farmer and owned no slaves—it would not have been proper to bury him in the area for Negroes. Carson’s son Jeremiah took over his father’s position and had assumed he would continue permanently as overseer. To his surprise and hurt, Samuel would hire another man, an itinerant traveler who would inquire about the job.
And Jeremiah’s pain would feed the resentment, which had traveled through his blood. The Franklins despised Samuel: he had taken advantage of Aidan in a difficult time, dangling pennies for Aidan’s land, instead of helping him like a friend should. Yet there was a grudging admiration of Samuel, too, for here was a man who had come up from two hundred and two and a half acres to own a thousand acres. And if a man such as Samuel could evolve from a common, working man into a wealthy landowner, there was hope for anyone, provided he was white, for Negroes didn’t count, and Indians were dead men walking.