She served him leftovers from Samuel’s lunch, but she made him fresh biscuits with butter pats inside. On the pine table, the other meal she’d made for Rabbit, Pompey, and herself. Rabbit was in the corner of the kitchen house, busy plucking a scalded chicken for supper. Neither of these three ate rich food during the day, as that courted drowsiness: there was only a pan of corn bread, a bowl of greens revealing hints of pork, and slices of red tomato on a tin plate. The greens and tomatoes had been picked by Pompey from the garden only hours before.
In weeks, when Holcomb would ask permission for and receive a kiss from Venie, he would bemoan his missed corn bread that day. And Venie would tell him that he should have asked. There had been plenty, and she would make it for him every evening, and in the mornings, hominy porridge, if he were so inclined.
That first day Holcomb had looked to Venie like a white man who’d want high-toned food. Yet the day of their kiss, Holcomb would tell Venie that his parents were pale mestizos who’d insisted on holding on to their old ways. As proof of his love, he’d shown Venie the medicine pouch he wore around his neck covered by a shirt. It was the most precious thing he owned.
The Taking of a Side
Though Jeremiah Franklin remained obsequiously respectful to his landlord, he continued to be angry that his position as overseer had been usurped, even after a year, and then two, passed. And he noticed that Samuel Pinchard did not seem vigorous anymore, but instead was settling into his dotage, putting on weight, and losing his mental sharpness. Yet this diminishing of the man did not give the Franklins an advantage, for Samuel’s son began to take on the master’s mantle.
When the new overseer had arrived, he had taken up residence with Pompey in the barn. Holcomb washed at the pump, along with the Negro, and ate his meals in the kitchen house. The overseer did not voice any complaint about this situation. However, within a year—and without asking his father—Victor had ordered the Franklin clan out of their cabins. Then Victor had ordered Quarters-men to burn all but one of the cabins—and he moved the overseer into the remaining structure. Thus, the entire Franklin clan—men, wives, and their many children—relocated to the south side of the plantation, with only a stingy twenty-acre plot to farm. They had to build new cabins from the ground up. There, they were far away from the big house, which relieved Victor’s wife, for Grace was tired of the many machinations required to avoid her poorer relatives; their presence now greatly embarrassed her, and she had voiced these feelings to Victor. He did not love Grace and never would, but he tried his best to make her happy within reason, since he rarely visited her bed.
But Jeremiah and his brothers were not about to let things go that easily. At night, they began to watch the Quarters, waiting for one of the folks to visit the community outhouse. They would catch someone coming out after relief, grab them, and beat them. Because the Franklin brothers wore cloth masks with holes for the eyes and mouth and did not speak, none of the folks who were assaulted could identify their attackers, but in the Quarters, it was assumed who the nighttime predators were.
If Jeremiah and his brothers had kept to the night, their actions might have been tolerated. When Quarters-men limped to the fields in the morning with bruises on their faces, and when Quarters-women wore the tragic expressions of those who had been ravished—and later when their wombs swelled with Franklin seed—the folks would keep their own sad counsels. This was the lot of Negroes, and they didn’t expect any better, though their resentment fumed in the sun. Jeremiah and his brothers’ mistake was bringing their violence out into the open. It was on a morning when the weeds were to be chopped in the fields. Instead of tending to their own patch of cotton and vegetables, the Franklin brothers walked the long distance from the south side of the plantation up to the master’s fields. The Franklins were a group of six, but because they were white men confronting Negroes, they believed their strength to be magnified. Each Franklin moved into the huge cotton field, grabbed someone at random—a man, a woman, a child—and began to choke and slap.
Holcomb was on his horse that day, riding slowly around the fields, and he clearly saw the Franklins’ melee. He shouted, but the Franklins didn’t stop. When he turned the horse around and headed back to the north side of the plantation, the Quarters-folks despaired: they were on their own. White men always took each other’s side. Yet in a few minutes, there was the sound of a gun blasting as Holcomb rode the edge of the field close to a Franklin brother. Holcomb was an excellent shot: when he pointed the gun again, the ground beside the Franklin brother’s foot exploded. He did this another time, and like skulking animals, Jeremiah and his brothers ran away back south.