Memphis Blues Again: Book I, Chapter 13.

Copyright © 2012 Bob R Bogle



Mr JJ Cutter owned a sixty acre tobacco farm in Buchanan County, located about ten miles southeast of St Joseph.  Within the month JJ had acquired another eighty acres lying immediately adjacent to his parcel of land, but it still lay fallow; nevertheless, this dinner was a kind of celebration marking the occasion of his parochial social promotion attendant upon the land purchase.  He was sixty years old and he lived on the farm with his wife, Sarah, and the seven children still at home, ages six to seventeen.  Presently he pushed himself back from the grand dining table, which was the signal for the others to begin doing likewise.

"Well gentlemen," JJ said, patting his ample belly, "I find there's nothing quite like an after dinner smoke to settle the meal and the mind.  Please join me out in the smokehouse for some fine Cutter leaf cigars."

"And ladies," JJ's wife, Miss Sarah Cutter, added quickly, "we'll be moving into the parlor for some special sweets the girls were all afternoon preparing."  She picked up her silver bell and gave it a twinkling tingle.  "Now, where is Miss Hettie got herself off to?"

"Here I am, Miss Sarah," the matronly woman answered as she hurried into the dining room.  Her gray curls were cut very close to the brown skin of her face, flecked with tiny darker blotches.  Close behind her followed Nipper and Tom, dressed unconvincingly in formal livery.  The three commenced to clear the great table while the others left the room, the women proceeding to the parlor on the right, and the men outside the back door on the left.

JJ turned.  "Just follow Isaac," he directed them with his beaming smile.  He was counting heads as they passed by down the steps outside.

"I hope you got something more spirited than just cigars waiting out here," one of the passing men said.  He was a smallish man with an unshaven face and dangerous, dark eyes.  He'd come up that day from Weston and hadn't bothered to change his clothes.

"I'm sure you'll find everything to suit your desires, Mr Hurd," JJ said in a lowered voice.

When the last man came outside JJ frowned.  "That's thirteen," he said.  "You'd better go back for your boy."

"Francis is sick," Isaiah Cutter replied.  "He won't be able to join us."

"Well, get your other boy, then.  What's his name ‑‑ Tom.  Go get Tom."

Isaiah was reluctant.  "Tom's just a child."

"Well, we can't have thirteen," JJ replied, "and I'm sure as hell not going to bring in Nipper.  Just you go and get him and come out to the first barn.  You'll see the lights."

Reluctantly, Isaiah went back in the house and found Tom with the wives and children in the parlor.  He signaled him to follow, and they went outside.

Tom looked up into the sky.  The night had come on during dinner.  A great purple sheet full of stars stretched overhead.  The air was still warm.  In the distance bullfrogs croaked.  He was hurrying alongside Cutter toward a building where bright light and the laughing voices of men spilled from the seams.

"I must make a good impression with JJ," Isaiah said to him as they walked, his voice lowered.  "Do you understand?  You just keep your mouth shut."

"I will," Tom said.

The night sky reminded him of when they'd arrived yesterday.  Later than Cutter had wanted, and he kept trying to hurry them forward in the darkness.  Only last night it was through the mud after the rain.  Today though the sun had been hot and had mostly dried the ground out again.

They reached the first barn and Cutter opened the door.  It was very bright inside with many lanterns already burning, and JJ going around lighting more.  Also a fire already was leaping up on its irons under a great chimney at the far end of the room even though it was so warm.  Cutter swept into the room but Tom fell back at the door, surprised by what he saw.  It looked like a barn on the outside, but here were many chairs and benches and tables scattered about.  The men were passing around a box of cigars, and at the rear of the room someone was pouring a clear liquid into glasses, and these were being passed around too.  Everyone seemed to be laughing, sniffing a big fat green cigar or else drinking, raising private toasts to one another in the din of voices.  After the stifling formality and politeness among the ladies in the parlor it seemed to Tom that he'd stumbled across a kind of secret, magical clubhouse, a sequestered enclave of light and merriment plucked out of the dark night.

The difference between women and men, he thought.