Memphis Blues Again: Book I, Chapter 15.

Copyright © 2012 Bob R Bogle



"When you said we were retiring to the smokehouse," one of the men said, "I fear I had visions of hams and chains of sausage hanging from the rafters.  This is some hidey-hole you've got here, JJ."

"We use it for different things," JJ said.  "Meetings.  Elections.  Sometimes we even used to have church services here, back in the old days.  But this is what I like best.  Coming out with a few good friends for a smoke after a meal."

"You sure do it up right!"

Tom didn't know who all these people were.  A lot of them were JJ's relatives, he knew.  That made them Cutter's relatives.  Many of them were named Cutter, too.

JJ was a funny man.  He could tell a story so that you had to laugh.  This was JJ's farm.  He had given them bottles of sarsaparilla to drink earlier today.  Tom had never had sarsaparilla before.  Across the room he saw Isaac and Cyrus, who were JJ's sons.  Frank and he had spent the day with Cyrus and John and Henry.  John and Henry were with the women in the parlor now because of their ages.  Tom wondered why he got to come out with the men and John and Henry had to stay in the house.  And there was Gideon Cutter and his son Thomas.  Gideon was old like JJ, but he was somber, or even sour; when other men laughed, Gideon Cutter just barely smiled.  Tom thought he looked a little sick and green.  Gideon's son, who was another Thomas, was about nineteen or twenty years old, and he was also serious, but not the same way as his father.  He appeared to look on all these people with a measure of disapproval, Tom thought, watching them silently with a small, forced smile, as though he were observing them and silently judging them.

And there was the sheriff ‑‑ Tom forgot his name ‑‑ and that pinched-face man, Hurd, who seemed like he didn't belong, and the rich man Fouts in his neat brown suit, and several others as well.  Now that they were out in the smokehouse away from the dinner table they were all talking in small little knots so that the room was bright and noisy and already beginning to fill with the earthy reek of cigar smoke.

Tom moved among them, looking to see where Cutter had gone.  He found his stepfather some distance away talking to JJ.  He came up behind him as Cutter was saying in a half-whispery voice:  "Do you hear anything about the Mowers in Maryville?"

JJ looked around Cutter's shoulder at Tom and his face brightened.  "Tom!  But grain alcohol and cigars aren't good for a boy, are they?"

Cutter whirled, eyeing Tom behind him.

"Isaac!" JJ called.  "Where are you?"

"Here, Pa."

"Take young Mr Tom back to the house for a glass of punch, and then both of you hurry right back."

"Pa. . . ."

"Go right ahead now!  Do as I say."

"Oh, all right."  Isaac found a place to put down his cigar and glass and eyed Tom with displeasure.  "Come on, then."

They went back into the warm darkness outside.

"I don't know why they let you in anyway," Isaac muttered as he hurried across the yard.  Tom was having to hurry to keep up with him.  "The smokehouse ain't for boys."

Tom looked up.  Again the night sky reminded him of their arrival yesterday.  The trip took longer than expected because of the rain and because they'd gone all the way to Russellville on the Nodaway River to avoid Maryville, coming down through the uncleared farm sections with only a few acres plowed for corn or oats around uniformly crude, low houses daubed in mud with sod chimneys and small flocks of white sheep like little patchy clouds in the grassy fields.  Down through Savannah they passed on the way south.  During the early afternoon they had seen the white clouds massing steadily in the western sky and advancing directly toward them, darkening as they came until all the blue sky was gone.  When the storm broke the rain was not heavy but it was never-ending and cold, turning the road beneath the wheels slick at first and then progressively thicker with gray muck.  For three or four hours the rain seemed to come down continuously until finally in the very late afternoon the clouds finished passing over them and moved on eastward.  Already by then the blue beyond was fading to a softer and clearer, airy color.  The late afternoon sky seemed somehow hollow to Tom then, and clean.  The full darkness wasn't yet on when at last they reached the outskirts of the city.  Mary and he could see the city off to the right with the sun sinking toward the horizon beyond and lighting it up all orange and golden.  Under his dripping hat Cutter too had his eye on the sun, and he kept urging them forward faster, faster, from where he walked up by the team, tugging on their trappings.

St Joseph was the biggest city Tom had ever seen, but they didn't go into the city.  They went past it and then out into the patchwork of farm fields where more industrious men were still working as the night was rushing toward them.  The wagon wheels were still sucking in the muck and Tom was beginning to feel sleepy at the end of another day on the road.  The first points of stars were emerging in the east when Mary called:  "Look!"  She flung her little arm out, pointing, and then Tom saw something he had never seen before, silhouetted against the last crescent of light in the sky:  a team of Negroes out in a wide white field of cotton.  They were a long way away, but he looked at them as closely as he could from the back of the wagon where he rode.  Black men in ratty gray clothes.  Slaves.

Isaac and he went into the house.  "Hettie!" Isaac called out.  "This child needs a cup of punch!"

Hettie and Nipper and Tom were still busy clearing off the mess in the dining room.  The large Negress eyed them closely when they came in, weighing them.  Her smile split her face and she turned from what she was doing to find a cup for the punch bowl.  She poured a cup and handed it to him.  "Here you are, little gent," she said.

"Thank you," Tom said, his voice low and meek.

"Come on," Isaac growled.  "Let's go."

They turned and went outside and back to the barn.

Again the barn was bright and cheerful, but by now the smoke was growing thick.  Isaac and he came inside, and immediately Isaac left him.  He saw where Cutter was sitting and moved in to slink down next to him.  His stepfather's hair was spiky like always, but at least he'd cleared away the stubble from his chin and cheeks.  Cutter eyed him suspiciously with his now empty punch cup, but he did not speak to him.

The men were telling stories of some adventure that several of them had been on together.  Many were speaking at once, or else they were interrupting each other, bursting in and disrupting each other's words.  They were laughing so much, and drinking and finishing each other's sentences, that it was hard for Tom to follow what was being said.

"And so I says to him," JJ said, with his thumbs in his suspenders and his head thrown back, "I says, well, we're here to protect the ballots."

"Protect them!" someone said.

"Sure, protect them.  Protect them from foreign trespassers.  We're good Democratic men, and we value the principle of freedom, fair and simple.  It's to be a fair election--"

"Fair, provided the right side wins--"

"Of course the right side must win.  The right side must always win.  That's the proof of democracy's triumph.  That's what this country is about."

"This country--"

"Our country.  Not a little piece of the Yankee North broken away and trying to invade--"

"That's the problem right there, JJ.  Invasion.  You're right.  It is an invasion.  They've got no right--"

"And where's this Harding house where you held your little soirée?"

"Just across the river.  Elwood."

"Oh."

"--trying to occupy our lands and take our rights away.  We didn't do that to them, did we?  We wouldn't do that to them.  But they lack proper comportment."

"Which is why they're they and we're we.  By what authority do they--"

"Did you make it to the Keytesville rally, JJ?"

"No, but I was at Lexington last month."

"Good turnout?"

"Good.  Very good.  Lafayette and Ray Counties are solid with us."

"The Yanks are going to regret they ever heard of Kansas.  They were supposed to get Nebraska, and we'd get Kansas.  Don't they know that?"

"Of course they do."

"But they have to go and stick their damned fool noses in our business."

"You heard about the boys meeting with the governor in Pawnee?  Apparently old Andy Reeder, with his whiskers like satchel handles, made a big speech about setting aside our differences and everybody pitching in to do the work of the territory.  Right about then is when the legislature voted itself right out of the governor's pride and joy, a nice new two-storey stone capitol building.  Reeder just about died of apoplexy.  Ran after them all the way back to the Shawnee Mission, tail between his legs.  Guess the governor's mansion in Pawnee now is full of mice.  At least they ought to have a quorum."

"Those are good boys.  They've got good laws on the books now.  Keep the abolitionists in their place."

"You'd better believe it, Jim.  They're under the thumb now.  No slipping away."

"Right where we want them!"

"They say Woodson's going to appoint Jones sheriff over Lawrence."

"Who?"

"Samuel Jones, of Weston."

"Sam Jones?  That's good news, if true.  Jones will keep up the pressure."

"It's that Doc Robinson is the worst of the bunch.  Nigger stealer and underground railroader.  Something needs to be done about him."

"Something will be done if they get Sam Jones over there.  You can rest assured of that."

"So did you get to vote then?"

"Did we get to vote?  Of course we got to vote!  Were we not in Kansas Territory?  We were.  We were, then, resident in Kansas Territory; we were, then, residents of Kansas Territory."

Everyone laughed.

"And besides that, one or two even had claims in Kansas Territory‑‑"

"Preferably," the sheriff murmured, "jumping those of the encroachers trespassing in that abolitionist hole of Lawrence."

"When that vulgar little Garrisonite Bryant--"

"Feculent!"

"--tried to challenge our residency, you ought to have seen Judge Leonard, face flaring up all fiery red, push right up to the front of the crowd and shout out the nomination of Colonel Scott as the other election judge.  The motion carried by acclaim with a mighty roar, selah!"

"Hurrah for Judge Leonard!"

"Then you should have seen the blood drain out of Bryant's face.  Because he knew right then, you see, that we were going to win Kansas for ourselves:  all of Kansas.  The damned invaders had been out-invaded."

"Damned abolitionists come to our country and stealing our niggers!"

"If Yanks can vote in Kansas, then by God, Missourians won't be stopped from voting in Kansas!"

"How about you?" someone said in a lowered voice to Isaiah Cutter while the other conversation was going on.  He was sitting on the other side of Cutter and Tom couldn't see him very well.  The man's brittle voice made Tom think of ashes dropping from burning twigs, thin, dry bony fingers glowing orange and then fluffing off white and dusty.  "Are you here to fight the war in Kansas Territory, too?"

But despite the lowered tones JJ overheard, and dropping out of the general conversation he leaned down over Tom and toward Cutter and the man beyond.  "Isaiah's here to see me about some business up in Atchison County.  I'm setting him up in Rock Port."

"In Rock Port?" the stranger said, obviously skeptical of the proposition.  "Don't you know that place is crawling with the damned Dutch?  And all of them brewers, it seems.  Northern sympathizers and brewers, that's where you're consigning your kin.  A hard place to make a go of it, JJ.  A hard place."

JJ straightened up again laughing, his great, gurgling laugh that rippled through his ample belly.

"Ah, Nelson, I have great confidence in my nephew.  Besides, the thirst for beer will never replace that for moonshine.  Not in this country."

"Tell you what you ought to do," the man called Nelson drawled, now sounding more thoughtful to Tom.  "Somebody ought to do it.  With all these trains coming in and all these sun-struck and gold-struck pioneers pushing out into the prairie and mountains beyond, somebody's going to get rich someday setting himself up with a mail order business in Chicago or somewhere.  You set yourself up with a big warehouse of dry goods, and then you can send pioneer families everything that they really want and need and that they can't get at their local little country stores.  Sell it to them direct and ship it out by train.  The man who figures out how to do that stands to make a killing."

JJ laughed again.  "You're a dreamer, Nelson.  A dreamer!  But don't you stop.  Someday even you may make a killing."

"Now JJ, I'm just saying--"

"I know; I know what you're saying.  You just keep on saying it, and keep on thinking it.  Keep right on figuring all the time."  Then JJ stood up straighter, still chuckling, and re-entered the greater swirls of conversation floating in the air all around him.

Tom was thinking.  He thought he had heard the name before.  Maybe Cutter and Ma had talked about it sometime.  The Mowers of Maryville.  What did it mean?