Chapter Seventy-Four
In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, was elected president of the United States in the most disputed presidential election in the nineteenth century. The popular vote favored Hayes’ opponent, Samuel Tilden, a Democrat and governor of New York. Three electoral votes were undecided. Political analysts of the day believed a deal was struck under the table that put Hayes in the White House. The Southern Democrats on the commission to decide the fate of the election agreed to give Hayes the electoral vote in exchange for the Republicans removing federal troops out of the South and bringing an end to Reconstruction. The deal led to the Compromise of 1877, an unwritten agreement in which the national government would allow the former Confederate states to govern themselves without northern interference in their political affairs.
The result was that the freed Negro was left unprotected in the South and at the mercy of the Jim Crow laws. These were federal and state statutes designed to segregate the black man from white society, deprive him of his civil liberties, and return him to his prewar social status. The sharecropping system as it was meant to work for the former slave indentured him further to his one-time master. The landowner’s manipulation was simple: On credit, he supplied his tenant with the necessary “furnishings” of a mule, plow, seed, house, and supplies to get started, with the contractual agreement that the cost of these expenses would be deducted from his share of the crop at sale time. More often than not, according to the white landowner’s figures, the illiterate black tenant’s debt exceeded his profit, and he was forced to stay on his land for another repeat of the cycle that would leave him forever in hock to his landlord. Escape from this sort of tyranny was nearly impossible. Workers who ran away from their legal obligations were hunted down by local sheriffs or groups hired for that purpose and returned to the landowner until their debt was paid.
The blacks’ rebuttal to this reinstatement of white domination was the mass “Black Exodus of 1879,” in which twenty thousand Negroes left the cotton-producing regions of the former Confederacy for the promise of free land in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Among them were Jasper’s two sons and their families.
“But, why?” Thomas asked in disbelief when Rand, the elder of the two sons, had approached him with news of their imminent departure. “Haven’t you been treated fairly?”
“Never better, Mister Thomas, and me and my family and my brother’s family, too, is mighty grateful to you. Because of your fair dealin’, we got the money to go and get us a good start. We got the education to make sure nobody cheats us, and we owe that to you, too. It ain’t nothin’ against you that we is goin’ but for the hope of havin’ our own land which we’d never have as long as we stay on Somerset.”
Thomas had heard an unmistakable note in Rand’s voice reminding him that if he’d agreed to sell him and his brother, Willie, the land they tilled (the request made numerous times), they would not be leaving. The look in Rand’s eye said it was still not too late to make the deal.
“I wish I could see my way clear to sell you those acres you’ve rented all these years, Rand, but Toliver land has never been for sale and never will be. It was a promise I made my father, and one I hold as well.”
“So you’ve made clear enough through the years,” Rand said. “Willie and I will see to the plantin’, stay for the christenin’ of Amy’s daughter, then we be on our way. Might make it to Kansas in time to get in a crop of wheat ’fore winter.”
Rand had arrived to say good-bye. They had gathered in front of his family’s old home that Thomas had taken over as a plantation office when it had been vacated at Jasper’s death. Vernon, fourteen, stood beside his father. In his son’s presence, Thomas made a point to set the example he hoped the boy would follow when he was master of the plantation. His son knew he was heartsick at losing two of the hardest-working, most loyal and trustworthy families on the place, but he couldn’t allow himself to be surly about it. Rand and his brother and their families were free to go. Rand stuck out his hand, and Thomas shook it.
“I’m sure you’ve heard stories of the scalawags that ask for money in advance to take you to the promised land, then not show up at the time of departure,” Thomas said. “Be aware of them, and you know that if things don’t work out in Kansas, you can always come back. Same terms as before.”
“I know that, Mister Thomas.” Rand returned his old, sweat-stained hat to his head. He looked at Vernon. “My boys said to tell you good-bye, Master Vernon. They’da come, but it was too hard for ’em.”
Thomas saw that his son had difficulty swallowing. “I’ll…miss them,” Vernon said. “I can’t imagine going fishing without them.”
“Neither can they.” Rand turned to Thomas. “Well, so long from all of us, Mister Thomas, and tell Petunia we’ll write.”
Neither Thomas nor Vernon spoke as they watched Jasper’s firstborn son ride away. He and his brother, Willie, had lived all their lives on the plantation. Thomas had grown up with them as Vernon had with their sons. Jasper had come to Texas with the Tolivers and become an integral part of the history of Somerset. His remains were buried in a place of honor in the cemetery on land he’d helped its patriarch to clear.
“Could you not have sold them the land they worked so they would stay, Daddy?” Vernon, blinking rapidly, asked in a wistful voice.
Thomas raised the boy’s chin to look at him. Vernon was nearly shoulder height to him now, but it would not be long before they stood eye to eye. “There are some things too important to put personal feelings above, son. Somerset is one of them. This land belongs to the Tolivers, and not a single acre of it is for sale at any price, for any reason. We are its sole masters. We share its control with no other man. You must remember that.”
“I will, Daddy.”
Thomas nodded. He had no doubt the boy would remember. His son was so much like him at fourteen. Vernon loved the plantation and had taken an interest in it from the time he toddled down the cotton rows hand in hand with his father. David, his eleven-year-old son—their scamp—had as well. Thomas had been blessed with two sons who had taken to learning the business of running a plantation like hounds to the hunt. David would have been here today, but he’d been permitted to play this Saturday morning in a baseball game, the new sport of the nineteenth century. Both understood what was expected of a Toliver. Thomas would have no son of his living off the bounty of his family’s labor without contributing to it. No offspring of his would enjoy the prominence of the name without deserving the right to bear it.
His daughter, too, understood her role as a member of a family that lived by the expectations of its heritage and traditions. Thomas automatically smiled, thinking of Regina. Sons were from the gods, but daughters were from the angels. This morning, she had said to him, “Daddy, Petunia and Amy are very sad.”
She had been the first of his children to call him Daddy. It had begun with da-da, and the boys had gone with their sister’s later form of address. Regina often led the way in how things were said and done in the Toliver household. Of all of the Tolivers he had known, she represented the truest definition of nobility. Kind of heart, strong in spirit, generous and gracious, she held the clearest title to the real meaning of royalty.
“I know, precious,” he’d said.
“Petunia’s brothers and their families are leaving Somerset. Can’t you do something to make them stay?”
“I cannot. Their departure is their decision.”
It was one of the rare times he had ever refused his daughter anything, and her disappointment cut him like a knife. For the fraction of a moment, he had actually considered reconsidering—anything to take that pained look from her sweet, freckled face. Instead he had drawn her to his lap. At twelve, she was enough of a little girl still to sit on his knees in the fortress of his arms. Most fathers would have offered a sop, a gift to compensate for the denied request, but that would not work with Regina. No concession could divert her from her original desire. She could not be bought.
“They leave for what they think is a better place,” he explained.
Her brow creased. “Than Somerset?”
“Yes.”
“There is no better place than Somerset,” she said.
He had hugged her. “I hope Petunia’s brothers will not find that out in Kansas.”
Whenever a blue spell overcame him, like today, Thomas thought of his family, and his mood lifted. He was a very blessed man indeed to have an efficient wife and loving mother at home, the memory of a devoted father, and three delightful children to call him Daddy. Sometimes his heart swelled with such love and pride he thought it would burst.
“Why are you smiling, Daddy?” There was a note of disapproval in Vernon’s voice. His tears had barely dried, and his father was smiling.
Thomas placed his arm around his son’s shoulders as they turned to go into the cabin. “I was thinking how fortunate I am to be the father of three fine children,” he said.
“Heirs to Somerset. Isn’t that what we are?”
“You’ve learned your lessons well, my son. Yes, heirs to Somerset. I wish my father had lived to see there is no curse on the land.”
“A curse?”
Thomas wished he had not spoken. Vernon was like a dog with a bone when he wanted to learn more about something. “A jinx,” Thomas explained. “Supposedly cast by a supernatural power to inflict harm on someone or something as punishment for their wrongdoing.”
“Your father did something wrong?”
“Not at all. He made…certain sacrifices to assure the establishment of Somerset.”
“What were they?”
“I don’t recall.”
“What kind of punishment did he believe the curse inflicted?”
Thomas hesitated. Yellow fever was rampant in Louisiana and sure to hop over the border into East Texas, but all the windows in the family home on Houston Avenue had recently been covered with the new metal mesh coverings called screens to deter the influx of disease-carrying mosquitoes. There was always a danger of cholera returning and other afflictions and accidents that could claim the lives of his children in the blink of an eye, but not by the hand of an imprecation uttered by his father’s angry mother almost half a century ago. Yet, superstitiously, Thomas felt a reluctance to voice aloud his father’s fear that her malediction related to the procreation and preservation of Toliver heirs. Silas Toliver had worried for nothing. Yes, he had lost his first son, but Joshua, God love his sweet soul, was no real heir to Somerset. Silas Toliver’s true heir was alive and well, and his grandsons would carry the name of Toliver and the plantation into the next generation.
“It’s a waste of time to talk about nonsense,” Thomas said to his son. “There is no such thing as a curse.”