Percy and his men took Grace to a few homesteads over near the central store, a wooden plank building stacked high above the thin road. Grace eyed the store with a bit of nervousness after Pettek’s previous visit. Out in the fields, things were more horizontal. The cabins were sturdy, and the men and women were robust and smiling. This was nothing like what Pettek had described. Percy, like a proud papa, explained that these happy families were making heavy profits in cotton. They had scores of smiling children, running through the crop.
At the end of the day, Percy instructed his men to take Grace back to the boat landing. Stopping still, Grace instead insisted—politely—that she stay the night. She wanted to see more. When Percy squirmed about her request, she showed him her letter from the governor. Percy backed down in a huff and consulted with his men. He instructed one of the Wrights to give her an available cabin. Percy cautioned that it might not be to her liking, in which case they could easily transport her back to Greenville. With that, Percy said good night.
As Grace walked to her cabin, she saw the same lopsided huts that Pettek had told her about. She saw the tired men and women with sun-dark skin. She could hear that they spoke no English. When she got to her cabin, there were no screens on the windows or door. The Wright brother who had escorted her left, not even acknowledging her. She set out her notebooks. The mosquitoes came in and out as they wanted, as if they were part of the air itself. A bit later, someone brought her a metal bowl filled with water that was murky red. She knew it was only iron, but it looked a lot like blood, especially under the darkening sky. She was a long way from Fifth Avenue.
The next day, Grace woke up at five thirty in the morning to get a good look at the truth of the place, once and for all. When Grace stepped outside, all the tenement farmers were already in their fields, moving like wraiths in the stony-blue dawn. Above her, she could see faint stars.
That day, Grace realized that Sunny Side was, through and through, a real cotton plantation. Everyone she saw was working toward that purpose with abandon. Every family had their own cabin, worked their own land, and seemed to be the master of the cotton they sold. There was shared equipment for ginning on site, at the end of the rail line. There was a doctor on call from a nearby village and a priest who lived on the plantation. For the most part, these workers ignored her. They were so very busy. The fluffy flecks drifted in the air and gave everything a sweet smell.
After this first day of discovery, Grace was very impressed by Sunny Side. She knew she wasn’t entirely wanted there, but that was to be expected, she supposed. These plantation owners were rude men, airs aside. Still, she found Percy to be far more upright than she had guessed, though she imagined he was behaving well because of the injuries done to Pettek. She met Crittenden, the owner of the plantation, whose ancestry stretched back to the earliest settlers of the Old South. He was cordial but dismissive. Percy’s men took her to see even more successful families on the plantation. They smiled back through their black mustaches and shook her hand with vigor.
Later that afternoon, as Grace walked through the cotton, she passed a patch of high, unshorn stalks. She brushed by the brittle sleeves of green and wandered in farther. She caught a man’s eye watching her. She stopped and walked up to him. He seemed as if he wanted to say something.
Through her interpreter, Grace found out that the dark-haired man was named Pasquale Georgina and that he lived on fourteen and three-quarter acres with his wife, Maria. Pasquale led Grace to his simple cabin, which consisted of a single room and a shed in the back. When the back door to the shed opened, they saw his aged mother, stooped in a chair, the skin of her wrists like paper. In the main cabin, there was another chair pulled up to a nicked-up table. The bed was wet from the leaky roof. And in a corner of the room was a small box that looked as if it had been made of old boards. It was a cradle, Pasquale said. Maria, his wife, had recently given birth. They stood and stared at the jumble of wood, almost as if they were waiting for it to move. The child died, Pasquale said quietly. The baby starved, he said, even though Maria denied herself food in an attempt to save it.
Just like the first one, he said.
Pasquale explained that under the Sunny Side system, his family was allowed $15.00 a month by the company to buy food with. But after they were charged $7.00 for their mule and $6.00 for a barrel of flour, they were left with only $2.00—a month—for any food other than bread. They had to frog gig and fish—but who had the time? Even the growing of any other vegetables on their parcels of land for meals had to be approved by the Wrights. The company—not cotton—was king.
When Grace left that hot cabin, sickness rising in her chest, she wondered about these numbers. Their cotton crop looked healthy enough—why weren’t they making any money? She wrote down the few names and numbers that the farmer had told her. She was framing her case. But Grace needed more proof. She needed numbers she could point to and share. She had to see the books.
Grace had to return to New York to testify in another case, though she would only be gone for a couple of days. When she returned, she took a day in Greenville because she had finally heard back from the travel agent, Pierini, who agreed to meet with her. Pierini told her that he had worked at Sunny Side. They weren’t recruiting from New York City, he said.
They were taking people directly from Italy.
With his lawyer present, Humberto Pierini showed Grace everything he had. Pierini had ties to the plantation that ran deep. Not only did he use to run the store at Sunny Side, but his father, Allessandro, was one of the watchmen on Prince Ruspoli’s original estate. While at Sunny Side, Pierini amassed a European staff of twelve agents and a ship’s captain named Calenda. Their job was to recruit whole families from Italy to work the cotton. They would be paid up to twenty-five dollars a family.
Pierini told Grace that they found families in Italy not only with men on the ground but also with advertisements. Pierini showed Grace a flier. It read:
Italians!
If you have parents or friends to be called to America, do not lose this great opportunity to buy the tickets from me, which tickets you can have at a great reduction.
I can sell you tickets for the steamer
MANILLA!
Which starts from Italy in the month of August, for $45.30 with railroad fare paid to Greenville, Miss.; but I will give you two dollars commission for each full ticket.
As you well know I can sell you the tickets for any steamship company at lower prices and guarantee the protection of your passages
Yours truly.
Humberto Pierini