“Good-bye, Sister.”
He watched her run down the road and into her grandmother’s open door. Then he trudged home.
Hazel told Granny that evening of what she had undertaken.
“I’s right glad, sugar,” Granny said heartily. “That boy’s been put upon. The old man works him like he was a mule, and then drinks up all he makes. They is Ward’s tenants, he that keeps the store down the tracks, and Ward always gives his tenants whiskey. I pity that poor woman. Every year it’s just the same. Slave, slave and not a thing to show for it.”
“Scip says they had a good crop of cotton last year.”
“He’s right, they done did. And what good come to them? Ward, he weighed the cotton and ’lowed old man Lee owed it on his books. He see to it his men always owes the half of the cotton and the half of the corn as is theirs by rights.”
Hazel looked puzzled.
“You don’t understand, child, and it ain’t no wonder. But I’s been through it. I’s owned my land many years now, though, thanks to my sons. You see, Ward, the master here, he owns the land and the store and the seed and the mules and the cows and the calves. Along come a colored family, like the Lees, and the master say to them: ‘You-all wants work. I done give you-all a house and mule for half the crop you done raise.’ Understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” said Hazel.
“Then the family move in; but they’s got to plant and make the crops afore anything comes to them. Then Master Ward he tell them to trade at his store and there ain’t no hurry to pay. So he run up a bill against them, charging what he feel like, and he sell the old man whiskey, ’stead of shoes for the children, ’cause there’s more money made in whiskey than in shoes and when fall come the crop is all drunk up, all traded off.”