A Land Remembered, Volume 2, page 7
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
1894
For over a year Tobias grieved, seldom leaving the clearing and having no interest in cows or anything. After this period of mourning he gradually focused his attention back on the orange grove, his one personal pride and satisfaction, and he spent most of his time there, often just sitting alone among the trees. Zech often said that Tobias counted each tiny orange as it changed from a blossom, knowing in advance exactly how many barrels the crop would fill. And this was more fact than jest.
Zech, Glenda and Sol moved into the main house to be closer to Tobias, and Glenda assumed all of the chores that once were Emma’s, the cooking and washing and housecleaning, never complaining or asking for help. Several times Zech offered to hire someone to come live on the place and help her, but each offer was refused. Whenever the men were tending herd close by, she went out each day in the buckboard with a hot meal for them, and often she rode horseback alongside Zech and the others as they drove cows into the corral for branding. Zech could not remember the last time she wore a dress, seeing her daily in the jeans and chambray shirt and the wide-brimmed black hat. Without the flaming red ponytail hanging down her back, she could have passed for just another cowhand.
Zech and the men started fencing the MacIvey land, going to Kissimmee and bringing back wagon loads of barbed wire, cutting cypress posts in the swamp and stringing the unfamiliar barrier yard by yard across the open range, coming back week after week and finding it cut, then stringing again. He knew this would eventually lead to trouble, but he was determined to see it through.
There had been no drive to Punta Rassa in two years, and this was the reason Zech wanted to fence the land. He planned to raise his own herds, give up the practice of wandering with them all summer, and fatten them on MacIvey land before driving them to market; and there was no way to contain the cattle except with the hated wire.
They were still bothered constantly by rustlers, often finding cows killed on the range or driven away. During the previous summer they took turns riding armed guard both day and night, but it did no more good than looking for invisible sand flies. The raiders were indeed ghosts, killing and stealing and then vanishing. Only now, Zech felt sure he knew where they were coming from. His thoughts turned more and more to the Ten Thousand Islands area.
Zech also remembered the things Tobias said to him the night before Emma’s burial, and each time he went into Kissimmee or Fort Drum or Fort Pierce he brought back gifts for Glenda, dresses still hanging unused in her closet, ribbons and bottles of perfume, aprons with lace borders—all of them useless on a wilderness homestead but nevertheless appreciated by Glenda. His mother’s death and Glenda’s willing assumption of Emma’s role brought them even closer together, forming an unbreakable bond between them.
December 28
“Pappa! Come down off there before you sail away like a kite!
The wind’s too strong for us to pick any longer!”
Tobias paid no need to Zech as he continued to perch on top of a wooden ladder leaning against an orange tree, a canvas sack slung over his shoulder.
Zech shouted again, “Pappa! Come on down before I come after you!”
“I’ll finish the sack first!” Tobias shot back. “Go on about your business and let me be!”
“Stubborn old billygoat,” Zech mumbled as he walked away and started loading filled barrels onto the ox wagon.
Glenda’s special Christmas dinner with roasted turkey and mincemeat pies was still fresh on everyone’s mind as they put the holiday behind them and worked the grove. There was a bumper crop of juice-filled globes, and the harvest was about a third finished.
The wind started early that morning, and the sky far in the north was totally black, signifying a coming northern. This was the time of year when brief storms and cold fronts rushed across the land and then disappeared as quickly as they arrived, making the temperature go up and down rapidly, often changing as much as thirty degrees in one hour. It was not a thing of dread but something to look forward to, not only for its temporary cooling effect but also because it sweetened the winter crop of collards now full grown in the garden and made the oranges even juicier.
Everyone else went back to the house as Zech waited for his father to finish picking and empty his sack into a barrel. As soon as this was done he drove the oxen to the barn and stored the barrels inside the adjacent orange shed.
By mid-afternoon the wind got much stronger and roared instead of growling. It lashed the hickory and oaks and popped the palmetto as the temperature dropped sharply, causing Zech to shiver as he left the house and went to the small corral attached to the rear of the barn. Frog and Lester were already there, driving the horses and oxen inside where they would be given a feeding of hay and bedded down for the night.
Frog pulled the lightweight denim jacket tighter around his neck and said, “Feels like the devil’s stingin’ me. This storm gone be a humdinger if it gets much colder. I think I’ll build a big fire in my cabin. That ought to keep a old man like me warm.”
“I guess it would,” Zech said. “But before you do that we need to chop more firewood.”
By the time Zech got back to the stoop, the outside thermometer attached to the wall showed only three degrees above freezing. He brought an armload of stove wood into the kitchen and returned for another, and in this short time the mercury had dropped to thirty-one degrees.
Tobias was sitting close to the stove when Zech brought in the last load of wood. “How’s it doing out there?” he asked.
“Getting colder, Pappa. It just went to a degree below freezing.”
“If it keeps this up and holds for long, it’ll sure hurt the oranges. I wish we’d got done with the pickin’ before this came.”
“It’ll probably ease up and pass by. It always has. If the wind keeps up like this it’ll blow the cold over the tops of the trees anyway. There’s no need for worry.”
“Maybe so,” Tobias said doubtfully, “but if the temperature drops much more, everbody better pray it don’t rain. If it does, we’ll have an ice storm like you never seen. I seen it happen a many a time in Georgia when I was a boy, and it always started out just like this.”
“Well, it didn’t really hurt nothing, did it, Pappa?”
“Not so much that nature didn’t cure in the spring, but we sure didn’t have orange trees up there.”
At suppertime the kitchen was cozy-warm, and the meal took on a festive air. After a sweltering summer and the sultry dog days of early fall, a cold snap was a welcome relief. It thickened the blood and invigorated everyone to a point of exhilaration. No one except Tobias seemed to be particularly concerned as the wind pounded the side of the house and rattled the cypress shingles.
Frog helped himself to a second portion of collard greens and corn pone and said, “If it’s still cold in the morning we ought to go out and shoot wild hogs. There ain’t no better time for the killin’ and dressin’ of hogs. It makes the meat taste sweet as honey.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Zech agreed. “We could cook some fresh, smoke some and salt down the rest. We might could get enough pork to last all winter.”
“Can I go too, Pappa?” Sol asked, excited by just the mention of a hunt.
“This time you can. If you’re not old enough now to face a wild boar you never will be. Way before I was your age I’d done killed a bear with Pappa’s old shotgun.”
“That’s for sure,” Tobias said. “Zech done it when we lived up in the scrub. Two bears tried to get in the barn one night when I was off driving Confederate cattle up to Georgia during the war. When they hemmed your granny up, Zech blowed one of them bears slam across the clearing and into the woodshed.”
Sol’s eyes widened as he said, “Really, Grampy? Did Pappa really do that? You’re not funning me again, are you?”
“He sure enough did.”
“Will you tell me about it sometime? Please, Grampy, will you?”
“I’ll tell you about it when we ain’t got nothing better to do. So just hush up about it now. And I’ll tell you a lot more besides that. We seen some things and done some things folks nowdays wouldn’t believe.”
“Would you believe your big brave daddy tripping over his own boots and falling flat on his face at a square dance?” Glenda said to Sol.
“Did you do that, Pappa?”
“Can’t say as I did,” Zech laughed. “Leastwise, I don’t remember. But your mamma once ate some rattlesnake meat and threw up all over the prairie.”
“That’s enough!” Glenda snapped. “Not at meal time anyway. We started out talking about hog hunting, so how did we get around to all this?”
“Well, Miz Glenda,” Frog said, “when you get a bunch of dodo birds perched on the same fence, like they is in here now, there ain’t no telling which way the conversation will go. But getting back to hogs, are we goin’ in the morning or not? If we ain’t, I won’t come out at sunup and freeze my tail off for nothin’.”
“We’ll go,” Zech said. “Come first dawn we’ll eat and leave.”
“Not me,” Tobias said. “My days of chasin’ some scrawny varmint all over the woods is long gone. I’ll stay here and help later with the scrapin’ if you get anything to scrape.”
“Fair enough,” Zech said, relieved that Tobias did not want to go. “We’ll meet here in the kitchen at dawn.”
Before going to bed Zech stoked the fire to keep the room warm during the night; then he took the coal oil lamp and went out to the stoop. The wind made the flame flicker and nearly go out as he held the lamp in front of the thermometer. It now read twenty degrees, a temperature drop of fifty-five degrees since morning, and for the first time he shared Tobias’ concern. But he learned long ago they were all powerless and at the mercy of their most fickle and deadly enemy, the weather. It couldn’t be shot or hanged or roped or corralled or harnessed in any way. It made them helpless, and whatever was to come would come, regardless of worry or concern. He glanced once more, and then he turned and went back into the house.
***
Dawn was late in coming because the sun couldn’t get through a low covering of black clouds boiling just over the treetops. There was an eerie gray gloom over the clearing when Zech came outside and looked at the thermometer. It read fourteen degrees, and the cold slapped into his face like ice water. He shivered violently and went back into the house.
He went to the stove and backed up as close as he could get to it, shivering again, feeling the heat tingle his flesh as it drove away the cold. Glenda put on the coffee pot and said, “What’s the reading now?”
“Fourteen degrees. The water bucket is froze solid. If it wasn’t for the wind still blowin’ we’d be knee deep in frost. I’ve never seen it so cold.”
“Are you still going hunting?”
“I guess. It’s up to the others. If they want to, I will, but we’ll all have to wear two pairs of britches.”
“It’s foolish to go out in this. You’ll make yourselves sick.”
“Well, if we do go, I don’t think we’ll have to shoot any hogs. They’ll be so froze we can pick ’em up like cord wood and bring ’em on back to the house.”
Tobias came into the room and poured himself a mug of coffee. He said, “I heard what you said, Zech. Fourteen degrees. That means the oranges are gone. And if it holds for much longer, the trees’ll go too.”
Zech knew the truth of this, but still he didn’t want Tobias upset. He said, “Don’t count them out yet, Pappa. This may blow over by noon. If it does I don’t think it’ll leave much damage.”
“If you believe that you also believe a jaybird can play a fiddle.”
There was nothing more Zech could say, and he was relieved when Frog and Lester came into the house and interrupted the conversation.
Frog backed up to the stove and said, “Lord have mercy. What a feelin’ it is to drape your bare bottom over one of them outhouse holes on a mornin’ like this! I think my butt is froze solid.”
Glenda smiled and shook her head as she continued the task of making fried hoecakes for their breakfast. She mumbled, “You men!”
After the meal was finished they took the rifles and went to the barn to saddle the horses. The cold rushed through the double layers of clothing like they weren’t there, burning the skin and making the bones feel like they were being crushed. If any one of them had backed out the others would follow gladly, but no one made the suggestion, each waiting to see what the others would do.
Zech said, “Any hog with good sense is going to be buried as deep as he can get in some bushes. I don’t think we’ll have much luck without dogs, ’less we riot them out ourselves.”
“Well, I ain’t goin’ to stick my foot in no bushes for sure,” Frog said. “They’ll be rattlers in there too. Maybe we ought to just ride for a spell and see what it looks like, if the horses don’t freeze under us.”
“Me and Sol’ll go down by the garden and cut north. You and Lester go west. If you need help pop your whip.”
“It may be too froze to pop,” Frog responded. “And if I’m stuck to the saddle when we get back I’ll just ride my hoss into the kitchen.”
The horses blew white clouds of icy breath as they trotted away. When Zech and Sol reached the garden they paused and looked over the split rail fence. All of the plants were flat on the ground and had taken on the death color of yellow. Only a few hardy collards were still upright, but the fringes of each leaf were curling. Tomatoes, beans, squash and peppers lay in lifeless heaps.
They turned north and rode into the grove. Zech dismounted, picked an orange and cut it in half with his hunting knife. The inside was solid ice, and when he squeezed it a blob of frozen juice plopped to the ground and bounced like a steel ball. He knew now the remaining crop was a total loss, and he dreaded telling Tobias.
From the grove they went into the creek bottom and found a flight of twenty Carolina parakeets dead on the ground, all frozen. One remaining bird was on a tree limb, swaying drunkenly. As they watched, it fluttered to the ground, flapping its wings in one last desperate gasp of life, and then it too lay still.
The sight of the colorful bodies dotting the ground in motionless heaps saddened Sol. He said, “Pappa, are they all going to die?”
“I suppose so. They can’t stand this much cold. It’ll kill a lot of fish too, and other things.”
Sol then said, “Pappa, I’m not trying to back out of the hunt if you want to keep going, but ever time my hand touches metal it sticks to it. It feels like it’s going to pull my skin off. I don’t think I can hold my rifle and aim it without some gloves.”
“I’m having the same trouble. We best go on back to the house now. There’s no need for us to stay out here and freeze for nothing.”
Shortly after they reached the house, Frog and Lester returned too. The rest of the day was spent in the room by the stove.
***
The cold lingered on for two days as they all huddled inside for warmth. A clear sky and brilliant sun greeted the third morning, and the temperature rose rapidly to seventy-five degrees.
Tobias and Zech went to the grove and found the trees not green but brown, each already surrounded by piles of fallen dead leaves. Tobias cut into the trunk of one and said, “It ain’t dead all the way. They just might make it if it stays warm like this. I just thank the Lord we didn’t get no rain and ice with all that cold.”
“They’ll make it, Pappa. We may never have another cold snap that bad. What I need to do now is replant the garden. There’s not a single thing left in there alive, and I sure don’t want to go back to eating wild poke two meals a day.”
“Poke ain’t so bad. We lived off it for years when we had to.”
“I know, Pappa. But tomatoes and beans and collards is better. Soon as we get back to the house I’ll put out the seeds.”
***
Amonth later Tobias came running through the woods, shouting as loud as he could, “They done it! They done it!”
Everyone poured out of cabins and house, and Zech scrambled from the barn and raced to meet his father as he came into the clearing. He said, “What in the world is all the shouting for, Pappa?”
“The orange trees,” Tobias panted, “they’re puttin’ out sap and new growth! They’re goin’ to bloom, Zech! They done made it!”
“That’s great, Pappa! Just great. I knew they’d come through.”
“I sure thought for a while it was all gone, but the Lord’s done smiled down on us. I got to go now and tell Emma.”
Zech stood by Glenda and put his arm around her as they watched the frail body lumber across the clearing toward the small plot of ground bearing Emma’s grave.
February 6, 1895
Zech was in the garden, driving thin stakes into the ground beside the tomato and bean plants that were thrusting up from the soft soil, when he felt the first rush of cool air. It was a moist breeze, not hot and dry, and he said to Sol who was working close by, “Goin’ to rain soon. It’ll be good for the garden. We better hurry and get done with this.”
A thunderhead formed in the north, layer upon layer of black clouds that spread rapidly and soon covered the horizon. The wind then came in gusts, blowing leaves from the nearby woods and scurrying them across the garden.
Rain was just beginning to pelt down when they reached the clearing and ran for the stoop. Zech stood there for several minutes, watching the blue sky disappear as clouds raced to the south like galloping horses, turning early afternoon into twilight.
1894
For over a year Tobias grieved, seldom leaving the clearing and having no interest in cows or anything. After this period of mourning he gradually focused his attention back on the orange grove, his one personal pride and satisfaction, and he spent most of his time there, often just sitting alone among the trees. Zech often said that Tobias counted each tiny orange as it changed from a blossom, knowing in advance exactly how many barrels the crop would fill. And this was more fact than jest.
Zech, Glenda and Sol moved into the main house to be closer to Tobias, and Glenda assumed all of the chores that once were Emma’s, the cooking and washing and housecleaning, never complaining or asking for help. Several times Zech offered to hire someone to come live on the place and help her, but each offer was refused. Whenever the men were tending herd close by, she went out each day in the buckboard with a hot meal for them, and often she rode horseback alongside Zech and the others as they drove cows into the corral for branding. Zech could not remember the last time she wore a dress, seeing her daily in the jeans and chambray shirt and the wide-brimmed black hat. Without the flaming red ponytail hanging down her back, she could have passed for just another cowhand.
Zech and the men started fencing the MacIvey land, going to Kissimmee and bringing back wagon loads of barbed wire, cutting cypress posts in the swamp and stringing the unfamiliar barrier yard by yard across the open range, coming back week after week and finding it cut, then stringing again. He knew this would eventually lead to trouble, but he was determined to see it through.
There had been no drive to Punta Rassa in two years, and this was the reason Zech wanted to fence the land. He planned to raise his own herds, give up the practice of wandering with them all summer, and fatten them on MacIvey land before driving them to market; and there was no way to contain the cattle except with the hated wire.
They were still bothered constantly by rustlers, often finding cows killed on the range or driven away. During the previous summer they took turns riding armed guard both day and night, but it did no more good than looking for invisible sand flies. The raiders were indeed ghosts, killing and stealing and then vanishing. Only now, Zech felt sure he knew where they were coming from. His thoughts turned more and more to the Ten Thousand Islands area.
Zech also remembered the things Tobias said to him the night before Emma’s burial, and each time he went into Kissimmee or Fort Drum or Fort Pierce he brought back gifts for Glenda, dresses still hanging unused in her closet, ribbons and bottles of perfume, aprons with lace borders—all of them useless on a wilderness homestead but nevertheless appreciated by Glenda. His mother’s death and Glenda’s willing assumption of Emma’s role brought them even closer together, forming an unbreakable bond between them.
December 28
“Pappa! Come down off there before you sail away like a kite!
The wind’s too strong for us to pick any longer!”
Tobias paid no need to Zech as he continued to perch on top of a wooden ladder leaning against an orange tree, a canvas sack slung over his shoulder.
Zech shouted again, “Pappa! Come on down before I come after you!”
“I’ll finish the sack first!” Tobias shot back. “Go on about your business and let me be!”
“Stubborn old billygoat,” Zech mumbled as he walked away and started loading filled barrels onto the ox wagon.
Glenda’s special Christmas dinner with roasted turkey and mincemeat pies was still fresh on everyone’s mind as they put the holiday behind them and worked the grove. There was a bumper crop of juice-filled globes, and the harvest was about a third finished.
The wind started early that morning, and the sky far in the north was totally black, signifying a coming northern. This was the time of year when brief storms and cold fronts rushed across the land and then disappeared as quickly as they arrived, making the temperature go up and down rapidly, often changing as much as thirty degrees in one hour. It was not a thing of dread but something to look forward to, not only for its temporary cooling effect but also because it sweetened the winter crop of collards now full grown in the garden and made the oranges even juicier.
Everyone else went back to the house as Zech waited for his father to finish picking and empty his sack into a barrel. As soon as this was done he drove the oxen to the barn and stored the barrels inside the adjacent orange shed.
By mid-afternoon the wind got much stronger and roared instead of growling. It lashed the hickory and oaks and popped the palmetto as the temperature dropped sharply, causing Zech to shiver as he left the house and went to the small corral attached to the rear of the barn. Frog and Lester were already there, driving the horses and oxen inside where they would be given a feeding of hay and bedded down for the night.
Frog pulled the lightweight denim jacket tighter around his neck and said, “Feels like the devil’s stingin’ me. This storm gone be a humdinger if it gets much colder. I think I’ll build a big fire in my cabin. That ought to keep a old man like me warm.”
“I guess it would,” Zech said. “But before you do that we need to chop more firewood.”
By the time Zech got back to the stoop, the outside thermometer attached to the wall showed only three degrees above freezing. He brought an armload of stove wood into the kitchen and returned for another, and in this short time the mercury had dropped to thirty-one degrees.
Tobias was sitting close to the stove when Zech brought in the last load of wood. “How’s it doing out there?” he asked.
“Getting colder, Pappa. It just went to a degree below freezing.”
“If it keeps this up and holds for long, it’ll sure hurt the oranges. I wish we’d got done with the pickin’ before this came.”
“It’ll probably ease up and pass by. It always has. If the wind keeps up like this it’ll blow the cold over the tops of the trees anyway. There’s no need for worry.”
“Maybe so,” Tobias said doubtfully, “but if the temperature drops much more, everbody better pray it don’t rain. If it does, we’ll have an ice storm like you never seen. I seen it happen a many a time in Georgia when I was a boy, and it always started out just like this.”
“Well, it didn’t really hurt nothing, did it, Pappa?”
“Not so much that nature didn’t cure in the spring, but we sure didn’t have orange trees up there.”
At suppertime the kitchen was cozy-warm, and the meal took on a festive air. After a sweltering summer and the sultry dog days of early fall, a cold snap was a welcome relief. It thickened the blood and invigorated everyone to a point of exhilaration. No one except Tobias seemed to be particularly concerned as the wind pounded the side of the house and rattled the cypress shingles.
Frog helped himself to a second portion of collard greens and corn pone and said, “If it’s still cold in the morning we ought to go out and shoot wild hogs. There ain’t no better time for the killin’ and dressin’ of hogs. It makes the meat taste sweet as honey.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Zech agreed. “We could cook some fresh, smoke some and salt down the rest. We might could get enough pork to last all winter.”
“Can I go too, Pappa?” Sol asked, excited by just the mention of a hunt.
“This time you can. If you’re not old enough now to face a wild boar you never will be. Way before I was your age I’d done killed a bear with Pappa’s old shotgun.”
“That’s for sure,” Tobias said. “Zech done it when we lived up in the scrub. Two bears tried to get in the barn one night when I was off driving Confederate cattle up to Georgia during the war. When they hemmed your granny up, Zech blowed one of them bears slam across the clearing and into the woodshed.”
Sol’s eyes widened as he said, “Really, Grampy? Did Pappa really do that? You’re not funning me again, are you?”
“He sure enough did.”
“Will you tell me about it sometime? Please, Grampy, will you?”
“I’ll tell you about it when we ain’t got nothing better to do. So just hush up about it now. And I’ll tell you a lot more besides that. We seen some things and done some things folks nowdays wouldn’t believe.”
“Would you believe your big brave daddy tripping over his own boots and falling flat on his face at a square dance?” Glenda said to Sol.
“Did you do that, Pappa?”
“Can’t say as I did,” Zech laughed. “Leastwise, I don’t remember. But your mamma once ate some rattlesnake meat and threw up all over the prairie.”
“That’s enough!” Glenda snapped. “Not at meal time anyway. We started out talking about hog hunting, so how did we get around to all this?”
“Well, Miz Glenda,” Frog said, “when you get a bunch of dodo birds perched on the same fence, like they is in here now, there ain’t no telling which way the conversation will go. But getting back to hogs, are we goin’ in the morning or not? If we ain’t, I won’t come out at sunup and freeze my tail off for nothin’.”
“We’ll go,” Zech said. “Come first dawn we’ll eat and leave.”
“Not me,” Tobias said. “My days of chasin’ some scrawny varmint all over the woods is long gone. I’ll stay here and help later with the scrapin’ if you get anything to scrape.”
“Fair enough,” Zech said, relieved that Tobias did not want to go. “We’ll meet here in the kitchen at dawn.”
Before going to bed Zech stoked the fire to keep the room warm during the night; then he took the coal oil lamp and went out to the stoop. The wind made the flame flicker and nearly go out as he held the lamp in front of the thermometer. It now read twenty degrees, a temperature drop of fifty-five degrees since morning, and for the first time he shared Tobias’ concern. But he learned long ago they were all powerless and at the mercy of their most fickle and deadly enemy, the weather. It couldn’t be shot or hanged or roped or corralled or harnessed in any way. It made them helpless, and whatever was to come would come, regardless of worry or concern. He glanced once more, and then he turned and went back into the house.
***
Dawn was late in coming because the sun couldn’t get through a low covering of black clouds boiling just over the treetops. There was an eerie gray gloom over the clearing when Zech came outside and looked at the thermometer. It read fourteen degrees, and the cold slapped into his face like ice water. He shivered violently and went back into the house.
He went to the stove and backed up as close as he could get to it, shivering again, feeling the heat tingle his flesh as it drove away the cold. Glenda put on the coffee pot and said, “What’s the reading now?”
“Fourteen degrees. The water bucket is froze solid. If it wasn’t for the wind still blowin’ we’d be knee deep in frost. I’ve never seen it so cold.”
“Are you still going hunting?”
“I guess. It’s up to the others. If they want to, I will, but we’ll all have to wear two pairs of britches.”
“It’s foolish to go out in this. You’ll make yourselves sick.”
“Well, if we do go, I don’t think we’ll have to shoot any hogs. They’ll be so froze we can pick ’em up like cord wood and bring ’em on back to the house.”
Tobias came into the room and poured himself a mug of coffee. He said, “I heard what you said, Zech. Fourteen degrees. That means the oranges are gone. And if it holds for much longer, the trees’ll go too.”
Zech knew the truth of this, but still he didn’t want Tobias upset. He said, “Don’t count them out yet, Pappa. This may blow over by noon. If it does I don’t think it’ll leave much damage.”
“If you believe that you also believe a jaybird can play a fiddle.”
There was nothing more Zech could say, and he was relieved when Frog and Lester came into the house and interrupted the conversation.
Frog backed up to the stove and said, “Lord have mercy. What a feelin’ it is to drape your bare bottom over one of them outhouse holes on a mornin’ like this! I think my butt is froze solid.”
Glenda smiled and shook her head as she continued the task of making fried hoecakes for their breakfast. She mumbled, “You men!”
After the meal was finished they took the rifles and went to the barn to saddle the horses. The cold rushed through the double layers of clothing like they weren’t there, burning the skin and making the bones feel like they were being crushed. If any one of them had backed out the others would follow gladly, but no one made the suggestion, each waiting to see what the others would do.
Zech said, “Any hog with good sense is going to be buried as deep as he can get in some bushes. I don’t think we’ll have much luck without dogs, ’less we riot them out ourselves.”
“Well, I ain’t goin’ to stick my foot in no bushes for sure,” Frog said. “They’ll be rattlers in there too. Maybe we ought to just ride for a spell and see what it looks like, if the horses don’t freeze under us.”
“Me and Sol’ll go down by the garden and cut north. You and Lester go west. If you need help pop your whip.”
“It may be too froze to pop,” Frog responded. “And if I’m stuck to the saddle when we get back I’ll just ride my hoss into the kitchen.”
The horses blew white clouds of icy breath as they trotted away. When Zech and Sol reached the garden they paused and looked over the split rail fence. All of the plants were flat on the ground and had taken on the death color of yellow. Only a few hardy collards were still upright, but the fringes of each leaf were curling. Tomatoes, beans, squash and peppers lay in lifeless heaps.
They turned north and rode into the grove. Zech dismounted, picked an orange and cut it in half with his hunting knife. The inside was solid ice, and when he squeezed it a blob of frozen juice plopped to the ground and bounced like a steel ball. He knew now the remaining crop was a total loss, and he dreaded telling Tobias.
From the grove they went into the creek bottom and found a flight of twenty Carolina parakeets dead on the ground, all frozen. One remaining bird was on a tree limb, swaying drunkenly. As they watched, it fluttered to the ground, flapping its wings in one last desperate gasp of life, and then it too lay still.
The sight of the colorful bodies dotting the ground in motionless heaps saddened Sol. He said, “Pappa, are they all going to die?”
“I suppose so. They can’t stand this much cold. It’ll kill a lot of fish too, and other things.”
Sol then said, “Pappa, I’m not trying to back out of the hunt if you want to keep going, but ever time my hand touches metal it sticks to it. It feels like it’s going to pull my skin off. I don’t think I can hold my rifle and aim it without some gloves.”
“I’m having the same trouble. We best go on back to the house now. There’s no need for us to stay out here and freeze for nothing.”
Shortly after they reached the house, Frog and Lester returned too. The rest of the day was spent in the room by the stove.
***
The cold lingered on for two days as they all huddled inside for warmth. A clear sky and brilliant sun greeted the third morning, and the temperature rose rapidly to seventy-five degrees.
Tobias and Zech went to the grove and found the trees not green but brown, each already surrounded by piles of fallen dead leaves. Tobias cut into the trunk of one and said, “It ain’t dead all the way. They just might make it if it stays warm like this. I just thank the Lord we didn’t get no rain and ice with all that cold.”
“They’ll make it, Pappa. We may never have another cold snap that bad. What I need to do now is replant the garden. There’s not a single thing left in there alive, and I sure don’t want to go back to eating wild poke two meals a day.”
“Poke ain’t so bad. We lived off it for years when we had to.”
“I know, Pappa. But tomatoes and beans and collards is better. Soon as we get back to the house I’ll put out the seeds.”
***
Amonth later Tobias came running through the woods, shouting as loud as he could, “They done it! They done it!”
Everyone poured out of cabins and house, and Zech scrambled from the barn and raced to meet his father as he came into the clearing. He said, “What in the world is all the shouting for, Pappa?”
“The orange trees,” Tobias panted, “they’re puttin’ out sap and new growth! They’re goin’ to bloom, Zech! They done made it!”
“That’s great, Pappa! Just great. I knew they’d come through.”
“I sure thought for a while it was all gone, but the Lord’s done smiled down on us. I got to go now and tell Emma.”
Zech stood by Glenda and put his arm around her as they watched the frail body lumber across the clearing toward the small plot of ground bearing Emma’s grave.
February 6, 1895
Zech was in the garden, driving thin stakes into the ground beside the tomato and bean plants that were thrusting up from the soft soil, when he felt the first rush of cool air. It was a moist breeze, not hot and dry, and he said to Sol who was working close by, “Goin’ to rain soon. It’ll be good for the garden. We better hurry and get done with this.”
A thunderhead formed in the north, layer upon layer of black clouds that spread rapidly and soon covered the horizon. The wind then came in gusts, blowing leaves from the nearby woods and scurrying them across the garden.
Rain was just beginning to pelt down when they reached the clearing and ran for the stoop. Zech stood there for several minutes, watching the blue sky disappear as clouds raced to the south like galloping horses, turning early afternoon into twilight.
