Sycamore Row

house, and the men got in their trucks and left. Seth and I took off. The last thing I saw was Cleon talking to Esther on the front steps of their little shack. We hopped on our pony and sprinted home. When we sneaked through the window to our room, our mother was waiting. She was angry and wanted to know where we had been. Seth was the better liar and he said we’d been out chasing fireflies. She seemed to believe us. We begged her not to tell Cleon, and I don’t think she ever did. We were in bed when we heard his truck approach and park. He came into the house and went to bed. We couldn’t sleep. We whispered all night. I couldn’t help but cry and Seth said it was okay to cry, as long as no one else saw me. He swore he wouldn’t tell anyone that I was crying. Then I caught him crying too. It was so hot and these were the days before air-conditioning.Long before daybreak, we sneaked out the window again and sat on the back porch where it was cooler. We talked about going back to Sycamore Row and checking on Sylvester, but we really weren’t serious. We speculated about what would happen to his body. And we were certain the sheriff would come out and arrest Cleon and the other men. The sheriff would need witnesses, and that’s why we could never breathe a word of what we’d seen. Never. We did not go to sleep that night. When we heard our mother in the kitchen, we sneaked back to bed, just in time for Cleon to walk in and yell at us to get to the barn and milk the cows. We did that every morning at dawn. Every morning. It was a tough life. I hated the farm, and from that day on I hated my father like no child has ever hated a parent. I wanted the sheriff to come get him and take him away forever.
”
    Off camera, Lucien seemed to need a break himself. He paused for a long time before continuing with “
What happened to the Rinds families?
”
    Ancil dropped his head and shook it in an exaggerated way. “
Awful, just awful. The story gets worse. A day or two later, Cleon went to see Esther. He gave her a few bucks and made her sign a deed to the eighty acres. He promised her she could stay there, and she did for about forty-eight hours. The sheriff showed up all right. He and a deputy and Cleon went out to the settlement and told Esther and the other Rinds folks that they were being evicted. Immediately. Pack up your stuff right now and get off his land. There was a small clapboard chapel, a church where they had worshipped for decades, and to prove he owned everything, Cleon torched it. Burned it to the ground to show what a big man he was. The sheriff and the deputy helped him. They threatened to torch the shacks too.
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    “
And you saw this?
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    “
Sure. Seth and I missed nothing. We were supposed to be chopping cotton, but when we saw the sheriff pull up in front of our house, we knew something was up. We were hoping he would arrest Cleon, but that’s not the way things worked in Mississippi back then. Not at all. The sheriff was there to help Cleon clean up his land and get rid of the blacks.
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    “
What happened to the blacks?
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Well, they left. They grabbed whatever they could and ran into the woods.
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    “
How many?
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Again, I was a kid. I wasn’t counting. But there were several families of Rindses living on the land, not all around the settlement, but they were fairly close to each other.
” Ancil took a deep breath and mumbled, “
I’m really tired all of a sudden.
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    Lucien said, “
We’re almost finished. Please continue.
”
    “Okay, okay. So, they were running away, into the woods, and as soon as a family vacated their shack, Cleon and the sheriff would set it on fire. They burned everything. I vividly remember some of the blacks standing at the edge of the woods, holding their kids and whatever possessions they could grab, and looking back at the fires and the thick gray smoke and crying and wailing. It was just awful.
”
    “
What happened to them?
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    “
They scattered. For a while, a bunch of them were camping beside Tutwiler Creek, deep in the woods near the Big Brown River. Seth and I were looking for Toby and we found him there with his family. They were starving and terrified. We loaded up the horses one Sunday afternoon, sneaked away, and took as much food as we could steal without getting caught. That was the day I saw Esther and her little girl, Lois. The kid was about five years old and completely naked. She had no clothes. It was just awful.