Chapter 2
Miss Maisie turned out to be colored, and, most distressing of all, did not seem inclined to give Hollis the deference she expected. Miss Maisie simply pointed out the buckets Hollis needed to fetch the water, and then sent her to the stream to start hauling the water back to the large laundry kettles. Miss Maisie had already started the fires underneath them.
“Why am I the one fetching the water?” asked Hollis with some indignation.
“Cause you the one whose job it is,” said Miss Maisie with a note of steel in her voice. Her eyes were steely as well, their black pupils surrounded by a ring of yellow. “I got the fires going and some of the water fetched, but I also gotta take down yesterday’s washing and get it folded and back to the camp. You want to go back to the camp this morning?”
“No,” said Hollis softly. She picked up the buckets and went down the trail to the stream. No, she certainly did not want to see the camp again. Hollis kept an eye out for water moccasins, but she didn’t even see the tracks of deer or raccoons by the creek, as if this area were blighted even to the wildlife.
Hollis had always maintained a cordial relationship with the coloreds on the farm. Most had been in the fields, anyway, not in the house, but sometimes, her mother hired Miss Clementine or Miss Tansy to help with the household or take care of a sick child. Those women were mostly silent and respectful, and their presence in the house was soft, like a blanket of fog or a coating of down. They were comforting, kept their eyes on the floor when addressing Hollis’ parents, collected their wages at the end of the day, and were no bother to anyone. They were easily employed, and just as easily dismissed and forgotten once their usefulness was through.
Over the course of her first two days, Hollis hauled more water, and used a large paddle to stir stained laundry in the cauldrons of boiling water mixed with caustic soap, than she ever had at home. Her skin became red from the heat of the laundry coming out of the kettles and irritation from the powdered soap. Her feet hurt at the end of the day, making her walk home take far longer than her walk to work. She ate dinner without tasting it, and dropped into bed the moment she was finished. Her mother didn’t even mention household chores to her and just let her sleep. She was up before dawn to eat breakfast and begin the long walk back to the camp.
The third morning she spent at the camp was foggy, and Hollis had no confidence in the laundry drying before tomorrow at the earliest. The air was heavy with moisture; at this time of year, that wasn’t unusual. Hollis finished hanging the laundry and looked back at the ramshackle hut that passed for the laundry house. She didn’t really want to go back inside to face Miss Maisie. She’d never felt so uncomfortable around someone else before.
She’d almost mentioned it to her father last night before she’d gone to bed, but hadn’t wanted to give him any excuse to instruct her to quit this job. As far as he was concerned, she was already treading on dangerous ground just by wanting to get away. The farm life had been enough for his wife, for his mother, his aunts, and his grandmothers. Why would Hollis want anything different?
Hollis took a deep breath. She couldn’t avoid Miss Maisie for long, and anyway, it was better than being in the camp itself. As it was, she could take the trail to the shed and bypass the camp entirely, and as long as she didn’t look past the gate, she didn’t have to see anything that went on there.
Hollis started back toward the shack, but a strange sound stopped her. She listened more closely. It was almost the sigh of the wind in the pines, but lower, more guttural.
Voices.
Someone was in the shack with Miss Maisie. Hollis almost called out to scare them off, but the voices didn’t sound disturbed or frightened. If Miss Maisie had a visitor, it would seem to be one she welcomed.
Hollis shifted her weight from foot to foot and wondered what she should do. She didn’t want to confront Miss Maisie if a friend had stopped by, and face stares from two unfriendly women rather than just one. The laundry crew was now just herself and Miss Maisie; that someone else had joined them, for however short a time, was something Hollis suspected Captain Scott wouldn’t like.
If Miss Tansy or Miss Clementine had ever done something untoward near Hollis, she would simply have gone to her father and told him what she had heard or seen. Here, going to the Captain hardly seemed a viable option. Perhaps the Captain would fire Miss Maisie, but more likely, he would simply reprimand her, and that would leave Hollis still in the laundry shack with her day after day. If she made an enemy of Miss Maisie now, the rest of her tenure here at the camp was going to be even more unendurable.
Why should she care if Miss Maisie had friends, and that sometimes, they came to visit?
She took a step backward and stepped on a twig. The resulting snap was loud enough that Hollis knew the people in the shack should have heard. Indeed, the whispering stopped immediately.
Miss Maisie stepped outside a few moments later. Her habitual hangdog expression was fouler than usual. “You finish hanging’ the sheets?”
“Yes, Miss Maisie, though I don’t suppose they’ll get dry today. Weather won’t allow it.”
The other woman just shrugged. Her dark skin was stretched over her thin, bird-like frame as if the skin were three sizes too small, except under her chin and her upper arms, where her skin sagged the way it had on Grandma Fairfield in the years before her death.
“We need more powder,” said Miss Maisie. “Go to the gate and tell them; they’ll make sure we get it by tomorrow.”
Hollis nodded and set off toward the gate. As she turned, she realized Miss Maisie was headed back inside the shack, no doubt to finish her conversation or usher the other person off into the woods.
Hollis didn’t turn back, but she felt eyes watching her every move as she walked to the gate on the wide path that would have been muddy except for the thick blanket of pine needles that kept most of the mud trapped underneath.
The guard at the gate this morning was the same one who had been there when she arrived. He nodded to her. “Ma’am.”
“Miss Maisie reports that we need more washing powder,” said Hollis. At home, they used lye soap that Aunt Vinita made, but the powder they were using here in the camp was from Birmingham. Besides turning Hollis’ hands red, it smelled strangely chemical and made the laundry dry stiff. When she’d asked Miss Maisie about it, the woman had just shrugged.
Hollis had heard tales that the East and the Union had more advanced things for their citizens, like better soaps and fabrics and kitchen utensils. Things the Fairfield farm could certainly use. But of course, those items would never be available in the West. Everyone knew that the East and the Union were fighting each other for the chance to take over the West and assert foreign control over Birmingham. The West—the real Confederacy, as her father said—would stand alone, and strong, no matter what the Union and the East said or did.
After all, the Yankees have proved how traitorous they were when they’d taken Tennessee after the Great War. That state had been part of the Western Confederacy for fifty years and now had been in Yankee hands for over a hundred.
Nothing good came out of the north. But even the East had apparently been corrupted, which was how Pastor Acuff had explained the nice roads, large well-stocked stores, and appliances that graced the households of places like Florida, which was just a few miles away from Tensaw. Sure, the people of the East had things, but those things had cost them their souls. Better to exist by the work of one’s hands than to become idle and corrupt.
If lack of work made one corrupt, Hollis need not fear such a thing. The drudgery of laundry for Camp Pinewood would make her as holy as a person could be.
The guard at the gate gestured for another man to open it. “Ma’am,” he said, “the Captain said he’d like to see you next time you came by.”
Hollis nodded and shuddered, hoping the young man didn’t notice her discomfiture. She still had no idea how anyone could work inside this camp and sound so calm, as if this were an ordinary day.
It was even more frightening to contemplate that this was just an ordinary day for the soldier at the gate. Which made Hollis wonder what he would consider a terrible day. For her, just getting near this camp was awful enough.
She kept her eyes down but couldn’t unsee two corpses hanging from the gallows this morning. Did they execute people here every day? What was the point of that? Why bring people here just to hang them? Was this a prison? If so, why didn’t everyone speak about it like they did Five Mile Prison down in Mobile? That wasn’t a secret; Charity Lange’s cousin had spent a year there after robbing a store as a teenager. Charity didn’t like to mention it, but it wasn’t like the prison itself was something hidden.
Camp Pinewood was different. Except for the strange whispers from Aunt Vinita, no one discussed it, even though everyone had to know it was here. You couldn’t chop down acres of forest, bring in groups of soldiers, and send trains of prisoners to the Mobile station without everyone knowing something was going on.
Hollis made her way up the few steps to the door of Captain Scott’s office, which was ajar. Hollis reached out to knock, but she heard voices. One sounded like Captain Scott.
“This here’s a crazy plan,” he was saying.
“It ain’t what I wanted, but it’s what we got to do after the mess in Birmingham last week.”
Mess in Birmingham? Hollis hungered for more news. Did he mean more rationing was coming?
“She still don’t belong here with the coloreds and the unnaturals and the race traitors. You know we’ll never be able to let her go. Keep her under house arrest in Mobile; don’t leave her here.”
“Too many people might find out. We need to keep this quiet, and no place is quieter than here. We can decide what to do with her later, depending on what the East does.”
Hollis bit her lip at the unemotional tone in the other’s voice.
“Please, let me go,” said a young girl’s voice. “I won’t tell anyone. I swear!” The accent was unfamiliar but the girl didn’t sound colored.
Hollis’ gut clenched so hard she thought she might vomit right here on the porch. Captain Scott and another man had a young white girl prisoner, and they were going to put her here in the camp, and then kill her on the gallows? What crime could the girl have committed to have earned such a fate?
“Shut up,” said Captain Scott. “I don’t have a choice here. The Colonel brought you here, so you’re here.”
“Please, let me go,” said the girl again, more quietly.
Hollis stood awkwardly on the veranda, wondering what she should do. The guards at the gate were surely watching. She was going to have to pretend she hadn’t heard.
She knocked on the door. It swung open slightly but Hollis stayed where she was.
“We’re not to be disturbed,” said Captain Scott.
“Yes, sir,” said Hollis. “Only the guard at the gate said you wanted to see me the next time I came to the camp.”
“Oh, yes. Well, the money for your pay has been delayed. Problems in Birmingham. You’ll be paid next week. Go back to your laundry, Miss Fairfield.”
Hollis said “yes, sir,” ashamed her voice was weak and trembled. She hoped the men inside didn’t notice. She walked back to the gate and slipped through as quickly as she could.
She hurried down the path back toward the laundry shed. But she stopped as soon as she was well in the trees and put her back to a large pine. What was going on here? Her heart pounded and her knees wouldn’t stop shaking.
Slowly, she looked around the bole of the tree. She couldn’t see the camp from here. She crept forward, tree to tree, until she found a spot where she could see the administration building through the branches and undergrowth.
Early mosquitoes buzzed around her, but she ignored them. Soon, her patience was rewarded. A tall man in a black suit came out of the building and waited on the veranda. His entire stance was one of extreme self-assurance, like the way her father swaggered when he went out in the fields to talk to the hands.
From behind the building, the loud roar of an automobile engine broke the stillness of the foggy morning. A black car, sleeker than anything Hollis had ever seen, though admittedly she’d seen few automobiles in her life, came from the back of the building. The man in the suit got into the back seat.
After a moment, Captain Scott came out of the building, dragging someone along with him. The girl. She was dressed in an odd asymmetrical style with pants of different colors on each leg, shiny boots, one coming up a couple inches higher on the calf than the other, and a shirt with sparkling beads raining down from the collar, which was wide on one side and narrow on the other. Her red hair flung itself out from her head like a wreath of flame. Hollis couldn’t see her face very well, but it was clear the girl was pale, even lighter-complected than Hollis.
The Captain dragged the girl away from the administration building and Hollis lost sight of him and his captive.
Hollis sank to the ground on her knees, incapable of standing any longer when she was trembling so badly. What would some man in a suit want with a captive teenage white girl? Why would this be the place to keep her, and what was the “mess” in Birmingham?
Hollis burned to know. Her skin felt too small, then too large, as if it were contracting and expanding with her every breath. She had never felt so afraid, nor so full or rage, in her life. That these men would dare lay their hands on a girl like this! And then dump her in this pit? No reason could be good enough.
Hollis was tempted to run home and tell her father, but what would he do? He hadn’t seen the girl, and even if he believed her, he wouldn’t do anything. The local sheriff wouldn’t take action against the army, either.
If anyone was going to help that girl, it was Hollis. But what could she do, all by herself?
For one thing, she had to pick herself off the ground and start learning what she could about the camp. The thought made her soul quail in terror, but her heart calmed slightly. As frightening as it was, helping this girl would be the right thing to do. Pastor Acuff always talked about doing the right thing, though Hollis felt he probably meant staying on the farm and bearing children. Only men needed to do things like join the army or leave home to find work in cities when times were bad.
But she couldn’t worry about that. She only knew she had to help. But first, she had to get back to the laundry. Miss Maisie would be missing her soon.
Hollis fled back down the trail to the shack, her secret, and her convictions, trapped in her throat. The vision of the girl’s hair, so wild, and so brightly colored, stayed in her mind all the way back to the shack.