There was fifteen men setting in that house upstairs, quiet as mice. They never went out during the day, only at night, and they set there in silence while Annie chewed the fat and run that nosybody off. Still, that woman knowed something was up, and from that day forward, she made it her business to stop off at the house anytime. She lived just down the road, and made it known that Cook had already got her dander up by romancing one of the neighbors’ daughters, who her brother had expected to marry. She took that as an affront of some kind, and made it her business to come by the house each day at different times, with her ragged, barefoot, dirty children trailing behind her like ducklings, poking her nose around and picking at Annie. She was a rough, uncouth woman who belonged more in Kansas Territory than back east. She constantly picked on Annie, who was refined and sweet and pretty as a peeled onion. Annie knowed it weren’t her business to ruffle that woman’s feathers in any way, so she took it standing up, calm as lettuce.
It got so that each afternoon at some point Mrs. Huffmaster would stomp onto the front porch where Annie and I sat and bark out, “What is you doin’ today?” and “Where’s my pie?” Just straight out bullying and poking. One morning she stomped up there and said, “That is a lot of shirts you is hanging out on your back line there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Annie said. “My Pa and brothers has a host of shirts. Changes ’em twice a week, sometimes more. Keeps my hands busy all day washing ’em. Ain’t that horrible?”
“’Deed it is, especially when but one shirt will serve my husband two or three weeks. How you get so many shirts?”
“Oh, by and by. My father bought them.”
“And what does he do again?”
“Why, he’s a miner, Mrs. Huffmaster. And there’s a couple of his workers live here, work for him. You know that.”
“And by the way, where is your Pa and them digging again?”
“Oh, I don’t ask their business,” Annie said.
“And your Mr. Cook sure do have a way with girls, being that he romanced Mary up the road. Does he work in the mine, too?”
“I reckon he does.”
“Then why’s he working the tavern down at the Ferry?”
“I don’t know all his business, Mrs. Huffmaster. But he is a dandy talker,” Annie said. “Maybe he got two jobs. One talking and one digging.”
And on and on it went. Time and again Mrs. Huffmaster invited herself inside the house, and each time Annie would put her off by saying, “Oh, I can’t finish cooking yet,” or point to me and say, “Oh, Henrietta here is ’bout to take a bath,” or some such thing. But that lady was moved to devilment. After a while she stopped being friendly altogether, and her questions took on a different tone. “Who is the nigger?” she said to Annie one afternoon when she come upon me and Annie setting out reading the Bible and conversating.
“Why, that’s Henrietta, Mrs. Huffmaster. She’s a member of the family.”
“A slave or free?”
“Why, she’s a ...” and Annie didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Why, I’m in bondage, missus. But a happier person in this world you cannot find.”
She glared at me and said, “I didn’t ask if you was happy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But if you is in bondage, why is you hanging ’bout the railroad down at the Ferry all the time, trying to roust the niggers up? That’s the talk ’round town ’bout you,” she said.
That stumped me. “I done no such thing,” I lied.
“Is you lying, nigger?”
Well, I was stumped. And Annie sat there, calm, with a straight face, but I could see the blood rushing to her cheeks, and see the cheerfulness back out of her face, and the angry calm lock itself into place instead—like it did with all them Browns. Once them Browns got to whirring up, once they got their blood to boiling, they got quiet and calm. And dangerous.
“Now, Mrs. Huffmaster,” she said. “Henrietta is my dear friend. And part of my family. And I don’t appreciate you speaking to her in such an unkind manner.”
Mrs. Huffmaster shrugged. “You can talk to your niggers however you like. But you better get your story straight. My husband was at the tavern at the Ferry, and he overheard Mr. Cook say that your Pa ain’t a miner or slave owner at all, but an abolitionist. And that the darkies is planning something big. Now your nigger here is saying y’all
“I reckon you is not privy to how we live. For it is none of your business,” Annie said.
“You got a smart mouth for someone so young.”
