Behold, this Dreamer. Charlotte Miller

things he would have liked to have told him—as dawn came he dressed and went out onto the front porch of the house, wanting to be alone, wanting to avoid the grieving and sympathetic looks of the kin and neighbors who had spent the night on chairs and pallets throughout the house, or who had sat up in respectful silence by the body of his father. He sat on the wooden steps that descended to the bare yard, staring out across red land burned black by fire, ruined fields, the destroyed crop, and it seemed to him as if the land was mourning as well.

      The screen door creaked open behind him, and he turned to find his mother staring out across the fields as well, a distant and hurting look in her dark eyes. He rose out of respect as she moved toward him a moment later, stepping up onto the porch to take her hands in his, hands that suddenly seemed so small, and so very frail.

      Her eyes were red and weak from crying, her face washed white with tears, her lips pale, their lines indistinct. He had never before looked into the face of loss, of grief such as she felt, and he knew somehow that her grief went much deeper than did his own, much deeper than even he could understand.

      He held her hands tightly in his, searching in his mind for the words to tell her what it was he felt, somehow knowing all the while there was nothing he could do, nothing he could say, that might help to lessen her loss—but her voice came before he could speak, her words strong, determined, a fierceness in them as he stared down at her that he had never before seen in anyone in all his life.

      “Your pa loved this land, and he loved me, and he loved you—and you make him proud—” she said, her hands squeezing his until his fingers ached. “Don’t you let them take this land away from you, and don’t you let them get the best of you—you’re my and Henry’s son; you’re half him, and half me, and don’t you ever forget that. Don’t you ever forget it.” She stared up at him, the strength in her matched only by her loss as she swayed slightly on her feet, her dark eyes never once leaving his face. “As long as they never beat you, they’ll never beat him, and they’ll never kill his dream. It’s inside of you, part of you—and don’t you ever let them touch it. You hold onto this place, and you be the man he taught you to be—and don’t you ever let them beat you. As long as you live, don’t you ever once in your life let them beat you—”

      Henry Sanders was laid to rest in the quiet of the small country cemetery just beyond the Holiness church he had attended since Janson had been a small boy, laid to rest beside two brothers who had gone before him, and a great-grandfather Janson had never known. Within months of his death, Nell Sanders went to join him, laid to rest at his side, taken by the influenza in the cold winter months, even after having survived the epidemic that had taken so many in the years of the World War—but Janson knew the truth; he knew she died simply because she no longer wanted to live, no longer wanted to exist in a world where Henry Sanders was no more. Her spirit had given in, and the influenza had taken her—and, even as Janson sat beside the two bare, unmarked graves in the small cemetery, the tears running down his cheeks and dripping onto the red earth, he knew his mother was where she wanted to be, beside his father again.

      He and his gran’pa had gone to the sheriff with what he had seen the night of the fire, but, even these months later, nothing had been done about it, as he had known nothing would be done—there had been too many witnesses to say Walter Eason had not left his home the night of the fire, and that the Cadillac had never once left the carriage house. It had been a heart attack that had taken Henry Sanders’ life, a heart attack brought on by the stress of trying to fight the fire, and it had been both the influenza and grief that had taken Nell Sanders—but still Janson knew the Easons were responsible. The Easons had set the fire that had taken more than half the cotton crop as it still stood in the fields, or had caused it to be set—Janson knew that; there was no doubt: the car, there where it should not have been; the fire, when there had been no cloud in the sky, no lightning that might have started the blaze; and the strong odor of gasoline in the burned fields—there was no doubt.

      But, still, nothing would be done. Nothing in Eason County.

      Time and again he started toward Pine in the weeks and months after his father’s, and then his mother’s, deaths, determined to make Walter Eason pay for what he had done, what he had caused. He knew the man could never have known the high price the fire would exact that night—but still he should pay, still he should—

      But time and again he turned back. His mother’s words would not leave him—“. . . don’t you let them get the best of you—you’re my and Henry’s son; you’re half him, and half me . . . As long as they never beat you, they’ll never beat him, and they’ll never kill his dream . . . don’t you ever let them beat you. As long as you live, don’t you ever once in your life let them beat you—”

      He could not allow himself to kill Walter Eason, though he wanted to badly. He was Henry and Nell Sanders’ son, and they had raised no murderer. He would hold onto the land, and he would make his parents proud, and he would see to it that the dream they had held for so many years would never die—the Easons had never defeated Henry or Nell Sanders once in their lives, and they would not defeat their son even now. Henry Sanders had dreamed too long, had worked too hard, for land of his own, a crop all his own, a better way of life for his son and for grandsons he would never know—Janson would not lose that now.

      But he was alone, eighteen, and with a farm to tend, a farm with fields devastated by the fire that had devastated his own life those months ago. He had picked what had been left of the cotton after the fire—prices were the lowest they had been all season, and over half the crop had been lost, but still he would not give up. He had taken the cotton out of the County for sale, and no attempt had been made to stop him—no words had been spoken, no threats made, but still Janson had carried a rifle beside him on the seat of one of the borrowed trucks that had been used to take the crop out of the County. He would have shot the first man who had attempted to interfere. He had already made that decision.

      When spring came, he began to break up the red land again, working alone behind mule and plow from just after sunup each morning to the last minutes of light. He planted the fields, tended them, chopped out the weeds with a hoe when they appeared; worked and worried and sweated from well before daybreak until long after dark each day. He fended for himself, alone for the first time in his life, as often as not eating cornbread and turnip greens, or whatever else he could find left over from what his gran’ma or his Aunt Rachel, or one of the ladies from the church, had brought over days before, sometimes too tired at the end of the day to even bother to heat it up on the old wood stove, and often too hungry to really care what it was that he ate. The preacher had suggested to him that he marry, that he take one of the girls from the church as his wife, someone to take care of the house and look after him, to cook his meals and mend his clothes, and maybe even give him a son or daughter in the year ahead—but Janson could not consider that. There were nice girls in the church, pretty girls, and he knew there were one or two who might even have taken a fancy to him—but he could not think about marrying now. He lay awake often in the night, tired and sore from the hours of work in the fields, lonely in the old house, missing his parents, and remembering how they had been. It would have been nice to have a woman beside him, someone he could touch and pleasure with and talk to—but all he could think about now was the land. All he could think about was the home he felt each day that he was losing.

      Somehow late each Saturday he found the time to wash his overalls, dungarees, and workshirts in the wash tub in the back yard, using hot water from the black pot on the wood stove, and strong lye soap his mother had boiled down the year before from hog renderings and potash dripped from the ash hopper in the back yard. He beat the clothes on the battling block out by the kitchen door, boiling the sheets and his two good white shirts in the huge black pot there, scrubbing his work clothes on the rub board until his fingers hurt and his knuckles were raw—and often doing it all by the light of the fire beneath the wash pot, the one kerosene lamp he had brought out from the house, and the light falling from the windows of the separate kitchen where he would go for supper when the work was finished. The clean clothes would hang on the wash line overnight, and would often still be damp the next morning when he would take down one of the two good shirts and his Sunday trousers, press them as best he could using the old black flat iron he heated on the back of the wood stove,