Back to Wando Passo by David Payne (books to improve english txt) 📕

“A place the Wando passed?”

He nods. “That’s just a guess, though. The truth is, no one knows.”

“How strange,” she says. “To think that once upon a time it meant enough to them to name their land for it, but now it’s lost, and those who knew the meaning are all gone.”

“I’ve always rather liked it.”

“So do I. It’s like the past, isn’t it?” She gazes at him, wondering. “Something you can’t quite grasp, however hard you try, that lives on nonetheless and casts its spell on us.”

Jarry smiles, and briefly, as he holds her stare, there is a kind of spell between them, too.

“Truly, though,” says Addie, breaking it, “the people here—are they not worried by the war?”

“Of course they are.”

“I suppose they hope for our defeat. You do, don’t you?” She casts a glance at him.

“I’ve made no secret of my views. But, no, not everybody in the quarters shares them.”

“How do they feel?”

“The older people worry what will happen to their homes if the South loses. They ask me about their spring and winter cloth allotments, their firewood—will this continue as before.”

“And what do you tell them?”

“That when and if they’re freed, they’ll own themselves and they may sell their labor and buy these things themselves. They don’t entirely trust the notion of a future different from the past.”

“How will this place work, Jarry, if we lose?”

He walks to the edge and stares over the prospect, hands clasped behind his back. “Not as it does now. That’s the only answer I’m certain of. All of this is predicated on slave labor. If you must begin to pay for what you’ve always had for free, the question becomes, how much will the labor cost? More than the prof it the rice returns? If that’s so, what will happen to Wando Passo and places like it? Will they be abandoned to go back to the swamp? And what will happen to the people in the quarters and thousands like them across the South? What will happen to you, the owners?” He turns back now. “Your primary asset has always been the land. If you must sell off parcels to purchase labor to farm the rest—and if all the other landowners are in the same position—how much will the land be worth? Not much, in my view.”

“You take a dark view of the future, then.”

“I think there are solutions, but they require a shift in thinking I’m not sure either side, the slaves or masters, is prepared to make.”

“Tell me what you mean.”

“It’s long been my view that Wando Passo could produce a third more than it does.”

“A million and a half pounds a year?”

“Or thereabouts.”

“How?”

He sits beside her on the bench and turns with hands clasped and elbows on his knees. “I could show you, I believe. Tim and Silas have the rice drills on Beard Island this morning. Tomorrow, once the seed has soaked, we’ll plant. The two squares there yielded—I’d have to check—but twenty-six or -seven bushels, I would guess, last year. If I said to Tim tonight, ‘This year you’re going to rent Beard Island from the mistress…. You will pay her…’ I haven’t thought this out, you understand?”

“No, of course,” says Addie, watching his intensity and not wanting to break the train.

“Let’s say ten bushels to the acre.” He gets up and starts to pace. “For the sake of argument, ten. If they throw the seed onto the ground tomorrow and go home and stay drunk until September, they’ll make ten. But if they have advantage of the weather and work the land as they know how, they’ll make forty bushels on those fields.”

“Forty!”

“If not forty-five. If you take your ten and half of the additional thirty or thirty-five, you’ll do as well or better than you did last year.”

“Why not ask that they make forty-five for me?”

He laughs. “It can’t be done! Tell me how to do it. I’ve tried everything—exhortation, shaming, punishment. I’ve appealed to pride and manhood. None of it has ever worked. The one thing I haven’t tried—because I’ve never had authority—is to let them share the profits. If you want excellence from them, that’s what you must do. Then, what I believe you’ll see is this: a hand like Tim, who now hoes out his half acre by ten thirty or eleven in the morning and goes home to tend his peas and shoats, then you’ll see him in the field till five or six. Instead of one task, he’ll do three or four, and because every third hand is capable of this, if you extend this over the whole plantation, you make your million and a half where you only have a million now. If I’m wrong, if they shirk and malinger, all you stand to lose is a few bushels on two fields out of almost fifty. Wouldn’t it be worth it to find out?”

“I think it would,” says Addie, swept up in his excitement.

“Then I have your permission to propose this to them?”

“Yes, you do,” she says. “Only, not tonight. Hold off for a few days. I must write to Harlan first.”

“Ah,” says Jarry, deflating as though punctured by a pin. “Ah, well then, never mind.”

“But why never mind?” she protests. “You think he won’t agree?”

“I know it.”

“How?” she challenges. “How do you know? Perhaps you do him an injustice.”

“I know because I’ve asked. I made a similar proposal to Father once, and Harlan would have none of it.”

“What was his objection?”

“Can’t you guess? Wando Passo presently produces a million pounds that he has all the profit of. So why should he change everything to produce an additional half million to profit someone else.”

“Is that not a fair point?”

“Don’t you see the answer, though? The reason you risk changing everything is to save yourself. In the event the South loses, to preserve the million you have now, you must make the million and a half and give the overage to those who presently own nothing.