A Case for Solomon by Tal McThenia & Margaret Dunbar Cutright

Author:Tal McThenia & Margaret Dunbar Cutright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press

Chapter 16

James Pleasant Walters Homestead, Robeson County, North Carolina (Courtesy of Becky Bass Fain)

IT WAS NOVEMBER 1911. The bulk of the Walterses’ cotton crop had been picked, loaded, and hauled off to the gin a month ago. After that, there was grading, tying, and bagging the dried tobacco. If croppers were in a rush, this became a community affair, a nighttime “tying party,” with even the children chipping in. Bruce was three, perhaps too young to do any tying, but he certainly enjoyed the parched peanuts and the company of other youngsters.

Then it was back to cotton. The fields were still full of green bolls, the temperature was dropping, and as the local paper reported, “hands [were] scarce.” All the way up to Thanksgiving, Julia was out there “scrapping,” with J.P. and Ailsie, as infirm and aged as they were, working alongside her. With Bunt a fugitive from the law, and Julia’s two children to manage, even if the Walterses’ teenage grandson Jackson were on hand to lend his strength, it was not an efficient harvest.

Just as they finished loading it all into the cotton house, a strange wagon came bumping down the road, its progress marked by the ever-loudening tinkle and clang of pots and pans, hanging against the tent flaps. J.P. and Ailsie had not seen their son William Cantwell in at least a decade. From letters, they had heard bits and pieces: his jail time in Georgia, his divorce, his travels to Louisiana and Mississippi, and his time in the hospital. But it must have surprised them to see, in person, how much it all had aged him. Most apparent was his hobble. There was, Walters told them, wire in his knee still. What most struck Julia Anderson, who had never seen this Walters brother before in her life, were his eyes. “Cantwell Walters sure had vigrus eyes, theh ain’t no gittin’ round that,” she would later recall.

Over Thanksgiving, the prodigal son regaled the household with tales of his travels, boasts of his burgeoning business as a fixer of musical instruments, and given half a chance, a song or two on his New Era Zither Harp. Between cooking, cleaning up, caring for Bernice, and running after Bruce, Julia caught snatches of the Walterses’ conversations during those late-fall weeks. From what she could tell, Cant had money troubles. “He tried to get the old man to deed him his farm,” she would later tell James Edmonds of the Item, “and promised to take care of the old folks if they would do that. They were too quick for him on that, though.”

That was not all he tried, either. According to Julia, Walters offered to haul the bagged tobacco to market and then returned virtually empty-handed, offering Julia just ten cents’ worth of snuff. In those days, croppers barely broke even on tobacco and often ended up deeper in debt, but Julia, who had worked hard for her share, suspected that Walters had skimmed her return. Sometime later, her mistrust was confirmed.

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