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idea of slaves, African or Cherokee, but like a lot of other farmers in the South who didn't have slaves she was just defending her home at a certain point. He would say to me, “Imagine a world, Shug, with no radio, no tell-e-vision, so it's hard to even know what kinda crazy makin’ those polly-ticians were drummin’ up on both sides of the Mason-Dixon. People could get all worked up—just hearin’ the preacher talkin’ about losin’ everythin’ to them greedy Yankees. It got folks all suspicious and scareder than scared, and they wasn't wrong to be scared … So it's awful easy for this sixties generation to think they know so much about what they wouldadone. They didn't even have them a gee-tar that plugged in back then to make all that racket at some protest rally for the good guys. See, the crazy thing was, was that we didn't see we was the bad side, 'cause we didn't have slaves or wanna be slaves, and by the time it got to us, the average pappy-tryin-to-put-food-on-the-table-for-his-youngins, we was just a voiceless majority of a piece of the South.” As Margaret Little told him, “When it all started gettin’ heated up, the farmers’ wives thought they'd just take care of the crops, do the farmin’, and those polly-ticians can settle this thang and everybody's gonna be aww-right, the God Lord willin’ and the creek don't rise.”
    By this point in the story, I'd already snapped my beans and gone to sit on the porch steps just downwind of Poppa's apple-smoked pipe tobacco and his hypnotic tenor voice. “So y'all can guess,” he would say, “the chagrin of Margaret Little when in 1864 she heard that the Bluecoats were comin’ her way … Burnin’ everything down, stealin’ all the livestock, folks, youngins and kinfolk, whose hearts are already halfway to heaven dyin’ of hunger and brutality. Yep, all the stories that were spreadin’ like wildfire she'd heard before. She'd heard all about the roundups when she was a young girl, son taken from his momma by the Bluecoats, makin’ all those people walk on foot, gettin’ gangrene rotted feet. Hell, they treated pigs better than they treated her people who were dyin’ on the way to Indian Territory. This was one woman who was not in a state of disbelief about what the Bluecoats could do, so she made up her mind. She didn't listen to the preacher or the other farmers’ wives sayin’ that their God would protect 'em. Stands to reason that a woman like this, whose people had been subjugated, while lookin’ at those Christian graves starin’ out at her with so much superiority, would realize she'd had about enough. And she had. So she came up with an idea. Turns out, about a week later, Bluecoats came and sure 'nuff burned the house, burned the barn, burnedthe fields, mammas and daddies even, everythin’ they could burn they did. They took the livestock for eatin’ and left Margaret Little's family to starve to death. Now ya gotta understand when I say this—there was
no
freeza full of food or a Winn-Dixie down the street, or another farmer who had a country store a mile away. No suhree, the South was in cinders and ya could even hear a mamma cryin’, ‘My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?’ as she cradled her burned baby in her arms.”
    By this time in the story Nanny would be snoring—after all, she's been up since four-thirty a.m., getting the homemade biscuits and the skillet-fried cornbread prepared for the army of people she would be feeding through the day. I, on the other hand, was transfixed. Poppa's drawl drew me back in. “Shug, now be honest, now: have ya figured out how Margaret Little outfoxed the Bluecoats?” And, as always, I said, “Poppa, tell me. My memory isn't so good.” He would look at me and say, “Yer only six and a half, Shug. Ya betta have yerself an extra helpin’ of mustard greens every day so yer mind don't turn hollow, like them Bluecoats in their grave. Shug, that like to tickle me to death, yer