Mudbound

Laura says the farm only reminds her of mud. The days blend together, and she feels that she is stuck in an endless routine of work, childcare, and cooking. She says that her children were always scared of their grandfather, who they called Pappy.

When she discusses her beginning in the story, Laura explains: “My father-in-law was murdered because I was born plain rather than pretty” (13). Then she says there are other possible beginnings: “It’s tempting to believe that what happened on the farm was inevitable” (13). She says that the truth is not simple and decides to begin with love.

When Laura meets Henry McAllan in 1939, she is a 31-year-old virgin: “My world was small, and everything in it was known” (14). Her mother had wept the night Laura turned 30, thinking she would always be a spinster. Laura’s brother Teddy had brought Henry to a dinner at their house. Henry was a 41-year-old bachelor, and Teddy’s new boss.

Over the next week, her parents talk of Henry constantly: “My parents’ hopefulness grated on me. It threatened to kindle my own” (17). Henry comes to dinner again the following Sunday, then invites Laura to a music performance the next Saturday. That is the day he kisses her for the first time: “Never before had a man kissed me with that degree of possession, either of himself or of me, and it thrilled me” (19). Laura is inspired by Henry’s confidence in himself and his certainty on many topics.

In July, Henry tells her that his brother is visiting from Oxford and he would like her to meet him: “That he wanted Jamie to meet me surely meant that he was considering a more permanent attachment between us” (21). She begins to fantasize about their future life together. Henry has told her that Jamie is an aspiring thespian who wastes his time with plays. When they meet Jamie at his train, Laura is astonished at the difference between him and Henry. Jamie “was beautiful; there was no other word for him” (22).

They go to a nice restaurant and have champagne. Jamie dances with Laura as a swing band plays: “I was aware of Henry’s eyes following us, and others’ too—women’s eyes, watching me enviously” (24). She sits with Henry after a few numbers and watches Jamie dance with another woman. Laura realizes that she must have looked clumsy when she sees how well the other woman dances. Henry tells her that girls “sparkle” (24) when Jamie is around, but he likes anything in a skirt.

Jamie returns to Oxford and Laura tries to stop thinking about him. She is grateful that Henry loves her and focuses on him. One day he picks her up at choir practice and tells her that he is living for Alabama to oversee the building of a new airfield. She thinks that he will propose to her, but he does not. After her leaves, Laura thinks: “I was furious—with myself, with Henry. With the cruel natural order that had made me simultaneously undesirable to men and unable to feel complete without one” (28).      

Two months later Henry returns. He tells her that he had to be sure of his feelings, and now he is. He tells Laura that he loves her and proposes marriage. Laura accepts, and Henry kisses her awkwardly: “His tongue felt foreign, thick and strange” (30). They are married six weeks later. When Laura meets the McAllan family, she finds Henry’s mother and sisters cold and aloof, and “it was clear they felt superior to us Chappells” (30).

After the wedding, Laura enjoys the routine of domestic life with Henry and thinks: “And so my time of cleaving began” (31). Six years into her marriage she will remember that “cleave has a second meaning, which is ‘to divide with a blow, as with an axe’” (31). 

Jamie dreams that he is on top of his sister Eboline’s house, watching the water of a flood rise. He says that the “water wants me. Not because I have any significance, but because it wants everything” (32). When he washes away, Henry’s hand grabs his hair and lifts him out of the water. The flood had been real, and over 1,000 people had died. Henry had saved Jamie: “So much of who I am and what I’ve done is because of Henry” (33). His earliest memory is of meeting Henry. Henry had fought Germans in the war, which led Jamie to hate the Germans.

Jamie’s dreams of the flood were constant as a child. He began to hate the water so badly that he stopped taking baths until his parents made him. He becomes inspired by the pilot Charles Lindbergh’s announcement that he will be the first solo pilot to complete a flight between New York and Paris. When Lindbergh completed the flight, Jamie believed “[I]t was impossible not to feel proud of what he’d done. Impossible not to want to be like him” (37). That night he decided to be a pilot like Lindbergh. “Fifteen years later the Army granted [his] wish” (38), but Jamie says that his experience would not be anything like Lindbergh’s. 

Ronsel describes the racism experienced in the Army by himself and other African American soldiers: “They called us Eleanor Roosevelt’s niggers” (39). They slept in separate barracks and had to provide their own blood supply for transfusions. Ronsel says the officers from West Point treated them better. After months of training, Ronsel is qualified to become a tank driver.

In July of 1942, Ronsel’s unit receives its first black lieutenant, but they get no respect off base when they try to enjoy themselves in nearby towns. The black men who came to the base from the north and west met the mistreatment with surprise:

[They] were thunderstruck by the way we were treated. Reading about Jim Crow in the paper is a might different thing from having a civilian bus driver wave a pistol in your face and tell you to get your coon hide off the bus to make room for a fat white farmer (41).

Ronsel believes that the reason the Army does not protect them from the abuse—even the occasional lynching—is that the Army wants them to fail.

In August of 1944, Ronsel’s unit is called to duty by General Patton. When he gets to Europe, he sees that the white people “weren’t like the ones back home. Wasn’t no hate in them” (43). The white women in clubs even ask the black men to dance. It was the first time “[he] ever felt like a man first and a black man second” (44).

In October, Ronsel’s unit is transferred to Normandy. While prepping for a battle, they are visited by General Patton, who makes a patriotic speech and asks them to kill as many Germans as they can: “He took us when nobody else thought we were worth a damn. I’d have gone to hell and back for him, and I think every one of us Panthers felt the same” (45). The fighting is fierce, and the tank company and infantry suffer casualties each day, but Ronsel does not talk about this when he writes letters to home. 

Within days of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Jamie and both of Laura’s brothers enlist. Henry remains a civilian and builds bases and airfields for the military. By 1943 Laura has two children: Amanda Leigh and Isabelle. She dotes on her children and they are a welcome distraction from the war.

Her brothers both survive. Jamie loses a finger to frostbite and decides to stay in Europe for a while when the war ends. He says he wants to see Europe from the ground, but Henry believes that Jamie is hiding something from them. That Christmas, they go to visit Eboline’s family. When they arrive, Henry’s father tells Henry “that stuck-up husband of your sister’s gone and killed himself” (51). In his suicide note to Eboline, Virgil had confessed that he had lost their fortune in a confidence scheme and couldn’t bear to tell her.

Henry stays with Eboline for two weeks while Laura goes home with the children. When he returns, he tells her that he has bought a farm in Marietta, Mississippi, and they will be moving there in two weeks. He says it is his duty to move closer to Eboline and help her with her children. He says Pappy will also be coming to live with them. Laura is not happy about the sudden change: “Just like that, my life was overturned. Henry didn’t ask me how I felt about leaving my home of thirty-seven years and moving with his cantankerous father in two to a hick town in the middle of Mississippi, and I didn’t tell him” (54).

On the morning of their departure, Laura’s father tells her that when she was a child of 1, she had Rubella. The doctor had told him that Laura would not live for more than two days. He had told the doctor: “Our Laura’s a fighter and she’s going to be just fine” (57). He tells Laura to remember that when she needs it.

When they reach the house in Marietta, Laura is pleased. It is charming and lovely. When they go up on the walk a large man named Orris Stokes comes onto the porch. He said that he bought the house a week ago and the previous owner hadn’t said anything to him about a family coming to rent it. Henry realizes that he has been cheated. He had not gotten anything in writing and had paid the owner $100, and Orris says the man left town three days ago. Orris’s wife Alice invites them in for dinner, and then to stay the night.

In bed, Laura thinks about Henry: “If he had just signed a lease. If he were just a different sort of man. Henry was never good at reading people. He always assumed everybody was just like him; that they said what they meant and would do what they said” (62). Henry comes in and tells her that they will have to live in the farmhouse, but that it doesn’t have a toilet, electricity, or running water.

In the morning they go to a store and meet Rose Trickle-bank, who owns the store with her husband Bill. She tells them that they need to stock up on supplies because a storm is coming and their farm “can be cut off for days” (65). When they leave, Pappy and Henry joke that Rose seems to think she is a man, which annoys Laura.

The farm is 20 minutes away. They arrive at a shack and Henry tells her it is their place. He tells her that they will fix it up, noticing her disappointment: “Make the best of it his eyes urged. Don’t shame me in front of my father and my girls” (67). Laura is angry at him for assuming that she wouldn’t make the most of it.

They unpack and take their belongings in the house, including a piano, Laura’s favorite possession. Inside, there are only three doors. Wind blows through the house and every surface is filthy. Laura feels angrier than before. Pappy says there is nowhere for him to sleep. He says that if they get rid of the piano there will be room for a bed. Laura takes Henry outside and says that she will leave if he gets rid of the piano: “It is the only civilized thing in this place” (69). She tells him that he will have to put a floor in the lean-to, which is where his father will sleep. Henry is surprised and annoyed at her boldness but agrees. 

Henry remembers being 6 years old when his grandfather was on his deathbed. He asked Henry to bring him a handful of dirt, then told him: “This is land. Because it’s mine. One day this’ll be your land, your farm. But in the meantime, to you and every other person who don’t own it, it’s just dirt” (71). He says that land is the only thing you can ever truly own. Henry’s father had hated farming and had sold the land after the flood.

Henry says that his plans would have remained nice and orderly if it hadn’t been for Virgil’s suicide. When he had bought the Marietta farm, he had thought: “I was a landowner at last. I could hardly wait to tell my wife” (74). He remembers deciding to keep a black man named Hap on to help. Hap is Ronsel’s father. In a ledger book, Hap shows Henry that Conley, the previous owner, had been shortchanging him in pay: “I believed him. A Negro is like a little child, when he tries to lie it’s stamped on his face plain as day” (76). He tells Hap that if he’ll stay with him, he’ll let him check the ledger whenever he wants to verify his fair treatment.

When he tells Laura about the move, he knows she is against it even though she feigns support: “A woman will make her feelings known one way or another” (78). A storm hits the night after they move in and it leaks into the girls’ room. They are sick and feverish by morning. Henry takes the truck and tries to go to town in the morning for a doctor. Then he remembers that Hap said his wife Florence was a midwife. He stops at their house and tells Florence that his girls have a whooping cough. She agrees to come back with him and bring something that might help. She sits in the front of the cab with him: “Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have stood for it, but I didn’t dare ask her to ride in back” (81). 

When Florence gets to the house, Laura glares at Henry and says they needed a real doctor. Florence makes a tea that she says will get the phlegm out of the girls. Florence and Laura make a chicken broth and she notices Pappy glaring at her. He demands that she go outside and get him a drink of water, but she refuses. After cooking, Florence says she can’t go home because now she is contagious and her own children could get the cough. Pappy retorts: “I ain’t sleeping under the same roof as a nigger” (87). Florence leaves the room and hears them arguing about where she should sleep. She hears Pappy tell Henry that he has to get control over his wife.

While Florence spends four days with them, she worries that the farming life will be too difficult for the McAllans. When she is home, she and Hap talk about what will happen to them if the McAllans sell the farm and put them off the land. Florence tells Hap that she won’t leave just because he tells her to. She feels safe arguing with him because he has never hit her.

Soon, Laura asks Florence to keep house for her. She needs the money and takes the job as long as she can continue her work as a midwife. But she almost says no because of Pappy. When he is a room alone with her, he often mocks Ronsel’s military service and says that Ronsel is digging ditches in the war, because no one would let a black man touch a tank. 

Henry proposes that they call their farm and land Fair Fields, but Laura suggests Mudbound, and the name sticks. Laura begins to enjoy days when she is alone with her girls, or with Florence. Sometimes she is exasperated with Florence because is superstitious, saying that there are evil eyes in the house and that they all need to burn their fingernail clippings so that they can’t be used to create hexes. She implies that Pappy is one of the Devil’s helpers. Florence sometimes brings her daughter, Lilly May, a tall girl with a clubfoot and a beautiful singing voice. Laura thinks: “Anyone who believes that Negroes are not God’s children never heard Lilly May Jackson sing to Him” (97).

One night, Laura hears gunshots. Henry and Pappy are away visiting Eboline. She goes onto her porch with a shotgun and looks in the direction of a property owned by the Atwoods. There are several more shots before it is quiet again. When the sun rises, she sees Hap walking towards her. He says Carl Atwood got drunk and shot his plow horse in the head. When Hap heard the shots, he had gone to investigate. Carl had shot the horse and then urinated on it, “cussing and crying like a baby the whole time” (100).

He says that Carl is crazy, and Laura explains: “Carl Atwood was my least favorite of all our tenants” (100). Hap goes to work but tells Laura he will be watching for Carl. Laura decides to tell Henry that Carl Atwood will have to be put off their land when he gets back. Later in the day, Vera Atwood and her daughter Alma come to talk to Laura. Vera is pregnant and has been beaten badly. Vera begs Laura not to make then leave because of what Carl does. Laura says that she has to think about her own children, and that it will be Henry’s decision.

Henry hears about what happened with Carl and drives home from the feed store. He says he’ll make the Atwoods leave immediately, but Laura asks him not to because Vera is eight and a half months pregnant. Henry says that the next day he will hear Carl out and then make his decision. When Pappy says that Laura is starting to run the farm instead of him, Henry tells him to shut up, which shocks them all. The next day Henry talks to Carl and agrees to let him stay through planting season, but then he will have to leave. He tells Laura that there is no pity on a farm: “I didn’t understand, not at all, but I was about to go to school on the subject” (107). 

During a hailstorm, a mule gets frantic after being pelted with the stones and begins smashing and kicking a shed. Hap has to shoot it to get it to stop. The next day Hap falls off a ladder and breaks his leg. He goes unconscious, later waking in a bed with Florence tying a charm around his neck. She thinks someone cast a trick that caused him to fall off the ladder. She tells him that she spoke with Henry and says that they won’t use one of his mules, because then they would have to pay him more of their farm shares than they can afford. Florence tells Henry that she won’t be able to keep house anymore because she’ll be working in the fields, which upsets Hap, who has promised her she would never have to do field work again.

Doc Turpin visits the next day. Hap’s leg is badly swollen. There are rumors that Doc is a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He tells Hap to bite down on a stick. He is going to set the broken leg but says there’s no point in giving him pain medication, because it won’t have any effect for another 15 minutes, and they have to set the leg immediately. Hap knows this is a lie, because the doctor has delayed a full day coming to visit him. Hap faints when Doc begins setting the leg. 

Laura thinks that without Florence, she will be alone with her anger and fear: “When Henry told me Florence wouldn’t be coming back, I felt something close to panic” (117). She asks Henry if they can lend Hap one of their mules. Henry is angry with her. He says that he is not lending the mule, and if Hap does not plant the seed quickly enough, they will have to be put off the land like any other tenant who does not produce the shares they agreed on.

A few days later, she visits Florence, who is worried because Hap has had a fever for three days and his leg is not healing straight. Speaking of Doc Turpin, she explains: “Half the colored folks who go to him end up sicker than they was before” (119). Laura understands that if Hap loses his leg, she will lose Florence for good. Laura drives to Greenville to find a doctor who will treat Hap. She finds a Jewish man named Dr. Pearlman, who is kind and competent with Hap.

When Laura tells Henry about finding the doctor, he is furious. He says she should have come to him so he could have gotten Doc Turpin, and that he no longer feels that he can trust her. 

Hap describes his fever and pain before Dr. Pearlman arrives. He is delirious and faints frequently. He gives Hap some medicine and angrily tells him that his leg was not set properly. The medicine puts Hap to sleep. When he wakes, he feels better and his pain is diminished. Florence gives him penicillin and tells him about finding the doctor. But she says that he’ll need to rest for at least eight weeks, which will be time that he can’t work in the fields. She says that she and the girls will do it and that he has to stay off of his leg.

Pearlman returns and makes a cast for Hap’s leg. Henry visits and says that they are behind schedule. He insists that they use his mule, and Hap agrees, even though it means they will not turn a profit on their shares. That night he sees Florence praying and knows that she is “praying for Ronsel to come home and deliver us” (130).