by Lynn Austin
Grady quickly washed his chest and arms, then slipped into the shirt William handed him. It was well-used and a size too large, but clean.
“Some of these folks is pretty desperate,” William continued in a low voice. “They try anything. There was one woman Massa bought who had to leave her young one behind. She wouldn’t eat nothing for days and days, and she got so skinny the shackles wouldn’t stay on. One day, when the boat was way out to sea, she jump overboard and drown herself.” He paused, biting his lip. Then he said quietly, “Massa beat us near to death for that. He says we supposed to watch and listen in the slave pen and tell him what we see and hear, find out who’s planning to escape.”
Grady shook his head in disbelief. “Is that what you do? Spy on all the others and then tell Massa?”
“That’s right! And you better be doing it, too, if you know what’s good for you. Didn’t I just tell you? If one of them tries to escape, we’re paying the price whether we hear them planning it or not.”
“How can you spy like that? You ain’t white—you’re a slave just like the rest of us.”
“Remember that beating Massa gave you?” William jabbed his finger into Grady’s still-tender ribs. “That was nothing. Believe me, after Massa strings you up and gives you forty lashes, you’ll be telling him every word folks say. My body’s already marked.” He turned and lifted his shirt so Grady could see the wide lumps of ugly scar tissue that crisscrossed his back. “Massa can’t sell me for much, so he don’t care if he whips me or not. Once a slave’s back is scarred, white folks figure he’s a runaway or a thief and they won’t buy him. My life ain’t worth nothing … and Massa’s gonna do the same thing to you if you ain’t careful.”
Grady stopped washing, frozen in horror by what he was hearing. William motioned impatiently for him to continue. “Massa Coop loves to beat us Negroes,” he said. “Only time he ever laugh out loud is when he’s winning at poker or whipping somebody.”
Grady swallowed, remembering Coop’s grinning face the night he’d beaten him.
“In fact,” William said, “he like to whip us so much that some folks bring their slaves to Massa Coop to be punished. They don’t even have to pay him for it. And he’ll make you watch so you’ll know what you’re in for if you ain’t careful.” For a brief moment the fierce expression William always wore vanished, replaced by a look of dread. Then he frowned again. “Listen good, Joe. Make sure you never give him a reason to whip you.”
“That ain’t my real name,” Grady said. “Don’t call me Joe; call me—”
“No, sir! You think I want a beating? From now on your name is Joe. Don’t even be thinking about that old name. And your last name is Coop, just like Massa’s.”
Grady repeated the hated name to himself: Joe Coop. That wasn’t who he was. He was Grady Fletcher, not Joe Coop. “Was William your real name?” he asked. “The name your mama gave you?”
“It’s my name now.”
Grady dropped his trousers and quickly changed into the clean pair of pants William had given him.
“Make sure you wash your old clothes tomorrow and always keep a clean set to change into,” William warned. “Massa can’t stand it if we smell bad. Up to us to make sure none of his slaves smell bad or is dirty or wearing rags. He can get more money for them if they look nice. One thing for sure, you’ll always be well fed. You’ll never go hungry like a lot of slaves do.”
When Grady finished with the wash water, William hefted the bucket and carried it across the pen to where three frightened teenaged girls stood huddled together. Coop had purchased them shortly after he’d bought Grady, and they had traveled from port to port without being offered for sale. “Here’s some soap and water,” William told them. “Wash your hair and fix yourselves up nice.” He rejoined Grady at the gate and signaled for the guard to unlock it.
“Massa gonna sell them girls tonight?” Grady asked.
William shook his head. “He’s saving them for the brothels in New Orleans.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re too young to understand,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Maybe it’s better that you don’t.”
Grady hurried down the street to Coop’s hotel with William, grateful to be away from the stench of the slave pen for a while. The streets were full of life, with horses and carriages rumbling past and street vendors hawking their wares. Gentlemen in frock coats and ladies in flowered hats crowded the sidewalks. William pulled Grady off the wooden walkways and into the gutter whenever a white person passed.
Grady longed to savor his momentary freedom, but he couldn’t. Fear and dread pounded through him at the prospect of facing Edward Coop again. He finally summoned the courage to ask William what was ahead.
“Massa gonna want me to shine his shoes again?”
“Probably. But that ain’t all. Massa’s inviting all the rich white men to come to his hotel room and we’re supposed to serve them drinks, maybe fan them if it’s hot, sometimes give them food. Just help them with whatever they’re needing. You got to act smart, stay alert, and be ready to jump the second Massa asks you to do something.” He glanced at Grady as if to see if he was listening. “And if you’re pouring them a drink, make sure you don’t be filling that glass too full. I done that one time and a gentleman spilt it down his shirt. Massa whipped me good for it.”
Grady nodded, but he wondered how he would manage to pour drinks at all with trembling hands.
“Later on,” William continued, “we’ll be coming downstairs to the pens so the customers can look over all the slaves. Massa likes to sell the best ones this way, by private sale. When he gets home to New Orleans, he’ll sell all the ones that’s left over at the auction.”
Grady had heard of the city of New Orleans, but he had no idea where it was or how far it was from his home in Richmond. “Is that where we’re gonna live? New Orleans?” he asked.
William shook his head impatiently. “We don’t live anywhere. Massa Coop’s just stopping home for a little while to see his family and wait till winter’s over. Then he’s setting sail again. That’s what he’s doing most of the year—traveling from city to city, buying and selling slaves. That’s Massa Coop’s job. There’s certain cities he’s going to all the time, like Richmond and Jacksonville. The white men can read in the newspaper that he’s coming and what kind of stock he has for sale, and they’re all coming around to buy what they need.”
Too soon they reached the hotel, a beautiful three-story brick building with shuttered windows. William halted outside and turned to grip Grady’s shoulders. “Pay attention, now! You do any little thing wrong to hurt Massa’s business, he’ll make you real sorry. Understand?”
Grady drew a shaky breath and nodded.
For the next several hours, he circulated the crowded hotel room, passing out cigars and pouring drinks, careful not to accidentally brush against anyone or trip over the men’s feet as they lounged around. The room grew very warm. William warned Grady not to let any of the gentlemen get overheated—he should offer to take their coats and cool them with a palmetto fan. His own discomfort didn’t matter. He didn’t dare rest for a moment or take a sip of water to ease his own thirst. And when his hands became slippery with sweat he had to make sure that he wiped them dry so he wouldn’t spill anything and earn a beating.
Throughout the long evening he felt Massa Coop’s eyes on him, watching for a lapse or a mistake, waiting to pounce. By the time the long evening was over and Grady was safely locked in the slave pen again for the night, far away from Coop, his shoulders ached with tension. His stomach felt like a tightened fist.
“You did okay,” William told him. He offered Grady a sandwich left over from their gentlemen guests. “Just do the same every night.”
Grady ate it, but a short time later when he recalled his unrelenting fear and the despair he’d seen in the eyes of the slaves who had been sold that night, he ran to the nearest slop bucket and heaved his dinner. William had said t
hat Massa Coop bought and sold slaves for most of the year. Grady would be doing this work from now on—helping Coop tear lives apart.
When his nausea passed, Grady lay down on the straw and closed his eyes, weeping quietly in the night.
The slave mart in New Orleans looked much the same as all the others Grady had seen in cities and towns along the coast: a small gated yard surrounded by locked buildings where the slaves slept at night. Customers arrived in a steady stream each day to examine Coop’s slaves, and by the end of the week the pen was nearly empty. A large white woman in a bright red gown and hair the color of dandelions had purchased a half-dozen of the prettiest young women. Grady overheard Coop telling her that he had picked them just for her customers.
Grady had lost all track of time since leaving his home in Richmond, but he knew that several months must have passed. Summer had been nearly over when he’d left home, and now he heard Massa Coop say he would celebrate the Christmas season here in New Orleans with his family. When all of his remaining slaves had been sold at auction and the pen was empty, Coop took Grady and William home with him to his town house.
“Gonna have us a little rest now,” William said with a sigh as they settled into the slaves’ quarters above the washhouse. “Ain’t nothing much for us to do till we leave with Massa again in a few weeks.” Grady nodded, but after months of hard work and constant watchfulness, he couldn’t comprehend the notion of rest.
Massa’s house was tall and narrow and elegant. Decorative balconies hung from the brick structure in the front and rear. It stood very close to the street and to the houses on either side of it, with only a small gated courtyard at the back. Coop’s town slaves, who lived in simple rooms above the outbuildings, treated Grady kindly, and he found himself wishing he could stay. He and William shared a room with a slave named Beau, whose only job, it seemed, was to play the fiddle. He performed at fancy gatherings in Massa’s town house, and Coop hired him out for other peoples’ parties and dances when he wasn’t needed.
Beau was slender and wiry, no taller than Grady, and as spirited as the lively tunes he played. Grady knew by Beau’s wooly gray hair and plentiful wrinkles that he was no longer young, but he was so full of energy—toes tapping, fingers dancing across the strings—that he might have been Grady’s age. Grady had a great deal of free time while they stayed in New Orleans, and he spent most of it with Beau, watching him practice the fiddle, memorizing all the tunes that flowed out of his instrument so effortlessly.
“Wanna learn?” Beau asked him one day as they sat outside on the washhouse steps. “I could teach you.” Grady was afraid to believe it.
“I … I don’t know. I never made no music before.”
“Well, it ain’t that hard if you put your mind to it,” Beau said with a grin. “Seems to me you’re a bright boy. William says you learn fast. Wanna try?” He offered the fiddle to Grady, and he accepted it carefully, using both hands.
“Okay … thanks.”
Beau gave him his first lesson that day, then loaned him an older fiddle to practice on in his spare time. “This used to belong to one of Massa’s other slaves,” Beau said, “but he ain’t around no more. It’s an old fiddle, but it still plays okay. Try it.”
Grady spent all of his days practicing, sometimes stopping only late at night when the others wanted to sleep. He grew to love the feel of the warm, smooth wood beneath his chin and the way the notes vibrated through him as he played. It seemed as though his fingers had always known where to sit on the strings and just how firmly to press to make the notes sing. The bow felt at home in his right hand, and his arm felt designed to lift the bow and glide it against the strings with just the right pressure and speed. Beau taught him where to put his fingers to make each note, and once Grady got a melody in his head, he would patiently pick out the notes, one by one, and string them together to repeat the song.
Playing the fiddle was immensely satisfying—like eating a full, rich meal—and it helped soothe all of Grady’s pent-up anger and frustration. As the weeks passed he worried, sometimes, that he was no longer storing up his rage the way Amos had told him to do. But it seemed impossible to be anything but happy as he sat beside the ever-cheerful Beau and made music.
“You sure do learn fast,” Beau told him. “Before long you be playing as good as me.” Grady doubted it was true, but the compliment brought a rare smile to his lips.
Grady barely saw Massa Coop during all the weeks they stayed in New Orleans, and the knot of fear that had rested in his stomach since the night Coop had beaten him slowly began to uncoil.
But one winter afternoon as Grady sat alone on the washhouse steps, fiddling a tune, he looked up to see Coop standing in the courtyard a few yards away, watching and listening. Grady halted mid-song. His arms went limp and fell to his sides, still clutching the fiddle and bow.
“No, keep playing,” Coop ordered.
Grady obeyed, his hands trembling and slick with sweat. Fear made his rhythm clumsy, the notes scratchy and out-of-tune. He glanced up and saw Coop listening, his hands on his hips, his expression unreadable. Then as quickly as he’d appeared, Coop vanished into the house again.
“We’re sailing tomorrow,” William told him a week later. “Massa say for you to bring the fiddle.”
Grady stared in disbelief. He had never imagined that he’d be allowed to play in the overcrowded ship’s hold and slave pens, certain that there’d be no time to continue practicing with endless work to be done. Why would Coop make such a kind offer? Grady longed to ask William why he was being granted this privilege, but he was afraid Coop would change his mind if he did. “Where’re we going?” he asked instead.
“Where do you think,” William said angrily. “Back for more slaves. This is what Massa does for a living. Some folks trade cotton or tobacco, our massa trades slaves.”
The long journey around Florida by steamship, then up the coast to Virginia took a few weeks. They stopped in dozens of ports along the way to refuel or change ships, but since Coop hadn’t purchased any slaves yet, Grady had plenty of time to practice his fiddle. Sometimes he would hear a new tune while he attended Coop in the ship’s salon or in one of the many hotel lounges they visited. Grady would hum it over and over in his mind, memorizing it, then he would try to pick out the melody on his fiddle when he returned to his quarters. He was becoming quite good, and he knew it. But sometimes he would catch William watching him with an expression on his face that Grady couldn’t quite read. It wasn’t jealousy or disapproval—it was as if William knew something that Grady didn’t.
“What’s wrong?” Grady asked him one night. “Why’re you always looking at me that way when I play?”
“No reason,” he said with a shrug.
“This bothering you? Want me to stop playing?”
“No. I’m used to it.” William’s frown deepened. “The slave Massa Coop had before you played that fiddle, too.”
A shudder passed through Grady when he saw the grim expression on William’s face. “What happened to him? Massa sell him?” Grady asked. Their eyes met for a moment before William looked away.
“Reason he’s gone ain’t got nothing to do with playing the fiddle,” he finally said.
Grady found no comfort in his answer. William’s uneasiness made him afraid—and certain that he was hiding something. “Why didn’t he take this with him?” Grady asked, holding up the instrument.
“That fiddle belongs to Massa Coop, not him. Now quit asking me questions.”
One afternoon as their ship steamed into yet another port, Grady looked out of the porthole in Massa Coop’s cabin and saw the familiar steeple of St. John’s church pointing above the trees.
The stately capitol building came into view on the hill, then he recognized Tredegar’s Iron Works sprawled near the shore. They were landing in Richmond. He was home.
Tears blurred Grady’s vision, but he quickly blinked them away, unwilling to miss a thing. He heard William gathering all Mas
sa’s belongings together and setting the bags near the cabin door, and Grady knew he should be helping. But he couldn’t tear himself away from the view. Maybe Mama or Eli or someone he knew would be waiting for him at the dock. Maybe he’d be allowed to go home and see them tonight and tell them all the things he’d seen and done. Wouldn’t they be surprised to hear him play the fiddle?
“What’re you staring out that window for?” William asked. “There’s work to be done.”
Grady scrambled to help with the luggage, eager to be ashore all the sooner. It seemed to take forever for the ship to ease close to the dock at Rockett’s Wharf, longer still for the gangway to be secured so the passengers could disembark. Grady stood at the rail, longing to race over to Broad Street and run up the hill toward the church. He had ridden that way in the carriage with Eli dozens of times, and he knew exactly which street to turn down in order to get home. He could picture Caroline’s Big House on the corner, Eli’s garden and the stables behind it, the loft above the kitchen where he used to live. He ached to set foot on shore and run. But as the first passengers began to disembark, he slowly became aware that William was eyeing him, studying him carefully as if trying to read Grady’s thoughts.
“This is where you come from, ain’t it,” William said slowly. “Richmond, Virginia.”
Grady didn’t answer. Suddenly William dropped Massa’s suitcases to the deck and gripped Grady’s arm.
“Don’t do it, boy!” he said in a low, angry voice. “Don’t be a fool!”
Tears filled Grady’s eyes in spite of all his efforts to stop them. It was impossible not to think of his mama or to long for home. He was so close, only a few dozen blocks away.