The Cellar

by Curtis Richardson

  By the time I was thirteen I was bigger than most grown men. People told my Father that I should be a field hand but he wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted to keep me up at the house to look after Missy. He knew she’d always be safe when I was around and he knew that making me her personal servant would keep me out of the fields.

  Missy grew up and was educated by her mother and a private tutor. I believe that even as a child she was different. She often seemed to live in an imaginary world. She spoke out loud to people who weren’t there and insisted that I talk to them as well. She had long conversations with God, the prophets, the apostles, or whoever might have been in her daily Bible readings. Once she became convinced that I was Moses and I disappointed her by not being able to create her a dry path across the creek. Her parents and I worried at her actions but she was a happy and loving child and there seemed to be nothing any of us could do.

  Missy liked to play school and she taught me everything she knew. I wasn’t supposed to learn to read of course but our Father didn’t care as long as I didn’t let my knowledge show. He was proud of my progress. I read the books in his library and have read the Bible through a dozen times at least. Missy’s mother was frightened by the fact that Missy had broken the rules by teaching me so much. She wanted my Father to send me away but Missy cried until she became ill and our Father wouldn’t hear of it. My candle was kept under a bushel so to speak.

  As she grew older, Missy seemed to understand that her behavior was disturbing to the rest of us and I believe she managed to control it or at least hide it most of the time. I sensed sometimes when she would have a spell and I would watch her closely. By the time she was in her early teens her voices seem to have left her. She confided in me once that she missed them and wondered if she had been abandoned.

  When Missy was about fifteen her Mother became ill. She was confined to her room for weeks and the local Doctor could do little for her. Father was desperate and asked around and sent for someone more skilled at his craft. That’s when we met Doctor Jasper Pendleton. He examined Missy’s Mother for a long time and went outside with Father to talk. Doctor Pendleton told Father that his wife was a going to die but it might take a long time. He could give her medicine for the pain so she would be comfortable, but that was about all anyone could do. Our Father didn’t want to accept the hard truth. He and Jasper went for a walk to discuss Missy’s mother’s condition. Something in the young man’s manner convinced him that he was going to lose yet another wife. They were coming back into the house when Jasper Pendleton saw Missy for the first time. The young Doctor lost his heart the moment he laid eyes on my little Sister. He was a gentleman and very respectable about it but he set his mind on her right then and there. He kept coming back to see about Missy’s Mother and did all that was possible to alleviate her pain, but she was gone inside of six months. By that time Missy had fallen in love with the Doctor and our Father saw that it was a good thing and gave his blessing to their marriage.

  By the time of Missy’s marriage the plantation was in trouble, Father had let things go while he looked after his wife as she was dying and he was too overwrought after she died to pay attention to it. He had entrusted the operation to a bad overseer who lost through mismanagement what he didn’t outright steal. I was sent along as part of Missy’s dowry when she and Jasper got married so I couldn’t be sold off.

  My Father had tears in his eyes as we parted. Jasper had inherited this farm which was many miles away and we would not be able to visit often due to the distance. My Father looked at me and told me how proud he was of me as a son. His last words to me were to ask me to please look after Missy. It was an easy promise to make; I would have walked through fire for her anyway, I still would.”

  Ike winced at Marcus’ mention of walking through fire. The opportunity to walk through fire for someone meant more than a figure of speech to him. He looked down at the old scars on his hands as the other man continued his story.

  “That was the last time we saw our Father. He was standing on the porch of the big house as we drove away in Jasper’s carriage. Later that week he lay down in the cemetery where the three women he had loved were buried and shot himself, he was so far in debt that there was little inheritance for Missy except for me. She had only Dr. Jasper and me to look after her.

  So I made my life with Missy and Jasper. Jasper treated me well in the beginning, he knew I was Missy’s half brother and I believe he thought of me as family. He was a very good and successful Doctor and made enough money to support his family well. I oversaw the place and looked after the crops and livestock and the other slaves who worked for us. I also helped them raise their boys. You never saw five more lively boys than that bunch.” Marcus finished, shaking his head and remembering. “I was always ‘Uncle Marcus’ to them, even when they left for the war.”

  Marcus looked grave and paused for a while as he seemed to gather his thoughts and dredge through old memories. Ike sensed that this was the first time the man has spoken of these things to anyone.

  “Things were as nearly idyllic as most could have asked for in our lives here. Missy had her husband and her sons. I had work to do and people to care for. I was even married for a time, but like my Father before me, my luck was bad and my wife died giving birth to our son. The child only lived a few days.” Marcus paused again as he recalled his personal tragedies. Ike felt a wave of sympathy for a man who had suffered a similar loss to his own. He wanted to tell Marcus about Emma, but held back as the big man resumed his narrative.

  “Then the dark times started, Dr. Jasper wasn’t a bad man at first but he had more ambitions than he wanted to admit. He mortgaged his farm to buy more land and more slaves to work it. He developed a taste for finer things, brandy, cigars, and fast horses for the boys. He was in the process of building a mansion for Missy on the next hill over when the war started. She insisted she was happy with the house they had but Jasper aspired to live the life of a gentleman planter and give her the type of home that she had grown up in. His idea of what a home was had become so much about keeping up with or outdoing the other ‘aristocrats’ that he ceased to be the man that Missy had fallen in love with. She still loved him, but he had pulled away from her, being more concerned about appearances and social status.

  I refused to beat the slaves and work them like animals so he hired a white overseer named MacGregor and relegated me to being a house servant again. The new overseer had come from deeper in the South and was unmerciful to the field hands and their families. He convinced Jasper that his ways were best. The children were looked at as a saleable resource and breeding more for sale became a source of income.

  I was angry at the treatment of the slaves. I had known many of them for years and thought of them as family. I had treated them well and they produced crops with as much efficiency without the cruelty that MacGregor insisted on, but Jasper would not see the folly of turning his operation over to this beast of a man. Jasper had began to see things in a different light himself.

  As the boys grew they came to look upon the slaves as livestock, whose sole purpose was to make money to sustain the life they sought. They still treated me with respect in their mother’s presence but I felt them pull away from me as they grew older. MacGregor winked at them when they trifled with the young slave girls. He was elated when the girls got pregnant and bore lighter skinned children that could be sold off as house servants. Jasper had sunk to the point of selling his own grandchildren. He thought he had kept Missy from knowing what was going on, but I think she knew even though she wouldn’t acknowledge it.

  The overseer resented my status in the family. He insinuated that a man of my size should be doing more to produce income. Missy was called away to visit a cousin who had fallen ill and the man saw the opportunity to work his wiles. MacGregor knew he would never be allowed to turn me into a field hand but saw in me an opportunity for breeding stock.

  MacGregor tried to befriend and beguile me to “get friendly” wi
th the slave women in hopes of producing “bucks” of my stature. He coerced me to walk down to the quarters with him one evening, thinking he could get me drunk and put me out to stud. I resisted and he had two other men jump me and chain me up in an old log smokehouse, they poured liquor down me until I was in a fog. That chain on your ankle was once on mine.”

  Marcus paused again and gazed out the door as he recalled his confinement. Johnny couldn’t help but comment. “Time was, I woulda wanted that job Ikey.”

  “I’m sure the overseer would have loved to have a bunch of short red headed bucks, who burned and blistered in the sun.” Ike replied silently.

  Marcus turned back to Ike and resumed his narrative.

  “One by one, women were brought to me, stripped naked and pushed through the door. The first of these women wasn’t terribly attractive but she seemed amused by the situation and acted as if she were willing and eager. She taunted me and aroused my lust and provoked me to do as I had been bidden. I was inside her and near the point of no return when she moaned in satisfaction and whispered in my ear. “You and me can jus’ make Massa’ another little nigger to go to the fields…” I stopped as if cold water had been thrown on me. She laughed at me as I lay panting and spilling my seed on the ground. She kissed my forehead and smiled. “Dey’ said you was a good man, an’ you is….jus’ think about what I say nex’ time.” She pounded on the door and shouted at the overseer’s lackey “Nigger done his bid’ness, let me outta here fo’ he wear me out!”

  The next woman was the widow of a man who I had been acquainted with for years. She was a beautiful and shapely being whose form I had always found enticing. I had resolved not to take advantage of the situation, but I have to admit to having a desire for her. She stood before me silently for a few moments as I looked at her with lust and chided myself for being tempted. As I was trying to think of something to say to her she did something I did not expect, she dropped to her knees in an attitude of prayer. Her action put out the flames of my lust and instead of taking her carnally I joined her in prayer. I put my shirt over her and held her in my arms and comforted her and we acted out a ruse that would be repeated several times. I did considerable moaning and she screamed as if in pain. The lackey grinned like a gargoyle as she staggered out melodramatically, crying with relief instead of the anguish of a raped woman.

  I must have repeated my act with all the slave women the overseer thought capable of bearing a child. The women had communicated among themselves that I wasn’t the beast I was intended to be and they seemed to try to outdo each other with their wailing and complaining. When they finally let me out MacGregor seemed pleased with himself and with me. A few weeks later he growled that I was even more useless than he thought.

  When Missy returned things were back to normal, I had taken care of the house and garden and no mention was made of my other duties. I was as unhappy as I had ever been. Jasper and the boys had turned from being people I cared about as family to being shameful loathsome monsters. Had it not been for my attachment to Missy, I would have went North with long ago, but I could not leave her. She had loved Jasper deeply from the beginning and the change in him was a great loss to her. Seeing her sons degenerate was even worse. I could tell she was listening for her voices again.

  When the war fever came Jasper stopped work on the big house and put his energies into helping equip a regiment so that his boys could go to war with the North as true Southern Gentlemen. I was glad to see them leave in spite of the pain it brought their mother. Within months four of them were dead, two died of camp fever early on and another two died at Shiloh charging into something that was referred to as the “hornet’s nest”. The loss of his sons took Jasper’s health and finally his life. It seems to have taken Missy’s mind.

  Ike had seen the aftermath of the “hornet’s nest”. Bodies clad in gray and butternut were strewn about in great abundance where they had fallen in one failed charge after another as they attempted to take the position so tenaciously occupied by General Prentiss and his men. He wondered if he had stepped over or around one of the Pendleton boys as his regiment pressed the Confederates back on the second day of fighting.

  A few days after Jasper died Missy and I went over the hill to the framework of the manor house. She sat on the beam that was to have supported the front porch and looked off into the distance for hours. I stayed with her for a while, but I decided that she needed to have some time to herself so I came back here to see to some chores. Just as the sun was beginning to set I saw smoke, Missy had brought matches with her and had set the big house ablaze. I had a team already hitched to a wagon I had just unloaded and I beat those poor animals unmercifully as I drove them over the hill. Missy stood facing the conflagration that was to have been Jasper’s monument to himself. I was thankful that the wind was to her back or she might have been scorched by the fire. She didn’t speak for days afterward. She finally willed herself to live for the hope that Todd might eventually return to her.

  With Jasper and the boys gone MacGregor tried to romance Missy in hopes of gaining ownership of the plantation. She loathed him and spurned his advances. She threatened to fire him, but he threatened to go to the authorities and tell them that she had taught me to read if she did. She wasn’t sure what the outcome might be, but she didn’t want to find out either, so MacGregor stayed on, abusing the slaves and harassing Missy. He had an unfortunate accident one night shortly after their last argument and now resides at the bottom of that old well out by the barn.” Marcus paused and looked at Ike to gauge his reaction. He smiled as he went on. “The local authorities spent little time looking for him and it was assumed that he had left for greener pastures, no one seemed to miss his presence and there was a war going on. His horse and worldly goods seemed to be missing as well. I believe his horse may have defected to the Union.

  A few of the original slave families stayed on and have been sharecropping. We make enough to feed ourselves and maintain a fair standard of living for Missy. The later acquisitions slipped away and followed your army I believe. I hope they are able to make better lives for themselves. Were it not for Missy, I would be somewhere to the north by now. If your army would have me at my age I might even be carrying a rifle.”

  Ike had listened attentively to Marcus’ story. He looked down at the chain on his ankle and thought of the irony of a white man being chained by a black one.

  Marcus had been having the same thought. “It does seem backwards doesn’t it? I have to admit to a perverse pleasure in chaining up a white person. Please don’t take it personally, I bear you no ill will and I intend to free you as soon as I am convinced that doing so will bring no harm to Missy. I thought keeping you here in the first place was a bad idea, but she insisted on it and I did feel that you would be treated brutally by the home guard or the Confederate army. I hate to admit it but when I found you it was as if I was hearing one of Missy’s voices in my head and I was concerned that I was losing my mind as well, but thankfully the annoying voice went away.”

  “Annoyin’ voice! What’s he mean by that, Ike?” Johnny chortled. “I wish I could annoy him into lettin’ you go, but for some reason I can’t penetrate his ol’ black noggin any more, but it sure was fun when I did.”

  “You speak well, when you want to.” Ike opined.

  “It’s a habit I have. When there are strangers around I use the slave vernacular. Among our family I speak normally, the way I learned to talk in my childhood. It seems that the sound of a black man speaking better English than most whites makes many southerners very uncomfortable, so I try to keep them at ease by speaking ‘slave talk’. I suppose you have been here so long I am beginning to look on you as family and have lapsed into my normal manner of speaking.”

  “I think it’s time for me to get your supper.” The big man said with a grin. “Do you play Chess Mr. Lowery?”

  “Yes, I do. And please call me Ike.”

  “Well ain’t that a wonder!” Johnny said.


  “Yes it is. I think you were right, Marcus seems to be at least sympathetic, even if he isn’t inclined to let me go.”

  “He may be, but that woman is smart and sneaky, even if she is crazy. She could put one over on the both of you if you don’t watch her.”

  Ike looked at the eye patch and looked at his sunken socket in the small mirror Marcus had placed on the wall for him and decided to try it on. “That there patch makes you look kinda’ dangerous there Ikey. With the patch and the black beard you look like one of them pirates in the story books. Hope you don’t end up with a wooden leg or a hook fer a hand.”

  “Hush Johnny, I don’t want to think about that.”

  After supper, Ike and Marcus played chess. Marcus brought a well worn chessboard with finely carved pieces and sat it on the table after he had taken away Ike’s tray.

  “You want to be white, I suppose.” Marcus said with the trace of a grin.

  “Well, since you are in the service of the white queen anyway, I think it would be fitting if you took the white pieces.” Ike said, training his left eye on Marcus to read his expression.

  Marcus looked at Ike for a long moment, trying to judge if his comment were out of bitterness or playfulness. He shook his head and began arranging the white pieces, starting with the queen.

  As Ike had guessed, he was outmatched by his opponent. Johnny grumbled in his head. “I always liked checkers…..never could keep track of who could do what in this one.”

  Mrs. Pendleton descended the stairs and watched the game for a while. She sat on the footstool and studied the two men’s moves. Ike ignored her completely and Marcus barely acknowledged her. She looked approvingly at the patch over Ike’s empty eye socket for a few minutes and took her leave when it became obvious that Marcus was going to win.