On Agate Hill

by Lee Smith

  “Water be damned!” cried Jess Crocker, a big redheaded Texas planter standing beside me. “Get back!” They did not. He drew a pistol from his belt and shot the closest man twice in the stomach. This pirate died a screaming, writhing death upon the sands before us, while his compatriots turned back to their wretched ship.

  “Shame! For shame!” The outcry rose all about us, but Jess Crocker was unrepentant, threatening to shoot anybody on the Marmion who disagreed with him. No one did. Apparently the captain was of the same mind, for Crocker was never chastised or disciplined in any way. As our journey continued, Crocker and I grew to be friends, or something like it, playing poker nightly, a game in which Crocker dealt with all disagreements strictly, in much the same fashion as he had handled the pirates.

  Our meals were served from tin pans — boiled potatoes, bean soup, and salted beef. I had lived on worse. A woman and two children died and were buried at sea, unceremoniously, as the only minister on board stayed drunk the whole time, his private cure for seasickness.

  The mouth of the Amazon turned the ocean a reddish brown sixty miles off the coast of Brazil. You could dip a bucket down into it and come up with fresh water. At dusk we anchored outside the city in view of the Raza lighthouse, the fort at the entrance to the harbor, and the lush green mountains which went right down to the Bay of Guanabara. Our fifty-six-hundred-mile voyage was at an end. By the light of the moon, we could see Sugarloaf Mountain rising above all. I stayed awake that entire night, sitting on the bare deck, my heart brimming with fear, memories, and anticipation — a sensation oddly similar to the nights I had experienced before a battle.

  We raised anchor at sunrise and steamed up to the city with its bright colors, tiled-roof buildings, and iron-railed balconies, not unlike New Orleans. I could fashion such railings myself. We disembarked and walked up huge white paving stones through an open iron gate. Here I parted company with Jess Crocker and most of my compatriots, for I had chosen to continue upriver to the village of Rio Doce, two days and two nights of further travel in wide canoes poled by men who walked up and down the runways on either side of the craft. Though plagued by mosquitoes, I was enthralled by the variety of handmade crafts on the river, the strange trees and vines beside us, the bright loud birds and big snakes sliding into the water.

  The town of Rio Doce featured a beautiful river of the same name, as well as the large Lake Juparana with its broad sandy beach. Everyone set in to the work of settlement immediately, the men digging ditches, clearing fields, and building houses in the native manner, with palm roofs and dirt floors. These soldiers had truly “turned their swords to plowshares.” Women who had never performed manual labor in their lives were cooking, sewing, and washing clothes in the river. People have said that the Confederados, as they called us, came to Brazil because slavery still existed there, at least until 1888, but in my experience, this was not entirely so, for few could afford slaves, depending instead upon free negroes who were present in an astonishing variety of color and were treated as the equal of whites. Though this was upsetting to many Confederados at first, especially the women, soon all grew accustomed to it, feeling that at least these negroes were preferable to Yankees. A tribe of Botacudo Indians, naked except for belts and knives hung around their necks, caused the women more consternation than the free negroes whenever they came running into town drunk on cachaca, the local rum. Their faces were grotesque, earlobes and lips distended by wooden discs.

  One morning at first light, following a fearsome storm, I was setting up my blacksmith shop, my forge having at last arrived with the greatest of trouble and expense, when I heard the Botacudos’ unmistakable clamor outside. I came to the door just in time to witness two of them circling each other in the muddy street, knives drawn, and chanting — or so it seemed to me — in their incomprehensible language. One thrust into the other’s shoulder, the other slashed a spurting cut down his opponent’s forearm. I turned back for my pistol, returning in time to see a third man rush forward to cut off one of the combatants’ heads with a swinging machete. The head rolled into the filthy rushing gutter; the others chased it, yelling, snatching it up. I fired repeatedly into the air to dispel them, then drank myself into a stupor — all before eight o’clock.

  I awoke sometime in the afternoon, disoriented, head pounding. For a moment I thought I was on a lane in Virginia, marching toward Fredericksburg. I was eating an apple, incredibly sweet and tart at the same time, the best apple I had ever eaten, and I remember thinking, Well, this is a fine country, just before the guns began to roar in the distance ahead.

  I sat up carefully on the dirt floor of my hut in Rio Doce.

  “Senhor.”

  I looked around.

  Crouching not four feet away was an Indian boy holding out an animal bladder filled with — what? In that moment I did not know or care, recklessly seizing it and upending the contents into my mouth. It could have killed me, of course. But it was only water, blessed water. I drank my fill, then poured the remainder over my head while the boy squatted like a little ape, watching me with no expression on his face, or in his long light eyes.

  “Obrigado,” I said.

  He said nothing.

  Finally I succeeded in standing up. He did not stand up.

  “Obrigado,” I said again.

  He did not move.

  “You will have to leave now,” I said. “Go on, vai embora.” He scuttled backward like a crab, fetching up against my cot.

  “Sai d’aqui,” I said.

  Instead he grabbed a cobertor, pulling it down over his head until he had covered himself completely. I almost laughed. Since he couldn’t see me, he imagined that I couldn’t see him either. I picked him up and threw him out into the street, cobertor and all, latching the door behind him.

  The next morning he was back at dawn, crouched against the door. He fell into the hut when I opened it, then handed me a banana.

  “Obrigado,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Como se chama?” I asked.

  The boy shrugged, then shook his head.

  This was Henry, whose father had been decapitated before my door the previous day, and he has been with me ever since, as you know. I named him myself, then set about schooling him, finding him both intelligent and industrious, unlike most of them.

  At Rio Doce, Henry immediately became my helper, then my right hand man at the forge and indeed, in all enterprises. I needed such a helper, as it turned out. Though I had thought to return to a simpler life shoeing horses, soon we were overtaken by the extreme need for plows, spades, harrows, and rakes, iron tools never having been employed in Brazil before our arrival. It was hard to believe, but it was true. I moved to a larger space, hired on four more Indians, and we sold iron plows as fast as we could make them. A line formed outside my door every morning, Confederados and Brazilians alike, white and Indian and negro, and I made no distinction among them. We worked like demons.

  Until I came down with malaria, that is, almost an occupational disease in that climate. But I had rather a rough go of it, ending up in a tent clinic at Santarem where Henry and I had gone to deliver a load of tools for a new mining venture. First I was freezing, then burning up, beset with pains and vomiting, my mind filled with a host of phantoms, chattering and laughing endlessly until I thought they would drive me mad.

  Finally my fever broke, and I awoke to find myself drenched all over in sweat, as wet as if I had fallen into the Rio Doce. A vision in white gave me a dose of cinchona then held a tin cup of water up to my rough lips.

  “É agua?” I asked.

  A beautiful white smile lit up her dark face. “Sím,” she said. “Aqui. Bebe.” Her hair was a black cloud around her large black eyes. An otherworldly sweetness seemed to envelop her. She poured the cool water down my sore throat, and then she disappeared, and then I slept, deeply and truly, awakening after another twelve hours in another sort of fever, wild to find my nurse. I did so despite all good advice to t
he contrary. For what did I care about good advice? Nothing ruled me save my own appetites and desires.

  Her name was Maria Conceicão and she was the daughter of a free negro who ran a sawmill in the interior. I gave her father a sum of money, and we were married on the spot by an outlaw whisky priest. I brought her back to Rio Doce as my bride.

  Maria was a sweet, docile girl with a natural sense of grace and composure, a true lady as compared with the Confederado women who shunned her — and me — forcing their husbands to do the same. I was astonished! For here we were in Brazil, where all had come to find the freedom to live as they chose, or so it had been said. Apparently this freedom did not extend to befriending my Maria, who was just a girl, after all, suffering these slights, and missing her family. My friends all but disappeared. We could not hire a servant.

  Now with child, my beautiful Maria wept every day. I was at my wit’s end when Jess Crocker, the Texan from the Marmion, appeared in Rio Doce on a business matter. He came to visit me at the shop, and left impressed by my business. A deal was soon struck. Within two weeks time we were all en route to Americana, the town where Jess Crocker proposed to back me in the establishment of a tool factory — all of us, that is, Maria and myself and two of the Indians, with Henry and more Indians bringing the forge and other equipment separately, under some duress. We built our Fabrica de Arados and four other houses, one for Maria and myself, one for Henry, one for the Indians, one for the servants. “It is a city!” Maria exclaimed. I bought her fine dresses, a pearl necklace, silver candlesticks, an arara in an ivory cage, fine china from England. “Simon.” She said my name like a caress.

  I called her Minha Nega, my darling.

  Maria gave birth to our twin sons whom I named Simon and Charles, in hopes that they would enjoy such a friendship as your father and I had had at Perdido. Maria proved to be a lovely mother, a natural mother, endlessly patient with the little boys, laughing in delight at their antics. Of course she was not much more than a child herself. Her sister Leonilde came to live with us, affording Maria both help and companionship. The boys grew. The factory expanded, successful even beyond Crocker’s wildcat expectations. Orders poured in, stacked up. Soon we were employing thirty men.

  Almost despite myself, I was fast becoming a wealthy man. I developed certain ambitions, in keeping with my station — or perhaps to spite those who had been so cruel to Maria in Rio Doce. Though she loved our simple, low house with its courtyard and gardens, I ordered up a grand stone house to be built, with tower and parapets. I insisted on it.

  With construction under way, Maria and Leonilde took the two little boys and set off for a visit to their family. The boys were wildly excited. There would be cousins, and dogs, and a donkey cart. Though they were over three years old, their hair still hung in curly black ringlets to their shoulders, for no one could bear to cut it. Their mother had dressed them in matching white linen suits. Minha Nega wore a blue cotton peasant dress that day, embroidered with all manner of fanciful beasts and flowers, and a straw hat. One of the most trustworthy of my Indians — though not Henry — drove the carriage, and it has never been explained to my satisfaction what could have caused those fine horses — personally trained by myself — to run away on the mountain road, plunging over the rocky cliff and into the waters of Lago Azul. Only Maria’s sister’s body was ever found, the lake being too deep to drag.

  In an instant, I became a shattered, broken man, consigned forever to my former darkness, the outer circle of despair. Yes, I thought. Such is my fate, such is my punishment for assaying even a shred of hope, a moment of pride and optimism.

  I left it all — the factory, Henry, my mansion in progress — and went back to Rio de Janeiro for a time, seeking to lose myself in all the ways a man may do that there. I returned to Americana some months later to find Jesse on his deathbed and the fabrica a roaring success. I buried Jesse, then sold the factory. This was the first of my fortunes, my dear, for ever since that time, I am like the fabled King Midas — everything I touch turns to gold. It has meant nothing to me.

  Henry and I set off on a series of travels — first to Peru, then to Lisbon, to London and Paris and Rome. We traveled for two years, and then I was ready to come back, resolved if nothing else to visit Agate Hill again and look in upon Alice and her children. You know the rest, my dear. Please do not misunderstand me. I was at that time long past any hope of personal happiness, or any notion that my presence could be of any use to anyone.

  And yet there you were, your mother’s child — but your mother before she was diminished by age and disappointment, your mother before she had chosen Charles, your mother before she had even become a woman, when we were all children together, playing in the river at Perdido. And your predicament was so dire, so extraordinary, that I seized upon it; I resolved to help you, whether you wanted me to or not. For I had carried Alice’s little stirrup all these years. The truth is that I needed you at that point, my dear, far more than you needed me. You and your concerns have afforded me a life, of sorts. An involvement. A purpose. For a man must have a purpose in this world. Therefore I give you now my deepest gratitude. It has been my privilege to know you and your family, my privilege to cherish and serve you; and if such a place as the afterlife exists, I shall be there serving you still, and this task will continue in death to afford me my greatest joy, as it has in life.

  Yrs.

  Simon Black

  I read this letter straight through immediately, then again, while Henry and Juney waited patiently. The letter was everything that I might have hoped from Simon, an extraordinary man, and I am pleased to have it though I required nothing from him, as he required nothing from me. I folded it back up and replaced it in the pigskin case, tying the leather strings.

  “We should tell —,” I began, but they both shook their heads, no, for Simon had been ours and ours alone.

  “Then we will take him out to Four Oaks,” I said, “for this is where all our dead are buried.” I took a bath and washed my hair while they rolled him up in Henry’s cobertor and hitched up the mules and put him in the wagon. It was a beautiful, blowing morning — the kind of day we don’t usually have here in midsummer — as we rode out to Four Oaks, Henry at the reins.

  Of course I knew that the house had been sold long ago, but I had not been there for years, and no one had told me that it had become a golf club. FOUR OAKS COUNTRY CLUB read the sign on the old stone arch. The graveled driveway led to a parking lot filled with automobiles. The house had been painted glistening white. Men and women lounged on the wide porch and sat on wrought iron benches beneath the giant oaks. A man in knickers bent over the little white ball on the putting green over to the left, while two other men watched intently, and a flag waved gaily on a stick. Beyond the house, green grass stretched over the hill, dotted with golfers and caddies.

  A beautiful blond girl in sunglasses stood leaning against the nearest oak, one knee raised, her bare foot against the rough bark, talking to a man in a wrought iron chair. She was laughing and smoking a cigarette, then paused, blowing smoke out, to stare at us coming along the road in our wagon, approaching the arch.

  I clutched Henry’s elbow. “Just keep on going straight.” I was already anticipating the PRIVATE PROPERTY sign which appeared on the closed gate of the old road leading up to the cemetery. “Turn around when you can,” I told Henry.

  It was a long day’s journey out to Four Oaks and then back home; we buried Simon at dusk in the garden plot beside Liddy’s kitchen house at Agate Hill, Henry and Juney taking turns at the shovel. They were making short work of it when suddenly Henry said something in his language, throwing the shovel aside. He knelt reaching into the hole to sift the dirt with both hands, finally drawing forth a long human leg bone attached to a foot. Then he paused, still kneeling, to look at me. Lightning bugs rose from the overgrown garden all around us.

  Of course I knew immediately. It was Mister Vogell, Selena’s husband who had disappeared. She had d
one it, she had killed him so that she could have poor old Uncle Junius. Of course she had! Selena would have done anything. I was not surprised, I believe I had known it all along. Perhaps this is why I hated her so much, because I knew — even then — that I was exactly like her, skin and bone, tooth and claw. I would have done anything at all to have my Jacky.

  Juney cocked his head toward me, but this was a love story too long and too hard to tell. And in the end it didn’t matter.

  “Put him back,” I said, and so they dug another grave for Simon, over there by the miller’s stone where those sunflowers are growing now. There is no stone.

  Just look.

  Have you ever seen any sunflowers so big? Nobody else has either. They come back bigger every year. I swear, they are pretty as a picture.

  July 21, 1927

  Upon Simon’s death, I got up and took charge. We cleaned out the tenant house and moved in there, Juney and myself, while Henry took Liddy’s kitchen, thus giving Agate Hill over to its ghosts for good. Now they rush through the passage, up the stairs and down, up and down, they have the run of this house. The foundation is crumbling, the roof of the parlor is falling in.