by John Jakes
George was fascinated by Cooper Main, who was twenty-three and taller than his younger brother. He wore fine clothes, which managed to look terribly untidy. He had sunken cheeks and darting dark eyes and was not without a sense of humor, although George found him more inclined to sarcastic smiles than to laughter. Cooper and Orry shared certain obvious family traits, including a slender frame, the brown wavy hair, and the narrow, almost haughty nose. But the older brother lacked the robust color Orry developed whenever he spent even one day in the sunshine; Cooper’s thin face and body seemed to have an unhealthy aura, as if he had been born pale, tired, and driven to think too much.
Cooper had decided to make the whirlwind overnight visit not only for the purpose of seeing Orry but to inspect the school that was turning out the nation’s smartest soldiers. He remarked that there was nothing in creation unworthy of study, unless perhaps it was family trees in his native state.
During Cooper’s short stay at Roe’s Hotel, however, his attention seemed to wander repeatedly from the sights he had come to see. Once Orry caught him gazing at the big stone barracks—or perhaps something beyond them—with an almost melancholy look in his eyes.
But just before Cooper left, he put aside his preoccupations and his air of mockery and flashed a big grin at George, saying: “You must pay us a visit, sir. Lots of mighty pretty girls down on the Ashley. Got a couple in our own family. They’ll be beauties when they grow up. Didn’t see many pretty girls in the Lehigh Valley. ’Course; I spent most of my time staring into fiery furnaces. Your family operates a mighty impressive factory, Mr. Hazard.”
“I wish you’d call me George.”
“No, call him Stump,” Orry put in. “All the cadets get nicknames eventually. We were christened last week.”
“Stump, eh?” Cooper shot a glance at his brother. “What’s yours?”
“Stick.”
That made Cooper laugh. “Parts of the same tree, is that it? Well, Mr. Stump, I want to say I admire the size and scope of your family’s enterprise.” Again his eyes took on that distant, melancholy look. “I surely do.”
Over the bellowings from a calf boat moving down the Hudson, they heard the whistle of the steamer at the North Dock. Cooper grabbed his valise and rushed down the steps of the hotel veranda.
“Come see us, Mr. Stump. Mind that you eat right, Orry. We’ll expect you home next summer.”
After the visitor hurried out of sight, George said, “Your brother seems like a fine fellow.”
Orry frowned. “He is. But there was something wrong. He was making a valiant effort to joke and smile—neither is very easy for him anytime—but he was upset.”
“Why?”
“I wish I knew.”
4
THE RIVER SLOOP EUTAW carried Cooper home from the seacoast. Aboard the sloop were packets of mail and shipments of staples sent upriver to the various plantations by the Charleston factor who served them.
It was a still, sunny morning. The Ashley was placid, glassy. Of all the rice rivers, it was one of the least valuable because the ocean could affect it so drastically. Although the river was fresh here, freak tides or hurricanes sometimes brought the salt of the Atlantic, which killed the rice. But in the opinion of Cooper’s father and the other local planters, that risk was offset by the ease of shipping the crop down to Charleston.
The heat of late June baked Cooper’s neck and hands as he stood at the rail awaiting his first glimpse of the Main dock. He was often bitterly critical of his state, and of this region in particular. But love of both dwelled deep in his bones. He especially loved the familiar sights of the river, the panorama of pines, live oaks, and occasional palmettos rising on those stretches of shore that remained unclaimed. In the trees, jays and redbirds flashed their colors. At one place a river road skirted the bank. Cooper watched three young blades on fine horses thunder by; racing was a favorite sport in the low country.
Insects nibbled and nagged at his skin. He could almost smell the sickly season coming. At the great house, preparations would be under way for the family’s removal to their place at Summerville. From there Cooper’s father would ride down to the plantation to inspect on a regular basis, but he would not stay at Mont Royal until the weather cooled again. They had a saying about South Carolina’s coastal region, where miasmic fevers killed scores of whites every year: “In the spring a heaven. In the summer a hell. In the fall a hospital.”
On the port side the foliage gave way to man-made ramparts—the high main banks. Beyond them lay fields long ago reclaimed from the marshlands by the hard work of Cooper’s forebears. The banks themselves were a key part of the operation of the complex agricultural machine that was a rice plantation.
At regular intervals the banks were pierced by rectangular wood culverts called trunks. The trunks had gates at both ends. By means of these gates the water of the river was carefully admitted to, or drained from, the fields where the rice grew. That is, the rice grew if Tillet Main’s people did their work properly and on time. It grew if the May birds and the rice birds weren’t too numerous. It grew if autumn storms didn’t poison the river with salt.
There were all sorts of variables, and endless risks. Many disappointments and few absolute triumphs. The life of a rice planter taught a healthy respect for the elements, and it frequently gave Cooper the feeling that the Mains should be in some less capricious, more modern business.
A hail from the wheel lifted him from his reverie. They had come in sight of the landing, and he hadn’t even realized it. All at once he felt strangely sad. Better keep your mouth shut about the things you saw up North.
He doubted he could, though.
Soon he was striding up the path through the formal garden that overlooked the river. The air smelled of violets and jasmine, of crab apple and roses. On the second-floor piazza of the great house, his mother, Clarissa Gault Main, was supervising some of the house slaves in the work of closing off the upper rooms. She spied him, ran to the railing, called down with a greeting. Cooper waved and blew her kisses. He loved her very much.
He didn’t enter the house but instead circled one end, saying hello to each of the Negroes coming and going around the separate kitchen building. From this spot he could enjoy the pleasing view down the half-mile lane that ran between giant live oaks to the little-used river road. A sultry breeze had sprung up; gray beards of Spanish moss stirred on the trees.
At the head of the lane he saw two little girls. His younger sisters, scrapping as usual; one was chasing the other. Of that rascally Cousin Charles there was no sign.
Mont Royal’s business headquarters was another small building beyond the kitchen. Cooper mounted the steps and heard the voice of Rambo, one of the plantation’s most experienced drivers.
“They’s pipped in South Square, Mr. Main. Landing Square, too.” He was referring to fields, each of which had a name.
Tillet Main hedged his bets every year by planting a third of his land during the late season in early June, when the resulting crop would be less likely to be damaged. The driver was telling Cooper’s father that the seed in those late-planted areas had put out shoots from beneath the water of the sprout flow. Soon those fields would be drained by means of their trunks, and the long period of dry growth would begin.
“Good news, Rambo. Does Mr. Jones know?”
“He there with me to see it, sir.”
“I want you and Mr. Jones to inform all the people who need to be told.”
“Yes, sir. Surely will.”
Cooper opened the door and said hello to the big gray-haired black man just leaving. Everyone else in the family called the Negroes Tillet’s people, people being a traditional term that was somehow supposed to soften or obscure the truth. To Cooper it seemed less onerous—though not much—to be honest in one’s thinking. He mentally referred to the Negroes by one word only: slaves.
“Thought the Yankees had kidnapped you,” Tillet Main said from within the cloud of pipe toba
cco hanging over his desk. He quirked the corners of his mouth—which would be all the affection he would display this morning, Cooper suspected.
“I took a day to visit Orry. He’s getting along just fine.”
“I expect him to get along just fine. I’m more interested in what you found out.”
Cooper eased himself into an old rocker beside his father’s ledger-littered desk. Tillet was his own bookkeeper, and examined every bill pertaining to the operation of Mont Royal. Like other low-country planters, he liked to refer to his holdings as a barony, but he was one baron who personally kept track of every coin he owned.
“I found my suspicions were correct,” Cooper said. “There’s a scientific reason for the beams and flywheels breaking so often. If enough of the carbon in cast iron isn’t oxidized—the carbon and some of the other elements, too—the iron isn’t tough enough for machine parts that take a lot of abuse. Now I have to convince that dunce up in Columbia. If I can’t, maybe we can order parts from a foundry in Maryland or even Pennsyl—”
“I would rather keep the business in the state,” Tillet broke in. “It’s easier to put pressure on friends than on strangers.”
“All right.” Cooper sighed. He had just been issued another parental order. He received dozens every week. Pique prompted him to add, “But I made some friends in Pennsylvania.” Tillet ignored the remark.
The head of the Main family was in his forty-eighth year. Already the fringe of hair around his bald head was pure white. Cooper had inherited Tillet’s height and his dark eyes. Yet in this last feature there was a distinct difference between father and eldest son. Cooper’s eyes were soft, speculative, bitterly humorous sometimes. Tillet’s gaze was seldom gentle or merry. It was, rather, direct, unblinking—and occasionally fierce.
Responsible for the behavior and the welfare of scores of human beings, white as well as black, Tillet Main had long ago schooled himself out of a natural shyness. He gave orders as if born to it—which, by virtue of his last name, he was. In summation of his character it could be said that he loved his wife, his children, his land, his church, his Negroes, and his state, and apologized for none of it.
Half the children he had sired hadn’t lived past age four. Cooper’s mother said that was why Tillet smiled so seldom. But the eldest son suspected there were other reasons. Tillet’s position and heritage naturally inclined him to a justifiable touch of arrogance. At the same time, he was the victim of a growing sense of inferiority which he was helpless to control or defeat. It was a malady Cooper recognized in many Southerners these days. His trip had reconfirmed that such a condition was not without good cause.
Tillet studied his son. “You don’t sound very happy to be home.”
“Oh, I am,” Cooper replied, telling the truth. “But I haven’t been up North since my last year at Yale. What I saw depressed me pretty thoroughly.”
“Exactly what did you see?” Tillet’s manner had turned prickly. Cooper knew he should retreat. Stubbornly, he refused.
“Factories, Father. Huge, dirty factories, humming and clanging and fouling the sky like the furnaces of Beelzebub himself. The North’s growing at a frightening rate. Machines are taking over. As for people—my God, I’ve never encountered so many. Comparatively speaking, this is a wilderness.”
Tillet relit his pipe and puffed a moment. “You think quantity counts more than quality?”
“No, sir, but—”
“We don’t want a lot of foreign nobodies crowding us.”
There it was again, that stupid, stiff-necked pride. Cooper snapped, “What was Charles Main except a foreign nobody?”
“He was a duke, a gentleman, and one of the original Huguenot settlers.”
“All very fine, sir. But worshiping the past won’t build factories or help the South’s economy. This is the age of the machine, and we refuse to acknowledge it. We cling to agriculture and our past, while we fall farther and farther out of step. Once the South practically ran this country. No more. Every year we lose respect and influence at the national level. And with reason. We aren’t attuned to the times.”
He stopped short of citing the familiar proof—the peculiar institution to which the South’s prosperity had become shackled as firmly as the slaves themselves were bound to their owners. But he didn’t have to go that far to infuriate Tillet. The older man banged the desk.
“Hold your tongue. Southerners don’t speak against their homeland. At least loyal Southerners don’t. There are enough Yankees doing that.”
The son was caught—squeezed—between his own convictions and his eternal inability to change Tillet’s mind. They had argued like this before, but never quite so hotly. Copper found himself shouting: “If you weren’t so damn stubborn, like all the rest of the barons of this benighted—”
A scream outside brought a temporary end to the quarrel. Father and son ran for the door.
The scream had come from one of the two little girls Cooper had noticed while on his way to the office. Ashton Main and her sister Brett had finished their reading and ciphering lessons a half hour before the sloop docked. Their tutor, a Charleston German named Herr Nagel, had gone off for a late-morning nap, pleased with the younger girl’s eagerness to learn but irked by the sauciness of the older one, as well as her boredom with all things intellectual.
Both girls were unmistakably Mains, yet they were different. Only one was ever noticed by visitors—Ashton, who was going on eight and already beautiful. Her hair was much darker than was typical in the family. In certain lights it looked black. In color and sometimes in ferocity her eyes were exactly those of her father.
Brett was two years younger, not homely but less perfectly featured than her sister. She showed signs of growing up to be slender and quite tall, like Tillet and her brothers; she and Ashton were already the same height. It was an inheritance that would prove a handicap when it came time to attract beaux, as Ashton frequently pointed out.
After their lessons, the girls had gone for a stroll along the river. On a branch in a clump of underbrush, beyond the last square where the green shoots of the March planting stood healthy and tall, Brett had discovered an empty bird’s nest containing a small, pale egg.
“Ashton, come see,” she called.
Ashton approached with a jaunty step that had a touch of swagger. Young as she was, she had a clear awareness of her physical assets as compared to those of her sister. Her sense of superiority showed as she gazed down at the egg.
Brett said, “A green heron left it, I think.” She scanned the river with grave eyes. “Bet she’ll be back to nest soon.”
Ashton noticed her sister’s expression, and for a second or so a little smile played on her pink mouth. “Well, she’ll be disappointed,” she said, bending quickly to scoop the egg from the nest. Then she ran.
Brett pursued her along the bank. “Put that back. You haven’t any right to take a mother bird’s baby.”
“Oh, yes, I have,” Ashton said, tossing her hair. That was that.
Brett knew her sister, or thought she did. The situation called for desperate action, but carried out with cleverness. She pretended to be resigned. Soon Ashton was off guard, walking slowly and examining the prize she held on her upraised palm. Brett ran up from behind and snatched the egg.
Ashton chased her around the great house to the lane—the point at which Cooper, on his way to the office, saw them. The pursuit continued for several minutes. Finally, when both girls were out of breath, Ashton seemed overcome by contrition.
“I’m sorry, Brett. You’re right and I’m a ninny. We should put it back. Just let me look at it once more, then we will.”
Ashton’s sweet sincerity lulled the younger girl. She handed the egg to her sister. Ashton’s smile changed. “If it isn’t mine, it isn’t yours either.” She closed her fist and crushed the egg.
Brett jumped at her and, being wiry and agile and not very ladylike, easily bore her to the ground. She yanked Ashton’s hair and
pummeled her until she shrieked. The outcry brought Papa and Cooper from the office. Papa pulled the two of them apart, got widely varying accounts of the incident from each, then turned them over his knee one at a time, and spanked them—all before their mother dashed out of the house in response to the noise.
Brett bawled to protest the injustice. Ashton bawled even louder. Yet while she threw her head back and grimaced and cut up, her eyes were luminous. At first glance the cause seemed to be tears. Closer inspection showed that she was amused. Clarissa, Tillet, and Cooper missed that.
Brett didn’t.
Roughly three-quarters of a mile from the great house, in a separate little community of the plantation, another fight was taking place about the same time. A black boy and a white boy rolled over and over in the middle of a dusty street, struggling for possession of a bamboo fishing pole.
The street ran between two rows of whitewashed slave cabins. Here, too, carefully separated from the master’s residence, stood the plantation sick house, the small church, and, dominating the far end of the street, a five-room residence raised on pillars of tabby. This house belonged to the Mont Royal overseer, Mr. Salem Jones, a New Englander by birth and a martinet by disposition. Jones had been raised in the South by his widowed mother and about eleven years ago had come to Mont Royal with excellent references from another plantation. Tillet still considered him a Yankee, hence an eternal outsider. Jones’s good performance on behalf of the Mains helped overcome Tillet’s distrust, but nothing could ever dispel it completely.
The two boys were tussling under the casual gaze of little black children and black men too old to work. It was hard to say which of the two was the rowdier or the dirtier. The white boy—seven years old, suntanned, and strong—was Charles Main. Cousin Charles, Clarissa called him, to distinguish him from the Mains in her own family.