by John Jakes
“It gets much colder than this up North,” he said. “You’ll miss the warm climate, I’m afraid.”
“Then you’ll just have to work very hard to keep me warm in bed.”
He cleared his throat to conceal the embarrassment her teasing produced. She was a forthright girl—it was one of the many qualities he loved—and thus she often said things that would shock more conventional people. Perhaps her frontier upbringing accounted for some of that frankness. He hoped his family would understand.
“Actually,” she went on, “I’ll be glad to go to a place where you don’t have to walk five hundred miles to find an abolitionist. I may involve myself in that work after we’re married.” They stopped near the top of a dune, both of them looking at the limitless Gulf. “Do you think your family would object?”
He smiled. “Would you stop if they did?”
“No. I don’t believe I could do that even for you.”
“Good. If you did, you wouldn’t be the girl I fell in love with.” He bussed her cheek.
“You didn’t answer about your family.”
“Constance, once we’re married, you’re my family. Only you, and anyone else who might chance to belong to both of us.”
Satisfied, she brought her mouth gently against his, then whispered, “I’ll try not to disappoint you there.”
“You could never disappoint me in anything. I love you.”
He moved behind her and slipped his arms around her waist, standing on her skirt in order to get close. She didn’t mind. She leaned against him.
He raised his hands till they rested against the underside of her bosom. He feared she might be angry. Instead, she placed her hands over his, so that he pressed harder.
“This is beautiful,” George said presently. “You’ll miss it.”
“I know I’ll miss it sometimes. But I would miss you more.” She faced him after some awkward maneuvering made necessary by the skirt. Softly, earnestly, she said, “‘Where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people.’ The first chapter of the book of Ruth.” Again she touched her lips to his. “I read it so often while you were away, I know it by heart.”
They laughed quietly, their foreheads touching. Her red hair tossed around them like a gossamer mantle. Walking home, they discussed practical matters, including wedding plans. George said he’d like Orry to stand up with him.
“He will, won’t he?”
“I’m not sure,” George replied with a frown. “The war robbed him of more than a limb. I’m worried about him. Though I really don’t want to, I’m going to stop at Mont Royal on my way home.”
14
SEVERAL MILES BELOW THE plantation, George smelled smoke. The late-November sky, already dark, grew darker still. Alarmed, he asked the captain of the river sloop whether one of the buildings might be afire.
The captain gave him a superior look. “Doubt it, sir. They’re burning off the stubble, I expect.”
The air grew noisy with the caw of unseen birds. The black billows continued to roll over the treetops and the river. Soon George was coughing. And when the sloop docked, Orry was nowhere to be seen, although George had written to say he was coming.
He didn’t know whether to blame the postal service or his friend’s state of mind. He tramped up the pier, the smoke irritating his eyes and throat. He felt as if he were back in the war zone.
From a three-high stack of rice casks a figure came hurtling down at him. George dodged and caught his breath. He smiled without much humor.
“Scared the daylights out of me, Charles.”
“Oh,” said the boy who had jumped. “I thought you saw me up there.” He offered no apology.
George’s heartbeat returned to normal. Cousin Charles went on, “Orry sent me to fetch you. He’s working over in Hull Square.” He dug some dirt from under a fingernail with his huge bowie knife.
An elderly house servant hobbled toward them along the pier. Charles scowled at the Negro. “Cicero, step lively or I’ll carve out your gizzard.” Charles lunged with the knife. The old black yelped and leaped away. He missed the edge of the pier and landed in the shallows with a mighty splash. Charles ran to look down at him.
“God above, Cicero—I was only sporting with you.”
“How’s I to know that?” the old man panted as Charles helped him out of the water. “Sometimes you really take after folks with that wicked thing.”
Charles shoved the knife into his belt. “I only take after Smiths and LaMottes, never niggers. Now you get busy and carry Mr. Hazard’s bag up to the house.”
Water dripped from the old man’s face and clothes. His brown toes showed through holes in the tips of his squeaking shoes. He picked up George’s valise and hurried off, not eager to prolong the encounter with Cousin Charles.
“Come on,” the boy said, still amused. He couldn’t be more than eleven, but he looked four or five years older. He had shot up several inches since George had seen him last. His shoulders had widened considerably. George wished he looked half as tough, and half as handsome.
Charles led him along the embankments separating the large, square fields. Smoke rose from three fields on the right. In each, slaves were using hoes to drag burning brush through the stubble to set it afire. All the workers were women. Their dresses were tied up at their knees. Bandannas protected their hair. In the distance, seated on a mule on another embankment, George saw Salem Jones. With his quirt and stick, the overseer resembled an equestrian statue.
George took Charles’s advice and pressed a kerchief over his mouth. The black women seemed unaffected by the fire-shot smoke. Perhaps they had been forced to inhale it for so many years it no longer bothered them. When the flames advanced too fast, the women ran to the nearest irrigation ditch and jumped to safety. “Fire gonna catch you !” he heard one exclaim. “Better run!”
Hollering and laughing, the others did. It hardly seemed like a game to George. More like a picture of the Inferno. But perhaps the stubble burning brought a welcome excitement into plantation routine.
“Not far now,” Charles said, beckoning him on toward fields already burned free of stubble. In these, huge flocks of black birds and wild ducks were noisily attacking the ground. Hunting for unsprouted grains, Charles said in response to George’s question. In the growing seasons the Mains fought the birds, but in the burning season they counted on their help.
Loud hammering drew George’s attention to the embankment next to the river. There he spied Orry, the only white in a group of six men. Orry was pounding nails into the gate of one of the culverts leading to the river. A nervous Negro positioned each nail and quickly retreated before Orry struck the first blow. He wielded the hammer with great arcing strokes.
Why in God’s name would Orry try to do carpentry when he was crippled? George couldn’t imagine. Then he realized Orry must be working so furiously precisely because he was crippled.
At last Orry finished. He turned to his friend who stood waiting nearby.
“Hello, George. Sorry I didn’t meet you. These boys botched the repairs. I had to show them how to do it right.” He dropped the hammer, paying no attention to the fact that it narrowly missed a slave’s foot.
George was shocked seeing Orry up close. His friend looked older. Gaunt, grim, almost biblical. His unkempt beard hung halfway down his chest. The left sleeve of his filthy white blouse was pinned up at the shoulder.
“How have you been?” George asked as they walked in the direction of the great house.
“Busy.” Orry fairly spat the word. “I’m trying to work myself back into the routine of things as fast as I can. Father’s too old to do it all himself, and Cooper’s leaving. Right after dinner today, as a matter of fact.”
George’s eyebrows shot up. “Where’s he going?”
“Charleston. By mutual agreement with Father. It’s a sort of self-exile, I reckon you’d call it. Cooper just can’t get along with Father anymore. He has too many radical ideas, and
both of them realize it. Cooper offered to move out before the quarrels got any worse.”
It was stunning news; no wonder Orry acted upset.
“Will he get a job?”
“There’s one waiting for him. A year ago a man owed Father a lot of money and couldn’t pay. He signed over his only possession—a little cotton packet company. The assets aren’t much: two old side-wheel steamers, a broken-down warehouse, and a dock. Father doesn’t give two pins for the whole thing. That’s why he didn’t fuss when Cooper said he’d take it over and run it. I’m glad to see you, George, but it’s a bad time to visit Mont Royal. People have been shouting at each other for days.”
You included? George wondered, but kept the question to himself. How haggard and hollow-eyed Orry looked. The sight of his friend in such a state saddened him.
“I had to stop,” he explained, noticing that Cousin Charles had departed. He spied the boy down in the nearest field, grinning and patting the bottom of a black woman twice his age. “I’m going to marry Constance. I’d like you to be best man.”
“That’s wonderful news. Congratulations.” Orry didn’t shake his friend’s hand or even break stride. He put his hand behind him, hunting for his handkerchief in his right rear pocket.
“It’s in the other one,” George said, reaching for it.
“I can get it.” Grim-faced, Orry strained to extend his hand across the small of his back. He caught the tip of the handkerchief and plucked it out.
“Will you stand up with me, Orry?”
“What? Oh, yes, certainly. Provided the work here isn’t too heavy. I hope you don’t mind eating dinner with my father and Cooper. It probably won’t be very pleasant.”
Nothing at Mont Royal was pleasant that day. George wished he hadn’t come. He made up his mind to leave as soon as possible.
Dinner proved as uncomfortable as Orry had predicted. Tillet, too, looked years older than George remembered. He and Cooper confined themselves to a desultory discussion of several matters relating to the little steamship company. Even an outsider could see Tillet had no interest in the subject. He merely wanted a safe topic for conversation.
Cooper, on the other hand, spoke with enthusiasm about formulating a plan to make the company profitable. “They’re shipping more and more cotton out of this state every year. We should get our share of those revenues.”
“Well, do what you can,” Tillet replied with a shrug. Orry had once said Tillet hated to hear about South Carolina’s expanding cotton industry. Somehow he construed it as a threat to rice planters in general, and the Mains in particular. He considered all cotton farmers to be upstarts without pedigrees, even though one of the state’s most distinguished citizens, and possibly its richest, Wade Hampton of Millwood, planted cotton.
Cooper heard all of that in the older man’s remark, and it irked him. “Count on it, sir,” he said with determination. Clarissa sighed and patted his arm. Tillet paid no attention.
Ashton, already showing the first signs of young womanhood, kept staring at George during the meal. The attention made him nervous. Brett elbowed her sister to get her to stop it. Ashton yanked Brett’s curls, whereupon Tillet blew up and sent both of them out of the room with Clarissa for a licking.
Brett was gulping, red-eyed, when the others came outside. The carriage had arrived. Ashton stared at her father with hot, hateful eyes. If the child had any feelings, they were all the wrong sort, George thought.
Cousin Charles sat with his back against one of the columns, whittling. Unexpectedly peevish, Clarissa flicked his ear with her middle finger. “Stand up and say good-bye to your cousin.”
Charles looked sullen. “I’m trying to finish this carving.”
Orry strode forward. “On your feet.” He slipped his hand under Charles’s left arm and yanked. He pulled so hard that Charles yelped. Then he glared. Orry glared back without blinking.
George studied Orry’s hand. It looked powerful, much thicker through the wrist than he remembered. Had Orry exercised to strengthen it? Apparently.
After Charles muttered a good-bye to Cooper, he put his bowie knife in his belt and rubbed the spot where Orry had held him. He was still rubbing when the carriage pulled away five minutes later.
That night George told the Mains that he would have to depart for Pennsylvania in the morning. Orry said he would accompany his friend to the little woodland way station of the Northeastern line. George slept fitfully and woke at first light. He dressed and left his room. He presumed no one would be awake except the slaves, who would have a pot of coffee ready. To his surprise, he heard loud voices below, voices of masters rather than servants. Tillet was up, and Clarissa, and Orry. Why?
He hurried down the great staircase and found the Mains in the dining room. Outside, the first faint rays of daylight shot over the eastern trees. A mist lay on the lawns, which were white with frost.
“Good morning, George,” Clarissa said. He had never seen her with her hair undone—much of it was white—or in anything but proper attire. The dressing gown she wore was old, the colors of its complex embroidery faded by the years.
“Good morning.” What did he say next? Why were they gathered? Had someone died during the night?
Tillet slumped in his chair, looking older than ever. A clay mug stood beside his hand. The coffee sent up curls of fragrant steam. Orry let out a long sigh and addressed his friend.
“No point hiding it from you. The whole plantation’s in an uproar. Lately we’ve had nothing but trouble from that buck named Priam—you remember him.”
George nodded; how could he forget the screaming that night?
“Well,” Orry said, “it appears he’s run away.”
In the ensuing silence, one of the house girls entered with a plate of biscuits and a pot of wild honey. George recalled the girl from his earlier visit. She was a sunny-tempered creature who joked with everyone. This morning she kept her head down and her eyes averted. Her footsteps hardly made a sound.
When she left, he once again caught the sound of anxious voices, this time through a window that was open a few inches. Out by the kitchen building, the house servants were talking. George heard no laughter. The crime of one slave was apparently the crime of all. But the slaves weren’t the only ones who were worried. Here in the dining room, the stink of fear was almost as strong as the smell of the hot biscuits.
“Papa, what’s wrong? Why is everyone up?”
The unexpected sound made them start. Brett stood in the hall, grave-faced in her cotton nightdress.
“One of the niggers ran off. We’ll catch him. You scoot back to bed.”
“Which one was it, Papa? Who ran off?”
Tillet struck the table. “Get back to your room.”
Brett fled. George listened to the rhythm of her bare feet on the stairs. Clarissa changed the position of her chair. She folded her arms and stared into the table’s brightly polished surface. Orry walked up and down in front of the windows.
The dawn burned away some of the mist outside. Tillet rubbed his palms over his cheeks and eye sockets. George munched a biscuit, finding himself confused. Why were three adults so upset about one man’s escape? One man’s freedom? Was freedom such an unacceptable idea? Hadn’t Tillet Main’s ancestors fought against the British for freedom in this very state?
But those were idiotic questions, he soon realized. The Mains had been fighting for freedom for white men, something greatly to be desired. Freedom for a black was altogether different, to be feared not only for its own sake but for its possible consequences. At last George began to understand something of the Southern dilemma. He began to understand the stranglehold that slavery had on those who practiced it. Not one slave could be allowed to escape, for if one succeeded, thousands might try. The Mains and all others like them were prisoners of the very system by which they profited. And they were prisoners of fear. He pitied Orry’s family, but for the first time he was scornful of them too.
The sound o
f a horse brought Tillet to his feet. Salem Jones galloped into sight in the drive. A moment later he strode into the room. The overseer looked exhilarated. He suppressed a smile as he reported.
“Still no sign of that buck. Last anyone saw of him was around sunset yesterday. I searched his cottage. I now understand why he’s been so troublesome.” He shot a quick, accusing glance at Clarissa. Her attention was elsewhere, but Tillet didn’t miss the overseer’s look.
“What are you talking about?” he said.
Jones reached under his coat. “This. I found it hidden in Priam’s pallet.” He flung a dirty, dog-eared book on the table. The others crowded around to see it. “I suspect he was reading it before he ran off. I’ll wager it gave him ideas. About how bad he was being treated,” Jones added with significance.
George said, “I thought slaves weren’t taught to read.”
“Not usually,” Orry said.
“In Priam’s case we made an exception,” Tillet said, without meeting his wife’s eye. “Mrs. Main thought he displayed great potential as a boy. A peaceable disposition, too. She may have been right about the former, but as for the latter—well, I’m not blaming you, Clarissa.”
At that point, finally, he looked at her. He was assigning her every bit of the blame.
“I gave you permission to teach Priam to read and cipher,” Tillet went on. “It was a calamitous mistake.” He turned to George. “Now perhaps you understand why the South must have laws prohibiting education of the Negro. Even the Bible, read with the wrong interpretation, can be a source of rebellious ideas.”
Orry picked up the book, which had paper covers. “Who brought this piece of garbage onto the plantation?”
“I don’t know,” Tillet said. “But you make sure it’s burned.”
By now George had identified the book. He had seen a copy at home some years ago. On its cover it bore the colophon of the American Anti-Slavery Society of New York and the words American Slavery As It is. The Reverend Theodore Weld had published the work in 1839. It was a compendium of excerpts from slave laws, testimony by escaped slaves, and damning quotes from Southern slaveholders attempting to defend the institution and minimize or deny their mistreatment of blacks. George had heard his sister Virgilia say Weld’s tract was the most important and influential anti-slavery document yet published in the United States.