by John Jakes
Clarissa said, “It’s all very well to point fingers, Tillet, but what do you propose to do now?”
Salem Jones spoke first. “I’ll question Priam’s sister, though it won’t do a hoot of good. She’s scared. What’s worse, she’s ignorant. Even if she wanted to give me a useful answer, she couldn’t. If I asked where her brother’s gone, all she could say is one word. North. And she’d be telling the truth, I expect. In my humble opinion, we have no choice but to appeal to our neighbors in the district and organize a special mounted patrol to pursue the nigger.”
Stiffly, Tillet said, “An armed patrol?”
“Heavily armed, sir. It’s regrettable but necessary.”
The little monster’s going to giggle before this is over, George thought.
Tillet nervously passed his hands across his forehead. “Never in the history of Mont Royal have the Mains resorted to a special mounted patrol. Not one of my people has run off in my lifetime. Not one!” He looked at George with anguish and pleading. Still confused and at the same time angry, George looked away.
Tillet’s face hardened. “But you’re right, Jones. Evidently the lesson of the cat-hauling was lost on Priam. An example must be made.”
“I agree,” said Orry with scarcely a trace of reluctance. George stared at his friend, inwardly aghast. Not bothering to conceal his eagerness, Jones strode out.
A couple of hours later, Orry and George rode to the railroad stop. Few words passed between them as Orry led the way along back roads and trails. He had donned a swallowtailed coat, old but obviously of fine quality. His bolstered Johnson pistol hung at his right hip.
Mist still floated near the ground, and the orange light of the sun falling through it lent the forest a beautiful, spectral quality. The hoofs of the horses plopped softly on the carpet of pine needles and rotting leaves. George’s valise bobbed behind his saddle.
Why was Orry so quiet? He acted angry. But at whom? Priam? His father? Things in general?
Or me?
He wanted to ask about Madeline LaMotte. During the visit her name hadn’t come up once. He decided he had better not.
When they were about a half mile from the little way station, the forest echoed with the long wail of a whistle. George booted his horse up beside Orry’s.
“Is that my train?”
Orry pulled a heavy gold watch from an inside pocket. He flicked back the lid, then shut it with a click and a shake of his head. “A northbound freight. It passes every morning at this time. It’s still five or six miles south of here. Sound carries a long way over the marshes. The passenger local won’t be along for twenty minutes yet.”
He rode on. The trail took them out of the trees, around the perimeter of another misty marsh, and back into the woods. Shortly they emerged in a gloomy clearing bisected by a single track running roughly southeast to northwest. At one side of the track stood a weathered cypress shed, open on the side next to the rails.
Orry’s judgment of distance had been right. The freight train was close, but not yet visible. The woodland resounded with the clatter of couplings and the shriek of wheels. While George tethered the nervous horses, Orry stepped inside the shed and lifted the lid of a wood box hanging on the wall. From the box he pulled a red flag. He raised the flag on the halyard of a pine pole at one end of the shed.
“There. That will signal the local to stop.” He crossed the tracks to rejoin his friend just as the freight locomotive rounded a bend to their left. The whistle sounded again, deafening. The engine rattled by, traveling about ten miles an hour. The fireman and the engineer waved. Orry returned the wave laconically. George brushed falling cinders out of his hair.
The locomotive disappeared into the woods on their right. Boxcars and flatcars went shuttling by. Orry started to say something. George was staring past him, startled by the sight of a black man who had burst out of the underbrush and was now running beside the train.
Orry saw his friend’s expression and turned. Surprise quickly changed to anger.
“Priam! Stop!”
The slave had seen the white men but apparently hadn’t recognized them. He looked terrified. He scrambled up into the open door of a boxcar as Orry ran for his horse. George had never seen his friend move and mount so fast.
Clinging to the floor of the boxcar, Priam made the mistake of looking back. He recognized the bearded face looming above the horse. Wild fright filled Priam’s eyes as Orry booted the horse forward. Go on, George found himself shouting silently. Get inside the car, where he can’t see to shoot you.
But the sight of his owner apparently threw Priam into confusion. He lay on his belly in the doorway of the boxcar, floundering like a beached fish. His legs hung down outside, his dirty bare feet just clearing the roadbed. Orry galloped past the car, all the way to the edge of the clearing. There he wheeled, his right side nearest the train.
Gasping, Priam raised his right leg and got it into the car. George could only assume the slave was not only scared but exhausted; otherwise he would have clambered inside with no trouble. His left leg still dangled, thrashing the air.
As the boxcar rolled slowly by, Orry reached out and seized Priam’s ankle. Priam was dragged backward through the opening. He tried to hold onto one of the doors, but then he shrieked and let go, as if splinters had torn his palms. Orry kneed his horse to the left, still pulling. Priam cleared the train and fell.
He landed on his chest on the shoulder of the roadbed. George could hear the slave’s sobs above the rattle of the last cars passing. A brakeman on the caboose platform gaped at the scene in the clearing, then vanished in the trees.
“George, I need your help,” Orry called, dismounting and pulling his pistol. George hurried forward. Orry gave him the pistol butt first.
“Keep this pointed at him. Shoot if he moves.”
Priam looked up over his shoulder. George could barely stand the sight of the slave’s eyes.
“Mist’ Orry—please, Mist’ Orry—”
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Orry interrupted, lifting a coil of rope from his saddle. “You knew what you were doing when you ran off. Stand up and put your hands behind your back.”
“Mist’ Orry,” Priam repeated, staggering to his feet. All traces of his former defiance were gone. His escape had rendered him as vulnerable as a little child. There was something shameful and almost obscene in a grown man begging so desperately that tears trickled down his cheeks.
“Keep that gun on him,” Orry said without taking his eyes off the runaway. He looped and tied one end of the rope around Priam’s wrists. He was as dexterous with one hand as most men were with two. He had taught himself a lot in a short time.
George licked his lips. “What will happen now?”
“I don’t know. He’ll probably be lamed so he can’t run away again. But my father’s so angry he may have him killed.”
Priam bent his head. “Oh, Jesus. Jesus.”
“Stop it, Priam. You knew the penalties before you—”
“Orry, let him go.”
George was astonished at the hoarseness of his own voice. He had approached a precipice and impulsively stepped over. This was none of his affair. Yet something in him was constitutionally unable to stand by and see the black man returned to Mont Royal to be crippled, perhaps even executed.
For a moment he felt idiotic. Priam meant nothing to him; his friendship with Orry meant a great deal. Still, he knew he would never be able to live with himself if he kept silent.
“What did you say?” Orry asked, his expression what it might have been if the sun had risen in the west, or the trees had grown bank notes in place of leaves.
“Let him go. Don’t be a party to murder.”
Orry fought back a furious reply, drew a deep breath. “You’re confusing men with slaves. They’re not the same th—”
“The hell they aren’t! Don’t do it.” Trembling, George struggled for control. His voice moderated. “If our friendship means anyt
hing, grant me this one request.”
“That’s unfair. You’re taking advantage of me.”
“Yes, I am. To save his life.”
“I can’t go back to Mont Royal and tell my father—”
“Why must you say anything?” George cut in. “I won’t, and you’ll never see Priam again.”
“Yes, sir, I be quiet,” Priam babbled. “Fore God, Mist’ Orry, I swear that after I’m gone, no one will ever—”
“Shut up, goddamn you.”
Orry’s shout rang in the stillness. George had never heard his friend invoke the Deity’s name in anger.
Orry rubbed his palm over his mouth. He squinted at his friend—angrily—then snatched the pistol out of George’s hand. Christ, he’s going to shoot him on the spot.
Orry’s face said he would like to do exactly that. George knew that what he had asked ran counter to everything Orry had been taught, everything he was. Suddenly Orry slashed the air with the pistol, a gesture of rage as well as dismissal.
“Run,” he said. “Run before I change my mind.”
Priam wasted no time on words. His great, liquid eyes flicked over George’s for a second—the only thanks George got. He bolted into the pines at the north side of the clearing.
Orry walked away, then halted, head down. Priam’s footfalls faded. From the other direction George heard the whistle of the approaching passenger local.
George took a breath and moved toward his friend. “I know I shouldn’t have asked you to let him go. I know he’s your property. But I just couldn’t stand by and let—”
He stopped. Orry was still standing with his back turned.
“Well, in any case, thank you.”
Orry spun around. He held the pistol so tightly his hand was white as flour. George expected him to shout, but his voice was pitched low.
“Once before, I tried to explain the nature of things in the South. I told you we understand our own problems, our own needs, better than outsiders do. I told you we’d eventually solve those problems—so long as outsiders didn’t interfere. I reckon all of that made no impression. Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked me to let Priam go. I honored your request because we’ve been friends a long time. But if you want us to continue to be friends, don’t ever ask me to do something like that again.”
George felt a flash of anger, but it was quickly gone. Orry’s quiet ferocity impressed him and made the terms of their future relationship absolutely clear.
“Agreed,” George said. “I understand your feelings.”
“I hope so.”
Orry tucked his pistol under his arm and dug into his pocket for his watch. By the time the local came steaming up to the way station, he was calm enough to discuss other subjects.
“I’m sorry your visit fell at a time when everything seemed to go wrong around here.” Orry’s eyes were less severe now. He held out a verbal olive branch. “Next time you come, it’ll be different. Until then, I’m eager to stand up with you when you marry Constance. That is, if you still want me to—”
Relieved, George clasped his friend’s shoulder. “Of course. I’ll write you with a date and particulars as soon as I have them.”
“Good. Safe journey—and say hello to your family.”
“I will, Orry. Thank you.”
The conductor called for him to board. Soon George was standing on the train platform, waving. Orry waved back, the gun still in his hand. Steam and smoke and the forest closed in. Orry disappeared from sight.
George stowed his valise inside the coach and sat staring out the window at the pines shuttling by. Occasional breaks in the trees revealed vistas of marshland. But the image that stayed with him was something quite different. He kept seeing Priam at the moment he was dragged from the boxcar, the knowledge of his own death showing in his eyes.
Priam had to be punished for wanting liberty; the same liberty Orry enjoyed because he was a white man. George had never considered himself a partisan of the Negro race, but he guessed he was now, especially in the matter of freedom. Why weren’t all men entitled to it? Especially in America?
He hoped Orry was right about the South’s eventually solving its own problems. If the South did not, the rest of the nation would surely take action. He not only grasped that for the very first time, he also grasped the reason.
15
AT RESOLUTE SEVERAL DAYS later, Madeline stood in the shadows in her dressing room and touched herself. She hurt. Not from physical pain. From loneliness. A lack of love. A growing sense of isolation.
She clasped her hands over her breasts as if she could end the pain that way. She stood a moment with her head back and her eyes closed, but it did no good. Despondent, she walked through the spacious bedroom to the second-floor piazza, where she shivered in the coolness of the dusk. From the kitchen building rose the rich smell of game birds roasting for Saturday dinner. Tomorrow was Saturday, wasn’t it? The days had little meaning any longer. Each one was like another: a trial.
How she wished Maum Sally were still with her. But the old woman had gone back to New Orleans to attend Madeline’s father in his last days. Being Nicholas Fabray’s free employee rather than his slave, Sally had chosen not to return to South Carolina after Fabray died. Madeline could certainly understand the decision; a few months of the LaMottes were all Sally could take. She had no patience with anyone who was arrogant or unkind, and Justin and most of his family were both.
Madeline had found one person who might someday take Maum Sally’s place. Nancy was a house girl, a beautiful yellow mulatto in her early twenties. She and Madeline got along well and had become confidantes of a sort. Twice Nancy had brought Madeline a verbal message from Mont Royal.
Both times the message was short: “Salvation Chapel,” then a day and a time. No names were spoken, and there was no trace of a sly smile in Nancy’s eyes when she delivered each message. If anything, her gaze expressed sympathy, understanding.
Madeline never asked how the message passed from the slaves of one plantation to those of another, and she took the discretion of the messengers on faith. What other choice did she have? Her acceptance of Nancy’s role as intermediary had built a bridge of trust between the two of them.
Madeline had never answered either message—or gone to the chapel, though she literally ached to go, to be with Orry and hold and kiss him. Now, leaning on the rail of the piazza, she realized she could hear no conversation from the kitchen, even though the slaves were at work there. She wondered about the peculiar silence. Then she heard a sound in the plantation office—the small building in which Justin spent so little time. The sound was the smack of leather on a bare back.
Clearly in the evening stillness there came another sound. A groan. Justin was thrashing one of the bucks. It had happened before.
Repelled yet irresistibly drawn, she slipped downstairs and through the foyer, where an old, dented saber decorated the wall. The sword had belonged to the LaMottes for several generations. Justin said an ancestor had wielded it when he fought beside Gamecock Sumter in the Revolution.
She ran along a path that would bring her to some shrubbery near the office. As she slipped behind the shrubbery there were more blows, more outcries. Then Justin’s hoarse voice:
“My brother said for a fact that on the night Main’s nigger ran away, someone on this plantation helped him hide out. Who was it, Ezekiel? Tell me.”
“Don’t know, Mr. LaMotte. Swear to God I don’t.”
“Liar.” Justin struck again. Ezekiel wailed.
Madeline held still, a shadow in deeper shadow. She was alarmed to learn that Justin was asking about the slave Priam. How had Francis LaMotte discovered that someone at Resolute had aided the runaway? Was it certain knowledge or merely a suspicion? How far would Justin’s investigation reach? All the way into the house? All the way to Nancy?
Madeline knew she didn’t dare linger here. If anyone discovered her, she would be suspect. But there was a small pergola not far from the of
fice, and she could sit inside as if taking the air. On a windless evening such as this, she might with luck hear more of what transpired in the office.
She hid herself in the pergola and was rewarded. During the next three-quarters of an hour, Justin continued to interrogate various slaves, laying a few blows on each. What infuriated Madeline was her husband’s interrogation of some of the wenches. He beat them as hard as he beat the men. Over and over he asked the same questions.
“Who did it? Who helped him? Who had sympathy for a runaway nigger? Tell me, Clyta.”
Clyta? Madeline sat up as if struck. Her mind had been wandering. There was only one Clyta at Resolute, a single girl of eighteen. Madeline suspected Justin had slept with her a few times. She was carrying a child. Even as she remembered that, she heard Justin hit the girl again. Clyta yelped in pain.
“Who did it?” he shouted. Madeline’s nails dug into her palms. The escaped slave had carried the answer to that question until a patrol picked him up a few miles this side of the North Carolina border. Priam had put up a fight and been mortally wounded by a patrolman’s pistol. The name of his secret benefactor had died with him.
Madeline was freezing now. Her breath clouded in the air when she exhaled. Justin repeated the question at full voice. Then came another blow and a scream. Madeline dug her fingers deeper, till they cut like tiny knives.
Who did it, Justin ? Your wife. It was your wife whom Nancy summoned the night Priam showed up, frightened and hungry. I’m the one who slipped out to help him. You were oblivious. Off with one of your horses or one of your slave sluts—as usual. I’m the one who helped him, you scum. I’m the one with the peculiar sympathy for niggers.
She didn’t quite have the courage to rush to the office and say all of it directly to him. She was ashamed of that lack within herself. She fled from the pergola, covering her ears to blot out the sound of Clyta’s cries.