Sometimes I come up out of it with somebody jerking to stop me cause I’m hurting her. Stopping me right then, before I get the job done, throwing all we just went through right in the trash. Shoulda put grease on her in the first place. If I started worrying on things like that, we’d never get nowhere with it.
Some of em I don’t hardly touch. I know better. They’re spitting glass and I just try to get through it sooner rather than later. You got to be careful who you put your hands on in this life.
But there will be some few with some sweetness left. What little they can stand. And they look at you and they know you don’t mean it. They know you backed in a corner you can’t get out from and so they help you both through it. They come carrying all they been holding pent up for theirs long gone, and they hold you, hoping somebody’s holding theirs somewhere, somehow.
With these few, I pull em right up against me instead of pressing down. But I try to angle it so peckerwood won’t ever know. No reason they need to see my mouth on the side of her neck. We all got our nature. Don’t matter who I am to her so long as I hold her right.
But those others, the ones spitting glass, I just want it over with. Get the job done and get out. Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don’t. But I can’t afford too many misses and neither can she. She keeps coming up empty, she’ll end up sold and gone, and the last thing she wants is leaving her mamma behind and those that raised her.
People paying for this, Quinn keeps reminding me.
People paying is right is what I say to myself.
They expect to get their money’s worth or they won’t be back, he tells me. And the word will spread and then where will you be? That’s what he says to me.
Some few, even I steer clear from. They’ll cut me soon as look at me. When I see Quinn coming with one of those, I fix on him like he’s clean out of his mind. We’ll stand there awhile, me and him, but if I stand there long enough, he’ll hitch his head over to the side, just like somebody jerked it, saying get her out of here. But I can’t play that card too much or it won’t never work. Costs me a lot to put my foot down so I best be sure.
It’s when he brings one to me and I see that looking down on me look, that’s what I can’t take. Thinking she knows about me. Like I’m some kind of animal and she’s not like me. She’s too fine for this world. Makes me want to say for this time right here, I am this world, so you can’t be too good for me. That kind of look raises my hand sooner than anything. They hear this about me so most of em learn how to step out of the way. Step out of the way into the way, I guess.
It was Vesta pulling away from me that made me need to grab her. I caught hold of her just as she was heading for the door. Can’t have her bringing Quinn in on it, so I took hold of her arm. Felt her bones under her skin, all small and delicate just like a rabbit. Eyes panicked just like that too. Same shallow breathing. Backed her up against the wall, shoved her tight, just to hold her still.
I can feel her breathing under me and I can see her heart beat in her throat. I’m trying to get her slowed down, calmed down, looking at me, listening to me, seeing me. But sometimes, the more she struggles, the harder I get. The harder I get and the harder I go after her till I’m not remembering her at all. I’m a hammer and I’m coming down and that’s all there is.
We carry everything inside. Everything in the whole world is lying full and complete, inside each and every one of us. This life will bring out the deepest thing that’s in you and you just can’t say how you would do.
Best thing is to find you some time and somebody where it don’t work to force it. Like I found Pallas. Even when she gets gone, I still have the thought of her, spreading quiet on my mind.
Richardson
I won’t let Quinn give mine the stripes. I don’t want them torn up. Even a fool knows whipping is best avoided. Makes them harder to sell. But if it needs to be done, I do it myself. Even my negroes will run over a man they think too squeamish to do the job.
I take care of mine myself. I have to. But it’s different than with the horses. With horses, the whip is not for hitting them. Lay into them and they’ll just tear around, walleyed and goosey. No horse, no matter how fine, shows his quality when he’s tearing around like a rabbit.
You crack the whip but just behind them. It’s the whir of the whip through the air and the sound of the crack at the end that keeps them moving forward but you can’t ever hit them. Not if you’re after what I’m after. That easiness like water flowing grace in a horse that will carry you to town and back all the way on a loose rein.
But with negroes, it’s different. Crack the whip and don’t strike a lick, all you’ll do is make them mad. The only thing that truly turns their mind away from trouble is that whip cutting into some skin.
The feeling is totally different. With the horses, it’s all in the wrist. But giving the stripes is more in the shoulder. You must put your weight behind it or it won’t cut. And if it doesn’t cut, then there’s not much point. You’re right back where you started, with them thinking they can push you around.
Best way not to have to is be sure they don’t want you to. You must lay into it. Sometimes, I can feel it the next day in the muscles running down my right side. I’ll raise my arm to take hold of my stirrup and yesterday will come rushing right back at me when that tight soreness catches me along my ribcage.
With the way I keep mine, it usually only takes one stripe, but sometimes it needs more. If I have to go past one, if I get to three, then I’ll find myself hard, pretty much without fail. Sometimes I won’t even realize it until I feel the cloth of my britches pulling tight against me. That’s the only time I ever feel like taking one of mine for myself. They know it too and they scatter, which is fine with me because there are some lines I try not to cross.
Wash
There are times when I know he gets like that. Any fool can see it come over him when his arm rises and falls. You can see his britches and read his mind.
You make somebody do something and he’ll find a way to like it, no matter what it is. Almost like God put that in our natures to test us. Makes choosing matter more.
It’d be too easy if it was only the good things felt good. How else would God know you meant what you said?
Richardson
It’s finding the balance between the threat and the execution that keeps things stable. Threats don’t work unless one is carried out every now and then. The only threat that has never worked on my place is altering. They know I won’t do it.
Sometimes I will with the horses, if one of my studs has become too much trouble and is not worth repeating. But I don’t get much satisfaction from it. Seems almost like breaking something just so you can keep the pieces. What good will the pieces do you?
If you have room for separate paddocks and good strong stalls, there’s no reason to alter. It’s like stealing from yourself. If you don’t want him, then get rid of him whole.
Better to sell trouble off than to try to alter it. That’s the beauty of selling. That threat works better than any other with mine. It’s so simple and it lets you get through without having to whip too many.
Make your place tolerable enough and most will want to stay. Thompson taught me that and he has stayed right all the way to now. Mine are no fools. God knows where they might end up. Goes from good to bad to worse, even right around here, and I make sure mine know it.
That is one of the reasons I’m so free with them. They can grow their own vegetables even if they do use it for barter to get God knows what. I’m relatively liberal with my passes and I hold two big feast days for them a year instead of the usual one. In honor of old man Thompson and everything he taught me.
Mine know to count their blessings. There are those few who can’t reason this out, or who know it clear as day but simply cannot keep themselves in hand. I don’t want those here anyway.
Unless they are fine. There’s an exception to every rule and you’re usually all right if you keep your
exceptions to a minimum. This is why I put up with Wash.
Wash is worth keeping and Pallas is the same way for Miller. Even though she’s barren and spooks plenty of whites due to how quiet she stays, Miller keeps her because she makes him good money with her doctoring. But he agrees with me it might be risky using her on your own family. With Pallas, you can look right into those pale gray eyes and never quite know what you see.
But she makes Miller a pocketful of money bringing in these little ones. Crops go up and down but these keep coming year round. And we don’t have to worry about her going clean out of her head like Grange’s old granny, helping some of those women to take the life from their babies just as soon as they get here.
Pallas knows how to stop babies from coming but so long as she doesn’t interfere with Wash’s get, we let her go ahead because those others are usually mixed and we know that they will grow up to cause nothing but trouble, running around all these places looking like nobody so much as their fathers.
Wash
As different as we can be, we’re no different in some regards. His daddy taught him, just like the next man. You take what your daddy teaches you and you only got two choices. You either go with it or you go against it.
His daddy taught him he knew best and to stay in charge so he did. His daddy gave him the right and he took it. He went on and gathered up the reins. Never looked back. Looking back is a waste of time was what his daddy said.
Course that daddy of his never did tell him how heavy that weight he took up was and how quick it can wear you out.
Part Six
Thanksgiving, 1823
This Thanksgiving, Richardson’s table centers around a platter holding one of Emmaline’s hams, smoked to perfection then sliced thin and laid out in overlapping arcs of lustrous pink edged with strips of pale white fat and black salty pepper.
Richardson hopes William will make it back in time to join them, mainly because he’s bringing news of the recent sale of Memphis lots, but there’s no sign of him yet and it has started to snow. Cassius has taken William’s seat next to their father and grows sullen as Richardson’s attention catches on even the smallest movement outside the window.
The conversation becomes heated as it often does whenever their abolitionist neighbors join them. Anson Carpenter has become staunchly antislavery in his old age. Round, blond and firmly convinced of man’s potential goodness, he has founded a chapter of the Manumission Society to help those who want to start freeing their negroes. Richardson founded his own chapter of the Colonization Society just as fast, working to send these recently freed negroes back to Africa as soon as possible, then writing a law requiring any stragglers to leave the state within the year.
He and Carpenter can joke about their differences, with Richardson saying, “All right, Anson, if you insist on freeing yours to clean your slate, then I’ll have to get them gone. The more freedmen running around, the harder you make it on the rest of us. I’m sure this Liberia is just as nice a place as your backyard or mine. And there’s no such thing as a truly free negro. Not yet and you know it. Mine are much safer owned and they will stay that way.”
Both men have decided not to shield their children from this debate but today their banter feels more pointed because a traveling journalist named Dexter sits with them, listening a little too closely. He’s from New York and has been riding around the South, gathering opinions for a piece he’s writing on the slavery question. Mary invited him for a two week stay, wanting to serve as a good example and making sure he met the minister. Richardson distrusted Dexter’s earnestness from the start and doesn’t want to turn up in any book he’s writing. The fact that Diana and Caroline have fallen for the young man’s ginger curls doesn’t help.
Dexter has already worn out his welcome and tonight he seems determined to push Richardson and Carpenter further than they intended to go.
“I hear Atkinson lost his temper and beat one of his men so badly that he died the next day for lack of proper treatment.”
Richardson has a ready answer. “That case led us to legislate a twenty four hour waiting period before inflicting punishment. Gives everybody time to cool down.”
“But how do you enforce it?”
Before Richardson can answer, Carpenter leans in with a different story for Dexter. “It’s the situation at Hargrove’s that haunts me. His old man Moses died of natural causes, so it wasn’t the death. And it wasn’t Hargrove’s wanting to bury his Moses in the family cemetery, right beside his own plot. It was his insisting on doing it by himself and then getting so drunk that he lost all sense of proportion.”
Dexter interrupts, having heard parts of this story already. He savors these details because he knows they will make good copy.
“From what I heard, he dug the grave too shallow and too short both. Ended up climbing on top of Moses then jumping and stomping, trying to make him fit.”
“Hargrove’s not much for doing his own work,” Carpenter says. “But the worst part is that Moses’s two boys saw the whole thing. Lying belly down under the magnolias. Said Hargrove was muttering nonstop, crying then yelling. Cursing Moses too, but they knew better than to try to stop him. Hargrove carries a pistol with him always and he was well past drunk enough to use it that night.”
Cassius cuts in, more irritated than sympathetic. “But Hargrove’s gun didn’t stop Moses’s boys from carrying their story straight down the road to the next batch and the next until we’ve had a rash of nightwalking, cut up cows and broken tools.”
“They are trying to make you rein Hargrove in and doing a hell of a job of it too,” Carpenter says, almost proudly.
Cassius looks to his father, expecting him to step in. Puzzled by Richardson’s surprising reticence, Cassius tries to speak for him. “A fine does need to be imposed on Hargrove, but we can’t let it seem like the negroes have forced our hand.”
Richardson is determined not to give Dexter any help in fleshing out this story so he doesn’t tell them that Moses’s eldest boy came to him, asking for help. Richardson has already been to see Hargrove, who was embarrassed enough to let him negotiate Moses’s reburial as quietly and quickly as possible.
All he says is, “These negroes will take a hell of a lot without flinching, but when it comes to the burying of their dead, any misstep serves as a match to tinder.”
“That’s the beauty of your cooling off period,” Cassius says. “Letting our neighbors get carried away only makes matters worse for the rest of us since we are all bound together whether we like it or not.”
Richardson hears his second son sounding more sure than he himself has ever felt. He thinks about William riding from Memphis, still believing he can spread abolition as easily as grass seed. His two eldest sons are utterly opposed. One wants into the system and one wants out. But from where Richardson sits, both viewpoints seem a luxury. Cassius has no idea what he’s in for and William would hardly be the mayor, managing his own store, unless Richardson had made sure he was well set up. It would be a different story if either one had to start from scratch.
On William’s last visit home, Richardson had come down the stairs into a fight between his two eldest boys, with Cassius lecturing William on the dangers of abolition and Miss Isobel Bryce while William let his mother’s bland smile play across his lips, saying all he’d done was lend Miss Bryce his reputation. Cassius had raged at William then, insisting it wasn’t his to lend. Both sons fell quiet as soon as they saw their father but Richardson has heard the gossip. People in Memphis have started to question William’s stability and competency. Whether it’s the alcohol or the abolitionism, it almost doesn’t matter.
Tonight Richardson watches Lucius look from Cassius to Carpenter and back, with those dark brows hovering high under his widow’s peak. He’s glad to see Lucius show some interest in his own family now that he’s finally quit shadowing Wash and Emmaline. But it’s hard to watch the boy trying to decide which side to take when Richardson suspects ther
e’s not any real choice. Not yet.
Lucius idolizes his eldest brother and it didn’t help that Emmaline pumped him full of talk about William being her hero. The boy has even started to ask about going to live out in Memphis with William and Celeste. He’s still too young but that excuse won’t last much longer.
Voices rise and fall then rise again as opinions begin to shoulder each other roughly aside across the long dinner table littered with now empty plates and serving bowls. Only the wine glasses are still in use. Richardson snaps at Emmaline each time she tries to clear.
“Just leave it. We’ll ring for you.”
Mary sits opposite her husband, growing first anxious then annoyed, both with Dexter for his lack of manners and with her husband for letting it go this far. She uses the side of her hand to groom the crumbs from her end of the tablecloth into her opposite palm then drops the small pile onto the edge of her plate.
When Dexter starts trying to get Cassius to open up about whether or not he or his friends ever go to the quarters, Richardson snaps. He sets his wine glass down carefully and then, quick and fierce as a squall, his hand slams down, rattling the china.
“Now wait just a damn minute.”
A sudden clear quiet catches Dexter midsentence.
“I have had enough. I’ve worked for over two full weeks to put up with you. Anson and I are lifelong friends, yet you think you can set us against each other, as if you were at your own personal cockfight, and then sit back to watch so you can write it up, thinking you have discovered something important.
“Let me tell you something. You know nothing of us. Nothing. Whatever you’ve seen that you think so awful is merely a dim shadow of what truly lives here. Not everything can be put into words.”
Dexter’s open mouth gradually closes of its own accord.
“It’s a wonder how you traveling writers survive, carrying as little common sense as you do. The cities you come from must be easy, sterile places indeed, where a man’s true nature never shows itself.
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