Henry had me by the arms and he flung me against the barn door and held me there. He shook his head. “Shoot, you dumb son of a bitch, you done it now.”
I heard Sup say, “Massuh? Massuh, you all right? Here, lemme help you up.”
My left eye was swollen shut but through the slit of my right eye I saw a lantern sitting on a stump, and by its light, Sup was helping Master Wilson off the ground, their shadows thrown large across the hedge of shrubbery. Wilson stood and brushed Sup’s hands away from him. I had not beaten him as badly as he had beaten me. I had not had the time for it.
Henry held my arms and Wilson took one step toward me, his boots crunching into the chicken bones that had fallen from my pocket. He looked down, and noticing the tin plate, he picked it up and held it between two fingers. “I caught this nigger with stolen food,” he said. “And then he went crazy on me, cussing and trying to hit me. I got the best of him though. You can see that.”
“Yassuh,” Henry said, looking me over. “Look to me like you did.”
“Fifty lashes,” Wilson said, pointing one plump finger at me. “To be administered Friday afternoon. Holmes will do it. Take him back to the quarters, Henry.”
“Yassuh.”
Sup leaned down and picked up Master Wilson’s hat. He brushed at it, his fingers raking off the leaves and grass that clung to it. “Yo’ hat, suh.” Wilson grabbed it, glowered at me once, and then stalked off to the big house, hat in one hand, and tin plate in the other.
The power I had felt while beating Wilson was gone now, dribbled out of me like pee. On one side, Henry got an arm around me, and on the other, Sup, and with their help I began limping my way back down the lane to our cabin.
“Chloe,” I said, my own voice coming to me as if from inside a hollow tree.
“That filly done got you in a heap of trouble, Shoot.”
“Is she all right?”
“Last I saw her,” Sup said. “Come and got us. Save yo’ life. Look like she save massuh’s too.” He chuckled.
“Why the whipping?” I asked.
They both stopped. It was Sup who answered. “You think you gonna do somethin’ like that and not get a whippin’?”
“No, I mean, why aren’t I going to hang?”
“Aw, damn, Shoot.” We started our movement toward the cabin again. “That ol’ buckra got some pride, don’t he? He cain’t let folk know you was humpin’ on his fancy.”
I reared up at this manner of talk about Chloe, reared up as best I could, which was not much, as the only response to it was Sup saying, “Easy there, stud.”
“What kind of food you steal?” Henry asked.
“I didn’t steal any food.”
“Someone did.”
“Chicken,” I said. “I stole chicken.”
“Fifty lashes mighty much fo’ stealin’ chicken,” Sup said. “Maybe he givin’ you half those fo’ not sharin’ with us.”
“Damn, Shoot. I got half a mind to hang you myself, hungry as I am.”
“I’ll bring you some next time Chloe and I meet.”
“Y’all ain’t gonna meet no mo’. Leave it be, Shoot. You got any damn sense at all, you leave that gal be.”
Sup let go of my shoulder long enough to ease the cabin door open and help me inside. I collapsed on my pallet and closed my eyes. I heard the sound of hands dipping into the water bucket, and wringing out a cloth, and then I felt cool moist fabric laid gently across my swollen eyes. I felt someone untie and then remove my shoes. “Rest up, Shoot,” I heard Henry say. “Gotta work tomorrow. Gotta work all week, then they gonna be a whippin’.” I heard him laughing to himself as he crossed the floor. The moss inside his mattress sighed as he lay down. “You got yo’self a beatin’, then workin’ all week in a cane field, then a whippin’. All that worse than hangin’, if you ask me.”
I believe Henry was right. At my whipping I would be made to lie facedown on the ground. My hands would be tied to two separate stakes, spread apart. My feet would be tied together onto one stake. I would be stripped to the waist that I might receive my lashes without ruining my shirt. The man doing the whipping would count out the number with each delivery.
I had seen such a whipping on Sweetmore the year before, required, as I was a part of the quarters, to witness the punishment of a young girl named Jilly, accused of insolence. I had heard the talk of what transpired to cause her punishment, but I cannot recall now the specifics. I do remember that she was young, and very pregnant, and that I had been given the task of digging a hole that her belly might rest in it while she received her punishment, thus protecting Master Wilson’s future property. I had closed my eyes to the whipping and lowered my head. If I could have covered my ears without notice, I would have done so, but I could not, and the sound of Jilly crying and screaming, and the whip whistling through the air and then landing on flesh was a cruel concert. As Jilly’s skin opened up the sound changed, and the liquid notes of blood and the moans of the slaves added themselves to this awful symphony.
I could barely move the morning after my encounter with Master Wilson, but I pulled myself out of bed and made my feet get inside their shoes, made my legs line up outside with my gang. I made my arm reach out to take the hoe. I made my fingers wrap around it. I said nothing to anyone that day, but I could feel the news of my crime, stealing chicken, and my punishment, fifty lashes, make its way through the cane plants and jump the ditches from one field to the next. By the time the day was over everyone in the quarters knew what had really happened.
I barely ate the cush-cush Sup offered me that night. I lay on my bed and closed my eyes, but it was not long before there was a knock on the door. I heard it open and then the sound of Sylvie’s voice. “I reckon his ribs might be broken, some of ’em,” she said. “Might help to wrap ’em.”
“Persy,” Sup said. “Sit up. This lady gonna tend you, not that you deserve it.”
I groaned as I raised my body up to sit on my pallet. “Take yo’ shirt off,” Sylvie demanded. I tried but my fingers felt like nubs of clay. I could not make them work the buttons. “Here,” she said. “Let me.” And she knelt before me and reached out, her fingers shuttling at the front of my shirt until it fell open. Sylvie stood, and resting one hand on my shoulder, she helped me slide the sleeves away until my shirt lay in a rumpled landscape behind me. “Raise yo’ arms,” she said, and I did so, painfully. Sylvie knelt again before me and began binding my torso with a cloth. She looked into my eyes as she did this, and I met her gaze. She was, I saw, a beautiful girl. “They’s perfectly good womens round here, Persy. Massuh be happy fo’ you to have any one of ’em. You ain’t gotta take what his.”
I looked away, and did not answer, and she cinched the cloth around my torso a little too roughly, causing me to draw in a painful breath.
“Too tight?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Well, I jest have to loosen it then.” And she did, and then bound me once more. “Better?” she asked.
I nodded again.
“I don’t see no fancy down here takin’ care of you,” Sylvie said.
EVERY DAY that week I dragged myself through my work. I winced with each beat of the hoe against the earth. I cursed the sun hammering down on my back. I cursed the mosquitoes that stung me without mercy. I cursed the cane plants and their precious sugar. I cursed the white people and their precious way of life.
Master Wilson did not come around to the fields that week as he usually did, nor did I see him riding anywhere. The big house loomed quiet and sullen. The only life I saw there was the occasional slave walking from the kitchen house to the back door, carrying a platter or a tureen of food.
All I could think of was what punishment Master Wilson might have meted out to Chloe. He would not whip her; I knew this. Her skin was too soft and smooth and inviting to him for whipping. I could only imagine that he forced himself upon her more often, and perhaps more brutally. She was not mine, he had said, she was his. He would teach her
, he’d said, whom she wanted.
I obliged myself now to think of those particulars that Chloe had told me of during that first meeting in the sugarhouse, the particulars that I had previously given myself the luxury of keeping out of my mind. I drove myself to remember Chloe telling me of his calling her to his chambers, and of her standing in the doorway offering to bring him a cup of tea or a tumbler of brandy, hoping to turn him away from his lechery. I thought of Master Wilson patting the bed he sat on, as though Chloe were a small dog delighted to leap up next to him.
These thoughts made me physically ill. More than once I bent over and vomited beside a cane plant, then straightened, spit once, wiped my mouth, and continued hoeing. Yet still I forced myself to remember. I felt nothing but contempt for my selfishness, my egotistical need to embellish the lies I had told Chloe, my need to make myself feel like a man while doing absolutely nothing for the woman I claimed to love. I almost welcomed the lash, believing that at least I would suffer during my whipping as much as she suffered every day. The only consolation I allowed myself was the knowledge that house slaves were not required to witness whippings, and therefore Chloe would not be among the wincing faces watching the flesh fly off my back.
The day came. Master Wilson did not attend. It was Holmes, as Wilson had named, who would do the job of punishing me. Holmes was Sweetmore’s only overseer who had not signed up for service with the Confederacy. He was thin and lanky, with a slab of dark hair falling from beneath his hat. I did not judge him to be particularly strong, but truthfully it did not matter as the whip was designed to do most of the work.
I remember raising my arms while the cloth that Sylvie had bound around my torso was unwound by one of the drivers. I remember the cool ground against my chest and stomach as I was made to lie down. I remember that there was a line of black ants marching across the dirt in front of me.
If I allow myself to, I can feel the roughness of the ropes as they were tied around my wrists and ankles, staking me into place. I can hear the slice of held breath behind me where my fellow slaves were gathered, and the voice of Holmes saying, “For the crime of stealing food, Persimmon Wilson, you are to receive fifty lashes,” and then the unfurling of the whip behind me, the tip of it dropping to the earth with a light smack.
Fifty lashes. I did not know what I was in for. The first lash stung. I thought I could bear it. The fifth lash caused a warming sensation. At ten I begged for mercy. At twelve I swore into the dirt to the god I did not believe in.
Holmes counted out loud. I remember puffs of dust erupting in front of my mouth, as I blew air out with each lash. I remember grit settling in my nose, my eyes, my mouth. After a while I felt my flesh split open.
“Oh Lord,” someone said behind me. “Oh Lord.”
The slaves began to moan. Their voices rose and fell into crescendos and valleys as each blow fell across my back. I felt another strip of skin peel away. I felt air move across muscles and tendons. I felt hot rivulets of blood pour down my sides. I saw a piece of my flesh plop wetly into the dirt in front of me.
I do not know at what count of the lash I went unconscious. I do not know where my mind went or how it could have gone anywhere at all while my body endured such treatment. Time passed. Flesh peeled off my back. The slaves moaned. More lashes were delivered. The counting continued, but I could no longer hear it.
After it was over Holmes must have commanded that someone cut me loose. He must have coiled the whip, and handed it to a slave to be put away. He must have daubed his hands, wet with my blood, on his pants legs.
I came to as I was being laid into the bed of a cart. I lay on my side as the cart bumped down the lane. Each squeak of the wheels tore into my brain. Each jolt of its hard wooden shelf ran through my body like bolts of lightning. “Is he dead?” someone asked.
The cart came to a stop. I was lifted from its bed. I opened my eyes and saw that we were at our cabin, that Henry was holding me in his arms as if I were a sack of potatoes, that Sup was standing at the door, one hand on its wooden knob, my shirt and the cloth that had bound my ribs in the other.
“Goddamn,” I heard Henry say. I remember feeling the deep resonance of his voice vibrate through his shirt where my ear rested.
“I’m not dead,” I tried to tell them, but the words did not come. I tried again to speak and nothing. I began to wonder if perhaps I was dead. Perhaps I had died on the ground ten or twenty lashes before the end. “Chloe,” I tried to say, but the only sound I heard was a wet garble.
“I get the brine.” A woman’s voice. I know now that it was Harriet.
“He ain’t gonna be able to work next week,” someone else said.
“Naw. That must of been some chicken,” and there was a smattering of laughter, and then the door opened and I was carried inside. I felt Henry lower me onto my pallet, and then turn me over so that my back was exposed. “Goddamn, Shoot.”
If I had any doubts about whether or not I was alive, they were immediately expelled when Harriet sopped a cloth soaked in brine across my back. It was fire, pure, hot, blue-flame fire, as if kerosene had been poured across my skin and then lit with a match. I jerked trying to get away from the pain. “Easy,” Harriet said. She pushed her hand against the back of my neck. “It bound to burn, but it what you need. Massuh sent it.”
“Good of him,” I heard Sup say from off in one corner.
Harriet peeled the cloth off my back. I heard her dip it in the brine again. I heard the brine drip as she lightly squeezed the cloth. Once more she sopped it across my shredded skin and again I jerked. I felt her cool hand on the back of my neck. My eyes watered with tears. The pain of the brine across my raw back was as bad as the whipping, yet it is never the brine that I think about, only the whip. I heard the door open and Henry say, “Y’all go on home now.”
“Persy gonna be all right?” someone asked.
“He be all right,” Henry said. “Jest a whippin’,” and he closed the door and said to himself, “jest a goddamn whippin’.”
Harriet sat with me throughout the night, keeping the cloth on my back from drying, constantly peeling it off and wringing it out with more brine, then laying it on again. After some time my back numbed to the burning, and I became accustomed to the sound of the wringing cloth in the brine and the feel of the air across my lacerated skin as the cloth was changed, and after some time I was able to sleep.
I dreamt, I remember, not of Chloe, but of my mother working in the field, heavy and pregnant with my sister, and dropping one day to her knees as her labor began. I dreamt of my pa tending the garden behind our cabin by the light of the moon, that we might have a little extra food besides our rations. I dreamt of the morning glory vine that grew outside our cabin door, how Mama had trained it to grow up the cabin walls by way of sticks jammed into the cracks between the chinking.
“Yo’ mama ain’t here,” I heard Harriet say, so I must have called out in my sleep. I opened my eyes. The cabin was dark. I heard Henry snore and Sup roll over and punch at his mattress. I felt Harriet peel the cloth away from my back. Then I heard her plunging it into the bucket of brine and wringing it out before I felt it laid across my back again. “Go on back to sleep,” she said. “You get some rest. Best thing fo’ it.”
Hours later the bell rang, calling the slaves to get up and ready for work. I felt Harriet rise from the side of my bed. “Change his dressin’ befo’ goin’ to the fields,” she said, and then I heard the door open and close as she left. I felt the movement in the cabin as Sup and Henry pulled on their britches and shirts. I heard the fire crackling and a spoon hitting against the sides of a bowl, then the sizzle of grease as someone dropped batter in to cook.
“You hungry, Persy?” Sup asked. “You want a hoecake?”
I shook my head.
“You ought to have you some water,” Henry said. I made myself prop up and drink while Henry held a gourd full of water to my lips. Then he changed the dressing on my back, as Harriet had instructed.
“Don’t let that dry on you,” he said. “Pull it off you feel it dryin’. You hear?”
I nodded.
The bell rang again, and Sup and Henry left for the fields. I drifted in and out of sleep. When I felt the cloth drying on my back I twisted my arm that I might grab its corner and pull it off. It scraped tortuously across the raw meat of my spine, and it was some time before I could drift again into sleep. I awoke, I do not know how many hours later, to the sound of the door creaking open.
“Day over?” I muttered, expecting the rough, hard steps of Henry and Sup coming in from the fields, and then feeling confusion that the light was too bright for the end of the day, and the footsteps that traversed the cabin floor were too light and soft.
“Persy?” I heard. “Persy? I got somethin’ fo’ you.”
I recognized the voice of Peach and I turned my head to find her standing at the side of my pallet. “This from Chloe,” she said, and she pried my fingers open and placed a piece of folded paper inside my palm. I closed my eyes as my fingers wrapped around this bit of paper.
Peach stood beside my pallet, then leaned over and picked the cloth up off the floor. I heard her dip it in the brine, and wring it out, and then felt it being laid across my back. “Thank you,” I said.
Her feet crossed the floor again, and the door creaked open. “You look right bad,” she said before stepping down onto the stoop and letting the door fall shut behind her.
The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson Page 7