“Well, we gots to rectify that. Yes, suh, we surely do. I kin baptize, you know. I a deacon now in the Lord’s service. They’s this preacher in Turbeville who travels all aroun’ these parts, stayin’ two, three days wif the plantation owners and preachin’ to they niggers. Well, jus’ after the firs’ shoots come up in the fields, he write to all the white folks an’ say he goan run a small school a li’l while, teach one nigger from each plantation how to preach the word, how to baptize, an’ how to feed the niggers’ hungry souls. He got rich white ladies in his flock that offer to pay the mastas fo’ the time the niggers be away from the fields. Masta Samuel sen’ me, an’ I learn stories from the Bible, an’ I learn how to baptize an’ all the right words—” Plum’s gaze drifted up to the sky. “An’ I learn about heaven, an’ all about the sweet, the oh so sweet love of Jesus.
“An’ me an’ Harris, we fall on our knees an’ we thanks the Lord ever’ mornin’ an’ night fo’ our deliverance, an’ fo’ keepin’ our bodies an’ souls safe from harm.” His eyes swept back to Jud. “But you gots to earn the Lord’s love. You gots to rid you’se’f of Satan an’ his legions of demons. ‘Cause Jesus doan love no contrary nigger, He doan love an’ He doan protec’ no troublesome buck. So you clean yo’ house, like the Bible say, an’ then I takes you down to the rivuh an’ bring God to you jus’ like John the Baptist, an’ then Jesus be yo’ shield an’ staff, too.”
Plum took Jud by both shoulders. “You hear?”
Jud nodded.
“Then you make yo’se’f ready.” He paused. “It good to have you back, brother, now that the craziness gone outta you.”
Jud went to the carpentry shop. He was glad Plum had recognized him, had called him by name and stopped to talk.
Fires were burning beneath iron kettles set atop brick supports. In these kettles clothes were being boiled in soapy water. Four female slaves worked the clothes with long wooden poles, steam and sweat plastering their wet frocks to their bodies. Jud glanced at them, opened the door to the shop, and paused and looked back. One of them had black and tightly waved hair that glistened in the sun.
He remembered her. She was Delia, the girl who had been purchased shortly before his fight with Chaskey, the one who had sat in front of him the time Reverend Hartwell had preached to them.
Her body was fuller now, but still unfinished. She was not tall, but she held her head high on her slim neck. She gave the impression that at this moment—in any other place imaginable—she would be doing exactly the same thing, simply because she wished to do so.
Jud watched her body strain to meet a work load beyond her strength, watched her metal-hard determination.
He went inside the shop. It was empty. There was an unfinished wheel-hub on the workbench. Jud turned it over in his hands. The original block had not been cut properly; it was unbalanced. However, it could be salvaged. He took up a reaming instrument and set to work. As he cut away at the hard wood, he thought about the girl Delia.
SAMUEL WALKED THROUGH THE slave quarters and work buildings with his hands jammed in his pockets. In the smokehouse, he rapped a sleeping slave sharply on the head with his knuckles. The black awoke with a startled cry.
“Please, Masta Samuel, suh,” he begged. “Doan whup Lenny, suh. I jus’ close my eyes the briefes’ li’l secon’ to res’ my pore achin’ head. I got a pow’ful pain there, suh. I not sleepin’, suh. I surely not.”
“Yes. Yes. You don’t even sleep at night. I know. Well, the afternoon is getting on. You’d better carry those hams over to the larder.”
“Yassum. Yes, suh! Lenny skitter these ham ovuh faster’n hot grease.”
Samuel rapped the black on the head again, sportively.
In the stables, Samuel spoke to no one. He stood off to the side, muttered to himself, and thought about taking a horse and riding out to look at the cotton gangs.
He shook his head: “No. Too hot. Too hot.”
He wandered about without any particular goal or direction.
“‘Noon, Mista Samuel,” a black called. “Did Mista Richard cotch that Shadrach yet?”
“Not yet. Soon, soon, I imagine.”
“Oooh-ee! They goan skin that ol’ nigguh alive.”
“Yes. They will.”
Samuel had placed a bounty on each of the rebellious blacks. Militia-like units were sweeping through South Carolina and the border areas of the neighboring states. From the larger plantations, every white adult male who could be spared had armed himself and saddled a horse. A general uprising of slaves—though unlikely—would be disastrous, and the seeds had to be crushed. No gentleman, of course, would ever claim the bounty on such a nigger. But the reward did draw hordes of vagrants and poor whites into the affair—anyone who could lay hands on a firearm, or fashion a nail-studded club. Three days had passed, and already sixteen of the twenty-one fugitives had been killed—and an unfortunate, regrettable number of innocent niggers too.
Richard had participated in three of the kills, but as yet his primary and declared quarry, Shadrach, was still at large.
Samuel wished that Richard would come home. It was difficult to maintain even an armed truce with Amanda while the boy was away. Since Maybelle had come to Olympus, well . . .
Samuel kicked at a stone and sighed. Tired, he was just too damn tired.
He came upon the boiling clothes.
“Emerald!”
A fat middle-aged slave snapped her head up.
“Yes, Masta?”
“Why have you got the girl working here?” He pointed to Delia. “This work is too heavy for her.”
“She ain’t no striplin’ no more, Masta. She pret’ near growed. But if’n you say so . . .”
Delia continued to stir the clothes in the kettle with a slow rhythm.
“Girl,” said Samuel, his voice gruff, “is this wearing you down any?”
“No, suh. It not too hard.”
Samuel coughed. “All right, then.”
He walked to the nearest shanty, sat down on a three-legged stool, tipped it back so that it stood on two legs, and leaned against the wall. He packed his pipe with tobacco, lit it, and pulled silently. He watched Delia work.
A beautiful little creature. A nigger, a black nigger wench, but still she was—beautiful. Like a moth. Like a thin-stemmed crystal goblet.
Like a daughter . . .
He got up abruptly, kicked away the stool, and left. Tired. Christ, so tired.
JUD EMERGED FROM THE carpentry shop at suppertime. Blacks were sauntering leisurely toward their shanties. They stretched as they walked, poked each other in fun, made jokes, and laughed with great hee-hawing sounds. Amid the dark skins, the gray, tattered work clothes, and the drab buildings, moved a burst of color—a young woman in a pale blue dress with a tight bodice and a flaring bell-shaped skirt. Her hair was elaborately coifed and held with jeweled combs. It was black hair with wide, premature swaths of white in it. Her decolletage was low, and her shoulders bare. She was laughing. Now and then she reached down and swatted the naked buttocks of a passing child with her closed fan. Then her wrist would flick and the fan would spring open and flutter over her mouth and nose as her eyes darted around. The slaves laughed nervously: “That Miss Maybelle, she sure . . . she sure . . . Um!”
Plum fell into step beside Jud. He looked sorrowfully at the woman.
“Who is she?” Jud said.
“Mist’ess ‘Manda’s kin. She a widow-woman. Her husband, he—” Plum lowered his voice. “They say he shoot his own head off. Um! Miss Maybelle come here roun’ seedin’ time all dressed in black. She bin here ever since.”
Maybelle swung in their direction. Plum stopped short. Maybelle closed the distance quickly, skirt caught up in her hand, a few inches of white stocking showing above her ankles.
“Now, Plum,” she said, “why do you look at me like that? Do I give you a fright, honey?” She poked him in the ribs with her fan. “Land’s sake. An itty thing like me giving the scaries to a big boy like you? Why, P
lum, it just isn’t natural, I tell you. You afraid I’ll eat you up?”
Plum pawed at the ground with one bare foot. He swallowed, and his larynx bobbed.
“My, my. Why, who on earth is your friend, Plum? He’s a big one, isn’t he? Makes you look almost puny, which of course you’re far from being. What’s your name?”
“Jud, ma’am.”
“Jud. That’s nice, real nice. It fits you. Nothing wasted, strong. Well, Jud, are you afraid of me too?”
“No, ma’am.”
Maybelle smiled. “That’s wonderful!” She peeped at him from behind her fan. “All the others are. Tell me, Jud, why aren’t you afraid of me?”
“I don’ know, ma’am.”
“Oh, that’s precious! What are you afraid of, Jud?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Do you mean you’re afraid of something you don’t understand, or that there’s nothing at all that frightens you?”
“I can’t think of nothin’, ma’am.”
“How absolutely marvelous. A nigger who isn’t afraid of anything. You are a very, very rare thing, Jud. Well, I imagine that if I were as big as you are and as strong as you look, I would be a little less fearful myself.” She laughed. “You two dears run along now and get yourselves some supper. Big men need to eat regularly. ‘Bye, now.”
She spun away with a swishing of her skirt.
Chaskey had sought Jud out earlier in the day. The foreman’s nose was flat and crooked, there was a half-moon scar under his right eye, and one of his ears was larger than the other.
“Hey, Jud, you coal-nigger.”
Jud didn’t move.
Chaskey slapped his knee and laughed.
“Doan be ‘feared, boy. I di’n’ come to whup you. Masta Richard, he doan care no more about you an’ me now. He plumb forgot all about us, I ‘spec’. So doan you be ‘feared.”
“I weren’t.”
Chaskey touched his nose and his ear. “No, I reckon you weren’t,” he said. “But maybe you should o’ bin. Masta Richard like t’ beat me to death fo’ not killin’ you. But you back from Sheol. Reckon Masta Richard be glad to see all the troublies gone outta you. Might even make a good fo’man someday.”
Jud didn’t know the two blacks in the shanty to which he’d been assigned. They ate, sitting cross-legged, outside it. Two women and another man joined them. Jud tried laughing at a few of their jokes, but it was a hard thing to do. He stopped trying and finished his meal in silence. Blacks were wandering at random; they would join one social knot for a while, and then walk away seeking another. This was the unhurried hour that took place nightly before darkness forced them into their shanties.
Jud walked around awhile and then—for lack of anything better—squatted down and poked at the dirt. He traced a meaningless design with his fingernail. Slowly he obliterated it. At Sheol, he would have been listening to the others, maybe even talking to them. He closed his eyes and listened to their voices inside his head. It was good, but it was not the same.
He walked again. He found Delia, sitting on a stool mending a frock. He sat down opposite her, several feet away. If she was aware of his presence, she gave no indication. He watched her until it grew dark. Then she went into her shanty and closed the door behind her.
AMANDA, THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, heard the pounding hoofbeats before anyone else in the Great House; her ears had, after all, been straining to hear the sound for days. She sprang from her chair, crossed the room with little steps so rapid that she seemed to bounce, and pulled open the door, crying, “Richard’s home! Richard’s come back!”
Samuel sighed, a low elongated sound, the kind a tired man makes at the end of a hard day, knowing that he can sleep now. He had heard nothing, but he did not doubt that Amanda was right; he had never known her to be wrong so far as Richard’s return from a trip was concerned.
Samuel pushed himself up from his chair.
Maybelle said, “The hero has come home, having conquered, I’m sure. Now he’ll take the burden from you.” She patted Samuel’s cheek.
Samuel gazed at her blankly. “What burden?”
She had learned not to trust him when he looked thus.
“Why, the plantation, honey. I can see that it’s wearing you down something awful having to run it all by yourself.” She stroked his shoulder and moved closer to him. He was aware of the odor of the perfume she had dabbed in the cleavage of her breasts. “Poor, tired muscles.”
Now they could hear what Amanda had heard, the galloping horse drawing nearer. A couple of blacks were shouting the news.
Samuel looked at her decolletage.
Maybelle smiled, increasing the pressure of her hand on his arm. He did not return her smile. She tried again. Empty moments passed. Her cheeks reddened. She snatched her hand away and spun on her heel.
“Richard’s almost here,” she said. “We should meet him when he arrives.”
“Yes,” Samuel said, and now he smiled.
Amanda was standing beneath the portico. Her mouth seemed softer, and her lips were slightly parted. Her small, wide-set eyes were narrowed as she watched the approaching rider.
Richard took his hat off and waved it back and forth over his head as his mount devoured the remaining distance. He reined it to an abrupt halt. The horse danced a few steps, blowing noisily through its nostrils. Its flanks were lathered with sweat.
Richard’s face was streaked with dirt. There were dark circles under the armpits of his shirt.
“It’s over,” he said. “It’s all over, as of ten o’clock this morning!”
He tossed the reins to a young black and he dismounted, stiffly.
“My poor baby,” Amanda said. She gathered him in her arms. “What have they done to you?”
Richard kissed her. “I’m fine. Really I am. Just fine. Nothing that a bath won’t repair.”
Samuel recognized the boy’s pose, recognized the young animal pride and the desire to be praised. It was justified. The hunt had been hard. Samuel walked forward and extended his hand.
“Welcome home, son.”
Richard grasped his hand strongly.
“Was it terribly, terribly difficult, Richie?” asked Maybelle, face half hidden by her fan.
“His name is Richard, dear,” said Amanda. “My Richard has never been called Richie since the day I gave birth to him. You do have trouble recalling that, don’t you?”
“It seems that I do, doesn’t it? But you must remember—” she smiled at Richard “—that Richard was such a little boy when I last saw him, that it’s very hard for me to think of him as a man now.”
Richard dropped his father’s hand.
“That’s odd,” Amanda replied. “You’re only a few years older than he yourself.”
Maybelle pounced with glee. “I know. I constantly have to remind myself that my dear sister is old enough to be the mother of a full-grown man.”
“Half-sister,” said Amanda.
“Yes. That’s so.”
Samuel coughed. “Come inside, boy, and tell us what happened.”
“Yes,” said Amanda, “I want you to tell your mother every little detail.”
“Well, some of it is a bit rough.” He looked at Maybelle. “You’ll stop me if I get too graphic, won’t you?”
“Honey, you’ll never be that graphic. No matter how old you are.”
Richard stomped across the porch, opened the door, and held it for her.
“Did you watch over everything while I was gone? Did you keep a close eye on the niggers?”
She brushed past him. “Yes, sweet. A very close eye.”
In a dressing gown, while servants were drawing a bath later, Richard slouched casually in a chair, and recounted the event. He and a party of ten had surprised the two remaining fugitives—Shadrach and another—in a barn this morning. The monstrous black had taken three shotgun blasts and two pistol balls before he had gone down. But he’d still managed to kill a planter’s son with a pistol
shot and two itinerant whites with a sickle. No longer able to stand, he had been set upon by the poor whites in the party, who finished him off with clubs and knives. His body was en route to Olympus. Richard had promised many of the planters that, after the Ackerly slaves had seen it, it would be sent to their plantations, to serve as an example of the consequences of any such actions.
“Thrilling, absolutely thrilling,” Maybelle said when Richard finished.
“Quite a job, son,” Samuel said.
Amanda leaned forward and patted his knee. “Your mother is very proud of you, dear.”
Richard shrugged.
“To think,” said Maybelle, “that it only took eleven of you to kill that big black monster. Why, it’s as heroic as a Greek myth.”
“Why don’t you run along and take your bath now, dear,” Amanda said.
“Yes, you run along and scrub yourself clean, Richie—Richard. I think I’ll go for a little walk.”
They left the drawing room. Maybelle paused to examine herself in a mirror. Richard walked up behind her, looking at her reflected visage.
“I thought about you while I was gone.”
“Did you now?”
“Yes. Constantly.”
Maybelle laughed. “The direct approach didn’t get you anywhere, so now you try the indirect, the softer way.”
“Why not, Maybelle? What’s the matter?”
“Simply,” she said, adjusting a comb in her hair, “that I find you repulsive, my sweet.”
He spun her around and dug his fingers into her shoulders. “You little bitch! You sashay around looking like you’ll give it to anyone old enough to wear pants, but you say I’m repulsive. Why don’t you use that mirror to take a really close look at yourself?”
“Let go of me.”
“What are you going to do if I don’t?”
“I shall scream, Richie. Very loudly.”
“Do you really think they’ll take your word over mine?”
“I don’t honestly know. It would be interesting to find out, wouldn’t it?”
“I’ll get satisfaction from you. Sooner or later I’ll get it.” He released her and walked away.
Slave (The Shame & Glory Saga) Page 8