Slave (The Shame & Glory Saga)

by Mundis, Jerrold

  Within the drawing room, Amanda’s nostrils were flared. “Samuel,” she said, “I do not want that . . . that female in my house any longer.”

  “What? Amanda, she’s your own sister. You—”

  “Half-sister!”

  “All right, half-sister. What has she done?”

  “Are you blind? The scandal of her husband taking his own life was bad enough. But on top of that, she has absolutely no shame. I like to die with mortification every time we have a male guest. It’s disgusting! And all the time she spends with those niggers. Samuel, it is positively indecent for a white woman to carry on like that, and I won’t have it. I will not put up with it a minute longer.”

  Samuel grasped his chin between thumb and forefinger. “Well, I agree that this business with the niggers has got to stop. I’ll speak to her. But as far as leaving the house goes, well, you know that’s not possible. It wouldn’t be proper for her to go back to her home yet, or to start visiting. Another couple of months, and the mourning period will be over. But until then—”

  “She’s a damn brazen hussy, an’ I won’t have her!”

  When Amanda lost control of her usually precise speech, further discussion was futile.

  “I’ll talk to her.”

  “She’s goin’ to leave, you hear?”

  TWO OTHER BLACKS WERE working with Jud when Maybelle came by the carpentry shop. She stopped midway through the door when she saw them, smiled at Jud, and left.

  Later, Jud saw that she had captured Plum. They were walking toward a corn crib. The boy kept his eyes cast down, trying to maintain distance between himself and the white woman.

  Shadows were lengthening when a stripling set to beating the iron triangle with a bar. The slaves hurried to the meeting shed to answer the summons. There was already a large cluster of blacks by the time Jud arrived. They were oohing and aahing, and children were crying. Jud heard Richard Ackerly’s voice above the commotion.

  “Keep moving there,” Richard called. “I want every buck, wench, and child to see this. You all know what he did, and now you can all see what happened to him.”

  Jud moved up in turn. Hanging by its bound wrists and ankles, slung like a deer or a wild pig on a long pole which was supported by two high sawhorses, was the body of Shadrach. The huge melon-shaped head was thrown back. The eyes were closed, but the mouth gaped open and the purplish and swollen tongue was extended. The face and skull were ripped and bruised. The massive chest was marked with three great rough-edged depressions and numerous punctures and furrows. Much of it was covered with a crust of black dried blood. Fat blue-bottle flies buzzed in lazy circles around the carcass.

  Richard caught Jud’s eye.

  “You’re a smart nigger. This could have been you.”

  Jud gazed down into Shadrach’s face. He reached out and laid his palm on the broad cold forehead; then he let his hand fall and moved on.

  “Oh, Jesus, no! Oh, sweet Jesus, doan lemme end up like this nigger. No! No!”

  Plum fell to his knees before the corpse and wailed. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He rocked back and forth.

  “Be my savior, Jesus. Plum love you, Lord! Plum cain’t help . . .” He looked around wildly. “I di’n’ mean to . . . Oh, Jesus, doan take yo love ‘way from Plum. Please, Jesus. Please!”

  “Hey, nigger,” Richard said. “Stop that. What’s the matter with you? Here now, stop that.”

  Samuel’s voice was gentler. “You stand on up now, Plum. Nobody’s going to snake a good nigger like you.”

  Plum wept hysterically.

  Jud took Plum by the arm and pulled him up. He led the boy away. Plum buried his face in his hands and sobbed. When they neared the shanties, the boy stopped. He stared at Jud. He whirled and ran off.

  Jud looked after him, then went to his shanty for supper. He worried the ground with a stick as he waited. He thought about the woman with the yellow turban, his mother. He thought about Diggs and about Shadrach. And he thought about Homer. He was sad. He was sad for Plum, too, though he didn’t understand why he included Plum with the others. Richard Ackerly said he, Jud, was a smart nigger. Maybe he was. Maybe he was a dumb nigger. He didn’t want to be any kind of nigger. He didn’t want to be anything. Maybe he should be with Shadrach and Homer.

  He ate alone. He did not want to be alone, but he did not want to sit with the other slaves either. He finished his meal and went to look for the girl Delia. He found her where she had been the previous night. Again he sat down across from her. He watched her. He felt good.

  The fourth night he did this, a fat woman with her frock hanging about her waist, a baby sucking at one ponderous breast, walked over to him.

  “Hey, nigger, whut you doin’?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “Nothin’? I kin see you ain’t doin’ nothin’. Jus’ sittin’ lookin’ at her.” She pointed. “Like las’ night, an’ the night before, an’ the night before. Whut you want from her?”

  Jud didn’t answer.

  “Well, I goan caution you, nigger, an’ you lissen good. Hear? Mista Samuel ain’t bust her, an’ Mista Richard ain’t bust her. She still a virgin. Maybe they somethin’ wrong wif her. I doan know. But I does know she still got her maidy-head, an’ if’n you go pesterin’ her, Mista Samuel an’ Mista Richard goan cut you up in li’l pieces. So you do all the lookin’ you wants, but you keep that dingus of yourn all tucked up safe. You hear?”

  Jud nodded. The fat woman looked at him and shook her head.

  “Crazy. Bof of you. Crazier ‘n loony birds.” She waddled away.

  THE TOUGH-SKINNED COTTON BOLLS grew larger daily, and several female slaves spent the greater part of their time preparing the raffia baskets and coarse cloth sacks that would be used in the picking. Jud would sometimes lay aside whatever he was working on, walk out of the carpentry shop, and find Delia. He never approached her, and she never acknowledged his presence, but it made him feel good just to see her.

  Once he found Richard Ackerly with her. She was reweaving a damaged basket. Richard was standing behind her. When she reached forward for a shears, Richard slipped both hands under her arms and cupped her breasts. He pressed his loins against her buttocks. She stiffened, then picked up the shears and did the necessary cutting on the basket. Richard said something—loudly and angrily—but Jud was not close enough to hear. Then he stalked away from her. Now that the white man was gone, Jud saw the girl’s lower lip quivering.

  IT WAS IN THE evening, nearly a week later, that she rose violently from a stool, knocking it over, and marched across the dirt avenue to confront him.

  She stood above him with her feet apart and her hands on her hips. “Why you look at me like that, nigger? Why you always search me out an’ stare at me like a statue? Whut you want from Delia?”

  “I want . . . I don’ know.”

  She frowned and turned to go.

  “No,” he said quickly. He motioned toward the ground beside him.

  She narrowed her eyes. “What for?”

  “To . . . talk.”

  “Talk? Ha! It ‘pears to me you cain’t say more’n four words.”

  “You don’ have to be ‘feared of me.”

  “Who’s ‘feared?” She sat down and faced him defiantly.

  After a few silent minutes, he reached out to touch her hair. She jerked back.

  “I knowed it!” she said. “I knowed certain!”

  “No, you don’ know. You preten’, but you don’ know.”

  “I know Masta Samuel an’ Masta Richard, they neither one bring me up to the house yet. But they doan say they doan want me, so no buck better try to pester me.”

  “I don’ want to pester you.”

  “That all you do want.” Delia stood up and dusted off her frock. “Keep away from me, nigger.”

  “Come out and sit with me after dark,” Jud said. “Right here. I ain’t goin’ harm you.”

  She snorted and walked away.

  When the light failed and
the yellow glow of lamps appeared in windows, Jud remained seated. The wenching shed was full, and raucous laughter issued from it. Slaves moved about it in the darkness. There were sounds of banjos and music boxes, and a lone harmonica. Slowly, as the hours lengthened, the slave quarters moved into silence, and the lamps were extinguished one by one. A half-moon illuminated the night. Jud waited. Twice he saw a face appear at the window of Delia’s shanty, but the door remained closed. When the moon reached its midpoint in the sky, he rose and went to bed.

  She did not come out the following night either. Jud waited an hour after darkness had fallen. Then he stood up suddenly, strode across to her shanty, and pounded on the door. He heard only silence within. He pounded again.

  “Who that?” asked a suspicious voice.

  “Jud.”

  “You go away, nigger. Go on, git outta here! You leave this wench be, hear?”

  “Open up.”

  “Git outta here, I tell you. You kin stan’ there all night an’ it ain’t goan do you no good.”

  “You open this door,” Jud said quietly, “or I goin’ bust it down.”

  There was no answer.

  Jud placed his hands on the door and leaned his weight against it. The clapboard panel sagged and creaked.

  “You watchin’ this? I jus’ playin’ with it now. I hardly gots to put my shoulder to it, an’ I bust it clean in two. Now, you goin’ open up? I ain’t goin’ wait long.”

  There was a moment’s pause. A wooden latch was worked. The door opened, revealing a tall woman of indefinite age with a sloping forehead. She looked at Jud with desperation.

  “Go ‘way. Your brains all scrambled. Masta Samuel kill us bof, you do anythin’ to this wench. Go ‘way!”

  Two other women were cowering next to the fireplace. Delia stood alone in the center of the room. She held her head high and looked at Jud through narrowed eyes.

  Jud stepped forward.

  The woman gave a frightened cry and clawed at his eyes. Jud took her by the shoulder and held her at arm’s length.

  “Wait!” It was a clear and sharp command from Delia.

  Everyone looked at the girl. She drew the silence out, holding them, and then when the first uneasy shuffle came, she said, “Delia go with him.”

  “Not wif this rutty buck,” said the tall woman. “He—”

  “Everythin’ be all right,” Delia said. “You kin watch from the window. Well,” she said to Jud, “is you the new door? Cain’t you move lessen you pushed?”

  Jud led her outside into the darkness. She stared at him, mouth curved down in that remote expression he had seen her wear so often. He met her gaze directly. Gradually he began to wear her down; he saw small muscles twitching around her eyes. She looked away. He averted his eyes a moment or two later, and when he looked back she was toying with her fingers.

  Jud did not know what had just happened—but it did not make him feel good.

  “You are crazy. Or jus’ maybe simple,” she said.

  Jud wanted to say something, but his throat was dry and his tongue thick and clumsy. He could not think of any words.

  “Well,” she said, “I goan sit here an’ look at the moon a spell. An’ when I done, I goan back inside, an’ then I be through with you an’ you kin git on back to where you sleep.”

  “You a eagle.”

  “Whut?”

  “You a eagle.”

  “Lissen, you crazy nigger. I’se Delia. Delia, hear? I ain’t nothin’ an’ nobody else. You lucky I let you sit here this long with me. But you talk like that, I goan box your ears an’ send you runnin’. You nothin’ but a simple, crazy nigger.”

  “A eagle fly higher’n any other bird.”

  She glared at him. Jud put his index finger in his mouth, pressed the tip against the inside of his cheek, and snapped it out. He had seen others do it. It was supposed to make a noise. It didn’t. He tried again, blowing up his cheeks, and when the finger pulled free it made a popping sound.

  Delia’s eyebrows bunched together.

  He did it again.

  Her mouth trembled.

  Pop-pop! Twice more, in quick succession.

  Delia’s lips pulled back from her teeth. Jud grinned. Delia’s smile became full. She giggled, and then she laughed. Jud laughed. And their laughter itself became a source of further laughter. Delia clutched her sides. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she struggled for breath. At length they exhausted themselves, and Jud flung himself on his back, cushioning his head with his hands.

  “You a young eagle,” he said.

  “I’m more’n fourteen,” she asserted. “An’ you ain’t hardly but a striplin’ yourse’f.”

  “But you ain’t all eagle. You—lemme see—you part, uh, whippoorwill. That it, whippoorwill.”

  “I declare. You perplexes me, nigger. You truly does. Whut you talkin’ about?”

  “Whut I be, if’n I a animal?”

  “You doan make no sense at all.”

  “Come on, whut I be?”

  She touched a finger to her lips.

  “A possum?” he prompted.

  “No. Oh, no. Not a possum.” She made a face.

  “A salymander?”

  She rolled her eyes in despair over the suggestion. She stared hard at him.

  “A bear,” she said firmly. “A big huge-y bear that live up on the top of a mountain in a cave all by hisself. An’ you own the whole woods, and you stomp aroun’ roarin’ all day an’ swattin’ fish outen the streams an’ stealin’ honey from the bumblybees.”

  Jud was partly pleased. “But if I lives there all alone, I don’ got no one to talk to.”

  “Nobody gots nobody to talk to. Jus’ ‘cause some animals makes a lot of noise when they together doan mean they talkin’ to each other.”

  “A big huge-y bear,” Jud said. “On top a mountain.”

  They were silent awhile. Jud sat up. He reached forward, gently. She watched his hand approach. Her lips drew into a thin line, and her eyes widened, but she did not pull back. His fingers touched her hair and stroked it lightly. She shivered and began to edge away from him. He lowered his hand.

  She reminded him of a doe he’d once surprised in the woods. The animal had gone rigid. Its ears had twitched. Muscles skittered in its flanks. Jud had silently willed it to stay, not to be afraid, because it was beautiful and he would have stood there all day if only he could have kept it near. But the doe could not bear the tension. It rose into the air with a high leap, seemed barely to touch the ground, and bounded up again. Jud had stood still, listening to it crash through the dim forest.

  He did not want Delia to flee thus.

  “Come,” he said. “I take you back.”

  He heard a noise from behind her door, and he knew the three women were waiting there. Her composure had returned. Her eyes were proud and disdainful once more.

  “I see you again,” Jud said.

  She answered him over her shoulder. “Maybe. If I feels like it. I let you know.”

  Jud went out past the stables and lay down on the grass close to a maple tree. He looked up at the stars. He clenched and unclenched his fists. He could not find a comfortable position. He sensed the great emptiness that lay between him and the stars. It had been some time since he had felt the pull of that emptiness, the deep yearning to flow into it, to be dissolved and drawn forth, rocked in darkness. . . .

  The longing was greater than it had ever been before, but simultaneously there was something tight and restraining within him. It blocked his way to the emptiness, anchoring him to the earth, no matter how he ached for the darkness.

  When he finally rose, he did so wearily, and he walked back to the slave quarters with heavy footsteps.

  He would not have noticed the kneeling figure had it not been for the low sobs. He searched the moonlit ground with his eyes, and found nothing; then he peered into the shadow of a dairy shed and saw Plum. He was about to turn and take another route when the muted voice whimpered to t
he night.

  “Please,” Plum said. “Please, sweet Jesus, it ain’t my faul’. I tries ever’ way I knows to keep outta the demon’s way. But it jus’ ain’t no good, Lord. I gets found an’ forced into sin. You knows that true, Lord. You sees it from yo’ golden throne. Oh, doan take yo’ love from me!”

  “Plum?”

  Plum screeched, threw himself forward, and curled into a tight ball, knees drawn up to his chin, arms shielding his head.

  “No! No!”

  “Plum. Plum! It me, Jud. Whut the matter, boy? Whut you ‘feared of?”

  The boy rolled violently. “No! You cain’t take me!”

  Jud pinned his shoulders down. “It me, I tell you. Jud. No one goin’ take you noplace. Plum, it me, Jud. Now stop that.”

  Plum opened his eyes. His chest was heaving.

  “Jud,” he said dully. “Jud. Hu-hu. It my fren’. My fren’ Jud. Hu. Hu-hu.” He laughed hysterically. “Jud. Hu-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Jud. Jus’ an ol’ black nigger. Oh, that funny. Hu-hu. That like to kill me it so funny!”

  Then he buried his face in Jud’s chest, and his arms wrapped around Jud, holding him tightly, and his laughter broke into ragged sobs.

  Jud patted him on the head. “Hey, now. Whut put the terrors in you, huh? Whut is it? It all right now, Plum. You safe.”

  “I thought you the devil. Comin’ to spear me wif his pitchfork an’ carry me down to the roastin’ fires.”

  “Why you think a thing like that? How come the ol’ devil be huntin’ you, the goodes’ nigger for a hunnert miles?”

  “Jud, if’n I ask you somethin’, you answer me true, won’t you?”

  “Course.”

  Plum gnawed his lip. “S’pose a nigger that love Jesus wif all his heart done somethin’ wrong. The absolute wronges’ thing. But s’pose he di’n’ have no choice, he gots made to do it. You think Jesus goan take his love ‘way from that nigger? You think that, Jud?”

  Jud scratched his head. “Plum, I ain’t knowin’ much ‘bout preachin’ an’ such things.”

  “But whut you think, Jud? You reckon Jesus goan punish that nigger, goan punish him terrible? Tell me, Jud. Whut Jesus goan do?”

  “Well, I don’ ‘zackly know. But it seem to me that Jesus goin’ unnerstan’ that nigger, that he still goin’ watch ovuh him.”