“You truly does?”
Jud nodded.
“You wouldn’t jus’ say that?”
“No.”
Plum’s shoulders slumped. “I bin prayin’, I bin prayin’ hard as I kin.” He looked away. “You know, it writ in the Bible that ‘“Vengeance is mine,” saith the Lord.’ An’ ‘His wrath’—that mean whut he do when he angry—‘is terrible an’ quick.’ He punish sinners, he punish ‘em bad.”
Plum said no more for a while. Jud saw thin wet lines roll from his eyes down his cheeks.
“Lemme be,” Plum said. “Lemme be. I gots to pray.”
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, excitement knifed through Olympus. The first cotton had appeared. There were haphazard, stunning bursts of pure white fiber, harbingers of the white sea that would inundate the fields in the coming weeks. Children were organized into picking gangs and they trooped out to the fields, dragging baskets and sacks behind them. The older blacks would be held in reserve until it was time for the heavy plant-by-plant picking.
By midday the first sacks were lugged into the square-timbered gin house and emptied into the feeding bins. The gears turned and the hooked cylinders, flat metal ribs, and doffing brushes separated the lint from the hard seeds. Later, cotton would be stored in huge lofts to dry before being fed into the gin, but there was a certain status attached to getting at least a few bales to the market early, so the first day’s picking went directly to the hoppers.
Jud was sharpening a saw when Samuel burst into the carpentry shop. The white man’s face was florid.
“Nigger, what were you doing with that Delia wench last night?”
“Talkin’, Masta.”
Samuel was momentarily taken aback. “Talking?”
“Yes, suh, talkin’.”
“About what?”
“I don’ know. Lotsa things, Masta. Animals an’ such.”
“Nigger, you’re young an’ you’re horny. Maybe I haven’t sent you to the wenching shed enough. That Delia hasn’t been up to the house yet. If you try anything funny with her, I’ll make a wench of you. Understand?”
“Yes, suh.”
“Good. Very good. You’re not a bad nigger. Just make sure you stay that way.” Samuel turned to go. “You’re going to keep away from that girl now, aren’t you?”
“No, suh.”
“What?”
Jud set down the saw and file. “I surely ain’t goin’ pester her, but I likes talkin’ to her, Masta. You di’n’ tell me not to do that.”
Ackerly searched the boy’s face. Rebellion had to be somewhere, the planter thought, in the eyes, in the set of the mouth—but he couldn’t find it. One faint trace, that was all he needed, and he would have the boy seized, snaked, and sent back to Sheol. Damn! Ackerly had never seen a face as unreadable.
“Yes,” he said suddenly. “You talk to her. You talk and you laugh and . . .” He stalked out of the shop muttering. “. . . and you scratch your wool and you roll your eyes and you work your ass off and you tell them all to go to hell for me and you . . .”
The white man walked out of earshot.
THE LEVEL OF COTTON in the storage lofts rose steadily during the following week, and slowly complements of adult blacks were assigned to the fields. Each day, the number of slaves working around the slave quarters dwindled. Maybelle Farrington was seen only infrequently. Occasionally she stopped to see Jud. Twice Jud saw her with Plum in tow. Plum’s behavior was becoming erratic, and Jud had seen Samuel looking at Plum with a critical eye. Plum talked to no one, and had taken to leaping and crying out at the slightest unexpected sound.
SAMUEL SPENT LONG HOURS in the fields. Every physically able Negro was pulling the white tufts from the plants from sunup until the light failed. It had been five years since Samuel had driven himself this hard during a harvest. It was the easiest way to stay away from the house, and he was tired enough at day’s end that he could get to sleep early. The Great House had become strife-torn. At best, its occupants simmered in controlled hostility, and at worst they chopped at each other with shouts and screams wielded like hand axes. Even Richard and Amanda were at each other’s throats. Only Maybelle retained any semblance of normalcy, and even that was deceptive—she was perhaps the deadliest among them, for she did her ripping and her tearing in a soft, honey-smooth voice, her composure rarely disturbed, her smile always ready.
Samuel himself had been sucked into shouting arguments, and that disturbed him deeply. He felt like a man being drawn down into a whirlpool. Never before had he needed to resort to force, or the implied threat of force, to maintain equilibrium.
Richard now spent his days either hunting, sipping mint juleps on the veranda of a neighboring planter’s home and returning to Olympus drunk and surly, or patrolling the fields, driving the slaves with harsh and unwarranted discipline.
Of the three, Samuel was not sure which he preferred.
He’d had a violent argument with Richard over the wench Delia. And that dispute with his son, who had avoided him since then, had led to another with Amanda on the following day.
Amanda had cornered him after breakfast, before he had a chance to escape to the fields.
“Why,” she demanded without preface, “can you tell me why—just give me one good reason—you told Richard, literally ordered him, that he was not to . . . to . . . approach that little red nigger wench? That Delilah, or whatever her name is?”
Samuel stiffened. This was the question he had prevented Richard from asking, the question he had not permitted himself to ask, much less answer.
“Yes,” he said.
“Well?”
“Simply because I don’t want him to.”
“You don’t want him to?” She raised her arms. “Do you hear him, Lord? Are you witness to my trials? Samuel, I am trying to discuss this in a civilized manner. God knows the shame I feel, the disgust that sours my stomach for having to deal with this at all. Look at me. Look at my humiliation. Me, a woman, forced by her husband and son to discuss their lusts. It makes me feel dirty.”
Samuel tightened his bootstrap. “Well, force is about the only thing that would make you even admit its existence.”
Amanda flushed. “Do you know what men are, Samuel? Do you know what you are?”
“No, Amanda. What?”
“Filthy, degraded, prurient, muck-wallowing animals.”
“That may be, Amanda. That may be. But they’re honest.”
“Honest! All right, show me some of this honesty. Why won’t you let Richard have this wench?”
Samuel slapped his boot and stood up. “Because I won’t, that’s why. That’s all there is to it. I told Richard, and I’m telling you: Nobody touches her. Nobody, do you understand?”
“Yes,” Amanda said slowly, “I do. So very well.”
Her tone unsettled him. “Amanda, now really, this is all rather unimportant, isn’t it? I mean this great fuss over one stupid wench. It’s time now that Richard should be thinking about a wife any—”
“A wife? Richard? Not while I’m— He’s still a child. It will be years before he begins thinking about a wife. But you’re not going to turn me off the track that easily.”
“It’s settled,” Samuel said, turning toward the door.
“You’re purposely tormenting him. Aren’t you? Admit it! If you want her, then take her, you pig. But don’t torture my Richard this way. You hear?”
Samuel went out of the room. Amanda hurried after him.
“But it’s more than that!” she cried suddenly. “There’s something perverse about the feeling you have for that wench, isn’t there? Something terrible and unnatural.”
“Amanda, the house niggers will hear you.”
“I don’ care!” she screamed. “I don’ care if every nigger on the whole damn place hears. You are corrupt and foul. Perverse, hear? Perverse!”
Samuel cocked his fist. “Shut up! Just shut up.”
Amanda clutched her throat. “Oh, God in heaven. How dee
p can a man sink?”
Samuel left her standing there, and slammed the door behind him.
The subject had not been raised again since then.
In the fields, Samuel noted how closely that big buck, Jud, kept to Delia as they worked. And he knew precisely how much time they spent together when not in the fields and how they spent it. He had made it his business to know.
He was of two minds. His first and perhaps strongest impulse was to transfer the buck to one of the other plantations, sell him off, anything. But there was a factor that held that impulse in delicate check. Delia was a proud, fragile little thing, and earlier, the question of her happiness or unhappiness had never entered Samuel’s mind; she seemed to be above such feelings. But now there was Jud, and one of the first times Samuel had observed them together, he had seen her laugh. This had startled him. Laugh? Laugh? If so, then she could also cry. She could laugh, and she could cry. She could be happy, and she could be unhappy. Something shattered and fell away from his vision of her. She was not after all immune to feeling. She was not a creature complete in herself, independent of everything and everyone. He felt a sense of loss, but beneath that a poignant kind of tenderness.
If that buck could make her happy, well then . . . But oh, Christ! She was so beautiful and so fragile, and Samuel . . .
Damn! Goddamn it to hell!
It was too much. It was too much sometimes, and he would walk away from them through the fields. Stupid. A goddamn gangly nigger wench.
“Nigger wench, nigger wench,” he’d mutter, and some of the blacks would look up at him curiously. “Niggers, niggers, niggers . . .”
I’ll burn it all to the ground, he thought: fields, house, and everything. I’ll burn the whole goddamn thing to the ground!
SAMUEL WAS SITTING AT the edge of a field, back against the bole of a tree, eating the dinner that had been carried out from the house to him in a wicker basket covered with a checked gingham cloth. It was late in the afternoon, and the blacks were gathered in small clusters, eating their pone.
The harvest was well past midpoint, and long open buckboards loaded with wire-wrapped cotton bales left Olympus daily. Samuel was pleased. Even by a conservative estimate, this promised to be one of the finest crops in Olympus’s history.
“Suh?”
It was Jud, with Delia.
Looking at them, Samuel felt a twinge of fear.
“Yes?” he said gruffly.
“Masta Samuel, Delia an’ me wants your permission to marry up.”
Samuel’s right hand jerked reflexively to his thigh where, had he been wearing one, his pistol would have been holstered. Several moments passed before he could force himself to say anything, and even then it was only, “What?”
“Delia an’ me wants to marry.”
“Why, the—” Samuel was about to protest that Delia was too young, but the absurdity of the statement stopped him; most wenches already had sucklers by the time they were fourteen.
“Is . . . is that true, girl?”
“It true.”
Samuel snorted. “There’s no point in that, girl. Marriage isn’t necessary for anything you want to do. There’ll be plenty of time for that later. Now you just put it out of your head.” His voice was harsh; he hoped the girl would be intimidated.
Hoped she would be intimidated? He cursed himself silently. What was wrong with him? God, that sun was hot. All he had to do was say No.
“But I wants to get married, suh.” She stepped closer to Jud.
“Wench, you don’t know what you want. You think about this for a few months, make your mind up; then we’ll talk about it again.”
“She know her mind, Masta,” said Jud. “An’ I know her mind. Don’ make no difference, today, nex’ year, or the nex’.”
Again that damned expressionless face. No. Just open his mouth and say it, and it would be over. He looked at Delia. His lips formed the word, but he made no sound. Proud little thing. Beautiful little thing . . .
Suddenly a thought occurred to him. He rose abruptly, flung aside a half-eaten chicken leg, and stared at them with hatred. He shielded his eyes against the sun. “Emerald! Dido! Get over here.” The women set aside their pone, gathered up the hems of their frocks, and hurried to Samuel’s side. “Take this wench back to her shanty,” he said, “and strip her down and examine her. If she’s still a virgin . . . well, then, bring her back here. If she’s not, lock her in, and come and report to me.”
“Yes, suh.” Emerald took Delia’s elbow. They walked off in the direction of the slave quarters.
Samuel glared at Jud a few moments. The white man was acutely aware of his own physical power. He experienced it, weighed it against Jud’s big-boned physique.
He clenched his hand into a fist and slowly, evenly, struck the curled edge against the tree. Again, and again.
In half an hour, Emerald and Dido returned with Delia.
“She fine,” Emerald said. “Ain’t nobody bust her.”
Samuel waved them away. There was scorn in Delia’s eyes, and it lacerated his heart. Oh, God! Amanda was right. There was something perverse about his having come to such a pass with niggers. He pressed the back of his arm to his forehead; his temples were pounding.
“Masta Samuel,” Jud said. “Delia an’ me wants to marry.”
“Goddamn, boy! Don’t you know how to say anything else?”
“Tonight, if n it be all right.”
Samuel’s shoulders sagged. He massaged the back of his neck. “All right, girl,” he said wearily. “If you want this buck, you can have him.”
“Thank you, suh.” Cold.
He remembered Amanda, years, years ago—a lifetime ago, rushing to her father’s arms after he had consented to her marriage to Samuel, kissing him and crying, “Thank you, Daddy, thank you!”
“Tha’s good,” Jud said.
Jesus! Samuel had to stifle a sudden giddiness. It was some kind of unnatural travesty. They were validating and approving him. Or was he just imagining it? He rubbed the bony ridges above his eyes with the palms of his hands. Was he going mad?
“Go on. Get out of here,” he snapped.
Delia stepped close to him. “Thank you, suh,” she said softly. Then she and Jud left.
Samuel watched them walk away. His lips formed the words “thank you.” Then he ground the tears from his eyes with his knuckles.
The sky was aflame, a deep red-orange, when the ceremony took place. The slaves gathered in front of the meeting shed, and their mood was jovial. Slave weddings weren’t encouraged (family attachments added unnecessary strain to the buying and selling of slaves, and occasionally caused resistance to breeding programs), but they were not directly prohibited, and there was usually a lot of merrymaking attached to them. Maybelle and Amanda stood at Samuel’s side, May-belle enjoying herself, Amanda sucking in her cheeks, expressing a vague disapproval of all this licensed roistering. Richard was home—unusual these days—and sober; equally unusual. He kept himself off to the side, hands clasped in front of him, his sharp face immobile, mouth thinned. His bright eyes never once left Delia. Samuel was holding a new broom.
He raised it up. “All right now. Hush up. Hush there, and let’s get on with it.”
The Negroes quieted and pressed around in a three-quarter circle. “Jud. Delia. Stand before me, both of you.”
Samuel gazed at them. The burning remnants of daylight cast a ruddy glow on his cheeks, but it seemed that without that artificial coloring his skin would be pale, even sallow. He appeared at the moment an old and very worn man.
He cleared his throat. “We’re gathered here,” he said mechanically, “because Jud wants to make a wife of Delia, and Delia wants to make a husband of Jud. Most of you probably know that already. I have given . . . given my permission to this, and I will record it an accomplished act in my records tonight.”
He paused, looking around as if he had forgotten his purpose. The silence lengthened.
“Well,” s
aid Maybelle, “are we going to do it, or not?”
Samuel looked at her and bobbed his head. “Yes,” he said to the assembly. “Yes. There’s nothing further to say.” He gripped the broom and singled out a black. “You, Phaethon. Hold the other end of this.” They held the broom horizontal to, and a foot and a half above, the ground.
“Life is fleeting,” Samuel said. “A short leap, in the eye of the Eternal, from dust to dust. May you pass it together.”
Jud and Delia joined hands. Delia gathered up her skirt. They took three quick steps and jumped over the broom. When they struck the ground on the other side, the encircling blacks whistled, stamped their feet, and whooped. Samuel relinquished the broom to Phaethon, who would give it to Delia later—a wedding present from the Ackerlys.
Richard caught Delia’s eyes as she whirled in Jud’s arms. He smiled slightly and made a curt inclination of his head. Then he turned on his heel and walked off.
“Thank the Lord that’s over,” said Amanda. “There’s something sacrilegious about ‘marrying’ niggers.”
Maybelle patted her hair. “I think I’ll go kiss the groom.”
“Maybelle!” Amanda crushed her lace handkerchief in her hand.
“You don’t think I should, darling? Well, then, we might as well go back up to the house.”
JUD AND DELIA’S SHANTY was small. It contained a plank table, two stools, and a slat bed with a straw mattress.
It was late. A short wick was burning in an oil dish. In the feeble and flickering light, a visitor might have mistaken the dark stain in the center of the mattress, a bag of coarse cloth stuffed with straw, for a shadow.
It had not been very good, this first joining, awkward and reticent, but what was good was that they had lain together afterward, silently, their bodies touching at several points, hesitantly, timorously drawing warmth from each other.
After a while, Jud sat up. He wrapped his arms around his legs and stared at the wall. The great quietude that enfolded him was alien and unknown. Something like it had been when he had listened to the sounds inside his head. But not really the same, for then he had felt as if he . . . weren’t. As if the sound were the only thing that existed. This was different. But even now he sensed that something was askance, that there was something deeper. . . .
Slave (The Shame & Glory Saga) Page 10