Slave (The Shame & Glory Saga)

by Mundis, Jerrold

  “Stop,” Richard said.

  He took a clasp-knife from his pocket, bent, and hamstrung Plum with two deft strokes. “Throw him down.”

  Plum struck the ground and rolled to his back. He flopped there, turned on his stomach again, jackknifed his spine, gained his knees, and then fell to the side. He lay still, going: “Uhhnh . . . uhhnh . . .”

  “I don’t want anyone coming near him,” Richard said. “He stays here, just like this, until he’s finished.” It was not necessary to repeat the warning.

  Richard and Samuel left. Slowly the blacks began to break up and return to their shanties.

  THE SHANTY WAS DARK. Delia was lying on the bed, but Jud knew from her breathing that she was still awake. He was sitting on the floor, his back braced against the wall, staring at the red glow of the dying embers in the fireplace. In not too great a while dawn would come. He shivered. He was cold, but he did not think to wrap a blanket around his shoulders. He grunted. Several minutes later he grunted again. He rose and crossed the shanty.

  He rummaged in the blackness through a raffia basket until his fingers closed about a long iron knitting needle.

  “Whut you doin’?” Delia asked as he walked back.

  “Nothin’. You go to sleep now.”

  When he opened the door, she said, “Jud?”

  “Hush. We both asleep. We sleeped all night.”

  “Jud, you goan to him, ain’t you?” She sprang from the bed and took him by the shoulder. “You cain’t, Jud. You heard whut Mista Richard said. You go near that poor nigger, you git the same thing done to you.”

  He pushed her gently away. “Quiet, girl. I right here by you—sleepin’.” He slipped out and closed the door behind him.

  The moon was three-quarters full, and pale, washing the night with sterile light. Jud kept to the shadows. His breath misted before him, and the needle was cold against his skin.

  Plum was lying on the open ground, face down, still, looking unreal in the gray light of the moon. Jud paused in the shadows; then he strode directly forward. He knelt at Plum’s side and raised the needle. He paused. Then he lowered it. He reached out and felt for the large prominent vein in the throat. Plum’s skin was cold. There was no pulse. Jud stood and walked away.

  When he returned to the shanty, Delia was sitting in bed crying. He sat down beside her and put his arm around her.

  “Hush, now.”

  She pulled away from him. “They goan kill you. You kilt you’se’f. They goan hang you up an’—”

  He put his finger to her lips. “Shhh. Shhh. He dead when I got there. I di’n’ do nothin’. It all right. Quiet, now.”

  She wept against his chest, and he stroked her hair. Soon she was asleep. He eased her down, covered her, and slid from the bed to his pallet on the floor. The bed was not large enough for both of them. He slept at its side on the pallet.

  He pulled his cover up to his chin. And hour and a half later, when day broke, he was still staring at the ceiling.

  IN THE SPRING, THE Republicans nominated Lincoln.

  Samuel raged through the Great House, pounding the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. “The idiots! The morons!”

  There were guests that afternoon in the Ackerly drawing room, three elegantly dressed young men and two demure young ladies along with Richard in the center of the room while Amanda and the mothers of the two girls sat off in a corner, drinking tea from delicate china cups.

  As Samuel stormed through the hall on the other side of the closed door, Richard stopped in the middle of a sentence, holding up his thin, long-fingered hand. He listened, then laughed.

  “One would think this had been a complete surprise. ‘Lincoln? Lincoln? Who, by God, is he?’”

  An appreciative titter rippled through the room.

  Amanda smiled.

  Lucille Vickers, a plump and jowly woman whose presence represented her first invitation to one of Amanda’s afternoon gatherings and who perched nervously on the edge of her chair and nodded vigorously every time Amanda spoke, leaned at an even more acute angle and whispered: “You have simply a marvelous son, Mrs. Ackerly.”

  “Why, thank you.” Amanda inclined her head toward the hall. “It—oh, how should I say it? It hasn’t been the easiest job to raise him properly.”

  Lucille impulsively took one of Amanda’s hands. “And don’t for one moment think that everyone doesn’t realize that, dear.”

  Amanda smiled and slipped her hand free. Lucille blushed and sat back.

  DELIA’S BELLY WAS SHOWING the first signs of tumescence. At night she and Jud would run their hands over it, bemused smiles on their faces, a giggle breaking from her, a laugh from him. Prima, the knobby-knuckled crone into whose care the sucklers and very young children on Olympus were given, had confirmed Delia’s pregnancy a month ago, but neither Jud nor Delia had believed it until the swelling began.

  There were changes, mostly in Delia. One night, not long after Plum’s death (Plum had been metamorphosed in a short time into a kind of bogeyman—”If’n you doan simmer down, ol’ Plum goan come grinnin’ up from his grave an’ carry you off’), Jud had said: “You know that mountain where the big huge-y bear live? Well, he don’ live there alone. He live with a eagle. A eagle that part whippoorwill. That where they should live. That where they belong. On a mountain, all by theyse’ves.”

  Delia’s pink tongue darted over her lips. She glanced at the door. “You shouldn’ talk like that. Someone hear, an’ ‘port you to Mista Richard.”

  “They nothin’ wrong with talkin’ ‘bout animals, jus’ animals. What you think?” he coaxed. “That eagle-y whippoorwill like that mountain much as the ol’ bear? It like to live there with jus’ the bear an’ no other animals?”

  “It . . . it prob’ly would. Yes, I thinks it would.”

  And they talked many nights, close together, voices low, about how it would be on the mountain.

  Jud made a quill from a goose feather, and secured scraps of paper from the Great House refuse. He used black dye mixed with a little water for ink. With these he taught Delia a little writing, and he used Samuel’s discarded newspapers to teach her reading. She was apt, but easily frustrated, and several times she flung aside the quill and ripped up the paper. But in a day or two she would ask Jud to sit down with her again.

  When her belly began to grow, though, all this stopped. She refused to let him discuss the mountain. She wanted him to throw away the quill and paper. He believed this was only temporary, that it would last no longer than her pregnancy, so he hid the writing implements and held his talk of the mountain in abeyance.

  But he did not stop thinking about it. In the fields, chopping out the weeds that competed with the new young cotton plants, he pictured the scene; he knew what kind of trees grew there, knew the density of the underbrush, felt the texture of the leaves and pine needles that carpeted the ground, and heard—actually heard—the silence.

  IN THE PERIOD BETWEEN Lincoln’s nomination and the blooming of the cotton plants, Samuel spent little time at Olympus. He went on three- and four-day political speaking trips in the company of influential planters. Most of these men dressed in somber clothes and were grave-faced and quiet-spoken. Amanda invited their wives to her afternoon gatherings, and when it became apparent that she would not be put out by hearing the prevailing opinions of her husband, indeed seemed to welcome such information, her guests spoke freely. Samuel, it seemed, was viewed by his associates as a buffoon. He was less than a political neophyte, totally ignorant, but possessed of a certain inexplicable zeal—frenzy was perhaps more appropriate—and thus there was a use for him.

  Amanda was content. There was little that she would change. Oh, those twin sisters, the octoroons that Richard had bought, were an annoyance, it was true, and she definitely did not approve of the way he carried on with them, particularly when he had both of them in his room on the same night. But it was a small thing, really. He had been coming along so nicely lately that Amand
a did not have the heart to make an issue over them. And he was, after all, properly discreet about them.

  XERXES—THAT WAS THE name sent down from the Great House for him—was born in the final week of the picking season. A stripling brought the message out to the field, and Jud was given an hour to go back and see the child.

  Prima was standing outside the shanty. She took his arm and wagged a skeletal finger beneath his nose.

  “Look here, you big nigger. The girl had a hard time of it, so doan you go botherin’ her none, hear?”

  Jud nodded and went inside.

  Delia was lying with her eyes half closed, cradling the squalling baby. She smiled sleepily when she saw Jud.

  “How you feel?”

  “Tired. Pow’ful tired.”

  “Kin I see him?”

  “Careful of him,” she said.

  He took the child gingerly and peered at it curiously. It was a big baby, but it was dwarfed in his grip. He had little sense of having anything to do with this strange, wrinkled little creature. Any bond between him and it was indirect, through Delia. The child waved its arms and cried.

  Instinctively, Jud drew back. “It got good lungs,” he said.

  “Yes.” She took Xerxes from him, nestled him back at her side.

  Jud tugged at his ear. “Well, I s’pose I best be goin’ back to the field now.”

  “Yes.”

  At the door he said, “Sure is a big one.” Then he left, feeling helpless and bewildered.

  THE HARVEST SEASON WAS only a few weeks past when Lincoln was elected President. Amanda was curious as to how Samuel would receive the news. Following the nomination, the elder Ackerly had campaigned furiously on behalf of John C. Breckinridge—and in June, Breckinridge had captured the Southern Democrats’ nomination. That night Samuel had attended a celebration at the home of a neighboring planter. As the story was related the next day to Amanda, Samuel had not drunk much—two, maybe three whiskeys at the most—but from the very beginning he had been boisterous and highly, almost maniacally, euphoric. He’d left the party, alone, a little after one in the morning to return to Olympus. What had occurred between then and dawn, when Hector had found him sitting outside on the bottom step of the veranda, staring at his boots, his untethered and still-saddled horse feeding on the sweet young grass of the lawn, no one could say.

  They took him upstairs, undressed him, and put him to bed. He lay there, apparently not hearing anything that was said to him, looking up at the canopy above him. The doctor found neither bruises nor cuts—nothing that would indicate a fall. Nor was there any sign of heart failure or epileptic seizure.

  “Frankly,” he told Amanda, “I cain’t find nothin’ more’n a generalized exhaustion. But even that doesn’t account for the way he is. The only, uh . . .” He coughed, removed his spectacles, and began to polish them.

  “There is something more. I can tell. What is it?” Amanda urged.

  “Well . . . You see it now an’ again in truly sick people. Appears as if they just don’t want to live anymore, an’ they give up. Happens sometimes in men his age, too. And—uh—well, this politickin’. Lots of times they git hyperactive just before it sets in. But that happens mostly ‘mong poor folk. Never known a case with a man like—” he made a gesture meant to include the whole of Olympus “—Mista Ackerly.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Not awful much, I’m afraid. Let him get some rest. Feed him meat. Then in a while get him up and try to involve him in something.”

  Amanda often brought Samuel meals herself. She was solicitous, and spoke to him slowly, as if to a child.

  “Here, Samuel. Look what I’ve brought you. I’ve brought you dinner. Would you like to eat some?”

  To the house servants she repeated each week that they were not to do or to say anything that would excite him (the first week she had said, “that would invol— that is, excite him”).

  Samuel hadn’t left the house since that day; indeed, he had spent most of his days in bed. He would listen when someone spoke to him, but rarely did he answer.

  Amanda was not really worried about the effect the news would have on him, but she did want to see his reaction.

  “Oh, by the way,” she said as she fluffed his pillows behind his back, “Lincoln won the election.”

  He smiled at her; then a moment later he said, “What?”

  “Abraham Lincoln was elected President.”

  “Oh.”

  Amanda turned away from him; her face was radiant.

  ALTHOUGH XERXES HAD BEEN given into Prima’s care, Delia visited him several times daily to suckle him. And in the evening she brought him back to the shanty for a while. He was a strong baby, and he grew rapidly. Jud liked the baby because Delia made a great fuss over it and it made her happy. In itself, it still seemed a very strange thing to him.

  Shortly after Christmas, the overseer came to Jud’s door in the early evening. Jud barely checked himself from closing the door in the white man’s face. This unnerved him; he was becoming less and less able to remain in the presence of white people. Other niggers he could tolerate, could successfully ignore. But when a white man was near, there was a tightening in his chest, perspiration broke out on his palms, and his hands clenched involuntarily into fists.

  Chaskey and another black stood behind the overseer.

  “How your muscles feelin’, Jud?” asked the white man.

  “All right.”

  “Good. Come on out here. We got a job to do.”

  Jud breathed deeply, tried to think about nothing, and stepped outside.

  The white man led them across the fields and into the woods, in the direction of the public road.

  Chaskey walked loosely and chafed his arms for warmth. “We goan cotch us a nigger-stealer,” he said. “You know that peddler that Mista Richard run off today? Well, he tol’ Prince here to meet him on the road, by that big ol’ gnarly oak. Say he goan take Prince up Norf to freedom. But Prince, he no dumb nigger. He tell.”

  “He a good nigger all right,” said the overseer, pushing through the leafless brush. “Freedom, hell. That ain’t no stinkin’ abolitionist. He the worse they is. A nigger-stealer. Carry Prince right into Tennessee, an’ sell him to a new masta.”

  Prince spoke for the first time. His voice was high and boyish. “He tell me Souf Car’lina ain’t part of the country no more, that it se—that it ses—”

  “It secede,” said the white man. “That true enough. We all vote on it, withdraw from the Union. Other states gonna follow. We gonna have our own country, the Confederate States of America. But he tell you that just to bait you, boy.”

  They arrived at the meeting place. The moon was hazy above a layer of clouds, but there was enough light to see the road clearly.

  “We got ‘bout half a hour,” said the overseer. “Now when that man come up, you gonna step out an’ meet him, Prince. Us three’ll be hidin’ here. Just the minute you an’ him start off, we leap out an’ take him.” To Jud and Chaskey he said, “We’d ruther take him alive if’n we can, but they’s no need to gentle him. ‘Member, this ain’t a white man. Not no more, leastwise. It the lowest thing that breathe.”

  The peddler came walking down the road later, bent under the load of his knapsack, a slouch hat pulled low on his forehead, greatcoat buttoned to his chin. He was humming to himself. He stopped, glanced up and down the road, and gave two short whistles. Jud, Chaskey, and the overseer were crouched a dozen paces away. Prince moved into the open.

  “Ah, good nigger,” said the peddler. “Right according to schedule. All right, listen good. Your name is Kip. Unnerstan’? Kip. If anyone asks, I bought you in Virginia more’n a year ago. Now, what’s your name, where’d I buy you, an’ how long you been with me?”

  “I Kip, Masta,” the boy said. His voice quavered. “You buy me in Virginy ‘bout year past.”

  “Good. But don’ be skeered, boy. You got t’ look natural. All right, let’s get started.”
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br />   “Now!” the overseer shouted.

  Jud and Chaskey sprang forward. The peddler shrugged off his pack with a quick motion, and a length of pipe appeared in his hand.

  “Get back, you black bastards,” he yelled.

  Chaskey lunged at him. The peddler sidestepped and clubbed the slave as he went by. Chaskey sprawled to the ground and didn’t move. The peddler pivoted and swung at Jud. Jud deflected the pipe, receiving a grazing blow on the forearm. His hands closed about the white man’s throat. The peddler brought his knee up into Jud’s groin. Jud’s fingers slipped loose and he doubled over.

  The overseer was standing to the side, his hand on his holstered pistol. He did not want to use the weapon unless forced to.

  The peddler’s arm rose for another blow. Jud caught his wrist and seized his elbow with his other hand. He and the peddler stared into each other’s faces. Then slowly, steadily, Jud increased the pressure. The white man’s eyes widened. He made one last effort; then he gasped and dropped the pipe.

  “You got him, boy,” the overseer said.

  The peddler’s shoulders slumped. He waited for Jud to release him. Jud bore down harder on his arm. The white man looked at him with a startled expression that quickly melted into panic. He screamed and tried to jerk loose. Jud grunted.

  The peddler’s elbow socket was torn apart with a snap.

  Jud drove his fist into the peddler’s mouth, pulping the lips and splintering teeth.

  “Jud, that’s enough!” the overseer yelled.

  Jud hammered at the peddler’s body; he hit him again in the face and cracked his jaw.

  “Jud!”

  The peddler collapsed. Jud caught him before he struck the ground, caught him by the throat and the crotch, and lifted him into the air.

  “Jud!” The overseer stood before him, pistol in hand. “Put him down.”

  Jud paused, the unconscious peddler still suspended above his head.

  “Put him down, I tell you!”

  Jud lowered the peddler, laid him on the ground, and stood staring off into the woods, face blank.