The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  That next morning, after Samuel had slept away his pain and wretchedness, he felt Joan’s hand on his shoulder, tender and sincere. She told him she had cooked griddle cakes for his breakfast, with cane syrup and butter to go along. Joan’s odor drifted above him, an aroma as only a child knows, the perfume that would invade his memories and make him weep, long after this time. And he hated his mother. And he loved his mother. And he wished that he would no longer be weak and a little boy. And Samuel made promises of what his strength would accomplish, once he became a tall and powerful man.

  The Monster Roams the Countryside

  When Samuel was sixteen, his father died, carried away by a fever. Adam lay in bed, shaking with the heat that emptied his bowels and shaved meat from his bones. Throughout he held his Bible close to his chest. He was a righteous Christian to the end, as was Joan, who read to her husband from the biblical book for the prophet for whom Samuel had been named: “And she said, Oh my lord, as thy soul liveth, my lord, I am the woman that stood by thee here, praying unto the Lord. For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of him: Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord. And he worshipped the Lord there.”

  The week after his father was buried in the small backyard, Samuel took a horse from the barn and rode away into the night. He cared nothing about his brothers and sisters, not even the twin with whom he had shared a womb. He had planned his escape and had packed a leather satchel with clothes, hiding it in the corner of the barn under hay. It was the same corner where his father had assaulted him. Samuel hadn’t slept the day of his leaving and tipped into the kitchen that served as a parlor as well. He took a loaf of bread that was covered with cloth, and a small dish of butter. He uncorked a jug, sniffed, and was happy it was water. As he walked past the room where he knew his mother lay in the same bed where his father had died, Samuel did not knock or call a greeting. He continued out the door to the barn. When Samuel took the horse, he did not care if the Negro who lived in the barn would be punished for his theft. He did not care about his siblings. He did not care about the land. Care was a flaw that burdened the weak. He meant to be strong now: brutality was his traveling companion.

  His journey to our land was roundabout. For three years, he traveled south and east through paths that had been cut through trees by our people. He rode up to cabins where men had seen their youth depart, in their quests to make fortunes on our land. He smiled and used deference and his beautiful face as weapons, for fading men want to be reassured that their shoulders haven’t narrowed, and their bellies haven’t sloped. A few times, when Samuel rode his horse up to homes, he encountered widows, and after charming a meal from these women and a night’s worth of sleep on the porch or barn, he rode off with no warning. Samuel had no use for grown women; he despised these bleeding, musty animals. In their weakness, women wanted to dump a burden in a man’s lap.

  He had thought himself free of the nature of men, until one day, many months into his journey away from his homeland, he saw Negroes working in a tobacco field. It was midday and a time of rest, but children everywhere are the same and though the day was warm, the small ones ran around the tobacco, laughing. Among their number Samuel saw the prettiest little brown girl, with her hair in short plaits. She was playing a game of tag. Her milk teeth were very white. Her eyes large and brown. Samuel felt a rush, such as a man feels heat for a woman. He knew he wanted to stay at this farm, simply to be around this little girl.

  So he stayed three months and had not imagined he would leave until one day his passion ruled him. He was returning from the outhouse and came upon the little girl. She was throwing corn to the chickens and calling to them. An animal overtook Samuel. He grabbed the little girl, placed his hand over her mouth, and ran with her back to the outhouse. Afterward, he did not try to dry her eyes or keep her from weeping. No one would believe a Negro girl’s accusations of a white man. And even if she was believed, no one would care. The next morning at breakfast, Samuel’s happiness was overwhelming. He had slept dreamlessly and deeply, and when he awoke, he conducted himself as if nothing had happened.

  Samuel did not feel morally bankrupt. To the contrary, he believed that he had been seduced by the child he’d assaulted, that the little girl had flaunted her beauty before him and that as a man, he had been helpless. Her Negro status was even more to blame, for hadn’t his father taught him that Negroes were descended from Cain? Though a child, the little girl belonged to an inferior group, and Negresses were known purveyors of temptation for white men. Samuel had not dragged his own daughter or even the child of someone white into the outhouse—he would never do such a thing. Samuel had taken a Negress and he was a white man. He was the surveyor of a kingdom that God had given him, and he was a white man. In fact, Samuel had honored the little girl with his seed: he was a white man. And Samuel was certain that the little girl felt honored—after all, he was a white man.

  No consequences occurred after that day, and Samuel watched the little girl for weeks, stalking her, so that he could capture her and steal her away to the outhouse again and again. It was a source of such great pleasure, until the afternoon when she turned limp in his hands. He did not fill with panic. His sense of power had inebriated him, coddling him in tranquility. He left the little girl slumped in the outhouse, not caring whether she was alive or dead. In the dwelling of his host, he sat for a delicious supper, and then regretted to inform him that he had strayed from his home too long. Samuel confessed that his mother was sick, and though she had been in the fine care of his other siblings, it was time for Samuel to return. He’d neglected his filial duty. A few weeks later, he arrived at the large plantation of a man who lived outside of the city of Savannah.

  The Monster Finds a Sanctuary

  Samuel was twenty-one and living on a vast establishment on an island off the coast of what was now called Georgia. There he was overseer for nearly one hundred slaves who grew tobacco for their owner, a man named Ezekiel Waterford, who owned a second property as well. The other place was a far more lucrative plantation where rice was cultivated; it had five hundred slaves, and three more overseers. As Samuel had done at his previous appointment, he had knocked on the door of the plantation house—this time on the back door—and shown his lovely face. As usual, his charm and beauty had resulted in his welcome. It was at this rice plantation that Samuel had heard about the lottery for land in the state, that parcels of a bit more than two hundred acres would be granted to lucky white men and white widows who won.

  Ezekiel was a man whose wealth had been inherited. He dressed as if for visitors every day, only to walk down to the small, whitewashed building that was designated the plantation office. There, Ezekiel sat in a chair at a walnut desk that his grandfather had imported from England and moved papers from one side of the desk to the other. He stood at the window and surveyed his property, though he could not see his slaves because the land where they worked and were overseen by Samuel was some great distance from where he lived and worked himself. Ezekiel was not a hardworking man, and yet Samuel longed to model himself after him—to wear shirts of fluffy whiteness and close, dark breeches that never were stained with sweat or dirt, with shiny black shoes that made impressive noise when Ezekiel walked upon the floor of his house or office. But such a noise would not be made if Samuel remained an overseer. He could not earn enough money to own even one Negro, let alone build a big white house with outbuildings surrounding it. Samuel would not have a cot in his office upon which he could assault the slaves that he owned. He needed to make something of himself.

  Ezekiel was a married man who regularly attended Sunday services at the church that he had built on his island. He gave the excuse of piety or work to his wife, whenever she knocked on the door of his bedroom and he did not answer. She may have known that he was not in his separate bedroom, but lying on the cot in his office, pressed on top of the back of a muscled young man. Before Samuel h
ad accepted the position of his overseer, Ezekiel had forced one of a group of handsome Negro men, which the previous overseer had culled for him from field slaves. That overseer had left a few days before Samuel had knocked on the back door of Ezekiel’s kitchen house. Ezekiel never had known congress with any man who had not been forced to comply; he had ignored the grunts of pain, the leaking blood and bowel effluvia of his Negroes. Thus, when Samuel did not shrink from Ezekiel’s searching hand on his shoulder, and then his open mouth and tongue, Ezekiel quickly fell in love. He was unaware that, while he was ecstatically pressing himself inside the slim blond-haired man with the aid of a generous slathering of lard, Samuel was fantasizing about murdering Ezekiel in torturous, inventive ways.

  After Ezekiel had finished with his passion, Samuel would pretend he could not bear to part with his older lover. He clung to Ezekiel, and in a matter of weeks, Ezekiel had told him many important pieces of information: about the running of the plantation; the yearly expenses and profits; the buying of slaves; the selling of slaves; the tending of the land; and how a man of property did not merely own that property, but must make sure that he paid taxes on this property. A man who did not pay taxes could not retain what he had worked so hard to possess.

  While Ezekiel spoke, Samuel kissed him with flutters. He touched Ezekiel’s lips, his cheeks, his collarbone, and more often than not, Ezekiel became capable again, this time in Samuel’s mouth. While Samuel tried not to choke, he no longer fantasized about Ezekiel’s death. Instead, he calculated what he would purchase that would require taxes. Within two years, and with the benefaction of Ezekiel, Samuel owned a secondhand two-wheel carriage, on which he paid taxes, as well as other goods that required the same. When the lawmakers in the (then) capital of Georgia, Milledgeville, passed the act announcing that each county should submit the names of the white heads of households, single white men, and white widows who had paid taxes for at least one year into a land lottery through which Creek lands would be distributed, Samuel’s name had been written down many times in Ezekiel’s record books as a respectable white man. And it was Ezekiel Waterford’s love, his grateful, sacrificial feeling, that persuaded him to write a letter certifying that one Samuel Edward Pinchard of legitimate, white birth had labored in his employ from March 1801 to September 1804, so that there would be no doubt that Samuel had a right to our land stolen from the Creek. When the announcement came that Samuel’s name had been drawn, that he was now the owner of a parcel of two hundred and two and a half acres, Ezekiel gave Samuel three hundred dollars and a better, younger horse than the one Samuel had taken from his dead father’s farm, and Ezekiel sent the younger man on his way with tears, well-wishes, and prayers.

  The day Samuel rode away, he was not only proud of his status as a landowner; he was proud that he had suppressed his own tastes for little girls. Ezekiel had been devoted to Samuel, but also jealous. On certain days, he had ridden down to the tobacco fields unannounced to see if Samuel was standing too close to large, handsome Negroes. He had watched from a distance for a time, never climbing down from his horse, then ridden back the mile to his office. Samuel did not know if his jealousy would extend to children, but he hadn’t wanted to take the chance. Thus, Samuel spent four years in agony, watching little Negro girls carrying water out to the fields he supervised. The sound of their laughter was like knives in his flesh, but he was patient.

  The Monster Makes His First Friend

  Aidan Franklin was not as young as Samuel. His eyes were not Samuel’s strange, ever-changing color, only a pedestrian blue, but he was still a very handsome man. Aidan had scrambled for a living since he’d been a young boy in his parents’ one-room cabin. When Aidan married, his wife had given birth to five children, before she died in the blood of the childbed. Aidan married again, and that wife had given him seven children, so that children seemed to hang everywhere. Yet life’s misfortunes had not stolen Aidan’s optimism. When Samuel met him and his very young, tired wife along the way to the new town called Chicasetta in the middle of Georgia, Aidan quoted to him from Romans: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.” Aidan and his wife rode one horse. His children walked beside it.

  Samuel parted ways with Aidan, and shortly he was knocking on the door of the cabin he discovered on the land that was now his in the eyes of the United States government. It was the cabin where Micco lived. Samuel was pleased to see this farm up and running, but when he knocked on the door of the cabin to evict the occupants, something about Micco gave him pause. Samuel knew nothing about Micco’s lineage—about the red hearts of his ancestors—but the younger man’s heart had no color. He had never used a weapon and he did not know how to kill. His only resources were his beauty, charm, and ability to manipulate. So he smiled and introduced himself and decided to wait to act.

  That next morning, Aidan arrived at Micco’s cabin as well. He introduced himself and asked, could Micco help him to build a cabin? Samuel greeted Aidan as if they were just meeting for the first time, giving him a quick wink. There was a general air of friendliness, even when Aidan said he owned the parcel of land to the north of this cabin. Samuel corrected him, telling him no one owned anything, except this man Micco, right here.

  Aidan tilted his head in confusion. “Well, now, that’s not right at all—”

  At that, Samuel cut him short, and asked him if they could talk outside. When Samuel returned, he told Micco that the other white man had been confused, and he had set him straight. Micco had not smiled, but his face had softened at the loyalty of the strange-eyed newcomer who sat at his table, not knowing that when Samuel had walked Aidan outside, he’d told him, don’t talk about ownership. Not yet. Samuel needed to ease this Indian inside the cabin into the notion that the land wasn’t his anymore. They didn’t want any trouble and have to kill these savages in their sleep. It was fine to kill the man, but there was a woman and little girl in the cabin. That wouldn’t be Christian, now, would it?

  When Aidan returned a couple of days later, he was still friendly, and labeled himself a squatter. Micco seemed completely at ease, and, as usual, Mahala brightened in the presence of a white man—until Aidan mentioned that he was planning to build his cabin with a view of territory, right on top of the flower-covered mound. Mahala gasped, and Micco reached behind himself, clutching for a chair. He took a breath and informed Aidan that he was so sorry; he could not spare his time. He offered Aidan tools, though. They were a gift, Micco said. Don’t bother bringing them back, and he smiled and nodded again, when Aidan said, that was right neighborly.

  When Aidan left, Micco invited Samuel to sit longer and poured more coffee. He leaned into the ways of his people, carefully talking. He told Samuel that he learned the manners of white men and had adapted. In fact, Micco’s own father was a Scotsman. Instead of only hunting for his meat, he now kept cattle and pigs. He wore clothes of cotton and wool, instead of deerskin. And Creek towns had changed, too, for now there were many places that no longer contained women-lined clans, but rather, clans that traced lineage through the men. Yet Micco told Samuel that what Aidan was suggesting—building upon the mound—went beyond adaptation into a matter of the grotesque. The mound was sacred, Micco said. Long ago, high-status people had lived on the mound, but no one who was alive, nor their parents nor their grandparents, remembered that time. In the village, the mound was untouchable. One did not climb upon the mound or pick its flowers. One only revered it from afar. To break that taboo was to court death.

  Throughout Micco’s quiet speech, Samuel was silent. He wanted to laugh at this savage’s superstition, but he couldn’t tip his hand.

  As Aidan Franklin began to build his cabin on top of the mound, he was cheerful. This optimism would remain some months, as the finished cabin was a fine structure. Within two years, however, Aidan would set fire to the cabin, after his wife and eleven of his twelve children died of a contagion that did not touch anyone e
lse in the territory. Along with his family, Aidan’s cheerfulness died. He became a bitter man, as he tried to eke out a living on the other acres in the shadow of the mound. The day that he set fire to his cabin, the red and blue flowers of the mound shriveled in the heat, as the wood of the cabin popped and sang. When recounting to Samuel, Aidan would say that, when he woke in his lean-to shelter with his remaining son, the flowers and grass on the mound had grown back overnight. This only living son was named Carson, and his father’s loss of optimism in the face of tragedy would transfer to his son, and his son’s offspring, along with a resentment of the mound.

  Before Aidan died, he would not be able to make a living on the two hundred and two acres that he had won in the Georgia land lottery. Over the years, Aidan would sell acres to Samuel piecemeal, for half of the usual price per acre. It gave Samuel pleasure to dupe another white man, as if he had dug up his father’s bones, animated them, and spelled them back into dust. He bought twenty-five of Aidan’s acres, and then forty of Aidan’s acres, and so on, until Aidan did not own any more land. Then, with a smile, Samuel offered Aidan and his remaining son the use of their own cabin, the second one they had built, far away from the mound. Samuel told them they could live in this cabin gratis, if Aidan would serve as his overseer. He needed a white man to keep his slaves in line.

  The Place Where the Monster Will Play,

  The Place Where the Monster Will Harm

  Samuel became a man of ingenuity as he slowly took over Micco’s farm. In addition to Samuel’s thriving cotton harvest, he built a general store where poor, middling, and wealthy white men came together to buy their supplies. There were only two of the latter in the territory. The rich men mostly kept to themselves, though along with Samuel, they had invested in the town’s only cotton gin.