by Kyle Onstott
‘Pimentade?’ inquired Brownlee. ‘Whut’s pimentade?’
Ham explained. ‘Hide tore offn a nigger, rub it over with pimentade and skin will grow right back without a mark. It sovereign fer skinning. You mix it out of salt, cayenne, and lemon juice. Course, it stings. The niggers dread the rubbin’ more than the hidin’, but it sho’ straighten ’em out.’
‘Salt, cayenne pepper, and lemon?’ Brownlee made a mental note. ‘Sounds convenient. Have to try it.’
Ham pushed back his chair and the party rose to return to the sitting-room. Ham said, ‘Mayhap, and you don’t feel yourself pushed in the mornin’ to git away, I’ll find the time to brush this boy down and you kin watch his squirm and wiggle and hear him holler when the pimentade goes on him. It’s sovereign. Seems peculiar you never heared about it. The idy come from Domingo. Them Frenchies are smart, that way.’
‘Don’t aim to git goin’ too early. I’ll kindly wait if you goin’ to correct the boy anyway; wouldn’t want you to take the trouble jest fer me to see. I sees lots of niggers larruped, but I always admires to see it. It’s kind of comical-like—that is if it has to be done anyways. One kin always learn something.’
Maxwell took a more moderate view. ‘We don’t flog much on Falconhurst. Only two cases all last year that I recollect—both fer stealin’. But when we flogs we flogs good—we lays it on well.’
‘Only way,’ declared Brownlee.
‘Only way, suh. Course, we don’t use a snake to nip hunks out of the meat and ruin a nigger. No, suh. I had me made a couple of paddles, a big one and a littler one fer saplin’s and wenches, made out of sole leather with holes drilled through ’em. Hang ’em up, jest by the ankles, never by the toes ’lessen you twist ’em, with the legs spread wide as you kin spread ’em, and a rag stuffed in they mouth. Give that big paddle to a strong young buck and tell him to go to work. Why, you git the skin offn a nigger’s rump in no time at all, and finish up with a good dosin’ of this here pimentade, as Ham was tellin’ you. Then go away and let the nigger hang and smart fer an hour or two, you got a good servant, a good servant, suh, from then on. Yes, suh, no nigger don’t want a second dose like it.’
‘I’ve hearn of them holed paddles. Never saw none. Yes, suh, it must be right purty to watch.’
‘No, not so purty—unless your taste run that way. Ham and me, we don’t enjoy floggin’s, and don’t have more than we kin help. Course, goin’ to keep niggers, you got to take the hide offn one, oncet in awhile. Especially house niggers. You’re good to ’em, feeds ’em up on the kind of vittles you eats your own self, breeds ’em to your likeliest wenches, and they gits slack, gits triflin’. They don’t mean no harm, but they’s nothing more aggravatin’ than a slack house nigger, nothin’.’
‘They takes advantage,’ interpolated Brownlee, who never had possessed a servant in his own house.
‘Sure do, and has to have it corrected out of ’em. Take this Memnon boy, here, a good buck but lazy, lazy as they come. Spiled, spiled. I reckon you right, Ham. Reckon you better pull a piece of hide offn him, sometime when you got an extra hour or two, no hurry about it. I kin spare him any time you likes.’
‘All right, Papa; I’ll take care of him, tomorrow or next day. Lucretia Borgia kin mix toddy and fire up fer you while he’s hanging up to dry, cain’t you, Lucretia Borgia?’
‘Sho’ kin. Sho’ kin.’ Lucretia Borgia enjoyed carnage.
‘Maybe it might be a good idea to have Lucretia Borgia spank Mem ever’ morning when she spanks the twins, that is after I gits through with him,’ declared Ham.
‘Ever’ morning?’ inquired Brownlee.
‘Yas, suh, ever’ morning I soften up they bottoms some fer the devilishness they do yestiday. Cain’t keep track of what the devilishness is, but I know they does it. Yas, suh. That way, with a little warmin’ every day, they won’t grow up and use up Masta Ham’s time a-skinnin’ ’em down every month or so. I aims that Alph and Meg to be spry niggers, fitten fer Masta to keep right in the house to wait on him good.’
‘I done told you, Lucretia Borgia, I don’t know how many times, that I won’t never whup them boys without’n your leave. Un’erstan’? I promise you,’ declared Hammond.
‘Whup ’em whenever you feels like, Masta Ham,’ Lucretia Borgia answered. ‘But jest don’ sell ’em. Don’t sell ’em unlessen you gits a great big price fer ’em, please Masta.’
‘No, I won’t never sell ’em either. Papa and me wants ’em fer ourselves. Don’t we, Papa?’
‘You done sold so many of my children right out from under me.’
‘Well, they was mine, wasn’t they?’ Maxwell bridled.
‘Yas, suh, Masta. They’s yours.’
‘And I got good homes for ’em, ever’one of ’em.’
‘Naw, suh, Masta. I ain’t moanin’ ’bout whure they went. I knows they gittin’ good Christian raisin’ up. But——’
‘But whut? Lucretia Borgia, you outgrowin’ your pants—tellin’ me whut to do with my own little niggers. Remember I bought them children from you, paid you a silver dollar fer ever’ damned one of ’em and two dollars fer them twins, and I’ll do with ’em whut I damn please.’
‘Papa, Papa, don’t git yourself all riled. It ain’t good fer your rheumatiz,’ Hammond admonished.
Maxwell turned as quickly as his rheumatism would permit and stumped vexedly into the sitting-room. Brownlee followed. Hammond remained in the dining-room. He was disturbed at the turn the conversation had taken, thought the arousal of Lucretia Borgia’s apprehensions about her beloved and badgered sons just a little gratuitous, debited his father’s unnecessary testiness if not to age at least to rheumatic pain. It was unlike his father to bully the Negroes.
Hammond at length followed Lucretia Borgia across the open passageway and into the cheerful hot kitchen where the twins were gourmandizing on the left-overs from the main table and where he found Lucretia Borgia in unwonted tears. At his show of surprised compassion, she heaved from her bench, threw her heavy arms about his neck, and wept herself dry while Ham supported her vast bulk of hot flesh.
It required only a little compassion with the merest trace of diplomacy, which was all Hammond possessed, to turn Lucretia Borgia’s misery to the happiness which was her birthright. Her health, her indomitable vigour, and her status in the plantation hierarchy, first as a cook and then as a breeder of amber twins, conspired together to provoke such gusto. Ham, without quite understanding his purpose, merely steadied Lucretia Borgia’s tottering pedestal. He comforted her until the fountainhead of her tears was dry, after which he joked with her.
Ham’s jokes lost nothing by their lewdness nor their lack of euphemism. They concerned Memnon’s supplanting, or rather supplementing, Napoleon, the yellow youth whom Lucretia Borgia had chosen as her paramour, the comparison of their anatomies, and the circumstances of the woman’s pregnancy.
The twins listened in silence, only half-comprehending at all why it should provoke such laughter from their mother and smiles from their master. They kept their eyes fixed on the single battered platter from which both ate with their fingers, lifting and rolling them now and again in the embarrassment of their failure to understand some of the terms their elders were using. There was no shame at what they understood, for they had listened to stark talk and overt bawdiness at the table of their masters, who would have thought it absurd to modify their conversations to protect so impersonal a commodity as the innocence of a couple of young slaves.
2
Hammond’s motive in going to the kitchen was as much to get away from Brownlee’s conversation as to succour Lucretia Borgia. He had endured about all of Brownlee that he was able, but he was about to return to the sitting-room when out of the black night there emerged an even blacker apparition in the person of Belshazzar, the son of Black Lucy.
‘Miz Lucretia Borgia,’ he blurted, ‘my mammy say tell Masta Big Pearl sick. She awful sick.’
Belshazzar addressed himself direc
tly to the cook, ignoring the master.
‘Whut ail Big Pearl?’ Hammond demanded with an unintentional gruffness which paralysed the child into dumbness.
Hammond grasped Belshazzar’s shoulder and repeated his question, ‘Whut ail Big Pearl?’
Big Pearl was the very gem of Falconhurst. Tawny as burnished copper, strong as a block and tackle, straight as a beam, and barely nubile, Big Pearl was as magnificent a pure Mandingo as had ever wielded a cotton hoe. She was elephantine equally in her proportions and in the grace with which she progressed. She did not walk or run or amble—Big Pearl progressed. She was the plantation show-piece, docile as a kitten, biddable as putty. She delighted in being stripped and paraded and handled and bargained for, confident that the tremendous offers for her would be declined. She had never known an ill day in her life. To Hammond the heavens seemed to have fallen.
‘Whut ail Big Pearl?’ he asked a third time.
Belshazzar, frightened into dumbness was re-frightened into speech. ‘Me? I don’t know, ’um. Big Pearl got a misery.’
Hammond, shuffling in his carpet slippers and limping on his stiffened knee, strode off across the blackness to Lucy’s cabin. He walked so fast that Belshazzar had to break into an occasional run to keep up with him. The nearness of his master protected him from the dark.
Hammond heard the girl’s groans, pierced at intervals by a wailing scream. He pushed open the cabin door. All was in confusion. Children cowered in fright against the walls in the background. Flames roared in the fireplace. Lucy bent, solicitous but in helpless despair, above the bed where her daughter Big Pearl threshed in her agony, making the cold night hideous with her cries.
Hammond was moved to compassion. He approached the bed, pushed the towering Lucy aside and, sitting down beside the girl, took her hand in his. ‘Big Pearl, whut’s the matter? Whut ail you?’
‘I got a misery, Master Ham, I got a misery in my belly, Masta—but it better now.’ The moaning ceased and Big Pearl lay calm. ‘It better now,’ she repeated weakly.
Hammond returned to the house and, sinking into a chair, ordered Memnon to fetch him a toddy. His apparent fatigue and anxiety caused his father to voice his solicitude.
‘I’s all right,’ Hammond replied, not very convincingly.
‘How Big Pearl? Whut ails her?’ Maxwell inquired impatiently.
‘Big Pearl better now, I reckon. Guess it weren’t more than the belly-ache. Worst over, time I got there,’ the youth explained. ‘I poured her out a big dose of castor oil and give her a little laudanum. Reckoned that the bes’ thing.’
‘Sure is,’ Maxwell affirmed.
‘Then I called Lancelot and had him tote Big Pearl down to the old pest house on his back. Big as that boy is, all he could do to tote that young wench. Don’t think it’s nothin’ but too much hog meat from that fresh killin’, but don’t want to take a chance on no catchin’ epizootic with a plantation full of young niggers.’
‘You don right, Ham. Got gumption, you has,’ Maxwell said approvingly. ‘I ain’t heard of nothing goin’ around, but the pox or the vomit would clean us right out. You done jest right.’
‘Good as I could. Had Lancelot make up a big fire in the pest house, and left him a-settin’ by it to watch her. If Big Pearl ain’t better by morning, I’ll put a boy on a mule and have him ride to the veterinary in Benson.’
‘ ’Tain’t safe, ’tain’t safe, I’m afeared, to leave that Lancelot boy with that wench all night. He mighty full-blooded and vig’ous. We doesn’t want no accidents of that kind with that choice wench.’
‘I warned him I’d hide him if he pestered her,’ said Hammond.
‘Virgin yet, ain’t she?’
‘I reckon so. I ain’t felt to see since last pickin’ time. Lucy pretty moral and she goin’ watch her.’
‘I don’t know whut’s the matter with you, Ham, lettin’ a nice smooth wench like Big Pearl go virgin so long—goin’ on fifteen years.’
‘Kinda shirkin’ your duty, ain’t you, son?’ interposed Brownlee, leering.
‘I done tol’ you at least fifty times,’ Hammond answered his father, ‘I cain’t stan’ the musk of a real nigger. The yaller onces is bad enough.’
‘Course, there’s one way to kill musk ever’ whit,’ said Brownlee, ‘good deal of trouble, but it kin be done.’
‘Whut way?’ inquired Hammond interestedly. ‘Rub ’em with some essence? That jest puts one stink on another and makes ’em worse.’
‘No; I mean soak ’em good, about five minutes, in ’manganate of potash water, not too strong, jest kind of red.’
‘Why, that’s that coarse powder-like stuff in that dusty bottle out in the medicine shelf. Never knew whut it was fer,’ said Hammond.
‘That’s whut it’s fer,’ declared Brownlee. ‘Everybody in New Orleans use it on they house niggers. A ’manganated wench will keep absolutely sweet two whole days; a buck begins to shed his musk agin after ’bout a day. I reckoned everybody knowed about that.’
‘Shore never heared on it,’ Maxwell said.
‘We’ll have to try it,’ Hammond resolved. ‘How much do you use?’
‘Jest enough to make the water red—not purple, and soak the nigger in it, head and all, all but his nose, about a good five minutes. One tub of ’manganate is enough fer a dozen or more niggers—no call to was’e it. But never don’t let it set to use over and over. It loses its stren’th in time.’
‘Shore gotten to try it,’ Maxwell said. ‘I don’t hold much with these new-fangled idees. But that cain’t do no harm. Think me to try it tomorrow, Ham.’
‘Papa sure don’t believe in new-fangled stuff,’ complained Ham. ‘Papa don’t want I should even go fer that new way of ploughin’ across the gullies instead of alongside ’em, that Mista Tom Jefferson up in Virginia wrote about. But I’m goin’ to do it, come plough time, anyhow.’
‘Too late, too late. Falconhurst is done fer cotton. If I had a-started earlier, when Mista Tom first talked about it, things might have been different. But it’s a lot of trouble, and too late anyway. Falconhurst does all right as is.’
‘Don’t git riled up so, Papa. It ain’t good fer your rheumatiz.’
‘Damn my rheumatiz! Don’t do this and don’t do that. It gits worser, whatever I do or quit doin’. Toddies do more fer it than anythin’, seems like. But tonight’s the worst it’s ever been.’
Ham shook his head in despair. ‘I only wishes you could git one of them nekid dogs the Mexicans got. They do say that sleepin’ with your feet agin one of them dogs dreens the rheumatiz right out of a man and into the dog.’
‘I’ve hearn about ’em, but I never seen one. I doubt that there really is sich a thing as a nekid dog.’
‘They is. They have ’em,’ Brownlee declared.
‘Must be right comical,’ conjectured Maxwell.
‘Course, any dog shaved down so that the feet kin git right agin its skin is jest as good—or a nigger. A nigger will dreen off the rheumatiz through the feet jest as good as any nekid dog.’
‘Do you reckon so?’
‘Shore do,’ Brownlee was confident. ‘Why, I knew a man name of Bronson over in Natchez that tried it. So cripped up he couldn’t hardly walk. He tried sleepin’ with his feet agin the belly of a nigger and in no time at all Bronson was a-walkin’ and a-straddlin’ his horse as good as ever. The old rheumatiz jest dreened right out’n him into the nigger. Nigger all cripped in no time, jest like Bronson was before.’
‘Might be worth tryin’,’ said Ham.
‘Might be,’ repeated Maxwell hopefully. ‘Get me a nigger, Hammond; I’ll begin this very night. Have him washed up good. A buck is better than a wench—a wench is sorta disturbin’ when you got the rheumatiz and cain’t do nothin’.’
‘We’ll use one of the twins, and I’ll give Lucretia Borgia some of that black powder to put in the wash water to kill the muskiness.’
‘Sort of hate to ruin one of them twins with rheumatiz,’ specu
lated Maxwell.
‘We kin dreen it right out of him into some other nigger if he gits too bad. He’s right here in the house and handy,’ Hammond said, rising to go to arouse Lucretia Borgia to give her instructions about the preparation of her son for his master’s use.
‘Course, you got to have the nigger sort of curl up around your feet, and you got to press hard and force the rheumatiz right out’n the soles,’ Brownlee counselled expertly.
Maxwell rubbed his knees and massaged one hand with the other. The pain subsided from time to time, but it never entirely left his joints. He had become so inured to its presence that when it was least he was unaware of it, until a sudden pang shot through the various parts of his body which forced him to restrain himself to keep from, crying out. ‘The worse of it is,’ he lamented. ‘Ham’s young—too young to tote the whole plantation on his shoulders. I got no mind to complain about the way he does—does right good; but at eighteen I was out and around, sowing my oats, and up to all kinds of devilment.’
‘A smart, sturdy boy like him. It won’t hurt him none to be nailed down for awhile,’ Brownlee hazarded. ‘I never got out to raise no hell. It never hurt me.’
‘He never even got no schoolin’ to speak of. His mamma learned him to read a little and I tried to after she died. She could read real good, better’n I kin. Then I sent him to the Institute over at Jackson fer a term three or four years ago, but couldn’t stand havin’ him away—wouldn’t let him go back. Always afraid somethin’ would happen to him—after that gelding pony, I was fool enough to put him on when he was little, threw him off and stiffened his knee. You cain’t never trust a gelding; give me a whole horse or none. Schoolin’ is a great thing fer a boy. He needs it—more and more as time goes on, more than in my day.’
‘Don’t know; don’t know. Sometimes schoolin’ ruints a boy—makes ’em big-headed,’ Brownlee opined. ‘Jest cain’t stand a big head. I didn’t never have no edication and didn’t never need none. Course, I had got to learn to cipher a little, and am right good at it now. But I never was ruint by book learnin’.’