by Kyle Onstott
Maxwell was still doubtful about the havoc wrought by education. ‘Guess Ham got enough to git along with, but I wish’t he had more of it. I wish’t I hadn’t been so hoggish fer him, a-holdin’ of him back.’
‘It sense that counts—not learnin’,’ Brownlee consoled. ‘And Hammond got sense.’
‘I helt him back that a-way, and I’m still a-holdin’ him back. Besides the plantation and two hundred niggers, he’s got me and my rheumatiz on his shoulders. Young as he is, I wonder if he wouldn’t be better off if I was dead. Of course, if my pains don’t better, I won’t last long, and I’d like to see him married off before I die—course to some nice, well-bred young lady—I want to see it. I want to see ’em breed another boy to take over Falconhurst when Ham gits the rheumatiz or whatever and to carry it along through the generations. Course, Falconhurst is played out fer cotton; but who needs cotton with niggers goin’ up and up?’
‘ ’Lessen them abolitionists at the North sets all the niggers free,’ Brownlee interposed, at once derisive and sceptical.
‘Triflin’ loafers, interferin’ in other folks’ business. Slavery was ordained by God, and there ain’t nothin’ they kin do about it except talk and stir up trouble between slavery territory and free territory, between South and North. Cain’t they understand that you got to have niggers to grow cotton, and you got to grow cotton to feed them Northern spindles? They tryin’ to ’bolish they own jobs and they own profits?’ Maxwell rose to his feet in the excitement of his own eloquence.
‘They dangerous, howsumever,’ said Brownlee. ‘Take them Quakers, and take that Garrison and that newspaper he started to print last year, that Liberator, as he calls it. Seen any o’ them papers?’
‘Don’t want to see none. To read about ’em in The New Orleans Advertiser turns me sick. Better not nobody fetch one of them Liberators to Falconhurst.’
‘Better not let the niggers see ’em, anyway. Puts idees in they heads,’ Brownlee warned.
‘My niggers cain’t read. Best law ever passed, that law agin learnin’ niggers to read.’
‘Some does it even agin the law,’ Brownlee said.
‘An’ they liable to have a risin’ to fight, too. No nigger readin’, no nigger risin’. Why, that Garrison hadn’t printed that Liberator of his six months when that nigger risin’ up in Virginia happened last year. Wonder they never could ketch that Nat Turner nigger.’
‘They ketched him. Didn’t you know? They ketched him and hung him along about harvest time.’
‘Hung him?’ Maxwell was incredulous.
‘Hung him.’
‘Jest hung him? Didn’t burn him or nothin’ after killin’ all them white folks? Had ought to of burned him. Ought to of made a sample of him.’
‘Had ought to have burned that Garrison at the same post and to stoked the fire with Liberators,’ Brownlee agreed. ‘Garrison jest set the nigger on. Strange you never hearn about it.’
‘I missed some New Orleans Advertisers around pickin’ time. Ham didn’t have no time to ride to Benson and the postmaster throwed ’em out. Reckoned we didn’t want ’em.’
‘All up and down the Seaboard, folks are still a-talkin’ about Nat Turner. They skeared of more risin’s. All through Virginia and the Carolinas, and ’specially Georgia.’
‘They don’t know nothin’ about how to treat niggers. Treat ’em right, feed ’em, don’ overwork ’em, and they don’t uprise. Owners too greedy to git work out’n ’em. A nigger responds to good treatment better’n a dog. I don’ have no trouble with mine, and Ham don’t.’
Hammond entered from the dining-room, guiding with hand on shoulder one of the Borgia’s twins. The boy had been roused from bed, bathed and soaked in a potassium permanganate solution, despite which he still was not fully awake. He was entirely naked and seemed unconcerned about the purpose of his arousal or the fate in store for him He had confidence in Hammond and feared no abuse.
‘Here’s your Mexican dog,’ Ham greeted his father. ‘Used that red stuff on him and there ain’t a trace of musk about him; smell like’n as if he was white.’
‘Come here, boy. Set and drink your toddy, Ham, ere it git cold.’ Maxwell sniffed at various parts of the boy and declared himself satisfied. ‘Must be strong medicine that kill nigger-stink like that. Smell of him, Mr. Brownlee,’ and he pushed the child toward the trader’s chair.
Brownlee in his turn sniffed and continued to sniff the boy all over, handling and embracing and patting him and clinging onto him, as if he doubted the efficacy of his own prescription. Brownlee too, at last, was convinced, but reluctant to surrender the young Negro servant. The Maxwells were insensible to Brownlee’s dalliance with the child, until, in the belief that the boy was lingering for attention and failing to note that the trader was grasping him, Hammond commanded the boy to be seated.
The chairs about the fireside were occupied and the boy retreated to one at the rear of the room and gingerly propped himself into it, unsure of what was expected of him.
‘Meg, whure your manners? You knows better than set in a chair,’ Hammond said sternly.
The boy immediately found his feet. ‘I ain’t Meg; I Alph.’
‘You Meg if’n I call you Meg. You knows who I means. You a nigger, and niggers sets on the floor in white folks’ houses.’
Hammond saw that the child intended no disrespect and changed his tone. ‘Come over here and set whure it wa’m,’ he half commanded, half invited, ‘there at one side of the hearth.’
The boy complied, squatting toad-fashion between his legs, comfortable and serene. He made an effort to listen to the conversation of the whites but couldn’t keep his eyes open. What he heard was neither interesting nor intelligible to him. He wondered what his masters drank that smelled so good. At length he toppled over upon his side, curled up, and slept warmly.
‘One more toddy, and we’ll all retire to bed,’ said Maxwell. ‘I crave to git me into bed with my feet agin his belly; crave to try it,’ whereupon he summoned Mem.
Memnon had been in and out of the sitting-room all the evening, renewing the fire, serving drinks, replacing candles. Unobtrusive and alert, he forgot nothing. He was bent upon proving that the whipping promised him for tomorrow was unnecessary. His imagination already felt the smart of his buttocks, and he pictured the contempt that the other Negroes would feel for him. His disgrace would be as poignant as the impact of the paddle.
‘Reckon I ought to go down to the pest house to see how Big Pearl come on afore I goes to retire?’ Hammond asked his father.
‘Let Big Pearl be. You weary, Ham. Night’s cole outdoors. Git yourself some sleep, and stop your frettin’ about all them niggers. You ain’t they mamma. You ain’t called to coddle and nurse ’em, the way you doin’. They all right. Let ’em alone.’
‘Howsumever, I ’sponsible fer ’em. I’m right fond of our niggers, and right proud of ’em. Every one of ’em sound as a hickory. And that Big Pearl—I’d sure grieve to lose her.’
‘Course, a good nigger is a right smart loss, these times and these prices. But why this here Pearl more than some othern?’
‘Whyn’t you show Big Pearl to Mista Brownlee, Papa?’
‘First place, she ain’t fer sale. Second place, she make other niggers look puny. Third place, it rainin’ and I didn’t want to shuck her down out in that rain and wind.’
‘Youen’s show nigger, eh?’
‘Mandingo, pure Mandingo,’ Maxwell explained. ‘Don’t find many Mandingos pure no more.’
‘I likes ’em black,’ Brownlee declared.
‘Me? I likes ’em lusty, whutever they colour. Course, it all right fer white men to pester black wenches—a protection to white womanhood, I always says. But everybody wantin’ yaller niggers; puny, frail, weak, white owners spends all they sap a-tryin’ to git light-coloured babies, that ain’t fitten to grow into strong cotton hands. They all dreams of gittin’ fancy yaller wenches that they kin sell young fer a monst’ous price. If th
ey had a lookin’-glass they know they couldn’t sire nothin’ but ugly, knotty runts. Course, I ain’t meaning such owners as Ham, here, sturdy, and purty an’ vig’ous, but Ham ain’t runnin’ through the cabins a-coverin’ all the wenches a-tryin’ fer yeller offspring. No, suh.’
The personal aspect of his father’s conversation Hammond found embarrassing. He sought to turn it back into its channel. ‘You sayin’ about Mandingos, Papa,’ he began.
‘So I was, so I was. I was talkin’ about Big Pearl. I’ll come back to that,’ said Maxwell, refusing the interruption. ‘Ham ain’t got but two or three babies all told—but they all turned out little bucks. They fancy, light-yallers, all right, but all bucks. His oldest one—comin’ on four, now—is as healthy and purty and straight a saplin’ as ever I see. Course, it gits extrie feed and everythin’.’
‘Ham look like he be a right vigorous stud,’ said Brownlee.
‘Didn’t look fer that first one to amount to nothin’ at all with Hammond jest fourteen years old when he got it. Dropped the day after his fifteenth birthday. Proudest boy ever was; thought he was a man fer shore.’
‘You purty mad, I reckon, when you found out about him pesterin’ your wenches at that age,’ said Brownlee. ‘Course, I know they all do it, but nothin’ come of it.’
‘Wasn’t my wench. She was his’n. One his mamma left him. She begin a-waitin’ on him when he was about eleven or twelve—when he shed his nurse-mammy.’
‘Wonder he wasn’t a-ruint.’
‘Ruther have a boy a-pesterin’ a smart, little clean wench than have him a-drivin’ hisself crazy a-hankerin’ to. I’d been stronger—and smarter too—if my old man had a-give me a wench of my own before I was sixteen, a-goin’ on seventeen.’
‘Seventeen? I was nineteen, and even then she wasn’t mine or my pappy’s. She belonged to the man my pappy was overseein’ fer, a ugly sambo, I reckon, leastwise lookin’ back I think she was part Choctaw. Course, I sneaked some before that,’ conceded Brownlee. ‘Out in the patches when the hands was noonin’, whenever I could shun my paw.’
Maxwell showed little interest in the trader’s youth. Brownlee was a poor recommendation for boyhood continence. ‘In them days pappies didn’t know how hankerin’ fer a wench could stunt a boy and drive him lunatic.’ The intimation was that Brownlee’s shortcomings were chargeable to his father’s negligence. ‘Pro’bly the reason young men at the North are so sapless and witless—nothin’ but white gals to pester with when they boys.’
The trader was more interested in the goblet of corn whisky which Agamemnon was bringing than in Maxwell’s comments. Mem’s gait was unsteady, his eyes emitted a glassy glint. His hand trembled on the tray as he handed the drinks about, although he refrained from spilling them.
‘Come here, you black scoun’rel. Kneel down here and let me smell you,’ Maxwell commanded.
Memnon found refuge in tears. ‘I didn’t drink none. I didn’t do it, Masta, suh. I didn’t do it. I on’y jest taste to see was it hot. On’y jest taste, suh.’
Memnon knelt by Maxwell, afterwards he crawled on his knees toward Hammond, who sniffed him but casually.
‘That mean jest twenty-five more squashings with that paddle tomorrow.’ Hammond addressed his father, ignoring the Negro. ‘And a big drench of ipecac tonight last thing.’
‘No, Masta, suh, no,’ the darkie begged sotto voce, not daring to speak out lest he aggravate the sentence, and yet unable to keep silent. ‘I jest tasted.’ Memnon knew that in so factual and objective a mood Hammond was relentless; if his master had reviled and threatened him, he might have softened him with his repentance. Hammond did not even deign to address him. His resolution was not even tempered by his anger.
When Memnon saw that Hammond was unmoved by pity, he rose to his feet and slunk from the room, but he was entirely sobered. The whisky he had drunk to smother his anticipations of the morrow’s chastisement had lost its lethe. All the agility and promptitude he had displayed throughout the evening to avert the disaster had been cancelled out. The ipecac was a punishment that exactly fitted the crime. The very thought of it caused him to retch in anticipation. When he returned to the house from his excursion out into the wind-filled darkness, the yellow of Mem’s face had taken on a greenish hue. He was sick at his stomach and sick at heart.
‘As I was a-sayin’ about them Mandingos,’ Maxwell resumed his monologue, oblivious of the interruption, ‘they right satisfyin’—powerful, biddable, healthy. Cain’t un’erstand this Big Pearl a-fallin’ sick.’
‘How you know she pure Mandingo?’ Brownlee inquired.
‘Look at her! Look at her! Don’t have more than to look at her,’ answered her owner. ‘But I knows her history—all about her, too. Ol’ Colonel Wilson of Coign Plantation, up the road apiece, about fifty or sixty miles, needed some han’s and rid to Charleston to buy a passel of bozals. Course, it was back in the time when the Colonel was young and could ride, the days before Mista Tom Jefferson stopped ’em from bringin’ in brutes. Everything was law-abidin’.’
Hammond had heard the story before, and diverted himself by tickling Alpha’s feet and watching his reflexes. Brownlee was mildly interested in Maxwell’s tale, and even more in Hammond’s play with the young boy.
‘Colonel Wilson foun’ ’em unloadin’ a whole cargo of prime Mandingos, two or three hunerd big, docile, upstandin’ brutes, and he picked himself out four or five good ones. Colonel Wilson know a good nigger. They never cost much then—five, six or seven hunerd apiece. Two of ’em, a big buck and a stout wench, was about the purtiest things I ever see. That wench must have been nineteen hands, or near it, and the buck even taller; and they wasn’t jest tall, but they was thick, not fat but hard, hard as mahogany.
‘Course, Colonel Wilson bred the two of ’em together and got a wench child—a big sturdy wench over sixteen pounds the day she was dropped; but ’bout that time the vomit broke out at Coign and the old wench died and all the other Mandingos, all except the big buck and the baby.’
‘Bad luck,’ said Brownlee.
‘Turrible, turrible. But the baby growed; and when she big an’ ready to breed, Colonel Wilson didn’t have no Mandingo ’ceptin’ her pappy to breed her to, and he was bounden to keep his Mandingo blood pure. So what he do? He put the wench right back to her pappy.’
‘Didn’t he know no better than that?’ Brownlee asked. ‘Why, that awful; that incest; that goin’ agin the Bible. I knowed a white man up in Tennessee oncet that pestered his own nigger daughter and had a wench child, that was jest a little puny, that cried all the time, never did grow none, and was weak-minded. Jest lay and slobbered. About three years old, the old man, seein’ that it wasn’t never goin’ be worth nothin’, took pity and knocked it in the head. Your Colonel Wilson ought to know better’n that.’
‘Well, he didn’t. The wench brought him the biggest, most vigourest young saplin’ you ever see. Most grown now, but the Colonel won’t market him. Goin’ to keep him fer seed.’
‘I swan!’ said Brownlee.
‘Seein’ as how it worked so good the first time, Colonel Wilson put the young wench right back to her pappy agin, and this time got a wench baby, Big Pearl. I bought her and Lucy—that her mammy—offen the Colonel while Big Pearl was a-suckin’ yet.
‘That’s how I knows she is pure Mandingo. Her and Lucy and Colonel Wilson’s two—the old buck and the young one—are the only simon purentee Mandingos I knows about anywhures. Beautiful niggers, all on ’em.’
‘Real dangerous, I call it,’ said Brownlee. ‘I wouldn’t risk it. Whut you goin’ to do with your wench? No more Mandingos to mate her up with.’
‘When Hammond gits the time, I aims to have him ride to Coign Plantation and plead with Colonel Wilson to borrow the old bozal buck to us fer a month or two. I aims to breed Big Pearl right back once more to her pappy, and her grandpappy. The buck is sixty or sixty-five years, maybe seventy, come now; but I reckon he got sap in him yet.’
�
��Don’t risk it, Mista Maxwell, suh. Don’t risk it. That awful.’
Brownlee’s horror only confirmed Maxwell in his determination. ‘Works fine in horses and cows and hogs and dogs and sich. I don’t see why it won’t work with niggers. Course, you got to have fine stock; no good with puny stock.’
‘You breedin’ in too fur, Mr. Maxwell. Thought you knowed more’n that about niggers.’
‘Ham thinks it all right. Don’t you, Ham? If he gives the nod to it, we goin’ to try it.’
Hammond had stopped playing with the sleeping child. He was tired, resting, hardly listening. ‘Papa, you been talkin’ that plan fer three years. Thought your mind was set, jest waitin’ fer me to go to Coign to fetch the buck. I’ll find the time in a few days. Don’t reckon there’s nothing to lose except Big Pearl’s time, if the foal should turn out puny or something.’
The Seth Thomas which ticked and ticked on the mantelpiece coughed and clanged eight rapid strokes of its bell, as if its duty were unpleasant and it wished to get it over with as quickly as possible.
‘That danged clock,’ observed Maxwell. ‘Keeps right time—about; but it’s an hour slow in its chiming. Kin fix it—ever git time.’
Hammond stretched. ‘Reckon it time to go up. ’Bout nine, ain’t it, Papa?’
Memnon brought the drinks for Maxwell and Brownlee as ordered.
His presence reminded Maxwell of his misdemeanour. He cautioned Hammond, ‘You won’t ferget that ipecac, Son?’
‘No, Papa. I mix it, I git upstairs.’
Memnon paled at the thought. ‘I ain’t needin’ no medicine now. I’s puked that corn, ever’ bit of it.’
‘You’s goin’ to puke some more. You’s goin’ to puke up all your innards with that dose I’m plannin’ to pour into you,’ Hammond threatened. ‘And you better go to sleep with them bucks in the stable, ’stead of in the hall by my door.’
‘Cain’t cure a nigger from drinkin’ corn, ’lessen you locks it up away from him,’ Brownlee observed.