Mandingo

by Kyle Onstott

  Stirring began. Young Negroes crossed the area to the well. Blue smoke rose from cabin chimneys. Katy came from Dick’s room and ambled towards the quarters. The plantation day had begun. Hammond dreaded the arrival of the Woodfords, with their unasked questions and ribald curiosity. He was grateful for Beatrix’s deafness. Would Blanche demand why he had left her bed, or would she care?

  Hammond looked up and saw the Major in the doorway, beaming and cheerful. The older man confined his comments to the fineness and largeness of the morning and to an insinuating inquiry about Ham’s health and how he had slept. Hammond ignored the insinuation and admitted that he had not slept well and had risen early, but did not say how early.

  ‘How Blanche?’ hinted her father. ‘She comin’ down—time for breakfast?’

  ‘I reckon,’ said Hammond.

  ‘I right plagued not to have a fancy weddin’, but I wrote it in Beatrix’s Bible. It will hold.’

  ‘I obliged you didn’t go to nothin’ fancy,’ declared Hammond.

  ‘Couldn’t. That money didn’t come. I couldn’t. And I cain’t make you no present, Beatrix and me. Had ought to, I knows. Plagues Blanche’s mamma.’

  ‘ ’S all right. Nothin’ I’s a-wantin’ savin’ your gal, savin’ Blanche.’

  ‘Had ought to give you a wench fer her—least I could do. Looks bad. Don’t know whut Warren goin’ to reckon.’

  ‘Him an’ me already got one of ourn picked out fer her. He don’t ’spect nothin’.’

  ‘You know how it is. Hands all mortgaged. Cain’t part with ’em. Course, you wantin’ to take up the mortgage an’ pay it, help yourself. Take any of ’em, any I got,’ the Major made a show of generosity which he knew would be rejected.

  Whatever aspect of cheerfulness, real or assumed, the others brought to the breakfast table, Beatrix’s austerity of manner cancelled out. Her reluctance to part with her daughter was aggravated by her conviction that marriage at its best was for women a sorrow only less evil than spinsterhood. Her own had been. All night she had imagined Blanche’s pure body at the mercy of male bestiality and had wept for her. Her horror of marriage as an institution embraced a resentment of the man to whom her daughter was married. She was at once impelled to implore him to restrain his appetite (which being male she knew to be gross) and restrained by a womanly decorum that forbade allusion to such a theme. Nor could she bring herself to suggest to Blanche that she demand forbearance from her husband.

  Blanche’s solemn visage was not, as her mother believed, inspired by Hammond’s ardour, but rather by his lack of it, which had moved him to forsake her bed after scarcely an hour with her. Her dreams of married bliss had been quite different.

  The team was waiting, harnessed to the surrey, by the time breakfast was finished, but the departure for which Hammond was impatient was delayed by Blanche’s preparation, packing her limited wardrobe into a capacious carpet-bag. Blanche acknowledged her mother’s admonitions with nods of her head and movements of her lips, some of which Beatrix was able to interpret. Seldom did the girl interrupt her work to go to the bed on which the elder woman sat to shout into her trumpet. Much as the mother regretted the parting, the daughter had no qualms at leaving home, which meant to her a pleasant adventure with a rich husband and a promise of luxury.

  It was approaching ten o’clock before Blanche was fully ready to go. The men spent the intervening time in gossip and visits to the spring-house, although Dick, in an upsurge of virtue, refused to join his father and brother-in-law in their libations.

  Blanche descended the stairs, again in the same challis dress, followed by the house-boy with the carpet-bag, which he stowed in the rear seat of the vehicle. Beatrix, in an effort further to delay the separation, proposed family prayers, for which Hammond declared himself to be unable to wait and to which Blanche was as loath to be subjected as was her husband.

  ‘Git yourself up in that back seat an’ watch that valise,’ his master admonished Meg. ‘Set up and don’t scrunch down, ’cause you ridin’ with your mist’ess.’

  ‘Ain’t you fergittin’?’ Dick demanded with a show of diffidence. At Hammond’s questioning lift of the brows, Dick added, ‘Fer pronouncin’ that weddin’. Ain’t you goin’ to pay? Course, you don’ got to; I ain’t a-astin’ nothin’.’

  Hammond delved into his pocket for his poke. ‘I sure like to fergotten,’ he said, fingering the coins. ‘Glad you remembered me.’ Unable to find a five-dollar piece, which he deemed adequate payment for the ceremony, he forked over a ten-dollar piece.

  ‘Too much, too much,’ protested the preacher, nevertheless quickly pocketing the money.

  ‘Keep it, keep it all. Reckon we kin ’ford it. All in the family, anyways, now.’

  Hammond’s statement gave the Major a hope of access to the Maxwell hoard. He contrived a beaming paternal smile.

  Dick withdrew the coin from his pocket and, after polishing it on his trousers, extended it on his upright palm toward his mother. ‘The first preacherin’ money!’ he said with pride. ‘I goin’ to keep it fer seed.’

  With mutual reluctance, Beatrix and Hammond exchanged a kiss. ‘God bless you!’ she said. ‘Be good to her, Cousin Hammond, an’ don’ be too demandin’.’ She folded her daughter in her arms, kissing her again and again, while Hammond shook the hands of the Major and the preacher. Dick gave Blanche a dutiful peck upon the cheek and her father, after planting a kiss upon her brow, ostentatiously withdrew a soiled handkerchief and wiped his eyes, in which no tears were visible. There was no pretence about the paroxysm of dry sobs which beset Beatrix as Hammond handed his wife into the surrey. The mother entertained no regrets for the match, but the separation from her youngest child moved her to an emotion which was either sadness or satisfaction.

  Hammond climbed into the driver’s seat and unwound the reins from around the whip. The Negro groom stepped away from the horses’ heads and the mares swung into a trot. As they traversed the lane towards the road, Blanche did not look back.

  The horses sensed that they were headed homeward and Hammond gave them their heads. The fine weather had dried the roads and reduced the ruts so much that the fast pace did not cause the carriage to bump and sway unduly.

  ‘You ain’t sayin’ nothin’. Ain’ you glad?’ asked the girl.

  ‘Glad?’ questioned the preoccupied husband.

  ‘Glad we married, glad we goin’?’ she elucidated.

  Hammond made no reply. When Blanche reached over and threw her arms about his neck, he shook her off and rolled his eyes in a glance into the rear seat to warn her of the presence of the slave who was apt to mark her indecorum.

  ‘I your wife, ain’t I?’ Blanche defended her behaviour.

  ‘I reckon you is,’ Hammond admitted, but was reluctant to speak further.

  ‘Whut fer you gittin’ up las’ night? You didn’t git no sleep,’ the girl pressed the theme.

  ‘I’s like that. I cain’t sleep, seem like, when I thinkin’.’

  ‘You thinkin’? Whut you thinkin’ about? You so funny.’

  ‘I thinkin’, I wonderin’ whut man had you afore me. You not believin’ I doesn’t know a virgin.’

  ‘I was too a virgin,’ the girl declared.

  ‘Oncet,’ said her husband succinctly. ‘But not las’ night.’

  Blanche began to weep, but her husband was indifferent to her tears. He turned and looked at the boy behind him, cautioning him to watch the carpet-bag. He was less concerned about the bag, in fact, than about Meg’s comprehension of the conversation in the front seat. The boy had strained his ears to hear, knew there was dissension, but failed to understand what it was about. Meg sat back in the seat with an assumption of innocence. Whatever might be the cause of the strife, he knew that the right was on the side of his master.

  ‘Hammon’ Maxwell, you ’cusin’ me of sompin’ I never done. I never done it, I never done it, I never,’ reiterated Blanche.

  ‘You ain’t a-tellin’ me.’ Hammond doub
ted the girl’s denial. ‘You don’t reckon I ain’t know a virgin when I see one—when I sleeps with one an’ pleasures?’

  ‘No! No! No!’ she cried, and broke afresh into tears.

  ‘Ain’t no good of me sayin’ and you sayin’ not, but I knowin’. You cain’t deny.’

  Blanche heaved a long sigh.

  ‘Might jest as well tell me, tell me who it is. Mayhap I goin’ to kill the son-a-bitch, shoot him down jest like he a skunk or somethin’. You might as well.’

  ‘I tellin’ you there weren’t nobody. I pure—till you.’

  ‘Me? I got the leave; I married to you. On’y had I have knew las’ night, beforehan’, I wouldn’t of—wouldn’t of married you.’

  ‘Hammon’, Hammon’, how you goin’ to think sich a thing? How kin you?’ She leaned toward him and embraced his neck, sought to find his mouth with hers, but he turned his face to avoid her kiss. She knew he was not convinced.

  Once she was tempted to blurt out the truth but bit her tongue. If he knew, perhaps he might forgive, her veniality was so little and so long ago. That was why she hated Charles and Charles her, that was the tale she held over her brother’s head. She had been thirteen and Charles scarcely two years older. They had been playing at keeping house, she the mother and he the father, her doll for a child. It had seemed at the time innocent enough although both knew that such an act was forbidden. Charles in his play had insisted upon his rights as her husband while she mimicked her mother’s frigidity, although she could not disguise her enjoyment of her violation. It had occurred so long ago. How could her husband know and hold it against her? If Charles had been available, if anybody knew where he was, she might have told Hammond what she had withheld so long from her parents.

  But she didn’t tell and was adamant, categorical, well-nigh convincing in her denial. How did Hammond know that she had not been a virgin? What caused him to suspect? She did not consider his education with Sukey, Aphrodite, Big Pearl, Ellen and all the other women who had shared his bed at one time or another. She sat tremulous in the fear that her husband would reject her, return her to Crowfoot. That Hammond did not turn back convinced her of his doubt.

  But Hammond had no doubt. He tortured his mind with his wife’s debasement. The horses guided themselves, onward, homeward. Hammond did not turn them back toward Crowfoot. There was no turning back.

  At length he spoke. ‘Well, we-all married—I reckon. Ain’t nothin’ we kin do—now. We married,’ he repeated. ‘We got to make the best of that.’

  Blanche felt the anomaly of her status, but was relieved that her husband accepted it. She sighed.

  ‘But we mustn’t tell my papa nothin’ about it. He ain’t never goin’ to know you wasn’ pure. Bust his heart, bus’ it right open—thinkin’ of Falconhurst goin’ to the son of a——,’ he searched his mind for a word but found none he could apply. ‘Like you,’ he concluded his sentence.

  Her half-forgotten childhood defection from virtue had seemed to Blanche a mere peccadillo, but she knew now that it was not. Her husband accepted her, but accepted her as something used, smirched, second-hand.

  She had expected no continence in the man she should marry. The concept would have startled her. She knew her brothers’ ways with the wenches and suspected her father’s. The satisfactions of their lusts was a male prerogative to which no blame was to be attached. But why the restriction on females?

  She foresaw herself as for ever suspect, unable to offer objection to anything her husband chose to do. She had envisaged no such dénouement to the accident, the trivial accident, that had occurred years before, as she had conceived of no such cause for her husband’s forsaking her bed and wandering the roads in the moonlight. But at least he had not rejected her, had not cast her off. He was driving forward, carrying her onward toward Falconhurst.

  13

  Few travellers were on the roads. The team overtook occasional pedestrians, mostly Negroes, who paused to wave and stare, and met infrequent white horsemen, sometimes two riding together, who saluted gravely and commented upon the weather. Once they came upon a caravan of gypsies, encamped by the roadside, two vans, a cart, three women in faded clothes that had once been gaudy, busily cooking over an open fire, a half-dozen idle men, and as many naked children, waving and shouting inarticulately and running after the surrey. Hammond whipped up his team in passing the encampment to protect Blanche from the sight of unashamed brats.

  Hammond calculated on reaching home by nightfall on the second day and postponed stopping to eat, but by four o’clock Blanche was insisting that she was hungry. She objected, however, to stopping at any of the scattered cabins they passed, and Hammond refused to stop at either of the larger plantations where it might have been possible to obtain meals, but whose owners he did not know. He drew up before a little hut on the edge of a clearing, above the door of which was an askew sign with the single word ‘Grocerys’ in grey, which had perhaps once been black, upon an otherwise unpainted board.

  Handing the reins to Blanche, Hammond got down from his seat and limped toward the entrance of the hut. He lifted the latch and went into the musty store. Boards between two hogsheads served for a counter, upon which rested slabs of fat pork and a quarter of a cheese. On a shelf were two bolts of calico, one blue, the other black. Barrels were scattered at random, and in the darkness of the room Hammond was able to see that everything was covered with a thin layer of dust.

  He waited and, when nobody appeared to serve him, came out-of-doors, walked entirely around the building, which was the only one in sight. He hallooed to the forest, but when nobody answered he re-entered the store. He lifted the lids of the barrels and searched about. From a barrel partly filled with meal a mouse sprang out and startled him, and he saw that he had disturbed her nest of half-grown young. The only articles of food that required no cooking were the quarter cheese, and crackers, the last ten pounds at the bottom of a barrel. No knife was in sight, and so Hammond employed a mattock that leaned in one corner to hack off a piece of the cheese which was dried out and crumbled on the counter. Neither could he find bags or paper, in lieu of which he tore a piece from the bolt of black calico, laid it on top of a barrel and scooped the broken cheese upon it. To this he added crackers.

  He estimated the value of the cheese, crackers and calico at thirty or forty cents, but to make sure of not cheating the merchant, whoever he might be, left a silver dollar on the board beside the cheese. He grasped the cloth by its four corners and carried it to the carriage. He closed the door as he went out and tried the latch to make sure it had caught.

  ‘This all?’ asked Blanche in her contempt of the meal.

  ‘All I could find, ’ceptin’ you wantin’ some sow bacon an’ no fire to cook it on. Wasn’t nobody,’ her husband explained. ‘Keep us till’n we git us home. Not fur, now.’ He reached into the cloth spread on Blanche’s knees and grasped a handful of crackers which he turned and extended to the boy in the rear seat.

  Blanche munched at the crumbs of cheese and bit into a cracker. ‘It old and soft, webs on it,’ she complained.

  ‘Don’ eat it, an’ you don’ want. You say you hongry,’ said Hammond reaching for a piece of the cheese. He had no feeling of hunger. He resumed the reins and the team trotted forward. Blanche continued to pick at the food, but ate little of it. At length she pulled the corners of the cloth together and, sliding it into the middle of the seat, brushed her skirt with her hands.

  Hammond picked up the parcel and handed it back to Meg.

  ‘Ain’t much,’ he said, ‘but Lucretia Borgia goin’ to fix us when we gits there.’

  As he ate the food, Meg sought to ingratiate himself with Blanche. She turned to look at him, and flinched, uneasy though she knew not why, under his eager gaze. He said: ‘Miz Lucretia Borgia my mammy. She the cook. She cook good. You goin’ to see. Me, I Masta’s, his nigger. I house tamed. I feeds him, an’ dresses him, an’ stirs his toddy.’

  They drove on, and only the horse
s’ hoofs broke the monotonous silence.

  Soon Hammond felt the pressure of Blanche’s hand upon his thigh. He looked up from the road on which his eyes had focused in his reverie and heard his wife whisper, ‘That ’un, the little ’un, is a conjure. I knows it. He lookin’ at me, at the back o’ my neck. I feels it—like pins an’ needles a-stickin’ me all over. He conjure me. I skeared.’

  Hammond turned in the seat to look behind him. Meg was sprawled in the corner, head on side, fast asleep. ‘If Meg conjure you,’ the husband replied, ‘he doin’ it in his sleep. Look back your own self.’

  ‘Then he playin’ possum. I felt his conjure, felt it plain. He ain’t asleep.’

  Hammond reached back and grasped Meg’s knee, shaking him awake. ‘Wake up an’ set up—straight. Don’ you know you ridin’ with your mist’ess?’

  The urchin obeyed, mumbling ‘Yas, suh; suh, Masta, suh.’

  ‘Ain’t no sich thing like conjure,’ Hammond told Blanche. ‘Jest nigger carryin’-on. They believes it.’

  ‘I believe it, too. Cain’t tell me. That ’un, behind there, he a conjure. Doin’ it in his sleep even. I knowed it when first I laid eyes on him. I wishin’ you git ridden of him.’

  ‘I will—in two, three years, when he growed enough to git me a price.’

  ‘I reckon you don’t believe ghostes neither?’ When her husband failed to reply, she added, ‘Nor God, nor Jesus, or nothin’? I’ve seen ’em—ghostes, that is. An’ Charles seen one oncet, a great big one.’

  Hammond did not interrupt her, and she added details of her apparitions and of her brother’s.

  The sun set clear, but there were clouds in the east that obscured the rising moon, but four days short of full. The horses recognized that they were approaching home and Hammond gave them their heads. It required a firm grip to restrain them as they turned into the lane that led to the house.

  ‘Falconhurst,’ murmured Hammond reverently, as if he approached a shrine.