Mandingo

by Kyle Onstott

  ‘Mad?’

  ‘Mad at me? I couldn’t help it; you did it.’

  Hammond ran his arm beneath Ellen’s body, drew her to him and kissed her mouth. ‘That how riled I is,’ he declared. ‘I a-wantin’ it.’

  ‘But you won’t be a-wantin’ me,’ the girl began to weep. ‘Be givin’ me to one of the hands—not a black one though, not to a black one!’

  It was too dark in the room for Ellen to see the smile that spread over Ham’s face. ‘Ellen, honey, I ain’t givin’ you away. You mine, mine. You an’ me, we goin’ to have a lot o’ suckers, a whole gang of ’em, one mos’ ever’ year.’

  ‘Sukey an’ the others?’

  ‘They different. They jest handy-like. I ain’t payin’ Ol’ Man Wilson no fifteen hundred dollars jest for three, four months of you. No, suh. I wouldn’t take fifteen thousand fer you.’

  ‘You reckon I am——?’

  ‘You missin’ your time, and your breasts, Lucretia Borgia mayhap right. Leastwise, she goin’ to be, an’ she ain’t. Us carryin’ on like we is, not a-goin’ to be long.’

  ‘You reckon it’s a little buck?’

  ‘I reckon. I gits bucks. All of mine been bucks so fur. Not a wench so fur, nor a crip.’

  ‘You reckon Miz Blanche’s goin’ to be a buck, I mean a boy child?’

  ‘Ifn ever she have one. I ain’t been doin’ right by her—too hot in all that riggin’. I’m a-goin’ to.’

  ‘Lucretia Borgia says Miz Blanche—she pukin’ up every mornin’ and her feet swellin’ up; Lucretia Borgia reckons that a sign.’

  ‘Lucretia Borgia reckons too much. She knowin’ ever’thing afore it goin’ to happen.’

  ‘I reckon you don’t crave Miss Blanche have none?’ Ellen’s inflection turned her speculation into a question.

  Hammond was quick to deny that such was the case. ‘Course I wantin’ one, an’ Papa do. Course I do.’ The weather had made the young man irascible. Ellen accepted his peevish mood. She fell silent, but continued to wield the fan above his naked body long after he had turned his back on her and fallen asleep. There was no moon and the room was so dark that she could distinguish only a vague outline of the man at whose body she gazed down in adoration.

  For herself, Ellen hoped that Lucretia Borgia was not mistaken, since Hammond was not averse to her bearing a child. Would it arrive before the child carried by her mistress? It should, she calculated; her master had favoured her for months before he had married Miss Blanche. A surge of jealous hatred of Hammond’s wife swept over her. She knew that she herself was the interloper. Did her master come to her from preference or merely to relieve his wife from the obligation to submit to him? Why should the white woman not relish the male embrace? Wherein was the difference between white and black? She thought of herself as black, and was glad of her skin; she would not exchange the ecstasy she obtained from her master’s caresses for the chaste frigidity of white wifehood.

  It would go hard, Ellen knew, but she believed that she would be willing to forgo Hammond’s embraces if he were able to obtain as much satisfaction in Blanche’s bed. The nights Hammond spent with Blanche, Ellen threshed in her bed and wept tears of agony, but she didn’t question the wife’s right to him. Jealousy she had admitted to herself, but never hatred. Now she hated. Now she willed Blanche injury, illness, abortion, death. Yet to murder her would alienate her white lover and defeat her purpose. If she could poison her secretly! There could be no rivalry—the other was white. Murder was the only solution.

  Ellen was terrified that Hammond might surmise her fantasies. How soundly did he sleep? If he should wake now would he divine what she had been thinking? The more she tried to stifle her evil thoughts, the more they obtruded into her consciousness. She was unable to sleep, and when Hammond awoke in the faint light of the false dawn, he felt the breeze even before he turned to see the girl, still reclining on her elbow and still patiently and monotonously swinging the fan to render his slumbers comfortable.

  In the morning Ham rose at once to go downstairs to tell his father that both Blanche and Ellen were pregnant. He knew the delight the old man would take in the fact that the Hammond line was now certain to be continued. But he himself was scarcely less pleased about Ellen than Blanche.

  16

  The following Saturday at the tavern Hammond saw the veterinarian, who obviously had something important to discuss. ‘Ain’t talked to Remmick, have ye?’ he asked, looking surreptitiously about him. He grasped Ham’s elbow and led him out to the entrance porch beneath the wooden awning. ‘Don’ say nothin’, but Remmick got a letter. He goin’ to show it you. Sportin’ gen’lemen from the City comin’, bringin’ with ’em they big fightin’ buck, want to pit it agin’ yourn. You goin’ to have a chance to pit your boy again’ a regular New Orleans fighter,’ Redfield confided.

  ‘How news about me a-havin’ Mede git all the way to New Orleans?’ Hammond pondered.

  ‘Jest wanted you to know. Don’ let on you anxious when Remmick tellin’ you. Take it casual an’ if you wantin’ a good match.’

  Remmick did indeed hurry up as soon as he saw Ham, spread open before him without comment the letter of which Redfield had spoken. Redfield read it over Ham’s shoulder.

  ‘Friend Mr. Remmick,’ the epistle ran; ‘it comes to me a rich gentleman Mr. Maxwell has a fine fighter near to Benson. I got one to match against him. I take my fighter to Benson in a short time to match him. You tell the gentleman please have his Negro redy when I come. Mine is real large and strong like a bull. I go to Natchez. Then come to Benson. Your humble and obdt. servt. J. Neri.’ The letter was from New Orleans, undated. It was neatly written in an easily legible running hand, except for the signature, which was so formalized and embellished that it was impossible to be sure of more than the ‘J’ in it.

  Hammond read the letter three times, turned it over and looked at the blank reverse. ‘Who this whutever his name be? This J. Neri?’ he asked.

  ‘Never seen the Frenchy, not as I know. Callin’ me his god-damn friend. I don’t know him,’ Remmick said, folding the letter and placing it in his pocket.

  ‘Heared of me, about my Mede,’ speculated Hammond.

  ‘From folks passin’ through, likely. Lots of talk a-goin’,’ Remmick guessed. ‘Goin’ to fight him? You bin a-cravin’ a chance.’

  ‘ ’Pendin’ on his buck and on whut he offerin’ to bet,’ shrugged Hammond. ‘I ain’t fightin’ my buck fer no scrawny runt of a saplin’.’

  ‘Course I ain’t knowin’, but I reckons that Frenchy cravin’ to fight fer money—not jest fer niggers. Likely, comin’ all that way, ain’t carryin’ along no bettin’ bucks.’ Remmick appeared to know more than he admitted about the business of the unknown letter-writer.

  For all Hammond’s assumed indifference, his eagerness to reach home to intensify the Mandingo’s training detracted from his interest in the afternoon’s entertainment. Before the final fight he departed, first having sought out Doc Redfield and asked him to come to Falconhurst. He wanted the veterinarian’s appraisal of Mede’s fitness to fight.

  So anxious was he to step up Mede’s conditioning, he galloped Eclipse all the way and went to the Mandingo cabin before reporting his arrival to his wife and father.

  ‘I goin’ to pit you,’ he told Mede excitedly. ‘Gen’leman from New Orleans bringin’ one, big as a bull.’

  ‘I ready for him. I beat him for you, Masta,’ Mede declared complacently.

  ‘You ain’t either ready. You got to git trainin’ good—runnin’, liftin’ that ol’ log, Lucy oilin’ an’ workin’ you.’

  Lucy acquiesced with a ‘Yas, suh, Masta. I rubs Mede ever’ day, me an’ Big Pearl.’

  ‘You still drinkin’ down them eggs from Lucretia Borgia ever’ day?’ Ham demanded.

  ‘She makin’ me. I don’ like ’em, Masta, suh.’

  ‘Nev’ min’; you drink ’em down. Now git out there a-liftin’ that log. Put it up an’ down over your head till you
petered out. Hear? Tomorrow we goin’ to run you, young buck on your back; an’ then we swims you in ol’ Tombigbee.’

  Mede’s training had been steady and consistent; Hammond had seen to it, even in those weeks when it seemed to him that he should be unable to find an opponent. Now, with the prospect of a fight impending, the owner was appalled at the thought that in any way he might have permitted Mede to loaf and stagnate into flabbiness. He resolved to make up in a week’s intensity of effort all that the boy had lost, or had failed to gain, in the interval since he had fought.

  Blanche, drinking a toddy, made a wry mouth of indifference to Ham’s tale of the letter. Maxwell’s chuckle assuaged his son’s doubt. ‘You got him to fight with, didn’t you? You got to crack eggs, an’ you makin’ a puddin’,’ he said. ‘Nev’ mind a bust jaw or a gouged eye. You got him to fight, not to look at.’

  That then was one comfort. If Mede should lose, Hammond would suffer no recriminations at home.

  Redfield lost no time in his visit to Falconhurst. As he approached the plantation astride his dun horse, he encountered Hammond on Eclipse following Mede, who trotted ploddingly, Belshazzar perched triumphantly on his shoulders. Although it was Sunday morning when no work was required of the Falconhurst slaves, the Mandingo had been lifting, jumping, stretching, contorting, and now running, under his master’s relentless eye, for five hours. His scanty clothes were wet and his face shone with sweat, but fatigue, if he felt it, was not visible. It was Hammond’s intention to tire his fighter to the point of exhaustion.

  ‘Whut you meanin’?’ asked the veterinarian jocosely. ‘Stinkin’ up the country with nigger sweat?’

  ‘I honin’ him, honin’ him right down.’

  When the white men had dismounted, Redfield glanced towards the Mandingo, and observed him as he came up the lane, watched him lift Belshazzar easily down from his shoulders. With a curiosity that appeared idle, he walked towards the big Negro, felt his biceps, his thighs, and his shoulders through the sweat-soaked garments, raised the boy’s shirt to feel his abdominal muscles, making no comment.

  ‘How he seem?’ inquired Hammond anxiously. ‘I jest beginnin’ workin’ him; don’ know kin I git him ready, come Sat’day. That Frenchy had ought to given me more time.’

  Redfield stooped to pick up a bit of soil with which to cleanse his hands of the Negro sweat. ‘Th’ boy all right, I reckon; good. On’y I wouldn’t work him no more, was I you. He hard now as you kin make him an’ he runs limber-like. You goin’ to wear him down. Let him rest till you ready to fight him.’

  ‘He a lazy son-of-a-bitch,’ scoffed the owner, concealing his pride. ‘I ’on’t want him goin’ off on me.’

  ‘Might swim him some, an’ keep him rubbed,’ prescribed the veterinarian. ‘Eats, I reckon.’

  ‘Eats good, white vittles an’ eggs raw, ’bout a dozen ever’ day.’

  Redfield nodded wisely in professional approval, and the gentlemen entered the house.

  A half-empty toddy glass stood on the table. Blanche, seeing the visitor through the window, had retired to dress in more fitting garments.

  ‘Reckon my son tellin’ you whut I want—’bout that Natchez ride,’ Maxwell opened a subject he had in mind, namely that Redfield should accompany Ham on the autumn slave-selling trip.

  ‘Glad to, glad to ’commodate.’

  ‘Course, nothin’ to do. Hammond here, he do ever’thing. He in charge,’ the father made clear, not to deprive the young man of his sense of responsibility.

  ‘Better,’ Redfield agreed.

  ‘I make it right with you; Hammond will, that is.’

  Redfield raised his hand in protest of payment. ‘Only neighbourly,’ he said. ‘Not a dollar, not a cent. You pay my keep on the road. A chancet to git out from under the Widder fer a spell.’

  ‘Course, course,’ Hammond promised, ignoring the aspersion on Redfield’s wife. ‘But——’

  ‘How many? How big the coffle?’

  ‘Dozen or fourteen head, bucks that is; mayhap fifteen or sixteen. Ain’t decided yet,’ Maxwell explained.

  ‘Papa aimin’ to send along three or four wenches too.’

  Redfield evinced surprise. ‘I reckon you wouldn’t sell off wenches.’

  ‘Ol,’ explained Maxwell. ‘Ridden of ’em afore they stops breedin’—that is if we kin git ’em showin’ in foal in time.’

  ‘Bring more open,’ Redfield argued.

  ‘Young yallers, mayhap, yes,’ Maxwell admitted. ‘These’n ol’, thirty or sich, an’ mos’ly right dark.’

  ‘Papa wantin’ to,’ Hammond implied his reluctance to part with the women.

  ‘Trouble about the Widder,’ Redfield complained. ‘Ain’t sold off. First thing you know, they stops breedin’ on you an’ ain’t worth nothin’. May take along two or three my own self, the Widder willin’.’

  ‘You welcome, welcome!’ declared Hammond. ‘Gotten anyways to take the surrey fer the wenches—’specially are they knocked. Room for two or three more.’

  ‘An’ I a freeholder now—that farm of the Widder’s. I kin sign your ’tificates you got to have in Louisianie and Mississippi that you ain’t a-bringin’ in runners or bad niggers.’

  ‘Banker Meyer always signs ourn,’ Hammond asserted.

  ‘The Banker don’t know nothin’ about the niggers—never seen ’em. But he signs,’ the father chuckled. ‘He know Warren Maxwell ain’t sluffin’ off bad stock.’

  ‘Takes two, two property owners. “James J. Redfield” will look nice right alongside of Banker Meyer on them papers. An’ I know your hands. My name will mean somethin’.’

  Blanche had dressed carefully, Tense lacing her into her brown costume. Mincing and demure, she sidled into the room.

  ‘You ain’t a-knowin’ Miz Maxwell yet, are you?’ Hammond rose from his chair. ‘This her, this my wife. Doc Redfield, you hearin’ about,’ he made the introduction.

  Blanche simpered and curtsied, and the Doctor made an elaborate bow. ‘Hammond here, he bin a-tellin’ me,’ the girl said.

  ‘An’ me, he tellin’ me ’bout his beautiful wife,’ Redfield lied.

  Blanche blushed at the flattery. ‘Right warm,’ she said, reaching for a palmetto.

  ‘I knowed your mamma, she about your age. Hankered fer her, but course I didn’t have nothin’, that time. Your grandpa wouldn’t hear to the likes of me, an’ I known better than ast. Miz Hammond her name was then, an’ purty as ever you see, but dark; not fair like you—dark.’

  ‘Mamma gittin’ deef now,’ Blanche sighed.

  ‘So did your grandpa, ol’ Orestes. You remember Orestes, Mista Maxwell.’

  ‘Like yest’day. Brother of Theophilus, but no sech a gen’leman.’

  ‘My ol’ man worked there—Pleasant Hill, the plantation was called—overseer, when I was a boy. Mista Orestes was kind and generous, sober; mean when he drunk. I mind he made my pappy lick me oncet fer somethin’ I never done, somethin’ about a wench he keepin’ fer one of his boys.’

  Maxwell saved his daughter-in-law’s blushes. ‘I wasn’t a-knowin’ you worked fer the Hammonds.’

  ‘My pappy! They had hosses, good hosses, and niggers, and pigs an’ things; that’s whure I learned to doctor so good. The Hill onhealthy; somethin’ always sick. Worst was the nine-days’ sickness—carried new suckers right off, never saved a one, might as well knock ’em in the head oncet they gits it.’

  ‘I ain’t never had it here,’ Maxwell vaunted.

  ‘You right clean. Don’t never let it start. Belly button swells up an’ turns green-like, ain’t nothin’ to do.’

  Meg appeared with four toddies on his tray, served his senior master first, as he had been taught. Blanche lifted her hand, but just in time caught Hammond’s eye, saw the just perceptible shake of his head, and dropped her hand to her lap.

  ‘I temp’ance. I never drinks corn,’ she denied.

  ‘ ’Ceptin’ sometimes fer medicine, suffers awful when her head aches her,’ modi
fied her father-in-law for the sake of truth.

  ‘Course, course,’ assented the guest.

  Blanche displayed her best manners, manners which her husband knew she possessed, having seen them at Crowfoot before he had married her. He was none the less proud that she had not forgotten them—the crooked small fingers, the dainty forkfuls, the abstemious appetite, which were reserved for the presence of guests. Hammond saw Redfield watching the girl with approval and admiration. She acquitted herself with elegance, and her husband was proud.

  After dinner and another toddy, when Redfield was about to depart, Maxwell followed him to the sunny gallery. ‘You reckon she knocked up?’ he asked the medical man, glancing behind him to indicate to whom the question pertained. ‘She puke mornin’s. Lucretia Borgia reckon.’

  ‘Bin two months, ’most three, ain’t it?’ Redfield calculated. ‘Knowin’ Hammond, she is, or she ain’t a-goin’ to never be. She is like to have a dozen, runnin’, one a year. I reckon she be.’

  Hammond accepted the veterinarian’s counsel to ease up on the Mandingo’s training. He worked him only lightly, swam him daily in the river, saw to it that he was oiled and massaged, questioned him about his bowels. Mede had an easy week.

  In view of Remmick’s opinion that the New Orleans man might demand a money wager, Hammond dug up the pot of gold and extracted from it twenty-five double eagles, which was the maximum sum he was willing to hazard. He was concerned less about winning money than about winning the fight and proving his slave’s prowess, but he felt that five hundred dollars was all that he could afford to lose. He preferred to bet Negroes, who, while they were saleable for money, were not gold itself.

  When at last Saturday came, Maxwell’s excitement over the contest was hardly less than his son’s, and he could not be restrained from making one of his infrequent visits to Benson.

  In their eagerness, father and son left Falconhurst earlier than need be, but despite their early arrival at the tavern it was apparent that things had already begun to stir. A half-dozen horses were at the rack, and a murmur of talk came through the open door.