by Kyle Onstott
‘Nev’ min’,’ said Hammond. ‘We seein’ it after we eats. She doin’ all right? Whut kin’ she fetch? On’y one?’
Memnon came with a platter of ham and eggs. ‘I bringin’ you nice sucker, Masta,’ he claimed credit. ‘Me and Lucretia Borgia.’
‘How know it yourn? She pleasurin’ with that Pole, wasn’t she? Mayhap hisn!’ Maxwell said between bites. ‘Been two of ’em, I’d reckon it yourn.’
‘It mine! You see an’ it not,’ Memnon was confident.
‘Then you weakin’ down some. Why ain’t it twins?’
Memnon shrugged.
‘Whut kind is it?’ Hammond wanted to know.
‘It little an’ light, light red,’ explained Meg.
‘They all comes light. They blackens,’ Hammond deigned to explain. ‘But whut kin’?’
‘Jes’ a wench, Masta, suh,’ admitted Mem with reluctance.
‘Well, anyways, better look at it, Ham, an’ give the wench a dollar, you gits time, after breakfas’.’
‘Whyn’t you? Sun’s out and dry. I got to watch after them pickin’ hands.’
‘You know she ruther you, Son; your dollar shines brighter. ’Sides in my time I’ve looked at so many they all lookin’ like squirmin’ water-dogs. See that it whole, arms an’ legs an’ all; an’ tell Lucretia Borgia somethin’ nice. Ain’t no rush ’bout her cookin’, tell her. Let her lay two, three days an’ she a-wantin’.’
The weather had taken a turn. Day followed day of fine sunshine obscured only by the blue October haze. Retarded bolls came to maturity and burst wide on the browning plants until the field from a short distance seemed covered with snow. Not only was the harvest copious, but it was easier to gather since each plant carried many ripe bolls. What is more, the cotton was dry. The crop was not a failure after all.
Hammond gave much time now to the autumn expedition to Natchez and New Orleans, for the purpose of selling a coffle of slaves, on which it was agreed he should be accompanied by Doc Redfield. The slaves selected for sale were put on increased rations and strenuous labours. Hammond added raw eggs to the boys’ diets, and set bottles of serpent oil about the dusty window ledges of the meeting house with instructions that each should anoint another and be anointed in turn every night before they should lie down to sleep. The stench of the nostrum was so vile that nobody could doubt its efficacy.
The boys imagined themselves going up and down the crowded streets of the city in search of masters that suited their taste. With no ideas of what a city might be or what a street was like, each pictured a concourse of men competing to buy him.
They were sobered by Napoleon’s warning, ‘You-all ain’t a-goin’ to do nothin’, savin’ Masta say. He goin’ to sell you to who he reckon, an’ you-all ain’t goin’ to have nothin’ to do with it. Leastwise, me. I doin’ whut Masta tells me.’
All knew that Napoleon spoke the truth, but it did not forestall their dreams of felicity. All looked ahead to the excursion into the greater world. They considered themselves the aristocrats of the plantation; they had been chosen.
Hammond looked with satisfaction upon the strong and strengthening bodies and fed them tales of New Orleans that intensified their desires. He half-believed his inventions. In his own interest, he imagined easy sales at high prices, and intended to dispose of these boys to none but gentlemen, masters who would treat them well. They were a fine assortment, just on the brink of maximum development, the edge of youth still on their features, the lustihood of maturity in their thews. His father had taught him to choose the exact time when a slave was likely to bring the largest price.
Only by comparison with Mede did the members of the sales-draft seem jejune. Watching him exercise, bending, squatting, jumping, lifting, Hammond felt that he was sacrificing nothing in disposing of the other boys. The Mandingo alone could replenish the plantation.
Some two weeks after the birth of Lucretia Borgia’s baby, Dite was beset with labour. She was promptly put to bed and Ellen hovered over her. The child was Hammond’s own and no chances were to be taken with amateur obstetrics. Vulcan, who knew the countryside, was put on a mule and sent to fetch the Widow Johnson. (Redfield continued to refer to his wife as ‘the Widder’, and as the Widow Johnson she remained in the minds of the Maxwells.)
That lady arrived driving the same big, heavy-footed grey mare hitched to the same vehicle in which she had driven on her professional errands since long before she was married to her former husband, a kind of rattletrap calash with the hood thrown back (nobody had ever seen it up), lop-sided from her heavy occupancy of the left seat. The front wheels, with only a few scabs of paint remaining on the spokes, converged at the tops; the rear wheels diverged. She got down with a bustling alacrity that reflected the urgency of her task, smoothed her voluminous bombazine skirt of the exact shade of dark bottle green as the remaining pile on the plush of the gig’s upholstery, grasped three soiled muslin bags that contained her herbs, and went toward the house, the warts of her face emphasizing the tic with which her features at ten seconds intervals registered her determination and haste to respond to the call of professional duty.
Mede, although not a stable hand, saw the rig unattended and deigned to come for the mare and lead her to the barn. He also saw Redfield approaching and called Big Pearl to care for the second horse.
The doctor dismounted and handed the bridle to the girl, who took it gingerly. Mede, seeing her fear, exchanged horses with her. ‘Here,’ he suggested, ‘you take this ’un. He gen’ler. Won’t rare up.’
Unable to refrain from professional observation, Redfield greeted the girl approvingly. ‘The way you bellyin’ out at this stage, you goin’ to have a purentee gyascutus.’
Big Pearl was flattered by the compliment, showing her teeth in a giggle.
Memnon opened the door and Redfield knew that he would find Maxwell in the sitting-room. Blanche, barefooted, her pregnancy obvious, was with her father-in-law, but she hastily left by way of the dining-room with her toddy goblet in hand as the guest came down the hall.
‘Whure the Widder?’ Redfield asked.
‘I don’ know. I reckon, an’ she come, she went right away up. It’s Dite, Ham’s own wench; that is she was before,’ Maxwell explained.
‘An’ he wantin’ the best fer her. The Widder, she right good.’
Hammond came in and sat down, brushing Meg away with the drink he brought for him. Plainly anxious, his ears were cocked more for sounds from upstairs than for the conversation of the older men.
‘They sayin’ the vomit ragin’ in New Orleans,’ Redfield made talk. ‘A gen’leman at the tavern, come right from there, sayin’.’
Maxwell refused to take alarm. ‘Ever’ summer,’ he nodded, ‘Ever’ summer the same. The cause I not cravin’ Hammond go there in summer—the vomit an’ waitin’ until after cotton when ever’body got they money.’
‘Had ought to be gittin’ better this time of year,’ Hammond ventured. ‘Ain’t no danger now, October.’
‘Won’t be danger, time you-all ready. Cool weather cleans it right up.’
A creaking of the stairs followed by the swish of bombazine brought Ham to his feet. He opened the door as the midwife came down the hall hugging in her arms a baby wrapped in a shawl.
‘No trouble, no trouble at all,’ she declared. ‘I wasn’t needed. Anybody could do it.’
‘Whut kind?’ Hammond plucked at the shawl.
‘I ain’t rightly had no time to look. Buck; I think so, anyways,’ said the woman, opening the parcel.
‘An’ it yourn, it a buck,’ said the proud grandfather. ‘You don’ fetch nothin’ else. Reckon you ain’t got no wenches in you.’
The shawl laid back, Hammond was aghast. The red baby, kicking and crying, was covered with a golden fuzz.
‘Mustee,’ breathed Ham.
‘Mustee?’ repeated his father, rising to look at the child. ‘Troublous, all on ’em. They comes white, they makes trouble. Reckon though you cravi
n’ to keep it.’ The old man proposed no alternative.
The baby ceased to cry and directed its unfocused gaze at Redfield, who remarked, ‘Maxwell eyes, regular Warren Maxwell eyes, blue as lobelia flowers.’
‘I better claim it mine, mayhap. Save trouble around.’ Warren Maxwell all but tittered as he gestured vaguely to indicate the part of the house where Blanche might be.
‘She ain’t carin’, not about this one,’ Hammond sighed, reluctant to be relieved of the credit for paternity. ‘ ’Sides, it was afore she come, afore we got marr’ed.’
‘It mine,’ the old man insisted. ‘Remember it mine—the las’, I reckon, I ever go’ to sire. An’ we’ll name him “Doc”, after Doc Redfield here.’
He called Meg to stir fresh toddies for a christening toast to Doc, but the Widow, avowing her temperance, rewrapped the blond baby in its shawl and took it upstairs to its mother’s breast.
But while Lucretia Borgia was up, cooking meals and bossing the plantation, two days after the delivery of her child, Dite remained ten days abed, cared for solicitously, even lovingly, by her successor in her master’s bed. Ellen was not unmindful of how soon she herself might require such attention. Dite was indifferent to the baby, except that she valued the status it gave her to bear her master’s child, but Ellen loved it for its own sake; it was a baby, a blue-eyed, white baby, and it was Hammond’s.
Some days afterwards, on a hot and still afternoon, Maxwell sat in a big chair in the shade of the gallery, asleep, with Alph asleep in the sun at his feet. Both had been drinking toddies from a single goblet. It amused the white man to make the small Negro tipsy by giving him frequent swallows from his own glass. The goblet had toppled and spilled on the floor beside the chair and the spot was speckled with flies drawn by the sugar. Hammond was in the field, supervising the gleaning of cotton, perhaps the final picking. Maxwell’s head tottered to his right shoulder and fell forward, and his face contorted in his dream. Alph, supine, snored lightly.
The clatter of a gallop was subdued by the rustle of drying leaves on the lane. A gallop betokened haste at Falconhurst. It brought Lucretia Borgia from the kitchen to see what could be so urgent.
‘It cholrie, it cholrie,’ shouted Redfield, springing from his horse.
Maxwell raised his head and opened his eyes, blinded by sunlight. Seeing who it was, he muttered hospitably enough but without enthusiasm, ‘Come in! Come in!’ And then he called, ‘Mem, another chair! Meg, stir us some toddies! Somebody take Doc Redfield’s horse! Whure at are all them niggers? Under foot when nobody wantin’ ’em.’
He kicked Alph awake with his boot, and the boy took the horse. Lucretia Borgia brought another chair.
All the while Redfield, staring with wild eyes, reiterated, ‘It’s cholrie! it’s cholrie, I’m a-tellin’ you! Ain’t the vomit, no sich thing, it’s cholrie!’
‘Whut you talkin’ ’bout, Doc Redfield? Who got it? I ain’t hearin’ of any aroun’.’ Maxwell wanted meaning from the incoherence.
‘The tavern! I jest rid from the tavern, hard as ol’ Skelter could fetch me.’
‘Who down with it? Remmick down?’
‘No! Ain’t nobody down aroun’ here—yet! Cain’t you un’erstand? In New Orleans, got cholrie in New Orleans! Two men passin’ through, runnin’ from it.’
‘Oh, that all? Reckon that place ain’t never clean shet of cholrie, or somethin’. Drink your toddy.’
‘But it ragin’, sweepin’ the whole place. Ever’body either dyin’ or gittin’ out, goin’ to their plantations or upriver or whurever. One day you’re hearty, next day you dead.’
‘Ain’t that a fac’? Anywhure?’ Maxwell refused to show alarm. ‘The Advertiser ain’t said nothin’.’
‘The Advertiser won’t, but it true. You ain’t leavin’ Ham go there? I ain’t a-goin’, not a step. Got to leave me out.’
‘Neither ain’t Hammond, an’ it bad as you sayin’. You know danged good an’ well, I ain’t sendin’ no thousand-dollars-a-head niggers, leavin’ Hammond alone, into no pest hole.’
‘I reckoned,’ Redfield breathed easier. ‘I hatin’ to quit that trip, but——’
Hammond rounded the corner of the house, greeted the visitor, and his father broke the doctor’s news.
‘ ’Tain’t nothin’. I ain’t bein’ balked,’ he affirmed. ‘Cotton all picked, niggers primed an’ ready. I goin’!’
‘Not an’ cholrie ragin’,’ his father argued in a wheedling tone as if to a small child. ‘Not a-sayin’ yet awhile it be, but ifn——’
‘I not a-skeared,’ said Hammond unconvincingly.
‘Well, I am,’ Redfield confessed. ‘You goin’, you goin’ alone.’
‘You not skeared, no,’ conceded Maxwell. ‘But them niggers! Barracoons ain’t clean. An’ besides, ever’body away, there ain’t no sale fer ’em. Won’t bring nothin’.’
‘Might risk Natchez,’ suggested Redfield. ‘It ain’t got upriver.’
‘Might,’ Maxwell assented. ‘Might, New Orleans. ’Pends on whut the Advertiser say. Natchez a good market—“Forks-of-the-Road.” ’
Nothing was settled. Hammond’s disappointment disturbed his father. Cholera in New Orleans was perhaps not so general as the rumour at the tavern had led the doctor to believe.
But the next issue of the weekly Advertiser confirmed the panic; the epidemic could no longer be ignored. Persons who had a place to go were getting out. Business was stagnant. The facts which had earlier been concealed were now enlarged fivefold and flaunted. If the newspaper was unable to repress a panic, it was profitable to produce a sensational one. It proclaimed unctuously that the Advertiser staff would remain to serve, perhaps to sicken, if not to die.
That Hammond should go to New Orleans at such a time was unthinkable. It would be not only hazardous but futile.
Redfield came again, gloating that the truth had borne out his rumour. After a canvass of their respective advantages as a place for selling slaves, Natchez was chosen over Mobile. Buyers from Louisiana and emigrants to the Texas country were more likely to be found at Natchez, where the market was always brisk, even when New Orleans flourished. Cane was more profitable than cotton had ever been, even before the Alabama soil was sapped. Buyers would be flusher on the river than on the gulf. Cholera there, by some reasoning, seemed less likely. Natchez it should be, and the start should be made a week from Monday, at sun-up. That would be, Hammond consulted the almanac, the fifteenth of November, mid-month, early enough before Christmas and late enough that crops would be sold and the money yet unspent.
‘I doubt me that you gits as much as you reckons, but take it. Git whut you kin, but take whut offers, Son, an’ don’ repine. Don’ bring none of ’em back with you. Takin’ ’em along to sell, sell ’em. May have to hold a public cry of ’em, but private treaty better. That a-way you knows who is a-gittin’ ’em, how they goin’ to be dealt with,’ Maxwell counselled his son.
‘Armfield and Franklin got a jail at the Forks, right neat an’ shipshape. Best place, an’ you kin git ’em in; ever’body know whure it at, an’ ever’body wantin’ hands goes there first or last,’ he continued his advice, Hammond giving it close heed. ‘Course, ifn A. and F. full—new-come coffle or niggers not sellin’ or sumpin’—you got to look aroun’.
‘Doc, he purty guiley. You mire down, he he’p you out. On’y use your own noggin, not hisn. Comes a wrangle between your way and hisn, do yours; I wants you should learn. But when you dubious, ast Doc.’
Hammond drank in the instructions and resolved to remember them. They left him a free hand.
‘Not many boys, nineteen, goin’ about carryin’ a coffle to market.’
‘An’ I not take ’em, I cain’t reckon how they git there,’ Hammond rebutted, stung by the emphasis upon his youth.
‘You right,’ acknowledged the old man, ‘and I’m proud that you kin, proud I got you. I don’ know whut I’d do.’
In the days pending Hammond’s departure, he ha
d to listen over and over again to his father’s charges and advice. He did not resent the necessity, since he had confidence in the paternal sagacity and, besides, the instructions were so vague as to leave him free to do as he believed best.
‘You ain’t carryin’ me along?’ Blanche attacked the subject one night after supper when Maxwell had left the dining-room. ‘You say you take me along to New Orleans, come fall and cotton pickin’ over.’
‘I ain’t goin’ to New Orleans. Cholrie. You knows it. I ain’t goin’ there. Besides, look down at yourself. You in no shape to go, no shape at all. No white lady hanker to be seen the way you are. You got to stay close to home until that boy come.’ To mitigate the girl’s disappointment, Hammond added, ‘You stay close an’ ack nice, I bring you sumpin’ when I come, a fine cloak or sumpin’.’
‘I don’ never go nowhures. I cain’t wear it,’ she retorted.
‘Well, sumpin’, sumpin’ nice, an’ sumpin’ fer the boy when he goin’ to come.’
‘I reckon you goin’ to carry along that Ellen nigger? That the cause you ain’t carryin’ me.’
Hammond sniffed in feigned amusement. ‘Ellen’s belly stickin’ out much as yourn, almos’. Ellen knowin’ she cain’t go. Ain’t neither one of you no good to me, the way you are.’
‘Then you fixin’ to pleasure with all them white ladies ever’body sayin’ Natchez full of, them white whores. That whut you goin’ fer?’
‘I goin’ to sell niggers, business, an’ you knowin’ it,’ Hammond gave way to his indignation. ‘Besides, I don’ crave to pleasure with no white ladies.’
At this Blanche began to cry, for although she knew that her husband was repelled by the whiteness of a woman’s skin, he had never told her so before. He believed it to be skin colour and the odour of white bodies that he did not like, whereas in fact it was a need to possess, to command his sexual object, in a manner he was unable to do with a woman free and white. He feared a rebuff. His choice was not between white and black (or yellow), but between free and chattel.
Compassion prompted Hammond to suggest toddies for Blanche and himself as they entered the sitting-room, where the elder Maxwell was already drinking. He knew that nothing was more likely to assuage his wife’s resentment of his preference for dark skins.