Mandingo

by Kyle Onstott

  ‘Mayhap, you behave, he got a wench or two fer you to take up.’ Hammond concealed the tears in his own eyes in a show of jocularity as he grasped Vulcan’s arm, raised him to his feet and clasped his shoulder in farewell. He watched as the Negro followed his buyer across the lot without a backward glance. The bearded man mounted his small horse, which walked out of the gate, Vulcan trotting easily by its side.

  ‘Well, that all of Vulc,’ Hammond sighed. ‘Reckon that man treat him good. Cain’t never tell.’

  ‘Come on, an’ you ready,’ Redfield suggested. ‘You got yo’ money, ain’t you? Whut you carin’ whut he do with him?’

  The sales for the day had been satisfactory. After supper Hammond went with Redfield down town, swallowed two or three drinks in a crowded bar, but when Redfield decided to sit down to a game of brag, the younger man, unused to late hours, went to the boarding-house and to bed.

  It was past midnight when Redfield came in, undressed quietly, and got into bed at Hammond’s side. He lay a full minute and nudged Ham into partial consciousness. ‘Whyn’t we stay—jest a spell, jest a few days longer?’ he demanded plaintively, ‘I jest now gittin’ acquainted.’

  Hammond grunted a reply.

  ‘I had that sorrel at Maggie’s tonight,’ the older man continued. ‘After her, kind of hard pilin’ in bed with the Widder.’

  Hammond feigned sleep and did not talk to him. A little later he heard Charles stirring for bed and getting into his pallet. He finally dropped to sleep. Later he awakened with a pain in his abdomen, which was intermittent, but grew worse.

  It was toward morning, and light was breaking, when he could endure the pain no longer. He nudged Redfield and told him, ‘I’m sick, Doc Redfield, suh. Cain’t you do nothin’?’

  ‘Whure you hurt?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘My belly. It achin’ me turrible.’

  ‘Cain’t git no doctor, no real, human doctor this time of night, an’ stores ain’t open. I didn’t bring nothin’, no medicine, along. Jest got to stan’ it till mornin’ breaks, an’ I’ll git you somethin’.’

  The boy resigned himself to suffer. Intense pains, each of which he hoped would be the last, swept over his lower abdomen, and he was alternately icy cold and burning with fever. Redfield, on his back, snored complacently beside him. Hammond half dozed between his spasms of pain.

  Through the window, he saw Mercury rise and swing slowly upward and at length the east grew red. He again nudged his bed-fellow and pleaded, ‘Doc Redfield, suh, cain’t you do nothin’?’

  Redfield roused himself and placed his hand on the boy’s brow, which he found intensely hot. ‘Hurtin’ yet?’ he asked fatuously. ‘Somethin’ you et, pro’ably; that catfish, I reckon. Had ought to be good, this time of year.’

  Hammond denied having eaten his supper.

  ‘That it; all that corn on your empty guts,’ diagnosed the doctor.

  ‘Cain’t you do somethin’? You could to a nigger. I knows you could.’

  The doctor piled from his bed reluctantly, and slipped into his clothes. ‘That store had ought to open up purty quick. I’ll git you somepin’, some laudanum, I reckon, and castor oil.’

  ‘Hurry up, please, suh,’ urged the sick boy.

  Redfield walked around the bed. The light was enough for him to see the glazed glare of the fever-burned eyes. He felt the irregularly rapid pulse and asked Hammond to show his tongue. He threw back the covers and pressed the boy’s abdomen and got only grunts. He knew not what he was seeking, but nodded gravely as if he had found it. ‘Laudanum and castor oil,’ he muttered under his breath, and aloud sought to encourage the youth. ‘You jist stopped up. You goin’ to git well,’ he said. ‘I fetch some medicine, soon as I kin git in to git it.’

  When he was gone, Charles, who was disturbed by the doctor’s rising, got up from his pallet and came to the bed. ‘Whut wrong, Cousin Hammon’? You ain’t sick?’ He had but to look at the unblinking eyes.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘while I puts on some clothes. It right col’, nekid, these mornin’s.’

  ‘I’m burnin’,’ Hammond rebutted.

  ‘Keep them quilts up tight. Mustn’t kotch col’,’ Charles warned.

  He dressed quickly and came again to the bedside. ‘You got it, you reckon?’

  ‘Whut? I don’ know. Whut?’ Hammond spoke weakly and without inflection, without interest.

  ‘It! The plague! Cholerie! Sure as you’re born! Comes this way, jest like you doin’. Dead afore tomorrow night. Most of ’em dies evenin’s late.’

  Hammond was indifferent.

  ‘Like me an’ ol’ Redfield will git it too, sleepin’ right with you, same room.’

  ‘Doc Redfield say it jest belly ache,’ breathed Hammond. ‘But it bad, sure bad.’

  ‘He only a hog doctor an’ a nigger doctor. He don’ know cholerie, how it come on, well one day, dead the nex’. You gotten it, cholerie.’

  A knock at the door was Royal, the boarding-house slave, who had brought two bottles which Redfield had entrusted to him.

  ‘Please, suh, gen’man say tell sick gen’man to swallow these, please, suh. Gen’man say tell he goin’ to the Forks; he goin’ to slop some niggers he got there,’ the Negro explained.

  Charles turned to Hammond. ‘See?’ he declared. ‘He know. Redfield know whut ail you. He not comin’ back. This medicine ain’t goin’ to do no good; nothin’ won’t.’

  ‘Mayhap, it ease me some,’ said Hammond, extending his arm for the bottles. ‘Got to die, might as well die without this hurtin’ I got.’

  Charles poured out the laudanum, which the sick man swallowed, and followed with castor oil. Charles was visibly frightened, picturing himself ill and dying within the week. He, none the less, went to breakfast, and Hammond felt very lonely, deserted. If only he had brought Ellen, or even Meg! Neither would have left him to die alone. Then he felt guilty in his need for them. Why should they die of cholera because he had to?

  Redfield’s failure to bring the medicine himself betrayed his belief. He would not come back. What, Hammond, wondered, would become of his Negroes—and his money? Would Redfield take the money to Hammond’s father? It bothered him even more than the thought of death.

  Charles, of course, would not return. One could not expect it of him, after the quarrel they had had. He had escaped from New Orleans only to run into the thing he had fled. Hammond was amazed that the boy had tarried to give him the medicine. One thing about cholera; it was short. He would die and be out of his pain tomorrow.

  He burned with fever, but the pain was abating. The last two spasms had not been so severe. The laudanum had done it. It was the precious syrup, but it was across the room and he wanted another dose. Had he the strength to get out of bed to get it? It would expose his fever to the chill air. He must keep well covered.

  He had resigned himself to isolation, when Charles unexpectedly returned. He had with him a slave bearing a large japanned tray, but would not permit the servant to come into the room. Instead, he took the tray at the door and carried it to the bed.

  ‘Got to scruge up, if you go to eat this. Cain’t swallow it layin’ down,’ Charles said cheerily.

  The sick man looked at the heavy meal on the tray—fried ham, eggs, cornbread and butter, grits, and coffee. The sight of it turned his stomach. ‘Set it down,’he said. ‘Rest it. I cain’t eat it now, hurtin’ too bad. But ifn you jest fetch me more of that medicine—the first kind—mayhap I goin’ to eat later on, mayhap.’

  Charles poured an ample dose from the laudanum bottle and Ham drank it. ‘On’y thing ’at seemin’ to help,’ he said. ‘Leave it here by me. I goin’ to crave more of it a’ter you goes.’

  ‘I goes? Goes whure? I ain’t goin’ nowhure. I goin’ to set by you an’ tend after you. Nobody else ain’t goin’ to—seem like.’

  ‘ ’Tain’t no use. You cain’t do nothin’. I goin’ to die,’ breathed the sick man resignedly.

  ‘I ’spec’ you is,’ the other
answered.

  ‘Ain’t no use of you a-gittin’ it, you an’ Redfield. Jest leave me that laudanum here, right by the bed.’

  ‘If I goin’ to git it, I done got it. So has Mista Doc Redfield; he sleepin’ right with you. Me? I ain’t goin’. I goin’ to stay an’ make you easy. You my cousin, even an’ you doesn’t like me no more.’

  Charles paused and Hammond made no comment.

  ‘You ain’t wantin’ no breakfast, then turn over an’ see kin you go to sleep,’ said Charles, approaching the bed and helping Hammond turn upon his side. ‘I goin’ to hang up my quilt at the window an’ keep the light offn you. Don’ fret. I be here, right here, an’ you goin’ to wake up.’

  The pain had subsided and Hammond was able to fall into a fitful sleep, in which he muttered and mumbled, wept and cried out. Charles, more than ever, was sure that it was cholera. All the symptoms were as he had heard they were. He speculated about how long his brother-in-law might live and about his chances of occupying the bed when he was dead. He doubted whether Redfield would consent to occupy it with him. Perhaps he would have it alone for a week until he too died. He sat still by the bedside and pulled the quilts back around the patient’s neck when he sought to throw them off. At noon he slipped quietly from the room and went to dinner, but revealed to nobody that there was a case of cholera in the house. Eating lightly and without appetite, he returned to his bedside vigil. The room with its closed windows smelled of fever.

  Early in the afternoon, the patient woke.

  ‘I reckon you wantin’ a reverend, ain’t you? Somebody to pray with?’ Charles asked. ‘Well, one of ’em wouldn’t come, an’ if he knew whut ail you. I ain’t much good at it—prayin’; but I try an’ you wants.’

  ‘Too late fer prayin’, now,’ replied the sick man, turning on his side and drawing the quilts about his neck. ‘Don’ reckon I needin’ it, anyways. I ain’t never done nothin’ whut wasn’t right, nothin’ that God kin hol’ agin me.’

  His denial of his own sinfulness relieved Ham. He felt himself better, asked for a piece of meat, at which he nibbled and gnawed. His fever had subsided. He was free from pain. He knew he was doomed to die, but he felt better. He sprawled on his back and stretched his legs.

  ‘I wonder is Doc Redfield takin’ care o’ my niggers,’ he began to worry.

  ‘That whut the nigger say whut brung your medicine,’ answered Charles. ‘Nev’ min’, they all right. An’ whut difference, anyways? You never a-goin’ to know an’ after you dead.’

  ‘I ain’t a-goin’ to die. I feelin’ me better. Not strong, but better,’ the patient announced. ‘Don’ they ever git up from that cholerie?’

  ‘Not many of ’em. Few.’

  ‘Then I ain’t got it at all. Ain’t never had it. I gittin’ me up, come mornin’.’

  ‘Hopin’ you right,’ sighed Charles. ‘You ain’t got it, I ain’t a-go’ to ketch it.’

  After an interval of silence, Hammond said, ‘Right kin’, you settin’ by me an’ lookin’ out fer me, ’specially you thinkin’ it cholerie. Right kin’, after ever’thin’, an’ all.’

  ‘Nothin’ else to do, with you my cousin. Couldn’ leave you all alone to die,’ Charlies belittled his charity.

  ‘Cain’t blame Redfield, not comin’ back, thinkin’ I got it. Cain’t blame him, not bein’ no a-kin.’ In Hammond’s very denial there was a show of resentment, but his animosity to Charles was at an end. Charles had more than made up for his theft—if theft it was—of Jason and of the money entrusted to him. Perhaps, Hammond reasoned, the boy really had believed the Negro a gift and had intended to return the money to his father.

  Hammond did not feel up to supper, but Charles brought him a bowl of soup. Redfield, Charles learned, had not returned to the boarding-house for either of his meals. The boys settled to sleep, and when Charles got up to serve his cousin shortly after midnight, Hammond suggested that he join him in the bed.

  ‘He ain’t comin’,’ he argued, laughingly. ‘Might as well. I ain’t got nothin’ ketchin’ an’ it better’n that hard pallet.’

  Charles acceded to the suggestion, not so much because the bed was softer than the pallet but because the invitation was an earnest of forgiveness. The previous night it would have been unthinkable.

  The following morning, Hammond put on his clothes with Charles’s assistance.

  Hammond had been burned out with fever and was still weak. He insisted, however, upon mounting his horse to go to the Forks to see after his slaves. Charles, more because he wished not to disrupt the renewed friendship than because of Hammond’s need for him, rented a horse from the livery stable and went along.

  Six of the slaves, four men and two women, were missing. Hammond could not believe that they had run. He went to the office to consult the caretaker.

  Hopkins told him, ‘He, that gen’leman, sold off some of ’em yestiday. I ain’t knowin’ how many of ’em. It all right, hain’t it, me lettin’ ’em go? Mista Redfield got your leave to sell ’em?’

  Hammond reassured Hopkins. Confident of Redfield’s honesty, at least in his relations with him and his father, he was nevertheless relieved to see the veterinary ride into the lot. Redfield came forward, embarrassed, amazed to see Hammond.

  ‘I reckoned I better take care o’ the varmints,’ he opined, ‘seein’ you sick. I knowin’ you wasn’t bad.’

  ‘Wasn’ nothin’,’ Hammond minimized his illness. ‘Cousin Charles here, he set with me.’

  Redfield detected recrimination in the statement, and turned the subject. ‘We had a good day. I ridded us of six of ’em—two of ’em wenches.’

  ‘I see they gone,’ nodded Ham. ‘I believin’ nobody goin’ to want them females. Git good prices?’

  ‘Thousan’ apiece fer the wenches. I ain’t changin’ the prices you set. Could o’ sol’ two otherns, ifn I could o’ lowered ’em some.’ He deliberately saved the best to the last. ‘You know that ’Poleon? I done right well with that one. Eighteen hundert.’

  ‘How come? On’y askin’ fifteen. How come?’

  ‘Well, this little ol’ man wantin’ a good breeder. Said so right straight out. Sol’ off all his common bucks; wantin’ a good one.’

  ‘Not Pole. He ain’t no good. You knowin’ he ain’t got a sucker in him. That the why Papa sellin’ him. You know that good an’ well. That ain’t hones’.’

  Redfield chuckled at his deception. ‘That man ain’t goin’ to know short o’ six months. I tol’ him Pole had knock all them wenches. He believe it.’

  Hammond was vexed. ‘Who is he? Whure at he live at? We find him an’ take Pole back agin. We kin tell him you didn’t know Pole barren.’

  ‘How I know whure he live? Name of Miller; that how the bill of sale made out.’

  ‘Miller? They is lots o’ Millers.’

  ‘You cain’t fin’ him. Let him go. Take you money,’ Charles counselled.

  ‘Ain’t no other course,’ sighed Hammond. ‘Fifteen hundert of it. Pole worth that, but not no more. Doc Redfield here got to keep the rest of it. I ain’t havin’ it.’ Thus he salved his conscience.

  Redfield demurred, but at Ham’s insistence finally accepted. He relished that three hundred dollars, but knew it was a reprimand.

  ‘Ain’t nothin’ but bad luck, this whole trip,’ Hammond lamented. ‘First, that mustee runnin’. After that I taken down sick. An’ now I cheatin’ a white man on a barren buck.’

  ‘Leastwise, you ain’t gotten the cholerie,’ said Charles cheerfully. ‘An’ we cousins again,’ he added.

  Next morning it was raining when Hammond awoke. He lay awhile listening to the patter on the shingles, speculated about the wisdom of setting out in the wet day, itemized, thumb against successive finger-ends, the details to which he must attend before the journey could get under way.

  He spent four vacuous days in getting rid of the last two wenches, whom he finally exchanged for four young boys. The delay irritated him for he would rather have been sco
uring the country for that escaped mustee. When he reached Falconhurst, it would mean that he must set out again to search, probably in vain, for the lost boy.

  But the responsibility was now at an end. He had discharged it to what was sure to be his father’s satisfaction. True, he would have to endure his father’s censure, expressed in cackling laughter, of the mishaps like the running of the mustee, the sale of the sterile Napoleon as a stallion. However, the old man would take no glee at his son’s illness. Possibly that might curb his amusement at the boy’s blunders.

  Over against the bad judgment with which Hammond charged himself, he set the heavy bag of gold—almost twenty-three thousand dollars; he was not sure just how much—he would lay at his father’s feet. On the whole, he had done well.

  He put on his clothes, and Charles got up and helped him with his boot.

  He had promised Blanche to bring her something from the city. What? Garments she could not wear in her pregnancy. After breakfast, he set out in the rain to buy some gimcrack—anything. He was not interested. A ring? He had for her the ring with diamond that Charles had returned to him.

  At the most lavish jewellery shop, Wineberg’s, he found pendant earrings, round disks gaudily encrusted with garnets. That would please a woman. He bought them, and thought how pretty they would look against Ellen’s duskiness, how barbaric. Jewels on a Negro, he knew, were wasted, but how pleased Ellen would be! She demanded nothing, expected nothing, but earrings would set her apart. On a whim, he bought a second pair exactly like the first.

  Not as a present, rather as a utility, he acquired for his father an open litter, such as the one in which he had seen an invalid going about the streets, carried on the shoulders of two Negroes. It would enable the rheumatic to traverse the plantation and take a more active part in its management. The stores where Hammond inquired for the article he was unable to name understood his description well enough but had no such thing in stock and shunted the purchaser from place to place. At length he learned of a man, now dead, who had ridden in a litter, no longer in use, and its owner’s heir was happy to give it to anybody who could find a use for it. Stored in a stable, the bed was faded and covered with dust and chaff, and the frame was somewhat sprung, but the pieces fitted together well enough and it was usable if not beautiful. Hammond would much have preferred to pay for the contraption and was embarrassed by the donor’s generosity. The transaction ended with Hammond’s fulsome declaration of his undying gratitude and his invitation that the generous man should come to Falconhurst and see his gift in use.