Mandingo

by Kyle Onstott

  ‘Set down, Masta, suh,’ suggested the servant, leading the way to the parlour. ‘I tell Mist’ess you come.’

  Hammond heard him in the sitting-room, trying to make Beatrix understand his presence, and heard her hollow ‘Oh!’

  When she entered to greet him, she appeared browner than ever, more sallow and bloodless, her teeth more discoloured, in the same brown dress. And she was older, many years older. She walked with her horn to her ear.

  ‘Oh, Cousin Hammond!’ she greeted him, falling into his arms. ‘I been a-thinkin’, thinkin’ and a-prayin’, wishin’ you’d come. How Blanche? How she? How my little girl?’

  Hammond screamed his reassurance into the horn, but was by no means sure she understood. ‘Whure the Major, Major Woodford?’ he asked. ‘I reckon he out?’

  ‘How?’ She wrinkled her face and extended the horn.

  Hammond repeated his question.

  ‘Papa?’ she asked. ‘He is porely. He jest set an’ don’ say nothin’. Come an’ see him.’

  Hammond followed Beatrix into the sitting-room, where the Major sprawled in a large rocking-chair, slowly and aimlessly moving to and fro. He looked at Hammond without recognition.

  Beatrix took him by the shoulder and shook him. ‘It’s Hammon’, Cousin Hammon’ Maxwell, Papa. Don’ you know him?’

  Hammond would hardly have recognized his father-in-law, he was so changed. He was fat, and his face was so bloated that no wrinkles showed. It was utterly without expression. He paid no attention to Hammond, seemed not to see him. Hammond picked up the Major’s hand from his lap, shook it, and replaced it. It returned no pressure.

  ‘Papa, he’s porely,’ Beatrix explained again.

  ‘Who runnin’ Crowfoot?’ Hammond asked and repeated. ‘It lookin’ real nice, better, that is.’

  When Beatrix finally understood the question, she answered, ‘Why, Dick, he runnin’ it, best he kin. Oh, he ain’t give up preacherin’. I couldn’t stan’ that. He still a-servin’ God, but he had to take a-holt. Wasn’ nobody else, an’ Charles gone, dead I reckon. We ain’t heard nothin’. I keep a-prayin’ an’ a-prayin’, askin’ God to fin’ him, us a-needin’ him like we do.’

  Hammond made an effort to reply, but was unable to make himself understood. Beatrix rambled on, and the guest merely nodded and shook his head, grimacing to acknowledge what she said. Major Woodford spoke not a word and appeared to hear none.

  Beatrix looked out of the window and said, ‘I wonder whyn’t Dick come. It time fer him. He kin talk; I cain’t hardly ’cause my hearin’ gittin’ bad. You notice?’ Hammond nodded and the woman fell silent.

  It was half an hour before Dick’s footsteps were heard on the gallery, during which time Beatrix and Hammond sat looking at each other and the speechless Major at neither of them.

  ‘Consarn, consarn!’ Dick greeted his brother-in-law. ‘Consarn! I knowed you was come. Saw your hoss in the stable. Right glad to see you, right glad! Ain’t nobody to talk, Papa losin’ his min’ an’ Mamma gone deef, nobody, savin’ the niggers.’

  ‘Wasn’t knowin’ about your Papa. Whut ail him?’ Hammond asked.

  Dick shook his head. ‘Ain’t no knowin’. Jest sets and don’ talk none. Min’ clean gone. Ain’t led the right life, I reckon; drinkin’ and carryin’ on. Ain’t right with Jesus.’

  ‘Blanche will be right sorry to hear,’ said Hammond.

  ‘Blanche?’ Dick asked, as if he had just thought of his sister. ‘Blanche? How she come on?’

  ‘She well,’ her husband assured. ‘That is, as well as kin be, allowin’ the shape she in.’

  ‘Whut shape she in?’

  ‘Why, she knocked. She in a family way. She goin’ to have a chil’.’ Hammond did not know how to put the fact with more delicacy.

  ‘Consarn! She is? You sure? When it comin’?’

  ‘Don’ exactly know. Couple of months. She bulgin’ big,’ Hammond said proudly.

  ‘Then the marriage took that I said over you. You didn’ lose no time gittin’ her knocked! Consarn!’ Dick turned from Hammond to his mother and asked, ‘Hear that, Mamma, whut Ham a-sayin’?’

  Beatrix adjusted her horn and Dick re-asked his question. She shook her head and leaned forward to hear.

  ‘Hammond say Blanche, she goin’ to have a baby.’ Dick repeated the statement three times.

  When she finally understood, Beatrix was shocked, alarmed. ‘Oh, oh, you horrible man, doin’ that to my little girl. No! No! She too young!’ the mother cried, dropping her horn and wringing her hands.

  Dick retrieved the trumpet. ‘Whut you reckon? They married, isn’t they? Whut fer you reckon they git married?’ he screamed at the woman, who failed—or refused—to hear him.

  Major Woodford took no cognizance of what was said, but stared vacantly into a far corner of the room and continued to rock.

  Hammond was too embarrassed to reply to his mother-in-law. He wished he had not come.

  ‘I’ll pray, I pray. Jest somethin’ else to pray about,’ the woman wept. ‘First, Charles, then Papa, now pore little Blanche. An’ it seem like Jesus jest don’ pay no attention. He knowin’ bes’. Mayhap, He goin’ to hear me now.’

  ‘Too late,’ laughed Dick, clapping Hammond warmly on the shoulder. ‘Consarn, whut else they fer—women? Course they goin’ to have babies. Won’t hurt her none. Blanche, she right buxom.’

  Beatrix wiped the tears from her eyes, and asked, ‘When it due to come? How long?’

  ‘Month or two, I reckon. Blanche, she right big,’ Hammond faltered.

  ‘An’ I cain’t go, cain’t be with my pore little girl an’ do fer her.’ Beatrix shook her head and burst into fresh tears. ‘Papa done gone crazy-like, an’ I cain’t leave him alone—jest alone with Dick. He’d do somethin’ to Dick. Oh, oh, oh! Seem like you the cause of all my trouble. I wisht I never seen you, wisht Cousin Sophy hadn’t never had you!’ She arose and fled from the room.

  ‘Consarn! Which is the looniest, her or Papa, I ain’t a-knowin’!’ said Dick, shaking his head. ‘Charlie an’ Blanche is lucky or smart or somethin’, gittin’ away an’ shet of ’em—leavin’ me to fret an’ manage.’

  ‘Plantation lookin’ better—right smart better,’ Hammond congratulated his cousin.

  ‘Yas, I went an’ sol’ off a couple of ol’ niggers. Had to; don’ care an’ they was mortgage, I jest made ’em over same as they was mine. I had to git me some money to plant with. An’ I put the otherns workin’. Papa never made ’em do nothin’. Got three or four of the wenches bringin’ suckers, an’ sows all in farrow. Go to plant me a cotton crop an’ a corn crop, too. Do jest like it was mine, my own. I reckon, with Charlie dead, I’ll be heirin’ it anyhow, purty soon. The ol’ folks cain’t live long.’

  Major Woodford stopped his rocking. ‘They tryin’ to kill me, Dick an’ Beatrix,’ he said in a loud whisper. ‘Tryin’ to pizen me, all the time, tryin’ to pizen me. Cain’t you do somethin’ about it, Hammon’?’ These were the first words he had spoken to Hammond, the first intimation that he had recognized his presence.

  ‘I reckon they ain’t, suh. They don’ want you should die,’ Hammond sought to placate the old man.

  ‘He always a-thinkin’ that. Cain’t pay no ’tention to his loony talkin’,’ Dick interposed.

  ‘They gits shet of me, an’ Dick goin’ to kill his mamma, an’ he thinkin’ he have Crowfoot all hisself,’ persisted the father. ‘He fergittin’ Blanche an’ you—an’ Charlie, if he alive yet.’

  ‘Blanche ain’t a-needin’ her part. Don’t fret none about Blanche an’ me,’ Hammond soothed.

  ‘You right sure you never killed Charles? He went runnin’ off with you an’ he never come back. I reckon you done kill him. Good riddance. Wasn’t no good, no way. I ain’t a-blamin’ you, ain’t a-blamin’ you at all,’ the Major condoned.

  ‘Charles yet a-livin’. That is, I reckon,’ Hammond was tempted to tell of his seeing Charles at Natchez. He wondered whether in the circumsta
nces it would violate his promise, but he decided to keep silent.

  ‘I ain’t a-blamin’ you fer killin’ him,’ persisted the insane man. ‘Whut you do it with, shootin’ or pizen? Whure you bury him?’

  The accusation, even while he recognized its irresponsibility, made Hammond uneasy.

  ‘You got him talkin’, leastwise,’ said Dick. ‘He ain’t talked none, ain’t opened his mouth, fer a month. Papa,’ he turned to his father, ‘Hammon’ never kilt Charlie. You makin’ things up, jest like you makin’ out Mamma an’ me tryin’ to pizen you.’

  Major Woodford put out his tongue at his son, withdrew it and set his lips in a hard line. He resumed his rocking and said no more.

  ‘Mustn’t never min’ him. He loony—kind of,’ Dick said. He accepted his father’s infirmity factually, a thing to be faced and acknowledged, and had no reticence in discussing it in his presence.

  ‘Supper done ready, Masta Dick, suh,’ old Washington, whom Hammond had last seen as a coachman, appeared to announce. He helped Major Woodford to his feet and shepherded him toward the dining-room. The younger men followed.

  Beatrix was already seated at the table and Wash drew the chair opposite her for her husband. Dick and Hammond sat between them, facing each other. Dick said a prolonged and passionate grace in a loud voice directed into Beatrix’s trumpet, but she was unable to hear the words.

  Woodford ignored the prayer and as soon as he was seated began reaching for the food, to all of which he helped himself in huge portions.

  ‘Seem you could wait fer the blessin’,’ Beatrix protested, ‘ ’specially when they’s company.’ To Hammond she added, ‘Got to overlook Papa. Don’ know whut he doin’. Cain’t git him to wait an’ be nice.’

  The old man ignored her, pretended not to hear. Before the prayer was finished, he had heaped his plate with victuals, and, grasping it with both hands, he lifted it towards Wash and said, ‘Taste.’

  The Negro took the plate, and, using his fingers instead of a fork, lifted some of each of its contents to his mouth. Of the chicken, he had no alternative but to bite it from its bone.

  ‘Papa reckons we tryin’ to pizen him an’ he tryin’ the vittles on the nigger,’ Beatrix explained the strange rite. ‘It don’ kill the nigger, he guesses it all right fer him.’

  Woodford’s eyes were focused upon the features of his slave. When Wash survived the ordeal and handed the plate back to him, he accepted it with a show of disappointment that the Negro had not died. But Major Woodford took this as evidence that the food was safe and began a furious stirring and mixing together of the various articles on his plate, after which he bolted the conglomeration like a cormorant, wiping the plate clean with bread. He then calmly pushed back his chair, rose, and left the room. The others had hardly begun to eat.

  ‘Papa ain’t hisself,’ Beatrix sighed, ‘actin’ that a-way. He plague us right smart, Dick and me.’

  ‘He ain’t bad, on’y he don’ do nothin’ an’ don’ say nothin’. He’ll git over it, I reckon, when he takes a notion,’ commented Dick.

  ‘How?’ demanded his mother, leaning towards him with her trumpet. ‘Whut you say?’

  The young man shook his head to indicate to her that his speech had been unimportant. Excluded from the conversation, she abandoned the effort to follow it and set to eating her meal. She could see the movement of the lips of the young men, knew when one was speaking and the other replying, and was curious about the drift of their conversation. Her loss was not great, however, since all that Dick told Hammond she already knew, and since Hammond’s tale of his trip to Natchez was so filled with reservations about his seeing Charles and about the money derived from the sale of the slaves, it was deprived of all reality. He did declare his errand to Briarfield and urged the necessity to pursue Ace further as an excuse to escape from the stifling hospitality of Crowfoot, with its deaf, religion-bound woman and its crazy man. Dick alone he could have endured.

  Supper over, Hammond asked for his horse. Beatrix, who had heard nothing about the runaway slave, was shocked and injured by his show of haste.

  ‘You doesn’t like us at Crowfoot, seem like,’ she complained. ‘Won’t never settle down an’ stay awhile.’

  ‘Cousin Hammon’ got to kotch him a runnin’ nigger,’ Dick bellowed into her horn. ‘Consarn, cain’t you un’erstan’?’

  Beatrix looked blankly from one face to the other in her failure of comprehension. ‘Seem like he could stay one night here as good as at Briarfield. There ain’t no moon an’ he cain’t go on no ways.’

  ‘He after a nigger,’ Dick bellowed again; and then in a normal voice added, ‘She gittin’ worse, seem like. She cain’t hear, ’specially when she ain’t a-wantin’ to.’

  ‘You tell Blanche that I cain’t come, but I kin pray, I kin pray,’ said Beatrix, beginning to weep. ‘When she git shet of this one, don’ make her have no more, Cousin Hammon’. Havin’ a chil’ ain’t nothin’ to a man, but it a turrible trial fer a lady. I’ve had four of ’em, countin’ the one that died. Papa jest that heartless. Don’t you be heartless. Tell her I goin’ to pray.’

  Hammond made no promise. When he bade farewell to Major Woodford, the host permitted him to shake his hand, but said not a word and did not cease his rocking in his chair. The perfunctory kiss Hammond planted on the cheek of his mother-in-law was an obligation.

  ‘Consarn, but I’d like to ride with you, a-lookin’ fer that buck, but I cain’t. Bound down. That whut I am, bound down,’ Dick bewailed his fate.

  Hammond had no intention of pursuing Ace further, since he had no clue as to where to look. Baffled, he was bound merely for home.

  So he came thankfully back again to Falconhurst. He had had some misgivings lest the plantation should have suffered from lack of his management during his long absence at Natchez, which his single day at home had not resolved, and was mildly disappointed to find how little he had been needed. Lucretia Borgia, in addition to her duties as cook, had taken to herself the function of supervision, from which nothing and nobody escaped. She had seen to it that the slaves were fed and cared for, also that they were kept busy enough not to deteriorate or grow slack and lazy. When tasks were not apparent, she made them—mending of clothes, cleaning of cabins and barns, chopping of unneeded wood, spading of garden patches. She even assigned chores to the children, the pulling of weeds, the sweeping of areaways between the cabins, the gathering of faggots. Hammond was pleased with the order that he found.

  The gold he had brought from Natchez was still in the house, and he had his boys unbury the kettle from under the tree, added the Natchez money to the hoard, and reburied the treasure. For lack of anything to be done, he lightened the slaves’ work and allowed them more leisure and ease. All except Mede, whom he believed to have shirked his training and whom he put to arduous toil, chopping down trees and splitting the wood for fences, and after a day at that, forced him to run behind Eclipse for half an hour, to carry weights, jump for him, both high and long, to bend and twist and turn, anything to bring the slave’s muscles into play, to flex and harden them. Mede’s strength was prodigious, but he was lazy and saw no reason to exert it, and his master never surfeited watching his activity. Lucy, anointing and massaging his exhausted body with serpent oil at night, harped on his lethargy and exhorted him to greater effort to satisfy his master. The more she grumbled, the harder she rubbed. Mede listened but little to the sermon she preached, but he relished the friction and pummelling she gave him, and when she was finished and drew the quilt over his nakedness, he sprawled in relaxation and went to sleep. He accepted it as his prerogative that he should luxuriate upon the bed alone, spreading his legs and threshing his arms, while the women slept together and with Bel upon the puncheoned floor, nor did they dispute it. When, from time to time, he permitted Big Pearl to join him, for which the girl was always avid, he ousted her after his appetite was satisfied and thrust himself out to cover the whole mattress and to sleep alone.

  M
ede not only hardened but grew, increased in stature and in girth. His legs were like hickories, his arms like pylons, his belly like an anvil. He ate hugely and slept at every respite. His owner had no anticipation of finding an opponent with whom to fight him, but kept him in training as a show-piece and ready if a worthy adversary should appear. Disregarding Wilson’s warning that the Mandingo hybrids tended to treachery, Hammond bred Mede to several of his wenches and already three or four, in addition to Lucy and Big Pearl, were pregnant by him. Lucy was complacent about such use of the boy, but Big Pearl was fiery though impotent in her jealousy, placing the blame on Mede rather than upon her master where it belonged. The youth was always acquiescent in such an assignment but never eager, although the women considered themselves favoured and boasted to their neighbours of the alliance. Mede knew himself to be his master’s property, to be used as the master saw fit to use him; if as a stallion, Mede was grateful not only for the mate allotted to him but for the short respite from training that he knew would follow. Hammond begrudged him those intervals as much as the loss of his strength, which he sought to restore by forcing upon the exhausted youth an additional pitcher of milk and eggs.

  Hammond had no such concern for his own virility, for every night he shared his bed with Ellen, who treasured his caresses as if every one might be the last. She had no awareness of his obligation to his wife, and Hammond believed that by preferring her he was relieving Blanche of her distasteful duty to him. To Ellen, the master was the master, whom she would have obeyed even if she had not loved him so entirely. She could not credit her good fortune in being chosen for his mistress and dreaded the day, which she anticipated, of being displaced and relegated to another.

  Lucretia Borgia, as pleased as Ellen with the earrings, had pierced the girl’s lobes with a darning needle to accommodate the jewels, and when Hammond returned from Briarfield he found Ellen with short straws through her ears to prevent the punctured lobes from closing as they healed. Three days later, unable to wait longer, Ellen withdrew the straws and inserted the earrings, which enhanced her dark beauty. The gift was an assurance of her owner’s affections, and she brushed her hair back and swung her head for all to see.