Ruffian Dick

by Kennedy, Joseph; Enright, John;

  There is much activity around the dock on this morning as the Sultana is not the only ship in port, and a great many people are on hand either to take delivery of newly arrived goods or else deliver their home products for export. A small crowd pressed close and marveled around a shipment of Simeon Plows, and others excitedly took possession of long-awaited engine parts, tools, and factory wheels. A veritable market of cash crops was being readied for transfer to New Orleans and other destinations up river—bales of cotton stacked three times a man’s height, tobacco, rice, sugarcane, flax, hemp, and indigo were all present.

  Apart from the crowd was a Negro about my age, whom I overheard speaking to himself in a dialect unlike any other on the dock. In an instant I recognized him as a Kikongo speaker from Central Africa and seized the opportunity to greet the man in his native tongue. It is impossible to describe the look on his face when he realized that I was in command of his language and willing to engage him in friendly conversation. He began speaking very rapidly, alternately laughing and crying, all the while shaking and patting my hand and rubbing my shoulder at the same time. He said he has been unable to satisfactorily communicate with anyone for almost a full year. He became very agitated when he told me that his name was Kwomo! Kwomo, certainly not this name Booster that everyone calls him. He made a bad face when he pronounced his newly given name and then explained that he was Kwomo, son of Kwomo the farmer and was chasing a goat near his village when Arab slavers set upon him with an iron dray-pin. He let go my hand and held up two fingers to emphasize he suffered double-vision the whole journey while under guard to the coast. “Feeders on filth and carrion,” he mumbled when referencing the Arabs.

  From there he was forced into a cargo hold of the ship Wanderer and endured severe privations until landfall at Jekyll Island, Georgia. He was sold at auction and brought up the Savannah River by steamboat to work for a white man named Abner Stander, who had a crooked nose and owned a ceramic factory in South Carolina. “Another eater of filth” was the black man’s evaluation of Mr. Stander.

  I bid him to slow his narrative for he had run a gambit of powerful emotions in a very short time and was seemingly on the verge of infarction. When he regained his composure, I asked what circumstances had brought him from the East Coast of America to the banks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana. “Ooohhh,” he groaned and covered his face with a long, slender hand. “That is a spider with many legs. But come walk with me if you will and I can try and tell you. I am bound to return to those who hold my freedom by afternoon. There must not be a delay or things will go badly for me.”

  I readily agreed for this was my opportunity to view first-hand the plantation owner/slave relationship that intrigued me so. I had already rejected the sentimental rubbish of Shenandoah and Uncle Tom’s Cabin and yearned for the naked truth. Surely, the South had been forged from neither daydream nor libel, but if not so, then what?

  But there was going to be no hints from Kwomo as he spoke only of his African home as we walked down the red dirt road. His lament was over people he was no longer able to see and familiar things he was no longer able to do. Perhaps his greatest complaints were the foods he was forced to eat in his new home, in particular “third grade shorts,” which was the flour from which the Negroes made their biscuits. He also missed the prestige he once enjoyed in his village. He was extremely proud to tell me that he once owned seven animals, and one pregnant.

  He thought his new masters physically repulsive and commented that there wasn’t a woman among them over the age of thirteen to whom he would even consider administering le patte de velours. We passed many well-tended plantations in the first few hours that were indeed remarkable for their size and appointments, and I confess being disappointed as we moved on from one to another without stopping. Kwomo finally mentioned that we would be able to rest soon, and I looked forward to reaching his master’s estate and getting on with my examination of the Southern agricultural and social systems.

  Three quarters of an hour later we rounded a bend in the road and came upon what at first glance appeared to be a proper Southern “Big House.” Closer examination revealed a false front masquerade before two structures no better than West Irish shanties with a dog trot between them. I asked Kwomo if this was his master’s estate. “Oh no, no, not at all,” he said. “This is where a slave may freely draw water and rest with impunity from the owners. This is a Yeoman farm, although the cotton snobs call them white trash because of some of the things they do and some of the things they do not have.”

  I was about to ask for a further clarification when a very poorly dressed gentleman approached us and offered his greeting. He was unaccountably eating a fist size chunk of consolidated soil. “How ye be, Booster?” He then turned in my direction, wiped his hand across the front of his grimy shirt and extended it to me for a friendly shake.

  “Names Lee, Caleb Lee, and this here’s my place. You’re welcome to take water and some shade, Mister, just like old Booster. We don’t make too much of a fuss ‘bout strangers or Negroes round here. Just people all the same. Ain’t that right Booster?”

  Lee leaned in my direction and said, “Old Booster’s a little retarded so he can’t say too much.” Under his breath in Kikongo, Kwomo mumbled, “filth eater.”

  Lee caught me looking at the dirt clod in his hand. “Oh, uh, y’all kin have some of this too if ya like. This here Feliciana clay contains natural medicines that fights all the lazy diseases. Gits rid of your hookworm, your malaria, pellagra, all those bugs what slows a man down.” Mr. Lee sat to join us and this afforded me the opportunity of asking after his life on the farm. He told me that he does “keep Negroes,” but that he is fair and kind, and offered for example, that he works along side of them and always takes care to restrict fasting as runaway punishment to only one or two days. Fasting? If I were a religious man, I would utter a prayer of forgiveness on behalf of this keeper of human beings.

  He boasted that he hires Irishman for all dangerous jobs such as placing dynamite charges and further shattered the myth of plantation paternalism by pointing out that, “A man like Booster over there will work from kin to kaint and is worth more than a thousand dollars on the market, but a blowed-up Irishman’s but sixty cents if he goes on the first day.” I must have appeared startled at these supposed acts of fair play and common sense economics, for the nerveless Lee began retreating behind scripture for justification of his acts.

  He began by reminding me that Noah cursed Canaan, son of Ham, from whom the Negroes were descended; and didn’t I recall that it was St. Paul himself who instructed the servant to return to his master?

  This was a disgusting and cowardly display of religion in the service of ignorance, although it is often difficult to determine which precedes the other. In Mr. Lee’s case, these twin liabilities seemed perfectly melded and it was not possible to resist exacting some measure of payment for his lack of learning and spiritual gullibility.

  I said, “Brother Lee, I can see you are a man who lives according to the Good Book, and I say unto you from Thessalonians in Chapter 3, Verse 10, ‘If any would not work, neither should he eat’.”

  “Amen!” Lee said, thinking I was lending further support to his practice of fasting runaway slaves.

  “And as for my thoughts on the Irishman and the Negro, Brother Lee?” He perked-up. “Ecclesiastes Chapter 9, Verse 4, teaches us that, ‘A living dog is better than a dead lion’.”

  “Yee-haw, praise the Lord, brother,” said an ebullient Lee. “‘Wine maketh merry; but money answers all things.’ That right there’s, Ecclesiastes Chapter 10, Verse 11.”

  “Ahh, Brother Lee, you are wise in the ways of the Lord.” I took a sip of water and then began looking at the soil clump in his hand with great concern. I asked if he was aware of what the bible had to say about the risks of getting involved in that sort of thing?

  “You mean my Feliciana clay? Why, this is for my health, Brother Burton.” He chuckled nervously, “To
chase away those ol’ lazy bugs. I discovered it my own self. Why I even got a number of my neighbors usin’ the clay and they say it suits them just fine.”

  I looked at him sternly and said, “Psalms, Chapter 106, Verse 39, warns us by saying, ‘Thus were they defiled with their own works, and went a whoring with their own inventions.’”

  Lee looked confused and a bit worried. He attempted partial redemption by offering that he doesn’t charge much for the clays, “Only five dollars for a two-month supply.”

  I told him that wouldn’t help in the eyes of God, and then I got serious. “Brother Lee, I am a physician sent here in the service of the Lord from England. I need to tell you that there is no merit in eating dirt. This is a false god you have placed before you and I will be concerned for your spiritual and physical well being if you continue this practice. Judging from other cases I have seen, you are most likely already in danger of intestinal blockage, depending, of course, on how long you have been at this practice.”

  Lee turned to me with a worried look and begged, “But Brother Burton, I have taken the clays for the better part of two years now and reckon it’s been working just fine.”

  “I see,” was my comment while rubbing my chin. “I’m afraid to report that there are no symptoms until just before the horrible end, which usually comes after approximately the twentieth month.”

  Lee wrestled with some base mental calculations for a long moment and said, “Why, near twenty months is what it has been.”

  “Oh my,” I said. “Then it is my diagnosis that you have about used up your luck and must either be prepared to face the awful consequences, and soon after your maker, or else partake of the cure.”

  “There is a cure?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes there is, but I must caution you that it is not a very pleasant one.”

  “Well for the love of God, Brother Burton, what is it? I am not yet ready for my heavenly reward.”

  “Very well then, you must begin by gathering several kilos of droppings from a stooling cat and then cook this material in a covered pot. Shortly after a rolling boil is achieved the patient is to draw off the broth and drink a small glass of it twice a day.”

  “What?” Lee screamed. “That’s cat shit y’all are talkin’ about here. That’s maybe the worst stuff that there is!”

  I agreed but quickly added that it was not worse than a horrible death from intestinal blockage. I began describing how the body begins to bloat until there is a complete disfiguration and the pain involved with not being able to evacuate one’s waste products.

  “Hold on right there,” howled Lee. “That’s one of my favorite things!”

  When I used the term “burst open” I was asked to stop, and he leaned against a tree to contemplate these two hideous fates.

  “There’s more,” I said resolutely. Lee looked over at me with a look of anguish and absolute disgust. By this time he was holding his stomach and pulling at the collar of his dirty shirt. “More? What more could be asked of a man, even if it is to save his life?”

  I told him that the paste from the pot must also be gathered and then applied to the patient’s genitals as a poultice. As with drinking the broth, this must be done every day for at least one month. He looked exhausted and groaned, “Ughh. World-a-fire, doctor, are you sure about all this?”

  “Absolutely drop-dead certain, Brother Lee. I beg you not to defer treatment as there is little time and I know this to be your only chance. You see, the feline intestinal tract possesses a unique chemical which, when taken orally, will act upon certain compounds that …”

  “Stop, stop, Doctor Burton; my suffering will begin soon enough. The tracking of my wife’s cat will begin immediately, and I will prepare and take on the horrid fluid to save my life.” He placed his forehead against the top of his lower arm and began sobbing. I could see his shoulders heaving, but I had no pity for the man.

  I related what had just taken place to Kwomo as we continued down the dusty road, for I know Africans love a good trickster tale. He chuckled very briefly and was unabashed in his comments. “Feeders on carrion. A filth-eater in the end, just as I told you. I hope he chokes on the cat shit and dies after the first treatment. I prefer a world lighter by even the weight of a single slave owner.” He spit into his right hand, and for punctuation brought his left one down upon it in order to make a loud clap.

  “When they all die, the world will be rid of so much grease and fat that it will take off from its place and lift up into heaven.” He raised his eyes to the sky and laughed. “Go on all the way up into heaven.”

  I began pressing Kwomo for some sort of introduction to his particular situation. Was his master the likes of Caleb Lee? How big was the plantation he was associated with and what were the principal crops? How was he treated? What was his job? He thought for a bit and answered slowly and very carefully. “Well, I already told you that the women are very ugly,” he shook his head, “very ugly, at least all of them over the age of thirteen.” He then weighed-in on other related matters. He guessed that his master’s land was only about three arpents, but, and he sneered, “They consider it much, much larger than it really is.” He commented that they have adopted the manners and customs of the French, which he considered disgusting but allowed, with some degree of envy, that many of them did sport brass rings on their wrists, ears, and noses.

  Needless to say, Kwomo’s descriptions presented me with a most confusing image, for this was hardly the conventional likeness of an American Southern Planter. I was about to make further inquiries when he offered that we would be arriving at our destination very shortly and that I could make all further judgments for myself. We walked together in silence for an additional twenty minutes until we came upon a clearing that contained a dozen simple cabins, ten or twelve feet square each, which were constructed of pine logs and covered with bark. Inter-spaced among them were a few oval, palmetto-thatched huts.

  Open fires smoldered about the camp, cur dogs sniffed at a gutted venison hung from a pole, and a dozen or more souls who were milling about stopped what they were doing and had a long look at me. It only did not take a moment to realize that there were no Negroes present, nor were there any whites. This was no southern plantation. I had been led into an Indian village.

  “We are here,” Kwomo said plaintively. “You should proceed with caution for they have some bad feelings for the English.” Then he walked away and disappeared into one of the huts. Almost immediately I was confronted by a large stoic-looking chap wearing buckskin breeches and a calico shirt that appeared dyed with ochre. Cradled in his arms was an old firelock that may have been one hundred years old. He greeted me in French and identified himself as Zenon La Joie, Chief of the Tunica. I offered a handshake but he simply shifted the weight of the old musket and asked, “What has brought you to the land of the People?”

  In common French I told him that I had arrived with Kwomo.

  “Kwomo?”

  “Well, Booster then, if that name suits you better. He is a friend of mine whose acquaintance I made at the dock.”

  “Booster?” He looked over at the hut that Kwomo went to and exclaimed, “Oh, you speak of Hoodoo Clay Maker.” He looked at me with a suspicious eye. “You say you are his friend, but he is a slave and considered an outsider to The People who he has lived among for three of the unakas years. He speaks only a little Tunican and has not learned French. Hoodoo Clay Maker walks a single path, he has no friends.”

  I explained to the chief that I could speak to the man in his own African language, and this allowed us to form a friendly and very speedy alliance. A curious Zenon La Joie raised his head and said, “I would like to hear these words for myself, the language of this Afreeka.”

  So in my best Kikongo I called out, “Kwomo, son of Kwomo the Farmer, would you be so kind as to approach and allow a proper introduction to the Chief?” An instant later Kwomo emerged from the hut and presented himself before us. I said in dialect, “The Chi
ef wants us to converse in Kikongo to prove it can be done.”

  Without missing a beat, Kwomo answered by saying, “You can tell the old man he can reach down and pull my nana buluku, just as his toad of a wife has been wishing to do for months.” Kwomo bowed slightly and smiled at La Joie.

  The Chief’s first reaction was to suspect some sort of trick, but after Kwomo and I exchanged a few more words he accepted the fact that we could indeed communicate in this exotic tongue and shifted his concerns to a different area. “Hoodoo Clay Maker is not for sale,” he said emphatically. “He was purchased by my wife’s family and is of great value to The People. You may not purchase him for any price.”

  I turned to Kwomo and asked why he was considered so valuable to the Tunica.

  “They call me Hoodoo Clay Maker because from crooked nose Abner Stander I have learned to craft a vessel of clay which is superior to the local version. With this I make hex jugs and luck balls which have come to be much valued by certain Shango cultists in New Orleans, who use them in their Hoodoo worship. Through me the Tunica have cornered the market in these pots which they ship to the great city and sell for a handsome profit. I see none of it you understand, but it is an easy life for me here among”—he shifted his eyes around and noticed Zenon La Joie was distracted at the moment—“The People. Can you believe that is what they call themselves?” he whispered. “The People, just as if there were no other people in the whole world. That is what that word Tunica means—The People. Feeders on carrion is what I’d call them.” He blew air through his generous lips until they flapped against each other and made a sound which echoed contempt. La Joie turned quickly at the sound, and this in turn sent Kwomo on a hasty retreat to his hut.