The Tinsmith

by Tim Bowling

  The others wore handcuffs too, but also leg shackles attached to iron balls. And they were joined together by chains. When John was shoved into the group, a new smell hit him: the reek of fear, the rankness of bodies responding to the slave’s worst nightmare. He could hear the unvoiced prayers, Oh, Lawd, don’t let me be parted from my own. Suddenly he understood what Daney had always told him: he was no different, he was exactly the same. He understood it now in his body, in his own trembling, in his sweat, the hatred rising at the back of his throat like burning bile.

  Hands on hips, a goose-quill stuck between his teeth, Orlett addressed them.

  “You’re going to be sold. But whether you end up in a good home depends on you. Mr. McElvane here represents important businessmen in South Carolina, and they don’t want any bad niggers. If they get them, those niggers go straight to the rice fields. And the masters there aren’t like what you’ve been used to. You’ve had it soft a long time. That time’s done.”

  He turned to the trader.

  “The men are all strong hands, no defects. You can look for yourself.”

  The trader walked slowly from man to man. He told them to open their mouths and show their teeth. He spent a considerable amount of time assessing their backs and limbs.

  “Whip marks?” he said.

  The overseer shrugged. “A few. And given only to harden these boys up a bit, to get them ready. They’re not bad, just a little slow to work on account of they never had the right encouragement. Like I said, the master here . . .”

  “I’ll have to take a few dollars off.”

  “But these are prime hands. A few whip marks . . .”

  The trader sighed as he leaned to Garney, the smallest boy, and pulled at his upper lip. “My employer doesn’t want trouble selling what he buys. And whip marks make a buyer shy.” He let go of Garney’s lip. “Don’t take on so, boy, there are beautiful homes in the South. It’s a rich land.”

  When the trader stopped before him, John saw the man’s confusion. Scratching his temple, he stepped over to Orlett and whispered something John couldn’t catch.

  “Yeah, him too,” the overseer said. “Just the same as the others, even if he don’t look it. He’s a good worker, field and house. A few years ago, the master even hired him out for a while to a tinsmith, so he’s got some craft.”

  John clenched and unclenched his fists. He could feel the blood pounding behind his eyes, in his limbs and chest; he could feel its heat. To calm himself, he tried to turn the pounding and the heat into a soothing memory of his tinsmithing work, into the rhythmic cutting of tinplate with shears, the steam rising off the solder and drenching his face with sweat. He had never felt so free and alive as when he’d been tinsmithing; even the thick chemical fumes of the work came to his nostrils now as a kind of springtime scent, full of hope. But he could not hold on to the memory. The rhythm of the shears became the pounding in his veins again. He kept his mouth shut tight, for fear of the blood spurting out through his teeth.

  The trader shook his head. “There’s folks won’t take him for a nigger. And if he runs, how am I supposed to get him back? A patrol’s not likely to bring him in.”

  Orlett squinted up at the flight of a barn swallow. He chewed on his thick bottom lip for a few seconds, dragged a blunt hand along his blood-red ruff.

  “There’s something I can do about that. Even if it takes a few dollars off, I don’t mind. I promised the boy a new life, and I don’t want to disappoint him. He’s hankering to travel. No relations, you see. No reason to come running back here.”

  “What can you do about it?” the trader asked Orlett.

  “I’ll show you tomorrow. Can we settle on the others? I got to run those girls to ground.”

  They agreed to prices and the trader returned to the house, presumably to pay the master.

  “Chain them with the woman,” Orlett said to the mulatto. “Yeah, him too. We’ll deal with him once we get the girls back.”

  Cray grunted an order and they all pulled up the leg chains and hobbled out of the barn.

  John thought about running because he didn’t have the chain or iron ball, but things had happened too quickly. Rage and fear confused him. He did not even have a sense of his chances. Besides, there was Caleb and Daney. It ate at him that Daney did not know the truth, and he had come to rely so heavily on Caleb’s advice. He wondered what Caleb would tell him now.

  They were put into a dark shed. A dry, musty smell of corn came out of a crib in the corner. In another corner sat the slumped, chained form of a woman.

  As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, John watched the woman raise her head slowly. The old familiar smile of endurance lit up Daney’s broad face. He had never seen so much scorn in it. To his relief, she directed the smile not at him but at the mulatto.

  “Here comes the proud man. You proud of yore work, nigger?”

  His face, large and ridged as the side of a squash, remained blank. “No’m. But I’m nothin’ else neither.”

  Daney’s laugh was terrible to hear. There was wild in it, but frightened wild.

  “Nothin’? What kind of devil’s talk is that? Every man’s either gonna be proud or shamed. If you’re nothin’ to yoself, then you shamed, nigger.”

  The mulatto turned in the doorway, almost blocking out the light. It cast a thin glow around him. “Mebbe I is, but they ain’t no irons on me, is they?” He slammed the door shut behind him.

  “Oh, yes,” Daney shouted, “you’se a free man, free to do the devil’s work! That gonna get you nowhere but the fiery pit!” Tears streamed down her face and hung off her nose and upper lip. Her shoulders shook.

  Against the wall, John hunched into himself and hoped she would not notice him. Fortunately Daney calmed herself and started to comfort the boys. All three were bony-chested, their ribs visible just under their coal-black skin. They wore only thin loin cloths, and tears dripped off the ends of their eyelashes and noses as they pressed together, their shoulders turned inward. Daney told them to have faith, that nothing was done yet, that they had to be brave.

  “Ain’t I got my girls safe away? They’s always hope. Maybe the master will come to his senses and stop all this foolishness.”

  Beside her, Robert, her eldest son, whispered something and her face went rigid. For several seconds she did not move. John was almost glad Daney was chained to the wall because he could not be sure she wouldn’t attack him. But when she finally moved, only sadness moved with her. He felt it wash through the shed in waves.

  “They’s no saving yoself by doing evil. Punishment come to all in time. To the white folks too. The Lawd takes care of that. I got no energy for hating him now. They’s much worse around.”

  John opened his mouth to tell her the truth, but then an image of Caleb bloodied on the ground stopped him. He doubted that she’d believe him anyway. In the end, he fingered the leather pouch in his pocket, grateful just to be left alone. His mind whirled. He had to clear his thoughts. The master was selling his blacks, including him. This had been done before, a few times, but always locally, never to a trader from the South. Occasionally a black on another farm had been sold down the river, but the master always tried to sell his people in Maryland. This time was obviously different. And he knew from the reaction of the others how terrible a fate it was to be sold into South Carolina or Georgia or anywhere in the South. He had heard of the cruelty of the rice and cotton plantations, of blacks worked to death under the scorching sun. Was this where he was bound? If so, how could he save himself? Then a kind of indignation stole over him. He was not like the others, no matter what Daney said. His pale skin had led him away from the shacks—or so Jabeth had insisted. Surely that paleness would save him now? He looked at his arms. The skin was not black, and yet his hands were cuffed. They were cuffed. The cold weight of the steel returned him to the one question that mattered: how could he save himself?

  Bodies slowly shifted, a chain clinked. Some of the men had moved so that Garn
ey could crawl up into Daney’s lap. She laid her cheek against his; their two wetnesses seemed to glow in the dim light. Softly she spoke. “Honey, don’t you fret, nobody but the Lawd know what’s comin’ and the Lawd is promised to deliver us out of our bonds, chile.” She kissed his cheek and he quieted. But she could not hold Garney in her arms, she could not wrap her arms around him because they were chained to the wall.

  John could feel the frustrated yearning in her to soothe the boy with the touch of her hands. It flowed through the dark, stale space. It touched his own body, then fell away like a breeze and left him even colder. Now she hummed into Garney’s neck and her bosom rose and fell. The beating of her heart must have added a weight to the rhythm of her song, but neither sound had any ease in it. Her eyes moved too quickly for the heartbeat and the humming. She kept looking at the door, then back at Garney.

  The door would open on them and it would not bring their deliverance. If he understood that much, then Daney did too. But her terrible hope distracted him from his own fate. He could see the girls running, their pretty faces scratched by branches, he could see them turn in terror at the baying of the bloodhounds. But maybe they were not alone, maybe something else had been arranged. One of the free blacks might have agreed to help. He looked at Daney and saw that Garney had gone to sleep in her armless embrace, his head lifting slightly with each great breath of her body.

  Some time later the door opened and the overseer stepped in.

  “I’ve got something to show you,” he said and moved aside as the mulatto shoved Daney’s girls ahead of him. They were gagged with burlap strips that made the terror in their eyes more apparent. Daney screamed. As she struggled to rise against her chains, Garney slid away from her. “Noooooo! Lawd noooooooo!” She kicked her legs on the planks until it seemed her shoulders pulling forward with her weight must tear out of their joints.

  Tom and Robert shouted at the overseer, but this only made him laugh.

  “I expected a harder time of it, but I guess you niggers have had it so easy for so long that you don’t even have it in you to run. I could probably unchain the whole lot of you and give you two hours to start and still have you all back in this shed by sunup. Cray, kindly give that boy there a reminder of how much I favour silence.”

  The mulatto ambled heavily over to Robert and punched him, hard and fast, in the face. Blood spurted from Robert’s nose. Daney’s screams intensified.

  When they subsided again to moans, the overseer said, “You’ve all been sold now, so I’ve no cause to worry about the shape you’re in. Besides, where the trader’s taking you’s no short journey. You’ll have time to heal before you’re sold again.”

  The girls’ muffled cries spread through the air. On hands and knees they crawled to their mother. Daney’s neck tightened until the sinews threatened to snap.

  Orlett ordered the mulatto to pull the girls up. Cray did so mechanically, easily. “There’s a better day a comin’,” sang Motes with his head lifted and his eyes rimmed with tears. “Won’t you come along with me?” Daney’s girls went limp, all the fight drained out of them. No wonder their hands hadn’t even been tied. The overseer slapped them both on the backside as the mulatto took them by. Daney moaned, a froth of spittle on her lips, and shook her head from side to side. The boys were sobbing heavily again.

  John sprang up and launched himself, his hands forming a cross before him. But the overseer saw him coming. He jumped aside and expertly stuck one foot out. The planks rushed up to meet John. His face hit hard. Before he could even roll over, Orlett pressed a boot down so hard on the back of his neck that he could barely breathe.

  “Goddammit, Cray, why isn’t he chained like the rest?”

  “You never told me to.”

  Orlett cursed. “Do it now then.”

  “Don’t have no mo’ irons.”

  “Then go and find some, for chrissakes! And take the girls with you while you’re at it. There’s time tonight to deal with this boy too.” The overseer kept his weight pressed down hard.

  Daney’s moans rose to screams again as the mulatto drove the girls out of the shed. Then, with the door shutting out the brief light, she suddenly fell quiet. Only the boys’ snufflings could be heard.

  John’s neck flashed with pain. He struggled to twist his head sideways an inch to allow a little air into his lungs. Daney’s voice reached him dully. She was pleading with the overseer.

  “If they got to go, let me go with them. I’m a good worker. You know it. Please let me go. I can pay you. I have some money. I’ll give it to you and you can let the trader take me away for nothin’. Please, I got to go. They jes babies still. Please, massa, please, I’ll do anything only let me go with them. They jes babies.”

  John wanted his neck to snap and he wanted even more to rise up without cuffs and wrap his hands around the overseer’s throat and squeeze until he saw the tiny eyes bulge and turn the same red as the red on Caleb’s back.

  The overseer said nothing. But now a different sound, even more terrible, filled the shed. Motes was weeping in great, heaving gasps. The shame of it surged through John’s body. He readied himself to focus it into one desperate act of strength when the door opened again and the iron snapped around his leg. The pressure came off his neck. The mulatto grabbed him under the shoulders and yanked him up.

  The overseer looked straight at him, as if Daney’s pleading had deflected his hatred. “I can’t let you go out into the world, bright boy, without the world knowing what you are. And I want you to know too. Bring him, Cray.”

  In minutes John was back in the barn, his hands chained to the wall, his legs also shackled together. The mulatto had stripped him. The cold bit into his skin, but John promised himself that he would give no satisfaction. He imagined Caleb going to the whipping post to protect his family and Daney pleading to do the same. He would not give the overseer anything but hatred. And yet he wanted to live. Life was more precious than ever because it meant the future and the future meant his hands around the overseer’s throat.

  Even when they tightened his chains and applied the first coat of tanning to him, he understood that worse was coming. Tanning wouldn’t last; it was merely a gesture. He knew it, Orlett and Cray knew it. Something deeper than the surface of the skin was involved. The fear came into him and he could not stop it. His stomach swayed, his groin tightened. He closed his eyes against the flickering oil light, heard the hiss of the coals.

  When the iron sank into his cheek, he did not think he would survive the searing pain. Then he did not think at all. There was no thought except the pain, no sight except the pain, no sound, no past, present or future. Only the pain.

  He did not know how long he lived inside it. Or when he passed out of it and woke to it again. The barn was dark and quiet. He shook the whole length of his naked body as he watched his white breath float up to the rafters where an owl ruffled its wings. Something scurried in the straw. A strip of moonlight fell straight down and just missed his feet. They were dark in the darkness. His thighs too. He could not see his arms or his hands chained behind him. But he felt the darkness on him, inside him, beating there. With relief, he became aware of his genitals. Then he returned to the pain. Whatever they had done, they had done to his face.

  He lay in the soft night sounds of the barn and stared at the strip of moonlight. The overseer was right. As he lay there, John knew exactly what he was, and he knew also what that meant. Between the pain on his face and the desire for the future to hurry to him, he passed the hours until cock-crow.

  As the darkness lifted, the mulatto returned. Expressionless and silent as always, he undid the wall shackles and drove John, still naked, the hundred yards across the frozen mud, then the crisp, tinsel-like grass, to the big house.

  The overseer sat at the kitchen table, his face greasy with egg and bacon. Behind him, Charlotte gaped, her hand pressed to her cheek.

  “Give him some bacon,” Orlett said to her.

  The mulatto
shoved him into a chair. John did not look at either Charlotte or the plate when she brought it over.

  “Go on, eat,” the overseer said. “You got to keep your strength up. Unless you want to die of starvation even before your new life starts. What’s the matter? Don’t you want to know what it’s like to look like a nigger same as the others?”

  But the overseer’s voice was tired, his face pale. His hands shook a little. Still he found the strength for goading.

  The words, however, did not touch John. He thought better of refusing the food. The bacon smelled wonderful, and he knew the future he dreamed of was not possible if he did not recover. But his hands were still cuffed. With difficulty, he took a fork in one hand and stabbed at a strip of bacon and raised it to his mouth. But he was weak and the bacon dropped to the plate before he could put it in his mouth.

  Orlett said, “Don’t just stand there, woman, feed the nigger.”

  Charlotte did as she was told and, not meeting her eyes, John began to chew.

  The overseer watched him closely. But John was more concerned with his nakedness, and he pulled up to the table as near as possible so that Charlotte would not see his lower body. He ate the bacon with increasing appetite and gratefully drank the water that Charlotte held to his mouth. His cheek throbbed with pain, especially when he chewed. The muscles in his face seemed torn. Charlotte gaped at him; sometimes she even missed his mouth with the forkful of bacon.

  Finally the overseer told her to stop and to go and get a handglass.

  “You might as well have a good look at yourself,” he said. “You won’t get the full benefit just staring into a flooded rice field.” He grinned and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.