Deep Summer

by Gwen Bristow

  Benny looked up at her after a moment, lifting a face like pale bronze, with fine-cut, almost aquiline features and large dark eyes with curling lashes. The late sun glinted on the satiny waves of his hair. Judith gripped his arms with a suddenness that was almost fierce. She did not know if it was a single feature of his or the general expression of them all, or something in the cool arrogance of his attitude that had set her heart to pounding. She had resolved bitterly that she was not going to try to find this child. There were dozens of colored children on the plantation, most of whom she hardly ever saw, and he was lost among them. She did not even know if Philip had made any effort to recognize him.

  He waited for her to speak with a quiet deference that had no suggestion of servility. She tried to keep herself from speaking. Might it not be better to let him go while she was still unsure?

  But she could not help it. “Who—who is your mother, Benny?” she asked tensely at last.

  For an instant he did not reply. She saw that her gentleness had turned his anger at little Philip into shame, and he was blinking back tears that he could not bear to let the mistress see. He tried to speak.

  “Her name’s Angeli—” But the effort of forcing out his voice was too much for him, and he broke from her grasp and wheeled around, covering his eyes with his arm and sobbing against the trunk of the tree.

  In her sudden wave of resentment that he should be alive and concrete before her she hardly knew he was crying. She simply saw him, with unthinking detestation. But then, he tried to swallow his tears and when he could not stop them he tried to explain them, and she heard the words struggle out between his sobs.

  “I’m—so—sick—of bein’—a nigger!”

  With an impulsive movement Judith drew him away from the tree and took him into her arms. He sobbed on her breast. She stood holding him, weak with compassion, for his wrong was so much greater than hers.

  After a moment he tried to break out of her arms and leave her, in shame at his tears and his confession, but she kept him back.

  “Come sit on the steps with me.”

  They walked to the gallery edge, her arm around him. The sun was nearly gone. Benny twisted his bare toes through the grass.

  “I reckon I went ’n’ acted like a baby, Miss Judith,” he ventured. “Please ma’am don’t tell anybody.”

  “I won’t.” They were silent, and she put her arm around him again. After awhile she added, with more effort than it had ever before cost her to say anything, “I’m sorry I can’t make you white, Benny.”

  Her tenderness broke down his reserves. “I’m nearabout white,” he blurted. “I’m whiter’n my mammy or my pappy.”

  “Who is your pappy?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Claude. He’s one of the indigo men. Only he ain’t my sure enough pappy. They says my sure enough pappy was a man who was really white.”

  Judith doubled her free hand into a fist in her lap. “They don’t tell you who he was?”

  “Well ma’am,” said Benny with the blunt disregard of childhood, “some says he was the master. I dunno.”

  “What does your mother tell you?”

  “She say it ain’t gonta do me no good to know ’causin’ some bright-skin niggers is got sold before now for sayin’ they was the master’s, and my pappy he gimme a frailin’ when I say I’m too white to be his’n.” Benny sat with his head down and hands dangling between his knees. “But I’m a nigger and I’m too white to be a nigger. It gives me a misery in the heart.”

  “Yes,” said Judith faintly, “I know it does.”

  Again they were silent. Benny, abashed at having talked so much to a white lady, kicked at the grass, evidently wishing she would give him leave to go back to the quarters. Judith looked away from him toward the darkening sky. There was a great crimson fan over the river where the sun had dropped. Such a beautiful, cruel sky it was, holding in this heat that was still torpid in spite of the twilight. Judith bit hard on her lip, battling again to conquer a resurgence of the fury Benny had done nothing to merit. After awhile, recalling the pity and forgiveness Benny’s mother had taught her, she forced it down. She drew his head to her shoulder.

  “Benny,” she said in a voice so low he could not have heard her if her lips had not been close to his ear, “I want to tell you something before you go back.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “About your misery in the heart. I know what you mean.”

  “Yassum. Er—I reckon you don’t though, Miss Judith.”

  “Yes I do. Nearly everybody has a misery, Benny.”

  “You reckon?” He sounded unbelieving.

  She held his head on her breast and stroked his silky hair. “Yes, Benny. White folks too.”

  That was hard for him to comprehend and he said nothing. She went on.

  “You’ll just have to get used to having a misery in the heart, Benny, because nobody can take it away. You’re mighty lucky to find out when you’re a boy what it’s like because now all the rest of your life you’ll understand other folks when they have one.”

  Benny waited some time before he spoke. She wondered if he knew what she was trying to say. Like all children and a good many adults, he probably thought that since she was immune to his own trouble she was immune to all the rest. At length he asked thoughtfully:

  “Is you got a misery in the heart, Miss Judith?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you do about it, missis?”

  “I don’t do anything about it. I can’t. I just keep it in my heart, the way you’ll have to keep yours.”

  “Huh,” said Benny. He lifted his head and looked at her, then back at the big house, that temple of the blessed where radiant white folks lived in unimaginably gorgeous autocracy. He asked incredulously,

  “What makes your misery, missis?”

  “When it’s a really bad one,” she said, “you don’t like to talk about it.”

  “Yassum,” said Benny. With a sad triumph he added, “Anybody can see what my misery is, though.”

  Judith took an uneven breath. “They don’t have to see how much you mind it.”

  “Mhm.” Benny fingered the muslin of her skirt, examining the clusters of little flowers printed there.

  It was nearly dark. Soon the servants would be bringing supper dishes from the kitchen-house.

  “You’d better go home now, Benny,” Judith said. “Your mother will be wondering where you are. Don’t come up to the big house again.”

  “Yassum.” Benny got up. He stood scratching his ankle with the toe of the other foot.

  “How is your mother?” Judith asked him in a faint voice that took more strength than a scream.

  “She’s doin’ pretty good.”

  “She has some other children too?”

  “Yassum.”

  “Tell your mother I asked about her.”

  “Yassum.”

  “Good night, Benny.”

  “Good night, missis.”

  Judith watched him scamper off toward the fields. She put her arm around the gallery post and laid her forehead on it. In retrospect what she had tried to tell him sounded hollow. As if anybody could get used to a misery in the heart merely by making up his mind to do so. She knew, more strongly than she had known in all these years, that she was not used to hers, and she hoped she would never have to see Benny nor hear of him again.

  A Negro man came around the corner of the house. He took off his hat and holding it in both hands he put his one foot behind the other and bowed. “Missis?”

  “Yes?” She had started to go in and turned back to him.

  “Dat white lady you tole me to take dem sheets and things to—”

  “What did she say?”

  “She say she ain’t got no use for ’em. Her li’l gal’s done died.”

  “O
h,” said Judith. How the fever galloped through the bodies of children.

  “But I left de things just de same, missis. I thought maybe as how she could find a use for ’em, wrappin’ up de li’l gal to be buried and all.”

  “That’s right,” said Judith. She went indoors. The passage was dark but from the front rooms she could see the glow of candles.

  Little Philip was calling her. The sound startled her into action. Poor child—she had forgotten sending him to his room and now it was dark and he would be wondering if he was to stay there all night supperless and unforgiven. Hurrying into the dining-room she got a candle from the table and went to his door.

  “Here I am, Phil. You may come out now.”

  She opened the door, but the room was big and her candle did not give enough light for her to see him at first. She exclaimed, “Phil, baby, where are you?”

  There was a sound from the bed. He was a big boy to be crying because he had been punished. Judith set down the candle and pushed back the mosquito bar. “Phil, if you’re sulking I’m ashamed of you!”

  He was lying across the bed, his face half hidden in the pillow. Bad boy, he hadn’t taken off his shoes and the counterpane was muddy. As she leaned over him he half raised up and made another inarticulate noise in his throat. With a little cry Judith caught him in her arms.

  Little Philip’s eyes were full of blood. His lips and nostrils were almost purple. He writhed into her arms, clinging to her as if she could protect him, and she felt his face blazing with fever. He murmured thickly, “I kept trying to call you. I reckon you didn’t hear me.”

  Judith felt her heart thumping. She laid his head back on the pillow.

  “No, dearest, I didn’t hear you. Now lie down like a good boy and I’ll take off your clothes. How long since you began feeling sick?”

  Whatever it was he said, she did not understand it. She got his clothes off and a bedgown on him, and drew up the sheets, trying to control the spasms of panic that shook her hands. It couldn’t be what she thought it was. These things couldn’t happen to people who were clean and careful and took pains with their children. When she had covered him she laid her hand on his forehead, thinking that even in this heat her fingers must be cool against such fever as his. At the door she spoke to a servant bringing in a tray of supper dishes, surprised at how level a voice could be above the fear she was feeling.

  “Find Mr. Philip and tell him to come here as soon as he can.”

  Philip came in a moment later. “What’s happened, Judith?”

  She gestured toward the bed. Philip raised the mosquito bar, saying, “What’s the trouble, boy? Eat too much?”

  The last word caught in his throat. He sat on the bed and lifted little Philip in his arms. The child’s body gave a jerk that ran from his shoulders down to his feet. His father said, “Oh my God.”

  Little Philip raised his head. He groaned. There was a rumbling noise deep down in his body. He screamed again, and jerked, and there came from his mouth a black discharge that ran over the pillow and sheets in a thick stream. He retched again and vomited again, and sank back in a stupor of exhaustion.

  His father stood up. For a moment he did not move. He simply stood there by the bed, and his eyes met Judith’s. She felt her face twisting. Little Philip made another retching noise, but nothing came up, and he gave a sharp scream of pain. His father put his hands over his eyes and shuddered. Then he lifted his head and said to Judith:

  “Let’s get the bed clean. Have them burn up the sheets.”

  She got fresh linens out of the armoire, moving mechanically without saying anything. Afterwards she remembered Philip’s gesture of helpless horror, and thought that was what had first made her understand how awful yellow fever was.

  At six o’clock in the morning David came out of the main passage to where his father stood on the gallery.

  “I got mother to go to her room,” said David. “She—she looks about to collapse, father.”

  “I’ll go to her,” Philip said. He had walked out of little Philip’s room a quarter of an hour before, because he simply could not bear any longer to see a child of his suffer like that. “David, I won’t get down to the fields today. Will you take a look around?”

  “Yes sir. Is there anything else I can do?”

  “Tell the servants nobody is to leave the plantation for any purpose unless I give the order. And tell them in the kitchen not to serve any food except what’s grown on the place. Find mammy before you go out and tell her to keep Rita in the nursery or on the side gallery, and not let her come near your mother or any of the rest of us who’ve been into Phil’s room.”

  “All right, sir,” said David. His voice was low, as though his first sight of the plague had scared him out of his customary self-confidence and he was glad to be told something definite to do. He went inside, and Philip hurried in to Judith. She had been working over little Philip all night, tending him with a rigid calmness and only once or twice hiding her face with a gasp when his screams were too agonized for her to endure.

  He opened the door of their room. Judith had thrown herself across the bed and was sobbing into the pillow. Philip sat by her. He took off her shoes and loosened her dress.

  “Won’t you try to go to sleep, Judith? Christine is taking care of him.”

  “I can’t.” She clung to him, shuddering, and hid her face on his breast. “Oh Philip, if he has to die, why must it be so horrible?”

  “Dearest, he doesn’t have to die!” Philip tried to speak reassuringly and not let her guess how frightened he was. “It’s not always fatal. At least half the people who have yellow fever live through it!”

  Judith shook her head. “But he won’t.” She spoke with despairing conviction. “Philip, don’t you remember what I did to him?”

  “Please, Judith!”

  But she could not be comforted. “I killed him in my soul. God waited eleven years so I could see what I was doing. I’ve thought of it all night.”

  From further down the hall they could hear faint, tired little cries. Philip shivered and Judith put her hands over her ears. Then she struggled up. “Let me go back to him.”

  He tried to keep her where she was. She did look, as David had said, on the verge of collapse, and the servants had promised to call if there was any need for her in the sickroom. But she insisted.

  “I can hold him up in my arms when the spasms come. Servants are no good—they aren’t his mother.”

  He had to let her go back. Toward afternoon little Philip fell into a troubled sleep, and Judith went to sleep too, lying on a mattress on the floor. David called his father outside.

  There were three cases of fever in the quarters, he said. He had had the Negroes moved to the plantation infirmary and had forbidden the others to go near them. Philip sent Christopher to Silverwood to ask Caleb if Rita could stay there to escape taking the fever by contact.

  Christopher returned to say there had been an explosion of plague all along the bluff. Two of the house-servants at Silverwood had been stricken that morning. He had ridden from there to Lynhaven to ask Gervaise if she could keep Rita safe, only to find that Walter Purcell had come in from the wharfs with the dizzying headache and bloodshot eyes that marked the onset of the fever.

  It rained that night, and the next day the air was thick and wet. Puddles stood about the soaked ground. Four Negroes collapsed in the indigo fields at noon. Philip hardly heard the report when David brought it to him, for David had come in from the fields with his face flushed nearly crimson. Philip involuntarily grasped his wrist to see if the pulse was faster. David reassured him.

  “I’m not sick, father. It’s this ghastly wet heat—did you ever see such weather?”

  “Never. Have you heard how Walter Purcell is?”

  “Worse, I understand. And Mrs. Durham fainted in her garden this morning.”
r />   Philip shook his head. David sat down, letting his riding-crop fall on the floor.

  “Father, the fields are demoralized. The Negroes are scared to work and scared to stay indoors. Nobody’s getting anything done.” He seemed to be pleading for courage. But Philip could only say, wearily:

  “I don’t wonder. It doesn’t matter,”

  After awhile David went out, as though any sort of movement was a relief from the tension of sitting still. Philip was about to call Judith from little Philip’s room and make her rest when she came in of her own accord. She dropped down by the table and held her head on her hands, saying:

  “Philip, I can’t stand watching him.”

  He put his arm around her and drew her head back to rest against him. “How is he now?”

  “He—he was delirious all night, but now he’s quiet—horribly quiet. And he’s yellow and splotched and hideous—last week he was so round and rosy! Why don’t we take it with him?”

  “I don’t know,” said Philip. “I wonder too.”

  They said nothing else. There was nothing to say.

  David and Christopher came in together. They shut the door softly behind them and stood just in front of it, looking at their parents and then at each other as if each were wishing the other would speak first. Judith stood up slowly and her hands sought Philip’s as if she already knew what they had come to tell her.

  David said, “He—he’s dead, mother.”

  Philip put his arms around her, but she did not scream or sob. She only said, “Yes, I knew he was going to die.”

  She was almost rigid in his arms. He motioned David and Christopher to leave them, for he knew a shock first made Judith numb and then brought a fierce reaction. The boys went out. Judith put her hands up to her temples. “Oh please, God, I didn’t know what I was doing!”

  She went limp against him, a flood of sobs tearing through her. Philip held her, feeling as helpless as a slave tied to the whipping-post.