Underground

by Gayle O'Brien

  “Mother, I …” she stammered.

  Her mother’s expression shifted from rage to disappointment.

  “How could you, Samantha? How could you do this to me?”

  “I … I didn’t mean to, Mother. I just …”

  “You come out in one week. Don’t you realize how important this is? Do you know how much money your father spent on the gown alone?”

  “I know, Mother. I wish I could …”

  Her mother sighed. “There is only one thing to do. Nessie!”

  The slave appeared so quickly it was as if she’d never left the room.

  “Until the cotillion on Friday, my daughter is only allowed water, apples and plain bread. Understood?”

  Nessie curtseyed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Samantha’s mother left the room. Samantha fought back tears while Nessie quietly untied the ribbons of the hoop skirt and let it fall to the floor.

  “Come on, Miss Sammy. Step on out.”

  Nessie held Samantha’s elbow as she stepped outside the frame.

  “Get me out of this corset, Nessie.”

  Nessie stepped back. “But Miss Sammy, you know your mama wants it on all …”

  “I said, get me out!” Even Samantha was surprised by the volume of her voice.

  Nessie undid the knot and loosened the strings. Samantha took in several deep breaths, as if she’d been under water too long.

  Nessie put her hand on Samantha’s shoulder. “You want to talk, Miss Sammy?”

  Samantha sneered. “Leave me alone, Nessie. You definitely wouldn’t understand.”

  Nessie left the room and closed the door. Samantha pushed the corset off her body and kicked it across the room.

  Samantha’s palomino was waiting for her in front, just as she’d instructed. Free of the corset and hoop skirt, she wore her canvas riding dress, durable for riding, but cool compared to the silks, wools and taffeta her mother wore regardless of the weather.

  Milo, the horse slave, held onto the palomino’s bridle. When Samantha burst through the front door with her saddle bag, he took one look at her dress and shook his head.

  “Oh, no, Miss Sammy.”

  “Take the saddle off, Milo.”

  He slowly undid the straps. “You know your mama wants you riding side saddle. And in your real riding outfit.” He set the saddle onto the ground and made a stirrup with his hands. Samantha pushed her boot into his pale palms. “Miss Sammy, you trying to get me whipped?”

  “Give me my saddle bag,” she said.

  Milo tisked. “Saddle bag, but no saddle. Honestly, Miss Sammy. What’s your mama gon’ say?”

  “She won’t say anything because no one is going to tell her.” Samantha kicked her feet into the horse’s sides. As she galloped away from the main house, towards the cotton fields, she turned her face toward the sun.

  Spring had arrived early in Virginia. The grass was dotted with daffodils, and the woods were blanketed in bluebells. In a little over a month, cotton planting would begin. For now the field contained row after row of dry branches and brush. Every field hand she’d ever known had scars on their hands from those sharp cotton bristles, miniature versions of the whipping scars that streaked across bare, black backs like the trail of a dozen shooting stars. “The marks of insolence,” her grandfather used to call them.

  Once past the cotton fields the landscape gave way to lush woodland. Mont Verity, Samantha’s family’s plantation, was 500 acres in all, 100 of which were filled with ancient trees that her grandfather claimed had been inhabited by Indians before the family bought the land. Samantha guided her horse towards the stream that marked the property border with Dominion Royale, the Fabre family plantation, and dismounted.

  While the horse drank from the stream, Samantha stepped over stumpy rocks to reach a large, flat boulder in the center. Had it been summer, she could have waded in and let her feet dangle in the rushing water. But even on this mild spring day, she knew the water would be too cold. It didn’t matter – Samantha was just happy to be out of the house and out of that stupid corset. This part of the stream was where she came every day, and where no one from her family ever bothered her.

  “Hold it right there.”

  Samantha looked up and saw Eli Fabre standing on the other side of the stream. His pistol was pointed straight at her, concealing his blue eyes and his blond curls. “You’re trespassing on Fabre family property.”

  Samantha stood up. “I think you’ll find that since the stream marks the division, the stream officially belongs to no one.”

  “I think if you check the deed the dotted line runs right down the center of the stream, thereby making one half mine and one half yours. You, Miss Weston, are on my half.”

  Samantha laughed. “So what are you going to do, Mr. Fabre? Shoot me?”

  Eli cocked his pistol. “You know, I just might.”

  Samantha put her bare feet in cold water and began to cross the stream. “Well, I can foresee a number of problems with that.”

  “Stay where you are, Miss Weston. Or I’ll shoot you.”

  Samantha ignored him and kept walking. “One, my daddy will kill you. Two, when my daddy kills you, your daddy will try and kill my daddy. Three, if I’m dead, then there’s no one to inherit my plantation. And four,” Samantha swiftly pulled her pistol from her cleavage, “you can’t kill me if I kill you first.”

  Eli let down his pistol and bowed.

  “Touché, Miss Weston. Touché.”

  They stood awkwardly, knowing what they were meant to do, but unsure who should initiate it. After several excruciating seconds, Samantha leaned in to kiss him. She missed his mouth, and kissed his nose instead.

  “You’re late,” she said, blushing.

  They sat on a fallen tree at the edge of the river.

  “I’m sorry. But you’ll never guess what happened? Father took me to the auction!”

  “A slave auction?”

  “Obviously. What other kind of auction happens around here? Your father was there, too.”

  This came as a surprise, but she did not say so. As far as she knew, her father wanted to replace slave labor with the industrialized methods used up north. Why was he buying more slaves?

  Eli continued. “One of the ones Father bought has the biggest hands I’ve ever seen on any man, which will be good for some of the hard labor Father needs doing. But a man that big might have a big attitude, so we’ll just have to keep an eye on him. And then we got a young thing who’ll probably have a baby in a month or so.”

  “Two for the price of one,” she said, absentmindedly. It’s what her grandfather always used to say when a slave was pregnant.

  “Nah, we’ll probably sell the baby on. Father’s had enough with black babies running around the place. He says at his age he only wants the ones that can be put to work. Then there’s two your father bought. A husband and wife, but he isn’t going to have them right away.”

  “Why not?”

  Eli sat up straighter, pleased – it seemed – that he had something to teach her. “I think the wife is sick or something. Actually, I don’t know why your father bothered with her. He could have just had the husband and left it at that. If you ask me, he’s just asking for trouble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the slave will know that your father is soft and that is the worst thing in the world a slave could think about its master, especially this one. I could see he had an independent streak. Father tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. It’ll cost him one way or another.”

  “You talk like you’re an expert on this stuff.”

  “I’ve got to be if I’m going to run my plantation.”

  “Our plantation.”

  Eli gave her a gentle nudge. “You know a woman can’t own property.”

  “And you know you wouldn’t have the prospect of a plantation if you don’t have mine.”

  Eli cleared his throat and shifted on the log. “So, what’s
been happening in the world of Samantha Weston today?”

  “My dress fitting,” she said. “It didn’t go so well.”

  “No?”

  Samantha told him about her mother and the small amount of food she was now allowed.

  “Well, I’m just going to have to start bringing you some cornbread. I can’t have you looking like you’re ripe for the picking.”

  “It’s not funny, Eli. You’ve got to talk to Father soon.”

  “Don’t you worry, I’ve got it all planned.”

  Samantha perked up. “You do?”

  “I’ve just got to get him at the right time,” said Eli.

  So he doesn’t have a plan, Samantha thought.

  “I was hoping I could talk to him at the cotillion actually,” said Eli. “He’ll be looking at all those suitors who’ve come from Lord knows where, and that’s when I’ll present myself. It’s an offer he can’t refuse – keeping his daughter and his plantation.”

  Samantha wasn’t so sure, but didn’t say. She didn’t know what to do, either.

  “Oh, I almost forgot!” She opened her saddlebag and pulled out a slim, rectangular box made of smooth wood.

  “Here,” she said, handing it to Eli. “Happy Birthday.”

  Eli smiled. “You remembered.”

  “Of course.”

  Eli pushed the lid off the box. Inside, resting on folds of deep red satin, was a Bowie knife. Samantha watched him wrap his hand around the wooden handle and pull the hold off the blade.

  “Well, my, Samantha,” he said. “It’s a beauty.” The steel blade was almost a foot long. He tapped the tip of the clip point.

  “Ow!” he said, as blood oozed from his fingertip.

  “It’s sharp,” she said.

  “I can see that.”

  “You like it?”

  Eli put his bleeding finger in his mouth “I sure do.”

  “Look,” she said, “the handle is inscribed.”

  Eli took his finger out of his mouth and held the knife flat over his palms. An oval copper plate shone against the wood.

  He read: “To Elijah Fabre, With Love from Samantha Weston, 1861.”

  Chapter 3

  Annie ran barefoot across the highway, darting in and out of cars. Lights blazed and horns blared. Beyond the highway, her father stood in front of their house in Virginia.

  “Dad!” she yelled.

  He held out his arms to embrace her. As she took a step towards him, an explosion ripped through the air. She waved her hands to clear the smoke and there it was: the Virginia State Police car, set against her house as it burned to the ground.

  “No!” yelled Annie, jolting upright as she woke from her dream. Sweat dripped down her back as the stained wallpaper surrounding her came into focus. Outside, icy rain tapped angrily at the window as if wanting to be let in. Footsteps came slowly up the stairs.

  He’s here, she thought. We’re dead.

  She thought about screaming, but if he’d found them, there was no point fighting it. She was tired of running.

  Her door creaked open, and Annie held her breath. Her mother appeared at the bedroom door, an apparition in the gray light on the upstairs landing.

  “I heard a noise,” she said, her voice almost imperceptible against the sound of the rain.

  Annie released her shoulders from where they’d crept up to her ears. “Sorry. I stubbed my toe.”

  Her mother turned and slowly made her way back down the stairs, not noticing that Annie was in bed and therefore couldn’t have stubbed her toe. If they’d been in Virginia, Annie might have told her mother she’d had a bad dream, because then her mother would do what mothers do – take Annie into her arms, rock her back and forth, and tell her everything was going to be okay.

  Instead, Annie fell back onto the bed and yanked the quilt over her head.

  Her empty stomach woke her several hours later. She glanced at her father’s watch – it was 2pm, a full hour before she usually allowed herself to eat.

  Annie had been scrutinizing what she ate since the night everything changed. It wasn’t that she was deliberately starving herself or trying to make herself ill – it was pure necessity. She and her mother had a fixed amount of money and when it ran out they would have nothing. Eating one meal a day was her way of making the money last longer.

  Still, she couldn’t deny she liked the effect this regime was having on her shape. Her jeans were looser, she could count her ribs and her cheekbones dominated her face. When she stood with her feet together, there was a few inches of space between her inner thighs. She could just imagine Jenna and Marcy’s reaction when they saw her again. “Oh my god, you’re so skinny!” they’d shriek. They would notice and they would be jealous.

  As she lay in bed, she imagined herself returning home, the center of attention, the past year nothing but a good story that everyone wanted to hear. Both guys and girls would admire Annie for surviving it all, even Jenna and Marcy, and they would envy that Annie got to see the country while the rest of them were stuck in high school.

  Who am I kidding, she thought. Even if she could go back to Virginia tomorrow, all her friends would be on the verge of graduating, something she could not do after missing a year of school. She’d have a lonely senior year while all her friends went to community college or Virginia State. No matter what happened now, her life was ruined forever.

  Her friends had forgotten her already anyway. It was obvious. No one had posted anything on her old Facebook page for months. On the night everything changed, almost everyone she knew posted something.

  Where R U????

  I just saw your house – WTF?!?

  Please call me. We’re all worried sickkkkk.

  I just want to know that you’re okay. Please know that NO ONE believes your dad could have done such a thing. Get home safe.

  Within a month, the posts stopped. These days, when she had access to a computer, she devoted her time to her other Facebook account.

  She reached into her jeans and pulled out the memory stick, holding it in the palm of her hand. This flimsy piece of plastic was the only thing that had kept Annie going over the past year. But it was useless without a computer. Maybe Theo, the boy at the Store at Five Corners, would know where to find internet access in this town.

  Theo.

  Annie spent hours replaying their meeting in her head. Could she have acted more rudely? More foolishly? He’d been so nice and full of smiles, and she’d reacted the only way she knew how: by running.

  Her only comfort was that had she been a normal girl, with a normal life, she might have been able to carry on a normal conversation with a perfectly normal boy.

  At least, this is what she kept telling herself.

  Annie forced her feet to the cold floor and got up, taking the quilt with her like a shroud. She knelt over her small pile of clothes and searched for anything that did not smell. Except for one clean pair of underwear and a pair of mismatched socks, everything else was dirty.

  “Guess I need to do some laundry,” she said to no one.

  As Annie scooped the clothes into her arms, she could hear Jenna’s reaction to the thrift-store clothes she now wore – “Since when are you going for the homeless look,” or “I think you need to return those to the trash can where you found them.”

  Annie carried the clothes downstairs, past her mother sleeping on the couch, and to the basement for the first time. Each step down felt like it might give under her weight. There was no railing, so she ran her hand along the wall.

  The basement was one large space, exactly the same size as the first floor above. A pile of defeated boxes littered one corner; in another stood a set of rusted metal shelves. A washing machine and dryer sat against the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

  Annie blew at the dust on the washing machine and lifted its lid. The drum inside was old, but intact. She pulled the dial to Normal. Nothing happened. She pulled out the mini flashlight she kept in her pocket. Cobwebs clung t
o her arm as she reached behind the washing machine to retrieve its plug and put it into the one socket she could find. The machine rumbled to life. No sooner had Annie turned around to retrieve her clothes than a loud pop sent the basement into blackness and silence.

  “Great,” Annie groaned. She scanned the room with the flashlight and located the fuse box. As soon as she flicked the errant switch the fluorescent lights came back on, but the washing machine did not. Annie pushed and pulled at the dial until it came off in her hand.

  She stared at the piece of plastic in her fist. Why were things that should be so simple so difficult? All she wanted to do was get out of the house and do what she needed to do, in clean clothes. And now she couldn’t, because nothing was working. She thought about her father. This – fixing a washing machine – was his job, not hers. He should be here, doing what dads were supposed to do, but he wasn’t. He’d done what he’d done and no amount of wishing was going to change that.

  Then she thought of her mother upstairs: why wasn’t she down here doing the laundry? Why was Annie, by default, the responsible one?

  I didn’t ask for this, she thought. I didn’t ask for any of this.

  Annie took one step back and kicked the washing machine with the flat of her foot. It rocked slightly, then settled back in its place. She kicked it again, harder this time. Before it had the chance to settle, she kicked it again and again and again.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she chanted with each blow. It rocked and rocked, until it finally fell sideways onto the floor, hitting the edge of the bottom step as it fell.

  The door to the basement creaked.

  “Is something wrong?” Her mother’s feeble voice.

  Annie cleared her throat. “No, Mom. I’m doing laundry.”

  “I heard a crash.”

  “Just the drum vibrating.”

  The door closed. Annie sat down on the stairs and put her face in her hands.

  That was when she noticed the gap between the bottom two steps and the rest of the staircase.