The Black Swan

by Day Taylor

  Leona continued to study her in silence. Then she said, "Zoe, I declare, you look like a young girl." At that moment Leona's attention was distracted. "Oh, my stars! Zoe! This can't be him!"

  "Dat's him all right, Miz Leona!"Mammy beamed. "He be a fine ol' man, jes' like Ah allers knowed he be."

  "You're my woman, Manrniy," Adam said cheerfully, putting his arm around her shoulders.

  "Ah ain't no sech a thing! Ah's yo' Mammy!"

  Leona laughed. "Come sit with me, Adam. I want to hear about your travels. And don't you dare leave out one bit of gossip!"

  Tom looked on this man he loved, as his daughter, Angela, shy with a newly awakened ten-year-old's femininity, moved closer. Affectionately Adam took her hand, including her in his magical circle of being. As she Hstened to his stories of far-off places where kings and queens and princes walked on red carpets and knights rode to the tournaments amid the trumpeting and colors of pageantry, her eyes glowed brightly on the warm presence of her own

  knight. There was no one on earth she'd rather love than Adam.

  Adam was Angela's escort to dinner, when Mammy, caught up in his aura as wildly as the others, appeared in the doorway with a new apron and a crisp, starched white tignon covering her head.

  "Suppah is suhved," she announced in stentorian tones.

  It was a gay meal, filled with more talk of the years that had passed. Garrett and Leona told about the activities of the Underground Railroad and the warrish temper of the Southern people.

  After coitee, Adam rose. "If you'll excuse us, ladies, the gentlemen will retire to the study."

  "They always run off to hide," Leona complained.

  There was a companionable silence in the study as each man mulled over his own thoughts and sipped his brandy. Adam smiled at Tom. "So, Garrett has you thoroughly m-volved in the Underground now, has he?"

  "Up to my eyeballs. Why, aside from Seth an' a few of the swamp people, I hardly see a white face for days at a time."

  "Tom's cabin is a safer place to keep the blacks then our house is."

  Tom glanced at Garrett, then grinned at Adam. "What we need is some old tar who's not afraid to put his neck in a noose."

  Adam played with his cigar, turning it in his mouth, his teeth showing brilliant white as his smile grew. "I know of one, maybe three."'

  "Three! Who?" Tom sputtered.

  "My last port before I came home was New Orleans. Captain Ben West and Captain Beau LeClerc are taking you up on that offer of a visit you extended them years ago, Tom. They'll soon be heading for Smithville."

  "By God!" Tom breathed. "Garrett, they're the salt o' the earth—sea too, I guess. Damn!"

  "These are the two boys you grew up with, Adam?"

  Tom was hopping excitedly in his chair. "Wait'll you meet them, Garrett. We'll be takin' slaves out by the score. These three haven't got a fearful bone in their bodies."

  Garrett looked concerned. "A man can hang for stealing a slave or inducing him to run."

  "Don't discourage him before he's gotten started, Garrett."

  Adam smiled. "Set your mind at ease. You're not leading us astray."

  Garrett asked in a musing voice, "You like the sharp knife of fear cutting at you, do you, Adam?"

  "Not the fear, but the challenging of it I'm ready to begin whenever I can get a ship."

  Tom looked impishly at Garrett. "Is it time to tell him?"

  "Tell me what?"

  "We've got a ship for you, Adam, a kind of gift from Tom and me."

  "My God, you've left me speechless. A ship!"

  "A steamer. Garrett an' I don't know ships. We're not sure of what we've got."

  Adam still had his dazed look of incredulity as Garrett explained. "You'll take the darkies to the north shore of Long Island. Rod Courtland will meet you there, and then he will see to them. The first trip will be nothing but a trial run. Tom and I will be your only passengers."

  Adam still did not understand. "Rod Courtland?"

  "Yes. As I once told you. Rod Courtland and I went to school in Boston together. The years have fled, but the friendship has remained steadfast. You and Rod will set the schedule of trips when you go up there. He will help you set up a legitimate merchant trade between New York and the Southern ports."

  As they talked, the business matters were cleared away one at a time. There were four partners in the shipping venture: Garrett, Tom, Roderick Courtland, and Adam. The profits would be divided evenly among them, and Ben and Beau would be paid according to Adam's own means.

  "Well, it sounds promising," Adam said. "But I am certainly the weak link in this outfit. It's your ship, your capital, your goods."

  Garrett said gravely, "Don't underestimate the seriousness of your part, Adam. In effect this will make you a criminal in the South and a smuggler in the North. You'd be quite a prize for a few interested parties to capture and turn over to the South."

  "Each of us has his own reasons for taking risks. Tom knows mine."

  Tom cleared his throat. "Shall we take a look at the ship before it's too dark to see?"

  Garrett said agreeably, "I'll go see to the carriage, then."

  Adam glanced around at the clutter of glasses and cigar ashes and rang for someone to clean up.

  "What you want, Mas' Adam?"

  "You can clear away now, Mammy. Isn't there anyone else to do this?"

  "Yassuh, but dey's a bunch o' wuthless free niggers. Ain't nobody gwine ten' to you 'cep' Mammy long's Ah got breaf in mah body."

  "Sure you won't be my woman, Mammy?"

  "You get yo' big ol' han's offen me, or mebbe Ah's gwine change mah min'." Her face screwed up into a stifled smile before she burst out in rolling girlish giggles.

  Tom watched their teasing with a half-smile. When Mammy left the room, Adam said, "Garrett should be ready. We'd better go."

  Tom shook his head. "He knows I wanted to talk to you alone."

  Adam sat back down in his chair, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees.

  "There isn't an easy way for me to say this to you, Adam. After all the years you'd think . . . but I just never got over Ullah's death."

  "Tom, you and I have never had to talk out loud about this."

  "There's somethin' she'd want you to know ... an' now she's not here to tell you herself." Slowly Tom got up and went to where he had left his coat. When he returned, he held Ullah's small, battered box of treasures. He placed it between himself and Adam, then lifted the lid so the contents of the box were exposed.

  "She kept all the things that meant the most to her in this box." He touched the shells, the clay doll, several pieces of jewelry. "Mostly I gave them to her." He picked up Zoe's letter. "She meant to show that to Angela when she was old enough. Ullah thought maybe a letter from a lady as fine as your mama would help Angela not to be ashamed of her."

  "Angela would never have been ashamed of Ullah.'*

  "Maybe not, but Ullah didn't know that. She didn't complain, mind you, but Ullah's life, well, she'd been taught to expect the worst." Tom's eyes were watering so badly he couldn't see. His hand trembled as he replaced the letter in the box.

  "Tom, we don't need to talk about this. I remember Ullah. I'll never forget her as long as I live. I loved her."

  Tom nodded his head with deep swoops. "I know ... I know . , . but see, Adam, you were somethin' special to Ullah. God forgive me, there was a time I was jealous. Right from the very first time she saw you, she knew. She said it was like lookin' at a lake full of white swans an' then seein' a black one. You just know that one black swan was somethin' God made special. She knew that." Trying to impress the import of his words on Adam physically, he clasped Adam's forearm. "She never got to tell you." Tom was crying outright now, and Adam found tears welling in his own eyes.

  "Thank you for telling me, Tom. I—"

  "That ain't all." He dragged the box nearer to him. With reverential care, Tom took out a package wrapped in gaily decorated paper. Tom held it gently
in both of his hands, staring at it as he spoke. "See, Adam, seems like all your life, leastways since Ullah and I knew you, you've been called upon to help her kind, even though you never sought it. But it's like she saw it . . . she knew. Ullah, seems like, knew a lot of things with her dreamin' an' her thinkin'. Around me, she called you her black swan."

  He put the package in Adam's hands. "I got this special made for her. I was goin' to give it to her that Christmas." He wiped at his eyes. "You've become what Ullah always knew you would. She'd want you to have this, Adam. Go ahead. Open it It's a Christmas gift long overdue."

  Carefully Adam unwrapped the small package. Cushioned among the wrappings, made of hand-blown glass, was a delicate black swan. The light caught in the dark glass, sparkling off the wings and the gracefully curving neck, taking away his breath with his speech as he looked at the miniature piece of art that had represented him in Ullah's eyes. His chest grew tight as he thought of her, remembered the clear oval of her face, the laughing dark eyes that had teased him and cared about him.

  He turned the black swan in his hands and tried to see in it and in himself what she had seen. Before him there lay a tapestry of unfinished threads on which was mapped out the many trips he would make from the South with his cargo of dark-faced people seeking the unfettered North.

  But that wasn't all. Even though Adam vaguely realized that the slave hauling was but a small part of the meaning of the black swan, he had no way of seeing what lay beyond the next year.

  BOOK II

  Dulcie 1850-1863

  Chapter One

  Dulcie had been fighting again. She had scratched and kicked Jothan, a child who under more favorable circumstances would have been her physical equal. But Jothan found himself in direct jeopardy from all sides. Though they played and took their schooling together, and got each other into trouble several times daily, Dulcie was still his Little Miss. No pickaninny was allowed to hit Little Miss. Jothan knew it was so, for his mother. Ester, had thumped his small woolly head with her knuckles countless times for doing just that.

  He was about to risk another thumping and give Little Miss a barefooted kick in the shins, when Ester came boiling out of her cabin to see what the commotion was. As if this wasn't discouraging enough, down the dirt path from the house came Dulcie*s mammy. There was fire in her eye, as much for the black child as for the white one.

  "Miss Dulciel" she roared. "You, Jothan! What in tarnation y'all scufllin' 'bout dis time?"

  "Jothan, you come right back herel" Ester yelled as her son ran to hide in the cavernous reaches of the stables.

  "Mammy, make Jothan give me my marble I" yelled Dulcie, jumping up and down, her red pigtails bouncing. "He won't let me have iti"

  Dulcie had made a mistake, staying in one place. Mammy grabbed her arm. "You hesh yo' moufi Mastah Jem give Jothan dat marble!"

  Dulcie twisted in Mammy's grasp. "But I won it, an* I want it!"

  "Dey's folks in de hot place wantin* ice water, an* dey am't gittin' what dey wants neither! Ah had mo'n enuf o' you today! You, Ester, it's 'bout time you learned dat uppity li'l pickaninny some manners!"

  "Ah doan see you makin' out so good yo'seff. Mammy," Ester retorted. Quickly she turned away, calling in a stem voice for Jothan to come right out of them stables or she'd tan his hide.

  Dulcie squirmed and jerked. Mammy held her firmly.

  "You is gwine to bed, Miss Dulcie. How you 'spects to grow up 'n' be a lady if you allers fisticuffin' an' screamin' like a peacock? Ladies doan climb trees an' show dey pant'Iettes, an' dey doan chunk odder people in dey faces! Ah gits plum petered out wiff makin' you behave yo'seff!"

  "It's mine," Dulcie said sullenly. "I betted him I could jump fu'ther'n him. He on'y jumped from Beauty's stall partway over to Buffy's—so I dumb up the ladder an* jumped from the loft, an' I won!"

  "Bless de Lawd, chil'," said Mammy, paling visibly. "Doan you do dat agin, you heah me? Yo' daddy fin's out you jump outer de loft an' he skin me alive. De Debbil muster been 'sleep, or you'd broke both yo' legs!"

  "But I didn't," said Dulcie with satisfaction. "And it's my marble!**

  James Moran stuck his head into the small parlor where his wife, Patricia, sat doing needlepoint in an oval frame. "Patsy love, why don't you come for a buggy ride with me?'*

  Patricia smiled up at him. "Ah am gettin' right bored with shovin' that needle in an' out. Jem, we need to have a pahty.*'

  "There's one next week at the Saunderses.'*

  "Ah mean a pahty heah! A big pahty! Ask Mad an* Ca'line to come an' stay ovah, have a ball an' a barbecuel An* a tiltin* tourney foah the young gentlemen! Ah can staht askin* folks next week."

  "Not so fast, Patsy, not so fast.'* Jem laughed. "We can talk about that later." As though he suddenly noticed the quiet, he looked about the room. "Where*s Dulcie? She's not in bed already? She*s not sick?'*

  Patricia sighed. "Oh, no, but Ah very nearly wish she was! Mammy told me she was bein' mean to three of the pickaninnies today, an' she struck Jothan! Sometimes, Jem, Ah jes* don't know what's to come o' that child.**

  "Jothan brought it on himself, I'll wager." Jem grinned. Secretly he was pleased that his daughter could hold her own. "Don't you worry about Jothan, love. He'll get even with her.**

  "Well, Ah don't know, Jem, she's all worked up 'bout somethin*. Did you give Jothan a present? Somethin' Dulcie might want?"

  "A bag of marbles to be divided among all the little boys is all."

  "What would a little girl want with marbles?" She took her husband's arm, looking up at him fondly. "Today, deah, Ah believe Dulcie is all youahs and none of mine. Why, when Ah was six, mah mama declared Ah was a perfect li'l lady."

  "It's her red hair," said Jem complacently. His own was the same color. "Red hair gives people strong passions."

  Patricia blushed hotly and patted him on the arm with her fingertips. "Jem Moran, you have got a very naughty mind! And besides, weah talkin' 'bout youah daughtah, not youahself!"

  Jem thought fleetingly that he was talking about Dulcie.

  They drove down the double line of crape myrtles that separated clover-thick lawn from vegetables gardens and the orchard beyond. In the long open spaces dust devils rose and died down in the constant, drying wind.

  Jem stopped the carriage. With a broad sweep of his thick square hand he indicated the field that stretched and rolled before him. The late-afternoon sun cast hot-looking shadows at the feet of the wilted plants. "This is what I wanted you to see. It proves everythin' I've been sayin'. The land's gone barren. Our Mossrose is dyin' on us, Patsy love."

  The summer had been exceptionally dry. Now, in mid-August, in the cotton fields stood a poor crop thickly covered with red-brown dust. On the lowest branches the bolls had turned brown and split open to show the snowy locks ready for the first picking. Patricia's gaze moved outward, down the long rows to the dark, ragged pine forest crouched waiting to reclaim the brilliant earth that had been cleared with so much difficulty.

  She shivered slightly. Turn one's back and the trees would creep up and take over again. "How big a crop do you reckon on this season, Jem?"

  "Unless we get a freshet soon, we'll be lucky to get half last year's. And it, you'll recollect, was mighty pindlin'."

  "But it will bring enough to keep the plantation through next yeah?"

  "That's why I wanted to talk to you, without the servants eavesdroppin' and chatterin' about it all over the county. Patsy darlin', we're runnin' out of money."

  Her eyes widened. "But ouah credit is still good! Isn*t it?"

  "Not as good as it was before. I've bartered and traded to the hilt, and we're still in need of cashl'*

  "But the cotton—"

  'The cotton crop may pay back the last loan. It won't buy you pretty dresses or see you off on visits to your kin-folk. I can't say positively that the vegetable gardens will feed us throu^ the winter. The field hands are totin' water, but nothin' is doing well. Nothin', Patsy."

  She tu
rned soft, confident brown eyes on him. "But you'll bring us out of it all right, Jem. Have you worked out a plan?"

  He drew a deep breath and seemed to grow taller and sturdier. "That I have. Patsy love. I'm goin' to spread out, do things different, quit totin' all my eggs in one basket"

  "Violet says the hens have got the sulks too."

  Sometimes Jem was hard-pressed not to lose his temper with literal Patricia. She was very young, imtutored in worldly ways. Her saving grace was that she loved him without reserve and she believed in him. The edge of his impatience softened. "Forget the hens for now, Patsy. They're Asa's job, and I'll have Wolf speak to him tomorrow. I'm talkin' about field upon field of puny cotton. We're goin' to have to let the land rest. You know, Patsy, that's one of the troubles of the South today."

  "Jem deah, don't let's get stahted on the whole South. You know how it boahs me. Ah thought we were talkin* about ouahselves."

  **I am, but let me lead up to it. Madam," he said, irritable again.

  "Very well, Jem," she said with cool dignity. "Ah'U just sit heah quiet as a beetle and listen to you."

  •The South," he began expansively, *thinks the land win go on forever, all on its own, without any replenishment, just raising the same cash crops in the same fields time without end. Most planters are too fine-frocked to have their darkies spread manure and plow it in."

  "But you've been doin' the same as they did!"

  "I know, I know, and me who knows better. You're lookin' at the results right out there. Every stalk of cotton dry as popcorn."

  "But next yeah—"

  "Patsy, when the land wears out, the planter's got few

  choices. He can sell, if anybody'll buy. He can abandon everythin', move his family to a new place, and begin again. Or he can build up his fields for a few years and then start rotatin' his crops."

  "A few yeahs! Jem, how can we manage to keep all ouah people fed and clothed and tended if we don't have good credit or cash or a crop?"