My Name's Not Friday

by Jon Walter

  ‘That’s better,’ says Chepstow.

  Well, Hubbard doesn’t flinch. To look at him you’d think he hasn’t even noticed, and that’s only going to make things worse as far as I can tell.

  Peighton steps alongside the barn door so he can see into Hubbard’s face. ‘That ain’t hard enough, son. It’s got to be harder. Look at this man. He’s a beast. Ain’t no way he’s gonna respect you till you make it hurt. Do you understand me?’

  Gerald tries again quickly, putting so much effort into it that he misses completely and lashes the wood of the door close to Peighton’s head. That makes the men laugh louder. ‘You’re gonna need to sell this man soon as you cut him down, Master Gerald. Ain’t no way he’s gonna do a stroke of work for you from now on.’

  Sicely hurries down the steps of the kitchen carrying a wooden chair and Peighton takes hold of it, walks across and places it next to Gerald. ‘Try that for size, boy. That should make it easier.’

  ‘I don’t need it.’ Gerald shouts out, and I can see he’s close to tears, but Peighton reaches out, picks him up and stands him up on the seat. The men all hoot with laughter, but Mrs Allen has had enough and she explodes, like a great dark cloud that’s been waiting to burst, like a river that’s come up over the banks and is ready to wash away anything in its path. She strides over to the chair and snatches the whip from Gerald’s hand. ‘Get down from there!’ She pulls him by the arm so he stumbles from the chair and falls into the dust at her feet. I think she might be about to whip her own son, she looks that angry, only Gerald scuttles away on his knees and runs off to the house in tears and I don’t know what is worse than this, seeing the people I care for getting hurt and upset.

  Peighton offers to take the whip from her. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. We’ve gone too far. Let me finish this for you and we’ll be gone.’

  Mrs Allen composes herself, then walks right past Peighton and she don’t say a word as she lashes Hubbard hard, like she hates the very soul of him, and she does it again and again, whipping him as though he were Abe Lincoln himself and she don’t stop to look around her. No. She don’t hesitate to hear what might be said. She whips that man who is twice her size, whips him till his back is more red than black, till his muscles look more like ribbon than flesh, but even then Hubbard don’t move or make a noise and you would think it was as though a fly had landed on him for all the emotion he shows and I reckon that makes her madder still, so she keeps whipping him. She don’t stop. She looks calm while she’s doing it, but you can see the fury and the strength of her, like she ain’t got full control of herself, and I don’t think anyone is counting how many lashes he’s had cos it goes on and on until I have to shout out, ‘How many is that? Who’s counting how many he’s had?’ Only no one answers me.

  Well, it says something ’bout the pride of the man that Hubbard’s legs give up before his head goes down. I see him buckle at the knees and hang there by his wrists and I’m asking God to make her stop but she carries on, gives him about ten more lashes, and with each one I’m whispering, ‘Bow your head, Hubbard. Bow your head. If you bow your head, she’ll have to stop.’

  Only he holds his head high. That man won’t bow his head even though he can’t still stand on his own two feet.

  Finally Chepstow steps forward and puts a hand on Mrs Allen’s shoulder. ‘I reckon you’d be wise to stop, ma’am, unless you want to risk permanent damage to your property. I make that a hundred and fifty. Give or take. He’s had enough.’

  Mrs Allen hesitates. She is breathing heavily and she straightens her dress. She hands the whip back to Chepstow. ‘Thank you for your help in returning my foreman.’

  Peighton takes his hat off to her. ‘We’ll be on our way then, Mrs Allen.’

  His men rouse their dogs from the water bowl and they mount up and take leave of us as Mrs Allen takes herself back inside the house.

  It’s Levi who cuts Hubbard down from the barn. He finds an old door and we lay the big man down upon it. Winnie appears with a bucket of salt water, which she pours over Hubbard’s back and we watch him shake as though convulsed and then be still. He closes his eyes. It takes four of us to carry him back to the cabin and we lay him down upon the floor and leave him there, going back to our work, weaving baskets for the new season and checking on the ploughs, making sure they are oiled and in good working order.

  Later, when I return to the cabin, Hubbard hasn’t moved. Not as far as I can tell. I can hear him breathing, and though he doesn’t speak, I’m sure he’s conscious. I build up a decent fire and cook a broth by boiling water with a little pork and rice. I make sure there’s fresh water in the bucket.

  Mrs Allen knocks on our cabin door. ‘How is he?’ she asks, and I stand aside so she can see for herself. She walks past me, kneels by his side and puts a hand to his head. ‘He ain’t hot. That’s a good sign. Bring me over my bag, will you?’

  I bring the leather bag from where she’s left it at the door and she opens it and brings out a brown glass bottle and a cloth. ‘I made a flaxseed poultice.’ She holds the bottle up to show me. ‘It should help to soothe the pain.’

  I don’t know nothing about that, and I would have told her, if she’d asked me, that she wouldn’t have a need of it if she hadn’t flogged him half to death. Only I don’t. I stand watching her dab at his red raw back and Hubbard don’t move nor make a sound. He lies still as can be, his eyes closed like he’s dead, though we can hear him breathing, and Mrs Allen hovers over him, all sweet as an angel, the very same vision I saw that first time we met, and to look at her you would have thought that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

  She stays sitting with him till the sun is almost set. She sure is gentle, I give her that, and that affects me in a way that’s strange and I feel uncomfortable and don’t know where to look. I find myself something to do with the pots and pans, but it ain’t no good; I can’t take my eyes from the missus and I find myself edging closer and closer till I’m kneeling beside the two of ’em. And suddenly I’m crying. I’m blubbering like a little child as I wipe an arm across my eyes.

  Mrs Allen puts a hand to my head and pulls me down upon her lap where I lie hopeless, sobbing like a little child, watching her soothe the last of the ointment into the wounds on Hubbard’s back.

  ‘Do you understand why I had to whip him?’ she whispers as she runs her fingers through my hair.

  ‘I think so, ma’am.’

  ‘Ain’t no one born who don’t make mistakes, Friday. Only we can’t learn from those mistakes till we accept the punishment we deserve.’

  I breathe in deeply, drawing the snot back up my nose, knowing it should have been me that took the punishment, if it was going to be anybody. ‘He ain’t never been whipped, ma’am. He told me once as a matter of pride.’

  ‘Did he tell you that? Well, pride can be a wicked thing, Friday. I’ve seen you listen to the preacher, so I know you understand. You’re a good boy, Friday.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I tell her. ‘I do try to be.’

  But I ain’t a good boy, and the good Lord knows it. I’m a bad, bad boy who lies to her and steals her books and I ain’t even got the decency to tell her. Not if I don’t have to.

  When she’s finished with her soothing, Hubbard’s back is a wide stretch of milky white and there ain’t no red or black left visible upon it. Mrs Allen shoos me from her lap and then packs her bag so she’s ready to leave. ‘Shall I have Lizzie come and stay with you tonight?’

  Hubbard’s lying half dead upon the floor, but I tell her I can manage.

  ‘You come and fetch me if he takes a turn for the worse. Do you hear me?’

  ‘I will, ma’am. Don’t you worry. I’ll come up to the house straight away.’

  ‘Thank you, Friday.’ She smiles uncertainly. ‘You’re a sweet and gentle child and this place is better off for having you here.’

  ‘I’ll pray for him, missus.’

  ‘You do that. And let’s hope we have no more need of this type
of nonsense. Goodness knows there’s enough misery in the world without us making any more for ourselves.’

  Mrs Allen leaves the bottle and the cloth on our table. She tells me to apply another poultice in the morning and then she goes outside and gathers us together at the fire.

  Tonight she don’t read to us from the Bible, reciting to us instead the Lord’s Prayer, as she is sometimes wont to do.

  Chapter 16

  First time I see Gerald after the whipping, we dig a grave for his father.

  Mr Allen might have died the same night Hubbard lay on our cabin floor – I don’t know – but the news of his death arrives the very day Hubbard is able to pull on a shirt and return to work. The missus had gone into town intending to buy flour, but returned instead with two bags of black dye and a letter that said her husband was dead.

  Sicely brings us the news from the house. She tells us Mr Allen had dictated the letter to a nurse as he lay on his deathbed and in it he had promised Mrs Allen they would meet again in heaven. Sicely thought that was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard. To Gerald, Mr Allen asked that he love and obey his stepmother in everything, that he protect his baby sister, and that when he came into his inheritance he run the plantation on the sound principles that his father had already established, in the hope that it would one day thrive and provide a good life for everyone who lived there, just as he had once dreamed it would.

  Gerald offers me a choice of shovels and pushes the hair back from his eyes. ‘You ever dug a grave before?’

  ‘Never,’ I tell him.

  ‘Well, we better get to it,’ he says, a look of grim determination in his bright blue eyes.

  I take the biggest of the spades and Gerald leads me to an old elm tree, which is situated in the woods on a rise that overlooks the house. This is where he will bury his father, and we choose a spot fifteen feet from the foot of the trunk to start our digging. ‘Daddy made me promise I’d bury him here if he died.’

  ‘It’s a nice spot,’ I tell him as we look down upon the view. We can see the road making a straight brown line through the fields. We can see the shining river as it curves its way around to the sea. In the yard directly below us Sicely has set up a pot to boil Mrs Allen’s clothes till the dye turns ’em black and a row of sombre dresses already hangs dripping from the corner of the cookhouse, right on over to the barn.

  ‘I’m sorry ’bout your father.’ It don’t seem like much to say in the circumstances but I want to say something. ‘I prayed for him like you asked. We all did.’

  Gerald nods as though he understands. I don’t think he wants to talk about it. He only wants to focus on the job in hand. ‘It shouldn’t be so difficult,’ he says, measuring it out with his feet. ‘Six feet long and six feet down.’ He stamps his shovel into the soil and turns it over. Then he digs again.

  I choose my own spot about three feet from Gerald and tread my spade down the same way he did. We don’t talk for a long time and Gerald digs two spades of dirt to every one of mine, but eventually he says to me, ‘You never did get to read to my daddy like I hoped you would. That’s a shame. Shame you never met him too, cos you’d have liked him. He’d have liked you too, I guess.’

  Now I don’t know about that. I dig the dirt out and we lay it up in piles at the foot of the elm tree. I get a blister on the heel of my hand, feel it rise up sore till it’s ’bout ready to burst. Maybe that’s what makes me angry, I don’t know, but digging that grave for Gerald’s father makes me want to strike out and hurt someone. We’re digging down through fibrous roots, lumping out wet clods of earth, and I can feel myself getting more and more angry. We’ve gone about a foot down when I blurt out, ‘It weren’t fair for your daddy to die.’

  I say it like I blame him, like Gerald has made this happen on purpose, and he stops his digging. ‘Fairness don’t come into it, Friday. It’s just bad luck. Mother reckons you got a one in four chance if the smallpox gets you. That’s why we had to pray for him. He just weren’t lucky. That’s all.’

  I bite my lip but it don’t help. It only makes the feeling stronger.

  When the blade of my shovel hits a stone, I dig around its edge, teasing it out. ‘He should never have gone to war. He shouldn’t have left you like he did. It’s a stupid war anyway. He should have been here looking after us.’

  Gerald takes offence at that. ‘Now hold on there a minute,’ he says. ‘My daddy’s a hero. There ain’t no two ways about it.’

  We stop our digging and glare at each other, but that don’t stop my mouth talking ten to the dozen like it has a life of its own. ‘Maybe if he’d have been where he was meant to be then Lizzie would still have Milly. Maybe Connie’d still be around and Hubbard wouldn’t have got whipped. Would your daddy have whipped Hubbard? I don’t think he would. You told me he never whipped a man himself. It was you who said that. I remember you did.’

  ‘So that’s what this is about.’

  ‘Why’d you do it, Gerald? Why didn’t you stop it?’

  Gerald stamps down, lifts another spade of earth up out of the grave and throws it further than he needs to. ‘Hubbard deserved what he got. He was caught fair and square and we didn’t have no choice but to whip him. My daddy would have done the same thing. I’m sure he would. Maybe he wouldn’t have done it himself, but he would have made sure someone did it.’

  ‘You could have refused!’

  ‘They’d have done it anyway!’ He stops his digging and stares at me, exasperated. ‘There are folks who think that darkies ain’t good enough to be free. Now I ain’t one of ’em, but that’s who you got to convince – and you can’t do that when they’ve brought in a runaway and everyone’s howling for blood.’

  ‘But it was you who did it – at least you would have if you’d been any good with a whip.’ That stings him and I’m glad of it. ‘You could have tried to stop it! I mean, I thought you owned all of us. Or don’t that mean nothing? Just like freeing us when you come into your inheritance. Is that just one big ol’ bag of shit as well?’

  Now I don’t know where my foul mouth comes from. It’s like the Devil has a hold of my tongue and I’m possessed of his anger so much that all I can feel is his fingers around my throat, trying to throttle all the goodness out of me.

  Gerald looks like he might be about to cry, but I ain’t even sorry for him. In fact it makes me glad.

  ‘Well, is it? Is it all just talk? After all, your daddy seemed to say a lot about freedom, but he still went to war to fight against Lincoln. So was that just bullshit? Cos I would sorely like to know and so would everyone else.’

  Gerald drops his head. ‘That ain’t fair, Friday,’ he says quietly.

  ‘It’s true enough and both of us know it.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Well, what about your daddy? Where’s your daddy now, Friday? He ain’t here for you either, is he? I bet you don’t even know where he is, do you? He probably went off whoring and—’

  I hit him hard as I can, swinging wildly so my knuckle slaps bang against his ear, and then I jump him, sending the two of us down onto the soft fresh earth of his own father’s grave. I grab a handful of hair and push his head down into the dirt, but he puts a hand up quick and claws at my cheek with his nails. It’s bad enough to draw blood and both of us are wriggling and squealing like frightened little pigs on slaughter day. Then a sudden blow lands on the back of my head, hard enough it shakes all the strength from my knees. Gerald must’ve hit me with a rock. He must have, but no, suddenly I’m lifted into the air, a hand on the back of my shirt dragging me up out the grave as another blow spins me around in the air to face Hubbard.

  He lets go of me, hitting me again on the back of my head as he does it, and I cower at his knees. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he barks at me, and taking a handful of my shirt again he begins to drag me down the path that leads towards the house and all the time I’m shouting that I’m sorry and that I didn’t know what I was doing.

  ‘Hubbard, let him go!’ There ar
e footsteps behind us as Gerald shouts out desperately. ‘I said for you to let him go. Now, you do as I say!’

  Hubbard stops walking. He takes his hand from my shirt. ‘He can’t ever raise a hand to you! The missus ought to know about this.’ He scowls at both of us. ‘She’s gotta decide what should be done.’

  ‘Please don’t tell her, Hubbard.’ Gerald wipes the dirt from underneath his eye. ‘It was my fault. I started it.’

  I begin to protest. ‘No, that ain’t right …’

  But Hubbard’s still glaring at me. ‘It don’t matter who started it.’

  ‘I started it, Hubbard.’ Gerald cuts us short. ‘I started it, and it wouldn’t be right for Friday to be punished twice.’ Gerald straightens my shirt out across my shoulders. ‘My daddy always said I had a bit of the bully in me, and I’d be letting him down if I let it get the better of me.’ He offers me his hand to shake right there and then. ‘I’m sorry, Friday. I won’t let it happen again.’

  I shake his hand, my fingers all limp with the shame of what I’ve done. ‘I’m sorry too. I really am.’

  Hubbard looks angry with the both of us. ‘You boys are too old for this. You shouldn’t be playing together. Do you hear me? You’re too old, and the missus doesn’t like it. You should be working at behaving like responsible young men. Now I don’t want to see you two together again. Do you hear me?’

  We tell him that we do, and he sends us both packing in different directions before finishing the grave himself.

  I apologize to Hubbard soon as he comes in through the door of our cabin. ‘Don’t you ever let it happen again,’ he tells me directly. ‘I mean it. People get killed for less than that. Do you hear me?’

  I tell him that I understand and spend the evening inside, thinking of all the things I might do that will balance out the bad I’d done today.

  It ain’t long till we find out we don’t have need of the grave. A second letter says that Mr Allen’s body has been disposed of in the hospital grounds as a precaution against the spread of disease and he will have to lie where he died, like every other unfortunate man who lost his life in this war and will never return home.