American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  Veronica slowed briefly. Her gaze was arrested by a man in a light gray suit standing by himself as she swept by. He was staring straight at her, as if he knew her, though she could not imagine ever seeing him before. It was a face almost as good-looking as Seth’s—she would surely remember it had she seen it before. He was older than she, in his late twenties probably.

  His head nodded ever so slightly, as if he too had noticed the invisible affiliation between them. A quick involuntary smile flashed from her lips, the nature of which it would have been difficult to define with certainty. A coquettish playfulness was the natural mode of her existence where the opposite sex was concerned, though at first glance she had little interest in this man. Perhaps it had been drawn out by the nervous uncertainty of realizing that his eyes were boring into hers.

  Whatever the cause, the locking of their gaze onto one another lasted but an instant. None of her friends even noticed. Quickly she continued on. She loved the attention. But no matter how many eyes might be drawn to her this day, Veronica Beaumont reminded herself that she had eyes for only one of the invited guests.

  With wide-skirted orange dress rustling, and well aware of the heady aroma of perfume she had liberally sprinkled on wrists, neck, and behind her ears, she drew up to a small group that had pulled into the estate only moments before. As Richmond handed the reins of the horses to the black groom standing beside him, she bore straight ahead to the older of the two young men who had just arrived.

  “Hello, Seth,” she said, dropping her eyes for just the right effect.

  “Hello, Veronica,” replied the handsome young Davidson with a smile. “Happy birthday.”

  “Thank you. I’m so glad you could come.”

  As she spoke she gradually eased him away from the others. Unconsciously Seth followed and soon they were alone.

  “The orchestra is about to begin,” she said, slipping her hand through his arm and leading him across the grass. “I hope you brought your dancing shoes.”

  A figure crept through the woods at the edge of a brown ploughed field. He had skillfully avoided a few working slaves and dogs after leaving his horse tied to a tree about a mile away near the back road he had taken from town. Now he had managed to get within sight of the plantation where his own father worked as assistant overseer, but where neither of them would ever be welcome on a social occasion such as today’s.

  He stopped as he crested a slight incline, then looked out from amid the cover of trees and undergrowth.

  He was close enough to hear the music, voices, and laughter drifting toward him from the birthday celebration.

  He had never attended such a gala in his life. Creeping closer, he could see the partygoers. Watching them filled him with many conflicting emotions he himself would have been the last person capable of fully identifying. This was a culture where class was everything. No one expected it to be otherwise. It was the way things had always been. Some were born to wealth and prestige. Some came from the other side of the tracks.

  He was the latter. He knew men like Denton Beaumont thought he was poor white trash. Let him think what he wanted. He didn’t care. He would make something of himself. Then they would see that white suits and mint juleps weren’t everything.

  Besides, right now he wasn’t looking for Denton Beaumont, but for another member of that prestigious family.

  The eyes of twenty-year-old Scully Riggs flitted back and forth trying to find Veronica in the crowd. He had been possessed by her beauty for years. Had his father been able to get him on at the plantation it would have been a dream come true, but this job at the train station was better than nothing. Soon he would have money of his own. He could buy her things, and maybe save up enough to buy himself a suit of clothes that would make her take notice, and show that father of hers that he could be a gentleman, too.

  The sound of a barking dog startled him.

  He spun around, pulse suddenly racing. The noise came from at least a quarter mile away. No one had seen him. But the sound triggered the memories and as usual, he was powerless to stop them. A sweat broke over his face.

  He slumped against a tree, trying to shake off the terrible phantasm.

  Suddenly he was running… running… glancing back… still running… stumbling… the sound of barking, growling dogs behind him and gaining rapidly.

  He could never hope to outrun them. There were too many, and they were bigger and faster than he was. He was only eight then… some of the boys chasing him had been ten, even twelve.

  He remembered glancing back again. They were closer yet, sprinting after him, big grins on their ugly black faces.

  “Hey, little w’ite boy!” he heard a voice he knew well enough call out behind him. “Who’s gwine ter save you now, you little w’ite trash!”

  He wanted to be brave. He should turn around and face them… put up his fists and fight them as best he could. But he was too afraid. He knew that tears were streaming down his face and he couldn’t stop them. He was a coward and they knew it.

  He heard the footsteps now—they were getting close—laughter and taunts and the sound of vicious dogs.

  He felt a hand on his back. He cried out in terror.

  The next instant a great shove sent him sprawling onto the ground face down in the dirt.

  For a few seconds he lay in terror. All he heard was the deep breathing of his five or six pursuers. Slowly he tried to raise himself. He saw their shadows surrounding him.

  “We gwine beat you up so bad!” said one. A swift kick in his ribs followed.

  He screamed out. “Please… please, Elias, don’t… help… somebody—please help me!”

  But the only answer to his screams was more laughter from the group of young Negro teens.

  “He’s callin’ fer help, Elias,” said one of Slade’s friends. “Well, I’ll help!”

  He felt himself dragged to his feet by a fist clutching his shirt. An evil-looking black face pulling him up to within two or three inches, spit into his eyes two or three times, then threw him toward one of his friends, who doubled up his fist and delivered a powerful blow into the middle of his stomach.

  He doubled over and collapsed, frantic and unable to breathe. Now what seemed a dozen hands and feet at once attacked him, pulling his hair, kicking, delivering blows all over his body, to his face and private parts and stomach and back. All he could do was crumple into a ball and try to keep his face protected from their feet.

  How long the torment lasted, he didn’t know. It seemed an hour. In truth it was probably less than five minutes.

  Eventually he became aware that he was alone again, whimpering on the ground in agony.

  Slowly Scully Riggs came to himself. He was still leaning against the thick pine trunk, and slowly the sounds of music and laughter drifted again into his hearing. He was breathing heavily in a cold sweat. The day was warm, but his shirt was drenched in an icy chill.

  It was his secret. His terrifying secret. The day he realized that he was too much a coward to stand up and fight. He hated the memory of it. He hated what it did to him.

  He could still see the little boy of his imagination, limping home crying, bloody and splattered with dirt, clothes torn, face and chest bruised, one rib broken, blood from his nose smeared all over his mouth and chin.

  He had not even told his mother what had happened. Somehow he knew that even if his father went to the McClellan plantation over the river and registered a complaint, nothing would be done. They didn’t care about men like Leon Riggs and what happened to his little brat of a kid. So a few colored boys got rowdy. If the same thing had happened to one of McClellan’s own sons, there would have been whippings, possibly even a hanging. But not for the son of poor white trash. The fact that Slade was a troublemaker and that McClellan had gotten rid of him less than a year after the incident had nothing to do with his having thrashed Scully Riggs.

  So he said he didn’t know who the boys were, and the incident was dropped. Whether his s
ilence made the culprits respect him any more, he didn’t know. It didn’t really matter to Scully what they thought. He had vowed that same night, lying in bed aching and crying himself to sleep, that he would get even in his own time and in his own way.

  It was a vow he had not forgotten.

  As the years went by, Scully occasionally saw one or another of the colored boys around town or, more recently, when he made his deliveries. He looked at them, and they looked at him. Eyes met, but there were no smiles. Neither had forgotten. It had just been a relief that Slade was gone. And when he learned two or three years ago that he was back at Greenwood, meaner and stronger than before, Scully couldn’t help trembling at the thought of running into him alone.

  If he hated Elias Slade worse than all the rest, it was not by much, for by the time he was fifteen he had learned to hate all coloreds. If he hated anything more, it was whites who gave their coloreds too much freedom.

  Thirty-two

  Out of the line of sight of the watchful son of his overseer’s assistant, and having no idea of the role his daughter occupied in the young man’s stratagems, on the other side of the grounds the day’s host was involved in a discussion with several prominent Virginia plantation owners and state legislators.

  “So, Denton,” the Irishman McClellan, whose plantation house as the crow flew lay but three miles north and across the river, was saying, “how does your Senate race appear to be shaping up?”

  “It is early yet, William,” replied Beaumont. “I only announced last month. But things look good thus far. I am confident that by summer I will have Democrats throughout the state backing my candidacy.”

  “And Republicans?”

  “I look for no support from the abolitionists. In today’s climate, no abolitionist candidate has a chance in Virginia.”

  “The West is almost entirely abolitionist,” commented one Ford Hayden, a congressman from Lynchburg.

  “Perhaps,” rejoined Beaumont, “but without the population or votes of the East. The Democratic tide will carry Virginia, and I intend to ride it all the way to Washington.”

  “Hear, hear!” said William McClellan.

  Light laughter and a few toasts followed.

  “What will you do about your role as commissioner?” asked Hayden.

  “I shall have to resign the post when I move to Washington,” replied Beaumont. “We have had so few runaways in Spotsylvania County, there’s not much to the job.”

  “Fugitives are on the increase everywhere,” said McClellan, “and we are in a direct line to the North.”

  “Then perhaps you shall have the job, William—that is, unless my son Wyatt seeks it! Then I shall have to cast my weight of influence behind him! But seriously, I do not see this region becoming a conduit for runaways. In all my years as commissioner, I have only had one fugitive bounty hunter come through looking for slaves. I sometimes wonder if the position is more honorary than legitimate!”*

  “I say, Beaumont,” now put in a relative newcomer to the region, a certain Nugent Bayhurst who had come from Louisiana but was wealthy enough to be considered one of Virginia’s most vital political contacts, “I was just talking to Frederick Trowbridge a few minutes ago. What’s this he tells me about your neighbor?”

  “You mean about his slaves?”

  “Yes, is it true?”

  The candidate nodded. “You didn’t read about it two years ago? It was in all the papers in the East.”

  “Now that you mention it, I think I do recall something about it,” mused the Louisianan. “But I didn’t know it was him. I couldn’t believe it when I heard. I know you Virginians have more Northern blood in your veins than we of the Deep South. But I didn’t think your radicalism had gone quite that far!”

  “Believe me, it hasn’t!” rejoined Beaumont, shaking his head. “The man is not representative of Virginia. This is a slave state and will always be a slave state.”

  “Then why did he do it?”

  “He maintains it is the principle of the thing.”

  “Is he mad?”

  “No, just a fool.”

  “Strong words for one’s neighbor.”

  “His action two years ago in my view qualifies him for the label.”

  “I understood you and he were friends?” put in Hayden.

  “I have known him all my life. We grew up together. I used to ride with him and his brother when we were boys. Had his father known what his son would do with the plantation he worked for all his life, he would never have turned it over to him after the, uh…”

  He hesitated. “—After the accident with his brother,” he added.

  “But why… why is what I want to know?” persisted Bayhurst.

  “Who can say with such fanatic types,” commented McClellan.

  “Who can possibly benefit from such a scheme, surely not the darkies?” asked Bayhurst. “They will be lost. They haven’t the capacity to take care of themselves. And how will he keep his plantation afloat?”

  “He has many old-fashioned notions,” replied Beaumont. “He has odd views about any number of things. He doesn’t seem to mind the consequences of his actions either to himself, his family, or his state and country. But he should be here today, why don’t you ask him for yourself?”

  “You invited him?”

  “Had to!” said Beaumont, continuing to laugh lightly. “My daughter fancies his son, you know! If you do find out more about the state of his mind,” he added, “please let me know. I would be most interested!”

  “He’s not actually… pro-North, outright abolitionist in his views?”

  “I doubt it extends so far as that. He cares nothing for politics. He says his decision was merely a private matter.”

  “Such things always have consequences,” noted Bayhurst.

  “You may be right. In all honesty, most of Virginia has forgotten him. It is an experiment doomed to fail.”

  A few more men sauntered toward the small group. One of them was considerably younger than the rest. Wearing a gray suit, he blended in as if he were one of them, though in truth not a single man present actually knew him. He smiled and laughed at all the right moments, carrying himself as if he were completely in the know about everything they were talking about. In fact, he was listening, observing, staring into eyes, noting body language, and making a hundred little mental notes of what he heard and saw. All the while he himself said nothing.

  “I just heard the most unbelievable rumor,” said one Harrison Roberts, a lawyer from Alabama as he approached the group, “—you must know, Denton. Some people were talking over there, and said that Richmond Davidson freed his slaves two years ago.”

  “We were just talking about it,” nodded Beaumont. “I am afraid you heard correctly. You didn’t get news of it down in Alabama either? I thought you Louisianans and Alabamans kept up on events. It created quite a stir here.”

  “No, I’ve heard nothing about it.”

  “It is actually true!” added Abraham Seehorn, walking up puffing on a large cigar.

  “I can hardly believe it!”

  “Believe it, Harrison,” said one of the more distinguished of today’s guests, newly appointed Supreme Court justice Upton Byford. “He had legal documentation drawn up, did he not, Beaumont?”

  “Not only that, he gave every adult eight dollars in cash, as I understand it, including the women. Those who wanted to remain, he offered jobs as wage-earning workers like any white man.”

  “You seem remarkably well informed on the matter.”

  “Word gets around. Besides, for good or ill, he is my neighbor.”

  “But he didn’t get his odd notions from association with you, eh?” said Hayden with a grin.

  “Please—don’t even suggest such a thing! I will admit that Richmond Davidson has indeed had a profound effect on the development of my political outlook… pushing me yet farther in the opposite direction!”

  Laughter followed as they paused to take sips from the glas
ses in their hands.

  “The thing’s preposterous!” huffed Seehorn, who had not joined in the laughter. He did not particularly like Denton Beaumont and was here only out of loyalty to the party. However, he despised Richmond Davidson. He had detected an oddity about the man at their first meeting three years ago, and reading about what Davidson had done had angered him to the depths of his Southern sensibilities.

  “How will they live?” now put in Hayden. “What will they do without him taking care of them?”

  “He is giving them wages,” replied Beaumont, “and they are paying him what he considers a fair rent for their living quarters. Whatever they have left after paying living expenses is theirs to keep.”

  “I take it, then, that they opted to stay on?” asked Roberts.

  “Mostly. Though there were some who went North. Isn’t that what you’ve heard, William?”

  McClellan nodded. “Our two sons and his are friends, but the information I receive is limited. I don’t think he’s lost more than half a dozen.”

  “Nevertheless, he will be bankrupt in no time!” laughed Hayden.

  “What is he doing, hoeing his own cotton, sowing his own seed?” asked Bayhurst.

  “Apparently it hasn’t come to that yet,” said McClellan. “I’ve wanted to pay him a visit just to see, but to be honest, I haven’t wanted to be seen fraternizing with the man. Have you been to Greenwood lately, Denton? What’s it like over there now?”

  “Me… no!” laughed Beaumont. “I wouldn’t darken the door of the place. But my Wyatt is over there, like your Brad, from time to time and tells me that he takes to the fields regularly.”

  Beaumont paused, chuckling, then went on. “Actually, I did call on him once—I’ve forgotten why,” he said, “about a year ago. I found him in work clothes out in a field with four or five of his slaves talking with them as if they were his friends.”