American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  Seth Davidson had ridden into the precincts of Oakbriar on the opposite side of the house about the same time Veronica had disappeared around the barn. He was talking to Jarvis at the front door just about the time Veronica’s treacherous game of cat and mouse turned ugly, and in the midst of her catty stratagems she suddenly found herself the prey.

  “Stop… stop it right now, Elias!” she yelled. “Don’t you dare… Elias—”

  But there was no one to hear her cries. Elias had made sure of that.

  “I don’t know, Massa Dav’son,” Jarvis was saying back at the house. “Las’ time I saw her, she lef’ out da back door. She may hab been goin’ fo’ a walk down by da garden.”

  “You don’t mind if I just walk around back and take a look, do you,” said Seth, “and see if I can find her?”

  “No, suh, Massa Dav’son. I’s sure dat be jes’ fine.”

  A minute or two later, Seth had been through the garden and was walking in the direction of the barn. As he glanced about he wondered where everyone was.

  He heard a muffled scream. He stopped and listened, then sprinted for the door of the barn.

  Running inside, at first all was darkness. Again came a scream, then another.

  “Help… someone… get off—you big brute! Help—”

  A vicious slap sounded, followed by a scream of pain. Seth knew it was Veronica.

  He groped forward. After coming in hurriedly from the sunshine, he was hardly able to see his way in the dark barn. He bumped into a post and tripped over a bale of hay.

  “Veronica!” he called as he picked himself up. “Veronica… is that you!”

  “Seth!” she cried. “Seth… please, help me!”

  The light from an upper window illuminated a corner where a stack of bales sat. As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light and he stumbled his way further inside, Seth saw two figures in the dim light.

  “Seth—” screamed Veronica, struggling to get up and run to him. Another blow knocked her back to the floor.

  By now Seth could see enough to make out what was going on. He didn’t recognize Slade, nor even realize at first that Veronica’s assailant was black. But the color of skin didn’t change what had to be done. He ran forward and hurled himself with all his might toward whomever it was bent over trying to keep Veronica down.

  He might as well have thrown himself against the trunk of an oak for all the effect of his attack. But at least he succeeded in knocking Slade off his balance, momentarily shoving him away from Veronica. She jumped to her feet and ran to the opposite side of the barn.

  “Seth… Seth, I’m safe!” she cried. “Come on… let’s get out of here!”

  Seth regained his feet, just as Slade turned around and began to pick himself up. But Seth did not flee. He would not leave until Veronica was outside.

  “Go, Veronica,” he said. “Get out of here. Go find your father.” As he spoke, from where Slade climbed to one knee, the light from the window fell on Seth’s form as he stood blocking the way to Veronica like an avenging angel.

  “So, hit’s you, young Dab’son,” said Slade angrily. “Dis ain’t none ob yo’ affair.”

  “Somebody’s got to stop you, Slade. This is Miss Beaumont—have you gone crazy… trying to hurt her! What are you thinking, man?”

  “What I dun’s my own biz’nus. Hit’s between me an’ her. Now back away, w’ite boy, effen you don’t want me ter hurt you real bad.”

  Seth’s feet did not budge.

  “Get out of here, Veronica!” he shouted again behind him. “Slade, you stay where you are till she’s gone.”

  By now Veronica was paralyzed with fear, not for herself but for Seth. Not only had Elias Slade’s passions been aroused, now so was his fury. He rose and took a menacing step toward Seth, then suddenly flew at him and struck wildly, intending to render him senseless in a single blow.

  But in the dim light and uneven footing he was not at his best. Nor did he quite realize how nimble Seth was on his feet and how swift were his reflexes. Seth easily sidestepped the charge, eluding Slade’s blow with a quick twist of his torso. At the same moment his coiled arm loosed a lightning punch. His fist struck just below Slade’s left eye and immediately drew blood. Slade staggered, enraged yet further, and fell to one knee as shafts of shooting light exploded through his eyes.

  By now Veronica saw how extreme the danger to Seth was likely to become. Having suffered no injuries except to her smugness and her dress, she tore from the barn, then picked up the hem of her dress and sprinted for the house, in terror for what might be Seth’s fate if she did not get help. She only prayed Jarvis knew where her father was this afternoon!

  Inside the barn, Slade shook his head to clear his brain, for the blow had stunned him in more ways than one. Until fifteen seconds ago, no fist of man or boy had ever succeeded in making clean contact with his face. The sensation of being felled in such a manner, and by a scrawny weakling of a white boy, was a new one. He quickly righted himself and turned again to face his foe. He came on more warily this time, like an enraged bear. Alongside his massive bulk, Seth was but a child, but apparently one whose reflexes Slade had underestimated.

  The two circled one another cautiously, fists raised, muscles coiled and awaiting opportunity. But Slade had too long relied on his sheer bulk and strength to be able to learn new habits within the span of a single fight. Again he charged, and yet again Seth’s quick-shifting feet and two twists of his waist left Slade grabbing at air. This time both Seth’s fists found their marks in rapid succession, to the side of the big man’s nose and directly into the center of his right cheek. With these blows, Slade kept his feet yet now tasted his own blood. He spun around again like a vicious wild man at last unchained.

  He did not wait, but charged again with a roar of rage. This time he was able to lay a hand on an outlying portion of Seth’s clothing. It was all he needed. Seth’s only hope lay in footwork, and in keeping space between himself and his adversary. But Seth’s hundred and seventy pounds were no match for Slade’s vastly superior strength in a close fight where Seth could no longer loose himself from the huge man’s grasp.

  He would surely have been killed and Slade hung by a local mob had not the deafening roar of a shotgun blast a minute later interrupted the beating before it became an execution.

  Slade stopped the pummeling and turned. There stood his employer, smoke rising from the barrel of the rifle in his hand, the look of unchecked wrath on his face. The two men stood staring at each other in silence.

  “My daughter says you tried to rape her?” said Beaumont in suppressed wrath.

  “She dun start it, suh, Mister Bowmont,” said Slade, unhumbled but soft spoken.

  “What happened?”

  “I’s mindin’ my own bis’nuz, Mister Bowmont. I come back for da tools like you tol’ me. She come roun’ da barn an’ started speakin’ ter me. She started feeling my arms an’ getting’ real close an’ talkin’ ’bout her brests an’ like dat, like no wumun oughter do, like she wuz tryin’ ter git ter me, not me ter her.”

  Beaumont listened. Though it was hard for him to believe his daughter had been that forward, he had seen how she acted around men before. Was his daughter a complete nitwit, trying her ploys on someone like Slade?

  “Then what?” he said.

  “I dun los’my head, Mister Bowmont. She got me all worked up. How’s I ter know she wuz just funnin’ an’ meant nuthin’by it. How’s a man ter know when a wumun duz dat ter him dat she don’ mean it?”

  Beaumont revolved the thing in his mind another minute longer.

  “All right, Slade,” he said at length. “You might be right, I can’t know for sure. They say most mules get three chances. But my slaves have never been as lucky as my mules because I can’t trust them as far. But since you’re not a slave, I figure even a mule-ugly nigger like you gets one chance. You just had yours. When I came in here I intended to empty both these shells into your belly. I may live to reg
ret not doing so. But if you ever so much as lay one finger on my daughter again… I will kill you. Now get out of here.”

  Even Elias Slade, who feared no man alive, knew that he was lucky to still be breathing and not have a shotgun hole through his chest. He had let the young vixen get to him. But though the Davidson kid just may have saved his life by keeping it from going too far, he would get revenge on him somehow. No one struck Elias Slade in the face and got away with it.

  He slunk from the barn, doing his best to hide his own injuries, and disappeared.

  Meanwhile, Beaumont waited until the big black man was gone, then walked forward and looked down at the unconscious form lying in the straw on the wood floor. With one foot he shoved at the limp piece of broken humanity and turned it over. It was Seth Davidson, all right, just like his daughter said—face bloodied, clothes ripped, and to appearances one arm broken between the wrist and elbow. He had hoped that maybe somehow it wouldn’t be him after all.

  He stared down at Seth’s face a moment more, shuddered at the sight, then turned and left the barn, instructing one of his men standing outside to go into town for the doctor, adding softly, “But take your time about it.”

  Beaumont did not see Elias Slade for the rest of the day. But there could be no denying that the big black man occupied more of his thoughts even than did his daughter. The situation was delicate. By all rights, Slade should hang for what he had done. One word and his men would round Slade up and overpower him. If they could find a limb strong enough to hold him, by nightfall Slade might be hanging dead from some nearby oak.

  But it wasn’t every day someone of Slade’s strength and usefulness came along. The man’s power went beyond mere physical strength. He was intimidating, and Beaumont had rather enjoyed the added dimension that Slade’s presence lent to his own authority and rule. On the other hand, Slade knew that his master had grown dependent on him. He carried himself with just a little too much confidence that was unseemly for a black. Maybe this incident was just what he needed to keep Slade in his place. If the man ever stepped out of line, he would be able to hang him without recrimination.

  But if he did not hang him immediately, Beaumont reflected, he would have to come up with some plausible explanation that would satisfy the community and not cast he himself in an unfavorable light for being too lenient with the man. The one result he could not afford was to look weak himself. That should be easily enough managed, he thought. Whatever Veronica told people, he would add his own embellishment as justification for not having shot Slade on the spot. As for the Davidson kid, he doubted he would make much trouble. He would tell his men what had happened in his own way, do his best to keep it quiet and not make too much of it, and then make sure his own version of events was the one that got around.

  The fact was, Beaumont admitted to himself in a jumble of mixed but selfish motives, he didn’t want to get rid of Slade. He would have one of the men give the brute a dozen lashes, and that, along with sketchy reports of the affair, ought to meet the case when rumors of the fight began to circulate, as they surely would.

  There was, of course, the matter of his daughter’s honor to consider. But his qualms in that direction did not trouble him for long. Veronica’s honor, he thought, was well able to take care of itself.

  Forty-nine

  If Seth Davidson thought going to see Veronica after talking with his mother would ease his uncertainty, he was badly mistaken. Not only had he not had the opportunity to speak with her, he had been pummeled within an inch of his life instead. Now in Veronica’s eyes he was not just a good-looking neighbor boy whom she had had her eyes on since childhood, but her brave squire, her knight in shining armor. Though her father would gladly have made less of the affair, for it made him look none too good for keeping Slade on after it, Veronica made sure the entire county heard of it and knew what a hero Seth Davidson was. The subtle effect was to produce within Seth a sense of protective duty toward Veronica. Even if at first the only means by which he felt it was from the way people looked at him, it could not help but invisibly draw the strings between him and Veronica a little tighter than they had been.

  The doctor set Seth’s arm, wrapped his chest tightly, and gave him powders to take in water for the pain of his facial wounds and cracked ribs. Otherwise, however, he pronounced him as healthy and fit as ever. With Seth at home in bed to recover under his mother’s and Maribel’s watchful care, as life resumed normalcy Veronica slowly realized that the terrifying episode may just have given her what she needed, as she put it, to “help Seth make up his mind,” or, failing that, to make it up for him. In her heart, she knew well and good that the whole thing had been her fault. But like her kind generally, she was not humbled by her blunder and miscalculation so much as determined not to make the same mistake again.

  Meanwhile, the sordid details of the little téte-à-téte behind the barn would remain between her and Elias Slade. What did anything he might say matter anyway? He was black, and she had the rip in her dress to prove that it was his fault. In the meantime, as long as Seth was all right, she would use the incident to her benefit.

  What was needed, of course, was for Seth to get down to business with one of those man-to-man talks with her father. Veronica knew well enough that Seth was still not ready to initiate the fateful interview. She knew equally well, however indebted he might be to Seth in the matter of the Elias Slade attack, that the bad place would freeze over, as she had heard some boys say, before her father would come crawling to Seth to welcome him into the Beaumont fold.

  She would have to give things a little shove, encourage them along, so that the momentum of events carried forward all concerned toward the inevitable conclusion.

  Men sometimes needed help with these things.

  Accordingly, one day about a week after the ugly incident in the barn, by which time Seth was able to get up and around, though with his arm in a sling and his chest still wrapped, Veronica appeared at Greenwood in her father’s fanciest buggy.

  “Hello, Veronica,” said Richmond, the first to greet her as the wheels of the carriage crunched to a stop at the entryway in front of the house. “Here… let me help you down.”

  She was dressed in more subdued colors than usual, and, if he was not mistaken, wearing one of her mother’s hats. The overall effect was to make her look older than her nineteen years. Almost matronly.

  “I came to see Seth, Mr. Davidson,” she said as he led her to the front door. “I thought he might like some fresh air and would enjoy a ride.”

  “I see,” nodded Richmond as he led her inside. “I suppose that might be a good idea—he is about to go crazy being cooped up all day long.”

  “Seth… you have a visitor,” he said as they entered the house.

  The animation on Seth’s face to see her gave Veronica all the more hope for her little scheme. He nearly bounded out of the chair at the suggestion of a ride.

  “That sounds terrific!” he said. “I can hardly stand the sight of these four walls much longer. Mother, would you get me another shirt and help me get my boots on?”

  A few minutes later, Richmond Davidson was helping his son up into the buggy.

  “You take good care of him now, Veronica,” he said. “If I don’t see you when you come back, please greet your father for me.”

  She nodded and smiled. “I will, Mr. Davidson,” she replied, to the first of his requests at least. As for the second, she had no intention of doing any such thing. This was not a time she wanted to rouse her father’s ill feelings toward anyone with the name Davidson. This was a time to let the dead past bury itself, or whatever the expression was. Let him carry his own greetings to whomever he wanted, not expect her to do it for him.

  She glanced toward Seth and handed him the reins.

  “You take these, Seth,” she said. “It was all I could do to get this stupid horse here.”

  “There’s nothing to it,” said Seth, taking the reins with his free hand. “Look,” he
added with a laugh, “I can do it with one hand! Grey Pride knows the way, you just have to guide him once in a while.”

  “Why do you call him that?”

  “That’s his name,” laughed Seth.

  “How do you know?”

  “I know all your father’s horses by name.”

  “My father’s horses have names too, just like you said yours do!”

  “Of course… well, not all of them do, just the riding and buggy horses. But we give all our horses names, even the old plough horses. Gid’up!” he called, flicking the reins, and they bounded into motion and down the winding drive.

  When they reached town, however, Veronica leaned over and took hold of the leather straps again. “I think I can try it again,” she said, making sure people saw her at the helm as they made their way through the middle of town. “I just need to make a stop at Mrs. Baker’s store… you don’t mind, do you?”

  “No… sure,” said Seth.

  She pulled back on the reins a little too quickly and they jerked to a stop in front of the big sign that read “Dry Goods and Mercantile.”

  “Gently,” laughed Seth. “All you need to do is ease back. He’ll do the rest.”

  Veronica glanced about, then stepped down. “Now you wait right here, Seth, dear,” she said as two or three passersby glanced their way from the boardwalk. “I will be right back.”

  The curious ladies continued on with inquisitive expressions on their faces, speaking in hushed tones.

  “That’s the Davidson boy, isn’t it?”

  “Yes… heard what happened to him….”