Sweetsmoke

by David Fuller

  Cassius watched the man come. Who was dead, and how did this death relate to the plantation? Any death that touched the planter family brought on an anxious time of limbo for the blacks. When a white planter, his wife, or one of their children died, ownership of slaves changed hands. Even the smallest peccadillo in a white man, a gambling debt or an illegitimate child, could propel waves through the slave community. Families might be broken up, wives sold from husbands, children sold from mothers. If they were sold to the cotton states, they would not be heard from again.

  The pounding of the hooves slowed, the heat and perspiration of the horse crowded the yard, and Otis Bornock swung out of his sweat-black saddle, the seat of his pants clinging to leather, peeling away. The horse was thinner, surcingle straps hanging long under its belly. Everyone was thinner now. Otis Bornock's pearl-handled Colt Army revolver glinted momentarily in the sun, his sole proud possession that he claimed to have won in a poker game. Others said he found it on a dead man, and whispers that Otis Bornock had encouraged the man's condition before "finding" the gun added to his reputation. Cassius watched him hurry to the porch. Sweat rolled from his stained hat down the ends of his hair and dripped to his collar. Otis Bornock removed his hat at the door and ran his kerchief across his face. Pet came to the door, haughty and superior in the face of white trash, but Ellen came up behind her and greeted him graciously, even as Cassius saw terror in her eyes. Then she allowed him inside, a man like that, Cassius thought, allowed in her home. Cassius saw that she anticipated the worst possible news. Otis Bornock drew a letter from his back pocket and it was wrinkled and moist and Cassius imagined it stank of Otis Bornock's backside. Young Charles followed him in, quiet as a shadow. Charles understood the impact of the visitor, preceded as he was by the song. Cassius knew he would have to be careful about Charles. He had aroused an enemy, and the boy would not forget.

  Cassius listened for the owl screech of anguish, but the silence inside stretched and he knew Master Jacob, Major Jacob Howard, was still alive. Cassius breathed. The planter's family remained intact.

  Cassius straightened his shoulders to relieve the strain on his back, where the scar tissue was like a crust. He picked up a pail with fresh water and moved to the chuffing horse, which dropped its nose and drank loudly. While he knew not to water a sweating horse, this was Bornock's beast and Cassius was carrying out a plan. Cassius looked toward the door to Mam Rosie's kitchen. Once the horse finished, Cassius would walk to the pump by the kitchen to refill. By then, Mam Rosie would know the news.

  Ellen came out of the big house onto the porch, the rider standing behind her in the dark of the room. She held the unfolded note in her hand.

  "Cassius!" she called.

  He set down the pail and stepped away from the horse into her line of view.

  Yes, Missus Ellen, said Cassius.

  "Mr. Bornock tells me the French gate leans."

  That's so, Missus Ellen.

  Cassius knew Bornock had said nothing of the kind, nor did he mention that the main gate had been leaning since the day it was built, that it had almost certainly leaned back in France on that vineyard.

  "You go directly and straighten it out."

  Yes, ma'am. Right after I finish this fence Master Charles knocked down.

  "That will have to wait. You get on down there like I said. And do it right the first time, Cassius, not like your usual."

  I will, Missus.

  She nodded to the rider, dismissing him. Otis Bornock returned to his horse and remounted. Cassius was not to know the news. Ellen would wait for Master Hoke, her husband, to return from Edensong later that afternoon to tell him. Young Charles stood in the doorway, staring at Cassius. Cassius could not help himself; he looked directly at Charles, and saw malicious satisfaction on the boy's face. The identity of the dead was bad news for Cassius, and everyone knew who it was but him.

  Cassius collected his hammer and nails and a coil of rope. He listened to the horse hooves fade down the hill. He did not fetch from his carpentry shed the tools he would require to complete the work. He went directly down the hill to the main gate. One of the house girls, probably Nanny Catherine, was crying in Mam Rosie's kitchen. But he could not go there to discover why. Ellen Howard had made sure that he would not find out.

  The main gate was from a vineyard in France, bought off the property by Hoke Howard on a European visit back in the days when money was in season. The field hands often told the story, heard second—or thirdhand, of Master Hoke riding in the French countryside, pulling up when he saw the magnificent gate. Well, Ol' Massa Hoke, he used to gettin what he want and he knows that gate belong not in France but on his plantation in the Commonwealth of Virginie, so he do what any self-respectin massa'd do, he walk on up to that ol' Frenchy's door and offer up a big ol' sack a money like them burlap ones we got in the fields. The hands seemed to think it was so much money—and with every recounting the amount increased—that Mr. Frenchy had been astonished, but when Cassius heard the story, he imagined the Frenchman suppressing a smirk as he allowed himself to be overpaid. Cassius knew that when Hoke was flush, he threw around his money the way he threw around his weight, randomly, in grand pointless gestures. So Hoke had hired people to systematically break down the gate, numbering each piece as a local man made a drawing. The crates were then shipped back to the Commonwealth in one of his merchant ships—before the blockade, when Hoke was still part owner of a fleet—but along the way, the numbered drawing was lost. Here the hands out-embellished one another, describing the Old Master in a comic rage dismissing ships full of careless white men.

  The gate was made of cedar, an overblown trellis that straddled the narrow road leading up to the big house, a vain and solitary structure in a vast landscape. While performing his apprenticeship as a carpenter—and it was Hoke who had offered to take him out of the fields so he could learn carpentry-Cassius had helped reconstruct the gate as it emerged from the crates, piecing it together like a puzzle. Hoke had then painted the name of the plantation across the top: Sweetsmoke.

  The wind shifted and Cassius heard it move above him, through the highest leaves of the tall oaks where it did him no good, and the immediate air around him went dead and he stood in a hollow of stillness. A sensation of dread came over him, one he had had before: He was living in another man's dream. The dreamer was like the wind rushing through the oak leaves above, indifferent and unaware of his presence. Cassius made no mark on either the man or the dream. The stillness crowded him and Cassius was afraid to move.

  He believed he had already lived long enough. He thought he was over the age of thirty-Jacob Howard was thirty, and they had been born around the same time—and Cassius looked that and more. He now studied the land as if he would never see it again, and tried to memorize it as if he might need to describe it one day. Indeed the land was elegant and sculpted and green and fertile, yet he was so unconnected to it that its beauty did not move him. He believed that he made no mark whatsoever on the land. He memorized but did not imagine carrying the memory with him to a better world. He could not imagine any kind of world that would come with death. He simply saw the end of his time, and in the quiet that followed, he found comfort. It would be an end to a life that had given him little pleasure, hope, or ease. He believed that he had turned his heart cold.

  A hornworm clung to a long sprig of switch grass and he reached down and plucked it off, its stubborn legs letting go one at a time. The creature fit in his palm. Its head was thick and bulbous with grooves that resembled a series of folds, its flabby legs grabbed at his skin, its jaw chewing on the air. Cassius looked at the small white ovals that ran down its side, outlined in orange with an orange dot in the middle so that they appeared to be a row of miniature painted eyes.

  It was early in the season, yet it felt late; the light of the sun seemed darker, older. He wondered if the field song was prescient and the death was his own. That would be a bit of good luck. He set down the hornworm without killi
ng it.

  Sounds of the plantation slipped in clear and bright, then were just as quickly muffled, a fragment of work song followed by a ghostly stillness, the drifting laughter of children, blown away by the rush of overhead wind. A deep ache built inside him as he listened to people living, working, and being together. A fierce and terrible melancholy gripped him and he did not understand why the feeling made him desire to live.

  Finally, a breath of breeze passed under the brim of his hat and cooled the sweat, and Cassius was released from the moment.

  He began to work. He tied a length of rope to the top of the gate and tied the other end around a stone and let it hang to make a plumb line. He secured one end of another piece of rope high on the opposite side, and pulled the far end around the trunk of a tree. With a steady pull, the gate came near to upright and the stone hung closer to the wood. He secured the rope around the trunk and moved to sit in shade. He hooked his hat over his knee to dry. No one wanted or expected this work to be done. Cassius was there to be separated from the big house until Hoke returned. He watched the road. The ruts were deep after the rains in April and early May.

  Dust came off the road to the west in the direction of town, and he watched the cloud grow larger. Not Hoke, as he would come from Edensong Plantation in the opposite direction. A neighbor perhaps, or a traveler.

  Cassius smiled as he recognized Weyman driving the buckboard of his owner, Thomas Chavis. Cassius remained in the shade, and when Weyman drew near he pulled up the horse.

  Woo, Cassius, you hidin out? said Weyman.

  Hiding out?

  What y'all doin down here, messin with that overgrown door frame? Must be in a heap a' trouble.

  No trouble here, said Cassius. He noticed something off in Weyman's manner. Around the eyes, maybe.

  Right, 'cause they always send you down here to rest your black backside in the shade.

  Can't have the sun looking over my shoulder, said Cassius. Like to make me self-conscious. Could miscalculate and build a gate that leans.

  Weyman laughed and Cassius was suddenly curious, never before having heard Weyman force a laugh. Cassius took note of something he might not have noticed otherwise, that he generally was at ease in Weyman's company. Right then Cassius felt like a dog whose fur had been shaved backward with a dull blade.

  Coming from town? said Cassius.

  Equipment in at the dry goods for Thomas, said Weyman, nodding to items in the back of the buckboard covered by a tarpaulin.

  Taking the long way home, said Cassius.

  Got a customer over at Edensong.

  Cassius nodded and looked in that direction and wondered when Hoke would return. Then Cassius said, abruptly:

  Tell me who died.

  Weyman looked away and Cassius understood Weyman's unusual manner. Weyman looked back and shrugged.

  Wouldn't know, said Weyman.

  Cassius nodded and his insides twisted into a knot. Weyman knew and Weyman would not say. This was likely to be bad news indeed for Cassius. From the moment Ellen had shut him out, he had suspected the identity, knowing whose death was most likely to bring him grief, but much as he tried not to be superstitious, he did not want to think of her at that moment, for fear he would make it so.

  When you goin make me some more a' them little soldiers? said Weyman.

  They take time, said Cassius.

  The white children like 'em. Remind 'em of they daddies. I can sell 'em at a good price, people been askin.

  See what I can do.

  A real good price, Cassius, and you know I always share.

  I know you say you do.

  Now that's a fact, said Weyman, nodding in appreciation.

  One day I'll make you hundreds of soldiers so you can be rich, said Cassius.

  Rich. Can't rightly imagine what that be like.

  Give it some thought, maybe you'll come up with something, like sitting down regularly to a fancy spread for supper or walking around in decent shoes.

  No sir, tell you what I'd do if I ever was rich, I reckon I'd like to own that Colt sidearm of old Otis Bornock.

  Maybe a new hat, that one got holes in the holes. You don't look out, pretty soon your hat'll be around your neck.

  Got that sweet pearl handle and all, said Weyman, but he pulled his hat off his head and looked at it.

  Bornock sooner cut his own throat than give up his gun, said Cassius, shaking his head, amused.

  I seen somethin, said Weyman, growing serious.

  What'd you see? I know, Bornock coming around to gift you that gun 'cause he's so doggone fond of you, said Cassius, enjoying himself.

  No, this serious. Seen your ol' massa consortin with The Angel Gabriel.

  Cassius felt a chill run up the backs of his arms.

  Maybe you got mixed up, said Cassius, but his smile was gone.

  No sir, seen it with my own eyes.

  Gabriel Logue, said Cassius, weighing the significance of the name.

  Cassius and Weyman looked at each other in silence, roasting under an indifferent sun. Gabriel Logue, nicknamed The Angel, was a smuggler, although he did not trade in human flesh. His goods flowed both north and south, across a porous border. The Confederate Army would be particularly satisfied to have Gabriel Logue in their custody. If Hoke was doing business with Logue, then he was again suffering financial difficulties, and that was not good.

  Your old master still lets you ride around in that thing, said Cassius finally, changing the subject with a smile.

  Oh yeah, Thomas trust me, he even trust me out here on the road with y'all wastrels and vagabonds, said Weyman.

  Now that's the second time you call your old master by his Christian name. Pretty soon he let you lay down with that pretty woman of his.

  Weyman laughed naturally this time. He and one other slave, an older man named Bunty, were owned by Thomas Chavis, and they worked his small family farm side by side with Thomas and his wife Martha. The white family sat with their slaves at the supper table and ate the same food at the same time, like equals. For a slave, Weyman's life was good.

  Pretty woman? Why, one time, that speckled old hen lean over to make a reflection in a pond and damned if that pond didn't pucker up and soak into the ground.

  I heard that, said Cassius laughing. He had never met Thomas Chavis's wife, but Weyman always had a good story about her.

  A skunk took one look at her and his stink peeled off his tail end and ran for cover.

  Makes a man wonder how old Thomas got her belly rounded, said Cassius.

  Some time after dark, I s'pect.

  Cassius saw the first indication of a dust cloud to the east, from the direction of Edensong Plantation. He moved casually to the rear of Weyman's buckboard, testing the ropes that held the tarpaulin in place, forcing Weyman to turn his back on the cloud.

  But you doin all right yourself, carpenter, said Weyman. Long as your old "secesh" master be loanin you out to other planters. Just keep hidin your half pay from them field negroes and you can buy your freedom by 'n' by.

  A free man, Cassius said thoughtfully. Tell me something, Weyman, what does a free man do? Where does a free man go? I better know so I can make plans.

  A serious look crossed Weyman's eyes as he said: Free man go wherever he want, Cassius. Free man free to go hungry with no roof over his head, free man free to get picked up by the paddyrollers without a note from the Old Master to keep him safe. Free man free to be whipped like a common slave, since he look no different to the white man.

  Well, Weyman, I guess you best stick with your Thomas.

  And his handsome nestin wife, said Weyman.

  The dust cloud was a certainty now. Cassius watched it peripherally.

  Got your story set for Saturday night?

  Workin on it, said Weyman, puffing his chest like an old peacock. He had won the storytelling competition three years running. Sunday's Big-To-Do was to be hosted this year at Edensong, Francis Jarvis's plantation, and the hands of the n
eighboring plantations waited on that day with great anticipation.

  You want to practice your story, go right ahead, said Cassius. The dust cloud was larger. Cassius observed it without turning his head.

  Well, now, I was just thinkin 'bout that time Old John went on up to Heaven and met Saint Peter at the gate. Old John, he look inside the gate and saw this mansion look just like his old plantation, and he say to Saint Peter, Saint Peter? Why you done built a copy of my Massa's plantation up here in Heaven? And Saint Peter say, Well now, why don't we go on over there and have a little look, and Saint Peter leads John over to the plantation, and it's all big like his plantation but it's different, too, fancy-like, made with jewels and gold and silver, and John is surprised and all wonderin and he says, Why, Saint Peter, this here plantation is even nicer than my massa's plantation, but who that workin over there on the roses, he look just like my old massa hisself, and Saint Peter says, Shhh, that be God, he just thinkin he your old massa—

  Weyman laughed at his own story, and in the middle of his laugh he looked around and saw the dust cloud and stopped laughing.

  That your Hoke?

  Cassius smiled and said, That's him.

  Weyman snapped the reins and tsked at the horse, turning him around to head back toward town and the Chavis farm, setting off at a trot to build some distance between himself and the oncoming dust.

  Guess I'll meet that customer some other time, said Weyman over his shoulder, and he smiled at Cassius, knowing Cassius had gotten some of his own back, after Weyman had held off from telling him who had died.