Sweetsmoke

by David Fuller

  Why, that beautiful, Big Gus, said the deeply stupid Fawn. Fawn embodied the black woman's curse—she was pretty. Hoke had named her as well, her newborn face reminding him of a young deer. As she developed, her body grew curvaceous to exaggeration so that men could not look at her without envisioning fornication. By age thirteen, Fawn's presence was required at the big house when Ellen was away, and sometimes at the smokehouse when she was not.

  The second girl with Big Gus was light-skinned, freckled Polly, she of the flat round face that pinched her small features in toward her nose. But she was as clever as she was plain. Cassius wondered why she attended to Big Gus but then knew it was because of her cleverness. She played pilot fish to the pretty one, safe in the knowledge that Gus would never amuse himself with someone so homely, allowing her to collect whatever scraps might fall.

  You like that? said Big Gus, referring to his poem. He did not look at Fawn. He looked at Quashee, the new girl. He raised his voice a notch and said: Mr. Nettle has expressed appreciation for my poetry, other patrollers, too. One said I ought present 'em to Old Master Hoke hisself.

  Quashee had come with her father Beauregard from Master John-Corey's plantation, and the two former house servants had been put to work in the fields. In the wake of Big Gus's plea for flattery,

  Cassius considered her for the first time. Quashee was unusual in the quarters where adult field hands were strong and large. Her shoulders were narrow, her breasts small, her hips and legs lean. Cassius admired her face, although he might have taken little notice had Big Gus not blazed the trail. Her eyes were wide-set, an almond shape that swept up and away from her nose. Her forehead was high, smooth, and her upper lip was particularly defined and appealing. In the right company she would be high yellow, lighter than most field hands, light enough to be welcome in the big house. And unless Cassius was mistaken, Quashee was edging away from Gus, a smile on her face that did not encourage him and may well have been indulgent. With that pleasant realization, Cassius came by a measure of respect for her.

  Might surprise you to know how many whites be appreciatin my poetry. But I want to know 'bout you, how you like it? said Big Gus.

  Oh I liked it, Gus, I did, said Fawn.

  No, I mean you, new girl, said Big Gus and Quashee's head dipped in a manner that resembled a nod.

  To go against Big Gus was dangerous, almost as dangerous as it was to get close to him. Big Gus was the Driver, and as such, his favorites reaped benefits. Those who crossed him found themselves trapped in unpleasant working conditions while being eyed suspiciously by the Overseer, as Big Gus regularly whispered in Mr. Nettle's ear. Wise to stay on Big Gus's good side, but even that could be treacherous. Once Gus tired of someone, then they too would be eyed suspiciously.

  Thought you ought to know, Quashee, your time in the fields can go easier, said Big Gus.

  It's not so bad, said Quashee softly.

  I got me a fine relationship with the white folk here, he said.

  I imagine you do, said Quashee.

  And I don't take serious all that talk 'bout bad luck, said Big Gus.

  Cassius saw Quashee's head flinch sideways at the words "bad luck."

  Big Gus moved to her, taking her hands in his, turning them over to expose her palms. Neither Fawn nor Polly moved, watching the moment play out.

  These hands, said Big Gus, ain't used to field work. These be inside hands. See how they split and blister. I can help these pretty little hands return to the big house where they belong.

  They just gettin used to new ways, said Quashee. Always that way in the beginning.

  Big Gus smiled at her, holding her hands for a beat too long, and Cassius shared his confusion. Was she playing the fool, or did she truly not understand what was being offered? If she did understand, was she being coy or was she not interested? Big Gus could offer good things to a pliant female, and he enjoyed it when women competed to satisfy him. What would cause this new girl to hesitate?

  Cassius saw Big Gus for what he was, a fickle boy in a man's body empowered by white people who enjoyed his groveling flattery. If Quashee saw through Big Gus, then she was wise indeed. Maybe even wise enough to play the fool.

  Quashee saw Cassius and a brief smile crossed her face. Cassius could not pretend he had not seen it, so he nodded. Big Gus saw her smile and turned his head, thus trapping Cassius.

  Hello Gus, said Cassius.

  What you lookin at? said Big Gus.

  Cassius did not care to start things with Big Gus. Did the new girl imagine that Cassius might protect her? Or was she simply redirecting Gus's attention away from her? Wise, perhaps, but Cassius wanted no part of it. If Gus had a fresh female target, so be it. Cassius's life was altogether simpler when he avoided friction with him.

  I was just thinking about your poem, said Cassius easily.

  You were thinkin 'bout my poem? said Big Gus.

  Heard it when I got to my door. You got that voice, Gus. Might sound good if you sing it.

  You sayin I should sing it? said Big Gus. Big Gus was altogether baffled by Cassius's meaning.

  Some poems sound better sung, said Cassius.

  What that mean? What you sayin, Cassius?

  Cassius was clever enough to trust silence, which put Big Gus in deeper torment. On one hand, it resembled flattery, but Gus knew Cassius and, what was worse, suspected Cassius of mocking him.

  You think you're better 'n me, Cassius?

  Gus, I only know I could never make up such a poem. But that's all I got to say 'cause I am dog tired, so I'll only say one last thing which is good night.

  Cassius walked back to his cabin door. He wondered why he had done it, making himself a target so the new girl Quashee could get away.

  Big Gus looked back and found only Fawn and Polly. He looked over their heads as they attempted to engage him.

  That was nice of him, said Fawn.

  Maybe it was, said Big Gus.

  But go on with your poem, said Fawn. I'd be lovin to hear it again.

  Don't remember it no more, said Big Gus as he saw Mr. Nettle coming down the lane, performing his evening check early. Big Gus rushed now, to walk with Mr. Nettle, who smiled when he saw Gus coming.

  Cassius opened his door and saw Savilla's husband Abram sitting inside waiting on the small stool by the cold hearth. Cassius had not kept a fire in the hearth since the rains in March and April. Abram was admiring the carved toy soldiers Cassius had been whittling for Weyman. He set them down in military formation.

  Little bit like you go out your way to get his goat, said Abram.

  Little bit like he goes out of his way to be a horse's ass, said Cassius. No one can say I wasn't pleasant as a man can be.

  You get to eat? said Abram.

  Cassius nodded. Got something from Mam Rosie.

  Because Savilla saw you were goin be late so she made extra in case you was hungry. You could'a had my portion. Can't eat nothin with my tooth.

  Savilla's a fine woman, Abram. You tell her I thank her, but that I'm all right tonight. Time you got that tooth pulled.

  Then Cassius caught himself. He had been about to tell Abram to visit Emoline in town, she had poultices that could lessen the pain of an extraction.

  Tooth ain't nothin, said Abram. Ain't nobody right. You hear 'bout Banjo George? Got the bilious fever.

  Banjo enjoys complaining so much he makes his own pain, said Cassius.

  Ain't nobody right.

  Abram stood up. He looked at the tobacco leaves hanging off the rafters drying near the ceiling.

  Some of them gettin the mold, you best dry heat 'em.

  Cassius nodded.

  Been out to the traps?

  Not in a few days.

  Abram nodded. Abram was glad to have his wife cook for Cassius, as Cassius was a lucky trapper and he brought to her whatever he caught, to share with her family.

  All right tonight, said Abram with a thoughtful frown, as if memorizing Cassius's exact words so he cou
ld repeat them to his wife. Cassius could see that Abram had something else on his mind, and he did not care to hear it.

  I'm just going to get some sleep, said Cassius, hoping to ward it off.

  I'se heartily sorry, Cassius. If it be all right to say so.

  Not necessary to say—

  Had a real good likin of that woman and she did not deserve to go in such a way.

  That's kind of you—

  She always decent to me and mine, and I think that be all I got to say 'bout it.

  Cassius had known that Abram could not be stopped from saying what he had come to say. Once Abram set on a path, he had to offer his condolences about Emoline Justice or eventually burst.

  Well, said Cassius. Maybe she's the lucky one. You remember to tell Savilla I thank her.

  All right tonight, said Abram. Cassius caught a whiff of Abram's breath and knew that his tooth had to go.

  Abram was a decent man and in the raw caverns of Cassius's mind, Abram's concern and empathy were a balm. But it was a relief when he was gone.

  Cassius lay on his pallet and listened as the quarter settled. Children's voices drifted off as bathing ended and bedtime stories concluded. Low conversations among men replaced them, as well as the activities of women, finishing candles, washing clothes, or mending their only frocks or their husband's one pair of trousers.

  Insects and crickets voiced their songs as the air cooled. His mind drifted and touched briefly on Mam Rosie. She had raised him, but Hoke had named him. Which act was more important to his personality? he wondered. Hoke Howard was not his father; his mother had been pregnant when Hoke bought her, although he had not bought Cassius's father. He had sold her four years after Cassius was born, and Cassius wondered if an incident had precipitated her sale. He thought not; Hoke's fortunes had always been up and down, and the turnover in slaves and horseflesh was considerable, new favorites purchased when he was enthusiastically flush, sold off when things went sour. Cassius considered Hoke Howard's name. If Cassius was named on a flight of whimsy, Hoke was named with grave consideration. The third Hoke Howard bore a name of substance with extensive roots. His great-grandfather Horace had built Sweetsmoke; his grandfather, the first Hoke, had made it a monstrous success; his father, the second Hoke, had further expanded it; and he now commanded it. If Cassius was a name from a book, Hoke was a name with great expectations. What would it be like to bear such a name? Cassius thought of the responsibility he had witnessed that afternoon, and for a fleeting moment imagined Hoke Howard as trapped in his destiny as Cassius was in his.

  Jenny came to his cabin door. She opened it without knocking, but tonight lingered in the doorway; normally she would have closed the door behind her and begun to undress.

  You want me with you tonight, Cassius? said Jenny.

  He looked at her silhouette, her arm stretched out with her hand on the door. Behind her, the grease fires were out, and a log shifted and sprayed embers in what remained of a fire by the gully. An instant of flame hugged the log, then dropped back into the glowing red ashes.

  Not tonight, said Cassius.

  Her silhouette nodded and backed out. He regretted turning her away, but did not know how to be anything but alone this night. Jenny would have been smart enough to provide nothing more than warmth and an easy presence, but he could not have that now.

  Back when it happened, Cassius had assumed that the love component of his life was over for good. His wife and son were gone. In the aftermath of that, with a raging and tormented mind, he saw women shy from him the way wild deer shy from a company of soldiers. More than a year passed before Jenny happened by the carpentry shed with something to be repaired. A few days later she visited again. In time, her excuses became careless. He had thought Jenny offered charity for old times' sake. Years before he had courted her, but it was a poor match and she had ended it and he had borne that hurt for some time. Now she came at night so the others would not know.

  Cassius and Jenny did not meet often. They rarely had occasion to speak; he a carpenter, she a field hand; and she only came when he nodded to her at some point during the day, granting her permission. She would not always come at his nod, but when she did, she would come furtively and lie beside him where he pretended not to be waiting. He craved the physical element of their liaison, but youthful passion was gone. She had once abandoned him—her punishment was to be ravished, but not loved. Yet she was willing, while others acted as if he were in smallpox quarantine. He better trusted the judgment of the wary women; they saw him as he saw himself, a raging, bitter, coldhearted man. Jenny tried to be near him, the way small children and animals tried to be near him, and this to him was inexplicable.

  On his worst days, small children, barely old enough to speak, would hover as if sensing his need. He imagined himself unapproachable, and yet they came, sometimes to sit by him, sometimes to take his hand. And he would grow calm. Domestic animals, independent cats in particular, would approach. Blinded within black storms, he would be jolted by a nudge against his shin, the shock of a cold nose, the amazing strength of a tiny body running its length against him, a layer of fur coating the sweat of his leg or neck or cheek.

  It was strange to think of these things, at a time when he was ready to release the demons of his memory.

  Cassius dreamed of running. His muscles knotted and anxiety passed through his legs as he slept fitfully on his pallet with his back on fire.

  He woke suddenly. He tried to shake off the dream, but it encircled him. On that day, he had been unaware of his back bleeding, but he had felt a deep cold and searing heat all at once. Marriah was dead. The boy who had yet to be named was gone. Cassius ran.

  The patrollers chased him on their horses with their dogs. When his mind was right, he knew ways to fool the dogs and evade the patrollers, but that took planning and this was not planned, he had to outrun them with the only tools he possessed: Stamina fueled by hatred and horror, the stamina to run forever and never stop, not to eat, not to sleep, just to run until he had outrun all of it.

  He ran through the fields, past crops and hedgerows, he ran across dusty roads and into woods, he ran through brambles and brush, he ran along the creek, he ran without thinking.

  The dogs were close, then far, then close again. He did not care. He anticipated the moment the dogs would catch him and tear him apart, a chance to feel again—would they go for his back, would the blood drive them mad, would it happen quickly or would he have time to savor his own death?

  He ran to the edge of town. A flash through his brain warned that if he were to run through the streets, he would surely be caught. He ran through the streets.

  They came on, dogs, and horses carrying men, and he ran between houses and past the dry goods store and a boardinghouse and a tavern, and then his legs were strange, as if no longer joined to his hips, running full-out in his mind while his legs lagged, as if dragging a dead steer, as if he had plugged into dense muck, thick legs sucking to pull free, the bottom of his feet shooting roots that dug in and grabbed. Each step tore his feet out of the ground while the world rushed and swirled around him.

  The first dog was too fast, barking maniacally, dancing around him. Then came the pack, a thunderous wave of sharp barking and hot breath chased by whistles, horsemen ordering dogs back, horses blundering in, dust clouding and choking.

  A woman's voice poked a pinhole of light into the scrabble of his mind, and he pictured the sound coming between himself and the dogs horses men. Her voice was a safe sound, a barrier, authority without fear. He quivered with exhaustion as he willed himself to remain standing. Never before had his body quit on him, never, he could press it to impossible limits and yet here in the direst of moments, it trembled.

  Her voice was close, the patroller's voices responded from far off. In a moment or an hour, the horse hooves backed away and she was in front of him, her arms under his armpits, and they moved, a miracle, but it was her legs doing the work, his own being dead.

&n
bsp; He did not know that Emoline Justice had saved him from being hobbled. He did not know that she had confronted the patroller who had unsheathed his blade, readying it for Cassius's Achilles tendon. He did not know that they were soon joined by Hoke on horseback. He did not know that she told them she would take Cassius into her home and that when he was recovered he would return to Sweetsmoke and his duties.

  He did not know that Hoke nodded in agreement at the same moment that the others scoffed at her in that high-handed arrogance of the desperate poor who crave a lower creature to abuse.

  Hoke turned them back and created a simmering resentment. Hoke informed them that Cassius was a valuable possession and he did not care to throw away property. Neither county nor Commonwealth would reimburse him for the loss of a carpenter, and he suggested that any patroller on their eight-dollar-a-week salary who damaged his slave could repay Hoke for Cassius's fair value. But Cassius knew Hoke Howard. Hoke was an emotional man who trusted his first instincts. In a moment of high dudgeon, Hoke had been known to sacrifice his own best interests for that heady savor of power and revenge. As he healed, Cassius revisited Hoke's choice. That same man three days before had flayed him with a bullwhip, carving stripe after stripe into his back. Planters reckoned that each stripe lowered the price of a slave by five dollars, but at that moment, Hoke was interested only in punishment. Cassius did not consider that something decent might be coiled inside the planter. Emoline alone had seen that.

  The first two days spent in Emoline's home, Cassius did not know where he was. His mind was convulsive with fulminating rage, ashriek with images of Marriah and her baby, images that burned inside until he was empty of everything, and yet the fire still would not quit.

  Pain gripped and ripped him, pain more intense than his shredded back. His helplessness was his horror, as he could not save the ones he loved. He could do precisely nothing. She was gone, the baby was out there somewhere, and there was no way to find him. By now, the boy was three days away and might well have been sold more than once. How could he force Hoke to name the slave trader and his destination? And were he to escape Sweetsmoke, he had never traveled more than thirty miles from the plantation. He did not know what existed out there. He could not read, and to him, a map was nothing more than a jumble of shapes and lines. He had done every possible thing in his power and it was not enough, it would never be enough. He had bargained, offered himself as proxy to accept the punishment intended for his wife, he had fought, he had run, and still he had ended up here. He had not even been able to defend himself. He was alive and not crippled only because an old freed woman had come to his defense. The wail that rose from his pith blinded him, engorging and splitting open the whole of his skin: Who will love him, who will love the little boy?