Sweetsmoke

by David Fuller

  Emoline Justice nursed him from the outside. She showed him a different side of her aggressive, opinionated nature. She worked her magic with salves, using extracts from leaves and bark and seemingly every other potion in her possession to soothe and heal him until his back responded. He wondered later if she had borrowed the intensity of her uncompromising persona and transposed it into healing, and he thought some of that persona had inadvertently rubbed in and taken root under his skin.

  Emoline had grown up at Sweetsmoke, a house servant and nanny to the children of Hoke Howard's parents. Hoke's mother, Grace, had been particular about the language spoken by her servants, and Emoline was her star pupil. Emoline then served as tutor to the children, one of whom was Hoke, a mere five years younger. After Emoline and Hoke's son was born, she "married" a man in the quarters who gave her two daughters. Marriages among slaves were not considered legal or binding in the eyes of the law, but Emoline treated her marriage as sacrosanct. Hoke's resultant jealousy caught him by surprise. Then Hoke's father died with Hoke still in his young twenties, and shortly thereafter his bereaved mother followed, leaving him the callow master of Sweetsmoke. He attempted to rise to the challenge of his father's expectations, and in a moment of magnanimous sentimentality he would come to regret, Hoke allowed Emoline to buy her freedom. She chose the last name Justice for herself and shared it with her son, Richard, whom she was able to buy a number of years later, when Hoke floundered in one of his depressed financial periods. The man in the quarters she had married now married another, a marriage Hoke had encouraged if not arranged. Emoline, however, remained true to her vows. She called herself a schoolteacher, even as she made more on the side as a conjurer, and it was conjurer money that bought freedom for her son.

  Throughout the first week of Cassius's healing, she read aloud. After a number of days he became aware that he was listening, and her words added up to a story. She read about a man named Ulysses, a warrior struggling to return home. As Cassius's interest grew, his rage became intermittent and she began to turn the open book and show him the words. Initially he saw small black shapes arranged in rows on white paper, and as they meant nothing to him, they were little more than magical markings. Yet they somehow conjured up fantastic imagery. In the years that followed, Cassius remembered few specifics from the book, only that it was another salve to his pain. He did remember that Ulysses had been away from home a long time, that when he returned he found more troubles, and Ulysses defeated those troubles in a great paroxysm of violence.

  Sometime during the second week, he asked Emoline why, with her knowledge and gifts, she told the fortunes of whites but never of blacks.

  She acted as if the fact that he had even asked such a question was a wonderful sign, because any interest in a topic outside his anger meant he was improved. Her explanation was delivered in her familiar, self-assured voice: She told only white fortunes because the future must not be predicted nor anticipated. She would not bring false hope to her people. Their lives were hopeless enough without packing them with lies. She was more than happy to take money to manufacture white fortunes, sewn out of whole cloth and presented in a pretty package, and wouldn't you know, the odder her predictions, the more her clients desired them.

  Emoline left her home on occasion to visit these clients and she carried her tools with her, as she would not have others in her home while Cassius was healing. Cassius knew that Hoke sometimes visited her for conjuring, and wondered if during those weeks she ever ventured to Sweetsmoke.

  By the second week, Cassius discovered he had less pain. He sat up. Emoline taught him the alphabet. He learned quickly, filling his aching, empty, hungry brain. By the end of the week, he recognized words. By the third week, he read sentences.

  Somewhere in the second week, Cassius noticed a distraction in Emoline's eyes and he wondered about it until Hoke sent the first messenger. At the knock on the door, Cassius rose to his feet in defiance, his back bristling. Emoline pushed past him and opened the door herself. The messenger was one of the grooms from Sweetsmoke, saying that Master Hoke was anxious to have his man back. She sent the messenger away without explanation. A few days later, another messenger arrived, this time William, the butler. To him she said simply, "Not yet." But for all her certainty, Cassius continued to identify a nervous energy in her demeanor.

  She could heal him physically, but his mental healing followed a separate path. For this she could only offer tools, and she knew her time was limited. She was pleased to see him learn words and sentences, and this new ability, this ability to read, reshaped his mind. For the first time in his life he experienced a nugget of personal power that was not a gift from his master. He did not know what might come of that power, but he knew it was greater than the strength of his arms, the power owned and benefited from by the Master. Reading was his secret power, and through it he recognized the small budding cancer of hope.

  By the third week he was moving well, and in between her reading lessons, she put his skills to work. He built for her a false panel between the hearth and the perpendicular streetside wall. She did not say why she desired a hiding place. He assumed it was to protect her money and her free papers.

  When the false wall was finished, he knew it was time to return to Sweetsmoke and he was able to pretend to be mentally recovered.

  The citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia marked time from that day, January 16, 1857. But more to the point, slaves living in the Commonwealth marked that day. Many slaves did not know their birthdays, but they remembered the day of the Cold Storm that blanketed the state and brought everything to a halt. It snowed and then it snowed. Snow waves crested under eaves and rolled up against doors, where they froze in place. People did not leave their homes. Cassius could not leave for the plantation, so he stayed another week with Emoline Justice, and his reading improved and his comprehension grew.

  He would return to Emoline's home many times in the ensuing years, and she would give him a Bible of his own to read, the book currently hidden in his cabin, and he would return with questions that she attempted to answer. But it was that last week, with snow falling on the roof over their heads, that he felt his confidence grow as he became fluent.

  On returning to Sweetsmoke, Cassius walked down the lane of the quarters. Snow melted, a trickle glinting down the Suetsmoke gully under a cover of lacy snowpack. He returned to his cabin on the lane, where it had stood empty for weeks. He stopped in the doorway and took in the large room with the cold hearth barely discolored with soot. He walked around to the back, to what remained of Marriah's garden, blanketed by snow that was unblemished. His shoes crunched through the icy top layer. Black sprigs of a sapling poked through a drift; he had planted it to coincide with the birth of his son. He dug his fingers down in the snow to secure the narrow trunk and wrenched it out of the earth. He threw it aside, where it remained as the snow melted beneath it, until someone sometime later took it away.

  The only excuse for a tree or garden was to invest in the future. No future existed. His heart was as cold as his fingers and knuckles had been on that day when he had wrenched out the sapling. He hated Jacob for what he had done, but it was not unusual or unexpected—he hated Hoke more, for protecting his planter son and for the three days in the tobacco shed.

  He rose from his pallet fully awake, his legs sore from running in his sleep. He found the cigar that he had hand-rolled earlier in the day, and a Lucifer friction match, and put them both into his pouch and went outside.

  The last of the fires sizzled. Wooden crosses surrounded him, dark and erect, fresh bulbous candles dangling off their arms. The smoke had cleared, a few crickets persisted in the night air and the dew cooled his bare feet. Mr. Nettle would have made his final pass down the lane hours ago. Cassius considered going into the woods, but it would be a slow and tedious journey to his traps in the dark. He had decided to go to town on Saturday night. Friday was the Fourth, and there would be celebrations, but Saturday would still see many
hands traveling to their abroad husbands or wives. The patrollers would soon tire of checking passes by lantern light for the second straight night, and he could utilize the whole night, as Sunday was free. The Big-To-Do was Sunday at Edensong, the Jarvis plantation, and not even Hoke would dare take that away from his "family," not even for hornworms.

  He ran his finger over the piece of string he had tied around the end of the cigar, an inch from the lip end, a personal habit and his alone, then brought the cigar between his teeth and dug for the match. Unable to find it in his pouch, he ducked under the arms of a cross and pushed the other end of the cigar into a banked fire. He stood slowly, drawing in the smoke, thinking that he would have to see if his pouch had developed a hole and if it could be mended. He looked back at the pale dry shapes made by his bare feet in the dew-covered dust where he had walked from his cabin. He smoked awhile standing there, and after many minutes had passed, he saw her in the cleared space beside his cabin. She sat on a log under a tree, and she hadn't moved. His heart raced, thinking her a spirit or an illusion, but when she smiled, he knew she was real and had been staring at him. He walked over to her. As he got closer, she seemed to duck away, and Cassius knew that she had not wanted him to see her. He considered that, and thought that it had to do with her being perceived as a jinx.

  Quashee is an unusual name, said Cassius.

  Not for an African.

  You born in Africa?

  No, I was born here.

  Your name got a meaning?

  What make you say that? she said.

  Something I was told, African names got meanings, and you didn't get Quashee from a white master.

  No. My father gave it to me. Quashee's a girl born on Sunday.

  Ah. So what day were you born? said Cassius.

  She smiled graciously. And your name? she said.

  My name came from Hoke.

  So no meaning.

  Got a meaning to Hoke. He plucked it from a play. From Julius Caesar, by Shakespeare.

  Ah. William Shakespeare.

  Cassius was surprised. You know Shakespeare? he said.

  I heard the name, she said, looking away as if she had revealed too much.

  Can you read?

  She looked back at him and considered his expression. Then she said: No.

  Cassius almost spoke up, but caught himself. She had not asked him if he could read, but if she had, he would also have said no.

  Why're you out here? said Cassius.

  Why're you? she said.

  Running from a dream.

  My muscles are too tired to run, I lie still and my leg knots up, said Quashee. She reached down and rubbed her calves.

  Savilla probably got a balm for that.

  Savilla got some witch's brew for most everything, said Quashee.

  Guess I forgot, wouldn't be like you to believe in low negro superstition, you being part big house.

  You ain't exactly a field hand.

  Cassius smiled. No. So why're you sitting here?

  Didn't know this was your field.

  Most likely that didn't come out right.

  It's late. Someone comes out, they like to ask questions, she said. Cassius smiled and looked down. She went on: Over here, I am out of their way.

  Cassius nodded, thinking, Out of the path of insatiable young men. Out of the way of gossiping women. Out of the way of people imagining you to be bad luck.

  She looked at the cigar in his hand.

  Your cigar got a string, said Quashee.

  He raised it as if seeing it for the first time. Nodded.

  Any reason for that? she said.

  He took her in with a full look, then spoke the truth: Did it once years ago, when all I had was an old leaf wouldn't hold together. Some of the others laughed, so instead of explaining I said it made the smoke taste smooth. They believed it, and a few even tried it once or twice, said I was right. I did it for the next one and now it's just habit.

  Does it make it taste smooth?

  No.

  They were quiet for a moment, staring at the dying fires on the lane.

  So why're they keeping you down here? You belong up at the house, said Cassius.

  They won't see me at the big house.

  Who won't?

  Missus Ellen. We've been called up, but always get sent back before she sees us. I asked her girl Pet, but she's got nothing to say to me.

  Cassius saw Quashee catch herself, letting her literate big house voice slip through. He imagined she was considering revising herself, but she clamped her mouth shut.

  I know they could use you, said Cassius, but he remembered how Pet had tried to convince Ellen to use Tempie Easter as a personal servant.

  Seems like they already got a full staff.

  Sarah should have someone, said Cassius.

  Quashee considered that and nodded. She said: I hoped to work for Master Jacob's wife, but she's always in her bed. Not much for a personal servant to do but bring food and empty the slops.

  Pet and the others do for Sarah but they don't like it. Ellen is spiting her daughter-in-law.

  Then I would surely love to be part of that, said Quashee with a low laugh.

  Cassius was aware of an undercurrent of tension.

  You think they'll sell you, said Cassius, making a statement.

  No good at field work, said Quashee. And now I'm bad luck.

  Stupid talk. Something bad's always happening in the quarters. Makes no sense to make it about you.

  Seems to be about my master John-Corey.

  So I hear. John-Corey dies in the war and starts a run of bad luck, then you come with your father and bring it along.

  They say we brought the hornworms.

  Hornworms started up before you came. Just another excuse to blame someone else for their troubles.

  Sounds 'bout right, said Quashee.

  Cassius thought for a moment before he said: I can talk to someone up there.

  From what I hear, you ain't got a whole lot of influence.

  That from Big Gus?

  From all of them. They wonder how you stay so independent. Big Gus would like to have you in the fields.

  Big Gus may get his wish, but that would be his bad luck.

  She smiled at that.

  Cassius was tired of talking. He wanted to be alone, out here where he hoped to avoid thinking. He said nothing more. Quashee may have sensed his desire because only a few minutes passed before she stood and walked back up the lane to the cabin she shared with her father.

  Cassius touched the warm dry spot on the log where she had been sitting, then sat on it. He had forgotten to smoke his cigar and it was out. He was unwilling to walk back to the embers to relight it.

  He sat until the sky turned pale and Mr. Nettle's bell rang. He heard the field hands rousing from their sleep to face another day battling the blight.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  Cassius opened the door and in the dim light before he found the lantern, he saw how things were. Her belongings had been handled and thrown aside and now lay strewn across the floorboards. He saw herbs and remedies scattered among smashed jugs, bottles, and plates. He wondered if this had happened after the murder or as she fought back, assuming she was able to fight back. He closed the door behind him and struck a match, carrying its timid light until he found the lantern unbroken. The wick accepted the flame.

  He sat, and the damaged property made him aware of the violence of her death. The longer he stared, the more he saw the destruction as having a pattern, and he visualized the killer ripping methodically through her belongings. His mind then explored a fresh scenario: Someone not her killer had come hours or days later to paw through her things, perhaps after the sheriff had removed her body. Or perhaps the sheriff and his men had been the vandals. Cassius rejected these narratives and returned to his first instinct.

  Upon reflection, he decided she had surprised someone ransacking her home and was killed trying to stop
it. She was a conjurer, a hoodoo woman—few whites and fewer blacks would risk the curse of an angry spirit, lingering and furious at its premature death.

  The previous night, he had avoided the celebration of the Fourth and gone into the woods to check his traps. He had folded his clothes by the bank of the creek and waded in to a shallow place where the water was quick, lying on his back among the stones and muck to let the chill current rush over him. With his lantern set nearby on the bank, he had watched the pale beam pass through the rivulet, fragmenting and dancing against his skin. His gaze shifted to the water bulging against his fingers just below the surface and curving around his bent knees. He had returned to the quarters with a possum, which he delivered to Savilla.

  During the day he had forged a pass for himself, a simple matter despite its inherent danger. Three years before, he had found papers written in Hoke's hand, which he had hidden in the band of his trousers for an entire day. Had these papers been discovered, the punishment would have been swift and severe. In secret he imitated the handwriting until he could reproduce it. But four nights before, when he had been called to Hoke's office, he had seen that his old master's hand had developed a quaver; Cassius's forgery was that of a younger Hoke. He could not imitate his master's shake without a sample, so he was forced to travel with a pass he did not trust. Walking in the dark, he had heard the patrollers singing somewhere ahead. He hid in heavy brush by the roadside and when the singing did not move, he emerged and saw that they were off the road in a clearing. They had liberated their bottles from their haversacks early that evening.