by David Fuller
Which of your sisters will you buy first? said Cassius.
Richard Justice hesitated. "Leave that decision to me."
How would you do it?
"This truly interests you?"
In point of fact, it did. Cassius had no conception of how one would bargain for the life of another human being.
"Dear Lord, Cassius, it's but a simple matter, I messenger a personal note to Mr. Sands, master of Philadelphia Plantation, and his oral reply is returned by my messenger. He would know it was about money and money is what drives such men. He would be obliged to entertain me."
You would go as a visitor?
"I am a free man, Cassius, as such I speak to anyone I choose. Now, if you don't mind."
Richard Justice moved into the darkness, staying clear of the many lanterns that illuminated the dance, buoyant in his step, a whistled tune on his lips.
Cassius returned to the big barn, and was irrationally happy. People drank and danced and ate boiled ears of corn. He had not indulged in more than a few swigs of the dreadful Edensong whiskey, but his head felt agreeably light and disconnected from his body. He warned himself against taking pride in his manipulation of Richard Justice but he could not make the happiness go away. He wandered among the revelers for some time with a smile on his face until someone leaned close to him in order to be heard over the music.
You helped my boy, said Savilla.
Cassius turned and she moved her head closer and said into his ear: I spoke to that Eula.
Eula? said Cassius.
Fanny's mamma, Eula, said you helped my boy. Didn't suppose that from you, Cassius.
Didn't suppose?
Not like you to put yourself out. Want to thank you.
Where's Joseph?
Actin the shamed puppy, probably crawled up inside a jug.
And Fanny?
Got the women all 'round her by the corn rig, keep her there till Big Gus drink himself to sleep.
Savilla left him with a bittersweet taste in his mouth, as her gratitude had been generously salted with the low expectations of his character. The pleasure of manipulating Richard Justice now receded and left him unexpectedly thirsty.
He searched for refreshment, brooding about Savilla's words. Did Savilla think the same about Mam Rosie, that she wouldn't put herself out for others? As a boy, he had tried to emulate his adoptive father Darby. But Darby was gone so soon, and as Cassius grew he was forced to define himself in opposition to the imperious, mercurial, self-centered Rose. Yet it was she he had recognized when Savilla described him.
He found an abandoned jug along the outside barn wall and heard the slosh of liquid within. He carried it up a rise into darkness near a stand of trees. He was glad to be surrounded by the wind which pushed away the noise of merriment. He was finished with this dance, tired of the hands with their opinions and their ominous intonations of dire luck. All that was left was to drink himself stupid and stagger back to his cabin by morning. He sat on a flat divot in the rise but before he could enjoy the contents of his jug, he saw Quashee following in his footsteps. The memory of her touch on his shoulder returned, and a fire grew around his middle as she sat beside him and took the jug.
I didn't know you house folk indulged in the bark juice, said Cassius, friendly.
Oh, I been known to change my breath now and again. 'Course, we used to drink finer fare up at John-Corey's big house, said Quashee.
So, the new girl sips planter juice.
I think maybe I did try it. Once, said Quashee, her smile no more than a twinkle.
She tipped the jug and he saw her try to hide the wince when the harshness gripped her throat, and he laughed. She returned the jug, eyes watering.
Not so smooth as planter juice, said Cassius.
If I'm goin be a hand, I'm goin learn to drink like a hand, said Quashee, voice snagging in her throat.
Showing off, he tipped the jug and drank and it bit back and he knew he had taken too much. He fought to swallow as it burned down his throat into his chest and without warning he hooted. Quashee laughed and rolled onto her side.
Thank you, he said, the words coming in a whisper.
Didn't mean to laugh so hard, she said, still laughing.
Laugh all you want, but I meant for earlier, when you stopped me telling Weyman I could read—hoo mama, that shit burns—'cause if Weyman knows, everybody knows.
You're welcome, she said, wiping a tear of laughter from her cheek.
And when you said about being a field hand-
I'm good with it. See my hand? Look there, see that? No, right there, by the blisters. That's a callus.
Does resemble a callus, said Cassius smiling. Might small, but congratulations on your first. Now listen, Quashee, maybe there's a way to get you up to the house.
You goin save everybody tonight?
What, me?
I saw you with Joseph.
Aw, that was, no, forget that, that was nothing.
Taking on Big Gus is a damn fool nothing.
Yeah, said Cassius, you got that right.
Burning's just about gone, pass the jug, said Quashee.
After she had fought down the bad liquor and could speak again, she said: I suppose you know some folks don't like you.
And here I was thinking of running for governor.
Be serious now. Folks who'd like nothing better than to hurt you.
Big Gus, said Cassius nodding.
The hands listen to him.
The hands listen to the Driver.
Just thought if you were warned—
I'll be all right.
You even talk different with them. Not like you talk to me.
Maybe I do, said Cassius, knowing that he sometimes slipped into his field voice when he was with the hands. He did the same with the planters.
I'm glad you don't talk that way to me, said Quashee.
They listened to the music roll in and out with the wind and passed the jug until it was empty. Cassius appreciated her gift for silence. He had noticed it earlier in the week and now saw it was a habit.
I hear you were married, said Quashee.
Doors and windows and shutters slammed shut. Cassius did not move his eyes for fear of seeing himself fly away.
Married, said Quashee. Someone said—
I heard you.
Quashee nodded. A few moments passed before he spoke: I was married.
What was she like? said Quashee.
Not sure I know anymore. Maybe never did.
Know her long?
Marriah. Her name was Marriah. No, she came when Hoke bought the people of another planter.
Nice when it's someone new.
Cassius looked at her, unsure of her meaning.
So you don't know everything about them and they don't know all about you. Not like with someone you grew up with.
He understood the unspoken implication. Humiliations from planters, their families, and every other white man, woman, and child in the county are more easily borne when your new partner hasn't been witness to your history of degradation, thus allowing you to maintain a small measure of dignity.
What do the cackling hens say about my marriage? said Cassius.
Quashee inspected the wild grass at her ankles.
That she had a white child Missus Ellen forced Master Hoke to sell. That Missus Ellen whipped her something fierce, said Quashee.
For once they say the truth.
They say she died but I never did learn why.
Those women can't shut their mouths long enough to chew, said Cassius.
Cassius stared down the hill at the lights along the lane and in the barn, at the drinkers and dancers, at the lovers and the drunken sleepers. He stared at all that intense living that flourished despite oppression, and an image of Marriah's face hovered just outside his vision. He was beginning to forget what she looked like, and the harder he tried to bring back her face, the more it slipped away.
She knew she cou
ldn't run, said Cassius. They'd just keep bringing her back. Pretty soon they'd hobble her. Couldn't be a mother after they took her son. Maybe she also didn't think she could be a wife. She went to the place where the creek runs deep under the little bridge. They were looking on the roads farther out, so she had time.
You don't have to, said Quashee.
Put a large stone inside her dress. Few hours later the planters crossed the little bridge and one of them saw something wave in the water. Buried her before they let me out.
Cassius appreciated more than ever Quashee's ability to be silent. He sat as if alone, hearing nothing. Gradually the sound of the wind returned. He was unsure as to how long they had been sitting in silence; when he looked around, she was in the same position, but the musicians now played a tune he had not heard from the beginning.
They told you a lot, those women, said Cassius.
Don't blame them; I played the spy, asking questions here and there so no one noticed I wanted to know about you.
Cassius started at the word "spy." Intelligence agent, he said without thinking.
When I first came, I thought I recognized you, another bitter, damaged animal, and I know enough to let the damaged ones be.
I am so very happy I helped you out with Big Gus, said Cassius with evident sarcasm. And now you warn me that I bother him like a burr in his trousers.
His trousers, his shoes, maybe a few other places, said Quashee, returning his smile. She passed the jug and said: So after Marriah, Emoline Justice nurses you, and now she's dead and the whole world creeps around you.
God damn cackling hens.
Oh, I pieced some of it together on my own. You been all the talk since she passed.
Emoline brought me out of a dark place. Kept everyone away and just when I had to go back, Cold Storm hit, must've hit you too, snowbound for a week. Extra healing time so my mind could catch up to my body.
Five years ago? I remember that, but we called it Cox's Snow.
What's Cox got to do with it? said Cassius.
Old Dr. Cox from Lynchburg got caught a half mile from his place, frozen in his buggy. Everybody there calls it Cox's Snow.
Sounds funny in my ear, maybe 'cause I didn't know Dr. Cox. More likely call it Emoline's Snow.
Tell me about her.
Well, she was at Sweetsmoke and then Hoke let her be free and after a time she bought her son, and was working to buy her daughters. Taught me to read.
Cassius was tempted to ask Quashee who had taught her to read, but he held his tongue.
They sat awhile surrounded by the wind continually changing its tune, chasing the musical scale through leaves and branches.
Looks like your friend down there, said Quashee.
Cassius saw stumbling Weyman itching for a fight with one of the Swan of Alicantes, who was wisely attempting to walk away from a drunk. Cassius got to his feet.
I'll see he gets home. I enjoyed our talk, Miss Quashee. I enjoyed it as well, Mr. Cassius.
As Cassius walked down the hill, he sensed Quashee's eyes on his back, which at that moment burned hotter than the Edensong rotgut.
Cassius held Weyman's arm around his neck and wrapped his other arm around Weyman's back, walking him out past Eden- song's big house to the road. When Weyman drank he rambled on about his early years, growing up in the cotton states. Weyman had been one of the lucky ones. His master had died when Weyman was still a young man and he had been sent north to Virginia as part of the inheritance of his master's son. The son had no use for him and had sold him to Thomas Chavis, and Weyman now lived a very different life. Intermingled with his horror tales of Georgia, he complained about Tempie Easter intruding on his territory.
She sellin more shit to them trash whites and now they don't want what Weyman got to offer, said Weyman. Cassius, y'all got to carve me some more of them little soldiers so I can get my business back.
Sure, sure, said Cassius.
I could shoot that girl Tempie, said Weyman.
Sure, Weyman, you shoot her with your finger, said Cassius.
Y'all think I wouldn't? said Weyman, looking hurt, and then he shut his mouth.
Most of the planters and their children had gone inside, but the two masters, Hoke and Judge Francis, remained on the front porch. They were impressively inebriated.
"You know full well I purchased that land, Francis."
"I would lay odds you cannot produce a document."
"I never bet more than I can afford to lose," said Hoke. "And neither should you."
"Then perhaps you recall that my grandfather, out of the kindness of his heart, permitted Buffalo Channing to clear and plow that land, and Channing's children as well, but never did he grant permission to Channing's grandson to sell it!"
"I purchased that land from its rightful owner and I own it fair and square."
"You waited until he was beyond desperation and pilfered it for a song. You are a land pirate, Hoke Howard!"
"Land pirate!" sputtered Hoke, and his ensuing words emerged coldly: "My dear sir, I know that you will withdraw those injurious words and on your knees beg my pardon!"
The women rushed from the house and surrounded the men, pulling them apart. Cassius walked Weyman out of sight. Cassius might have found the battle between two aging plantation owners comic were it not so fraught with dangerous implications. The planter argument would likely lead to further unpleasantness, and Cassius began to question if there might be some truth at the core of the superstition. Was it possible that the arrival of bad luck was more than coincidence? Francis Jarvis's son-in-law was a Confederate quartermaster, bad luck indeed for the plantation Sweetsmoke.
Cassius scoured the area near the main road and eventually found Bunty, Weyman's fellow slave, who also worked Thomas Chavis's farm. Cassius unloaded Weyman so he could return directly to Sweetsmoke. He would need sleep—tomorrow promised to be a busy day.
* * *
Chapter Five
Cassius stood at the edge of the clearing and drove temporary stakes into the ground. The clearing was on a rise in an area of deep forest, a tract of land that was being considered to be clear-cut for the following year's crop.
At dawn on that Monday, the day after the Big-To-Do, Hoke had accompanied Cassius to the fields. As they walked, Cassius had listened to Hoke grumbling aloud, "Goddamned Jarvis can't read French," and "Arrogant prig," and "I'm the one introduced Pompous Pilate to Victor Hugo." Once in the tobacco fields, Hoke informed Mr. Nettle that Cassius would handpick men to build fences and an enclosure in a location away from the barns to conceal the livestock. Cassius had chosen Joseph among the men he knew to be fluent with hammer and saw. Big Gus protested vehemently, going so far as to drive his hand into a burlap sack to raise a handful of wriggling hornworms, as if this constituted proof that Joseph was indispensable to the counterattack on the blight. He misjudged Hoke's tolerance for confrontation and was promptly silenced by Mr. Nettle. Big Gus closed his fingers into a fist, squeezing hornworms that popped and oozed in his grip. Hoke looked away, Mr. Nettle glared, and Cassius concluded that the Driver had severely blundered. As Cassius led the men out of the fields, he saw Big Gus waving his arms in the air, berating Abram.
It was unnecessary for Hoke Howard to tell Cassius of the need for haste; Cassius had already anticipated this move and by daybreak had designed in his head an enclosure that could be built quickly and strengthened later. Hoke informed him that the livestock would arrive at the clearing by mid-morning. Cassius cordoned off an area with stakes and rope, and at the arrival of cattle and sheep, he compelled them into that area and continued to build around them. The hogs would quickly follow, delivered by wagons. The sound of men and hammers alarmed the beasts and they huddled behind ropes while Cassius built and re-roped to open new space as individual sections of fence were completed.
He returned to the quarters at sundown to learn that Hoke's urgency had been astute. Captain Whitacre and his empty wagons had rolled up in the middle aft
ernoon and requisitioned a patriotic percentage of their commodities. Hoke had not been able to hide all his grain and other dry goods in time, but Whitacre's primary goal—to reduce Sweetsmoke's supply of fresh meat—had been thwarted, and he loaded thin, weak, and lame livestock into his wagons as well as into the Sweetsmoke buckboard, which he also requisitioned. Frustrated by their meager gain, Whitacre's men targeted the high- stepping bantam rooster who frequented the yard outside the big house. The house servants described the clumsy, off-balance soldiers in full-bore pursuit of the quick cock, who after being cornered more than once, feinted and dodged his way to freedom. Children on the lane mimicked the rooster's moves as their friends imitated the stumbling soldiers. In the end, Whitacre had moved out with less than a quarter of his wagons full, wearing the expression of one who had been obliged to eat an apple acrawl with worms.
The work of the day had been intense and fulfilling, and Cassius had taken satisfaction in its accomplishment. This rare moment of personal value led him to seek out Jenny and apologize, as he was certain, in his charitable humor, that he would surely salvage their friendship. Cassius found Jenny pulling weeds from between a row of cabbage plants and emerging carrots in the vegetable garden behind the cabin she shared with her sister, her sister's husband, their children, and a blond dog. When she saw him, an expression warped her face that checked his approach. She bent back to the weeds, but a residue of his determination drove him on, even as his prepared apology slipped away. She whirled to face him, eyes blunt with fury.
You make God angry! Jenny hissed. That little girl's a jinx, she's bad luck!
He was stunned motionless.
Who do you think you are? said Jenny.
After years of friendship and intimacy, the Jenny before him was a stranger. As difficult as it was to define what they had together, it had brought him comfort, as she had accepted him during his complicated times. An invisible wall was now between them, as if the past had never occurred. The feel of her breasts and belly under his hand, the smoky-sweet smell of her breath, her fingertips drifting along his neck into his hair, all these memories became suspect, unreal. Their past now joined other good times of his life that had been crushed or undermined, as if the real world could accommodate only pain and misery and contempt.