by David Fuller
He say undermined, and I like to think he whip Big Gus right there, but he done give him a sack and send him off down a row away from everybody and told him to start toppin and primin.
So wait a minute, where's Gus now?
Hidin out in his cabin. You shoulda seen Abram, he was swearin and cussin out his Savilla, sayin he had Big Gus calmed down and now she got him all riled up again, but I think Big Gus not be comin back to Driver no time soon.
So Big Gus finally got his, said Cassius with satisfaction.
Sure seem like it, said Jenny and they laughed together.
And Savilla, how 'bout that, said Cassius.
She a strong one when it come to her boys.
Good to have someone looking out for you, said Cassius.
Jenny looked at him pointedly and said: Real good to have someone look out for you.
Yes it is, said Cassius, continuing to chuckle as he played it out in his mind, picturing their expressions and body language.
Take me with you, Cassius, said Jenny suddenly.
How's that? Cassius stopped laughing.
You heard, take me with you, I can't stand much more, I got to go with you.
What makes you think I'm going?
Please, Cassius.
Cassius looked at her but now said nothing.
She stood up abruptly. Please, she said. Think about it.
She walked quickly away leaving radishes and carrots and okra in a line on his step. If Jenny knew he was planning to run, then everyone knew, and he had thought he was undecided. He had also thought he was inscrutable, only to find that he was no less transparent than Fawn. He watched Jenny go along the gully and out of sight up near her cabin.
The next day Mam Rosie came to see him. She came in the afternoon with the sun high, and he thought of Jenny and wondered if Mam Rosie also knew. She had removed her apron, and wore her good dress, and she found him outside the barn repairing a wagon wheel.
Cassius was impressed that she was not apologetic.
I ain't had no chance to see you since you come back, said Mam Rosie.
You been busy.
Busy? Always busy, what you mean busy?
Hoke ill, people coming and going, doctors and visitors, said Cassius.
Mouths to feed, that so.
Well, it's a fine surprise to see you.
Mam Rosie winced, but he kept the smile firmly planted on his face.
Cassius, you know's well as I it ain't no fine surprise, said Mam Rosie, thus marking the deliberate course change in their conversation.
Cassius looked at her and allowed his easy smile to fade. He knew she knew that he would not make it easy, but he would also not make it impossible.
I didn't mean it the way it come out, said Mam Rosie. I didn't mean it the way it happened.
Never thought you did.
Didn't do it to hurt you.
All right.
I thought you was gone, clean away. I thought you was smart to do it, too. The way you think about everything all the way to the end. The way you plan things out.
You flattering me, Rose?
No, Cassius. Just me and you.
All right, Rose. Tell me how you thought.
Master Hoke sick, said Mam Rosie. He not there to lead them paddyrollers after you, and you know them paddyrollers, if he ain't there, they don't care the same way. And the way they just got paid paper money for Joseph, too, how much they get worked up for another runner after that? They go hard in the bush for Joseph, and now they got another one? No, sir, they never find a smart one like you. I was glad for you. I knowed you was away for good.
So you saw an opportunity, said Cassius.
Now what you got to say that for?
I know you, Rose. Don't you think I don't.
Mam Rosie remembered how she had used those very words on him, and her face twisted in recognition and pain.
I deserve that, I do. But Missus Ellen, she promise me some old clothes, fine linen, hard worn, but nice, you know how that be. I do be likin that soft cloth. But after she say that, it never come so I figure she done forgot, or maybe she promise in her happy time with that secret bottle. I knowed you was safe, so I figure ain't no harm to give her somethin, so maybe after she trust me a little and I can ask her again for them things she already promise.
She give them to you?
Give what? said Mam Rosie.
After you told her I said I was running, she give you the linen?
No. She done forgot.
You never got them.
No.
Never.
Mam Rosie understood his meaning as he reemphasized her betrayal of him for soft linen.
Who you think you are? said Mam Rosie.
She turned and walked away, back to her kitchen, and he went back to repairing the wheel.
* * *
Chapter Fifteen
Quashee found a piece of time to slip away and met him outside the carpentry shed. She was different, girlish, and he did not immediately appreciate that she was flirting. Finally she took his hand and led him into the shed. Her eyes did not wander but remained fixed on his. Her clothes carried the aroma of fish from the whale oil lamps in the big house, and Cassius was again pleasantly reminded of power and privilege. He felt himself aroused, in proximity to a strong, exciting woman who desired him; better still, a woman who had chosen him, someone who smelled good in an influential and elegant way, and he welcomed the moment, turning his head slightly and closing his eyes to breathe her in. She was very close, and his memory brought back the night in the big house so completely that he felt the sensation of her warm mouth against his and then something turned in his mind and he forced himself to step back and he moved away from her across the shed.
You all right? said Quashee and he saw the awkward tilt of her shoulders and the confused hurt in her eyes.
I am. No. Guess I'm not, said Cassius.
I thought maybe this time was good for us, said Quashee, and he had never before heard insecurity in her voice.
It would be. Should be, even might be.
Her eyes opened wider as she contemplated the enormity of her error, believing she had completely misread him.
Oh, said Quashee. I'm sorry, I thought something else.
You didn't think wrong.
No, I did and I'm sorry, said Quashee and she backed up toward the door.
You're not wrong, Quashee. But something changed.
You don't got to explain, I best be getting back.
No, not yet. Hear me.
She stopped at the door, and her girlishness was gone and he was sorry. Her shoulders tried to close around her heart and her eyes were large and moist in her face. He saw that she was alone, and it broke his heart.
I—I got to go again, said Cassius.
You only just come back.
Something to finish.
I will miss you, said Quashee, and she was another inch closer to the door. She opened it a crack. He saw that she wanted to be away to keep private any display of emotion.
You don't understand, said Cassius.
I do, said Quashee.
You don't. Listen now.
She turned her face away, and a slant of brightness from the open door swelled in her liquid eyes.
I see you, said Cassius. I see you in the yard or by a window or coming down the lane and my poor heart flies. I think on you when I'm alone just working and I smile inside. You come to my dreams and I wake up at peace. I want to know what it is to touch your hair, to know if your back is smooth or striped, to know how you sound when you breathe while you sleep. I want to know that everything'll be all right. And when I think that, I get afraid, and remember how it was when I was cold because I didn't want and didn't offer. That was a good time-they couldn't hurt me and I couldn't hurt because no one got close.
Only Emoline, said Quashee softly.
Only close enough to mend so I could stand again.
I think she did more.
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I wasn't afraid then. If they hurt me I could take it. If they killed me, then the thing that I am stops and I could take that too. I didn't care, and now that's changed and that says I can hurt you, and I can't take that. I don't know how to say you should give up love, but if you don't, then they got every power over you, every one. If you don't love, then there's one thing they can't destroy.
That's a compliment, only it means you won't be with me, said Quashee.
I could be, I could put a whole life of you in my last days here, but where are you after? A man on the road, and you not knowing where or if he's coming back. I got to go. If I'm a gambling man, I don't bet on my chances. I am tired of the hurt and I don't want to cause more.
So I did this.
How you mean?
You opened to me, and it made you afraid.
No, that's not right.
But think, Cassius, if you don't let it happen, that fear and pain all be for nothin. 'Cause that's all you got, fear and pain, so you got none of the good that goes with it. It's the good lets us stand the pain.
Cassius closed his eyes and exhaled.
Never thought I was unlucky, said Quashee.
No no no no, said Cassius.
But I look around and there's Pet close by every day.
It's not better in the big house than the fields?
When you outside Missus Ellen only hear what someone say about you in her ear, she can't see you every day—
And see you're good.
Okay, but then every day she also reminded about you.
Cassius opened his palms in a gesture of helplessness.
Master John-Corey was a straight-up man, said Quashee. Different from his father. Simple.
I know, I remember, said Cassius.
Old Hoke, he's like other planters, grand and poetic and naming plantations Swan of Alicante and Edensong and Horn of Plenty and Sweetsmoke, while John-Corey Howard just made his Howard. Howard Plantation.
John-Corey's great-grandfather made his Sweetsmoke.
I'm saying John-Corey was not complicated. Straight-up. And I fit in. I knew what was expected. I was proud of what I did. Life was slow, but it was safe. I had a man at John-Corey's.
I didn't know.
I know you didn't. We didn't jump the broom or nothing, but we had each other for a time and it was something for me. He was in the big house, too, and he was straight-up. Straight up and good to me. It was nice to have someone. When John-Corey got killed, he got sold with all the rest, all of them but my father and me. I cried, but it was over quick. That was a surprise 'cause I found out I didn't love him. He was a good man, and I miss him, but I didn't love him. I had kept back some part of me when I was with him. After that I was at Howard Plantation for months closing it, and I got easy with the idea I would never love. And then I got unlucky to meet you, and more unlucky when you said no.
Quashee pushed the door of the shed wide, and the sudden sunny green of the outdoors shocked his eyes.
My back, she said, is smooth.
She ran out the door, and he followed to see her go from the sun into the shadow of the trees on the way back to the big house.
She hadn't been gone more than an hour when he heard her call: He's worse, Cassius, come quick!
He dropped his tools and saw her running to him, slowing as he started in her direction: He's worse. Come now.
He ran with her to the big house, and followed her in and up the stairs. She stopped at the door to Hoke's bedroom and Cassius passed her and removed his hat. Hoke's eyes were open, but he saw nothing. He spoke but in words that Cassius did not recognize. Hoke raised a trembling hand and then down it fluttered and he was quiet, but his open eyes looked wildly around, as if he could not understand the things he was seeing, and those things frightened him unimaginably.
Cassius stared at the man on the bed, knowing how different things would be when he died. Then he realized that Ellen was speaking loudly in his ear.
"Go, Cassius, go now, fetch the doctor, do not simply stand there gaping," she said.
Cassius returned in the carriage with the doctor following in his own buggy. Cassius trailed the man up the stairs, but the doctor closed the door to shut him out. Cassius went to sit near the front porch, and within the hour the doctor emerged alone, snugging his hat on his head and going for his buggy; things were not good. Cassius heard no crying within, so the old man wasn't dead. Genevieve came to the yard and walked the long way around to the kitchen, as if she could no longer remember what she had set out to do a moment before. He watched the comings and goings inside the house, and through the window he saw Ellen Howard descend the stairs and cross the large greeting room to Hoke's study.
He stood and dusted off his trousers but did not bother to put his hat on his head. He stepped up to the front porch. He caught a glance of the bantam rooster and he made an abrupt move toward the little cock and said: Go on now. The rooster ran in a circle then went around the corner out of sight. Cassius felt sour in the pit of his stomach. He entered the big house without knocking, crossing the large greeting room to Hoke's study. He stopped there, and saw Pet's shock at his brazen entrance. He handed her his hat. She looked at it with stunned disapproval, set it down on a sideboard, and scurried away. He knocked on the study door.
"Yes yes, come in," said Ellen.
Cassius did so.
Ellen Howard commanded Hoke's desk in a way different than her husband. Hoke embraced the wood; he touched it and gathered strength from its warmth and grain. Ellen acted as if she could rise above it. Cassius sensed that her power was precarious.
"Cassius," said Ellen, and her tone of voice betrayed her lack of tolerance.
Missus Ellen, if time is short, then make the best of it.
"You continue to take many liberties."
If so, it's for family and Sweetsmoke, said Cassius.
"I forbid you to use that tone with me, Cassius."
You think Master Hoke won't live long.
Ellen glared at him, and for a moment he thought he had gambled too recklessly, but then she looked away and he knew he had won.
"The doctor is not optimistic."
Cassius remembered the lessons he had learned from Emoline, and he conjured up a story on the spot: You been having dreams.
"How did you know?"
Dreams about your family.
Her carriage went rigid.
Good news comes about the war and you believe you got to pay for it somehow.
"Oh God," said Ellen, and her arms crossed in front of her, hands to her shoulders as if he had torn off her dress.
Cassius intended to prey on her fears. He only wished he could unsettle her more.
I had a look at your dreams, said Cassius quietly.
She kept her arms crossed and her head drew back in surprise.
You're not careful, Missus Ellen. Letting down your guard. You were protecting Master Jacob, but now your energy goes to Sweetsmoke. The line to him is weaker.
"Do not speak to me in that way, Cassius," said Ellen, in a whisper close to a hiss.
I can help you.
"How can you help me?"
You best remake the connection to your son in a hurry. You can't lose both.
"Aah!" she cried out, loudly, her deepest fear rended from her insides and laid out fresh and wretched.
Bring him home, said Cassius.
"How can I? How? How is that possible?"
Someone's got to tell him his father's dying.
Ellen's mouth made a flat line.
Someone's got to bring him back.
"Who can go, who can do that?"
I can.
"You? How would you do that?"
First find the army, then find your son. Bring him home, but then it falls to you, you make him stay.
Ellen's eyes went wild much as Hoke's had done earlier, but in her madness she saw possibilities. Cassius glanced at the portrait behind Hoke's desk, and in that moment, he recognized what
the painter had captured.
You got to have Jacob back, said Cassius simply.
They worked out the details. The carriage had to remain at the plantation. Cassius would find whatever transportation availed itself. She wrote out a pass and an accompanying letter explaining who he was, and that he was on his way to see his master who was with the Army of Northern Virginia. Her letter was concise, and he was impressed by it.
She said that at dawn, someone would take him in the carriage to the outskirts of the town and then he would be on his own.
He took the letter and the pass and walked to the door of the study and opened it. He saw Quashee on the other side, halfway down the stairs, supporting herself with her hand on the banister, staring at him. From behind him, he heard Ellen say, "You will do this, Cassius? You will bring him back? You won't just go off, you will fulfill your duty to us?"
He looked back at her, and Ellen was standing in almost exactly the same pose as Quashee, supporting herself with her hand on the bookshelf.
Cassius looked again to Quashee and said: I'll come back, if I am able. I will make you that promise.
He went to his cabin in the quarters to collect his things. From the secret hiding place he removed the stash of money he had earned from being loaned out as a carpenter, leaving the soldier he had carved for his son. There was more money than he had remembered. He thought back on the six months spent doing finish work on the addition to Swan of Alicante's big house, and realized Hoke had not taken his half. He folded the bills and slid them into the small panel he had sewn into the inside of his trousers leg, up near the left knee. He put one stitch in the top of the panel so that the money could not accidentally fall out.
His decision hardened in his mind. He would accept nothing less than the death of Solomon Whitacre. His death for hers. It no longer mattered what happened to him afterward. He was absolute in his final promise to himself, that he would kill Emoline's murderer. No matter the cost.
He filled Jacob's old haversack with salted beef and pork and ashcakes. He inspected his hat, and was sorry he hadn't taken the time to repair it. It would have to do. He would go out later, when the sun went down, to his traps. He would give any trapped animal to Savilla, and then he would shut them down for good. He would not allow an animal to starve to death inside an abandoned trap.