The brick sidewalk held the night cool though the morning sun scorched the sky. Inside town houses, servants went tiptoeing from room to room, closing sunny shutters and opening shady ones to catch the errant breeze. What would white folks do without us? Ruth wondered. Who would open and close all those shutters if we wasn’t here to do it?
He’d be coming pretty soon. He wouldn’t be late. Important Masters would wait on Langston’s uncle Middleton, but his unproven nephew must be on time.
Ruth didn’t think he’d remember her, though she’d often been in his house with Jehu’s dinner bucket. She mustn’t think of Jehu or she’d start crying.
Martine sang to her doll: “la, la, la.” Ruth felt as if her soul had dried to a nubbin.
Butler materialized so swiftly, it was as if he’d always been there. In a blink, Ruth’s quarry had arrived! “Martine.” Her daughter stuck her thumb in her mouth. “Don’t forget Silly.”
The Young Master wore a conservative frock coat and tight gray trousers. He consulted his watch.
Hercules had promised he’d be five minutes late. He’d kissed Ruth’s forehead. “I trainin’ Valentine for the Jockey Club races, and I the only one can handle that horse. Master Langston wants to beat Colonel Jack’s horse. He’ll figure I on purpose late, but he won’t whip me until the race. If he wins, he’ll forget ’bout that old bullwhip. If he don’t, I gets whipped whatever I done for you.” Hercules shrugged. “I gets you five minutes, Ruth. Make the best of ’em.”
When Ruth fronted him, Langston Butler looked through her as if she was glass. Ruth blurted, “Master Butler!”
When he didn’t respond, she babbled, “Master Butler, I Ruth, Jehu Glen’s wife. I don’t reckon you recollects, but I been fetchin’ Jehu’s supper when he doin’ your fine withdrawing room. Master Butler, you tryin’ my Jehu in court today.”
His eyes were cold and flat like a snake’s. He looked her all up and down. He frowned. Was his frown for her bare feet?
Ruth begged, “Jehu Glen good husband, Master. He li’l Martine papa. Jehu try to do right, but that Vesey . . . that Vesey . . .” Ruth shook her head disgustedly. “Vesey make Jehu crazy. My Jehu, he scared plumb to death of that old man.”
The Young Master clicked his watch shut and examined the corner where his carriage must appear.
“You knows my Jehu, Master. He makin’ you chair rails. He makin’ you plans for you plantation house. My Jehu valuable nigger, Master. Was you to sell Jehu, I believe he’d fetch seven, might be eight hundred dollars. I know he done wrong. I ain’t askin’ you let him off. No, sir. No, sir. But he worth eight hundred dollars, Master. That’s what I’m askin’ you, Master. Sell him. Don’t let eight hundred dollars go to waste.”
As if touched by her plea, young Master Butler reached down to tip her chin, and hard blue eyes searched scared brown ones. “If I am late to court, I will have you whipped for your trouble.” His soft voice was the hardest thing Ruth had ever heard. Despite the sun burning her shoulders, his voice made her go cold.
The clatter at her back was Hercules’s carriage. “Ge’e up, you scamps!” like Hercules was mad at the horses for makin’ him late.
Desperately, Ruth lifted Martine, as if her living child was an argument. “She love her Papa,” she begged. “Her Papa all she got.”
Martine was startled into silence. Then she wailed.
Disgust rolled over young Master Butler’s pale white face. “If your husband is valuable,” he said, “think how much more valuable you are: a breeder with proof of fecundity at your side.”
Ruth gasped. Langston Butler set his foot on the step and glanced up to let Hercules know he hadn’t been fooled.
He closed the door and smiled down at Ruth. “Your husband—Jehu? Didn’t he want to hold his head up high?” He nodded. “I believe we can arrange that.”
As he drove off, Langston Butler was chuckling.
For years afterward Ruth wondered what she might have said to make things turn out different. Maybe she should have worn her churchgoing shoes.
Martine
On July 26, Mingo Harth, Lot Forrester, Joe Jorre, Julius Forrest, Tom Russell, Smart Anderson, John Robertson, Polydore Faber, Bacchus Hammett, Dick Simms, Pharaoh Thompson, Jemmy Clement, Jerry Cohen, Dean Mitchell, Jack Purcell, Bellisle Yates, Naphur Yates, Adam Yates, Jehu Glen, Charles Billings, Jack McNeil, Caesar Smith, Jacob Stagg, and Tom Scott were hanged.
“WE IS PUT asunder, honey. Ain’t no helpin’ it,” Ruth told Martine. Her daughter wore the best rags Ruth owned, and her shiny hair was braided with green ribbons, for which, last night in the slave jail, Ruth had bartered her supper. “You so pretty, child,” Ruth advised. “They gots see how pretty you is. My Martine. They gonna love you just like I do. New Mistress gonna love you to pieces.”
With other slaves Ruth and her child waited on the wooden platform next to the stairs of the Exchange House, Charleston’s customs house and post office. Horses would be auctioned after the slaves. Diverse merchandise—halters, saddles, hand-cranked grain mills, small tools, and two bright green portmanteaus—would be sold last.
In the morning of the same day Jehu was hanged, the Watch knocked politely on Ruth’s broken blue door. Charleston’s prudent authorities meant to recoup expenses and confiscated Jehu’s tools, Jehu’s slave, and her get. His planes, chisels, and measuring implements were sold to a builder, and Jehu’s human Capital was delivered to the workhouse for auction.
Ruth concealed her father’s fate from Martine but imagined it whenever her tired eyes shut.
The authorities were determined to have an exemplary hanging, and since the gallows couldn’t accommodate twenty-four men at once, they were marched to the long stone wall which had protected the city from the British in 1812. Twenty-four hemp ropes were dangled over and attached behind this wall before the condemned mounted low benches in front of it. A rowdy mixed-race crowd pressed against the militiamen as the executioner adjusted nooses. When he kicked the benches away, the drop was insufficient to break necks and twenty-four men began strangling. Most danced, kicking, twirling, and convulsing. Bacchus Hammett lifted his knees to shorten his agonies, and the executioner dispatched several lingerers. Jeremy Clement’s young son, Cicero, tried to run to his father, but Cicero was kicked by a militiaman’s horse and died later that evening.
* * *
Ruth’s auctioneer, a bearded gentleman in linen coat and spotless broad-brimmed hat, perused sale documents while his merchandise was inspected by buyers and the idly curious. At one planter’s request, a young Negro jogged in place, rotated his arms, and squat-jumped to demonstrate his fitness for field work. The young brown-skinned woman next to Ruth bared her teeth and turned this way and that. When a young fellow told her to raise her shift, the auctioneer interrupted, “You buyin’, son? Or just want a free peek?”
The auctioneer stacked his papers, cleared his throat, and began his chant. “Now this boy gonna make you some money! That’s M-U-N-Y: Money! This boy can plant, weed, harvest, and thresh. He come from Anderson Plantation, so he knows everything there is to know about Carolina Gold rice.”
Ruth felt nothing. Unlike Hell, this day would end.
After the field hand and light-skinned young woman were sold, the auctioneer’s helper pulled Ruth and Martine onto the block. Although Ruth had belonged to the Forniers, the Evanses, and Jehu, she hadn’t really belonged to them. She’d been Ruth or Mammy Ruth, which wasn’t the same as belonging to. Now she was simplified.
Just twenty feet from Ruth and her daughter, a planter entered the Exchange House. He’d be checking a manifest, filing a deed; perhaps he had a letter to mail. He didn’t notice them. If Ruth called out, he might be startled or annoyed before he continued about his business. Ruth, Jehu, her beloved Martine: how had they existed? If not in men’s eyes, had they shared a small, unassuming place in
Le Bon Dieu’s heart?
The auctioneer continued, “Gentlemen, I beg your best attention. I have a house servant for sale! Twenty or so years, in tip-top health, an experienced Mammy and housemaid, compliant and hardworking. Gentlemen: she cannot read a seditious word in any language! Not a sick day in her life with a child of five years at her side. The child is well nurtured, has no scars or sores, and her mother’s a proven breeder. One or both; how much for the pair? Two hundred and fifty dollars; very well, sir, two fifty to begin. Mr. Smalls has bid two fifty. Truly, gentlemen, she’s a bargain. Two fifty? Look at these eyes, examine her straight limbs. Shall I say two sixty? Picture this young woman, uh, cleaning your bedchamber.”
A ripple of knowing laughter.
“You sir, I have you! Two sixty, I have two sixty. Do I have two seventy-five? Gentlemen, this is a five-hundred-dollar wench if I ever sold one! Now! Two eighty for the best Mammy in the Low Country? Think how your dear wives will thank you for her services!”
His emphasis on this last word rekindled knowing laughter, which some Christians thought in dubious taste.
“Must I sell them for two hundred eighty dollars? Three hundred. Thank you, sir, I have three hundred . . .”
A rustic stepped forward. “She’s one of Vesey’s devils. Her own husband was hanged Tuesday last. This slut been lying aside him plottin’ to cut white throats! Her ’n’ him ’n’ Satan Vesey. Sir, you reckon my wife’d thank me for clasping this viper to the snow-white bosoms of our innocent babes?”
In the back of the crowd, cheerful horsemen arrived. More interested in bonhomie than the auction, one drained his flask; another clung to his saddle as a precautionary measure.
The auctioneer snapped at the rustic. “Sir! If you please! I have three hundred . . .”
“The hell you have!” the high bidder cried. “You never said she was one of Vesey’s!”
“Sir, I have auctioned two score loyal servants caught up in that desperate business. All were thoroughly examined and proved ignorant of Vesey’s plot. Left to their own devices—without agitation—our Negroes are happy and respectful. This woman has served fine families in Savannah and Charleston. She is no Judas! No women was involved in Vesey’s plot. How could they be? Are not women the weaker vessel?”
The three-hundred-dollar bidder turned his back and walked away. One of the newly arrived horsemen dismounted to shake a pebble out of his boot while his friends offered advice.
The auctioneer had met the “Vesey objection” before. He pursed his lips. “Woman, turn away and remove your shirt.”
Ruth’s shirt slipped off, light as the faintest breeze. The slaves facing her stared at their feet.
“You see any scar on her back?” the auctioneer asked. “Has she been whipped? No! And I’ll tell you why. Because her man was a rebel but this woman knows her place! Face forward.”
Young boys giggled. Someone guffawed.
“This wench may not be light enough for the fancy trade, but I have been told by sophisticated gentlemen that blackness cannot be seen in the dark. I had three hundred. I begin anew. Have you two fifty for this young nigra with youngster at her side. Two fifty? Do I hear two fifty?”
“I’ll give you forty for the whelp,” the interfering rustic sang out. “My cook lost hers and I despise her whinin’ ’bout it.”
“I have forty, forty. You in the back, sir. Will you go forty-five? Forty it is then. Sold to number sixteen. Sir, my associate, Mr. Mullen, will take your money and provide your bill of sale.”
Ruth’s hand was entirely numb, so she didn’t feel Martine’s hand pulled out of it. She didn’t hear Martine’s wail. She didn’t see her go. Ruth had deportment: what she didn’t touch or hear or see or feel wasn’t.
A moment of blackness, a few seconds dead, her heart scarred forever; that was all there was to it.
A white man hollered, “It’s noon, Mr. Smithers! I’ve come to buy me a horse. When’s the goddamned horses?”
“Patience, Jack. I’ll sell the niggers, then the horses.”
“What the hell! What the hell!” Colonel Jack dismounted and pushed toward the block. “Smithers, you double-dyed son of a . . . Ruth! By God, it is you! What the hell is going on?”
Ruth whispered, “Martine.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. I’ll be damned. Does Frances know ’bout this?”
Ruth shook her head.
Jack opened his pocketbook and thumbed through his money. “Smithers, how’s my credit?”
“Jack . . .”
“How much I owe you?”
“You haven’t settled for that bay mare. Remember? White foreleg. Nor that black colt you bought in December. Jack, you know and I know you stole that colt.”
Jack jabbed a finger at his chest. “Steal a colt? Smithers, you namin’ Jack Ravanel: horse thief?”
Jack’s friends laughed, and the fellow holding Jack’s horse volunteered, “Be damned if you ain’t, Jack. Damned if you ain’t.”
After more back-and-forth, it was established that Jack’s credit was unacceptable until back payments were received, or unless a lien was recorded on certain rice lands, in which case credit would be willingly, nay gladly, reinstituted by Smithers and Sons, auctioneers of slaves, horses, and general merchandise.
“Frances would kill me,” Jack said.
Ruth wondered how many words there were and why there were so many.
Colonel Jack worked his horsey pals with entreaties and assurances. He invoked Frances.
Normally, the $217 Jack put together wouldn’t buy a young woman with child, but the woman was tainted, the market glutted, the auctioneer wanted to get on, and the child sold separately.
* * *
Seventy years ago, Jack Ravanel’s great-grandfather Nathaniel put his profits from the deerskin trade into indigo land beside the Ashley. Jack’s grandfather Josiah was eighteen when he was killed in a duel, and his brother, William, planted rice on the Ravanel lands and built a rambling cypress farmhouse on high ground across the river. Carolina Gold was light, shippable, and kept forever. Napoleon’s and Wellington’s quartermasters poured money into the Low Country, where newly rich planters gilded their carriages and demolished their grandfathers’ workaday farmhouses for “plantation houses” in the Georgian style. The Ravanels were content in their rambling, unfashionable cypress farmhouse between the river road and the river where it was tucked under the back slope of the bluff, and storms howled over harmlessly. While Jack reveled in town with his horsey friends, Frances preferred to be where, as she said, she could hear the birds and termites singing. The family rooms were cheerful with knickknacks, and the dining room wall was covered with Creek Indian blankets in vivid red, green, and orange patterns. Though eighteen full- and half-task hands toiled across the river in Jack’s rice fields, only Cook and Mammy Ruth lived in the house. Jack’s stable boys and jockeys slept in the annex of a twelve-stall stable.
Colonel Jack was neither a keen nor a careful planter and treated his Negroes as he had white militiamen. Consequently, they worked well under Jack’s eye but tended their own gardens, hunted, and fished when Master was away. Jack’s friends recommended overseers, but one was too slack, the next too strict, and none lasted for more than a month or two.
Since Jack was often away buying horses, Frances and her daughter, Penny, were each other’s best company.
When Jack arrived with Ruth on the back of his horse, his eyes were tight with headache and Ruth was gray as mop water. Her wan smile was terrible.
“We bought us another servant,” Jack said. “I know; I know I shouldn’t, but how could I let Ruth be sold away?”
“Sold away? Sold? Where . . . ? Of course you couldn’t, dear Jack. Come inside, Ruth, you are exhausted.”
Penny, who’d rushed out to greet her Mammy and her friend Martine
, stuck a thumb into her mouth.
“Fine house,” Ruth managed.
“It’s an old ruin, but it’s home.” When she shot a questioning glance at her husband, Jack’s frown warned her not to ask about Martine.
Ruth sat stupefied on a front porch glider until Penny found her way into her Mammy’s lap, and, after a long time, Ruth stroked her hair.
That night, kneeling beside her bed, Penny prayed that Martine would be well and happy. Ruth’s eyes caressed the child so fiercely and tenderly, Frances couldn’t look.
In the morning, Jack left for Beaufort, where a widow might be selling her husband’s horses.
By week’s end, Ruth was able to sleep, sometimes for thirty minutes at a time.
Jack was brave enough to face bullets, but not this. When Colonel Ravanel wasn’t traveling, he stayed in town.
Ruth did everything Frances asked as she melded with her drab brown shift and worn green kerchief. Not infrequently Frances would look up and wonder when had Ruth come into the room and how long had she been sitting there.
She invited no remark, and when Frances tried to converse, Ruth’s wan smile stifled it as a blanket smothers fire. Only Penny mentioned Martine, in the child’s bedside prayers. Though neither grown-up remarked, they would have noticed if one night Penny forgot.
Fever was often fatal to Low Country newcomers. Native-born whites and coloreds—whose forebear knew the fever in Africa—often contracted the disease in milder form. They’d all had it at one time or another, and two or three days’ distress until the fever ran its course was what Frances expected one morning when Penny couldn’t get out of bed and her forehead was on fire.
Ruth dosed her with quinine bark tea and a decoction of radish leaves, and for three days Penny improved. Next day, when Frances thought Penny would leave her bed, her daughter complained of headache and the fever was back. By nightfall the child was so weak she had to be carried to the chamber pot.
Ruth's Journey: The Authorized Novel of Mammy From Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind Page 17