March

by Geraldine Brooks

  Since the dusk was gathering, Canning asked the servant to bring light. The old man shuffled in with a pair of candles mounted in a hollowed-out potato. “Thank you, Ptolemy,” he said, then chuckled as the flare of the kindled flame illuminated my expression.

  “Not what you imagined, eh, March? Not quite what I had in mind, either.” He chewed diligently upon his gristly meat. “First the federals went through the place, when the late owner was still alive. What they didn’t take the rebel irregulars made off with, soon as they heard that the mistress had taken the loyalty oath. I’ve found one or two things in the slave quarters, and you can be sure plenty more left with the slaves that ran off-which was more than half of them, from what I can figure. Some of those came back; and we have forty people-including that clapped-out old house servant-assigned here from the contraband camp the Union army had to set up at Darwin’s Bend, to accommodate all the runaways coming into their lines. At least, having been comprehensively robbed means we’re marginally safer from raids now, since word has gone about that we don’t have anything left worth looting. Although once news gets out that there’s a fresh Yankee arrived here, they may come sniffing ...”

  “But I understood there was a garrison at Waterbank to protect the Northern lessees in this area?”

  Canning gave a dry laugh. “There is a post at Waterbank, yes, but what they call cavalry is laughably insufficient for the making of patrols between that town and the next garrison, or for the hunting down of irregulars. I’ve never seen such an indifferently mounted force. Why, some are even on mules or cart horses confiscated from the citizenry. You can imagine their effectiveness in any kind of hot pursuit. No, Mr. March, the garrison’s protection extends no farther than whatever the fact of its presence affords. I do not expect that they would venture any heroic effort on our behalf.”

  For the rest of that cheerless dinner, Canning enumerated the woes of the enterprise known as Oak Landing. The, picking season in this region generally began in September but in any case no later than November, so as to be concluded by Christmas. But Canning had arrived to find the place in utter disarray. Those slaves who remained had-quite sensibly, it seemed to me-turned their hands to raising food crops that would stave off their own hunger. Before Canning could get workers assigned to him by the superintendent of contraband who ran the camp at Darwin’s Bend, and then reorganize everyone into work gangs, the crop was months delayed. As a result, winter rains had washed almost half the bolls from the stalks, and the late picking, still under way, was yielding disappointment. “Mrs. Croft gave me to understand-and showed me the factor’s accounts to support it-that the yield per hand would be above a hundred pounds of cotton a day. We are lucky to get fifty, and that from the best hands. The children and the old folk bring in much less. Still, we must use every hand we have.”

  This news was dispiriting, for it meant my classroom would stand empty until the picking was complete. I wondered aloud if I might in the meantime make myself useful among slaves such as Josiah, who were too ill to toil.

  Canning’s narrow face flushed. “That boy is not too ill to toil:” He gave a sigh and, after fumbling in his lap for a napkin that did not in fact rest there, rubbed the pork grease from his chin with the back of his hand. “Whatever you may have heard said, Mr. March, about the evil exploitations of the plantation system-and I heard and believed such things, too, I’ll not deny it-a great many slave owners must have been gullible beyond the reach of folly, if this place is any measure of the matter. Why, the hands here think they can lie all day in their huts on account of the slightest ache or sniffle. My view is that any man who can stand to make his water must go to the fields and do his share of work—or else forgo his share of corn.”

  My face must have told the emotion that was mounting in my breast, for Canning glared. “If you think that harsh, wait till you’ve been here a week. You will see what I am presented with. Colonel Croft and his lady wife had a slave’s lifetime in which to defray the expenses of illness, real or feigned. My lease here runs a single year, and I mean to make something at the end of it, in return for all the danger and discomfort I’ve undertaken. I don’t claim to be an evangel of abolition like you, Mr. March. I’m a businessman, simple as that. Yet we both have a role to play in the betterment of the Negro’s condition. I came here with more than an ordinary interest in the free labor enterprise. I believe that the production of cotton and sugar by free labor must be both possible and profitable ... for them as well as us. If we cannot prove our point, what future will these people have? A dark one, wouldn’t you say?” Canning smirked at his own wit, pushed away from the table, and checked his pocket watch. “And now, if you like, I will show you your quarters. I need to make the nightly check of the slave cabins-make sure everyone is where he is supposed to be, and at his rest, rather than squandering strength at some savage rollick or another. The drivers must have the gangs in the fields a quarter hour before sunrise.”

  I followed as he led the way from the dining room, holding the potato candlestick before him. Tired and downcast, I looked forward to my bed-the first real bed I would have enjoyed since setting out from Concord so many months earlier. But Canning did not ascend the large staircase that swept to the upper floors. He led the way to the cookhouse, where the old slave Ptolemy handed him a parcel wrapped in a cloth blooming with grease stains, then held out another, similar packet to me. “Corn bread for the morning,” explained Canning. “We can’t spare the time or the manpower to be preparing breakfast.” I thought, but did not say, that if palsied old Ptolemy, who appeared to be both cook and butler, was classed as indispensable field labor, then the situation must be grave indeed.

  Canning turned then to the door leading to the yard, and ushered me outside. “You are free, of course, to sleep in the house, but I don’t advocate it. I recommend you do as I have and choose one of the outbuildings. If the guerrillas do return, it will likely be by night, and they have a reputation for untender behavior to abolitionists such as yourself.”

  There was a full moon, so we made our way easily across the yards toward a cluster of looming shapes that resolved itself, as we approached, into the industrial hub of the plantation. The chimney of a large steam engine towered over a collection of low-slung huts and workshops. The tang of wood sap told that one was a sawmill. Another disclosed itself as the smithy, while what I assumed must be the gin house stood at the far extent of the yard. Canning tugged one of the candles from the potato and handed it to me. “Be sparing with this-fm rationing myself one half candle a week. I sleep in the corn mill. Recommend you try the storehouse. There are bags of cotton seed there. You’ll find they make a fair mattress. Oh, and don’t take that candle anywhere near the gin house. The lint flares up like a lit wick.”

  I pushed open the balky door to the building Canning had indicated. A huge pile of cotton seed-many hundreds of bushels, I estimated-rose almost to the roofbeam. Much of the seed had been stuffed into hessian sacks, and so I arranged a pair of these for my bedding and used my army greatcoat for a blanket.

  I awoke in the dark to the sound of a great clanging. I had slept heavily, the cotton seed indeed making a yielding sort of a bed, and so had to lie for a moment staring at the rafters, trying to recall just where I was. Eventually, I understood that the clanging must be the slaves’ waking bell. Anxious to meet my future pupils, I rose, throwing my coat around my shoulders, and went searching for water with which to make some kind of morning toilet.

  It was, as Canning had warned, still some time before sunrise. The predawn air was cold, and I pulled my coat tight about me. So accustomed had I become to the mildness of the region, I had to remind myself that a chill morn was no great oddity for this time of year. I stumbled around in the dark for some time before I could make out a well house. Inside, the damp cold was penetrating. There was no bucket attached to the rope wound around the turntree, so I fumbled around, feeling along the wall brackets, to see if I could find one. Losing my footin
g on the slick stone floor, I skidded, landing hard on my buttocks. I let out a curse at my own clumsiness.

  A quavering voice, coming from somewhere under the floor, made me jump almost out of my skin.

  “Marse? Dat you, suh?”

  “Who is that?” I cried. “Where are you?”

  “I’s Zeke, marse. Don’t you ’member? I’s been down here since before two days, and I is real sorry for what I done. Please, suh, I is powerful hungry an’ cold. Please let me come on out.”

  I lay down on my belly on that cold damp stone and peered over the lip of the well, which was sunk into the floor to a depth of some twenty feet. At first I could see nothing but blackness, but as my eyes adjusted I made out the light color of a smock, and the whites of two frightened eyes. The well, I perceived, was dry save for a few inches of water at the bottom, in which the poor wretched man was standing.

  “Good heavens, man! If I lower the rope will you have the strength to climb out?”

  “Yessuh, I reckon I can, but you’s not the marse after all, and if he ain’t give me leave to git out, I don’t rightly know as I should.”

  “Zeke,” 1 said, “I am working with Mr. Canning. I will, make it right with him. Come on, now, and take the rope and I’ll help pull you up.” Zeke was a tall man, but spare to the point of wasted, so it took me no very significant effort to hoist him over the lip of the well. He lay there for a minute, panting and shivering. I wrapped my coat around him and assisted him outside, where the temperature was at least a couple of degrees less chill. He stumbled, and I saw that his bare feet, withered and blue from standing in the water, were shedding slabs of sodden flesh. We sat down with our backs to the wall of the well house as a pale sun eased up over the lush horizon. I opened the cloth holding the corn bread, and passed it to Zeke. He took it in trembling hands that were knotted all over with snaking veins. He ate with the desperation of the starving until every crumb was consumed. He leaned back then and closed his eyes with a sigh. It must have been a handsome face once, but now the cheeks were sunken.

  “Why were you in there, Zeke?”

  His eyelids flickered. “Best you ax Marse Canning.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “I am asking you. Please give me your account.”

  “I done butchered a hog and fed it to my chillun,” he said. “The marse got in a temper ‘cause I say I never stole the hog. Way I figure, that weren’t no lie. The marse own the corn and the marse own the mule, and I spose to give the corn to the mule and that called looking after the marse’s property. Well, I and my chilluns the marse’s property, and the hog is the marse’s property, so what mind if we eats the hog? The hog part of us now and the marse still own it, ’cause he still own us.”

  “But, Zeke,” I remonstrated. “Mr. Canning does not own you. You are contraband of war. You are his employee, not his slave.”

  “’S that so? Sure enough still feel like I’s his slave.” He pointed a trembling finger up to the horizon, where a pale moon still lingered. “That there moon done wax and wane and wax again, and we’s promise we be paid and more than a month done gone and we ain’t seen a cent. Old Marse Croft time, he say, ‘Work you stint, git done, then go dig you taters to feed you chilluns.’ Young Marse Canning, he say, ‘Work you stint and then go work some mo’.’ But if you works a man from black to black, there ain’t no daylight for plantin’ greens and our taters all run over with weeds and the chilluns’ bellies aching.”

  I did not know what the truth of this account might be, so I kept mum, but resolved to go directly to find Canning. How could the young man sanction such cruelty? To let his people go hungry, and to put them in a hole for the crime of feeding themselves! Such a punishment might not flout the letter of the army’s directive, which specifically banned only flogging, but it most certainly flouted the spirit of the leasing experiment.

  Accordingly, I took instruction from Zeke with regard to my direction, and set off for the cotton field. Soon, I came up with a little water carrier-a girl not yet as old, I judged, as my Amy, and similar to her in delicacy of movement and grace of build, except that the large water bucket sat upon dark fuzz rather than that tumble of golden curls of which my little one has a tendency to be a trifle vain. I greeted the girl, and she replied with a cheerful openness of manner that came as a relief after the reticence of Josiah the day before. When I told her I would be her teacher presently, she clapped her hands together, somehow managing to keep the bucket upon her head even without the benefit of a steadying arm. “I wants to learn too bad,” she exclaimed. I wished my Amy, who whined incessantly about the trials of her schoolroom, shared this little one’s enthusiasm. Cilla, as she introduced herself, was happy to lead me to the field, chattering all the way about the progress of the pickers, the prospects for continued dry weather, and quizzing me about the lessons and when they might begin.

  The field, when we reached it, was an impressive sight. I judged that it stretched over more than a mile of country, yet the whole looked as carefully wrought as a Boston gardener’s tiny pea patch. The plants stood in serried ranks, grown tall on the river’s rich alluvium. While some showed the clear ravages of the wet weather of which Mr. Canning had spoken-their highest stalks stripped or broken, or foliage blighted brown with rust-a good part still stood in large-leaved luxuriance, the whole expanse luminous in the early light, awash in a sweet green freshness.

  The pickers looked to have moved through about half of this field. I did not know how many such large expanses of planting the estate afforded. As I drew closer to the work gangs I noted the economy of the pickers’ movements. The best of them, it seemed, could pick with two hands simultaneously, somehow twisting and plucking so that the staple fell readily into their grip. Less skillful pickers had to grasp the boll with one hand and pluck the staple with the other. Canning had said that every hand had been pressed into service, and I soon saw the truth of it. Even very young children were gathering low-growing staple, while elderly men and women, bent with age and the weight of their sacks, struggled with trembling hands to add their mite to the massing clouds of cotton.

  Canning limped briskly up and down the long rows, exhorting the laborers to greater effort, hurrying them along to the telltale, and carefully scrutinizing what weight the scale disclosed. He had a ledger with him, in which he noted a running tally of each hand’s pickings, apparently comparing it with previous days. He barked at one man, whose bag’s weight displeased him, and praised another who must have been running ahead of his stint.

  Canning wore the same rumpled camel waistcoat and trousers as he had the prior evening, but he had forsaken his jacket, and sweat stains already had begun to darken his shirt. He looked sallow in the bright light of morning, and I wondered if his bluff manner covered an incipient illness. On his head was the same broad palmetto hat the Negroes wore, and from time to time he swept it off impatiently to mop his brow.

  I watched for a while, suddenly abashed at interrupting this scene of industry. The Negroes seemed intent on their task, few raising their heads even to note my presence, which seemed odd, since strangers could not have been very frequent in the fields. Canning perhaps provided the lead in this, for though he could not have missed me where I stood, he made no sign of greeting or acknowledgment.

  As the hour wore on I saw not a few individuals in the gang who were clearly tiring. Several had the same hacking cough as young Josiah. None of them looked robust. Many, especially among the children and the elderly, were emaciated. Almost every piece of clothing was patched, torn, or threadbare.

  When Canning called for the water carrier, I took the chance to plant myself before him. I thought to start on a positive note, so praised the scene of diligent toil. Canning took a swig of water, swilled it around his mouth, and spat without troubling to make me any reply. Affronted by his rudeness, I bluntly spoke my dismay at his ill usage of the man Zeke.

  Canning grabbed my arm roughly and marched me briskly away from the telltale. When we were
well out of earshot of the workers, he launched himself into a lacerating rebuke.

  “How dare you, sir! How dare you arrive here with the very barest notion of the difficulties I am confronted with, and have the effrontery to rebuke me, to rebuke me! III usage? I assure you, I am the one being ill used here-by the lessor, by the army, by the Negroes! And to raise such matters in front of my hands! Have you no sense of order ? Have you no sense, period?” His grip on my arm had tightened like a claw, and his voice had risen to a shout. He threw my arm down with a gesture that was almost violent, and opened his mouth to continue his tirade, then seemed to think better of it. He gathered control of himself, and lowered his voice. “I don’t have time for this. If you have inquiries to make to me regarding my management, kindly reserve them until this evening, at which time I will endeavor to answer your concerns in full. Now you will excuse me. I have work to do. It would be advisable if you found some practical task to set your own hand to. Don’t you have a schoolroom to be preparing?”

  “I don’t know exactly-” I was about to say that I didn’t know what building might be available, but Canning cut me off.

  “No: you don’t know. You know exactly nothing.” With that, he turned his back on me and marched off toward the work gang. He was, I thought, the rudest and most arrogant young man I had ever encountered.

  I spent the rest of the day walking the estate to become more familiar with its layout and buildings. At noon, I took from the cookhouse a heel of bread, which I dipped in ajar of honey that had been kept so negligently I had to pick corpses of dead flies from it. After that undistinguished luncheon, I went in search of the slave quarters. These, I discovered, were a village-sized array of tidily made cottages, built of poles lapped with clay, set out in parallel, like a street. The place at first looked deserted, everyone being off at his work, but from one cottage rose the mewling of infants. When I approached and peered inside, I saw an old, hunchbacked woman, brown and wizened, sitting in the corner of the room, whose rafters were strung with eight or nine small hammocks, each of which contained a baby, some newborn, some a few months old, all quite naked. There were also ambulatory infants of one or two years old, also naked, scrambling like dogs around a pile of cooked peas that had been turned out of the cook pot directly onto the earthen floor. The old woman had a long staff with which she could reach each hammock and gently prod it into swinging without rising from her stool. She alternated this with a switch of reeds, which she flicked smartly at one infant who had snatched an extra handful of the terrible gray peas. He pulled back his tiny hand and howled.