Slave (The Shame & Glory Saga)

by Mundis, Jerrold

  He remembered little of it now, but he had cried frequently as a baby. The clashing voices had driven him to it, hurling him into the abyss—the deep rumbling voice and the sharp stabbing one. But always he had been safely caught up from his slow and terrifying descent by soft arms, and he had been patted and crooned to for a long time after. A few times, the hands and arms that swung him up were harder and stronger, but they were warm and comforting nonetheless, and their touch was gentle. That had happened only in the beginning, though, and always they had been driven off by the sharp voice and replaced by the soft arms.

  He was four years old when Amanda stormed out of the drawing room after Samuel had dismissed her shouting assault with a laugh. Richard, who had been bending with his ear to the crack of the closed doors, scampered away when he heard her coming. He wasn’t quick enough, though, and she saw him and pursued him down the hall with a screech. Her blunt fingers dug into his neck. She flung him against the wall, and the breath was nearly knocked from his slightly chubby body. She stared at him, face flushed, veins prominent and throbbing, small wide-set eyes narrow, her mouth twisted in a grimace.

  “You . . .”

  She swung hard and struck him on the mouth with the back of her hand. She hit him again . . . and again. . . . She bloodied his nose, cut his lip, and bruised his face. She was breathing heavily and with each blow she gasped: “You . . . you . . . you . . .”

  The onslaught knocked Richard to the floor. He doubled up sobbing, choking, trying to protect himself.

  Then it was suddenly over and Amanda dropped down beside him. She clutched him to her, pressing his face against her small, high breasts.

  “Oh!” she cried. “My baby. What has he made me do? What has he done to you?”

  Her hands ran lovingly, desperately over his body. His face received her kisses—warm, moist kisses on his forehead, his cheeks, his lips, his throat. She surrounded him with her warmth and she rocked him back and forth whispering: “My baby . . . my little man . . . my baby . . . my little man . . .”

  She held him like that for some time, and she stroked him, and she kissed him.

  It happened several times again. The boy trembled whenever he heard her shrieking voice, but, after the first two incidents, he did not run away and hide, and he made only a token effort to escape when she came bursting out of a room. The punishment was painful, but also short. Not so the duration of her hands fondling him, her very soft body, and her lingering kisses.

  As he grew older she stopped calling him her baby; he remained her little man, was frequently, ever more frequently, her little lover. . . .

  Damn! Wouldn’t that baby ever shut up? When the mustee was finally sold and removed, and new slaves were led onto the platform, Ackerly resolved to bid as high as necessary to get the two bucks that looked good to him out of this bunch. Four more, that was all he needed to round out his coffle, and then he could leave. The crowd was shifting, pressing in around him. Someone stepped on his toes, marring the high gloss to which his boots had been polished, and he grew angry.

  When the bidding began, Ackerly got his first buck for seventeen hundred fifty dollars, one hundred more than he thought the slave to be worth, but that left him only three to go.

  Ragged long-haired boys pushed through the crowd carrying paper cones and buckets filled with crushed ice. Bottles of flavored syrups clinked in the pockets of their baggy trousers. They argued, wheedled, cajoled, made general nuisances of themselves, and flocked to the side of any man who removed his hat and wiped sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. Occasionally, one of them was lucky enough to sell an ice-cone for a silver coin—or, if he had to, a copper one. At intervals an excited whoop was heard from off to the side, where there was the constant click of dice from gaming tables run by flashily dressed gentlemen. Farther back was a ring of logs and on these sat rough, unshaven, sunburned men who had no money but who had come to watch the excitement. They bunched together in small groups, passed jugs to one another from which they took deep draughts, commented knowledgeably and critically on the slaves being offered, and at times bent their heads closer for the duration of a joke, erupting in laughter.

  Ackerly had to wait another twenty minutes before the second buck he wanted was called. In that time a slumping, thin nigger with a desolate look was sold to a gentleman from Louisiana for six hundred dollars. The nigger became hysterical and clamored unintelligibly about Virginia and some sort of charm. At the outbreak, his new master shouted to the auctioneer that he didn’t want any lunatic slave. An unshaven man in a battered slouch hat—poor white, and possibly even white trash—immediately offered the Louisianan three hundred dollars for him. This was a market vulture, a man who hovered in wait for just such an occurrence. The Louisianan accepted. The unshaven man went to claim his property, and Ackerly noted the bullwhip and the heavy leg-irons he carried. The slave would be worked to death in a matter of three or four years.

  “Jud!” shouted the auctioneer.

  The buck Ackerly had been eying stepped forward. He was tall, an easy two inches over six feet, and had good bones. He was dark, one of the darkest Ackerly had ever seen—a color that blended the deepest hues of blue and black.

  “This here’s Jud,” called the auctioneer. “A Mississippi nigger from the plantation of Cap’n Aaron Tiligman. He a firs’-rate cotton hand an’ got some wheelwright learnin’, too. He never been whupped for nothin’ worse’n daydreamin’, an’ he growed outen that some long time back. Ain’t nobody ever take a snake to him, an’ ain’t the slightenest mark on his entire body.

  “Now, gennelmen, I invites you to look on this ‘un slow and careful. He as sound a spec’min as I seen in all my years o’ sellin’. Cap’n Tiligman say he twenty years old or so, but I estimates him closer t’ eighteen or nineteen. Big an’ musculated as he is, he still got fillin’ t’ do, a lot of fillin’. Drop your pan’s, boy, an’ show ‘em your legs an’ flanks. There, jus’ look on that.

  “Gennelmen, this be as fine a nigger as you’ll ever hope to see. I’m settin’ the minimum bid at fifteen hunnert. Now which of you gennelmen gonna offer me sixteen?”

  Ackerly bought the nigger for twenty-one hundred. He was pleased. The auctioneer had not exaggerated. The buck would have brought twenty-four, twenty-five in the New Orleans market.

  THE BUCKS WERE ALL of an age except one—a big gangly but promising-looking boy of thirteen or fourteen who was the younger brother of another. Young, healthy, well-made animals, twenty in all. Ackerly was conferring off to the side with two of his overseers.

  Jud had little basis for comparison (only Tiligman, and Tiligman’s guests), but he sensed that Ackerly’s attire was of high quality. He’d never seen clothes that were made so well: a plum-colored coat with flaring tails, a string tie, not a single wrinkle on the stiff linen shirt, snug black breeches, and knee-high boots that caught and reflected the sun.

  He was slim, and not much older than the slaves he’d just bought. His hair was black and lay close to his head. Long slender sideburns made his face seem even narrower than it was. He had a hooked, hawklike nose and a short mouth. He carried himself confidently and in a manner that suggested a sinewy and well-coordinated body. But when he spoke, his hands were constantly in motion, and wheeling—like frightened birds fleeing from his predator face.

  Jud stood motionless, his arms hanging at his sides. He did not try to listen to his master. He did not listen to the other niggers. He listened to the sound inside his head. It wasn’t really very loud, but if he listened hard he could hear it better than he could hear anything else. Once he had thought it was like the sound a field of growing grass would make, if growing grass had been able to make a sound. Then he forgot the thought. He had no reason to remember thoughts.

  “Lissen here, niggers,” one of the white men said.

  Conversation ceased immediately. Jud listened to the man.

  “This is Mista Richard Ackerly. Him and his daddy’s your new mastas. You ack
like civ’lize’ niggers, you git treated good. You don’, you git your hide torn off right down to your bone.”

  “I assume,” said Ackerly, speaking in their general direction rather than to them, “that you all know what a working pass is, even if you’ve never had one. Is there anyone here who doesn’t?”

  There were a scuffling of bare feet and a few coughs. Finally one wary voice said, “I not ‘zackly sure, Masta,” and there was a general relaxing of tension among the others. Few of them knew, but they did not want to risk angering their master.

  Ackerly read one of the passes. It contained the slave’s name, cited the owner as Samuel Ackerly of the Ackerly Plantations in South Carolina, stated that the slave was for hire, and gave the date he was expected at the Ackerly Plantations. The pass requested that if the slave were found after that date or heading in any but a southeasterly direction before that date, he be taken into custody immediately. A reward was offered.

  “The following niggers,” said Ackerly, “will have these passes.” He read ten names. Jud’s was not among them. “You have thirty days in which to reach the plantations. Any of the five will do. If you become lost or confused, stop in any town larger than three buildings and you will be given directions. I expect each of you to report in with at least twelve dollars. Any less, and we will assume you have stolen some.”

  Jud had difficulty in following Ackerly’s words. His new master spoke in a way Jud had never heard before. It seemed a stiff, uncomfortable way to talk, but it was not unpleasant to hear.

  “But Masta, suh,” said a buck. “My ol’ masta once give me a workin’ pass for six month, an’ they ain’t no nigguh can earn more’n eight, ten dolla’ a month.”

  Ackerly sighed and shook his head, slowly, as would one mildly troubled by an uncomprehending child. Then he nodded to one of his overseers.

  The man stepped forward and slashed the slave across the face with a strap.

  Ackerly was silent. He looked at the slaves with a faint—very faint—expression of amusement, then handed the passes to the overseer. The ten bucks were sent on their way. Ackerly, his men, and the remaining slaves made ready to leave.

  They went first to the livery stables where Ackerly and his overseers got their mounts, and then due east out of Memphis. Ackerly rode point, and immediately behind him were the slaves, running two abreast. The overseers rode flank. The horsemen alternated between canters and trots, and the blacks had little problem keeping up with them, jogging and gaining back wind when the horsemen slowed their mounts, covering ground with long loping strides when the horses entered a slow gallop. In this way rest periods were not necessary, and the only interruptions made were to water men and animals and to fulfill natural processes.

  They did not stop until the sun had sunk so low that it appeared to be resting atop the trees on the horizon. The sound of hoofs on the hardpacked dirt and the horses’ snorts brought forth the innkeeper before the white men had dismounted. He was wiping his hands on a towel.

  “Cyrus,” he called. “Cyrus, I say. Git on out here an’ take the gennelmen’s horses.”

  The innkeeper prepared a simple meal of stewed chicken, dumplings, and ham steaks for Ackerly and his overseers. It was good. When finished, Ackerly dabbed at his lips with the napkin the innkeeper had provided only on request. Benson, the larger of the two overseers, belched and picked his teeth with a long fingernail. Ackerly arranged to have his slaves fed—boiled rice and half a pound of bacon to be divided among them—and then went to bed.

  THE MORNING STAR WAS still visible when Ackerly and his coffle left the inn and swung onto the road. The pace was brisk for the first two hours, and the exertion warmed the slaves against the predawn chill. In low spots and by creek beds there were delicate traceries of hoarfrost. These glittered with brilliant splendor when the first rays of the rising sun struck them, and disappeared within minutes.

  They met horsemen on the road and an occasional gig or surrey, and a few blacks on foot or driving buckboards loaded with supplies. The whites exchanged cordial greetings as they passed, and sometimes stopped a few moments to chat. The slaves they met grinned, doffed their caps, and waved. After the sun was well on its way up the eastern sky, the pace slackened, Ackerly had his slaves sing. The cotton fields, cane fields, mills, and black work gangs of the South were redolent with song. Slaves sang as they chopped, as they hoed, as they loaded wagons, as they trooped in from the fields. And the masters loved to hear them sing, because where there is singing there is no violence, where there is singing the work is not resented and it goes faster.

  The rhythmic chant, the deep baritone and bass of his slaves, wove a skein of well-being around Ackerly, making him feel that all was right in the world. Despite the agitators and rabble-rousers of the North, despite the hypocritical abolitionists who on one hand condemned Southern slavery and on the other hand condoned what (while without having the name) was in fact the enslavement of whites—whites, mind you, human beings—in the factories and dark mine tunnels of the industrial North, yes, despite these voluble fanatics, the South had held its ground.

  Ackerly called a halt by a spring that bubbled up at the foot of a stand of willows. He filled his pipe and allowed his niggers to rest until he had finished his smoke and knocked the ashes out of the bowl against the heel of his boot.

  There was a bronze boy named Abel among Ackerly’s new slaves, slim and wiry, with outsized calves and thighs. He grew restless whenever the pace was slow, raising his knees high, shaking his arms as the slaves jogged. He was one of the lead pair and occasionally would spurt to a point just behind Ackerly’s horse and mark time there until his fellows caught up with him. He ran effortlessly and seemed never to tire.

  In the early afternoon, he called out to Ackerly: “Masta, kin I run on ahead? I got pow’ful juices jus’ a-weepin’ to be let loose, suh.”

  He had moved up and was trotting alongside Ackerly’s horse.

  “Please, suh. You kin trus’ Abel. I jes’ wants to do some real runnin’. I get too far up, I slow down an’ wait.”

  Both his nigger and his horse (it had been skittish most of the morning) wanted their heads, and so after a moment’s hesitation Richard said, “All right, nigger. Let’s see how fast you are.”

  He whacked his mount’s rump and drove his heels into its sides. “Gee-ah!”

  The horse bolted forward and Abel was left momentarily behind. Then he was abreast of his master again, lips pulled back from his teeth in a wide smile, long legs devouring the ground. His motion was easy, fluid. Ackerly held his horse down for the first mile, seeing if the slave would tire.

  But Abel showed no sign of fatigue, in fact undertook a song to show that his wind was still very much intact. Ackerly loosened his hold on the reins. The horse’s long neck stretched ahead. Spittle flew back from its mouth and its hoofs pounded on the hard-packed dirt. Richard was exhilarated; he wished momentarily that his father were there, because Samuel would have enjoyed the race, and perhaps they could have enjoyed it together. Such a wish was unusual for Richard, and it soon vanished. Abel’s song ceased. The boy sucked in air through his open mouth. Sweat beaded his forehead and dampened his shirt. His movements became ragged, but by the time Ackerly’s horse finally did pull away, Ackerly knew that it could not sustain the pace much longer itself. Ackerly kept on until he rounded a bend and lost sight of Abel, and then stopped the horse, turned it, and went back. He found Abel still moving forward, walking briskly.

  “That a good stallion,” Abel said without sarcasm or arrogance. “Ain’t many that kin lose me.”

  “You’re fast,” Ackerly said, and permitted himself a smile. It was good for a nigger to know he’d pleased his master. It made the nigger happy.

  For the remainder of the afternoon Ackerly let the buck run on ahead whenever Abel requested. The rest of the party would find him jogging slowly—the manner in which he rested—two or three miles ahead. Or, if he had gotten too far out, he’d reverse his dire
ction and trot back to them.

  They made a brief stop in the late afternoon at an inn, ate a sparse meal, rested half an hour, and then went on. Ackerly planned on reaching Eagle’s Head—the Bonestelle plantation, which was twenty miles west of Florence, Alabama—before nightfall. The Bonestelles were family friends, and Richard would be assured of a comfortable night.

  They were little more than fifteen miles from the inn at which they’d eaten when a furious baying filled the heavy evening air. The road was flanked on both sides by a pine forest, heavily overgrown with underbrush. Ackerly signaled to his column to halt.

  “Hounds,” he said.

  “Whut you figure they runnin’?” asked Benson. “Deer, or nigger?”

  Ackerly listened a moment. “Nigger, I think. They’re coming straight toward us.”

  The other overseer nodded. “An’ they fer killin’, not catchin’. They unleashed.”

  The dogs’ voices drew nearer, intensified, and cracked into savage barking.

  “They on his heels now,” said Benson.

  A black in torn clothes, with a bright line of blood staining his cheek, staggered out of the brush in front of them, fell, picked himself up, and stumbled across the road. A lean, tan-and-white blur hurtled into sight immediately after him, seemed to touch the ground once, lightly, and drove forward, and man and dog went down in a tangle of limbs.

  The slave screamed. His hand rose, clutching a rock, and plunged down. The hound yelped, twisted spasmodically, and died of a crushed skull, its forelegs and hind legs extended and rigid. The rest of the pack was close at hand, singing the kill.

  The fugitive teetered when he tried to stand, and then collapsed and began dragging himself toward the brush.