Mandingo

by Kyle Onstott

  ‘I’ll cure this one; last thing I do—cure him or kill him.’

  Memnon was silent. There was no rebuttal to fate itself. Hammond yawned and rose, reluctant to leave the warm fireside to go into the cold hall. He planted a perfunctory kiss upon his father’s cheek, bade Brownlee a polite good night and pleasant dreams, and, noting the inviting target of Alpha’s protruding rump, reached down and gave it a resounding smack. Alpha’s muscles were constantly bruised from Lucretia Borgia’s daily spankings, and the blow, intended only as a caress, was painful. The boy, only half aroused from sleep, cried out, reached around and rubbed his buttock and slept again. ‘Don’t fergit your foot-warmer; it’s a cold night, Papa,’ Ham joked.

  ‘Dite gone up a’ready?’ Hammond inquired of Memnon.

  ‘Dite go up early,’ Memnon replied.

  ‘Come ’long, then,’ said Hammond and limped out, followed by the apprehensive Negro.

  Maxwell listened to the uneven steps of his crippled son upon the stairs. He censured himself again for having entrusted his heir to the uncertain temperament of a gelding.

  ‘Who that?’ Brownlee inquired.

  Maxwell’s mind was upon the accident, long passed. ‘Whut you mean, suh?’

  ‘Who that? That Dite?’

  ‘Oh, that. That Hammond’s bed wench.’

  ‘Purty, I reckon,’ the trader voiced his imagination.

  ‘Right likely. Mustee, I guess.’

  ‘Light, eh? And young?’

  ‘Fourteen, mayhaps fifteen now. Why?’

  ‘I was jest a-thinkin’, jest a-thinkin’ whut a fine lot of niggers you all got. Got ’em all over the place, and won’t sell none.’

  3

  When Ham entered his bedroom his concubine rose to welcome him. She had taken off her clothes and stood covered only with a quilt wrapped around her and hanging from her shoulders. ‘You late, suh,’ she said casually.

  ‘Yes, a little. Big Pearl sick. Whyn’t you lay down?’

  ‘Waitin’ to know an’ if you wants me in the bed or on a pallet.’

  ‘On the floor, I reckon. I tired tonight,’ Hammond said as he sank into a chair before the fire and surrendered to Mem’s ministrations. Then he reconsidered, ‘No; git into bed and warm them sheets up until I strips and after that you kin take to your pallet.’

  Aphrodite dropped her quilt and stood naked as she turned down the covers, adjusted the bolster and plumped herself upon the feather bed. Mem stripped Hammond of his clothes, hoping his master had forgotten the ipecac. As Ham stood before the fire Aphrodite lay looking at him with servile affection.

  Hammond’s body, barring some areas on his back and around his belly, was enveloped in blond hair, hardly heavier than down, but of considerable length. Standing, the stiffness of his knee was not apparent. His shoulders were not broad, but they were hard and strong and, clothed with hair, seemed larger than they really were. His body was more than normally long and his legs somewhat short. Long hours in the saddle had developed his thighs, which bulged and rippled as he changed his position in the firelight.

  ‘Fetch me a big gourd, that big, yeller bottle agin the wall on the shelf, and a jug of hot water. We goin’ to have some fun.’

  Mem knew that protest was futile. ‘And ’stir yourself,’ Ham added as Mem started on the errand.

  Mem did as he was told, and his gorge rose as he watched Ham pour the staggering dose from the bottle into the gourd, add water, and stir the mixture with his finger, which he wiped on the hair of his thigh. The gourd he set upon the hearth, propping the handle against the mantelpiece. ‘We’ll keep it hot,’ he said, taking one final turn around before the fire. He was reluctant to leave the heat and to get into his bed.

  At length he crossed the room, fell on one knee, stretching the stiff leg behind him, as he bowed his head and hastily repeated his simple prayer: ‘Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.’ It was a mere meaningless formula, hastily uttered without a concept of sleeping or dying, of keeping or taking souls. He hesitated as if taking thought and added, ‘Dear God, bless my mamma up in heaven; bless my papa and dreen his rheumatiz into Alph; bless Thy servant Hammond; bless Big Pearl and make her git well; bless Dite; bless Lucretia Borgia and the twins——’

  ‘Mem, Masta, suh, Memnon. Ask God bless Memnon. Please, Masta; please, suh,’ the Negro interrupted the orison, assuming that white petitions received more prompt attention than black ones.

  His master humoured him and interposed for him, ‘Bless Memnon and learn him not to steal and make him a good nigger after his hidin’ tomorrow; and, God, bless Falconhurst, and all the niggers on the plantation.’ It was little enough to ask. Falconhurst was a goodly place, and its personnel a goodly company.

  Dite vacated the bed and assumed her place on the pallet beside it, and Hammond crawled upon the high bed and snuggled down between the sheets her body had warmed.

  ‘Leave the can’le, boy. You’ll be comin’ back to drink that drench, right after you waits on Mr. Brownlee and your masta. If I a-sleepin’, wake me up.’

  ‘Yas, suh, Masta,’ said Mem; and then he ventured, ‘I jest take the gourd along and drink that stuff before I lays down.’

  ‘You’ll come back here, like I tol’ you. You drink it now, you’ll puke up so you cain’t wait on the gen’lemen. Wrap that twin around Papa’s feet good.’

  Mem escaped without making a promise. Ham knew he would come back, and Mem knew it.

  Hammond lay and looked into the fire. His day was not finished until he had done his duty by Memnon and he did not intend to sleep until the Negro’s return.

  ‘Masta, suh, is you ’wake?’ Dite asked tentatively, reaching up from her pallet to place her hand on the bed.

  ‘Whut you wantin’, Dite?’

  ‘Masta, I knocked up.’ She had postponed telling him, in the knowledge that the tenure of her position would be limited by her advancing pregnancy. She had won her present status by another slave girl’s pregnancy and would lose it by her own. She could never be deprived of the distinction of having shared her young master’s bed, however long in the past it might grow to be. To be the mother of a master’s child would engender envy from the other wenches, and envy made for status.

  However, it was unlikely that the present relations, once interrupted, would ever be resumed. She could pretend that she would be reinstated after her child was weaned, but her figure would thicken, her breasts would sag, and Dite would be old. On a plantation of the size of Falconhurst, there was a succession of young wenches maturing at frequent enough intervals to render at least unlikely the summons of a once discarded wench back to her master’s couch.

  Hammond was dozing and was slow to reply. ‘I been a-lookin’ fer that. How long ago?’

  ‘ ’Bout two months. I don’ know ’xactly.’

  ‘I ben kind of hopin’ you wouldn’t be ’til that wench of Dido’s got bigger. She right purty.’

  ‘That Tense nigger?’ Dite knew her successor now.

  ‘Yes, that her name, somethin’ like that. Hortense, I believe.’

  ‘That triflin’, skinny, brown thing? She ain’t fitten fer you, Masta.’

  ‘She light yaller; she ain’t brown,’ Ham defended.

  ‘She not light like me.’

  ‘Yes, she darker’n you. You ’mos’ white. But her colour light enough. She right nice,’ he argued.

  ‘She ain’t got hardly no meat on her at all.’

  ‘She puttin’ on meat. I was lookin’ at her the other day—hippin’ out good and tittie-in’ up real full-like. Course her udders ain’t full growed yet. That why I wishes you wait awhile, another six months.’

  ‘You don’t reckon that Tense no virgin, does you?’ Dite clinched her disparagement.

  ‘Why, I reckon she is. Dido right moral-like.’

  ‘Dido moral, yes. But with that big brother of hern sleepin’ right in the cabin, Tense’s mai
denhead shore gone, plumb gone,’ Dite declared hopefully. ‘I was a virgin, wasn’t I, Masta?’

  ‘Shore was. Shore was. You wasn’t no older than Tense that time. You was plagued and skeared of me till I had to slap your face and hold you down. You was real comical-like. Remember?’

  Dite remembered that first, terrified but treasured night with Hammond well enough, remembered his ruthlessness and his tenderness, her own evasion and enforced submission.

  Hammond made a mental note to caution Dido again about her protection of Tense and to send that young buck of hers to the stable to sleep. He lay quiet awhile. Mem had had ample time to see Brownlee and Maxwell to their beds. He wondered whether Mem’s stubborn recusancy would extend so far as to fail to return for the draught mixed for him. Ham was already resolved to chastise the Negro as hard and as long as he dared without destroying his value; further disobedience could not aggravate the punishment. Ham wondered whether Mem would be astute enough to realize this.

  In fact the chores of putting the two elder men to bed had been minor ones. Brownlee had been shown to a room without a fireplace. It was upstairs over the ell of the house and was cold. It was habit, however, not the cold that determined the removal only of his outer garments and prompted him to crawl into bed wearing undershirt, drawers and socks, none of which had been laundered or even removed since he left the Carolinas.

  Brownlee’s vocation made him unduly sensitive to any treatment he could interpret as a slight. He so interpreted the absence of heat in the room assigned to him and especially the absence of a wench to keep him warm.

  ‘Memnon, fetch me a wench to pleasure me tonight. Did you fergit that, too?’

  ‘No, suh, Masta Brownlee. My Masta never tol’ me nothin’ about no wench fer you.’

  ‘I tell you whut. Fetch me a likely, young, clean, light-skin wench, an’ I’ll try to beg you off your hidin’ tomorrer mornin’. I’ll tell Mista Hammond that you not no bad nigger at all. I’ll tell him his pappy cranky——’

  ‘Naw, suh, don’t tell Masta Ham that. You make him mad. He know Ol’ Masta ain’t cranky. He think Ol’ Masta all time right.’

  ‘You fetch the wench, and leave the res’ to me.’

  ‘Yas, suh; yas suh, Masta Brownlee. I will, suh.’ Memnon was uncertain whether he would keep his promise, but there was no harm in giving it. He was torn between his desire for mediation in his difference with his masters and the fear of acting without authority. The bribe the dealer offered was a tempting one, but he doubted Brownlee’s will as well as his ability to divert Hammond from his policy.

  And what wench? If the dealer’s intercession was worth bartering for, was it not wisdom to supply him with the best in the quarters? Would his gratitude be the greater? Should he fetch Dido’s Tense, whom Memnon surmised that Hammond had staked out for his own uses? A night spent with this white man could do a wench no harm.

  Mem was not used to making decisions; decisions were made for him. He pondered the alternatives all the while he was putting his old master to bed, which, except for adjusting the boy to the old man’s comfort and so draping the bed coverings that the urchin could breathe, was a mere routine. Alph’s unwaking torpor was so sound that he did not alter the position in which he was draped rather than placed. He could have been tied in a bow knot without knowing it.

  Maxwell, sodden with his toddies, and somnolent with the unwonted lateness of his bedtime, was well-nigh as complacent as the child. He sprawled on the bed while Memnon removed his clothes, the silence broken only by an oath or two when Mem had some difficulty in pulling his shirt over his head.

  The light of the fire suffused the room, and the candle was hardly to be missed when Memnon took it with him and closed the door.

  There remained for Mem only to go to Hammond’s room to swallow the vile drench which awaited him there. The very thought of it caused him to shiver with nausea. He knew the violent sickness it would cause all through the night.

  Memnon hesitated before he entered Hammond’s room, fearing the dressing-down that was in store for him. Instead Hammond appeared to be in the best of humours. He even chuckled as he commanded, ‘Fetch me that gourd and that bottle. Wouldn’t come back to drink the dose I mixed, eh? We’ll jest mix it stronger,’ and he emptied half the contents of the bottle into the already potent mixture and handed it to Mem.

  ‘That white gen’man say fetch him a wench. Whut wench I goin’ to git fer him? Tense? Got to fetch her right away afore white gen’leman git mad and go to sleep,’ Mem sought to divert Hammond from the project in hand.

  ‘You let that white gen’leman alone, and you let Tense alone. Hear? That nigger trader don’t need no wench. I don’ want that kind of dirty, nigger trader blood mixed up with my niggers.’

  ‘But he say——’

  ‘And I say drink that gourd and git out’n here. And mind you strike the fires early in the morning. Lots to do come tomorrow. Now drink down that gourd.’

  Memnon held the gourd by the handle and slopped the contents as he sank on his knees by the bed to beg for mercy. ‘Masta Ham ain’t goin’ to hide Memnon tomorrow? Is you Masta, suh? Memnon your little boy. Memnon wait on you and take care of you and mix toddy fer Ol’ Masta. Who goin’ to serve you and mix toddy while Mem git well from the larrupin’? I be good nigger, I be spry nigger, I won’t taste the toddy. I won’t do nothin’. Please, Masta, suh, don’t hide Mem!’

  ‘You goin’ to mix toddy and do jest whut you been doin’; that’s who. Needn’t think that sore ass I’m goin’ to give you git you out of workin’. You’ll go on and work jest the same. Now drink down that gourd and go to the stable like I tol’ you, and let me go asleep.’

  Ham’s calm, which Memnon took for complacence, was the calm of anger. He was fed up with the boy’s evasion and disobedience and the mention of the wench for Brownlee did Mem some harm.

  Memnon’s hand trembled as he lifted the gourd to his mouth. He sipped the nauseating mixture.

  ‘Drink it down. Drink it down quick—ever’ drop of it.’

  Memnon drank. ‘Please, Masta Ham, suh, that enough. Cain’t drink no more.’

  ‘Ever’ drop. And drink it fas’.’

  Memnon tried again—and swallowed it all. He felt himself sicken and rushed from the room. At the bottom of the stairs he fell prone on the floor, broke into a cold sweat. He lay there retching, too sick to rise.

  When Lucretia Borgia rose at her accustomed time, shortly before the dawn, she came upon Memnon in the hall.

  He was still too sick to explain anything to her. She lifted him to his feet, and half guided him, half carried him into the kitchen. She called the first boy she could find, who happened to be Napoleon, and set him to cleaning the stairs and hall. She loaded Meg’s arms with firewood and herself carrying an even larger load strode through the hall and up the stairs, to prepare fires before which her masters could dress in comfort. The elder Maxwell was still asleep, snoring; but Alph’s head protruded from the covers at the foot of the bed, and he proudly boasted, ‘Mammy, I got rheumatiz. It hurts awful, jist like Masta.’

  ‘Hush up yo’ mouth and keep it hushed. You wake Masta and I goin’ rheumatiz you fer sure,’ Lucretia Borgia whispered, but she rejoiced in the improvement of Maxwell’s ailment and even more that one of her sons had absorbed his pains. She did not doubt the truth of Alph’s claim.

  Meg stood beside his mother while she unloaded her arms and started the fire. Then he followed his mother into Hammond’s room at the other end of the hall.

  Hammond was awake. He had told Memnon to make the fire early and the chill of the room had deterred him from rising immediately. He was refreshed from his fatigue of the previous night and had reached down to rouse Dite and had given her leave to come into his bed. Lucretia Borgia, entering the room, ignored the contortions that were taking place beneath the covers. Meg, however, while his mother unloaded the wood from his arms and laid the fire, could not keep his eyes from rolling toward the bed. He was no
t entirely innocent; he had overheard bawdy talk; he knew approximately what his master was doing.

  As Lucretia Borgia laid the fire she noted that the ashes were cold and she sent Meg down the hall and into Maxwell’s room to fetch a brand. He met his brother coming out, limping and rubbing with one hand the knuckles of the other. Meg’s envy of Alph’s ailment made him pause, forgetting for a moment the errand on which he was bound.

  ‘Masta’s misery dreened right through my belly,’ Alph declared. ‘It hurt awful, and my han’s jist killin’ me.’

  ‘You jest puttin’ on, nigger. Hain’t nothin’ ails you, ’ceptin’ you don’t crave no spankin’. You thinks Mammy ain’t goin’ whup you ’cause you got rheumatiz, you a fool. Mammy all riled ’s mornin’!’ Meg warned and went into Maxwell’s room while Alph went slowly down the stairs exaggerating his limp.

  Maxwell ignored Meg’s squatting by the fire until he had ignited a piece of kindling and had crossed the room to leave with it, when the old man demanded, ‘Wha’ Memnon?’

  ‘Memnon, he sick,’ answered the boy with diffidence and made an effort to be gone.

  ‘That nigger ain’t sick. He jest cravin’ to git offn that touchin’ up he goin’ to git. He goin’ to git it a’right. Nigger ain’t sick,’ Maxwell said aloud but to himself.

  ‘Yassum, Masta, suh.’ Meg would have agreed with any statement the master made. He was not exactly afraid of the stern old man, but he was ill at ease. He had never been upstairs before and what appeared luxury to him appalled him. White living was so complex. White men took more trouble to be comfortable than comfort was worth.

  ‘Take that bran’ along. Then, come back here and he’p me on with ma boots,’ ordered Maxwell, and Meg was relieved to get away.

  Back in Ham’s room Lucretia Borgia still squatted before the fireplace. ‘That nigger jest nasty hisself all over,’ Meg heard his mother chuckle to Ham, who, without waiting for the fire, was getting out of bed.

  ‘Wha’ fer you stay so long? Cain’t you see you makin’ your masta dress hisself withoutn no fire?’ Lucretia Borgia scolded.