by Kyle Onstott
‘Why, Cousin Hammond on’y jest come.’
‘That don’t make no difference. Don’t take a man long to make up his mind fer a purty piece like that Blanche.’
Beatrix began to weep; she arose and kissed Hammond, continuing to weep in his arms. ‘You’ll be good to her?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve raised her up in the fear of the Lord, and she’ll make you a good, faithful wife. Maybe she’ll bring you to Jesus.’
Hammond got loose from Beatrix as soon as he could, but was forced to endure the shake of the Major’s pudgy hand and the enthusiastic pat on the shoulder. ‘How it feel to be plighted?’ Woodford tittered.
‘Purty good,’ Hammond shrugged from his doubt. ‘Purty good,’ he repeated for emphasis.
‘And Hammond goin’ to borrow me twenty-five hundert dollars,’ Major Woodford added in a stentorian whisper into the horn.
Beatrix nodded that she had heard, and murmured with polite indifference, ‘That nice. That nice.’ No lady was concerned with money.
That night Blanche and Hammond sat aside from the company, which now included the superannuated and devout Satherwaits, and planned their life together.
Blanche found it necessary to count on her fingers to set a propitious date for the wedding and chose the eighth of May, something more than two months hence. Hammond said nothing about a ring to bind the betrothal and Blanche found it necessary to remind him. He was oblivious of the engagement ring, which no woman ever forgets; but, brought to his mind and explained, he promised to comply with custom.
Blanche was elated at her prospects. All the local swains were callow; worse, they were poor. Her betrothal was additionally romantic, even glamorous, because it was with a stranger, a man from strange parts, a man of the great world who had been to New Orleans, and a man whom she had toppled off his feet at their first meeting. All these attributes were items to boast of in Centerville and Briarfield.
Hammond, for his part, was complacently pleased with his bargain, for a bargain it had been. He could well put up with the petulance which Blanche habitually displayed until she got her way, in the silent solace of the knowledge that she was bought and would be paid for. In due course, she would be his to dominate as he chose.
The bedroom to which Charles and Hammond eventually retired was the only one on the ground floor, a big room furnished with pieces, largely of walnut, that had been left over from the furniture of the old house when the new one was built, pieces good enough for destructive boys. It was cluttered with a broken spinning-wheel, and an extra dresser with a cracked mirror, a heavy round table piled with dust-covered clothes that were outworn or outmoded, two crippled chairs, as well as containing usable if badly designed bedroom furniture, quite as good, however, as that in Hammond’s room at home. The carpet was woven of rags, but so were all the carpets at Falconhurst. There were no curtains on the wide bed with a frame for a canopy. Except for the junk, which the room had ample surplus space to accommodate, the informal room was not uncomfortable.
When Hammond entered, Charles was stripped to the waist, reclining on the bed, his stockinged feet upon the floor, too tired or too lazy to take off the rest of his clothes. His bearing toward Hammond had veered completely since the morning encounter upon the road. His affability was prompted by Hammond’s statements that he had visited New Orleans and that he did not disapprove of fighting niggers, a subject upon which Charles desired to draw his guest out.
‘Which side the bed you crave?’ he asked.
‘Don’t make no difference,’ Hammond replied.
‘I always sleeps this side. Dick sleep over there when he home.’
‘Your papa say Cousin Dick readin’ the law in Centerville,’ said Hammond. ‘Must be right smart, fixin’ to make a lawyer. Takes a heap of studyin’.’
‘Dick ain’t a-goin’ to be no lawyer. Readin’ law is jest his excuse. Dick fixin’ to be gam’ler.’
‘He older than you, ain’t he?’
‘Yas, he older, and Mamma’s favourite. Gits ever’thin’. I don’t hardly git nothin’. Even has to wear Dick’s old clothes, cut down. Papa pore, plumb pore,’ Charles confessed. ‘Dick better-lookin’ than me, too. Makes a difference.’
‘You ain’t through your growin’ and makin’ up,’ condoned Hammond. ‘You right big, leastwise tall fer your age.’
‘An’ Dick looks straight. He ain’t gotch-eyed like me.’
Hammond’s compassion could summon no satisfactory answer, and the subject was dropped in Charles’ fit of coughing.
‘You a-sparkin’ Blanche?’ her brother demanded abruptly. ‘Aimin’ to marry her?’
‘Well, yes, kinder,’ acknowledged Hammond.
‘I likes you, even if you are my cousin. You my frien’, ain’t you? Well then, let Blanche alone.’
‘Your papa say I kin. He say it all right. Why you hostile?’
‘I tells you I your frien’. She pizen. Blanche is pizen.’
‘She your sister. You hadn’t ought to talk that a-way,’ Hammond sought to shame Charles.
‘She my sister, and I knows her, knows all about her. I tell you she won’t let you have no fightin’ nigger.’
‘Who say I craves to have no fightin’ nigger?’
‘Everybody craves nigger fightin’, anybody that got any sap. I un’erstands you at dinner that it warn’t no wrong.’ Charles’ confidence was shaken.
‘To say true, I does crave me a fighter, an’ Cousin Blanche ain’t goin’ to restrain me from gittin’ me one. I lookin’ around—kinder. I find one someday.’
‘I thought you had lots of good bucks. Folks say you rich.’
‘Ourn ain’t fightin’ niggers though. I wants a buck that kin whup all the rest ’n them.’
‘I jest craves to see ’em fight, no matter they wins or loses,’ said Charles. ‘That whut I doin’ this evenin’ whiles you all talkin’. Takes me a couple of bucks up beyant the wood lot whure Papa couldn’t hear ’em, and I fights ’em. Course, I wouldn’t let ’em bite or gouge; jest scuffled and pounded ’em. Didn’t want Papa to find out. You won’t tell?’
‘Course not. Ain’t none o’ my put in. Ain’t my niggers,’ Ham washed his hands.
‘Don’t want Papa should know—Blanche leasten of all. She hold somethin’ I do a long time ago over my head. She pizen, I tells you. Why you reckon them wenches don’t come?’ Charles answered his own question, ‘That Sukey afeared of you.’
He strode to the outside door to call the girls and found them huddled together on the edge of the gallery, waiting to be summoned. ‘Git yourself in here, and shuck down,’ he ordered them.
Hammond was embarrassed, torn between his misgivings about the propriety of receiving a wench into his bed in this household on the one hand and the exhibition of his lack of virility on the other. ‘Reckon I don’t need none tonight. I kind of tired,’ he temporized.
‘It all right. Papa say it all right. Papa say give you a wench,’ Charles urged, while the two girls shed their simple clothes, perfunctorily.
‘This Sukey kind of tall and stringy like, but Dick think she right good. She Dick’s when he at home. Ain’t no virgins on the place, ’ceptin’ some blacks that ain’t right ripe yet.’
‘Sukey all right. Ain’t you, Sukey?’ Hammond declared, without enthusiasm.
‘Yas, suh, Masta,’ Sukey admitted, diffidently.
‘Coursen, she ain’t so round like as yourn, ain’t fleshed out,’ Hammond admitted.
‘This here Katy gittin’ too fat. Got to cut down on her eatin’ some,’ commented Charles, running his hand over the girl’s flank and pinching her ample calf. ‘An’ if you ruther trade——’ he suggested hospitably, but failed to conceal his reluctance and Hammond declined.
Katy was low and wide, moon-faced, short-necked, and fat. She waddled provocatively when she walked. She enjoyed her status as her young master’s concubine and Hammond thought her presumptuous in her display of familiarity.
While Hammond knelt by the right-han
d side of the bed to utter his prayer, Charles and Katy climbed into the deep feather-bed on the opposite side.
‘You reckon that prayin’ ever’ night do you no good?’ asked Charles when Hammond had mumbled his amen.
‘I don’t reckon it do, but I promised my mamma, ’fore she died,’ Hammond answered. ‘Don’t you ever pray?’
‘I gits ’nough of that trash mornin’s after breakfast. Ever’body kneels down, even the house niggers, even Papa; cain’t nobody git outn it. You’ll see. You marries Blanche, you’ll be kneelin’ down ever’ mornin’,’ Charles threatened and was ignored.
Sukey waited for her unhurried lover to enter the bed so that she might pinch out the candle. He would have dismissed the wench and have gone to sleep, but for the violation of hospitality. Charles, on the other side of the bed, would see in such behaviour a contempt for the best entertainment Crowfoot had to offer. Hammond performed what he looked upon as a duty without pleasure and with little satisfaction.
Sukey sensed Hammond’s apathy, but, none the less, thanked him for his favour, as Dick had taught her to do.
‘Git out now and let me turn over and git some sleep. This bed too crowded,’ whispered Hammond.
‘You means you don’ want me no more?’ Sukey asked in surprise.
‘Not tonight,’ groaned Hammond.
‘Whure I go? Whure I sleep?’
‘Whure you wants to, on’y be gone outn here,’ said Hammond with a show of impatience. ‘Go back to the quarters, an’ you wants, or on the floor.’
‘I be cold. Masta Richard, he don’ never throw me out of bed,’ Sukey complained.
‘Well, wrap in a quilt. Think I wants to lay and smell you all night?’
To return to the quarters would be to admit to the other Negroes her fall from the grace of her lover’s bed. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Perhaps, if she remained, the white man would avail himself of her again. She crossed the room to get a quilt from a stack of bedclothes on a chair, evoking Charles’ impatience.
‘Fer Christ sake, Suke! Whut’s the matter? Lay down and behave yourself.’
Sukey obeyed. She flung herself naked on the carpet and shivered through the night, protected only by her dress and Katy’s, which she was able to reach and pull over her.
Hammond was disturbed through the night by the bedfellows of whom he could not so easily rid himself as he had done of Sukey. He was aware of the couple’s nestling in each other’s arms; he felt the stretching and relaxation of the ropes that supported the mattress; he heard the little squeals of delight; sensed the clipping and kissing that was going on.
Ham’s disturbance was not physical, however, not mere noise, nor lack of space, nor movement. It was disgust, bordering upon nausea, that a white man should assume an amatory equality with a Negro wench. It was beneath the dignity of his race—somehow bestial. A wench was an object for a white man’s use when he should need her, not a goal of his affections, to be commanded and not to be wheedled. It disturbed Hammond that Charles should kiss Katy with passion. How could white lips endure the contact with the yellow skin? How could Charles so demean himself, aware of another white man lying beside him?
Scarcely had the dawn broken when Hammond arose. Sukey lay on the floor, her legs drawn up to keep warm, and Hammond spread a quilt over her. His pants went on easily, but he had to struggle with his left boot, as was usual when he put it on without assistance. Sukey had relaxed her position and stretched out before Hammond left the room by the gallery door to keep from waking the household.
The outdoor air was fresh and crisp and the morning star had paled but was still visible. Hammond ambled about in a critical mood. He observed gates off hinges, a field of dry thistles seeding the adjacent land, wheelbarrows overturned in the weeds and left to the elements, a fruit orchard blighted and unpruned, a worm fence with half the rails broken. No wonder Woodford was in debt and needed money.
Hammond wandered back toward the house and sat down on the gallery, waiting for the family to stir. Sukey came out the side door and greeted him on her way to the quarters. It was not long before Katy followed, and Charles soon appeared.
‘Wants to git them wenches gone afore Mamma gits up,’ he explained. ‘I reckon she know, but——’
‘Course, she deaf,’ said Hammond. ‘Maybe——’
‘That Blanche, she know and she blab. She make trouble however she kin. You ain’t goin’ to marry her? I likes you and I’m a-tellin’ you,’ Charles warned again.
‘Yas, I’m goin’ to marry your sister!’ Hammond declared positively.
‘You kin crawdaddle outn of it,’ Charles suggested. ‘Tell her you pore. She don’ want no pore man. You too good fer her, tha’s all.’
‘You don’t know if I good or not. I reckon she right pure and good and simple. Seem like to me.’
‘You honest. She ain’t. She won’t let you keep your fightin’ nigger, I tell you, jest to be honery.’
‘I reckon she git used to it.’
Mrs. Woodford presided at the breakfast table with her hollow voice and her horn. Blanche appeared late in long riding-habit—the most striking costume in her sparse wardrobe. She had timed her entrance to occur after the rest of the party was seated when all eyes would be upon her, although she was interested only in Hammond’s appraisal.
‘Plannin’ to ride some this mornin’, darlin’?’ asked Beatrix, cocking her horn.
Blanche nodded and shouted, ‘Hammond and me goin’ a-ridin’ right after breakfast.’
‘You’ll wait fer prayers, of course,’ said her mother. ‘Mista and Miz Satherwait is here, and I’m sure Colonel Butler is a godly man. Hammond will kneel down with us.’
‘Cousin Hammond don’t have to say his prayers,’ Charles announced. ‘He knelt down las’ night.’
Beatrix beamed on Hammond. ‘I hope, Son, you kneeled with him. I knows Cousin Hammond comin’ to Jesus.’
‘I’m afeared I cain’t go a-ridin’, Cousin Blanche, or wait fer prayer neither,’ Hammond excused himself. ‘I got a long ride ahead and got to git me started. I craves to git me to Coign Plantation afore noon or a little after, and to git on my way to Falconhurst before nightfall.’
Blanche intended merely to pout, which she believed she did very prettily, but found herself crying and abruptly left the table. Hammond pushed back his chair and followed her into the sitting-room, trying to appease her.
‘You don’ love me! You don’ love me! I wouldn’ marry you if they never was another man!’ percolated into the dining-room and appalled the girl’s father, who hastened into the sitting-room to settle the quarrel which threatened his calculations.
Charles’ satisfaction was dampened by his fear that Blanche would never permit the boy to escape from her. Beatrix looked from one to another for an explanation of what was going on, but amid the embarrassment of the party nobody gave her one.
‘Now, now, Blanche, darlin’,’ the Major consoled his daughter; ‘Hammond got to return to his plantation. He a busy man. You s’pose he propose marriage the first day, an’ he could stay an’ spark?’
‘But, Papa!’ protested Blanche, drying her eyes. ‘It ain’t fair, ain’t decent. Nobody will believe me. Nobody think I got me a beau at all.’
‘We’ll show ’em, won’t we, Hammond? The quicker Hammond git home and talk to his papa, the quicker he git back and you gits married,’ said the Major.
‘He already say he come the eighth of May,’ sobbed Blanche. ‘I wants he should stay now.’
‘I has got to git home and buy me that di’mon’ ring,’ wheedled Hammond. ‘The quicker I buys it, the quicker it come.’
This argument appeased the girl. She blew her nose and wiped her eyes. Hammond stooped and kissed her awkwardly and the three returned to the dining-room.
The Major beamed. ‘Jest a lovers’ fuss,’ he proclaimed proudly. The tears of reconciliation still sparkled in Blanche’s eyes as she again took her seat at breakfast.
As the
party rose from the table, Charles placed his arm about Ham’s shoulder and whispered a reminder, ‘You goin’ to ast Papa kin I come to visit you at Falconhurst?’
Despite his distaste for the boy, Hammond’s invitation was genial. ‘Major Woodford,’ Ham said, ‘Charles here wantin’ to ride Falconhurst way. He right welcome, an’ you lets him.’
‘I reckon he purty young to go gallivantin’,’ replied the Major. ‘Cain’t trus’ him.’
‘I ain’t never been nowhures. Cain’t go nowhures. I ain’t no little boy no longer,’ argued the boy. ‘Cousin Hammond, he ben to New Orleans an’ all over. I most as old.’
‘Don’t ack like,’ said his father. ‘Mayhap and ifn you sends that money, I let him go.’
‘Course, he come, he got to do like I say,’ specified Hammond.
Hammond ordered his horse, and went into his bedroom to fetch his saddle-bags. He stole a brief aside with Blanche in the parlour, from which the pair emerged embarrassed, the girl’s hair dishevelled and tears in her eyes. Wash held the stallion by the bridle. The Major repeated his directions how best to get to Coign and warned of mire in the road through the swamp for about four miles.
Hammond dreaded Beatrix’s kiss, which he knew that he couldn’t avoid, braced himself and got it over. Beatrix wiped her eyes. Hammond shook hands all around. To Colonel Butler and the Satherwaits the farewell was perfunctory; Charles was nervous, and Hammond wondered at the boy’s anxiety to get him gone; Major Woodford held on to Hammond’s hand, pumping it. ‘Reckon I better write a letter to your papa about that money?’ he suggested aside. ‘I ain’t very handy writin’ letters.’
‘Won’t do no good,’ Hammond told him. ‘Papa do whut I say. He send it—sure.’
A final seemly kiss for Blanche, ardent enough to confirm his affections, brief enough not to violate propriety, and Hammond was in the saddle. The group stood back to be out of the way of the wheeling horse. What was intended as a brave smile, the stuff of heroines, appeared on Blanche’s face.
Hammond walked his horse, looking back and waving, till he reached the public road and turned south. The rest of the party could not escape Beatrix’s morning prayer meeting, and the Satherwaits had no desire to.
