by Kyle Onstott
At midday, when father and son had settled themselves at table, Lucretia Borgia planted herself in the doorway to the kitchen. ‘Masta, suh, I wants to ‘form you, that saplin’ of Masta Charles never turn up to git his dinner.’
‘Jason?’ asked Hammond.
‘Yas, suh; that the one. Whut I do?’
‘Don’t do nuthin’,’ said Hammond. ‘He come up fer supper.’
‘Prob’ly off a-mopin’ ’bout its masta,’ surmised the older man. ‘Loony-like about Charles, but never come to see him ride away.’
‘Mayhap watched from upstairs. Upstairs now, cryin’, I venture.’
‘Charles treat it good, too. Like it, seem like.’
‘I minded him to treat him good and not to never lambaste him.’
‘He lambaste him nights,’ Meg interposed.
Hammond at first looked sternly at the young slave to reprimand the interruption; then asked, ‘How you know?’
Meg was confused by the tacit injunction to silence and the spoken question. ‘Jason say,’ he shrugged. ‘He like it.’
‘Nigger talk.’
‘You reckon Charles take that buck along?’ Hammond asked his father. ‘He crazy enough.’
‘You see him ride off. Course not.’
‘He mayhap send Jason ahead an’ pick him up. He untrusty.’
‘You trust him with twenty-five hunert dollars gold. Reckon you trus’ him with a little yaller buck.’
‘That different. Charles crazy ’bout Jason.’
‘Wouldn’t care, savin’ the buck was a present,’ said the father. ‘Never grow into nothin’ noway.’
‘Charles got him, I fetch him when I go to Crowfoot nex’ month. Don’ mean no harm.’
‘Had ought to ast, anyways.’
‘Course. Course. I’d a let him carry him along until I goes.’
‘Mayhap you right. That whure he go.’
‘Hope so, an’ he don’ come up,’ Hammond dismissed the subject. He was still too pleased by Mede’s success in the fight to bother much about a runty little nigger like Jason.
But Ham’s pride took a blow from, unexpectedly, Doc Redfield when the latter called at the big house the next evening.
‘Why you so monstrous keen fer this Mandingo to fight?’ queried the Doc, interrupting Ham in yet another description of the previous Saturday’s victory.
‘I craves my buck to win final—so as nobody goin’ to misdoubt,’ taken aback, Hammond fumbled in search of his words.
‘You-all got ever’thin’ an’ nothin’ good enough,’ Redfield observed, accepting a toddy from Meg’s tray. ‘Take me; I ain’t never had nothin’, an’ marryin’ a dozen or like ol’ petered out niggers an’ a quarter section plantation make me feel a gen’leman. Take you; got this place, always had it, an’ the finest niggers around, and you frets a-cause your buck cain’t strike the other man’s buck dead jest a-lookin’ at him. You real gen’lemen, gen’lemen born. Livin’ up to it must be hell.’
‘It that Hammond blood,’ affirmed Maxwell. ‘Ol’ Theophilus Hammond always had the best land, the best hosses, the best whisky, the best niggers, and the best women, an’ none of ’em good enough to ease his mind.’
‘I don’t reckon Maxwell blood count none,’ said Redfield, sipping at his drink.
The old man denied the implication. ‘I not prideful, never was prideful, nor my papa before me weren’t. I knows my niggers likely an’ prime. The kind I keeps because it the only kind worth pourin’ vittles into, the kind that don’t have to stan’ a month in New Orleans jails waitin’ for a body to buy.’
The conversation turned to other themes, but Hammond did not forget the accusation of excessive pride. It came back to him while Meg bathed him as he sat in the tub with his stiff leg extended. He wondered. Did a cripple, such as he, have a claim to pride? Was he seeking a vicarious soundness in his obsession with slaves without blemishes? As for gentility, a white cripple could still be a gentleman if he had, or ever had had, property. In addition, he himself had blood—three generations of planter forebears. Gentility was his birthright, which he could no more avoid than Redfield could acquire it. A gentleman must live up to his heritage, accept its perquisites and immunities, but the man proud of being a gentleman was something less than a gentleman, just as the man who aspired to be believed a gentleman, by so much, failed of his aspiration. Perhaps his own crippled leg, by curbing his pride, saved his gentility. Possibly that was its purpose, to chasten him. These unfamiliar reflections worried Ham.
Little could be expected from Ellen, but Hammond appealed to her that night. ‘Is I spreadin’ my tail too much, lovie?’ he asked her as she lay in his arms.
‘How you mean, Masta, suh?’
‘Doc Redfield say I gittin’ too proud-like, buyin’ a buck like Mede that whup all the otherns, an’ a wench like you, lighter an’ purtier than any other gen’lemen got. I don’t crave to be ’sumptuous an’ overbearin’. You don’ reckon I overbearin’, not to white men?’
‘Mista Doc doesn’t know what a gentleman is like. I know he is white, but he ain’t a gentleman, not like you’re a gentleman, or old Masta Wilson’s a gentleman.’
‘I ain’t talk’ ’bout Doc Redfield; I talkin’ about me. Does havin’ Falconhurst, an’ good hosses, an’ fine niggers make me too proudful?’
‘I don’t know how you treats white folks.’ Ellen was gradually assuming the vernacular of the plantation; ‘but you good to your niggers, sure good to them. Me, you——’
‘How I treats you don’t figure. You my bed-woman, and course I treats you choice-like.’
‘All of ’em—Meg and Memnon, Lucretia Borgia, an’ Mede, an’ Big Pearl, even the field niggers, all of ’em.’
‘I feed ’em good an’ don’ work them too hard. That all. With niggers nobody got to spread his tail; nobody. Niggers knows you better than they is. But when you better than another white man, you hadn’t ought to let on you thinks it. He cain’t he’p it ’cause he ain’t got blood an’ land an’ niggers an’ all.’
‘But you is better, Masta, suh,’ the girl emphasized.
‘You reckon me marryin’ that purty young white lady goin’ to make me more prideful? Make me so as no white man kin talk to me?’
Tears suffused Ellen’s eyes and Hammond heard her sobbing in the darkness.
‘Whut you cryin’ ’bout? I didn’t do nothin’ to you,’ he said.
‘I cain’t help it. I cain’t help it, Masta, please, suh. You goin’ to marry an’ I won’t be nothing to you, nothin’.’ He felt her lift her hand and draw it across her eyes to brush away the tears.
‘Doesn’t you un’erstand?’ Hammond demanded. ‘I got to—got to do it. I promised. Besides, it won’t make no difference to you an’ me. White ladies don’t like no pesterin’; they not like wenches; they detests it; they jest submits to make a child. I still keeps you.’
‘But you goin’ to love her—more than you love me. Masta, suh, oh, Masta.’
‘She goin’ to be my wife, don’ you un’erstan’?’ the boy argued. ‘I got to love her like a white lady. I still goin’ love you like a wench. Ain’t nobody ever, white nor black, goin’ to take your place. You always goin’ to be mine.’
‘She goin’ to be first.’
‘Course. She got to be. She white,’ he admitted. ‘Mustn’t git to thinkin’, ’cause I takes you into my bed, that you anythin’ but a nigger. You purty and clean and sweet-like an’ I loves you, but you ain’t white, cain’t have me a chil’, not a white child.’
Ellen knew that what he said was true and attempted no rebuttal.
‘Not like me givin’ you to no buck fer a breeder an’ takin’ me another wench. You my wench, rest easy; an’ I don’ want no other. Now, spread out an’ let’s go to sleep. I got plantin’, come mornin’.’
Meg’s ear at the keyhole caught only random words of the conversation and failed to understand even what he heard. When he was sure the talking had stopped, he lay down outsid
e his master’s door and slept.
12
On subsequent Saturdays, Ham was unable to get fights for Mede in Benson, which augmented his belief that his boy was supreme, at least for the area around Benson. But even if Mede should never fight again—and Hammond despaired of finding an opponent for him—he would remain, even to his decrepitude, a show-piece of whom no demonstration was required.
However, with the approach of May, Hammond had to set out to collect his bride, and fighting was relegated to the periphery of his interests.
His mother’s room, closed since her death, was reopened and refurbished. The feather-bed was tumbled, the former owner’s apparel removed from the clothes-press, the carpet taken up and dusted, and all made ready for Blanche’s reception.
‘Reckon we give Tense to Miz Blanche to be her nigger. She big enough, don’ you reckon, an’ clean an’ a virgin?’ Maxwell proposed. ‘That important. Don’t want no impure wench a-servin’ your wife.’
‘Needn’t fret about that. Major Woodford goin’ to give Blanche a little wench fer her weddin’, I guess. Usual, ain’t it?’
Maxwell snorted, ‘See that old man givin’ nobody nothin’. Ain’t got one to give.’
‘That money, Charles took along. Like he paid off on some of ’em. Wouldn’t be genteel to not give her a wench that she used to.’
‘Better figger on Tense—’less, that is, you wants that one fer yourself. Cain’t pester with your wife’s wench.’
‘Not an’ so long as I got Ellen, I doesn’t crave no other,’ said the son.
‘Dotin’ more on that Ellen than right decent, seem like,’ cautioned the older man. ‘All well enough to pester with. Got to have you a wench, course. Remember, she jist a wench.’
‘I don’ care. I don’ want no other.’
‘No sense in you marryin’, seem like.’
‘I hadn’t bought Ellen when I promised Blanche. If I’d a went to Crowfoot by way of The Coign, I ’speck I wouldn’t never a done it. Besides, you wants a gran’chile, doesn’t you?’
Maxwell admitted as much.
‘You mustn’t neglec’ to take Memnon down to the smith afore you go. Don’t want no lusty, unringed buck in the house whure there is a white lady.’
‘Been puttin’ it off. Mem scared of burnin’. Las’ time the smith drop solder on him. Skeared yet.’
‘Fiddlesticks, smith not goin’ to burn him, not to hurt much anyway. Don’t got to punch through him this time; hole already in him.’
‘I take him, come mornin’,’ Hammond agreed.
‘Another thing,’ bethought the old man. ‘Ain’t decent all these saplin’s runnin’ around nekid—the bucks especial. They shock her an’ she see ’em.’
‘They in the cabins an’ the barn. They don’ come around the house. Whut we goin’ to do?’
‘Better put shimmies on ’em. Tell Lucretia Borgia to git ’em made; she know which wenches kin ply a needle.’
‘Needn’t come more than mid-leg.’
‘Long enough they cain’t go aroun’ kickin’ up an’ a-showin’ theyself. An’ these twins, got to learn ’em to keep buttoned up. They too little to warrant ringin’ for a year or two, but got to be decent an’ talk decent. Hear?’
Both boys assented with a ‘Yas, suh, Masta, suh.’
‘Mine goin’ to be all right in that riggin’ I buy for him. Cain’t fly open, an’ I’ll hang him up, I hears any dirty talk outn him. Alph too. Have to watch out your own self, I reckon.’
‘While you gittin’, better git one of them brass-buttoned habits fer mine, too. Look real nice, the two of ’em alike, an’ we kin use ’em on that Kit when the twins grows out of ’em.’
‘Don’t reckon I better git new fer Mem? He’s a-wearin’ out.’
‘He do well enough. Make him brush his coat an’ clean up.’
It was plain to both the men that the presence of a white woman would necessitate some alteration in the plantation customs. Maxwell harked back to the time Hammond’s mother had been alive and to the decorum that had reigned. In retrospect it did not seem to him onerous; Blanche could not be more exacting.
‘Better fetch up them two mares from pasture an’ have ’em clipped an’ the harness greased,’ remarked Hammond.
‘Goin’ to take the surrey? Better drive them mares a little. Liable to be wil’, grassin’ all winter.’
‘Thought the surrey. Cousin Blanche goin’ to have a trunk, dresses an’ all to fetch along. Goin’ the north way, ferryin’ good over all the branches. Won’t have to swim the wagon.’
‘Good thing we got it. Hain’t hardly been used sence your mamma——. Cain’t abide wheels under me. Ruther straddle.’
‘But a lady——. Hard to ride side that fur.’
‘I knows. Ladies cain’t straddle.’
Hammond felt conspicuous and uneasy driving to Benson in a surrey to obtain the clothes he had ordered. A young man without a female companion seemed to him out of his realm in a vehicle. The mares, however, adjusted readily to harness; they travelled in unison and without more skittishness than was expected from horses so long at pasture.
And the clothes he had had made were uncomfortable but would suffice for the purpose intended. The village cobbler had sought to make the boots as small as Ham could cramp his feet into and, however much pain resulted, they were neat, even dainty. His father was impressed with the dignity with which Ham strutted across the sitting-room floor, concealing his limp as best he could.
‘Right well set up,’ was Maxwell’s verdict. ‘Lady right lucky, I reckon.’
‘See that goods. Heavy. Wear like ’gater hide,’ said Hammond insistently, picking up the skirt of the coat and forcing it into the gnarled hands of his father. ‘Feel it.’
‘Right strong broadcloth, but ain’t any too fine, not a bit. No better’n I wore the time I marry your mamma. Nothin’ too stylish to marry in!’
In turn Meg was summoned to try on his new suit of which he had known nothing. ‘Better have him washed first,’ suggested Maxwell.
‘Jest to try fer size, he won’t dirty it none,’ Hammond declared. ‘Shuck down,’ he ordered the delighted boy.
Not bothering with stockings, which were a part of the outfit, he had the boy slip his naked legs into the breeches, adjusted the coat over his shirtless shoulders, and, seated on the floor, Meg pulled the shoes on his bare feet. They were his first shoes and he relished the enhanced status that would come from wearing them.
‘You sure ’nough house nigger now,’ Hammond explained. ‘Got to ack like. No more rushin’ around an’ scufflin’. No more nekid skin. Got to keep these fixin’s whole.’
‘I still goin’ to be yo’ nigger, yo’ own?’
‘I takin’ you with me clear to Crowfoot, ain’t I, whut more? Reckon you kin behave?’
‘Yas, suh, Masta, yas suh, I behave; I behave good.’
Two days later master and manikin set out on their journey. Pole had brought the surrey early in the morning and stood patiently at their heads holding the horses. Meg, magnificent in his brass-buttoned jacket, stockinged and shod, sat ramrod straight in the driver’s seat an hour before Hammond was ready to depart.
There was much to be done. Putting on and adjusting the new clothes was itself a chore. A final trip to the Mandingo’s cabin took up time.
Lucretia Borgia stood on the gallery beside Ellen, who had come out for the leave-taking. Hammond kissed them both. Tears came to Ellen’s eyes but she did not sob. He kissed his father and hugged him to his body.
‘You min’ yo’ manners, nigger, an’ do what Masta say—ever’thin’ jest like he say,’ his mother cautioned Meg. ‘An’ take care them new clothes.’
‘I ain’t takin’ no blacksnake, but I kin sure tear him down with this buggy whup,’ said Hammond climbing into the surrey and shoving Meg toward the other seat.
‘That’s right, Masta,’ applauded Lucretia Borgia solemnly. ‘I hopes you goin’ to smash him, Masta, suh. On’y way to
tame a young nigger.’
The world was green with May and the sunshine warmed it well. The rutted and washed roads slowed the surrey, which swayed on its springs, but there was no need for haste. The wedding was set for the eighth, and Hammond allowed four days for the journey.
Yet fine though the weather was, and despite Meg’s excitement, Ham could not help brooding on the way. He dreaded what was ahead of him—his wedding, the prospect of which would have irked him less if the festivities connected with it could have been avoided. Crowfoot would overflow with guests strange to him, with whom he would be at ill ease. It was like Major Woodford to make the most of his daughter’s marriage. The standing up to take those vows before all those people, the dinner afterwards, and the banter he would have to endure, the effort to behave like a gentleman when he wasn’t quite sure of being one, all frightened Hammond. Taking refuge in vicarious good manners, he instructed Meg how to act; keep his coat straight and his pants buttoned, eat what was offered him and don’t ask for anything else, don’t pick his nose, don’t break wind, and don’t tell embarrassing lies.
Ham found no enjoyment in the lush green landscape, the planted acres, the brood of young bob-whites that scurried at his approach, the meadow lark’s calls, the hawk, a speck in the turquoise dome, the snake that slithered across the road, causing his horses to shy. However, he looked forward to seeing Charles again, despite Charles’ childish animosity for his sister, which was perhaps only jealousy.
It was not much short of noon on the fourth day when the carriage reached Crowfoot. ‘Set up straight now, we’s gittin’ there. I wants you to ac’ good and right,’ he admonished Meg as he turned into the lane that led to the house.
‘I is, Masta, suh,’ the small boy replied with resolution.
Hammond was relieved, and also amazed, to see so little stir about the place. Possibly, he thought, the Major had restrained himself from making a festival of his daughter’s wedding. A ragged young slave scurried to take charge of the team, and before Hammond could reach the front door the old house-boy appeared from a side door to receive him.
