by Kyle Onstott
Hammond hitched his team in the shade of a large maple across the road from the tavern, helped his father to alight, and told the slaves to stay where they were. ‘Don’ git down fer nobody, ’lessen I tells you—not even if a white man say. An’ don’t you eat nothin’ nobody a-goin’ to give you. Hear? Somebody tryin’ to pizen you afore you fights.’
‘Eh,’ scoffed his father at his precautions.
The son led the father across the road, steadied him as he stepped upon the porch, and guided him into the tavern. Talk stopped in deference to so important a personage. Redfield was first to see and greet his friend.
‘Couldn’t trus’ the boy, eh? Got to come?’ Redfield suggested. ‘Boys, Ham’s age, reckless, I reckon, bets too heavy. Got to hol’ ’em down. How the rheumatics?’
‘You know, Doc, Hammond trusty. I ain’t no part of this fight. Jest felt like comin’ along to watch—plumb outsider. Hammond kin bet ever’ nigger an’ every dollar on Falconhurst, he seein’ that way.’ Maxwell underlined his disinterest so that his presence might not impair his son’s prestige at the tavern.
‘I jest a-coddin’,’ Redfield repaired his error. ‘Ham ain’t a-needin’ no didy changer.’
When they arrived, Remmick hastened out from behind the bar to draw up a spindle-backed wicker-seated armchair for his honoured guest, and grasped his arm to lower him into it.
‘Nev’ mind, never min’,’ Maxwell at once repulsed and accepted the attention, pleased with his reception. ‘Corn fer everybody, mine with hot water an’ a little sweetenin’. Son, you pay.’
‘Got to wait, suh, whiles I hotten some,’ Remmick apologized. ‘Ain’t no call fer toddies. Won’t take more than a minute.’
‘Don’ stir yourself. I reckon I kin wait.’ Maxwell blinked in his effort to adjust his eyes to the interior darkness after the brightness of the sun. He squinted toward a figure against the bar and asked, ‘Ain’t that Mista Brownlee?’
The other, unsure of his reception, came forward and extended his hand. ‘If it ain’t Mista Maxwell, well! well! I’m often a-thinkin’ about my visit to your place—whut do you call it, Falconhurst?—an’ your good vittles an’ fine stock, specially that twin pair o’ saplin’s. Sure to buy ’em offn you. I knows jest whure I kin sell ’em, know jest the man to want ’em—fer pets, jest pets. I pay a good sum.’
Maxwell shook his head and changed the subject. ‘How you make with them two you traded me out of?’
‘Them two unsound bucks? I didn’t lose nothin’,’ admitted Brownlee, by which he acknowledged that he had done well.
‘How’s niggers in gen’al?’ Maxwell queried.
‘They’s high, still high. Cain’t buy ’em.’
‘Thought maybe that new Louisianie law goin’ to cheapen ’em.’
Brownlee sniffed. ‘Nobody pay no attention to that fool law. Course, you cain’t sell ’em at public cry in New Orleans, unless you makes out they bin a year in the state; but niggers ain’t knowin’ whure they comes from and nobody a-carin’.’
‘Mine all a-knowin’ they Alabama.’
‘Learn ’em to say they Louisiana. Private treaty better anyways, if you got prime stock. They goin’ to take that law back, come Assembly. Planters needs niggers—cain’t breed ’em fast as they kills ’em in the cane.’
Remmick brought Maxwell’s toddy and waited for him to taste it. ‘Sweet enough, suh?’ he asked, subdued and solicitous.
‘Best I ever drunk,’ Maxwell savoured the drink.
The party crowded around the bar to obtain their drinks at the Maxwell expense.
‘Reckon you mayhap owns that boy we come to fight, Mista Brownlee?’ broached Hammond suspiciously.
‘Wishin’ I did,’ said the buyer, raising his drink to his host and downing it. ‘Whupped ever’thin’ around about. Worth a fortune, jest about.’
‘Where is he?’ Hammond appealed to Remmick. ‘Whure the owner?’
‘He gittin’ ready his boy, rubbin’ him. He’ll come.’ The less the haste, the more whisky would be consumed.
The room was filling when the side door, which led to the sleeping rooms of the tavern, opened and a swarthy, squat, muscular man appeared. Hammond knew who it was before Remmick announced, ‘Here Mista Neri now!’
‘That Mista Maxwell?’ demanded the Italian.
‘This him,’ Remmick indicated.
Neri was direct. ‘Bring your boy?’ he asked Hammond. ‘Want to fight him?’
‘I ain’t seen yourn,’ Ham refused to commit himself.
‘Don’t want to see yours. I’ll fight him,’ said Neri aggressively. ‘I’ll fetch out Topaz when comes the time. He’s restin’.’
‘I seen him—not shucked down—but I seen him,’ the tavern keeper intruded into the negotiations, anxious that they should not fall through.
Hammond asked, ‘He big?’
‘He high up. Ain’t sayin’ he little, but ain’t no scuffler, as I kin see. Yourn kin whup, whup easy—that is I reckon, fur as I see.’
‘Gen’leman ain’t seen Mede,’ called Maxwell impatiently from his chair. ‘You ain’t a-choosin’ a damn whore. Cain’t tell, lookin’ at him, kin he fight. Pit ’em, an’ see who whups.’ The father did not want his son’s caution to deprive him of the spectacle he had come so far to see.
‘I got to see his bettin’ nigger, howsumever,’ Hammond stipulated, and by these words conceded his willingness to make the match without an examination of the opposing fighter.
‘Whut bettin’ nigger? I don’t fight my boy fer little niggers. I fight fer spondulix, nothing short,’ declared Neri with a show of scorn.
‘I tellin’ you, Mista Maxwell, Mista Neri not liable to match fer niggers,’ Remmick reminded Ham.
Hammond gave a sidelong glance at his father, who was unmoved, then asked, ‘How much?’
Neri drew from his pocket a sheaf of greenbacks and cast them loosely on the counter. ‘There five thousand—all I got. Any part of it. Mista Remmick, here, let him hold the stakes an’ run the fight, judge it.’
From the crowd of onlookers there was an audible stir, from one man a whistle of amazement.
The proposal bewildered Hammond. He produced his pouch and shook its gold upon the counter. ‘That five hundert. I ain’t a-riskin’ no more. It all I brung.’
Neri reached for his roll of bills, folded it with a sneer, and returned it to his pocket. He started to walk away.
‘Wait!’ said Redfield, turning Neri back. ‘I might go two hundred on Ham’s buck. I ain’t got so much along, but Remmick here knows I good fer it.’
Lewis Gasaway came forward and stacked fifty dollars beside Hammond’s pile of gold. ‘I backin’ Ham’s nigger,’ he declared.
‘I ain’t risking my Topaz fer coppers. Not afeared that he won’t win, but he may git hurt. Wouldn’t have him battered fer seven-fifty. Twenty-five hundred, anyway; that’s the lowest.’
‘Cover it! Cover it!’ Maxwell urged Hammond.
‘I never brung on’y five hunnert. I ain’t a-betting more, ’ceptin’ it be a nigger,’ Hammond’s discretion overbore his humiliation.
‘Go around to Banker Meyer. He let you have two thousand till Monday,’ urged Maxwell. ‘I’ll sign. Won’t take more than a minute—or half hour.’
‘When we got to borrow money to bet, I stops a-fightin’. We ain’t debted and ain’t a-goin’ to debt,’ affirmed the son.
‘Well!’ The old man struggled to rise. ‘You ain’t goin’ to fight him, I reckon we take the Mandingo home an’ put him over the fireplace to look at. Ever stuff a nigger, Doc Redfield? Reckon you kin make him look nat’chell? Hammond wantin’ you to stuff his Mandingo. It hisn. I don’t say nothin’.’
‘You still got them span o’ twins, Mista Maxwell, suh?’ asked Brownlee, detaching himself from the crowd. ‘They still sound and well, an’ they not blistered?’
‘You hear my son say we ain’t debted.’
‘I will give Mista Neri two thousand fer the two of ’em
, an’ if he win ’em. Put ’em up with Hammond’s five hundred against Neri’s twenty-five hunderd,’ the dealer proposed. ‘You knows them two squirts ain’t worth it, but I give it—two thousand. I got a fool in New Orleans a-wantin’ fancies. Pets, jest pets. Needn’t fret whure they goin’. They live—best in the lan’.’
Maxwell resumed his chair, and ordered another round of drinks.
‘You know, Papa, we promise Lucretia Borgia,’ Hammond interposed. ‘We cain’t sell ’em withoutn her say.’
‘Not sell ’em, but we kin bet ’em,’ Maxwell rationalized a distinction.
‘Promise to a nigger!’ scoffed Brownlee. ‘Nobody goin’ to hold you to it!’
The offer was enticing. A thousand dollars each for Alph and Meg. They were more valuable as a matched brace than singly, it was true, and they were choice boys, delicately made, alert, and responsive. On the other hand, there was a remote chance that they would not grow up into big, muscular men. Maxwell remembered when, before the war with Britain, the La Fitte brothers had sold smuggled bozal Negroes in New Orleans by the pound. There was still value in weight, and the twins would never be big.
Maxwell sipped the toddy which Remmick had brought him. ‘Ham’s say, I reckon. Them saplin’s hisn, also. Be me, I’d take you up, Mista Brownlee. But it ain’t me.’
‘Yourn a-goin’ to win, anyways, Hammond,’ argued Remmick. ‘Ain’t no risk.’
‘But they ain’t here. I cain’t bet ’em,’ Hammond hesitated.
‘I drop out tomorrow an’ pick ’em up, if Neri wins ’em. I trust you. I post my two thousand and your five hunderd agin’ Mista Neri’s twenty-five hunderd. Ifn he win, he take all the money an’ I takes the span of twins.’
Hammond reluctantly, against his judgment and with fear in his heart, agreed to the wager. Neri did not understand the arrangement, or pretended not to understand. It had to be explained to him twice.
‘That’s all right,’ he added, ‘jest so I git the money. Put up the real money with Mista Remmick. But I take no responsibility that these Maxwells will give you the niggers if they lose. I thought they was rich, or I wouldn’t a-come. If you cain’t afford it, there’s still time.’
Hammond again emptied his purse on the counter, Brownlee counted out the dollars, and Neri matched the joint sums. Remmick raked all together, wrapped the gold in the greenbacks and placed the whole sum in his pocket. Neri bought a round of drinks for the house, lifted his glass to Hammond, barely touched his lips to the whisky and pushed it from him.
‘We savin’ the big fight to the las’,’ Remmick announced. ‘Ain’t any you other gen’lemen brung your varmints?’
‘ ’Ceptin’ Mista Gore, over there, ain’t none brung none,’ Holden told the impresario. ‘Gore’s nigger cain’t fight hisself.’
‘I reckoned with Ham’s buck matchin’ that other one, wouldn’t be no interest in no other fightin’,’ said Kyle apologetically. ‘I could brung one.’
‘Me, too,’ a dozen men muttered, one to another, some of whom owned no slaves at all.
‘To tell truth, my ol’ man a-watchin’ I don’t sneak none out. I tried,’ confessed Lewis Gasaway, laughing in his embarrassment. ‘Don’t hold with me a-fightin’—’lessen I wins.’
‘Well, bring on you god-damn niggers,’ called Remmick, ‘an’ let’s see ’em.’ He had delayed the fight as long as possible, but now the crowd was milling with impatience and the less ardent were likely to leave. No drinks were being sold.
Redfield followed Hammond across the road to summon Mede, while Neri disappeared through the side door to bring his fighter. Maxwell remained seated. Gasaway, Gore, Kyle and a few others straggled out as far as the porch, but did not venture into the sun. The larger number remained at the bar to see the new fighter emerge. The division of the crowd was a rough indication of partisanship, although some men reserved their allegiance until they saw the fighters, and others, who had no intention of laying bets, were interested in the fight for its own sake and indifferent which side should win.
Mede was asleep in the back of the surrey, mouth agape, and Ham had to shake him awake.
‘Come on! Git down. It goin’ to start.’
‘Whut, Masta, suh?’
‘That fightin’. You knows I goin’ to fight you this evenin’; doesn’t you?’
‘Yas, suh; yas, suh,’ the big Negro drawled, half awake.
‘All you ponders is sleepin’,’ Hammond censured. ‘Ain’t aimin’ to fight. Ain’t thinkin’ nothin’! I reckon we goin’ to be whup. That othern is a gyascutus, ever’body sayin’!’ As the time for the combat neared, Neri’s fighter grew more formidable in Ham’s imagining.
‘I still a-bettin’ my two hundert on yourn, if I kin find somebody.’ Redfield’s confidence or loyalty was unshaken. ‘He goin’ to be all right. Don’ be so shaky.’
The owner and the veterinarian flanked the big Negro to lead him across the road. The party on the porch parted to let the trio enter the room, and straggled after.
The crowd left an open space before Maxwell’s chair, where Hammond paused. Men crowded to look over others’ shoulders at the fighter, who, conscious of the scrutiny and now fully awake, began a nervous flexing of his muscles and shifting of stance.
‘Quiet down. You ain’t no stud horse,’ ordered the old man. ‘Shuck off his clo’s, an’ let folks see him.’
Mede looked at Hammond for confirmation of the command, and at a nod began ripping himself out of his two garments, which he cast on the floor at Maxwell’s feet. He towered naked before the crowd, unable to refrain from flexing his muscles.
A murmur of discussion ran through the onlookers.
Two or three adults reached out to stroke the Negro admiringly. Kyle commented somewhat idly to Hammond, ‘Gotten him a little fat, ain’t you? Seem-like, jest a shade.’
Redfield went quickly to his defence. ‘They ain’t no lard on him, not a bit. He all sound meat. He jest big-made.’
The side door opened and Neri appeared, followed by his gladiator, naked and glowering, and the crowd shifted its attention, leaving Mede alone in front of Maxwell’s chair. Even Hammond, anxious for an appraisal of the challenger, moved with the others. Maxwell, who felt himself deserted, extended his arm towards Mede for help in rising from the chair, and the naked black boy sustained him as he made his way into the crowd that gathered about Neri and his man. Mede, noting that his old master was unable to see Topaz over the crowd in front of him, stooped and lifted him to his shoulder. Maxwell, resentful of the implication that he was not tall enough to see above the crowd, kicked the boy soundly with his booted heel, and demanded to be put down.
But he had had a good look at Topaz, a lanky mulatto, possibly a quadroon, whose height Maxwell over-estimated at twenty hands. But he was obviously taller than Mede. Maxwell’s entire impression of the Negro was one of length and leanness. The muscles were bunched and were individually visible as the joints articulated. The long, sloping shoulders seemed wider than they were by contrast with the body’s taper to a small, lithe waist and rumpless hips. The rib formation was distinct, which led Maxwell to believe, at least to hope, that the man was underfed, despite his reasoning that no owner would risk his money on a starved fighter.
No mere youth, Topaz was fully thirty and possibly thirty-five years old, past his prime perhaps as a fighter, but seasoned and experienced in all the tricks of his enforced vocation. In contrast with Mede, a ridge of hair straggled down Topaz’s sternum and spread above his nipples; it had been shortened to mere stubble. The hair on the chest covered but did not conceal a tattooed crucifix suspended by a tattooed chain about the neck. Not permitted by the conventions of fighting to wear a real crucifix or religious medal, Neri relied upon the tattoo as a protection. Yet the protection it offered was not only divine, for no antagonist would flout such a symbol. To strike the tattoo would court defeat not only at the hands of Topaz but at the hands of God.
Topaz’s skull was long and lean, li
ke the other parts of him. It rose to a pinnacle accentuated by his high, retreating forehead, a receding hair line, a sunken-cheeked lantern-jaw, small, amber, feral eyes, red and lashless, narrowly together under scant but meeting brows. It was easy to see that the two incisors on the right side of his upper jaw were broken off or missing, and his other visible teeth were pitted and stained. His most repellent aspect, however, was the absence of ears.
Neri’s abrupt manners and laconic speech discouraged questions, but Holden ventured to ask him, ‘Whut ’come of his years? Didn’t he never have none?’
Neri seemed to feel himself on the defensive and replied, ‘He got one tore in a fracas, time back; and, cuttin’ it off, I thought it well to slice off the other side. Didn’t we, Topaz? Save it from tearin’.’
Topaz cocked his head in order to hear his master. ‘Yes, suh; save tearin’ it off,’ he concurred. ‘Ain’t nothin’ to tear,’ he added.
‘Them burns, though, I didn’t do them. He had ’em when I bought him,’ Neri absolved himself of wanton mutilation of his slave.
‘Yes, suh,’ Topaz elucidated, feeling behind him, ‘Masta Henry burn my ass when I ’fuse to fight; it long while back, ’fore I didn’t have no powder. I feared, that time. Ain’t no more. Masta give me powder now.’
It was a hint, a plea, upon which Neri acted. Drawing a phial from his pocket, he shook from it into Topaz’s hand a small cone of white powder, which the Negro raised to his nose and inhaled at a single sniff. He wiped the residue upon his thigh, leaving a lighter spot upon the flesh.
‘Whut that stuff you got smeared on it?’ demanded Lewis Gasaway, noting the immediate moisture of the powder.
‘It nothin’, only lard,’ replied Neri, blandly. ‘Don’t you all smear lard before fighting? Slicks, makes the strikes glance. Keeps the other one from gettin’ aholt.’
Hammond glanced at Mede, whose snake oil had ceased to serve such a purpose.
‘Stand ’em together,’ suggested Remmick, ‘so that the gent’men kin see which one they goin’ to bet.’
Hammond limped forward, grasped Mede by the arm and led him to the centre of the crowd, that comparison might be possible. Topaz was at some aesthetic disadvantage beside the youthful black symmetry of Mede, although he towered above him in stature. The consensus was that the slaves were well matched.
