by Kyle Onstott
‘All them big words,’ Hammond shook his head in doubtful wonder.
‘I cain’t say ’em, cain’t soun’ ’em out,’ Willis admitted. ‘But they ain’t no call to. I kin spell ’em out, an’ know whut they mean, most of ’em. An’ Doc Murrey tells me, drivin’ along, when he ain’t drunken, an’ shows me on sick folks how to do. He knowin’ he got to give up purty quick, an’ then I got to take a-holt an’ do the bes’ I kin.’
The youth’s assurance was balanced with modesty, but sustained by a will to learn, a curiosity, and a determination to succeed in his vocation.
The supper-bell rang. Willis felt called upon to look at Doctor Murrey before he should eat, but suggested that the Maxwells should not delay their meal. They waited for him. He found the doctor asleep on his back, snoring lightly, and adjusted the quilts that had slipped from his neck.
‘He goin’ to be all right. No cause to fret,’ the young man announced on his return. ‘But we got to stay the night out. Ain’t no other way. Reckon you kin sleep us?’
‘Course, course,’ Maxwell said hospitably. ‘Ain’t no other way. Wouldn’t hear of you goin’ out in this dark, rainy night.’
‘Then the doctor kin look at Miz Maxwell, come mornin’,’ said Willis by way of excusing the need to remain.
‘The chil’ done come,’ said Hammond. ‘Ain’t needin’ him now.’
‘I could of kotched the baby jest as good as Murrey; I helpin’ him with so many, I know jest how, on’y he won’t have it yet awhile. Afeared, I reckon, afeared I goin’ to crowd him out.’
‘I ain’t a-blamin’ you none,’ Hammond allayed the apprentice’s uneasiness. ‘Blamin’ anybody, I blamin’ him.’
Willis watched with anguish as Memnon helped the old man to rise from his chair, heard him protest profanely at the move to lead him to the supper room, glanced askance at the difficulty he had cutting his ham, but kept silent. Lucretia Borgia, with the supper, made up for what she deemed the scantiness of the dinner prepared by Dite and Ellen. The talk was as usual about the price of cotton and the price of slaves.
In the return to the sitting-room, Willis was forced to curb his impulse to offer support to Maxwell, whom he had heard upbraid the Negro for seeking to help him on the way toward the dining-room. The old man’s frailty excited the boy’s sympathy and his desire to exercise his healing arts, but he respected the older man’s reticence about his malady.
‘I knowed it was comin’, this rain, knowed it in my han’s an’ knees,’ said Maxwell, rubbing with his right hand the knuckles of his left, as he sank into his chair. ‘Rain a-comin’, my rheumatiz backs up on me, ever’ time.’
‘You right bad,’ said Willis.
‘Yes. That the cause of me takin’ all them toddies. Helps me, seem like,’ sighed Maxwell, accepting a glass which Meg had brought him.
‘Corn licker for rheumatiz better outside than in,’ Willis suggested. ‘Better rubbed on than drunken.’ Maxwell’s observation had given him the cue he had sought. He sidled his chair towards the patient, placed his hand upon his brow, felt the pulse, asked to see his tongue, all without concept of what he wanted to learn—mere gestures of diagnosis.
Maxwell relished rather than resented the attention. ‘I’m betterin’, betterin’ right along—on’y tonight, this rainin’.’ He shook his head. ‘I dreenin’ it, dreenin’ it through my feet, into this buck here.’ He reached his glass down to Alph, sprawled on the floor beside his chair and said, ‘Better take a swallow, boy; you be needin’ it afore mornin’.’
Willis looked doubtful. ‘It may be he goin’ to git it, git it bad. Only that ain’t a-goin’ to git you shet of it. It jest dreen into him, not out of you,’ he explained authoritatively. He reached down and felt the young Negro’s brow solicitously.
‘You reckon he gittin’ it? Feel anythin’?’ Maxwell asked anxiously.
‘Not yet; an’ even if he had, it don’ mean you sheddin’ it.’
‘Might as well die, I reckon,’ Maxwell added.
‘Now, Papa,’ Hammond interposed. ‘You all riled about it comin’ a girl. Whenever Papa git riled, his achin’ gits worser.’
‘Whut that got to do with it? My achin’ is not in my head,’ Maxwell bristled. ‘It in my han’s, an’ feet, an’ all over me.’
‘Rheumatism?’ Willis pushed his chair back from the patient in resignation. ‘I don’ know. I ain’t come to that part in the books yet. That is away over under “R”. But I’ll git there. Jest wait. An’ when I do——’ His promise was only implied, but it gave the invalid some hope.
‘You think rubbin’ with corn——?’ asked Maxwell tentatively.
Willis shrugged his uncertainty.
‘Serpent oil? That would be better,’ Hammond expressed his opinion.
‘That stink so bad. I’d sooner ache,’ Maxwell breathed.
‘Serpent oil! Serpent oil! Doctor Mulbach’s, or whoever’s? That ain’t jest only goose grease—of course, flavoured up to make it smell an’ coloured green. It ain’t never been near no snake. It the rubbin’ whut does it, whut make it work,’ declared Willis with some indignation.
‘It say on the bottle, right on the bottle——’ Hammond defended the remedy.
‘Whut an’ if it does say?’ Willis scoffed. ‘Kin make up anythin’ and print it on the bottle. Ask Doc Murrey if it ain’t goose grease.’
Hammond preferred to believe the maker of the nostrum rather than this callow tyro. All doctors, he told himself, disparaged remedies that could be obtained without their sanction.
‘I ain’t usin’ it, even an’ if——’ Maxwell affirmed with finality. ‘One more toddy an’ I reckon I better go up. Jest one won’t drunken you, Doctor Willis, an’ it will warm you, retirin’.’
To be called ‘Doctor’ flattered Willis and he was tempted to acquiesce, but thought of Murrey and shook his head. ‘Thank you, suh, I don’ aim to be like him that a-way,’ he said.
‘I reckon how you don’ crave no wench to pleasure with, neither,’ said Hammond. ‘I was jes’ a-thinkin’ which one.’
Willis felt his white face burn with blushes to the roots of his hair. He had heard of the custom of many plantations of providing guests with a woman for the night, but he had not previously encountered it. At Bankside his mother’s scruples forbade such dalliance within the house. Of course, what occurred furtively in the cabins, she did not know about and did not care.
‘I reckoned I sleepin’ with Doc Murrey,’ he evaded a direct answer. ‘Ain’t hardly room an’ he drunk an’ spread out.’
‘We got another bed. Ain’t no call to double,’ said Hammond.
‘Well, in that case, an’ if you got a clean young yaller,’ Willis faltered.
‘I was thinkin’ of Dite,’ Hammond said to his father.
‘An’ if you not wantin’ her your own self no more,’ Maxwell nodded.
‘I got me Ellen,’ said Ham. ‘Dite, she young, she light, an’ she not musky.’
‘When I say “clean”, I meanin’ the clap. She ain’t got the clap?’ specified Willis.
Hammond laughed. ‘None of our niggers got it, an’ none ever had it,’ he boasted.
‘It goin’ aroun’,’ asserted Willis, and his blush subsided as he saw that it was unobserved in the candlelight.
‘It always goin’ aroun’,’ said Maxwell, rising, and rousing Alph. He called loudly for Memnon, who came to help him to bed.
Hammond settled Willis in the bedroom at the end of the hall, next to his own, and returned to the kitchen to summon Dite.
The girl giggled. ‘You reckon he goin’ to have me? Whut I goin’ to do with my sucker?’
‘I keep him good,’ Lucretia Borgia volunteered. ‘He wantin’ suck, I give it to him. Now, go ’long, like Masta say. The young white gen’man right nice. I noticin’ him durin’ supper. Course, he young.’ Willis’s youth justified the falling of the mantle upon Aphrodite instead of upon herself.
The following morning Doctor Murrey aros
e, fully sobered after his debauch. He accepted heartily Maxwell’s invitation to drink before breakfast and downed his whisky undiluted. He insisted upon seeing the child he had come to deliver and praised its beauty, although no parts of it were visible except the tiny, wrinkled, red face and the dainty hands. The eyes were closed in sleep and he did not see the strabismus. The naked and sturdy Old Mister Wilson was also asleep, in Big Pearl’s other arm, and, although the Doctor did his full duty in his admiration of the white baby, his professional interest centred in the Mandingo.
‘Heft it oncet, jest heft it,’ Maxwell urged.
‘No good wakin’ it,’ said the doctor, feeling the child’s thigh.
‘No harm. Jest heft it,’ insisted Maxwell, grasping the baby’s ankle and drawing it from the mother’s arm. The doctor laughed to hear the wrathful squall of the startled young thing and took the leg from the owner’s hand, holding the boy from him to avoid being soiled. He jostled the baby to estimate its weight, which was greater than he had deemed possible.
‘Fifteen—sixteen pounds,’ he estimated.
‘More, more; bigger than that,’ Maxwell urged.
‘Of course, the dam here is a burly varmint,’ observed the doctor, handing the baby back to Big Pearl and stooping to raise her skirt to admire the bulk of her leg.
‘Had ought to see the stud buck. Purentee Mandingos, both on ’em,’ Maxwell boasted. ‘Both.’
‘I never studied up on the tribes,’ shrugged the doctor, ‘A nigger is a nigger, I always reckoned.’
‘All, only a Mandingo,’ pursued Maxwell. ‘They half rhinoceros, I guess; they that stout. But they gentle and biddable as a goslin’. Never git out of hand.’
As Willis entered the room he was unable to curb his blush, but his bearing was manly to the point of truculence. He wondered whether Maxwell had told the doctor about Dite, not that he feared his anger but rather his raillery. The doctor was hardly in a position for indignation.
‘Did he talk your leg off?’ asked the doctor, slapping the boy on the shoulders. ‘Does usually. Knows all there is to know about ever’thin’, thinks he does.’
‘I kin reckon. He right in’erestin’. Knowin’ a lot, so young,’ Maxwell assented.
‘I goin’ to learn him to doctor, if he don’t try to learn me,’ laughed Murrey. ‘Reads books; thinks he kin learn doctorin’ out of books, tells me whut’s in ’em. Got to learn it from sick folks, I always tellin’ him. Ain’t I, Willis?’
‘He sayin’ how he Willis Smith’s boy. I know his papa,’ said Maxwell. ‘Looks like him too, in daylight, same lengthy build, but better lookin’, better put together.’
‘Yas, he is well set up—goin’ to be when he stoutens out,’ the doctor nodded approvingly. ‘Mista Smith give him to me and said make him a doctor—the boy is set that a-way. And, by God, I will, if he don’ try to go too fast.’
After breakfast, the doctor sought to justify his futile visit by looking at the patient. Hammond led him and Willis to Blanche’s room, where he found the girl sitting up in bed with a large breakfast before her. She shrank from the doctor, refusing to permit him to touch her, even to feel her brow for fever; anyway, it was apparent that she had none.
‘Cain’t I have a toddy, Doctor? Jest one,’ she begged. ‘Hammond, he won’t give me none, and won’t have the niggers stir me one.’
‘Best thing, best thing in the world,’ said the doctor. ‘All you wantin’ of ’em.’
‘She havin’ ’em all the time beforehan’,’ said her husband. ‘I reckon it time to stop. I not wantin’ she should be——’ Hammond checked himself out of consideration for the doctor’s weakness.
‘Havin’ ’em before, she got to have ’em now. Cain’t quit right off. Got to taper—taper slow. Liable to have fits otherwise. You don’ want fits.’
Hammond gravely acknowledged that he did not.
‘That, toddies, hot as Miz Maxwell kin take ’em, an’ her in bed, not gittin’ out too soon is all, all she need,’ the doctor declared. ‘Good as new, ten days or two weeks.’
Willis stood in the background, listening, learning, saying no word. Blanche’s eyes lingered on him in admiration. She would not have shrunk from his touch. Lucretia Borgia had already told her that Dite had been Willis’s bedmate and she was jealous of Dite’s fortune.
The men went downstairs, but after a short while there was a knock on the bedroom door. Tense opened it to Willis, a steaming goblet in his hand. He had mixed and brought the toddy which Murrey had prescribed. Not trusting Tense to serve it, he carried it himself to the bedside, and with his left arm supported Blanche’s waist as she drank from the glass in his right hand. Willis was unsure whether it was admiration for the girl’s blondeness or his vocation as a healer that had prompted him to detach himself from the gentlemen and return to the room.
Blanche drained the glass slowly to prolong the apprentice physician’s embrace of her body. Her breasts were filling up and beginning to itch. She was tempted to tell the young doctor about them and show them to him, but out of modesty refrained. Instead, grasping his hand in both of hers, she raised it to her brow and let it rest there. He asked to see her tongue, and then felt of her pulse, which beat rapidly. Later he laid his ear against her breast to listen to her heart. He was not sure of the symptoms he sought; he was merely playing at being a physician.
‘You right good an’ powerful kind,’ said Blanche. ‘I not afeared of you at all. I afeared o’ the othern.’
‘There ain’t no call to be afeared. I craves that you git well and up. That is all,’ the boy responded. ‘That toddy goin’ to help you right smart.’
‘You reckon? I feels better a’ready,’ the girl declared. ‘I goin’ to have ’em—all I craves of ’em. That whut that doctor done say. Wasn’t it?’
Willis said that it was.
‘Won’ have you to hol’ me up while I drink ’em though,’ said Blanche, surveying the standing boy.
‘I comin’ back, in passin’ by, to see how you comin’ on,’ the youth promised.
‘Come soon, come often,’ Blanche urged.
Willis glanced at Tense before he stooped and kissed his patient.
As Tense showed him out the door, he seized her arm and guided her into the hall where, through her dress, he felt her immature breasts and patted her buttock.
‘You good an’ not tell nothin’, whut I did, I goin’ to ast your masta kin I have you next time I come. We have good time, pesterin’,’ he told the innocent girl.
Tense answered him, ‘Yas, suh, Masta, suh.’ There was no other reply to a white man.
Tense was not sure what she was not to reveal. She had seen the young man kiss her mistress, but did not know it was not a convention among the whites, whose nature and customs were inexplicable. Nor did she resent the young man’s boldness to herself, which was a white prerogative, and besides she found it pleasurable, though vaguely disturbing.
In eight days Blanche was able to come down the stairs with Lucretia Borgia’s aid. In the interval, she had quieted her impatience with toddies, which, in view of Doctor Murrey’s advice, Hammond no longer denied her. He made it a practice to go to her room mornings and evenings, and, when he had time, at midday, but did not relish the chore, since the girl was always tipsy or peevish or both. He was, however, glad to find her sitting opposite his father in the sitting-room when he returned for dinner, even if she was sipping a toddy.
To her husband’s inquiry, Blanche replied, ‘I reckon I strengthin’ some. I reckon I is. I allow as these toddies, the doctor say about, helpin’ me strengthen.’ The doctor’s advice justified her drinking as much as she chose to drink.
Toward her child Blanche was, and remained, as indifferent as though she had not borne it. She ignored Big Pearl except to tell her to take one of the babies from her presence when it cried. This was usually Sophia, who failed to thrive. Old Mister Wilson, on the other hand, a glutton at the breast, grew and prospered and seldom cried. Once, when the
boy’s impatience for Big Pearl’s breast excited him into a bit of crying, Blanche ordered the black mother to take him to the kitchen and spank him until he should give them some peace. Big Pearl was by no means reluctant, but her blows only aggravated the noise which endured until the baby fell asleep from exhaustion.
The favouritism the nurse showed for her master’s child was not wholly sycophancy, but a true preference for the small, doll-like, white Sophia over the big, robust and self-willed, dusky Wilson. Big Pearl truckled to Blanche and cowered before her, but she loved Blanche’s baby better than her own. She was unable to keep her thick lips from Sophia’s face and body. She lifted her tenderly and cuddled her against her sturdy bosom to still her fretfulness, whereas to Wilson’s occasional tantrums she was indifferent, lifted him as often by a single arm or leg as by his body, and cuffed him soundly whenever he annoyed her.
While Maxwell and Blanche sipped their toddies, Ham paid little heed to her frequent eulogies of Willis Smith and her speculation about why the boy had not kept his promise to come again.
‘Not that I a-carin’ an’ if he don’ never come, only he hadn’t ought to say like that,’ she always wound up.
‘They’s lots of sickness aroun’, an’ with Murrey drunk, I reckon the boy is powerful busy,’ Maxwell replied. ‘I’d as soon have him as Murrey anyways, even an’ if he ain’t full-fledged.’
‘Ruther, ruther have him,’ sighed Blanche.
Blanche had been up two weeks when Lucretia Borgia one day accosted Hammond as he passed through the kitchen.
‘I reckon you had better do somethin’ about Dite, suh, Masta,’ she suggested. ‘She got somethin’, sure has. Kotched it from that young white boy whut come a-doctorin’.’
Hammond questioned Aphrodite. There was no doubt about her malady and only one person from whom she could have contracted it.
‘The damn son-of-a-bitch,’ he ranted to his father. ‘Spreadin’ the clap aroun’, ’stead of curin’ folks. Spreadin’ it, jest a-spreadin’ it. I feel like takin’ my gun to Benson an’ shootin’ him dead.’
