by Kyle Onstott
‘That Doctor Smith never do it. I know he never, Hammond,’ Blanche protested. ‘Ain’t only a nigger, no way.’
‘Nigger or not a nigger, it could be all on ’em, ever’ one we got,’ Hammond said, sinking to a chair, his face in his hands. ‘An’ we keepin’ our stock so clean. Never had nothin’, nothin’ before.’
‘Nev’ mind, Ham,’ Maxwell sought to appease his son. ‘Take Dite’s sucker offn her?’
‘I shore did. I done that quick. I don’ reckon he got it yet awhile.’
‘An’ we sen’ fer Redfield. He do somethin’, dry it up, or somethin’,’ the father continued. ‘It ain’t bad anyways. Half the niggers on half the plantations in Alabama git it one time an’ another—not to say the white owners.’
‘That the reason he, that Smith, talk so much about the clap an’ how he cure it—knowin’ he got it his own self.’ Hammond rose and walked the floor to refrain from weeping.
‘You’ll be seein’ Redfield, come Sat’day in Benson. Ast him. Tell him to stop by, passin’ along.’
‘I was aimin’ to put Dite and Mede together first thing, seein’ the kind of suckers he bringin’,’ Hammond said. ‘Now we cain’t.’
Redfield lost little time. He came on Sunday morning, and after a toddy with the Maxwells, father and son, examined Dite. To the veterinarian it was something of a joke that the Maxwell slaves should have a venereal infection.
‘Long time, long time you ain’t had nothin’, Mista Warren. I recollec’ me back ten or twelve year ago you had a buck——’ he harked back.
‘Bought him, bought him my own self, had it a’ready,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘But I sol’ him agin, ’fore he done nothin’, ’fore he spread it aroun’. Only Ham don’t crave to sell this one. Aimin’ to keep her, her the mother of his chil’ an’ all. Don’t want he should sell his own flesh.’
‘Well, it soon wear out,’ Redfield predicted. ‘Ain’t much to do with it, save not to spread it.’ He drew a packet of cloth from his pocket and added, ‘I brung along some dried weed the Widder gathered an’ say it right good. She say it sovereign, in fac’. Me? I ain’t sayin’. Might try it. Make a tea. It bitterer than gall.’
‘That Smith!’ Hammond spat. ‘Him goin’ to make him a doctor!’
‘Might be anybody,’ argued Redfield. ‘You never had it. I have, many’s the time; and I reckon your papa—when he was young.’
The gentlemen had returned to the sitting-room. Blanche’s step was heard on the stairs, and it was necessary to change the subject. Meg brought more toddies, including one for Blanche, who noted a momentary silence and wondered what the talk had been about.
Redfield did not tarry long, but at his departure Hammond insisted upon his looking at Mede, who was in excellent fettle, and at Mede’s progeny, which won his enthusiastic approval.
Blanche did not have to wonder long what the talk had been about, since she learned the gist of it from the servants. Even then, however, she failed to understand the situation, since Dite was not confined to her bed. Blanche wished that the victim had been Ellen.
23
It was a wet and windy spring. Many of the cotton seeds rotted and failed to germinate; large areas in the lowest ground had to be replanted. The plants that broke through the soil were yellow and unthrifty, but the weather did not deter the weeds and the ground was too wet to hoe. Hammond was displeased with the prospects for his cotton crop.
‘Cotton? Whut’s cotton?’ chuckled the elder Maxwell to relieve his son’s anxiety. ‘It’s the nigger crop whut pays.’
On days when it was impossible to hoe the fields, the slaves were permitted to idle, to work if they could in their own patches of garden, or just to sit and doze or converse and laugh at each others’ antics or sallies of such wit as they had—all but Mede. When there was no work for Mede, he was exercised. Hammond forced him to run in a large circle with a younger slave astride his shoulders, to jump and leap, to lift logs, to flex and twist his body, to wrestle with two less powerful slaves at the same time. The owner found relief from anxiety about cotton in watching the Mandingo labour and the slave never appeared to tire. Mede, magnificent though he had been when his master acquired him, had matured, broadened, and filled out during his year at Falconhurst, until he was now more handsome and formidable than ever. Hammond desired as many progeny from the boy as he could obtain, and from time to time delegated women to be his mates. The matings were supervised like those of other animals, as if the Mandingo had been a stallion or a bull. The girls sometimes made a giggling or pouting remonstrance to their master’s presence, but Hammond was stern and Mede was unabashed. The docile slave thought of this surveillance as a master’s right, if not duty, to control his every act.
Many of the cotton seeds that were believed to have perished finally came up and the resown areas had to be thinned. The yellow leaves of the cotton turned green under the sunshine, although the sickly plants never turned vigorous. Hammond’s discouragement abated in the belief that his efforts had not all been wasted, that the crop would warrant chopping, though he knew he could not ask the exhausted soil of Falconhurst for a bountiful yield.
Hammond timed his trips to Benson to enable him to look in on the fights at Remmick’s, although his interest was desultory when he had no participant in the contests. He drank with the sporting men and laid small bets upon the fights without much caring whether he should win or lose. His prime purpose in attending was to remind the others of Mede’s prowess, which he did with understatement and mild disparagement, lest it seem that he was boasting.
Hammond’s habit was to go every week to the Post Office, a cubbyhole partitioned from the back part of the grocery store, to obtain the New Orleans Advertiser, to which his father was a subscriber. There was seldom any other mail for him. However, early in June he found a letter addressed to himself. ‘H. Maxwell eskuir.’ Hastily he tore it from its wrapper. It turned out to be a broadside, an advertisement of an auction. ‘AUCTION, AUCTION,’ it read in bold type. ‘NEGROES, MULES, HORSES, PLOUGHS, WAGGONS. SATURDAY, JULY 7 AT THE COURTHOUSE BLOCK AT WAYNESBORO.’ In smaller type followed: ‘Vended at public outcry to the highest bidder, without any reserve, for cash, will be 32 NEGROES, 32, all sound and likely, men, women, boys, girls, 11 young mules, yearlings and older, 3 mares, all good breeders, assortment of ploughs, wagons, buggies, etc., etc., from the estate of the late deceased EDWARD ALLEN. The heirs must have money to settle debts, etc. This is a public opportunity to secure prime stock at your own price. Never anything like it. Come one, come all. (Signed) A. C. Murry, Auctioneer.’
Hammond had no idea where Waynesboro might be, but he was the only H. Maxwell in or around Benson and he knew it was intended for him. He folded the broadside carefully, returned it to its wrapper and placed it in his pocket to show to his father. The receipt of mail other than the newspaper was so uncommon that any piece of it was always considered and digested.
Maxwell read the advertisement carefully. ‘You goin’?’ he asked.
‘No! Away out there, Waynesboro or whurever?’ scoffed Hammond.
‘I don’ know. I don’ know,’ pondered the father.
‘They short of money, seem like. Sellin’ off.’
‘Seem like,’ Maxwell agreed. ‘Mebbe it useful you go see.’
So in the end it was settled that Hammond should go to Tennessee for the Allen auction. Blanche was elated when she heard of the plan.
‘I got to have me new trogs,’ she announced enthusiastically. ‘Miz Forsythe kin make ’em. I got to purty me up, goin’ a-visitin’.’
‘I don’t know. We see,’ Hammond put his wife off. ‘That kerriage, I don’ know will it stan’ another long trip. I’ll see. I kin go quicker alone, straddlin’. Besides, this is business. You better stay home with Papa. That better.’
Blanche wept. ‘I don’ never git to do nothin’ or go nowhure,’ she lamented. ‘You always gallivantin’. Won’t never take me along.’ She rose, sobbing, from the supper table
and stalked out of the room. In a few minutes her footsteps on the stair were heard. That she should go to bed without her after-supper toddy was unthinkable.
Father and son sat in silence a long while, then at length the older man brought himself to speak what had been on his mind for some time.
‘You ain’t doin’ your duty, Son.’
‘Ain’t? How ain’t I doin’ everythin’?’
‘Blanche, I meanin’.’
‘I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.’
‘You ain’t done nothin’ right either,’ accused the father. ‘You wantin’ a son. How you reckon you goin’ to have one. Skylarkin’ and pleasurin’ with your nigger ever’ night, an’ lettin’ your wife res’ alone?’
‘You say, your own se’f, a white don’ relish pesterin’. Ellen jest a-savin’ Blanche. You say it all right, me a-havin’ Ellen. I don’ care an’ if it ain’t.’
‘It all right a-havin’ her, yes. On’y it not all right to be loony over her.’
They said no more, but that night Hammond was last to bed and went to his wife’s room. When he failed to come to his own bed, Ellen, feeling herself displaced and abandoned, as she had long believed was inevitable, cried herself to sleep.
Early next morning, however, Hammond invaded Lucretia Borgia’s kitchen and found Ellen drying dishes. He walked to the table where she stood and encircled the girl with his arm. ‘That, las’ night is jest sometimes. You mine tonight, and here-on,’ he told her. ‘Don’ you fret, don’t you ever fret, Ellen. You mind, you mine.’
Later Blanche came down to breakfast more affably than was her wont, and said nothing further about the projected trip. Her husband’s word was final and she knew it. She drank more toddies than usual, and Maxwell didn’t interfere. Hammond was out of the house, training Mede.
Blanche drowned her disappointment in hot toddies but kept silent about it. Maxwell, who enjoyed the girl’s tippling companionship, backed her up. ‘She delicate, kind of like. She needin’ it to give her stren’th,’ he said, and the husband said no more.
Wednesday was the fourth of July, and Hammond on Eclipse set out for Waynesboro. He carried in his saddle-bags a bag of gold coins to purchase any slaves that should suit his fancy.
‘The ’portant thing is young niggers,’ his father had told him, ‘We’re short on ’em, needin’ ’em.’
‘I ain’t a-bringin’ back no trash to feed. You always says your own self you cain’t make no money pourin’ good vittles into puny stock.’
The older man was pleased that his tutelage had borne fruit.
That Ellen, dressed as a boy, should depart an hour before her master and wait for him upon the highway was the father’s plan. He saw no reason why Hammond should not take his slave with him if he wished, but he sought to protect Blanche from the rancour she would feel at the awareness that her husband preferred Ellen’s company to her own. Blanche had not risen to see Hammond take his leave, and the ruse was wasted. She appeared to be resigned to his absence, since it left her free to drink as many toddies as she might want.
Just when her plan of revenge took shape she herself was never quite sure. Perhaps it began to seethe in her befuddled mind the night Hammond had decreed that she should remain at home and it may have been assuming a more definite form from that time forth.
The afternoon of Ham’s departure, Maxwell fell into a doze and Blanche went to the kitchen to obtain a toddy about which he should not know. She felt that he was more censorious of her drinking than he professed and believed that she was justified in swigging one toddy about which he would never know. She found the kitchen filled with negroes—Lucretia Borgia, her brood, Memnon, Dite, Big Pearl and the babies, her own Tense—but she missed Ellen, of whose presence or absence her jealousy always made her aware.
‘Whure at that Ellen?’ the mistress demanded, addressing her question to anyone who might answer it. Since it was directed to no particular person, nobody replied, but rather an ominous hush fell over the Negroes. Blanche repeated the question, ‘Whure at, I say, is that Ellen?’
Lucretia Borgia waited for another to speak, but everybody left the answer to her. She hesitated and mumbled, ‘Ummm, I don’ know, Miz Blanche, ma’am. I don’ know whure she gone. She right here, time back.’ Lucretia Borgia had no will to betray her master.
Meg giggled and stifled his mixture of amusement and embarrassment with his hand over his mouth, whereat his mother slapped both his cheeks with the full leverage of her strong arm. The child was as loyal to Hammond as the woman, and if she had ignored his laughter, the woman, half drunk, would not have seen it. Even half drunk as she was, she surmised what had occurred.
‘Time back?’ she asked, closing her eyes in her befuddlement. ‘How much time back? How long ago? Whure at she now? Whure she go to? Don’ lie to me.’
Memnon and Dite left the room, but Big Pearl sat stolidly, nursing her babies. The twins could not control their curiosity.
Lucretia Borgia’s lower lip dropped into a pout, as she hummed rather than spoke the answer, ‘I don’ know ma’am. I don’ know, I tellin’ you. I don’ know.’
‘Well, I knowin’. She done gone with her masta. That whure she at. I know. You cain’t tell me. I know,’ Blanche screamed, swallowing her hot toddy between breaths and pouring out another. ‘Ain’t nothin’ ’ceptin’ a whore nigger, that whut she is, jist a whore, with her red earrings. She don’ care no more about Hammon’ than about the blackes’ buck on the plantation, ’ceptin’ he kin fetch her red earrings to mark her hisn. Hisn! Now I know why he won’t never take me along nowhures. You ’on’t got to tell me. I know.’ Her voice rose in a maudlin crescendo until she shouted the final sentences as she left the kitchen, supporting herself by whatever furniture she could reach.
‘Better go after her,’ Lucretia Borgia said to Tense. ‘Git her in bed.’
The following day Blanche kept to her room. Although there was nothing to be said that they had not hashed over a hundred times before, Maxwell was disappointed that the girl did not come down to sit with him and drink her toddies. Once when he called for Meg to bring him a drink, Memnon brought it instead with the excuse that Meg had gone to carry one to his mistress. Maxwell surmised that Blanche’s indisposition, whatever it might be, would not deprive her of her drinks. The July day was humid and through the distorted panes, he could see the heat waves rising from the ground in the butter-coloured sunshine. He was half-stupefied with whisky and he intended to remain so until his son’s return; it was the only anodyne for the emptiness of his heart, drained by Hammond’s absence.
Blanche lay on her bed. She turned on her side and said to Tense, ‘Fetch me up here the bigges’, blackes’ nigger buck we’s got on the place. That Mede nigger. He the one. Go, fetch him along here.’
‘Whut, ma’am, you wantin’ him fer?’ Tense had the temerity to ask.
‘Nev’ mind. Nev’ mind. I say fetch him. I knowin’ whut I goin’ to do; I goin’ to pay him back. That’s whut.’
‘Masta not goin’ to like. He not leavin’ no fiel’ nigger come right in the house,’ Tense demurred.
‘I say fetch him, didn’ I, nigger?’ the mistress demanded. ‘When I says do somethin’, you do it. Hear me? You listen to me!’
‘Yessum, mist’ess.’ Tense started to go.
‘Fetch him through the kitchen and up the steps quiet like. Quiet, you hear? Ifn that ol’ man a-snoozin’ down there in that settin’ room hear you comin’, I goin’ to tear you down. Tear you down, you hear?’
‘Yessum, mist’ess. I be still as I kin,’ promised the slave girl.
‘You make noise or leave that Mede make noise, I goin’ to shuck you down an’ lash you within an inch of your life. You hearin’? You listenin’? Now go and fetch him. Tell him I said.’
Tense went. She found Mede stretched naked on his bed, half asleep, with Lucy, her baby in one arm, standing over him, fanning his hot body with a frayed palm-leaf fan which had been discarded by the masters. Tense d
elivered her summons.
‘What she want of me? What mistress want?’ Mede was incredulous, for he had sensed his mistress’s hatred of him. ‘I’m afeared,’ he admitted. ‘I ain’t got no leave to go in that big house.’
‘Mist’ess say. I tellin’ you come along. White folks say,’ said Tense impatiently. ‘Mist’ess drunken, an’ I reckon she cravin’ somebody to pleasure her.’
‘No!’ Mede exclaimed with horror and fear. ‘I ain’t goin’. My masta be mad. He shoot me dead, Masta Hammon’. An’ mist’ess don’ like me no how.’
‘She say——’ argued Tense.
‘You got to do whut you told,’ declared Lucy.
Mede trembled as he got to his feet and pulled on his pants and shirt.
‘Masta goin’ to slice me an’ feed me to the buzzards,’ he said, knowing it to be literally true.
‘Like, it ain’t whut mist’ess wantin’ at all,’ Lucy opined. ‘She white, mist’ess is. She ain’t a-cravin’ no big, black lummox like you.’
‘That whut she want an’ you doesn’t do it, she goin’ to tell Masta you tried to rape her. I knows,’ said Tense, shaking her head. ‘I knows. Ain’t nothin’ mist’ess won’t do. She lie about you soon as look at you. Come along.’
‘I won’t do it. I ain’t a-goin’ to,’ Mede protested as he followed Tense between the cabins and across the entryway and into the house.
The Negroes in the kitchen were amazed to see the giant Mandingo following the yellow girl, whom they knew to be executing her mistress’s command. Meg followed the pair and saw them ascend the stairs. Dite looked in quandary at Lucretia Borgia, who only raised her brows. Big Pearl laughed aloud and opened her dress for Old Mister Wilson to nurse.
On the stairs, Tense cautioned Mede to be quiet, but he was unable to avoid the creak of the steps under his heavy tread. In the upper hall he stepped aside for the girl to lead the way to their mistress’s room.
