by Kyle Onstott
The old man shook his head in disapproval, and Hammond said, ‘I reckon, if your masta, your white masta, say you name them li’l bucks “Masta, suh,” they ain’t no other way. They treats you good?’
‘Yas, suh, Masta,’ Lucretia Borgia begrudged the necessity to reply. ‘They treats me good enough, I reckon. On’y they always sayin’ they goin’ to tear me down an’ whup me good. Always sayin’, threatin’ like. They ain’t done it yit, but they always sayin’ an’ laughin’ ’bout how funny I’d look, dancin’ nekid under their snake, an’ how I squeal while they goin’ to rub in the pepper.’
‘Your masta wouldn’t let ’em, not ‘lessen you do somethin’.’ Hammond said.
‘How they come on, them twins of yourn?’ Maxwell asked without much caring.
‘They good, Masta, suh. On’y they mean; they awful mean, suh,’ the mother said. ‘Meaner, seem like, ever’ minute.’
‘They new masta, he still likin’ ’em?’ the white man asked with greater concern for the answer.
‘Yas, suh! He sure do,’ Lucretia Borgia chuckled in a kind of derision. ‘That whut makin’ ’em so mean. He ain’t whup ’em, neither one of ’em, not even oncet, nor even slap ’em or kick ’em. Leaves ’em carry on jest like they wants. Sure is awful. Don’t have ’em do nothin’, ’ceptin’, that is, stan’ by his place while he eatin’ an’ he feedin’ ’em right offn his own plate, an’ they drinkin’ wine right outn his glass. Yas, suh. They drunken ever’ night. Standin’ nekid, plumb nekid, without a stitch on ’em, right by they masta’s chair, savin’ on’y their earbobs an’ they finger rings with little white rocks a-twinklin’, jest like that ring of Miz Blanche.’
‘Di’mon’s!’ Hammond guessed. ‘Di’mon’s wasted on niggers, nigger bucks.’
‘Yas, suh, that right, Masta, suh. That whut they calls ’em. I got to say they purty, right purty, them little bucks, standin’ there, them little rocks twinklin’ in the can’lelight. Jason, he wait table on his masta, do ever’thin’ fer him, wash him, undress him, put him to bed, take him up mornin’s, put his clothes on, ever’thin’. An’ masta, he not care whut them young bucks does to Jason. No, suh, don’ care at all. He jest laugh when they pinches Jason, or slaps him, or makes him spill things.’
‘They out of han’, I reckon,’ Hammond said. ‘Had ought to be hung up, hung up by they heels with a little snakin’.’
‘Yas, suh, Masta. Sure ought,’ the woman went on. ‘Course, they different when Masta takes ’em along out with him, to drive in his kerriage, or to show ’em to the gent’men down at Maspero’s Exchange, or to Mass——’
‘A Papist. Makin’ them niggers Papists,’ Maxwell interrupted the tale in an aside to his son.
‘Then they wears clothes,’ Lucretia Borgia said. ‘Fine clothes, all slick an’ smooth an’ sof, an’ fine stockin’s, an’ shoes.’
‘Silk?’ Hammond suggested.
‘Yas, suh, that whut they calls it, somepin’ like that. But gittin’ ’em dress’, gittin’ they clothes on! Lord A’mighty! Me? Masta tell me wash ’em, wash ’em all over, an’ dress ’em devils. They is devils, suh. They kick like young jackass, they scratches an’ bites me an’ slaps me hard, hard as they kin, won’ hol’ still or nothin’ while I scrubbin’ ’em. I tells Masta, on’y he laugh an’ don’ do nothin’, say I theirn to do with how they likes. But when they dressed with clothes on, an’ them earbobs an’ rings a-twinklin’, they good, they so good they won’ melt butter, walks so proper that they like angels or kittens or molasses or somethin’. On’y when they comes home, an’ I shucks ’em nekid agin, they worse than ever, jumpin’, caperin’, teasin’, pesterin’, hittin’, hittin’ ever’body, that is, ’ceptin’ the masta. Never do nothin’ to him, ’cept makin’ him laugh or beggin’ fer a bite offn his fork.’
‘Whut you reckon the fool mean, carryin’ on like he do, like Lucretia Borgia say he do?’ Maxwell turned to his son. ‘Seventy-five hundert dollars worth of good nigger meat, jest a-wastin’!’
‘He do, he sure do, Masta. I ain’t fib to you, ain’t tol’ you half. Why, Masta hire a white man, white, hire him an’ pay him money, jest to come an’ learn them bucks to talk that lingo like he talk. That white man crack the head of Alph ’cause he won’ learn, an’ Alph tell Masta. I don’ know whut Masta say in his kin’ of talk, but he mad, mad, an’ white man say he not do it agin. He skeared of Masta, that white man is, an’ I reckon that whut he say.’
‘Them bucks kin talk, talk good as you or me,’ Maxwell said to Hammond. ‘An’ that man un’erstan’s American talk. Don’ need no learnin’. They niggers.’
‘That right, Masta, suh. Sure kin talk. They talks too much. An’ Jason fetch ’em chocolate in bed ever’ mornin’ jest like they masta. Cain’t pile out, cain’t set foot on floor afore they have they chocolate.’
‘That enough. I don’ want to hear no more, Lucretia Borgia,’ Maxwell silenced the woman.
‘But you goin’ back the way you come,’ said Hammond. ‘You hisn an’ bought an’ paid for. You goin’ back.’
Lucretia Borgia assumed her stubborn, wide stance and, arms akimbo, defied her former master. ‘No, suh, please, suh, Masta, suh, I ain’t a-goin’. I go to stay right here.’
‘You a-goin’. You goin’ to do whut you tol’,’ Hammond said firmly but without anger.
‘I ain’t,’ affirmed the woman.
‘You know whut it mean an’ ifn your masta got to come fer you, don’ you? Mean you a runner, a ordinary runner, an’ you know whut he goin’ to do to you—hang you up upside down an’ snake all the skin offn you, that whut. Ifn you go back your own se’f, mayhap he won’ do nothin’,’ Hammond argued.
‘I not a-goin’ back an’ call them niggers “Masta, suh”. I ain’t goin’,’ Lucretia Borgia maintained. ‘You kin drive me off, on’y I goin’ to turn that ol’ mule an’ go the other way.’
‘Whut ol’ mule? We ain’t a-goin’ to give you no mule,’ declared Maxwell.
‘My mule,’ Lucretia Borgia explained. ‘My ol’ cripped mule I brung from New Orleans.’
‘Whure you git any mule?’ the old man demanded.
‘I bought it, bought it with money I done took out of Meg’s box, suh,’ Lucretia Borgia confessed candidly. ‘They, both of ’em, got lots of money they masta give ’em. An’ I pay a yaller boy who kin write, a light yaller boy who usten to be Masta’s pet afore he gotten them twins, to write me out a pass, suh, fer the patterolers.’
‘A real sure enough runner,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘You got to write a letter to that white son-of-a-bitch to come an’ git her. I ’on’t care whut he is or whut he do, he bought her an’ pay fer her. An’ you cain’t trust her to go back alone by her own se’f, mule or no mule. She actin’ like a mule.’
There was no other honourable course. Lucretia Borgia was dismissed to go back to the kitchen to resume her former duties until her owner should come or send for her.
Breakfast over, Hammond wrote the letter. It was a task, for he was unused to writing. The letters wouldn’t come right, the ink spattered, and Hammond sharpened and resharpened the nib of his goose-quill. An hour’s agony over the brief note and it was finished and ready for his father’s approval.
‘How am I goin’ to back this letter?’ he asked, ‘not a-knowin’ his name? He never said.’
‘He said all right, time ’fore you come in, on’y I disremembers. Somethin’ like Roach. He’ll git it. Roach close enough,’ said his father. ‘First, ast Lucretia Borgia. She’ll be knowin’.’
Memnon was sent to bring the runaway into the sitting-room.
When she came, Hammond said to her, ‘Whut the name of your new masta? Whut he call hisse’f?’
‘Somethin’ like Roach,’ the father suggested.
‘Soun’ like, somethin’ like that,’ she agreed.
‘You doesn’t know how to spell it out?’ Hammond asked hopefully.
‘That be readin’. I don’ know readin’, Masta, suh. You knows that a’r
eady.’
Stumped for the want of a first name for his correspondent, Hammond addressed the letter merely to ‘Mister Roach, New Orleans.’ He could not be sure it would be delivered; in fact, he would not admit to himself the hope that it might not. He had done his best and his conscience was salved. However, he would be reluctant to give the woman up again, despite that he saw no reason for her coming back.
‘I goin’ to sen’ Mem to the Post Office with it,’ Hammond said to his father.
‘That nigger cain’t sen’ no letter,’ the father replied. ‘I needin’ him to stir my toddies. Wait till you goin’ to Benson your own se’f. Ain’t no press.’
Hammond grasped the excuse for delay, but the following Saturday he went himself to Benson, mailed the letter, and went to the tavern for the fights. He could hardly expect a reply short of a week, but a week went by, two weeks, a month, and nothing came, and his letter was not returned to him. He assumed that it had been delivered. Lucretia Borgia went on working, fearful when her former owner went to town that he would get a reply to his letter. But none came. None ever came. Lucretia Borgia was again a Maxwell slave. She could not, of course, be sold, but the Maxwells had no desire to sell her. She was her old self, obsequious to the whites, dictatorial to her fellow slaves, efficient, obliging, indispensable. Hammond was glad she was back, and dreaded the day when her owner might arrive to take her away. But he did not come.
26
For Blanche, childbed impended. She grew larger and larger, and her mother worried about the delay and about her own prolonged absence from home. Beatrix was accepted as a part of the Maxwell family, walking as if in a dream; unhearing, her hollow voice, if not unheard, was ignored.
In January, Blanche developed pains in her abdomen and it was believed that her time was upon her, but she recovered and nothing happened. She was content. Her breasts enlarged and she felt the baby, but a languor enveloped her. She watched her father-in-law drink his toddies and knew that, but for her mother’s presence, she would drink with him.
Cotton planting time arrived and Hammond ploughed his fields and put in his crop. The Mandingo exercised and Lucy rubbed him with serpent oil; he ate and thrived. Hammond looked at him from time to time and considered that it was wasteful to maintain so futile a luxury, but the elder Maxwell insisted upon keeping him as a stallion. His progeny, as they were born, were stalwart and healthy.
Hammond had been tacitly impatient with Blanche’s prolonged pregnancy, but his impatience ceased. The baby would come when it would come. He was vexed with her failure to reckon the date, but vexation was vain. He was happy with Ellen.
March, with its bluster, showers, and sunshine, with its dogwood and wild roses, came and went. The first of April, Blanche awoke in labour. The house was solemn. Lucretia Borgia was the only person of any use. Tense wished to help but knew not what to do. Beatrix went around asking questions to which she was unable to hear the answers. Maxwell swallowed impatient toddies. Hammond sent Memnon riding to Benson to summon Doctor Murrey, who although he would probably be drunk upon his arrival was the only physician in the community whose experience in such matters was great enough to enable him to deliver a child, drunk or sober.
Blanche’s recurrent pains begot groans as she lay and waited for the doctor, but there were no such screams of terror as had heralded the birth of her former child. Her mother, who sat beside the bed and rocked in her anxiety, was unable to hear the groans of her daughter but in her sympathy suffered more than Blanche. Lucretia Borgia pattered back and forth between the kitchen and the bedroom, fetching hot pepper gruels to stimulate labour and stooping by the bedside to massage Blanche’s abdomen. Tense hung over the foot of the bed in a futile desire to help, but was able to do nothing except to fetch such things as Lucretia Borgia required from other parts of the house.
Memnon was gone for hours, while Maxwell drank the toddies which Lucretia Borgia found time between her trips upstairs to prepare for him, and Hammond limped the floor and cursed Memnon for his delay. It was three o’clock before the clatter of mule-hoofs on the lane announced the messenger’s return. Hammond met him at the door as he crawled from the mule’s back.
‘That Masta Docta, he cain’t come. He down sick—got lung fever, Miz say,’ the Negro informed his master.
‘Did he say? Did you talk to him? Did you tell him who a-wantin’ he should come quick an’ whut fer?’ Hammond demanded.
‘Naw, suh, Masta. I never seen him. Miz, she wouldn’t leave me inside,’ Memnon explained. ‘But she done say.’
‘You damned triflin’, slothy nigger. I had ought to know better than send you. Had ought to go my own se’f,’ Hammond muttered and went in to tell his father the tidings and to consult with him about what should be done.
‘Lung fever? Liable, jest drunken!’ was the older man’s comment. ‘Well, I reckon the yarb woman, Doc Redfield’s Widder, got to get her. Reckon she as good as any doctor anyways; has grannied enough women, white an’ black, she had ought to know how to ketch a chil’.’
Hammond sighed his acquiescence. ‘On’y whut Cousin Beatrix goin’ to think? How I goin’ to make her hear that there ain’t no man doctor?’
‘Don’ try. Ain’t no other way,’ said the father.
Hammond went upstairs to tell Blanche that Doctor Murrey was unavailable and that she should just have to suffer while he went himself to bring Redfield’s wife. He would make all the haste that Eclipse was capable of, he promised her.
‘Why ain’t that other doctor come instead of Murrey?’ Blanche asked.
‘Whut othern?’
‘That young doctor. Doctor Smith,’ said Blanche. ‘He real nice. Ruther him than Miz Redfield.’
‘That blackguard! That scoun’rel! That houn’!’ ranted Hammond so loud that Beatrix’s trumpet caught the sound and she directed it toward him. ‘He ain’t no doctor man yet, that Willis Smith, an’ ain’t never goin’ to be. Goin’ aroun’ spreadin’ the clap through clean niggers, makin’ more sickness than ever he cure up. I’d sooner have Mede, sooner have that Mandingo ketch a chil’ as that Willis Smith.’
A spasm of pain overtook Blanche and forestalled any argument. Her husband, ignoring her suffering in his indignation, stalked out of the room, down the stairs, and toward the stable.
Maxwell recognized the hoofbeats of Eclipse’s canter as Hammond rode down the lane and knew his son had gone for Mrs. Redfield. The house was quiet except for the creak of the stairs as Lucretia Borgia made her heavy way from Blanche’s bed to the kitchen and back again and for the loud ticking of the crazy clock above the cold fireplace. Two toddies later he heard the crow-hop gait of Mrs. Redfield’s tired horse and the turning wheels of her vehicle, and he knew that the herb-woman had come. He rose stiffly, made his way to the window, and saw her crawl down from her lop-sided seat, gather her paper bag of herbs, and stalk with brisk importance toward the house. Without waiting for the door to be opened for her, she entered, and Maxwell heard the stairs under her firm tread as she ascended. Maxwell felt easier, now that help had come.
Hammond, with Doc Redfield on his dun gelding, followed the woman down the lane a furlong behind her buggy. Redfield, with nothing else to do, had come along for a visit while his wife performed her professional duties. He was elated that his wife should be summoned on so notable a mission and sought to partake, however vicariously, of her distinction. Maxwell was glad of somebody to talk to through the vigil.
The random conversation touched on many subjects—the Mandingo, his condition and fitness for a fight, the size and vigour of his babies, cotton, the current market for slaves and the prices they brought, a suitable diet for young slaves, tribal differences, the virtues and dangers from infusions of white blood in Negroes, anything to avoid discussion of the weight upon all their minds. Hammond, between sips of his toddy, limped from window to window, looked at the landscape and assessed the weather. Not that he cared.
‘Redfield! Redfield! Come up here! Hurry!’ cam
e his wife’s loud voice from the upper hall. Mrs. Redfield was a placid woman, not unused to emergencies and taking them in her stride, but to his amazement, Redfield detected an implication of terror in the summons.
He set down his toddy glass, rose, and went into the hall. ‘You callin’ me? You wantin’ me, Widder? Whut you reckon I kin do?’ he asked as he made his way up the steps.
‘Come up here!’ the woman repeated. ‘Come quick!’
Redfield hastened as best he was able. ‘It come yit?’ he demanded as he reached the head of the stairs.
‘It come!’ the midwife said in a loud whisper. ‘It come! Only it ain’t white! It a—a nigger! Whut we goin’ to do?’
The astounded man was taken aback. He did not believe her. ‘A nigger! You wrong; it ain’t no nigger!’ he contradicted.
‘You sayin’ I don’ know a nigger, me who have ketched a hunerd black suckers in my time?’ the woman said with indignation.
‘Whure is it?’
‘On the bed. I laid it on the bed till I could call you. Whut we goin’ to do with it?’
‘If it a nigger, like you sayin’, we jest cut the cord short an’ let it bleed. Mista Maxwell, he don’ want no nigger chil’, not his own, not from his wife, he don’.’ Redfield was resolute. By destroying the baby he calculated to save Hammond the necessity. As he followed his wife to the bedroom, Beatrix Woodford emerged from it, weeping, but her head high, her tread firm, and went into her own room.
Blanche lay exhausted, but calm and comfortable, relieved now of her long burden. Her baby was not beside her where the herb-woman had left it. Blanche opened her eyes at the turning of the door on its hinges.
‘Whure is it? What you do with it, your chil’?’ Mrs. Redfield demanded.
