The Family Mansion

by Anthony C. Winkler

  He found Phibba sitting on the small wooden veranda of the board shack she shared with her father, staring into space as though she was trying to divine the future. The shack had no veranda chairs so she sat on the floor, her back propped up against the front wall of the house. Hartley sat beside her to the amused glances of slaves who gathered in small groups and were characteristically chatty at the end of another day.

  “You packed and ready to go?” Hartley asked her.

  “Phibba can’t go to England with you, donkey hood,” she said with a sorrowful sigh.

  He handed her the bill of sale that Meredith had just given him. “I’ve bought you. You’re now a free woman.”

  She fingered the piece of paper with wonderment and looked hard at the cursive scribbling Meredith had just written in ink, announcing to the world that for a payment of fifty pounds she belonged to Hartley Fudges who had now set her free. Being unable to read, she could only marvel at the power of what could’ve been the tracks of carpenter ants marching across the paper and accomplishing wondrous feats of magic.

  “That paper,” he said, “tells the world that you’re free.”

  They had an argument about what it meant to be free and what she would do in England. Who would she know there but him? She would look like no one else. She would stand out everywhere she went and feel like a monster.

  They paced around the room while the night bled dark over the countryside and they spoke about what he would do and what she would do, and sometime around midnight the two of them fell entwined on the bed where he slept fitfully with two loaded pistols at his bedside table.

  CHAPTER 19

  There was just one road to Falmouth, but it was a road only in a metaphorical sense. It twisted and coiled over parched hillsides and dreary swamps, lanced through clotted woodlands, and emptied like a placid creek into the occasional valley or pasture. The roadbed was an uneven surface of potholes, jagged fissures, and protuberances like cracked teeth. It was the same road that had brought Hartley to the plantation; now it was carrying him and Phibba away to England.

  They began the trek early because even though the metaphorical road was the only way to reach Falmouth from the east, stretches of it were so abandoned and desolate that ambushes by escaped bands of slaves were common. Cartmen therefore preferred to travel this road in groups rather than alone, and when Hartley and Phibba left the plantation they were accompanied by two other carts, each manned by a driver and a sideman and drawn respectively by two mules and two donkeys. The wayfarers pulled out of the plantation premises long before the sun could claw its way above the sheltering mountains and begin to broil the earth with the tropical heat. Phibba rode beside Hartley, who got out frequently and walked when the little procession was climbing a hill and the donkeys or mules were obviously laboring.

  It seemed to take forever for the travelers to clear the premises of the plantation, dray carts being notoriously slow and pokey-pokey, and Hartley found himself urging on the overworked animals and mentally straining at the bit to put distance between him and the great house. Phibba was in a playful mood, and as the cart rattled along, she pointed at one of the donkeys and whispered coquettishly to Hartley, “Donkey hood,” to which he replied with a put-on gruffness, “Don’t call me that name.” She giggled and made a face.

  The journey began with the usual bantering among the men. When they started out the morning was still cool, and everyone was rested and in good spirits. But by the time they entered the first stretch of dense woodlands, the men had become quiet and watchful. All the talking and joke telling died out and was replaced by a jumpy alertness.

  On an island, every road leads eventually to the sea, and once the little group of drays had emerged from the first woodland and had crossed the crest of the mountains, every eye could see the unwrinkled blue Caribbean ocean stretching like a starched altar cloth toward the horizon. Here the small caravan separated, one cart heading for a great house in the mountains, another for plantations in the valleys. Only the dray that carried Hartley and Phibba continued toward Falmouth. By midday the rugged cart on which the two rode was bobbing over tree roots and fissures and slowly descending the mountains toward the sea where the rutted metaphorical road intersected the main one that skirted the coastline.

  The driver was a leery man and had a loaded pistol tucked into the waist of his pants. When his eyes were not fixed on the path ahead, they probed the surrounding thicket for signs of life with the quick stabbing plunges of a knitting needle, and more than once he thought he saw something and grabbed onto the butt of the pistol while his stare remained riveted on the passing shadows. But every time the shadow would turn out to be caused by the breeze or the antics of lizards, birds, or stray livestock.

  Hartley was also keeping a constant watch over any bush or shrub that was big enough to conceal a man. He could not believe that he was getting away so easily, that in a few more hours, with Phibba at his side, he would climb aboard a ship bound for England. He was looking forward eagerly to the moment when the tallest mountain in Jamaica would slip beneath the waves and vanish from the horizon, and this detested land of hatred, turmoil, and confusion would be finally behind him. In the meantime, he was highly alert to the impending danger that might be lurking around the next corner or below the crest of the next hill.

  They were halfway down the slope of a mountain with a cut-stone wall paralleling the road when a gunshot blasted the peace and the driver slumped forward with a glance of horror and plunged a finger into a pulpy hole that had suddenly opened up in his chest.

  “Mary, mother of Jesus!” the man managed to cry just before he toppled off the dray with a death groan. His sideman took off downhill, screaming with terror, and was quickly swallowed up in the thicket. Hartley and Phibba were left alone in the dray cart staring in the direction from which the shot had come. As they gaped, they saw the face of Cuffy solidifying against the background of shrubs and bushes.

  Dressed in a grab bag of mismatched clothing his gang had stolen during plantation raids, Cuffy was a resplendent caricature of a comic book Englishman. He wore a pair of ill-fitting, baggy pantaloons; a shirt so tight that it squeezed a ring of exposed flesh out of his belly; and a purple sash that hung off his waistline like a peeling bandage. Nothing matched; every shred of his apparel clashed in a hideously mute war of rioting colors. Topping off the ensemble was an ugly flat hat with a vulgar cockade, like an overripe tomato, hanging off its brim. In addition, Cuffy had mastered the swagger of a patrolling busha—or so he thought—and with a malevolent expression he closed in on the cart while Hartley and Phibba stared helplessly. Almost without a sound, his band of followers, most dressed in the rags and tatters of the typical slave, seeped out of the woodland and encircled the small cart. Next to Cuffy stood his lieutenant, Quashie.

  “Are you ready to fight our duel?” Cuffy asked in a taunting voice, speaking in the clipped nasal accent he’d learned under Hartley’s tutelage.

  “You know the rules,” Hartley mumbled.

  “Yes,” Cuffy answered, “gentlemen only fight duels with other gentlemen. Well, now I’m a gentleman. And this is what I think of you,” and he slapped Hartley hard on the face, snapping his head back.

  Hartley stood glaring at his own feet. Phibba moved to his side protectively and held his hand. A light came on in Cuffy’s face.

  “We either fight a duel right now,” he said softly, “or we kill your woman.”

  Hartley stared at him with disbelief. “I’ll fight you,” he said evenly. “But if I kill you, what will happen to us?”

  Cuffy looked around at his men before gesturing to Quashie. “If this Englishman kills me, I want you to let him go. Is that understood?”

  One man said, “Him nah going kill you. We nuh have fe worry ’bout dat.”

  The other men nodded and smirked at the preposterous idea of their leader being killed by the Englishman.

  “So it’s agreed?” pressed Hartley. “If you die, your
men will let us go?”

  There were murmurs of assent among the group.

  Cuffy was afire with excitement and eagerness, like a child at Christmas. He beckoned to one of his men who trotted over carrying a case of dueling pistols recently captured from a plantation. It was an elaborate set of Belgian pistols with geometric designs that looked like runic scribbles all over the barrel and handle, and it came in a box almost big enough to serve as a coffin for a stillborn baby. The inside flap of the cover was inscribed in several languages with calligraphic characters that said the same thing in Spanish, French, German, and English: Pistolas de Duelo / Pistolets de Duel / Duellenpistollen / Dueling Pistols Set.

  Meanwhile, the other men were treating the duel as if it were a sporting event, and many of them engaged in the back-and-forth raillery of spectators at a football match.

  Hartley examined the pistols carefully. The shooting mechanism was a flintlock, an invention that originated in the mid-1550s and was gradually being replaced in 1808 by the percussion cap, which was itself destined to be replaced by the modern bullet. The pistols were almost a foot long, weighed two and half pounds, and fired a lead ball through an unrifled barrel. Gunpowder was wadded into the bottom of the barrel by a rod and the spring-driven hammer (nicknamed the cock) tipped with a piece of flint. When the gun was fired, the flint struck a piece of steel known as a frizzen and made a spark that ignited the gunpowder. The result was a deafening bang as the lead ball exploded out of the muzzle of the gun at a murderous velocity.

  Flintlock pistols were notorious for misfiring. Most were equipped with a hair trigger, and in the usual ready position, the hammer of the pistol was pulled all the way back. But while the pistol was being carried, it was a common practice to pull the hammer halfway back to allow for a quick shot. Often, the hammer set in this position would cause the pistol to prematurely fire—hence the expression “go off half-cocked.”

  As the two combatants went through the ritual of choosing a pistol and loading it, Phibba paced around anxiously, begging both of them to stop and consider what they were doing. Both men were breathing hard as if they could not get enough air. The onlookers were joshing with each other and placing bets on who would get off the first shot and where it would likely strike.

  “What? De whole o’ you gone mad?” Phibba shrieked as the two men continued to prepare for their encounter.

  Quashie, swollen with pride because of his special role as second in this strange English ritual, was fussing about like a distraught innkeeper whose overbooked rooms were not ready for occupancy. He presided officiously over every particular of the ceremony. He had rehearsed every part of it and now finally his moment had come to show how much he knew about this English game that was shrouded in such complex habits and strange rules. Many of the watching men were openly jealous of Quashie and looked on sullenly. Yet in spite of themselves, all seemed caught up in the spirit of the moment.

  “Why are we doing this, Cuffy?” Hartley asked his former slave, hoping to somehow talk him out of the folly he was bent on committing.

  Cuffy answered with a venomous intensity: “You set me free! In front of everybody!”

  Phibba, who had been hovering near the duelists, butted in: “Him set me free too.”

  “See dat! Is there no end to your heartlessness?” snapped Cuffy. “Must you destroy everything and everybody? Listen to me. I don’t even know how I should sound when I talk. I sound like you, not like me. I think like you, not like me. First you stole my voice. Then you stole my brain.”

  “Blood don’t have to shed here today,” Phibba begged. “No reason for blood to spill. Donkey hood, say you sorry and make we go about we business.”

  “What’s that you call him?” Cuffy asked suspiciously.

  “Donkey hood.”

  Cuffy took a brisk, agitated spin around the knot of onlooking men and scolded Phibba, “How can you call an English earl donkey hood? Don’t you have any respect?”

  “Me respect everybody, even you,” Phibba said fearlessly.

  With some pushing and shoving and jostling, the men rowdily formed two ragged lines to create a shooting lane for the duelists.

  Quashie asked, “De shooters ready?”

  “Ready,” Cuffy declared.

  “I’m ready,” mumbled Hartley.

  “No, no!” Phibba screamed. “Dey not ready.”

  “Stand back-to-back,” ordered Quashie.

  Walking stiffly, the two men, their backs rigid and straight, their pistols clasped tightly against their chests, paced off the distance.

  Phibba screamed, “Dis is madness! Donkey hood, nuh do dis!”

  When the shooters stopped, Quashie blared out, “Turn and face your enemy.”

  Like windup dolls, the men turned mechanically.

  “Take your aim,” Quashie commanded.

  The men took their aim, and for a second the duelists, the onlookers, and Phibba were frozen in a ludicrous tableau.

  As he readied himself to fire, Hartley bitterly regretted sharing with Cuffy so much of the hearsay accounts of duels he had picked up from roaming the streets and bars of London. He tried to remember if he’d told Cuffy what others had impressed upon Hartley as the primary rule of the good duelist: don’t be in a rush to get off the first shot. Most likely you’ll miss and have to stand rigidly in position while your adversary takes aim to his heart’s content. If you flinch or move in any way, your adversary’s seconds are empowered by tradition to shoot you down.

  As the two men aimed at one another from a distance of roughly thirty feet, Hartley was furiously telling himself to relax, to take his time and aim, to not be hasty, and all the while he was facing the pistol of Cuffy which was steadily pointing right at his head.

  Just before Quashie gave the signal to fire, Hartley shuffled his feet, trying to plant himself securely against the kick of the gun, when something ghastly happened: his gun fired with a thunderclap that caromed off the next row of hills and noisily whiplashed over the scene of the duel.

  In the ensuing silence that followed, Cuffy was standing erect and still like a garden statue made of stone. He gave no sign of a wound. He did not recoil from the impact of a bullet; no blood gushed out of him. Nor did the gun he pointed at Hartley in the least bit waver. From Hartley’s point of view, the muzzle of the pistol gaped at him like a serpent’s open mouth.

  “Don’t kill donkey hood!” Phibba cried in a quavering voice.

  “Donkey hood,” Quashie said sternly, aiming his own pistol at Hartley, “don’t take another step. Stand and receive you shot.”

  “My gun went off accidentally,” Hartley heard himself saying. “I didn’t mean to shoot. It wasn’t a real shot.” Then he added lamely, “Stop calling me that execrable name.”

  “Execrable,” Cuffy murmured. “What does that word mean?”

  “Shoot, man! For god sakes, shoot!” urged Hartley.

  “Hush you mouth, donkey hood,” Quashie chided. “De man can take all de time him want.”

  “My name is the Marquis of Fudges. Now, shoot!”

  “Don’t shoot donkey hood,” Phibba wailed in an anguished pitch.

  With a malicious chuckle that sounded like the sadistic purr of a playful cat, Cuffy continued to train the pistol steadily on Hartley. “You ever see a more perfect slave than me?” he taunted.

  “Shoot, damn you!”

  “Nuh shoot donkey hood!” Phibba screamed at an even higher, shriller pitch.

  “Answer me!” Cuffy barked. “Was I not the perfect slave?”

  After a tense moment, Hartley replied, “If you say so,” staring at his feet, unable to look any longer down the muzzle of the gun that was about to kill him.

  “Don’t move, donkey hood,” Quashie warned.

  Cuffy chuckled with triumph and the hand holding the pistol fell to his side. But then, his mood suddenly changing, he said savagely, “So why did you free me, you damn Englishman?”

  He abruptly raised the gun and aimed
it at Hartley again.

  “No!” Phibba shrieked, jumping in front of her English lover. The gun went off and the bullet meant for Hartley pierced her chest, ripping open her heart.

  “Phibba!” Hartley screamed.

  It took her less than two seconds to hit the ground.

  By then she was already dead.

  * * *

  The small ragtag company of men gathered around the fallen woman as Hartley knelt over her sobbing hysterically, as if that could bring her back. It was unnerving to the onlooking slaves to see a white man stricken with such profound grief over the death of a black woman. None of them had ever before witnessed a weeping busha, and to this spectacle some reacted with open scorn.

  “Hush up you mouth, man,” Quashie said contemptuously. “All de bawling in de world won’t bring her back.”

  Cuffy snapped, “Mek him bawl if him want bawl.”

  Then he seemed to remember himself and his present condition, for he added in his best accent, “Of course, it’s his prerogative to weep if he wishes.”

  Realizing for the first time what a fool he must sound like, Cuffy closed his mouth, looking gloomy. The other men began a clamoring about what to do with Hartley. Several asked Cuffy if they could kill him. One asked for permission to cut his throat. Another offered to disembowel the Englishman. A third wanted to cut his head off and attach it to a pole just like the backra would do if he had the upper hand. A babble of confusion arose as each man tried to give advice to Cuffy about what to do with him.

  Oblivious to the threats buzzing in the air, Hartley remained on the ground bent over dead Phibba. He was still weeping openly, loudly, sucking in noisy globs of breath.