by Jon Walter
Mr Chepstow continues where he left off. ‘You are so right, Mrs Allen, so right indeed. And that is why a regular prayer meeting is the only thing to do. These Negroes must know whom God favours in this war, and to that end I have made it my mission to go to the plantations hereabout and preach the good word to ’em all. I would like to come here too if you would be so kind as to allow it.’
I watch as Gerald cuts a square of the juicy ham and sneaks it from his fork to his fingers, holding it under the table so only I can see it. I don’t know why he’s doing that. He looks again at Mrs Allen and the preacher, making sure they haven’t noticed, before tossing the ham onto the floor at my feet.
I try to ignore it but I can’t. I keep pulling that rope, behaving as though there’s nothing there, but there is; that ham’s right there at my toes, all glistening and pink.
I start to sweat. I begin to pull the rope a little faster and when Mrs Allen claps her hands in excitement, I nearly jump out of my skin. ‘Oh yes! Then we shall do it,’ she says loudly. ‘Of course we shall! A meeting to be held here on the second Sunday of each month, to hear the word of God spoken clearly in these troubled times. We shall all attend, Mr Chepstow. We shall pray for deliverance through hard work and for the victory that our men deserve!’
She’s got her back to me, same as Gerald has, but that preacher has a view straight across the table to my feet, and if he weren’t so concentrated on Mrs Allen’s speech he’d be sure to notice that piece of ham right in front of me, so I kneel quickly, pick the ham up off the floor and pop it in my mouth. I daren’t swallow it though and the ham seems to expand in size, getting trapped between the back of my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
Sicely comes back into the room. She takes the mustard to the preacher, puts it down in front of him and comes to stand beside me while we wait for them to finish their lunch. They’re still planning and talking about the state of the world as I chew slowly, but I manage to swallow without being seen, and when they stand to leave the room, Gerald looks to see if the meat is still on the floor and he smiles when he sees it gone.
Once the sliding doors shut, Sicely tugs at my earlobe. ‘Don’t just stand there. Help me get these plates downstairs. And don’t go pinching any of that ham either, cos I know how much there is of it left.’
She gives me a look like I’m the Devil himself.
Now I don’t know much about girls – I haven’t had the opportunity of finding out. But I sure hope they ain’t all like Sicely.
Chapter 6
Once the meal is over and the preacher has left, I’m stood outside the cookhouse looking like a little lost boy. Mrs Allen thinks for a moment, putting a hand to her forehead. ‘Have him go in with Lizzie, will you, Winnie? It’ll help make up for her loss. And have Nancy put the kettle on too. I’ll take tea upstairs. If Harriet is in the kitchen, have her bring Virginia to me in the nursery. Would you do that?’
‘I’ll deal with the boy first,’ says Winnie, and she leads me out across the yard. She’s got one of those walks where she don’t hardly seem to move her legs and yet she scoots along pretty quick for an ol’ girl. I can tell she knows what’s what around here and I got a whole lot of questions as I chase after her skirts. ‘Where we going, Winnie? And who’s Lizzie? Won’t I be sleeping in the big house with everyone else?’
Winnie comes to a stop and she’s got puzzled eyes. ‘You’re one strange child. Don’t you know anything? And where’d you learn to speak that way? That ain’t Tennessee drawl, least as far as I can tell.’
I nearly tell her I ain’t from Tennessee, but I don’t. I’ve been thinking I’ll trust in Hubbard, tell him Mrs Allen has got it all wrong; tell him I’m a free black and I shouldn’t ever have been sold at auction. Hubbard strikes me as someone I can trust. I reckon he’ll be the one to advise me how best to leave.
Winnie walks on. ‘Well, wherever you come from, don’t go getting ideas you’re something special, cos you’re not. You be starting at the bottom, same as the rest of us, and there ain’t no way up from there, so you better get used to it if you ain’t already.’
Each side of the path where we walk there are rolling lawns of green turf. A line of tall trees shelters the back of the house from the weather, and as we pass them, a view opens out onto the cotton fields that lie out the back of the estate. But before the fields, only a couple of hundred yards from us, I see a large fenced-off area where the green turf is all scuffed out to mud. Two rows of wooden cabins stand opposite each other with a fire pit between ’em in the middle of that mud. They’re the only thing in the whole place that ain’t nice to look at and Winnie nods in their direction. ‘Lizzie’s place is the second one along, over on the left there. You go on and wait for her. She won’t be so long.’
I must be stupid to have thought I was ever going to live up in the pretty house.
I go on towards the huts. There’s no one about that I can see, save for a couple of children skipping with a rope, but they catch my eye – I don’t know why. There’s something ’bout the way one of ’em moves, a little boy who has his back to me. When he jumps over the rope he leaves a foot dangling, lifts it just high enough to clear the rope by an inch or two. Joshua used to do that. I squint into the sun, suddenly excited, and put a hand over my eyes. Could it actually be Joshua? Could he already be here, playing over by the tree?
I race towards the tree shouting, ‘Joshua, Joshua!’ and those boys stop playing and they turn to watch me come, but even before I reach ’em I know I have made a mistake and it ain’t Joshua at all.
I arrive all out of breath and panting. ‘Is this one Lizzie’s place?’ I point over at a cabin.
‘Next one along,’ says the boy I mistook for Joshua, and he looks at me strange, a mix of wariness and wanting to please. ‘She ain’t there though. She’s still in the field.’ He sizes me up just like my brother would.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask him.
‘Gil.’
‘You skip pretty good, Gil. You ever get caught by the rope?’
He shakes his head. ‘Never.’
‘No, I didn’t reckon you did.’
I wander across to the cabins, which are lifted up on brick blocks to keep ’em from the mud. Two wooden steps lead up to each door, and every cabin has a mud-brick chimney that leans away from the outer wall and is propped at the top by two tall poles. They look all old and broken, those chimneys, like they could collapse from only a little gust of wind. These cabins ain’t much to look at and they’re probably worse to live in than they look, all draughty and cold, I’ll bet.
Lizzie’s cabin is different to the others, with a little vegetable garden out the back that she’s made look nice. I can tell she cares for it from the way she’s pushed all those sticks into the earth to make the fence. I practise my smile before I knock on her door. No one answers, but I suppose they warned me.
A dirt track leads down towards the woods on the eastern side of the plantation, so I decide to take a look around and see how far I can go. I carry right on into the wood and out the other side, where the land is just scrub. I know I must have left the plantation grounds by now, but I ain’t heard a by-your-leave from anyone and so I make for the river and follow it along the nearest bank where the last of the cotton fields comes right down to its edge. The only folk I see are a single line of cotton pickers way off in a field, and it seems to me I could walk out of here whenever I want.
I’m passing a cornfield on the way back to the cabins when I see Hubbard walking up ahead of me, his green shirt tucked in tidy at the back of his breeches and a whip pointing up from the line of his belt. If I’m quick I can get to talk to him alone and I run to catch him up, my quick little feet making no more sound than a rabbit in full flight. When I get close, I call out his name. ‘Mr Hubbard! Say, Mr Hubbard!’
The big man turns and sees me. He waits for me to reach him. ‘What do you need, Friday? You found Lizzie yet? I heard Mrs Allen’s put you in with her.’
I shake my head. ‘I ain’t seen her yet, Mr Hubbard, but I’m going there directly.’
Hubbard nods. ‘That’s good. The day’s almost done. She’ll be back soon. You go wait for her there and tell her that the mistress has said you’re to come in with her.’
‘I will, sir. I’ll do that. Only there was something else, Mr Hubbard. Something I wanted to say to you. You see, sir, I think you should know …’ I stumble on my words, too anxious to get ’em out quickly. ‘My name ain’t Friday,’ I tell him. ‘My name is Samuel, sir, and I was taken from my home in the orphanage and sold at the auction by a man named Gloucester. He’s a rogue trader, sir. I’m certain of it. He never had the right to sell me and he forged my papers, but the thing is this, you see sir, I have a brother by the name of Joshua and he’s only very little.’ I take a quick breath, not wanting to stop till I’ve told him everything. ‘I’ve got to look after him cos he’s got no one else to do it. Do you see, Mr Hubbard? What I’m saying is that there’s only him and me. There ain’t no one else can help him.’
The big man has been listening closely, I can tell. He has bowed his head, his eyes staring to the edge of the field as he concentrates on what I’m telling him. He puts a calm hand on my shoulder. ‘Who’ve you told ’bout this?’
I take a deep breath. ‘Only you.’
He bends closer, so we’re face to face. ‘You ever been whipped, Friday?’
‘No, sir, I never have.’
He slaps my face hard enough that I go spinning to the ground, then he takes the whip from his belt and the end of it falls to the ground as he stands over me. ‘I ain’t never been whipped either,’ he tells me grimly. ‘Never once. And that’s the way it’s gonna stay, Friday.’
I ain’t cried for a long time, but a tear escapes me now. ‘Don’t you believe me?’ I plead with his boots. ‘I thought you’d believe me!’
‘Don’t matter if I believe you or I don’t. It won’t change a thing for either of us. Do you understand that? I advised Mrs Allen to buy you, even though you was off the catalogue and had no references. Now, if you tell her you ain’t no slave, do you know what will happen?’
I made a mistake telling Hubbard and nothing I can say will put it right. I want to hurt him. I want to get up and punch him.
He flicks the edge of his boot into my face so it cuffs the side of my eye. ‘Well, do you?’
‘What’ll happen?’ I spit out.
‘She’ll ask me to whip you till you stop telling lies and then she’ll most likely have me whipped as well. Do you understand me? It won’t change a thing, but it’ll hurt the both of us like hell, though like I said, I ain’t never been lashed. I’m just taking other people’s word for it.’ He leans right over me. ‘Around here, it’s me that does the whipping when it’s needed.’
And then he offers me his hand to help me back on my feet.
Well, I refuse to take it. I get up on my own two feet, my eyes all narrow with staring so hard at him, trying to see the man I thought he was. He still looks proud, but there ain’t no kindness there like I had assumed. No kindness and no sense of justice. That much is obvious, and I tell him so. ‘I ain’t never been so disappointed in a man before!’
He might flinch at that, I can’t be sure, but I flinch myself when he flicks out the whip, coils it up and stores it back in his belt.
‘That’s something we’ll both have to live with, Friday. Now get yourself over to Lizzie’s cabin. I want you out in the fields when the horn sounds first thing tomorrow morning.’
I don’t want to be near this man a moment longer than I have to, and I walk away with the mark of his big hand on my cheek, still sore to the touch and burning.
*
When I get back to the cabins there are more people about than there were before. A bunch of kids are skipping over at the tree, all talking at once like little birds. A woman squats on her doorstep, scrubbing something in a pail of water, and three young men have brought wooden chairs outside their cabin door and are sitting smoking. They watch me pass the fire pit and stop at Lizzie’s cabin.
To my surprise, it’s Sicely who opens when I knock and she leans on the doorframe, blocking my view inside. ‘What do you want?’
A voice calls out from behind her back. ‘Who’s that, Sicely? What they want?’
‘It’s the new boy, Mama.’ Sicely shouts back inside. ‘The one the missus brought back ’stead of Milly.’
A hand grasps the door above Sicely’s head. ‘Come on now, Sicely. Open it up and let me see.’
Sicely slides back inside the cabin and a woman appears at the door in her place. She’s about the same age as my mama would have been. She’s got a similar line in her nose and cheeks as well – at least as far as I remember. Her head is bound up in old Woolsey rags and she has a shawl across her shoulders that looks like it’s seen more years in this world than she has.
‘Are you Lizzie?’ I ask. ‘Mrs Allen said I was to stay with you.’
The woman stands there looking at me. It’s like she ain’t seeing me at all, like she’s seeing someone else entirely. Behind her back I see Sicely move across to the fire and she kneels, blowing a tiny flame that lights her face. The young boy I saw at the tree squeezes out from behind Lizzie’s skirt to take a look at me, but Lizzie puts a finger to his head. ‘Go on back inside, Gil.’ She folds her arms when she speaks to me. ‘You come from the auction?’ I nod. ‘Then you must’ve seen my Milly.’
‘I don’t know, ma’am. I didn’t talk to no one there. I don’t know who anyone is.’ I’m awkward, standing here on the step without being invited inside, but I want to make an effort to please this woman if I can. ‘What did she look like?’
Lizzie’s lip twitches. ‘Oh, Milly’s pretty. You’d remember her if you saw her.’
‘Oh yes! You mean the pretty girl? I do remember. Yes, I do. The girl with the blue bow at the front of her dress?’
‘That’s her!’ Lizzie’s face lights up. ‘She had her best dress on, the one I made for her last birthday. Did you see her sold? Do you know who bought her and where she went?’
‘I saw the man who bought her. Yes, I did. He was wearing a green jacket as I remember.’
‘He was? And where’d he take her? Did they say where he was from?’
‘I don’t know.’ Lizzie’s eyes drop like a stone in water and I know I haven’t helped at all. ‘Won’t Mrs Allen be able to tell you?’
Lizzie looks like I made her eat a gooseberry and she don’t answer, just stands at the door, staring at her feet, but I still try to make it better. ‘She sure is beautiful, just like you said. And she got a good high price. Two thousand dollars, I think it was. She was worth more than anyone else there. I know she was. So that man must have thought she was special. He must have wanted her real bad to have paid—’
Lizzie slaps my face.
I stagger back from the cabin, but this time I stay standing cos her arm don’t possess the power of Hubbard. Now I’ve had about as much as I can take of people slapping me. I don’t know who they think they are, these no-good slaves, slapping about a boy who done no harm to no one, who always says his prayers and tries to do right by the Lord. I take a step towards her, pulling myself up as tall as I can get, but then Sicely bursts out through the door, brushing her mother aside in her rush to get at me. She pushes me in the chest, making me stagger backwards with little flicks of her hands at my face. ‘Don’t you dare hit my mother!’
I run away. I just get the hell out of there, like a frightened, angry rabbit, and I don’t see a thing ’cept the dirt beneath my feet as I run back towards the fields and the river.
I run pretty fast. I’ve got my arms bent and pumping like a steam engine. I got nothing on my mind but moving forward cos I’m going home and there’s no one gonna stop me. I’m going back to find my brother and I don’t care if the Lord don’t like it or if Hubbard whips me. They sure can go to hell if they don’t agree. They can burn in the Devil’s fire for all I care, bec
ause I have had just about enough of this place and I’m going home, I’m going back to Middle Creek.
‘Hey, boy! You got a pass?’
I don’t see the person who calls to me from beneath the weeping willow on the river bank – but I stop running. I clutch my stomach and I’m taking in big gulps of air as I watch the tree. A man walks out from under the branches. He ain’t old but he ain’t young either. He wears Woolseys though, and I’m relieved to see that.
‘What’s it to you?’ I make as though I’m gonna walk on.
‘Oh, it ain’t nothing to me, but it’s a question the men up yonder’ll ask if they see you. They out on patrol, you see. They’re looking for strays who don’t have passes.’
‘I ain’t afraid of ’em.’
‘No? That’s right, boy. You shouldn’t be afraid of no one. But they got dogs. That’s the thing. They got dogs that’ll sniff out a black man from the thickest of bushes. Not that there are no bushes. I been a long way up this river and there’s only these here willows to weep under. I can assure you of that.’
He comes closer. I’d reckon he’s about thirty. He’s got honey-toned skin, lighter than my own, and his short curls are looser and flecked with hints of red. He’s wearing a porkpie hat with a rabbit’s foot stuck into the brown band around its edge, and his nose is spread out so wide it’s almost flat across his left cheek, like someone has taken a real dislike to it being straight. He makes a helluva noise when he breathes. ‘Where you from anyways?’ he asks me. ‘You been sneaking into the Allens’ place?’
I take offence at that. ‘I ain’t sneaking anywhere. I’m going home.’ I hesitate, not knowing whether I still have a home or not. ‘Well, leastways I’m going back to Middle Creek. Do you know where that is?’
The man shakes his head, wide-eyed. ‘I can’t say I’ve heard of it. Don’t you know where it is?’ I shake my head. ‘Well, that’s a problem.’ He pauses and takes a deep breath through his mouth. He’s wearing shoes that are busted up around the edges and tied to his feet with string, though I suppose they’re a step up from my own bare feet. A dog barks from somewhere up ahead and the man twitches. ‘I got to go.’ He looks behind him quickly. ‘If you ain’t got a pass, I suggest you come with me.’
