by Jon Walter
He walks away along the river bank and I let him go. I don’t want to go with him. But then that dog barks again, so I catch him up and follow in silence. After a little while I start to notice the countryside around me, the fish jumping up for flies, the cattle feeding on the far bank. Somewhere on the air there’s a hummingbird, but I couldn’t say where it was cos I’m too busy asking myself what I’ll do when darkness falls, whether I’ll keep on walking or find a place to sleep.
‘So have you got a pass?’ I ask him.
‘Why’d you ask?’
‘Just wondering. How’d you get ’em?’
‘Hubbard’s got a few he gives out.’
‘Oh.’
‘But you gotta have a good reason. He won’t give you one just cos you fancy it. He’s got a wife and child on another plantation, so of course he gets one for himself before anyone else.’ He looks over his shoulder again, just to make sure we ain’t being followed. ‘I don’t have one, since you asked, so if you don’t mind quickening your step, seeing as how you’ve held me up and all.’
We pick up our pace and the soles of his shoes flap against his feet as we trot ahead. The man offers me his hand. ‘The name’s Connie.’
I shake on it. ‘They call me Friday.’
That makes him laugh at me. ‘It ain’t every day of the week I meet someone with that name.’
‘That ain’t funny.’
‘No, I guess not. Guess you heard ’em all before.’
We turn away from the river and start back beside the cotton fields and I stay with him, thinking it’d be better for me to go back to the cabins till I can find a good way to leave.
‘You’re new here, ain’t you? Did Mrs Allen buy you at this morning’s auction?’
‘She did.’
‘So how come you’re running off as soon as you got here? This ain’t such a bad place to be.’
‘Yes, it is.’
He raises his eyebrows about as high as they will go. ‘I don’t know where you come from, boy, but I reckon this is about as good as it gets around here. I been worse places, I can tell you. I been to a lot worse. What was your last place like?’
‘I ain’t going in with Lizzie,’ I tell him quickly. ‘Hubbard can whip me all he likes, but I ain’t going in with her.’
Connie takes another deep breath. He lifts his hat up, then puts it back on his head, exactly as it was. ‘Lizzie ain’t so bad. You’ll see she’s all right once you meet her.’
‘She slapped my face.’
‘OK. So you already met. What did you do to make her slap you?’
‘I didn’t do anything ’cept try to be nice.’
‘Well, Lizzie don’t suffer fools. Was it something you said?’
It ain’t often that I’m likened to a fool and I don’t appreciate it. ‘She asked me ’bout Milly. She wanted to know who had bought her and I said how she fetched a higher price than anyone else at the auction, and then she just went and slapped me.’
‘And you don’t know why?’
‘I meant it as a compliment.’
Connie sucks at his teeth. In the setting sunlight I can clearly see the red in his hair. ‘No mother wants to have a beautiful daughter. Not when you’re a slave.’
But I still don’t understand, and Connie can see that. He thinks about the best way to explain. ‘Have you met Harriet? Harriet’s the nursemaid to Mrs Allen’s baby. When you see her, take a good look, cos Harriet’s black as coal, same as her husband, Levi. They’re both Africa black. I mean they’re real dark. Well now, Harriet’s got a baby of her own by the name of Richard. He’s coming up two years old and I believe it was Mr Allen himself who named him. But baby Richard, you see, he ain’t black. Not Africa black. Do you hear what I’m saying? Baby Richard ain’t the colour of coal.’ Connie tuts when he shakes his head. ‘I reckon Mrs Allen’s getting rid of any more temptation before the master gets back from the war. That’s what I think. And if Milly fetched a good price, it weren’t cos she’s good in the cookhouse.’
I’m shocked at what Connie says. Just hearing it makes my ears burn. And it makes me think about the boys back at the orphanage, how some of us were darker than others, and I remember Joshua lying naked in the sun one Saturday morning, hoping to make himself the same shade of black as me. I hadn’t seen my daddy for four years before Joshua was born, but I hadn’t ever thought of it that way. It makes me ashamed to be so stupid.
‘Lizzie’s a good woman,’ Connie tells me when we’re in sight of the cabins. ‘She’ll look after you. But she just lost her daughter and she don’t know if she’ll ever set eyes on her again, so you’ve got to meet her more than halfway.’
Once I’m there, I stand a little while before her door. Ain’t no point knocking if I don’t apologize. I say a little prayer, asking for the strength to be better than I am. I reckon she’ll be sorry for slapping me if I make the first move.
So I’m glad when Lizzie opens the door herself. ‘I’m sorry ’bout earlier. I didn’t mean to be rude about Milly. And I’m sorry for your loss. I truly am.’
Lizzie stands aside and lets her door swing wide and I step past her into the cabin.
It’s a small room, with bare wooden floors and a single window in the wall opposite the fire. Sicely and Gil are sitting at a low table with bowls of food in front of ’em and they’re watching me closely. Lizzie follows me in and closes the door. She takes a grease lamp from the shelf above the fire and lights the wick. ‘You can sleep there in the corner. Use Milly’s mattress. It’s stacked against the wall. See? Now come and get some food.’
‘Thank you, but I ain’t hungry.’
I take the mattress and put it down on the bare floor. All I want is to lie down and be quiet and I curl up with my face to the wall. In the darkness they won’t see me cry and I try not to, I try to keep it all inside, but my eyes won’t obey me and my nose runs away from me like a river.
I pray for Joshua. I don’t want to – after all, this is all his fault – but I do, and I try to think of all the good things I’ve done since Gloucester took me from the privy. There ain’t much to be proud of – all I can remember is murderous thoughts and cursing every little thing I could think of.
But I forgive Lizzie for slapping me.
I’m glad to do that.
It’s something good I get to add to my account.
Chapter 7
I wake to the sound of a horn.
Up at the window, the light that creeps past the rag of a curtain is dawn light, all blue and sombre. On the floor beside me, Gil turns on his mattress, moaning softly, struggling to wake. I roll over. Lizzie’s already up. She puts a jar of molasses onto the table, then kneels, rattles the grate and pats ashcakes onto the hearth, nice and close to the embers, where she prods and scrapes at ’em with a wooden spatula.
Joshua will be waking up about now. He’ll be putting on his clothes and making his way to the washroom with the other boys, all under Sister Miriam’s stern eye. I wonder if he feels the same way I do – kinda empty and small.
Lizzie’s got a stern eye of her own and she casts it over the mattresses on the floor. Sicely stands up, wiping the sleep from her eyes. She lifts her mattress up against the cabin wall, then takes a cup and fills it from the bucket of water on the floor.
‘Come and get it,’ Lizzie says to none of us in particular.
From outside our door, the horn calls us again.
I’ve been sleeping in my clothes cos I didn’t want to get undressed with everyone looking. I get to my feet and stack my mattress against the wall, the same as Sicely did. Over at the bucket I take a drink of water as she watches me crossly. ‘By rights I oughta be sleeping in the big house,’ she tells me, though I didn’t ask her nothing. ‘That’s where I’m living now, but I asked Mrs Allen if I can sleep here so as to be a help to my mother now that Milly’s gone. Winnie’s still got Mary to help at the house if things need doing in the night, so the missus said she don’t mind.’
I don’t know who Mary is. I didn’t see her yesterday.
‘Hush now, Sicely,’ Lizzie tells her bluntly. ‘Give the boy some peace first thing in the morning.’
Sicely takes an ashcake from the hearth and goes out the door without saying goodbye.
‘Get up, Gil,’ Lizzie says, then raises her voice. ‘Get up before I come over there and get you up myself.’
I feel awkward sitting at the table not knowing what to do.
‘Take a cake,’ Lizzie tells me, and I do. It’s warm in my fingers. ‘Now go on out to the fire pit and wait with the others.’ She points me to the door.
There are men waiting in front of the cabins, shadowy figures standing out against the half-light dawn, their faces outlined by the small glow from the rekindled fire. Some of ’em hold steaming cups. I recognize Connie and he nods to me so I go and stand with him. He’s with two other men, Antoinne and Isaac. He says all of ’em share a cabin.
The fella called Antoinne puts a hand around my shoulder. ‘Hey, Connie, this the boy you told me ’bout? You should’ve let him run away. There ain’t nothing for him here.’ He winks at me. ‘Did you want to join up, boy? Is that what it is? Do you want to fight the good fight for freedom?’
Connie shoves Antoinne away from me. ‘Don’t put fool ideas in the boy’s head.’ He puts his own arm around my shoulder. ‘Don’t listen to him, Friday. Everyone knows that the clever man is staying put right now. He’s waiting for freedom to come to him. You know what I’m saying?’
I shake my head cos I don’t know what he’s talking about, and he leans in closer and lowers his voice. ‘I’m saying that the Yankees are sailing up the big ol’ river as we speak, and it won’t be long now before those soldiers are here.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I go to market. I talk to people.’ He taps the side of his nose. ‘There ain’t no reason to go nowhere right now. Do you hear me? You stay right here and things’ll work out just fine.’
‘But I don’t have a choice.’
‘Everyone’s got a choice, and I’m telling you that you won’t get away. You’ll just run into a whole load of trouble and you won’t be no good to anyone after that.’
I think about that for a moment. I can’t bear the thought of Joshua being on his own, but like Connie says, I ain’t no good to him dead.
‘How many boats they got coming?’
Connie wipes a hand across his face to clear his nose. ‘Oh, they got lots of boats. Big ones, little ones. They got ’em full of guns and full of men and they’re coming up the river. Just you wait and see.’
I don’t know what to do or whom to trust, and that makes the world feel heavy on my shoulders. ‘Connie, will you tell me when it’s time to go?’
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘I’ll tell you.’
‘You won’t forget, will you?’
He swigs the last of his coffee. ‘I doubt it. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to think about.’
We move off as a group, heading towards the shimmering fields that stretch away to our left, all lit up by the first rays of the sun. Ahead of me there’s nothing but cotton and I tap Connie’s arm and nod at the fields. ‘It looks pretty, don’t you think? Looks like the world’s all full of rabbits.’
But Connie shakes his head. ‘I don’t see nothing but another day of work.’
Soon as he says that, I can’t see the rabbits either.
We ain’t the first to arrive in the field but we ain’t the last. I reckon there’s about twenty of us in total. Connie takes me over to where Hubbard sits on a piebald mare, waiting for us to begin. There’s a wagon beside him with three empty baskets and they’re ’bout as tall as I am and twice as wide.
‘You want the boy to work with me?’ asks Connie.
Hubbard looks us over. ‘He might as well. Show him how he should weed the ground as well as pick the cotton. Mrs Allen says she’s gonna mix his duties. She wants him here in the mornings and helping around the house in the afternoons, so be sure to send him along there for lunch.’
Connie says he’ll show me what to do. He leads me back to the line that has formed at the edge of the field, where everyone has a white cotton sack slung from their shoulders that hangs down behind their back. Connie finds one of ’em for me. ‘You ever done this before?’ I shake my head. ‘Well, don’t worry. It ain’t difficult.’
At the first row of bushes, he holds a rabbit’s tail. ‘See this here? It’s called the boll.’ His fingers pinch at the fluffy white ball and he puts it in my hand so I can get a feel for the thing, ‘You see what’s left behind when I pick it? That’s called the burr, and you got to leave that where it is. You start picking the both of ’em together and Hubbard’ll be picking on you.’
Connie’s fingers are already working like a busy spider, picking the bolls and holding ’em in his palm till he’s got a fistful that he throws over his shoulder into the sack. ‘Go on now. Give it a go.’ I start to pick at the cotton and Connie nods in encouragement. ‘That’s right. That’s good. Now try to speed up a little. You gotta keep up with the line.’
There sure seems a lot to do, cos the field is fit to bursting with bushes. They’re planted so close together that if you’re not careful the one behind will scratch the skin from your back when you bend down low to pick the one in front. I move with the line across the field and I can only just keep up. It ain’t long before my back aches, but I get to do some talking while I work and that makes it easier. I learn that Antoinne, Connie and Isaac are the men Mr Allen hired in before he left for the war. They’re young and fit and they tell me they can pick twice as much as the rest of us put together. Only they don’t. They just talk about it. I reckon they pick about the same as everyone else, and no one picks more than a boy called George. He’s about a year older than me and this is his first harvest. He’s so desperate to prove himself that he works like some sort of lunatic and the boys keep telling him to ‘slow down son, slow down’, only he don’t, not until his old man, Albert, clips his ear and tells him how he’s making everyone else look bad, and that if Hubbard ain’t telling him to work harder, then he shouldn’t be doing it of his own accord. ‘That’s the way to an early grave, son.’ That’s what Albert says. ‘There’s plenty more years for picking. You don’t want to use yourself up before your time, boy.’
I ain’t got the problem of going too fast. Connie tells me to go the whole way down the bush, leaving the ones that are still closed. If I do it properly, I can only just keep up, so sometimes I skimp on it, always looking to make sure Hubbard ain’t close enough to see what I’m doing. When my bag’s full, I drag it back to the edge of the field and tip the cotton into the tall wicker baskets right next to Hubbard. He sits on his horse with his whip in his belt, watching us work and making sure it all runs smoothly.
The early shift goes quickly, but once those first baskets are full, we lose Henry, Levi and Antoinne. They go with Hubbard to the barn to put the cotton through the gin. That next shift feels a lot slower without ’em, and I swear those new baskets are bigger than the ones before.
I work next to Lizzie for a little while. She don’t say nothing to me ’cept when I prick my finger on a bush. Then she stops me from picking the bolls, tells me to put my finger in my mouth and suck it till the blood stops. ‘If Hubbard finds blood on the cotton,’ she tells me, ‘there’ll be hell to pay.’ I can’t decide whether she’s helping me or scolding me and I still ain’t sure she’s forgiven me like I have her.
When we break for lunch, I get sent off to the house and I get to eat.
I leave the field hungry and arrive at the kitchen even hungrier and yet all I get is a single bowl of soup. That’s all. And Winnie won’t let me eat it till I’ve cleared the table upstairs and laid it out ready for their lunch. It don’t matter that I tell her I’ve been working in the field and that I’m ready to drop if I don’t get some food in me. She just looks at me with those deep-set eyes, like she heard it all before.
; *
Days go by where I don’t do nothing but work and sleep. There ain’t much time here to call my own, ’cept for after sundown. Most evenings I sit out by the fire or go and call on Connie for the hour I get to myself before sleep. They don’t seem to mind, and it means I don’t have to sit with Lizzie’s unhappiness and the hostility I get from Sicely.
I thought she might improve with time, but a week after my arrival the two of us are in the dining room preparing lunch and she tuts when she sees how I laid out the table, then makes a point of showing me what I did wrong.
Mrs Allen comes into the room. She asks me to fetch Gerald from the nursery and I take to the staircase, my bare feet padding up the carpet runner till I reach the top and follow the cries of baby Virginia along the landing. At the nursery door, I knock and go in. Gerald is standing by the window with a book in his hand, staring out across the front lawn.
‘Excuse me, Master Gerald, but Mrs Allen has asked for you to come for lunch.’
From the corner of my eye I see the bare breast of Harriet as she feeds Mrs Allen’s baby and it makes me all confused, and my heart jumps into my mouth at the sight of Harriet naked and I know that I couldn’t speak, not if someone were to ask me something. Harriet sure is black, just like Connie said. She’s holding baby Virginia in her arms, already moving her into position to suckle at the breast and adjusting the cloth that covers her modesty, though not from me, cos I see her big black nipple as she brings the screaming child to her chest and I hear the baby stop its noise and drink her in, all greedy, its fair little cheek pressed up against the mound of Harriet’s blackness.
‘Come on,’ says Gerald, tugging at the sleeve of my shirt.
I follow him from the room, swallowing hard and closing the door behind us. He waits for me to walk beside him. ‘That’s my little sister with Harriet. She ain’t much fun to have around. She’s too small. I was hoping for a brother instead of a sister. You got a brother back where you come from?’
