I did my best to look like I was dumb to the news of Johnny Kane. “What brings you, then?”
Doc Bates held up the drawstring pouch. “I’ve brought a ration of head powders for Gideon.”
“I’II tell my mama you’ve come to check on the master,” I said, stepping away toward the kitchen.
But with gentle firmness, the doctor fetched me back before I even had a chance to go. “Oblige me with a chat first, won’t you?” he said.
I looked at him sidelong. “Sir?”
“I guess Gideon has neglected to teach his servants the duties of cordiality.” That little smile hadn’t left the doctor’s lips.
“Cordiality, sir?”
The doctor came closer to me. He lowered his voice. “What’s your name?”
I cut my eyes toward the master’s study, wondering if Parnell could hear us having some “duties of cordiality.” Then I glanced to the stairs to see if Lowed was coming for his lesson. There was no sign of him.
“Rosco,” I said, near a whisper. “Rosco’s my name.”
“Rosco,” said the doctor. “You ever watch the stars at night, Rosco?”
I didn’t answer one way or the other. Ad I did was shrug. Doc Bates may have been an easy talker with a smile on his lips, but he was still a white man. Still an acquaintance of Parnell’s. Who knew where his cordiality was heading? I couldn’t help but wonder why the doctor was trying to draw me out. You can never tell with white folks.
Doc Bates set the pouch of head powders on the hall bench. He unfolded his newspaper and, with both hands, curled it into a thick, tight rod. “Wed,” he said, “if star-watching ever strikes you, you can use this.” He swung his rolled newspaper to the ceiling and peered through one end. “Not quite a telescope, but it will bring the North Star into brilliant isolation. Especially on a clear night,” he said.
Then Doc Bates did something that made me blink. He pressed the paper rod right to my chest. “I hear more and more young nigras are learning to read. If you’re one of them, this may interest you. If you don’t know letters, find someone who does—someone you trust.”
Doc Bates was speaking near to a whisper. He said, “This . . . this star-finder is best used at night and in out-of-the-way places.” Doc Bates was standing over me, looking clear into my face. I couldn’t hold his gaze, though. Its openness startled me. I didn’t know what-all to do. I quickly lowered my eyes.
The doctor rocked once on his heels. “I’ll take the head powders to Gideon myself. No need to cad on your mama. I know the way.”
Before Doc Bates disappeared into the gray shadows of the master’s study, he said, “Let me know if you ever need anything, Rosco. I’m a man of healing.”
I dared to look at Doc Bates then. Straight and long, I looked. There was something more than openness in his eyes. There was invitation. Doc Bates was encouraging me to action. Clem had been right. What he’d said about the doctor’s involvement with abolition had been true.
I went back to the anteroom by the scullery. I turned that paper open quick as I could. It wasn’t the Harper’s Weekly at all. It was called L’Union, a newspaper written by free coloreds in Louisiana.’ I didn’t even know there could ever be such a thing—a whole newspaper made by nigras, written by colored men!
The paper was dated December 6, 1862. It told of Abraham Lincoln’s draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. It urged coloreds to fight for freedom. It said:
Men of my blood! Shake off the contempt of your proud oppressors. Enough of shame and submission; the break is complete! Down with the craven behavior of bondage! Stand up under the noble flag of the Union and declare yourselves noble champions of the right. Defend your rights against the barbarous and imbecile spirit of slavery . . .
Like a blurred carriage on the horizon that suddenly comes into view, I now knew the true purpose of Doc Bates’s visit. Doc Bates was offering me his help to go North. And to think it! If I was to get free, I could read and write openly, maybe even in a newspaper.
With a firm grip, I curled the L’Union back to its roll. I looked through one end. I studied the ceiling coffers.
I now had the cad from L’Union poking at me: “Defend your rights against the barbarous and imbecile spirit of slavery. . .”
23
Summer
December 22, 1862
“KIT! KIT!”
There was no mistaking Missy Claire’s call. It flew out from her dressing chamber like a nilly goose flails up from her just-laid egg.
Mama and I were in the kitchen, preparing the master’s breakfast tray. “Quick,” Mama said, “set a tray with tea service and meet me in Missy Claire’s chamber.” Mama hurried to tend to Master Gideon, then to Missy Claire.
This was the day Missy Claire’s brother, Thomas Farnsworth, was set to come. Mama had woken me early and had insisted I leave the quarters with her at first light, way before Chief’s crow. I tried to remember what Mama had told me about Missy Claire: that I should be mindful of the hardships Missy Claire had suffered. Since this had never come easy to me, I figured I could at least make some pretty-looking tea for Missy Claire on the day she was expecting her brother. So I set a real fine tray, I did. Silver. Linens. China. Doilies. And a tea sock with Thea’s best mint leaves. As I made the tray, I tried to imagine how I would feel if Rosco was coming to visit me, after not seeing him for a whole long time. Maybe that’s what Mama meant by mindfulness—putting myself inside somebody else’s circumstances.
When I got to the dressing chamber, Mama was sitting at the vanity with Missy Claire, preparing her hair for dressing. Missy Claire was leaning in toward the looking glass that hung above the vanity. “I look absolutely ghoulish!” Missy Claire was saying. She handed Mama her ivory-handled brush. “Curl quickly,” she said. “My brother Thomas prides himself on his punctuality, and he’s scheduled to arrive this very morning, soon after the breakfast hour.”
Mama put the bristles to Missy Claire’s hair. She smoothed it and parted it and curled it. When she was through, I helped Mama dress Missy Claire. First, we dressed her in brown watered silk. But Missy Claire frowned at her reflection in the looking glass. She said the color brown left her face looking pale. So we undressed her all the way down to her satin slip, fitted her with a fresh petticoat, and dressed her back up again, this time in a flounced dress of emerald green. This brought an even darker frown to Missy Claire’s face. She insisted that the flounces accentuated her poorly. Mama tried to make Missy Claire come to reason. “The breakfast hour is close,” she said. “Your brother’s most likely near to town by now. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see you, whatever you be wearing, even if you was to greet him in a gunnysack.”
Missy Claire huffed. “A gunnysack! Oh, Kit, don’t taunt me with such foolery.”
Finally, Missy Claire settled on a simple dress of French blue dimity. To me, the dimity made her look palest of all, and it showed off her scrawny arms and her chicken neck. If it had been me, I would have chosen the emerald green. Even a chicken looks good in flounces.
Missy Claire studied herself in the vanity looking glass. “Summer, child, help me with my pearls. I want to wear them today, in honor of my brother’s arrival. The pearls belonged to our mother, Leona. The sight of them will surely please Thomas after his long journey.”
I’d only seen Missy’s pearls, had never been obliged to touch them. Even though Missy was telling me to help her, it seemed I needed some kind of special permission to lay my hands on her delicate jewelry. I looked to Mama.
“You heard what Missy Claire’s askin’,” she said, real low. “Go ‘head, now—git the pearls.” Mama nudged me.
I lifted the pearls from their velvet-lined box that sat on top of Missy Claire’s vanity table. They were heavier than I expected they’d be, but the weight of them was joy to me. My hands trembled as I fastened the clasp at Missy Claire’s nape. Those pearls were milky dots of beauty, even on a chicken neck.
Missy Claire stood quickly. She smo
othed her dress, patted her hair, and swept from the chamber. Mama looked to see that Missy Claire had fully left the room. Quietly she said, “If I ever see freedom in my lifetime, one of its greatest glories will be the power to choose—whether it’s a dress, or a ‘do, or a spoon to stir my tea.”
Mama was speaking more to the walls than to me. But still, I nodded once firmly. “I’d choose to wear pearls,” I said.
Mama followed Missy Claire in a flurry, taking the tea service with her. As she left, she told me to straighten Missy Claire’s bed linens and to fluff her pillows. That pleased me fine. Mama usually fixes Missy Claire’s bed—and fetches her jewelry—but today some kind of good luck was smiling down on me. I was getting to do both.
I made Missy Claire’s bed with the most special care ever. I tucked. I smoothed. I yanked and folded. Each sheet corner was tight as wax to a barrel.
I took comfort in daydreaming that someday I’d be able to sleep in a feather bed of fine linens. I arranged each pillow just as Missy Claire likes it. She liked to say her bed pillows should be positioned as if they were “a throne of clouds for the head of an angel.”
After the pillows, it was time for putting Missy Claire’s china-headed dollies onto the bed. There were three of them dollies. They sat, side by side, on the settee in the corner. I propped the first two on Missy Claire’s pillows.
The third dolly—I’d already named her Clove—was the prettiest of the three. She had molasses-colored hair and amber eyes. If she’d been a shade darker, she could have passed for nigra. When I lifted her from the settee, I couldn’t help but hold her for a time. Even though her head was china, there was something soft about her, too. I folded her in my arms. I rocked her gently. I told her about Walnut. I told her about Serendipity.
Then I carefully set her on the bolster that topped Missy Claire’s throne of clouds.
Soon as Mama gathered the remains of Gideon’s breakfast tray, Missy Claire’s brother arrived.
Thomas Farnsworth didn’t do much talking, but, oh, was he ever lookin’ things over. He was short and round-chested, with overgrown sideburns and possum eyes that watched every move we made. Missy Claire brought him right to the kitchen, where she sang praises over Mama’s cooking. The whole time, Mama refused to even look in Thomas Farnsworth’s direction. He was trespassing on her roost.
Missy Claire was blind to the whole thing. She was too busy telling Mama to serve tea cakes in the parlor, where she and Thomas would be spending the afternoon.
When Missy Claire and her brother left the kitchen, I saw Mama’s jaw go tight. She got the same hard look as when I’d first shown her my lesson book—scared for what might be.
The afternoon crawled slow as an inchworm, with Mama keeping to herself through most of it. She made a supper of boiled pheasant for Missy Claire and her brother, and she served them with the careful hand that’s expected for company. After supper she even rolled Thomas a twig of tobacco, and lit it so’s he could smoke it.
Thomas Farnsworth didn’t waste no time runnin’ things. After we cleared the supper dishes, Missy Claire called Mama, Thea, and me together. She told us her brother had rented us out to Penelope Bates for making food and serving guests at the Christmas cotillion.
After Missy Claire was gone, Thea put a finger to her cheek. She shook her head. “I had me a special holy service planned, and now I gots to be watching a bunch of white folks get merry. The coming of the Savior’s birth is meant for prayin’, not party-makin’. Too much vice on Christmas Eve calls up haints and opens the door to evil. This cotillion ain’t good. It ain’t good. I tells you.”
Mama didn’t speak on the cotillion at all. Me, I was feeling two ways at once about it. Some of me was glad for the cotillion. A night in Doc Bates’s warm parlor sure beat saying prayers with Thea in the drafty quarters, wishing with all my muster that Christmas would bring me a china-headed dolly.
But then there was a whole other piece of me that looked upon this cotillion—and Christmas—with sad eyes.
I never would have me a china-headed dolly, no matter how much wishing I did. And even though I’d been given the gift of learning letters, it was a gift I had to keep hidden. I couldn’t show it off under the lighted tree candles as if it were a shiny new hair clip.
The Hobbs Hollow Christmas Cotillion was a party for young’uns and grown-ups alike. Girls my very own age would be dressed in velvet and lace, and soft-soled bad slippers. They would dance with each other, and would let their mamas rest so’s their daddies could take them to the dance floor.
I would never dance with my daddy, and neither would my mama. (And surely Mama would have not a moment’s rest this night.)
I could never even speak my pa’s name, except when I was calling him “Master.”
And when it came time for the holiday toast, I would try to swallow back my misery while everybody white drank in the sweetness of Mama’s best-made eggnog.
24
Rosco
December 22, 1862
HE’S HERE. SECESH TO THE BONE. Thomas Farnsworth.
Me and Clem were at the smithing shack picking dean Dash’s hooves when we heard the bell. The holler bell, we called it, coming from the far fields. Only time that bell rang was when something couldn’t wait— a haycock on fire, or somebody’s child fallen into the well. Every slave on Parnell’s place knew that when the holler bell sounded, you had to stop whatever you were doing and get to the smokehouse at the tobacco field’s north end.
Lucky for Dash we were just about done picking. I turned Dash’s back hoof free from between my knees. Clem threw his hoof pick to the dirt. “We’ll take Dash to the stables on the way,” he said. I gave Dash’s hind quarters a slap. “Git, horse, the holler bell’s calling.”
The north end of the tobacco field stood on a slope of land, way past the toolshed. You could see the whole spread of the field from the stables. Dusk had started to sweep her cape across the sky. Up ahead in the distance, folks wove their way across Parnell’s property. The brittle ground crackled under our feet. We stepped full and fast to meet the holler bell’s clang.
Most everybody coming up on the smokehouse was breathing heavy, wondering ’bout the reason for the holler bell. Some of us were rubbing our hands to warm them from the cold.
At the smokehouse, Farnsworth was standing on a turned-over bucket, waiting for all of us to come inside. He stood among the hanging pork parts, which were stored in the smokehouse. Farnsworth looked like he belonged with those meats. He was just as pink as the rest of them.
As uppity as Missy Claire was, you’ll have thought her brother would look like a king. But Thomas Farnsworth was as sloppy as they come. A scalawag in britches. His hair needed combing. His face needed a shave. His clothes could have used a good mend.
It wasn’t until Clem and I got full into the smokehouse that I noticed it was only men in there, no women. No Mama. No Summer. No Thea. Once we had gathered—most all of Parnell’s men—the holler bell grew silent. A rustle of voices filled the small stone house. Then Farnsworth spoke, and everybody got quiet.
“Listen good now,” he said, “I’m going to tell you about the Farnsworth way.”
Now I could see the resemblance between Missy Claire and her brother. It was in their way of talking. They both dragged their words when they spoke, like what they said was being pulled out slow from their way-back teeth.
“Look around you. There are no womenfolk here because I sent them all back to the quarters,” he said. “What I got to say is for you only, because the Farnsworth way is the way of he-folk.”
Even in the dim lantern light, I could see Clem’s chest heaving. Me, I was waiting and watching and listening close.
“Gideon Parnell ran a profitable plantation. But my brother-in-law hasn’t always been known for his ability to keep his slaves in line. I’m the one who first showed Gideon the proper way to lash a nigra, though I hear Gideon’s slow to have his slaves meet the whip.”
Farnswor
th was talkin’ real proud about himself, like he’d invented something. “I’m a longtime believer in the bullwhip, especially for breaking bucks like some of you,” he said. “That’s the Farnsworth way. Any buck who gives me even a speck of trouble can expect the leather from me.” Farnsworth brought a whip out from behind his back. Biggest bullwhip I ever saw. Big as a boat rigging.
Clem flinched. He slowly backed away toward the smokehouse door. Something was rising up in Clem. He was losing his good sense.
“I don’t believe in whipping womenfolk,” Farnsworth said. “I got my own way of dealing with them. Besides, it’s bucks who give me the most trouble.”
It was then that Farnsworth saw Clem backing up. He was looking right at Clem, and talking at him, too. “And there’s always one buck—one at every plantation—who can’t help but volunteer for a beating.” Farnsworth stepped down from his bucket. He pushed past the rest of us to get to Clem. He snatched Clem by the collar. “I think I got me a volunteer right here,” he said, his words dragging slow.
Now my chest was heaving. I heard myself praying silently to Thea’s Almighty. I was scared for Clem. Scared Farnsworth would beat him to sawdust.
“Where you going, boy?” Farnsworth wanted to know. “Nobody—especially no darkie—backs out on me when I’m speaking.”
Farnsworth let his whip uncoil. He still had Clem by the collar. “You see, men, this here is a buck who’s begging to be whipped.”
Farnsworth leaned in close to Clem. “Take your shirt off, boy.”
Clem did what Farnsworth said. Did it without blinking. Peeled his shirt off his shoulders and let it drop.
A few of us raised our lanterns toward Clem. Even in the dusk light, you could see Clem’s back real good. You could see where Parnell’s overseer had beat him before.
Clem’s back was a spider web of whipping scars. Natty rinds of flesh. An ugly memory sewn deep into his skin.
Farnsworth slowly lowered the very tip of his whip and quietly traced Clem’s scars with it. Same way a finger traces a map drawn into soft dirt. Farnsworth was teasing Clem with that whip. Frightening him with the torment of uncertainty.
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