American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  “Now, now, children,” chided Lady Daphne. “We don’t want to argue around the table.”

  “Mother, when are you going to stop calling us children!” said Veronica. “Cameron’s the only one who’s still a child.”

  “I am not. I’m fifteen.”

  “Exactly,” said Veronica with snooty superiority, “—a child.”

  “Quiet down, all of you,” said the master of the household. He had been stewing over his daughter’s little game and now intended to get to the bottom of it. “Veronica—I want to know what put an idea into your head like teaching the slaves to better themselves.”

  “Nothing, Daddy.”

  “Something put it there. I’ve never heard you use a phrase like help them mature and develop as people in your life. I don’t even know what it means. It’s not you, Veronica. I want to know where you picked up such a notion.”

  “Just from Seth, Daddy.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “Where did he get it?”

  “His mother is teaching their coloreds to read.”

  “I thought as much—has that whole family gone mad! Is the woman as big an imbecile as her husband? I’ve a good mind to bring charges against her. The law would be on my side. What a thing that would be,” he added with a laugh, “—Carolyn Davidson in jail!”

  Lady Daphne glanced at her husband, shocked to hear such words of ridicule toward a woman come out of his mouth. She wisely kept her own mouth shut.

  “Veronica,” said Beaumont, leaving the delicious thought for the moment, “when are you going to give up this childish infatuation with that Davidson boy?”

  “He’s not a boy, Daddy. He’s older than I am.”

  “Not much. And however old he is, he’s wool brained. No good can come of it. It sounds like he is as big a fool as his father.”

  “Well, I like him,” retorted Veronica playfully. “I might even be in love with him. I think he will change.”

  “Why would he?”

  “Because he loves me too and would do anything for me? I’ll make him change.”

  “Look, Veronica,” said Beaumont in a stern tone, “I want you to stay away from him. No good can come of it. We’ve had nothing but trouble with our slaves since the Greenwood niggers became so uppity and are going spreading their notions around everywhere. Nothing but trouble, I tell you, and I’m sick of the whole thing! It’s time some people around here started listening when they’re spoken to and doing as they’re told!”

  Veronica took his bluster in stride, knowing that their father would do nothing to them. Only Cameron was still young enough to be intimidated by his father’s tirades, although given what Denton Beaumont was capable of, this hardly qualified as even a mild one. But it was sufficient to silence him if he had had any thought of saying anything further.

  Wyatt soon excused himself and went outside. He had been breaking a year-old mare whom he hoped to train to race one day. He had been out on the hills with his father’s men looking for Gibbons who had disappeared, and was now anxious to return to his mare. Veronica, too, neither humbled nor worried, also soon excused herself and went up to her room.

  “What are you so upset about, dear?” asked Beaumont’s wife when their eldest son and daughter were gone.

  “What do you mean?” he snapped.

  “You seem tense. There’s not really anything so wrong in her seeing Richmond and Carolyn’s boy… is there? Seth is a nice boy. He always treats me with courtesy.”

  “A fool can be courteous, Daphne. It means nothing. I don’t like him.”

  “There… you see. Something is bothering you. This isn’t like you.”

  He lifted his glass and took a long soothing swallow of after-dinner port, then let out a sigh. “One of our troublesome slaves has disappeared,” he said. “We’ve been out looking for him but can’t find him anywhere.”

  “You’ve no idea where he’s gone?”

  “He’s in no shape to go anywhere,” retorted Beaumont. The calming effect of the port had lasted about ten seconds. “He’s hiding out on the land somewhere. We’ll take the dogs out tomorrow. He won’t get far. Believe me, once we haul him back, there will be a lesson none of the others will soon forget.”

  Before he could say anything further, Leon Riggs walked in holding a coiled strand of rope. He nodded to Lady Daphne and Cameron, then turned to Beaumont.

  “This strong enough?” he said.

  Beaumont turned away from the table to face him, and took the rope and examined it briefly.

  “It ought to do fine,” he said. “And you remember the oak… the one we used before?”

  Leon nodded and left the house. Involuntarily Lady Daphne shuddered, glancing toward Cameron and hoping that he did not grasp what the brief conversation between his father and his man was about.

  “Don’t be too hard on them, dear,” said Lady Daphne, who had no idea that her husband had already beaten the missing slave to within an inch of his life. “Remember, you are running for office now. People have to think of you as a gentle man toward your slaves.”

  “Keep to your own affairs, Daphne!” he snapped. “No man ever succeeded growing tobacco and cotton who was gentle to his slaves. That’s why God put men to rule over both slaves and women, because women don’t have the stomach for what’s necessary.”

  Upon reflection, however, Beaumont had to admit that his wife was right. He’d have to take care of Gibbons at night. He wanted the slaves to know, as a lesson. But no sense stirring up the rest of his men. He and Riggs would take care of it themselves… tomorrow night… as soon as the dogs found the cur and they could drag him out of his hiding place and sit him high enough on a horse to slip the noose around his neck.

  He poured himself another half glass of port, drained it in a single swallow, then rose from the table and followed his assistant overseer outside.

  “Leon,” he said after him, “there’s still two or three hours of daylight left—let’s turn the dogs loose after him now. His trail will be too cold tomorrow.”

  “Don’t see much sense in it, Mr. Beaumont,” replied Riggs, who in truth was exhausted from the day’s search and did not relish another three hours trying to keep up with the hounds. Unlike several other of Beaumont’s men who were single and who lived at Oakbriar, he had a wife and son and lived in town. “We’ve already been every place close by he could have got to. He’ll have to move again tomorrow, and that’ll be the best chance the dogs have to pick up—”

  “Curse you, Riggs!” Beaumont exploded. “You’re as fainthearted as my wife. I gave you an order—if you can’t carry it out, just tell me and I’ll find someone who can.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Beaumont,” said Riggs. “I didn’t mean it like that. I only meant—”

  “I know what you meant, Riggs,” interrupted Beaumont. “Now go get the dogs and get back out there on the ridge.”

  Thirty-eight

  The visitor to appear in the middle of the night on Greenwood’s doorstep in early June had hoped to see the face of Moses answering his gentle but persistent knock.

  But Moses’s hearing, along with his gait, was not what it once was. Furthermore, he had been blessed with that gift not given to all during their advancing years, of being able to sleep soundly for eight or more hours every night. The visitor made his cautious approach to the Davidson plantation house somewhere between two and four in the morning, with such canny step, though impeded with a painful limp, that not even the dogs asleep at the side of the house awoke to give herald to his presence. All the while, Moses slumbered on dreamless and dead to the world in his room on the ground floor.

  Richmond Davidson had always been a light sleeper. Was it that his mind was too active, even at rest, or that his active physical constitution simply kept brain and body moving a little too rapidly to enter the full depths of sleep which others enjoyed? Regardless, the fact was that after dropping off quickly and thoroughly most evenings bet
ween nine and ten o’clock within moments of head hitting pillow, the master of Greenwood considered himself fortunate to obtain more than four or five hours of sleep before fitfulness began to intrude. Thence the remainder of the night passed tossing about and doing his best not to disturb the wife at his side, who could sleep as soundly as Moses. He usually patiently waited until an hour fit to be up should tediously draw near, though typically still long before daybreak.

  During these slow-moving predawn hours of semidozing wakefulness, every sound for a mile came to his ears—every low of sleepless cow, every drop of rain, every distant bark of nocturnal fox, every rustle of occasional breeze in the giant oak next to the house, every frog, every cricket, and, in winter, every crack of thunder far and near. Thus it was on a night so still that not a blade of grass or stalk of grain moved, that within seconds of the first creak of intruding step on the porch below, he was slippered and robed and creeping down the main staircase of the house with rifle in one hand and flickering candle in the other.

  As he tiptoed toward the door, again came a rapping of knuckles against it, not loud but obviously intended to rouse someone inside. Someone of ill intent would hardly thus announce his presence, or stand waiting in front of a door well known never to be locked. Davidson set his rifle aside, put his free hand to the latch, and slowly opened the door to the width of about a foot.

  The light from his candle fell on the most miserable-looking face he thought he had ever seen, a Negro man, his face perspiring and covered with dirt and grime. His clothes were torn and ragged and it was obvious from the splotches of what could only be dried blood that there were wounds on arms, legs, and shoulders. At the sight of a white face staring back at him from inside the house, looking fearsome as shadows from the candle danced about it, the man’s eyes grew wide with terror.

  For an instant, it looked like the black stranger would bolt. Doubtless he knew he wouldn’t get very far very fast in such a condition.

  “What do you want?” said Davidson somewhat apprehensively, for a visitor at this hour looking as this man did boded no good.

  “Ah wuz hopin’ ter see Moses, massa,” said the man in a trembling voice.

  “Are you a friend of his?”

  “No, massa. Ah neber laid eyes on da man in mah life. Ah jes’ knowed he libbed here wif y’all.”

  “What do you want with him? You are obviously running from something… what are you afraid of? What has happened to you?”

  “Mah massa dun whupped me good, massa. Ah dun run away, but now ah’s feared turrible ob what he’s gwine do ter me effen he fin’s me, spechully after ah dun hid out from him fo’ a day an’ a night.”

  “But where are you from and what—”

  He paused and lifted the candle a little closer to the man’s face.

  “Wait a minute,” said Davidson. “I recognize you, don’t I? Though faintly, because the only other time I saw you, you were unconscious. You’re from Oakbriar? You’re Mr. Beaumont’s slave?”

  “Yes, suh, massa.”

  “Has he been whipping you again, like before?”

  “Dat he has, massa.”

  “That’s why you ran away?”

  “Yes, suh, Massa Dab’son,” said the man, and once his tongue was loosened, the whole story was not long in coming out. “One ob da nigger boys,” he went on, “he herd massa talkin’ ’bout roustin’ me outta bed one night an’ takin’ me ter sum oak tree, an’ massa wuz sayin’ he cudn’t wait ter see me swingin’ in da breeze. An’ when ah herd dat, ah waited till hit wuz dark an’ den ah run, though ah cudn’t run much on account er da whuppin’, but ah snuck outta dere an’ ah limped ter da trees an den up into da hills. Ah went in an’ out ob da riber ter keep da dogs from sniffin’ me out, an’ ah hid up in one er dem caves up on der ridge by da peak where dey’re all feared ter go on account er da stories ob ghosts an’ bones an’ dem ol’ Injun legen’s dat’s nuffin but superstishun effen you ax’d me. Eben dose dogs cudn’t fin’ me dere, an’ den w’en ah figered hit wuz safe, ah cum down here on account er what ah dun herd ’bout you, massa, an’ dat you’s a kin’ly man ter yo’ slaves an’ from what dey tol’ me you did ter keep massa from killin’ me las’ time. An’ ah knowed dat a nigger man called Moses libbed in yo’ house as a man-slave like, wifout bein’a slave no mo’, an’ dat’s why ah cum ax’n fo’ him.”

  At last, he stopped for a breath. His short speech had given Richmond a great deal to think about, and presented him with a serious dilemma. The full ramifications of it, however, were not immediately apparent to him as he stood in the dark pondering what to do. What was clear was the fact that he had been unwittingly presented with a situation that, if he followed his conscience, would inevitably widen the gap between himself and his neighbor all the more.

  Yet what could he do but render aid? The man was obviously desperate. He had come seeking refuge. Richmond did not doubt for a moment that the man’s life was now in more imminent danger even than before his flight from Oakbriar. He had seen enough on the previous occasion to recognize that hanging a man would not lie outside the scope of what Denton might do if sufficiently roused. There had been evil stories through the years among the slaves about things that had happened at Oakbriar. He had not wanted to believe them. Now he began to wonder if there might be more truth to them than he had been willing to admit.

  He would consider what to do in more detail later. Right now this man needed help, and had come to his door seeking it.

  “Come in,” said Richmond, swinging the door the rest of the way back.

  The man hesitated, as if he had not heard correctly.

  “In ter da big house, massa?” he said, the huge whites of his eyes in the darkness revealing his astonishment.

  “Yes… come in. We don’t stand on ceremony here. We treat all men as God’s children. Are you hungry?”

  “Yes, massa… ah be par’ful hungry. Ah ain’t had nuffin t’ eat fo’ two days.”

  “Then let’s get you washed up and into a clean shirt and trousers—I’ll wake Moses and see what he can find for you while you’re washing up. Then we’ll get you something to eat and drink and find you a bed.”

  “Bless you, massa—dat be ’bout da kin’ est thing a man cud do fo’ a nigger man… thank you, massa. Ah’s neber fo’ git dis, no suh.”

  “What is your name?” asked Davidson.

  “Nate, suh,” answered the black man. “Nate Gibbons.”

  Around ten o’clock that morning, a caller came asking for Thomas.

  “Dere’s a young man ax’in ’bout Massa Thomas,” said Moses as Richmond, Carolyn, and Thomas sat at the breakfast table together. The elder two had eaten hours ago but were sitting at the table with their youngest son.

  “It’s Jeremy!” said Thomas, jumping up and running through the house to the door. Carolyn glanced toward her husband with a questioning glance.

  “Jeremy McClellan,” said Richmond, “William’s son.”

  Less than two minutes later Thomas came hurrying through the kitchen again, this time with a rifle under his arm. This time Carolyn’s expression was one of alarm.

  “Is it all right if I go with Jeremy?” he said. “His father promised to take us shooting. Don’t worry, Mother, only for rabbits,” he added, turning toward Carolyn.

  “That’s fine, son,” replied Richmond. “This will be the first time you’ve gone shooting without me. You remember everything I’ve taught you?”

  “Sure, Father.”

  “The gun’s not loaded?”

  “Not till we reach where we’re going.”

  “You’ve got shells?”

  “Here in my pocket.”

  “Good boy. All right, have fun. Greet Mr. McClellan for me.”

  “I will! Bye, Mother… bye, Father,” said Thomas, leaving the kitchen again. A few seconds later they heard the front door slam.

  Carolyn glanced at her husband. “It sounds like you and he had already talked about this,” she said. “Yo
u’re sure he’s all right with the gun, going off with Jeremy alone?”

  “I’ve taught him all I know about gun safety. There comes a time when we’ve got to let them test their wings. I think he’s ready. William and I spoke briefly at Oakbriar about him getting together with Thomas and Jeremy.”

  Further conversation was interrupted by Moses with a question, followed on its heels by the appearance of Mary and Nancy from the village to see Carolyn.

  Richmond had not planned to keep news of their midnight caller, who was now sleeping peacefully on a makeshift cot he and Moses had assembled in the cellar, from his youngest son. But a strange sense of relief swept over him the moment Thomas was gone. Somehow, he knew Thomas would not be pleased with what they had done. He was just glad remnants of the poor man’s smell—before he and Moses had managed to get him bathed and his wounds dressed—had not lingered in the house to give away the uninvited secret.

  What to do now was the question. He and Carolyn had hardly had a minute to themselves since the strange morning began several hours ago.

  About half an hour after Thomas’s departure, they walked out of the house onto the veranda together. Carolyn had a watering can in her hand and proceeded to water several potted geraniums and a hanging fern, then sat down beside her husband.

  “It would seem we have a situation on our hands,” she said.

  “Indeed it would!” rejoined her husband.

  “Did you adjure Moses and Maribel to silence with the other blacks, until we decide what is to be done?”

  “I did, although I doubt it was necessary. They both recognize what is at stake should word get out that we have one of Denton’s runaway slaves under our roof. It would likely go as badly for us as it would for that poor man down in the cellar.”

  “Not quite so bad,” said Carolyn. “He would be hanged—you would only be put in jail for harboring a runaway.”

  “Of course. I only meant that it is a serious matter. We must tread carefully. It is especially serious in that we know full well who the man’s owner is. That only adds to our guilt in the eyes of the law.”