by Dave Mckay
And when it was all done me and the youngest -- Joanna -- had a meal in the kitchen off of the leavings, while the others was helping the slaves clean up the things. Joanna she got to questioning me about England, and I think the ice was getting mighty thin at times.
She says: “Did you ever see the king?”
“Who? William Fourth? Well, I’ll say I have -- he goes to our church.” I knowed he was dead years ago, but I never let on.
So when I says he goes to our church, she says: “What -- all the time?”
“Yes -- all the time. His bench is right over opposite ours -- on t’other side of where the preacher stands.”
“I thought he lived in London?”
“Well, he does. Where would he live?”
“But I thought you lived in Sheffield?” I see I was in a corner. I let on to have a chicken bone in my throat, so as to get time to think how to get out of it.
Then I says: “I mean he goes to our church all the time when he’s in Sheffield. That’s only in the summer.
Next, she says: “Do you go to church, too?”
“Yes -- all the time.”
“Where do you sit?”
“Why, on our bench.”
“Whose bench?”
“Why, ours -- your Uncle Harvey’s.”
“His? What does he want with a bench?”
“Wants it to sit in. What did you think he wanted with it?”
“Why, I thought he’d be up in the front preaching.”
Trapped again. I had forgotten he was a preacher. I see I was in a corner again, so I played another chicken bone and got another think.
Then I says: “Blame it, do you think there ain’t but one preacher to a church?”
“Why, what do they want with more?”
“What! -- to preach before a king? I never did see such a girl as you. They don’t have no less than seventeen.”
“Seventeen! My land! Why, I wouldn’t sit out such a string as that, not if I never got to heaven. It must take ‘em a week.”
“No, they don’t all preach the same day -- only one of ‘em.”
“Well, then, what does the others do?”
“Oh, nothing much. Lie around, pass the plate -- and one thing or another. But mostly they don’t do nothing.”
“Well, then, what are they for?”
“Why, they’re for looks. Don’t you know nothing?”
“I don’t want to know such foolishness as that. How is servants seen in England? Are they nicer to ‘em than we are to our slaves?”
“No! A servant ain’t nobody there. They look on ‘em worse than dogs.”
“Don’t they give ‘em holidays for special days?”
“Oh, just listen! A body could tell you ain’t never been to England by that. Why, Joanna, they never see a holiday from year’s end to year’s end; never go to the circus, or the theatre, or servant shows, or nowhere.”
“Not to church?”
“Not to church.”
“But you always went to church.”
Well, I was gone again. I had forgotten I was the old man’s servant. But next minute I flew in saying a man’s servant was different from a family servant and had to go to church if he wanted to or not, and sit with his man, because of it being the law. But I didn’t do it well enough, because when I got done I seen she weren’t happy.
She says: “Honest Indian, now, ain’t you been telling me lies?”
“Honest Indian,” says I.
“None of it at all?”
“None of it at all. Not a lie in it,” says I. “Put your hand on this book and say it.”
I see it weren’t nothing but a dictionary, so I put my hand on it and said it. So then she looked a little happier, and says: “Well, then, I’ll believe some of it; but I hope I’m never stupid enough to believe it all.”
“What is it you won’t believe, Jo?” says Mary Jane, stepping in with Susan behind her. “It ain’t right and it ain't kind for you to talk so to him, and him a stranger and so far from his people. How would you like to be talked to like that?”
“That’s always your way, Jane -- always sailing in to help someone before they’re even hurt. I ain’t done nothing to him. He’s told some big ones, I think, and I said I wouldn’t believe it all; and that’s every last piece of what I did say. I think he can take a little thing like that, can’t he?”
“I don’t care if it was little or if it was big; he’s here in our house and a stranger, and it wasn’t good of you to say it. If you was in his place it would make you feel bad; and so you shouldn’t say a thing to another person that will make them feel bad.”
“Why, Jane, he said -- “
“It don’t make no difference what he said -- that ain’t the thing. The thing is for you to be kind to him, and not be saying things to make him remember he ain’t in his own country and with his own people.”
I says to myself, this is a girl that I’m letting that old snake rob of her money!
Then Susan she joined in; and if you’ll believe me, she did give Joanna word from the dead!
Says I to myself, and this is another one that I’m letting him rob of her money!
Then Mary Jane she had another go at it, and went in sweet and nice again -- which was her way; but when she got done there weren’t much of anything left of poor Joanna.
“All right, then,” says the two older girls; “you just ask him to forgive you.”
She done it, too; and she done it beautiful. She done it so beautiful it was good to hear; and I wished I could tell her a thousand lies, so she could do it again.
I says to myself, this is another one that I’m letting him rob of her money. And when she got through they all just put themselves out to make me feel at home and know I was with friends. I felt so bad and low down that I says to myself, I’m going to do it; I’ll get that money for them or die trying.
So then I left -- for bed, I said, meaning some time or another. When I got by myself I went to thinking the thing over. I says to myself, shall I go to that doctor, secretly, and tell on these snakes? No -- that won’t do. He might tell who told him; then the king and the duke would make it warm for me. Shall I go, secretly, and tell Mary Jane? No -- I best not do that. Her face would tell them, sure. They’ve got the money, and they’d run off and get away with it. If she was to bring in help I’d get mixed up in the business before it was done with, I judged. No; there weren’t no good way but one. I got to rob that money, one way or another; and I got to rob it some way that they won’t think that I done it. They’ve got a good thing here, and they ain’t a-going to leave until they’ve played this family and this town for all they’re worth, so I’ve time to find a way. I’ll rob it and hide it; and by and by, when I’m away down the river, I’ll write a letter and tell Mary Jane where it’s hiding. But I better do it tonight if I can, because the doctor maybe hasn’t let up as much as he lets on he has; he might scare them out of here yet.
So, thinks I, I’ll go and look through their rooms. They were up the steps, where it was dark. I found the duke’s room, and started to feel around it with my hands; but I remembered it wouldn’t be much like the king to let anyone else take care of that money but himself; so then I went to his room and started to feel around there. But I see I couldn’t do nothing without a candle, and it was too dangerous to light one. So I judged I’d need to do the other thing -- wait for them and listen in secretly. About that time I hears their steps coming, and was going to hide under the bed; I reached for it, but it weren’t where I thought it would be; but I touched the curtain that covered Mary Jane’s dresses, so I jumped in behind that and crowded in between the dresses, and stood there perfectly still.
They come in and shut the door; and the first thing the duke done was to get down and look under the bed to see if anyone was there. I was glad I hadn’t found the bed when I wanted it. Yet, you know, it’s kind of where anyone goes when they want to hide.
They sat down then, and th
e king says: “Well, what is it? And cut it short, because it’s better for us to be down there a-crying than up here giving ‘em time to talk us over.”
“Well, this is it, King. I ain’t easy; I ain’t comfortable. That doctor worries me. I wanted to know your plans, because I’ve got one, and I think it’s a good one.”
“What is it, duke?”
“That we better get out of this before morning, and hurry down the river with what we’ve got. Seeing we got it so easy -- given back to us, thrown at our heads, as you may say, when we were thinking to rob it back. I’m for ending it and heading out.”
That made me feel pretty bad. About an hour or two ago it would a been a little different, but now it made me feel bad and sad.
The king cuts in and says: “What! And not sell the other things? Walk off and leave eight or nine thousand dollars’ worth of land and furniture lying around just waiting to be pulled in? -- and all good, easy to sell things, too.”
The duke he complained; said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn’t want to go no deeper -- didn’t want to rob the girls of everything they had.
“Why, how you talk!” says the king. “We won’t rob ‘em of nothing at all but just this money. The people that buys the place is the ones who will be hurting; because as soon as it’s found out that we didn’t own it -- which won’t be long after we’ve left -- the land won’t be theirs, and it’ll all go back to the girls. They’ll get their house back again, and that’s enough for them; they’re young and healthy, and can easily get jobs. They ain’t a-going to hurt. Why, just think -- there’s thousands and thousands that ain’t near as well off. Bless you, they ain’t got nothing to complain of.”
Well, the king he talked him blind; so at last he give in, and said all right, but said he still believed it was foolishness to stay with that doctor hanging over them. But the king says: “Curse the doctor! What do we care for him? Ain’t we got all the stupid people in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough part of any town?”
So they got ready to go down again.
The duke says: “I don’t think we put that money in a good place.”
That encouraged me. I’d started to think I weren’t going to get a sign of no kind to help me. The king says: “Why?”
“Because Mary Jane’ll be feeling very sad; and first thing you know the servant that does up the rooms will be told to box these clothes up and put ‘em away; and do you think a slave can run across money and not borrow some of it?”
“Your head’s done it right again, duke,” says the king; and he comes a-reaching under the curtain two or three foot from where I was. I stayed tight to the wall and kept very still, apart from shaking a little; and I was thinking about what they would say to me if they caught me; and I tried to think what I should do if they did catch me. But the king he got the bag before I could think more than about half a thought, and he never knew I was around. They took and pushed the bag through a hole in the mattress that was under the feather bed, and forced it a foot or two up into the dried grass and said it was all right now, because a servant only makes up the feather bed, and don’t ever turn over the mattress only about two times a year, and so it weren’t in no danger of getting robbed now.
But I knowed better. I had it out of there before they was half-way down the steps.
I felt my way along up to my room, to hide it there until I could find a way to do it better. I judged I better hide it outside the house somewhere, because if they missed it they would give the house a good going over: I knowed that very well. Then I turned in, with my clothes all on; but I couldn’t a gone to sleep if I’d a wanted to, I was in such a hurry to get through with the business. By and by I heard the king and the duke come up; so I got off my mattress and moved to the top of the ladder to my room, and waited to see if anything was going to happen down there. But nothing did.
So I held on until all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn’t started yet; and then I went quietly down the ladder.
Chapter 27
I went up to their doors and listened; they was snoring. So I walked along on my toes, and got down the steps all right.
There weren’t a sound anywhere.
I looked through an opening of the door to where the men that was watching the body was, and seen that they was all asleep on their chairs. In another room where the body itself was, there was a candle. The door was open; but I seen there weren’t nobody in there but the body of old Peter; so I went on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasn’t there. Just then I heard someone coming down the steps, back behind me. I run in the other room and took a fast look around, and the only place I seen to hide the bag was in the box with the body. The cover was open only about a foot, showing the dead man’s face down in there, with a wet cloth over it. I pushed the money-bag in under the cover, just down below where his hands was crossed, which made me feel strange, they was so cold, and then I run back across the room and in behind the door.
The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the box, very soft, and got down on her knees in front of it and looked in; then she put up a cloth to her eyes, and I see she started to cry. Her back was to me and I couldn’t hear her, but I was able to move quietly out the door behind her.
I went up to bed, feeling a little blue, because things had played out that way after I had took so much trouble and faced so much danger doing it. If it could stay where it was, all right; because when we got down the river a hundred miles or two I could write back to Mary Jane, and she could dig him up and get it; but that ain’t what’s going to happen; the thing that’s going to happen is, the money will be found when they come to screw on the cover. Then the king will get it again, and it’ll be a long day before he gives anyone another go at taking it. I wanted to go down and get it out, but it was too dangerous. Every minute it was getting earlier, and pretty soon them watchers would start to wake up, and I might get caught -- with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn’t told me to take. I don’t wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, I says to myself.
When I got down there in the morning the room with the body was shut up, and the watchers was gone. There weren’t nobody around but the family and the widow Bartley and our lot. I watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but I couldn’t tell.
Toward the middle of the day the funeral man come with his helper, and they put the box in the middle of the room on two chairs, and then put all our chairs in lines, and borrowed more from the neighbours until all the rooms was full. I see the cover for the box was the way it was before, but I wasn’t brave enough to go and look in under it, with people around.
Then the people started to come in, and those two dogs and the girls took chairs in the front at the head of the body, and for a half an hour the people walked around slow, in a line, and looked down at the dead man’s face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very quiet and serious, only the girls and the king and the duke holding cloths to their eyes and keeping their heads forward, and crying softly. There weren’t no other sound but the rubbing of feet on the floor and blowing noses -- because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places apart from church.
When the place was as full as it could be the funeral man he moved around in his black gloves with his soft ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all right and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat. He never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up doors to side rooms, and done it all with movements of his head, and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the smoothest, softest, quietest man I ever seen; and there weren’t no more smile to him than there is to a piece of meat.
They had borrowed a little piano like instrument that used wind to work -- a sick one; and when everything was ready a young woman sat down and worked it, and it was pretty loud and sickly, and everybody joined in singing, and Peter was t
he only one that had a good thing, the way I saw it. Then the Reverend Hobson opened up, slow and serious, and started to talk; and straight off the most awful noise broke out in the basement; it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful noise, and he kept it up right along; the preacher he had to stand there, over the body, and wait -- you couldn’t hear yourself think. It was right down embarrassing for everyone, and nobody didn’t seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that long-legged funeral man make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, “Don’t you worry -- just trust me.” Then he leaned down and started to move along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people’s heads. He moved along, with the noise getting worse and worse all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he goes down the steps to the basement. Then in about two seconds we heard a loud hit, and the dog he finished up with a most surprised cry or two, and then everything was dead quiet, and the preacher started his serious talk where he left off.
In a minute or two here comes this funeral man’s back and shoulders moving along the wall again; and so he went around three sides of the room, and then stood up, and half covered his mouth with his hands, and leaned his neck out toward the preacher, over the people’s heads, and says, in a kind of rough whisper, “He had a rat!”
