Slave (The Shame & Glory Saga) Page 14

  “Goddamn, boy,” said the overseer, kneeling at the peddler’s side. “He gotta go into town for trial. You come close to killin’ him, you know that?”

  Jud said nothing.

  The overseer looked up. “Whut got into you, boy? You acted like a wild . . . Whut’s wrong with you, nigger?”

  “Nothin’,” Jud said abruptly. He walked over to help Chaskey.

  AFTER THE SPRING RAINS had gone, and when the first tiny buds had appeared on the trees, Samuel rose from bed one morning and politely asked one of the house servants to help him dress to go outdoors. He wandered awhile, hesitantly, like a child in a strange place, through the slave quarters. The blacks were astonished by his pallor, by the way his compact body had grown flaccid and soft, and by the uncomprehending placidity in his eyes. They greeted him unsurely.

  Samuel nodded at them, and smiled.

  Later he left the quarters and walked over the grounds in front of the Great House, sitting down at last on a marble bench set in an arbor whose vines were still bare and therefore did not obscure his vision. He sat quite still, with his hands folded in his lap. He looked up at the portico, the tall pillars, and the gleaming white height of the Great House. And in his mind the sky around him darkened; it became night, and the house was illuminated by the moon. A muscle fluttered in his cheek. His body began to sway, as it had swayed with the motion of the horse the night he had galloped back to Olympus from the party celebrating Breckinridge’s nomination. He left the public road, spurring his mount beneath the arch and through the stand of oaks; then he left the trees, the rolling lawn and the gardens and the ponds and the arbors, and the huge house itself with its darkened windows exploded in his vision. Without realizing it, he tightened his grip on the reins, slowing the horse somewhat. The night was quiet. Nothing moved. And as he drew nearer the house, it seemed as if the entire scene were a fantasy, some sort of lifeless shadow of a reality long ago destroyed. Fear rose within him, and he forced his horse down into a slow trot. It was not real; it was a facade, a painted canvas beyond which lurked something terrifying. He laughed brittlely and shook his head. Fool, you’re overtired, drunk maybe. Breckinridge. The campaign. It is real. It is. Real? Breckinridge? The last few months? What did all that have to do with him? Him, Samuel Ackerly. What did it mean to him? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. What concerned him was here. Olympus. This was where he was, where he belonged. But look. Look. There was nothing there. It was illusory, all of it. It was gone! What he saw did not really exist; it was only some sort of horrible trap that had been set for him. Everything he touched would crumble to dust. He would be devoured. The horse had now slowed to a walk. He wanted to stop it, but could not. He wanted to turn and flee. But whatever it was that was crouching before him, it was drawing him closer . . . closer. . . . It was irresistible . . . inevitable. . . . There was no escape! . . . Everything was disintegrating around him . . . everything. . . .

  In the arbor, Samuel gave a hoarse little cry. He pulled his arms into his sides and hunched over as if in pain. He buried his face in his hands.

  There was . . . something . . . something. There, it was slipping away. Better. Better now.

  He raised his head. The sun felt warm upon his back. His face was tranquil, and he was smiling.

  NED PEARSALL SAT LOOSELY in the saddle of his standing mount and sucked thoughtfully on the stem of his pipe. He was a young man, with fair hair riffled by the breeze. Looking down the center avenue of the shanties, he said: “You surely have an effective system here, Richard. Everything neat and streamlined. Hardly any wastage that I can see.”

  “It took a bit of doing, but it runs pretty smoothly now.”

  To their right, in front of the large shanty in which Prima watched over the sucklers and young striplings, a baby began to bawl. It was late afternoon and several wenches were visiting their offspring.

  Richard’s pipe went out. He cupped his hand to shield the bowl from the wind as he relit it.

  “They have no right to occupy a fort in our harbor,” Ned said, picking up their conversation of minutes ago. His horse did a nervous sidestep. He patted its neck. “Easy, Hook, easy.”

  “Why, how the hell,” he continued, “do you think they’d take it if we sailed a gunboat up the Potomac and—hey!”

  Hook tossed his head and whickered. A fat naked baby was crawling toward the horse.

  “Whoa there, Hook. Stand easy.”

  The horse whinnied and stamped the ground. The baby looked up and howled in fright. At the sound the horse reared, stood on its hind legs, and pawed the air.

  “Easy, damn you, easy!” Ned swatted the animal’s ears and tried to wrench its head to the side.

  The baby screamed. Hook’s flailing hooves plunged down. Ned leaped from the saddle.

  “Oh, hell!” He grabbed the reins and lashed Hook across the face. “Damn spooky horse!”

  “Xerxes!”

  Delia ran from Prima’s side, scooped up her battered baby and clasped it to her breast. “Xerxes!”

  Ned passed Hook’s reins to a black and he reached out for the baby. “Here, let me see.”

  Delia hugged the baby tight to herself.

  “Don’t be hysterical. Give it here.” His hand touched a thick substance oozing from the cracked skull. “Oh,” he said. “Oh. I’m sorry. It’s . . . what can I say?”

  Delia’s eyes went wide. She stared at Xerxes, shaking her head from side to side.

  Richard dismounted and came to Ned’s side. Ned said, “Damn, I’m sorry, Richard.” He looked furiously at Hook. The horse snorted nervously. “I swear, I’m going to have to shoot that goddamn horse. Look, Richard, I feel awful about this. That was a buck, wasn’t it? Let me give you two hundred for him.”

  Delia held Xerxes at arm’s length from her, staring. She screamed. Richard watched her.

  “Richard?”

  “What?”

  “About the buck, I want to give you two hundred for him. Say, what’s wrong? There wasn’t anything special about him, was there?”

  “No. No. Nothing.”

  Beneath the agony of Delia’s face, Richard was fascinated by a strange and wild kind of beauty, something exquisitely revealed by her pain. He had found her desirable before, but never like this, with such terrible intensity.

  “There is something the matter,” Ned said.

  “What? Oh. No. No.”

  “Let’s go back to the house. You can draw up a bill of sale for two hundred.”

  “Bill of sale?”

  Ned frowned. “For the buck, the suckler.”

  “That’s ridiculous. It was hardly five months old, wouldn’t have brought a penny on the market.”

  They led their horses away.

  “Really,” Ned said, “I do wish you’d let me pay you for it. . . .”

  Richard was looking back over his shoulder at Delia.

  In the evening, as the leavings from supper were being cleared under the direction of Sadie, who headed the kitchen staff, Richard said: “Oh, Sadie. I want you to add Delia, that wench with the reddish skin, to your crew. You can start her tomorrow.”

  “She ain’t no house nigger,” Sadie said scornfully. “She nothin’ but a dirty field nigger. She doan belong here.”

  “Well, bring her here anyway,” Richard said. “And don’t get huffy about it.”

  Amanda stiffened at Delia’s name. “That’s all, Sadie. You can go now.” She waited a moment, then said, “I don’t think this is a good idea, Richard, bringing that wench into the house.”

  She dabbed at her lips with a napkin, waiting.

  He sat back and lighted his pipe.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Well, what?”

  “I just told you,” she said coolly, “that I don’t like bringing Delia into the house. She’s a contrary nigger. She’s caused nothing but trouble in the past.”

  “Uh-hm.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Do?” Richard
took the pipe from his mouth and smiled. “Mother, now that I’m master of Olympus, I should exercise my own judgment, don’t you think?”

  JUD DID NOT LEARN of Xerxes’ death until he returned from the fields that evening. He felt a sense of loss; he had been growing fond of the baby.

  Delia wept bitterly and sat hunched in a corner. She would not let him come near her. His hands fumbled helplessly, and as he watched her struggle alone with her sorrow his anger grew.

  Finally, when her tears began to abate, he moved to her side. He put his arm lightly around her. She didn’t respond.

  “Delia. Delia girl,” he said into her hair.

  “He gone, Jud. He crushed dead.”

  “I know. An’ we both know he ain’t goin’ come back. But you still here, an’ I still here.”

  “Why he gone? Why it have to be him?”

  “There ain’t no reason. There no reason for nothin’. It jus’ is,” he said roughly. “It jus’ is.”

  “They kilt him!”

  “Yes. An’ he gone, Delia. You unnerstan’? Gone. But there goin’ be more. There goin’ be li’l sucklers twice as fat. They goin’ be your sucklers.” He tightened his grip around her. “We goin’ care for ‘em. We goin’ watch ovuh ‘em—on that mountain if’n you want. You want that, Delia?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes. All alone.” She turned her face up to his. “We goan have another suckler, Jud? Truly? An’ we goan ‘tect it ourse’ves?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh!” She buried her face against his chest and began to cry again.

  They fell asleep together, she nestled closely to him, his heavy arms clasping her.

  AFTER HER FIRST DAY in the kitchen of the Great House, Delia raged around the shanty.

  “Who that black Sadie bitch think she is? That uppity nigger ack like I a rag to wipe her feet on. An’ Mist’ess ‘Manda. She got meanness fo’ me. I see it in her eyes an’ hear it when she talk.” She flung a tin plate down from the shelf. “Hhhmph!”

  Jud turned a piece of firewood over in his hands, toying with it; he flexed and loosened his muscles against it.

  “Soon,” he said. “We goin’ to that mountain soon.”

  Delia looked at him, and apprehension crept into her eyes. “They . . . they won’t cotch us, will they?”

  “Maybe. I don’ know.”

  Delia looked down at the floor.

  “You ‘fraid?” Jud asked.

  She nodded.

  “You want t’ stay?”

  She gnawed on her lip a moment, and shook her head. She was silent awhile; then she said, “Whut they do if they cotch us?”

  Jud set down the wood. “We got to wait the right time. I s’pose’ to spen’ a few days movin’ roun’ Mista Richard’s othuh plantations, workin’ wood. Then we pass a few more days, an’ the firs’ dark night we run. Soon. ‘Fore plantin’ season.”

  Delia turned away from him.

  “Come here.”

  He took her hand as she approached and guided her down to the floor in front of him. She laid her head on his knee. He cupped her face with one hand and stroked her hair with the other.

  RICHARD MADE NO ATTEMPT to restrain his mother or Sadie. They both resented Delia’s presence in the house, and this resentment was expressed in savage verbal assaults upon the girl. And the more she was attacked, the haughtier and more aloof she grew. Richard held himself in check, not going near her, even though his impulse was to take her without further delay. He wanted her pride to climb to its highest summit.

  Then he would break her.

  Shortly before supper on the third day, Richard was brought springing to his feet in the sitting room by Amanda’s scream.

  “Richard!”

  He ran down the hall and through the dining room, and into the kitchen.

  Amanda was in the center of the room, next to a table on which rested platters of meat, a large steaming kettle, and a silver soup tureen. Her face was blanched, her small wide-set eyes were slitted, and she was trembling. Her cheek and dress were spattered with liquid.

  Delia stood across the room, her back against the wall, brandishing a heavy soup ladle like a club. Sadie and two other wenches cowered in the far corner.

  “What happened?”

  Amanda raised her arm, pointing. “Her! That devil-bitch you brought into the house. She attacked me! Threw hot soup at me. At me!”

  Richard was angry. The time was not right. He wasn’t ready yet.

  “Well, what did you do to her?” he demanded of Amanda.

  She whirled and slapped him, sputtering furiously, unable to speak.

  Richard recoiled, shocked back to reality. “Hector,” he bellowed. “Hector, get in here.”

  The liveried butler appeared. “Take her to the barn and hold her until I get there,” Richard said.”

  “Yes, suh.”

  Delia edged away as Hector approached, then bolted for the door. Hector grabbed her. She snarled and beat him about the head with the ladle. He knocked it from her hand. She kicked and clawed at him. He pinned her arms, then slung her small body over a hip and carried her out.

  “Bitch!” Delia screamed at Amanda. “Bitch!”

  “Richard,” Amanda said. “I want you to hurt her. Do you understand? Hurt her.”

  Richard took her arm and led her back into the dining room. “Yes, Mother,” he said.

  After supper he went to the barn. He had two blacks strip the girl naked and hold her down on a bench. Delia said nothing. Her face was unrepentant. Richard took up a long, thin, supple rod he’d cut from a peach tree. He swished it through the air to test its spring. At the sound, Delia’s buttocks tightened. Richard smiled. The moment was premature, but, he decided, by no means lost.

  The first blow struck the girl just above her knees. After that, Richard worked the rod slowly and methodically up the length of her body. When the swollen red welts marked her from knees to neck, he returned to her buttocks and concentrated on them. The girl was whimpering and the slaves holding her exerted all their strength to keep her from jerking out of their grasp. Her hips and loins pounded against the bench as she tried to escape the rod.

  She was crying out, and that was good, Richard thought, but there was no real subjugation in her voice, only an involuntary response to pain. Still, it was a beginning.

  He laid into her buttocks with a frenzy. He was panting. His mouth opened. His accuracy began to fail. Then suddenly he dropped the rod, twisted to the side, clutched his groin with both hands, and gave a long, low moan.

  When he straightened he said, “Have her washed down. That will be enough for now.”

  DELIA LAY FACE DOWN and unclothed atop the bed in her shanty. Jud had left early in the morning for Europa and had not yet returned; she was alone. Her skin was unbroken, but swollen and inflamed. She tried to force back the sobs, but they came anyway, twisting her on the bed in the darkness. She vacillated between them and snarling rage, clutching at the rough blanket and beating her small fists against the bed frame. Each time footsteps approached the shanty, she looked up hopefully, and began to edge herself painfully from the bed. But the footfalls were always those of someone passing by. At last a heavy tread did not veer off but came directly toward the door.

  “Jud,” Delia murmured. “Jud.” Her cheeks grew wet again.

  There was a knock on the door. Halfway off the bed, Delia stopped, suddenly afraid.

  “Who there?” she said.

  “Delia? It Chaskey.” The door swung open, and the big foreman stood silhouetted in the moonlight.

  “Whut you want, Chaskey?”

  “Mista Richard want you up at the house. I s’pose’ to bring you.”

  “Whut for?”

  “I doan know. You best put a frock on. Cain’t go like that.”

  “Chaskey? Whut he goan do?”

  “I . . .” He let the sentence die. “We gots to hurry,” he said gruffly. “Mista Richard doan like waitin’.”

  Chaskey led
her to the house and turned her over to a servant. Carrying a candle, the servant brought her up the back stairs, paused to look up and down the hall, and then hurried her to Richard’s room and knocked softly.

  “Come in.”

  The house black opened the door just wide enough to nudge Delia in, then hastily retired. Richard was standing at the foot of the bed, wearing a robe.

  “Good evening,” he said.

  Delia stared at the wall. She stood at her full height, shoulders thrown back and head held high.

  Richard locked the door and slipped the key into his pocket.

  “Are you ignoring me?” he asked pleasantly. “Come now, look at me. Oh my, but that’s a proud expression. Don’t you know that, as it is said, ‘Pride goeth before destruction’?”

  He loosened the belt to his robe. The garment swung open. He was naked and excited beneath it. His voice dropped to a whisper.

  “First,” he said, “first I want you to get on your belly . . . and crawl to me . . . and lick my feet.”

  JUD RETURNED SEVERAL HOURS after nightfall. The moon was high and there were lights in only a few of the shanties. At first he thought Delia was asleep. He moved quietly to the bed, so as not to wake her, and reached out to touch her. The bed was empty.

  “Delia?”

  He struck flint and steel and lit the lamp. He looked around. Nothing seemed amiss. He went to the neighboring shanty. A frightened girl, anxious to close the door on him, told him that she knew nothing. When he persisted, threatening to force his way in, she said, “Chaskey. Go see Chaskey. He tell you.”

  Jud strode to Chaskey’s shack and hammered on the door.

  “Where Delia at?” he demanded when Chaskey answered.

  The foreman looked down at his feet. Jud bunched his shirt in one hand and pulled him forward.

  “Where is she!”

  “Easy, Jud. I tell you.”

  Jud released him.

  Chaskey rubbed the back of his neck. “Jud . . . Jud, they was trouble. Delia, she throw somethin’ at Mist’ess ‘Manda.”

  Jud stepped back as if struck.