Slave (The Shame & Glory Saga) Page 6

  He stripped away the poultice, tossing handfuls to the side, where they lay in a sodden mass.

  “Mmph. Looka’ that, Chet. They like to snaked him in half. Still wet. Dryin’ up round the edges, though. Goddamn! Pret’ near ruint his kidney.”

  The man poked in the right, lower section of Jud’s back. Nausea doubled Jud into a ball.

  When the men had left, Jud looked out through the long air vents near the ceiling at the stars. He didn’t think about anything, and he tried not to feel anything.

  THEY WERE AWAKENED BEFORE dawn by two sleepy-eyed slaves who brought them a breakfast of hot mush. The pain was not as bad as it had been the previous night. But Jud was weak, and so stiff he could barely move.

  Two oil-rag lamps were burning. The room was bare, with not a single piece of rough furniture. Embers were glowing in the stone fireplace. There were eleven slaves in the shanty including himself. Heavy iron bolts were sunk into the floor, and the slaves wore shackles around their ankles. Four feet of chain linked each of the shackles to one of the bolts. Jud, too, was chained.

  Shortly after they had finished breakfast, the two white men Jud had seen the night before entered.

  Again, the one called Chet carried a shotgun. The other one, gaunt, carried a bullwhip, a holstered pistol, and a large key ring. As each slave was freed, he rose and silently left the shanty.

  Jud and one other slave remained. “You, Homer,” the man with the keys said, “you work with Mista Atwood’s gang today.”

  “Yes, suh, Masta Collins.”

  It was the same rough voice Jud had heard when he’d been helped to drink.

  Homer left. Collins turned the key in Jud’s shackle. He glanced without real interest at Jud’s back, grunting to himself.

  “Pick up them dirty pans an’ come with me.”

  Jud gathered the pans slowly, wincing as he moved, and stifling little gasps. Collins brandished the whip.

  “Be spry! If’n you don’ work that soreness out, you stiffen up an’ be crippled sure. Bend over all the way!”

  At the door, Jud paused to let Collins precede him. The overseer pushed him forward.

  “Go on. Ain’t no nigger that gets behind a white man here for no reason.”

  Outside it was hazy and the sky was dirty gray with the first light of false dawn. The night chill was still in the air. Slaves were stamping their feet, hugging themselves, and rubbing their sides. They stood in groups of ten. Each group was shepherded by a white man. All the overseers were armed. A few slaves were passing out canvas seed bags with shoulder straps.

  “Caesar,” Collins called.

  A chestnut-colored slave jerked his head up

  “Yassum. Yes, suh, Mista Collins, Masta.”

  His seed bag fell to the ground, spilling most of its contents. Caesar plunged to his hands and knees, scrambled in the dirt, and scooped up the seeds with rapid, jerky motions.

  “I’s sorry, Masta Wilkey,” he wailed to the nearest overseer. “I din’ mean no harm. I cleans ‘em up good. I git ever’ one of ‘em. See? See? I comin’, Masta Collins.”

  He howled when Wilkey kicked him.

  “Oh, don’ snake Caesar’s black ass. I scamper like a squirrel all day. I work extry hard.”

  He spun and crawled like a running, handicapped dog to Collins. He gained his feet halfway and loped the rest of the distance.

  “I here, Masta. I here jus’ as lightnin’ fas’ as my pore black body kin move. Whut you wants Caesar to do, suh? You jus’ tell ‘im an’ it be done.”

  Jud’s eyes would not stay on Caesar’s face. He looked up to the sky. Some stars were still visible. Faint, but hard, points of light. The moon was pale. He studied it.

  A voice to the side muttered something. The only word Jud caught was “Caesar.” Then there was the sound of someone spitting.

  “You jest lookin’ for a lead ball in your head, ain’t you, nigger?” said Wilkey.

  Jud looked and saw that the overseer had uncoiled his whip. He was squinting at a huge slave—the largest man Jud had ever seen. The black stepped away from the rest of the slaves and faced Wilkey. He was several inches taller than Jud, and massive. His head was outsized even for his body, and deformed, roughly the girth and shape of a young watermelon. His eyes were bulbous, froglike. A vivid red scar ran from his forehead to his chin, cutting his face into two unequal halves.

  “You know whut I a-goin’ to do to you someday?” Wilkey said, tone conversational, almost amiable. “When your term up, I goin’ to give a full report to Mista Ackerly an’ he goin’ to say, ‘Wilkey, my fren’, you take that nigger out behind the barn an’ you shoot him dead.’ An’ that jus’ whut I goin’ to do. I goin’ to blow a hole clean through you an’ they ain’t goin’ to be nothin’ but mush-meat where your heart used to be. That’s whut we do to mad dogs, an’ that’s whut we do to mad niggers.”

  The whip flicked back, then sliced the air and tore a patch from Shadrach’s shirt, laying a crimson welt on his side. Shadrach didn’t move. Wilkey swung the whip around his head with casual expertise, and struck again. As Shadrach waited for the next blow, he was struck from behind by the whip of another overseer. He spun, was lashed by Wilkey. The whites laid into Shadrach from both sides with a rhythm. Shadrach’s arms rose, and for a moment it looked as if he would seize both whips and yank them away. Then he clenched his fists, his biceps swelled, then swelled again, and his chest expanded, and his face was transfigured into a thing that was at once both wrathful and rapturous.

  “All right,” said Collins. “That’s enuff. Don’ cut him so he can’t work.”

  Shadrach was bleeding in several spots. Puffy ridges were rising on his skin.

  “Whut you standin’ there for?” Wilkey said.

  Shadrach smiled. “You din’ tell me to do nothin’ else, Masta.”

  “Git on back with them other niggers.”

  “Yes, suh, Masta. Yes, suh.”

  Shadrach moved slowly, ponderously, back into the ranks. Wilkey ordered his crew out to the fields. The other groups followed at intervals. Collins said to Caesar, “You watch over this buck today, hear? You show him what to do. Keep him movin’—a lot o’ bendin’ an’ a lot o’ liftin’. Don’ want him cripplin’ up on us. If he ain’t limber by the end of the day, you the one that goin’ get the hidin’. You unnerstan’?”

  “Yes, suh, Masta. I git him limbry like a snake. You jus’ depen’ on ol’ Caesar.”

  “I am.”

  Collins pointed the butt of his whip at Caesar. The black winced.

  First they gathered all the tin plates from the shanties. They filled two barrels with hot water, scrubbed the plates with pumice stones, and set them on the ground to dry in the sun. Next they washed and dried the crockery and utensils from the overseers’ homes and the china from the Great House. There were iron ovens from which the ashes had to be removed. There was firewood to carry and stack.

  The hard scabs on Jud’s back tore loose around the edges and a clear liquid oozed out. But by late afternoon he was feeling better for his activity, looser. Caesar implored, cajoled, begged him to work harder and faster, and whenever an overseer passed the smaller man cowered.

  Jud kept as far from him as was possible. He thought about this. He had never, so far as he knew, either liked or disliked anybody. Maybe disliking somebody meant that you didn’t want to be near them. Maybe he disliked Caesar.

  Something was wrong inside him. He stared into the sky awhile; he focused on a stark-white, ragged cloud, tried to float with it through the blue emptiness, tried to be nothing.

  He couldn’t. Not completely.

  His stomach tightened periodically, and sometimes sweat broke out on his palms.

  Maybe he was afraid.

  Of what?

  Darkness had nearly swallowed Sheol before the slaves were returned to their shanties and chained for the night. Collins left a bottle of fish oil with Jud, telling him to rub it into the scabs; this would keep them pliable so
the wounds would not tear and reopen each day. Most of Jud’s back had not scabbed over. Instead it had ridged and hardened, as the flesh does when a fingertip has been injured and the dead nail falls away. This process was incomplete, and there were still wet and raw patches. Jud contorted himself to apply the oil, but there were areas he could not reach.

  “Gimme that skunk juice,” said Homer.

  Jud handed him the bottle. Homer’s blunt fingers rubbed the oil on sparingly and quickly. His touch was like his voice, rough but not hard. He capped the bottle.

  “There. Now maybe you won’t wriggle around so much, an’ I kin git some rest.”

  Jud said nothing. Supper had been finished and there was a heavy somnolence in the air. The slaves were not sleeping, though.

  Homer sighed. He was not old, but his face was grizzled. His features were ill-defined, seeming to flow into each other. There were thin lines etched into the skin about his mouth and eyes, as if he were in perpetual pain.

  A slave began to sing to himself, low-voiced, melodic. A subdued conversation started at the far end of the shanty. Chains rattled.

  “I gettin’ out of here soon,” someone said. “Masta Good-friend tell me today. Ain’t goan have no chain on my leg no more.”

  “How soon?”

  “My fingers on bof han’s an’ my toes on one foot.”

  “Mm-hm. That nice. That real nice.”

  A flat voice said: “Ain’t no nigger never get out of no-place. ‘Cep’ by dyin’. A grave be the only thing that love a nigger. Fold him up nice an’ snug, keep him warm in the winter an’ cool in the summer.”

  “Grave ain’t goan love you no more’n a white man do. It goan eat you up, fill your mouf wif worms,” Shadrach said. “Not even niggers love niggers.”

  Then there was silence, broken only by the slave who was singing to himself. Jud listened. He wanted the others to speak. When he realized this, his stomach began to twitch. What was wrong? What was happening to him? He lay back and tried to listen to the sound within his head. He couldn’t.

  The slave who had been singing stopped. “I’m goan run,” he said.

  “Whut?”

  “You cain’t run from here.”

  “I ain’t goan run from here. If’n I behave, they goan take me ‘way from here ‘bout the time the firs’ bloom come on the plants, near as I kin reckon. When I gets back, I show Mista Ackerly that I a re-formed nigger. I used drive a team fo’ him, pick up things from Europa an’ his other plantations, bring ‘em back to Olympus. Take me a entire day, it used to.

  “Well, suh, I goan set out one mornin’ an I jus’ goan keep on till night come. Then I goan hide the buckboard an’ I goan keep to the woods, walk by the moon, an’ sleep during the day.”

  “Where you goan go?”

  “North.”

  “Whut you goan do when you gits there?”

  “Work fo’ wages.”

  Homer said, “They catch you ‘fore you get fifty mile. Ain’t no way fo’ a nigger to get North from down here. No way at all.”

  “But if you go South,” someone said, “an’ if you kin git as fur as Charleston, you might git free.”

  Homer laughed brittlely. “Nobody in Charleston goan free no nigger. More likely they hang you up by your heels.”

  “No, they people there that help niggers. They called Quakers. The men wear long dark coats an’ the ladies got dresses so long that even their shoes is covered. When they talk, it sound like a preacher-man readin’ out of a Bible. They got meetin’ houses where they go sit an’ talk all night about freein’ niggers.”

  “An’ they white?”

  “They white as Masta’s linen.”

  “That crazy. I never heard nuffin’ so crazy!”

  “It true. I tell you it true. My ol’ masta brung me to Charleston wif his fambly once. An’ I saw ‘em wif my own two eyes. Masta push one off the boardwalk right into the mud an’ cuss him out fit to pop a blood vessy. But the gennelman in the long coat, he doan say nuffin’. He jus’ smile at Masta all kind-like. He tip his hat at Masta’s wife an’ say, ‘Good day,’ an’ he walk away.”

  “He scared of your masta, tha’s all.”

  “No, he weren’t. He a big man, an’ my ol’ masta only a little mitey thing.”

  “How these Quakers make you free?” Homer challenged.

  “They hides you somehow an’ they gits you up North.”

  “North!” Shadrach rumbled. “They got white men up North?”

  “Why sure they got white men. Whut the matter wif you, Shadrach? Doan you know nuffin’?”

  “I know more’n you, nigger. I know they got laws up North that make ‘em bring niggers back to the mastas they run from. An’ I know they got white men there who doan do nuffin’ else but hunt down runners an’ bring ‘em back South for re-wards. I know I run from Virginy when I hardly more’n a saplin’. I know I live in New York two weeks an’ nobody give me no work an’ I starve half-dead. An’ I know they arres’ me an’ beat me so my ear doan work an’ my eyes go flippy an’ they bring me back to Virginy.”

  “It different. It not all the same.”

  “White men are white men,” Shadrach said.

  “Sometimes these Quakers git you up to Cany-da.”

  “What that?” Jud asked without realizing he was doing so. He was surprised by the sound of his voice.

  “Cany-da a place that . . . well . . . it not the South, but it not the North. It a different place. They doan got slaves there. Nary a one.”

  “You dreamin’,” someone said. “Ain’t no place where they ain’t some kind of slave.”

  “Tha’s right,” Homer said savagely. “They’s slaves ever’where you go. They ain’t nothin’ you kin do. Nothin’!” He slumped back against the wall.

  “I gots to be free!” said the black who claimed he was going to run.

  Homer spoke to himself. Only Jud heard him.

  “It hard. Oh, Lordy, it pow’ful hard.” He made a choked sound in his throat.

  “I gots to be free!”

  Free. Jud’s mouth was dry, his throat constricted. Breathing was difficult. What was happening to him? What?

  He knuckled his hand into a fist and struck the floor.

  The sound boomed in the shanty, silencing the blacks.

  In a moment, Shadrach said: “Tha’s free. Tha’s how you git free. The only way. Free doan mean nothin’ but one thing—not havin’ no masta. Tha’s all. Nothin’ more. An’ as long as they’s white men, you not goan be free. You wan’ be free . . . then kill the white man! Kill ever’ one! Kill ‘em!”

  “Shut your mouf, Shadrach.” An urgent voice. “They goan hear you an’ come in here an’ rip us all to pieces.”

  “Kill the white man!” Shadrach roared.

  “Wif whips,” someone said. “Snake ‘em all to death.”

  “Snake ‘em,” Shadrach said. “Shoot ‘em, bash they heads an’ pull they brains out, cut ‘em, burn ‘em—it doan make no difference, but kill ‘em. Kill ‘em!”

  “Tear they throats out,” chanted a wiry mulatto.

  “Kill ‘em!” answered Shadrach.

  “Gouge they eyes out.”

  “Kill ‘em!”

  “Smash they heads in.”

  “Kill ‘em!” Shadrach’s voice was not alone.

  “Cut they balls off.”

  “Kill ‘em!”

  “Carve they hearts up.”

  “Kill ‘em!”

  “Kill them!” shouted the mulatto.

  The moment was poised, full, fiery. A word, a scream, and half of the shanty’s blacks would have set to clawing and jerking at their chains, would have torn their fingernails and ripped their flesh against the cold iron. The others were cowering in the darkness. Jud belonged to neither side. He was disembodied, spiraling, leaping—a leaf driven by a howling autumn wind. He shook.

  Silence. Long, long empty silence. And then a plunge into darkness.

  The chains were strong. And too many
. Oh, so many! How did you carry me in your dark wet cave, Mammy, when I was so heavy with chains?

  Silence.

  Shadrach buried his face in his hands with a moan. He doubled over, rocked back and forth, and wept.

  TWO WEEKS AFTER THE last of the seed had been put into the ground, the first tender, pale green shoots forced their way up from the dirt and struggled toward the sky. The dark fields wore these like a shy girl donning finery for the first time. As soon as the shoots had unfurled their third leaves, the slaves trooped out to the fields with hoes and spades and dirt forks. Painstakingly, they set to clearing the ridges of the weeds that had sprung up beside the cotton. This care was required daily during the first month. As the plants grew hardier, bulltongues—narrow plows—were used to turn loose earth around the ridges and bury grass and small corn plants that had continued to grow. Since dray animals could no longer be used for fear of trampling the cotton, slaves were harnessed to the bulltongues.

  The sun burned, sweat glistened, and muscles strained. There were irrigation canals to be dug when the ground grew dry. There were aphids to destroy, and leaf worms, bollworms, thrips and spider mites. The cotton plants were coaxed, nourished, prayed to. And bled for.

  Jud’s back healed into corrugated, horny scar tissue. There remained an ache in his kidney. This grew progressively less noticeable, as his body accustomed itself to it. Occasionally it would blossom, making him limp slightly.

  He worked hard, pushing himself. By the end of the day, he was barely able to stagger back to the shanty. But it did little good. It did not kill the thing inside him that made him hungry to hear the others speak, that made him clench and unclench his fists while his mouth worked wordlessly, that prevented him from listening to the sound within his head.

  New blacks arrived at Sheol, some unmarked, some mutilated, some bloodied by the snake. One was brought in a buckboard, unconscious, his back even more than Jud’s had been. He died during the night, and Jud and another slave dragged his body to the large burial area—devoid of stones or markers—at the edge of the woods. They began to dig, uncovered the leg of a corpse in advanced putrefaction, shifted the site, and buried the new carcass in a shallow grave after pushing to the side the yellowish bones they found there.