Dessa Rose Page 3

  It was ironic, Nehemiah knew, that he who had never owned a slave—nor wished to—should be counted an expert on their management. He had shrugged off much of the Calvinistic teachings of his father with the same ease with which he had put off the rough homespun his father’s parsimonious nature forced the family to wear. But the elder Nehemiah’s abhorrence of slaves still clung to him. He no longer saw the institution as quite the threat to white workingmen that his father had. Still, about the only thing a darky could do for him was to wash his linen—and that task he hired out. Such, he reflected, were the vagaries—and rewards—of life. Nehemiah pulled off first one boot, then the other and stood to take off his trousers. He would always take a special pride in the fact that he had been the first to hit upon the idea of compiling the Guide, but he felt in his bones that the new book would be an intellectual as well as practical achievement, a magnum opus, far eclipsing the impact of the Guide.

  The Guide had not sold well in Alabama—It had done, Nehemiah amended, a brisk business in Mobile, and he smiled somewhat grimly: The rumors—and actual evidence!—of bands of runaway slaves in the area were too persistent for there not to be a high interest in the management of slaves among even the smallest slave holders. But, in general, Alabama slave owners prided themselves on taking care of their own. And it was true that there were not in the newspapers of the state the regular rash of alarums about rebellion plots discovered in the nick of time or advertisements for runaways that were a leitmotif in the papers and journals of most southern states. News of this uprising, despite the efforts of some civic boosters to keep it quiet, was rippling through the state, spreading consternation and fear in its wake. Hundreds of coffles a year went through Alabama, en route to Montgomery, Natchez, New Orleans—or the next town. Most of them averaged no more than twenty or thirty slaves except in the fall, when all roads in the state seemed to lead to the slave market in Montgomery. Even one desperate slave loose among the populace was fearful to contemplate and Wilson’s had been a relatively large coffle of more than a hundred slaves. And white men had been killed. This was not news that would keep. If it sold no place else, Nehemiah thought with a chuckle, Roots would do “tolerable” well in Alabama! He adjusted his nightcap, blew out the candle, and climbed into bed. Ah, the work, the Work had begun.

  June 20, 1847

  The darky demanded a bath this morning, which Hughes foolishly allowed her, and in the creek. She bathed in her clothes and dried in them also—as though there were not another darky on the place to spare her some sort of covering. A chill was the natural outcome, whose severity we have yet to determine. And were that not bad enough, she cut her foot, a deep slash across the instep and ball while climbing up the bank. Hughes thinks it a reasonably clean cut but she bathed near the place where the livestock come to water so there is no way of knowing. He claims that he was so nonplussed, “flustered,” as he phrases it, at such a novel request coming from a nigger and a wench ready to be brought to light, too, that he had granted the request before he had time to think properly of the possible outcome. Since she was shackled during the whole business, he thought no harm could come of it—as though darkies were not subject to the same chills and sweats that overtake the veriest pack animal. It seems that I am never to be spared the consequences of dealing with ignorant people. Pray God this darky don’t die before I get my book!**

  “Sho was hot out there today.”

  “Yeah, look like it fixin to be a hot, hot summer.”

  The desultory conversation eddied around Dessa. The day’s heat hung in the air; dust clung to her sweaty skin. The westering sun sent their shadows before them in wick-thin stripes dark across the sand-brown soil.

  “Hope it don’t get too hot.” Even the ones talking, Charlie and Sara and them, didn’t seem too interested in what they were saying.

  “I see old crazy Monroe been over Masa Jefferson place again.”

  Dessa had seen Monroe that morning, chained out at one of the barns, looking miserable. He had been trying for the longest time to be with some girl over at the Jefferson plantation. But Young Mistress said all the girl was good for was housework and they didn’t need another wench up to the House. That should have been that, but Monroe kept sneaking over to see her every chance he got. Which was to say, he made chances. As much as Boss Smith worked people in the fields, there was no way any of them were just going to “find” a chance to even sneak a “visit.” And Master didn’t like the men planting his seeds in the neighbors’ gardens. Monroe want to chance that lash, Dessa thought, feeling suddenly evil; that was him.

  “Masa say he going sell him,” Charlie said over his shoulder.

  Sell him. For taking off a day to see a sweetheart. Sold away Her temples throbbed with heat—

  “Lawd, won’t these children learn?” Sara asked of the air.

  “Can’t learn a nigga nothing,” Petey said quickly and they laughed.

  “Well,” Santee said, “I sho wished I knowed what that little girl got to make a nigga ask for a beating and walk fifteen miles a night to get em.”

  “Don’t know,” Brady said loudly, “but it sho gots to be good.”

  “This one nigga won’t never find out.” Charlie laughed and shook his head for emphasis. “I don’t want to love…” and again that shake, “where I can’t live.”

  “Hey, hey sweet…”

  “Listen to Charlie talk!”

  She didn’t join their laughter…Someone…down the Quarters

  “…calling his da’ling’s name.

  Hey, hey sweet mamma…”

  Kaine’s voice in the sunset, always, always the same.

  “Someone sho is walking fast all a sudden.”

  They were laughing behind her. Dessa swung her short-handle hoe with elaborate casualness and paid them no mind. Kaine could always give you something to laugh about, changing words with the men, teasing the women. He made jokes on the banjo, came out with a song made up of old sayings and words that had popped into his head a second before he opened his mouth.

  “…Kaine Poppa, calling his woman’s name…”

  Fear touched her. There must have been something for Kaine to do back at the House. Childer could have found him a closet to turn out, some piece of furniture to move so the girls could clean behind it; Aunt Lefonia might have had some spoons or some such to polish in the kitchen. He could help serve supper if there was nothing else to do.

  “Say now, hey now, Dessa da’lin…”

  Heart pounding, she quickened her steps. Aunt Lefonia said Master was always complaining about how they couldn’t afford to have a nigga sitting around eating his head off while he waited for some flowers to grow. Kaine could laugh, put it off on Master trying to get a rise out of his wife and her mother, but it must be something to it if it could put Young Mistress in tears. “What else she got to cry about?” Kaine, grinning wryly, eyes lit—Dessa wanted to run, to quiet his careless mouth with kisses…she hurried, hearing a quavering, high-pitched twang: “Place going to wrack and ruin cause he [meaning Master] don’t know the difference between a gardener and a common field hand.” Lefonia’s ruddy brown face, twisted in comic mockery, shimmered before her eyes…hurrying…Mammy swore Aunt Lefonia could do Old Mistress to the life, the pinched mouth, the stuffed-nose quality to her voice. Lefonia knew, even if Kaine wouldn’t tell her: “Long as it Vaugham money keep this House a showplace, that nigger [meaning Kaine] better turn his hand to whatever need doing.” Not Aunt Lefonia’s imitation now, but a voice so harsh and heavy it must have been Master’s—when had she heard him speak? (that question wild within her, making her cold all the way through. Someday Master wouldn’t care about Young Mistress’s tears or Old Mistress throwing his family up in his face. He’d sell Kaine to Charleston or the next slave coffle that passed their way.

  “Hey, hey…”

  Dessa moved as if through molasses: Kaine was coming down the Quarters; temples pounding, she ran

  Nehemiah persuaded H
ughes to allow the meetings with the darky to take place in the yard. He hoped that the novelty of fresh air would help him regain the rapport established during the last session with the darky and broken, he feared, by the brief respite while she recuperated from her chills. She was now fully recovered, suffering, so Jemina said, from no more than an occasional sniffle; the gash, while painful, perhaps, caused her no more than a slight limp. He sat now on a crude chair in the shade of the big elm in the side yard, pad and pen on his knee. The darky sat near him on the ground, knees drawn up to her chest, manacled hands clasped about them; her dress covered the leg-irons that hobbled her feet. A chain attached to her ankle-bead was wound around the trunk of the elm. From time to time she hummed, an absurd monotonous little tune in a minor key, the melody of which she repeated over and over as she stared vacantly into space. Each morning Nehemiah was awakened by the singing of the darkies and they often startled him by breaking into song at odd times during the day. Hughes, of course, found this comforting; thus far, Nehemiah reflected sourly, he had heard nothing but moaning from this darky.

  “Who had the file you used to break the chains?” This was a shot in the dark; there was no proof that a file had been used, no indication, really, of just how this darky had first gotten free of her chains. And Nehemiah did not really expect an answer; except for that offensive flicking of the eyes, the darky had responded to none of his overtures. “Where did the file come from?” he asked sharply. “Was it another darky?”

  The darky sat with her eyes closed and he nudged her with the tip of his boot to assure himself that she had not fallen into a doze. He had been told they fell asleep much as a cow would in the midst of a satisfying chew. He had not observed this himself and thought it an exaggeration for the darky did move, flicking her eyes up at him as she did so. He caught himself on an expletive, tapping his watch case impatiently. This was a damnable business.

  The darky closed her eyes. Nehemiah contained his irritation and went on with his questioning. “Where were the renegades going?” They had been heading south when the posse caught up with them and Nehemiah was not the only one to speculate that they had been making for an encampment of runaway slaves long rumored to be in the vicinity of Mobile. The darky opened her eyes and stared off into space, humming again, that absurd tune. “Who were the darkies that got away?” He raised his voice so as to be heard over her humming. This, too, was a shot in the dark; there was no proof that any of the renegades had escaped the posse. But there was a discrepancy between the number of slaves listed on the coffle manifest and the accounting made by the court of those killed, executed, branded, and/or released. It might be, as Wilson’s partner, Duncan, maintained, that those slaves—by Nehemiah’s count there were at least two—had been sold en route and not immediately noted in the manifest. But the discrepancy remained a loose end in Nehemiah’s opinion and he knew the darky could tie it up.

  “Lawd, give me wings like Noah’s dove

  Lawd, give me wings like Noah’s dove

  I’d fly cross these fields to the one I love

  Say, hello, darling; say how you be.”

  The darky’s song burst in upon these reflections and before Nehemiah could react, she spoke.

  “Kaine just laugh when Mamma Hattie say that playing with God, putting yourself on the same level’s His peoples is on. He say Mamma Hattie ain’t knowed no more about God and the Bible than what the white folk tell her and that can’t be too much cause Masa say he don’t be liking religion in his slaves.” She had caught him by surprise, but he wrote quickly, abbreviating with a reckless abandon, scribbling almost as he sought to keep up with the flow of her words. “…Kaine just go on singing his songs to me in the evening after I gets out the fields. I be laying up on our pallet and he be leaning against the wall. He play sweet-soft cause he say that what I needs, soft-sweeting put me to sleep after I done work so all day. He really feel bad about that, me in the field and him in the garden. He even ask Boss Smith could I come work at the House or he come work the field. I scared when he do that. Nobody ask Boss Smith for nothing cause that make him note you and the onliest way Boss Smith know to note you is with that whip. But he just laugh; tell Kaine he a crazy nigga.”

  She laughed softly, shaking her head. “Kaine not crazy. He the sweetest nigga as ever walk this earth. He play that banjo, he play it so sweet till Mist’s even have him up to the House to play and she talk about having a gang of niggas to play music for when they be parties and such like at the House.”

  Nehemiah stopped writing. More of that business with the young buck. He scowled, looking at the darky in exasperation. Sunlight filtering through the leaves dappled her face with shadow. In the cellar, her skin had seemed an ashen black, almost scaly in its leathery pallor. Now it seemed the color of pekoe tea, a deep lustrous brown that even in the shade glowed with a hint of red. Her voice had lost some of its roughness yet still held a faint echo of that desperate bravado that had fascinated him during their last meeting.

  “‘Niggas,’ Kaine tell me, ‘niggas just only belongs to white folks and that be’s all. They don’t be belonging to they mammas and daddies; not they sister, not they brother.’ Kaine mamma be sold when he little bit and he never know her face. And some time he think maybe his first masa or the driver or maybe just some white man passing through be his daddy.”

  Perhaps that was it, Nehemiah speculated, that strain of white blood that had made the young buck so rebellious. He should interrupt her, he knew; this was hardly germane. Yet he was reluctant to disturb the darky’s trancelike state. He watched as her mouth quirked drolly, an eyebrow lifted skeptically. He wouldn’t have thought the darky’s face so expressive. Well, he thought, tapping his watch case again yet oddly arrested by the darky’s display, he would let the darky talk this out.

  “…Kaine say first time he hear anybody play a banjo, he have to stop, have to listen cause it seem like it talking right at him. And the man what play it, he a Af’ca man, he say the music he play be from his home, and his home be his; it don’t be belongs to no white folks. Nobody there belongs to white folks, just onliest theyselfs and each others. That in Charleston and I know that close to where I’m is and I wonder how it be if Masa had buyed Kaine then, when he little bit, stead of when Kaine be grown. But—It happen how it happen and that time in Charleston, Kaine not know all what the Af’ca man say, cept about the home and about the banjo, how to make it, how to play it. And he know that cause he know if he have it, home be his and the banjo be his. Cept he ain’t got no home, so he just onliest have the banjo.

  “He made that banjo hisself. Make it out good parchment and seasoned wood he get hisself and when Masa break it, it seem like he break Kaine. Might well as had; cause it not right with him after that. And I can’t make it right with him. I tell him he can make another one. I pick up wood for him from Jim-boy at the carpenter shed, get horsehair from Emmalina’s Joe Big down to the stables. But Kaine just look at it. ‘Masa can make another one,’ he say. ‘Nigga can’t do shit. Masa can step on a nigga hand, nigga heart, nigga life, and what can a nigga do? Nigga can’t do shit.

  ‘What can a nigga do when Masa house on fire?

  What can a nigga do when Masa house on fire?

  Bet not do [mo’n yell, fire, fire.]

  [Cause a nigga can’t do shit!]’

  He sing that and laugh. And one day Emmalina meet me when I come in out the field and tell me Masa done shove in the side of Kaine’s head.” She looked up at the sun and blinked her eyes rapidly several times.

  The woolly hair fitted her head like a nubby cap and for a moment Nehemiah fancied he could smell her, not the rank, feral stink of the cellar, but a pungent, musky odor that reminded him of sun-warmed currants and freshly turned earth. His skin prickled and he shook himself, cursing. The darky had led him back to the same point as the previous session and he had taken notes on nothing save the names she called in her first burst of speech.

  June 26, 1847

&nb
sp; These are the facts of the darky’s history as I have thus far uncovered them:

  The master smashed the young buck’s banjo.

  The young buck attacked the master.

  The master killed the young buck.

  The darky attacked the master—and was sold to the Wilson slave coffle.

  Nehemiah hesitated; the “facts” sounded like some kind of fantastical fiction. Had he but the pen of a novelist—And were darkies the subject of romance, he thought sardonically, smiling at his own whimsy. He didn’t for a minute believe that was all there was to the young buck’s attack on his master—a busted banjo! Yet, even if he never got to the bottom of that, the darky’s case had already provided some interesting leads—collusion between slave owners and slave dealers and, the more he thought of it, the more it seemed that an argument ought to be made for a stricter separation between house servants and field hands. Clearly the buck had gotten ideas above himself, placing such exaggerated value on a primitive “banjar,” even going so far as to try to order the work force to suit his own convenience. So, this incident with the buck was not wholly tangential to the events on the coffle. Nehemiah double-starred the last word. Obviously, mention of the buck was the key to getting the darky to talk.

  “Did this darky—What did you say his name was?” Nehemiah nudged the darky impatiently with his foot; she flicked her eyes at him. They sat under the elm, the darky chained as usual, Nehemiah stripped to his shirt sleeves against the heat. “Kay-ene—is that it?” People would give darkies these outlandish names, he muttered to himself, and throw the rules of spelling to the winds.