Текст книги "Dominion"

Автор книги: Calvin Baker

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

six

Libbie Merian felt the pain of labor for the first time in mid-July that year – as if one soul had first to cross over before the other could begin its outward journey. She was sitting in the front parlor, knitting a blanket for the expected child, when her waters burst without warning. She felt her former fear descend upon her but was calm as she called Claudia, to come help her.

Claudia, who had delivered countless young, was perfectly poised as she came to her mistress’s side. “It will most likely be awhile yet,” she said, leading Libbie to the room they had prepared for her to give birth in when the time came. None of them could have known, though, how that time would reach and stretch – until it had taken up near two days and consumed all their hopes and fears – before putting them down to rest again.

Libbie sweated through the night, cursing all she could think of, and all who crossed her path, so unbearable was her torment and tribulation. Caleum had decamped to Stonehouses for the duration of the labor, and Adelia had in turn gone over to the new building to aid with the birth and comforting of the mother.

At Stonehouses Magnus sat up with Caleum until late in the evening, speaking of how long it had been since there were children on the land. Magnus next told stories of what Caleum was like as a boy and laid wager as to what the new arrival’s character would be like. They also noted things, such as who was tallest in the family and who was strongest, and bet about the child’s height and strength. When the two men went to sleep that night, each abundantly happy at the prospect of the new birth, both were certain the ordeal would be over before they awoke.

In the morning one of the women who worked on the place told them the women were still at the new building and the baby had not yet come into the world. Magnus and Caleum took the news in stride, as they went to work inspecting the fields, thinking they would be summoned before midday.

They came home that noon unbidden, as they had yet to receive word about the delivery and were grown anxious from this lack of news. In their concern they decided to go over to the other house to see what the matter was, even if it was not their place to do so.

When they arrived they were told nothing was wrong; it was only proving an extraordinarily long labor, and they should perhaps better return to the other place. Libbie, flush-faced and exhausted, was in the throes of the greatest pain, and when Caleum peeked into the room where she was, he could see this, and became filled with apprehension. “You are very brave,” he said to her.

When she saw his doting face, Libbie cursed him for being there and added further obscenities, ending with, “It was an evil hour I met thee.”

At nine o’clock that evening her torment finally ceased. The child who was so long in coming into the world decided at last to join it, and Caleum was called back to the birthing house. When Claudia came to summon him, though, instead of joy he felt a passing second of dread, like a fast-moving cloud that plunged him temporarily into shadow. He found himself hoping nothing was the matter with his wife, but, as he walked through the crowd of women in his house and approached the room where his wife was, he heard a loud, wailing cry that filled him with sadness and hope.

Caleum’s fears all left him then and he was overjoyed, as he could not have imagined just hours earlier. When he held the child he had no sight for anything else. It was a feeling unlike any he had known, as he looked on the boy’s shriveled new face, like a bud on a vine that had yet to fully open. The child was so small Caleum could fit him in one of his outstretched hands, though he was careful not to do so for danger of dropping him.

At last he turned to Libbie and stroked her face as she recovered from the long labor. “How are you feeling?” he asked, looking at her where she rested.

He could tell how much her ordeal had taken from her, but her dread at least had lifted and she was no longer afraid. Too tired to speak, she merely smiled at her husband.

As they gazed at the child together, what sprang first to Caleum’s mind was that, coming so close after Merian’s death, the boy must somehow be blessed by the departed. To honor the connection, he suggested they name him accordingly.

Libbie nodded in assent when he told her. “I think Jasper is fitting. But I also had in mind John.”

“That is also a good name.” Caleum negotiated, wanting to give her what she wanted. “We can give him both.”

So they named their first child together John Jasper, and Magnus and Adelia were nearly as pleased as the parents to be made grandparents, or granduncle and grandaunt, such as it was. To give thanks, Magnus declared the next day a holiday for all of Stonehouses, so they might celebrate Libbie’s motherhood.

How long he stayed with them though, or, rather, how short a while, was soon the cause of great desolation. The child for whom it had been so difficult to gain life only held on to it until the end of his first week, when they found him dead atop his mother’s breast.

“He seemed perfectly healthy,” Adelia said with despair, coming over from the other house after she learned the boy had passed away, “but God strikes and snatches what He will.”

“It is true,” Claudia agreed, as she tried to coax the child from its mother’s arms. “And for all His own reasons He did not give the boy this day as He did the ones before it.” She had seen so many little ones whisked back away in her work, she knew whereof she spoke.

Libbie, though, shunned Claudia’s hands, refusing to let go or relinquish the boy’s lifeless body. She went on holding her baby in her arms the rest of that day.

Caleum had the opposite response. Pretending a coarseness that had known greater suffering than was in his history, he refused to look on the corpse at all, saying there was no reason to glance back.

He sent word over to the carpenter to come make a box for the body and instructed one of the overseers to dig a grave in the far valley, which was their graveyard at Stonehouses.

So its ranks swelled, from two who were very old – and one very old for its kind – to three, and their average age fell considerably.

Everyone was pained to witness such misfortune befall a couple so young, but Magnus, in his grief, thought it to be more than just bad luck. “Somebody cursed us,” he said, speaking roughly. “I seen it among the slaves in Virginia. Somebody is trying to punish Stonehouses.”

In his mind no one was above suspicion, and he soon began to sow his dark fears all around, so that everyone began to regard the others nearby with distrust. Each listed the possible culprits in his head, and, though no one had real grievance, any could have been envious of them at Stonehouses.

Understanding he would never sort out one person, but that ultimately nothing less than their future safety depended on acting swiftly, Magnus did something very rash immediately after the funeral.

On the other side of the valley was a slave called Sam Day – who was married to Effie, a free woman who worked as a maid in the barns of Stonehouses – and who was rumored to be very powerful with roots and the like. He served not only the other slaves but, through intermediaries, much of the free population as well – either when something happened that the doctor could not cure or when they were taken with superstition because of something no one could explain and turned to him. When the child died, although it was not uncommon for such to happen, it was him Magnus sent for in his grief.

When Sam heard from Magnus’s messenger what had happened at Stonehouses, he sent word back, first with questions and finally with the prognosis that the new house had not been properly blessed when they built it. It was easy enough to remedy, he said, but the ritual must be performed by him in person.

“Well, where is he?” Magnus asked the boy he had sent on the errand.

“They don’t allow him to leave his master’s place,” the boy answered.

Desperate, Magnus resolved to find a solution. The next day he left Stonehouses early in the morning, saying only that he had business beyond its gates. Where he went then was to see Sam Day’s master, a man named Michael Smith.

Smith, being Christian, detested Sam’s practice of magic, and when Magnus showed up, saying he had come to see him about his slave Sam, Smith grew irritable just to hear the man’s name.

“I would sell that troublemaker Sam Day for the next hundred pounds I saw,” he said.

“I just wanted to see if it was possible to hire him from you for the season.”

“Hire him? For what?” Smith asked. “You could find better workers among your womenfolk.”

“That may be so, but I’m short of hands this season, Mr. Smith, and they say he is a strong-bodied worker. Plus his woman is at Stonehouses, which I figured would make it an easy adjustment for him. I have ready cash.”

“If I hired him out to you, Magnus, I’d never know the end of it,” Smith said. “He would run, I swear to you he would. For a hundred pounds, though, I would sell him clean and free of any claims.”

A hundred pounds was a very good price for a man in his prime, and Magnus looked at Smith to see whether he was only talking idly. When he saw Smith meant what he said, Magnus made a counterproposal. Though it was never his intention to do so, the low price coupled with his own need overtook him and all his higher principles almost before he knew it. “I can give you seventy for him,” he said, although he knew it was less than any man was worth.

“A hundred is my price,” Smith repeated. “You say you need a man and have ready cash. You’ll never get a better price than that on a slave good as Sam.”

“It seems like he causes you a lot of trouble, Mr. Smith. You should just let me take him off your hands,” reasoned Magnus, who had grown expert at bartering in the marketplace each year. When Smith moved down ten, he offered to close the deal. “Since we’re only that far apart let’s just split the difference.”

“It is done,” said Smith, though he did not shake. He only rang a bell and instructed the servant who appeared to go fetch Sam Day from out his indigo fields.

* * *

Sam had been taking a much-needed break from work, resting his head on a cool rock in a little gully that hid him from sight, when he heard footsteps approaching his resting place. He stood up and looked around to see Smith’s boy from the house, calling his name.

“What you want with me?” Sam asked, taking up his work so it seemed he had never ceased. He was immediately tired out again, though, and took out his annoyance on the boy.

“Master Smith want you to come round right now,” the boy told him.

“Well, what he want with me, boy?” Sam asked with irritation. “You too thick to know that?”

“He sold you, Sam!” the boy cried. “He sending you away!”

“Boy, stop meddling with me and get from out of here,” Sam barked, raising one of his hands, which was permanent black from the indigo, to shoo the boy off. When the boy left, he went back to the spot where he had been resting and took back up his pillowstone.

No sooner had he laid down again than he heard one of the overseers call out his name.

“I’m coming right there, sir,” Sam answered, wondering for the first time whether what the boy had said was true.

He was on the verge of panic as he approached the overseer, fearing he might be at the start of a trip to another unknown place, where no one knew him and he was only currency in a transaction that satisfied everyone except him.

“What you need, Mr. Paul?” he asked, looking at the overseer.

“It finally happened.” The man whistled. “He finally sold your arse, Sam. Go on up to the house now and meet your new master.” Never an admirer of Sam’s, the other man showed just the hint of laughter at the edges of his mouth, like tiny shards of glass, as he turned and walked away.

The spores of panic in Sam’s head continued to grow, as he began to wish for an alternate fate. “Can I go round and say my good-byes to everybody first?” he called after him. “He can’t just lift me up like that and move me on.”

“Mr. Smith wants you at the house now,” Paul told him again. “Seems to me, if I had a master and he called, I wouldn’t try to do nothing but go find out what he wanted.”

Sam cursed under his breath and glowered as he went up to the back door of the house and announced himself – not that his arrival could have gone unnoticed. Throughout the plantation the news had spread, and eyes watched him from every corner of the land as he mounted the stairs.

Mr. Smith came around about ten minutes later with a tall Negro man, ten years or so older than Day. “Sam, I want you to meet your new owner, Magnus Merian.”

Sam looked at both men standing in front of him, as he comprehended what had transpired. “Oh, good goddamn Jesus why is y’all doing this to me again?” he asked aloud.

Smith hit Sam before he knew it, knocking him flat into the dirt. As he lay sprawled there, Sam knew better than to get up too fast. When he did rise, though, he heard Magnus Merian telling Master Smith, “Thank you, Mr. Smith, but I can manage my own men.” Sam allowed himself to think he might have lucked and found a better master when he heard that, until Magnus approached him.

“Get your ass up and apologize to Mr. Smith,” he said.

He could not believe what was happening and was no longer sure which of the two had actually clapped him. It was as if the entire world had reversed itself, until he could not tell the black man from the white one. It wasn’t surprise at a black master, but that he was used to being deferred to by Negroes because of his powers, and never thought another one would make him bend his head without the use of force. When he looked at Magnus, though, who still had the long memory of slavery and how a certain type was handled in Virginia, he saw something fearful there and made haste to do as he had been commanded.

“I’m sorry, Smith,” Sam said, looking his old owner square in the face. He turned to Magnus and added, “I apologize to you too, Master Merian.”

Looking at Sam then, contrite and confused, Smith was half tempted to offer Magnus his money back. In the end, however, something told him Sam was putting him on somehow, and he was relieved to be rid of the worrisome slave. “It has been a pleasure conducting business with you, Magnus,” he said. “If there is ever anything I can help you with further, please do not hesitate to let me know.”

“Thank you,” Magnus answered. “I imagine everything will go just fine from here.”

Sam had, of course, heard about the Merians long before he left with Magnus that afternoon, but he had little idea of what they were truly like or, more important, how they treated their men. He had never seen a Negro act with a white man as Magnus had with Smith, and he was uncertain and afraid he might do something to upset this new master and get clapped again, so when they left, he followed at a respectful distance until they reached the wagon.

“You climb in and ride back there,” Magnus said, motioning to the bed of the vehicle.

Sam pulled himself up into the wagon and waited for the chains to be secured around him, as they had been the first time he was sold. When Magnus continued on to the front of the wagon and took up the reins, Sam could not hold his tongue. “Master Merian, ain’t you gone chain me?” he asked.

“I hadn’t figured to,” Magnus replied. “You planning on running?”

“No,” Sam said, then added with a hesitant pride, “but I could.”

“As long as it stay at speculation, Sam, we’ll be just fine,” Magnus answered.

Master and slave then began the journey back to Stonehouses.

As they drove through the hill country Magnus was fired by guilt. He wanted to tell Sam that he had not intended to come and tear him from his known life and meant even less to cause him harm. He only wanted to hire his services as an herbman, because his own house had been cursed. As he drove, though, he knew he had miscalculated and could no longer ask for the the man’s help. He owned him now, and if he was going to keep Sam from running over him he would have to be absolute, which, in his position, meant not explaining more than the other needed to know.

“You will like it at Stonehouses,” Magnus said. “Of course, it is only a temporary situation for you.”

“What do you mean by temporary, Master Merian?” Sam asked, in fearful confusion.

“I mean that I intend to make you free after the season,” Magnus said, as he could not force the kind of work he needed from Sam or otherwise coerce the spirit.

“What happen to me after that?” Sam asked. “Where I’m supposed to go, Master Merian?”

Magnus had not reflected on it before, but he knew it would never do for him to set the likes of Sam Day free in Berkeley. The rest of the town, black and white, would surely turn on him. “Well, we’ll figure something out, Sam,” Magnus said, “soon as the harvest is over.”

Each man then was flax-hearted and silent, as they made their way through the country, each wondering what he had gotten into, and what would become of him.

Lord, what have I done? Magnus thought to himself, knowing he had purchased another soul and now owned him and all his burden. There was, he knew, no way to alleviate the consequences of that.

What happen next? Sam wondered as the wagon rolled through the unknown countryside, reminding him of his original trip there, the only time before he had been anywhere other than his natural home.

When they arrived back at Stonehouses, Magnus drove up next to the barn and stopped the wagon. “This is it,” he announced. “This is where you’ll be staying.” For he still could not admit to himself it was the man’s new home.

If Sam had been impressed by Magnus before he was even more so now, as he could see plainly his new master was wealthier than his old one.

“Where I’m supposed to sleep, Master Merian?” Sam asked, inspecting the barn, then looking deep into the country for the slave cabins.

“Down with the rest of the hired men,” Magnus said, calling for a boy to show Sam where that was. “I’ll send for you later,” Magnus told him, as he himself turned to go into the house.

Inside, the first person he saw was Effie, whom he hurried past, making his way upstairs. He did something then that he had not done since his very first days at Stonehouses; he went into his bedroom and drew the curtains until it was dark and fell asleep during the middle of the day.

He woke up to find Adelia sitting next to him.

“Are you all right?” she wanted to know.

“Adelia, I bought a man today,” he told her, sitting up and looking her in the eyes.

“So I hear,” she answered, stroking his forehead. “What happened?”

“It was not on purpose. I will let him loose, just as soon as I figure out how to do it.”

“You’ll figure out something,” Adelia said.

“Where is he now?” Magnus asked.

“I think Caleum put him to work already.”

Magnus was thankful at least to hear the younger man had done so sensible a thing. That evening at dinner he tried to conceal his own thoughts as he asked his nephew how the day had gone with the harvest. Caleum, sensing his uncle’s true concern, replied that no other healthy body lazed about while the sun was up, so he saw no reason why Sam Day should be allowed to either. “Slave or no slave, he has to put in an honest day’s work.”

It was impeccable logic, but Magnus knew he had done something gravely wrong, and they had not yet seen the end of suffering for that year.

“I’m going to turn that man free, just as soon as I lay a plan for what to do with him,” he said to his family. No one at the table objected to his words, though no one else thought it was quite so dire as he.

seven

When the harvest months arrived Magnus began estimating the yield from his lands, and it looked to be slightly more than the year before, which had been a good season all around, and this pleased him despite the earlier events in the summer.

Sam Day watched the harvest process with disbelief, as the men all arrived in the morning of their own accord, and only very few had disappeared from the fields by the time the sun reached midday. There was no lash and no prison for idlers either. When he asked one of the other men about it, he was told they were paid for their work according to how much they gathered, and besides this wage there was also a prize at the end of the season for the man who had pulled in the most. “It is a solid gold coin, Sam, worth I couldn’t say how much, but, if it’s yours, I doubt you would have to work the whole next year.”

Sam Day had never touched money before in his life. He was paid for his farm work not at all, and for his root work in kind – mostly favors of food and cloth so that he never went lacking for what he needed, especially as old Master Smith had been on the stingy side with both cornmeal and shoe leather. Sam, though, had managed to live like the priest of a well-devoted temple, and he carried himself in accordance with this authority of position whenever he was called on as a healer. In his other labors, by contrast, he was more humble, even to the point of being lazy, as he resented having to do anything other than his born calling.

When he heard about that gold coin for the man who was best at harvesting the fields, though, he could not help but daydream about it. He thought, if he won it, he would first get something for Effie; then, if there was any money beyond that, he imagined to himself he might use it to have a great party that would last the better part of a week. He got himself so worked up with the idea that he showed up on time next morning, without having to be sent for after the others went out into the fields.

Having never worked in earnest before, though, he was not so quick as the other men and could barely walk on his tender feet by the end of the day, as they were burned and bleeding from use against the thorny weeds and hot ground. Being so unused to physical exertion, he could not help but comment on his condition that night when the workers gathered for supper. “How much you think that gold coin could be worth to get all of us killing ourselves for it?”

“It isn’t just the money, Sam, but the sport as well,” one of them answered him.

“I see,” he replied, without being convinced of anything other than his own pain at that particular moment.

When he went to sleep that night, his joints were still aflame from the day’s work and he thought he would rather be paid in kind for divining than gold for physical labor. In his dreams that night, which were wild and deep, he was dressed all in finery, and people came from far and wide to seek him out and ask his favor. He was seated throughout on a claw-footed chair, and whenever anyone approached he would listen from a distance to what they had to say but not allow them to come any nearer to him.

“I dreamed I was a king last night,” he told any who would listen, as they ate breakfast early the next morning. “I was sitting on a throne in the middle of my country, passing out solid gold coins to all my subjects.”

They all laughed at him. “What did you call your kingdom, Sam?”

“Laugh all you want,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know fair that I had a vision about winning that coin, so the rest of y’all can stop trying for it.”

The men were still filled with mirth as they returned to the tobacco, but Sam was a proud man, and his dream had infected his imagination. Their laughter only raised his cholera and determination to win.

When Sam returned to the fields the next day he put himself back into his labors as if his life was at stake. No one was laughing at him by the time the sun went down on that day. In a week they had all legitimate respect for him, as he stripped stack after stack of the broad green leaves, and by the end of the month they allowed he might even have a fair chance at the coin.

The only man among them who begrudged these efforts was one called Angus Carson, who had won the prize the year before, and was counting on winning the money again to see his family through the winter. “He’ll win it over my dead body,” Carson said, once he saw the threat from Sam Day was real. “It will be the same day he takes food from my little ones’ mouths.”

As they went into the final week of harvest, which according to the ledger Magnus kept was a fortnight earlier than the year before, the other men around them had all chosen sides and laid wagers as to which of these two headstrong men would win the prize. At supper each night that week the contestants would occupy opposite ends of the table, with his followers seated beside him, attending to his needs. In the middle of the bench were two empty chairs to keep distance between the two camps, and they hectored each other from across the divide.

At his end of the table Angus sat bare-chested, drinking bock and otherwise silent as his men boasted of his exploits.

“Angus Carson is the strongest man in all His Majesty’s realm,” they taunted. “He’s also the fastest and will never lose, especially not to the likes of one like you. It’s folly, Sam Day – nay, madness’s mischief, if not the thing itself – to think ye can compete against him.”

Sam Day governed the other end of the board, looking to all like a leader among his men, but he too was silent, allowing them to speak their minds on his behalf.

“Sam Day has been blessed with the gift of fore prophecy and can see well into the future,” they called and countered. “What he saw there last time he looked was Angus Carson coming to borrow a shilling.”

Thus were all the men in good spirits as the autumn rain started to come in and they hurried to draw the harvest to a close. Each could look forward then not only to his pay but also his profit from betting, as none imagined losing what he had wagered, and they boasted of it each chance they got.

Such was not the case for the chief adversaries, who eyed each other stealthily around camp, each trying to measure his opponent. Angus, at first, had thought Sam Day all blowhard and nothing hale about him, due to the slightness of his physique. Then he saw the work the man did and thought perhaps he was aided by the harpies and demons it was said he could conjure at his beckon and call.

Sam Day, on his end, had seen men bigger than Angus Carson, and he would even bet half the men in the barracks of Stonehouses were stronger than his foe, but he had never seen a man want something so bad as Carson seemed to when his fingers reached out to harvest the plants. Even his own friends said of him, “He’s stubborn as he is mean, and the only thing that loves him, besides his wife and children, seems to be tobaccy leaves.” For no sooner had he fingered one than it seemed to be in his stack, as he moved down the rows like a drowning man who had figured out a way to harvest air.

Despite their different styles, the two men were dead even in the counting when they rose the last morning of the harvest.

It was an hour ahead of the sun when they came to the communal table, where all the men ate before heading into the fields. That morning, in place of hominy, the table was piled high with bacon and biscuits for each of them to take and eat his fill, but instead of feeding their own gnawing hunger all the others held back and let Sam and Angus in front of them – even the men who herded the cattle or worked the rice deferred.

Magnus and Caleum, who always ate with the men on the final day of the cropping, were the only others seated at the table besides the two contestants.

“I looked at the ledger this morning,” said Magnus, who always loved being among the men in the fields at that time of year. “This looks to be the best reaping we had all decade, if we gather just a bit more.”

“How far short are we?” asked Caleum.

“Only a couple hundred pounds off four years ago.”

“I remember that year. It would be something to outdo.”

“It sure would, and if it happens I think I might just make the harvest prize double,” Magnus went on, looking at Caleum but speaking so all could hear. “What would you think of that, Sam?”

From his side of the table Sam stopped chewing and looked toward Magnus. If he had heard the same thing only a month before he would have thought Magnus was funning him, but now he thought only of the gold and let another coin settle beside the first in his mind’s eye. “I think we better get to reaping.”

Dawn had broken by then and stood rosy and mysterious at the edge of the horizon. As it spread, it grew bright and golden, touching everything at Stonehouses evenly and portending well for the final gathering of the year.

After breakfast the men all stood from where they sat and looked out at the neat, even rows of plants, which were nearly bare from earlier pickings – except the tender leaves at their tips that are always last to ripen.

Angus Carson looked out over the rows, thought of the new prize, and said to one of his men, “It’s not so much a doubling the old one as it is that I’m going to whup his arse twice now.”

The two rivals then started at opposite sides of a single row; they could have looked each other in the eyes over the tops of the plants, if they had so chosen. Each man’s hand went out and each retrieved a leaf, being careful not to harm it, then stacked it in a cart that went alongside each of them to keep the new leaf from getting bruised; nor did they look up from their work.

By the time they were halfway down the row, both men were covered with sweat and each forgot about the other. They concentrated on the bright green plants and thought about the weight of gold that would rest in his hand at the end of the day.

Nor did they stop to eat at lunchtime, but merely called to have water brought out to them. By three in the afternoon the heat of August was unbearable, and no one would have been surprised to see them both fall down from exhaustion. They kept at their work, though, determined to have both prize and the honor that would go with it.

At six o’clock everyone else came in from the fields, and the plants themselves stood bare – save the final two rows, which were still divided between the two, but no longer evenly as before. While Angus Carson started at the top of one, Sam Day was already midway down the other.