A Reckoning Page 8

  22

  Late that month, John went over the accounts again, rubbing out a numeral here and adding one there. Benjamin’s debts exceeded by two thousand dollars the total value of his assets.

  19th, more snow, no one to do spinning, Tom and Jule to cut wood, Edward sick.

  Winter was the time for women to spin and weave and sew while men cut and split timber to rebuild fences, grubbed out new ground, and hauled topsoil to the fields from the wetlands. Now with a foot of snow and five men run off and with Emly and her children sold, John divided the seven remaining workers into groups – a plow gang made up of Tom and Abe and Young Jim, and a hoe gang composed of old Reuben and Jule and Edward, who was sickly and thin. He made lists. Rakel must tend to the animals. She must cook for Matilda and see that the workers had something to eat. He added and subtracted. It gave him a measure of calm but it was a small enough measure because most of his mind was caught up in imagining an endless morning in the barn when Emly and her children had been sold and scattered. Had it been bright or cloudy? Weather was always company on John’s circuit but now he could not remember his rides through the woods and valleys during that terrible week. He had no recollection of rain or sun or wind. He had preached with his usual fury out in the hinterlands while Emly and the children were pushed into a corner of the barn in spite of the promise – the vow – he had made. Were there tears or screams? Were they bound by ropes? One woman, five children, and a suckling babe and what was the profit in it? How could a person’s worth be counted in dollars? It was a question he had never asked himself. Benjamin’s begotten. And his. Why had they been sold apart from the mother who fed and protected them? Where was the record of those dismal sales? At what fraction of a dollar had his little Pleasance been valued? Pleasance of the turned-down nose and doubled-up fist…He remembered her tiny grip on his finger and touched his own hand wonderingly. She, too, had needed him. He had seen it happen dozens of times over the years. A family disrupted, sold apart. Human histories severed. He had seen it and accepted it as necessary to the lives that must be lived in their world. He had made Emly a promise but, in truth, it was not for her. He was looking after himself. Yes. He must speak to his brother, like it or not. He would do it. Shame or no shame: he would force the question or his mind would crack.

  And one cold afternoon, when the north wind came straight down from Canada, John left his hat on a hook by Benjamin’s front door, having come in without knocking. The house was silent, as if no one lived above or below, no one slept or ate or loved, no one wept or bled or felt the cold. Silence, and John went quickly up the stairs, gripping a banister covered in dust, taking the steps two at a time. From a bedside chair, he stared down at the man who had betrayed a contract between brothers, a man who had thereby caused him to break his own solemn promise. Wake up, John said, poking at Benjamin’s arm. Then, without preamble, he spoke of a day when he’d built a fort with Bry. Do you remember how you knocked it down? How small we were then, Bry and I, born the same year.

  In the mess of blankets, Benjamin stirred. His voice, unused for days, was unpleasantly hoarse; it was raspy and thin, and when he opened his eyes they were red-rimmed and bleary as he pushed himself up on an elbow. What?

  I was thinking of Bry because he was the first to run away last spring, John said. When the abolitionist came down here from New York, Bry was the first to run and he’s far too old to survive such a trick and no doubt he’s down some hole in the ice or drowned or been shot. Consumed by a hound. Why would he take such a risk at his age? I wouldn’t do it. John lifted his head and studied the unswept bedroom. A cobweb dangled at the front window and the curtain was torn. There were clothes and shoes strewn on the floor and the fireplace was cold. He had not been in this room since he’d come to view the body of Elizabeth laid out with the flowers she’d nourished. He could remember the day Benjamin had brought her home from the east with two slaves chained to her pretty cart, but he said to his brother now: Do you remember how you didn’t allow Bry to play with me after you tore down our fort? We were two little lads and yet you used your boots and fists because he was born to a slave who lived in our sister Mary’s house.

  A swirl of ashes drifted across the floorboards and mingled with the clothes left in piles.

  Benjamin pushed himself up on his pillow and the effort made him wheeze and a racking cough went on for several minutes, during which John sat stoically, and when all the coughing and choking subsided, he said: In fact, Bry was raised by our sister. And yet we never looked after him when he ran away that first time and got caught. We took him in trade and enslaved him again. Yes? Broken, castrated. Ruined, is the fact of it, but we put him to work in the field before he could stand up straight or walk without soiling the cotton with his blood. I suspect his pain was as real as yours or mine would be when he got whipped for that.

  Benjamin licked his cracked lips and swallowed. He said: What difference now? I can’t get my breath.

  I used to run off to play with Bry, John said, where you wouldn’t find us. Eight years old and I was afraid of you, afraid you would put out my eye or break my arm or put sand in my mouth. Things you sometimes did when you were roused. And do you remember? Bry made me a sword, but our father didn’t let me play with it although you were allowed a musket. John was talking to himself in a darkening room. A clock was ticking. A hand clung to his sleeve. He was sitting by a brother who was sick to death. He was thinking of their lives lived so close to each other, thinking of what they had used and abused. He put his hand on Benjamin’s wrist to feel its pulse. On a shelf over the door the clock ticked away. Where is Emly? he said, pressing hard on the flesh.

  Benjamin said: Out to whore.

  23

  In Kentucky, Bry was working on a horse farm. Three days of that fine life although his manner of getting there had been fraught with hiding by day, walking by night, and crossing two rivers, first Big Sandy and then Kanawha, which had coal-lined creeks running into it so the water was distinct. He felt fortunate in the miracle of that dark water and in the fact that, raised by Mama Bett and Mother Mary, who owned her, he could read any posted sign. South to river, one said. East to Bap. Chr., said another.

  He found a place he could float across the Ohio on a flatboat if he stole it, although a boat is a danger to a man who can’t swim. He’d been following trees in Virginia – nails in them at every crossroad – and he made a mistake because he’d never known, in those hungry weeks of nighttime wandering, in those weeks of sleeping in forests and haystacks by day, that at Point Pleasant the river was not flowing up to Ohio. No. At Point Pleasant, the river flowed south and west.

  Bry wondered if Josiah had run off by now. Josiah had reached in the leather bag and pulled out a compass. Said he needed no map. Said he sure as the devil would know the way from the look of the sky; said any fool knew that, but Josiah could not read. What good was a map? What about Nick? What about Billy, who used to help Bry fill his cotton sack? What about Jule, who was the most frequently lashed? Josiah always said he had nothing to lose so why not try. Josiah took chances, leaving a field to hunt or fish, but he looked after Rakel, finding an extra bite for her when food was thin and checking on was she warm and quiet enough in her sleep. Josiah was the watchdog of the cellar and Nick was the clown and Jim was the youngest and Bry wished he could find one of them by some chance but he wouldn’t wish that river on Josiah, who couldn’t swim, or on anyone who had better sense than to jump on a flatboat that was soaked through and when the river slowed down some, Bry had climbed out where he thought it was Ohio and walked in his careful way for some nights and kept to a valley, surviving on mushrooms and onions and berries and the yams he dug out of farm fields. He was walking north but he never saw a living soul until he came upon a white man in the canebrakes, dead and stiff. The white man had a dense and vicious smell about him and the face was crooked from lying sidewise and Bry felt exploded by the thought of this person’s lost life. Did somebody wait for him? T
he man was dressed pretty well and his hair was cut straight. He was white but turning dark and he’d be hard to recognize in another day but Bry had found him and so they would say he killed him and he would get hanged on the spot if he went for help. Knowing that, he ran himself out of breath to get far enough away, the sight staying with him for miles and later in his life it would come back, a man lying dead in a field with nobody around him to grieve. There was some fighting going on in those days about German and Irish immigrants. Bry had read a paper to that effect tacked on a fence. So maybe this man was a German or an Irish not desired in these United States. Like me, Bry thought, only he knew himself to be desired as a slave. At night he walked in the dark and by day he found a place to sleep. Once, he killed a squirrel and skinned it with the bowie knife given by Mister Ross, closing his eyes when he had to take off the ears and face. Once, he cut his hand and the blood made him weak, but he bound the wound, never looking, using leaves wrapped around his wrist. He sat with his hand in the air for some hours and sang because it took away his fear. Bry had never prayed for help from the Redeemer because to do so wasn’t right. What help he had – knife and compass – had been unasked for and given freely and now he was currying a horse, brushing the mane. Why do such a thing to a beast?

  He curried too gently in respect of this horse that could kick and bash. The long legs might break and he knew that was the end of a horse and would also be the end of him. He had to laugh at his luck or lack of it. Walking to find Mama Bett and maybe that child born when Jemima died and got rolled away in a cart. How old would the child be? What color eyes did she have? All that walking to get to Ohio and on the other side of the river he’d stumbled to a farmhouse pursued by starvation, beyond caring if he got caught.

  His arrival was an opportunity for Mister Lappeton, breeder of horses, to assess a wandering man of another race and to offer comfort and food. Indeed, sore and bitten, Bry was looked over and taken in. It was the first time he’d come into a house for five months and to top that he got offered a chair and a glass of beer and a cloth to clean his face. Missus Lappeton herself came in to serve up ham hocks and rice, black peas, cornbread, a hot cup of coffee, although he took this fine meal out on the porch. I wasn’t for sure, Bry admitted, scraping the juice from his plate with a finger. Had two mothers once, he said, and yet I forgot how to eat from a plate.

  The horse breeder had noticed Bry’s poor, cracked boots. I have a pair to fit ye good enough for work. If you’ll take it. You’ll be out to the barn.

  So it began, the idyll of three days in a barn with geldings as fine as anyone had seen in this horse-raising state. You be firm now, the farm wife said. Have a care or they’ll kill ye.

  Bry did not say that he had never touched a horse. He knew mules with a deal of hatred and horses were worse. In the barn he was issued a blanket, a pair of old boots, and instructions. Go to sleep. Work tomorrow. Tell us your story another time.

  Race horses have brains that are not as great as their hearts and the look in their eyes was outrage. They lifted their hooves in their stalls, pawing in agitation as if the hay was not suited to their needs. But the barn was immaculate and there was a trainer who was white. The trainer did not talk to him and the horses also got quiet when he came into a stall, but Bry crept carefully past the noses and ears and teeth and never close to the rear as he’d been taught when Mama Bett took him out to a fence at the age of two and showed him Mister Daniel’s horse that he’d saved from an auctioneer. That horse was broken down but even so he was loved although a worker who can’t do work is known as an impediment. Know that big word? Mister Benjamin used to shout on a Sunday when the slaves were concocting suppers for themselves or hanging up some clothes to dry. Know that word impediment? What you are to me when you don’t earn your keep.

  Tell us your story. Another time.

  Indeed, the idyll of the horse barn gave Bry a chance to consider the shape of his life and he remembered back to his first days at Mister Rafe’s when he was a child in the cotton field pulling bolls, jamming them into a bag that was bigger than he was in length. Two hundred pounds or a whipping. Little boy that I was, taken from my two mothers and made to sleep on a log in the quarters and drag the bag through the field and then the day Jemima came we all heard about it, how she lived with our master in the way of a wife. When Bry learned about Jemima he could not eat or sleep or move his bowels or think. He ached at the thought of Jemima with Mister Rafe. He could ache even yet because he had loved her as a boy and then for the rest of his life. Later they met in the shade hut out in the middle of a cornfield and she did her explaining. She swore that she’d come as a woman to Mister Rafe in order to be close to Bry and for nothing else. He was thirteen by then and raged out and thin after three years dragging the cotton bag. Such an angry one you grew to be, she said, and it wasn’t blame on her part to say it. They were no longer children and they found relief in a field hut all around bristled with maize. Then later she was growing a baby and it was Bry’s baby and not Mister Rafe’s is what she said. What would Rafe do if the baby had no red hair on its head like his? If the baby had coal black eyes like a baby slave? Which is just what her baby would be if it lived. Put out in the quarters to work in the fields.

  Bry wondered about that child as he watched three white men approach the barn where he was currying a beast so much larger, so much stronger than he was. It had been three days of calm thinking, remembering, currying. One of the men approaching now was the horse breeder who’d offered him work in the big, clean horse barn. The others were larger of girth and walked with their legs set apart and yet moving fast. One of them was opening and shutting his bare hands. The other had gloves on and a tall hat. Bry reached up to the spine of the horse and felt the weight of hard muscle over bone. He wanted to climb up and ride away but there was no chance of that although he might still run on his own two feet. But maybe they meant him no harm. He must get used to the world again. The horse breeder had taken him in, offered him a fair wage, given him boots. Maybe the other two had come to look at the big horse, so he began with the curry brush again, stroke after downward stroke, even talking to the beast in his high soft voice. You an me, he said, both the same but you run faster only you tied up right now and I’m free.

  Step over here, boy, the breeder said.

  Bry dropped the brush and turned to the three white men.

  Say your name to these gentlemen and where you came here from. Time to tell your story.

  Bry said his name, that one word.

  From around here?

  Yessir.

  This county.

  Uh huh. Yessir.

  What’s the name of it? The two unknown men were closing in.

  Bry said: I never got told it but I…

  The breeder put out a hand much dented with lines and took hold of Bry’s arm. His face was frozen, eyes never blinking.

  You come on with us now and we’ll get you a name. The breeder reached behind him to a peg and brought down a rope and pulled Bry’s arms behind his back. Bry thought of falling to his knees but instead he stepped along quickly from the barn to the house where he got tied into a covered cart with tall wheels.

  24

  Spring was late and Benjamin wasn’t buried until the thaw. Then people arrived at John’s little church in the Jonesville school riding in wagons and buggies and a few came on foot and when they bent their heads to pray, it seemed to Lavina that dead, we are all alike. Dead we are God’s contract with the universe and she said this to herself although it was a heathen thing to say and she sat like a stone in her long brown dress and remembered the funeral of Eliza Ely because she had last worn the brown dress on that terrible day. She thought of Sister Eliza even as she watched Matilda sway on her bench and blow her nose on a handkerchief she pulled out of her sleeve. What did Matilda know of grief? This is my baby now, Eliza’s mother had boldly announced, looking at the grieving father, whose head hung down on his heaving chest. A mother dies and h
er child loses every right to safekeeping. What if I die? John can’t take care of Gina. It will be left to Electa, who cares only for herself at this age. She then thought of the two little hand-dug graves under the apple tree, the graves of her children unmet. She tried to concentrate. John was lately quiet at home but in public he was more and more erratic. She shifted her weight and stretched her legs. John and Benjamin worked as a team, John taking orders from the older brother, and what will happen to us now without Benjamin’s expertise? John will inherit land from his brother, of course. She was sure of this because it was common sense. John had slaved for his brother, although Lavina did not like the word to be used as a verb. She imagined the windfall that might occur as recompense for John’s years of service. She imagined herself in a fine Persian shawl even as John at the pulpit went rambling on about the spoils of…Lust! She began to listen now. Was he going to expose his brother’s half-breeds? They had never confronted that shameful subject and Lavina prayed that they never would. Gina had fallen asleep on Lavina’s lap and Martin was knotting a long piece of string but Electa was obviously hearing every word of her father’s strange rant! At school she had learned to embroider and do long division and write an essay on Rome in the Middle Ages, but she was not of an age to understand lust, and even the adults around her were scratching and shifting. They were muttering one to another behind their hands when John suddenly pointed at the coffin: Someone in this room will be tramping in hell before winter comes again, he exclaimed. And when he mentioned the tired old metaphor of the eye of a needle, Lavina discerned that it was lust for wealth that John was berating, using his brother as an example of death by greed. Trying to imagine Benjamin, even as a ghost, fitting through the eye of anything smaller than a doorway, Lavina bent her head to hide her smile.