Authors: Gen LaGreca
The man’s hand stopped
midway to the weapon. He rose, staring at Tom in bewilderment, his anger
cooling at the sight of the cash. He took it and counted in disbelief.
“Eight hundred? For
that
wench
?”
In handing over the large
sum of cash he was carrying for his journey, Tom had just done something he had
never done and thought he would never do. Instead of buying a ticket to the new
age, he was buying a parcel from the old one.
“Why, fella, that’s a
price ya might pay for a decent plowman, but for
that
piece o’
trouble . . .”—he pointed to the girl—“that
spiteful . . .” The man stopped. He seemed to think better of
telling Tom he was paying too much. “Say, you don’t come from ’round here, do
ya? You sound like one o’ them Yankees.”
Tom hadn’t seen the man
before. Bayou Redbird brought strangers in and out of its docks, some of whom
made their way up the bluff to Greenbriar.
“Just take the money and
go.”
The man smiled, flashing
his decaying teeth. He removed the rope from around the girl’s neck.
“All right, Yankee, she’s
all yours.” He stuffed the bills in his pocket, picked up the pliers, and rode
off.
The parcel and the
purchaser looked at each other. Both seemed astonished. Tom untied the rope
around her hands. Her wrists were red from the burning cord, but she paid them
no attention.
He walked toward his
horse with her following him. He offered her a canteen of water. The eagerness
with which she drank told him it was from need, not pleasure. When she’d had
enough and returned the vessel to him, he took a cloth from his saddlebag,
spilled some water over it, and held it out to her. She rubbed her face with
it, removing mud, grime, and blood to reveal the bronze glow of her skin
beneath. She put the cloth in her pocket and stared at her new owner.
He realized he had
exchanged no information about his purchase and had
no . . . receipt.
“What’s your name?” he
asked.
She gave no reply. With
her immediate ordeal ended, the abject terror drained from her face, and the
defiance he had seen on their first meeting returned. She offered no words of
gratitude.
“Who are you?” he
persisted.
The only response he
received was a contemptuous stare, as if all white men were the same rot to
her. He took this as a sign that her condition had improved to its normal
state.
He took hold of the
horse’s reins and gestured for her to mount. He waited, but she remained on her
spot.
“It’s a long way to
walk,” he said.
She remained motionless,
so he mounted. He made room in front of him for her to ride sidesaddle, as
women did, and extended his hand to help her up. When she didn’t respond, he
started off at a slow pace. She finally ran up and leaped on behind the saddle,
straddling the horse like a man.
Cheerlessly, they rode
together in that fashion. With her feathery light weight and keen sense of
balance, she endeavored to stay on the animal while avoiding the revulsion of
touching him. She succeeded, except for the wind that kept blowing disorderly
strands of her long, wild hair across his face.
The clip-clop of Tom’s
horse was amplified in the silence of his ride with his companion. Greenbriar’s
countryside, lush even in February, draped the two travelers in its primeval
beauty. After the previous day’s storm, the resurrection fern that attached to
the oak branches had turned from brown to green. The plant possessed the
amazing capacity to endure dry periods in which it appeared to be dead, only to
regain its color with a new rainfall. Tom felt no such resurrection of his
parched mood as he rode along the main road through the town’s plantation country.
He had lost the man who was like a father to him and the machine that was to
launch his future. And now, a precious sum of money was also lost, replaced by
the hostile body behind him.
The young woman proved to
be a good rider. Despite the brisk pace that Tom set, she ably kept her balance
without reaching to hold on to him.
As they neared the
turnoff to Indigo Springs, he wondered what he might find there. Even though he
had been gone only two nights, he felt uneasy. Although the field hands were managed
well by his trusted overseer, Nikolaus Bergen, what worried him were the
servants in the big house and its dependencies, who were under
his
direction—or
lack of it.
He felt in constant
tension with the slaves he managed. The spark of choice, the great igniter of
human energy, had been stolen from their lives, and they, in turn, took what
they could from him. He was their enemy, and they were his nemesis. He could
harness fuel to produce mechanical power, but he couldn’t harness the human
spirit. Perhaps no one could—or should. His overseer had promised to monitor
the servants and craftsmen who lived and worked around the big house, but Tom
knew that Nick would be kept busy ginning and baling the remainder of last
year’s crop and plowing for this year’s planting. What liberties would his
servants take? What tasks would they leave undone? What would they steal? He
would soon find out.
He observed a wagon
ahead, coming from the opposite direction and turning onto his plantation
trail. One of his slaves was hauling a pile of bricks that Tom had purchased to
build a new smokehouse. He bristled thinking of the time his servants spent
idle while he bought bricks from the outside instead of making them with his
own labor. He thought that the bricks would long be mass-produced by machine
and hauled with a motor wagon before he would learn the secret of getting
first-rate work from people who toiled without will, without gain, without
hope, people whom it was against the state laws in 1859 to free, and against his
nature to compel, making him feel as chained to them as they were to him.
Alongside the road, some
of his fields came into view. He saw plow teams turning the soil, with the men
looking as indifferent as the earth they tried to stir. His workmen would soon
be planting a few hundred acres of corn and other crops consumed on the
plantation, then a few thousand acres of the white gold, cotton. In a budding
industrial age, these crops would be grown using manual methods of the ancient
past, he thought, envisioning the day when a single man driving a motorized
tractor could plant an entire field by himself.
He saw Nick on horseback,
presiding over the field hands. Nick and his three brothers had come here from
Germany for greater opportunities and were working as overseers on different
plantations to earn enough money to buy their own land. The thirty-five
year-old immigrant was too busy watching the hands to notice his employer.
Growing cotton with gangs of unwilling men required constant scrutiny, Tom
thought grimly, but it was better than the whip, which he forbade. He owned
their bodies, but how much more would be possible if he could tap their will?
He took the turnoff to
Indigo Springs, traveling along a path lined with towering trees whose
seedlings were planted sixty years ago by his grandfather. In spacing the
little plants many feet apart, his grandfather must have envisioned the
spectacular growth that Tom now saw. He wondered if one day someone would
travel this road in a motorized vehicle, realizing the future that he imagined.
He rode along a path that
sliced through some of the richest soil deposits in the world, where his
grandparents had started a modest family farm that had grown into one of the
largest cotton plantations in the state. Now he planned to create a different
and greater future through his invention. Would he ever recover it?
Through the trees, he
glimpsed the roof of a solitary cabin high on a plateau away from the big house
and its dependencies. It was the place where he had spent all the time he could
spare. To anyone’s casual glance, the simple wood structure looked like an old
shack, but to Tom the place was a sanctuary for escaping the old world and a
factory for building a new one. It was his workshop.
Tom had chosen a secluded
spot to assemble his invention, with a shed to house the device and an arable
field outside to test it. The hands lived a distance away, by the cotton
fields, and had no contact with the shed. The household servants paid little
attention to the small building removed from their living and working quarters.
The pains he took to ensure his seclusion might have been unnecessary because
none of the slaves had shown any curiosity about his endeavors. They seemed as
content to be left alone by him as he was to be free of them, so his work had
proceeded in privacy. When he had left with the invention for his trip, he
shuttered the windows and locked the doors. Now, with the product of that shop
lost, he felt no urge to ride up the hill and reopen the place. It was the
first time he’d passed his workshop feeling no desire to be there.
The shop vanished from
view as he headed toward the big house. He saw four servants walking out of the
well house, plodding along lifelessly, hauling two buckets of water among them;
it was a job for one person. He saw the laundress carrying a basket of clothes,
with two helpers who carried nothing. The faces he saw looked blank, distant,
bored. At that moment, when his grief had smothered his desire to do anything,
he felt as listless as the servants. Is this what they felt like every day, he
wondered, as they faced life without the spark of a goal, a purpose, or a
dream?
Like the fern that
covered the oaks, their spirit seemed never to die actually but rather to go
dormant. It was resurrected in their leisure time, with the wild revelry of
their music and dancing that seemed as much a need as a pleasure. He liked
knowing they had an escape. The new numbness he felt seemed inescapable.
As he rode on the path
around the front garden toward the big house, the servants walking about didn’t
yet notice him. His arrival was obscured by overgrown shrubs spilling onto the
road, shrubs he had directed his servants to prune—how many times? The garden
also needed tending, yet the grounds team was nowhere to be found.
The home up ahead looked
fit for a painting: a two-story plantation house, with arching trees brushing
the upstairs windows, a gallery wrapping the main level, and a pond partly
visible behind the home with ducks wading across the water. Like so much of
Greenbriar, he thought, the sight was one of untroubled beauty. A landscape
artist would capture nothing more. But what picture lay beyond the painter’s
brush?
He thought of the young
woman riding behind him. The scene of her torment was something that never made
it onto artists’ canvasses. He wondered how she viewed the site of her new
captivity and what he was going to do with her.
Just then he saw a sight
that vexed him. His stable hand and the chief factotum of the plantation,
Jerome, was dressed in a satin vest and dress shirt, a carryover from his days
as head of Colonel Edmunton’s household servants before Tom had taken charge
and demoted him. The lanky slave in his late twenties was neither dressed for
the stable nor anywhere near it. In fact, Jerome was coming out the front door
of the big house and holding a glass of sherry, looking like the owner. He also
held a small object in his hand, which he inspected closely, then placed in his
pocket. He availed himself of the rocker that was the colonel’s favorite seat,
and began swaying leisurely, enjoying the view—until he spotted Tom
approaching.
In one frozen moment, the
rocking stopped and Jerome stared at Tom in utter surprise. Then the
resourceful slave sprang to his feet, casually hid the drink behind a pot of
ferns, and began shaking the rocker, sitting, standing, shaking it again, as if
testing its stability.
He leaned over the rail
and called to another slave who was sawing wood nearby. “Lawd sakes, Sammy, the
colonel’s rocker, it’s a-dancin’ ’stead o’ standin’ still. You needs to fix it
’fore Mr. Tom come home—” He was shouting loud enough for Tom to hear. As the
inventor rode up, Jerome feigned surprise.
“Well, well! What we got
here? Mr. Tom! Ain’t you went to Philerdelfi?”
“I had a change in
plans.” Tom stopped the horse in front of the house. “I hope I’m not
interrupting your afternoon sherry.”
Jerome laughed smoothly
from the gallery. “I wuz inspectin’ the big house, sir. Makin’ sure them
good-fer-nothin’ maids keepin’ it clean. Yes, sir, Jerome watch everythin’ when
yer gone,” he said with great self-importance as he walked toward Tom. With his
fine clothes and shiny boots, he looked ready for a Sunday social, but the day
wasn’t Sunday, and he was supposed to be in the stable.
“What about the drink
that’s behind the plant?”
“Oh!” His lips pursed as
he pondered what to say next. “You see, Mr. Tom, I wuz testin’ it, and it gone
a tad sour, so I be gittin’ Jimmy to replace it.”
Jimmy was the butler.
Either from their memory of Jerome as their boss under the colonel or from
Tom’s failure to supervise them himself, Jimmy and the other servants tended to
take orders from Jerome.
“What’s in your pocket?”
“Nothin’ to concern you
none, Mr. Tom. Jus’ somethin’ I’s meanin’ to do ’fore you return.” He smiled
charmingly.
“Come on, Jerome, let me
see what you’ve taken this time.”
Reluctantly, Jerome
removed a small silver object from his pocket.
“The colonel’s bookmark!
How could you, Jerome? You took it from the library. You stole a keepsake from
my father!”
“Why no, sir, I jus’
inspectin’ the house and sees this gotten tarnished, so I takes it to put a
shine to it. The colonel, he don’t let his stuff git tarnished, no sir! That
disrespectin’ to his memory. You needs to put a strap to them house servants so
they be keepin’ things better fer you.”
“I’m not amused,” Tom
said curtly. “Not about this or with the watch or the ivory comb or the scarf
pin that’re also missing.”
From his saddle, Tom
stretched his hand down to Jerome, demanding the object back. Jerome gave it to
him.
“And what about the ham
that went missing from the smokehouse before I left?”
The slave sheepishly
confessed. “Jerome jus’ move Mr. Tom’s ham from inside Mr. Tom’s smokehouse to
inside Mr. Tom’s slave.”
Tom wanted to punish him
roundly. But how? He realized that Jerome’s assessment of the situation was
right. If he had stolen Jerome’s entire life, how could he punish the slave for
stealing a ham or a bookmark or anything else?
Tom wished that the
attempt he’d made to get rid of Jerome had worked. Some time ago, through
contacts at the docks, Tom had learned of a safe house in Cincinnati and of a
steamship captain who could be persuaded, with sufficient inducement, to carry
a slave there from Bayou Redbird on his route to and from the northern ports.
When Tom suggested the possibility to Jerome, the slave was eager to leave, so
Tom made the arrangements. He hired Jerome out to work on the captain’s ship
and gave him one hundred dollars to deliver secretly to the captain in exchange
for leaving him behind in Cincinnati. Then he had Jerome memorize the address
of the safe house. Both of them needed to be extremely careful. If Tom were
caught aiding a slave to escape, he could go to prison for years, and if Jerome
were caught, the consequences could be . . . worse.
Jerome eagerly embarked
on the trip, and Tom thought he had finally seen the last of the incorrigible
slave. But then Jerome unexpectedly returned home—without freedom and without
Tom’s money given to purchase it.
Jerome had never boarded
the ship to Cincinnati. Instead, he’d spent a few days frequenting the shops at
Bayou Redbird and lodging with a free man of color whom he knew. Then he
returned to Indigo Springs with a new wardrobe for himself and gifts for his
lady friends. To Tom’s exasperation, Jerome resumed all of his old tricks.
Although he was assigned to the stable, the unruly slave was often in the big
house, bossing the servants, availing himself of Tom’s food and liquor, and
stealing little items along his way. The bondsman who managed to fleece Tom of
his money and have the run of the house was a chronic reminder of his failure
as a slave owner.
Jerome seemed to sense
that his master struggled with the unhappy choice of either being a patsy or a
brute. Since Tom rejected the latter, Jerome seemed bent on making him the
former.
“Why didn’t you go when
you had the chance?” Tom had scolded Jerome at the time.
“Jus’ afore I wuz s’posed
to go, I sees a snake in my dreams, sir. A snake wid two heads. One head
pointin’ north, the other south.” Jerome became agitated, as if he were
reliving the dream. “The head pointin’ north wuz hissin’ and flashin’ its
tongue. It wuz fixin’ to bite me somethin’ fierce.”
The ready grin on
Jerome’s face had vanished. He looked sincere and troubled. “You see, sir, I
wuz more afeared o’ the head pointin’ north than the head pointin’ south.”