Les Blancs (26 page)

The girl quivers in his arms and he holds her a little more tightly
,
looking up once again to his stars
.

HIRAM SWEET
and his wife
,
MARIA
,
sit at either end of a well-laden table, attended by two male servants. The youngest son
,
TOMMY
,
about ten, sits near his father and across from his older brother
,
EVERETT
,
who is approaching thirty. A fifth person, a dinner guest, is seated on
EVERETT
’s
left. He is
DR. MACON BULLETT
.
The meal has just ended, but an animated conversation which characterized it lingers actively
.

EVERETT
—by Heaven, I’ll tell you we don’t have to take any more of it! (
He hits the table with his fist for emphasis
) I say we can have
600,000 men in the field without even feeling it. The whole thing wouldn’t have to last more than six months, Papa. Why can’t you see that?

H
IRAM
(
A man in his mid-sixties, with an overgenerous physique and a kind, if somewhat overindulged, face
) I see it fine! I see that it’s the river of stupidity the South will eventually drown itself in.

BULLETT
(
A man of slightly quieter temperament than the other two men; with an air of deeply ingrained “refinement”
) I don’t see that we have much choice, however you look at it, Hiram. They’ve pushed our backs against the wall. Suddenly every blubber-fronted Yankee industrialist in New England has begun to imagine himself the deliverer of the blacks—at least in public speeches.

At the epithet
,
HIRAM
looks down at his own stomach and then back at his friend with some annoyance
.

EVERETT
Hear, hear, sir!

HIRAM
(
Eating something
) The only thing is—it doesn’t make sense to fight a war you know you can’t win.

EVERETT
is so exasperated by the remark that he jumps up from the table. His mother laughs
.

EVERETT
(
With genuine irritation
) Whatever are you laughing about, Mother?

MARIA
Forgive me, darling. It’s just that it always amuses me to see how serious you have become now-a-day. (
To
BULLETT
) He was so boyish and playful for so long. (
Innocently
) Right up until his twenty-first birthday he used to love to have me come to him and—

EVERETT
Mother, please. Papa, how can you constantly talk about our
not
winning when—(
On his fingers
)—we have the finest generals in the country and a labor force of four million who can just go on working undisturbed. Why, don’t you see—if we had to, we could put every white man in the South in uniform! Will the North ever be able to boast that? (
Smiling at
BULLETT
) What will
happen to that great rising industrial center—if its men go off to war? (
He bends close to
BULLETT
so they can laugh together
) Who will run the machines then? New England schoolmarms?

They laugh heartily together
.
HIRAM
watches them and folds his hands on his stomach
.

HIRAM
And may I ask something of you, my son? When
you
and the rest of the white men of the South go off to fight your half of the war, who is going to stay home and guard your slaves? Or are they simply going to stop running away because then, for the first time in history, running away will be so easy?

EVERETT
’s
mouth is a little ajar from the question, though it is far from the first time he has heard it. He and
BULLETT
are merely exasperated to hear it asked again. They begin to smile at one another as though a child had once again asked a famous and tiresome riddle
.

BULLETT
(
Waving his hands at absurdity
) Hiram, you know perfectly well that that is not a real consideration. Abolitionist nonsense that any slaveholder should know better than worry about!

HIRAM
I see. Tell me something, Macon. How many slaves did you lose off your plantation last year?

BULLETT
Why—two. Prime hands, too, blast them!

HIRAM
Two. And Robley hit the jackpot with his new overseer: he lost five. And one from the Davis place. And I lost one. Let’s see … two, seven, eight, nine—from this immediate district … in spite of every single precaution that we know how to take …

BULLETT
Oh, come on now, Sweet, everyone knows that the ones who run away are the troublemakers, the malcontents. Usually bad workers …

HIRAM
Mmm-hmm. Of course. Then why are there reward posters up on every other tree in this county? Come, man, you’re not talking to a starry-eyed Yankee fool! You’re talking to a slaveholder!

BULLETT
I don’t follow your point.

HIRAM
You follow my point! We all follow my point! Or else will somebody here stop laughing long enough to tell me why you and me and Robley and all the others waste all that money on armed guards and patrols and rewards and dogs? And, above all, why you and me and every other planter in the cotton South
and
the Border States tried to move heaven and earth to get the fugitive slave laws passed? Was it to try and guarantee the return of property that you are sitting there calmly and happily telling me doesn’t run off in the first place!

EVERETT
Well, Papa, of course a few—

HIRAM
A few, my eyelashes! What’s the matter with you two! I believe in slavery! But I also understand it! I understand it well enough not to laugh at the very question that might decide this war that you are just dying to start.

EVERETT
You forget, Papa, it’s not going to be much of a war. And if it is, then we can always arm the
blacks!

HIRAM
puts down his cup with astonishment and even
MACON
looks at
EVERETT
askance for his naïve remark
.

HIRAM
(
With undiluted sarcasm
) I have to admit that my boy here is as logical as the rest of the leaders of our cause. For what could be more logical than the idea that you can give somebody a gun and make him fight
for
what he’s trying like blazes to run away
from
in the first place. (
Dryly
) I salute you, Everett. You belong in Washington—immediately—among your peers.

MARIA
Now, Hiram—

EVERETT
You don’t have to be insulting, Papa.

HIRAM
I’ll be what I please in this house and you’ll mind your manners to me in the face of it!

EVERETT
looks to his mother in outrage for support
.

MARIA
Well, dear, you shouldn’t sass your father.

EVERETT
Mother, I am not Tommy! I am a grown man. Who, incidentally, any place but this would be running his father’s plantation at my age.

HIRAM
You’ll run it when I can depend on you to run it in my tradition. And not before.

EVERETT
Your “tradition” is running it to ruin!

MARIA
(
Upset
) Everett, I’ll not have it at the table. I simply won’t have it at the table. (
To the younger boy to get him away from the argument
) You may excuse yourself and go to your room if you are through, Tommy. Say good night to Dr. Bullett.

TOMMY
Good night, sir.

(
He exits
)

HIRAM
(
Immediately
) So I am running it to ruin, am I! You hear that, Macon! This polished little pepper is now one of the new experts of the South. Knows everything. Even how to run a plantation. Studied it in Paris cafés!

BULLETT
At this point, Hiram, I hear only that you must quiet yourself. (
Looking at his watch
) In fact, let’s get upstairs and get it over.

HIRAM
I don’t feel like going upstairs and I don’t feel like being poked all over with your little sticks and tubes.

BULLETT
I came over this evening to examine you, Hiram, and I am going to examine you if we have to do it right here at the table.

(
He rises and gets his black bag and
MARIA
sits nodding her appreciation of his forcefulness with the difficult man
)

MARIA
He’s been eating salt again, too, Macon. I declare I can’t do a thing with him.

HIRAM
(
To his wife
) Yahhhhhh.

EVERETT
(
Watching his father’s antics
) Stubbornness, backwardness, disorder, contempt for new ways. It’s the curse of the past and it is strangling us.

HIRAM
All I can say is that if you are the spirit of the Future, it sure is going to be talkative.

MARIA
Can’t you ever talk nicely to him, Hiram?

EVERETT
I don’t want him to talk “nice” to me. For the eighty-thousandth time, I am not a little boy!

HIRAM
(
To
MACON
) Isn’t there something you are always quoting to me from your Shakespeare about people protesting too much? (
To
EVERETT
) Seems to me, son, that I haven’t done too badly with what you seem to think are my backward ways. You can testify to that, can’t you, Macon? Came into this country with four slaves and fifty dollars. Four slaves and fifty dollars! (
He becomes mellow and a little grand whenever he recalls this for the world
) I planted the first seed myself and supervised my own baling. That was thirty-five years ago and I made this one of the finest—though I am the first to admit, not one of the biggest—plantations in this district. So I must know a little something about how to run it.

EVERETT
Maybe you
knew
about running it.

HIRAM
I
know
about running it!

BULLETT
Calm down now, Hiram.

HIRAM
(
To
MACON
) You know what HIS idea is of running this place? It’s simple. I’ts the “modern” way. It’s what everybody does. You put the whole thing in the hands of overseers! That’s all! Then you take off for Saratoga or Paris. Those aren’t planters who do that—those are parasites! I’m a cotton grower, and I’ll manage my own plantation until I’m put under. And that I promise God!

EVERETT
Papa, can I ask you a simple unemotional question—when is the last time our yield came anywhere near ten bales to the hand? When, Papa? You tell me.

HIRAM
Well, the land is just about finished. Five bales to the hand is pretty good for our land at this point.

EVERETT
(
Looking triumphantly from his father to the other
) And when are we going to buy new land?

HIRAM
(
Troubled in spite of himself
) Next year, if the crop is good.

EVERETT
And if the crop is poor? Listen close to this circular conversation, Macon.

(
He waves his hand to point up the absurdity
)

HIRAM
Well, we’ll borrow.

EVERETT
Yes—and then what?

HIRAM
We’ll buy more land.

EVERETT
And who will work the extra land? You going to buy new slaves too?

HIRAM
(
Rubbing his ear
) Well, if those Virginia breeders weren’t such bandits we could take on one or two more prime hands—

EVERETT
But they
are
bandits, and until such time as we can get some decent legislation in this country to reopen the African slave trade we have to meet their prices. So now what?

HIRAM
Don’t goad me!

EVERETT
Don’t goad you! What do you expect me to do, sit around and watch you let this place go bankrupt! You don’t seem to understand, Papa, we don’t have much choice. We have got to up our yield or go under. It’s as simple as that. (
To the doctor
) You know what this place is, Macon? A resort for slaves! You know what they put in the fields here? I am ashamed to tell you. Nine and one half hours!

HIRAM
Nine and a half hours is plenty of labor for a hand!

EVERETT
(
Almost shouting
) Not on that cotton-burned land it isn’t! (
Then fighting to hold himself in check
) Sure, I know—there was a time when the land was pure and fertile as a dream. You hardly had to do anything but just poke something in it and it grew. But that is over with. It has to be coaxed now, and you have to keep your labor in the fields a decent length of time. Nine and one half hours! Why the drivers stroll around out there as though it were all a game. (
Looking at his father
) And the high-water mark gets higher and higher and higher. But he doesn’t care! This is his little farm, run in his little way, by his dear old friends out there who understand him and love him: Fa-la-la-la-la!

MARIA
I think that will do, son.

EVERETT
Yes, that will do! That will do—!