Jacob's Ladder (8 page)

The two-bit piece Abigail Gatewood had inserted into each pair of thick woolen socks was half a day's wages for a free white, and some of Gatewoods' neighbors would have disapproved. Miss Dinwiddie had been heard to complain that Gatewood “spoiled his niggers,” and it was partly for this reason that the money was discreetly delivered. Discretion came naturally to the servants, and they did not inspect their bonus until they were well clear of the house.

Mistress Abigail smiled. “Odona, how is your ague? All the damp we've had! I trust you are using the comfrey poultices I gave you?”

“Oh yes, Mistress.”

“And Rufus, your hand is still swollen.”

“Rufus be a little more careful jerkin' them logs downhill, he don't get run over by them,” Jack the Driver said.

Rufus grinned. “Had me a driver's job where I wouldn't do no work, I'd heal quicker.”

“Come to the kitchen house tomorrow and I'll have another look.”

“He don't be so full of himself, Mistress, he don't get hurt,” Jack muttered.

“I'm sure that's true, Jack. But we can't help that, can we?”

Some of the younger women unrolled their new clothing before they were out the back door.

Mistress Abigail gave Jesse the largest socks she had. “Happy Christmas to you both,” she said gaily.

The parade snaked past the table to the rustle of new cloth and Abigail's inquiries. “When we broach the keg, don't you act up as you did last year,” she admonished ancient Uncle Agamemnon, who sixty years ago had been a Bakongo sorcerer before he was sold into slavery.

Duncan reined in his mare, Gypsy, at a bend where he could see all Stratford at his feet.

He hated refusing his roommate Spaulding's Christmas invitation: two weeks in the Piedmont—horse races, hunting, gala balls, people who didn't know Duncan Gatewood from Adam—but Duncan could not deny his father's stiff, courteous summons. “Your dear mother would be so pleased . . . You will be interested to see the wonderful wheat crop we have put up. That servant marriage in which you had some interest seems satisfactory. I pray you and I might resume more congenial relations. . . .”

Thank God South Carolina had seceded! Thank God Duncan had something to think about besides his own misery!

As a boy, Duncan had been good-natured and natural—nothing had prepared him for desire, he never imagined that anything could set him and his father at loggerheads. He had tried to be an obedient son, but Midge, she . . . Duncan's hands trembled, and Gypsy stirred restlessly. Gypsy knew she was home.

Smoke lifted from Stratford's chimneys. A wagon rumbled across the plank bridge over the millrace. How small everything seemed. How could this mountain plantation have been his entire world?

Samuel, the thoughtful master, had provided Maggie with a husband and father for her baby. Duncan's old schoolmate, Jesse. Duncan himself could not have chosen better. But awake, late at night in the Institute barracks, listening to Spaulding's snores and the soft pad of a sentry's footfalls in the hall, Duncan tried not to think of Maggie with Jesse. Duncan tried not to think how Jesse would be learning Maggie's ways. Oh, she had her ways!

To make this day bearable, Duncan vowed to shun her. He vowed to shun her baby. Some cadets joked about slipping down to the Quarters for a taste, but no cadet ever joked about the babies.

Samuel Gatewood's guests' servants were celebrating with their fellows. At the end of the lane, one of Andrew Seig's field hands was inspecting the hog slow-roasting over a bed of coals. He kept his hands folded behind his back, ostentatiously resisting temptation. Aunt Opal visited from cabin to cabin. Franky and Dinah Williams perched on the seat of a worn-out dump rake. Though all the cabins had wooden floors, only Jack the Driver's cabin, at the head of the lane, boasted a modest front porch, where Uncle Agamemnon sat rocking. Uncle Agamemnon claimed to be a hundred years old and maybe he was, because he remembered Africa and could talk to you in its language.

Jesse Burns said, “How you gettin' on, Uncle? I'm Jesse, Maggie's husband.”

The old man was dark skin over skeleton. His tiny black eyes sparked. “Come up and sit, son.”

“Thank you, Uncle.”

In his twenty-sixth year, Jesse Burns was muscled like a bull calf, veins and sinew prominent, each in right proportion. It graveled some white men the way Jesse stood as though he had an absolute right to take up the space he took, to breathe the air he breathed.

When he was twelve years old, Jesse was already doing a man's work. By eighteen some SunRise sports wagered that Jesse could outpull a light drafter and would have put the matter to the test had not Uther Botkin forbade it. The irises of Jesse's large eyes were light tan, and though he neither dipped snuff nor touched liquor, the whites were yellowish.

Uncle Agamemnon occupied the Quarters' sole rocker, which had adorned the Gatewoods' porch until it wore out. Mended, it sufficed to hold one frail old man who didn't weigh as much as his years. Jesse sat on the crackerbox beside him.

“You seek something of me,” the old man said. “The name of something,
nkisi,
to help you.”

Jesse lowered his head. “Yes, Uncle,” he said. Jesse had been taught by rationalist Uther Botkin, and asking this old conjure man for help shamed him. Two women waited, out of earshot, in the street with letters they had brought for Jesse to read. Jesse spoke softly. “Uncle . . . can you help me? My woman, Maggie, she will not come to my bed.”

The old man's toothless smile. “Grow old, you will no longer want her,” he suggested. “Can't you wait?” After a pause, the old man relented. “Bring me red flannel and four new needles and I will make you a charm.” Loudly, and with audible satisfaction, the old man called to the waiting women, “What do you want? Why have you come? To read white man's marks?” He snorted and spat and rather grandly drew a feed sack over his shoulders and closed his eyes.

While the old man dozed, people brought Jesse their letters. “Dear Ellie, I am still at this place . . .” “Darling husband, I have not heard from you in such a spell. Are you still with Gatewoods?” “My dearest, we have been so long separated that today I jump over the broomstick with Dell a woman on this plantation. She is carrying my child. She is a hard worker. She is plain-featured, and a good Christian.”

“I'm sorry,” Jesse said.

“What you got to be sorry about?” The woman snatched her letter back.

When bid, Jesse replied in his florid hand, on cheap paper which could be folded to serve as its own envelope.

Children ran hooting and hollering between the cabins.

Jack the Driver gave a gaily painted tin box to Rufus. “You let the young'uns fire these off, but Rufus, have a care.”

Rufus dipped into the box for a string of ladycrackers and flipped it into the hog fire, where it exploded coals and soot into the air, to the children's delight and the hog cook's indignation.

“I'd like to talk with you, Jesse,” Jack the Driver said.

Jesse patted the porch where his letter writers sat, but Jack shook his head no. “Inside,” he said. He called, “Franky, you bring us some of that tea you got brewin'.”

More ladycrackers chittered as Jack ushered Jesse into the cabin. It contained a straw pallet against the back wall, rolled up so you could sit on it, a chifforobe (doors missing) beside the sprung thirty-gallon cask which served as a table, and two handmade wooden stools, legs guyed by rawhide. The wool jacket hanging in the chifforobe was Jack's now, but had been Catesby Byrd's. Jack took a stool and waited until Jesse took the other.

Franky presented battered teacups as if they were finest china. “These mine. Don't you bust them now.”

After each man took a suitably cautious sip, Franky left.

Jack the Driver said, “I ain't never had no young buck who worked better'n you or mooned around so much neither. What's the matter with you, boy?”

“I expect you know.”

Jack did, but didn't intend to have that knowledge thrown up to him. “Master Duncan comin' home today.”

“I wish to hell he'd stayed away.”

“Don't you go blaspheming, boy. Ain't no blaspheming in my house.”

Jesse stared into his handleless teacup.

After a time, Jack the Driver began, “I come here with Maggie when she come to this place. She weren't nothin' but a pickaninny then. The Mitchells in Warm Springs was where we was before. Me and her and Auntie Opal. I sleep in the horse barn with the bridles and saddles. Maggie's mamma sleep in the big house, which is how she gets into trouble.”

“What trouble?”

“Trouble with the master. For a colored gal, worst trouble there is!”

The tea was mostly hot water, but Jesse took another respectful sip.

“You see that hog out there?” Jack said.

“Fine hog, mighty fine hog.”

“And we got deer hams for tomorrow which Master Gatewood and Master Byrd hunted on the mountain. Great big ol' deer hams!”

Jack was making Jesse nervous. When people beat around the bush, usually they want you to do something that doesn't make good sense.

Jack smacked his lips over his tea. “How many drivers you know don't carry no bullwhip?” he asked. “That's 'cause Master Gatewood don't care for no whip. Been two years, more, since the bullwhip come out at Stratford.”

“I never had no man lay a whip on me. I don't know how I'd take it,” Jesse said.

“Then you one lucky nigger,” Jack said. “You want more tea to drink?”

Jesse stood up. “Thank you for your kindness, Mr. Jack. People outside waitin' on me.”

“Sit down, boy. I ain't done.” Jack wiped his lips on the back of his hand. “You see this sock? Knit by Miss Abigail her ownself. Look at these nubbins on the outside—outside—so they don't rasp at my feet. And you know what I find in the toe of this here sock? A silver dollar! The master he just give it to me.”

“What was you wantin' from me?”

“That you keep yourself from bein' foolish. That you don't lose the chance you has here. Colored woman not like white woman. Colored woman got no choice who she take up with.”

“Maggie's my woman. We jump the broomstick together.”

“But you ain't happy and she ain't neither. Why you don't take up with some other woman? That Franky gal ripe as a new peach.”

When Jesse went blank, Jack realized that Jesse's face was just as big as the rest of him.

“Maggie'll come to care for me bye 'n' bye,” Jesse said carefully. “I'm good to her all the time. Baby Jacob, he's not mine but he will be. Your daddy's whoever decides to be your daddy, not the fellow sowed the seed. Hell, I never knew . . .”

“Don't allow no cursin' in this house.”

“I never did know who my daddy was. Old Uther's been as much daddy as I have, and he's white. I'll be Jacob's daddy one day. Don't tell me about that Franky gal. I don't want to lie with her. I lie down with Maggie when she's willin'.”

“Don't you go spoilin' things. Ain't been no servant sold from Strat-ford Plantation since I been here. Master got work for all of us—more work 'n he got hands to do it. Time Master Duncan comes into his own, I be like Uncle Agamemnon on the porch, rockin' and snorin'. I gonna die right here on Stratford Plantation. Uncle Agamemnon don't work no more, but he get a shirt every year, same as me, and he eat hog meat, same as me, and some of the womens they cut it up small for him.”

“Stratford's a fine place to be a nigger, all right. Mr. Jack, you're a fair driver, and you set me a task, I do it. But me and Maggie, we are man and wife, and the Bible says that no man comes betwixt us.” He stood. “I believe I got more letters to write. Maggie be along directly. She's restin' with the baby.”

Jesse marched outside. “How many of you want somethin' writ? I don't do love letters. You want love letters, you got to ask somebody else.”

Later that afternoon, from the head of his dining table, Samuel Gatewood inspected his guests with eyes softened by his own excellent eggnog. This was what it meant for a man, by dint of his labors, to have created a competency. So many nights he had lain awake worrying: would the railroad be satisfied with his sleepers, would the crops come, might he and his son reconcile?

Samuel Gatewood felt like a mariner who'd charted a course through perilous seas and brought his boat, almost, into safe harbor. Stratford Plantation was prosperous, and necessary improvements would occupy him until his dying day. His family, white and black, hummed with contentment. His only daughter, Leona, was safely married. Although upon his arrival today Duncan had seemed sullen, he had obeyed Samuel's summons to come home for Christmas. Surely Samuel could take that as a favorable omen. Surely Duncan could be persuaded of his own best interests. Samuel was willing to forgive everything. The gift he'd ordered for his son had arrived at the Millboro depot just last week, just in time!

Soft winter light cast its benison on kinfolk and friends. Samuel Gatewood swallowed the lump in his throat and tapped a spoon against his glass. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I've never heard a nobler toast than George Washington's: ‘Our friends!' ”

“Our friends!”

“Samuel, our friends!”

His son got to his feet. Duncan said, “And I offer a second toast. Ladies, gentlemen—to South Carolina, the world's newest and bravest independent nation. May Virginia soon follow her lead!”

Andrew Seig and two other men stood. After glancing at Samuel Gatewood, Catesby remained seated.

The hand with which Duncan offered his glass tremored.

Deliberately, Samuel Gatewood rose. “My son's new fervor for politics distinguishes him.” He lifted his glass. “To our friends and kinfolk in South Carolina. Let us pray they have made a wise decision.”