North and South: The North and South Trilogy (12 page)

Brett didn’t.

Roughly three-quarters of a mile from the great house, in a separate little community of the plantation, another fight was taking place about the same time. A black boy and a white boy rolled over and over in the middle of a dusty street, struggling for possession of a bamboo fishing pole.

The street ran between two rows of whitewashed slave cabins. Here, too, carefully separated from the master’s residence, stood the plantation sick house, the small church, and, dominating the far end of the street, a five-room residence raised on pillars of tabby. This house belonged to the Mont Royal overseer, Mr. Salem Jones, a New Englander by birth and a martinet by disposition. Jones had been raised in the South by his widowed mother and about eleven years ago had come to Mont Royal with excellent references from another plantation. Tillet still considered him a Yankee, hence an eternal outsider. Jones’s good performance on behalf of the Mains helped overcome Tillet’s distrust, but nothing could ever dispel it completely.

The two boys were tussling under the casual gaze of little black children and black men too old to work. It was hard to say which of the two was the rowdier or the dirtier. The white boy—seven years old, suntanned, and strong—was Charles Main. Cousin Charles, Clarissa called him, to distinguish him from the Mains in her own family.

Charles was an exceptionally handsome child. But good looks were just about his only inherited assets. He was the son of Tillet’s brother, an incompetent lawyer named Huger Main. Together with his wife, Huger had perished on a New York-bound steamer that foundered and sank off Hatteras in 1841. Charles had been staying with his aunt and uncle while his parents vacationed. He was their only child, and he remained with his relatives after the funeral and the burial of a pair of empty caskets.

It was an easy life for Charles, if a lonely one. With the intuition of the young, he suspected Uncle Tillet hadn’t thought much of his father, hence didn’t think much of him. Charles turned the rejection into a blessing. His aunt and uncle permitted him to go his own way. making no attempt to subject him to the torture of studying with that Dutch tutor. Charles fished a lot and roamed the woods and marshes around the plantation. For friends he had black boys such as Cuffey, with whom he was wrestling for possession of the pole.

Loud voices in one of the slave cottages attracted the attention of the boys and some of the Negroes. Out of the cottage strode a familiar booted figure. Short, bald, and potbellied, with one of the more cherubic faces in the world, Salem Jones found it necessary to emphasize his authority by going everywhere with a quirt in his hand and a thick hickory truncheon in his belt.

The boys stopped fighting. In the process, Charles accidentally broke the pole. As usual, his shirt hung out and dirt streaked his cheeks and chin. Last week’s fight with Cuffey’s cousin James had cost Charles one of his upper front teeth. He thought the gap gave him a dashing air.

“Jones been tryin’ to go at Semiramis,” Cuffey whispered. “He been tryin’ since his wife died six month ago.”

“He was trying a long time before that, only not so’s everybody could see,” Charles confided. “That’s what Uncle Tillet said, anyway.”

Salem Jones walked up the street and disappeared in back of his residence. Charles drifted nearer the cottage occupied by Semiramis and her family. The girl was dimly visible beyond the open door. Charles couldn’t see much of her, but he could picture her vividly. Semiramis had satiny black skin, gloriously perfect features, and a ripe figure. All the boys on the plantation agreed she was something special.

Looking angry, Jones saddled up his horse and rode rapidly toward the fields. Cuffey offered a prediction. “Priam be in for it tonight. Old Jones don’t get what he want from her, he take it out on her brother.”

Charles studied the position of the sun. “I was going to the house for dinner. I think I’ll hang around till Priam finishes with his task.” The family wouldn’t miss him anyway.

Soon he was speculating about what might happen. Semiramis’s brother Priam was a strong, and strong-willed, Negro. Three generations removed from Angola, he still possessed a great sense of the freedom that he had been denied.

Charles could appreciate Priam’s resentment. The boy didn’t understand a system that granted some men freedom because they were white and barred other men from it because they were not. He found that kind of system unjust, even barbaric, although he also believed it to be both immutable and universal.

He had several times discussed certain aspects of the slave system with Cuffey. For example, they had both observed that Semiramis had not the least objection to the classical name given her at birth; her fancy name, Cuffey called it. She did not consider it a sly mockery of her status. Priam, on the other hand, understood the mockery very well. He made no secret of hating his name.

“Priam say he won’t be Mist’ Tillet’s man forever,” Cuffey had once confided to his friend. “He say it a lot.”

Charles knew what was meant. Priam would run away. To what, though? Wasn’t slavery practiced everywhere? Cuffey thought not, but could offer no evidence.

Charles loitered around the slave community as the afternoon wore on. He napped for an hour in the cool, dark church and was seated on a cottage stoop, whittling, when the field hands began to stream in with their hoes canted over their shoulders.

Jones had returned to his house an hour ago. He now appeared on the porch, sweat rings staining his shirt and his quirt and his truncheon very much in evidence.

“You, Priam,” Jones called with an affable smile. The slave, a full head taller and fifteen years younger than the overseer, stepped out of the file of ambling Negroes. He was barely respectful as he answered:

“Yes, Mist’ Jones?”

“Driver tells me you’ve been slack in your work lately. He says you’ve complained a lot, too. Shall I give you a task and a half every day?”

Priam shook his head. “I do every lick I’m ’posed to. I don’t have to like it, do I?” He glanced at the other slaves, his eyes resentful, even threatening. “Driver never tol’ me I wasn’t pleasin’ him.”

Jones swaggered down the steps, but only halfway; going farther would have put the top of his head below the level of Priam’s eyes. “Do you honestly think he’d tell you? No. You’re too stupid to understand. All you’re good for is just what you’re doing. Nigger work. Animal’s work.”

The overseer gigged Priam’s stomach with the truncheon, trying to rouse him. “I’m going to keep you busier for a week or so. An extra half task every day.”

There were soft gasps from some of the Negroes who were watching. One task, one assigned piece of work, was the customary quota on all but the most repressive plantations. An able man could complete his task well before the sun set and then have time to cultivate his own garden or attend to personal chores.

Priam’s jaw set. He knew better than to sass the overseer. But Jones was determined to provoke him. Charles hated the puffed-up little Yankee with his bald skull and whiny nasal voice.

“Got nothing to say about that, nigger?” Jones gigged Priam harder this time. “I could do more than increase your work. I could give you what your insolent stares call for.” He shook the quirt at Priam. “Some of this.”

The one-sided nature of the quarrel propelled Charles off the stoop like a cannonball. “Mr. Jones, you got a whip and you got a stick, and Priam’s got nothing at all. Why don’t you treat him fair? Give him one or the other and then pick a fight.”

Silence.

The frightened slaves stood motionless. From the river drifted the hoarse bellowing of an alligator. Even Priam lost the murderous look Jones had kindled in his eyes. The dumbfounded overseer gazed down at the boy.

“You taking this nigger’s part?”

“I just like to see him treated fair. Everybody says he’s a hard worker. My uncle says that.”

“He’s a nigger. He’s expected to work hard. To break his back, if need be. And you’re expected to stay up at the great house where you belong. You keep messing around this part of the plantation, I’ll start to wonder why. Does something attract you down here? Does something call to you, like to like? A little nigger blood, perhaps?”

It was the sneer, not the insult, that infuriated Charles. He lowered his head and butted Salem Jones in the stomach. Then he punched him twice and ran like the devil.

He hid out down by the river until twilight. Finally, he decided he couldn’t stay away from the great house any longer. As he walked slowly through the garden, a hiss from behind a shrub caught his attention.

Cuffey’s face shone in the fading light. Grinning, he said the diversion had been successful. After Charles’s attack, Jones had been so mad he had lost interest in bullying Priam.

Hungry and tired, Charles drifted on toward the house. Somehow his victory seemed unimportant. It seemed downright disastrous when he found Uncle Tillet waiting for him, a scowl on his face.

“Jones was here an hour ago. Come in the library. I demand to know what you have to say for yourself.”

Charles obeyed and followed his uncle. The boy had always loved the sights and sounds of the great house at this hour of the day. The silver pots and bowls, the rosewood and walnut furniture giving back the candle and lamplight. The crystal chandelier pendants catching the river breeze and jingling. The house servants murmuring and laughing occasionally as they finished their work. He saw and heard none of that tonight.

Charles had always liked Tillet’s library, too, with its heavy, masculine furniture and the fascinating and highly realistic mural of ancient Roman ruins that formed part of the wall above the mantel. The shelves held hundreds of fine books in English, Latin, and Greek. Charles had no interest in those, although he admired his uncle for his ability to read all of them. This evening the library seemed unfriendly and forbidding.

Tillet asked Charles to explain his behavior. Haltingly, the boy said that since Jones had a quirt and a stick and Priam had no weapon there had been no question about whose side he would take.

Tillet shook his head as he reached for his pipe. “You have no business taking sides in that kind of dispute. You know Priam’s one of my people. He doesn’t have the same rights or privileges as a white man.”

“But shouldn’t he? If someone’s going to hurt him, does he have to take it?”

Tillet lit his pipe with quick, jerky motions. His voice dropped, a sign of anger.

“You’re very young, Charles. It’s easy for you to fall prey to misconceptions—the wrong ideas,” he amended when the long word produced a look of bafflement. “I take care of my people. They know that. And Mr. Jones, while a good manager, is in some ways a blasted fool. There is no need for him to strut around with a stick and quirt. We have no troublemaking niggers at Mont Royal—well, I take that back. Priam and one or two others show signs of rebellious temperament. But not all the time, and not to an unforgivable degree. I work hard to maintain a good atmosphere here. My people are happy.”

He broke off, awaiting the boy’s approval. Charles asked, “How can they be happy when they can’t go wherever they want or do whatever they want?”

It seemed a perfectly natural question, but Tillet flew into a rage.

“Don’t ask questions about things you don’t understand. The system is beneficial to the people. If they weren’t here, they’d be living in savagery. Negroes are happiest when their lives are organized and run for them. As for you, young man—”

Tillet’s gaze flicked to the door, which he hadn’t quite closed when they came in. Someone was out there listening. Tillet didn’t appear concerned. He shook the stem of his pipe at the boy.

“If you cause Mr. Jones any more trouble, I’ll put you across my knee and give you a tanning. I wish to heaven you’d behave yourself and try to act like a young gentleman—although I realize that’s probably an impossible request, given your disposition. Now get out of here.”

Charles pivoted on the heel of his boot and ran. He didn’t want his uncle to see the tears that had filled his eyes so unexpectedly. He tore the door open and gasped when he saw the looming figure—

It was only Aunt Clarissa. She stretched out a comforting hand.

“Charles—”

His uncle thought him worthless. No doubt she did too. He dodged her hand and ran out of the house into the dark.

Later that night, in the large bedroom on the river side of the second floor, Tillet helped unfasten the lacings of his wife’s corset. She breathed a long sigh, walked around several partially packed trunks and valises, and stepped behind a screen to finish her preparations for bed.

Tillet tugged on the linen drawers he wore for sleeping in warm weather. They weren’t fashionable, but they were comfortable. The room remained quiet. The stillness upset him. He looked toward the screen.

“Out with it, Clarissa. I’d like a good night’s sleep.”

She emerged in her nightdress, stroking her unbound gray hair with a brush. Clarissa Main was a small woman with delicate, aristocratic features that somewhat offset a strong peasant look created by her plump face and thick arms. Few people thought her sons resembled her, except in one way: their noses were exactly like hers. Clarissa’s ancestors, Huguenots named Gault, had arrived in Carolina two years before Charles de Main—a fact with which she twitted her husband whenever he became overbearing.

“I already apologized for eavesdropping,” she said. “How you discipline Cousin Charles is your affair. He’s your brother’s son.”

“You can’t abdicate so easily,” Tillet replied with gruff sarcasm. “Not when I know you have definite ideas of your own.”

“Would you listen if I offered them?” The question was serious, yet free of acrimony. They seldom had arguments, but they had an almost infinite number of what they termed discussions. “I think not. You’ve already written the boy off as a wastrel and a failure.”

Tillet fell back on a catchphrase: “Like father, like son.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes not.”

“He has dangerous notions. Did you hear some of the questions he asked?”

“Tillet, my dear, Cousin Charles isn’t the only one with doubts about the system under which this family has lived for six generations.”