Bon Marche (22 page)

Over Samuel Wilkins.

Freeman.

15

“T
HE
soil here,” the letter said, “exceeds any expectation. Oats and barley flourish—flax, hemp, cotton, and tobacco grow luxuriantly. And no part of the nation can exceed this country for grazing grass for livestock. Indeed, livestock turned out for the winter can support themselves in the woods and fields and keep in fine order. The Cumberland is navigable for 500 miles for large boats, and I daresay that some seasons it has enough water to float a forty-gun ship.”

Dewey put the letter down on his desk, turning to gaze out of the window at a group of mares and their new foals grazing in the pasture. But his thoughts weren't on the horses. He was thinking of the West.

The letter had just arrived from a gentleman named Patton Anderson. He had sent it from a frontier town called Nashville, hard by the Cumberland River. Anderson was an enthusiast for the area. He had written to Charles several times about the horse racing in the West, frequently mentioning a horseman-gambler-politician named Andrew Jackson.

Charles's appetite for news of the western frontier was insatiable. He went to great lengths to learn everything he could about the far reaches of the nation, which now encompassed a vast area from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, from the Great Lakes to the borders of Spanish Florida.

In size, as great as all of Europe.

Four million people, unhappily including seven hundred thousand slaves, spread out over a domain of a million square miles. Room to grow. To prosper.

And the population was swelling every day as Europeans heeded the siren call of a country that promised fair wages, a long life, independence of action, and even wealth—untold wealth, perhaps—for anyone who was ambitious and industrious. All without concern for birthright or station.

Why, even the savages were being controlled. Hadn't General Anthony Wayne signed a peace treaty with the Ottawas and the Shawnees and the Miamis and the Iroquois in 1795?

There was a dreamlike image in Charles's mind of the forests and rivers and farmlands—the opportunity—that lay west of the Old Dominion.

He had followed, in his reading, the efforts of settlers in the western lands of North Carolina to establish the new state of Franklin. They had gone so far as to seek admission to the Union. That there were problems, that Franklin itself had come to naught, did not change the reality that there would be, someday, a new state in that region south of Kentucky.

Patton Anderson said that in his enthusiastic letters. And Dewey was certain that the West called to him. He had made himself an important man in Virginia. He was grateful for that. But he wanted more.

The West offered him more.

One question remained: When?

II

T
HE
gray filly foal struggled to stand.

Charles watched her with half of his mind. That half told him the filly was big, healthy, energetic; the first daughter of Elkwood's White she was. The other half was still contemplating the letter he had received that day from Nashville.

“She's a special lady,” Horace said to him.

“What?” He pulled his mind back together. “Oh, yes, she is indeed. Very special.”

The two of them—the master of Fortunata plantation and the black jockey—watched as the foal finally got its footing and sought out the mare's teats.

“Let's get one of those small halters on her,” Dewey said.

“Ain't none 'round, Mistah Charles. Had so many babies in this crop so far thet—”

“No mind. Get the housemaids to stitch up a few more in the morning, will you? The leather's in the tannery, all cut and ready.”

“Yas, suh.”

Charles yawned. It was very late.

“It just occurred to me,” he said offhandedly, “that I left a couple of those small halters in a box in the loft at Elkwood.” He shrugged. “Oh, well…”

III

H
ORACE
was coming down the ladder from the Elkwood barn loft, two foal-size halters in his hand, when Funston walked into the barn, lighting his way with an oil lamp.

“Here, boy!” Funston shouted. “What are you doing there?”

“Ah come fer halters…” He held them up for Funston to see. “… thet Mistah Charles lef' heah.”

“So you just came here to steal them!”

“Ah ain't stealin' 'em, Mistah Funston. Ah'm jest takin' 'em back 'cause Mistah Charles forgit 'em.”

“Put them down!” Funston ordered.

Horace dropped the halters to the barn floor.

Lee came up to the young black and slapped him in the face. “Do you know what we do here with thieves?”

The boy was frightened now. “Ah ain't no thief, Mistah Funston, hones' Ah ain't!”

“Do these belong to you?” Lee asked, kicking at the halters.

“No, suh, but—”

“Then you're a thief.” He bellowed: “Cephas! Jonas!”

Two black men came running to his side.

“Take this thief and tie him to the post!”

The slaves followed his orders without question.

“Rout everyone out,” Lee shouted to anyone who could hear him. “And build a couple of fires. I want everyone to see what we do with thieves!”

Rapidly, two bonfires were built near the whipping post, and in what seemed only a few minutes more than a hundred slaves ringed it. The fires cast weird shadows on the trembling Horace, who was lashed tightly to the post.

“This boy,” Funston announced to his audience, “is a thief! He came to my farm, climbed into the loft of my barn, and stole these halters.” He displayed them to the sullen crowd of Negroes. “
My
halters!”

He was screaming. “Now he's to be punished for what he clearly is—a common thief!”

Slowly, with great deliberation, Lee walked to a pile of firewood nearby and picked up an axe. Returning to the center of the lighted circle, he gave an order: “Hold his hand firmly against the post!”

No one moved.

“Jonas! You!”

The elderly black man shuffled forward, grasping Horace's left arm several inches above the wrist and pinioning the arm against the post.

“Firmly, now,” Lee instructed, suddenly appearing very calm.

The axe was swung in a giant arc, thudding into the post, sticking there.

Horace's agonizing scream echoed.

His severed hand dropped into the dust, soon to be made red mud by the bleeding stump.

There was silence, terrifying in its totality, broken only by the crackling of the bonfires.

Nonchalantly, Funston returned the bloody axe to the woodpile. He smiled. “Tie a rag around that mess and put him on his horse.”

The smile grew broader. “Point him toward Fortunata.”

IV

S
OMEHOW
, despite his pain and the loss of blood, Horace managed to guide his horse to the entrance of his master's house, where another slave saw him and ran to take the news to Charles.

Weakly, the jockey mumbled his story.

“Tell the smith to heat up an iron,” Charles ordered, picking up the Negro in his arms and carrying him toward the blacksmith shop.

“I don't want to have to do this,” he gently told the young man, “but you'll die unless we stop the bleeding. And quickly.”

“Yas, suh.”

At the smithy's Charles laid Horace on the ground. “Any whiskey around here?” An illicit jug was swiftly produced from under a pile of straw. Charles put the jug to the boy's lips. “Drink, lad, as much as you can.”

Horace took several large gulps. He began to choke.

“Hold him down,” Charles said. He undid the bloody rag, nearly retching when he saw the ugly wound. Dewey gestured for the white-hot iron, and the smithy brought it to him. “Hold the arm as steady as you can. Courage, boy.” He didn't hesitate; the stump had to be cauterized.

Horace's screams chilled Dewey's blood, but he finished the job. The jockey was unconscious. “Put him in his bed and someone go for the doctor. Hurry! Hurry!”

By the time Charles got back to the mansion, his clothes smeared with blood, Martha had been told what had happened by one of the housemaids.

“Oh, Charles, it's just horrible!”

He didn't answer her, but went to his desk, and took a pistol out of a drawer. He checked the priming.

“Charles! What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to kill him,” he answered with little apparent emotion. “I'm going to rid the world of that vermin.”

Martha threw her arms around him, unmindful of the blood. “No, Charles, you can't! Don't do this! Please, darling—have someone go for the sheriff.”

“There are times when there's only one way—”

“No! No! If you go up there with a gun, if you kill Funston, you'll be no better than he is! An animal!”

Charles stared at her for a moment, then dropped the gun on the desk. “Very well. Send for the sheriff.” He dropped into a chair. Weeping.

V

H
IS
name was Caleb Mercer. He was a slovenly man with big hands and feet and a fat, puffy face. He was the sheriff of Goochland County, and he was unhappy that he had been rousted out of his home that late at night.

Charles told him the story.

“There ain't nothin' Ah kin do,” the sheriff drawled.

“For God's sake, Mercer, Lee assaulted that boy—he cut off his hand! Don't you understand that?”

“Yas, suh, Ah understan' thet.” He shrugged. “But after all, Squire Dewey, it were a nigger. An' he stole somethin' from Mistah Lee.”

“Do you mean to tell me—” Charles couldn't find words in his angry frustration.

“He's only a nigger, squire.”

Charles swept up the gun from the desk, pointing it at the sheriff. “Get out of here, you bastard, before I pull the trigger!”

The big man was unconcerned, perhaps because Charles had neglected to cock the pistol. He shrugged again, nodded to Martha, and left Fortunata, content in the knowledge that he had done his duty.

VI

H
ORACE
survived the ordeal.

Charles Dewey's association with Goochland County, Virginia, did not.

Before that terrible night had ended, Charles had decided to leave Fortunata. He was going west. Now.

Uncharacteristically, he didn't discuss the decision with Martha. He simply told her they'd be leaving. His wife accepted the decision calmly, recognizing that there was no other way for him.

Martha wanted to ask him about the nagging feeling she had that Funston Lee was driving them away. But she thought it out, as she knew Charles must have thought it out, and concluded that there would be no happiness any longer at Fortunata.

For Charles. For herself. For her children.

16

L
EAVING
Fortunata was not something that could be done quickly.

Within the week, Charles rode to Richmond to consult with the lawyer, Millard Exner. He gave him power of attorney, asking him to begin to seek a buyer for the estate. The two men spent most of the day cataloging Dewey's assets, determining what would be sold and what would be taken along.

“Lee might be a prospective buyer,” Exner suggested.

“Never! I'd put Fortunata to the torch before I'd sell it to him!”

The lawyer wisely changed the subject, asking about Charles's specific destination.

“Nashville, I think,” he replied. “I have a friend there—a friend in correspondence, at least—and I've written to him asking about the availability of good property in that area.”

“I know nothing about Nashville, but there's talk that our next state will come from that region.”

“Most likely. And from what I've learned, it's an ideal place to raise horses.” Charles smiled for the first time that day. “The racing there, according to my correspondent, is rather spirited.”

“Well, wherever you go,” Exner said, “you'll arrive as a rich man, I can assure you of that. Your assets add up to a rather impressive total. In one sense, you'll probably be more wealthy in the West than you are here in Virginia. Land values are cheaper there. So, too, should be the general cost of day-to-day living. More Spartan, too, I would imagine.”

Charles made several major decisions that day: that he would carefully review his equine holdings and empower Exner to act as his agent for the dispersal of those horses he didn't want to take with him; that the lawyer would find him a competent and honest manager-in-residence for Fortunata for the transition period.

“What of the nigras?” Exner asked. “Are you going to take them with you?”

“I wish I could free them now, so that I could make my way to a new life without them.”

Dewey grimaced. “But there's a strange reality about slavery, Squire Exner: it's difficult to let go of. If I freed them, what would they do? Most, I'll wager, would be back in slavery with someone else. Within days, probably; certainly within weeks. There are too many Funston Lees in Virginia to risk that. If I take them with me—as I must do, it seems—I perpetuate myself as a slaveholder. Maybe in the West I'll find a solution to the problem.”

II

M
ARTHA
began preparing the children for the move. Franklin, the eldest at nine, and George, at age seven, were the most enthusiastic. It was going to be a great adventure.

“Will we see any Indians, Mother?” Franklin asked, his eyes wide with the wonder of the thought.

“I imagine we might.”

“Will they kill us?”

“Don't be silly, Franklin. Your father will be with us.”

“Oh, sure.” That was enough guarantee for the lad.

Corrine, at age six a very sober young lady, was concerned about one thing. “Will I take my pony along, Mother?”

“I would think so.”