Caleb (25 page)

Miss Jenkins showed no sign that she’d heard anything Caleb said. “Well,” she said, “we’re looking for a boy who can do the heavy work in this household. You look strong. Are you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You would have to be.” She described a job that started at four in the morning, ended at ten in the evening, and seemed to involve endless humping of heavy objects up and down the stairs of the four-story house.

She concluded, “Your pay will be twenty-five dollars a month, and you will have every Sunday afternoon and two evenings a month off. Other than that, you would be expected to be on call. Do you understand what I have said?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Would you like to see your room?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I beg your pardon?” Miss Jenkins’s tight little mouth formed a perfect
O
of surprise.

“I wouldn’t want to waste your time,” Caleb said. “Or mine. To tell you the truth, Miss Jenkins, I recently made considerable personal effort to break out of slavery, and I am not in a hurry to get back into it. The position you offer does not suit me. But thank you for your time, all the same.”

“You do realize, don’t you,” Miss Jenkins asked, “that we are just entering upon a war to free your people?”

“So I understand, ma’am. And if I were still a slave, I’d be very grateful. But since I freed myself, I have to consider your efforts a little bit late.”

“You are most ungrateful.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Jenkins reached over and pushed a button on the wall. There was a jangling overhead and a few moments later the sound of feet on the stairs. A slim brown man with carefully combed hair came through the door. He was wearing an apron over a white shirt and a neat dark tie. His sleeves were rolled up. He looked at Caleb with apprehension.

“Mr. Purvis,” Miss Jenkins said severely, “this boy has been rude and impudent. I want you to thrash him.” The apprehension on Purvis’s face edged toward alarm.

“Madam?”

“You heard me. We cannot allow these people to come up here, rely upon our good nature and generosity, and then abuse us.”

“May I suggest, Mr. Purvis,” Caleb said, “that you might want to thrash me outside, rather than risk damage to this very nice kitchen?”

“Don’t make it worse on yourself, boy,” said Miss Jenkins.

“I won’t, ma’am,” Caleb said. “Thank you for your time.”

“That’ll be enough out of you,” said Purvis, taking heart. “Let’s go!”

“Yes, sir,” said Caleb submissively. As they were walking out the back door to a little courtyard totally surrounded by brick walls, Miss Jenkins disappeared upstairs.

“I hope you appreciate my position, son,” Purvis said.

“Oh, I do,” Caleb said. “Do you think I made a mistake not taking the job Miss Jenkins so kindly offered?”

“Can you do anything else?” Purvis asked in a whisper.

“I think so.”

“Then do it.”

The two stood just inside the gate leading to the alley to Fifth Avenue. “Well, Mr. Purvis,” Caleb said, “I guess you’d better get on with the thrashing. Are you a classic thrasher or sort of creative?”

“Son, strangely enough, that question has never come up before,” said Purvis.

“Okay,” said Caleb. “Let’s do her quick and easy.” He shrieked, “Oh, please, sir! Don’t! Don’t!” Then, with his open hand, he delivered several noisy but harmless blows to his own shoulder and upper arm. “Please!”

Caleb lowered his voice. “Shouldn’t you be saying something, Mr. Purvis?”

“Oh, yes,” said Purvis. “Thank you.” Raising his voice to a rather reedy tremolo, he exclaimed, “Let that be a lesson to you, and don’t you ever come back here again.”

Caleb opened the gate and closed it again loudly. “Well thrashed, sir,” he said to Purvis and held out his hand.

“My pleasure,” said Purvis, shaking it.

“One last thing, Mr. Purvis,” said Caleb before going through the gate, “I think you should show some signs of having delivered a severe thrashing. Excuse me.” He reached out and mussed Purvis’s carefully combed hair and pulled his discreet tie out over the front of his apron. “Now you look the perfect thrasher. Do I look thrashed?”

“Not that much, to be honest,” said Purvis.

“Oh well. I’ll slink away quickly so Miss Jerkins doesn’t see me. Good luck, Mr. Purvis.”

“You too, son.”

46

After leaving Caleb at the train station, Jardine bought the same newspaper that Caleb did and checked into a hotel. He asked to be woken up at seven that evening, took a bath, and immediately went to bed. Lying there in comfort, Jardine tried to quell his racing mind, and finally fatigue overtook him.

“What!” Jardine, snatched from a bottomless pit of sleep, shouted at the loud knocking on the door.

“It’s just gone seven o’clock, sir,” came a muffled voice.

“Thanks,” said Jardine, getting out of bed regretfully. Within half an hour, he had discovered that there was a train south at nine that night and checked out of the hotel. In another hour and a half, he had eaten the biggest steak he could find in Manhattan, bought some sandwiches and bottles of beer, and was waiting on the platform for the Dixie Special to start his journey home. He wondered what Caleb was doing and whether he’d seen the paper. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about him on the return trip.

Jardine felt restless on the first leg of his journey home. At every stop, he bought a newspaper, and the seriousness of the situation became ever more evident. The action at Fort Sumter clearly would slide into war between the slave states and the North. As the train rolled through Pennsylvania headed for Philadelphia, Jardine looked up from his paper to find a couple of soldiers in new uniforms staring meaningfully at him from across the aisle. He let his eyes flick across them and went back to reading. But his concentration was soon disturbed by muttering, and Jardine looked across the aisle to find them still staring at him. He lowered his newspaper.

“Can I help you gentlemen in any way?” he inquired softly.

“Huh? Whatcha mean?” asked the larger of the two.

“You seemed to be paying such a lot of attention to me,” Jardine said. “I thought perhaps you had something to say. Do you?”

“No!” said the larger one. “Why should we?”

“No reason,” said Jardine, fixing his eyes on the other one. “How about you?”

“N-no,” the other soldier said. “I—”

“Then I suggest that we all mind our own business, and we’ll get along just fine.” Jardine again raised his newspaper, and the soldiers got off in Philadelphia with no more than ritual grumbling.

As Jardine headed southward, the newspapers presented a different view on the events at Fort Sumter. As the accents softened and deepened, an almost partylike atmosphere prevailed on the trains, and strangers shared their perceptions and analysis of the current situation. The duration of the war was a constant topic. A couple of Yankee commercial travelers trapped on the last train Jardine took huddled nervously until several flasks were produced and declarations of lack of personal enmity were made.

At Great Falls, while waiting for the boat home, Jardine met up with several friends who gave him the local angle on the situation. One said that there had been a small uprising on a remote plantation on Little Lynches River. A few of the boys had put it down without much trouble and with no loss of white life. Jardine also learned that Rafe Bentley was raising a squadron of Kershaw County dragoons and had been asking when he was going to get back.

When Jardine pulled off the turnpike onto the track leading to Three Rivers late the next afternoon, nothing seemed to have changed. He hallooed a work gang in the cotton field, and they hallooed him back. He spotted Big Mose’s distinctive tall black hat among them. As Jardine drove up to the house, Drusilla, Caesar, and the house girls were waiting to meet him. Rose held Little Boyd up for his inspection, and Jardine was convinced that the boy had grown. William took the wagon and horses to the barn, and Jardine followed Drusilla up to the porch, where a small table was laid with whiskey, water, and chunks of ice in a covered bowl.

Sitting down, Jardine took a deep drink and listened as Drusilla gave him a short report of happenings at Three Rivers in his absence. Jardine wished he could ask her to sit down, as he used to ask Caleb to do. Drusilla said that Rafe Bentley had been over twice while he was away.

“Thank you, Drusilla,” Jardine said. “I suppose there’s some hot water?”

“Yes, Massa.”

“Well, good. I think I will use a whole lot of it,” Jardine said. “I’ll have dinner at about the usual time. Why don’t you let Caesar wait on me this evening so I can see how he’s coming along?”

Drusilla’s expression said that she was not keen on this idea, but her mouth said, “Yes, Massa.”

Caesar’s performance was not as bad as Drusilla had feared. He didn’t actually drop anything, but under his nervous hand the dishes and cutlery seemed to have a life of their own. They set up a cacophony of clattering that was hard to ignore. Drusilla hovered in the background, looking as if at any minute she was going to leap in, strangle Caesar, and finish serving dinner herself. Her knuckles were pale from clenching her fists in restraint.

Finally, Jardine thanked Caesar, who was still shaking with nerves and running with sweat, for his sincere efforts and sent him back into the kitchen to collapse. Then he said to Drusilla, “I suppose you are wondering how Caleb made out?”

“I am, Massa.”

“Well,” said Jardine, “he had a rather difficult trip north. Our transportation system is not yet equipped to accommodate free blacks, and his progress was not without problems. Up in Virginia, some slave catchers got him confused with another feller, but he made it to New York City, all right.” Drusilla relaxed visibly. “When I last saw him at the station, Caleb still looked like a scarecrow in a high wind, but he was savoring the glories of freedom. Since I wasn’t in New York long myself, I can’t report on his further progress, but I think he will be all right.”

“Thank you, Massa,” Drusilla said. “Where will you have coffee?”

“In my study, I think,” said Jardine, “but bring it yourself. I’ve had enough of young Caesar and his unique style of service for one evening.”

When Drusilla brought the coffee, Jardine was looking through the thick stack of newspapers he had collected on the journey from New York City. Jardine looked up. “I don’t suppose that you would like a look at these newspapers when I’ve finished with them,” he said.

“Yes, Massa.”

“All right, but only on the condition that you are not teaching Caesar to read and write. You’re not, are you?”

“No, sir. I’ve got enough problems teachin’ Caesar the difference between left and right just now,” said Drusilla.

“That’s a relief. Between you and me, Drusilla, some hard times are coming, and we are going to have our hands full without the added menace of a semiliterate Caesar rampaging all over the place. That will be all.”

“Thank you, Massa.”

Jardine sat long into the night poring over the newspapers and trying to look into the future. He couldn’t even see past the next day.

The next morning, Jardine rode over to Bellevue and found Bentley and half a dozen neighbors talking war. To hear them tell it, Kershaw County was the key to defending the South from the coming Yankee invasion.

“About time you got back,” Bentley greeted him as Jardine tied up his bay. “We were beginning to wonder whether you hadn’t turned your coat and decided to stay north. What kept you so long?”

Luke Bradford, a transplanted Yankee who had come south as a boy fifteen years before, asked, “For that matter, what were you doing up there at a time like this? You were lucky to get back.”

“I had a delivery to make,” said Jardine.

“Yes,” said Bentley, “I noticed when I rode over to your place to try to root you out that your man Caleb seemed to be missing. I nearly got the hounds out.”

“Is he really free in New York City?” asked another neighbor.

“He really is,” Jardine said. “Next time you see him will probably be on the delivering end of a Yankee bayonet. There was a piece in one of the Yankee papers suggesting raising some nigger regiments.”

“I’m looking forward to that,” said Bradford.

“Maybe we ought to do the same,” suggested Bentley. “Our niggers could shoot their niggers, and we could stay home in bed.”

“You arm your darkies if you want to,” said a farmer from downriver. “I’ll sleep easier if mine stick to their hoes and mattocks. Those sharp implements make me nervous enough as it is.”

“Too bad you didn’t get back sooner, Boyd,” Bentley said. “Staffing of the squadron is just about complete. I’m the major, of course, but I’m afraid all I’ve got left to offer you is either assistant bugler or pastry cook. How are your doughnuts?”

“Lethal at ten yards,” said Jardine.

“You’re hired,” said Bentley.

But after lunch, when the others were smoking cigars and drinking brandy, Bentley took Jardine off to the side.

“Damn you, Boyd, you’ve caused me no end of staffing problems. I had you down for my executive officer, but that fool Calhoun, being the richest man in the county, had to have it. That clown has never buckled on a sword.”

“Neither have I, Rafe,” Jardine said, “except on a parade ground at the Citadel.”

“Yes, maybe,” Bentley said, “but at least you know which end of a sword to hold and can manage to stay in the saddle.”

“He’ll come along,” Jardine said. “And besides, he looks good. Is that one of the new uniforms he’s buying?”

“The executive version,” Bentley said. “The rank and file will be wearing something less gaudy. I managed to talk him out of capes and plumed hats.”

“What about umbrellas?”

“Damned near bought them, too,” Rafe said. “But damn it, Boyd, I’m serious. All the captaincies have gone, too. If these fools had their way, they’d
all
be captains. All I’ve got left for you is a lieutenancy as commander of a troop. Will that do you?”

“That’ll do me,” Jardine said. “Can I pick my own NCOs?”

“Sure,” said Bentley, “and look on the bright side. Most of these brass-mad fools will get themselves killed in training, not to mention in battle. You’ll soon be up there where you belong.”

“That gives me something to look forward to,” Jardine said. “The imminent demise of my friends and neighbors.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean, Rafe. But I’ll be the happiest lieutenant in your squadron.”

Before the meeting broke up, they all agreed that recruiting would start immediately, with training beginning in a month. Each would arrange management of his plantation so that he could fully devote himself to the dragoons. There was no telling when they’d be called up to fight the Yankees. Nobody voiced any doubt that they would be.

All the way back to Three Rivers, Jardine pondered what to do about the plantation. Little Boyd was no problem. He could go to one of Jardine’s cousins inland from Charleston. That ought to be safe enough. But what about Three Rivers? Could Drusilla and Big Mose manage it without an overseer? What would happen if the fighting came as far south as Kershaw County and he was serving elsewhere? Jardine realized that in a war, one could not always defend his own little patch of ground.

At Three Rivers, Jardine retreated to his study and did some more serious thinking aided by a bottle of brandy. He found himself wishing that Caleb were there. Not that he would have the answer, but at least he would be someone to talk to. Damn free blacks, anyway. What the hell was freedom when the future of Three Rivers was at stake?