Dessa Rose (16 page)

She shrugged, pleased to have finally gotten a rise out of him. “Oh, I hear things,” she said airily. “It have something to do with you-all escaping from that coffle, huh?”

He grinned slightly. “That ain't nothing but something white folks made up,” he said with an air of unconcern.

“Well, why they call her that?” she prodded.

“That's some mess—That's some of Harker's talk,” he said annoyed. “Dessa done her part just like everybody else, just she was more easy to pick out cause of that big belly.” He chuckled suddenly. “She did like to scare Master Wilson half to death when she jumped on his back—he screeched like a stuck pig and she was already yelling like a banshee. I guess white folks might of thought they was in hell.”

“You-all did kill some white people, then?” she breathed, admitting to herself, finally, that this question had been in the back of her mind ever since he told her of the escape from the coffle.

“Mis'ess,” he said looking at her steadily, “we ain't harmed no one didn't offer us harm first.”

“You-all going to kill me?”

“No, Mis'ess.” He sounded genuinely shocked.

“Don't suppose you'd tell me if you was,” she said, still on a note of disbelief.

“Mis'ess,” he said earnestly, “ain't no one here plan you no hurt or would do you or yours any harm.” He cleared his throat. “We all know it's not too many white folks would let us stay round like this.”

It was not exactly the expression of gratitude she felt the runaways owed her, but, somewhat mollified and reassured, too, she asked curiously, “Was it a big battle?”

“On that coffle? Not really,” he said briefly.

“Well.” Rufel was disappointed. “Did that wench—Odessa really jump on that trader like you said?”

“Rode him like you would a mule,” he said, laughing outright. “Master Wilson a big burly man but she stuck to him like a burr to a saddle. Knocking him all upside the head with her bare hand, yelling to the rest of us, ‘Get him, get him.' Oh, she was something,” he said shaking his head.

“All you darkies from off that coffle?” she asked.

“No'm; I believe Ned from down round Lowdnes County; Red from round about Dallas County someplace.”

Rufel had only a hazy idea of whom he spoke and an even hazier idea of where the counties he named were located. To cover her ignorance, she said sarcastically, “All you-all escaping from a cruel master, huh? Beat every one of you worse than what that wench's mistress beat her, huh?”

“No, Mis'ess,” he said quietly. “Castor's old master died and the 'state was being broke up; stead of being sold away from everything he knowed, he runned off.” He paused and looked at her in a measuring way. “Master Wilson cuff me sometime, throw a boot at me now then, but, sometime—sometime I get to wondering why Master can take his ease while I be the one that sweat, why the harder
I
work the more
he
gets. But I guess you wouldn't know nothing about that?” he added, cutting his eyes at her.

His lightly mocking tone recalled her earlier anguish over Mammy—Had she felt this way? Rufel rose hastily to her feet. How could you love someone who used you so?

“Ada say you come from pretty big people back there in Charleston.”

Rufel paused. He was watching her, she saw, not in that disconcertingly bold way he had, but from beneath properly lowered lashes. She was instantly suspicious; he was trying to cozen her, of course. “They wasn't
that
big,” she said cautiously, remembering that other occasion, yet, wanting to impress him, she added quickly, “Oh, we was accepted by society, but we wasn't real prominent.”

The darky nodded wisely. “Ada say Dorcas was always talking about the parties and dances you was invited to.”

“Well,” she said slowly, “I did go to a lot of balls and parties,” and remembered with familiar yearning the ballroom glittering with the flames of a hundred candles; the jewellike colors of the women's dresses swirled in a kaleidoscope before her eyes.

“Reckon he'll be home right soon.”

The darky's voice recalled Rufel to his presence and she stared blankly at him. “What?”

“Your husband,” he prompted. “Reckon he'll be home soon?”

“Yes,” she said nervously. “Yes, I expects him home any day now.”

“Must be some powerful big business keep him away so long.”

What could Bertie do on the river, any river, that would earn him money, that would make him stay away from home like this?

“—gambling.”

It was not the first time Rufel had asked herself this question and for a moment she thought she had spoken aloud, that the one word she'd heard from the darky was his answer. She stared at him in disbelief.

He grinned at her. “Oh, yes, ma'am, Harker's old master was a gambler; won Harker in a card game. Master's cardplaying was how Harker got free.” Rufel relaxed as soon as she realized the darky wasn't talking about Bertie; the darky continued unperturbed. “Harker ain't had to escape like the rest of us, least ways to hear him tell it. Seem like his master got caught with too many aces—you know it's only four in a deck, Mis'ess, and there was three on the table and two in his hand. Not that I think the master here would do anything like that,” he said, looking slyly, or so it seemed to her, out of the corner of his eye, then continuing casually, “Seem like Harker's master was a regular cutup, a confidence man you know. Sold snake-bite oil and a magic elixir was straight puredee alcohol. Sold well, too—especially to spinster ladies and widders.”

He paused for breath and Rufel grinned broadly at his fast-
talking commentary. “You,” she said clapping her hands, “you are the funniest darky—”

“Nathan,” he said smiling. “My name Nathan, Mis'ess.”

Rufel hardly noticed. “What,” she asked laughingly, “what ‘puredee alcohol' and ‘widders' got to do with Harker escaping?”

Not much, as it turned out. Harker had not thought it prudent to stay around and find out what the other cardplayers thought of a five-ace deck, as he himself had several stashed about his person. These he had slipped to his master as occasion and circumstance permitted while he served the gentleman drinks. When his master failed to meet him as they had previously arranged, Harker, believing all to be lost, had fled the vicinity. He had been a wanderer ever since. “Until he happened onto the Glen and a kind white lady named Miz—” He paused expectantly.

Amused by his mock gallantry, she replied, “Rufel,” automatically, and wanted to bite her tongue.

He tipped his hat slightly and continued, “—named Mistress 'Fel took him in.”

Gratified that he showed no reaction to her use of a pet name and oddly moved by his use of the diminutive, she smiled.

“That's better,” he said. “Nice Miz Lady like you not supposed to go round all sad,” he said gruffly.

“Why, why,” startled she stammered. “Thank you, Nathan,” she said touched.

Now that she knew who Nathan was, Rufel seemed to see him frequently. He came every couple of days to see the girl and now and then she walked out with him afterward, pausing at the edge of the yard for a moment as he finished some amusing pleasantry or anecdote, before turning back to the House. Often they met at the stream. It had been her habit to sit by the stream in summer with her sketch pad. She had some skill, she thought, with caricature, but Bertie had not encouraged this. The form, she knew, was rather vulgar but she could not help preferring the whimsical figures drawn as much from her imagination as life to the crude still-lifes and landscapes that Bertie praised as ladylike. So she had
seldom sketched; she had watched the play of sunlight on the surface of the stream, counted the various shades of green among the branches of the overhanging trees, dozed a little, dreamed, though she could not remember of what.

Sometimes now she took Clara, as she had once taken Timmy, and spread a quilt for her under the trees. Now and then Timmy and Dante, pausing between the vague but exciting adventures that drew them to the fields and woods, or taking a rest from picking the fruit that Ada had started to can and dry for winter use, would sit with her. Most frequently it was Nathan who bore her company. He took his turn at the plow, he assured her when Rufel laughingly taxed him (“Harker going see to
that
,” he added with a laugh), but his luck with snare and fishing pole were valued more than any furrow he could plow. He had shown Timmy and Dante how to make snares to trap the small game that abounded in the woods. The two youngsters had yet to make a contribution to the pot, but Nathan's skill kept a variety of fresh meat on the table. And he told fascinating stories—animals that talked, trees that had spirits, people who refused to die, and tales that he swore were “true to life.” Often Harker figured in these; between them, the two of them seemed to have done everything possible for a darky to do and much that Rufel knew to be impossible.

Nathan had a gap between his two front teeth that gave his grin an open, carefree quality, and little red-rimmed eyes that he could make dance or sparkle almost, it seemed, at will. His company came, in large measure, to replace the companionship Rufel had shared with Mammy. She could not see him as she had seen Mammy, almost as an extension of herself—his observations were, by and large, too racy for that. His opinions and positions were sometimes mildly outrageous—he would rather come back to life as an animal or bird with a chance to work his way back to human form than sit around heaven drinking honey; women were as smart as men; there were some people who could see into the future—but he could make even the driest crop report sound scandalously funny. He treated her with a semblance of the deference and indulgence that had characterized Mammy's attitude
toward her. Now and then, she might speak of some incident she had seen or heard of in Charleston or Mobile, but she felt little need to talk about herself. Mostly she was content to listen.

Through talking with Nathan, Rufel came to know something of the people who lived in her Quarters: Ned, a young rascal given to playing pranks; Red, who longed after a “wife” down around his homeplace; Castor and Janet and the others—and once again became aware of the daily routine of the farm. She used him much as she had Mammy, as the means through which she participated in the life beyond the yard. These were not Sutton darkies, of course, so she was mindful of what she said. Nathan could shut his face just as tight and quick as Ada or that wench, but he was far friendlier.

Rufel still felt some resentment that the wench had destroyed her comfortable, and comforting, image of Mammy, but she no longer held that silly argument against the wench. However hateful and spiteful the wench had been, she couldn't change the way Mammy had cared for Rufel. Even if Mammy herself had been spiteful, bitter, secretly rebellious, Mammy, through caring and concern, had made Rufel hers, had laid claim to her affections. Rufel knew this as love. She would have said as much, but the wench's stiff civility made her hesitant to reopen the subject.

She had heard the story of the escape from the coffle and the wench's rescue from the cellar again and again from Nathan. She knew there must be some element of exaggeration as in his other “true-to-life” tales. She would not admire the action—one couldn't, of course, approve any slave's running away or an attack upon a master—still, something in her wanted to applaud the girl's will, the spunk that had made action possible. The wench was nothing but a little old colored gal, yet she had helped to make herself free.

Nothing Rufel said or did made either the wench or Ada more at ease with her. Once Rufel had entered the bedroom to find Ada combing the wench's hair. The older darky sat in a ladder-back chair; the girl sat on the pallet, her back leaning against the rungs of the chair. Her head rested on Ada's knee as Ada's fingers wove rhythmically through the stubby strands of the girl's hair. They
looked so companionable and content that Rufel almost felt an intruder. The moment the darkies became aware of her they started nervously, the wench vailing her eyes and bowing her head, Ada rising clumsily. Almost, Rufel begged pardon for entering her own room.

When Nathan told her that the wench was trying to settle on a name for the baby, Rufel did not immediately suggest one. She called him Button, a name that Timmy and Ada had picked up from her, which seemed like a perfectly serviceable one to her. Almost, she offered it in jest, but it was obvious that Nathan took the matter seriously. He was all for naming the baby Kaine, after the baby's daddy, and Harker agreed with him. The wench wanted to name the baby in honor of her rescuers. The baby's daddy, like that part of her life, was dead; she would not rake it up each time she called her son's name. Rufel saw both sides and suggested, half humorously, that the baby be named for all of them, or at least a name that represented them all, and, on impulse, offered “Desmond” as a pretty compromise. “Des” for Odessa, “mond” to represent the men, Nathan, Cully, and Harker, who were responsible for his free birth.

Button became Desmond Kaine (called Mony because Odessa, so Nathan told her, felt him to be as good as gold) with little ceremony that Rufel could see. She said nothing, but felt that, as mistress of the place, she ought at least to have been advised. She added it to her secret count against the wench, which already included her coldness toward herself and the wench's growing chumminess with Ada. Now she took a private pleasure in having had some hand in naming Button, feeling repaid in some measure for the wench's continuing aloofness. Maybe this was what Mammy had felt when she had changed Ruth Elizabeth's name, that somehow she had snuck a little piece of the child for herself, had marked at least some part of him with something of her own making.

She sought Nathan's company more often—he at least treated her like a person—and took out her pique at the wench by teasing Nathan, insisting that he must be sweet on her. “You talk about
her all the time,” she would say innocently, as if she herself took no delight in hearing of the girl's exploits.