Dessa Rose (24 page)

His arm tightened round me. “Hankty negress like you need a damn fool negro like me.” And I laughed.

I don't mean to say that I ever got so's I liked the idea, black man, white woman. I don't think none of us ever liked the idea; and we was uneasy situated as we was; had to be uneasy. But I don't think Nathan and Miz Lady did more than hold hands or walk apart for a minute throughout that whole journey. This was business and Harker didn't even allow
us
more than that. I know I never felt that same kind of feeling flowing between them after
that first morning. And, after a while, we was too close to hold hands, if you know what I mean, too mindful about everybody to show much that was special to one person. So I don't think none of us thought too much about them; and as for her—.

Well. My thoughts on her had changed some since that night at Mr. Oscar's. You can't do something like this with someone and not develop some closeness, some trust. And we couldn't help but talk, much time as we spent together. At first it wasn't no more than what we would do the next day, the peoples we seen; as time went on we talked about the sales and the stories Harker-nem was bringing back. We even laughed about that bad Oscar one night. Often, we was so tired from traveling and scheming we went to sleep with barely a good night between us. We was moving quick, honey—we watched every word; and the scheme went smooth.

Back in them days about all you had to do was put a rope and a collar on a negro and seem like every white person in seeing distance want to make an offer for him. We seldom had to hold auctions. At first we kept the stories simple—Harker's old master taught that the best lie is always the one closest to the truth. So Miz Lady sold them as just plain field hands—prime ones, now; they was always prime—and trusted. Family hadn't never meant to sell them, Miz Lady'd say, looking sad. By her always wearing some kind of dark dress, this gived the impression death was the cause of sale. Clara even got so she cried after them when they was sold. But (Miz Lady would go on), prime field hand don't go cheap. That's all she ever said they was, field hand. But the white peoples would just insist—“You mean he can't carpenter?” “He can't lay no brick?” “She must can cook.” Till finally she started saying, “Yes, he a mason” “he a drayman.”

We sold Flora as a laundress and expert ironer when she hadn't even so much as seen a flatiron in them days. People could do these things was sold for more money. Sometimes they masters hired them out and collected they wages. Oh, I tell you, honey, slavery was ugly and we felt right to soak the masters for all we could get. And Miz Lady was good; she could hold and pacify Clara and bargain over a slave at the same time, matter a fact, she liked
to do that to throw peoples off guard; they'd be up there playing with Clara and she had closed the sale. She bat her eyes and the sheriff want to put up handbills for her. She smile and a planter raise his price fifty dollars, just to be what she called “gallant.” All that bat the eye and giggle was just so much put-on now, and it give me a kick to see how she used these to get her way with the peoples we met.

We always tried to have our noon meal off the road someplace so we could talk together, let down our guard a little. Harker wouldn't have us let down our pretense but just so much. Miz Lady always sat on something, a log, a rock, one of the bags, and I sat beside her, between her and the rest. And we all called her Mistress; that “Miz Rufel” and “Miz Lady” was only amongst ourselfs. Trusted hands, yes, but it wouldn't do for none of us to seem to familiar with her. Nathan and Harker kept things light with their back-and-forth and everybody played with Clara. (You know, she turned out to be no trouble at all. I hadn't taken up too much time with her at the House—that was Annabelle's job; she was the nursemaid. But Clara was a cheerful baby, go to anybody for a smile; and laughing and playing with her whiled away many an hour as we was traveling or me and Miz Lady waited in some hotel.) This was where we rested, where we planned and told tales.

The more money we made, the more real “West” got. What would we have to buy? When should we leave? These was the things we talked about. Should we head for St. Joe or Council Bluffs? St. Joe was closer but it was in slave country; so we settled on Council Bluffs. I was all set to leave as soon as we got back to the Glen, but Harker said no. This was a long journey and we couldn't just go rushing off. It would take a while to buy and pack all we needed. It would be winter by the time we was ready and we couldn't spect nothing but bad weather going north. (You know, I'm shamed to say I didn't know this where cold weather come from, the north. That I'd never seed no real meaning in birds going south till Harker pointed it out to me. This is what I hold against slavery. May come a time when I
forgive—
cause I don't think I'm
set up to for
get—
the beatings, the selling, the killings, but I don't think I ever forgive the ignorance they kept us in.) We couldn't start out much before the end of winter, and seemed like we need to buy some of everything cause none of us had nothing.

And the stories. Harker told about one place he was sold had a bulldog weigh five hundred pounds patrolling the Quarters, could see negroes in the dark; Castor about another one where they growed negroes so big one could eat half a barrel of flour and a middle of meat at one meal—and back that up with a barrel of greens and a water bucket full of syrup. One master tried to force his way with Flora—that was the way he broke all his women. But he was drunk and she “helped him,” she say, “pass
out
,” didn't even wait for morning to skedaddle out that place—and had been waiting for two days in the next town when we got there; was fixing ready to leave
us
. One of Ned's buyers sent him with a note down to the sheriff's to be whipped—this is what a lot of owners did in the cities and towns cause they didn't want to do this theyself. Ned stopped a white man and asked him what the note say; when the man told him, Ned give the note to the next negro he seen. Gave him two coppers to take it to the sheriff and wait for an answer. This wasn't a nice trick but it was what slavery taught a lot of people: to take everybody so you didn't get took yourself. We laughed so we wouldn't cry; we was seeing ourselfs as we had been and seeing the thing that had made us. Only way we could defend ouselves was by making it into some hair-raising story or a joke.

Somebody even tried to hold us up. We had just sold Ned—or was it Castor? We sold peoples so many times it was hard to keep count of them. Harker was the only other person with us, riding in the wagon-bed; I was sitting up there between Nathan and Miz Lady wishing I was back there with Harker. Seem like I could feel him touching me—oh, not with his hands; he hardly laid a hand on me. And sometimes I'd about swoon, my senses be so overcome with knowing he was near. That day, we'd set out later than we should, but was specting to reach the next town by nightfall. They'd told us at the place where we'd sold Ned, town was only
a little piece the way down the road, but dusk found us still on the road with no house in sight. We figured later that they'd told us this on purpose and that it was somebody from that place knew we had cash money and thought they saw a chance to steal it. Well, they laid in wait for us in a canebrake, two of them, masked, on horses. One pointed a gun at us while the other held the mules by the bridle. “Put your hands up!” the one with the gun say.

Miz Lady carried a big, floppy, drawstring bag, sort of like a reticule, but big; carried some of everything in it, mostly Clara's stuff, but she had started crocheting for winter so that was in there, too. Well, Miz Lady cried, “What?! Why the i-
dee
!” just like these was some rude boys tracked dirt across her clean floors or was chunking rocks at her laundry. That's how she say it, “the i-
dee
,” and flung that bag in the horse's face. This was the horse of the man had the gun on us. It reared up and he dropped the gun trying to control it.

Honey, they wasn't no match for us, smooth as we moved together. When she flung that bag, Nathan shoved them reins on me, went flying at the one held the mules; I ducked down with the baby between the seat and the front of the wagon and pulled Miz Lady down on top of us. By the time I looked up, Harker had the gun on one and Nathan had a choke hold on the other. Miz Lady was brushing herself off and fussing about scoundrels picking on defenseless peoples. That's the way it was: bam, bam, bam, just like that, just like we'd done this a hundred times before.

We tied them up—Miz Lady still fussing; we didn't even take off they masks: Who was interested in knowing some good-for-nothing white mens?—run off they horses, and left them just like that for someone else to find there by the side of the road. “Let them explain that,” Miz Lady said. “The i-
dee
!” and we fell out laughing.

A course Nathan and Harker fussed Miz Lady a little about the chance she took. Had to say something—it actually not that many bad mens a woman can stop with her purse. If they hadn't been there to back her up, she'd been in deep trouble. This was more
understood than said, and what was said was more like a joke. We was feeling too good about ourselfs to take anything too hard. So, when Miz Lady brought up about me and her beating that bad Oscar with pillows, it was more or less to keep the joke going. By this time, Oscar was more funny to us than scary, but somehow we'd never talked about him in front the others. Well, by the time that story all come out, he wasn't so funny to Harker, neither Nathan. They'd thought about ravishment in the Quarters, but not about ravishment in the House, not under the white woman's guard, not of the white woman herself. And they was some upset that we was just now telling them—like that would've done some good. Harker jawed at me, Nathan at Miz Lady; I was sore at her for bringing it up in the first place. She was mad at all of us for being mad at her. And Clara was squalling; all that arguing back and forth woke her up. Everybody's mouth was poked out by the time we finished that ride.

Nathan had Miz Lady buy a little pistol in the next town, to keep beside the bed, and him and Harker taught us to shoot it. And our travels went on. King's Store, Eutaw, Yancyville, these the names I remember. Never stayed in none of them more than a day or two, and most of that was in some hotel, waiting. Sometimes we spent the night at a plantation house. Other times, we camped out. They tell you now about the gloried south; south wasn't so gloried back then, honey. Some of them places we went through wasn't no more than three buildings: the cotton warehouse, the cash-store, and the house where the manager or owner of the warehouse and store lived. Sometime, if they looked prosperous enough, we would stop at these places. There was one we seen had a bear chained up outside; this was their pet—big, smelly, hide gone all to mange, wallowing round the yard; he was some pitiful. We didn't stop there; didn't none of us want to be round someone would do a living thing like that.

No, being round her own people didn't make Miz Lady waver none in what we was doing. The money helped, of course. She was getting a good portion of money from the sales—not the largest portion, but a good share, you understand. Now, being round
white peoples myself, I could understand how she was posed to be living up there in that half-finished House. With the money we was making she could go back to her peoples in style. And we none of us could help being some familiar with her. Castor and Flora was still kind of shy with her, but even they come to speak to her, sometimes without her having to speak first. I served her, yes, but she didn't treat me the way I had seen some treated on that journey, had never treated none of us with all that yelling and cuffing which was the way many masters did.

It had made me kind of scared to see the way peoples was treated at some of the tavern-inns and Houses where we stayed. I could go from one season to another at my old home and not see no more white folks than the overseer who bossed us in the fields, or Master from a distance. I just had no idea of all the cuffing and cursing we had to bear. I knew a rough word or shove wasn't nothing beside a caning or the lash; yet and still, it bothered me. And you was always darky or nigger or gal to them, never your name.

Nathan said the white folks mostly didn't mean nothing by all they carrying on and the black folks mostly didn't take it too much to heart. Miz Lady said only the most low-class white folks acted so harsh; most masters treated they slaves like they would other servants.

I didn't too much care to talk about slavery in front of her. Shy or not shy, nobody much wanted to disagree with her—though the time she said that, about low-class masters, Ned did speak out to say poor white folks didn't own no slaves. See, Miz Lady didn't believe most white folks was mean. She thought that if white folks knew slaves as she knew us, wouldn't be no slavery. She thought that was what'd ruined her husband—seeing how much money you could make if you owned other peoples. This is why she felt slavery was wrong, because peoples was no more to you than a pair of hands, stock, sometimes not even a name. When she said this, Flora say real earnest, “Please, Miz Lady, don't say nothing like that round no white folk.” We all kind of laughed at the way she said it—Flora was being funny, you know; but she was serious,
too. She had seen white mens who said such things run out of town for just being in close talk with other peoples' slaves. We didn't want Miz Lady giving no white folks no reason to dislike her. And she didn't see herself as no different from most white peoples. If they just knew, she kept saying. Well, I believed this of
her
, but I couldn't understand how she could watch white folks buying up our peoples right and left and say this. As far as white folks not knowing how bad slavery was—they was the ones made it, was the ones kept it. Master could've freed me anytime and I wouldn't've never said him nay. Maybe Nathan and them saw these things, too, but no one said them to her.