Rafe

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Rafe

Kerry Newcomb and Frank Schaefer

1

Steam oozed from the lichenous clay-mud walls where the fierce spring sun struck the side of the pit. A light cloud eddied and swirled upward, barely visible, dissipating rapidly. The pit was thirty feet in diameter, dug deep in a clay deposit that formed a small knoll. It drained to the stream below which in turn drained to the Sabine River. From there most of the water ran south to the Gulf of Mexico. Some found its way to the swamps west of the river. Some was caught by one of the myriad, slow motion eddies and trapped in the murky, stagnant bayous. There the fierce subtropical sun sucked it through tangles of brush and cypress, through quiet air heavy with the mystery of undiscovered eons, back to the sky to fall again and moisten the walls and floor of the pit and turn them into treacherous, slippery footing.

The unusually wet winter and fragrant spring rains had erased the stench of summer's many deaths. Rain would never remove the red taint of the pit's clay flooring, for the clay attracted the blood spilled on it, held it, and would not allow it to be washed away by water alone. Like lust or hate the tint remained and darkened, an accumulative pigment only time might erase, and then only from the earth itself, not from the hearts and minds of men.

The black stood alone near the eastern wall, the sun behind him. His gaze skipped up the opposite wall to the swaying platform hung from the hoisting winch, then slowly travelled down the wall to the spot on which his opponent would be lowered. He didn't contemplate, yet, the size or color of the man he would fight and kill. He spent no time on the weapons he might have to face. Such contemplation would be a waste of time, he knew, for the men and weapons against which he found himself pitted always differed to one degree or the other. It was enough to know there would be a man, and the man would be armed. And the man would try to kill him. A small smile, unseen by the spectators ringing the circle of sky above, played about at one corner of his mouth. It would not be he who died. But now was not the time to think of death. Now was the time to concentrate on the spot soon to be filled by the man he would kill.

Had he glanced to either side of the hoisting block—to any spot on the rim of the pit—he would have seen anxious, excited, hungry white faces staring down at him. He had long since given up examining the spectators, ten feet overhead. They did not interest him. His gaze held the spot even when the watchers called his name.

“Rafe! Hey, Rafe. I got money on you.”

“You better be fast, nigger. You gonna have to be fast today.”

Rafe, they called him. Short for Rapha, a biblical name meaning giant, given him by his first white master. Two inches over six feet tall, he was aptly named. A long cruel scar ran down his neck and across his shoulder, through the checked, puckered tribal scars on his thick chest, there to curl under the ribs and disappear around his side to end in a slanting gash halfway down his right buttock, hidden by the loincloth, the only article of clothing he wore. He had received the scar in his first fight when, befuddled by the newness of the situation and distracted by the lusting eyes above, he had let the devil with the red beard get too close. Suddenly aware, he had leaped, spinning away from the curving, flashing knife, not in time to escape entirely, but in time to save his life. Stunned, shaken into sobriety, he had gazed for a moment at the blood welling from him, shook his head to clear the pain and waded in, oblivious to the screams from above. The red-bearded man had died quickly, his knife arm broken and dangling useless at his side, his face turning the color of his beard as the blood collected there, unable to get past the deadly vise of massive black hands on his throat. Later the wound festered and almost killed him, but he escaped that death and, emaciated and worn, lived. He had gone to the pit forty times since then and had not been wounded again. He had killed other slaves like himself, Indians, and three more delicious times, other whites. He enjoyed killing the whites.

His fame spread in the three years he fought and he soon drew crowds from the surrounding plantations, once even a party from New Orleans, complete with top hats on the men and wide, round, low-cut dresses on the delicate white-skinned women, slumming up-country far from the fancy streets and cultured homes. They had brought their own champion, a wiry Delta black with a sentence of death on his head and a promise of life should he win. They came to amuse themselves and bet their money against Ezra Clayton's slave. The man was armed with a length of ship's chain. He died with it wrapped around his skull. The fancy crowd sighed collectively and chattered their way gaily back to Freedom Mansion, there to pay off the bets they had lost and drink the rustic cane rum and dance until near dawn.

Rafe was only one of the twenty-five fighters Ezra Clayton owned and trained to fight with machete, saber, knife, axe, pitchfork, whip or chain. They all put on a good show, but Rafe was the favorite. The crowds were bigger and the bets higher when he fought. The towering slave, naked but for the loincloth which barely concealed his manhood from the spectators, could have cared less. He heard neither the shouts of praise nor the taunts.

Little was different on this first day of spring. Nothing but the year had changed. Alone in the coolness of the pit, the one place in the world he could call his own, Rafe waited. The world shrank to encompass no more than the thirty-foot circle, ten feet below the face of the earth. The mossy walls and slippery floor gave him confidence. Here was the only home he could remember with any clarity—the home over which he was the undisputed master. Silently, like some dark and ominous giant, he waited and watched.

“What the hell's holding things up, Ezra? I'm gonna have to get back to the shop before too long.”

Ezra Clayton, his eyes hidden under the broad-brimmed Panama which shielded them from the spring sun slanting in from the southeast, looked up lazily to stare at the speaker. He saw a tall man, all bones and skin, balding at an early age. Joe Terson, store-and tavernkeeper of Claytonville, wiped his brow for the umpteenth time and fidgeted before Clayton's relentless scrutiny. “You know how Abigail is, Ezra.” Terson forced a ragged laugh, his hands flapping nervously in front of him. “She's always on my back about spending too much time out here.”

Ezra's stare held. “You ought to bring her out to Freedom,” he said. “Micara would love to visit with her. She sees so few women these days.” Ezra removed his hat and ran his almost delicate fingers through the full shock of sculpted hair, snow white already at only forty-five years of age. The lord and master of Freedom never seemed to sweat, as if sweating were too plebian, too far beneath his station. His eyes could be seen, now. A light blue they were, so bright they seemed to burn—or freeze—a hole right through a man. Eyes too hard and cold for the soft, run-to-fat body on the spindly legs. But few men looked at the body. Fewer commented on the legs. All the strength a man might need lay hidden in the eyes, hidden and waiting to be brought to bear on anyone so unfortunate as to cross his path.

“I'll do that, Mr. Clayton. She'd like it. I reckon she'd be happy to visit tomorrow.…” The eyes had done their work. Joe Terson had received the message, explicit and implicit. He and his wife would do Ezra Clayton's bidding.

“Go and get a drink from the tray, Joe.” Clayton waved a soft hand, the gesture forgiving, bestowing absolution. “Tell Old Mose I said to let you have a chunk of ice. Rum's mighty tasty with ice.”

Terson smacked his lips at the thought. Ice. His eyes widened and he let himself anticipate the sudden, welcome coolness as he turned. The last time he'd had ice was three winters ago on the morning he'd gone outside to find a thin skim of crystal on the bucket. But then it was winter and cold. Now it was spring and already hot. He scurried toward Mose, the old slave with the creased scar on his head, the legacy left behind by a nameless, dead Creek.

Ezra sipped his drink as he cast his eye over the small crowd ringing the pit and loitering in the vicinity. Only ten on the rim itself, and they were a scruffy, sweating lot of gawking fools from nearby small holdings. More frontiersmen than landholders, really, the type who when the time came would be easy to drive across the Sabine and into Mexico. They would hardly bet enough to make it worth the time. Still, their shouts and yells instilled in the crowds an air of excitement. Later in the year their raucous, frenetic bets called across the pit would stimulate real wagers from the more genteel, and it was from these Ezra would profit.

Four small clusters of three or four men stood scattered here and there within close range of the table and cooling drinks. They were all from Claytonville, there because they knew Ezra Clayton expected them. Timid to a man, vicarious bravery would mount as they watched the brutality below. Their excitement, too, would generate some bets as well as add an aura of middle-class respectability to the proceedings.

A dozen small plantation owners from downriver stood near the wagon that had carried them from the landing. They had come upstream from Burr Ferry the night before and camped out at the landing sheds. Owners of fifty to a hundred acres and a few slaves apiece, they were taking a break from spring planting and their wives. They stood packed together, a convivial gathering, their talk spurred and quickened by the homemade cane rum they carried. From time to time a word from the knot of men broke loose and announced the subjects of their debate. The usual, Clayton thought. Always the usual. Crops and weather, slaves, Indians, women and rum, Mexico and the free land they wished they could get their hands on. And wives. Clayton despised the usual subjects, despised the men who could not break from them. They had no flair, no … what was it Bernard called it?…
panache
. But never mind. Their bets were more substantial. With luck he'd even be able to separate the big Cajun Beaumarchant, from Duggins, one of the twelve. Now there would be a coup. Beaumarchant! His mouth watered at the thought of the war-battered Acadian giant in his pit. He and Rafe together could take on any dozen men. What a battle that would be!