Sweetsmoke

    The
big one closed his hand into a fist and took a step toward the smaller boy. He
was tall and narrow, ten years old, and black; his joints bulged in rude knobs,
his long bones had grown quickly and suddenly and the meat in between was
strung taut like piano wire. A stiff muslin shirt, his only item of clothing,
hung to the top of his thighs, barely covering his buttocks and the skin that
stretched over his angular pelvic bones. Dust powdered his thin legs and turned
his calves pale, and his bare feet left significant shapes in the dirt. The
smaller one, the white one, should have been afraid. He wore a gingham shirt
with soft trousers held up by suspenders and he had real shoes. But skin showed
between shoe and cuff, and the trousers bagged at the knees, shiny there and
thin.

    Cassius
had not noticed the worn material of the boy's trousers until that moment, and
wondered if the condition of the white children's clothing was another casualty
of the Confederate quartermasters. Then he wondered what the boy's grandmother
thought about it.

    The
white one, grandson of the planter, stood his ground, hands open at his side;
in that moment, Cassius remembered himself standing barefoot in the same yard,
facing another white boy twenty years before, this one's father. On that day,
Cassius had yet to understand that he was another man's property, and now the
steam of humiliation flushed through him as if he was standing there again,
reliving the past.

    Cassius
made no move. He had not witnessed the boyhood conflict that had brought on
this moment, but he knew how it would end.

    Andrew,
the tall, black one, should also have known. He had older brothers in the
field, and even if by their compassion they hesitated to warn him, he should
have known he was alone and surrounded. None of the black children seemed to
know, but the white children knew, and one of them ran to the kitchen for Mam
Rosie.

    Mam
Rosie was out in an instant, humping down the steps, wiping her hands down her apron,
an old woman lean as a rope twisted tight, coming on fast. Mam Rosie showed no
fear, she was high yellow and had privileges, but she was also conscious of the
precise limits of her power. She came fast but Cassius knew there was time—the
two boys were there in the dirt, the other children were near the wilting
camellias by the big house porch steps, and Nanny Catherine watched over her
shoulder. No rush at all, thought Cassius, as his eyes drifted toward the work
sheds behind the big house. The smokehouse was there, and the sheds for
carpentry, blacksmithing, and shoe making. Then the barns and beyond them the
shed for curing tobacco—the old woman still running—and Cassius's eyes slid to
the low rise beyond which, out of sight, stood the Overseer's house and past
that the quarters. Acres of fields rolled out in three directions where
maturing tobacco grew tall. The children's gardening chores were done, the
butter churn put away, and the air was soft with moisture and sunlight and
insects sawing, plenty of time on most days, but not today, as Mam Rosie was
quick but not quick enough, and Andrew swung. He opened his hand at the last
second and slapped young Charles's ear.

    Cassius
closed his eyes at the sound. Every child, every adult, every creature in the
yard paused, and the future came into Cassius's mind as clearly as he
remembered his own past: Tomorrow Andrew would be obliged to work the fields
with his brothers and parents.

    He
would learn about it that night in the quarters, and his heart would be glad
because with the news would arrive his first pair of trousers and his first hat
and something that passed for shoes. His parents would see his gladness and
their eyes would meet in resignation. Their son, their little one, the baby,
already going to the fields, two years early. In the morning before sunup, Mr.
Nettle would ring the bell rousing Andrew from his place on the pallet between
mother and father, torn from sleep with trembling stomach, expected to consume
a full meal by candlelight with the sun barely a rumor. He would never again
sleep between them. He would eat little and regret it later. Walking in the
dark to the fields, his new shoes would pinch and the lower legs of his
trousers would cling, wet with dew and cold against his shins. They would
assign him a row to pick hornworms off tobacco leaves, the hands working
quickly, quickly to save the crop. He was to inspect each leaf top and bottom,
plucking hornworms as they grasped with their sturdy legs and strong tiny jaws.
The sun would step into the sky and dry his trousers and the heat would
gradually increase, unnoticed until he moved, when he would discover his body
reluctant, leaden. He would beg for a rest. His mother Savilla would shift in
her row to grant him shade from her thick trunk as she continued to pluck
hornworms, but then his mother, his
mother,
would guide his fingers back
to the work. Eventually she would yield to his complaints and pour hornworms
from her sack into his, hastily attacking his section to deceive Mr. Nettle the
Overseer. But Big Gus the Driver would know and when he came by she would be
forced back to her row. They would not beat him, though, not on his first day.
In time, when exhaustion, blisters, soreness, and sweat became routine, he
would think back and remember that slap. Andrew would never return to play with
the other children.

    Mam
Rosie cuffed Andrew on
his
ear, a loud and obvious blow that she hoped
would satisfy the planter's grandson. Her gnarled fingers squeezed the back of
Andrew's smooth dry neck and steered him aside. Mam Rosie pretended Charles was
not there, but Cassius saw the boy's reddened ear and knew something would
happen. He waited for Charles to order Mam Rosie to bind Andrew's wrists high
to the ring on the whipping post, to order her to pull up Andrew's shirt and
expose his back. Cassius knew Mam Rosie would do what she was told, whispering
to calm Andrew as she secured him to the post while he twisted and bucked in
outrage. He waited for Charles to tell Mam Rosie to run fetch the whip. Cassius
saw meanness in Charles's face as he controlled his tears, and then Charles's
eyes found Cassius's eyes and when Cassius did not look away, Charles saw that
Cassius knew, and Charles would have to do something. It was of no consequence
that he was ten years old. This was white man's pride.

    "Cassius,
you git along now and fetch me some water," said Charles.

    I
don't think I hear you, said Cassius aloud but not loud enough for Charles to
hear.

    "What's
that you say? What's that?" said Charles.

    Beautiful
day, said Cassius, again too quietly to be heard.

    Cassius
gripped the heavy hammer in his right hand, nails in his left, and pressed his
leg against the fence post where his knee and the top of his foot held the
stave in place. A tan and gray feral cat, kitten in her mouth, sauntered into
the shade under the big house porch. Sweat coated his skin and fat oily drops
clung to his nose, eyebrows, and chin. The air would not cool until long after
dark. Mr. Nettle's wife came around the far corner returning from the privy,
using her wide skirt to funnel her three small Nettles ahead of her, suddenly
alerted by the tension, wondering what she had missed. A bantam rooster lurched
with a high step in the yard, one eye warily on the shadow where the cat had
disappeared.

    "I
said git, boy," said Charles.

    Cassius
probed his own facial expression from within, finding it locked into a blank,
uncomprehending stare, reaching back to know it had been just so at the moment
Charles had met his eyes. But Cassius still did not look away. His mind
remained trapped in the past, barefoot in his own stiff shirt, not yet knowing
who he was or what would come of his defiance. Charles's eyes reflected
uncertainty; he knew there should be no hesitation. The yard by the big house
was unnaturally quiet. Cassius became aware of the song then, the ever-present
song that rose out of the fields, brought louder up the hill by a shift in the
wind. He did not notice that the smell came as well.

    Cassius
turned back to the fence stave and expertly angled a nail, bringing the hammer,
driving it three-quarters home with one swing.

    "I'll
tell her, Cassius, I'll tell Grandma Ellen!" Charles said. He spit out
Cassius's name and walked to the big house.

    Mam
Rosie stood with Andrew, looking at Cassius, a warning flashing in her eyes.

    On
the second floor, Ellen Howard read aloud to her servants a news story from a
two-day-old copy of the
Richmond Daily Whig,
reliving General Lee's
victory at Gaines' Mill, the third battle fought in as many days. She read
dramatically, expecting her servant, Pet, and her daughter's personal servants,
Susan and Pearl, to be properly moved. The early months of the war had brought
a constant stream of terrible news that had spread a pall over the Confederacy.
The newspapers bemoaned the inevitability of the war's rapid conclusion in
favor of the Union, and Ellen had been deeply traumatized. The culmination of
the bitter news came with the fall of New Orleans in April, and her natural
gloom settled into depression. But soon followed the campaign in Virginia, and
a series of victories over Union general George McClellan's enormous army
brought unexpected joy to the populace. Ellen Howard, however, was slow to
trust good news, afraid to emerge from her comfortable cocoon of dread and
ennui. Already feared as a thin-skinned and distant mistress, she had grown
unpredictable after the news of her oldest son John-Corey Howard's death at
Manassas Junction during the first battle of the war. John-Corey had been named
for her father, the late Judge Ezra John Corey, a man she had adored. Ellen's
bitterness over her son's death grew when informed that the Yankees had ridden
out from Washington, D.C. in their buggies with picnic lunches to enjoy the
spectacle of their soldiers defeating the Johnny Rebs. She was little cheered
to know they had been forced to flee in haste and terror when the South had
answered the cocksure Yankees with blood. A number of John-Corey's belongings
had arrived with a letter of condolence, his watch but not the winding key, his
slouch hat and his precious collection of received letters, many of which were
written in her hand.