Sweetsmoke (10 page)

    Sounds
'bout right, said Quashee.

    Cassius
thought for a moment before he said: I can talk to someone up there.

    From
what I hear, you ain't got a whole lot of influence.

    That
from Big Gus?

    From
all of them. They wonder how you stay so independent. Big Gus would like to
have you in the fields.

    Big
Gus may get his wish, but that would be his bad luck.

    She
smiled at that.

    Cassius
was tired of talking. He wanted to be alone, out here where he hoped to avoid
thinking. He said nothing more. Quashee may have sensed his desire because only
a few minutes passed before she stood and walked back up the lane to the cabin
she shared with her father.

    Cassius
touched the warm dry spot on the log where she had been sitting, then sat on
it. He had forgotten to smoke his cigar and it was out. He was unwilling to
walk back to the embers to relight it.

    He
sat until the sky turned pale and Mr. Nettle's bell rang. He heard the field
hands rousing from their sleep to face another day battling the blight.

    Cassius
opened the door and in the dim light before he found the lantern, he saw how things
were. Her belongings had been handled and thrown aside and now lay strewn
across the floorboards. He saw herbs and remedies scattered among smashed jugs,
bottles, and plates. He wondered if this had happened after the murder or as
she fought back, assuming she was able to fight back. He closed the door behind
him and struck a match, carrying its timid light until he found the lantern
unbroken. The wick accepted the flame.

    He
sat, and the damaged property made him aware of the violence of her death. The
longer he stared, the more he saw the destruction as having a pattern, and he
visualized the killer ripping methodically through her belongings. His mind
then explored a fresh scenario: Someone not her killer had come hours or days
later to paw through her things, perhaps after the sheriff had removed her
body. Or perhaps the sheriff and his men had been the vandals. Cassius rejected
these narratives and returned to his first instinct.

    Upon
reflection, he decided she had surprised someone ransacking her home and was
killed trying to stop it. She was a conjurer, a hoodoo woman—few whites and
fewer blacks would risk the curse of an angry spirit, lingering and furious at
its premature death.

    The
previous night, he had avoided the celebration of the Fourth and gone into the
woods to check his traps. He had folded his clothes by the bank of the creek
and waded in to a shallow place where the water was quick, lying on his back
among the stones and muck to let the chill current rush over him. With his
lantern set nearby on the bank, he had watched the pale beam pass through the
rivulet, fragmenting and dancing against his skin. His gaze shifted to the
water bulging against his fingers just below the surface and curving around his
bent knees. He had returned to the quarters with a possum, which he delivered
to Savilla.

    During
the day he had forged a pass for himself, a simple matter despite its inherent
danger. Three years before, he had found papers written in Hoke's hand, which
he had hidden in the band of his trousers for an entire day. Had these papers
been discovered, the punishment would have been swift and severe. In secret he
imitated the handwriting until he could reproduce it. But four nights before,
when he had been called to Hoke's office, he had seen that his old master's
hand had developed a quaver; Cassius's forgery was that of a younger Hoke. He
could not imitate his master's shake without a sample, so he was forced to
travel with a pass he did not trust. Walking in the dark, he had heard the
patrollers singing somewhere ahead. He hid in heavy brush by the roadside and
when the singing did not move, he emerged and saw that they were off the road
in a clearing. They had liberated their bottles from their haversacks early
that evening.

    He
continued to sit, dazed, in her cabin, slivers of information filtering through
to him. The floorboards had absorbed a dark spot, and after staring at it for
some time, he understood that he was looking at dried blood. The closest he
would ever come to viewing her remains was this stain. Hoke had not bothered to
tell him that she was already buried. Cassius remembered that he had also been
protected from viewing Marriah's body. His thoughts flowed to her.

    He
had won Marriah despite being the slow, salacious young bear among swift,
adolescent wolves. He had always been slow. He remembered firsthand the trauma
of separation when his mother was sold. He was raised by Mam Rosie and for a
brief time her husband Darby, as Darby was sold soon after. He grew tall and
made to himself a secret promise, that he would be different. He would not love
anything. He would make his heart cold. He evaluated the available young
females of Sweetsmoke as well as those at other plantations. Opportunities
existed to make a match outside the home plantation through the infrequent
communal dances, corn shuckings, and the occasional collective rigging of
Sunday church. But Cassius decided he was too smart to fall into an abroad
marriage; he saw what the lovers were forced to endure-traveling at night,
begging Master for a pass, the difficulties inherent in living apart. He
limited his courting to the women of Sweetsmoke. His promise to shield his
heart made him overcautious, thus the slow bear. Females in their early teens
were courted by eager young men, and these couples were kept company by the
girls' mammas; if the young men were approved, with permission usually
automatic from the big house, they "married." He briefly courted
Jenny. He courted Fawn, but men craved her brutishly and his heretofore
unacknowledged jealousy flinched. Emotionally stunted Fawn was unable to
publicly parade the gown of faithfulness, as she mistook sexual ardor for love.
He left her to others, and Cassius entered his young twenties without a steady
partner.

    Before
the war, Hoke Howard's investment in a fleet of ships brought an influx of new
wealth to Sweetsmoke, and he celebrated by traveling, purchasing French chateau
gates, expanding his cellars of wine, adding to Ellen's wardrobe, and almost as
an afterthought, purchasing the slaves of an acquaintance whose wife and child
had died while visiting New England during a yellow fever outbreak. Marriah
arrived with five others two years before the Cold Storm. She was older than
most available females, almost twenty, but when on that first evening she toted
her belongings to her assigned cabin, the wolf pack pricked up. Cassius held
back and studied his competition. He learned that she'd had a husband at her
old plantation, a forced marriage by the whites who mated couples deliberately
and conscientiously, breeding them to add size and strength to their herd. She
bore him a son who never took a breath and made that the excuse to push him
away. He found another and she was glad. Cassius chanced to be there when
Master Jacob first set eyes on her, and he saw the effect Marriah had on him.
But Cassius was determined.

    When
Cassius made his move, he discovered that she had been waiting for him and
wondered what had taken him so long. It was the first time Big Gus knew that he
was outmaneuvered.

    Cassius
and Marriah decided to be married. As neither had parents in the quarters, only
permission from the big house was required. Genevieve, the unmarried daughter
of Hoke and Ellen, took interest in their wedding. Genevieve delighted in
matchmaking, but by this time her planter friends no longer agreed to submit to
her manipulations. Thus she had turned her sights on the quarters. Genevieve
planned a lavish event, the bulk of the celebration being for the planter
families, with the marriage ceremony serving as spectacle. Cassius learned of
the plan and he and Marriah chose a day and married in secret. On that day they
jumped the broom, and pulled on opposite ends of a rope thrown over the roof of
the cabin he had built. The rope pull was designed to end in a stalemate so
when the bride then moved to the side of the groom and they pulled together,
the rope came easily, demonstrating the importance of cooperation. They moved
in to the new cabin that afternoon.

    Genevieve
noticed uncommon bustle in the kitchen on that day and learned from Mam Rosie
about the secret wedding. Cheated out of her event, Genevieve summoned Marriah
to the big house. When the sun set and Marriah did not return, Cassius was
irritated but not overly concerned. He trusted his relationship with Hoke.
Cassius was his favorite. Hoke would surely keep his bride from Jacob's bed.
Mam Rosie came to the quarters to inform Cassius that one of the planter
children suffered with fever and Marriah was to remain at the big house to care
for him. Cassius spent his wedding night alone.

    Marriah
returned the following morning. Only a moment did they share, but she reassured
him with her eyes and a touch on his arm. At sunset, he hurried to their cabin,
and found her waiting.

    She
suspected she was pregnant that night.

    Marriah
evolved into a different person during pregnancy. She went weeks without
bathing, the odor of her body changed, small noises caused her to flinch, and
he would wake in the night to find only her body's imprint on their pallet with
Marriah wandering in the dark. It was as if she hoped to make her baby
unwelcome.

    The
night arrived for the delivery. Marriah asked Cassius to stay away, but when he
heard the baby cry, he forced his way past Savilla and Mam Rosie. He lifted the
newborn and held it in his arms, umbilical cord still attaching baby to mother,
birth blood smeared on his shirt, beholding a child he could not have fathered,
a child who could pass for white.

    Master
Jacob had gotten his way. Cassius's anger was directed neither at the boy nor
his wife, and, oddly, he was not angry at Jacob. He felt instead the betrayal
of his old master, believing he should have prevented Jacob from indulging his
compulsion. Cassius took advantage of a bottle for a day and a night before he
accepted what he had known from the beginning, that he would raise the boy as
his own.

    Ellen
traveled to the quarters. She was repulsed by the sight of a white child born
to chattel. She returned to the big house and insisted her husband send for the
slave trader. Two days after giving birth, a weakened Marriah was directed to
join the hands in clear- cutting a new field. The winter of 1856 into 1857 was
unnaturally cold, and she bundled herself as best she could, returning to the
yard by the big house every three hours to breast-feed the infant. Cassius was
directed to a job in the second barn. The slave trader arrived in a carriage
accompanied by a black woman. The business was transacted in the yard. The
slave trader took the still-unnamed boy from Nanny Catherine's arms and placed
it in the arms of the black woman, and the three of them rode away. Marriah
returned to the yard, breasts engorged. Nanny Catherine said the baby was gone.
Marriah did not believe her. She searched until Mam Rosie confirmed the story.

    Marriah
ran away to catch the slave trader who had her baby. Hoke took a horse and
groomsman and set out after her. He returned with the groomsman and a loud
conversation was overheard between Hoke and his wife. Hours later, patrollers
arrived with Marriah, hands bound, hair in her face, breathing sharply like a
wild animal.

    Ellen
met the patrollers alone, and ordered Otis Bornock, Hans Mueller, and Isaac
Lang to secure Marriah's wrists to the high ring on the whipping post and
expose her back. Ellen took up the bullwhip and swung it over her head, then
snapped it into Marriah's skin with the patrollers looking on. She counted two
dozen lashes, set the bullwhip down, and dismissed them. She ordered the yard
cleared and strode back inside, leaving Marriah tied there whimpering in the
cold, milk leaking down her belly.

    At
close of day, Cassius approached the yard intending to walk with his wife and
son to the quarters. He discovered her alone in the yard, tied to the post with
her back in shreds. He cut her down and carried her to the quarters. He learned
about the slave trader and left her facedown on their pallet with Savilla
attending. At the big house, Hoke would not see him, and he returned to find
the pallet empty and Savilla rocking on a stool. Savilla had left her alone in
order to fetch herbs from her cabin, and Marriah had run again. Cassius ran
after her.

    He
found her on the road standing on the small bridge, cold and weak and insane,
but then the lights of lanterns appeared around the road's elbow, patrollers
hunting them, taking them, returning them to Sweetsmoke. Cassius begged to take
her punishment for her, but they laughed and said he had punishment of his own
coming. Cassius was taken into the shed with tobacco drying overhead and he was
shackled to a ring bolt in the wall. He called Marriah's name. Hoke came with
the whip which was red wet at its ends. After Hoke laid into him, Cassius was
left there.