The black swan (26 page)

BOOK II

Dulcie 1850-1863

Chapter One

Dulcie had been fighting again. She had scratched and kicked Jothan, a child who under more favorable circumstances would have been her physical equal. But Jothan found himself in direct jeopardy from all sides. Though they played and took their schooling together, and got each other into trouble several times daily, Dulcie was still his Little Miss. No pickaninny was allowed to hit Little Miss. Jothan knew it was so, for his mother. Ester, had thumped his small woolly head with her knuckles countless times for doing just that.

He was about to risk another thumping and give Little Miss a barefooted kick in the shins, when Ester came boiling out of her cabin to see what the commotion was. As if this wasn't discouraging enough, down the dirt path from the house came Dulcie*s mammy. There was fire in her eye, as much for the black child as for the white one.

"Miss Dulciel" she roared. "You, Jothan! What in tarnation y'all scufllin' 'bout dis time?"

"Jothan, you come right back herel" Ester yelled as her son ran to hide in the cavernous reaches of the stables.

"Mammy, make Jothan give me my marble I" yelled Dulcie, jumping up and down, her red pigtails bouncing. "He won't let me have iti"

Dulcie had made a mistake, staying in one place. Mammy grabbed her arm. "You hesh yo' moufi Mastah Jem give Jothan dat marble!"

Dulcie twisted in Mammy's grasp. "But I won it, an* I want it!"

"Dey's folks in de hot place wantin* ice water, an* dey am't gittin' what dey wants neither! Ah had mo'n enuf o' you today! You, Ester, it's 'bout time you learned dat uppity li'l pickaninny some manners!"

"Ah doan see you makin' out so good yo'seff. Mammy," Ester retorted. Quickly she turned away, calling in a stem voice for Jothan to come right out of them stables or she'd tan his hide.

Dulcie squirmed and jerked. Mammy held her firmly.

"You is gwine to bed, Miss Dulcie. How you 'spects to grow up 'n' be a lady if you allers fisticuffin' an' screamin' like a peacock? Ladies doan climb trees an' show dey pant'Iettes, an' dey doan chunk odder people in dey faces! Ah gits plum petered out wiff makin' you behave yo'seff!"

"It's mine," Dulcie said sullenly. "I betted him I could jump fu'ther'n him. He on'y jumped from Beauty's stall partway over to Buffy's—so I dumb up the ladder an* jumped from the loft, an' I won!"

"Bless de Lawd, chil'," said Mammy, paling visibly. "Doan you do dat agin, you heah me? Yo' daddy fin's out you jump outer de loft an' he skin me alive. De Debbil muster been 'sleep, or you'd broke both yo' legs!"

"But I didn't," said Dulcie with satisfaction. "And it's my marble!**

James Moran stuck his head into the small parlor where his wife, Patricia, sat doing needlepoint in an oval frame. "Patsy love, why don't you come for a buggy ride with me?'*

Patricia smiled up at him. "Ah am gettin' right bored with shovin' that needle in an' out. Jem, we need to have a pahty.*'

"There's one next week at the Saunderses.'*

"Ah mean a pahty heah! A big pahty! Ask Mad an* Ca'line to come an' stay ovah, have a ball an' a barbecuel An* a tiltin* tourney foah the young gentlemen! Ah can staht askin* folks next week."

"Not so fast, Patsy, not so fast.'* Jem laughed. "We can talk about that later." As though he suddenly noticed the quiet, he looked about the room. "Where*s Dulcie? She's not in bed already? She*s not sick?'*

Patricia sighed. "Oh, no, but Ah very nearly wish she was! Mammy told me she was bein' mean to three of the pickaninnies today, an' she struck Jothan! Sometimes, Jem, Ah jes* don't know what's to come o' that child.**

"Jothan brought it on himself, I'll wager." Jem grinned. Secretly he was pleased that his daughter could hold her own. "Don't you worry about Jothan, love. He'll get even with her.**

"Well, Ah don't know, Jem, she's all worked up 'bout somethin*. Did you give Jothan a present? Somethin' Dulcie might want?"

"A bag of marbles to be divided among all the little boys is all."

"What would a little girl want with marbles?" She took her husband's arm, looking up at him fondly. "Today, deah, Ah believe Dulcie is all youahs and none of mine. Why, when Ah was six, mah mama declared Ah was a perfect li'l lady."

"It's her red hair," said Jem complacently. His own was the same color. "Red hair gives people strong passions."

Patricia blushed hotly and patted him on the arm with her fingertips. "Jem Moran, you have got a very naughty mind! And besides, weah talkin' 'bout youah daughtah, not youahself!"

Jem thought fleetingly that he was talking about Dulcie.

They drove down the double line of crape myrtles that separated clover-thick lawn from vegetables gardens and the orchard beyond. In the long open spaces dust devils rose and died down in the constant, drying wind.

Jem stopped the carriage. With a broad sweep of his thick square hand he indicated the field that stretched and rolled before him. The late-afternoon sun cast hot-looking shadows at the feet of the wilted plants. "This is what I wanted you to see. It proves everythin' I've been sayin'. The land's gone barren. Our Mossrose is dyin' on us, Patsy love."

The summer had been exceptionally dry. Now, in mid-August, in the cotton fields stood a poor crop thickly covered with red-brown dust. On the lowest branches the bolls had turned brown and split open to show the snowy locks ready for the first picking. Patricia's gaze moved outward, down the long rows to the dark, ragged pine forest crouched waiting to reclaim the brilliant earth that had been cleared with so much difficulty.

She shivered slightly. Turn one's back and the trees would creep up and take over again. "How big a crop do you reckon on this season, Jem?"

"Unless we get a freshet soon, we'll be lucky to get half last year's. And it, you'll recollect, was mighty pindlin'."

"But it will bring enough to keep the plantation through next yeah?"

"That's why I wanted to talk to you, without the servants eavesdroppin' and chatterin' about it all over the county. Patsy darlin', we're runnin' out of money."

Her eyes widened. "But ouah credit is still good! Isn*t it?"

"Not as good as it was before. I've bartered and traded to the hilt, and we're still in need of cashl'*

"But the cotton—"

'The cotton crop may pay back the last loan. It won't buy you pretty dresses or see you off on visits to your kin-folk. I can't say positively that the vegetable gardens will feed us throu^ the winter. The field hands are totin' water, but nothin' is doing well. Nothin', Patsy."

She turned soft, confident brown eyes on him. "But you'll bring us out of it all right, Jem. Have you worked out a plan?"

He drew a deep breath and seemed to grow taller and sturdier. "That I have. Patsy love. I'm goin' to spread out, do things different, quit totin' all my eggs in one basket"

"Violet says the hens have got the sulks too."

Sometimes Jem was hard-pressed not to lose his temper with literal Patricia. She was very young, imtutored in worldly ways. Her saving grace was that she loved him without reserve and she believed in him. The edge of his impatience softened. "Forget the hens for now, Patsy. They're Asa's job, and I'll have Wolf speak to him tomorrow. I'm talkin' about field upon field of puny cotton. We're goin' to have to let the land rest. You know, Patsy, that's one of the troubles of the South today."

"Jem deah, don't let's get stahted on the whole South. You know how it boahs me. Ah thought we were talkin* about ouahselves."

**I am, but let me lead up to it. Madam," he said, irritable again.

"Very well, Jem," she said with cool dignity. "Ah'U just sit heah quiet as a beetle and listen to you."

•The South," he began expansively, *thinks the land win go on forever, all on its own, without any replenishment, just raising the same cash crops in the same fields time without end. Most planters are too fine-frocked to have their darkies spread manure and plow it in."

"But you've been doin' the same as they did!"

"I know, I know, and me who knows better. You're lookin' at the results right out there. Every stalk of cotton dry as popcorn."

"But next yeah—"

"Patsy, when the land wears out, the planter's got few

choices. He can sell, if anybody'll buy. He can abandon everythin', move his family to a new place, and begin again. Or he can build up his fields for a few years and then start rotatin' his crops."

"A few yeahs! Jem, how can we manage to keep all ouah people fed and clothed and tended if we don't have good credit or cash or a crop?"

"If we don't raise crops, we don't need so many field hands.'*

"You mean, sell off—"

"Sell off every slave we don't need. Use the money for capital while I'm startin' on my grand plan. Now, the North has a lot of advantages the South hasn't got—"

"James Moran, it was bad enough when mah sister Mad married Oliver Raymer and moved to N'Yawk, but Ah set mah foot down. Ah'm stayin' right heah.'*

"Quiet as a beetle. Your very words." He touched a finger to her lips. "I figure that the things the North has are as much mine by right as the things of the South. I should have thought of this long ago. With the capital I'll have from sellin' a hundred prime field hands, I'm goin* to do three things. I'm goin' to build the land back up. I'm goin' to invest in textile mills in the North—Oliver is willin' to run a mill for me on shares. And"—he braced himself against her shock—"I'm goin' to turn Mossrose into a breedin' farm."

"Foah hawses?"

"I'm goin' to breed slaves." Into her wide-eyed silence he said hastily, "There's a huge market for them all over the Deep South. Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky have great farms that do little else but breed slaves."

"Jem, that's wicked!"

"Wicked, is it! No more so than havin' those we've got starve along with us! But they'll have plenty to do besides lie about and make babies."

"James Moran, Ah fin' youah conversation highly objectionable!"

"Patsy love, I'll speak no more of it. But my mind is made up. I'm never goin' to let myself get caught with my hat in my hand at the doors of a bank again. My Irish forebears survived worse than this on potatoes, rocks, and manure, and we can do the same!"

After a silence she said, "Well, then, thafs all settled, Jem."

'We'll start next week. Patsy." He ran his hands through his thick pale red hair and let the breeze cool his head. "I've talked to Spig Hurd, the slave trader. He'll come by on Tuesday to pick out the first lot."

Patricia shuddered. "Ah wish there was some other way. If it's manure yoah needin', Jem, wouldn't breedin' hawses be just as good?"

"It's all decided," Jem said firmly.

"Jem, youah the head o' the household, and it*s youah right to do what you think best for us all. But have you thought about what this might do to ouah li'l Dulcie?"

Jem hadn't thought of Dulcie. "Why?" he asked belligerently. "The darkies breed all the time anyway. What's a six-year-old child going to know?"

"She isn't always goin' to be sk. She's goin' to turn twelve and fifteen. She's bound to notice, to heah some-thin* a young lady shouldn't ought to heah."

"It will be good practice in stoppin' her ears, then," he said shortly. "Besides, she's already watched me and Asa puttin' the bull to the cows."

Patricia put her hand to her forehead as if about to faint. "Mah^baby! An' you been smirchin' up her mind, lettin' her see those animals? Oh! Oh!'*

"It wasn't so much let her as not knowin* she was there. Patsy. She was lookin* down from the loft while we were busy. How*s I to know she*d be up there in the haymow with the new kittens?'*

"You got her right out of there. Ah hope?"

"Well, yes, as soon as I knew she— **

"You didn't tell her anythin*, Jem?'* <

"Well, I ... the fact of the matter is, I did. She asked me what we were makin* the bull do that for, so I jes' said he was helpin* the cow, uh, make a little calf." Into his wife's stunned, glacial silence he added, "She might as well know while she's young enough to see it as a natural event.'* This not helping particularly, he said, "Unless you want her to grow up into such a fine lady that her hus-band'U have to tell her how it is between man and wife."

Patricia was red from the roots of her hair clear down mside the modest cleavage of her brown tulle afternoon dress. Tears sprang from her eyes. "Jes' like a man! He

wants his bride to be innocent and then blames her because she knows nothin' about men!"

Patricia, Jem observed, was winding up for a high old bawling spell. He said gently, "Now Patsy, have I ever once blamed you? No! You were a lady born and bred, and I've always respected that in you. Our Dulcie was born a tomboy, as much lad as lass. A good thing too, since she'll be our only child. By the time you've molded her into a lady, it will be all to your credit and entirely due to your good sense. But don't curb her spirit and her natural curiosity to the place you stifle them!"

"That's far moah desirable than what you—" She broke off, still blushing, hiding her tears in a lacy handkerchief.

He patted her awkwardly. "I'll look around first, next time. This one glimpse isn't goin' to ruin her, Patsy. Not unless you decide to make a point of it."

"Ah do b'lieve the damage has already been done!**

Jem sighed sharply, his short patience exhausted. "For your information, Madam, our daughter is not goin' to grow up so delicate she doesn't even know that hens lay eggs! Since when is it damagin' to a child's brain to get a bit of knowledge into it?"

Patricia wiped her eyes, but a tear leaked out now and then to punctuate her diminishing sobs. "You did give youah word to keep Dulcie away from the animal breedin' areas."

"I said I'd look around, didn't I? Besides, what's she got Mammy for?"

Abruptly changing the subject, Patricia put her husband on the defensive again. "I s'pose bein' short o' cash means we can't have pahties."

Jem recognized the maneuver; Patricia's solution to everything was always the most socially fashionable. A party might make a breeding farm acceptable to her. "Does this party you speak of mean so much to you?"