Becoming Americans (66 page)

      The two men and the slave boy were laughing when they climbed out of the river, thinking that the worst part of the cattle drive was over with at the beginning. But, it had rained for the last fortnight and the road was mud, again. The heavy hoofs of cattle pressed it into mire and muck and soon the cattle, even, searched for ways around it. Strays drifted to the edge of the woods and the men were kept on the run chasing them back onto the path. Tony was an agile runner, and a system soon evolved that let Stephen and Willy remain with the herd while the young slave chased strays back to the road.

      "You have a good worker in that boy, Stephen. I wager he's worth a few hundred pounds," Willy said.

      Stephen grunted agreement. His father had been smart in buying slaves, spending his money on young, strong boys that he could feed and train to be hard workers. He'd needed strong backs for mill work, hauling and handling barrels of corn and wheat, then the meal and flour. Stephen did have to thank his father for willing him Tony. The boy had been no trouble. He ate like a horse, but food wasn't a problem. The boy grew his own corn, anyway.

      Tony was, maybe, five years older than Stephen's Junior, and he'd been a good playmate for Junior, back in the country where the nearest neighbor was at least a mile off in either direction.

      "Yes, and that's good since he's my only slave, and probably will remain my only one. The price of slaves is high and people aren't selling the good ones. Not here."

      "You going to buy him a wife? Willy asked.

      Tony looked towards his master to hear the answer.

      Stephen chuckled.

      "Can't do it. Doubt he'll ever have a woman."

      Stephen laughed to himself at Willy's talk. It wasn't "thee" and "thou," anymore. It hadn't been for some time. With no Quaker community around, Willy's speech had lapsed into the style and pattern of his neighbors. Not that there was much neighborly conversation to mimic. There was little occasion for neighbors to get together in this part of Carolina. There was no sense of community, like there'd been in Virginia. Court days were an excuse to gather and get drunk, but the taverns were expensive and they expected cash payments. There was no church to gather around; no exciting militia drills. Stephen didn't miss it, but he knew Nancy missed the parties and gatherings she'd been used to. Stephen didn't know the answer to that. There was nothing he could do about it. He wasn't moving back to Virginia. William Bass paid him a few pounds rent for the land that abutted his, and James did the same for that next to his. Stephen had used that Virginia money to buy his horse.

      Much of the road northeast into Virginia was through piney woods and swamp land; good forage for the cattle, but uncomfortable for the men. Tony seemed to be the only one among them who took to the landscape. He was a cheerful worker, and Stephen was glad to have him along. He carried his own knapsack of food and spoke only when the white men spoke to him.

      The drive was slow and uneventful, so, by the second day, Stephen relaxed early and started drinking from his jug of brandy earlier than usual. He retold old stories of his pirate days and, as they neared the western edges of the Dismal Swamp, he and Willy retold each other stories of the swamp; of what they'd seen there, and how people survived. Tony was convinced that humans couldn't live in the swamp, but the men said they had, and both bragged to the slave boy about their survival techniques.

      On the third morning, the road forked into three branches and, later, when a road leading south from Virginia crossed it, the cattle scattered at the noisy approach of a slave trader. The trader helped them collect the cattle and the two groups stopped to share a noon-time meal. The trader had three blacks and two Indians in chains; the Indians having been bought at the nearby Meherrin Indian town, he said, captives brought to that tribe from allies in the west. He was headed south to Edenton, he said, where a crowd had gathered to hear a traveling preacher named Whitefield. Folks said the preacher drew huge crowds out into open fields to hear his style of preaching, and that he made men cry out and fall down shaking with the power of his message.

      Willy was curious to see such a scene and to hear the man, but Stephen wasn't interested. He was more interested in the Barbados rum waiting on the Nansemond.

      That afternoon, the men and cattle eagerly plunged across the Chowan, just south of where the Meherrin River joined it, and by the next afternoon they had crossed into Virginia about ten miles west of where Stephen had left the survey team twelve years earlier, and about ten miles south of the Ruffin plantation.

      The men and cattle were passed by people returning to their homes from hearing Whitefield. None of the dispersing congregation was alone. They were small groups and larger groups, but everyone seemed within touching distance of another. They walked arm in arm, smiling and laughing, or stopped by the road to put their arms about each other, some of them sobbing, most with wet eyes. Most of them shed tears of happiness. A group stood by for them to pass and comforted a member who was distraught with fear, on his knees pleading to God for forgiveness. Willy was upset that they'd not attended the sermon, but Stephen was preoccupied with worldly things.

      After their fifth day of walking through mud and cow dung, Stephen told Willy they were stopping early. The next day would bring them to the Nansemond, anyway. And, since they'd have access to real rum the next day, there was no need to be sparing of the brandy. By nightfall, the small cask was nearly empty and, as Stephen had a far greater taste for alcohol than did Willy, he was far drunker. Soon after he had emptied the cask—long before midnight—Stephen was asleep, leaving Willy and Tony alone with the peaceful herd.

      In the middle of the night Willy was awakened by movement in the herd. He could tell in the faint moonlight that some of the cattle were on their feet, lowing softly, but acting nervously. He sent Tony to calm them and tried to wake Stephen. Stephen wouldn't budge; he could not be awakened. Willy waited for Tony to calm the cattle and return, but when heavy clouds blocked out the little moonlight, wolf howls sent the cattle stampeding toward the camp the men had set up. Willy grabbed Stephen by his feet and pulled him behind a clump of trees that were felled beside the road, and lay beside him as the cattle jostled each other in their attempt to flee the wolves. But, there were no wolves attacking and the cattle scattered into the woods.

      Stephen had been jarred to semi-consciousness and was pulling himself up as Willy quieted his horse and untangled its bridle that was twisted and wrapped around a tree that held it. Stephen saw what had happened and stumbled up to regroup the cattle, calling out for Tony to come help. Willy came to help, but Tony didn't answer.

      Nancy stood up in the garden and wiped her hands on her apron. She took off her hat to fan her face, then put it back on, adjusting the brim to shield the back of her neck. She looked around, then lifted her skirts to wave cool air through her legs. She squatted, again, to pull the weeds from her peas.

      She should be combing wool, she knew, but she had Junior doing that and the garden needed weeding. She saw that several shoots at the end of rows had been nibbled down and she looked around the fence to find where the hole was so she could fix it. The days weren't long enough.

      She stood again to ease her back. If she had more children she'd have more help. She moved down the row and squatted.

      It wasn't God's will that she have more children. The sickness that came with the birth of Junior had killed the thing inside her that made children. It was the passion that had killed it, she'd decided. With Charles there'd been no passion. Union with her first husband had been a sacred act of making children. Or, maybe something had died in Stephen.

      When they came back from visiting his family in Deep Creek and started preparation for the move to Bertie, Stephen had become more sullen. He spent more of his time and earnings at taverns in Edenton, or sitting by himself at home with a jug of whatever was most handy. More and more often, the drink kept him from work. His quiet drinking was more painful to Nancy than if he'd beat her. She was powerless to help him, as she'd been powerless to help Charles. At night, in bed, Stephen turned fitfully and snored while Nancy cried in frustration or got up to do needlework by the fire. She worried that Stephen didn't have any patience with Junior's high spirits and had once, in drunken mutters, referred to him as "the little bastard."

      Junior tapped the last peg flush with the hinge and swung the door back and forth, free of the floor. He was tired of doing chores for his mother and wanted to do men's work. He'd chopped the block, and carved the two sets of hinges for the door the previous day. Then he'd shown his mother what he'd done and convinced her to let him put on the new hinges. He was anxious for his father to see the work.

      His father would never have fixed the door. His father didn't care if the hinges worked or didn't. Junior loved his father, but he didn't understand him. Junior had asked his father why it was that everyone he knew had brothers and sisters but him. The answer was, "One of you is enough!" His father didn't seem to want any more of anything and he didn't care about what he did have. Junior had decided that when he grew up he wanted more of everything: more land, more horses, more slaves, more children. His father didn't work the land he had, he didn't work Tony very hard—his horse even less—and he didn't like children. His father played cards and drank with his friends, Junior knew, but he never seemed to be having a good time. Junior liked having a good time, and that was another thing he wanted more of.

      He limped to the door of the smokehouse and stuck his head inside, just to get a whiff of the smoked meat and sausage hanging there. He heard Amos barking at a coming horse and latched the door shut to see who was riding by. It was his father and Uncle Willy, riding on the one horse, coming from the wrong direction. Tony wasn't with them.

      Nancy ran to meet her husband while Junior waited by the hitching post. By the time his parents got to him they were silent.

      "Pa, you didn't sell Tony, did you?"

      Junior was afraid. Tony was his friend and his father had said he'd never sell the slave. Tony would be Junior's, one day, he'd said, come down from his Grandpa Williams in Virginia.

      "Let me in the house, first, Boy. Willy and I been moving for two weeks."

      Willy bid a somber good-bye to the Williams family and rode off.

      They went into the house, Junior's father not noticing the repaired door.

      "The boy shouldn't have broke that leg. We needed more hands with the cattle," Stephen explained to his wife. "The rascal just ran off."

      "Run off? But why would Tony run off, Pa? He's happy here. No slave's got it better than Tony has. I bet he was stole," Junior said.

       It was incomprehensible that his friend would run off and leave him alone with no one to fish and hunt with, no one to talk to. His Uncle Willy kept Tom busy working, so he didn't see him but once or twice a month.

      "Could be he was stole," Stephen said. "We ran up with a slave trader that morning, headed to Edenton. That's where we went after Nansemond. Went to the Bertie Courthouse then to Edenton to report him run away or stole. They put out a hue-and-cry in Nansemond, but I don't know. I expect he's in the Dismal. Probably eat up by a bear, by now."

      Junior rejected that.

      "He was stole, Pa. Tony wouldn't run off from his home."

      "They asked me lots of questions at the courthouse."

      Stephen spoke to his wife with some concern in his voice.

      "They wanted to know where I lived; was I a freeholder or a tenant. Wanted to know had I paid my quit rents and poll tax."

      "He was all we had, Stephen," Nancy said.

      She hadn't been listening.

      "All that set us apart from the squatters."

      She saw their fortunes going downhill. She'd had hopes for their new beginning when they'd left Deep Creek with a slave. Now, they'd be just another set of poor and powerless settlers living in an increasingly distant society of large slaveholders and their blacks.

      Junior looked up at his parents. They were looking away from each other, both looking sad. He'd never seen them looking sad, before.

      A runaway slave was a threat to everyone's property. The number of large slaveholders was increasing as abandoned land was amassed by large Virginia planters. One of them, Elisha Battle, had bought ten adjacent farms, three of them touching Stephen's land. With him and his wife he'd brought nineteen slaves, but no white settlers. There were too many black faces, many people said, and men worried for the safety of their wives and children should the slaves unite and revolt. Tony's escape was an alarm to all the slaveholders in Bertie and Edgecombe Precincts. Owners came to the Williams house to express concern, admitting that search parties would be futile since the boy had run off in Virginia. The men were united in their indignation and in their determination that it wouldn't happen to them, agreeing among themselves that Stephen Williams had been too lax in his treatment of the slave, and that he'd acted foolishly in taking the boy out of the province. Stephen hadn't concerned himself with worrying about slave uprisings, he was more concerned about the large planters moving in, and about the increasing number of Scotch Highlanders and Scotch-Irish moving in from the Cape Fear.