The floors of the house were
made of heart pine that had been sanded and buffed until the planks
glowed like honey. The windows extended all the way to the ceiling and
looked out on low green hills and hardwood forests and the wide,
churning breadth of the Mississippi. The drapes on the windows were red
velvet, the walls and ceiling a creamy white, the molding put together
from ornately carved, dark-stained mahogany.
But for some reason it was a
detail in the brick fireplace that caught her eye, a fissure in the
elevated hearth as well as the chimney that rose from it.
"A little settling in the foundation," Ira Jamison said. "What can I
help
you with, Miss Dowling?"
"Is
your wife here,
sir?"
"I'm a widower. Why do you
ask?"
She was sitting on a divan
now, her hands folded in her lap, her back not touching the fabric. He
continued to stand. She paused for a long moment before she spoke, then
let her eyes rest on his until he blinked.
"I'm disturbed by the conduct
of your employee Captain Atkins. I believe he's molesting one of your
slaves, a young woman who has done nothing to warrant being treated in
such a frankly disgusting fashion," she said.
Ira Jamison was framed in the
light through the window, his expression obscured by his own
silhouette. She heard him clear an obstruction from his throat.
"I see. Well, I'll have a talk
with Mr. Atkins. I should see him in the next week or so," he said.
"Let me be more forthcoming.
The young woman's name is Flower. Do you know her, sir?" she said, the
anger and accusation starting to rise in her voice.
He sat down in a chair not far
from her. He pressed one knuckle against his lips and seemed to think
for a moment.
"I have the feeling you want
to say something to me of a personal nature. If that's the case, I'd
rather you simply get to it, madam," he said.
"I've been told she's your
daughter. It's not my intention to offend you, but the resemblance is
obvious. You allow an employee to sexually harm your own child? My God,
sir, have you no decency?"
The skin seemed to shrink on
his face. A black woman in a gray dress with a white apron appeared at
the doorway to the dining room.
"Supper for you and your guest
is on the table, Mr. Jamison," she said.
"Thank you, Ruby," he said,
rising, his face still disconcerted.
"I don't think I'll be
staying. Thank you very much for your hospitality," Abigail said.
"I insist you have supper with
me."
"You
insist?"
"You cast aspersions on my
decency in my own home? Then you seem to glow with
vituperative
rage,
even though I've
only known you five minutes. Couldn't you at some point be a little
more lenient and less judgmental and allow me to make redress of some
kind?"
"You're the largest slave
owner in this state, sir. Will you make 'redress' by setting your
slaves free?"
"I just realized who you are.
You're the abolitionist."
"I think there are more than
one of us."
"You're right. And when they
have their way, I'll be destitute and we'll have bedlam in our society."
"Good," she said, and walked
toward the door.
"You haven't eaten, madam.
Stay and rest just a little while."
"When will you be talking to
Captain Atkins?" she asked.
"I'll send a telegraph message
to him this evening."
"In that case, it's very nice
of you to invite me to your table," Abigail said.
As he held a dining room chair
for Abigail to sit down, he smelled the perfume rising off her neck and
felt a quickening in his loins, then realized the black woman named
Ruby was watching him from the kitchen. He shot her a look that made
her face twitch out of shape.
AFTER Willie reported to Camp
Pratt and began his first real day of the tedium that constituted life
in the army, he knew it was only a matter of time before he would
empower Rufus Atkins to do him serious harm. One week later, after an
afternoon of scrubbing a barracks floor and draining mosquito-breeding
ponds back in the woods, he and Jim Stubbefield were seated in the
shade on a bench behind the mess hall, cleaning fish over a tub of
water, when Corporal Clay Hatcher approached them. It was cool in the
shade, the sunlight dancing on the lake, the Spanish moss waving
overhead, and Willie tried to pretend the corporal's mission had
nothing to do with him.
"You threw fish guts under
Captain Atkins' window?" Hatcher said.
"Not us," Willie said.
"Then how'd they get there?"
Hatcher asked. "Be fucked if I know," Jim said.
"I was talking to Burke. How'd
they get there?" Hatcher said. "I haven't the faintest idea, Corporal.
Have you inquired of the fish?" Willie said.
"Come with me," Hatcher said
.
Willie placed his knife on the
bench, washed his hands in a bucket of clean water, and began putting
on his shirt, smiling at the corporal as he buttoned it.
"You think this is funny?"
Hatcher said.
"Not in the least. Misplaced
fish guts are what this army's about. Lead the way and let's straighten
this out," Willie said. He heard Jim laugh behind him. "I can have
those stripes, Stubbefield," Hatcher said. "You can have a session with
me behind the saloon, too. You're not a bleeder, are you?" Jim said.
Hatcher pointed a finger at
Jim without replying, then fitted one hand under Willie's arm and
marched him to the one-room building that Rufus Atkins was now using as
his office.
"I got Private Burke here,
sir," Hatcher said through the door. Atkins stepped out into the
softness of the late spring afternoon, without a coat or hat, wearing
gray pants and a blue shirt with braces notched into his shoulders. He
had shaved that morning, using a tin basin and mirror nailed to the
back side of the building, flicking the soap off his razor into the
shallows, but his jaws already looked grained, dark, an audible rasping
sound rising from the back of his hand when he rubbed it against his
throat.
"He says he didn't do it, sir.
I think he's lying," Hatcher said. Atkins cut a piece off a plug of
tobacco and fed it off the back of his pocketknife into his mouth.
"Tell me, Private, do you see
anyone else around here cleaning fish besides yourself and Corporal
Stubbefield?" he said.
"Absolutely not, sir," Willie
replied.
"Did Corporal Stubbefield
throw fish guts under my window?"
"Not while I was
around," Willie said.
"Then that leaves only
you, doesn't it?" Atkins said.
"There could be another
explanation, sir," Willie said.
"What might that be?" Atkins
asked.
"Perhaps there are no fish
guts under your window," Willie said.
"Excuse me?" Atkins said.
"Could it be you still have a
bit of Carrie LaRose's hot pillow house in your mustache, sir?" Willie
said. Atkins' eyes blazed.
"Buck and gag him. The rag and stick. Five hours' worth of it," he
said to the corporal.
"We're s'pposed to keep it at
three, Cap," Hatcher said.
"Do you have wax in your
ears?" Atkins said.
"Five sounds right as rain,"
Hatcher replied.
WILLIE remained in an upright
ball by the lake's edge for three hours, his wrists tied to his ankles,
a stick inserted between his forearms and the backs of his knees, a rag
stuffed in his mouth. A stick protruded from each side of his mouth,
the ends looped with leather thongs that were tied tightly behind his
head.
Water ran from his tear ducts
and he choked on his own saliva. The small of his back felt like a hot
iron had been pressed against his spine. He watched the sun descend on
the lake and tried to think of the fish swimming under the water, the
wind blowing through the trees, the way the four-o'clocks rippled like
a spray of purple and gold confetti in the grass.
Out of the corner of his eye
he saw Rufus Atkins mount his horse and ride out of the camp. The pain
spread through Willie's shoulders and wrapped around his thighs, like
the tentacles of a jellyfish.
Jim Stubbefield could not
watch it any longer. He pulled aside the flap on the corporal's tent
and went inside, closing the flap behind him. Hanging from Jim's belt
was a bowie knife with a ten-inch blade that could divide a sheet of
paper in half as cleanly as a barber's razor.
Hatcher was combing his hair
in a mirror attached to the tent pole when Jim locked his arm under
Hatcher's neck and simultaneously stuck the knife between his buttocks
and wedged the blade upward into his genitals.
"You cut Willie loose and keep
your mouth shut about it. If that's not acceptable, I'll be happy to
slice off your package and hang it on your tent," Jim said.
Two minutes later Corporal
Hatcher cut the ropes on Willie's wrists and ankles and the thong that
held the stick in his mouth. Willie stumbled back to the tent he and
Jim shared and fell on his cot. Jim sat down next to him and gazed into
his face.
"What's on your mind, you ole
beanpole?" Willie said.
"You have to stop sassing them, Willie," Jim said.
"They cut bait, didn't they?"
Willie
said.
"What do you mean?" Jim asked.
"I outlasted them. They're
blowhards and yellow-backs, Jim."
"I put a bowie to Hatcher and
told him I'd make a regimental flag out of his manhood," Jim said.
"Go on with you?" Willie said,
rising up on his elbows. "Hey, come back here. Tell me you didn't do
that, Jim."
But Jim had already gone out
the tent flap to relieve himself in the privy.
Willie got up from his cot and
walked unsteadily behind the mess hall and picked up the severed pieces
of rope that had bound his wrists and ankles and the salvia-soaked gun
rag that had been stuffed in his mouth and the sticks that had been
threaded under his knees and pushed back in his teeth. He crossed the
parade ground to Corporal Clay Hatcher's tent and went inside.
A small oil lamp burned on the
floor, a coil of black smoke twisting from the glass up through an
opening in the canvas. Hatcher slept on his side, in a pair of long
underwear, his head on a dirty pillow, his mouth open. The inside of
the tent smelled like re-breathed whiskey fumes, unwashed hair, and
shoes someone had worn for long hours in a dirt field.
Willie kicked the cot. Hatcher
lifted his head uncertainly from the pillow, his pale blue eyes bleary
with sleep.
Willie threw the sticks and
pieces of rope and thong into his chest. "God love Jim for his loyalty
to a friend. But you finish your work, you malignant cretin, or one
morning find glass in your mush," Willie said.
Hatcher sat up, his lips caked
with mucus. "Finish my work?" he said stupidly.
"Did your mother not clean
your ears when she dug you out of her shite? You and Atkins do your
worst. I'll live to piss in your coffin, you pitiful fuck."
Hatcher continued to stare at
Willie, unable to comprehend the words being spoken to him, the bad
whiskey he had drunk throbbing in his head.
Willie started for him.
"I'm coming. I got to relieve myself first," Hatcher said, jerking
backward, clutching his groin under the coarse cotton sheet. His throat
swallowed in shame at the fear his voice couldn't hide.
EXCEPT for the house servants,
Ira Jamison's slaves were free to do as they wished on Sunday. Until
sunset they could visit on other plantations, sit upstairs at a white
church, play a card game called pitty-pat, roll dice, or dance to
fiddle music. Even though Jamison's slaves were forbidden to possess
"julep," a fermented mixture of water, yeast, and fruit or cane pulp,
Jamison's overseers looked the other way on Sunday, as long as no slave
became outrageously drunk or was sick when he or she reported for bell
count on Monday.
On Sunday mornings Flower
usually put on her gingham dress and bonnet and walked one and a half
miles to a slat church house, where a white Baptist minister conducted
a service for slaves and free people of color after he had completed
services at the white church in town. He was considered a liberal
minister and tolerant man because he often allowed one of the
congregation to give the homily.
This morning the homilist was
a free man of color by the name of Jubal Labiche, who actually never
attended services in the church unless he was asked to give the sermon.
He owned slaves and, upstream from town, a brick kiln on Bayou Teche.
Behind a long tunnel of oak trees on the St. Martinville Road he had
built a house that sought to imitate the classical design of his
neighbors' houses, except the columns and porch were wood, not marble,
the workmanship utilitarian, the paint an off-white that seemed to
darken each year from the smoke of stubble fires.