The Underground Railroad(8)
The Randall brothers had emerged from the great house and were among them.
The slaves stepped aside, making calculations of what distance represented the right proportion of fear and respect. Godfrey, James’s houseboy, held up a lantern. According to Old Abraham, James favored the mother, stout as a barrel and just as firm in countenance, and Terrance took after the father, tall and owl-faced, perpetually on the verge of swooping down on prey. In addition to the land, they inherited their father’s tailor, who arrived once a month in his rickety carriage with his samples of linen and cotton. The brothers dressed alike when they were children and continued to do so in manhood. Their white trousers and shirts were as clean as the laundry girls’ hands could make them, and the orange glow made the men look like ghosts emerging from the dark.
“Master James,” Jockey said. His good hand gripped the arm of his chair as if to rise, but he did not stir. “Master Terrance.”
“Don’t let us disturb you,” Terrance said. “My brother and I were discussing business and heard the music. I told him, Now that is the most god-awful racket I’d ever heard.”
The Randalls were drinking wine out of goblets of cut glass and looked as if they had drained a few bottles. Cora searched for Caesar’s face in the crowd. She did not find him. He hadn’t been present the last time the brothers appeared together on the northern half. You did well to remember the different lessons of those occasions. Something always happened when the Randalls ventured into the quarter. Sooner or later. A new thing coming that you couldn’t predict until it was upon you.
James left the daily operations to his man Connelly and rarely visited. He might grant a tour to a visitor, a distinguished neighbor or curious planter from another neck of the woods, but it was rare. James rarely addressed his niggers, who had been taught by the lash to keep working and ignore his presence. When Terrance appeared on his brother’s plantation, he usually appraised each slave and made a note of which men were the most able and which women the most appealing. Content to leer at his brother’s women, he grazed heartily upon the women of his own half. “I like to taste my plums,” Terrance said, prowling the rows of cabins to see what struck his fancy. He violated the bonds of affection, sometimes visiting slaves on their wedding night to show the husband the proper way to discharge his marital duty. He tasted his plums, and broke the skin, and left his mark.
It was accepted that James was of a different orientation. Unlike his father and brother, James did not use his property to gratify himself. Occasionally he had women from the county to dine, and Alice was always sure to make the most sumptuous, seductive supper at her means. Mrs. Randall had passed many years before, and it was Alice’s thought that a woman would be a civilizing presence on the plantation. For months at a time, James entertained these pale creatures, their white buggies traversing the mud tracks that led to the great house. The kitchen girls giggled and speculated. And then a new woman would appear.
To hear his valet Prideful tell it, James confined his erotic energies to specialized rooms in a New Orleans establishment. The madam was broad-minded and modern, adept in the trajectories of human desire. Prideful’s stories were hard to believe, despite assurances that he received his reports from the staff of the place, with whom he’d grown close over the years. What kind of white man would willingly submit to the whip?
Terrance scratched his cane in the dirt. It had been his father’s cane, topped with a silver wolf’s head. Many remembered its bite on their flesh. “Then I recollected James telling me about a nigger he had down here,” Terrance said, “could recite the Declaration of Independence. I can’t bring myself to believe him. I thought perhaps tonight he can show me, since everyone is out and about, from the sound of it.”
“We’ll settle it,” James said. “Where is that boy? Michael.”
No one said anything. Godfrey waved the lantern around pathetically. Moses was the boss unfortunate enough to stand closest to the Randall brothers. He cleared his throat. “Michael dead, Master James.”
Moses instructed one of the pickaninnies to fetch Connelly, even if it meant interrupting the overseer from his Sunday-evening concubinage. The expression on James’s face told Moses to start explaining.
Michael, the slave in question, had indeed possessed the ability to recite long passages. According to Connelly, who heard the story from the nigger trader, Michael’s former master was fascinated by the abilities of South American parrots and reasoned that if a bird could be taught limericks, a slave might be taught to remember as well. Merely glancing at the size of the skulls told you that a nigger possessed a bigger brain than a bird.
Michael had been the son of his master’s coachman. Had a brand of animal cleverness, the kind you see in pigs sometimes. The master and his unlikely pupil started with simple rhymes and short passages from popular British versifiers. They went slow over the words the nigger didn’t understand and, if truth be told, the master only half understood, as his tutor had been a reprobate who had been chased from every decent position he had ever held and who decided to make his final posting the canvas for his secret revenge. They made miracles, the tobacco farmer and the coachman’s son. The Declaration of Independence was their masterpiece. “A history of repeated injuries and usurpations.”
Michael’s ability never amounted to more than a parlor trick, delighting visitors before the discussion turned as it always did to the diminished faculties of niggers. His owner grew bored and sold the boy south. By the time Michael got to Randall, some torture or punishment had addled his senses. He was a mediocre worker. He complained of noises and black spells that blotted his memory. In exasperation Connelly beat out what little brains he had left. It was a scourging that Michael was not intended to survive, and it achieved its purpose.