Glory over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House(68)
THE NEXT MORNING Henry sat back a distance, as a manservant would, while I stood on deck staring out at the Chesapeake coastline. The weather was mild, and as we drew closer to Norfolk, familiar Virginia scents came in on the soft breeze. Unexpectedly, wave after wave of homesickness struck. Nostalgia for my old home swept over me. I thought again of how close Tall Oaks was to the area of North Carolina where I hoped to find Pan. Perhaps after I found him, when he and Henry were safely on their way back to Philadelphia, I could travel the day or two it would take me to arrive at my childhood home in Virginia. Surely Lavinia had been overcautious in her warnings about Rankin. Wasn’t he already an old man when I fled twenty years ago?
As the boat docked, Henry rushed over to push me aside and vomit into the water. Others attempted to disregard his miserable retching as they filed off, while I gathered our things and Henry tried to recover himself.
On the next part of our journey, we were to board a stage, but Henry was unfit for the road, so I got us settled into a tavern close to the water but on the outskirts of town. There I hoped to give Henry a chance to recover before we set off once more.
On the second day, late in the afternoon and while Henry slept, I walked into town to seek out the post office. Enveloped by the warm spring sun, I felt such a sense of longing for my childhood home that I wanted to weep. Though my home was now in Philadelphia, everything about Virginia felt like mine. Here was May as it should be, thick with honeysuckle scent and lush trees bursting with green. As I neared the post office, I quickened my pace. Robert and I had agreed that if he heard any early news, he would post it to me in Norfolk. Though I knew that was unlikely, I was nonetheless disappointed to find no letter from him.
On my return to the tavern, I found Henry had worsened; his eyes were glazed with fever and his speech was incoherent. I sent for a doctor who suggested only that Henry be given rest. Five days later, his condition had worsened to such a degree that I left him only for meals and to walk out for the mail.
One afternoon, concerned and frustrated, I left for the mail earlier than usual and went the short distance into town to join a small group of farmers and tradesmen who had gathered to await the mail’s arrival. We first heard the shout and the whip, then the steady dull thudding of what I thought were horses’ hooves. But I was wrong. A coffle of slaves came around the corner, driven forward by two men on horseback, one who whipped the air as though driving cattle.
The double row of chained Negroes thumped by at a slow but steady pace. My chest began an aching pound when, in the midst of the dark-skinned prisoners, I saw a face almost as white as my own. He was stumbling in his struggle to keep up with the others, and when a whip caught him on the shoulder, I flinched as though it had landed on me. Outraged, I looked toward the slave driver who had dealt the blow. He was a small man, and his dirty brown hair hung clumped around his face. Though his hat sat low, there was something about the set of his jaw that looked familiar. The closer he came, the more certain I felt I knew him.
Taller than many, I stood above the crowd, and as though he felt my stare, the rider looked up and met my one good eye—or was it my black eye patch at which he stared? When I clearly saw his face, I caught my breath. It couldn’t be! Although our last encounter had taken place some twenty years before, it took only one brief moment to recognize Jake, Rankin’s son. To judge from his openmouthed expression, he recognized me, until a stumble of his horse and a shout from the other driver had him turn back to his duties.
The coffle soon rounded the corner, but I was left with the memory of my last encounter with Jake.
THE AFTERNOON WHEN Marshall had me removed from the big house, Rankin took me down to the quarters where, mute with fear, I was bound to a row of other slaves. We were mercifully left to sit under some trees and out of the direct sun but were watched over by a heavily armed slave trader until evening, when another man took his place. Although he looked as rough as the first man, Jake was younger, and because of that I appealed to him. “Listen,” I said, “there’s been a mistake, and I need your help.”
“There’s been a mistake?” he said. “And what kinda mistake is that?”
“They’re calling me a Negro, but that isn’t the case. Just look at me. Do I look like a Negro?” I pulled open my shirt to expose my white throat and neck.
He shifted uncomfortably, then turned to walk away.
“I say,” I shouted after him. “I insist that you release me! I am not a Negro and therefore cannot be treated like this!”
He came back and stood above me, looking down. “You that Jamie from the big house?”
“I am,” I said hopefully.
He gave a low laugh. “Then you just a dirty nigga like the rest of ’em.”
One of the slaves to whom I was bound suddenly growled. “And how you know this, Jake? How you know he a nigga?”
Jake stared at the man. “You shut up!”
“He as much a nigga as you, Jake? It looks to me like he even whiter than you. Uh-huh, he sure do! This boy look even whiter than you!”
Jake kicked out, his booted foot connecting with the man’s head; the man righted himself from the blow and spoke again. “But then he don’ sell his own brother, like you do me, do he, Jakie?”
I wasn’t certain what might have happened had the slave trader not pulled Jake back. Later in the day, when Rankin made his return, I saw the unmistakable likeness between Jake and his father. Then I looked at Jake’s darker-skinned brother, bound with the rest of us to be sold. Rankin was selling his own flesh and blood.