Drum (35 page)

As for Drum, he accepted Blaise's worship as a matter of course. He was never consciously unkind to the Fullah boy who was constantly at his elbow, but he treated him exactly as he had seen white masters treat their slaves—as a thing, not a person. Blaise was kept running to wait on him; only too anxious to be of service, he jumped at the chance to perform the most menial services. Blaise bathed him, rubbed him down, anointed him with the oil which Drum always used to keep his skin in condition, helped him to dress on the rare occasions when Drum wore his good clothes, and would willingly have lain down on the floor and thanked his idol for kicking him, if Drum had so much as expressed such £ wish. Drum accepted all Blaise's services without commeni or thanks. When he scolded him for being a stupid brut Blaise accepted the censure meekly. As long as he could bt

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with his master he was happy, and to him Drum was truly his master. As for Alix, he rarely saw her and when he did he became awkward and tongue-tied to think that he was in the presence of a white woman.

Blaise was quick to learn and soon caught on to the tricks in mixing drinks. Although he could never do it with the flair and showmanship Drum displayed, he soon achieved a share of the popularity which the master had enjoyed at the bar. Lacking, however, were the quick and the ingratiating repartee which endeared Drum to Madame Alix' customers. Blaise could never think of anj^hing to say when some Creole elegant started chaffing him, but his grin was so wide and so startling white-toothed, his eyes so softly brown and honest and his dependability so apparent that these qualities soon endeared him to all, quite as much as Drum's flashy mannerisms.

There was one possession of Drum's which Blaise admired most of all. Calinda! Without even admitting the fact to himself, he had been in love with her since the first night she had come to him and washed the blood from his face. She had been so tender with him, even washing parts of his body where there was no blood, it had been a new experience for him. He had never known affection from the time he had been torn from his mother's arms as a child of seven and watched her mount the auction block to be sold. Later he had been knocked down in a miscellaneous lot of twelve children and sold to the famous Falconhurst Plantation in Alabama. Here he had grown up with enough to eat and the impersonal kindness which Warren Maxwell always accorded his slaves. He had never been starved, gone naked, slept without a roof over his head or been whipped—but neither had he ever had any love or affection. When he had been brought into New Orleans with the Maxwell caffle and sold to Lazare LeToscan, he had been horribly homesick for the carefree days at Falconhurst. His had been a rough, masculine existence in which love had had no place and into which tenderness had never entered.

He had longed for love as a homeless dog longs for a master. Now he found himself in a place where people treated him kindly. Drum accepted his worship and returned it with a casual friendship of sorts. Calinda accepted it more graciously and returned it with occasional evidences of affection, each onp of which Blaise remembered and treasured. Actually he saw more of Calinda than Dnmi

did, for Drum's hours of waking and sleeping were at variance with the rest of the household's. Drum went to bed early each night except Saturday, and alone except for Blaise's joint occupancy of his room.

Although Blaise managed to accommodate most of his hours to coincide with Drum's, during the long nights when Drum was asleep and Blaise was on duty at the bar, he and Calinda saw much of each other^ Calinda was now performing most of the maid's duties which Rachel had done previously, and part of those duties was to bring drinks to the various rooms, which necessitated her waiting behind the bar while Blaise prepared them. During these moments they always talked and then, when the house became quieter after midnight, they drew their chairs up beside each other in the courtyard and whispered together. Later, when the last guest had departed, they treated themselves to bread and coflfee in the kitchen, lingering over it and yawning until Calinda went to her little room and Blaise climbed the stairs on tiptoe so as not to waken Drum. On Saturday nights, however, Blaise never went up those stairs, but crept into the lonely pallet on the floor of Calinda's cubbyhole, reveling in the fact that the very mattress he slept on was hers, that the sheet under him was redolent of her body and that the thin pillow imder his head had been hollowed by hers.

Blaise had never had a woman when he arrived at the Academy of Music but he did not retain his chastity for long. Alix had had him brought to her room, examined him with enthusiasm and pridefully pronounced him more than adequate for a coming performance of one of her famous melees ordered in advance by young Pablo Hernandez as an evening's entertainment for a visiting Cubano cousin from Havana. That night Hernandez and his cousin received an unexpected double portion of entertainment for their money; Alix had demanded that Drum be present to initiate Blaise into the intricacies of his duties.

"That black brut won't even know what to do unless you tell him," she said. "The lying bastard claims he's never been with a woman and if he's telling the truth, which I doubt, what kind of a performance could he put on?" She waggled an authoritative finger at Dnmi. "Fighting or not fighting, it won't do you any harm for one night. Besides"—she relaxed her authority enough to smile at Drum—"you'll enjoy it, danm you, as you always have and don't tell me you won't. One night a week with Calinda will never be enough

for you. How are you managing these days anyway? You and Blaise playing with each other?"

"Me and that black monster? Pfft!" Drum was properly outraged. "Regardez, madamel At seven in the morning I get up. I run five miles. I go to Masta' Jemmy's at ten and practice until noon. In the afternoon I work out for four hours, then I am ready for bed again. But. . . ."—^he grinned at her, quite overjoyed at the prospect, for he had always enjoyed the melees despite the dijBBcult time they meant with Calinda afterwards—"perhaps one night would not be harmful."

"Then be on hand this evening."

And Drum was. Along with Blaise and six of Alix' charming quadroons! Hernandez and his Cuban cousin had an entertainment such as they had never seen before. Indeed Blaise's performance, even without coaching, was entirely professional and compared favorably with that of Drum. Nobody could have imagined that it was his first experience. The audience was most enthusiastic.

"Que hombres!" the Cuban was heard to exclaim. "Como dos fuentes de agua!"

"Fontaines?" Hernandez lisped in French which he considered more elegant than Spanish. "Fontaines, mon cher cousin? Comme deux cataractes d'eau! Un veritable deluge! Un torrent! Un flux!"

The cousin nodded his head and agreed. "Urui inundacion verdadera."

After that performance, which Alix had watched from behind a screen in the salon, she knew she could rely on Blaise's proficiency, and did not call on Drum again. Calinda was supremely happy. Drum, however, relinquished his duties with some regret. When Blaise, always willing to surrender to his idol, offered to turn over his tips, Drum accepted them without compunction for, as he argued with himself, what would a brut like Blaise do with money anyway? As for himself, he was saving the tips for new and more resplendent clothes. He also had in mind that eventually—after he had his own new suit of course—he would buy Calinda a dress for their occasional promenades in Congo Square. It was only fitting that she should be well dressed, seeing that he had become a celebrity in New Orleans. He was known all over the city, up the river as far as Natchez, and even in Mobile and Pensacola. People pointed him out as Madame Alix' fighting black or that mulatto who fights in the whore-

house on Dumaine Street. Or, more simply, as the old bawd's fighter.

Mais ouil Drum was really a fighter and through Blaise's importunings to be allowed to emulate him, he taught him how to fight well too. Blaise was an apt pupil and he soon became more than a sparring partner for Drum. He became a formidable opponent, except that he himself did not realize his proficiency and always pulled his pimches so that he would not hit Drum with full force. But Dnun pummeled him unmercifully.

Every morning he kicked Blaise awake, even though the poor fellow had had only a few hours of sleep, and together they crept out of the sleeping house in the cool hours before the real heat of the sun began, jogging along through the city and out into the more rural part of the new development where Bernard de Marigny was converting the family plantation lands into city blocks. Here they would run along the dusty, vacant streets with such fanciful names as the Rue de Craps, the Rue d' Amour and the Rue De Grand Homme— which Marigny told Drum he had named in his honor. Returning to the house they would have a hearty breakfast and Drum would take Blaise with him to Jemmy's. Dominique had not offered to pay for Blaise's instruction, but Jemmy became so interested in the big fellow and his earnest desire to learn that he taught him without charge. Blaise did manage a few hours sleep in the afternoon and some sparring with Drum later before it was necessary for him to take up his duties at the bar.

With training, Blaise's spindly legs swelled with muscles, his chest rounded, his long arms grew stronger, his neck thickened out and, without actually realizing it, he too became a fighter, albeit a fighter who never fought. His first: engagement with Dnmi was his last and although at times he' wished he might take the master's place within the open circle, of spectators, especially if Drum seemed to be having ai diflficult time, Blaise was willing to allow him all the honors,, content merely to stand by in his white jacket and be prepared i to serve drinks after the fight was over, and Drum had won.

And Drum always won. He fought at least once a month, sometimes twice, and on one occasion he had two fights in one week, for this kind of fighting was becoming the most exciting method of gambling in the city, far more thrilling than playing cards or fighting cocks or baiting bears. Indeed, what more interesting spectacle than to watch two

handsome young animals trying to massacre each other?

Although Drum had always been a prime favorite of Marigny's, who boasted that he had discovered him and thus inaugurated the fashion of fighting slaves in New Orleans, there was no man in the city more anxious to own a slave who could beat him. Marigny had to be first in everything. If he could have had Drum he would have been happy but, failing that, he must find a champion of his own. His supreme moment would come when he could hold up his man's hand as the victor. Just once he hoped to see Drum's handsome face bloodied, his nose crushed, his lips smashed so that he, Marigny, might have the distinction of having accomplished it. It was a challenge to his superiority which he must meet and master.

Failing to find a man himself, Marigny had given Maspero orders to look around for a fighter, price to be no object Scenting a handsome profit, Maspero foimd a man, the slave of a tavern owner in Savannah, who had gained a certain reputation as a bouncer. Marigny took one look at the fellow, whose name was Babouin—a most appropriate name as he looked like a baboon—and bought him. Immediately he summoned Dominique You to arrange a match between the baboon and Drum.

Babouin was an ill-formed beast of a man with the preposterous claim that he had been fathered by a gorilla in Africa. However, when one looked at him, the claim did not seem so unlikely, for the fellow looked enough like an ape to have been the offspring of one. It would have been impossible to say what African tribe had spawned him. iSBiort, immensely muscled legs seemed altogether inadequate to hold up his huge upper body with its enormous dangling arms and apelike hands. His head was small and mongoloid with a low forehead and huge prognathous jaws. Small yellow eyes squinted out from under overhanging brows and the fact that both ears had been chewed off added nothing to his appearance.

Stripped and facing Drum, he was an awesome sight, actually lacking only fur to transform him into a beast. Drum immediately recognized him as a dangerous opponent. Babouin had only one method of fighting—to wrap his huge arms around his opponent and crush his chest, squeezing the breath out of him. Twice Drum was caught in the beast's arms and only by a superhuman effort was he able to dislodge himself each time. He dared not get near enough to be caught

again and his blows on the creature's body seemed to have no more effect than hitting a stone.

The third time that Babouin caught him, he felt that he was done for. He ached from the pressure of the huge arms and felt himself helpless as he was lifted from the ground. He tried to knee the man as he had done with the coachman in his first fight but it was impossible. The breath was fast leaving his lungs but his months of training directed his brain and he was able to extricate his right arm sufficiently so that his forearm came between his body and that of Babouin. As Babouin continued to press, Drum inched his arm up until he got his hand free. He clutched the man's throat, his fingers seeking the hard cartilage of the larynx deep in the: muscles. When they located it, he squeezed and although he could not exert all the pressure he wanted, owing to the constriction of his arm, it was enough to shut off the man's wind. Slowly the apelike arms relaxed but Drum kept his hold, choking Babouin until the fellow sank to the floor. Then with his foot on Babouin's neck. Drum was again master of I the situation. He allowed just enough air to pass into the. tortured lungs to keep the man alive. Dominique You came forward and lifted Drum's hand as the winner but when Drum stepped back to receive the acclamations, Babouin struggled to his feet and would have continued the fight.

"Get back," Dominique shouted. "The fight is over."

"Not fo' me," Babouin muttered.

"Oh yes it is." Dominique pushed him away and a^ Babouin once again moved toward Drum, Dominique threatened him. "Back, I tell you the fight is over."

"Let them go on! Let them finish it!" De Marigny rushed up in support of his man.