Queen (13 page)

    blue. Up again into the hills, through woods that slowly gave way to

    fanns, and they saw fields of cotton and wondered at it, and played with

    some bolls of it, although they got prickles in their fingers. The

    weather was hot but it suited the land, and they saw slave gangs out

    picking the cotton, chanting work songs as they picked, and they thought

    it idyllic. Even the overseer flicking his whip occasionally, lazily, at

    the blacks, appeared to them to be a necessary functionary. They came to

    a river running through a deep gorge and were told it was called the Cum-

    berland, and that they were close to their journey's end.

    After thirty-five days of traveling, they arrived in the thriving

    settlement of Nashville. Dirty, disheveled, and unshaven, skins browned

    and necks reddened by the sun, they beamed in delight for they had

    arrived almost at the edge of the world, and were happier than they could

    possibly have imagined.

    9

As far as James was concerned, Nashville was America, and

the rest of the country could go hang. From the moment they

rode into the town, he was so captivated by its simple vigor

and pleasant aspect, its sense of isolation and independence,

    BLOODLINES 73

that he could not imagine he would ever want to live anywhere else. It was

Tennessee's oldest town, but established almost within the span of his own

lifetime, so that he could feel part of its growth, and would be able to

tell his children that he had been there from the beginning. It was a

thriving community, with half a dozen brick houses already replacing the log

cabins, and another hundred dwellings of clapboard. There were a dozen small

shops and stores, which drew their supplies, as James and Washington would

do, from Philadelphia and Baltimore to the east, and New Orleans to the

south. The local cotton farmers sent their crop to those same cities, for

export to Europe.

    The land around Nashville had been settled by an early pioneer, John

    Donelson, who had made a treaty with the Indian tribes, Cherokee, Creek,

    Choctaw, and Chickasaw. To the south and southeast were immense tracts of

    Indian land, mostly Cherokee in Tennessee and Creek in Alabama, which were

    sacred to their traditional owners, and exempt from white settlement.

    Constant encroachments were made onto this land in violation of the

    treaties, and then the Indians retaliated. The Tennessee Militia, now under

    the command of Andrew Jackson, would trounce the raiding parties, and the

    usual result was that more Indian land would be ceded to whites. For the

    most part, the Indians near Nashville who lived on white man's land dwelt

    in uneasy alliance with their conquerors, but resentment simmered among the

    younger men, the braves.

    In the early days, the main route south from Nashville had been the river,

    which connected briefly with the Ohio and then flowed into the mighty

    Mississippi, and down into Louisiana. There was still considerable river

    traffic, but a new road, the Natchez Trace, a mere remnant of an old Indian

    path, led from Nashville, twisting and turning through the forests and

    beside the gorges, skimpy wooden bridges fording the streams, to Natchez.

    With the influx of settlers and merchants and speculators, the path became

    broader and well traveled, linking Philadelphia to New Orleans, a distance

    of two thousand miles.

    There was a plentiful water supply from the Cumberland River, good rain,

    sharp, snowy winters, and high, hot summers. A printing office published a

    weekly newspaper. There

74 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

was no hotel or inn as yet, no industry of any kind, and the ambience of the

town was pastoral, uncluttered by machinery or factory.

    Of the many settlers who had come to the district, to stay and farm, or

    move on in search of that elusive, ultimate, perfect pasture, many had

    prospered mightily. Land was abundant and cheap, and fortunes had been

    quickly made by some. Not all had been so lucky. The adventurers and

    speculators, the entrepreneurs and the farseeing, had taken the best of the

    land, and those less fortunate immigrants who had stayed had found what few

    acres they could on less productive soil. Dour, hardy, weatherbeaten folk,

    worn out by wandering, had pitched tents on rocky plots which could be had

    for a cent an acre, or squatted on Indian borders. They scratched out an

    existence raising tobacco or corn, and, the women more fertile than the

    land, swarms of children. Many of these children did not live beyond their

    first few months or years, and those who did were condemned to a life at

    least as harsh as their parents', unless they got lucky, or moved on.

    West, always west. It was the anthem of the frontier. Somewhere out west

    was the elusive crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, and few looked

    back to the East, or to Europe, for what they had now, no matter how

    little, or how much, was almost always more than what they had left behind.

    These white poor gave spice to James's appreciation of his new environment,

    for without the less lucky, how could the fortunate appreciate what they

    had achieved? While he believed that all men were created equal, and

    believed in equal opportunity, he did not believe in a leveled society,

    with no rich and no poor. It was the duty of the strong to protect the

    weak, but not to become weak themselves.

    The population of the town was cosmopolitan, reflecting America. English

    and Scottish and Irish and Welsh, German, Huguenot, and Scandinavian, and

    a few from the Caribbean Islands. There were blacks-a few free tradesmen,

    and enslaved laborers. Some Indians, like the Cherokee chief Doublehead,

    had adapted to the white man's ways, and had successful farms. Others lived

    in the forest, tribally, in small communities, some in log cabins, some in

    wigwams or tepees.

    BLOODLINES 75

    Already there were settlers in the neighboring, less peaceful, territory

    of Missouri, and some had gone farther west, and crossed the Sabine

    River, into the Mexican province of Texas.

    Nashville was the crossroads, and James was wise enough to understand

    that fortunes can be made more easily at crossroads than at destinations.

James and Washington found a boardinghouse and settled in. Their letters

of introduction served them well, and they were welcomed to the community.

Being Irish was no disadvantage here; it was sufficient, they quickly

discovered, that they were white gentlemen. The manners and modes of the

town were no different from any other they had known, if more open and

informal, though both James and Washington were amused that almost all

white men, rich or poor, had constant dribbles on their chins, from

chewing tobacco. James never took to the practice. The few free blacks

were regarded dubiously by the majority of whites, if not with open

hostility, and the slaves were a simple fact of life, harshly treated or

otherwise, depending on the whim of their Massas. The Indians, of whatever

tribe, were mostly shunned and avoided, and half-breeds despised, even by

other Indians.

    Within two weeks, James and Washington had found, and arranged to buy,

    a spacious wooden store in the main street. Washington had his portion

    from his father and was ready to pay cash. James had wrestled with his

    conscience. Ultimately, not wanting to be indebted to a bank or his

    younger brother, he used his own portion that he had vowed he would never

    touch. He justified the breaking of this oath by his need for a start in

    life.

    Their supplies began arriving by flat-bottomed barge from Philadelphia

    and Baltimore, and soon their shelves were stacked with clothing and

    cloth-calico, linen, wool, and woven cotton-hats and boots, cases of

    candles, tins of tobacco, bags of loose coffee and tea, flour and

    oatmeal, dry beans and maize, crockery and cutlery, pots and pans, and

    racks and spades and hoes. Even before the shop opened, they had begun

    business, making contact with the farmers who dealt with their brothers

    in the East, offering their services in any and every capacity, as

    mailmen and post office, as agents and suppliers,

76 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

and as accountants and bookkeepers. They preferred cash money, specie, as

their payment, but were prepared to take signed notes or paper; they offered

credit, provided there was collateral, they would even barter, and they

accepted deeds to land, the common currency of the frontier.

    They hung up their shingle, JACKSON BROTHERS, DRY GOODS, and on the day the

    store was ready, they looked at each other, both in serviceable trousers,

    with blousy shirts and clean linen aprons, shook hands, wished each other

    good luck, and opened their door.

    They did better than they had hoped and were busier than they could have

    imagined. At the end of the first day, they knew they needed some help, if

    only an errand boy, to run messages, clean the store, and load wagons. They

    put a sign in the window, confidently expecting a number of applications

    from the poor white boys in the district, keen to earn pocket money, but to

    their surprise, no one came for the job. Had they been more attuned to the

    town and the times, they might have noticed that some of their customers

    looked at the sign suspiciously, but they were new to the district, and

    naive.

James ran the store on his own, for Washington was always out making

deliveries in the wagon. He was toying with putting an advertisement for the

job in the local newspaper, when the door burst open, and an angry white man

came in. He snatched the job advertisement from the door and marched to the

counter, interrupting two women who were debating the merits of different

brands of linseed oil with James.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded.

    James was irritated, and glared at the intruder. A tall, lanky man, with a

    shock of unruly red hair and startling, sapphire eyes that were dancing

    with anger. A slender, well-dressed black man had followed him into the

    store, and stood behind him, Ue a shadow.

    The ferocity of the man's approach unnerved James. The two women drifted

    away to inspect bags of white beans.

    "I need a boy for the store," James said. "To run errands, and keep the

    place clean-"

"Nigger work," the man shouted, interrupting James. He

    BLOODLINES 77

turned to his shadow. "Nigger work, eh, Alfred?"

The shadow nodded, and his Massa turned back to James.

"No decent white boy would do this."

James's temper was rising.

    "But I need help, and I'd pay well," he said, with an edge in his voice.

The man laughed, and James wondered what was so funny.

"Then get a nigger," he said.

    "I don't know how," James countered. "None have applied."

    The man laughed again, and the shadow chuckled. "Nigger boys don't apply

    for jobs; they don't have a choice in the matter. You buy 'em."

    James felt foolish now. The concept of owning slaves was no longer

    shocking or exotic to him, but he had never imagined he would have the

    need to purchase one. He was not sure he wanted to own a slave.

    An image popped into his mind of a well-dressed woman in Liverpool

    leading a beautifully attired Nubian boy, on a silver chain. The boy had

    not seemed unhappy.

"How?" was the best he could manage.

    The man's anger had dissipated, and he looked at James almost pityingly,

    and shook his head.

    "I thought your brothers would have equipped you better for the

    frontier."

    It dawned on James who he was. Some cadence in his speech matched the

    phrases he had read in irate letters.

    "Mr. Jackson?" he wondered, and Andrew laughed, and shook his hand.

    "Andrew will do," he said. "And you're the greenhorn. James or

    Washington?"

    "James," James murmured, feeling very like an errant boy before his

    father.

    "Well, James," Andrew said. "You've already set a few tongues wagging in

    Nashville with this advertisement, Everyone took pity on you because you

    are new, but no one had the guts to tell you. Except me."

He tapped the advertisement on the counter.

"We'll find you a boy."

78 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

He turned to his shadow. "See to it, Alfred. Get him a good un, but not

too pricey. We may have one at the farm.

"Yes, suh, Massa," the shadow, Alfred, murmured.

Andrew turned back to James.

"Irish," he barked. "Horses?"

James didn't understand the question.

    "Horseracing!" Andrew snapped impatiently. "Are you a gambling man?"