Queen (35 page)

    James knew this, and saw it as a thing to be proud of in his son. -All

    young men fight," he said, and Mrs. Perkins concurred. "All men fight," she

    said. "It is part of being masculine."

    So Sally had a fit of motherly pique instead. "He never brings me his

    shirts to mend," she complained, but James smiled. "You'd only give them to

    a slave."

"That's not the point," Sally insisted. "I'm his mother."

    Lizzie had reasons for disappointment, too. She spent most of her life

    being desperately bored. She had been brought up to it and should have been

    used to it, but she wasn't. The only ripples in her life were school, which

    was quite fun, although, try as she might, she wasn't overly popular with

    the other girls and there were no young men around, and visiting, when she

    could persuade herself, if only because she had a perky personality, that

    she was popular, and there were likely to be young men. Such as Jass. She'd

    spent the last hour waiting for him to come home, was bored with Sassy, who

    seemed much more interested in discussing her own suitors and playing

    mother to the three-year-old Jane Jackson than discussing Lizzie's future,

    and now here was Jass, looking gorgeousshe hadn't lied-and then he was

    gone.

"Why doesn't he come talk to us?" she complained. Sassy

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shrugged. "He's probably been in a fight. Easter cleans him up and mends

his clothes so that we won't know." She giggled again. "He's so silly."

    "Easter?" Lizzie's antennae were out for potential rivals, and she knew

    of no young lady in the district called Easter.

"A slave girl," Sassy explained. "She does the weaving."

    Lizzie was considerably relieved. "Oh," she said. "Is that all. "

Had Lizzie known more of the weaving house, her relief might have been

short-lived. It hadn't changed much over the years; it still wasn't much

of a place, a little shack nestled in a peaceful grove. The roof leaked

in heavy rain, and it sorely needed a coat of paint, but the atmosphere

inside was warm and comfortable and loving. Home is the familiar, home is

where you are loved, and Jass knew that he was loved here, loved by Cap'n

Jack and loved, without knowing that it was love, by Easter. He knew that

his parents loved him, in their fashion, and his brothers and sisters, and

he them, but when he thought of home it was as much this shabby shack as

the great mansion on the hill. For this place was different. This was the

cottage where he was king.

    He brought his horse to a halt and dismounted. He knew he should have

    stopped to greet Mrs. Perkins and her daughter, but he didn't want Lizzie

    to see him battered and torn from his fight. "See to Morgan," he called,

    unnecessarily for both he and Cap'n Jack knew that the horse would be

    seen to, but an order given because he was the young Massa, and that's

    what good Massas did to prove they were not insensible to the chores of

    routine. Cap'n Jack was content to oblige, beyond the fact that it was

    his job, because he was content that this young Massa, whom he, as much

    as anyone, he believed, had fashioned and shaped, would be, one day, his

    ol' Massa.

    Easter had been at the loom, but on hearing the arrival of the horses,

    she glanced out of the window, saw the state Jass was in, and went to

    fetch water, iodine, and a cloth. Thirteen years old and still a little

    gangly, she held the promise of a beautiful woman, with all of her

    mother's gentle calm but a certain cheekiness as well-sparky, fiery

    quirks to her personality that might have been inherited from her father,

    or perhaps

210 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

came from being brought up in a somewhat privileged atmosphere. The sale

of Annie was seldom referred to anymore, but it still had powerful

resonance for those who could remember. For the blacks it signified the

most blatant example of the white man's dominance that had ever occurred

at The Forks. For the whites, particularly ol' Massa James, it represented

the nadir of the treatment of slaves under his dominion, and he preferred

to block the event from his mind. Easter had grown up in the shadow of

that memory, and was consequently much indulged by the blacks to solace

her for the outrage, by the whites to atone for their guilt. She had

always lived in this house with Cap'n Jack, she had received some general

schooling, although not, of course, reading and writing, in the big house

with the Jackson daughters, and she had inherited the role of weaver

without question or demur. Tiara had shown her the ways, and she seemed

to have a natural talent for the skill, a rhythm and grace about her that

made it a pleasure to watch her work and gave the resulting cloth a

neatness and texture to be admired.

    And she had grown up with Jass, who spent at least as much time here,

    with her, as anywhere, with anyone. As his constant companion, she found

    few doors closed to her, and although she had felt the sting of the

    switch, infrequently, as punishment for minor infringements of adult

    rules, she was a wellmannered girl who was mostly content with the

    confines of her existence. A small part of her, of course, longed to live

    in the big house, or go to grand parties and wear pretty frocks, and

    another part of her wanted to be free, but only a part, and not a very

    large one. The concept of freedom, of being able to do what she wanted

    with her life, was a desirable ideal, but she had heard many stories of

    slaves, freed, whose lives were very much less than hers now. But then

    almost every slave's life was less than hers now, and if she was free,

    she might not have the thing she most wanted.

    Because what she wanted was Jass. The fact that it was he who had

    occasionally inflicted the mild stinging pain of the switch was not

    without pleasure to her. It meant, in her mind, that she mattered to him.

    And she knew how to get her own back.

He strode into the cottage like a husband coming home, and

    MERGING 211

stripped to the waist. "Fix my shirt," he said, throwing the garment to

her. He took an empty corncob pipe from the shelf and sat in an old

rocking chair by the empty fireplace. Easter came to him to tend his

wounds and knew that only his pride needed real attention. "You gwine have

some mighty bruises. "

    Easter's recognition that he had fought hard and well mollified Jass a

    little. "It's always the same old rut," he complained. "They won't admit

    that we've got to expand the economy, and whenever I try to talk about

    it, they all say I'm advocating abolition-Owwwwww-for pity's sake! " He

    flinched at the sting of the iodine.

    Easter ignored his yell, and carried on, as did Jass. --and I'm not

    saying we should abolish slavery, I'm saying we have to think beyond it-"

    Easter hated talk of slavery and abolition. Most of the time she was able

    to convince herself of the lie that she wasn't really a slave, and this

    mystical new word, abolition, had frightening connotations, such as the

    possibility of not living at The Forks, of living somewhere else, of

    being apart from Jass. "Them's five-dollar words," she complained, hoping

    to shut him up, knowing she was wasting her breath.

    "You've had learning; you know what they mean." He puffed contentedly on

    the empty pipe, but she flared a little.

    "You scare me when you talk like that! Freein' slaves. Where would I go?

    What would I do?"

    Jass looked at her. She seemed at that moment so vulnerable, so in need

    of protection, that all he wanted to do was take her in his anns and hold

    her safe from the world, for the rest of her life. She made the boy feel

    manly.

    "It's never going to happen; it's just silly talk," he said gently. "This

    is your home and always will be."

    Then he smiled. "Besides," he said, "whatever would I do without you?,"

    which is what she had wanted to hear from the moment he came in the door,

    but she would not let him off the hook too easily-

    "That's all very well and fine, Massa," she sniffed, "but I still don't

    get to go to no wedding."

He looked at her in genuine surprise, for he had been at

212 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

school when the invitations arrived and thought the visit of Mrs. Perkins

and Lizzie to be purely social. "What wedding?"

Parson Dick needed no telling. News of it had reached the slaves days before

the formal correspondence had reached the whites, but since it was to be a

black wedding, between black folk, none of the slaves had felt any need to

inform their masters, and although they heard rumors that some white folk

were to be invited, none of them were sure if their Massa was on the list,

although Parson Dick, who could speak three languages but couldn't read or

write, was fairly convinced that theJacksons were when he had taken the

envelope to his Master's study earlier that day.

    "We will be going to Nashville next month, Parson Dick, to a wedding-" was

    as far as James got.

    "Yes, sir, I know," said the butler, to save time. And perhaps to score a

    point. James looked at him in amazement. The accuracy and speed of the

    slave grapevine was a constant and remarkable amusement to him.

    Parson Dick was helpful. "Everybody talkin' about it, sub. Alfred is

    marrying Miss Gracie."

    James laughed. "How is it that whenever anything happens in this country,

    the slaves all know about it before we do?"

    "Jungle drums, perhaps, Massa," Parson Dick ventured, maintaining a poker

    face. James was never sure quite how to take Parson Dick, although Mrs.

    Perkins had no such hesitation. "That's exactly right," she cried. "Voodoo!

    Sheer voodoo! White folk and nigras guests at the same wedding!"

    Parson Dick looked at her. "Disgraceful, m'm, I agree," but Mrs. Perkins's

    skin was far too thick for such subtle sarcasm. "You see!" she crowed in

    triumph, reluctantly preparing to leave. "Even the nigras are agin it!"

    Slaves had brought the Perkins landau to the house. Soon it would be

    sundown, and so it was time to go, but Mrs. Perkins was not anxious to

    depart without at least some discourse between Lizzie and Jass. Playing for

    time, she was also looking for ways to shake the Jacksons from their

    complaisancy.

    "You don't suppose she'll actually allow nigras to dance with whites?" she

    gasped, but the wretched people wouldn't even take that idea seriously.

    They only laughed.

"It's a wedding, my dear, not a revolution," Sally tried to

    MERGING 213

placate her. Mrs. Perkins sniffed, taking a long time to put on her

gloves. "You never know. Sarah's obviously a freethinker. "

    It was Lizzie who saw him first, face iodined, shirt damed, hovering at

    the side of the house, staring, she was sure, at her. She made a-hurried

    farewell to Sassy, and moved as quickly as feigned lack of interest would

    allow to be near him.

    "Why, who's this mess of a boy?" she asked the world, thus drawing

    everyone's attention to their proximity. "It can't be young James?"

    Mrs. Perkins beamed in satisfaction; Sally concerned herself with tea

    things and Parson Dick; Sassy giggled and gave unnecessary orders to the

    slave nurse to tend little Jane.

    But James stared at his son and Lizzie as if the best idea in all the

    world had just occurred to him.

    Jass smiled shyly at her attention. "Miss Lizzie, you're looking lovely,"

    he said.

    Generally, girls of his own age confused Jass, but he liked Lizzie. She

    was so pretty. Somehow, she always made him feel like a callow boy, but

    that didn't matter because he had an exquisite revenge. Alone in his bed

    at night, when that vile thing happened to his body that demanded

    attention but could not be spoken of to anyone, or even considered in

    waking hours, he would fight against it and sometimes win. But sometimes

    the urge for the pleasure was so intense that he would lose the battle,

    and when he did, it was often Lizzie's face that he imagined, and her

    golden hair, and lovely body. He had no clear idea of what the unclad

    white female form looked like, but he assumed, and was assured by his

    schoolmates, that it was simply a paler version of the black, and so he

    had an intimate familiarity with what he imagined Lizzie's nakedness to

    be. It was his constant triumph over her perpetual skittishness with him.

    Having no idea of what was in his mind, Lizzie rejected the spoken

    compliment. "Tush," she drawled, "just thinking of these nigra nuptials

    makes me glow. Poor Mamma's in a terfible pother."

    Jass was puzzled; he couldn't imagine Lizzie missing out on a party. "You