Queen (44 page)

    but I wasn't aware that you had ever lost him." She kissed his forehead.

    "Always remember that emotions can be easily manipulated, and that love

    is a thing of the mind as well as the heart." She wondered if he

    understood what she was trying to say, but decided to leave it at that.

    "Good night, my darling," she said, and left the room. Jass mumbled a

    good night, and turned to face the wall.

James was awake, lying in bed reading, when she came into their room. She

was still cross with him.

    She began to undress in silence. James put down his book. "He'll get over

    it," he offered, to make the peace. "It was a good experience for him."

    "I'm sure it was an experience," she said. "Whether it was good or not

    is a matter of opinion."

    She sat at the dressing table to put on her nightcap. She didn't want to

    be near James, not yet. Not until he said he was sorry.

    "I'm sorry," he said. The laughter in his eyes betrayed him. "I'm very

    angry with you," Sally replied, but she could never be very angry with

    him for very long. Besides, her initial temper was being replaced by

    curiosity.

"I can't imagine it happening to Jass," she said.

James, to whom the whole evening had been amusing but

    MERGING 263

of little consequence, could think only of a platitude.

    "Still waters run deep." He patted the space beside him. "Come to bed."

    Sally finished her toilette, and did as she was bidden, snuggling into

    her husband's arms.

    "Do you really think Lizzie will be suitable for him, one day?" It was

    the first time she had raised the subject of Lizzie with James.

    He was careful, sensing Sally's dislike of the idea. "She's going to be

    very pretty," he offered.

    "She's so very young, and so very brittle," Sally said. James nodded.

    "She'll grow up, grow out of it."

    Sara's realistic appraisal of the situation with Andrew had dulled

    James's eagerness to settle on the concept, at least, of an early union

    for Jass, but it was still there.

    "I hope Jass enjoys his youth," he told his wife. "But if anything should

    happen to him, or to any of the other three, or to me-"

    He didn't refer to the loss of A.J., but Sally knew what he meant. The

    succession to the inheritance was paramount to families like theirs.

    She smiled at her husband. "Nothing's going to happen to you for a very

    long time," she said, lovingly.

    James looked into her eyes. "I surely hope not," he said. He held her in

    his arms, kissed her full on the mouth, and she surrendered to his loving

    embrace.

    "Hush," she murmured when her mouth was free. "Don't wake the children."

Jass stared at the bedroom wall. He couldn't believe it! He guessed from

the rhythmic noise of the bedsprings in the next room that his parents

were doing-that-right then and there. How could they, after what he'd been

through?

    He rolled over in his bunk, away from the wall, and tried to block out

    the sounds and come to terms with what it was he'd been through. Away

    from the Preacher's influence, he didn't feel very much more certain of

    what God might be than at the start of the evening. Had he found Jesus?

    He wasn't sure. He knew he'd found something, even if it was only a

    rock-solid determination that he was going to have greater

264 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

discipline over his body in future. But was that all?

    What was the love of Jesus? What was the love of God? What was God? He

    didn't know. Confusing questions about the relationship of God to man

    assailed him. If there was only one God, why were there so many

    religions? If God was love, why was there war? If killing was forbidden

    in the commandments, how could God forgive soldiers? How could you take

    an eye for an eye and turn the other cheek at the same time? Even though

    his teachers had always given ready answers to these seeming

    contradictions, now Jass began to doubt their authority. If fornication

    was so wrong, why was the urge to do it so overwhelming? If it was wrong

    to do the unspeakable, why had He made it so pleasurable? Some of the

    younger slaves did it too, he knew, because he'd heard them giggling

    about it.

    And what about the blacks? Where was the dividing line between animals,

    blacks-or come to that, redskins-and white people? Wesley had talked of

    a slave girl who was as white as his sister, and two of their own slaves

    were only a kind of pale yellow, so why were they black, and why didn't

    they have souls, as the Reverend Sloss insisted? If Ham was the first

    nigger, why didn't he have a soul like his brothers? If niggers didn't

    have souls, why did so many of them believe in God? And how did God

    choose? If Wesley, or anyone, did a slave girl and she had a baby, that

    baby wouldn't have a soul, but when he got married to a white girl and

    had a baby, that child would. Did souls descend only through the white

    maternal line? Were mothers that sacred?

    In that case, if Jass had found Jesus, as the Preacher claimed, why was

    his mother so angry? Perhaps it was this that caused the greatest

    confusion of all, for Jass had loved Jesus all his life, and as his

    mother had pointed out, how could something be found if it had never been

    lost? And if his mother was right about that, then what about the other

    thing? If it was true, if the Preacher, whom he didn't know from Adam,

    had manipulated his emotions so easily, what happened when you fell in

    love with someone? If you loved someone with all your heart, how much

    control did the adored one have over you? Obviously quite a lot in my

    case, Jass thought. He would have to tread very carefully around girls

    from now on.

    MERGING 265

    He was tired. The emotional outpouring of the evening had exhausted him,

    and he felt drained and vitalized all at the same time. He drifted to sleep

    in the reassuring knowledge that he had certainly experienced something,

    whatever it was, that was somehow part of growing up, for the questions

    that were concerning him now were not ones he had ever asked himself

    before.

    32

On the afternoon of the fifth day they arrived at their destination, the

slave cart having slowed their progress, and went straight to cousin John

Kirkman's house, where they were lodging.

    Town, Aunt Eleanor told them, was full; there was no room to be had at any

    inn, lodging house, farm, or private house in the district. Sarah had

    scandalized the South with her invitation, and consequently anyone who

    thought they were anybody and hadn't been invited had done everything in

    their power to ensure that they were. Plantation Massas who would have a

    black whipped to death without turning a hair had pulled every string they

    could, political and social, to watch two nigras jump the broom. Eleanor's

    eyes danced with glee, and she laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks.

    Jass was fascinated by his aging aunt. She had been merely a daunting woman

    with a slight mustache when he first became aware of her as a child, but he

    had come to know her well in the years he spent at school in Nashville, for

    she had charge of him then. At first he had been unable to reconcile his

    father's funny stories of her when young. He couldn't imagine this

    forbidding woman in black bornbazine as a redheaded revolutionary in Dublin

    married to a great Irish martyr, but because of that past, it was with her

    that he first raised some of the troubling questions that Cap'n Jack had

    put in his mind.

266 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    He contrived to be alone with her in her pretty garden and, somewhat

    diffidently, asked her about slavery-.

    Aunt Eleanor had snorted in derision. "Half this so-called Southern

    aristocracy is just jumped-up bog peasants who've made their pile on the

    backs of men they don't even pay a wage. "

    She was no freethinker, however. "I've no love for the nigras, Jass," she

    continued. "Dirty, shiftless, and lazy, most of I em, who'd cut your throat

    for a shillin', and should have been left in the jungle where they belong.

    But if a man works, he should be paid for it."

Jass was confused. "We own slaves," he said.

    Eleanor smiled ruefully. "And so do I,- she said, with a wistfulness that

    Jass didn't understand. She owned some house slaves, one of whom, Joshua,

    was digging in the vegetable patch.

    "When I first came here," Eleanor explained, "I wouldn't have a bar of it.

    I thought it was a disgrace against nature, and I was shocked that

    Jamie-your father-had taken to practicing it. But it was the custom, and

    life was hard then, awful hard-you young folk have it easy-and in the end

    it was simpler to swim with the tide than against it. And it didn't bother

    your poor, dear Uncle Thomas, God rest his soul."

    A sadness had settled on her. "I often asked myself what Oliver--

    She looked at Jass and realized that probably he had no idea who Oliver

    was. "My first husband," she explained, and memory of him fluttered in her

    heart.

    She looked at the gardener. The sadness vanished, and as if to complete her

    case against herself, she yelled to him.

    "Joshua! Put your back into it, man!" The voice was stentorian. "I could

    have dug that whole patch by now."

    Joshua muttered something inaudible and carried on at his usual pace.

    Eleanor looked at Jass. and there was a smile of self-mockery twinkling in

    her eye.

    "At least I know what I am," she said. "Which is more than can be said for

    most of these Southern kings in their cotton castles. "

    An old campaigner from a lost war, she still had advice for the young.

    MERGING 267

    "Never give your nigras reason to hate you, Jass," she said. "Because one

    day they'll have their revenge. It is the nature of things,"

    So they became friends. She never had direct answers for Jass on moral

    or political questions he raised but would put the various sides of an

    argument, and encourage him to arrive at his own conclusions. The only

    subject on which she never equivocated was the British in Ireland, and

    she would lecture him for hours on the evil of their cause.

    "Why didn't you stay and fight them?" Jass asked once, and Eleanor looked

    at him sharply, but her reply was surprisingly reasonable.

    "It's terrible hard to be wed to a man who gives his life to a great

    cause," she said. "And realize that his dyin' made not one jot or tittle

    of difference to anything. The Irish were still starvin', and the British

    still lived off the fat of their land. So I came here. And look at me

    now."

    She laughed again, a vulgar, raucous laugh. "All piss and wind, I

    suppose."

    Jass blushed scarlet. He'd never heard a woman use that word before.

    "And I met your Uncle Thomas," she said gently, "and I had a wonderful

    life with him."

    Now she was old and frail, and could walk only with the help of canes or,

    preferably to her, the arms of a strong young man. She was pragmatic

    about her declining years and intended to move to Baltimore, with Sara

    to look after her. "To die," Eleanor said cheerfully, "looking at old

    Ireland."

"You'll live for years yet," James retorted.

    "I may," Aunt Eleanor nodded. The smile faded from her face. "God

    forbid."

    She would sell this house and cousin John would move to Florence. It is

    the end of the Nashville years, James thought. A chapter in our lives is

    closing. Florence is the future now. The South.

The wedding was not until the coming Sunday, with a welcoming barbecue the

day before, but the week was to be a hectic social calendar of luncheons,

levees, and soirees. The gathering of the clans, James explained to Jass.

268 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    Slaves had been heating water all day, and now the women bathed in the

    outhouse, while James and Jass used the creek on the edge of the property.

    After a week on the road, they felt filthy, and Sally longed to let down

    her hair and have Angel examine it for any lice picked up in the tawdry

    travelers' hostels. The visitors from Florence crammed the house. Jass was

    sleeping in the attic with his young second cousin, and they had a jolly

    time, the boy delighting in taunting Jass's authority by giving voice to

    all the new cuss words he had teamed, and juvenile allusions to bodily

    functions. James and Sally were in the guest bedroom, Sally was sleeping

    with the Kirkman girls, Easter and Angel were sharing a cramped outhouse