Queen (60 page)

    beginning. But, oh, what a glorious start. Now Cap'n lack fiercely

    regretted his rashness in refusing his papers of manumission when James

    had offered them. He understood he had been motivated by his need for

    revenge on James, but the vengeance had been foul to him, and what he had

    lost was precious beyond his dreams.

    MERGING 361

    He thought that he might ask Jass for his freedom. No one knew what had

    happened between the two of them on that fateful day in James's study,

    except perhaps Sally, but he had refused the offer, and he was sure Sally

    knew that too. And part of him was wary of raising the matter, because

    without Easter life was meaningless to him. He could easily tell Jass

    that the ol' Massa had promised him his freedom, which wm true, and Sally

    would confirm it, but even if Jass accepted it, he would never free

    Easter-she meant too much to him, and he would be scared of losing her.

    And he knew Jass had changed, He knew that the responsibilities of his

    new role had subverted Jass from the Massa Cap'n Jack had tried to train

    him to be. It was never spoken between them-they seldom spoke of

    important things anymore-but it was evident in Jass's manner and actions.

    And in his relationship with George.

Journeying back from Delaware, in George's company, Cap'n Jack allowed a

little of his new knowledge to show, by quoting Shakespeare to them.

George was intrigued, but Jass, to Cap'n Jack's surprise, was angry.

"For God's sake, where did you team this?"

"In class, with you, Massa," Cap'n Jack replied.

    "Don't ever let anyone know. Forget what you have learned," Jass

    demanded.

    "Where's the harm in it?" George asked, as surprised as Cap'n Jack at

    Jass's reaction.

    "There are those in Alabama who would lynch him for it," Jass replied,

    and inwardly cursed Cap'n Jack for not keeping whatever it was he knew

    to himself.

    They rode in silence for a while, and then George looked at Jass.

    "How can you bear to live with such a system?" he said. And Jass

    exploded.

    "Because it is our system," Jass cried. "You know nothing about us; you

    have never come to us to see how we manage things. You hear some ghastly

    stories about wrongs that are done by some to a few slaves, and you

    indict us all. It isn't like that; it isn't what you think it to be."

He struggled to control his temper, because he liked George.

362 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    "Put your own states in order, find jobs for your own blacks, feed your

    own niggers first, before you tell us what to do. "

    George was proud of his family and the way they lived. "Some of us have,

    I think," he said, gently.

    It marked the beginning of the end of their friendship. They stayed

    roommates to the end, and were polite to each other, often more than

    that, but they avoided serious discussion of the division both knew

    existed between them.

    Both graduated well, and said fond good-byes, and knew they would not see

    each other again.

    The eager youth who had gone to college came back as a man, and the

    despondent slave who had gone to the North came back as a literate,

    educated teacher.

Coming home was wonderful. Nothing much seemed to have changed, though a

great deal had. Florence was bigger now, although Jass smiled and thought

of it as a village compared to the great cities he had seen. The hotel had

been destroyed in a fire, and a new and grander one was replacing it. A

few folk remembered and waved a greeting as they trotted through the main

street. They galloped the final miles home, along a path they had ridden

so often, and just as always, Jass brought his horse to a halt when they

were in sight of the mansion.

    He stared at it for a few moments. The racecourse had fallen into

    disrepair, since it was no longer used. Jass had no strong interest in

    racing or breeding, and Tom had realized good money by the sale of the

    pedigree stock. Murdoch had gone with Glencoe to Colonel Elliot, and

    Monkey Jack with them. Otherwise everything was as it always had been,

    the fields white with cotton, the gangs working. The house stood on the

    hill, the twenty-one graceful columns sparkling white in the afternoon

    sun. For all Jass appreciated his years away, for all he had grown and

    matured, he felt like a boy again, looking at home as he always did on

    his way back from school, knowing he was safe again, knowing he would be

    loved.

    Cap'n Jack was beside him. Things had not been easy between them for the

    past year. Knowing of Jass's displeasure, Cap'n Jack had become ever more

    secretive about his learning, and guarded his tongue in conversations

    with Jass, in case he should offend.

    MERGING 363

    Jass had tried to apologize to Cap'n Jack, but only for his anger, not

    for what he had said. He knew the slave had continued to learn, and

    disapproved of it strongly, for the danger it represented to the man who

    had brought him up, and also to himself, as that slave's Massa. Above

    all, Jass did not want change.

    But now it was different; now they were at the end of their long journey.

    He turned and smiled at Cap'n Jack.

"Race you," he said. Cap'n Jack was ready.

Both men spurred their horses and galloped home.

    44

Sally was pleased with him. His years away had given him the authority she

had hoped for, the time to mature, and there was a bonus too. Jass's

liberal ideas about slavery had been of considerable concern to her. Sally

took the simple view. She had always seen slavery as a necessary

institution, and while she cared quite deeply for many of her blacks, it

was as illiterate, incapable children who needed the firm guidance that

the whites could provide. As with a child, or a pet dog, she could not

bear the idea of sending them out, free, into a white man's world, for she

believed that few of them had the skills to survive in that world, and she

had heard the horror stories from the Northern states, magnified and

gaudily colored in the Southern retelling, of poverty and destitution.

    "Freedom" seemed ridiculous to her, if it brought with it such

    deprivation. She had no patience with whites who treated their blacks

    badly, for she believed, as a devout Christian, that it was the

    responsibility of the strong to protect the weak. She believed, as

    devoutly, that since blacks could not be sent back to Africa, the

    institutions of the South, benevolently discharged, were their best

    alternative. Abolitionist literature was proscribed in the South, but

    Sally was an educated woman, and she was able to glean, from discussion

    and discourse with

364 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

travelers, and the few Southern sympathizers to the cause whom she met,

and with Cap'n Jack, her dear friend, what the arguments for emancipation

were, and thought them sentimental.

    She talked a great deal with Cap'n Jack, about the North, about

    abolition, and wondered if she was simply rationalizing, finding

    justifications for an abhorrent condition, but had found some simple

    beliefs in her heart. The basic creed of abolition was that all human

    beings had the right to be free, but were blacks human beings? She did

    not regard them as animals, but she did not believe they had souls. They

    were, in her mind, special creatures who, like Lucifer, had fallen from

    God's grace and were without the sense of personal discipline that might

    restore them to His favor. Left to their own devices, they were idle and

    shiftless, children of the jungle, indulging animal passions and

    instincts. Without a firm guiding hand, they could easily destroy the

    order, the industry, the civilization, that Providence had destined good

    Christian whites to bring to an unruly world.

    The economic arguments against slavery seemed to her to be the most

    ridiculous. Abolitionists, Cap'n Jack told her, believed that the South

    wanted to maintain slavery because it provided an endless supply of cheap

    labor.

    Sally was astonished. Cheap? Slavery was not cheap, at least not at The

    Forks of Cypress. Parson Dick was easily worth a thousand dollars, if not

    more, and a good field hand might be five hundred. Then there was the

    cost of feeding and housing them, of providing medical care, of tending

    the young and nursing the old. She did some rough calculations in her

    head and decided that to run the plantation with paid labor might be more

    economical than with slaves, certainly as far as the household staff was

    concerned. But then all those slaves would be free, and would bring chaos

    where there had been order, and the whites would have abandoned their

    covenant with God.

    She thought she might like to visit the North one day to see for herself.

    Certainly, the effect on Jass had been salutary. He no longer talked

    about the possibility of an eventual move away from slavery but seemed

    instead to have espoused the status quo. Which was all to the good in

    Sally's mind. For

    MERGING 365

better or worse, they had cast their lot with the South and it had been

good to them; they were Southerners, and to question slavery, or any

aspect of their glorious civilization, was tantamount to treason from an

economic point of view, and heresy from a religious one.

    She no longer worried herself unduly about Jass's undiminished fondness

    for Easter. If he needed an outlet for his passions, for he was a young

    man in his prime, she was relieved that he had settled on the reliable

    Easter and had not become a rake, or libertine, indulging himself with

    any slave woman who was at hand. The relationship was settled and

    discreet, and while there had been some mild, amused gossip about it

    "behind the fans" before Jass went away, for it indicated his loss of

    virginity, now it was no longer of any scandalous value and was seldom

    if ever referred to, even by the inquisitive chatterbox Becky Perkins.

    Indeed, it was Sally herself who had raised the matter with Mrs. Perkins

    one afternoon when they sat on the veranda taking tea, for she wondered

    how much Lizzie knew.

    "Lizzie is an innocent gel," Mrs. Perkins replied, fanning herself

    vigorously and unnecessarily, for her black boy was waving a larger fan

    over her head, and in any case it was fall, and there was a chill in the

    air.

    "An innocent gel who understands little of the baser desires that men are

    prey to," Mrs. Perkins continued, her vowels Anglicized these days in

    imitation of a visiting English duchess she had met. "And it is better

    for all concerned that she remain innocent, don't you think?"

    Sally thought so and said so. Mrs. Perkins nodded agreement. "We women

    understand."

    She paused for a moment, then raised her fan and spoke behind it.

    "And so much better," she whispered, "for their eventual union."

    There it was, in a nutshell. Now, above everything, Sally's ambition for

    Jass was to see him married and with children. She would prefer his bride

    were someone other than Lizzie, but Lizzie seemed to be the only

    contender. Jass was charming to the many other young ladies who came to

    call on him in increasing numbers, but he seemed to have no interest in

    them

366 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

as potential partners. If Sally had not known about Easter, she might have

worried that Jass had no libido at all or, horror of horrors, that he

might end up like young Antony Beaumont, who had disgraced his family when

caught by his father in an abomination with a black field hand. Mr.

Beaumont had taken a whip to his son and left a pistol in the young man's

room, in order for him to do the decent thing, but Antony had behaved like

a cad and had run away with the field hand to that Sodom of the south, New

Orleans. The breathless gossip about this had made Sally even more

grateful for Easter.

    So there was only Lizzie, but even in her case, Jass showed no real

    desire to extend their relationship beyond the rather complex friendship

    they enjoyed.

    "There's plenty of time," Jass had said, when Sally raised the matter at

    dinner one evening. "I've only been back a few months. "

    Neither Sally nor Mrs. Perkins thought there was plenty of time-it had

    already dragged on quite long enough-and so Sally found herself in the

    unlikely position of being in alliance with Lizzie's mother to bring

    about a union that Sally did not entirely relish.

    "Time is getting on," Mrs. Perkins said, and she was not referring to the