Queen (61 page)

    day. "Lizzie has many suitors. If Jass is not careful, some other young

    man will snap her up."

    It wasn't true. Sally knew that. Lizzie had very few gentleman callers

    and spent as much time as she could with Jass.

    "Snap her up!" Mrs. Perkins said again, snapping her fingers and causing

    several of her attendant slaves to rush to her, to see what she needed.

Lizzie was riding with Jass, but had she been with her mother she would

have agreed, for she was pining for Jass to snap her up. The young man

whom she was quite fond of had gone away to college and had come back four

years later as the husband of her dreams. Partly this was ' because there

was no one else, but mostly it was because he was now a very handsome and

mature young man who was still gentle and caring but with an edge to him

that Lizzie adored. He never forced his opinions on her, or on anyone, but

had a sure authority about him, so that if he disagreed with something,

or thought

    MERGING 367

it wrong or improper, she knew immediately what he felt, and wild horses

would not drag him from that opinion. Lizzie loved this, for it gave her

the freedom to do whatever she wanted, and if she stepped over the line,

which she seldom did for she was careful with him, he would firmly, if

gently, put her in her place. The only thing he could not be drawn on was

the possibility of their marriage.

    "There's plenty of time for that," he said, whenever she raised the

    subject, which, when he first came back from college, was quite often.

    She had pushed him quite hard at first.

    "Why, Jass," she said. ' "I had thought your intentions toward me to be

    honorable."

"Oh, they are," he told her. "Entirely honorable."

    "Well, surely, you do not expect me to wait for you forever?" Lizzie

    primped herself a little. "I have so many suitors, and I do not intend

    to be left on the shelf."

    She certainly did not intend to be left on the shelf, but that was where

    she was heading, she thought. Most of the other young men she might have

    wed were married now, and the few who weren't showed little interest in

    her except as a jolly friend (for Lizzie, secure in the hope that Jass

    would eventually ask for her hand, could be very jolly at parties, when

    the pressure of snaring Jass was off), but she could not understand why

    Jass didn't do what she yearned for him to do.

    Nor did Jass entirely understand. He wanted to be married and, more

    important, he wanted to be a father, and if he was going to marry anyone,

    he guessed it would be Lizzie. In many ways, he thought, his relationship

    with her paralleled his relationship with Easter. He had grown up with

    Easter, known her all his life, and the progression from friends to

    lovers seemed natural to him, without any dividing line, so that somehow

    they had always been lovers, whether bedding or not, and more important,

    they had remained tremendous friends. He had not known Lizzie as long,

    but he had known her as long as he had known any white woman outside his

    family, and they were friends, even if their friendship was of a

    different nature from his with Easter. Lizzie made constant demands on

    him, while Easter made none. He put this down to the differences in their

    respective stations and personalities, and assumed that one day he would

    cross a similar line with Lizzie and take her to bed as his wife.

368 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    The difference was that he had an urgent desire for Easter and he didn't

    desire Lizzie.

She is more beautiful than ever, he thought, when he first saw Easter on

his return home.

    Which she was. Then a girl, now a woman, she had an extraordinary grace

    and elegance about her, which dazzled Jass.

    The girl he had known had been his friend, and when he had taken her, or

    she had given herself to him, on the night his father died, it had not

    felt as if he were seducing an acquaintance. He'd had a need, and he went

    to his friend and she had fulfilled it. Her body had been no secret to

    him, for he had bathed with her when they were little, and his no secret

    to her, for there are no secrets between such friends as they. That he

    had found new depths to their friendship, inside her body, was simply an

    extension of what they had always had, and what they were always destined

    to discover. Even the small separation that had existed between them when

    he had first been dazzled by Lizzie seemed proper, for it had made him

    appreciate Easter even more. He had no sense of her as "lover," for that

    had a sense of the temporary to it, and he knew that his love for her

    was, as with his mother, the most permanent aspect of his universe. She

    was, to him, home.

    This recent separation, of four years, was the great test of this love,

    and when he had been with her in the weaving house on the first night of

    his return, he had been a little scared, for he did not know if her

    feelings to him had changed. And while he could take her as his right,

    he didn't want that, he wanted it to be as it always had been.

    She had been scared of him, too. She had no way of knowing if he had

    found some other woman while he was away, or if his taste for her had

    changed, and the loss of her baby had caused a sadness to her soul, which

    she carried with her as if light had faded from her heart, and made Jass

    ache to comfort her.

    He came into the weaving house and smiled that silly grin, and sat in the

    rocking chair and puffed on his old cob pipe, and suddenly he wasn't

    scared of her, or of anything, anymore, for this is how it had always

    been and always would be and

    MERGING 369

if she had changed a little physically, it was only in the way that he

knew he had grown. She was still Easter, only more beautiful now, and he

wanted her as much as he had ever wanted anything.

    They had sat until dawn, talking some times, silent others, neither

    wanting the security of the moment to end, and then, without speaking,

    they had undressed and climbed into the rickety cot. He put his arms

    around her, looked into her eyes, and those eyes told her what she knew

    he would never, could never, say. She gave her mouth to him and it was

    as soft and yielding as ever, limitless as ever, and he mounted her and

    filled her with his seed, and prayed with all his heart that the seed

    would take hold, and nourish and grow, and give her the priceless gift

    that both of them so sorely wanted, even as he knew it was not now, this

    was not the moment, for no matter how deeply he went into her, she still

    seemed infinite to him, and there was something just beyond his reach,

    which he longed, with all his heart, from the very core of his soul, to

    grasp.

    45

The slaves were staring at the night sky in awe. Some cried out in fear.

Others fell to their knees and prayed.

    Tiara began to sing a spiritual, believing that her love of the Lord

    would save her from the destruction of the world that was so imminent.

    Sally stood with the Trio on the veranda and watched in wonder. Sally's

    rational mind told her there was nothing to worry about, but the

    superstitious Sally, the religious Sally, was disturbed by this evidence

    of the majesty of nature. A star shower had fallen on them some years

    ago, and the river had flooded, devastatingly, soon after. What new

    catastrophe might this be, an omen for? The Trio whooped and hollered and

    played on Sally's fears. Polly and Pattie hid downstairs, their

370 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

heads covered by their aprons, weeping. Other house slaves peeped out from

windows.

    Cap'n Jack was moved in profound ways that related to the knowledge he had

    acquired at college. He thought this must be how Galileo felt, as he

    contemplated the heavens. His mind ranged and roamed over centuries of

    learning, and he felt at one with the classical scholars, as his learning

    had provoked him to be. He walked with Claudius Ptolemy through the library

    at Alexandria, imaging the world from God's point of view.

    Parson Dick was in his room, gibbering a prayer to a little African totem,

    eyes wide with terror. He had known it was coming. A few years ago, the

    stars had fallen from the heavens, thousands of them, scattering over

    Alabama, but Parson Dick had not been frightened then, for they were only

    a harbinger of the fateful day that was to come.

It was now.

    Jass and Easter stood together in the clearing outside the weaving house,

    looking at the black heaven.

    Some others had joined Tiara in the spiritual, and the lovely choir filled

    the air around them, counterpointed by the sobs of fear they heard.

    A comet blazed through the sky, a bright sliver of light dazzling toward

    earth.

    They had known it was coming, the newspapers had been full of it for days,

    but no one knew what it presaged. Clergymen thundered the doom it would

    bring, the vengeance of a wrathful God upon an iniquitous world. Others

    believed it heralded the second coming of the Lord. Scientists denigrated

    all this-it was only an astral phenomenon-but few were inclined to believe

    them.

They stood in awe of it.

    " Some people say it means the end of the world," Jass said, and moved

    closer to Easter.

    She knew he didn't believe it, he had told her so, but she knew he was

    fascinated by the reaction it caused in others, and knew he was entranced

    by its beauty.

For Easter, it had another meaning.

    MERGING 371

    "An' some folk say it is the star that guided the wise men to Bethlehem,"

    she whispered softly.

    Something in her voice made Jass turn to look at her. She looked wonderful

    in the moonlight, the starlight, her face enthralled, without that

    mysterious sadness that she had carried with her. He could almost see the

    comet reflected in her eyes.

"I's gwine have a baby," Easter said.

    As soon as Jass heard her, he knew that he had known before she told him,

    for he had known without knowing the night that it had happened, one night

    not so very long ago, when he knew that he had reached inside her and

    touched the outer edges of her soul. He felt a vault of exultation that

    pitched him to some other place, riding on a comet in the sky perhaps,

    through the celestial heavens.

    His silence bothered Easter. "Ain't you got nuttin' to say?" she whispered

    angrily.

    How could he tell her of his bursting heart? The only possible way to

    express his feelings was in simple, teasing domesticity, as if she had just

    taken in a stray dog.

    "Oh, plenty," he said, and didn't smile. "Another damn mouth to feed."

    For an instant, Easter was furious with him, the salt sting of tears in her

    eyes. She had expected so much more of him, and yet this is how he always

    was in moments of deep emotion. She longed for the words of love he would

    never say. She turned away.

    "They say it hurts like the devil, you know," she heard him say, and heard

    the laughter of happiness in his voice. "And you never could stand a lick

    of pain."

    She knew now that it was all fight. His love was almost tangible to her.

    She turned to him, and he had a grin on his face as wide as any cotton

    field, and his arms were open in the most welcome invitation she had ever

    received in her life.

    She moved to him, into his strong embrace, and he held her against him and

    hugged her hard, so hard she thought the tiny thing nestled inside must

    feel the strength of his arms, and his love, and she wanted to cry out with

    happiness, and let the sweet tears flow.

372 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    Locked in each other's arms, they were one being, the three of them,

    oblivious of the night and the world, oblivious of some slaves

    watching them curiously from nearby, and oblivious even of a comet,

    glistening in the sky.

    46

if Jass rode a comet when he heard Easter's news, Cap'n Jack was over the

moon. He had only learned of Easter's previous pregnancy and subsequent

miscarriage when he returned to The Forks of Cypress, and was devastated

for his daughter. And for himself, for he was lonely. He had devoted his

life to Easter and had lost a great part of her to Jass, and he missed

what he had once had. He was furious with Jass for not telling him; he was

sure the Massa had known, and if he hadn't known, he wasn't a good Massa.

    "She's my chile," he said to Tiara. "He should a tole me. I had a right