Queen (86 page)

    On being told that he was not, much of her joy deserted her briefly, and

    she sulked alone in the sitting room. But still it was good news, or better

    news than they had heard in a very long time, and, calmer now, she found

    the children, and hugged them to her, as hard as she had hoped to hug her

    husband.

    There was someone else to tell. Sally climbed the stairs slowly and paused

    to catch her breath on the landing. Then she went up the little attic

    stairs to Cap'n Jack.

    Queen was with him, bathing his chest. The room smelled awful, of waste and

    illness, and that other rich and heady aroma that Sally knew betokened the

    presence of death.

    Queen covered Cap'n Jack with a blanket when Sally came in.

    - He say he dyin'," she blurted, grumpily. "I can't talk him out of it. "

    "The Massa has been freed," Sally said softly, so that Cap'n Jack would not

    hear. She saw a light sparkle in Queen's eyes, one she had not seen for

    months.

    QUEEN 523

    Queen stared at Sally, hardly daring to believe that it was true.

"When he coming home?" she asked.

    "Not for a little while," Sally told her, guessing that Queen wanted to

    be somewhere else. To be alone, perhaps.

    "I'll stay with him," she said. Queen nodded, trying to contain her joy.

    She made Cap'n Jack as comfortable as she could as quickly as she could,

    and then went to the door.

"Thank you, Missy," Queen said. "I got to tell Mammy."

    She hurried from the room. Sally smiled. She understood the girl's need

    to be at her mother's grave, to tell her news she could not hear, and

    wondered why she felt no need to tell James. Or be with him, beside him,

    alone in the silent cemetery with the man whom she had loved.

    When Queen had gone, Sally settled in the chair beside the bed, and took

    Cap'n Jack's hand, to let him know that she was there.

    He seemed lost to her, in some other world, and for a moment Sally

    thought he might be gone already, but then he opened his eyes and stared

    at her.

"I dyin', Missy," he said.

    "Now why on earth would you want to do that?" Sally said gently. "When

    the Massa's coming home."

    She knew he understood, because a duller version of the same sparkle that

    had brightened Queen's eyes glittered into his. His lips moved in what

    she knew to be a silent prayer.

    "Massa Jass free," he said. "Now I can die happy. The good Lord's

    a'callin' me, Missy."

    "I'm sure He would wait a while," Sally said, knowing He would not.

    "Massa Jass free," Cap'n Jack said again. "Oh, blessed freedom."

    Suddenly, Sally understood what he had been waiting for, why he would not

    leave, and she wanted to fulfill his dream.

"And you are free," she said.

Cap'n Jack stared at her.

    "You've been free for a very long time," she continued. "I have the paper

    downstairs in the safe. Massa James gave it to me years ago, believing

    you would ask for it one day."

It wasn't true. James had told her, years ago, of his offer

524 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

of freedom to Cap'n Jack, and of his subsequent refusal. Furious with his

slave, he had burned the paper.

    "If he ever wants it, he'll damn well have to ask for it," James had said.

    But what did it matter now, if he asked or it was given? Sickness,

    weariness, pain, seemed to vanish from Cap'n Jack's eyes. If I have done

    nothing else good in my life, Sally thought, I have done this.

    "Free." Was it a question or a statement? Sally couldn't tell, and it

    didn't matter. The lies were nothing. The result was all.

    - And soon all the slaves will be free," she said. Perhaps they would, if

    Lincoln had his way.

Cap'n Jack smiled, then frowned. "Queen?"

    "Queen and all the slaves," Sally reassured him. "Very soon.

    "Oh, Lordy," Cap'n Jack whispered. He closed his eyes, and squeezed her

    hand. Then he turned away from her, turned to the wall.

    Sally sat holding his hand, and felt his grip slowly loosen until there was

    nothing of it left.

She looked about the empty room, and tears stung her eyes.

    "What on earth am I going to do without him?" she cried out to no one, and

    was unable to control her choking voice.

They buried him in the slaves' graveyard, next to Easter. No one cried,

because no one had any more tears to shed. The war had left them bereft, not

of grief but of the means to express it. They moved through life now in an

emotional vacuum, accepting whatever was given them, and little of it was

good.

    Sally stood next to Queen at the grave and read her favorite passage from

    the Book of Common Prayer, which spoke of loss in terms of hope.

    "We seem to give him back to Thee, 0 Lord, who gavest him to us. But as

    Thou didst not lose him in the giving, we shall not lose him by his

    return."

    When the service was done, Queen helped Sally down the hill. They did not

    speak to each other because they had no need to speak. They simply shielded

    each other against loss.

    QUEEN 525

Soon after, rumors began to fly among the slaves, and life and vigor

returned to them, and the mounting optimism of the slaves was matched by

the increasing pessimism of the whites.

And Queen was petrified.

    She heard the rumors, but no joy came to her with them. She snapped

    angrily at those who told her the news, and said it hadn't happened yet,

    and it didn't affect her. What worried her was that it might. She threw

    herself into preparations for Christmas with febrile energy, and when the

    blessed feast came, she tried to make herself indispensable to the

    family, as if she belonged to them, was part of them. They had no idea

    of the fear besieging her, and treated her no differently than usual. Or

    perhaps they did, a little, for her unspoken but incessant demand for

    proof of their affection, for some recognition of her place with them,

    wearied them and caused them to snap at her. So Queen's fears magnified.

    She didn't dare ask Sally if the rumor was true, for fear that it was.

    She wouldn't ask Lizzie, and, with Cap'n Jack gone, there was only one

    person she trusted.

    She went to Parson Dick's room one night, and tapped on his door. She

    heard fear in his voice when he asked who it was, and when she told him,

    there was silence. She went in. Parson Dick was packing, stuffing his

    clothes into a big old bag made of carpet.

"What you doin'?" she asked.

"Getting out of here," he told her.

    She panicked. "But vou can't!" she cried. "We belong here.

    "I don't 'belong' here, I don't belong to no one," he said. "An' now Abe

    Lincoln's made that legal."

    "We still slaves!" she insisted. "This ain't the North. Abe Lincoln can't

    do nuttin' down here."

    The rumor was that Abraham Lincoln had issued a proclamation freeing all

    the slaves, in any state, as of the first day of the coming New Year.

    "We can get away is what we can do," Parson Dick said. "Over the river,

    to Union lines."

    "They catch you, they bring you back, whip you good!" Queen tried to

    sound casual, but failed, and Parson Dick laughed at her.

526 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    "They ain't going to waste time catching slaves now; there'll be too many

    on the run!"

    He looked at the miserable Queen and felt a sweep of pity for her.

"You come with me and Ruby," he said. "We look after

you. "

Queen shook her head, defiantly.

    "This here is my home," she said. "This here is my family. "

    "You ain't nothin' to them, 'cept some skivvy slave," he replied. But she

    did not hear him, or did not want to.

"Colonel Jass is my pappy," she said.

    Parson Dick understood her fear, and the foolishness of her dream,

    "Oh, girl," he said gently. "What you think your pappy's going to do? You

    think he's going to raise you into the bosom of his family, and say to

    all the world you is his true-born daughter?"

    Queen looked at him uncertainly. That was what she wanted to happen, what

    she wanted to believe would happen, but faced with the actuality of it,

    it seemed unreal.

    "Slavery's finished, thank the good Lord in heaven." Parson Dick pressed

    his point. "But it going to bring hard times for the Massas, and they

    going to stick to each other like glue. They never going to admit that

    all those mulattos and quadroons and octoroons and Lord knows how many

    'roons is begat out of white blood!"

    Queen was trembling, and shaking her head. She didn't want to hear any

    more.

    "You stay here, you nothing, you worse than nothing, coz they won't even

    admit that you exist," he said softly, sadly, accurately predicting her

    future.

    "It ain't true!" she cried. "You don't know! My pappy loves me!"

    Crying, she ran from the room. She stumbled down the back stairs and into

    the kitchen. She stood in the middle of the room, gasping, panting, not

    knowing what to do. A ferocious energy invaded her, and she began to

    clean what was already clean, scrub what was already scrubbed, tidy what

    was already neat, as if the faultless management of the house proved her

    indispensability to it.

    QUEEN 527

    A few hours later, when everyone was asleep, Parson Dick crept from the

    house to the stables. He took an old nag, fair wages, he thought, for his

    years of service, and rode into the night. He met Ruby at a bend in the

    river near Florence, a spot they had arranged in whispered assignations

    conveyed by the seed merchant's assistant. They spent the day in the

    woods, and the following evening they stole an old rowboat they found on

    the riverbank, and made their way across the river. By morning, they were

    behind Union lines and threw themselves on the mercy of some soldiers.

    Although they were treated roughly, as runaways, they were fed, given the

    use of a tent, and no serious attempt was made to return them to their

    owners. With the tolling of the church bells on New Year's Day, they were

    free.

Those same church bells proclaiming the New Year sounded ominous to Sally,

tolling for a way of life that was dying. The Emancipation Proclamation

had no direct effect on themthey were beyond its jurisdiction-but already

it was working indirectly. It hurt her deeply that Parson Dick, most

reliable, she had thought, of their, slaves, had been the first to take

advantage of this new situation, for she had little doubt as to what he

had done, and others, she was convinced, would follow. The..Union Army,

Northern law, was too tantalizingly close to them. Yet she had to do

everything in her power to stop them from going, even if that meant the

unthinkable. Hands were needed to run the farm, for without the farm the

whites could not live, and Sally was aware of the paradox. The white South

depended on the enslaved blacks for their very survival. They did not have

the means to keep the slaves against their will if they chose to go, and

Sally determined that she must make them choose to stay.

    Once again, she had them gathered into the clearing, although Isaac was

    in charge of them now, and she came to them as supplicant, not as

    mistress. She told no one else of her plan. Lizzie would not understand,

    Tom would disapprove, and Mrs. Henderson would resist it fiercely. It was

    possible that if it was generally known, Sally would be accused of

    treachery to the cause.

"Abe Lincoln has issued an order making all slaves in

528 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

United States territory free," she began, and stopped again for a moment. It

was not easy for her. She heard the muttered prayers of some of the slaves.

If the Missy was telling them, then the rumors were true. Free at last, free

at last.

    "That order does not apply to this plantation, or any in the Confederacy,"

    Sally continued, and heard the sharp intakes of breath, the audible

    disappointment. "But the army of the United States is only twenty miles

    away, freedom is only twenty miles away, and I do not have the means to

    make you stay. -

    She knew that they didn't understand why she was telling them what they

    already knew.

    "And so you are free," she said. "Free to do what you want, go where you

    will."

    The reaction surprised her, for there was none. She could hear the wind

    rustling in the leafless branches of the trees, but she could not even hear

    the slaves breathe. Then she became aware of another sound, close to her.

    Queen standing two feet behind her, as if to reinforce her own position,

    was crying.