Queen (88 page)

    She went to the door, but Sally spoke before she left the room.

"And where will you go, Queen?" she said.

    Queen stopped. Perhaps it was the moment she had been dreading.

    "Now you are free, you must think about where you will go, and what you

    will do," Sally continued.

Queen did not turn to look at her.

    "I ain't going nowhere," she muttered. "I stay here and serve you. "

    The tiny silence that followed was filled with volumes of unspoken emotion.

    The inevitable confrontation had come, and Queen prayed with all her heart

    that Sally would give her the answer she longed to hear, and refused to

    consider that she would not.

    "We have no place for you here," Sally said softly, and the words formed

    ice in Queen's heart.

Still Queen did not look at her.

"But this is my home," she whispered.

    She should have turned to Sally, for then she would have seen the tiny

    tears that Sally now brusquely brushed away. There was another silence,

    while Sally composed herself to the task at hand. It was not easy for her,

    because she loved Queen. But nothing was easy for her these days, and it

    had to be done. For both their sakes.

"The world as we know it has gone," Sally said, more

    QUEEN 535

calmly than she felt. "And it can only get worse. We cannot feed the

family even now, and after the war I don't know what we will do."

    Now Queen turned to her, ran to her, knelt at her feet. But it was too

    late.

    "I help you, Missy," she cried. "I cook and clean and garden. I do

    everything!"

    Sally took her sweet face in her hands. Oh, she loved Queen and did not

    want her to go. But she could not let her stay.

    "Child, we love you and have tried to do right by you," she said. "But

    you are a nigra, and the times will be hard. Your best place will be with

    your own people."

    Queen was shaking her head, fighting Sally's grip, wanting her embrace.

    "I ain't a nigra, I's white!" she screamed. "My pappy won't let you turn

    me away!"

    Sally used all her strength to hold the girl's face firm, and looked hard

    into her eyes. She spoke with absolute resolve.

    "You must never think of Colonel Jackson as your pappy," she commanded.

    "You are a child of the plantation, like thousands upon thousands of

    others. And that is all."

    Queen could not believe the firmness of Sally's voice, or the coldness

    in her eyes, or the truth of what she was hearing.

    "No!" she screamed again. "I'll never leave. You are my people! -

She scrabbled to her feet, and ran to the door.

    "You are my family!" she shouted angrily at Sally. She left the room,

    slamming the door.

Alone, Sally found that her distress was battling a deep and rising anger.

They had been so stupid. There should never have been union. After an

alliance with the North to drive out the British, the Southern states

should have gone their own way, formed their confederacy then, all those

years ago, and none of these present disasters would have happened. Some

few, romantic, idealistic men had rammed through a panAmerican concept

with scant regard for the people it might affect the most. Like the

Indians, the nigras had never been seriously considered by the founding

fathers,-in their rush to white independence, the Northerners because they

had so few

536 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

of them, the South because they had no problem. But it was not possible,

and never had been, for slave states to imagine they could share

government with slave-free states. And like the Indians in the grab for

land, who was paying the price of this lack of foresight now but those

same nigras that everyone claimed they were fighting to protect? If the

South had gone its own way, become its own country eighty years ago, then

Queen's predicament would never have arisen. Oh, they had been so happy.

Why could not those damn Yankees leave them alone?

Queen had no such thoughts. Filled with an anger far more complex than

Sally's, and a hurt and a loneliness far-deeper, she ran from the house,

without any sense of purpose or direction. She might have run to the

graveyard and called her distress to her mammy, but it was not her mammy

she needed now, and not self-pity that possessed her, but rather a raging

anger at her dispossession. She ran to the deserted weaving house instead,

and fell on the bed where she had been conceived, weeping, and called out

her love for her pappy.

    62

When peace came, in a gentle spring, it was not as a benediction but as

an anticlimax, coupled with relief and an absolute sense of desolation.

They hardly dared look at the ravaged country, for there was nothing. What

had once been another Eden was a wasteland, barren and bankrupt.

    The men straggling back from the war had no choice but to see the

    devastation, and to comprehend its vastness. After the surrender of the

    South, the soldiers of the Confederate Army laid down their weapons and

    began their long walk home. Penniless, dispirited, hopeless, they trod

    through fields that had once been fertile, along roads that had once

    resounded with bustling business. As they marched, they were joined by

    QUEEN 537

a new army, a fulsome, extravagant, free-spending army. An army of

Northern opportunists, who saw in the ravaged South a feeding ground of

opportunity for fortunes as yet unmade. The generals of this army had

noble ambitions for the reconstruction of the South, but the foot soldiers

wore florid suits, carried carpetbags stuffed with the most precious

ammunition, Federal banknotes, and their training manual was a bible of

chicanery. Marching with them came other battalions of highminded

missionaries, devoted to the capture of the newly freed black souls, while

many of the mortal targets they sought passed them by, walking North to

promised riches.

    "All them niggers let loose on the world," Henderson said to a weary

    companion. The bitterness of the veterans was intense. Everyone, it

    seemed, had food in their bellies but them. Even the poorest of the

    carpetbagging businessmen was rich compared to those who had fought for

    the South. The missionaries came with the blessing of their Northern

    churches, or their own life savings, and fed any hungry black they saw.

    But for the whites, for the soldiers, there was nothing but further

    abasement.

    Henderson had walked for days. He had been stationed at Richmond in

    Virginia since his promotion to sergeant three years ago, and had seen

    the vagaries of the war from its front lines. His regiment had laid down

    its arms the day before the general surrender at Appomattox, and after

    ten days of indecision and enforced idleness, and infinite frustration,

    bright news had come to them. Lincoln, wretched Lincoln, architect of

    their destruction, had been killed, shot to death by some righteous,

    avenging angel. The men of the South had cheered and hollered at the

    news, and picked fights with their Northern captors. Order had been

    restored with rifle butts and broken bones, and the following day they

    had been told to go home, by whatever means they could. Which meant

    walking. There was not a horse or cart to be had, even for ready money,

    which was in shorter supply.

Footsore and weary, nursing new blisters and old grievances, Henderson was

resting with a hundred other veterans outside a barn. A sympathetic farmer

had given the veterans use of his outbuildings, and scores of men were

resting there. Blacks,

538 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

walking North, used the fields opposite as their resting place. No

Confederate soldier would have shared his sanctuary with them, even though

there was no Confederacy left. And carpetbaggers were practicing their

craft. One of them stood under a tree near the returning soldiers, hawking

his dollars.

    "Any man who wants to sell his land, I'll give him a fair price for it!" he

    barked at the broken men. "Cash money! Greenbacks! No questions asked."

    "I got five fair acres in Georgia," a man responded. Five fair acres was

    all he had. Confederate troops had not been paid in weeks, or months, and

    anyway, the Confederate dollar was worthless paper. He sold his five acres

    for five dollars, which was a fortune to him.

    "A man could buy the whole South for a good honest meal," Henderson said to

    the veterans near him. No one replied, although they all agreed with him.

    At that moment, they would have sold their souls for a good honest meal.

    But not Henderson. All he had to do was get back to'The Forks of Cypress,

    where a comparative treasure awaited him, God willing, tucked away in a

    little box under some floorboards in his cottage. He had told no one, not

    even Letitia, of its existence, and while he knew her life had been hard

    while he was away, he guessed that the Jacksons would have provided basic

    necessities for her. Besides, a little suffering, a little hunger, a little

    deprivation, would be good for her. It was nothing compared with what he

    had been through, and might knock some of the edges off her. So, barring

    some terrible accident, fire or flood, which were both unlikely, or

    marauding Yankees, which was possible, be expected to find his store of

    gold intact when he returned. Andhe would be, comparatively, rich. Yet all

    the gold on earth col~ld only partially alleviate his bitterness.

    Everything that he had~striven so hard to achieve was meaningless, for the

    slaves were ascendant, and the white man trash. Often his thoughts turned

    to his dead mother, and he could not bear to think that her lifelong

    struggle for existence had been without sense or meaning, and that her

    place in the scheme of things had been reduced to less than that of the

    humblest nigger.

    Like the poor black who stood before him now, begging for food. There were

    no missionaries nearby, and the black, who

    QUEEN 539

had been called Washington by his hopeful mother, had accepted in good

faith the promise of Abraham Lincoln. All men, whatever their color, were

equal now. On his way to the city that bore his name, whose streets, he

was told, were paved with gold, he hadn't eaten for two days, and doubted

that the returning soldiers camped in the barn had much to share, but

might have something.

    "Get away from me, you nigger bastard," Henderson drawled lazily at the

    man. "Or you'll wish you'd never been bom. "

    Washington bridled inside, but stood his ground. Perhaps this veteran

    hadn't heard the news.

"Yo' cain't do nuttin' to me," he said. "I's free now."

    Henderson stared at him, secure in his recent rank, his expected wealth,

    and the authority given to the whites, he believed, by God.

    "Can't IT' he said, and his tone was the more ominous for its powerful

    understatement. "Listen to me, boy, and you listen good. You get your ass

    out of here, get to your Yankee friends as fast as you know how."

    The other white soldiers said nothing, but their hearts were with him,

    Henderson knew. All they needed was a leader. All they needed was someone

    to voice what they all felt.

    "We might have lost the war," Henderson continued, seizing the moment.

    "But we're men, and we can still fight, and we will. You ever get in my

    way, you or any of your jungle kin, and we will come to you in the dead

    of night, with flames of retribution, and roast you so good, hell will

    seem like a better idea."

    He had not prepared the words-they came to him from some deep, dark place

    in his soul-but as he said them he saw what he described, and it made him

    feel better. It also made his companions feel better. Listlessness about

    their condition gave way to unspoken hostility, directed generally to all

    niggers, and, at this moment, to just one, whose name was Washington.

"I wam you, boy, it's acoming," Henderson said.

    No one doubted him, certainly not Washington, who was scared by what had

    been said, and by the palpable atmosphere of violence the words had

    evoked.

540 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    "Yes, sub, Massa," Washington said, already moving away. "I sorry,

    Massa."

    Henderson watched the retreat of Washington with a small sense of

    triumph. It had been so easy. It would be as easy, in the future.

    He turned to his enraptured audience of disadvantaged whites, and felt

    the heady taste of power.

    "Giving 'em freedom, giving 'em the vote, it don't make a lick of

    difference," he said. "They're still niggers."

    Some men nodded, and a couple moved closer to him, younger men, who