Rafe (4 page)

Behind them Decater staggered to his feet as Butkis and his men headed for the compound at a dead run. Decater grabbed his musket from the ground, drew a lead ball from the pouch at his side and rammed it down the barrel, priming the piece with a cap and aiming it at the retreating slave. For a second time the gun was wrenched from his grasp, this time by Butkis.

“What the hell ya' think y'up to, Decater?” Butkis asked.

“I'm gonna kill me a nigger, goddamit! Gimme back my gun, Butkis. The som'bitch tried to shoot me with it.”

“What's the trouble, Butkis?”

The overseer turned toward the quiet voice. Decater froze. Ezra had decided to check on the disturbance himself. He didn't want to lose one of his pitbucks this early in the season.

“Decater here was flxin' to shoot Rafe, Mr. Clayton.”

“Shoot who?” Ezra asked, his eyebrows arching in disbelief.

“Rafe, sir.”

Ezra turned slowly to Decater. His eyes bored intently into those of the guard, forcing the unfortunate Decater to lower his gaze, shrink back a step and fumble for an explanation.

“Sir … he tried ta' shoot me. Woulda' kilt me dead if'n I hadn't … uh … jumped.”

Ezra examined Decater's twitching face, his dancing, nervous gestures. It would be easy, breaking this one. The lord of Freedom relaxed, his eyelids hooding the piercing gaze. He looked as if he'd suddenly lost all interest and fallen asleep. “What's your name?” The voice was almost a whisper.

“Uh … Decater, sir.”

“Decater … Decater …” The name rolled silkily, lazily from his mouth, the lips barely moving. “You look like a weasel that's just come up with a rancid hen, Decater.”

Decater didn't know what that meant, but it didn't sound very good. “Yessir …”

“When's the last time you won me any gold, Decater?”

“Well, I ain't never … Mr. Clayton …” Decater answered, confused. The man sounded like he was talking in a dream, his voice was so light, so far away.

“I suspect that if Rafe had shot at you, you'd be dead. And if you were dead, then I would have to hang him. And if I had to hang that buck, then he wouldn't be around to win me any more gold.” The voice stopped, leaving only silence suspended with the dust motes. “I wouldn't like that, Decater.”

“No, sir.”

“Now, if that buck can take your gun away from you, I have to consider the possibility I can't trust you with protecting the life and property of Freedom. I might have to find some other way to put you to use.” The bright eyes snapped open abruptly, stared mercilessly and with malicious intensity at Decater, who squirmed in total discomfort. “Perhaps in the pit.”

Decater's face went entirely bloodless. He struggled to speak but found himself barely able to breathe. Ezra smiled reassuringly, the kind of smile that comes to a man's face as he guts a fish. “Against which one, Decater? Jomo? Cat? Trinidad? Rafe?”

“I … I jes' dropped my musket, Mr. Clayton,” Decater finally managed to mumble, the words barely audible. “It went off accidental-like.”

Too easy. Ezra stared into Decater's eyes, searching for something, anything other than fear. It was a waste of time. The fool was less a man than his niggers. They had a sense of pride, at least. He had never seen fear in any of his pitbucks' eyes. “You should be more careful, Decater.”

Ezra snapped his fingers, heard the jingle of harness and the creak of wooden wheels behind him as the coachee pulled up. He turned and climbed into it without looking back, sat stiff-necked as the coachee moved onto the river path and toward the gap in the trees. Beyond that gap, the startlingly white mansion loomed, lazing in the noon sun.

Butkis slapped the chastened guard across the mouth, jolting him back to a semblance of life. “Dumb ass,” the overseer muttered. Decater stood with head bowed, the livid handprint standing out on the white skin. Milo, Boo and the others giggled at his expense, enjoying his discomfort. “Boo, you take a meal,” Butkis went on. “Decater here'll spell you now that he's got his gun back.” Everyone except Decater exploded into laughter. Decater scowled, turned his back on them and began his rounds, disappearing as rapidly as possible around the corner. “The rest of you boys follow me over to the shanties,” Butkis went on. “Got to make sure the field hands is fed okay. Maybe even grab us a quick 'un. Get that gate, Milo.”

The guards whooped and hollered their approval as Butkis winked and gestured lewdly. This was turning out to be a holiday after all.

Rafe submerged the bucket, filling it to the brim with the cool springwater from the trough. He dumped the contents over his head, dousing himself completely. To his battle-flushed skin the water felt icy. He filled the bucket and repeated the action three more times, shaking the water from his head in great glittering arcs. Jomo alone remained nearby, enjoying the opportunity to relax. Whenever a fight was held at the plantation, training for the slaves not involved was called off for the day. Usually they fought on a Sunday, and as that was a day of rest for them anyway, the respite was nothing special. But
Monsieur
Bernard had brought his Creeks down on a Saturday, giving Clayton's pitbucks an extra day of rest.

Jomo squinted at the afternoon sun. Rafe crossed in front of him and onto the rickety porch where a flimsy overhang offered a meager patch of shade. The blood from the wound on his thigh had begun to coagulate and his back was beginning to stiffen. He sank gratefully onto the single, slatted chair and sagged forward, letting the final shred of tension drain from him.

Moments later the small door in the main gate opened and Old Chulem shuffled in and padded through the dust. Old Chulem was the medicine man of Freedom Plantation. He cured the wounds of the body, and of the heart as well. The slaves went to him for everything. Too enfeebled to work, Chulem had the run of both the fighters' compound and the larger shanty town of the field hands. He went unmolested by the guards. Not a one would strike the withered Negro. Even Ezra Clayton realized the importance of the conjure man to the slave populace: allowing Old Chulem a modicum of liberty about the plantation kept the blacks tractable.

The old man barely managed the single step up to the porch and stood, breathing deeply, gazing at the wound on the thigh. When he finally squatted in front of Rafe, his frail body creaked with the effort. He wasted no time on words, simply drew a pouch from his rope belt, opened it, dabbed his fingers into the fetid depths and withdrew an oily brown glob of herbs, roots and tree sap mixed in bear grease. Ancient fingers spread the wound and worked the mixture in, massaging it into the muscle, loosening the drying blood. A final slather covered the area completely. Old Chulem rose slowly, withered muscles trembling.

“Yo' leave dat po'tice on 'til mornin', hear me, boy?” His voice was dry with age but still rang with authority. “Now turn 'round. Let me care fer dat back, too.” Rafe turned, straddled the chair and rested his forehead on the cool wood planking of the shack. “Knife poison ken rot a man sooner'n he can spit. So keep Ol' Chulem's medicine over dem cuts. No woman for you tonight, nigger.”

Jomo chuckled. “Ah'll take his women fo' him. Don't yo' worry none, old man.”

Rafe nearly dozed as the old, expert fingers worked out the stiffness and eased the stinging pain. Sweet euphoria drifted over him. He was alive and finally calm enough to fully realize and savor the fact. Forty-three fights. That's close to fifty.
Gettin' close to fifty, Rafe
, he thought to himself. Only seven to go. Only seven fights left. Then a rifle and a woman, supplies and a boat ride across the Sabine, and the sweet prospect of never coming back. The swamps stretched before him, then the open land he'd heard of. Open land … real freedom …

He realized Chulem was finished and turned back to see the old man staring at him. Had the conjure man spoken? Was he waiting for an answer? To what? What was there to say? There were no answers. Only life, and holding on to it any way possible, day by day, fight by fight. Rafe glanced over at Jomo's drowsy face. Jomo liked it, enjoyed the violence, the way it felt to stand over a man just butchered and watch the tortured, dying muscles jerk, the clay drink the red juices. And listen to the cheers and shouts of the men and women above. The ignobility of killing for another's pleasure. Odd thoughts for a slave.

Dammit. Why was Chulem staring at him? Rafe thought of Lord Lucas Clayton, the New Orleans aristocrat who had stared at him the same way before he bought him from the slave market on the docks. Rafe had been only a boy, frightened and determined not to show it. Lucas Clayton had taken an interest in him, and despairing ignorance in any form, saw to his education, made him the pride and joy of the Clayton household. “This is my manservant, Rafe. Speaks better than most white men. Say something for the gentlemen, Rafe.”

I
think,
goddamit! I
can
speak better than most whites!
Rafe screamed in his mind.
I'm not like Jomo and the others, just an ignorant nigger to fight and die for a white man
… Old Chulem's eyes bored into him, breaking the thought. “Why you starin' at me, old man, conjure man?”

Chulem rubbed his lips and toothless gums with a dirty finger. He spat into the compound yard. “I'se jus' checkin' yo' eyes fer de poison sign.”

“What you see, old man?”

“Poison,” he said, starting to turn, then cautiously easing off the porch into the dust. “But not from no knife.” The conjure man hobbled off toward the cook shack where a black slave beat a strip of metal and called the pitbucks to their meal. Rafe watched Chulem leave, measuring the old man for the thousandth time, wondering what he knew and didn't know.

Jomo took a length of sugar cane from the basket hanging from the beam and began to chew on it. “Yo' get yo' po'k today, Rafe N'gata, while the rest of us has ouah rice and beans. You kill yo' man, you gets yo' po'k.”

Jomo watched his massive companion step from the porch and, ignoring him, stride across the compound. The shorter man grinned and spit out the torn fibers. He was used to Rafe's silences. They didn't bother him. He stretched his squat, muscular frame, then jumped lightly from the porch and followed the giant. N'gata. Surely he could talk Rafe out of a chunk of that pork. A little fresh meat was good for a man.

3

The boat from Boston arrived with great fanfare, welcomed by an always boisterous, clamoring New Orleans. Crissa, tired and disheveled from the long journey, stood at the rail, glad for the sight of land, happier because this land was familiar, was close to home. The sights at dockside first filled her with warmth and an easy feeling of nostalgia. She remembered how proud and noble her father looked as he stood with arms akimbo and legs planted firmly on the quarterdeck of the warship. But that was almost seven years ago and since then he had, as had so many others, perished on the high seas during the War with England. Since then she had left the land where she was born and raised, left for the far north and Boston and four years of schooling. Now she was back and wanted nothing more than to savor the homecoming. Why then, despite her determination to remain cheerful, did such a disturbing feeling of disquietude insist upon intruding upon her thoughts? Something was very wrong, but she couldn't lay her finger on exactly what bothered her.

The shipboard sounds swelled as officers and crew saw to the unloading of passengers and freight: the noisy, good-natured curses of sweat-lathered dockhands, the rap-rap-rap of feet on the deck, gangplank and dock, the squeal of winches and groan of ropes as cartons of goods were hoisted from the hold and dropped to the deck, there to be placed on the backs of an army of slaves. All was as it should be.

Then above the pleasant cacophony another sound gradually forced its way into her consciousness. The clank of chains. The shuffling of a hundred bare feet scraping on wood. Suddenly a whip cracked and a high-pitched scream rose above the din. Crissa turned toward the sound and saw a coffle of slaves, directly off a boat, making their way down the dock. Men and women chained together, filthy, emaciated, stumbling, evidently in pain. A fat white man strode beside them, yelling from time to time. He carried a bullwhip which he cracked about his head, then about the ankles of the chained blacks. An unfortunate soul tripped and nearly fell. Again the whip lashed out with deadly accuracy and caught a middle-aged black woman across her back, the tip curling around her side and biting cruelly into her right breast, drawing blood. The woman didn't scream, only moaned. Her head fell back and Crissa could see her eyes clenched shut, her mouth wide with pain. A manacled hand tried to reach the bleeding breast, but was pulled short and jerked back viciously.

Crissa was rigid, her muscles taut. Repelled by the sight, she was yet so fascinated she couldn't tear her eyes from the coffle, and watched its passage down the dock and through the huge doors of what appeared to be a warehouse. When the door slammed closed she glanced down at her hands to discover them clenched on the rail, her knuckles white and bloodless. She drew a shuddering breath. Could she have forgotten what slavery was? What it meant? How horribly demeaning it must be for those under its power? Four years in Boston had taught her a new way of life, a way of life which regarded slavery as an abomination in the sight of God and man. Her father had been a slave owner, she remembered. One had to be to get the work done. But he had never transformed men and women into wretches such as these. Or had he? Had she, as so many others, been blind to that which was now so obvious? She had not realized until that moment how deeply the four years had affected her. Shaken to the core, she hailed the first carriage available and disembarked.

The trip through the teeming, crowded streets of New Orleans went by as if Crissa were in a trance. The once familiar streets and buildings shimmered in the hallucinatory heat of the afternoon sun, and dreamlike, she stared as they slipped by. So complete was her withdrawal she barely realized the carriage had come to a halt in front of Le Grande Hotel and the porters had carried her trunks to the lobby.