Sweetsmoke (39 page)

    I—I
got to go again, said Cassius.

    You
only just come back.

    Something
to finish.

    I
will miss you, said Quashee, and she was another inch closer to the door. She
opened it a crack. He saw that she wanted to be away to keep private any
display of emotion.

    You
don't understand, said Cassius.

    I do,
said Quashee.

    You
don't. Listen now.

    She
turned her face away, and a slant of brightness from the open door swelled in
her liquid eyes.

    I see
you, said Cassius. I see you in the yard or by a window or coming down the lane
and my poor heart flies. I think on you when I'm alone just working and I smile
inside. You come to my dreams and I wake up at peace. I want to know what it is
to touch your hair, to know if your back is smooth or striped, to know how you
sound when you breathe while you sleep. I want to know that everything'll be
all right. And when I think that, I get afraid, and remember how it was when I
was cold because I didn't want and didn't offer. That was a good time-they
couldn't hurt me and I couldn't hurt because no one got close.

    Only
Emoline, said Quashee softly.

    Only
close enough to mend so I could stand again.

    I
think she did more.

    I
wasn't afraid then. If they hurt me I could take it. If they killed me, then
the thing that I am stops and I could take that too. I didn't care, and now that's
changed and that says I can hurt you, and I can't take that. I don't know how
to say you should give up love, but if you don't, then they got every power
over you, every one. If you don't love, then there's one thing they can't
destroy.

    That's
a compliment, only it means you won't be with me, said Quashee.

    I
could be, I could put a whole life of you in my last days here, but where are
you after? A man on the road, and you not knowing where or if he's coming back.
I got to go. If I'm a gambling man, I don't bet on my chances. I am tired of
the hurt and I don't want to cause more.

    So I
did this.

    How
you mean?

    You
opened to me, and it made you afraid.

    No,
that's not right.

    But
think, Cassius, if you don't let it happen, that fear and pain all be for
nothin. 'Cause that's all you got, fear and pain, so you got none of the good
that goes with it. It's the good lets us stand the pain.

    Cassius
closed his eyes and exhaled.

    Never
thought I was unlucky, said Quashee.

    No no
no no, said Cassius.

    But I
look around and there's Pet close by every day.

    It's
not better in the big house than the fields?

    When
you outside Missus Ellen only hear what someone say about you in her ear, she
can't see you every day—

    And
see you're good.

    Okay,
but then every day she also reminded about you.

    Cassius
opened his palms in a gesture of helplessness.

    Master
John-Corey was a straight-up man, said Quashee. Different from his father.
Simple.

    I know,
I remember, said Cassius.

    Old
Hoke, he's like other planters, grand and poetic and naming plantations Swan of
Alicante and Edensong and Horn of Plenty and Sweetsmoke, while John-Corey
Howard just made his Howard. Howard Plantation.

    John-Corey's
great-grandfather made his Sweetsmoke.

    I'm
saying John-Corey was not complicated. Straight-up. And I fit in. I knew what
was expected. I was proud of what I did. Life was slow, but it was safe. I had
a man at John-Corey's.

    I
didn't know.

    I know
you didn't. We didn't jump the broom or nothing, but we had each other for a
time and it was something for me. He was in the big house, too, and he was
straight-up. Straight up and good to me. It was nice to have someone. When
John-Corey got killed, he got sold with all the rest, all of them but my father
and me. I cried, but it was over quick. That was a surprise 'cause I found out
I didn't love him. He was a good man, and I miss him, but I didn't love him. I
had kept back some part of me when I was with him. After that I was at Howard
Plantation for months closing it, and I got easy with the idea I would never
love. And then I got unlucky to meet you, and more unlucky when you said no.

    Quashee
pushed the door of the shed wide, and the sudden sunny green of the outdoors
shocked his eyes.

    My
back, she said, is smooth.

    She
ran out the door, and he followed to see her go from the sun into the shadow of
the trees on the way back to the big house.

    She hadn't
been gone more than an hour when he heard her call: He's worse, Cassius, come
quick!

    He
dropped his tools and saw her running to him, slowing as he started in her
direction: He's worse. Come now.

    He
ran with her to the big house, and followed her in and up the stairs. She
stopped at the door to Hoke's bedroom and Cassius passed her and removed his
hat. Hoke's eyes were open, but he saw nothing. He spoke but in words that
Cassius did not recognize. Hoke raised a trembling hand and then down it
fluttered and he was quiet, but his open eyes looked wildly around, as if he
could not understand the things he was seeing, and those things frightened him
unimaginably.

    Cassius
stared at the man on the bed, knowing how different things would be when he
died. Then he realized that Ellen was speaking loudly in his ear.

    "Go,
Cassius, go now, fetch the doctor, do not simply stand there gaping," she
said.

    Cassius
returned in the carriage with the doctor following in his own buggy. Cassius
trailed the man up the stairs, but the doctor closed the door to shut him out.
Cassius went to sit near the front porch, and within the hour the doctor
emerged alone, snugging his hat on his head and going for his buggy; things
were not good. Cassius heard no crying within, so the old man wasn't dead.
Genevieve came to the yard and walked the long way around to the kitchen, as if
she could no longer remember what she had set out to do a moment before. He
watched the comings and goings inside the house, and through the window he saw
Ellen Howard descend the stairs and cross the large greeting room to Hoke's
study.

    He
stood and dusted off his trousers but did not bother to put his hat on his
head. He stepped up to the front porch. He caught a glance of the bantam rooster
and he made an abrupt move toward the little cock and said: Go on now. The
rooster ran in a circle then went around the corner out of sight. Cassius felt
sour in the pit of his stomach. He entered the big house without knocking,
crossing the large greeting room to Hoke's study. He stopped there, and saw
Pet's shock at his brazen entrance. He handed her his hat. She looked at it
with stunned disapproval, set it down on a sideboard, and scurried away. He
knocked on the study door.

    "Yes
yes, come in," said Ellen.

    Cassius
did so.

    Ellen
Howard commanded Hoke's desk in a way different than her husband. Hoke embraced
the wood; he touched it and gathered strength from its warmth and grain. Ellen
acted as if she could rise above it. Cassius sensed that her power was
precarious.

    "Cassius,"
said Ellen, and her tone of voice betrayed her lack of tolerance.

    Missus
Ellen, if time is short, then make the best of it.

    "You
continue to take many liberties."

    If
so, it's for family and Sweetsmoke, said Cassius.

    "I
forbid you to use that tone with me, Cassius."

    You
think Master Hoke won't live long.

    Ellen
glared at him, and for a moment he thought he had gambled too recklessly, but
then she looked away and he knew he had won.

    "The
doctor is not optimistic."

    Cassius
remembered the lessons he had learned from Emoline, and he conjured up a story
on the spot: You been having dreams.

    "How
did you know?"

    Dreams
about your family.

    Her
carriage went rigid.

    Good
news comes about the war and you believe you got to pay for it somehow.

    "Oh
God," said Ellen, and her arms crossed in front of her, hands to her
shoulders as if he had torn off her dress.

    Cassius
intended to prey on her fears. He only wished he could unsettle her more.

    I had
a look at your dreams, said Cassius quietly.

    She
kept her arms crossed and her head drew back in surprise.

    You're
not careful, Missus Ellen. Letting down your guard. You were protecting Master
Jacob, but now your energy goes to Sweetsmoke. The line to him is weaker.

    "Do
not speak to me in that way, Cassius," said Ellen, in a whisper close to a
hiss.

    I can
help you.

    "How
can you help me?"

    You best
remake the connection to your son in a hurry. You can't lose both.

    "Aah!"
she cried out, loudly, her deepest fear rended from her insides and laid out
fresh and wretched.

    Bring
him home, said Cassius.

    "How
can I? How? How is that possible?"

    Someone's
got to tell him his father's dying.

    Ellen's
mouth made a flat line.

    Someone's
got to bring him back.

    "Who
can go, who can do that?"

    I
can.

    
"You?
How would you do that?"

    First
find the army, then find your son. Bring him home, but then it falls to you,
you make him stay.

    Ellen's
eyes went wild much as Hoke's had done earlier, but in her madness she saw
possibilities. Cassius glanced at the portrait behind Hoke's desk, and in that
moment, he recognized what the painter had captured.

    You
got to have Jacob back, said Cassius simply.

    They
worked out the details. The carriage had to remain at the plantation. Cassius
would find whatever transportation availed itself. She wrote out a pass and an
accompanying letter explaining who he was, and that he was on his way to see
his master who was with the Army of Northern Virginia. Her letter was concise,
and he was impressed by it.

    She
said that at dawn, someone would take him in the carriage to the outskirts of
the town and then he would be on his own.

    He
took the letter and the pass and walked to the door of the study and opened it.
He saw Quashee on the other side, halfway down the stairs, supporting herself
with her hand on the banister, staring at him. From behind him, he heard Ellen
say, "You will do this, Cassius? You will bring him back? You won't just
go off, you will fulfill your duty to us?"

    He
looked back at her, and Ellen was standing in almost exactly the same pose as
Quashee, supporting herself with her hand on the bookshelf.

    Cassius
looked again to Quashee and said: I'll come back, if I am able. I will make you
that promise.

    He
went to his cabin in the quarters to collect his things. From the secret hiding
place he removed the stash of money he had earned from being loaned out as a
carpenter, leaving the soldier he had carved for his son. There was more money
than he had remembered. He thought back on the six months spent doing finish
work on the addition to Swan of Alicante's big house, and realized Hoke had not
taken his half. He folded the bills and slid them into the small panel he had
sewn into the inside of his trousers leg, up near the left knee. He put one
stitch in the top of the panel so that the money could not accidentally fall
out.

    His
decision hardened in his mind. He would accept nothing less than the death of
Solomon Whitacre. His death for hers. It no longer mattered what happened to
him afterward. He was absolute in his final promise to himself, that he would
kill Emoline's murderer. No matter the cost.