Chapter Sixty
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Another week went by. In the fields the kernels of rice were plumping in the sun, and the water that nourished them grew warmer and warmer each day, more like a tepid bath than a cooling wash. Over in the brickyard the sun beat down so hot that it made the entire clearing feel as though it were on fire, and the mud blocks appeared to turn to bricks with the speed of bread dough in a fiercely heated oven. Few songs from the slaves now. They worked in nothing but their tattered trousers, their dark sweat-soaked bodies gleaming in the sun, rank kerchiefs tied around their heads to keep the sweat from pouring into their eyes and blinding them. I quickly removed my coat and now and then exercised my privileges of stepping into the shade and taking a rest against a tree or going to the horse and drinking from the animal-skin water bag that I had tied on to the saddle when I left the house in the morning. The water tasted rank, absent the coolness that had made it so appealing when one of the house slaves had drawn it for me from the well just after breakfast.
The slaves had their own way of cooling off, with a break in their labors coming every hour or so when they would wade out into the creek up to their shoulders, or some even ducking their heads under while others joked about alligators catching them for supper if they didn’t catch them first. Once at midday they had time to rest, on some pallets that were put there for just this purpose, pallets soaked with sweat and worn thin by the daily grind of bodies splayed out upon them. (There were not enough to go around, and most of the slaves sprawled during this respite on the ground, under the shade of the trees at the edge of the glade, which in this season was no shade at all.)
After a day such as this I found myself waiting for the right moment at dinner to ask for an interview.
“You wish to speak to me?” my uncle said. “We are speaking now.”
I tried not to look around at the other faces at the table, my aunt’s, Jonathan’s, Rebecca’s, and I avoided any recognition of white-haired, ramrod straight Black Jack who stood at his ready just behind my aunt’s place, or Precious Sally, at her customary stand near the rear door.
“Might we speak in private?”
Cousin Jonathan raised his lip and glared at me.
“Something about the rice, no doubt,” he said.
My uncle turned on him, in as sudden a way as a heavy man like himself could turn.
“Have some respect for your cousin.”
“Might we speak now, sir?”
“Let me eat my dessert and we’ll retire then to the veranda.”
I watched him devour two slices of Precious Sally’s best peach pie and swallow his coffee in one gulp, which gave me little time to rehearse the speech I planned to make to him.
“It is so hot this evening, is it not it?” my aunt said.
“It is,” Rebecca said.
Jonathan continued to glare at me, ignoring his dessert.
“Come on, mass’ Jonathan,” Precious Sally said from the doorway where she kept her watch. “Ain’t you going to eat my pie? It’s delicious.”
“What about him?” Jonathan said.
In the place before me my own dessert lay untouched.
“I made it for you, mass’.”
I couldn’t help but be distracted as Jonathan, looking dutifully scolded, reached grudgingly for his fork and attacked the pie.
“Well, now,” said my uncle, his own plate now cleared. He got up and lumbered to the veranda, with me a few paces behind.
Outside, in the swell of the early evening heat, my fear cooled me. I watched carefully as he lowered himself into his large wicker chair that creaked as he sat like an old bridge with heavy wagons crossing it.
“Shall we have a little brandy then?” he said when he had settled.
“Thank you, sir, but not for me.”
“Don’t suppose it will do me any good, but then it can’t hurt either, can it?”
He called for Jack, who almost instantly appeared, and told him to bring us some brandy.
The light had faded, but the noise of the day still pushed against that border of sound that came with the night. I listened, waiting for Jack to return and depart again.
“Now then,” my uncle said, raising his glass.
“Uncle,” I said, raising my own glass and quickly swallowing, “I will not dance around the subject.” I cleared my throat and spoke again, as forthrightly as I could muster. “I wish to buy Liza.”
He paused a moment, silent except for his breathing that was so intense I could hear it despite the rising sounds of night, and looked at me as though I had caught him in the eye with a bright lantern light.
“Well, then, so you shall agree to my proposal? Have you written to your father? I don’t pretend that I kept track of everything that happens on this plantation, but I would know if you had sent out a letter.”
“I have not yet written to him, Uncle,” I said.
He wagged his head from side to side.
“But it is good news that you have made up your mind. And as far as owning anyone, you will own all of that girl’s fifty or so uncles and aunts and cousins and brothers and sisters, and so forth. Though it is difficult, if you ever were so inclined as to figure just who is related to whom. I know there are Gentiles who keep good records about these matters, and I know that we Israelites are famous for keeping our genealogies, but that has never been of much concern to me.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief with which he dabbed at his forehead, giving the impression that he was an overweight dandy rather than a businessman.
He was putting me off, playing with me, but I would no longer be toyed with in this manner.
“Uncle,” I said as forthrightly as I could, “I don’t want them all. I just want her.”
Now he appeared puzzled, using his great bulk to somehow sink down inside himself and keep from the question I had proposed.
“Well, hum, there are so many difficulties…” He suffered a jagged cough, and appeared almost bewildered by that occurrence, and stuffed his cloth into his pocket and quickly poured himself another brandy.
“Difficulties…?”
“None that…I don’t wish…Nephew?” He raised his beefy arm and drank.
“Yes, Uncle?”
“We will own all of these slaves in common, you see? But I cannot sell you that girl. In fact, if you had decided to recommend to my brother that you believe this enterprise of ours to be a bad proposition, your aunt and I would sell all the slaves, except for a few, like Liza and Precious Sally and Black Jack. They would come to town with us and work for us in whatever house we might acquire there.”
“So, Uncle, you are saying no to my proposal?”
“Is it a proposal? Either it is or it isn’t.” His hands were trembling, which gave me the impression that he felt nearly overwhelmed by this difficulty. “Do you wish to become partners with me and your cousin in the plantation?”
“That question I am still pondering, Uncle.”
His eyes wandered off to the front lawn, where fireflies played across the hedges.
“That is, as I say, a simple question. But you have complicated it enormously by your query about Liza.”
“You are fond of her, Uncle?”
“As I say, were we to sell all else and move to town, she would be one of the few we would keep.”
Isaac came to mind, the picture of him soaked with sweat, bending above the rice stalks.
“You would sell Isaac?”
“Isaac? Oh, no, no, no, he had slipped from my mind.” An agitated look spread across his face. “No, we would keep him also.”
I shook my head in dismay.
“But you would not sell Liza?”
Now his voice tightened, his drawl nearly disappearing from his speech, like the old cultivation water from the rice fields upon the opening of the drain ditches.
“Nephew, how do I say this? She is like family to us.”
“I am part of the family. So she would not be leaving the family if I bought her.”
He took several deep breaths, and I watched him, and waited, listening to the now overbearing sounds of night.
“Dear nephew,” he said, “Because you are so insistent I will consult with your cousin about this question. Though I doubt he will hold a view different from my own. He…is quite attached to that girl.”
“Is that so?”
My uncle ignored my impudence and focused again on the matter that mattered most to him.
“Allow me to say this again. If you persuade your father, my brother, to invest in the plantation, you will in effect become the girl’s owner.”
He cleared his throat.
“I wish to resolve our business. Young man, the future of our family depends on this, and I trust you will make the right decision. And when I say family, I hope you understand that it includes all of the slaves who work on this plantation.”
“Uncle, I am still pondering all this. I hope that by the time of the rice harvest, everything will be clear to me.”
“Which will be soon. We have had good hot days, and Isaac tells me the kernels are plumping up beautifully.”
“Yes,” I said, “it will be soon.”
“Meanwhile, I will speak to my son about your proposal. Who knows that he may be more forgiving than I suspect.”
He looked down into his glass, and after this gesture of refusal to meet my eye I looked out into the night.