Andersonville (115 page)

 LVIII 

J
onas found Ira Claffey in the implement shed and said gently, Mastah, please hear me.

With sinking heart Ira looked into the grave brown face, and noted how afternoon sunlight pierced through the open door and found silver in grubby twists of wool on Jonas’s head; ah, there was more silver, more each month; Jonas was aging as Ira was aging, though Jonas was believed to be not more than forty. . . . Twice Ira had come upon the Yeomans’ mighty Scooper talking to Claffey people with furtiveness. The second time Scooper made off nonchalantly when Ira approached (as if he had merely stopped to pass the time of day). Scooper was bound to be the trouble-maker in this particular neighborhood, just as there must be trouble-makers, thousands, scattered elsewhere.

What is it, Jonas?

Mastah, we wants to walk off.

Who is we?

Me and Extra, Mastah.

Do Jem and Coffee wish to go as well?

Don’t know bout that. Spect maybe so, maybe not.

Ira had assembled the people in front of Leander’s door a few hours earlier, after Cato Dillard stopped by to confirm the news of Johnston’s surrender. Original impulse and lifetime habit dictated that Ira should cope with any unpleasant task promptly; he should slay or bury that which must be slain or buried; he must not keep a rabid dog on the premises, he must delve with shovel and quicklime when a monstrosity was found with birds above.

He said to the people, Our General Johnston has surrendered to the Yankees, which means that the war is practically over. A few bands of Confederates may hold out until the death; I pray that they will not; we are defeated by the North, by the Federal Government, do you understand? All three of the young masters are dead, as you people know—

Promptly they began to moan, and Old Leander, nearly blind, propped in a cushioned chair beside the door, announced that he had seen the young masters in the night; he spoke of raiment—

Hush, all of you! I am talking, you hear?

When the blacks had fallen silent, Ira continued: Your mistress also is dead. Miss Lucy may be here for a time, but I suspect that soon she’ll remove elsewhere; thus I shall be alone. I have little to tempt me to remain here, myself; still it is my home, always has been, and I know not where else to go. Now, as to you people: you have been slaves all of your lives, you were born slaves, I had expected that you would die in bondage. But the Nationals say—and they have won, they have whipped the Secessionists, they have whipped Georgia, whipped
us
—

His voice broke suddenly. All the black women had their faces buried in their aprons except Extra; she was staring fixedly at Ira, eyes bulging, nostrils distended, mouth open and dripping.

He continued, The National Government says that you are free. You belong to no one except yourselves, and to God above. I may no longer order you about except as one man orders another because he is the supervisor, the boss; thus he orders him. But no longer as master and slave.

Naomi burst out with a shrill, but you
is
our mastah—

I
was
your master; no longer; the Federal law says that you are free, and now the Federal law prevails, it rules here. But I can still be your employer, and as my employees you may still live here as you’ve always done—dwell in the same cabins, eat the same food, live as you have done before. But now I must pay you wages.

There was a general beaming as they began to appreciate this statement. You pay us real money, Mastah? Cash money? We get hard money?

If you work for me, and do your work well, you will receive real money. But if you do not do your work well, done as I wish it done, then I’ll get some other people to work for me, to live in the houses where you lived before. You will be turned out. I shall need to employ other people in your stead. . . .

Old Leander was nodding pontifically throughout and he said clearly as Ira paused: My children do work like you bid, Mastah. Yes sir, I
make
them do it. We all belong to you, like it say in Scriptures.

Ira said, I provided for you people, just as I provided for the many we had here before the war. You had no thought of the morrow; I thought of that for you. If you were sick, I doctored you myself; if I could do no good for you, and Miss Lucy could do you no good, then I fetched the doctor, and I paid him money to make you well. As with you, Jonas, when you broke your hip whilst lumbering; as with you, Coffee, when the cotton bale toppled on your foot long ago; as with Naomi and her tumor, and the doctor took it out and healed her. You were clothed and fed, fed better than most black people, even in parlous times. No one has ever gone hungry on my place. Is that not true?

True! It true! You good mastah, Mastah—

But now the law says that you must take charge of yourselves. If I am to pay you wages, then with your wages you must buy food and clothing; for I cannot afford to give you these things if I am to pay you money. If you ask me to give you meat and meal, shoes and stockings, then must I charge them against you. You are to sell me the work you do, and I am to pay you wages; if I give you fruit or corn or bacon or a shawl or a blanket, then I shall write it down in a book, each time, and I must show that book to officers who might come and wish to see it, to make sure that I am paying you wages as the law says. And— And I may not keep you on the place against your will! If one of you wishes to leave, he may go elsewhere. You are free men and women and children.

Old Leander declared feelingly that he didn’t want any old Yankee law. He said that all this was none of the Yankees’ business.

Ira’s heart had gone from him as he spoke. Enough, enough, I can say nothing more; I cannot make them understand this thing which has befallen; indeed, do I understand it myself? I fear not.

He managed to tell them that he would explain further, when and if they wished further explanation; in the meantime he must examine his accounts, find out exactly how much money he had, how much he might reasonably expect to make off the plantation, and thus what wages he could offer; and if he said eight dollars or ten dollars, if he spoke of ninety-six dollars a year, then he would try to explain to them exactly what ninety-six dollars might be and what it would buy.

Ira went to his desk and sat among ledgers until he was half blind, until his head rang each time he moved it. He unlocked his iron cash box and counted currency contained therein. He placed Confederate scrip in one pile, the few bits of gold coin in another, the silver in another; he had no greenbacks, the law had said that he might have none, and he had obeyed as few other individuals obeyed. He owned however a sheaf of bills, some issued by the Central Railroad and Banking Company, more by the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company, and these he had held since before the war began. Thank God that the best of the old Georgia banks had been connected with railroads. Ira knew that in 1861 his own State had a greater mileage of railroads than Alabama and Mississippi put together. He had heard that these bills were selling at the North for from seventy-five to ninety-five per cent of their par value. Thus he was not at the moment penniless; he might be penniless in another year if he did not manage cautiously. He shoved his small riches back into the cash box without counting all of the piles, locked the heavy box and put it in its cupboard, locked the cupboard. He went outside with a swimming head, trying to clear head and spirit in the ministration of sun and garden smells, for the day was fair.

Therefore he was in the implement shed, reassuring his hand with the feel of his favorite knife, and thinking vaguely of plum weevils, when Jonas approached.

So you and Extra are determined to go. To what place?

Mastah? murmured Jonas as in a dream, and his eyes were dreaming also, they were intense within narrowed lids.

I said, where are you going?

Savannah, Mastah.

But you’ve never been there. Why do you wish—?

Get all our back money, Mastah.

Back money? Damn it, said Ira fiercely (almost never had he allowed himself to curse before his blacks; even more rarely did he curse them directly), you damned idiot, what are you talking about?

Scooper say you owe us wage now, Mastah. All time you own us, you owe us wage every day. You own me how long, Mastah? He inquired as one making a most delicate plea.

So Scooper’s at the bottom of this!

Scooper he done gone already.

Gone where?

Savannah. Done left at sun-up, take his woman, take all the children.

What? Had he a mule, a rig?

No, Mastah. They a-walking. Old Miss Barney Yeoman, she say she not give him no cart, no nothing. She say she not owe him no wage. But Atlanta niggers, they come through lass fortnight, they walking on the railroad, and they say all our old mastahs owe us money for every day we work, and they get that money in Savannah.

Jonas, you’re my best hand. I don’t want to see you believing this silly thing. Tis an untruth from start to finish! No one owes you money, not one copper cent—not until now. From this time forth—

Scooper say them Atlanta niggers say white folks ain’t got no money give us now. But Linkum got money, and he send folks pay us all them dimes, them dollars!

Jonas, Lincoln is dead. He was murdered at the theatre! He—

Could Jonas appreciate a cruel fact so quickly (even now, after only a fortnight) turned into history? He could not appreciate it. Since he stood in the first sturdiness of young maturity Jonas had been owned by Ira, had been dutiful and obliging, had been able to cope with the complication of more demanding tasks better than most slaves. He had trusted Ira, appealed to him, begged before him, begged to have Extra as his wife, had had her awarded to him as a prize when Extra admitted her willingness. In an exceedingly humble way he had shared the rise and fall of Claffey fortunes as a dog might share: a fine beef bone with meat attached, on occasion—scrawny table scraps when the fare was thin. He lamented honestly when the stroke of death fell, bragged about the prowess of young Claffeys when he saw them in uniform, wept afresh when the stroke came down again, wept sincerely again, remembered with pride how he had pulled the toddler Lucy out of a Sweetwater marsh when she went floundering there, loved to read the time from a plated watch which Ira gave him as tribute for this feat, loved to impress his fellows by reading the time even incorrectly. Jonas had tended Deuce when the puppy was near to dying of distemper, had volunteered with Extra to assume parental duties when little Dick was orphaned—he and Extra had volunteered kindly, they did not have to be ordered to take the charge. Ira had never considered selling Jonas and Extra and their children as he had sold so many when it became necessary. Extra was indigenous to the place, Jonas very nearly so.

Yet he would heed the word of the massive bully Scooper, the word of idle strangers; and solely because they were black words, so now to be considered as gospel.

If old Linkum dead, Scooper say they got other folks give us money—

Jonas, no longer are you a slave. As a master I may no longer forbid you to go. But do you believe I am your friend?

You always good to us, and Jonas began to cry.

Then as your friend I forbid you to go!

Scooper say— Jonas blubbered softly, unintelligibly.

Don’t mention Scooper to me again, you hear?

Mastah, we wants to walk off.

Ira cursed savagely. And, I presume, take your children with you? Take Bun and little Gracious—?

Mastah, they our—children. They ain’t belong you no more, like you say. They
our’n
.

What of Orphan Dick? He’s not your child, you shan’t have him.

No—Mastah. Pet and Coffee—they say they—look after Orphan Dick.

So it seemed that Coffee, whose intelligence was less than that of Jonas (at least that portion of intelligence essential to the performance of successful labors)— And Jem, the lightest-brained of the three— They were not going, they would not walk off with their wives. This course gave Jonas grief, but he stood here now as a man, not a chattel; and this very transformation was a grief in itself. It did not kill the soul but it hurt the soul, and the wound was in Jonas’s eyes as he cried.