Angels Make Their Hope Here (8 page)

Jan looked up from his feet and got warm. He kept up stepping and whirling in his own jigs and shaking his left ankle as if trying to toss something off his foot.

“That oaf of yours and Hattie’s is pretty, too. He’s like a stallion growing up in a grass meadow. But is he tough?” Duncan slung out.

“Aye, he is that,” Wilhelm replied.

“Oh, he’s a proven dog, your son is,” Duncan continued. He realized he would tattle. It was, of course, a cruelty to Pet, but he wanted to stick it to Wilhelm. “He’s sneakin’ off down to New Barbados pretty regular. He’s got a girl—a white farm girl. I heard she’s working on a stomach, and Pet’s the cause of it,” Duncan said to stun Ernst Wilhelm. He stunned Pet, too, who didn’t know that Duncan had found out.

Pet turned to his father red and stammering, “Papa, I…”

“Alle und alles auf einmal gewachsen, mein Sohn,”
Ernst Wilhelm said and thumped his son in the center of his back.

“Papa…,” Pet repeated.

Jan piped up, “He ain’t sneakin’, Uncle. He can see a girl, can’t he? Pet ain’t no baby.”

“Maybe when ’em lowlanders fin’ out Pet is only half a white man, they’ll come an’ crack his balls,” Duncan answered. “We’d better be careful with your boy, Wilhelm. What you gonna do when her papa comes looking for him?” Duncan fed hot words to his brother-in-law’s anxiety.

“Petrus can marry her. I’ll build him a place and he can bring her here.”

“No, Papa!” Pet exploded. “I ain’t gettin’ married!” He and Jan guffawed.

“You will get married, boy, if I say so. You ain’ got to do
nothin’ but just behave a little bit. You bring her here and settle down.”

“Papa, I ain’t gonna do it,” Pet said.

“Now, Pet, I think you ought to do like your papa says,” Duncan said.

“No, Uncle, I can’t get married! I don’t want to.”

“You tell him, Wilhelm. Being married don’t mean he have to stop being free with the women. Your papa intends to build this white girl a house, and you and her will build him an empire.”

“No, Papa! No, Uncle, I don’t want Emma as a wife!”

“Emma, is it? Is a nice name, eh, Wilhelm?”

“You ain’t got to get married, Pet—just ’cause you’re down there plowing her rows,” Jan put in and exploded with more laughing. He punched at his cousin’s ribs until he caused Pet to laugh as well.

“But, boy, you got to do what your papa says,” Duncan insisted, driving the idea.

“Papa,” Pet pleaded.

Duncan chuckled to himself that, of course, Pet was too young to marry. This was a battle between him and Wilhelm. Wilhelm was still a Europe. He was still thinking he ought to be king because he’s a white man. He’s never wanted the Smoots to claim Pet.

“Your papa is a slave buyer, Pet. Did you know it?” Duncan said suddenly. “I s’pose you got to do what he tell you. Him a white man, he got the final say.”

“Aw, everybody’s free in the highlands,” Ernst Wilhelm said.

“Ask Dossie about free. Some lowlanders would say she was free, but some won’t—they’d treat her worse than a dog,” Duncan answered.

“Then you brung her here to make her free. Is that so?”

“I have done it. She’s as bright as a swallow and as free as a lark.” The boys noticed Duncan’s heat, his passion, and perked up their ears and tensed.

Ernst Wilhelm snorted disdainfully but said nothing more.

Each man held the other’s glance, and the boys looked away. “Your papa is a slave buyer, boy.” Duncan was gambling for Pet’s soul, his inside stuffing. It was perverse, because he knew it would cause the boy some discomfort. But if he left Russell’s Knob to take up in another town, he’d live as a white man. He had to know it all. And Wilhelm would not tell him the truth unless he was forced.

“Your ma left these hills as the virgin wife of a pretty man that held himself high and mighty—not your papa,” Duncan continued, looking straight into his nephew’s eyes. He couldn’t remember ever having looked at Pet—Petrus—this way. Wilhelm was right that he ought not to be called Pet always. Ah, it was his name, though. It was adhered to him. It was Cissy’s gift, and if they stopped calling it, they’d lose more of Cissy. How often this boy bowed his head in his uncle’s presence. Now looking full into his face, Duncan saw that, though he greatly favored his father, he had the Smoots about him, too. He is Hattie’s boy child, and so he belongs to Duncan.

“A sly boy convinced my papa that he loved Hattie and would take good care of her. Papa was drunk and fooled, and the boy took her down to Perth Amboy and sold her as a slave to your papa there. Is’t not true, Ernst? Did you not buy your wife in a slave market?”

Only Duncan breathed. Ernst Wilhelm lost his breath. He could not answer. His chest commenced heaving, and puffs of air came back into his body, then left again in gasps. He kept
himself from shouting and lunging at Duncan only because his anger and panic had made him nearly blind. Duncan Smoot, goddamn it, was a shameless provocateur! Wilhelm wanted to kill Duncan then, but he knew that decision would leave Pet without a father.

Duncan continued to provoke. “Isn’t it so, Ernst? Tell the boy about the bill of sale that your wife won’t let you tear up and throw away.”

“I married my Hattie. Your mother is my wife, Petrus,” he sputtered to his son. “I’ve got a marriage license,” Wilhelm shouted at Duncan.

“That rounder that first took her off from here had some kind of paper, too,” Duncan countered.

Ernst Wilhelm struggled to keep his voice down in volume and so began to growl. “That bastard had his new wife upon an auction stage within a day of his wedding,” he answered. “She had on a blue dress and a pained look when I first saw her.”

Wilhelm quaked to consider what he risked in telling all of Hat’s and his story to their son. The boy’s love could be lost, and Hattie might like him less, a privation he didn’t think he could bear. But he kept forward, since he had begun. “Ah, he is right. You’re fucking women and maybe making babies, so you ought to have the whole truth.” The son stared at his father’s face. Absolutely silent, absolutely still, Petrus Wilhelm became keener as his father recounted a story he knew nothing about.

“What parts of the story that came before I saw her, I have from her lips. I don’t know what her husband told her, but she did not know what was going to happen. She believed they were stopping at a tavern. When the men in the room started
to discuss her, she came to realize what place she was in. It was a pitiful shame—her so trusting and innocent and him wanting to book passage on a riverboat. He wanted to get aboard a boat with a stake and be off on his adventure. He touted her.

“I paid some above what I had allotted.” Wilhelm lowered his voice further. “Was a market at Perth Amboy at the time. I venture it still is there. They’re not legal, but they’re known and they’re open. I came to purchase a woman to nurse my first wife and fix up the food. My first wife was sick unto death and I knew it. We lived way out and I needed a helper. I decided to buy an African slave woman. I couldn’t hire a white woman to travel such a distance for nursing work. I had cash from selling my beer at Perth Amboy. They had illegal slave auctions in all the port towns. So I went in flush with money. I had as well one more barrel put by. A man told me about a place that featured young and pretty girls, and I could not resist. I bid high and quick and shut off any other bidders because I wanted to stop them looking at her. It was mostly because I wanted her for myself,” Wilhelm said and clamped his hand over his son’s arm. “I was a lusty, young man.

“ ‘Sight unseen. Sight unseen,’ I shouted out loud. I stepped forward to stop the auctioneer from tearing her bodice.

“It was her face specially. She was so stunned at the way her husband had treated her. Ah, the gal was still a virgin was how he touted her.” Both father and son colored up, and Wilhelm’s watery eyes went back to Duncan. He wondered what the People had intended when they sent Hat off with the pretty boy.

“I was sore at her people,” Wilhelm continued. “They should have looked at this dandy more close. I brought her back up
here as much to show them fools what they’d let to happen as anything. And then the lowlanders wouldn’t let us stay. For I took Hattie as my wife after Anna Beth succumbed to her conditions.”

Wilhelm knew that what he said next would not be understood quite right by Petrus, but Petrus must hear it. His son ought to understand. He is a man who could make a child now. He is grown. “I thought of Hattie when I first saw her like she was a pretty bitch—a soft, pretty puppy that was going to be harmed with rough handling. I mean to say I didn’t think of her so much as I wanted her to touch and look at and nuzzle on. Was the same as if I was to buy a mare or some other beast. That is how a dark woman like your mother was looked at whether she was a slave of yours or not. You didn’t have to court her or ask her leave. You just could take as you wanted. That was the attitude. Or you could buy what you wanted if you had the money. I needed to have a nursing gal. I needed a gal to tend to my wife who was nearly dead in the bed. That is why I came there. I was in a place where men were buying young gals that had been snatched. All of them were young gals—some butter colored, some brown, some black, some white-colored. There was plenty of purchasers.”

Pet and Jan were stunned, mute. Wilhelm started crying out loud. It was not unheard of. They’d seen him cry before. Tonight, filled with liquor and remorse, he hung his head down between his legs. Pet wanted to reach out to him to keep him from falling over, but his arms felt frozen.

Wilhelm cried and said a string of things in his old language. Finally, Pet reached toward his father. “Papa,” he said.

“I had come to watch, too. It was a known entertainment. It
had many aspects.” After pausing for some minutes, he continued, “Birds were flying withershins over our heads when we came up the crest of the hill to my farm. I feared my wife was dead, but she was not. She was low—filled with carbuncles. I made Hattie look after Anna Beth and help me put things in order on my farm. It was not easy, but she went about it. Owning women is a different thing than owning a man. I owned a slave man once, but I was scared to keep him in hand. I let him run off. But you can make a woman too scared to misbehave or run off. I reckon, on looking back, that Hattie was very afraid of me. She’d have done anything not to be put on a coffle going south. Hattie helped me bury Anna Beth. We came here married, and you came to us, Pet. I give Hattie a soft life and I figure that’s as happy as I can make her. Sometimes she don’t like me all that much. I recognize it isn’t her fault. I’ve been harsh at times, and she had no choice but take me,” Wilhelm said and squeezed his son’s hand.

“You could sell Mama and me?” Pet asked and laughed. It was the silly, only question that came to him.

“Naw, boy. Don’t talk fool talk!” his father barked back.

“You could put a chain on her and me and take us down south, Papa? You could make money on us?” Pet chuckled again. “I reckon I better do what you say… or run off.”

“I saved your mama. That’s what I did!” Wilhelm shouted, then groaned.

“It don’t matter, does it, Uncle?” Pet asked.

“Naw, Pet. We wouldn’t never let ’em take you off.”

For some reason, what Duncan said had sounded more cruel than kind. Inexplicably, Pet wanted to go home and grab up his mama and kiss her face. He wanted to touch her. He
suddenly remembered a night when he was very small that he’d clung to her like a little possum. She took him up from his bed. He could not now remember why. He was frightened, his arms were wrapped around her neck, she ran around the house holding him against her chest, and her skin was hot and very moist. He’d have thought it was a game except that her thumping heart said she was scared. He felt Papa pry him out of her arms and toss him onto the floor. Mama crouched over him and kissed his ear to soothe him. Papa came at her again and grabbed her, and Pet heard his mother say, “Don’t.” But he never knew what she was asking Papa not to do.

“Ernst, is it true Petrus has a child down in the town?” Hat asked while working a dough. Ernst Wilhelm sat at the table with his account book and did not lift his eyes.

“Ernst, does my Pet have a child in town?” she repeated.

“Yonder is a girl that loves him.”

“Is there a child, Ernst?” Hat raised her voice and stamped her foot. Ernst Wilhelm looked up at her coolly.

“There is a girl who says it is Petrus who fathered the child she is carrying. He doesn’t deny it,” Wilhelm explained. “The girl wants him down there to stay, but your brother thinks otherwise. He wants to tie the boy up in his enterprises.”

“What kind of girl is she?”

“This girl is no slut, Hattie,” he said. “She is sweet on Petrus. This Emma reckons your son is white—white enough to live with her in her town.”

Only momentous events ever halted Hat in the middle of kneading a bread dough. She stopped her fingers and wiped her hands and stood back from the nascent bread.

“A white man—because some little white whore wants him to be!” Hat squealed with indignation.

“Ah, he’s one of your jumble boys because you want him to be!” Wilhelm sneered. Usually he did not bristle if Hat railed against his race. But it pissed him that she had wrinkled her nose and curled her lips in disgust.