Black Angels (25 page)

“I leave in a few minutes. See that you have his room ready by our return, and try to instruct that Negress you're
paying
to treat Master Washington with the respect that he is due. He's nearing manhood, and sorely in need of a White man's discipline, I'll warrant. His mother was a lady and I expect the same example from you. He was seven when she died. He will remember. I will be gone for about two weeks. Once I rescue my son, I have business to take care of in North Carolina.”

He strode from the room, leaving her alone. Her emotions were restrained by an instinct for self-preservation. Troy was a cruel man whose need to control was as large as his appetites were. A question from her would be interpreted as a challenge to his authority. Better to add this to the long list of his other traits she had accepted since their marriage began.

There was no convenient place to put this affront to her expectations. Her entire reason for marrying Troy had been security and his ability to hold on to at least some of his fortune after the war. True, much of his money was gone, lost to the Yankee greed that in her mind was the whole reason for the war. He was still considered prosperous by any standard. But now there was a son in the picture, a White son, unlike the others. She could only guess at how many niggers he had fathered.

Matilda heard the squawking of a chicken being pursued by Lina with the ax, the capture, and then the thud of the ax against the chopping block. The maid, Lina, would have to be told. Matilda would not have her maid thinking she had found out about Troy's son on the same day Lina was informed.

Lina opened the back door and took the large black kettle off the hearth she used to boil water before plucking chicken feathers. “Scuse me,” she said quietly.

“Lina,” said Matilda, pretending that this was old news, “have I ever told you that Captain Washington has a son by his first wife?”

Lina, a former slave, concealed her surprise. “No, ma'am,” she said in an almost imperceptible whisper, and without turning around.

She knew her place, this Lina. Hear no evil, see no evil. But Matilda knew that White people never really knew what their servants were thinking. Their impudence was as hidden as her real attitude was toward her husband, and why not, thought Matilda; we all have to live the best way we can.

“He'll be here in two weeks. See that you have the upstairs guest room ready for the young master.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Lina murmured. She closed the door quietly behind her. The dead chicken's blood stuck to the doorknob, to her hands and skirt. She went to the pump with the large pot, filled it with water, and put it on a fire she had built out behind the kitchen.

Matilda rose and went to her room. There was no hurry with the peas. Troy would not be there for dinner at any rate.

CHAPTER 40

FOUND

Captain Troy Washington was seething with anger at those he had owned, “cared for” and even fathered. He was never reconciled to the outcome of the war. God had turned his back on the Confederacy, and Troy had turned his back on God. His rage was full and overflowing. And so by the time he reached Harper's Ferry, there was no way to contain it.

The approach to Iona's house was through the town, and then he had to travel on a rather sparsely populated road that led to the house, so he could be seen coming from a distance. All the children were in the house. Daylily was looking through the window to see if the rain had let up so they could go outside, when she saw a man approaching.

“Mama Iona,” she said, “there's a rider coming down the road. He a White man.”

Iona looked through the window. A White man stopping at their house could mean only two things: either someone she owed money to, or something she didn't want to think about—Caswell had been discovered.

He was close enough now that they could tell he was clearly coming to their house. She knew who he was. There was no mistaking his resemblance to Caswell. Her heart sank like a stone.

“Quick,” she said to the children. “Y'all go into the kitchen. Now!”

The children scrambled, aware there was danger, not sure why. Daylily had seen the man and knew it was a serious threat.

Caswell whispered in her ear, “Who is it?”

“I don't know,” she whispered back. “A White man.”

Although perfectly in order and clean to a fault, Iona's house was only a nigger house to him. A nigger house with a nigger criminal raising his son. He had put both the Klan and the army on to searching for the boy who just seemed to have vanished into the war. They had looked in North Carolina and Virginia in all of the major cities, and finally after six years they had found him in Harper's Ferry. Now Troy was here, and he was determined to have what was his.

Troy Washington ordered Iona to open the door, and she did so with a look of one whose life has suddenly turned into a calamity.

“You know why I'm here,” he barked at her. “Where is he? I know you have him. Your so-called neighbor down the road has heard you calling him in for supper. ‘Caswell,' you hollered, and they told my people in order to save their skins.”

Iona did not bother to deny the truth. The child who came for reading lessons that day and then came back often to play must have said something to his folks. She couldn't expect to keep a child away from his kin forever. Besides, she had the others to think about. The night riders were fearful and violent. They were confederates who were mad about losing the war. They hated colored people. She knew what they could do. If she resisted, there would be hell to pay. Her only hope to save the other children and herself was to cooperate.

“Caswell, come here, honey,” she said, her eyes red with the effort not to cry. Caswell, now a tall, lanky thirteen-year-old, appeared from a side room. Their similarity was very clear. There were the same gray eyes of Troy Washington looking at her from Caswell's face. There was no mistaking it. In spite of Caswell's well-tanned face and long hair, in spite of his rough farm clothes and calloused hands.

Caswell had taken one look at his father and known him instantly. Now he only looked at the floor in a numb disbelief. How had this happened? In one second his life had been torn apart, never to be put back together.

Daylily was standing in the shadows, her mouth open in horror. She shook with fear, wringing her hands and twisting her white apron so hard she almost ripped it. And she was afraid to look, afraid Washington would hit Iona or take her away. Nineteen-year-old Gracey was holding a screaming six-year-old Vina by the hand.

Well, let them wail, thought Troy Washington. “You wench,” he said roughly, grabbing Iona's arm. “By rights I ought to turn you out, or better yet give you to the White man's law. Do you know who I am, nigger? Do you know what they do to niggers who steal children?”

Troy grabbed Caswell's face by the chin and turned it to the right, looking for the scar on his son's ear. There was no way he could miss it.

Daylily let go of her apron and covered her mouth in horror. Caswell opened his mouth to protest, and Troy slapped Iona once on each cheek. Gracey let out a cry, but Iona was silent. The other children stood helplessly in a corner. Finally, Caswell couldn't stand it.

“If you
are
my father,” said Caswell, “you'll listen. She took care of me real good! She gave me a home. I wasn't scared no more, and I had somebody to be with. You don't know what we went through in the war. You don't know!”

“Shut up!” Troy yelled. “Shut up!”

Caswell plunged on, stammering. “But it wasn't her fault. I was the one who wanted to stay! I was. We couldn't find you!”

Troy spat on the clean floor. “Makes me sick to think about it!” He walked toward Caswell and grabbed him by the nape of the neck. Troy yanked Caswell toward the door, and then he fixed his eyes on his son. “If you so much as mention their names to me again, I'll come back here and burn them alive. Do you hear me? And you sluts,” he said, looking at Iona, Gracey and Daylily, “you tell anybody about this, anybody, you mention this boy's name to anyone alive, you're dead.”

As he dragged Caswell out of the house, the boy stopped protesting. Somehow, he knew it would go harder for Mama Iona if he made his father any angrier. He went quietly, a lamb to the slaughter. He would hold in the grief and the outrage, but he would have his life. One day, he would be in charge of his own life. He would stop hiding, and he would come back and make things better for his family, Daylily, Mama Iona, and all the rest of them. He would have his own life; he had paid dearly for it.

CHAPTER 41

TO BE A WHITE MAN

His stepmother didn't make his life unbearable, not all by herself. It was bad enough to have lost his “family,” but even more terrible was hearing his father's voice and the constant ridicule and hatred for people he had loved and who had loved him. On the other hand, his stepmother seemed to think he was something strange and alien, because he had been raised by a “darky woman.” She hated his habit of treating Lina like a friend, and kept telling his father he needed to “take that boy in hand” and teach him who he was.

“There is no reason to talk to darkies, unless you are giving orders,” she told him time and time again. She told Troy the boy was withdrawn and stubborn, and that he still talked like a nigger, making mistakes in his grammar. But his father, who could be hard enough on Caswell himself, would not tolerate any criticism of him from Matilda. The lessons of what it meant to be the White man who ruled by God's decree would be entirely under Troy's control.

Matilda and Troy often had guests. Entertaining was one of the few things they both enjoyed. After-dinner smokes meant arguments among the men only, about Reconstruction and politics, but mostly about hatred. Caswell had to hear comments like, “It's 1870; they been free for five years. Five years too long, I say.” His father's friends puffed on their cigars, and as the smoke permeated the carpets and their clothes, they continued to express their hatred.

“We shoulda burnt that nigger too like we did the other one,” one man said. “Down in Mississippi they don't just burn em, you know, and they make the family watch.”

Choking on the smoke, Caswell coughed roughly.

“What's ailing you, boy?” said his father, slapping him on the back. “Smoke's good. Make a man of you.” All the men laughed.

Troy said, “They are getting out of hand, I tell you, thinking they should dress and even live like White folks.”

Caswell nodded, pretending that he agreed, because he was afraid to defy his father, even while he was seeing Daylily's and Luke's faces in his mind.

On the other hand, Caswell wanted more than anything in the world to please his father and be one of those cigar-smoking Southern gentlemen. He wished he could make his father smile.

For a while when he was fourteen, he even wanted to become a member of the Ku Klux Klan and wear a disguise. But then, just as he thought he could do that and be a good son to his father, and fit in and be accepted, he would remember his sister Daylily and his brother Luke, and Betty Strong Foot, and Mama Iona, the only mothers he had known after his mother died.

When he was fifteen, and the war had been over for eight years, he tried to talk to his father about Luke and Daylily. Caswell had just come back from a ride. He put his horse, Strong Foot, in the stable, and went through the house to the library. He found Troy on the veranda. His father had his back to the library door, looking over his cropland.

“Daddy,” Caswell said, “I need to speak with you.”

Troy said, as if he had not heard his son, “I've got to get more profit out of these crops. We didn't make enough this year.”

Caswell continued. “Daddy, I want to tell you about my time away with Luke and the rest.” Caswell wanted to tell him about their long walk from North Carolina to Harper's Ferry, and about how they had become like brothers and sisters. “You don't understand,” he said quietly. “If you knew them, if you would just listen to me, you'd know they're people, just like you and me.”

Troy turned around so fast he almost lost his balance.

Caswell would never forget the look in his father's eyes. It was like looking into gray ice. Immediately, he knew he had made a terrible mistake by saying they were just like Luke and the others. Troy gripped his cane, and Caswell looked away from his father's face. His eyes focused on his father's large knuckles, almost white, he held the cane so tightly.

“Now you listen to me, boy, and you listen well.” He wasn't shouting, but there was something in his low-pitched voice that was much worse than shouting. “Niggers are not like us and they never will be. Niggers are animals. And like my horse and mule they were put on earth to be servants to the White man. Do not ever, ever let me hear you say that they are like you and me again. Or, and I promise you this on my father's grave, I will beat you with this cane until the blood runs.”

Troy walked into the house, and Caswell could hear the cane and the man's footsteps going through the parlor and up the stairs. He listened until the terrible sounds faded away, but he could still hear his father's voice in his head and see his enraged eyes. He had listened to his father, and he had listened well, and he would never forget what his father said, because that was when he realized he was still hiding, hiding who he really was from his father and his father's world, and hiding sometimes even from himself.

He thought about Betty saying he had the spirit of a wolf inside him. Betty had said, “The wolf is wise and leads others, especially his own family.” Caswell knew his skin was white, and he was not an Indian and he was not Black, but in his heart he was just a person. At that moment, he knew that the truth was that all people were sisters and brothers. He had to find out what to do with this feeling that was so strong in him. He wanted to know more about what was in the Bible.