Liberating Atlantis (6 page)

On a harsher plantation, the midday meal might have been smaller, or there might have been none. The break might have been shorter. Henry Barford wasn’t cruel for the sake of being cruel, and neither was his overseer. They were cruel simply because you couldn’t be anything else, not if you intended to own slaves and to get work out of them.

A handful of free Negroes and copperskins had slaves of their own. From everything Frederick had ever heard, they made sterner masters than most whites. They had to—their animate property was less inclined to take orders from people of their color. They had to use colored overseers, too. That lowered the respect their slaves had for the overseers. But what other choice did such owners have? No white overseer would lower himself to working for someone he thought he should be bossing around. And so . . .

“Come on, people!” Matthew shouted. “You done wasted enough time! Get to work, and put your backs into it for a change!”

Whatever Frederick’s thought had been, it flickered and blew out like a candle flame in the wind. His joints creaked as he started hoeing again. He wasn’t used to this kind of work—no indeed. He didn’t know whether he dreaded getting used to it or not getting used to it more.

Was this all he had to look forward to for the rest of his days? A hoe and a row? A shovel? A big sack at harvest time? If it was, wouldn’t he be better off dead?

III

When the horn’s bray woke Frederick for his second day as a field hand, he didn’t feel a day over ninety-seven. Every part of him ached or stung. Quite a few parts ached
and
stung. As he had the afternoon before, he got about a third of the way toward wishing he were dead.

He’d fallen asleep right after supper. He’d come
that
close to falling asleep in the middle of supper, with his mouth hanging open to show off the cornmeal mush or the chunk of fat sowbelly he’d been chewing when his mainspring ran down. Somehow, he’d kept his eyes open till he and Helen got back to the cabin. But he didn’t remember a thing after the two of them lay down.

Beside him, Helen groaned as she sat up. She rubbed her eyes. She had to be as weary as he was. The first words out of her mouth, though, were, “How’s your back?”

“Sore,” he answered. “Better than it was. Not as good as it’s gonna be—or I sure hope not, anyways.” He made himself remember he wasn’t the only one with troubles. “How
you
doin’, sweetheart?”

“Well, I thought I worked hard back in the big house.” She shook her head at her own foolishness. “Only goes to show what I knew, don’t it?”

She didn’t call him twelve different kinds of stupid, clumsy jackass for costing both of them the soft places they’d enjoyed. Why she didn’t, Frederick had no idea. If it wasn’t because of something very much like love, he couldn’t imagine what it would be.

The horn blared out again. This time, Matthew’s warning shout followed: “Last one out’s gonna catch it!”

Frederick had taken off only his hat and his shoes. Putting the straw hat back on was a matter of a moment. Shoes were a different story. His fingers were stiff and crooked, his hands sore. He had a devil of a time tying the laces.

Then he had to help Helen. Her palms looked even worse than his. “Should’ve put your ointment on ’em,” he scolded.

“I was savin’ it for you.”

“Well, don’t, confound it,” he told her. He also kissed her on the cheek, not least because he knew she wouldn’t listen to him. Yes, that was love, all right, even if the words the colored preacher’d said over them didn’t mean a thing in the rarefied air the Barfords breathed.

They weren’t the last ones out. The overseer unbent enough to nod to them as they took their places with the field hands.
With the
other
field hands
—Frederick corrected himself. “Ready for another go?” Matthew asked.

“I’m ready,” Frederick said shortly. He resolved to die before admitting to the white man that he was anything less.

“Well, all right.” Matthew was taciturn, too. But he could have been much nastier. Maybe he was wondering if Frederick and Helen would go back to the big house before too long. If they did, they would be personages even an overseer had to reckon with. Was he hedging his bets now? Frederick could hope so. That might make life a little easier. And even a little seemed like a lot.

When a Negro couple didn’t come out, Matthew went into their cabin after them. The shouting and screeching and carrying on made everybody in the labor gang smile. “I slep’ through the blame horn!” the male slave in the cabin wailed.

“You’ll sleep in the swamp with a rock tied to your ankle if you don’t get moving, you stupid toad!” the overseer said. In less time than it took to tell, both the slave and his woman were out there. If some of her buttons were still undone, if he had to bend down to tie his shoes, Matthew wasn’t fussy about such things. They were there. Nothing else mattered.

Frederick wolfed down his breakfast. He wished he could have got twice as much. He wouldn’t starve on a field hand’s rations. But he would wish—he would always wish—he could get more.

Mosquitoes buzzed around him as he ate. They were worse in the close little cabin at night. So the raised, itchy places on his arms and ankles and the back of his neck insisted, though he didn’t remember getting bitten. They were worse, then, yes, but they never went away. He wondered if he could get some mesh or screening for the windows. Or would Matthew think something like that was too good for field hands? Slapping at a bug that landed on his wrist, Frederick thought,
I can find out
.

The overseer glanced at the ascending sun. With a theatrical shake of the head, he shouted at the slaves: “Eat up! You ain’t porkers! Master Henry ain’t fattening you up. You got work to do.”

A Negro pointed to the path that led from the big house to the road to New Marseille. “What’s goin’ on there?” he said.

“Don’t waste my time with your silly games, Lou,” Matthew snapped. “You—” He broke off. Lou wasn’t playing games, not this morning.

“Dog my cats if them ain’t soldiers,” another Negro said.

“Cavalry,” a copperskin named Lorenzo—a power among the field hands, as Frederick had already seen—added with precision.

It wasn’t just that the men were on horseback. Infantry could mount horses when they needed to get from here to there in a hurry. But the soldiers’ gray uniforms had yellow piping and chevrons, not the blue foot soldiers would have used. The troopers es corted two supply wagons: smaller versions of the prairie frigates settlers in Terranova used to cross the broad plains there. The copperskins who lived on those plains didn’t care for that, but when a folk that had to buy or steal firearms and ammunition bumped up against one that could make such things, the end of the struggle was obvious even if it hadn’t arrived yet.

Matthew watched the wagons and their escort come up the path. Absently slapping at a mosquito, he said, “Never seen the like in all my born days. I wonder what the devil they want.”

Frederick had never seen the like, either, and he’d lived on the plantation much longer than the overseer. Were he still back at the big house, he would have come out onto the front porch and asked the soldiers what the devil they wanted—though he would have been more polite about it than that. As a field hand with stripes on his back, all he could do was stand there and watch.

Henry Barford came out himself. He was barefoot and wore homespun wool trousers not much better than his slaves’, though his linen shirt was white. He hadn’t combed his hair; as usual when he hadn’t, it went every which way. He looked like a drunken stumblebum. But the unconscious arrogance with which he bore himself declared him the planter here.

“What in tarnation are you doing on my land?” he shouted to the incoming cavalrymen.

Their leader wore two small silver stars on either side of his stand collar: a first lieutenant’s rank badges. He gave Barford a crisp salute. “Sorry to trouble you, sir, but we’re bound for New Marseille with a cargo of rifle muskets and ammunition.” He waved at the wagons behind him. “Much as I hate to say it, three of my men are down with what looks like the yellow jack.”

A low murmur ran through the slaves. The morning sun was already hot, but Frederick shivered all the same. He wouldn’t have wanted to take men with yellow fever into New Marseille. What would they do to an officer who let a plague like that get loose in a city? Frederick wouldn’t have wanted to find out, and evidently the lieutenant didn’t, either.

None of which appeased Henry Barford, not even a little bit. He jumped straight up in the air, as if a scorpion had stung him on the ankle. He let out a wordless howl of fury as if he’d been stung, too. Then he did find words: “You mangy son of a bitch! Take your stinking sick soldiers and get the hell off my property! How
dare
you bring the yellow jack here?”

“My apologies, sir, but I can’t do that,” the officer said stolidly. “The men need bed rest, and we happened to see your place here. Yellow fever doesn’t kill everyone who comes down with it—not even close. And I assure you that you will be generously compensated for your time and trouble.”

“How can you compensate me when I’m dead and buried—if anybody’d have the nerve to plant me?” Barford said. “Go on, get lost, or I’ll grab my shotgun and blow some sense into you!”

The lieutenant nodded to his healthy troopers. In the twinkling of an eye, they all aimed eight-shooters at Henry Barford’s head and midsection. “Meaning no disrespect, sir, but don’t talk silly talk,” the officer said. “We’re here, and we’re going to stay until my men recover.”

“Or until you put
them
six feet under,” Barford said. But he made no sudden moves and kept his hands in plain sight. Frederick hadn’t thought anyone could make a mistake worse than his in the dining room. If Master Henry made one now, though, he’d never make another. He glumly eyed the revolvers. “Don’t look like I can stop you.”

“No. It doesn’t,” the lieutenant agreed. His voice turned brisk. “Now . . . You won’t want me to quarter Jenkins and Merridale and Casey in the main residence, will you?”

“In the big house? I hope to spit, I won’t!” Maybe Barford said
spit
. “What you ought to do is put ’em in tents way the devil away from anybody.”

“No,” the lieutenant said in a hard, flat voice. “They’re good men. They deserve the best we can give them. I suppose your slave quarters will have to do.”

“If my niggers and mudfaces come down sick, I’ll take compensation out of your hide,” Barford said.

“I understand, sir,” the lieutenant said. Of course, if the slaves came down sick, he was liable to do the same thing himself. If he did, he’d be in no condition to compensate Henry Barford.

Barford was also liable to come down sick. The officer didn’t say anything more about that. Neither did the planter.

“Matthew!” Barford bawled.

“Yes, Mr. Barford?” the overseer said.

“Put up the sick soldiers in one of the cabins. Make sure they’ve got themselves a wench to take care of ’em. We’ll do the best job we can, but you know as well as I do they’re in God’s hands now.” Barford might be talking to his overseer, but he also aimed his words at the lieutenant.
If your men die, it won’t be my fault
, he meant.

“I’ll see to it.” Matthew turned to the cavalry officer. “Can your men tote ’em into the cabin? They’ve already been around ’em.”

“I’d thought it would be slave work, but. . . .” The lieutenant nodded grudgingly. “Yes, that does seem reasonable. Let it be as you say.” He barked orders at his men. They obeyed more readily—certainly more quickly—than slaves obeyed an overseer. And they were all white men, too! Oh, one of them was swarthy and had a Spanish-sounding name, but he remained on the good side of Atlantis’ great social divide.

The sick cavalrymen weren’t quite so yellow as the trim on their uniforms, but they weren’t far from it. The soldiers who carried them from the wagons to the slave cabins didn’t look happy about their work. Frederick wouldn’t have been, either. Nobody knew how the yellow jack spread. Come to that, nobody knew how any disease except the pox and the clap spread. Handling someone who already had the sickness seemed as likely a way as any, and more likely than most. The copperskinned woman Matthew chose to care for them wasn’t thrilled about the honor, either.

“
Somebody’s
got to do it,” the overseer said. “Why
not
you, Abigail?”

Abigail had no answer for that. In her place, Frederick didn’t suppose he would have himself. He would have looked everywhere he could to find one, though. He was sure of that.

Matthew faced the rest of the slaves. “Well, come on,” he said. “Get your tools and head on out to the fields. Or do you
want
to hang around here with the sick soldiers?”

They headed out. The pace left stiff, sore Frederick struggling to keep up. It also left the overseer goggling. Had he ever seen slaves move so fast? Had anybody, since the beginning of the world? If the other choice was sticking close to people down with the yellow jack, even weeding a cotton field under the blazing subtropical sun didn’t seem bad at all.

Dragging back as the sun went down, Frederick wearily shook his head. Going out to weed under the subtropical sun might not have seemed so bad. Doing it all day, even at the slowest pace the overseer would let people get away with, was something else again. If it wasn’t hell on earth, he didn’t know what would be.

The yellow jack, maybe?

One of the troopers died two days later. A copperskin and a Negro dug a grave for him in the plot back of the cabins where they buried their own. Frederick and Helen had lain two small bodies to rest there. The lieutenant—his name was Peter Torrance—borrowed a Bible from Henry Barford and read the Twenty-third Psalm over the man’s body. The Barfords and their slaves and the cavalrymen all stood around the grave together, listening to the somberly inspiring words and now and then brushing and slapping at buzzing bugs.