Liberating Atlantis (8 page)

Were he still a house slave, he probably would have gone on having trouble seeing why. As a field hand—as a field hand with the marks of the overseer’s lash still no better than half healed on his back—he suddenly understood. They didn’t want the weapons to fall into slaves’ hands.

And he understood why, too. Slaves with fancy new rifle muskets could rise against the whites who put stripes on their backs, who lay down with their women whenever they pleased, and who could sell them like so many sacks of beans. No slave rising yet had succeeded. But the chance was always there.

“You awake?” he whispered to Helen when they lay down in the muggy little cabin that night.

“Not me,” she answered. “I done went to sleep an hour ago.”

Frederick laughed softly. “I been thinkin’,” he said.

“You should’ve gone to sleep an hour ago, too,” Helen said, and he couldn’t very well tell her she didn’t have a point. But she relented enough to ask, “What was you wastin’ your time thinkin’ about?”

His voice dropped lower still. “Them guns,” he said. If those two words reached Henry Barford’s ears, it wasn’t a lashing matter any more. Frederick would die, quickly if he was lucky but more likely with as much pain and cruelty as his master could mete out. Even talking about uprisings was a capital crime.

Helen’s sharp intake of breath said she understood as much. “You out of your mind?” she said. “You pick one of them up, you can’t never put it down no more.”

“I know,” Frederick said. “But do you reckon Victor Radcliff wanted his grandson to be a field nigger?”

“I reckon Victor Radcliff wanted his grandson to be a
live
nigger,” Helen said. “Lord Jesus, Frederick, first one of those other field hands you talk to, he’s liable to sell you down the river for whatever Master Henry give him. Thirty pieces of silver, I reckon—that’s the goin’ rate.”

“If we’re gonna rise up, we’ll never find a better time to do it,” Frederick said.

“Says who?” Helen retorted. “Way the yellow jack’s goin’ around, half your army may be dead week after next.”

“If it gets us like that, it’ll get the white folks we’re fighting the same way,” Frederick said, which was true—or he hoped it was, anyhow. He went on, “That’s not what I was talkin’ about, anyways.”

“Well, what
was
you talkin’ about, then?” Helen asked pointedly.

“You know that lieutenant, the one who’s down sick? He’s a Croydon man, from way up north. They don’t have slaves up there. He just about told me I had to free myself if I ever wanted to be free,” Frederick said.

“Fever must’ve scrambled his brains,” Helen said. “I wish to heaven you would’ve just dozed off like you should have.”

“Most folks from Croydon hate slavery,” Frederick went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I hear tell there’s even niggers and mudfaces who can vote in the state of Croydon. And Consul Newton, he’s from Croydon, too. Everybody knows he can’t stand the notion of one man buying and selling another one.”

If he’d hoped to impress his wife—and he had—he failed. “Well, la-de-da!” Helen said. “And Consul Stafford, he’s from Cosquer, down here on this side of the slave line. He’s a planter his own self. He’s got a bigger place than this here one, and he works more slaves’n Master Henry ever dreamt of owning. Gotta have both them fellas on the same side to do us any good.” Negroes and copperskins in bondage could no more vote than they could fly, which didn’t keep them from paying attention to Atlantean politics.

Frederick grinned, there in the dark. “Most of the time, sure,” he said. “The Senate passes a law that says all the slaves are free, Consul Stafford can veto it, and nobody can say boo. But suppose we rise up now. Consul Stafford says, ‘The United States of Atlantis got to send soldiers over there and put those slaves down.’ ”

“An’ the soldiers come, an’ they start killin’ niggers an’ mudfaces. It’s happened before,” Helen agreed.

“It has,” Frederick agreed. “But I bet it won’t happen this time, on account of all Consul Newton’s got to do is, he’s got to say, ‘I veto it,’ and nobody goes anywhere.”

“He do that?” Helen didn’t sound as if she believed it. And she knew why she didn’t: “Even white folks who don’t like slavery, that don’t mean they do like niggers an’ mudfaces. The whites down here start screamin’ loud enough . . .”

She had a point. Frederick would have been much happier if she didn’t, but she did. He paused a while in thought, listening to mosquitoes buzz and to more distant crickets trill and frogs squeak and croak. At last, he answered, “What we got to do is, we got to fight clean, like it’s a war, not an uprising. Can’t go killing women and children for the fun of it, the way they do in uprisings.”
Can’t go raping white women for the fun of it, either
, he thought. That happened in every slave revolt. What vengeance was more basic?

“Reckon it’d make any difference?” Helen still sounded dubious.

“Bound to make some,” Frederick said.

“Reckon slaves with guns in their hands’ll want to let them folks go?” She knew which questions to ask, all right.

“They will if their commanders make ’em,” Frederick answered. And then, just before sleep took him at last, he added, “If
I
make ’em.” He was ready. Whether anyone else was . . . he’d find out.

IV

Matthew blew the horn again the next morning. As Frederick came out to eat breakfast and go on to the fields, he looked at the overseer in a whole new way. He had to be careful not to let it show. Matthew took it for granted that he could hit or whip Frederick, or any other slave, without worrying about reprisal. If he realized Frederick didn’t take it for granted, he would do his best to kill him right away. And he could, if he got any kind of chance. He had his switch and a knife with a blade long enough to gut a man like a hog. Frederick didn’t think he was a coward, either. Life would have been simpler if he were, but no.

There was plenty to eat. Fewer and fewer field hands came out to work, but the cooks went on making as much as they always had. More than one slave patted his belly and grinned after he finished eating. Frederick was surprised Matthew hadn’t noticed what was going on and done something about it, but the overseer hadn’t. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have other things on his mind.

And so did Henry Barford. The planter looked like a man bathing in hellfire when he came out onto the front porch. Eyes wild, he pointed at one of the cavalrymen guarding the precious wagons. “Where’s that lieutenant of yours, the God-damned son of a bitch bastard?”

“Sir, Lieutenant Torrance is sick. He’s mighty sick,” the trooper answered. “He can’t see anybody right now. What’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter? What’s the God-damned
matter
?” Barford howled. “My wife is puking up this horrible black gunk—looks like coffee grounds—and you ask me what’s the matter? Your miserable, stinking lieutenant is what’s the matter, that’s what! Bringing the yellow jack to my plantation! I don’t want to see the lousy bugger. I want to horsewhip him!”

“Well, sir, if it makes you feel any better, he’s heaving up black stuff, too,” the soldier said. “I don’t think he’s going to pull through.”

“Too bad,” Barford said, which surprised Frederick till he added, “I wanted to kill him with my own hands. But I reckon the yellow jack’ll have to do. Though why a merciful God would take my sweet Clotilde, too . . .” He turned and lurched back into the big house.

Sweet? Frederick shook his head. Mistress Clotilde was about as sweet as vinegar. She was the one who’d wanted to give him more lashes than Master Henry. That was just like her, too. Did her husband really believe what he was saying, or was he trying to make the trooper feel worse?

From inside the house, Barford shouted, “I’ll sue the government for every last eagle it’s got! You wait and see if I don’t!”

The cavalryman only shrugged. He scratched his nose, as if to say it was no skin off that organ. Unless the planter came out shooting—or unless the soldier got yellow fever—it wasn’t his worry.

“Come on,” Matthew called to the field hands. “Grab your tools. The work doesn’t go away. The work never goes away. I know we’re shorthanded, but we’ve got to keep at it. Otherwise, the harvest’ll be bad, and then we’ll all go hungry.”

He wouldn’t. Master Henry would yell at him, but that was all. The field hands really might go hungry in a bad year. Or Barford might have to sell some of them, which would be almost as rough. Frederick snorted quietly. He had other things on his own mind besides what the master might do after a bad harvest.

“You ain’t said anything to anybody,” Helen said as they walked out to the cotton field with tools on their shoulders. Hopefully, she added, “You gone and changed your mind?”

“Nope. Not me,” Frederick answered. People said
stubborn as a Radcliff
. By that standard alone, he might have guessed he shared blood with one of the First Consuls. Even Henry Barford had sometimes seemed more proud than annoyed when calling him a hardheaded smoke. But Frederick also had other things than that on his mind. “Sometimes all the talking in the world doesn’t do a cent’s worth of good. Sometimes you got to show people instead.”

Helen clicked her tongue between her teeth. “Oh, Fred, what are you gonna do?”

Burn my bridges
, Frederick thought. But that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. All he said was, “What I’ve got to do.”

Helen shook her head, but she didn’t say anything more, either. Maybe she hoped he would change his mind once they settled down to work. Part of him hoped the same thing: the part that had lived a quiet, pretty easy life all the way up into middle age. Well, his life wasn’t quiet or easy any more. By all the signs, it never would be again. And if it wouldn’t, why
not
act the way Sam-son had in the Philistines’ temple? What did you have to lose?

He worked for a while, chopping and moving forward, chopping and moving forward. By now he had no trouble keeping up with the slaves working the rows of cotton to either side of him. He methodically weeded till Matthew came along to see how he was doing.

“Going all right, Frederick?” the overseer asked.

Frederick straightened and stretched, though he kept both hands on the hoe handle. “Not too bad, sir.”

“Back easing up?”

“A bit.” Frederick stretched again.

Matthew nodded, more to himself than to the Negro in front of him. “Told you it would. Whippings are like that.”

Yes, he thought of them as nothing more than a rather unpleasant part of plantation routine. And so they were—if you held the whip. If you were on the other end . . . Frederick’s hands tightened.

Some of what was going through his mind must have shown on his face at last. “You don’t want to look at me that way,” Matthew warned. “You
don’t
want to look at me that way, by God!” He started to raise the switch, then seemed to realize it wouldn’t be enough. He dropped it and grabbed for his knife instead.

Too late. Frederick swung the hoe in a deadly arc, an arc powered by a lifetime’s worth of smothered fury. Smothered no more. The heavy blade tore away half the overseer’s face. Blood gouted, astoundingly red in the bright sunshine. Matthew let out a gobbling shriek. The knife fell in the dirt as he clapped both hands to the ghastly wound.

He tried to stagger away from Frederick. Frederick hit him again, this time from behind. The heavy hoe blade bit into Matthew’s skull. The overseer crumpled. He thrashed on the ground. Frederick hit him one more time. The thrashing slowed, then stopped. The white man’s blood soaked into the thirsty soil.

The slaves working to either side of Frederick gaped at him in commingled astonishment, horror, and awe. “Lord Jesus!” one of them burst out. “What did you go and do that for?”

“We’re all in trouble now!” the other one added. He stared at Matthew’s huddled corpse. “Big trouble, I mean.”

“Not if we grab those guns in the wagons,” Frederick answered, more calmly than his drumming heart should have let him speak. “Not if we make all the white folks pay for what they’ve done to us.”

Matthew’s dying cries made more Negroes and copperskins hurry over to see what was going on. They all eyed the overseer’s bloody corpse with the same look of disbelief, as if they’d never dreamt they might see such a thing. And yet how many of them would have wanted to slaughter him themselves?

“They’re gonna kill you,” a copperskin said. A moment later, he mournfully added, “They’re gonna kill all of us.”

“They will if we let ’em,” Frederick said. “So let’s not let ’em. Let’s do some killing of our own—as much as it takes till we’re free the way we’re supposed to be. The United States of Atlantis are so damned proud of their precious Proclamation of Liberty. But they reckon it stops with white folks. Don’t you think mudfaces and niggers deserve their share, too?”

He waited, still clutching the gore-spattered hoe. Their other choice was to kill him now. If they did that, they might convince Henry Barford they hadn’t had anything to do with murdering Matthew. They might. Or the planter might decide they
had
had something to do with it, and were using Frederick’s death to cover their own guilt.

Or Barford might be down with the yellow jack himself by now. The way things were going, nobody could guess anything he couldn’t see.

“Do you
want
to stay slaves the rest of your days?” Frederick asked. “Wouldn’t you sooner be free?”

They looked at him. They looked at Matthew’s body. Flies with metallic bodies—blue, green, brass—were already buzzing above it. “Don’t seem like we got much else we can do,” a Negro said slowly. “They gonna kill us any which way. Might as well kill some of them before we’s dead.”

One by one, the other slaves nodded. It wasn’t the grand war cry Frederick had dreamt of, but when did reality ever measure up to dreams? He’d made them move. That much, anyhow, he’d foreseen.