Middle Passage (15 page)

On this day I speak of, Master Chandler was old and full of days. As pale as a parsnip. If I remember rightly, it was raining pitchforks. Isn't it always on a day of gloom? And the climb behind my brother to the top-floor chamber was the slowest I have ever made. Some part of me loved my brother. Yes. But we couldn't get along or see things the same way. If you are born on the bottom—in bondage—there are only two ways you can go: outright sedition or plodding reform. I chose the first, expressing my childhood hatred of colonization in boyish foul-ups and “accidents” (setting Peleg's barn on fire once, breaking things, petty theft, lies, swearing, keeping bad company, forgetting to bathe, fighting, all the things “problem children” normally do), but in the context of the Old South, for a colored boy in Makanda, they were really small acts of revolt—blows against the Empire—though I was too young at the time to know them by their proper name. These things Master Chandler dismissed as youthful folly, then, later, as irredeemable parts of the “Negro character.” But Jackson went the other way: a proper Negro, he was, a churchgoing boy who matched my every irresponsibility with a selfless deed as if he wanted to shame me, or subvert each bigot's lie about blacks by providing a countertext, saying to the slaveholding world, “Not even this can make me miss a step.” If that was what being a “gentleman of color” amounted to, then I decided I wanted none of it.

And let it be known that I hated that cramped
low-ceilinged room. Nor was I eager to look into Chandler's face as the light there flimmered, then failed. His chin hung like a turkey wattle. His mouth was fishlike, all collops and pleats, caved in, his dry lips sunk inward as if his gums had grown together. Seeing him, Jackson breathed a deep sigh. Half irritation, half fellow feeling. He went to his bedside, then poured water for him from a hobnail pitcher. Though my brother spent hours in this sickroom (Chandler had a bell on his night table, which he jangled to call Jackson, and to this very day the tang of every bell reminds me of the one in his bedroom), all I felt then was its oppressiveness. There were no windows. The air inside was yellow, the floor damp. It smelled violently of medicaments, lotions, and disinfectants. Outside the wind howled, shaking the latch and hinges on doors downstairs. Timbers in the room shook.

“Sir.” Jackson leaned toward Chandler's iron bed, then turned his head away from the smell. “Do you know me?” He sat on a painted fiddle-back chair, his dark hands folded. Weakly, the old man took a deep-chested breath. He seemed touchingly glad to see my brother, who said, “Rutherford is here too.”

Reverend Chandler frowned at that, thinking perhaps of how I'd disappointed him, that I was and would always be pretty light timber. The look he gave me was severe. I stayed a respectful distance from his bed, watching them from one side.

“Did you want to see us?”

“Bring me the Bible. And something to write with . . .” He coughed miserably. His breathing was noisy. Jackson came back from a trestle table in the corner, carrying the book and a goosefeather pen, which he handed to our master. Slowly Chandler began scrawling our names
along-side those of Maggie and Adeline on the riffled pages of the book.

“I should have done this years ago, seeing how you've kept things going here for me and the others when I couldn't . . .”

Jackson bowed his head formally, his eyes on his spit-shined shoe buckles. “As the oldest, it was my duty.”

(For Christ's sake, I thought, get
on
with the goddamn will! That very next morning I figured on starting off the day with a breakfast of egg bread; of sleeping until noon, hunting until dark, wearing a pair of skilts and a stylish cap, then dining on potted salmon from England and preserved meats from France.)

Master Chandler lay back. Jackson readjusted the old man's nightcap on a skull that looked thin as eggshell. I shivered, the chill of the room taking hold of me. After several moments, Chandler's breath rolled out again; “As of today, I release you both, if you wish to go.” I stepped closer, listening with every nerve as Jackson lifted our master's head a little to adjust his pillow. “But Jackson—good Jackson—dear Jackson,” he whispered, “let us come down to cases. You
are
the oldest, and I daresay I am in your debt. Whatever you want for you and Rutherford is yours. Tell me how you wish to be rewarded and I shall see that you have it.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, believing all our burdens had lifted. But my brother looked pained. Never before had anyone asked him what
he
wanted. He hesitated. A knot gathered in my throat; I wanted to speak, but Chandler cut the air with the side of his hand to silence me.

“You have
no
requests, then, Jackson?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Jackson. “I've thought about it, sir. There's so much my people need.”

“There's a lot I need,” I said.

Jackson sent a scowl my way, then closed his eyes to help his words along. “I know Rutherford has thought about this too. But it don't seem
right
to ask for myself. I
could
ask for land, but how can any man, even you, sir,
own
something like those trees outside? Or take that pitcher there. It's a fine thing, sure it is now, but it kinda favors the quilts the womenfolk make, you know, the ones where everybody in the quarters adds a stitch or knits a flower, so the finished thing is greater'n any of them. Well, I been thinking on this, sir, and I wonder: What
ain't
like that? Nothing can stand by itself. Took a million years, I figure, for the copper and tin in that pitcher to come together as pewter. Took the sun, the seasons, the metalworker, his family and forebears, and the whole of Creation, seems to me, sir, to make that one pitcher. How can I say I
own
something like that?” He scowled to stop me from interrupting. “I'm sure I speak for both of us, sir, when I say the property and profits of this farm should be divided equally among all your servants and hired hands, presently and formerly employed, for their labor helped create it—isn't that so?—the fixed capital spread among bondmen throughout the county—I can give you their names—and whatever remains donated to that college in Oberlin what helps Negroes on their way north.”

“There'll be less for you and Rutherford then,” said Chandler.

My brother nodded. “Our needs are small, sir, or should be.”

“Jackson!” My voice jumped. “You fool!”

“That'll be
enough,
Rutherford.” A deep crease split Master Chandler's wrinkle-grooved face. He patted Jackson's hand, then twisted out a dour, disapproving look at me. “You'd do well, you young reprobate, to end this light-minded life
you've been leading and improve yourself by listening to your brother's counsel. He is wise for his years. Wealth, you know, isn't what a man has, but what he
is,
Rutherford. Your brother, I daresay, has been an inspiration for me—”

“As you have been for me, sir,” said Jackson.

The floor beneath my feet seemed to fall away. Do what I would, I could not move. They sat there for the longest time, complimenting and smiling at each other. I could have strangled them both. I felt like smashing things. Instead, I shrank from the room, feeling sacked and empty, wondering if I would ever get on in this world. It took me five days to stop shaking. For the rest of my short stay on Chandler's farm before I struck south for New Orleans, I felt angry at anything that moved.

It was nearly daybreak. Josiah Squibb sat staring, his eyebrows raised. “Great day!” He sucked his teeth. “Give it
all
away, did he?”

“Would I be here serving hardtack if he hadn't?”

“What'd yer share come to, Illinois?”

“About forty dollars. Also, I got the family Bible and his bedpan.”

The cook snorted, one of those sounds impossible to decipher, then lay back on his table. Two or three breaths later he was asleep, somnambulized by my life's story (I never knew it was that dull) and playing dueling snores—so they sounded—with Baleka. I reached to touch her hair, then drew back my hand from the heat enveloping her like an aura. I could not let her die, a dark pawn, caught between Falcon and the ship's proletariat. I knew that now. I rose stiffly, stretched out the stiffness in my spine, and climbed back on deck where all slept except Ngonyama.

Leaning against the rough-tree rail, parts of him rubbed
out by morning mist (his left arm, his legs), he stared back toward Bangalang. There was something in this, and the way he canted his head, that reminded me so of how my brother sometimes stood alone on the road leading to Chandler's farm after our father left, looking. Just looking. Seeing me, Ngonyama turned and smiled.

“You couldn't sleep, Rutherford?”

I shook my head. “Can I ask you a question?”

He waited.

“If you were captain of this ship, what would you do?”

“Me?” he laughed. “If I were master?”

“I mean, if your tribe could take the helm.”

He took a moment to think, rubbing his chin, as if this were a Yankee riddle. “Brother, my people have a saying: Wish in one hand, piss in the other, and see which hand fills up first. But if this could be, we would set sail to Africa. All that has happened in the last few weeks would be as a dream, a tale to thrill—and terrify—our grandchildren.”

“And the crew?” I asked. “Would you harm them?”

“What is the point in that? Once home, we would return their boat to them. Anger, we say, is like the blade of a sword. Very difficult to hold for long without harming oneself.”

Behind me, I heard the morning hack of McGinnis. A few of the children on deck were starting to awaken. From the pocket of my breeches I withdrew a few loose crumbs of hardtack and the key I hoped might open their chains. Like a magnet, it had clung to my palm when I lifted Falcon's tray from his table the night before.

“Here,” I said. “This is for you.”

Twenty blacks were brought from below to dance them a bit to music from Tommy's flute and let them breathe. They climbed topside and stood crushed together, blinded by the sun, for that morning the weather was fair, yet hushed. Meadows and Ngonyama searched the fusty spaces between decks for Africans unable to come up on their own. There were always a few of these since Ebenezer Falcon rearranged their position after the storm. He was, as they say, a “tight-packer,” having learned ten years ago from a one-handed French slaver named Captain Ledoux that if you arranged the Africans in two parallel rows, their backs against the lining of the ship's belly, this left a free space at their rusty feet, and
that,
given the flexibility of bone and skin, could be squeezed with even more slaves if you made them squat at ninety-degree angles to one another. Flesh could conform to anything. So when they came half-dead from the depths, these eyeless contortionists emerging from a shadowy Platonic cave, they were stiff and sore and stank of their own vomit and feces. Right then I decided our captain was more than just evil. He was the Devil. Who else could twist the body so terribly? Who else could enslave gods and men alike? All, like livestock, bore the initials of the
Republic's
financiers burned into their right buttock by a twisted wire—
ZS, PZ, EG,
a cabal of Louisiana speculators whose names I would learn soon enough.

Meadows snapped his head away, his nose wrinkled, and he splashed buckets of salt water on them, then told Tommy to play. The cabin boy, taking his place on the capstan head, had not stopped smiling since seeing the Allmuseri god. Snapping together his three-piece flute and touching it to lips shaped in that strangely mad, distant smile unreadable as a mask, he let his chest fall, forcing wind into wood that transformed his exhalations into a rill of sound-colors all on board found chilling—less music, if you ask me, than the boy's air alchemized into emotion, or the song of hundred-year-old trees from which the narrow flute was torn.

One side of Falcon's face tightened. “Methinks that's too damned melancholy. Even niggers can't dance to that. A lighter tune, if you will, Tommy.” The cabin boy obeyed, striking up a tune of lighter tempo. Falcon, pleased, tapped his foot, stopping only to stare as Ngonyama and Meadows carried an African's corpse from below. As with previous cases like these, Falcon ordered his ears sliced off and preserved below in oil to prove to the ship's investors that he had in fact purchased in Bangalang as many slaves as promised. This amputation proved tough going for Meadows, for the last stages of rigor mortis froze the body hunched forward in a grotesque hunker, like Lot's wife. Hence, after shearing off his ears, they toted him to the rail as you might a chair or the ship's figurehead, then found him too heavy to heave over.

“Lend us a hand here, Mr. Calhoun.” Meadows wiped sweat off his upper lip.

I stayed where I was. Beside me, a moan burst from a
carpenter standing too close to the slaves. They danced in place like men in a work-gang, but one had slipped when the ship rolled, falling on his back and accidentally, it seemed, kicking the sailor in his stomach. And a good kick it was, knocking the wind out of him. The mate looked puzzled; he ran two fingers over his forehead.

“You should earn your keep, my boy.” Falcon nudged me toward them, then brought a handkerchief to his brow. “One hundred bars overboard. Gawd, I hate waste.”

Ngonyama was holding the boy—for so he proved to be when I stepped closer—under his arms. Meadows had him by legs cooled to the lower temperatures of the hold. Though he was semistiff, blood giving way to the pull of gravity, motionless in his veins, was settling into his lower limbs, purplish in color as he entered the first stages of stench and putrefaction. The young rot quickest, you know. The underside of his body had the squishy, fluid-squirting feel of soft, overripe fruit. If you squeezed his calves, a cheeselike crasis oozed through the cracks and cuts made in his legs by the chains. It was this side of him Meadows wanted me to grab, providing him and Ngonyama the leverage they needed to swing him past the rail. I cannot say how sickened I felt. The sight and smell of him was a wild thing turned loose in my mind. Never in my life had I handled the dead. It did not matter that I knew nothing of this boy. Except for Ngonyama, the males had generally been kept below, but I'd seen him among the others when Falcon made the Africans dance. Judging by what little was left of his face, hard as wood on one side and melting into worm-eaten pulp on the other as rigor mortis began to reverse, he was close to my own age, perhaps had been torn from a lass as lovely as, lately, I now saw Isadora to be, and from a brother as troublesome as my
own. His open eyes were unalive, mere kernels of muscle, though I still found myself poised vertiginously on their edge, falling through these dead holes deeper into the empty hulk he had become, as if his spirit had flown and mine was being sucked there in its place.