Property (Vintage Contemporaries) (3 page)

I bade Sarah brush my hair while I waited for them to leave. It relaxes me and gives her something to do. She was looking gloomy, no more pleased than I was to be shut up in close quarters. A fly buzzed around, landing on the mirror and crawling over our reflection. “Kill it,” I said. She dropped my hair and took up a swatter. When she had smashed the thing, she wiped it away with a bit of rag. No sooner was this done than another came buzzing in at the window, skittering madly across the ceiling. “Finish my hair,” I said, “and then fill the trap.” She took up my hair, which was already damp with perspiration, and began braiding it. I looked at her reflection, her face intent on the task, a few drops of moisture on her forehead. She’s an excellent hairdresser. I watched her long fingers smoothing back the waves at my temple; she watched her hands too, looking for any gray hairs to pull out. My hair is thick, wavy, too brassy, in my opinion, though Father always called it his golden treasure.

When she was done, she pinned the braid up and my neck was cool for the first time all day. We could hear the chairs scraping downstairs, the heavy footsteps and laughter as the men went out on the porch, then the shouting as they mounted their horses and clattered off on their mission. Behind that racket a dense stillness announced the long night ahead of us.

“Do you know anything about these runaways?” I asked her. She was filling the base of the trap with sugar water.

“One of them is brother to Delphine,” she said. She looked up over the glass to see how this information affected me.

Were they coming this way in the hope of help from Delphine? I thought. What if she was foolish enough to let them into the house? But she wouldn’t do that; she would be too afraid of the dogs. That was why my husband had closed them up with her and sent Sarah to hide with me. “Did he tell you to stay with me?” I asked. “Or was it your idea?”

For answer all I got was one of her smirks.

I WAS DREAMING. There was a fox. As I approached the animal it opened its mouth as if panting and a high-pitched scream came out. I woke up inside that scream, which was in my room, a shriek so loud and harsh I thought a woman was being murdered outside my window. I remembered Delphine in the kitchen, the runaway negroes. I sat up, breathless, ready to leap from the bed, but before I did, the scream moved rapidly, past the house, swooping away in the direction of the cabins.

“An owl,” I said.

I heard a rustling sound in the corner of the room, which gave me another shock until I recalled that I was not alone. The moonlight made a bright swath across the floor, ending at Sarah’s pallet. I made out the white contour of her shift and the light of her eyes watching me steadily. We looked at each other without speaking while my heart slowed to a normal pace. Her baby made a muffled cry and she turned to take it up in her arms.

“Has he come back?” I asked.

“ ’Bout an hour ago,” she said. “You was asleep.”

I fell back on my pillow. There was a thin breeze pressing the net lightly toward me. I loosened the front of my shift to have advantage of it. When I turned on my side, I looked down to where Sarah lay, the child curled up at her side, her wide eyes watching me, and I thought, She has been watching me like that this entire night.

AT BREAKFAST HE was ravenous. I ate a piece of bread with Creole cheese and drank a cup of strong coffee while I watched him shovel in ham, hominy, potatoes, eggs, and griddle cakes. Everything was hot enough for him. When he had finished, he wiped his face with his napkin and called for more coffee. Then he launched into the story of his evening adventure.

The fugitives never came anywhere near our house. As the patrol had reasoned, they made for the bottomland in the hopes of sneaking onto a boat and getting to New Orleans. The patrol was nine armed men on horseback and a pack of hounds. They picked up the trail after an hour or so, and in the next spotted one of the negroes climbing a tree. They left a few dogs to keep him up there, then went after the other two. These were eventually discovered hip-deep in mud at the river’s edge.

They let the dogs at one, which must have been quite a spectacle, as the dogs got stuck in the mud too and had to be hauled out with ropes. The second fugitive took advantage of the confusion to get to the water, where he floundered about because he wasn’t a good swimmer. Two members of the patrol went down and shot him. The one in the mud was finally pulled out like the dogs and gave up pretty readily, so they tied his hands behind his back, threw the rope over a tree limb, and went back for the one the dogs were guarding. He had tried coming down from his perch only to get one foot nearly chewed off, and was so scared they had no trouble talking him down. They put him on a horse and went back for the one they’d left tied up. Before they saw him, they heard him screaming for help. Lo and behold an alligator had discovered him and he was running around in a circle trying to keep from being eaten for dinner. The alligator got so agitated it attacked the horses, so they shot it too. And that was what Joel Borden got delivered to his door in the middle of the night, one dead negro, one with his foot nearly torn off, one just scared to death, and a dead alligator.

As he told this story, he laughed at his own wit; it had been an exciting night. Sarah stood at the sideboard listening closely, her eyes on the butter dish. I put a bland smile on my lips and kept it there, sipping my coffee during the irritating intervals of his phlegmy laughter. When he was finished he looked from Sarah to me, including us in his genial pleasure.

“I thought Joel’s negroes were armed,” I said.

“No,” he replied. “They weren’t.”

Sarah gave me a darting look. “Wasn’t one of them Delphine’s brother?” I asked.

His good humor evaporated. He looked from Sarah to me and back again. “All you women do is talk,” he said.

As this was his first truly humorous remark of the morning, I indulged in an unladylike snort of laughter myself.

“Eben Borden,” he said to Sarah. “Yes, he was one of them. He’s the one nearly lost his foot to the dogs, and when Borden’s overseer is through with him, his foot will be the least of his troubles.” He laid his hand across his chest, wincing from a sudden pain. “So you and Delphine can quit poisoning me,” he said. “I saved her damn brother’s life.”

Sarah’s face was a mask. She glanced at his cup, then took up the pot to refill it.

“You women should think about what would become of you if I wasn’t here,” he said, gazing suspiciously into his half-full cup.

DOES SARAH THINK about what would become of her if he were gone? How could she not? What would become of me must be her next question, as she belongs to me. She can’t doubt that I would sell her; I would sell them all. I imagine it sometimes, selling them all and the house and the land, settling his debts, which are considerable. He has loans from his brother and three banks, and he has used the house as collateral for repairs on the mill. He has what my father called “planter’s disease”; he keeps buying land when he hasn’t the means to cultivate it. If the price of sugar falls again this year, it will hurt him, but he won’t have the sense to stop planting to meet the shortfall. He doesn’t know I can read an account book, but I can, and I’ve been looking into his for some time now. He might pull through this year if the weather is good and the price stable, but this combination is unlikely, as good weather means a better crop for everyone, which will drive the price down. I never speak to him about such things.

Though his ruin entails my own, I long for it.

Often I’m grateful that my father didn’t live to see me in this place. If he knew what humiliation I suffer every day, he would be at the door with his carriage to take me home. Our home is lost, but if it were still there, still ours, though it was not half so grand as this one, with what joy would I return to its simple comforts!

Do the dead see us? Is Father weeping for me in the graveyard?

If my husband died, I think. If my husband died. But he won’t. Not before it’s too late for me.

THIS AFTERNOON’S GAME was a more straightforward one, not very original at all. Two strong boys were required to fight until one couldn’t get up. The loser then received a whipping. It was an eerie scene to watch through the glass because there was no sound. Doubtless the boys were grunting and groaning, and he was urging them on, but it all looked as serene and orchestrated as a dance. I watched for several minutes. One of the boys was clearly the better fighter, though the smaller of the two. “Come look through this glass,” I said to Sarah, “and tell me who that smaller boy is.”

Sarah backed away as if I’d asked her to pick up a roach. “No, missus,” she said.

“And why not?” I asked.

“I don’ like that glass.”

“Have you never looked through it?”

She looked down, shaking her head slowly.

This surprised me. The glass is on the landing, pointing out of the only window in the house that faces the quarter. He had it specially mounted for this purpose, to watch the negroes at their daily business, to see if they are congregating. Sarah must pass it ten times a day.

“I’d look if I were you,” I said. “You might see something you need to know.”

For answer she took another step back.

“Or do you already know everything you need to know?” I said, turning back to the glass.

I was right. The taller boy lay facedown in the dirt, his legs drawn up under him, trying to lift himself up like a baby learning to walk. The victor stood before him, unsmiling, sweating. In the shadow of the tree I saw him, bending over to put down his Bible and take up his stick. As he turned toward the fighters, he said something to the victor, who looked up boldly at the house, directly at me, or so it seemed. I backed away from the window, stunned, momentarily as guilty as a child caught stealing candy. Sarah had passed into my room, where her baby was whining. Why should I feel guilty? I thought.