Queen (123 page)

    he was all right.

    "That nigger saved me," he said. His mother came rushing to Queen, and

    thanked her profusely, asked after George's welfare.

752 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    "I think his leg's broke," Queen said. The mother, more interested in her

    son's welfare than George's, drifted away, calling for help for the poor

    nigger. Other, kinder, black men volunteered their help and their advice.

    Someone had a cart, and carefully they laid George into it, to take him and

    his family home.

    At the shack, they carried George inside, while Queen organized the

    children. She sent Freeland to tell his father, and told Minnie and Julie

    to take Abner to Dora, at the mansion.

    But Freeland did not go. He was staring at the shack, and tears were

    rolling down his cheeks. Queen put her arm around him.

    " He gwine be all right, Queen?" Freeland stammered through his tears, for

    George was his hero. Like any good mother, Queen folded him into her

    embrace, and dried his tears, and told him to go fetch his pa. She would

    look after George, and he would be all right. She promised.

    George was lying on Alec's cot, sweating and moaning gently. One of the

    black men who had brought him in offered to go for his brother, who could

    set bones. Queen shook her head. She could do it. She sent the men to find

    pieces of wood and cloth, and sat with George.

    She stroked his forehead, and he smiled that it was bad, and apologized to

    her, but held on to her hand.

    11 No need to be sorry," Queen assured him gently. "That's what I'm here

    for."

She smiled, and kissed him tenderly.

"That's what mammys are for."

    George knew it was a lie, for she was not his mammy, but it was sweet to

    him. The men had found suitable pieces of wood and cloth, and Queen told

    George that it would hurt, but she had nothing to give him, there was no

    liquor in the house.

    George nodded, and the men held him down while Queen felt his fractured

    leg. She found the break, and caressed it for a while, crooning softly to

    George, who gritted his teeth. Suddenly, and with a strength and sureness

    that surprised the men who were watching, she set the bone.

    Alec came home with Freeland and it was all done. George was asleep, his

    leg in makeshift splints. Dora came by to see if she could help, and took

    Freeland back to the mansion to

    A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 753

eat with the others, as a special treat. Queen made a scratch meal for the

men who had helped her, which they ate gratefully, and after some small

conversation, they drifted off to their homes.

Queen sat rocking on the porch with Alec. The sun had gone down; the night

was clear and the moon full. They rocked in silent unison for a while,

with Alec puffing on his pipe, and it felt good to both of them. Although

she understood much of the complexity and depth of her relationship with

Alec and his family, she had never thought of him as a husband or bed

partner. She had come to love him, but not in the way that she had loved

Davis. It was a different sort of love, with mutuality as its basis,

mutual trust, mutual loneliness, and mutual need. She admired him and

respected him, and believed he felt the same about her. She knew that Alec

would protect and cherish her, defend her and provide for her, and she

would respond in kind. If passion was missing from the equation, perhaps

that was no bad thing, for in its place was something of infinitely

greater value to her.

    She regarded her new family as one of misfits: the orphan George, who had

    become like a son to her, the motherless children of Alec, the widowed

    father, and she, the dispossessed black who looked white, and mother to

    a boy whose father was dead. The mutuality of need extended beyond her-

    self and Alec; it embraced all of them. The puzzle now was the next step.

    Would it be more than it was, or was that enough? Was this as much as God

    gave? It was almost as if Alec was not prepared to test that limit, and

    Queen was not anxious that he should, lest she lose what she had.

"You got another pipe?" Queen asked him eventually.

    Alec was only mildly surprised, and reached for a corncob pipe from the.

    window ledge behind him. He gave it to Queen, and she sucked on it. He

    offered her his tobacco, but she shook her head. It was fine as it was.

    They rocked some more in silence, and Alec was moved by what had happened

    that day, and deeply grateful that this woman had come into his life.

    "Ain't nobody sat in that chair since Tennie died," he said. "It was her

    chair. They all know it, an' they don't sit in it."

754 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

Queen nodded, knowing that she did not have to move.

    "Didn't think I'd ever find anyone to take her place," Alec said. "Didn't

    think anyone would sit in that ol' chair again."

    Queen nodded again. It was a good chair, a comfortable chair. It was

    home.

    "How's the saving goin'?" Alec asked her softly, and Queen shook her

    head.

"Not so good," she said. "Not real good at all."

    It wasn't true. She was saving well, but even if she saved all the

    fortune that her grandfather had once made, she would never have enough

    money to leave here.

    Alec stretched out his hand to her. She reached to him and put her hand

    in his, and he grasped it hard.

    "That's all right, then," he whispered, and his voice was gruff with

    affection.

They were married in the local church, and it seemed to them that all of

Savannah came to their wedding. Minnie and Julie were bridesmaids, George

was best man, and Dora looked after Freeland and Abner.

    Queen looked wonderful in white, and Mr. Cherry gave her away, because

    she had no pappy to do this for her.

    When the service was done, Alec kissed her, and then Dora and George

    brought a broom, and placed it in front of them. Alec and Queen joined

    hands and jumped over the broom into the land of matrimony, as thousands

    of their forebears, slaves, had done.

    They were free, and were proud of their freedom, and cherished it, but

    not ashamed of their days of slavery, for it was not of their choosing

    and they had survived. Free, they jumped over the broom in remembrance

    of all those who had not survived, and in remembrance of the small

    traditions that had helped so many endure the long years of their

    bondage.

    Free, they jumped over the broom, and were married, and turned back to

    the cheers of the applauding congregation. And when Queen smiled at Alec,

    it was with a smile that might break your heart.

    88

Her father was dead, killed in an accident to his carriage caused by a

runaway wagon.

    Mr. Cherry himself told her the news, in the quiet of his study. He had

    read it in the newspaper.

    Queen was surprised that she was not more distressed. She nodded her

    head, thanked Mr. Cherry, left the house, and walked down by the river,

    trying to remember Jass, who had once been the most important person in

    her life. She had thought about him occasionally in the years of her

    marriage to Alec, but only occasionally, and then as some fond memory of

    some other life that did not matter to her now. Her new family occupied

    the totality of her heart, and Alec had become husband, father, and lover

    all rolled into one. She had given him two children, Annie and Conway,

    fine healthy babies who were growing into fine small people whom she

    loved as much as any of the others, certainly not less than Abner and

    perhaps only a little more than those who were not of her own body. Abner

    was still her darling, for he was her firstborn son, and had shared a

    suffering with her that the others had not known, but how do you divide

    and quantify love?

    She felt some need to come to terms with at least some of her past. There

    was an epidemic of yellow fever, the black wind as it was called, in

    Alabama and some of the other Southern states, but against Alec's strong

    advice, and she seldom went against him, she decided to go to Jass's

    funeral, and to take Abner with her. It was proper that he be present at

    the burial of his grandfather.

    They took a coach to Florence, riding on the outside because they were

    nigra, and Abner thrilled to the journey, for he had no memory of

    anything outside Savannah. They booked into a cheap lodginghouse, and the

    following day

    755

756 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

Queen dressed in black, and hired a cart and driver to take her to The

Forks.

    As they rumbled down the old familiar road that was not familiar to her

    anymore, Queen looked desperately for things she might recognize, but found

    nothing, not even a few distant memories. She tried to recall where Andy

    had picked her up in the butcher's cart, but could not. Every bend in the

    road looked the same as any other. The driver of the cart, Jonson, an old

    black man who had been a slave, talked of The Forks of Cypress and how

    famous it once had been, and how sad it was that Massa Jackson was dead.

    She learned that Jass had never regained anything of his former fortune,

    but had enjoyed a settled life as state senator. She learned that he was no

    great friend to black people, and had voted, in the state legislature,

    against several measures that might have improved their lot. Of the

    surviving family she learned very little, other than that Miss Lizzie had

    died some years ago, perhaps about the time that Queen had arrived in

    Savannah.

    Then suddenly they broke through the trees, and the mansion stood before

    them on the little hill. Queen gasped at the flood of memories that surged

    through her, but she felt no pain, and began telling Abner of the days of

    her youth. This was why she had come, for it was important that he know

    something of his past. Abner, who was ten, listened attentively to his

    mammy, but found it difficult to imagine why this house, splendid as it

    was, so occupied his mother's mind.

    She did not want to be too early for the funeral, so she told Jonson to

    drive on past the house, farther down the road. When they came to the old

    Henderson store, it was locked and abandoned, the windows boarded up.

    Jonson did not know what had happened to the people who had owned it.

    They rode back to The Forks and Jonson let them off at the main gate, and

    said he would come back for them that afternoon. Queen took Abner's hand

    and walked with him up the drive. The racecourse was long gone, overgrown

    with weeds, and only a few fences left to suggest what it had once been.

    Queen could hardly remember what it looked like.

    "And over here," she said, pointing to the other side of the drive, "were

    cotton fields, as far as the eye could see."

Abner tried to imagine cotton fields to the horizon, but all

    A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 757

he saw was untended grass on a few acres, and edged by encroaching trees.

They approached the mansion. The lawn was pretty and well kept, and the

magnolia tree was enormous now, and filled with huge, creamy blossoms. But

the house was not quite as large as she remembered, not quite as mag-

nificent, and the twenty-one lovely columns were sorely in need of a coat

of paint.

    They didn't go inside, for they had not been invited, but made their way

    to the back of the house, and down the track through the empty, derelict

    slave quarters, most of which had been pulled down. Through the trees

    Queen could see that the weaving house was still there, but she avoided

    it.

    She was filled with a sense of nature reclaiming its own, for the path

    to the graveyard was overgrown, and the trees lining it were crowding in,

    as if they were walking through a forest.

    "Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of

    misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower. He fleeth as it were

    a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. "

    The preacher stood at the grave, surrounded by many mourners, for Jass

    had been an important man. All were white. Queen stayed back, at the edge

    of the graveyard, holding Abner's hand. She looked for faces she might

    recognize, but saw none, except a frail old lady with white hair, wearing

    thick pebble glasses, who was supported by a younger man she did not

    know. William, perhaps? James?

    "In the midst of life, we are in death. Of whom shall we seek succor but

    of Thee, 0 Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased."

    Queen became aware that someone had noticed her, and smiled to herself,