Queen (53 page)

    the fun it had been. They seldom mentioned the move to Alabama, they

    never talked about Annie, but James delighted in news of Easter, and

    would have the girl brought to him, and would spoil her with silly treats

    of candy, and once a new frock.

    It was Cap'n Jack who sang lullabys as James drifted to sleep, and slept

    himself on a palliasse at the foot of his Massa's bed, in case he should

    be needed in the night.

    Frequently, at night or when he dozed in the afternoons, James dreamed

    of Ireland, an Ireland of his memory, that gave him no desire to return

    to the country of his birth, for what he dreamed of was gone, he knew,

    scythed by the passing years. He dreamed instead of playing in the fields

    of his youth.

    Of Carrickmacross and Ballybay, not as they might be now but as he

    remembered them. Of Jugs and,old Quinn. Of poteen and soda bread, and

    peat fires on misty mornings. Of rainwashed fields and white-walled

    cottages. Of lowering skies and breaking sunlight. Of croppies, hare

    hunts, and hurley. Of swirling fogs and shrouded legends. Of

    superstitious priests, storytelling shanachies, and pole-vaulting

    messengers.

    And of Sean. Blessedly, kind, unvengeful death had not added a moment to

    Sean's years and he was now, in James's dreams, what he had always been,

    laughing, golden, riding rainbows,

    Sometimes, too, he would dream of leprechauns, and if one of them looked

    exactly like Andrew, it was the generous Andrew of his youth, and he

    would take a little dust from the pouch at his side and sprinkle it on

    James, and James would

    MERGING 319

be riding the rainbow too, sparkling with the magic powder, riding through

iridescent, pfismatic light, the primary colors of life, down toward the

crock of gold that nestled, as the leprechaun told him, at the foot of the

rainbow, faster and faster, falling toward the glittering pfize that shone

before him, failing, failing, until he knew that in a moment he would have

it, the pot of fairy gold, the fabulous treasure that was beyond all

reckoning. Falling, falling to a greater light whose source was only inches

from his touch. But always before he reached it, he would wake up, and when

he woke he was filled with a sense of loss, of something sought and not

achieved, and the lack of it made him yearn to dream again.

    Sometimes he would not find the leprechaun in his dreams, and he would be

    astride Glencoe, galloping across the dewsoft emerald grass toward a great

    city he knew was Dublin. Others would fide beside him for a while, on

    animals not as fine as his, and just as he recognized them and waved to

    them in cheery greeting, Lord Fitzgerald and Pamela, or Oliver Bond or

    Uncle Henry, Eleanor or Sara or Jugs, their horses would fail them, and

    they would fall behind. Then Sean would appear, galloping, laughing, always

    laughing, until he too could no longer keep pace with the reckless James,

    and would fall behind.

    He would fide into Dublin, through shouting crowds, and all his friends

    would be there again, cheering with the mob, and James knew that he had

    just won a tremendous race. As suddenly, everyone disappeared, and he would

    be alone in the empty streets of the city, searching for them, and riding

    down a tiny, dark alley that led, he was sure, to the Liberties, the

    decrepit slums where all his friends were hiding. The houses would slowly

    give way to leafless trees and bushes ablaze with flowers, and he would

    find himself riding down avenues of endless, fragrant roses.

    Those roses stayed with him in his waking hours; he could not rid his mind

    of the image that the missionary had conjured up. He could not bear to hear

    stories of the Indians trekking west, for all the news that reached him was

    of nothing but deprivation and starvation and death. He did not want to

    know about the new treaty made with the holdout Cherokee at New Echota, for

    however magnanimous it seemed to be on paper,

320 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

he knew it could lead only to the same awful fate, and while he blocked

from his mind the picture of another nation walking west to its doom, the

image that replaced it was one of endless rows, here to the horizon, of

withering, lifeless rosebushes.

    Not even the recruitment of local young men for a small army out to drive

    the few remaining Lower Creek out of southern Alabama stirred James to

    any protest.

    There is nothing I can do for them, he told himself. I did everything I

    could. Yet even as he said it, he knew how great was the lie.

    39

Wiliam Perkins caught a more contagious disease than the congestive fever

that was afflicting James. Eventually it would prove fatal to his

financial well-being and his wife's physical health, but there was no

preventive medicine for it. It was called Land Fever, and an epidemic of

it had swept the frontier states. As ever more Indians were removed, more

Indian land became available for white settlement, and more white settlers

flooded in.

    Perkins, a naturally cautious man, thought he was immune, but his wife's

    temperature soared as she heard the stories of the easy fortunes that

    were being made, and she communicated the virus to him. Perkins thought

    long and hard about a course of action, and finally made an eminently

    sensible decision. He asked the advice of Thomas Kirkman, who took him

    to see his father-in-law, his Uncle James.

    James had several reasons for offering generous help. It is always

    flattering when a successful student asks his teacher for advice, and

    Perkins had sought out and listened to James when he first came to

    Florence, and had done well. Now he had money to invest, not a lot but

    enough, and wanted to make more, if only to make Lizzie's financial

    future, already secure,

    MERGING 321

impregnable. James guessed that the redoubtable Becky Perkins had already

made plans to spend a good portion of whatever profit was made, but she

amused him, and he loved to hear the gently told tales of marital woe from

the henpecked husband. And then there was Lizzie.

    For whatever reason, James still cherished the notion that Jass and

    Lizzie would wed, and the constancy of their friendship gave him

    continuing hope. He gave Perkins some good advice, told Thomas to keep

    an eye on him, and wrote a couple of letters to influential friends.

    It worked like a charm. Perkins was offered and bought shares in a new

    development company, and within three months had doubled his money. Under

    Thomas's direction he also bought four lots in Tennessee, and within the

    same period sold them at four times their original cost.

    There was no stopping him now. Caution to the winds, and, increasingly

    against Thomas's advice, he bought land wherever he could find it for

    sale, only to sell it again, almost always at some profit. It was as if

    he had suddenly discovered the secret of Midas, and as his reputation for

    canniness increased, so did his profit, for it was generally reckoned

    that if he bought land, it was going to double in value overnight, which,

    in many cases, it did. Speculators, bankers, and simple settlers all

    rushed to the developments with which Perkins was associated, and it made

    him, for a time at least, something of a celebrity, and gave him a

    formidably increased bank account.

    The new money provided Mrs. Perkins with the fuel for her most

    extravagant dreams, which she indulged with increasing ostentation. They

    owned over eighty slaves on a plantation that needed fewer than half that

    number. Where she had once been Becky to her friends, she now preferred

    her given name, Pocahontas, and she began to dress in the Oriental style

    made popular by Dolley Madison years before, turbaned and overly

    bejeweled. The dinners she gave were famous for the sumptuous table she

    served and the troops of attendants she provided, a footman to every

    chair. She traveled, if only to visit near friends, with a considerable

    retinue of footmen and lackeys and page boys. This vulgar display of

    wealth made her unwelcome to some of her less fortunate friends, and an

    object of derision to the more successful, and so the tolerant Jacksons

322 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

were called upon at least once a week. William Perkins would sit in the

Study with James, supposedly seeking more counsel, but actually unburdening

himself about his wife's demanding excesses. James, amused and astonished

by

his prot6gCs success, gave frequent warnings of prudence, which Perkins ac-

cepted miserably, for his success terrified him.

    "There is nothing I can do," he said sadly. "They throw the money at me."

    James knew it was true, for he remembered the panic buying that had

    attended the sales of the Cypress Land Company, and while Perkins's profits

    were not quite in that league, they were still very handsome.

    Meanwhile, Mrs. Perkins was perpetual shadow to Sally, wallowing in

    self-pity, weeping of the fool that Fortune had made her with this newfound

    fortune, and pouring out her grievances with the world. She understood that

    the new unfriendliness of so many of her neighbors was caused by "the

    green-eyed god," but it still hurt, and she couldn't pretend she didn't

    have money. Not when every coup of William's was broadcast in the

    newspapers, journals, and taverns as they happened. Nor was it her fault

    that William had been so astute in business, and they so obtuse. No one,

it

    seemed, understood the problems that fame and fortune brought with them,

    and she had only dear Sally to turn to for advice. Not the least of her

    difficulties was disciplining the army of nigras she commanded.

    Lizzie called at The Forks more frequently than even her parents, and came

    because she wanted to see Jass.

    Her parents' newly increased wealth, and perhaps time, had calmed Lizzie.

    Still an exemplary Southern belle, she had started to develop a morbid fear

    that she was going to be left on the shelf. At any social gathering, at any

    picnic, ball, or levee, Lizzie was, at the beginning of the occasion, the

    center of attention, but she had begun to see that it was not because

    anybody actually liked her, but because she wasn't dull. All the most

    eligible young men would flirt with her, flatter her, and laugh at her

    jokes at the beginning of the evening, but as if they were passing the time

    with her until they were able to ascertain which young lady it was that

    they really wanted to be with or, in the case of the less bold, had

    summoned up enough Southern courage from Lizzie to approach the actual

    MERGING 323

object of their affections. Even worse, Lizzie could not avoid the

conviction that people were laughing at her behind her back-once they had

done laughing about her mother.

    She dared not voice these fears to her mother, from whom she had learned

    her patterns of behavior, and anyway, how could you tell your mother what

    the world thought of her? She could not talk to her father because he

    would have been hurt, and she had seldom received sensible advice from

    her father on anything that really mattered, only the dictum "Talk to

    your mother." If she had friends she trusted, she might have confided in

    them, but Lizzie looked at her long list of acquaintances and realized

    that she didn't have any friends she would trust with such confidences.

    Instead she took a long, hard look in the mirror, and tried to work out

    what it was she was doing wrong.

    She was pretty, she could see, but so strong was her new fear, she could

    also see that she wasn't actually much more than pretty, as were most

    girls of her age. Certainly she was not flowering into any great beauty.

    Her nose was longer than it should be, her lips were thin, and there was

    a kind of bland ordinariness to her features. She tried to laugh

    flippantly at the image in the mirror, but in a moment of remarkable

    selfappraisal for one who was still quite young, she saw that most of her

    elaborately cultivated mannerisms simply made her look silly.

    Then the most awful truth of all appeared in the mirror. She had always

    understood, or been taught by her mother, that boredom was a maiden's

    lot, and so Lizzie had endured her boredom, thinking everyone else was

    doing the same. Her reflection told her she wasn't bored at all. She was

    lonely.

    A lifetime of that loneliness suddenly yawned in front of her. She

    considered the potential young men who might alleviate the terrifying