Queen (72 page)

    William thought was funny. They giggled about the name now, as the

    carriage pulled into the drive, until Lizzie told them off sharply, and

    told Queen to remember her place.

Tragic circumstances had attended the Perkinses a few years ago. Convinced

that his fortune was being frittered away by

436 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

his wife's extravagances, William Perkins had plunged, once again, into land

speculation, this time with disastrous results. If he had consulted wiser,

more cautious minds, catastrophe might have been avoided, but he was

convinced he was a better businessman than any of his associates, and

especially Tom Kirkman, who had been his original adviser. After all, Tom

had not been doing all that well recently. The Jackson fortune was still

considerable, but no one could deny that it had not thriven under Tom's

stewardship. He had ignored all his father-in-law's precepts, divested them

of much of their land and invested everything in cotton and the banks. Which

was fine, thought William, when the price of cotton was high, but cotton was

a commodity subject to market forces, and banks frequently failed.

    Willing prey to his fears and unscrupulous developers, William invested far

    too much money in new territories in the West, and bought thousands of

    acres in California, sight unseen. When this land proved to be unusable,

    unsellable desert, the Perkins fortune collapsed, and William with it. He

    panicked, and sold everything he had at giveaway prices. He also sold his

    wife's slaves. Becky was away in Atlanta attending some function, and,

    knowing he didn't have much time, he called the auctioneer in one morning,

    and by evening all the slaves but three were gone: the cook, the

    housekeeper, and the gardener.

    Becky was speechless with rage when she found out, and wept for her darling

    darkies, and for herself. How could she live? How could she visit anyone of

    quality now, bereft of attendants? How could she hold her head up in

    public? She took to her room with a sick headache, and swore she would

    never speak to her husband again. She never did. The money resulting from

    the sale of the slaves was a useless, tiny flame quickly extinguished in

    the ocean of William's disasters. Blinded by panic, he could see no

    alternative but bankruptcy, and died of a bleeding ulcer the day after

    Becky withdrew to her bedroom.

    All this affected Becky's mind. Increasingly unstable since Lizzie's

    marriage, she dwelt near the border of the insane, but the loss of money,

    slaves, position, and husband in such quick succession persuaded her to

    cross the dividing line and take

    QUEEN 437

up residence in the comforting country of the deranged. Lizzie was

distraught, but Jass had been good to Becky, and built her a house so that

she might be in close proximity to her daughter, and had given Becky a

couple of slaves to look after her. She spent her days in a sweetly

remembered but illogically recalled past Above everything, she realized

how very much she had always adored her husband, and her loveliest memo-

ries were of William, who was waiting for her patiently, in another house

he was building somewhere not far away, and of her former slaves, who were

mysteriously visiting her husband, and would come for her one day,

carriage ready, to take her to him. In her more lucid moments, she

understood that William was dead, and she saw no reason for living, but

Fate was cruel to her, and would not remove her from her vale of grief.

    She loved her daughter, but Lizzie had her own life as mistress of a

    great mansion, and The Sinks was not Becky's idea of the house that

    suited the woman she had once been. She loved Jass, but he did not

    provide her with enough slaves to regain her foothold in society. She

    loved her grandson, young William, who had been named in honor of her

    late husband, but he was not the William she wanted. She loved her other

    grandchildren; the little ones were just gorgeous and she wanted to run

    and tell her William all about them, but he was never there. She wished

    they wouldn't bring that half-caste girl with them all the time. She

    reminded Becky of things she would rather forget, but young William was

    very fond of her and it was proper that he have a personal slave,

    although it was high time the girl moved out of his room. If only she

    weren't so very white. Queen, as the mostly white nigra slave child of

    her son-in-law, perplexed Becky. Indeed, the whole issue of black and

    white, slave and free, was confusing to her, as was much of the rest of

    the modem world, and she no longer collected gossip or trivia or scandal,

    because without William she had no one to tell it to, and without darkies

    she could not go visiting. Everything she had ever been was what people

    perceived her to be, and she could not bear to be thought of as a lonely

    widow, eking out a solitary existence on someone else's charity.

438 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

She greeted them now, pleased to see them but frantically worried about

events in the world, and filled with questions. The few visitors who still

came to see her-Sally, and the minister's wife, and some others who,

distressed by her present circumstances, had forgiven her past

affectations-had kept her informed of the developing crisis between North

and South, and Becky was agog to know the outcome of the presidential

election. Jass had little positive news for her. The results had not reached

them yet, which was why he was going into town, but the general feeling was

that Abraham Lincoln would win on a platform dedicated to limiting the

extension and expansion of the slaveholding states, and that if he did,

South Carolina would almost certainly secede from the Union. It had

threatened it before, effectively done it before, thirty years ago, and over

the last couple of years the Southern dealings with Washington had been

increasingly, dangerously, fractious.

    Becky said nothing, but held Little Sally to her, and tears dribbled from

    her eyes. Any fool could tell that this Lincoln was an abolitionist at

    heart, however cunningly disguised. The slaves believed it, they talked of

    nothing else, and Becky trusted their gossip. Thus a Republican victory

    would put an abolitionist in the White House, with inconceivable conse-

    quences for the South, but it hardly seemed to bother her family. They took

    tea, and chatted about inconsequential things, without seeming to

    understand that they were standing on the very brink of a precipice. When

    they said their good-byes, Becky begged Jass to send news of the election

    as soon as he knew the outcome, and he promised that he would.

Jass kept his word, but tardily. He did not send old Ephraim to tell Becky

the result until the next day, and by then it was too late.

    Nathan, one of Jass's slaves who attended Becky, heard the news from

    Joshua, the gardener, who heard it from some men who had been rafting

    downriver. Nathan told Mary, the cook, who told Becky.

"Massa Linkun Presyden'," she said.

    Becky said nothing, but puzzled as always about the phenomenon that was the

    slave grapevine. How had news of his

    QUEEN 439

victory, for Becky had no doubt that it was true, reached them before it

reached her? Unable to read or write, or at least forbidden to, what could

they know of Abraham Lincoln, how did they have news of him, and how had

he become their hero? Becky didn't know very much about him herself, but

what she did know frightened her.

    "Us gwine be free," Mary said, as a statement of fact, without any

    excitement or rancor.

    Becky finished her supper in silence, and went to her room. She spent a

    long time preparing for bed, tying her hair in cotton curlers and putting

    on her best nightgown. She tried to avoid thinking about the future,

    although the future as envisioned by Mary kept impinging on her mind.

    She was troubled by the nightmare of John Brown. Denmark Vesey had been

    one thing, and Nat Turner anotherthey were nigras-but a white man freeing

    slaves! Killing white folk! Becky could not imagine what the world was

    coming to. Or rather, she could, for she knew that the election of

    Lincoln almost certainly presaged a war between the statesno one had

    talked about anything else for weeks-and while she believed passionately

    that the dear Southern boys would fight to the very last drop of their

    blood, and would whip those Yankee cuts in a matter of weeks, she dreaded

    the possibility of their failure. If the South lost, the ramifications

    were too appalling to consider, for how could they live without slaves?

    What would happen to her, and to Lizzie, and to all of Lizzie's dear

    children, who would never know the fabulous society that was their

    birthright? She had an awful vision of Lizzie trying to run The Forks of

    Cypress without any slaves, and the very idea of it made her weep in

    horror.

    Free nigras! It wasn't fair to them, they were children, the house ones,

    who needed a finn, guiding white hand. And the field hands, the bucks,

    would be running around raping and pillaging at will; no woman would be

    safe in her bed. It was all very well for the Yankees to claim the blacks

    were equal, but they were not, any fool knew that, the Bible said so, and

    in any case, there were not so many blacks in the North for the Yankees

    to be scared of. Thinking about a violent, impovefished South gave her

    a sick headache, and she climbed into bed, determined not to leave that

    bed until she felt better. She

440 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

picked up her Bible and it fell open at Revelation. It was an omen to Becky.

The last days were upon them.

    Rather than contemplate the abysmal future or think of her impoverished

    present, she let her mind frolic through the groves of her favorite realm,

    the past. She dreamed that her retinue attended her still, as they did in

    her glory days, when she was young, when the world was her oyster and she

    its most precious pearl, and when William was there, to shield her and

    provide for her and protect her.

    She called out his name, and a miracle happened! A man came in the door,

    although it was locked, she was sure-she always locked it in case the

    darkies should forget themselves and come bursting in to ravish her, or

    some white abolitionists to murder her. For a moment she was convinced it

    was an avenging John Brown, come to destroy her, sword in one hand, Bible

    in the other, and her heart skipped a beat. And another. And another. And

    as her heart went haywire, she realized it was William; she could see him

    clearly, and the door was open, and there was light in the hallway beyond.

    He stood by the bed and smiled at her, and she felt a flooding sense of

    relief. He had come back to her, as she had always known he would, and now

    she could pour out her heart to him, and tell him of her many problems, and

    he would make it all fight again, and she could hold her head up high.

    Now was not the time to talk, she knew that. He held out his hand to her,

    and to her surprise, her sick headache had completely disappeared. She felt

    better than she had done for years. She knew he wanted to take her to show

    her the lovely new mansion he had been building for her, so she took his

    hand. He helped her out of bed, and they walked together toward the door,

    toward the light, which was getting stronger and stronger and held no fears

    for her, even though she was improperly dressed for daylight, and her hair

    was a mess.

    But this was a welcoming light which told her that nothing mattered

    anymore. She knew with absolute conviction that when she walked with

    William into that dazzling light, she would, at last, be happy.

    52

    4====~

Wth defiant shouts of bravado, the South had lived in expectation of the

possibility of the election of a Republican president for months, It would

surely lead to secession by at least some of the states, and no one could

chart those unpredictable, stormy waters. Jass had tried to shield his

wife and children from the rumors and the passions kindled, but today was

a momentous day, perhaps a historic one, and he felt they should have some

understanding of the forces at work, for their lives might never be the

same again.

    They said their farewells to Becky at The Sinks, and headed for Florence.

    William and Mary were chattering excitedly, in a party mood, for visits

    to town were rare, and even Queen, usually so shy in front of Lizzie, was

    joining in the fun. Until Lizzie reminded her of her manners. Queen fell