The Tinsmith (15 page)

Orlett returned, his face tight. A long muscle throbbed in his neck. “I need to talk with you.”

The master hesitated, then rose slowly. “If you'll excuse me, sir.” He and Orlett put their heads together on the far side of the room. A minute passed.

“Search before you do anything else.” The master finally lifted his head. “Use the hounds. But don't release them. There mustn't be violence.”

The overseer scowled. “Four thousand dollars,” he whispered fiercely. “Think on it. There's a faster way to recover them.”

“Not yet.” The master turned back to the trader with an apologetic smile.

McElvane' s shoulders slumped. “I reckon the girls you mentioned is run off? I can wait if they're as prime as you say, but only if we come to terms on some others. If we don't, I got to get back on the road.”

“Oh, we'll come to terms,” Orlett said and gripped his own thigh hard. “You might as well come and have a look now. I've rounded them up in the barn.”

“Jacob, you'll remember what I said?”

“Of course.” Then the overseer said something low.

The master looked over at John. He looked for several long seconds. His eyelids fluttered. The blue veins darkened at his temple as he turned. Weakly he said, “You best go along too, boy.”

As soon as he stepped outside, the mulatto jumped him and wrestled him to the hard ground, snapping the cuffs back on. The steel struck hard against his wrist bones. He gasped with the pain.

Orlett said to the trader, “The master here's been overly kind to his niggers. It's his habit, formed I believe by his late wife. I'm trying to save him from himself.”

McElvane frowned. “Sometimes a man reaps what he sows. But I don't favour violence any myself. A good nigger don't need it and a bad nigger don't change on account of it.”

“No? Well, I can't say that's been my experience.”

John's chest heaved. He felt tears sting his eyes as he blinked hard at the master, in shock, unable to speak. Surely the master did not favour such violence toward him. After all, John knew himself to be different from the others—why else had he been chosen to serve at the house? But the master did not meet his gaze. He had already turned his back.

The overseer stepped into the barn. “Put him with the others, Cray,” he said.

The faces were familiar, but not the fear and bewilderment on them. A dozen men, including Daney's two eldest sons, and three boys, the youngest barely ten years old, stood shivering in the straws of light falling through the chinks in the walls. John was both relieved and concerned not to see Caleb; the old man was probably too damaged to be sold. The boys wept, and Motes, who was nigh on sixty years of age, softly sang, “There's a better day a comin', will you go along with me? There's a better day a comin', go sound the jubilee.” Even though the hog-killing was done, the air still had a bloody smell. Not even the manure of the stables could quash it.

The others wore handcuffs too, but also leg shackles attached to iron balls. And they were joined together by chains. When John was shoved into the group, a new smell hit him: the reek of fear, the rankness of bodies responding to the slave's worst nightmare. He could hear the unvoiced prayers, Oh, Lawd, don't let me be parted from my own. Suddenly he understood what Daney had always told him: he was no different, he was exactly the same. He understood it now in his body, in his own trembling, in his sweat, the hatred rising at the back of his throat like burning bile.

Hands on hips, a goose-quill stuck between his teeth, Orlett addressed them.

“You're going to be sold. But whether you end up in a good home depends on you. Mr. McElvane here represents important businessmen in South Carolina, and they don't want any bad niggers. If they get them, those niggers go straight to the rice fields. And the masters there aren't like what you've been used to. You've had it soft a long time. That time's done.”

He turned to the trader.

“The men are all strong hands, no defects. You can look for yourself.”

The trader walked slowly from man to man. He told them to open their mouths and show their teeth. He spent a considerable amount of time assessing their backs and limbs.

“Whip marks?” he said.

The overseer shrugged. “A few. And given only to harden these boys up a bit, to get them ready. They're not bad, just a little slow to work on account of they never had the right encouragement. Like I said, the master here . . .”

“I'll have to take a few dollars off.”

“But these are prime hands. A few whip marks . . .”

The trader sighed as he leaned to Garney, the smallest boy, and pulled at his upper lip. “My employer doesn't want trouble selling what he buys. And whip marks make a buyer shy.” He let go of Garney's lip. “Don't take on so, boy, there are beautiful homes in the South. It's a rich land.”

When the trader stopped before him, John saw the man's confusion. Scratching his temple, he stepped over to Orlett and whispered something John couldn't catch.

“Yeah, him too,” the overseer said. “Just the same as the others, even if he don't look it. He's a good worker, field and house. A few years ago, the master even hired him out for a while to a tinsmith, so he's got some craft.”

John clenched and unclenched his fists. He could feel the blood pounding behind his eyes, in his limbs and chest; he could feel its heat. To calm himself, he tried to turn the pounding and the heat into a soothing memory of his tinsmithing work, into the rhythmic cutting of tinplate with shears, the steam rising off the solder and drenching his face with sweat. He had never felt so free and alive as when he'd been tinsmithing; even the thick chemical fumes of the work came to his nostrils now as a kind of springtime scent, full of hope. But he could not hold on to the memory. The rhythm of the shears became the pounding in his veins again. He kept his mouth shut tight, for fear of the blood spurting out through his teeth.

The trader shook his head. “There's folks won't take him for a nigger. And if he runs, how am I supposed to get him back? A patrol's not likely to bring him in.”

Orlett squinted up at the flight of a barn swallow. He chewed on his thick bottom lip for a few seconds, dragged a blunt hand along his blood-red ruff.

“There's something I can do about that. Even if it takes a few dollars off, I don't mind. I promised the boy a new life, and I don't want to disappoint him. He's hankering to travel. No relations, you see. No reason to come running back here.”

“What can you do about it?” the trader asked Orlett.

“I'll show you tomorrow. Can we settle on the others? I got to run those girls to ground.”

They agreed to prices and the trader returned to the house, presumably to pay the master.

“Chain them with the woman,” Orlett said to the mulatto. “Yeah, him too. We'll deal with him once we get the girls back.”

Cray grunted an order and they all pulled up the leg chains and hobbled out of the barn.

John thought about running because he didn't have the chain or iron ball, but things had happened too quickly. Rage and fear confused him. He did not even have a sense of his chances. Besides, there was Caleb and Daney. It ate at him that Daney did not know the truth, and he had come to rely so heavily on Caleb's advice. He wondered what Caleb would tell him now.

They were put into a dark shed. A dry, musty smell of corn came out of a crib in the corner. In another corner sat the slumped, chained form of a woman.

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, John watched the woman raise her head slowly. The old familiar smile of endurance lit up Daney's broad face. He had never seen so much scorn in it. To his relief, she directed the smile not at him but at the mulatto.

“Here comes the proud man. You proud of yore work, nigger?”

His face, large and ridged as the side of a squash, remained blank. “No'm. But I'm nothin' else neither.”

Daney's laugh was terrible to hear. There was wild in it, but frightened wild.

“Nothin'? What kind of devil's talk is that? Every man's either gonna be proud or shamed. If you're nothin' to yoself, then you shamed, nigger.”

The mulatto turned in the doorway, almost blocking out the light. It cast a thin glow around him. “Mebbe I is, but they ain't no irons on me, is they?” He slammed the door shut behind him.

“Oh, yes,” Daney shouted, “you'se a free man, free to do the devil's work! That gonna get you nowhere but the fiery pit!” Tears streamed down her face and hung off her nose and upper lip. Her shoulders shook.

Against the wall, John hunched into himself and hoped she would not notice him. Fortunately Daney calmed herself and started to comfort the boys. All three were bony-chested, their ribs visible just under their coal-black skin. They wore only thin loin cloths, and tears dripped off the ends of their eyelashes and noses as they pressed together, their shoulders turned inward. Daney told them to have faith, that nothing was done yet, that they had to be brave.

“Ain't I got my girls safe away? They's always hope. Maybe the master will come to his senses and stop all this foolishness.”

Beside her, Robert, her eldest son, whispered something and her face went rigid. For several seconds she did not move. John was almost glad Daney was chained to the wall because he could not be sure she wouldn't attack him. But when she finally moved, only sadness moved with her. He felt it wash through the shed in waves.

“They's no saving yoself by doing evil. Punishment come to all in time. To the white folks too. The Lawd takes care of that. I got no energy for hating him now. They's much worse around.”

John opened his mouth to tell her the truth, but then an image of Caleb bloodied on the ground stopped him. He doubted that she'd believe him anyway. In the end, he fingered the leather pouch in his pocket, grateful just to be left alone. His mind whirled. He had to clear his thoughts. The master was selling his blacks, including him. This had been done before, a few times, but always locally, never to a trader from the South. Occasionally a black on another farm had been sold down the river, but the master always tried to sell his people in Maryland. This time was obviously different. And he knew from the reaction of the others how terrible a fate it was to be sold into South Carolina or Georgia or anywhere in the South. He had heard of the cruelty of the rice and cotton plantations, of blacks worked to death under the scorching sun. Was this where he was bound? If so, how could he save himself? Then a kind of indignation stole over him. He was not like the others, no matter what Daney said. His pale skin had led him away from the shacks—or so Jabeth had insisted. Surely that paleness would save him now? He looked at his arms. The skin was not black, and yet his hands were cuffed. They were cuffed. The cold weight of the steel returned him to the one question that mattered: how could he save himself?

Bodies slowly shifted, a chain clinked. Some of the men had moved so that Garney could crawl up into Daney's lap. She laid her cheek against his; their two wetnesses seemed to glow in the dim light. Softly she spoke. “Honey, don't you fret, nobody but the Lawd know what's comin' and the Lawd is promised to deliver us out of our bonds, chile.” She kissed his cheek and he quieted. But she could not hold Garney in her arms, she could not wrap her arms around him because they were chained to the wall.

John could feel the frustrated yearning in her to soothe the boy with the touch of her hands. It flowed through the dark, stale space. It touched his own body, then fell away like a breeze and left him even colder. Now she hummed into Garney's neck and her bosom rose and fell. The beating of her heart must have added a weight to the rhythm of her song, but neither sound had any ease in it. Her eyes moved too quickly for the heartbeat and the humming. She kept looking at the door, then back at Garney.

The door would open on them and it would not bring their deliverance. If he understood that much, then Daney did too. But her terrible hope distracted him from his own fate. He could see the girls running, their pretty faces scratched by branches, he could see them turn in terror at the baying of the bloodhounds. But maybe they were not alone, maybe something else had been arranged. One of the free blacks might have agreed to help. He looked at Daney and saw that Garney had gone to sleep in her armless embrace, his head lifting slightly with each great breath of her body.

Some time later the door opened and the overseer stepped in.

“I've got something to show you,” he said and moved aside as the mulatto shoved Daney's girls ahead of him. They were gagged with burlap strips that made the terror in their eyes more apparent. Daney screamed. As she struggled to rise against her chains, Garney slid away from her. “Noooooo! Lawd noooooooo!” She kicked her legs on the planks until it seemed her shoulders pulling forward with her weight must tear out of their joints.

Tom and Robert shouted at the overseer, but this only made him laugh.

“I expected a harder time of it, but I guess you niggers have had it so easy for so long that you don't even have it in you to run. I could probably unchain the whole lot of you and give you two hours to start and still have you all back in this shed by sunup. Cray, kindly give that boy there a reminder of how much I favour silence.”

The mulatto ambled heavily over to Robert and punched him, hard and fast, in the face. Blood spurted from Robert's nose. Daney's screams intensified.

When they subsided again to moans, the overseer said, “You've all been sold now, so I've no cause to worry about the shape you're in. Besides, where the trader's taking you's no short journey. You'll have time to heal before you're sold again.”

The girls' muffled cries spread through the air. On hands and knees they crawled to their mother. Daney's neck tightened until the sinews threatened to snap.