CHAPTER 13
The Indian summer heat rose off the fields in waves of liquid mirage. Benjamin shielded his eyes against the midday sun and pulled at the prickly rope. The bell clanged out across the place, summoning the slaves near the house to dinner. Bent figures straightened in a rippling surge across the fields, speckled with leftover bolls of cotton like the dirty remains of a rare Southern snow. A group of field hands trudged toward the main house. They mopped their brows, with nodded greetings to those passing in the other direction, carrying loads of food to the outer fields. A few stopped briefly, exchanging news or a hearty laugh before trudging on.
On the summer kitchen porch, Ginny set whiteware and a pile of utensils on the table. She was proud of the dinnerware on the long table, spotless from her scrubbing. Mismatched glasses stood on a side table, beside two white pitchers of fresh water. All these things were something of a rarity, indeed a luxury, among Southern slaveholders. She shook her head to think how many here had never eaten at a proper table before the judge purchased them.
The laborers lined up at the well to wash, the women wiping their faces with the corners of their aprons, the men shaking their hands dry in the air. Benjamin mounted the steps and took his place at the head of the table. The others followed, adults leading, followed by the older adolescents. The judge did not work children. No one made room for Samantha, who remained aloof and had not yet made a place for herself among the slaves.
Ginny set a skillet of crisp cornbread at each end of the table. Samantha laid a plate of freshly molded butter beside Benjamin. She did not speak, but she knew he was looking. She felt his gaze on her as she retreated to the far end of the table and pulled an extra chair to the corner. As she sat, she glared at two or three of the women. Then she raised her eyes to meet Benjamin’s. He nodded. Benjamin raised his glass and took a long draft, still gazing at her. Beside him, Nathan glanced back and forth between the two of them.
“Thank you, Samantha,” Benjamin said. “You serve a right fine dish of butter.”
A soft smile turned up the corners of Samantha’s rounded lips. Nathan, watching, let out a hoot. The others at the table looked askance, but Nathan laughed on. Samantha lowered her head, shook it side to side until she, too, burst into laughter.
As the contagious merriment died down, the talk around the table turned to the weather, the morning’s work, and which fishing hole seemed most likely for a good mess of crappie. Benjamin caught Samantha glancing his direction and smiled down into his bowl of peas and cornbread, soaked in pot liquor, the melted butter floating in golden puddles on the surface. When he finished, Benjamin excused himself. As he passed Samantha’s chair, his hand brushed her shoulder. She did not look up, but stilled as if a butterfly had landed in her hair.
* * *
“Afternoon, Mason. What can I help you with today?” Judge Matthews stood and extended his hand across the desk as the sheriff entered his office “Tangled in a legal knot?”
“No, sir. Though if the struggle over Kansas gets much worse, we’re all likely to be tangled in worse than legal knots. World is headed toward bloodshed.”
Judge Matthews pulled a sheet of paper over a book on his desk, but not quickly enough to keep it from the sheriff’s keen eye: The Impending Crisis of the South. The subtitle following was long and unwieldy, but Mason knew it instantly. He had read Hilton Helper’s treatise on the moral failure of a slaveholding society. He found Helper’s economic arguments more rational than his moral ones: that slavery inhibited the progress of the South and worked to the detriment of the non-slaveholding Southerners. He needed little convincing that on a moral basis slavery was an abomination, and yet he found himself obliged to uphold laws that were an offense to him. Why he stayed in office was a constant struggle for him. But he had little land, did not know commerce or any trade, for that matter, and most of his work was upholding the law as he construed it. And like Judge Matthews, he found he could intervene and ameliorate where possible with injustice at the individual level.
“Might get yourself in a knot with that book, Judge. You know they’re locking folks up just for its possession. You might ought to be more careful.”
“I know, Mason, but seeing as you are the sheriff and I’m the judge, I don’t reckon there is too much danger here in chambers. Do you?”
“No, sir.” Mason chuckled. “But you might want to be careful who else sees it. Folks are mighty scared of that book, and you know scared folks is dangerous folks.” Mason bit his lip. “Well, enough about all that. Mainly I came by to see how you are since Will’s death.”
Judge Matthews averted his face, then sat down and motioned Mason to do the same. The judge swiveled in his chair to stare out the window.
“I idolized that boy, Mason,” he said at last, back still turned.
“He was your firstborn, Judge. Your primary heir.” The sheriff sat back and crossed his knees. “How is Belinda holding up?”
The judge hesitated. “Not well, Mason, not well at all. She’s erratic at best, you know. So is Jeremiah. The curse of inheritance at work.”
“Yes, sir. All that girl’s life, seems to me. Never quite level-headed, that one. Been knowing her a good part of her life and never could tell what she might do or say next.”
“More true now.” The judge cleared his throat. “Speaking of heirs, Mason, I have made a grave mistake.”
“Hard to imagine, Judge.”
“No, I have. Distracted by these slavery issues. Spending my mental energies on all this damned secession malarkey. And how to get around the law to free my Negroes.”
“Yes, sir, I am aware how close you came to losing your office.” Mason shifted and crossed the other leg. “You calling that a mistake?”
“Well, likely it is, Mason. Likely to answer for that choice when I meet my Maker. Priorities and such. Kinds of mistakes we will all answer gravely for in this country, but not what I was referring to.” The judge stood, came around, propped himself on his desk. “I made an agreement with Will about the land and inheritance. All verbal. I was distracted. Had my mind on all this conflict. Distraught about Kansas and where this country’s headed. Bloody Kansas. Rightly termed. On our way to being the bloody States.” He waved his hand in an impotent gesture, as if to rid himself of something vile. “Kansas and that damned Hamilton. Can’t get myself past it even after all this time. Going on two years now. The Marais des Cygnes massacre. Hell of a peaceful name for such despicable violence. One of the dead in that massacre was an old childhood friend of mine.” The judge pushed away from his desk and paced across the office. “What kind of man captures peaceable Free-State men who knew him? Trusted him and went with him willingly, for God’s sake—takes them down in some damn ravine and starts shooting. Portends of what’s to come, I’m afraid, and—” The judge stopped, shook his head. “Well, I digress. Distracted. You see.” He tugged at his beard and scratched his cheek. “I never expected to outlive my son, Mason. Foolish, foolish. People outlive their children all the time.”
Mason waited.
“Sorry.” Judge Matthews shook his head as if to clear it. “I was headed somewhere. Ah, yes, the absence of a written document on inheritance. Pure negligence, I’m afraid. And now Belinda is beside herself. Goes on incessantly about the land. Jeremiah too. He can’t even deal with the thought that Emily should inherit land from me. Only the males in his head. And looks like Charles is taking on Belinda’s cause. She vacillates between cloying dependency and hysterical anger.”
“At you, Judge?”
“Hell if I know, Mason. One minute she hates me; next, she adores me. Depends on the day and what time the clock says. I try to contain myself, but I blame her for Will’s death. Her and Charles. And Jeremiah is fit to be tied. No containing him. Never has been. I don’t want Emily to have to deal with my feelings toward Charles, but I know she does. I try to reason with myself. I know in the end it’s possible no blame exists at all. But in my heart, it’s there. Maybe Belinda’s irrationality about the land is just a diversion for her. Easier to deal with than Will’s absence. Better to be angry with me than with death. At least it gives her someone to blame. Same with me.”
Judge Matthews stood. He seemed to return to the room from somewhere else.
“I beg your pardon, Mason. You came to extend friendship, not to hear my woes.” He sighed. “I bear this loss so poorly and I haven’t anyone to discuss it with. I took advantage.” He extended his hand.
“I came to see a friend, Judge. No advantage taken.”
* * *
The Mississippi heat descended early and shimmered over the fields of young cotton as Charles rode toward Greensboro. He unbuttoned his coat to the artificial breeze he and his sorrel gelding stirred up. As he passed a few white pedestrians, he tipped his hat. He ignored the slaves along the way, his gaze concentrated past the horse’s ears. He began to whistle tunelessly as the horse trotted into town.
A drab, heavyset man with red suspenders, known about town for loafing his time away, ambled out into the street and waylaid the doctor. “Been having some problems with my stomach, Doc.”
“Well, now, why don’t you come on out to the office and we’ll see what we can do for you?”
“Well, I seen you trotting in here and thought maybe I could just ask? Figured you could script me some sort of remedy.”
“Now, you know I don’t practice medicine from the saddle in the middle of the dusty street. But offhand, my first prescription would be to spend a few less hours a day at Jenkins Saloon and a few more in the open air.”
“Coolest place in town, Doc. Heat’s no good for a body. You coming in the saloon?”
“Seeing a patient.”
“One that don’t have to come out to the office?”
“I don’t have all day to stand here chatting. You think about what I told you.”
The man ambled into the shade of the overhang at Jenkins Saloon and watched Charles tie his horse, walk away, then circle back in the direction of the town brothel. Instead of going into the saloon, the man thought for once he might take the good doctor’s advice, stay in the open for a while. But after half an hour, he wandered inside, anyway, ordered a whiskey, but unusual for him, didn’t have much to say. When he exited, Charles’s horse was still tied at the same post.
“Hmff,” he said under his breath, “can’t do his doctoring in the street, but looks like the whorehouse is a different proposition.”
* * *
From the second-floor window of the courthouse, Judge Matthews checked to see Charles’s horse still tied where it had been the better part of the afternoon, same as every Thursday. Marriage had changed nothing. He lowered the shade. And then he lowered his head, wiping at his eyes. What have I let happen, he thought. He dropped into his chair, rested his forehead in his hands, massaging the bridge of his nose with his fingertips. He nudged his spectacles up on his nose, lay back against the smooth leather, turning his head from side to side. I should get up now, he thought. I should be waiting for him when he comes for his horse. He raised the shade again. A deep inertia overwhelmed him. What use would a confrontation be? Out there in the street for people to see, to add to their gossip, to reach his already sad daughter. No, he hoped in spite of the small rifts in the marriage he noticed that Emily did not suspect her husband’s whoring. Making it plain would not protect her. Nor did he think it would bring James to the cross. His only true choice to care for her and her child was his silence.
Judge Matthews rose and tidied his desk, straightened the corners of papers and books, brought order to what he could. He took his hat from the coatrack and locked the door. Somehow the subtle clank of the keys as he pocketed them brought him comfort. For all the rest, he would wait.