James

James wandered the perimeter, kept himself at the edges, surveyed the middle spaces by walking around the entire border of the land, first alone, then with a few of his hands, like Zeke, Malachi, and Jonathan. There was no way to fortify what was already keeping the niggers at bay: the fence, the river, the woods rigged with traps and assassins, fear. Well, the last was the one exception. He could always employ indulgences that allowed them to ratchet the last up high.

“When is Paul due back?” Malachi asked.

“Not sure,” James answered. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and made more determined steps. He couldn’t locate the moon. Perhaps it was behind the trees preparing for its descent, leaving the inkiness of the sky for the sun to obliterate. He yawned and held his lantern out in front of him. Its corona wasn’t bright enough to do anything except show him how impenetrable the night could be. He kept it moving.

His clothes were a bit more raggedy than he would have liked, but he had no means, not enough means to dress better. Like Paul, for example. He had no wife to stitch something together for him, no children to wash and fold his belongings as a part of their daily chores. No children that he would claim anyway, which was probably for the best since he had nothing to give them except hard hands and aching feet, which were useless. He didn’t even have his cabin to turn over to them; that belonged to Paul. He couldn’t even afford slaves.

If James hadn’t looked so much like his mother and, therefore, like Paul’s mother, he was certain that Paul would have turned him away, accused him of fraud, and maybe called for the sheriff to lock him up for trespassing or vagrancy. But his face saved him.

“You walk that-a-way,” he said to Zeke, pointing over toward a row of slave cabins, which sat ramshackle and simple, just beyond the weeds. “Holler if you see anything out of order.”

He realized as soon as he said it the futility of the command. To be a nigger was to exist in a constant state of disorder, a darkness that could only be righted by light, a jungle that could only be untangled by machete, a chaos that could only be overruled by a slow hand and swift authority. Blood, James thought. Sometimes, he hungered for blood.

And blood was plentiful among the slaves, flowed through them like passion—singing and dancing, beating in their tongues, pulsing through their lips, stretched into wide smiles. He could smell it. They had changed very little from the ships and he had to admit to himself how much that surprised him. He had expected that they would pull themselves up like he did, find possibility in the flourishing impossible, break chains like he broke out of the orphanage. But no. They had merely brought the belly of the vessel with them everywhere they went. It assailed the senses. Then again, who were they lucky enough to be kin to?

They were of raggedy dress (his anger was fueled by the similarity of their attire and his) and little intelligence. They lived on top of one another, packed into dwellings by their own will as much as Paul’s. They were belligerent and smelled of a toil that couldn’t be washed away. They ate refuse and their skin bore the curse of wild. It was easier to think of them as animals, not so different from cows and horses, apes of great mimicry that managed to speak the language of humans. That they could sometimes inspire erections was no ill reflection on the bearer of such hardness. The fact of the matter was that they could pass for human and, therefore, trick the loins, if not always the mind.

After a long while, Zeke returned to the fold. “Everything looks all right. Niggers accounted for,” he said.

“All right, then. You three can wait for the next shift and then go,” James said.

“Oh. You might wanna go see ’bout Miss Ruth,” Zeke said. “She out there. Wandering for no good reason.”

James scratched his chin.

“What she doing out there?”

Zeke shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, where is she?”

“Over by the river, just past the barn.”

James shook his head. “Goddamnit. Keep watch. I’ll see to Ruth.”

She was the one woman on the entire plantation worth her salt and that would make things difficult. Her pale skin, red hair, and tight bosom hurt his feelings so deeply that masturbation only picked at the wound. She did nothing to hide her offense, not even the decency of a shawl on cool evenings in autumn.

He remembered how it was back then. It was a year of debilitating heat that emanated from everywhere, of him crossing his legs or squatting to contain it or keep it away. He pulled his hat down low over his eyes whenever Ruth would pass. He stuffed his face with any food that was near so as to occupy his tongue. He was barely able to resist smearing manure under his nose to prevent the smell of verbena from reaching him. He thought he would collapse from longing if he didn’t do something.

One sticky twilight, a nigger was bathing down by the edge of the swamp when she should have been in the kitchen. She stood in the path of the setting sun as it reflected off the water’s skin and caused a bright beam of light to obscure her body. She thus appeared not-nigger, was revealed as a figure he was able to hold in his mind until the deed was done. In that crimson light, her nigger tangles became golden locks, her black face, a coy blush—just like the women back home in Merry Old.

And she proved just as feisty. She bit him. She scratched his neck, leaving a mark that was still raised there. For that, he punched her timid face repeatedly until the blood ran down her mouth and covered the lower part of her face like a veil.

When he pushed himself inside of her—when he pumped and twisted and jabbed, bringing to already scarred spaces new contusions—he discovered that what he heard about these wenches wasn’t true after all: there were no teeth on the inside of their cunts, no hooks that would hold the cock inside, bleeding it dry while the man hooted and howled in pain. He didn’t feel his soul being sucked from him. No, sir. It was just as smooth and proper as all the prim white pussies that escaped England just like he did.

But she was spirited, and not even his massive slugs to her top lip or to the edge of her chin could stop her stark raving. So, after he released his thick spray, he, with his pants trapped around his ankles, clutched her throat and smashed her head under the water. And she kicked and kicked, bruising his jewels and darkening his inner thigh. She kicked for what seemed longer than any human being could feasibly hold her breath. Then he remembered that he wasn’t dealing with a human being and that perhaps those things—her hell-fury and her gumption, her animated arms and legs—were the teeth and hooks of which they spoke. One final blow to her hip to keep her legs at bay and he heard something snap. He let her go.

Drenched, he stumbled back to drier shore. And up she rose: bent to the side from where he struck her, soaked in blood and river water, staring at him with black, glowing eyes. Then suddenly, she looked past him and he swore that he felt a razor slice his shoulder as her eyes moved over it toward the distance. He felt himself loosening. It started in the pit of his stomach and worked itself outward. He lost control of his bowels. Urine trickled down his legs, to the ground, and toward the river; shit dropped into his pants. His breathing slowed. He felt light and empty. It was as if his body was turning to air. Was he dead? He looked at his feet and he seemed to be floating, like a haint. It made him laugh. The one magical nigger in the whole place and he had the misfortune of choosing her.

Ain’t that just dandy?

The next thing he remembered, he was back in his shack, facedown on his bed. For a moment, he felt well rested. Afterward, however, he could sleep only in fits, and his walk was suddenly bowlegged. There wasn’t a nigger on the plantation who didn’t make him want to vomit—especially the females. The resolve it took for him to overcome the sudden bout of nausea he would experience when one of them came near and, perhaps, stood too close, or when one of them would speak his name and drag it out a few seconds too long as the slow-witted were wont to do. And if James tried to say her name, the name of the one had he desecrated, tried to pronounce even the first letter, M . . . mm . . . mm, he found himself, again, coming undone, like at the river. So he kept his mouth closed and avoided her. No more dinners at Paul’s, not even when a place was set for him. No, I’ll eat in my cabin. It’s fine. I can keep my eye on the niggers better from there. Just in case. His rifle became a crucial border. And from the safety of that demarcation, he learned a great deal more about them than those who ignored the line.

Trying to find where Ruth could be, he walked through the darkness as rock and weed crunched beneath his boots. The only song was the click of crickets backed by the river’s rush. He was listening for other footsteps, looking for other imprints, sniffing for perfume, but detected nothing. He slipped on the mud of the bank and caught a glimpse of a figure in the periphery. He turned quickly only to see the frilled edge of a gown pass by a tree. He followed it.

He walked along the bank and then through the trees. His lantern flickered and then from behind him, a voice.

“Late for a swim.”

He couldn’t see her face even when he held up the lantern because she wore the shadows like something given to her by an old friend.

“Impolite not to speak.”

He wanted to, but she had caught him by surprise.

“You must be the one who stole the moon, eh?” he said finally.

She smiled. He intentionally denied himself the opportunity to.

They walked across the plantation, neither of them speaking. He was amazed by her ability to go out in the darkness without stumbling, without uncertainty, without a lantern. He tried to provide her the benefit of his light, but she refused it, retreated into the thickness, laughed at the mere suggestion. And he wanted so badly to see her face.

“What you creeping around for, Ruth?” he asked, hoping to draw her out.

She twirled in her nightgown, praising the coolness that rushed underneath it, and hummed a melody. By the time they reached the fence, she was already under it and skipping up the stairs to his cabin.

He thought her a puzzle missing more than a few pieces. But maybe those were the best kind. Those were the ones that required a bit more from those putting them together: a bit more time, a bit more patience, a bit more imagination. The last was the most fertile of grounds, where mastery was sown, and he had planned to patiently await what might grow.

She walked into the cabin and danced around it.

“This place is a mess,” she finally said. “Nobody ever taught you to keep house? You need to get hitched, maybe.”

He smiled. He thought she might have, too. He put the lantern down on a small table with only one chair tucked under it. It was the first time he had ever even given that any consideration—Me? A wife? Who would? My manner ain’t exactly roomy for another. He was distracted, though, because her hair was fire.

Ruth turned and went toward the door. He didn’t want her to leave.

“I hope your cousin comes home soon. He’s going to sell those niggers that looked at me, you know.”

“I know.”

He looked at her as she walked past him. “Ruth, ain’t safe for you to be wandering the plantation at night. You should get back home, you hear?”

“Why should I be scared of what’s mine?” She looked at him, puzzled.

He removed his hat for the first time in her presence. As he had said before, his manner wasn’t roomy. He leaned his head to the side. “If only it was yours.” He held his hat to his chest to express respect and sincerity.

Ruth chuckled and then she left. When he went to the door to see which direction she was traveling, she was already gone, swallowed up by a night she felt comfort in, which he didn’t understand. He saw four overseers off in the distance, talking to Zeke, Malachi, and Jonathan as the shift exchange began.

James went back into his cabin. He sat down on his bed but didn’t remove his shoes. Eaten through as they were, it really didn’t matter if they were on or off. He threw his hat onto the floor. He reclined. He put his rifle next to him, in the place where his wife would have slept had he the inclination or the space. He put both of his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling. The lantern glowed and the flame made things in the dark move, but it also made James not want to. Heavy as his eyelids had gotten, he just let them do what they were asking.

When he entered the dreaming, he was in the field and the niggers were picking cotton. But the cotton was alive and shrieked with every pluck. Then suddenly, the slaves stopped, all of them, at once. Like a flock of birds, they turned in unison. They raised themselves from their prostrate positions. Old and young, they all faced him. None of them had eyes, but somehow they could still see. And there was a noise coming from in between their legs: the sound of something moving, buzzing; listen closer: voices: beating. And the niggers started toward him and he had his gun, but there were too many of them and each of them had a pitchfork in his hands. He opened his eyes just as the first points were coming toward his forehead.

He swung his legs around to the side of his bed and kicked over the spittoon.

“Goddamnit.”

He got up and surveyed the room for a rag. He avoided the mirror. The plank wood walls closed in on him. Four walls, blank, darker at the tops and at the bottoms, dyed black by mildew and fungus. The low ceiling sloped upward but granted no room to breathe, stretch, or stand tall. Just one room and very little furniture: a bed, a small table, and, yes, only one chair; atop the table the lantern still alight. Over in the corner: a washbasin, and next to it an extinguished fireplace with a small black pot hanging within.

He found a used rag on the floor by the window. The glass reflected the flickering flame of the lantern. Outside was blackness, but still, shapes: the trees, the Big House, the barn, the nigger shacks on one side, and twelve or so others on the other side of the field. His own cabin was only a smidgen larger. How dare they do that. Give him a cabin that small. Let the niggers build ones almost as large. And on the other side of the fence. The fence that he couldn’t even see the shape of because it was so close. The fuckers. All of them: the propertied, their niggers, and the chasers.

He wiped his saliva from the floor. In it, lumps of chewed tobacco that made him frown. He threw the rag into the fireplace, underneath the pot, into the ash. There was a stain on the floor where the spittoon had spilled. The brownness of its contents seeped into the wood grain. It would always be there now.

He patted the pocket of his overalls. There was still half a plug of tobacco left. He pulled it out of the pouch, broke off a piece, and shoved it into his mouth. He sat in the only chair in the room and stared at the dying light in the lantern: how it shrank and dimmed but still made the whole room jump, inhale and exhale in its light, casting shadowy auras around everything. It made him long for evenings on the London plains, as foggy as they were, but not for its people.

The promise of riches, he thought, was a damn lie. It had rendered his journey—his long, arduous journey on ships with gaunt, diseased men—a mockery. But he didn’t have the resources to return, not that things were much better in England. There, he would have the same sallow face and necessity for chewing tobacco. At least here his pockets were not as empty. But they were still not full enough, and that wasn’t what his cousin Paul had promised him.

Paul didn’t tell him how disagreeable this land would prove to be, how it would harden him further, that even his voice would change. No one told him that the women here would scoff at him and that, as a result, his beauty—the one thing he could count on across the sea—would fade from disuse. Paul had called him vain and he thought Paul gluttonous. Linked by sins, he realized that they were family not merely because the same blood ran through their veins, but because the same blood stained their hands.

James’s father died first; his mother, moaning and coughing up something dark, shortly afterward. He was four and he had not yet learned how to bathe himself. So when two tall men finally came to the broken-down house of festering and insects, claimed him, and brought him, on horse, to some place where the mist hid everything, they scrunched their noses, and James blended into the mass of messy-faced, disheveled orphans forever dressed in gray.

As he chewed on the tobacco, he thought, Dirty children should remain dirty for as long as they can. Clean ones attract too much attention. At the orphanage, busy hands were as much a workshop for the devil as idle ones. And because he was such a good student, he learned to do interesting things with his own. Picking locks and pockets, and sometimes women, was what he resigned himself to until he reached the age of nineteen and learned that his mother had a sister.

There was no other way across the ocean than to rent himself out to the slavers. He was astounded by how many niggers they managed to squeeze onto the ship. They were filed away in the hull like documents, carefully stacked upon one another, barely enough room to wiggle their toes. Hot and funky, they were jammed into the space, chained together in a prostrate position, weeping and moaning, praying in their gibberish languages, surely begging their black-ass godlings to grant them the gift of being able to stretch their arms and breathe.

Every day, James had the task of entering the space to feed them whatever slop was in the pot he was carrying. The food smelled almost as bad as the niggers. Each day, he entered and each day he left wishing he never had to see any of that ever again.

Sometimes, the niggers died. Spoiled, the slavers called it. And he, with a few other men no older than he was, had to unchain the dead, carry their decomposing, vacating bodies up to the deck, and hurl them over the side of the ship for the sea beasts or the ocean itself to dispose of. He wondered how many niggers had met a similar fate, if, in death, they had begun to assemble in the deep, designing the shape of their vengeance, which would come in the form of some infinitely black whirlpool or gigantic, crashing tidal wave that would wipe clean the face of the earth like it did in Noah’s time.

No. If James learned nothing else in the gray orphanage, he learned that God’s heartlessness would never again include mass murder by drowning. The rainbow was His promise that He would be more creative the next time His sadistic impulses got the better of Him. The priests had assured James of this, but only as a confession after they had already unleashed themselves on him and could no longer stand his sorrowful eyes.

Weeks sailing across the gray ocean and then they finally reached land in some place called Hispaniola. He stumbled from the ship with wobbly legs that were, after such a relatively short period, no longer accustomed to solid ground. It would take him a few months to make it to Mississippi, where his mother’s sister’s son owned a plantation. He had to make his way across untamed land where people scowled because of the heat and were suspicious of every new face. Hungry and exhausted, he arrived, on foot, at the Halifax plantation just as the sun was sinking. He could barely even stretch his arm to greet his newfound cousin, but he had strength enough for a smile.

He didn’t even allow himself the time to be overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of the land on which he stood, or the house that seemed large enough to hold everyone he ever knew. After downing bowl after bowl of possum stew, and lazy conversation with his cousin, in whom he remembered what he thought he had lost of his mother, he was escorted to a bedroom by some young darkie, and he slept until it was night again. He didn’t know what to make of Paul’s offer that he oversee the plantation and watchdog the slaves. He would get his own piece of land, right near the northern edge of the property, and he would have help with his duties, of course. Paul had befriended some poor wretches from town who were rough but malleable. He let them, too, set up their shacks just on the other side of the cotton field, a parcel of land on which they could raise their families in exchange for becoming nigger barriers. Still, they were outnumbered. They would need an equalizer.

Out of his mind and back to himself, James got up from the table and walked over to the spittoon he had left lying on the floor. He picked it up and spit a huge wad into it. It was still slippery from the spill. He placed it down on the table and the clank against the wood almost disguised the sound of barking coming from over the fence.

The bloodhounds’ noise meant that stirring somewhere in the thick void was a quail or an unfortunate nigger. James grabbed the lantern and retrieved the rifle from his bed. His heart beat vigorously. He spit the rest of the tobacco juice onto the ground as his boots trod the last step of his porch. The woofing continued, and it was coming from somewhere over by the barn.

The barn was a source of vexation and an interest to almost everyone on the plantation, but James wasn’t even the smallest bit stunned by what went on between those two young niggers, Samuel and Isaiah. He couldn’t tell which was which, but the orphanage taught him to recognize animals when he saw them.

For this particular purpose, the whippings would only make them devious, deceitful, he told Paul. It wasn’t like a fit of laziness or an eye that dared to lay itself upon the face of a white woman. No, it was a blood mark and one that was relatively harmless. It was best to just let them be. All that mattered was that the work get done. And, by all accounts, the work wasn’t done better by any other niggers in the state of Mississippi.

“It’s ungodly, James. If I allow that here, without punishment . . .”

“Silly to be concerned with that when you have this,” James said as he looked around the plantation. He had finally paid attention to the vastness upon which they stood.

“Have this even longer if I breed them,” Paul responded.

“Greed is a pitfall, Cousin.”

“Ability, Cousin. A man does what he is able to.”

James shook his head. He could see his cabin in the distance.

He quieted himself. For all Paul was doing to sabotage those two animals, did he know that he had one living right in his own house? Paul and Ruth had so protected their only surviving child that they softened him and had the audacity not to notice. Had they let his strength develop unhindered by their fear and sadness, perhaps he would have had the chance to be a man. Instead, he followed after one of the barn animals, grinned insufferably, painted nature’s nonsense, and had the same desperate eyes as all malnourished people.

He didn’t envy Timothy’s fascinations. He wanted terribly to be as far away from niggers as he could—except when they sang. For when niggers sang, it was something that no white person could imitate, not even the ones like him, who suffered and were miserable. What the folks in Paul’s church did were birdcalls compared to what the niggers did in the tree circle. One hundred wolves howling at the moon in perfect pitch. A fleet of ships creaking simultaneously at sea. He gladly stood in the trees and listened, occasionally rocking with the rhythm and humming, keeping his rifle close.

“Sell them, if it makes it any better. I know a few folks who will give you more than they’re worth.”

But it wasn’t singing that James heard now; it was the sound of dogs barking. He put the lantern down, but not the rifle, and climbed the fence. He grabbed the lantern through the post and trod slowly toward the slave cabins. Nothing stirred. But as he got closer to the barn, he saw the horses running free. The pigs were meandering about. Chickens were perched on the fence. The other overseers ran from around the back side of the barn.

“What’s going on here?” James demanded. “Get these animals back in their pens. Wake the niggers and have them help you. Get Zeke, Malachi, Jonathan, and the others to come out. Need as many guns as possible.”

“They getting paid for coming back out during their sleep time?”

“Don’t worry yourself with that now. Do what I tell you to. I’ll go check on Ruth.”

James ran toward the Big House.

His lantern at his side, he ran into the house and saw Paul. He was covered in blood. The hounds were in the house, woofing and pacing in crooked lines. There was a trail of blood leading down the stairs. On the floor, at Paul’s side, a nigger with more blood on him than Paul.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” James yelled.

Paul said nothing, didn’t so much as twitch a finger. He stared ahead at the tree that could be seen through the doorway behind James.

“What’s the matter with you? You hurt?” He looked at Paul, held the lantern up to his face. “Paul? The animals are loose. I got some of my men waking niggers to help round them up.”

James took a step toward him and Paul flinched.

“What?” James asked.

Paul mouthed some words.

“Speak up!” James shouted. “What happened to you?”

Paul said nothing. He swatted for James to move out of his way and headed toward the door. He dragged the nigger’s body out of it, onto the porch, then down the steps, and toward the willow tree.

“Paul, goddamnit! The animals!” he said, following Paul, reaching the porch and refusing to step on the blood trail that he knew no amount of scrubbing would remove. “What’s going on? Paul!”

Paul stopped. He straightened his back and then sank into himself again.

“In the house,” he croaked.

“Ruth?” James shouted.

He ran back into the house and up the stairs. He looked around. He heard nothing but saw shadows. He ran down the hall. The floor was wet. There was a light coming from up ahead. Timothy’s door was open. He walked inside. The room was ransacked. Ruth was on top of the bed, writhing, weeping to herself, mouth agape, but barely a whisper coming from her.

“Are you hurt? Who hurt you?”

James’s face had begun to contort. He ran around the bed and tripped over Timothy’s legs. He looked down. Timothy was disgraced. No eyes, just like the niggers in his dream.

“Christ Jesus,” he whispered.

He stepped gingerly over Timothy and toward where Ruth lay. He tried to pick her up to carry her to her room and help her clean herself, but each time he got his arms around her, she fought and tried to bite him. He exhaled loudly.

“Ruth. Ain’t nothing we can . . .”

It didn’t matter. This was how she would mourn. It seemed ancient, what she was doing. Older even than his beliefs. Like it might have come with the land itself. So maybe she was in the grasp of something, wasn’t herself because she wasn’t herself. Who was she now, then? He would have to leave her to know, and inside him was something that desperately needed to know.

He flew down the stairs and out to where he had seen Paul. Now there was a group of others who had finally awoken, and what seemed like an endless crowd of niggers being gathered around the fat willow. James ran to the tree where Paul stood. He had dragged the nigger by his hand and held on to it. But the way he held it, like a parent would hold a child’s hand, gave James chills.

“Rope,” Paul said.

Zeke hooted. Malachi danced. Jonathan howled. James told Jonathan and some of the others to help with the animals despite Paul’s command.

“These niggers ain’t godly!” Jonathan shouted into James’s face.

Zeke started to giggle and James yelled, “Quiet!” but Zeke kept giggling.

James walked over to Paul, pointing to the nigger on the ground beside him. “Who is that?”

“Do it matter?” Malachi shot back.

“Paul?” James turned to look at Paul again.

Paul dropped to his knees and began to weep. He let go of the nigger’s hand. James bent down next to him.

“Paul.”

Paul looked at James. In his eyes, James saw his mother not on her deathbed, but in a coach riding away from a magnificent sunrise. She held her hands daintily and smiled at the thought of her son, who was now a man, and she didn’t even judge how he had lost himself because somewhere, perhaps, there was a piece left, but only a mother had the skill to find it. It was she, after all, who had built it. She wasn’t looking at him, no, but she was still smiling and that was enough. There, James and Paul’s relation became real, realer even than it was that first day, when he stumbled, could barely keep his eyelids open, and took all of Paul’s lies for inevitable truth. James whispered something that only Paul could hear, but it wasn’t for Paul. Then Paul said, loud enough for everyone to hear: “String this nigger up. High!”

James blinked, then nodded. He took the listless, dying body from Paul, and he and some of the men noosed then hefted it. All of their rifles lined their backs.

“Be on guard,” James said and some of the men stopped tending to the body and raised their weapons toward the crowd of niggers, some of whom wept, some of whom shook, while a few stood resolute in the face of everything.

Paul began to grab at the weeds, pulling them out of the ground by their roots. He started to shove them into his mouth. Dirt still clumped at the bottom, he pushed weeds into his mouth and began to chew. Crying, moaning, and chewing. It had finally happened, James thought. Something vital had broken. He helped Paul to his feet and whispered to him, “They can’t see you this way.”

Paul just stared wordlessly and, for the first time, James put his arm around his cousin’s shoulder. Briefly, everything was theirs. They looked at each other and it wasn’t an ending, but it was something new. It frightened James, and he could tell from his quivering lip that it had frightened Paul, too.

After he had disassembled his lantern so that he might light his makeshift torch, James heard the buzzing. As he made his way toward the swinging body and set it aflame, the buzzing. All guns were pointed toward the niggers and he knew from his dream that was the first mistake. How many might we get? Twenty? Thirty? What of the other hundred or so? Then he saw the nigger whose name his tongue was forbidden to curl around, and she made her move, and something in him froze.

That was why the mulatto boy was able to catch him by surprise.