manhood. They rode down avenues of untidy cypresses, on roads that had
been created only by the traffic of horses and carts. They passed lonely
farming shacks, on land only partly and recently reclaimed from nature.
He could easily imagine how it was when the true native people still
lived here, smoke from their fires curling through the lazy afternoon to
the distant, vaulting heavens. He could see himself in their company, as
his father had been not so very many years ago, learning of their values
and beliefs and endless, unwritten, recited history.
He loved those stories at his father's knee. He could listen for hours
to the tales his parents told, his mother too, for they were both pioneer
people who had come to this extravagant wilderness, done battle with it,
and won. They had collected a vast repository of folklore that was, to
the impressionable, dreaming Jass, a living thing, because his parents
had lived it.
And if they were capable of doing what they had done, not so very many
years ago, almost within the span of his own lifetime, then what was he
capable of9 What adventures awaited him out there, just a few miles
farther than his parents had gone? What stories would he be able to tell
his children one day, of frontiers extended and mountains crossed and
wilderness made productive? He knew that out there lay the possibility
of experiences richer than all the treasure on earth, in this country
called America.
They broke through the sheltering trees, and Jass slowed his pace. There
it was, on a little hill, dazzling him as it always did, the pristine,
elegant mansion, surrounded by cotton fields of apple-pie order on land
that had been a sacred place to the native peoples. He could see the
stallions grazing in a paddock
204 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
beside the immaculately maintained racecourse, and wished that Leviathan was
kept here instead of in Nashville, for he was the most famous stud in
America. He could see the trim acres of the cotton fields, with row upon
orderly row of the budding plants that yielded such a bountiful harvest. He
could hear the distant song of the weeding gang as they moved among the
sprouting cotton under the careful eye of Mitchell, the overseer.
The splendid vision caught at his heart, just as always, and all sense of
the roaming life deserted him. His only ambition, at this moment, was to
cherish this place, to nurture it, to watch it grow and be a haven of
happiness and tranquillity, as it was to hirn now.
Cap'n Jack's thoughts on staring at The Forks of Cypress were colored by
other experiences, different memories. For Cap'n Jack hated this house,
which represented to him all the things he despised in old Massa James, all
the many promises sweetly made and bitterly broken. Even building the house
on this hallowed land now seemed to him profane, and represented the
precise moment from which he could date his many bitter disappointments in
James Jackson, whom once he had held in such regard.
Jass knew nothing of this, and smiled at him, just as always.
"Race you," he called, and galloped away. Cap'n Jack knew the pattern of
it; it happened every day. Jass would make for the house, but halfway along
the drive he would spur Morgan over the fence and gallop once around the
racetrack before heading home, to the amusement of Monkey Simon and the
stable hands, and the ire of Murdoch, the trainer, who thought it disturbed
the broodmares. Cap'n Jack kicked his horse too, and, better rider, he
could easily have overtaken Jass, but held back, to let the young man win.
Jass rode hard and fast now, laughing, as if suddenly freed of care, in
what seemed to be exhilaration but might as easily be a mask for the
impending moment when he must face his parents, and they would know he had
been fighting again.
26
Pocahontas Rebecca Meredith Boiling Perkins fanned herself vigorously. "A
wedding!" she exclaimed. "It's nothing but a charade! A fiasco! Just so
a couple of nigras can jump the broom. Why, I feel faint even thinking
about it!"
Sally smiled. Mrs. Perkins had felt faint several times that afternoon
already, although the day was not overly warm. "A little more tea, Mrs.
Perkins?" she asked. The fanning worthy gave an aggrieved nod, and Polly,
a slave maid, refilled her glass with cool sun tea.
"That the president's daughter-in-law could do such a thing! "
She was in full flood now and Sally knew from experience that little
could stop the flow unless something of more pressing import occurred.
Which was hardly likely, given the thunderous rarnifications of Sarah
York Jackson's correspondence, which had arrived at both the Perkins
place and The Forks that day. Although it was apparently a simple
invitation to a wedding, Sally was sure that matriarchs (and not a few
patriarchs) throughout the South would be as agog about it as their
present visitor. The mail had been delivered to the Perkins estate at
midday, and when Mrs. Perkins read the letter, her first reaction was to
go and lie down with a sick headache, but almost immediately her second
reaction took charge, for she had to share her feelings with someone, and
her daughter was not audience enough. Ordering Elizabeth to dress for
visiting, she had summoned the landau, taken some care over her toilette,
and arrived at The Forks in time for afternoon tea and, she hoped, some
comforting apoplexy. But the wretched Jacksons hardly seemed bothered by
the outrageous correspondence, and seemed to think the whole thing rather
amusing.
"Well, that's Yankees for you," snapped Mrs. Perkins, as
205
206 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
if Yankees were the reason for the world's ills, and took a sip of tea.
James, distracted by other letters, had taken little interest in the
conversation, or monologue with interruptions as Sally thought of it. Now
he looked up. "Sarah's hardly a Yankee," he said.
"Might as well be," Mrs. Perkins snapped back. "Mixing nigras and white
folk at a social event, can you imagine? Is that your boy?"
As it was uttered all in one breath, it took Sally a moment to realize
that the tiny, hoped-for miracle had arrived. Something had happened to
distract Mrs. Perkins from her obsession with the wedding. Jass was
galloping across the racetrack toward the drive, Cap'n Jack only yards
behind him. Sally watched him for a moment, maternally satisfied that he
was home safe, and knew just by looking at him that he had been fighting
again. She was also acutely aware that Mrs. Perkins was making urgent,
silent eye contact with her daughter, known to them all, but not to her
parents, as Lizzie, who was sitting with Sassy on the lawn, some little
distance away. Sally sensed matchmaking in the air.
Although only fourteen, Lizzie completely understood her mother's
unspoken signaling from the veranda, but saw little
need for it. She knew
she looked pretty, she always made sure she looked her very best when
visiting the Jacksons, and she knew she had little, if any, competition
in the district. The potential of Jass as her eventual spouse had never
been overtly discussed by her parents, but their constant hints at the
suitability of such a union made their opinion clear.
Lizzie thought it was a fairly good idea, too. Old James Jackson was much
richer than her own father, a reasonably successful businessman who had
small interest in agriculture but had bought a plantation near Florence
five years ago to give himself a sense of place, and because land was a
secure investment. The day-to-day running of the farm bored him, and he
had little aptitude for picking overseers who might make up for his own
shortcomings, so the plantation jogged along, and the Perkinses were able
to dwell comfortably in the fantasy that they were landholding gentry.
Not that they were poor-Lizzie would bring a handsome dowry to her mar-
riage-but they were not, by any means, rich.
MERGING 207
Lizzie was an only surviving child, raised alone, taught by tutors, only
now being allowed to go to school to finish her education. The
overwhelming influence on her life was her mother, and from her mother
she was learning all the attributes of a Southern belle, as if the mother
were creating in the all too willing girl the woman she herself had never
quite become. Lizzie could flirt and charm and tantalize, even faint if
necessary, with the best of them, but somehow none of it came naturally
to her. It was as if she were playing a role that was demanded of her,
and she behaved as if everything she did would be graded and commented
on by her mother afterward. Which it was.
In her private world, her fantasy world, Lizzie might dream of a more
dashing husband than Jass, a sweeping cavalier, but Jass was the reality:
certainly rich enough, potentially handsome enough, and undoubtedly
gentleman enough. They got on well together, and Lizzie thought she could
manage him well enough to create in him, if not her ideal husband, then
at least a reasonable facsimile. That they were both too young to
contemplate marriage was hardly a factor. Young girls, and their parents,
had to plan for the future.
She glanced at Sassy Jackson, as if to reassure herself that she was the
prettiest present, and turned to watch Jass. Followed by a black who
seemed to be his personal slave, Jass took the fence, and his horse
cleared it with energy and graceful ease.
"Why"-Lizzie affected what she thought to be her most seductive drawl,
and primped her hair-"your brother is positively gorgeous. Last time I
saw him, he was all gangly and spotty. "
Sassy, aware of the subtext that was being prepared, giggled. She
couldn't stand Lizzie. She was so very-young.
On the veranda, Mrs. Perkins echoed her daughter's sentiments. "What a
fine young man he's becoming," she cooed. "Best keep him out of
Elizabeth's sight. She has an eye for a beau. "
Driven by some internal, matemal clock, Sally dismissed the idea out of
hand. "Nonsense," she snapped, "they're both far too young." The rebuff
didn't bother Mrs. Perkins, who did elaborate things with her fan, said
"Mmmmm" in a way
208 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
that allowed, she hoped, considerable interpretation, and glanced at the
boy's father, who glanced at her, and she knew she was in striking distance,
at least, of the mother lode.
But Jass didn't stop and dismount, didn't join them on the veranda, didn't
even attempt to fulfill the various expectations of him. Instead he slowed
to a trot, waved cheerfully at his parents, and spurred his horse away,
behind the house, Cap'n Jack following. To the weaving house, Sally knew.
To Easter.
"He's been fighting again," Sally said, perhaps to give Mrs. Perkins some
doubts about her son's potential suitability. "He likes to pretend that we
don't know." She didn't disapprove of fighting; she took the view of many
pioneer mothers, that her door was always open to brave men and permanently
closed to cowards, but since the death of A.J., she didn't want anything
untoward to happen to Jass. She felt a sudden flurry of exasperation with
the world and with the boy. "It's happening almost every week. You should
talk to him."
James knew this, and saw it as a thing to be proud of in his son. -All
young men fight," he said, and Mrs. Perkins concurred. "All men fight," she
said. "It is part of being masculine."
So Sally had a fit of motherly pique instead. "He never brings me his
shirts to mend," she complained, but James smiled. "You'd only give them to
a slave."
"That's not the point," Sally insisted. "I'm his mother."
Lizzie had reasons for disappointment, too. She spent most of her life
being desperately bored. She had been brought up to it and should have been
used to it, but she wasn't. The only ripples in her life were school, which
was quite fun, although, try as she might, she wasn't overly popular with
the other girls and there were no young men around, and visiting, when she
could persuade herself, if only because she had a perky personality, that
she was popular, and there were likely to be young men. Such as Jass. She'd
spent the last hour waiting for him to come home, was bored with Sassy, who
seemed much more interested in discussing her own suitors and playing
mother to the three-year-old Jane Jackson than discussing Lizzie's future,
and now here was Jass, looking gorgeousshe hadn't lied-and then he was
gone.
"Why doesn't he come talk to us?" she complained. Sassy
MERGING 209
shrugged. "He's probably been in a fight. Easter cleans him up and mends
his clothes so that we won't know." She giggled again. "He's so silly."
"Easter?" Lizzie's antennae were out for potential rivals, and she knew
of no young lady in the district called Easter.
"A slave girl," Sassy explained. "She does the weaving."
Lizzie was considerably relieved. "Oh," she said. "Is that all. "
Had Lizzie known more of the weaving house, her relief might have been
short-lived. It hadn't changed much over the years; it still wasn't much
of a place, a little shack nestled in a peaceful grove. The roof leaked
in heavy rain, and it sorely needed a coat of paint, but the atmosphere
inside was warm and comfortable and loving. Home is the familiar, home is
where you are loved, and Jass knew that he was loved here, loved by Cap'n
Jack and loved, without knowing that it was love, by Easter. He knew that
his parents loved him, in their fashion, and his brothers and sisters, and
he them, but when he thought of home it was as much this shabby shack as
the great mansion on the hill. For this place was different. This was the
cottage where he was king.
He brought his horse
to a halt and dismounted. He knew he should have
stopped to greet Mrs. Perkins and her daughter, but he didn't want Lizzie
to see him battered and torn from his fight. "See to Morgan," he called,
unnecessarily for both he and Cap'n Jack knew that the horse would be
seen to, but an order given because he was the young Massa, and that's
what good Massas did to prove they were not insensible to the chores of
routine. Cap'n Jack was content to oblige, beyond the fact that it was
his job, because he was content that this young Massa, whom he, as much
as anyone, he believed, had fashioned and shaped, would be, one day, his
ol' Massa.
Easter had been at the loom, but on hearing the arrival of the horses,
she glanced out of the window, saw the state Jass was in, and went to
fetch water, iodine, and a cloth. Thirteen years old and still a little
gangly, she held the promise of a beautiful woman, with all of her
mother's gentle calm but a certain cheekiness as well-sparky, fiery
quirks to her personality that might have been inherited from her father,
or perhaps
210 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
came from being brought up in a somewhat privileged atmosphere. The sale
of Annie was seldom referred to anymore, but it still had powerful
resonance for those who could remember. For the blacks it signified the
most blatant example of the white man's dominance that had ever occurred
at The Forks. For the whites, particularly ol' Massa James, it represented
the nadir of the treatment of slaves under his dominion, and he preferred
to block the event from his mind. Easter had grown up in the shadow of
that memory, and was consequently much indulged by the blacks to solace
her for the outrage, by the whites to atone for their guilt. She had
always lived in this house with Cap'n Jack, she had received some general
schooling, although not, of course, reading and writing, in the big house
with the Jackson daughters, and she had inherited the role of weaver
without question or demur. Tiara had shown her the ways, and she seemed
to have a natural talent for the skill, a rhythm and grace about her that
made it a pleasure to watch her work and gave the resulting cloth a
neatness and texture to be admired.
And she had grown up with Jass, who spent at least as much time here,
with her, as anywhere, with anyone. As his constant companion, she found
few doors closed to her, and although she had felt the sting of the
switch, infrequently, as punishment for minor infringements of adult
rules, she was a wellmannered girl who was mostly content with the
confines of her existence. A small part of her, of course, longed to live
in the big house, or go to grand parties and wear pretty frocks, and
another part of her wanted to be free, but only a part, and not a very
large one. The concept of freedom, of being able to do what she wanted
with her life, was a desirable ideal, but she had heard many stories of
slaves, freed, whose lives were very much less than hers now. But then
almost every slave's life was less than hers now, and if she was free,
she might not have the thing she most wanted.
Because what she wanted was Jass. The fact that it was he who had
occasionally inflicted the mild stinging pain of the switch was not
without pleasure to her. It meant, in her mind, that she mattered to him.
And she knew how to get her own back.
He strode into the cottage like a husband coming home, and
MERGING 211
stripped to the waist. "Fix my shirt," he said, throwing the garment to
her. He took an empty corncob pipe from the shelf and sat in an old
rocking chair by the empty fireplace. Easter came to him to tend his
wounds and knew that only his pride needed real attention. "You gwine have
some mighty bruises. "
Easter's recognition that he had fought hard and well mollified Jass a
little. "It's always the same old rut," he complained. "They won't admit
that we've got to expand the economy, and whenever I try to talk about