validity of the South--
"But what if the Feds abolish slavery?" Jass jumped in. "Or if the slaves
revolted, like Nat Turner-"
The very name Nat Turner unsettled the women, it was the stuff of their
worst nightmares. Sensing this, James tried to be calm, and ignored the
interruption. "And to question slavery is to attack the South, which only
gets you into more trouble."
Sally intervened, as much for herself as for her daughter. "Why don't you
discuss this after dinner, in the other room?"
Sassy had gone very quiet. "Quite right," said James, and looked for a
happier subject. "Are you all excited about the wedding?"
Soup done, Polly cleared the plates, and Parson Dick brought the roast
to James to carve.
The change of course and subject had the desired effect. Sassy cheered
up immediately, and Polly glanced at Parson Dick. They all had varying
degrees of knowledge about the wedding, the whites and the blacks, from
the invitation, from the Perkinses, or from the grapevine, although Jass,
whose only sources were Easter and Lizzie, knew less than most.
"What's it all about?" he asked, and his family all spoke at once, to
fill him in, and in relief from the talk of Nat Turner. From the
confusion of names, opinions, and gossip, Jass learned what he did not
already know.
220 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
When President Jackson's son, Andrew Jackson, Jr., had recently married
Sarah York, the president gave his new daughter-in-law a slave maid,
Gracie, as a wedding gift. Alfred, never far from the president's side,
had fallen in love with Gracie, and she accepted his offer of marriage.
Sarah, wanting the wedding to be celebrated in style, was organizing a
grand function at the Hermitage, and had invited the gentry of the South,
together with their most valued slaves, to attend. It was the inclusion
of the slaves in the invitations that was causing the fuss.
"Can you imagine?" Sassy giggled. "Slaves? As guests?"
Jass was tickled pink. "What a grand idea," he laughed. "And not so very
unusual-we often go to their weddings."
"To watch, or because we own them." Sassy shared some of Lizzie's
outrage. "Never all mixed up together. No one will go!"
"I think most everyone will," James corrected his daughter. "Sarah is so
close to the president. Who will turn her down?"
"Will you go, Papa?" Sassy asked. They all knew of the cooling of their
father's friendship with the man who was now president. "I thought you
and Uncle Andrew had a quarrel."
James shrugged it aside. "We've had our differences from time to time.
That's all over and done with."
"Andrew Jackson has been a good friend to this family," Sally said. "He
helped us considerably in the early days."
She was only telling them what they all already knew, but felt she had
to defend the days of their youth. Whatever her private opinion of
Andrew, she knew that he was responsible for much of their considerable
fortune.
"If it's going to be such a grand occasion, what am I going to wear?"
Sassy wailed. "I can't go in these old rags!"
Everyone laughed again. The "old rags" were gorgeous, handmade in
Charleston, and worn twice at most, but a party atmosphere prevailed, and
the rest of the meal was spent in a discussion of new clothes for Sally
and Sassy, and of who might be attending the wedding and who might not.
Jass longed to be away. The talk of the dresses had interested him
briefly, if only because they were soft, feminine things, but now he
wanted to see Cap'n Jack, for he was still puzzled by Easter's recent
attitude, and needed older, wiser, male help.
MERGING 221
As soon as they had given thanks for their meal, he begged to be excused,
and scooted out of the room, to James's disappointment, for he had been
planning to talk to his son.
"Off to see Easter," Sassy giggled, and she hurried away to find Angel,
Sally's personal maid, and plan new ball gowns.
Suddenly then, James and Sally were alone but for the slaves. James
stared at his wife for a long moment. The years seemed to be making her
more handsome, not less, and motherhood had given both a tranquillity and
purpose that enhanced her personality. She was born to be what she is
now, thought James, and hoped she loved him still, knowing that she did.
Parson coughed gently. "No," said James, "I'll take it here. "
Parson Dick poured a small glass of port, looked a question at Sally, who
shook her head slightly, and the butler and the maid left the room.
James sipped his port, and they sat in companionable silence for a while,
the dull ticking of the grandfather clock a metronome to their thoughts.
Sally knew something was worrying her husband, and she guessed it had to
do with Andrew. Ever since James Coffee's visit last week, when the two
men had spent the entire afternoon in the study supposedly discussing
business matters, James had been distracted. Well, she thought, he will
tell me in his good time, if it's important, knowing that it was. James
always shared his most worrying concerns with her eventually, unlike some
men who treated their wives as decorative imbeciles when it came to
business affairs. She could not imagine a better husband, and thanked her
Maker that she had found this gentle, reasonable man. She saw his graying
hair, the wrinkles around his eyes, and the thickening waistline, and it
made not one jot of difference to her feelings for him. For this is how
it was meant to be, she thought. This is what love is: We are friends as
much as lovers, we will grow old together, and I would trust him, I do
trust him, with my life. She prayed with all her heart for a similar
contentment for her children.
Especially Jass. Because he was not born to the role of first son, she
knew life was not easy for the boy. A.J. had been blessed with a more
forceful personality. No one ever worried about A.J., for he seemed to
understand naturally what was
222 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
expected of him, and even as a youth you could see in him the future head of
the family, master of the estate, the slaves, and their fortunes. But Jass
was different. Honest, caring, and studious, he was scrupulous in his
attention to other people's feelings, and she knew that his eventual
responsibilities as master would weigh heavily on him, for she saw in the
blithe boy a wretched affliction for those in authority: Jass could always
see both sides of every question.
Briefly, bitterly, she felt a sudden stab of almost inconsolable grief, and
cursed God for taking A.J. from them, not just because she loved her
firstbom-which she did with all her heart; his death had caused her untold
pain-but also because his presence would have made Jass's future so much
easier. It hadn't mattered so much two years ago, when AT had been killed
in that awful accident,
because Jass had still been a boy, basking in the
careless, carefree days of innocence. But it mattered now, as she watched
him daily becoming more of a man, with a man's care, and she knew, if only
from Mrs. Perkins's fan language, Lizzie's flirting, and James's too ready
receptivity of their plot, that a man's future was being planned for him.
Not Lizzie, she begged, anyone but Lizzie, wanting for her son a woman who
might more easily comprehend his forgiving nature and make considerably
fewer demands on his gentle morality.
And then there was Easter.
As if tracking her thoughts, James smiled at her. "Easter's good for him,"
he said. He took a sip of brandy, and his tone was cautionary. "He's nearly
a man, after all."
Yes, thought Sally, he's nearly a man. She felt a sudden flash of temper
again. But he isn't a man yet, he's still a boy, and I want him to be that
boy for as long as his heart desires. She yearned for the pioneer days of
their youth, when building a life was more important than sustaining a
fortune, for she knew that now they were rich, now they were people of con-
sequence, what her son might want in a bride was secondary to the
successional needs of a good marriage.
He's still a boy, her heart insisted. But she looked at her husband.
" Yes, " she agreed. " He's nearly a man. " She wasn't trying to avoid the
inevitable, merely delay it. For as long as was humanly possible.
MERGING 223
The young man in question was looking for advice about women, specifically
Easter, from his mentor, Cap'n Jack.
"She's growing up," Cap'n Jack told Jass. "She want woman things."
Jass grabbed at the only straw he felt confident with about girls. "You
mean pretty dresses and things?"
Cap'n Jack smiled. He'd had a long talk with Easter and knew that her
ambition ran to much more than a frock.
"And invitations to weddings an' things." Cap'n Jack dropped the tiny
bombshell lightly.
Jass was astonished. "You mean, she wants to go? But that's ridiculous,
she's too young, she's not even a lady's maid, she-"
"Don't stop her wanting it, all the same," Cap'n Jack responded.
Jass stared at the night. Fireflies sparkled in the long grass.
The slave quarters, a collection of shacks around a large clearing, were
almost a second home away from home to Jass, for he spent almost as much
time here as in the mansion or the weaving house. A bonfire, large pot
of food simmering over it, burned in the middle of the clearing. Most of
the slaves had already eaten and were relaxing as best they could, gath-
ered in little groups outside their shacks. Somewhere Monkey Simon was
strumming a banjo, and a mother was washing a child in an old bathtub.
A sense of tranquillity prevailed, for whatever resentments any of the
younger, more hotheaded men felt for their status, no slave had run away
from The Forks for years. There was no point in it.
Old Tiara, who had been Jass's nurse and now cared for her young
grandson, Isaac, sat on a broken-down rocker, the boy on her lap,
discussing the coming wedding with anyone who cared to listen.
"Yo' gwine be Alfred's best man?" she called to Cap'n Jack, only a small
distance away.
Cap'n Jack shook his head. "Ain't seen too much of him. Not since the
Massa and Massa Presyden' fell out."
He sorely missed his old friend but was proud of his status as most loyal
slave to the president, whom he never called Massa Andrew anymore, but
always Massa Presyden'.
224 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
"Alfred gettin' awful old," Tiara cackled. "Same like you. Time you was
hitched agen, Cap'n Jack."
Her husband, Micah, was whittling on the stoop of their little shack.
"Hush, woman," he said, knowing the command was useless.
"Don't yo' shush me!" Tiara was indignant. "Cap'n Jack need a woman to
look after him, cain't go on dreamin' 'bout Annie fo' evuh an' evuh."
Isaac, warm and secure against his grandmother's capacious bosom,
stirred. "Who's Annie?" he asked.
"You hush too, boy," muttered Micah. "She ain't with us no more."
A slave child must learn early, at his mother's knee. Or his
grandmother's, and Tiara was always ready to pick at an old sore, as much
for the young Massa's benefit as Isaac's. "Don't you tell Isaac hush. No
reason he cain't know what Massa did."
She was looking at Jass, but talking to Isaac. "She wer' Easter's mammy.
Massa sol' her away."
Jass, who ' had heard the story many times, but had no memory of it, was
not listening. His mind was filled with images of Easter in a pretty
dress rather than the simple homespun she usually wore.
"Weren't the Massa," Cap'n Jack said sharply. "Wer' the overseer,
Harris."
Tiara laughed derisively. "Don't make no never mind. She got so]' away."
She hugged Isaac to her. "Things differen' now," she told the boy, "but
in the ol' days, hit didn't make no never mind if'n a slave had family.
Massas sell anyone away if"n they had a mind. Sons from pappies. Mammies
from sons."
Micah stopped his whittling and stared at the fire. "Still happen, most
places," he said. There was no bitterness in his voice; it was a simple
statement of fact. The only thing permanent to a slave was slavery.
"Not here," Cap'n Jack insisted. "Massa wouldn't let it."
In Jass's mind, the vision of Easter in a pretty frock gave way to Lizzie
in the same frock. It shocked him from his reverie, and he heard Tiara
speaking.
"Him Massa. An' all Massas the same. Don't give a hoot
MERGING 225
'bout. black folk, other'n to work their selves to the grave for ern.
-That's tosh, Tiara," Jass broke into the conversation, without rancor,
for it happened all the time. "We look after you, don't we?"
"Jes' sayin'." Tiara rocked in the gentle night. There was no point in
starting an argument with Jass about it, for she would never win.
It was also true. Despite the visceral resentment many of the slaves felt
about their servitude, the Jacksons looked after them reasonably well.
Furious with Harris for selling Annie, James, on his return to The Forks,
had sacked the man instantly, and had spent many weeks searching for a
suitable replacement. Edward Mitchell had come to him with good
references that praised his work but complained of a certain leniency in
his treatment of slaves, and James had hired him at once. A man who used
the whip as punishment of last resort rather than weapon of first
defense, he had made some improvements to conditions for the slaves, and
they, in return, had given a somewhat better productivity. Slaves were
never sold away now, and were only purchased when absolutely necessary,
both the Massa and the overseer preferring to train their own people,
born and bred on the plantation. It was a poor substitute for freedom,
but it was gener
ally agreed that if you had to be a slave, The Forks was
one of the better places to be.
If you had to be a slave. They all had a dream of freedom and prayed for
a miracle that would somehow deliver them from their bondage, but the
dreams and the prayers were tempered by the reality of their existence.
The known was preferable to the unknown, and although the younger men
talked of running away, they had no clear idea of where they would run
to, except the vague, distant North, Up South as the slaves called it,
and between them and any viable sanctuary was a hostile, perilous
environment that few believed they would survive.
In the chaos of gossip and hysteria that attended the Nat Turner
rebellion, one of their number, Samuel, a rash young man, saw cause for
hope and did run away. It was one of the few times when Mitchell had
thought it necessary to display
226 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
his authority, and they had been locked in their quarters, even Cap'n Jack
and Easter, the men shackled, until Samuel was returned. Mitchell employed
slave catchers, with instructions that the runaway was not to be unduly
harmed, and after a week they brought him back, hungry and miserable,
bruised and bleeding from the unnecessary beating the catchers had
insisted was necessary for his recapture. Samuel had been chained to a
tree for a week, the time of his absence, through the blazing days of
August, until Mitchell believed his promises that he would never attempt
to escape again.
Samuel kept his word. For months he would not even talk of his time away,
but as his wounds of spirit and body healed, he started to brag of it,
the extent and unlikeliness of his adventures expanding with every
telling, until they all devoutly wished he would shut up.
Freedom, then, was a double-edged sword, a longed-for dream and a
terrifying prospect, and to someone of Tiara's years, not something she
could easily imagine in her lifetime. But she hugged Isaac to her again,
and begged sweet Jesus in heaven to make it a reality for him.
A distraction arrived, in the form of Parson Dick.
Immaculately attired, as always, Parson Dick looked considerably out of
place in this community of field hands. Although black, he was more of
an outsider here than the white youth, Jass.
"Cap'n Jack, the Massa want to see you," he called. "You too, Massa Jass.
" Duty done, he sniffed the air. "My, Missus Tiara, that pot likker sure
smell fine-"
Although his elocution was usually flawless, Parson Dick could fall into
slave idiom whenever it suited him. He thrived on knowledge, on gossip,
loved to keep his finger on the pulse of the field slaves' thinking, and
Tiara, an old sparring partner, was the key to that world.
Tiara glared at him. "Yo' get yo victuals up the big house, Parson Dick,
where yo' belong. We ain't good enough fo' house niggers like yo'." But
she nodded to her daughter, Minnie, who got up and went to the pot with
a bowl.
" But you gettin' mighty thin, Parson Dick, on all that white livin',"
Tiara chortled. "Have some real food, mebbe put a little color back in
yo' cheeks."
MERGING 227
Everyone laughed, although they were never quite sure of Parson Dick. He
settled comfortably on a log and accepted the bowl of pot likker from
Minnie. "The Massa waitin'," he told Jass and Cap'n Jack, who now got up
to leave.
There was a small silence, which Parson Dick broke, knowing that nothing
would be teamed from Tiara without something in return. "Be a whole lot
of stitchin' goin' on," he began. "Gettin' ready for the wedding."
Tiara nodded. It was the introduction to gossip from the big house, which
she loved. It was also the last thing Jass heard as he walked away, and
it reminded him of Easter.
"I could ask my father," he told Cap'n Jack. "But I don't think he'd
agree."
"Mebbe," Cap'n Jack said, and his tone told Jass to say nothing to James.
"Mebbe."
Easter, bored with brushing her hair, had not joined the other slaves for