longed for the comforts of the little shack that was home.
At a small village on the last night before reaching their destination,
James took Jass to a revival meeting in a field nearby. the settlement
being too small for a church. James, although he believed devoutly in God,
was not a deeply religious man and adhered to no particular church, but
the emotional ferocity that the frontier preachers could arouse fascinated
him, and he thought the experience would be interesting for Jass.
The meeting was already in progress when they arrived. Some fifty people
attended, country folk, poor whites, gathered in from outlying farms and
settlements. Many of them had traveled many miles to find some relief
from the abject hardships they daily endured, some promise of future
glory. Simply clad as they were, with weathered faces and gnarled, knotty
hands, Jass could not imagine that these austere people would provide any
of the exotic entertainment his father had promised. He had not reckoned
on the Preacher man.
260 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
He heard the Preacher before he saw him, a voice thundering at heaven,
but in a language that Jass had no knowledge of, and could not
understand. He was silent as they reached the clearing, and all heads
were bowed in prayer. The Preacher was standing on a cart, his Bible
clenched in his fist. A couple of lanterns tied to sticks in the ground
provided small illumination and ghostly shadows. Jass could see some
spectators watching from the surrounding trees, a few black faces among
them, but his father led him closer to the cart, the center of things.
Suddenly, the Preacher looked up. "You are all sinners," the Preacher
yelled, and a murmur of agreement ran through his congregation. It
unnerved Jass, for in the dim light he thought the Preacher was staring
directly at him.
"Liars! Swindlers! Hypocrites!" the Preacher cried. The assenting murmur
of response from the accused was louder now.
"Fornicators! "
Jass blushed. He knew what the word ft)rnicator meant. Wesley used it all
the time, and while Jass had never had actual physical contact with a
woman, the private fantasies he sometimes enjoyed seemed just as
reprehensible. He wondered if his father knew, or could guess, for his
guilt must surely be branded on his brow.
"And as sinners you are damned," the Preacher shouted again.
"Yes! Yes!" a responsive voice yelled back.
"There is only one way to redemption," the Preacher continued, waving the
Good Book of direction in the air. "God is your only salvation, and your
only path to Him is the blood of the Lamb!"
Now the Preacher shouted again in that alien tongue, and another man in
the crowd called something in response, but it seemed to Jass to be in
a different language. He wondered if the two understood each other.
It made no difference. It wouldn't have mattered if the entire sermon had
been delivered in tongues-and much of it wasbecause even if the sounds
were incomprehensible to others, Jass knew what they meant, and knew they
were all directed exclusively at him.
The throbbing voice of the Preacher touched some deep well
MERGING 261
of unchanneled, teenage emotion in Jass, and he was gathered into the
mounting ecstasy. He moved forward, away from his father, perhaps to hear
the Preacher better, perhaps to be part of the now swaying throng. The
Preacher warned fire and brimstone, and the crowd shivered from the heat.
The Preacher cried hell and damnation, and the crowd simply cried. The
Preacher held out the promise of salvation, and someone fainted in relief.
The voice roared on. Jass was not an individual now but an engulfed
fraction of a mounting collective frenzy. The Preacher jumped down from
the cart, and came into the midst of it, ranting eye of a hysterical
cyclone, laying his hands on swooning bodies, casting demons out of a
babbling fannhand, and yet seeming to direct a torrential energy on Jass,
as if demanding from him some ultimate submission. Jass was euphoric.
The unspeakable happened. Jass was incredulous. How could the vile
monster assert itself here, in this exquisite company? The dreadful
hardness was incontrovertible proof to Jass that he was guilty of sin
beyond all reckoning, and he fell to his knees at the Preacher's feet,
weeping for forgiveness of something he could not even name, and begging
for salvation from his accursed path.
Then it all seemed to stop. The Preacher, having done his work, gave a
few final, less extravagant admonitions; the congregation got up, dusted
themselves down, resumed their earlier, self-contained composure, and
departed, on carts, horseback, and foot, into the night.
Jass looked at James a little sheepishly, wondering what his father would
think of it all. James didn't say very much. He walked his son back to
the hotel, asking only a few mild questions about the evening, but Jass
couldn't shake the conviction that his father was laughing. At him.
Sally was furious. A devout Presbyterian, she had an aversion to all
extravagant forms of worship and had tried to stop James from taking Jass
to the meeting. She rounded on her husband in fury and demanded to know
why he hadn't stopped Jass from taking part.
"He was being saved %for Jesus," James responded calmly. "I didn't think
it was my place to interfere." Jass saw the
262 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
twinkle in his father's eye, and knew for sure what he had guessed. James
thought the whole evening was the best fun. Sally knew it too, because she
also saw the twinkle, and ordered Jass to bed so she could have a few
words with James alone.
She came to him a little later, before he fell asleep, sat on the edge
of his bed and talked to him calmly, whispering, because Sassy was
slumbering in the next bed.
"I am very angry with your father," she said softly. "I have no love for
these evangelist religions. They bring comfort to a number of the poor
country folk, I know, but for me God is to be found in quiet
contemplation, not in public display."
She paused, not sure quite how to phrase what she wanted to say, for it
didn't pertain only to God.
"If you have truly found Jesus, of course, I couldn't be happier for you,
but I wasn't aware that you had ever lost him." She kissed his forehead.
"Always remember that emotions can be easily manipulated, and that love
is a thing of the mind as well as the heart." She wondered if he
understood what she was trying to say, but decided to leave it at that.
"Good night, my darling," she said, and left the room. Jass mumbled a
good night, and turned to face the wall.
James was awake, lying in bed reading, when she came into their room. She
was still cross with him.
She began to undress in silence. James put down his book. "He'll get over
it," he offered, to make the peace. "It was a good exp
erience for him."
"I'm sure it was an experience," she said. "Whether it was good or not
is a matter of opinion."
She sat at the dressing table to put on her nightcap. She didn't want to
be near James, not yet. Not until he said he was sorry.
"I'm sorry," he said. The laughter in his eyes betrayed him. "I'm very
angry with you," Sally replied, but she could never be very angry with
him for very long. Besides, her initial temper was being replaced by
curiosity.
"I can't imagine it happening to Jass," she said.
James, to whom the whole evening had been amusing but
MERGING 263
of little consequence, could think only of a platitude.
"Still waters run deep." He patted the space beside him. "Come to bed."
Sally finished her toilette, and did as she was bidden, snuggling into
her husband's arms.
"Do you really think Lizzie will be suitable for him, one day?" It was
the first time she had raised the subject of Lizzie with James.
He was careful, sensing Sally's dislike of the idea. "She's going to be
very pretty," he offered.
"She's so very young, and so very brittle," Sally said. James nodded.
"She'll grow up, grow out of it."
Sara's realistic appraisal of the situation with Andrew had dulled
James's eagerness to settle on the concept, at least, of an early union
for Jass, but it was still there.
"I hope Jass enjoys his youth," he told his wife. "But if anything should
happen to him, or to any of the other three, or to me-"
He didn't refer to the loss of A.J., but Sally knew what he meant. The
succession to the inheritance was paramount to families like theirs.
She smiled at her husband. "Nothing's going to happen to you for a very
long time," she said, lovingly.
James looked into her eyes. "I surely hope not," he said. He held her in
his arms, kissed her full on the mouth, and she surrendered to his loving
embrace.
"Hush," she murmured when her mouth was free. "Don't wake the children."
Jass stared at the bedroom wall. He couldn't believe it! He guessed from
the rhythmic noise of the bedsprings in the next room that his parents
were doing-that-right then and there. How could they, after what he'd been
through?
He rolled over in his bunk, away from the wall, and tried to block out
the sounds and come to terms with what it was he'd been through. Away
from the Preacher's influence, he didn't feel very much more certain of
what God might be than at the start of the evening. Had he found Jesus?
He wasn't sure. He knew he'd found something, even if it was only a
rock-solid determination that he was going to have greater
264 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
discipline over his body in future. But was that all?
What was the love of Jesus? What was the love of God? What was God? He
didn't know. Confusing questions about the relationship of God to man
assailed him. If there was only one God, why were there so many
religions? If God was love, why was there war? If killing was forbidden
in the commandments, how could God forgive soldiers? How could you take
an eye for an eye and turn the other cheek at the same time? Even though
his teachers had always given ready answers to these seeming
contradictions, now Jass began to doubt their authority. If fornication
was so wrong, why was the urge to do it so overwhelming? If it was wrong
to do the unspeakable, why had He made it so pleasurable? Some of the
younger slaves did it too, he knew, because he'd heard them giggling
about it.
And what about the blacks? Where was the dividing line between animals,
blacks-or come to that, redskins-and white people? Wesley had talked of
a slave girl who was as white as his sister, and two of their own slaves
were only a kind of pale yellow, so why were they black, and why didn't
they have souls, as the Reverend Sloss insisted? If Ham was the first
nigger, why didn't he have a soul like his brothers? If niggers didn't
have souls, why did so many of them believe in God? And how did God
choose? If Wesley, or anyone, did a slave girl and she had a baby, that
baby wouldn't have a soul, but when he got married to a white girl and
had a baby, that child would. Did souls descend only through the white
maternal line? Were mothers that sacred?
In that case, if Jass had found Jesus, as the Preacher claimed, why was
his mother so angry? Perhaps it was this that caused the greatest
confusion of all, for Jass had loved Jesus all his life, and as his
mother had pointed out, how could something be found if it had never been
lost? And if his mother was right about that, then what about the other
thing? If it was true, if the Preacher, whom he didn't know from Adam,
had manipulated his emotions so easily, what happened when you fell in
love with someone? If you loved someone with all your heart, how much
control did the adored one have over you? Obviously quite a lot in my
case, Jass thought. He would have to tread very carefully around girls
from now on.
MERGING 265
He was tired. The emotional outpouring of the evening had exhausted him,
and he felt drained and vitalized all at the same time. He drifted to sleep
in the reassuring knowledge that he had certainly experienced something,
whatever it was, that was somehow part of growing up, for the questions
that were concerning him now were not ones he had ever asked himself
before.
32
On the afternoon of the fifth day they arrived at their destination, the
slave cart having slowed their progress, and went straight to cousin John
Kirkman's house, where they were lodging.
Town, Aunt Eleanor told them, was full; there was no room to be had at any
inn, lodging house, farm, or private house in the district. Sarah had
scandalized the South with her invitation, and consequently anyone who
thought they were anybody and hadn't been invited had done everything in
their power to ensure that they were. Plantation Massas who would have a
black whipped to death without turning a hair had pulled every string they
could, political and social, to watch two nigras jump the broom. Eleanor's
eyes danced with glee, and she laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks.
Jass was fascinated by his aging aunt. She had been merely a daunting woman
with a slight mustache when he first became aware of her as a child, but he
had come to know her well in the years he spent at school in Nashville, for
she had charge of him then. At first he had been unable to reconcile his
father's funny stories of her when young. He couldn't imagine this
forbidding woman in black bornbazine as a redheaded revolutionary in Dublin
married to a great Irish martyr, but because of that past, it was with her
that he first raised some of the troubling questions that Cap'n Jack had
put in his mind.
266 AL
EX HALEY'S QUEEN
He contrived to be alone with her in her pretty garden and, somewhat
diffidently, asked her about slavery-.
Aunt Eleanor had snorted in derision. "Half this so-called Southern
aristocracy is just jumped-up bog peasants who've made their pile on the
backs of men they don't even pay a wage. "
She was no freethinker, however. "I've no love for the nigras, Jass," she
continued. "Dirty, shiftless, and lazy, most of I em, who'd cut your throat
for a shillin', and should have been left in the jungle where they belong.
But if a man works, he should be paid for it."
Jass was confused. "We own slaves," he said.
Eleanor smiled ruefully. "And so do I,- she said, with a wistfulness that
Jass didn't understand. She owned some house slaves, one of whom, Joshua,
was digging in the vegetable patch.
"When I first came here," Eleanor explained, "I wouldn't have a bar of it.
I thought it was a disgrace against nature, and I was shocked that
Jamie-your father-had taken to practicing it. But it was the custom, and
life was hard then, awful hard-you young folk have it easy-and in the end
it was simpler to swim with the tide than against it. And it didn't bother
your poor, dear Uncle Thomas, God rest his soul."
A sadness had settled on her. "I often asked myself what Oliver--
She looked at Jass and realized that probably he had no idea who Oliver
was. "My first husband," she explained, and memory of him fluttered in her
heart.
She looked at the gardener. The sadness vanished, and as if to complete her
case against herself, she yelled to him.
"Joshua! Put your back into it, man!" The voice was stentorian. "I could
have dug that whole patch by now."
Joshua muttered something inaudible and carried on at his usual pace.
Eleanor looked at Jass. and there was a smile of self-mockery twinkling in
her eye.
"At least I know what I am," she said. "Which is more than can be said for
most of these Southern kings in their cotton castles. "
An old campaigner from a lost war, she still had advice for the young.
MERGING 267
"Never give your nigras reason to hate you, Jass," she said. "Because one
day they'll have their revenge. It is the nature of things,"
So they became friends. She never had direct answers for Jass on moral
or political questions he raised but would put the various sides of an
argument, and encourage him to arrive at his own conclusions. The only
subject on which she never equivocated was the British in Ireland, and
she would lecture him for hours on the evil of their cause.
"Why didn't you stay and fight them?" Jass asked once, and Eleanor looked
at him sharply, but her reply was surprisingly reasonable.
"It's terrible hard to be wed to a man who gives his life to a great
cause," she said. "And realize that his dyin' made not one jot or tittle
of difference to anything. The Irish were still starvin', and the British
still lived off the fat of their land. So I came here. And look at me
now."
She laughed again, a vulgar, raucous laugh. "All piss and wind, I
suppose."
Jass blushed scarlet. He'd never heard a woman use that word before.
"And I met your Uncle Thomas," she said gently, "and I had a wonderful
life with him."
Now she was old and frail, and could walk only with the help of canes or,
preferably to her, the arms of a strong young man. She was pragmatic
about her declining years and intended to move to Baltimore, with Sara
to look after her. "To die," Eleanor said cheerfully, "looking at old
Ireland."
"You'll live for years yet," James retorted.
"I may," Aunt Eleanor nodded. The smile faded from her face. "God
forbid."
She would sell this house and cousin John would move to Florence. It is
the end of the Nashville years, James thought. A chapter in our lives is
closing. Florence is the future now. The South.
The wedding was not until the coming Sunday, with a welcoming barbecue the