Benjamin January 4 - Sold Down The River (26 page)

“That's fitting,” said Kiki, her voice metallic calm. “For if ever there was a man who didn't care, it's him.” January sighed, and gazed out through the door of e little back room, which faced, not the big house among its peaceful oaks, but the yard between kitchen, landry, hospital, and the little shop where an old slave named Pennydip made candles and soap. Beyond, the new sun glared harsh and heatless on the cane, a dark green wall that drank sweat and life and spirit.

Mon Triomphe.
My Victory. “Even so,” he said, caught between his earlier anger and a vast weariness. “You sow the wind and you'll reap the whirlwind-and the whirlwind doesn't care whose child lies asleep in its path. Six families just lost everying they had. Every white man in the parish is now thinking Rebels, and getting ready to kill. Two children are dead, and men and women are crying in pain, because somebody wanted to hurt Fourchet. And yes, he deserves to be hurt. But whoever boiled up oleander and dumped it in Michie Fourchet's liquor, they knew other people might drink that liquor. They knew your husband might be one of 'em, and from all I can tell he never hurt a soul in his life. But they wanted what they wanted more than they cared about Gilles or you or Reuben or Rodney, or what'll happen if les blankittes decide this is a revolt. They were like Baptiste's master, who sold him off because he'd rather have that eleven hundred dollars, thank you very much. Whoever this was, he sold your husband down the biggest river of 'em all, for the pleasure of seein' Fourchet ruined and dead.”

Sharp and clear, the plantation bell began to ring. January flinched, a thousand memories cutting at him from whenever the bell rang at the wrong time of the day. The queasiness he hadn't experienced since his childhood; the dread of whatever les blankittes had decided to do.

Kiki put back the blankets and started to rise. “You got a bandage on one of your feet?” he asked.

She pulled up her nightdress to show him a surprisingly dainty foot for so heavy a woman, ankle delicate as a young girl's.

“I stepped on a piece of cane in the dark, if anyone asks,” she said.

He answered her fleeting smile with one of his own, and handed her a black dress from the shelf. She slipped it on over the white calico of the shift and buttoned its big black buttons.

“Just remember to limp, then.” He took her arm and helped her to walk down to the open ground between the mill and the overseer's house.

Thierry stood on the rear steps of his cottage, whip lying loose against the leather of his boot. The last feathers of the night's deadly wind stirred the skirts of his coat. Bumper, dust-smeared and scared-looking, still banged at the bell; Esteban and Robert, rifles on their arms, flanked the overseer, their eyes blank as smoked beads. From around the corner of the garçonniere the house-servants filed in a line, the three maids clinging close beside Baptiste, whom they already seemed to have taken to as a father or an uncle. The valet Cornwallis-the American and the Protestant-strode ahead, haughtily alone.

Madame Fourchet could be seen in the shadows of the big house's gallery, still in her soot-damaged shawl and gown. Taller and more opulent, Madame Helene was beside her, little Jean-Luc yanking furiously at his mother's grip on his arm. Fantine was still screaming.

This sound fell curiously distant and detached, against the silence in the yard, when the bell ceased. In the mill, the rollers were still.

“Now you listen to me.” Thierry's soft voice cut the hush like rusted iron. “We had about enough of these little games. You think we don't know that some of you know who set those fires. Some of you know who damaged the knives, and set the fires in the mill and the barn. Know who's been writin' hoodoo to scare each other with. You think we don't know, but we know.”

From the crowd's edge January watched the faces, the flicker of eyes meeting eyes. A gust of smoke from the mill doors blew over him, and an exhalation of heat, like the belch of Hell. No one spoke.

Thierry shifted his weight, like a dog setting itself to spring. “So I'm tellin' you. Whoever knows anythin' about the fires, or about them juju marks, or about the knives-you come forward right now. Juno-Ancilla. The man you're protectin'-they're protectin'-killed those kids of yours. You gonna let him get away with it?”

Ancilla cried out and pressed her face to Rodney's shoulder. Juno, an older woman, listened with a countenance of stone.

“All right.”
Thierry nodded as if he had expected this. “You want it this way, it'll be this way. Ajax, Herc, line 'em up.”

Bumper's tiny sister Milly started to cry. The men shuffled and milled, frightened and not certain what was wanted of them, looking at Ajax with questioning eyes. But the big driver just pushed them into line, so they went, each trying to garner a minute advantage in placement as the drivers pushed each gang into order. “Stand 'em straight, goddammit! Single file! I gotta draw you a picture?”

They formed up in lines, by gangs: main gang, second gang, women's gang, suckling gang. Old Pennydip, who watched the toddlers during the day, clutched her charges around her, face working with terror. “Get those brats in line, dammit!” bellowed Thierry, the unexpected roar making everyone jump.

“If they can't walk they go with their mamas, now how hard is that? House niggers over there. Baptiste, don't you know what a fuckin' line is? Now number off.”

January had guessed already what was coming, and discreetly worked himself into a position a few places from the front of the main-gang line. The other men mostly hadn't had the advantage of a classical education.

His number was eight. Gosport was ten. Nathan was twenty, that gap-toothed friendly man remarkable only for his ability to whittle the best toys in the quarter for the children.

In the second gang Philippe was ten, Ti-Fred twenty. The four women taken were Flora, Ajax's daughter Eve, Chuma, and Cipria. Among the houseservants they were Baptiste, Agamemnon, and Vanille, Madame Helene's maid.

And if you touch the children, thought January, cold fury twisting in his chest, I will personally step out of this line and break your neck.

But even as he thought it he felt something in him falter, something in him ask, Will you really? What good would it do? And he knew it would do no good at all.

After a long moment of standing and looking at the weeping youngsters of the hogmeat gang, Thierry seemed to realize-if he had not before-what would happen, should he decimate them as he was about to decimate their seniors. He turned away, and with his whip signed to Ajax and Herc to separate out those whose numbers were ten, or twenty.

“Now every one of those people is gonna be whipped.” He spoke calmly again, surveying the crowd that had already begun to fall out of line, to clump and cling and seek comfort among themselves. “And it ain't me who's makin' it happen. It's you.” January saw Esteban flinch and turn toward Thierry; saw him put aside what he was going to say. Saw him glance away from Agamemnon's horrified look of appeal.

“For the last time-Who started the fire in those sheds?”

A rising ripple of voices, a deadly muttering.
Angry, and yet knowing already that a dozen lashed was better than what would happen if all rose up. January felt the violence like the breath of heat from the mouth of the mill. Felt every man look again at Ajax, and at Herc.

The two drivers folded their arms, impassive as statues, on either side of their charges. Behind Thierry, Robert and Esteban shifted the rifles in their arms.

From the river the hoarse whistle of a steamboat sounded, an upstream boat putting out of the main channel toward the landing where a white flag flew from the jackstaff; Robert Fourchet turned his head. “You better get on, sir.” Thierry spoke without taking his eyes from the slaves. Gauging them. Understanding that the moment for rebellion had slipped past. “We can handle it from here.”

Robert started back toward the house.

“Rodney, get your gang back into the mill,” ordered Thierry. “We got little enough wood there as it is, let's not waste it. Ajax, Herc, take those folks and lock 'em up. 'Ceptin' for Ti-Fred. He's first.”

Esteban wavered, looking as if he might speak, but it was Mohammed who stepped forward out of the milling crowd.

“Michie Thierry, Sir.” The blacksmith bowed. “Michie Esteban. Beggin' your pardon, sir, but Baptiste, he's the one nigger on this place who can't possibly have done or known anythin' of this. He only came here six days ago, not knowin' a soul, sir. Him and Ben.”

“Why, I guess you're right, boy.” Thierry stroked his mustache and nodded as if with deliberation.

“Guess maybe you better take Baptiste's place. Ajax,” he added, as, without so much as a hesitation, the smith crossed over to the little knot of the selected. “Maybe we better get M'sieu Quashie in there for good measure. Somehow I just can't believe there's any hijinks here that he don't know about.”

“God damn it, you got no fuckin' right-!” Quashie, who had dodged along behind the crowd at once to speak to Jeanette, jerked his arm free of the driver's grasp. At once Esteban raised the muzzle of his gun.

“Me, too!” screamed Vanille, and threw herself forward as Herc began to push and nudge the prisoners toward the squat brick jailhouse. “Me, too! I wasn't here, me and Leander, we wasn't even here when the mill burned! M'sieu Robert, M'sieu Robert . . . !”

Robert paused a step, already several yards off in the direction of the house. By the levee the steamboat whistled again, maneuvering in to the wharf. Thierry looked from Robert's face to Esteban's, and let out a crack of rude laughter.

Trying not to look as if he were trembling with relief, Leander bustled self-importantly to his master's side. “Best we get going, sir.” He cast a spiteful glance back at the maid, with whose airs and self-importance he'd shared the small servants' quarters of a packet-boat from France not many weeks ago. “I've got your bag all packed, Michie Robert, and you know how Michie Ney hates to wait with a head of steam in the boilers.”

Robert allowed himself to be led away. Grinning behind his mustache, Thierry said, “What about it, Esteban?” and the older son opened his mouth, then closed it again. Even as there wasn't a man in the quarters who would have come forward with information about another's transgressions, by instinct and custom and habit ingrained just as deeply, no white man was going to tamper with another white man's authority before the slaves. It was simply something that wouldn't happen.

Thierry grinned at the shocked betrayal on Agamemnon's face, and nudged Esteban with a conspiratorial elbow. “Don't worry, I won't scratch him up much! I'll skin his back for him but I won't touch his arse!” And turning to Ajax and the main gang, he commanded, “Get that boy triced and then get those niggers back to work! We got wood enough for a day's fires yet! And you,” he added to January, as January started to lead the limping Kiki back toward the kitchen. “You get out to the field right smart, understand? Your master gave you to us for payment while he's here and you ain't done two days' solid work yet.”

“No, sir,” agreed January, bobbing his head and trying to look frightened, and gritting his teeth til his jaw hurt. “Yes, sir.”

Kiki stumbled with a gasp and a cry, and grasped at his arm for support. As January scooped her up into his arms he could feel the steady rhythm of her breath, not the shallow quick panting of pain. Meeting her eyes for an instant he saw no pain there either, only complicity, and he was hard pressed to keep his smile hidden. “I be out there right quick, sir.”

“Whew, look at him tote that load!” he heard the overseer jest behind him. “Now, that's one strong black boy!”

“What can I do?” Kiki asked, as January laid her down on her bed again.

“You can tell me how many jars of oil they had stored under the house. The small jars, forty liters or so.”

“Eight,” said Kiki immediately. “Maybe ten. Michie Fourchet used to have me just pour out the oil so we could use the jars for drinking water, but Madame says, there's no point wasting it. . . . Only of course we do pour it out, as soon as we need a jar for something. But there's eight or ten at the north end of the storeroom under the house.”

January nodded, and glanced through the door again, as Pennydip climbed slowly up the brick step into her little shop, her thin back bent nearly double under the weight of her years. Ti-Jeanne the laundry woman hurried up after her, helping her inside.

“Can you get into the laundry room between now and Sunday night and have a look at the clothes before Ti-Jeanne puts them in to soak?” he asked. “Our hoodoo was working fast and working in the dark, and you and I have both emptied enough wash-buckets to know that somethin' almost always gets on you, of what you throw around. Will you do that?”

Kiki's eyes widened as she realized what he was talking about. “I'll do that,” she said. “The house-servants and the family both.
But what then? What if I find something?”

January was silent, knowing what she meant. Understanding her, because he too had been a slave, and he knew what all slaves know: that once you pass information, any information, along to the Man, it's out of your hands. Les blankittes are going to do about it what they will. It will be the worse for someone, and maybe not the person you thought.

He said softly, “We have to do something, Kiki. There's two children dead this morning.”

“Children die all the time, Ben.” Weary defeat stained her voice and he remembered the bloody scraps of flesh he'd buried not eight hours ago.

But that had been her choice. Juno and Ancilla, Bo and Claire had had none. He could only shake his head and repeat, “After last night, we have to do something.”

He came around the corner of the kitchen in time to see the coachman Musenda bring the carriage to the rear of the house. The natty Leander emerged onto the gallery from the French doors of the room Robert shared with Madame Helene, burdened with a small portmanteau and a valise. As the valet hastened down the rear steps and loaded the luggage into the vehicle, Robert himself came out, and at the same moment Madame Fourchet emerged from the dining room, in a clean dress now, properly corseted and combed.