Caleb (13 page)

30

Miss Lacey and her aunt’s visit went pleasantly enough, with picnics, excursions, visits to the neighbors, and all of the pleasant—if limited—activities available in rural South Carolina. Not once did Miss Lacey ask to see the slave quarter. As a Charleston belle, her only experience was with house slaves up close and stevedores and other street laborers at a distance. She made sure that she visited the nursery at least once a day, where she held little Boyd as if he were a lifelike doll. She studied Missy without seeming to notice her; to Miss Lacey, the nurse was just a pair of brown hands to pass her the baby and a small problem to deal with.

The day before Miss Lacey and Mrs. Brooks were scheduled to return to Charleston, Jardine called Caleb into his study. His face was serious.

“Caleb,” said Jardine, “we’ve got a problem.”

Caleb said nothing.

“I’m going to take Miss Lacey and her aunt back to Charleston. There are going to be some changes around here. Miss Lacey’s coming here to live at Three Rivers as mistress.” Jardine paused as if he expected some reaction from Caleb.

“Congratulations, Master.”

“Thank you, Caleb,” Jardine said absentmindedly. “But, as I said, there are going to be some changes around here.”

“Master?”

“Damn it, Caleb, Missy has to go. Miss Lacey just won’t have her on the place. She’s going to bring her own nurse for little Boyd back from Charleston.”

Caleb knew what he was saying, but he looked at Jardine blankly.

“Don’t you pull that dumb act on me,” Jardine flared. “You know what I mean. While I was in Camden the other day, I arranged for somebody to pick her up next Thursday. You tell her—and give her this.” Jardine handed Caleb a gold twenty-dollar coin. “And you make sure that she’s ready to go on Thursday morning. But don’t tell her until late the day before. Understood?”

“Understood, Master.”

“Drusilla will be going along with us to take care of little Boyd. Let her know. Tell her to pack for three weeks.”

“Yes, Master.”

“The wedding will be held down there,” Jardine continued. “Miss Lacey has a whole passel of relations who can’t be expected to trek all the way up here. And we haven’t got room for them, anyway. Repaint the master bedroom and Miss Nancy’s dressing room by the time we get back.” He paused, then added, “That’s it,” dismissing Caleb.

“Very good, Master.” Caleb turned to leave.

“One other thing,” Jardine said.

Caleb turned back.

“Put that oil painting of Miss Nancy and me up in the attic. Wrap it up carefully in some blankets.”

“Yes, Master,” Caleb said. “Will that be all?”

“Of course that’s all,” Jardine said angrily. “I’d tell you if there was more, wouldn’t I? Now get out of here and do as I say.”

No sooner had Jardine’s carriage disappeared toward the turnpike, the dust cloud from its wheels still visible in the distance, than Caleb went up to the nursery.

“Hello, stranger,” Missy said, looking up from the baby clothes she was folding. “Drusilla’s hardly out of sight and you’re already visiting me. You are a bad boy.”

“I’ve got something to tell you, Missy,” Caleb said soberly.

“Really?” Missy opened her eyes wide in mock surprise. “What can that be?” Then she laughed harshly. “Save your breath, Caleb. What day are they coming?”

“Thursday.”

“What are you doing telling me so soon, fool?” she laughed. “Don’t you know that I might do something rash? Like burn down the damned house! When were you supposed to tell me?”

“Wednesday night.”

“Well, well.” Missy taunted. “Caleb, the perfect slave, done gone ahead and disobeyed orders, and his master hardly gone a minute. Maybe you will be free one of these days. You’re learning. Why you telling me so soon?”

“I thought it was fair.”

She laughed. “You’re going to have to forget about fair if you’re going to be a black white man, honey. They don’t know nothing about fair. You might as well give it to me.” She held out her hand, and Caleb put the gold coin into it.

Missy admired the coin. “Caleb,” she said, “your Master Boyd may be a low-down, cowardly, gutless man-boy, but he’s not too stingy. I didn’t expect more than ten.” She tucked the coin safely into a secret pocket in the waistband of her skirt. “You know why they took that baby with them?”

“I think so,” said Caleb.

“That’s right,” Missy smiled scornfully. “Because your Master Boyd was afraid I might poison little Birdie. After months of taking care of that precious little baby, I’m supposed to turn around and kill him just because his daddy is fool enough to marry that bundle of golden locks and flounces. Because that’s what thrown-away slave women do. Every time.” She laughed. “If that were true, this state would be littered with little crosses so you couldn’t hardly walk. I love that baby, and now I’ll never see him again.”

Caleb did not know what to say.

Missy had been talking more to herself than to Caleb. Then she looked up at him. “Caleb, will you do me a favor?”

“That depends on what it is,” Caleb said carefully.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not trying to get into your bed while Drusilla is away. Will you let me serve you in the dining room until the man comes for me?”

“Yes, Missy,” Caleb said seriously, “you can do that.”

So, every night that remained, Missy set the table for one. And after she and Caleb prepared his meal, he sat in solitary splendor and ate while she served him with quiet efficiency.

Finally, on Missy’s last night at Three Rivers, she broke her silence while serving. “Tell me honestly, Caleb, am I better at serving than Drusilla?”

Caleb thought for a long moment. “I have to admit, girl,” he said, “you are better.”

Missy said no more, but she went back to the empty nursery to sleep with some consolation and a little less worry about what the future would bring.

31

The next morning, earlier than they’d expected, the slave trader’s man came. He was a little man, verging on old age, in a rusty black hat and a long duster that nearly reached his ankles. He had the benign face of a lay reader or a Bible salesman, but the manacles and leg irons in the back of his wagon were real enough. Beside them on a pile of sacks sat a toothless old woman in a red kerchief. Missy and Caleb, who was carrying her bag, came out of the house just as the wagon reined up. Missy was wearing her oldest sacking dress, but inside her bag was a fine selection of Miss Nancy’s clothes that Jardine had ordered packed away and forgotten.

“That her?” he asked Caleb, consulting a crumpled list he pulled from his coat pocket. “That Missy?”

“It is, sir,” Caleb replied. “Can we give you some breakfast before you go on?”

“I wish you could,” the man said, “but I’ve got three more darkies to pick up and a boat to catch before noon. I’m already running behind. Get up there, girl, with mammy,” he said to Missy. “We’ll just forget about the irons. You don’t look to me like you want to do any running this morning.”

“Sure don’t, uncle,” Missy said as Caleb helped her up to the back of the wagon with her bag and a sack of food he’d put together from the kitchen. Missy might be traveling a couple of days before she was sold. Caleb went to the front of the wagon and offered the man another small sack.

“Some biscuits and ham and things from our kitchen, sir,” he said, “just in case you don’t have time to eat this morning. And a bottle of beer.”

“Thank you, son,” said the slaver. “Very thoughtful. Thank your master for me.” He looked narrowly at Caleb. “Say, where is your master?”

“Charleston, sir,” Caleb said.

The slave trader’s man thought that over. “Well,” he said, “this isn’t getting the job done. We’re off.” He cracked his whip over the heads of the horses, and they shambled to a leisurely trot.

“Best care, Missy,” Caleb called out as the wagon turned toward the drive.

“You, too, Caleb,” Missy said. “And tell Drusilla something for me.”

“What’s that?”

“That wedding silver from Memphis could use a touch of polish.”

“I’ll do that.” Caleb stood and watched the wagon until it was out of sight. Missy did not wave.

Jardine came back one morning a bit more than a week later. With him were Drusilla, little Boyd, and a new nurse, a horse-faced woman in her forties, but no Miss Lacey. Caleb came racing down from the master bedroom, where he was supervising the painting, to find Jardine jumping down from the buggy. Jardine’s face was set.

“Don’t say a word, Caleb,” he said when he saw the slave. “Don’t say a goddamned word. Just get this rig unpacked.” Jardine stalked into the house and disappeared into his study.

Caleb exchanged looks with Drusilla and then said hello to the nurse. “I’m Caleb,” he told her. “Drusilla will show you where the nursery is so that you can get the baby settled. Then, come on down to the kitchen and meet the house people.”

When they got into the kitchen, Caleb asked Drusilla, “What happened?”

“I don’t rightly know,” she said. “Of course, I didn’t see much of them on the boat because I was minding the baby. But Miss Lacey came in once a day to see Birdie, and she seemed happy enough. Once we were in Charleston, we got to Miss Lacey’s daddy’s house, a big old place, and things started moving toward the wedding. But then two or three days later, Mr. Boyd, his face near as black as yours, said, ‘Pack up; we going home.’ So I did. Nobody told me anything. When we got to the boat, Rose—that’s the nurse—was waiting there, and so was Master. No sign of Miss Lacey, her daddy, or anybody even to wave us good-bye. All the way back up the river, Mr. Boyd sat up to all hours drinking but not talking. Of course, I didn’t dare ask him anything.”

“I suppose we’ll find out if he wants us to know,” Caleb said.

“When did Missy go?” Drusilla asked him.

“Last Thursday.”

“Any problems?”

“What do you mean, ‘any problems’?” Caleb asked angrily. “Master says a slave goes, a slave goes. You’ve been around long enough to know that. What are you trying to ask?”

“How’d you feel about her leaving?”

“You know slaves don’t have feelings,” said Caleb. “If you gotta know, I think we lost a good nurse for nothing, but maybe this Rose will be a better one. You got any more questions?”

“No, I guess not,” said Drusilla.

“Good,” Caleb said, “because I’ve got to go upstairs and get that bedroom put together again. You get the dining room ready for Master’s lunch.”

“He won’t eat,” Drusilla predicted.

“That’s not the question,” Caleb said. “You get it ready even if he
never
eats again.”

Drusilla was right; Jardine did not come out of his study until late that day. When he did, he was drunk.

“Where’s my goddamn dinner?” he demanded, though it was nearly midnight.

“It’s coming out of the kitchen right now,” said Caleb.

“Well, hurry it up.” Jardine sat down at his place at the end of the long table and looked around with bleary irritation for something to yell about. He spotted the oil painting of himself and Nancy on the wall.

“Caleb!” he bellowed.

Caleb came out of the kitchen with a tray. “Master?”

“I thought I told you to take that painting down and store it in the attic.”

“I did, Master.”

“Well, what’s it doing back up?”

“I had it put up again this afternoon,” Caleb said.

“Why?”

“Because I thought you would want it. Do you want me to take it down again?”

Jardine looked confused. “No,” he said at last. “Just leave it be. And give me my damned dinner.”

Jardine fell asleep several times over his dinner and ate almost nothing, but when Caleb tried to get him to go to bed, he resisted angrily. “Who’s the goddamned slave here, you or me?” When Caleb did not answer, Jardine said, “That’s right. And don’t you ever forget it,” before lurching back to his study and slamming the door. On his way to bed, Caleb listened at the study door and heard Jardine mumbling to himself, bottle and glass clinking.

In the morning, Caleb found Jardine sprawled on the big horsehide sofa in his study with his mouth open. A nearly empty bottle lay on the floor in a pool of drying whiskey. Caleb threw a blanket over Jardine, mopped up the whiskey, closed the study door, and went about his business. It was late afternoon before Jardine appeared. He was ghostly white, and for a half hour he was only able to say two words: “My head!” But after drinking a whole lot of water—which got him slightly drunk again—and taking some headache powders Miss Lacey had left behind, Jardine went up for a bath. When he came back down, he was ravenously hungry and somewhat like his former self.

Jardine ate the delayed breakfast Caleb served him in silence. But as he stirred his second cup of coffee, Jardine looked up at Caleb.

“I’ll bet you’re just busting with curiosity, aren’t you?”

Caleb surprised him by saying, “Yes, Master.”

“Well,” Jardine said, “you can just go ahead and bust.”

But later that evening, after Caleb had given him a report on affairs at Three Rivers during his absence, Jardine said, “Sit down, Caleb. I hate to give you the satisfaction, but I have to tell somebody what happened in Charleston, or I think I’ll explode.” Caleb sat on his usual chair at the end of the sideboard.

“A couple of things first,” Jardine said. “I’m telling you only because there is no one
else
to tell. You can just imagine what Martha Bentley would say. She’d
I told you so
me into an early grave and never leave off reminding me that that turkey-faced cousin of hers
and
her ten thousand dollars a year is marrying a tobacco farmer up in Lancaster. Second thing is, I don’t want any comments from you. You are just a pair of ears for this purpose. Understood? And third and just as important, I don’t want you telling anyone on this place—not even Drusilla. If I get one hint, one sniff, one
anything
that you have, I’ll sell you down Hampton County way where they use darkies like you for gator bait. Agreed?” He looked sternly at Caleb.

“Agreed, Master.”

“All right,” Jardine said, and he sat silently for a while staring at his desk. Finally, he started. “Well, you know, Caleb, things were okay when we left here. Oh, I was sorry to have to get rid of a good girl like Missy, but I could sort of understand Miss Lacey’s point of view. What women don’t know, they can figure out, and if she was going to be little Boyd’s new mama, I reckoned she had a right to pick his nurse. That aside, things were pretty fine until we got to Charleston. In fact, they were pretty fine in Charleston. Miss Lacey’s papa has a big old house near the cathedral, and we settled in there in some state and comfort. That importing business of his must be doing all right. We had no complaints, or at least I didn’t.”

Jardine cut a cigar and lit it off the lamp on his desk. “Then, Caleb,” he continued, “we started meeting relations. That Miss Lacey has more cousins, aunts, uncles than anyone you have ever met, and I think I howdied every damn one of them. Nice enough, but I think there’s some Creole blood there somewhere. A couple of her old uncles were near as black as you are, Caleb, but a man would risk his life by pointing that out. Needless to say, I did not bother. Anyway, the first couple of days were nothing but a blur of socials and preparations for the wedding, though my end of that was pretty much limited to buying new formal wear and the biggest diamond ring Charleston had to offer. I didn’t even have to choose a best man. Miss Lacey’s squirt of a little brother was going to be that. The rails were greased for sure.

“But then came the train accident, and I was the star of it. The third day we were in Charleston, Miss Lacey’s daddy invited me down to see their business premises. Well, he gave me the grand tour, which was long enough to suit me, and then we went up to his office that looks out over Hamlin Sound. He gave me a nice glass of whiskey and a Havana cigar about a foot long. Everything was pretty mellow all right. Then, off came the velvet gloves, and I found out what the real arrangement was. Old Daddy Clayton pretty quickly forgot about his role of gracious host, and the hard businessman began to show through. He started talking about
certain alterations
that would have to be made before the wedding on Sunday. And then I really started listening. That whiskey stopped tasting so good, and the cigar was like a piece of old rope soaked in tar.

“I won’t burden you with the gory details, but getting rid of Missy was just the opening act in this little drama. Though Miss Lacey was apparently too shy to say so, she had a whole parcel of other modest changes she wanted made around Three Rivers before she would consent to become the second Mrs. Jardine. I’ll give you the short list. For starters, you had to go, Drusilla had to go, and some lame dog of a second cousin had to come in as overseer.
And
I had to agree to let Miss Lacey spend six months of each year with her dear mama in Charleston and transport mama to Three Rivers for the other six. There were a whole lot more, not least to do with little Boyd. Apparently, like the portrait of Nancy and me, he was to be discreetly farmed out somewhere because Miss Lacey did not fancy raising someone else’s brat. You can imagine my reaction to that, but these were just the pick of the litter. I listened politely. Being just as businesslike as Pa Clayton, I said that they sounded like very interesting proposals. I asked could he put them on paper so that I’d be able to study them. Would you believe it, Caleb, he opened a drawer and handed me a sheet of paper with his proposals—I call them demands—all neatly laid out on it.

“He all but handed me a pen along with them. I told him I needed to study Miss Lacey’s suggestions, shook his hand, thanked him for the tour, whiskey, and cigar, and got the hell out of there. First, I ordered Drusilla to pack up little Boyd and be ready to fly. Second was the steamship office for tickets. Third was that jeweler’s where I sold back the ring—at a considerable loss, I might add. Fourth was a slave dealer to pick up old Dobbin, the boy’s new nurse. Fifth and final was a short but interesting interview with Miss Lacey and her mama. I told them, with regrets, that I would have to reject their terms and the marriage was off. Then I invited them to drop by Three Rivers any time they were in the neighborhood. I grabbed Drusilla and little Boyd and got the hell out of there before any of her hot-blooded kin could decide I’d insulted somebody and call me out.”