Dominion (9 page)

It was a mask but a true one; his yield from the ground had improved steadily as he invested it with fertilizers and good care each year, so that he expected nearly twice again what he achieved the year before. All the result of steady work and getting to keep his benefits for himself. This season, he reckoned, when his accounts were settled, he would leave with more ready cash than he had ever seen in his life, and no debt to any man.

When the harvest came he took his produce to market and received payment, more than a little amazed at the amount—for it was a sum that would have been unthinkable to him only recently.

He splurged then at the merchants' shops and even spent a few pence at his sworn enemy the chandler's, after seeing a handkerchief in the window he thought Sanne might fancy.

When he went home that evening he was loaded down with the winter goods in a new cart, which was pulled by the gelding he had bought to replace Ruth Potter, though he considered that particular creature irreplaceable and without peer in all the annals of animal husbandry.

He arrived back at Stonehouses at nightfall, and Sanne came out to help him unpack the cart and put things away in their cellar. He was proud then that, while before he had barely been able to fill a single basement with his labors from the season, this year two storerooms were scarcely enough to hold all his goods. He celebrated with a little of the bought whiskey he had picked up in his splurging, then presented his wife with her gift.

“Oh, it's just foolish,” she protested, as she looked at the spun lace cloth. “What do I need with such a thing around here?” She could not, however, disguise her merriment at being presented with something so precious, or, for that matter, at receiving anything besides another pair of sturdy boots.

Nor was it his only gift to her. As he unpacked the crates there were all kinds of sweets and delicacies, such as had barely been available for sale in the place before but which were now well within their means. He drank in celebration of his growing wealth as well as the commerce that made it possible. He had amassed a sum of capital that was tremendous to his mind, and he knew exactly what it was worth and what purpose to put it to.

“I have another family I left back in Virginia,” he said to Sanne that night, as they lay in bed.

“What do you mean another family?” she asked, even as she had always suspected he kept secrets from her. “You have another wife?”

“Not legal like you and me, at least, but yes, you can say another wife.”

When she heard this she began to cry and berate him. “I always knew you hid things from me,” she said, sobbing. “What else is there? Do you have other children? Why, I bet you have them all the way up to Massachusetts!”

“Just one, Sanne,” he answered. “I had to leave both of them when they changed the law about where freed men could settle. I never made it a secret that's how I ended up here. Or did you think I had lived all that time before you just by myself?”

“You never told me about another family,” she said, still tearing.

“That's because I couldn't do anything about it,” he answered. “I can now and intend to.”

“Intend to what?” she asked, sitting up. “What are you going to do?”

“Buy them out,” he answered her. “It don't affect you and me, but it is what I promised them and still intend.” It had been his heart's truth for longer than he could bear, although when he made the promise it had seemed like an earthly impossibility.

“You can't bring another woman here; I won't stand for that!” Sanne screamed at him. “I don't care what you promised. If you try to bring your slave woman here you'll both pay in hell.”

Merian chewed the inside of his mouth and said nothing else. He tried eventually to embosom and comfort his wife, whom he did love, until she could sleep. But in his pocket that money from the harvest lit him with singular purpose.

He rises the next day, before the sun has gained the rim of the horizon, while his wife still sleeps soundly, and saddles the gelding. Sanne wakes and listens to him outside, leaving, but does not stir from their shared mattress. By the time she realizes to herself where he has gone the sun will be at noonday and he will be unredeemable to her except by his own will.

He stopped for lunch at his customary time and ate in the saddle, to save an hour before taking back to the road again. The last time he was on this path he had been pressed to it by the legal inability to earn a wage and the misery that ensued. Still, he did not consider this ride back triumphant, for he did not know what to expect. He only knew he was in better condition than before—when he was beyond whipped and defeated and damn near dead. He tried not to think about it any longer or ever again, but if he did speculate in isolated moments he surely did not dwell on it, and certainly not on the last night before his manumission was a legal fact. Ebsen, the overseer, had visited him then at the party they were having in one of the cabins and, unprovoked, smashed him full in the mouth with a leather-wrapped fist.

Everyone in the room stared between the two, waiting for a response as the blood welled in Merian's lip and Ruth clutched their boy toward her bosom.

Merian looked at the other man quizzically, determined not to be hedged. “I thought you and me were friends, Ebsen,” he said. “We never had discord before.”

“Well, we got it now,” Ebsen answered, smacking him again with his sheathed fist. “You think you're better than everybody else here.”

The other men in the room made a cordon of bodies around the two combatants, though they knew it would take much more provocation for Merian to box.

“I'm not better than anybody,” Merian said, as the other man drew up to strike him again. “But I'm no less than anybody either.”

Ebsen beat his mute hand against Merian again, as if he wanted to teach him a lesson, though he himself did not know what lesson that was. He knew only that the other man's lot had changed and his own had not; not for six years had it changed at all. He beat him in accordance with no known law but only because men do not like to know defeat, and he felt, with Merian's advancement, something was lost to him, so tortured whatever he might to rectify that feeling.

He struck him again and Merian withstood the blows with his hands raised in defense and an equanimity that bordered on indulgence.

I bet he won't try to hit me again, Merian thought now, as he drew himself up in the saddle and spurred the horse. I bet won't nobody ever lay another living finger on me. The memory, though, of what had passed before filled him with a shame he could not speak. I hope Ebsen is the first person I see when I get to Sorel's Hundred.

He rode for three days, barely stopping to sleep, as he stoked in his imagination the narrative of how the journey would play out and all the flattering variations of his original imagining. They were almost as fanciful as those of his last night on the old place, when he dreamed himself larger than his natural size, which was very mighty, striding a great mountain and holding a balled gavel in his hand. To the east the skies parted and he saw an antelope's head rear and stare after him, as if to give chase. He responded by running, still clutching the gavel, until the eyes of the animal bore into him with such intensity he felt himself beginning to melt. To escape he flung the hammer directly at the stars and the sky, and only then saw that it was fashioned of horn, as it split in two along an enormous chasm that began to fill immediately with a great inrush of water, the eastern half receding, as if falling into the abyss
of a well, and the western sky pushing up toward him slowly as if he were sinking to the bottom of a river. He woke before he touched bottom and reached out to Ruth. He knew there were those who could interpret it rightly, but he had never revealed this vision for fear, even while waking, of what it might mean.

A mile from the main gate he stopped the horse and went into the bushes, where he changed into a new set of clothes, like war paint or a lover's talisman, which he hoped would render him stronger to stand and face the combined forces of time's elapse before proceeding. He sat high in the saddle, marking the things he knew from those he did not recognize as he headed to the stable. In front of the red brick building, a crowd of children formed around him, all from curiosity but none in recognition. He dismounted and walked the horse to a fence post, stopping to shine a small one without hair on top of the head, and asked if they knew whether Ruth was round back.

The children giggled at him and ran off as he went on ahead, back to one of the old cabins, where he paused at the door to remove his hat before knocking on the weathered gray wood—as he realized that to let himself in was no longer his right. When he lowered his hand he heard movement from inside, causing him to hold his breath as the wooden slats gave way, and he laid eyes upon Ruth for the first time in over five years.

When she looked up and saw him standing in the doorway, he could plainly see she did not immediately trust it was him, as she looked on him as you might a phantom, or else something half-dream in origin. When he called her name, though, she responded by coming nearer, and they were both torn by a series of complex emotions as he entered the room.

He had built this structure himself, even if it was long ago, and though he could barely remember its bricks and beams when he entered, he knew its deep inner blueprint as he did his own hands and hide.

Ruth pointed out a low bench next to the table for him to sit at and asked evenly—as though his presence made sense to her—“What brings you this way?” There was such determination and so little revealed in her voice that it pointed to a knot of the spirit cord that held her and would not unravel even for this man who was once hers and stood here again after more than half a decade away.

“Ah, Ruth,” Merian said, standing and moving toward her, “is that the only welcome you got for me?”

“More than I had from you all these years,” she rebuked him. “You got nerve, man. I will give you that.”

He tried to explain to her that he could not just pick up and travel when he wanted, then began to tell how he had been hounded but found respite in Carolina. He stopped and settled on saying simply that everything got beyond him.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “Even if all you telling me is true, I know. …” Her voice trailed and her mind lit on to something that had been stoking there ever since he started talking. “Who is she?”

She halted as soon as the words tumbled from her mouth, when she sensed her betrayal and anger were revealed for him to appraise, and she didn't want to give him anything more in that moment.

Merian did not answer for a while. He had not thought jealously of her in years, but her accusation planted its own counterweight in his mind, which pressed upon him. “What about you?” he asked.

And even after she had replied in the negative, “No one,” he would not believe it, because the curve of desire he found to be permanent and sturdy as lignum vitae.

“Stay and see who else comes here then,” she said, but he still would not let it go.

Just like that they found themselves embroiled in domesticity again. While the pair sat staring each other down, the door flew open and a child burst in, running to clutch Ruth around her legs. “Mama!” he screamed with delight, as if having waited for her all day.

“What are you running from?” she asked sternly.

“Nothing,” he swore.

“Hm,” she said, unbelieving. “Look who's here,” Ruth instructed then, turning him toward his father. “Look who came all this way just to see you.”

It was a leap of faith that the boy made when he ventured—“Papa?”—waiting anxiously after that as his voice passed through the room.

Merian picked the boy up and hugged him. “That's right,” he said, holding the child in his arms. “That's right, Ware. Your papa has come to fetch you.” He looked over the boy's head at Ruth as he spoke.

Ruth turned away to the cooking fire. “Don't fill him with fool's talk,” she reprimanded coldly.

“Here you go, Ware.”

Jasper gave the boy a hard candy he had thought to bring and put him back down on the floor.

“I mean it.” He turned to Ruth. “I promised it when I left here, and I came back to do it.”

“Magnus, go outside for a little while.” She shooed the child, calling him by his other name. The boy left grudgingly and went to sit in the dirt in front of the cabin as the two of them began at it again inside.

“What are we going to do, go back and live with you and your new woman?” Ruth asked indignantly.

As they argued there vigorously, someone knocked at the door, and Ruth opened it to a small crowd gathered out front of the cabin. “We heard Jasper come back,” one of the men asked. “Is he really?”

“There he is.” Ruth opened the door the rest of the way to show Merian, still seated on the low bench by the table. He rose as he looked out on all those faces he had not seen for so long, which filled him with a warmth of familiarity he had lived in the wilderness without. This is who he belonged to, he thought.

What his wife would not give to him by way of praise the neighbors did, telling him how well he looked.

A simple feast was produced then, with everybody contributing something, and he ate thankfully, thinking how long it had been since he had eaten the foods of his youth. He sat with the boy balanced on his knee. The child devoured glass after glass of milk, which had been brought out for the whole room, and pressed hard against his father's chest. He was enthralled and said excitedly, to anyone who would listen, “My papa came back for me and Mama.” Those close enough to hear smiled at him with warm uncertainty.

Ruth commanded the boy to be quiet, shooting Merian an accusatory look. Merian for his part lifted his hand to his mouth and filled it again with food, as a couple of men began singing a bawdy song he loved and the party spilled over into the night. It is what he promised and intended, he told her beneath the din.