North and South: The North and South Trilogy (40 page)

And he did.

B
Y LATE 1849 PEOPLE
along the Ashley had a saying about Orry Main: every month his beard got a little longer and his conversations a little shorter.

Orry never meant to be curt, just brief. In his head he was constantly sorting and organizing hundreds of details pertaining to the family and the operation of Mont Royal. Most of these details required him to take some action, which in turn had to be planned. Further, every week or so some kind of crisis required his intervention. Hence his time was short. He conserved it when he talked to others.

If neighbors and acquaintances took this to be a sign of a sullen streak—merely one more of those changes wrought by his war injury—that was fine with him. The reaction had a practical benefit. People didn’t expect him to chatter about his personal life, nor did they press him about a subject he found infuriating.

That is, no one pressed him except his father.

Tillet was nearly fifty-five now, gout-ridden and prickly-tempered. “Damn it, boy, you’re eminently marriageable,” he said one night in the library. “Why do you refuse to search for a wife?”

December rain pattered on the windows. Orry sighed and laid down his pen. He had been totting up figures from a ledger, one of several he had fetched from the office. Salem Jones was responsible for keeping the ledgers, something he’d been doing ever since Tillet’s health began to break down. In them were recorded the number of barrels in each shipment to Charleston.

After the harvest, Orry had chanced to glance into the ledger for the current year. The neatly inscribed figures somehow didn’t jibe with his intuitive feel for the number of rice barrels leaving the plantation. Didn’t jibe with a vivid picture of many more barrels piled up on the pier—which needed two pilings replaced, he recalled. He had been meaning to jot a reminder to himself for weeks. He did so now, before turning to his father.

“May I ask what brought up a question I thought we’d settled to everyone’s satisfaction?”

“To your mother’s, perhaps. Not mine.”

From his chair Tillet flourished the pages of Cooper’s latest letter. “Your brother is squiring eligible young ladies to all those Christmas parties and balls. Of course, if he ever grew serious about a girl, her father would probably send him packing because of his wild ideas. However, your brother’s marital status is of no interest to me. I cite him only as an example of what you should be doing. You—”

Tillet moved slightly, winced, and gripped his outstretched leg. A moment later he finished, “You should be wed and starting a family.”

Orry shook his head. “Too busy.”

“But surely you feel the need for companionship. A vigorous man of your age always—”

Orry smiled, which gave his father leave to stop. Tillet looked relieved. Orry said, “I take care of that, don’t worry.”

Tillet smirked. “So I’ve heard from several gentlemen in the neighborhood. But women of that sort—common women or those tinctured with a drop of nigger blood—they’re good for one thing only. You can’t marry someone like that.”

“I don’t intend to. As I’ve said many times before”—he touched his pinned-up sleeve with his pen—“I no longer consider myself fit to marry. Now I’d like to get back to work. I’ve found some damned odd discrepancies, going back as far as two and a half years.”

Tillet harrumphed, his equivalent of permission. His son had grown a mite gruff when he said he wasn’t fit to wed. Tillet had heard the excuse often, and much as he hated to admit it, he believed there was something to it. He knew what people along the Ashley thought of Orry. They thought the war had left him a little queer in the head.

There was ample evidence to support the contention: The way Orry went about his duties at Mont Royal, as though he were driven to prove himself the equal of any uninjured man. His clothes, always too heavy and somber for the climate and mood of the low country. His brusque manner. That damn beard, so long and thick chickadees could nest in it.

Once, out by the entrance to the lane, Tillet had been returning from Charleston in his carriage at the same time Orry was riding away on some errand. Three of the gardeners, scything weeds, had stared at Orry when he cantered by. The slaves had exchanged looks; one had shaken his head, and another had actually shivered. Tillet had seen it and been saddened. His son had become a strange, even frightening figure to others.

Of course the deficiencies had to be kept in perspective. Odd as Orry might be, he pleased Tillet far more than Cooper did. Cooper had jumped right into management of the little shipping line, and he was doing well at it. But he continued to express offensive, not to say downright traitorous, opinions.

Lately there had been a lot written about several resolutions old Henry Clay planned to introduce in the Senate early next year. Clay hoped to prevent a further widening of the rift between the North and the South. The Union, thirty states strong, was delicately balanced. Fifteen states practiced slavery; the other fifteen did not. Clay wanted to throw some bones to each side. He proposed to align the new state of California on the Northern side, with the stipulation that slavery not be permitted there. Southerners would receive a pledge of noninterference with interstate slave traffic, as well as a more effective fugitive slave law.

If Tillet had been required to isolate the foremost cause of his animosity toward the North, he would instantly have named the fugitive slave issue. The fourth article of the Constitution specifically stated that a man had the right to recover any slave who ran away. It also said that laws in force in a state that did not practice slavery had no effect on this right. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 had been written to implement the Constitution. And ever since, the high-minded hypocrites up North had sought ways to water down or completely circumvent the law of the land.

Tillet opposed Clay’s compromises. So did a great many Southern leaders, including Senator Jeff Davis of Mississippi and Senator John Calhoun. Clay did have the famous and influential Senator Webster on his side. But he was opposed by various abolitionist hatchet men, Senator Seward of New York being perhaps the most extreme. For once Tillet was grateful to that crowd.

Cooper believed the much-debated compromises were reasonable and badly needed. In Tillet’s opinion, what was badly needed was a horsewhipping for Cooper.

While those thoughts were passing through Tillet’s mind, Orry was recalling his father’s remark about people in the neighborhood knowing he carried on with women. He was delighted to hear that. It meant his plan had worked. Over the past year he had taken a succession of mistresses, the latest a mulatto seamstress he had met on a visit to Charleston. He took pains to keep this activity discreet, but not secret.

The women gave him the one thing that Madeline, by the terms of their agreement, could not. But he wouldn’t have entered into the affairs just to fulfill that need, although Tillet obviously thought otherwise. Orry took up with various women so that people would notice and would therefore be less likely to connect each occasional unexplained absence from Mont Royal with Madeline’s absences from Resolute on the same day. Protecting her from suspicion was almost as important as seeing her regularly.

Pleased that the deception was successful, Orry went back to the ledgers. He had stumbled onto something with a decidedly fishy odor, and he concentrated on it for the next half hour while Tillet dozed into a gleeful dream-fantasy in which a mob stoned Senator Seward.

A sound like a pistol shot jerked Tillet awake; Orry had closed a ledger with a snap. He stood with the book clutched in his hand.

Tillet rubbed his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Plenty. We’ve been harboring a thief. He’s repaid your trust and kindness with deceit. I never liked the bastard. I’m going to get rid of him right now.”

“Who?” Tillet said, still sleepy and confused.

At the door Orry turned. “Jones.”

“But—I hired him. You can’t just throw him out.”

“I beg to differ sir,” Orry said in a voice so low and hard that the older man could barely hear it above the sound of the rain. “I’m in charge of this plantation now. You’ll agree with my decision when I show you the proof. But even if you don’t, Jones is through.”

Orry stared at his father. Not angrily, just steadily. The beard, the eyes, the tall, gaunt frame, and the empty sleeve—they had a queer effect on Tillet all at once. He felt he was arguing with a stranger, and a frightening one at that.

“Whatever you say,” he murmured. His son gave a crisp little nod and went out.

Orry walked to the overseer’s house with the ledgers clutched under his arm and an old cloak belling behind him. Rain collected in his hair and beard. He took long, swift strides and was so intent on his errand that he didn’t notice Cousin Charles lounging on the dark porch of one of the slave cabins.

Jones was asleep. Orry roused him with shouts, then confronted him in the kitchen of his immaculate house. The surprise visit had upset the overseer. Sweat shone on his bald head, and there were dark patches of it on his nightshirt. He had brought his quirt and hickory truncheon from the bedroom. Evidently he slept with them.

“It was a simple scheme, wasn’t it?” Orry said. He hurled the ledgers onto the kitchen table. A look of panic spread on Jones’s face. “In the permanent record of each shipment you put a short total. As many as a dozen barrels less than the number actually loaded on the boat. But our factors pay us for the number of barrels received. Since you kept the books on those transactions too, all you had to do was record a sum that matched the short total in the shipping ledger and pocket the excess. Last time I was in Charleston, I examined the factor’s records. They prove that, over and over, the factors paid us more than you showed us receiving.”

Jones gulped and pressed his truncheon against his pot belly, as if seized by pain. “You can’t prove I’m responsible for the discrepancy.”

“Maybe not in a court, though I think I could make a strong case. Until I came home from Mexico, no one handled those records except you and my father, who regrettably grew weak, and a little too trusting. I hardly suppose my father would cheat himself.”

“No matter what you say, you still won’t be able to prove—”

“Stop prattling about proof. I don’t need the verdict of a jury in order to discharge you. It’s my decision, and I’ve made it.”

“It’s unfair,” Jones exclaimed. “I’ve given everything to this plantation.”

Orry’s face looked ugly in the lamplight. Points of fire showed in his eyes. “You’ve taken a lot as well.”

“I’m not a young man, Mr. Main. I beg you to give me another chan—”

“No.”

“It will take me”—Jones laid the quirt down—“at least a week to gather my belongings.”

“You’ll vacate this house by daylight. I’ll order the drivers to burn anything that’s still here in the morning.”

“Goddamn you,” Jones cried, the shadow of his upraised hickory truncheon flying across the wall and then the ceiling. As he started to hit Orry’s forehead, Orry turned sideways, the better to use his right hand. He seized Jones’s wrist and held the truncheon above them.

“I’m not one of the slaves, Mr. Jones. If you raise your voice or your hand to me once more, I’ll see that you travel downriver on a stretcher.”

Shaking, he tore the truncheon from Jones’s hand and jammed it under his arm. With a swift, scooping motion he picked up the ledgers and strode toward the door. He barely saw Cousin Charles, who was leaning against one of the foundation’s tabby pillars, an excited, almost worshipful expression on his face.

“What’s going on?” Charles asked. “Did Jones do something wrong?”

The rain had turned to light mist. Orry walked down from the porch, the thud of his boots muffling his brusque answer. Cousin Charles thought Orry hadn’t bothered to reply. The excited look on his face was replaced by one of resentment.

Cousin Charles lay naked beside Semiramis. Her smooth, warm skin radiated the faintly sweaty odor of their recent lovemaking.

In the darkness the girl heard an ominous sound begin.
Thunk, thunk.
Each blow was preceded by a violent movement of Cousin Charles’s body. With his bowie knife he was repeatedly stabbing the plank wall to the right of the pallet.

He always fooled with that big knife when he was angry. Surely he wasn’t angry with her. They had blended together just fine, as they always did—though, come to think of it, his thrusts had been unusually deep and rough.

Semiramis stretched her arms above her head but experienced no feeling of sleepiness. Charles continued to whack the wall with the knife. It was nearly an hour since he had crept in to tell her he had met Mr. Orry. Now the slave community was buzzing with news that Salem Jones had been ordered to leave. Lamps burned throughout the overseer’s fancy house. He was packing right now. From out of the misty dark, Semiramis heard laughter and little snatches of happy conversation. Folks were awake and joyous. For weeks to come the whole place would have a feeling of jubilee.

The news about Jones had had that effect on Semiramis, too. She had been in a splendid, receptive mood by the time the strapping fourteen-year-old mounted her. Charles never failed to satisfy her, but tonight her pleasure had been heightened because of Jones, and because the boy had come back to her again. She had been the first to show him what men and women did together, and no matter how many white girls he fooled with, he always came back. Lately, so she had heard, he had been sniffing around one of the Smith girls. Sue Marie Smith, that was her name. A pretty little thing, but too polite for a cub as lusty as this one.

Thunk.
The wall vibrated. She took his free hand and pulled it over on top of her bristly mound. He jerked it back.

“Lord,” she said with a small, forced laugh. “Who you so mad at?”

“Orry. He looks through me like I was a window. He doesn’t know I’m alive. Or care.”

Thunk.

“Mmm. You must hate him ’bout as much as I hate his poppa for showing off my brother like a chicken thief. I guess I was wrong about Mr. Orry.”