The Amalgamation Polka (15 page)

“Well,” replied Roxana, “maybe this ‘civilization’ isn’t the grand thing everyone likes to pretend it is.”

“Why, Miss Roxana,” declared Dr. Quake, “wherever do you get these bizarre ideas?”

“Her mother and I,” Asa explained, “have meditated over this question many a night through the years. She seemed to arrive in this world with a contrary disposition and it’s only grown worse with age. All we can figure is Grandma Nannie on her mother’s side was arrested several times for uttering public and seditious remarks against the king. They threw her out of the colony and, story was, she ended up in Rhode Island living in sin with a defrocked preacher. We think Roxana has more than a few drops of Nannie’s blood coursing through her veins.”

“And every drop is precious,” said Roxana, “and nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I didn’t say it should be. I am merely attempting to offer up a plausible theory for the origin of some of your strange beliefs.”

“Is it not possible that I could have arrived at these ‘strange beliefs’ through the operations of my own mind and without a whisper of assistance from ghostly ancestors? I have a fairly decent pair of clear eyes and a working brain, and I really don’t think anything more is required. In fact, I don’t understand why more people don’t subscribe to similar views.”

Father turned to Dr. Quake. “Once her sister was gone, she was left surrounded by brothers. She’s always somewhat seen herself as a boy, arrogant, tenacious, brave and foolhardy, and frankly, at this point, there appears to be damn little we can do about it.”

“But why would you want to?”

“Because,” explained Father, his voice steadily rising, “I don’t want to see my sole surviving daughter ostracized by society, shunned by men, condemned to a solitary, lonely, bitter existence as a spinster.”

“There are men, I’m sure,” interjected Roxana, “who would find my ideas invigorating, madly inspiring perhaps.”

“The best of luck,” said Father, “in locating one.”

“You remember that Hampton boy from years back?” asked Dr. Quake.

“Indeed I do,” said Father. “The one they called Reed. A wastrel, a renegade and, ultimately, a traitor. Arming the negroes? What could possibly have gotten into that head of his?”

“I recollect hearing that the father was quite the tyrant.”

“Then deal directly with the man, sir, don’t go turning the country upside down over a quarrel with your parent. Old Win Spencer died of heart failure just hearing about the crushed rebellion.”

“And now there’s Middleton.”

“Middleton, yes, and northern agitators and abolitionist propaganda and too many damn foreigners running down here nosing around in matters they know nothing about and are none of their concern.”

“I should think injustice to be a matter of everyone’s concern,” said Roxana.

“Yes,” agreed Father, “when there is a legitimate injustice for people to trouble themselves about.”

“Know it all around,” said Dr. Quake kindly, directing his remarks to Roxana, “it’s a murky world for all of us to see clearly in.”

At that instant a huge black figure in a woman’s bright calico dress came bounding out of the fields through the trees, making terrific speed toward the river. The front of the dress was spattered with what appeared to be an excessive quantity of fresh blood.

“What was that?” exclaimed Dr. Quake.

“Why I believe it’s Nicodemus,” said Roxana, voice quavering with alarm.

Father was on his feet at once, leaning out over the rail and calling, “Nicodemus! Nicodemus, stop!” to no effect as the retreating figure disappeared into the row of trees lining the riverbank. It all happened so quickly no one was certain what they’d seen.

Father descended the steps, walked out into the yard and looked back toward the fields. There was no one in pursuit. He stood looking and waiting. “I reckon I’d best go and see what this is all about.” He started out through the grass.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a boy run so fast,” declared Dr. Quake.

“He’s a full-grown man,” replied Roxana tartly. “I’m afraid something awful has happened.”

Both looked up at the keening sound of a frantic woman struggling in from the field, arms flapping above her head, stumbling, falling to her knees, rising again, struggling on, all the while crying out breathlessly, “Master Maury! Master Maury!”

Roxana and Dr. Quake hurried out to join Father, gathered round the woman who was down wailing into the dirt.

“What is it, Patsy?” demanded Father. “What’s happened?”

“Terrible, Master,” she gasped out between breaths, “terrible thing. Nicodemus, he’s killed Mr. Dray dead. Planted that hoe right in his chest. Then he commenced cutting and chopping, hoed a furrow right through Mr. Dray’s body. Worst thing I’ve ever seen, buckets of blood everywhere, you wouldn’t even think it was once a man.”

Father’s face had swelled up into a shade of purple Roxana had never seen there before. “And what prompted this murderous act?” he asked coldly.

“It was Mr. Dray, Master. He been pounding on Nicodemus all week now and today when Nicodemus said his back still hurt from the beating the day before and he couldn’t do no hoeing, Mr. Dray called him a little old lady and made Jenny go get a dress from the cabin and stripped him naked out in the field and made him step into that dress and threw a hoe at him and told him to get back to work and Nicodemus, he looked Mr. Dray right back in the eye and said no, he wouldn’t and Mr. Dray started whipping at him and Nicodemus grabbed that hoe and drove the blade plunk into Mr. Dray’s heart and he was stone dead before he hit the ground and he lay there still as a rock with that hoe handle sticking up out of him like a crooked fence pole.” And she ceased, staring up at the trio of white faces encircling her in masks of shock and outrage, and she thought now that she, too, might be punished simply for telling what she saw. There were more people now running in out of the field, several hands and Tom, the driver.

“Well,” said Father flatly, glancing up into the sky as if searching for a spot he could put his eyes on that wouldn’t remind him of what he’d just been told. “Well,” he said again.

“Are you all right?” asked Roxana, reaching down to feel Patsy’s sweating forehead.

“Yes, Missus, drawing breath a mite easier, but I don’t believe I can get up just yet.”

“That’s fine, Patsy, you stay right where you are.”

“Want me to go call out the patrol?” asked Dr. Quake.

“Yes,” said Father, “you go do that, but tell everyone I want him first and I don’t want him banged up any more than is necessary to take him. The punishment is something I want to handle personally.”

Quake ran back to his sulky, which remained where he had left it, vaulted up onto the seat and, whipping away at the horse, clattered down the lane and out onto the road as though pursued by a tunnel of dust.

Roxana looked up at her father. His face seemed as if it had been cast in bronze for a likeness to be made after his death. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“That’s none of your concern,” he replied. “I don’t want you involved in this business. I don’t want you to know what happens. But you must understand, we cannot permit an act of such wanton savagery to go unpunished.”

“Will Val be riding with you?”

“I expect so.”

“Then I want to go, too.”

“No.”

“Why not? This is as much my home as Val’s.”

“No. And I’m not discussing it any further.”

“Asa!” came a cry from across the Bermuda grass flowing in the mild breeze like hair being stroked. “Asa!” Mother stood alone on the gallery, at this distance a small figure clothed in black and posed stiffly there, hands gripping the rail, leaning forward anxiously, almost heroically, as if bearing herself against an invisible wind, fierce, implacable, ruthless. “Asa!” she continued to call. “Asa!”

The remaining events of the day and the oncoming night took place, as events of any consequence tended to do in her sequestered life, at somewhat of a remove from Roxana’s awareness. Once Mother had been informed of the situation, she unlocked the case herself and brought Father’s guns out to where he sat waiting atop his horse. Several of the men from neighboring plantations had already arrived and grimly touched their hats in mute greeting to the mistress of Redemption Hall, each expression holding the burden of the moment. Father leaned down to kiss Mother on the forehead, then swung the head of his horse around and, attended by several riders, trotted out to the gate where another group of horsemen waited with the same somber expression on their faces. Then all, with barely a word to one another, went galloping together down the road, surrounded by a pack of yelping hounds.

The sun set and quiet settled over the house but for the ticking of the parlor clock and the occasional sigh escaping Mother’s compressed lips as she bent in tense concentration over her sewing. Roxana sat in the chair opposite, the book in her lap open to pages she had read and reread without comprehension or memory, each thinking the same thoughts they did not permit themselves to voice. Finally, Mother’s hands stopped moving and she leaned back and sighed again. She glanced over at the clock. “After eleven,” she said.

“Yes,” said Roxana. “It’s getting late.”

“I believe I’ll be going up to bed.”

“Yes. I probably should, too.”

They gathered up their belongings and left the parlor and mounted the stairs together, pausing to wish each other a good night before retiring to their rooms. Roxana undressed and slipped into her nightclothes and lay in her bed wide awake, thinking, then trying not to think, watching the shadows of the branches and leaves from the tree outside cast by the moon (Dr. Quake had been correct) across the wall and ceiling. Then, without awareness of the transition, she was in a dream, one with the vivid light and color of day, strolling alone down a street in Charleston when she is approached by a stranger dressed in black with a bushy black moustache. Removing his hat, he bows courteously before her and she begins to feel a telltale blush moving across her cheeks which only deepens as he straightens up and gazes directly into her unguarded eyes, his eyes are black, too, globes of rich black fire like musket balls fired point-blank into the center of her heart, and she feels herself start to swoon as the stranger’s lips draw slowly back in a smile that reveals his bright, shining teeth, teeth horribly shaped and sharp as a dog’s canines, and then she awoke to terror and the clattering sound of hooves advancing toward the house.

Roxana scrambled out of bed barefoot and in her nightclothes to rush downstairs, arriving in the hallway just as Father stepped through the front door, his face the same stolid mask he was wearing when he departed hours before. “It’s all right,” he assured her. “We got him.”

“What happened?” she asked, fearful of the answer.

“Never mind,” Father said, hanging his hat up on the rack. “It’s been taken care of.”

“What’s been taken care of?”

“I said, never mind. This is no business for young girls. You should be upstairs in bed.”

“But I want to know.”

“Go to bed. I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”

“Is Nicodemus all right?”

He took her by the shoulders. “Yes, everything’s been properly taken care of. Now you, child, should get some sleep.”

Back up in bed she found neither rest nor comfort, and at dawn she got up, put on a dress and, in a sort of languid trance, made her way downstairs.

Sally was in the kitchen making breakfast. “What happened to you, Missy?” she asked. “Your eyes are all red and black. You don’t look like you slept a wink all night.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t,” said Roxana. “Where’s Nicodemus? What did they do with him?”

“Now don’t trouble yourself about that. You need some breakfast and then you’ll be feeling better.”

“But I want to know,” said Roxana angrily. “Why won’t anyone tell me? Is he dead?”

“You better sit yourself down, Miss Roxana. Sit in this chair here. I’ll make you a nice plate of eggs.”

“I don’t want eggs. I want to know what happened last night.”

Sally’s hand went faster and faster, beating the eggs in a bowl. “Why do I always have to be the one telling everybody what’s going on in this place?”

“Because you know, Sally, you always know. You know the truth and you aren’t afraid to speak it. Remember, the truth shall set you free.”

Sally stopped, staring in astonishment at the young white mistress. Then she threw back her head and laughed so hard she had to wipe her eyes with her apron. “Good Lord, child, the stuff that comes out of your mouth sometimes. The truth never set nobody free on this plantation and isn’t never likely to, neither. Only things that could set anyone free are money and death. Nobody got any cash, but we got plenty of death, yes, more than enough of that to go around for everybody.”

Roxana sat silently, staring at the floor.

“Oh, come now, Miss Roxana, don’t be putting on such a down look. Don’t work so good on you. You were born to be happier than that. All right then, I’ll tell about last night if you promise me you won’t tell a soul where you heard it from.”

Roxana confronted Sally, eye to eye. “I promise.”

“Well, you know that Nicodemus is a powerful runner. Couldn’t nobody catch him. So he got down to the river way ahead of anybody else and swum clean across before even them dogs could get down there. So Master Asa and the rest of them paddyrollers got to go galloping down to the bridge and try to pick up his trail on the other side, but it takes them a real long time, maybe the water washed away all of Nicodemus’s scent or maybe he had some special powder on him but they got to spend more than an hour or two running them damn dogs back and forth through the bushes till finally they all begun tearing off and howling in a heap and all of them go riding after through most of the night, yelling and shooting their guns and waving their lanterns around till sometime in the deepest middle of darkness all the dogs go sniffing around a tree and yapping and jumping up ’cause way up in the teeniest branches was ol’ Nicodemus himself. ‘Come down from there!’ they yelled, but he wouldn’t, even when they shook that tree. He wouldn’t move, no matter what they did. Then one of the men took out his gun and shot and he come tumbling down, but he was still alive so they got a rope and hung him up and while he was hanging there they shot him some more. So ol’ Nicodemus, he ain’t coming home no more. And that’s the God’s truth.” She turned back to her pots and skillets. “Now, how do you want them eggs?”