Virginia Hamilton (12 page)

“Con'l Charles Suttle's, oveh by Stafford County,
suh,” Whittom said.

“You be the Colonel Suttle, suh?” asked the slaver, turning to Suttle. He was a big man, slim, but with a powerful chest and arms.

“Colonel Charles Suttle, at yo' service,” Suttle said, smiling broadly. “All these my boys,” he added. He saluted the slave owner.

“I am Ebenezer Caldwell, from near heah, suh.” The owner bowed stiffly to Suttle, noting that the Colonel did not seem completely well off. Though he was dressed properly, Suttle's attire appeared to be considerably soiled, and his boys had no new clothes. That would leave the buying of fresh apparel to their new owners or employers. Well, that was all right, Caldwell thought, but the master could have shown a bit more gentlemen's class than he had.

“And him, the big one?” asked Caldwell.

“Name of Whittom, but I calls 'em Jim,” Suttle said.

“Calls all mine Amos,” Caldwell said. “Well, Jim, what can you do?” he asked Whittom.

“I can do mos' anythin',” Whittom said, as though he didn't care about anything. He didn't fancy the slaver, saw cruelty in his eyes.

Without warning, Charles Suttle slapped Whittom across his face with the flat of his hand. He was furious. For Whittom had meant an insult by not telling in detail what he could do. “Ask you somethin', you bettah say it right!” Suttle told him angrily.

“I 'po'gize, I 'po'gize! I ain't mean nuttin' wrong, boss,” Whittom said to the masters.

“Excuse my Jim, suh. I 'pol'gize, myself, to you, suh,” Suttle said to the slaver.
“Don't know what gets into 'em. They gets here and has to act up first thing!”

Caldwell sighed, nodding. “It's all so many nigras in one place,” he said. “They get excited when they smells a great bunch of 'em togethah.”

“Ain't it the truth!” Suttle said, and grinned at this fine-looking gentleman.

Again Ebenezer Caldwell studied Whittom, as the Colonel spun him around to give the slaver a good look.

“Stick out your tongue, Jim,” Colonel said.

Whittom stuck out his tongue. Caldwell peered down his throat, turning him around to see better. He looked up his nose and in his ears. He lifted his eyelids and studied the whites of Whittom's eyes. He felt his glands, in his throat and his groin. The latter test made Whittom wince with pain.

Lastly, he made Whittom jump up and down with his arms straight at his sides, then over his head. “Now,” Caldwell said, slowly and carefully, “what can you do, Jim?”

“I can stoke fire,” Whittom said quickly. “I can drive a hoss, both saddle and buggy. I can make bread. I can run errands. I can sweep and warsh walls and mop floors.”

“He's a big un, all right,” the Colonel said. “He's a mite slow, but he can still do 'bout anything you want.”

“Can you run my coach and take care of the horses?” the slaver asked Whittom.

“I can do that!” Whittom said loudly. He had seen the dark look of warning on Colonel's face. He knew the Colonel was going to get a fair
price for his labor. Whittom danced around. “I can do this an' that an' anythin'; I can coach any ole hosses!”

The Colonel and Caldwell laughed. “I like a boy got a humorous streak,” Caldwell said.

“Suggest you take on t'other Jim there, the small one, then,” Colonel said. He nodded toward Simon. “He one of them liar boys, keep ev'body in a good humor with his tellin's. He and big Jim together make quite a twosome—coach and footman, don't you know!”

Caldwell looked Simon over, walking around him. Anthony, who had been quietly alert and listening, kept his head bowed. He had told the Colonel Simon had been sick. There was no way to avoid it. Simon looked sick to anyone who knew him well. But there was the chance that Caldwell would take the boy for a “high yellow-pillow.”

That meant he was soft, good for clowning. Pale skin and soft, pale hands. Some masters, cruel like Caldwell, used them as entertainment in the big house. Perhaps Simon would get to tell his “lies” to the mistress and her ladies at the Caldwell plantation. If so, he would not have to work outside in weather under the overseer.

“All right then!” Ebenezer Caldwell said, pinching Simon's cheek hard. “I'll hire me a boy and a ‘girl-y' for one year!” He slapped Colonel Suttle on his back as if to strike the bargain.

He and Suttle retired to one side to arrange the business undertaking in writing. The “boys” stood close around Simon.

There were tears in Simon's eyes.

“Never you mind,” Anthony said, only loud enough
for his charges to hear. “Maybe I be close by and come visit sometime. Maybe can talk Colonel into lettin' me go see how y'all farin'.”

“It be all right,'” Whittom said to Anthony. “Simon with me—I'll protect him. They ain't goin' get past me!”

But they all knew it was likely that poor Simon would be on his own. There was nothing to be done if Simon stayed sick with stomach pains. For then he would most certainly be sold away. They none of them spoke any more about it. But the air they breathed was grim now.

Every now and again one of them must prance around, making broad statements as to his abilities. He would boast that he could do a hundred different labors. It didn't matter if he could or not. It was only necessary that he sound like he could.

Soon the Colonel was back, and one by one they were hired out. Whittom and Simon went off with their new employer. The last Anthony saw of them, they were sitting under a tree, eating food that Caldwell had provided. Whittom had a new cap, and Simon had one too. They both had on fairly new shoes. They did not look as if they were too badly off as they waited for the new master to finish his hiring of slaves.

As for Anthony, he was obliged to go off next. Colonel Suttle stood by when a gentleman named Mr. Foote was attracted by the serious and generally forthright appearance Anthony made. Anthony for his part didn't like the looks of Foote. But no matter. When Mr. Foote asked the question, “What can you do, boy?” at once Colonel Suttle replied for Anthony, “Suh, my head Jim here can
do
any-thin'
.”

“Well then,” Foote said, “I'm wantin' your Jim to tend the steam engine in my sawmill.”

“He can do it!” Suttle said swiftly, before Anthony could tell him he had no idea about sawmills, let alone steam engines. A bargain was quickly made, with seventy-five dollars being the price for Anthony's services for the year. Anthony and Mr. Foote left the Hiring Ground right after the arrangement was fixed.

Mr. Foote lived with his wife at Culpeper, bordering Stafford County. They were Northerners, Yankees, but they might as well have been the lowest of the South's slave masters. It wasn't long before Anthony discovered that Mrs. Foote beat young slaves without mercy. She would strap them to planks on their stomachs, faces downward, on the ground. Anthony watched helplessly one day as Mrs. Foote took up a strip of board cut with holes and roughened with tar and sand. She struck a child's back with the board. Anthony winced as the air drawn through the holes made a high whistle. The child screamed and cried. And by the time Missy Foote had finished the beating, blisters had formed on the child's skin. The sand had made the pain much worse, and the child fainted.

This method of beating was quite common, Anthony had heard, although he'd seen it only a few times. The sand increased the stinging pain but did not deeply cut the flesh to diminish the market value of the slave.

He was never beaten, but he and the other slaves were always hungry. Sometimes the single slice of meat he was given for supper was so thin, he
could hold it up and see the sun shine through it. The only good thing that came out of the experience at the Footes' was the fact that there was a daughter who was friendly and secretly helped him along with his reading.

One day, after about three months, Anthony was busy at his duties in the mill. Without warning, Mr. Foote set the machinery in motion. Anthony let out a bloodcurdling cry of pain. His hand was caught in the wheel. When he saw his blood splatter everywhere, he fell unconscious.

Later, when he came to, his hand was broken and swollen beyond recognition. The pain was terrible. A house woman cleaned the dried blood and dirt away and put medicine on it for him. It was only then that Anthony saw how seriously wounded his hand was. The woman bound it tightly, to hold in the swelling, she said. He sucked in his breath and nearly cried; his hand felt as if it would explode.

It was a week before the swelling went down. Then Anthony had the wrappings taken off and replaced with clean ones. He saw the awful disfigurement. His hand no longer seemed to belong to him. Only the pain was his. It never went away, not even when he slept. He was feverish and sick to his stomach most of the time. He could not get the vision of his blood spurting out of his mind. And since he could not work, Mr. Foote decided to send him back to Colonel Suttle.

He went back. The Colonel was there to greet him, looking concerned about him. “Tony, boy,” he said, by way of sympathy. “It's a pity, m'boy, a great shame.”

Wincing, Anthony held up his broken
hand. “That's
anythin
',” he said. For the Colonel had said to Foote when Foote first inquired about him, “He can do
anythin'
.”

Anthony continued to suffer with pain. He could not work, and Suttle, feeling guilty, allowed him to go about the place as he pleased. Often he would wander into the forest to pray as Mamaw had taught him. Sometimes he actually saw Jesus standing before him. The Lord's robes were whiter than snow.

“Yea, Lord!” Anthony would murmur to Him. And it would seem that Jesus smiled and spoke to Anthony's mind without moving His mouth. Always, Jesus was kind and gentle.

At other times, Anthony felt the Devil near. And if he dared turn around, he would see the evil serpent of Satan.

“Get away! Get gone from me!” he hollered at it, and worked himself up so that he became feverish again. Crying frantically for Mamaw, he'd run from beneath silent evergreens in terror. He was only just thirteen years old, still a boy and utterly lonely. And it was from these experiences and visitations in the forest that he decided he would serve God and become a slave minister for his people.

Again and again Anthony fought his hopelessness by gathering a small congregation of slaves. Occasionally they would meet in the kitchen of a friendly white person. More often they gathered in one of their own rough cabins. Anthony would lead his people in prayer and speak to them of the Gospel and the great King, Jesus.

What he did, preaching, was a violation of Virginia law, but he fortunately never ended
up in the “cage,” the temporary outdoor cell for slaves who disobeyed, because Mars Suttle gave Anthony permission to preach. As the slave preacher, he performed marriages among the black subjects and presided over the burial of the dead.

A slave might die during the week, but no funeral could take place that would upset the routine and discipline of the Colonel's Jims and Janetys. The body was placed in a box and put into the ground without delay or ceremony. A few shovels of soil were thrown in, but nobody stopped work to notice. On the following Sunday all the slaves and Charles Suttle would present themselves to the box, and they would cover the grave with earth. They would pray. Anthony would lead the prayers; he would preach until Mars Charles said it was enough, not to take on so. Then the slaves would sing the sorrow songs, the hymns of slavery.

At these times the Colonel smiled on Anthony and the others. He did so love the nigra music. Then it was over. He would leave them to bury the dead in the plain orange box.

In Virginia no monument marked the spot where a dead black was laid to rest at last. Maybe a tree branch carved nicely or a stone marked with a personal sign signifying the man or woman or child in the ground to the other slaves. That would be all that there was to show a life had ended.

“I can do most
anythin!
'” came to his memory. It was a year later. He was back at the Hiring Ground. His hand had been broken and then healed. A man was speaking—a slave owner from Fredricksburg, Virginia. “Well, I keep a tavern. What does that say to you,
Jim?” said the man.

“Says I can sweep up that tavern, suh,” Anthony answered. “Say I can warsh them tankards. I can wipe them tables up good, suh!”

“I sholy mean it when I tell you,” said Colonel Suttle to the tavern keeper, “my head Jim can do mo' with one hand than a bunch o' them otheh boys can do with two hands apiece.”

“I believe it,” the tavern man said. “The lame work harder.”

“Indeed, they do, sholy,” Suttle said.

Anthony made one hundred dollars that year for his owner, Mars Charles Suttle. He had long since left the Footes behind.

And the next year he found a new place to work in the same town. It was a place where medicines were stored and sold—an apothecary shop. Anthony remained true to his purpose of learning ever more reading and writing by often changing his place of labor. For only this would help him to his secret goal—freedom.

One day, when he went into the employer's kitchen to eat, he met there the black woman other slaves called a “two-head”—she was a seer. Everyone knew her as Maude Maw.

After introducing himself, he asked, “You can read all what ain't be yet, for true?”

“Done seen behind me, all-time,” Maude Maw said, and paused a moment before she went on, “Now can see before me when it please me.”

A two-head for true, Anthony thought. “Yessum, well, will it please you to see before you to where I might
stand?” Anthony asked.

She stared at Anthony a long time. In a moment it felt as if heat came to him out of her gaze. He felt slightly dizzy and his eyes began to tear, as though he cried. Yet he felt utter calm inside himself. He was unafraid.