An Embarrassment of Riches (22 page)

“You would like to see where the slaves live, no, Sammy?” he asked.

“Indeed, I would,” said I.

“
Bon
. Then we shall stop on our way back and visit these simple creatures in their habitat.”

Storm clouds boiled over the treetops in the distance. Soon we reached the boundary of LeBoeuf's hemp fields and he commanded the oarsmen to make for shore, where a small dock had been built against the bank. We followed a little path between a hemp field and a hedgerow. It led to a patch of woods. Yago shouted a command in Choctaw. Up ahead, music struck up.

We entered an airy grove of shortstraw pine
(Pinus echinata)
, within which stood two cabins. Upon one of the porches, three slaves played a fiddle, a banjo, and a flute made out of a hollow gourd. The tune was quick, but in a minor, mournful key. Several black children sat on the porch steps enjoying pink and green slabs of watermelon. A pig was a'roasting over a bed of coals between the two cabins, and a slave woman turned the spit. Upon the porch of the second cabin stood four other slave couples, men and their wives, I supposed, young, healthy, well fed, and strikingly handsome, taken as an aggregate. I recalled Judge Ravenel's slaves, and it seemed to me that they had come in more shapes and sizes, short ones, fat ones, lean ones, old ones, while these were all in the prime of life, the men muscular and their women shapely. For dress they wore simple cotton trousers and shirts; the women plain cotton shifts. All were remarkably clean, considering their hard duties. But it was the expression they wore on their faces that made the deepest impression: a look of spellbound emptiness, as though they had been deprived of their very souls.

“Here we are,
mes amis
,” LeBoeuf trilled, in discordant counterpoint to the strange music.

“'Tis most satisfactory,” Uncle declared.

An Indian passed amongst the slaves with a wooden bucket and a gourd ladle, proffering some dark beverage. They eagerly took the gourd and quaffed the liquid by turns.

“What are they drinking?” I asked.

“A sort of ale we brew for them.”

“Made of what, monsieur?”

“Of the hemp leaves. It has—how you say?—a mildly euphoric effect.”

“Really? Might I try some?”

“I don't' think you would enjoy it, Sammy,” LeBoeuf said.

“Perhaps. But I'd like to try it all the same.”

“Guzzle, guzzle,” Uncle quipped. “The lad is turning into a regular sot.”

LeBoeuf told Yago to summon the bucketeer. The Indian brought the liquor to us. He looked confused. Yago commanded him again in the savage tongue, and he scooped up a ladle of the brownish liquid. I took it from him and drained the gourd. The brew tasted like extremely strong tea, very acrid, though the bitterness was masked by a heavy lacing of molasses.

“Ah, how refreshing!” I remarked. “I'd like another.”

“I don't think so, Sammy—”

“Monsieur, I thirst unto a dither. Please.”

LeBoeuf shrugged his shoulders. Yago told the underling to dip another gourdful. He did so, but proffered it reluctantly. I took it and quaffed the contents in four swallows.

“Thank you,” I told the footling. He withdrew back to his duties. LeBoeuf coughed into his sleeve.

“Why don't we look inside a typical dwelling?” he suggested.

We followed him to the cabin where the musicians were playing and climbed the steps. Here, I realized with a pang of recognition, were the same musicians who had awakened us the past two mornings in our apartment aboard the floating palace; only now they were attired in rustic garb instead of the house livery. If Uncle recognized them, he did not say so. LeBoeuf opened the door and we stepped inside.

It was as neat as a parsonage. In one corner was a wooden bed, furnished with bedclothes of a quality not often enjoyed by common slaves, at least not the slaves I had been acquainted with. Upon the wall hung a straw hat. At the opposite end of the one-room dwelling stood a hearth, equipped with all manner of utensils and conveniences. Either the inhabitants of this cabin were fastidious unto absurdity, or there had never been a stick of wood fired in this particular hearth. It was as clean as a gun barrel—not so much as a fragment of charcoal or a single ash sullied the brick within. I began to feel a warm sensation in my belly, sort of a pleasant glow, so to speak. The hemp ale was taking effect.

“These slaves are certainly tidy,” I observed.

“They are excellent housekeepers,” LeBoeuf replied.

“Superlative, I would say.”

“I confess, we asked them to take special pains on your account.”

“I see. But, tell me, monsieur: this cabin is a dwelling for two persons, correct?”

“Yes. A slave and his wife.”

“There are more than a dozen adults outside, and as many children. Where do they all live?”

“Elsewhere, of course. They are visiting.”

“I see.”

“Their cabins are scattered all about these holdings. They like it better that way.”

“How do they keep them from running away?”

“Running away?” LeBoeuf laughed, as though the idea were nonsensical. “Why would they run away?”

“Why?” I echoed him with equal incredulity. “Because they are slaves. They have no freedom.”

“Bah,” LeBoeuf scowled. “Freedom is an overrated thing. They are happy. Look, what is more important: the freedom to live in misery, or happiness, even if that happiness is imposed. I tell you, Sammy, I have seen many a free European peasant who dwells in the uttermost affliction. On the other hand, we are so far away from anywhere here—where would they run to? They have not the slightest knowledge of the world without, nor even of where they are in relation to it.
This
is their world.”

“Yes,” Uncle entered the discussion, however reluctantly, “but I thought thee was in the custom of letting them earn their freedom.”

“I do follow that practice,” LeBoeuf agreed with mounting annoyance.

“Freedom is very precious to us Americans,” I persisted.

“You Americans make too much of it,” LeBoeuf retorted. “Why, it is you very Americans who have perfected the very
business
of slavery, no? Who have devised an entire economy based on the exploitation of African human beings! Eh, my young friend?”

Though I took perverse pleasure in provoking the Frenchman's ire, I could not dispute further without sounding like a spouter of cant.

“Not all of us are slavers,” was all I could manage before letting the subject drop.

The warm feeling in my belly had suffused to my extremities. It was a kind of intoxication, but nothing like the stuporous transports of whiskey. The room seemed to swell with light. LeBoeuf had never looked more like a bird of prey.

“This way, messieurs,” he said dryly, and we followed him outside, thence into the second cabin, which was practically identical to the first. On the way out, I noticed that the three alleged field hands on the porch were none other than the actors who had played Cassio, Roderigo, and Iago on stage the night before. It took me a moment to recognize them without their masks of white paint. One of their wives, moreover, was the very girl who had acted Desdemona. What we were inspecting, I realized, was nothing less than a complete theatrical—the piney grove with its tidy cabins an elaborate stage setting. LeBoeuf's audacity was boundless. No, diabolical! Furthermore, the sham was so brazenly obvious—to me, at least—that it was as though he were daring us to swallow it.

“Very nice, Fernand,” Uncle said, and I could barely believe my ears. “'Tis a model of liberal management.”

“I am so glad you approve,
mon ami
William. And you, Sammy?”

“If half the planters of Virginia and the Carolinas were as kind-hearted as you, Monsieur LeBoeuf, then all the Yankees of New England would throw over their farms and chattels and volunteer to become slaves.”

“You swell my head,” our host feigned modesty. Far away, thunder grumbled lowly. “To the boat, my dear comrades, and back to the center of the universe!”

The boat trip back to the floating palace was, for me, stupendously strange. By the time we reboarded the hunting barge, the hemp tea was in full force, raging in my brain unlike any tonic, physic, or poison I had ever met with. It quite surpassed those doses of laudanum given me by my dear papa when, at age thirteen, I had tumbled out of an apple tree and broken my arm in two places and the bone had to be set with a fearful yanking.

All objects—trees, Indians, what-have-you—seemed to pulse with the beating of my heart and to emanate an inner light so that each seemed surrounded by a nimbus, like the spars of a ship at sea that glow with Saint Elmo's fire. Never had I seen colors so vivid. Even in the gloom of the gathering storm, every leaf, every bird glimmered with awful brilliance. I felt as though I were seeing the world with new eyes. Indeed, the very strangeness, the wonder of existence itself, stunned my senses, so that all I could do was exclaim such silly utterances as “O, my…!” and “Gad…!” and “Oooh…!”

“What's that, nephew?”

“Those flowers on yonder bank.”

“The
Pogonias
?”

“Yes, those pink things.”

“Well, what about them?”

“They are amazing.”

“I'm glad thee has finally gained an insight on the lure of botany,” Uncle quipped, and LeBoeuf might have laughed too, though the sound I heard emanate from his mouth was a spine-chilling sort of cackle. The two resumed their avid conversation. I could not follow it to save my life. Though part of my brain recognized their sentences as belonging to the English language, they might as well have been two tom turkeys gabbling over nuts.

Every blossom or flitting finch my eye fastened on seemed fraught with the deepest meanings, a contemplation of which was like entering a magical tunnel, but which required strenuous force of mind to escape. It was not altogether pleasurable. There were moments when I feared for my sanity. The wonder is that I did not conjure up the sight of browsing sloths along the way, so distorted and fantastical were all my impressions. But I did not, and shortly we were berthed before Chateau Félicité, which, of all the sights besieging my brain in the preceding hours, was, without a doubt, the strangest vision of all.

“Woodsman! O, Woodsman!” I cried upon entering the dining room.

It was eight o'clock. A nap and a bath had restored my wits considerably, though everything still pulsed and glowed somewhat. Sitting at table now was our late acquaintance—nay,
savior
—the noble Woodsman, whom we had last seen departing Shannoah-town on a whirlwind.

“What ho, friend!” I greeted him, but he did not respond. Then, stepping closer I saw what terrible misfortune had befallen the gallant nimrod since our last encounter: all around his eyes were frightful scars and scabs, and the eyeballs themselves, though still residing in their sockets, had turned milky white, like a couple of hard-boiled eggs. “O, Woodsman!” I lamented. “What cruel savages have undone you?”

“It is no use,” LeBoeuf put his hand on my shoulder. “He cannot hear.”

“O, no! Gone deaf and blind, both?” I despaired. “Fate, you are a cruel mistress!”

LeBoeuf sighed and nodded ruefully.

“What has happened to the poor fellow?” Uncle asked.

“Wait—”

The Woodsman sniffed the air, his nose twitching like a fox's reading the forest breeze.

“Why, my two stalwart friends from Shannoah-town!” he exclaimed cheerfully and in robust good voice. “How capital to be back amongst you. LeBoeuf, I tell you these chaps treated me to a 'possum ragout at their campfire that was the equal of your fine victuals any day. You'll be glad to know that your companions—that tall fellow and his'n—are safe and sound on the Ohio. I come upon 'em some ways above the falls of the Dismal. Sick as dogs they were, but mobile. You're probably wondering what has happened to my eyes. No, don't protest. I shall tell you. I had the misfortune to have been attacked by a great horned owl whilst rambling to Blue Jacket's Town hard by Fort Defiance on the Great Maumee. I believe the owl meant to attack my hat, thinking it a live skunk. There is a lesson in this twist of fate, my friends. Choose your headgear with care. It is a shame that I had to strike upon it the hard way, but that is life, eh? I'll get around all right. Still got my nose, anyway, which is what a fellow needs more'n eyes when he sojourns at this happy outpost where the victuals are mighty fine.”

His olfactory organ recommenced twitching, this time in a violent manner.

“Why, either a bower o'pokeweed blossoms or the lady o'the house is a'coming this way,” the Woodsman declared.

The door to the dining room was thrown open and in marched Madame LeBoeuf in another stunning gown of the sheerest silk. Her face, however, was flushed with emotion and her manner very agitated. Yago followed close on her heels, his nostrils flaring. At the sight of the Woodsman, he flinched visibly. Madame seemed likewise startled to find the gallant wanderer at table, and equally aghast at his injuries.