Caleb (2 page)

3

The next morning, while Boyd was out in the fields supervising the slaves, Nancy walked down to the long shed. Taking the stick out of the hasp, she walked into the gloom and waited for her eyes to adjust. Then she saw the new slave sitting on a bale of hay in one corner. A hoop of iron around his neck was secured to a long chain hanging from a thick beam. She could see him watching her. When she got closer but was still well outside the length of the chain, she could see that he had been liberally smeared with Dulcie’s homemade salve. It was a villainous blue color with an awful smell, but it seemed to work. On the stamped earth floor was an empty earthenware bowl with a wooden spoon in it. The smell of dirt and sweat was strong in the still air, but she was used to that.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

The big slave looked at her expressionlessly. There seemed to be no menace in him.

“You’ll have to talk some time,” she told him. “You live here now. That’s not going to change in a hurry. Besides, my husband says you talk funny. I want to hear.”

Something changed in the man’s eyes. “You talk funny, too,” he said.

“I know. I’m from Charleston. My husband says I talk like I’ve got a mouth full of hot mashed potatoes. Where are you from?”

“Boston.” With his flat, nasal accent it sounded like
Baahstun
.

“Massachusetts?”

“It’s the only one I know,” he said. His tone did not invite further inquiry.

“Tell me,” she said. “Why did you threaten to kill my husband if he bought you?”

He paused for a long moment before answering. “I was going to escape from the barge last night. I was desperate.”

“Escape to where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me tell you something,” she began, but then stopped. “What’s your name?”

“Caleb,” he said with a touch of surliness.

“Well, Caleb,” she continued, “in this part of the county alone, there are five packs of dogs with nothing to do all day but track down escaped slaves. And they don’t just track them down. They rip them apart. You may not think it, but my husband did you a favor by buying you, rather than leaving you to escape. If you had succeeded and were still alive now, you wouldn’t be for long. Does freedom mean that much to you?”

“Yes.” He looked directly into her eyes in a way she’d never seen a slave do. It embarrassed her.

“I can’t stop you from running away, Caleb,” she said softly. “I can only advise you strongly against it. And I’ll give you another piece of advice.” She paused until she saw acquiescence in his eyes. “My husband will put you out in the fields, so you won’t be seeing much of me, but if our paths do cross, and I speak to you, you would be well advised not to answer me so sharply. My husband won’t like it. The people here call me Miss Nancy.”

After a long pause he said, “All right—Miss Nancy.”

“Good. And my husband likes to be called Master. He insists on it. He will have it.”

“Yes . . . Miss Nancy.”

She turned to leave but then turned back. “Are you being fed enough, Caleb? Is there anything you need?”

“No, Miss Nancy,” Caleb said. “Dulcie is a good woman.”

After a few days in the long shed, a good rest, and a lot of Dulcie’s cooking, Caleb began to get bored. When Jardine looked in one evening, Caleb got up on his feet—not hurriedly, but quickly enough to be noticed approvingly.

“You feelin’ better?”

“Yes, Master.” There was nothing sullen in his voice or manner.

That surprised Jardine. He’d expected a long process of education. He didn’t know whether to feel sorry or glad. Jardine liked a challenge.

“You got anything more to say to me?”

“No, Master.”

“Ready to go to work?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Okay. We start work early. Big Mose will turn you loose and show you where you sleep. But remember—my whip is always close by.”

4

Caleb turned out to be a good worker, but the other slaves didn’t like him. He was too alien, with his keen, confident gaze and self-contained nature. Caleb never seemed to relax totally. He didn’t help break the monotony of long days in the field with coarse humor and old songs. But he worked hard, silently and willingly, which won the others’ respect. At first they mocked Caleb’s strange, foreign way of talking, but even that didn’t last long. Perhaps because he took so little notice of it. Caleb shared a hut with Big Mose, but since Mose was coupled with Dulcie, he had the space to himself most of the time.

Jardine was a slave owner who liked to know everything that was happening on his plantation. One day, about a month after buying Caleb, he opened the door to Caleb’s hut and peered into the darkness. The corner Mose occupied now and then was a tangle of blankets and clothing. But the far corner that Caleb had taken over told another story. Caleb’s corn-husk mattress had been elevated on a platform of empty boxes, and the ragged sacking sheet and thick blanket had been pulled together with precision. A feed-sack pillow stuffed with clover sat squarely at the head of the improvised bed. An oil lamp with a tin reflector was nailed to the wooden wall, along with a cast-off wooden box that served as a cupboard for Caleb’s few possessions.

Jardine poked at the pillow with the swagger stick he carried and revealed something beneath it. Leaning down, Jardine picked up a book. It was coverless, tattered, and water stained, but, by God, a book. Jardine riffled through the pages. He was no expert, but it seemed to be some kind of story set in England in the last century. The people in it were called Bennet. He shoved the book carelessly into the side pocket of his jacket.

Two days later, Jardine rode out into the fields where the blacks were chopping the denuded cotton stalks and signaled Big Mose to give them a rest. As usual, Caleb went off by himself to sit by one of the small rivers that gave the plantation its name. Jardine rode over to where he sat.

Caleb got to his feet—not gladly, but quickly enough. Jardine leaned over the pommel of his saddle.

“Caleb, you missing anything?”

Caleb looked up at him. “Yes, Master.”

“And what would that be?” Jardine asked with a sly smile.

“A book, Master.”

“A book?” Jardine pretended amazement. “What would you be doing with a book?”

“I got it on the barge. Traded my dinner to a boy for it.”

“You went without dinner for a
book
?”

“Yes, Master.”

A sudden, astonishing thought came to Jardine. “Caleb,” he demanded. “Can you read?”

“Yes, Master.”

“And write?”

“Yes, Master.”

Jardine reckoned he might as well go the whole hog. “And cipher?”

“Yes, Master.”

Jardine thought for a long moment. “How much is six and seven?”

“Thirteen.”

“Ninety-one take away eighteen?”

“Seventy-three.”

“Eight times forty-three?”

This took a few moments longer. “Three hundred and forty-four.”

Jardine paused to calculate that last one in his head and decided to take Caleb’s word for it. He moved on to the supreme test.

“Uh . . . two hundred and fifty-six divided by thirteen?”

Caleb had to think a long time about that. “I’m not sure, Master,” Caleb said, “but I think it’s nineteen and a bit.”

Jardine didn’t say anything else. He just pulled on the reins and spurred his horse away from the brook. He called to Big Mose, “Get ’em back to work!” and rode toward the house. When he was behind a big line of live oaks, Jardine reined in his horse. Pulling out his little notebook and a pencil, he calculated the long division he had given the slave.

Nineteen point six nine, he worked out, before getting mixed up carrying the naught.

“Son of a bitch!” Jardine exclaimed and spurred the roan toward the house.

Jardine found Nancy in the big food larder doing an inventory of the bottled goods.

“Nancy!” he exclaimed. “You’ll never guess what’s happened.”

“I probably won’t, dear,” she said calmly.

“I’ve only bought myself a genius for five hundred and fifty dollars!”

“You told me you paid four hundred and fifty for Caleb,” she reminded him.

“Never mind that,” Jardine said. “Do you know what that boy can do?”

Nancy kept a straight face. “Play the banjo?”

“No! Goddamn it, Nancy, I’m serious. Caleb can read. I found a book in his hut. Look!” He waved the tattered book at her. “And write. And cipher like a goddamn bookkeeper! Long division! In his head!” He pulled out his notebook and shoved it before Nancy’s eyes. “I checked. Look!”

Nancy took the notebook from his hand and confirmed his figures.

“In his head?” she asked.

“Yes! Did you ever hear anything like it?”

“And you’ve got him chopping cotton,” Nancy said, the devil dancing in her soft gray eyes.

“Well, how was I to know?” Jardine demanded. “These damned slaves never tell you anything except things you don’t want to hear.”

5

Caleb didn’t hear anything more from Jardine for over a week—though he did find the book where Nancy had shoved it back under his pillow. But then one evening at just about sundown, Dulcie came to the door of Caleb’s hut and said, “Marse wants to see you in the horse barn.” Caleb shoved the book under his mattress and left the hut.

Jardine was waiting for him, whacking the side of his boot with the swagger stick. He liked to think it made him look like an army officer. “Caleb,” he said.

“Yes, Master?” It made Jardine a little nervous that this new slave didn’t call him
Marse
or
Massa
like the other slaves, though he didn’t really feel that he could complain about it.

“Where did you learn to read and write and all that?”

“When I was a boy, Mr. Staunton had a tutor for Brent, and he taught me, too.”

“Mr. Staunton? Brent?” Jardine asked angrily. “Who are they?”

Caleb was a quick learner. “Old Master and Young Master,” he said.

“That’s better. Where the hell were they?”

“Boston, Master.”

“Boston?” Jardine exclaimed. “No wonder you’re so goddamned uppity. I spent most of a year in Boston myself. At Harvard College.”

“Yes, Master.”

Jardine was a little disappointed at Caleb’s lack of response to this bit of information, but he plowed on. “Caleb, I’m thinking of moving you up to the house. I’m too busy to look after the accounts book, the business side of the plantation, and all that. Do you think you could do that?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Well, if I bring you up to the house, don’t think you’ll be sitting on the seat of your pants all the time. No, you’ll do anything Miss Nancy tells you to do and generally make yourself useful. You’ll live over the coach house with Andrew, my coachman, and eat with the house slaves. That sound good?”

“Yes, Master.”

“All right,” Jardine said. “Get back to your hut. I’ll let you know what I decide.”

“Thank you, Master.” Caleb turned and started to walk away from the barn, but Jardine stopped him.

“Caleb! How long you been a slave?”

“All my life, Master.”

“No, I mean down here. Down south.”

“Almost five years.”

“And you never told anyone that you could read and write and that?”

“No, Master.”

“Why the hell not? Do you like working in the fields?”

“No, Master.”

“Then why not?”

Caleb thought carefully before he answered. “I didn’t plan to stay a slave.”

Jardine didn’t like the sound of that, but it wasn’t enough of a challenge to stir things up—not just yet. “Well, you’d better get used to it,” he said. “Go back to your hut.”

“Yes, Master.” Caleb turned to leave, but again Jardine stopped him.

“Wait! You’re not teaching any of the rest of my people to read and write, are you?”

“No, Master.”

“Well, don’t. There’re more than enough book-learned slaves around here to suit me. You remember that.”

“Yes, Master.”