Candle in the Darkness (7 page)

Beyond the shady yard, pear and apple trees hung heavy with ripening fruit. Three young Negro girls about the same age as me were listlessly hoeing weeds in the fenced vegetable garden we passed.

“Hey there!” Jonathan called gruffly from the gate. “Those weeds are growing faster than y’all are chopping them.” The girls worked a little faster as we watched for a moment. “If we don’t keep an eye on these people constantly,” Jonathan said, “they don’t do a lick of work.”

He led the way up the road to the weathered wooden barn and blacksmith’s forge. The tall, windowless building alongside it was the tobacco shed; the crudely chinked log building, the corncrib. Cattle, sheep, and draft horses grazed in pastures behind more rail fences. Jonathan pointed to the cultivated fields in the distance, then to the dense green woods beyond. “We farm about six hundred acres in all,” he said proudly. “And all of that forest land is ours, too.”

I loved it—all of it. In spite of the busyness of farm life, there was a deep stillness here on the plantation that I’d never experienced in the city. The brush of wind in the treetops replaced the hectic rush of city traffic. Instead of smoking factories and warehouses crowded one upon the other, there were open spaces, green vistas, cloudless skies. I wished I could stay here forever.

Then Jonathan showed me Slave Row. Two rows of tumbledown shacks no sturdier than the corncrib faced each other across a littered dirt path. Jonathan said they were home to more than fifty of Hilltop’s field slaves. I never would have believed that such ramshackle cabins were inhabited if I hadn’t seen a handful of small children toddling in the dirt out in front and some ragged patches of vegetables growing in gardens in the rear.

“Oh, what a terrible place,” I whispered.

Jonathan draped his arm around my shoulder and steered me away. “Come on. It must be nearly dinnertime. And I’ll bet this carriage coming up the road is your father’s.”

They ate the big meal of the day at noon on the plantation and usually followed it with a short afternoon rest. But before Tessie and I went to our room to lie down that first day, my father took me into the downstairs bedroom to meet my grandparents.

“Grandmother is deaf as a fence post,” Jonathan whispered in my ear as he followed us inside. “She has been for years, but she won’t admit it.”

Grandfather lay in bed with his eyes closed, gray-faced, unmoving. I’d never seen a corpse before, but he looked just like I’d imagined one would look. I wanted to run out of the room in fright. Jonathan took my hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze.

Grandmother sat in a rocking chair near the bed, sewing. She was gray-haired and crabby-looking. She laid aside the needle and cloth when she saw us and stood. My daddy went to her.

“Hello, Mother.” He rested his hands lightly on her shoulders and bent to kiss her cheek.

“George. You came.” Her voice rasped harshly, her unsmiling expression never changed. At first my grandmother’s greeting seemed cold, but then she reached up to touch Daddy’s face, brushing a stray lock of his hair, and I recognized the love and tenderness in her gesture. Tessie fussed over me the same way.

“Mother, I brought my daughter with me from Richmond. I’d like you to meet her.” He urged me forward. Up close, I saw that my grandmother had a mustache. She looked for all the world like Jonathan or my father dressed up in women’s clothing and a gray wig.

“Who is this?” she asked, frowning.

“My daughter,” he repeated, louder. “Her name is Caroline.”

“What? She’s from
Carolina,
you say?”

“No, Mother. That’s her name . . . Caroline
Ruth
. She’s named after you.”

“After
noon
? I know it’s afternoon! I just finished my dinner.” I heard a sputtering sound and glanced over my shoulder. Jonathan was struggling to hold back his laughter—and barely succeeding. If he kept it up, I knew I would catch the giggles, too.

Daddy tried shouting. “No,
Ruth
. . . she’s named Caroline
Ruth
—
your
name.”

“Well, I should think I know my own name!” Grandmother said indignantly.

Daddy pushed me forward into her stiff embrace. I was taller than she was. Her arms and legs were so bony, it was like hugging a pile of kindling wood.

“Did you come by train from Carolina?” she asked me.

“N-no, ma’am,” I stammered. “I came by carriage . . . from Richmond.”

She frowned. “Rich men! They’ll find it very difficult to enter the kingdom of heaven, I can tell you that. Don’t put your faith in riches, young lady.”

“Yes, ma’am . . . I mean, no, ma’am. I won’t.”

As soon as Daddy excused us, Jonathan and I fled the room. We fell into each other’s arms in the hallway, laughing until tears came.

The afternoon was hot and still, as if nature were holding her breath. I was tired from the long trip, so Tessie and I went upstairs to my room for a nap. Aunt Anne sent a little Negro girl named Nellie upstairs to fan me while I rested, but I felt so sorry for the poor child, forced to wave her tired arms in the stifling heat, that I urged her to lie down on the floor beside Tessie. Nellie was sound asleep before we were.

“Have you seen your family yet?” I asked Tessie before drifting off.

“No, Missy,” she whispered. “They all field hands. I have to wait till sunset, when they come in from the fields.”

“May I go with you?”

“Down Slave Row? That’s no place for Little Missy. Why you want to go down there?”

I couldn’t explain why to myself, much less to Tessie. I suppose I remembered all the happy times I’d spent in our kitchen with Tessie and Grady, or out in the carriage house, talking to Eli, and I wanted to replace the image of Slave Row that I’d seen earlier with a happier one. I was certain that Eli would be down there, too, laughing and talking with Josiah.

“Jonathan already showed me Slave Row,” I told Tessie. She didn’t answer. I wondered if she had fallen asleep.

But later that night, while Daddy and the others were visiting in the parlor after supper, Tessie came to me and pulled me aside. “I take you down there now . . . if you still want to go,” she said.

Tessie’s family was truly happy to see her, but Slave Row wasn’t a place of warmth and laughter like our kitchen back home. An atmosphere of weariness and wariness hung over all the cabins, so that even the small children seemed subdued. I caught a glimpse inside her family’s unlit cabin, enough to see that it had a dirt floor and was nearly bare of furniture.

“You back here to stay, girl?” Tessie’s mama asked as her family stood around their front stoop, visiting.

“No, my massa just come for few days.” She wrapped her arm around me and pulled me close, as if sensing my uneasiness. “And my little Missy come long, too.”

“Must mean Old Massa’s dying if young Massa George come back here,” Tessie’s father said.

She nodded. “All the folk up the house think so. He in a real bad way, so I hear.”

“Wonder what become of us when he die? You hearing anything, Tessie?”

“Don’t know about that,” she said. “But my massa, he got plenty money, so his family must have plenty, too. Probably no one have to be sold.”

Tessie’s father puffed on an old corncob pipe. “If you dream of Massa counting money, means someone gonna be sold.”

Slowly, one by one, the other slaves ambled over to the cabin to greet Tessie and join the conversation. I didn’t see Eli, but Josiah stood at a cautious distance, watching and listening. The young man beside him was shirtless, and when he turned around I saw ridges of ugly welts on his back, like a furrowed field. I couldn’t stop staring.

“What happened to him, Tessie?” I whispered.

“Overseer’s whip what happened.” She turned my head away and held me close to her side so I couldn’t see him.

As more and more people gathered near the cabin, I began to sense how uncomfortable they all were around me—and I began to grow uneasy around them. I couldn’t understand why that was, why these servants were so different from our servants at home. For the first time in my life I felt out of place. I felt
white
. And I didn’t like the feeling at all. I wiggled out of Tessie’s grasp.

“I’m going back to the house now,” I told her.

She looked over at Josiah. Their eyes met. “Then I going, too,” she said.

“No, stay as long as you like, Tessie. I can walk back by myself.”

I threaded through the crowd before she had a chance to follow me. But when I reached the last cabin I heard someone behind me say, “Peculiar little white gal, ain’t she?”

Chapter Four

Hilltop, July 1854

I awoke at dawn to the haunting sound of the conch shell, blowing to summon the field slaves. A few minutes later I heard a faint rumbling and recognized it as wagons rolling and the tramp of marching feet. Then, above the sound of roosters crowing and birds calling, I heard music—the song of the slaves. I never will forget that shivery, mournful sound.

Nobody know the trouble I see. . . . Nobody know but Jesus
.

It was singing, yet it wasn’t—it was weeping. And when the sound finally faded away, I realized that I was weeping, too.

My grandfather died that day. Aunt Abigail arrived in the afternoon with her husband, a minister, and he conducted the funeral service the following day. The plantation yard filled with carriages and the house overflowed with neighbors, all coming to pay their last respects. I had no idea how they’d heard the news. Hilltop was so huge that neighboring houses weren’t even visible; the nearest town was miles away. But they came by the dozens, sharing words of consolation with my grandmother, embracing my aunts, somberly shaking hands with my daddy and uncle.

As I walked up the path through the woods to the family burial plot, holding my daddy’s hand, a hot wind rustled through the branches all around me, carrying the fragrance of pine. A white picket fence separated the graves from the woods, the tombstones shaded by a massive oak tree, with branches that spread above us like gentle arms. Dozens of weathered tombstones marked the graves of my ancestors—people I didn’t know. I did not feel any grief for a grandfather I’d never known. My daddy bowed his head, but his eyes, like his brother’s, remained dry. Jonathan tried in vain to emulate the men, but he wept silent tears like the women.

When we returned from the gravesite, the slaves had a huge meal spread out on trestle tables in the yard. The lunch, too, was a somber affair. I stayed close to my father’s side, listening as he discussed politics with the other men, until I grew tired of hearing about slave states and free states and a turbulent place called Kansas. Daddy didn’t talk about my grandfather at all. Later, as quietly as they had come, the neighbors began to leave. My grandfather’s funeral was the first I’d ever attended.

The next day was the Sabbath, and Aunt Abigail’s husband conducted a church service for us on the plantation. The servants carried chairs outdoors for our family, setting them up in rows beneath the trees. They even hauled the parlor piano outside so Aunt Abigail could play hymns. Tessie, Eli, and all the other slaves sat on the ground or on handmade wooden benches behind us. The Negroes made up a much larger proportion of the congregation than us white folks. We sang “Rock of Ages” and “How Firm a Foundation.” Then, after a prayer, Jonathan’s father came forward to say a few words.

“I know many of you are concerned about my father’s will,” he said, addressing the slaves in the rear. “You may rest assured that it has been read and that his accounts are all in order. No one will have to be sold.”

I looked over my shoulder to see if his words had relieved some of the tension I’d witnessed down in Slave Row a few nights earlier, but everyone seemed to be waiting for something more, as if collectively holding their breath. I nudged Jonathan, who was seated beside me.

“What’s wrong with all the servants?” I whispered.

“Some of them are wondering if Grandfather set them free in his will.”

“Did he?”

“Of course not. You’ve seen how big this place is. How could we run the plantation if we let the slaves go free?”

“I have inherited Hilltop and all its possessions,” my uncle continued. “Things will go on just as they have in the past.” I thought I heard someone behind me moan as Uncle William signaled for the service to continue.

The scripture text Aunt Abigail’s husband read, from the book of Colossians, was a very familiar one: “ ‘Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God . . . for ye serve the Lord Christ.’ ” I’d heard similar sermons preached in Richmond. But he surprised me by adding another verse from Colossians that I hadn’t heard before: “ ‘Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.’ ”

I wondered what the Lord would say about Slave Row, if He would think it was “just and equal.”

Cattle lowed in the distance as my uncle preached, leaves rustled in the treetops, my grandmother snored softly. My uncle told us that it pleased God when we obeyed His Word, that it offended Him when we disobeyed, and he reminded us that God’s Word commanded us to obey our masters. “Look upon your daily tasks as the will of God,” he said. “It’s His will that some of you are slaves. Your earthly masters are God’s overseers. Blessed are the faithful, those who are submissive, obedient. They will inherit the kingdom of heaven.”