Queen (79 page)

she didn't want him to go to war, she didn't want him to die. She ran to her

mother in the weaving house and poured out her distress. Easter, as always,

had comforted her and stroked her hair.

    "There, now, chile, he'll come home safe, I promise," she crooned.

"You cain't know that," Queen muttered.

"I ain't never tole you a lie," Easter said.

    It was true, Queen thought, her mother had never tied to her. But perhaps

    she had never told her the complete truth, either.

    "Then tell me true now," she said. "They say the Massa's my pappy. Is it

    true?"

    Even now, after all these years, Easter resisted it. She didn't believe it

    could do any good for Queen to know, yet she knew Queen did know.

    "It don't matter," she said, and turned away, but that was not enough for

    Queen.

"It matters to me," she cried, "coz half of me is missing!"

    She had to make her mother understand why it was so important. "I's black

    but I look white. You're my mammy, the black side of me, and I love you. "

    She turned her mother's face to her. "But who's the other side of me?" she

    begged. "The white me. Where'd she come from? "

    Easter was crying. She understood her daughter's need. "From love, chile,

    I swear to you," she said. "From love."

    They stood together now, in front of a grand house on a little hill, and

    watched him fide away to war.

    It could not matter now, Easter persuaded herself. And told Queen the

    truth.

"Pray for yo' pappy," she said.

    It was as if a great weight was taken from Queen's shoulders. In a

    practical sense it made no difference to her lifeshe was still a slave-but

    things that had never made sense to her now became clear. She knew she'd

    always knownher father's constant visits to her mother, the way he had pro-

    tected her and taken her into the big house, the way he had

    QUEEN 479

treated her with some slight special attention, the things that other

slaves had told her-but it had been knowledge without knowing. To know the

truth for a fact was different from guessing it by rumor.

She waved to her pappy until she could no longer see him.

They rode for days, Jass and Henderson. At every village and town they

passed through, others joined them, and others again as they rode on,

until, by the time they reached the North, they were a great army.

    But why that army fought, the purposes of its war, had never been

    explained to those who were the ultimate cause of it, the slaves.

    Sally believed that if the slaves did not understand the reasons for the

    war, they could become the enemy. With so many white men away, discipline

    would become increasingly difficult, the number of runaways would

    increase, the work force would slowly disappear, and the problems of

    running the new country would be insurmountable.

    Someone had to make them understand why white men were ready to shed

    their blood to defend the institution of slavery. It was not, in Sally's

    mind, just for the benefit of whites. It was for the good of the slaves

    as well.

    She had Tom Parsons gather them together one evening, shortly after Jass

    had left.

    She stood in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by all her family,

    for she had insisted on their presence, and Mrs. Henderson. The house

    slaves stood to her right, the field slaves in front of her. Queen and

    Easter stood together, but apart from the others, for they belonged to

    neither group.

    Tom Parsons cracked his whip and yelled at the slaves to be quiet, which

    was unnecessary because no one was talking, and Sally stepped forward.

    "We are at the beginning of a great adventure," she told them, her voice

    crisp and clear in the warm night air. "And only the good Lord in heaven

    knows how and when it will end. "

    She paused for a moment. She had practiced the speech several times, but

    it was important to her that they understood how passionately she

    believed in what she was telling them.

480 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    "Some of you will have heard that this war is being fought for and against

    slavery, but that is not true. The South is fighting to protect its own way

    of life."

    Tom Parsons had his eye out for troublemakers, but found himself paying

    more and more attention to Sally's speech. He was young and impressionable,

    and had never really understood what the war was about. He'd been excited

    by the founding of the Confederacy, and had caught the general fever of

    war, but his God-fearing parents had told him that it was the beginning of

    the Millennium and heralded the Second Coming of Christ, which dashed his

    exuberance. Sally seemed to have a more pragmatic view.

    "The alternative is too dreadful to imagine," Sally continued, "especially

    for you nigras. You have all heard the stories of your people in the North.

    Of hunger, and sickness, and poverty. Of homeless nigras forced to beg for

    crumbs of bread, of sleeping in gutters, dying friendless and alone."

    Very few of the slaves had heard those stories. It was not what they knew

    of the North, of freedom. And even if the stories were true, they did not

    matter.

    "That is not our way," Sally told them. "When you are born, we nurse you.

    When you are hungry, we feed you. When you are sick we nurse you, when you

    are old, we care for you, and when you die, we bury you. That is our

    Christian duty."

    She was completely unaware of an unspoken dialogue going on among some of

    the slaves. Jeremiah, the blacksmith, simmered with anger. He was a skilled

    and able tradesman, and he believed he could make a good living for himself

    and his family, if given the chance. The chance was all. If it was his

    destiny, which he did not for one moment believe, to die alone in a

    Northern gutter, then so be it. He wanted the choice, he wanted to be free,

    to succeed or fail, and no one, for all Missy Sally's fine speeches, had

    the right to deny him that. He looked at some of the other slaves, and knew

    he was not alone in his anger.

    The slaves had discussed the war as avidly as any whites. Many believed

    that it heralded the glory day of deliverance. John Brown had been the

    harbinger, and Linkun was the new Messiah. Fervently believed rumors told

    the slaves that 01' Linkun was amassing a righteous army that would sweep

    QUEEN 481

through the South, gather the dispossessed black peoples into its bosom,

and lead them to the mountain. A few, the old and less able, those without

family, were scared, for they had never known any other life than that of

a slave, and despite the tantalizing hope that freedom promised, it was

new, unknown, and frightening territory.

    For some, mostly the able-bodied younger men, it could not come quickly

    enough, and a few, like Jeremiah, were realistic enough to comprehend

    that the South would not yield easily. The war would be bloody, and it

    was possible the Yankees might lose, although it would be a cruel God who

    gave victory to the South. All Jeremiah wanted was his chance, which

    might, he thought, be now.

    "I cannot believe, in my heart, that God, in His infinite wisdom, could

    allow us to lose this war," Sally said. "But He helps those who help

    themselves, and so it is our bounden duty to strive together, to keep our

    houses and our fields in good order, until the blessed day of peace

    comes, and brings our men safe home. I ask you to kneel and pray with

    me."

    Tom Parsons closed his eyes and prayed most fervently. The others knelt,

    obediently.

    "0 Heavenly Father," Sally led them in prayer, "our Creator and Provider,

    we pray to You now in this our hour of need. We beg You for peace, 0

    Lord. We beg that in Your infinite wisdom You spare lives that would be

    needlessly lost in battle, but, if war it must be, that You grant victory

    to our glorious Southern cause."

    Queen and Easter were not praying for the war, or for the South, but for

    Jass. As Sally did now.

    "And we ask You to bless and protect our beloved son Jass, to keep him

    from harm, and bring him safe home to the bosom of his family. But if his

    time on earth is done, we pray that You receive him in Paradise, and

    attend him with angels."

"Amen," Queen whispered.

"Amen," Easter whispered.

"Amen," chorused the slaves. Those that were left.

    When Tom Parsons opened his eyes, he had a bit of a shock. He was sure

    that a few of the slaves were absent. He said nothing to Sally, but when

    she had gone back to the big house, he did a head count.

482 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    Jeremiah and three field hands had gone missing during Sally's prayer, as

    well as Alphis, Jass's new valet from the big house. Taking advantage of

    the chaos that war must bring, and believing that the Massas had better

    things to do than go chasing after a few niggers, they had taken their

    chance. Away, away down Freedom Road.

    Tom Parsons, who had been responsible for them, was too young, too callow,

    and too scared to face the wrath of his employers, and ran away himself.

    He spent the night in a friend's barn near Florence, crept into town before

    dawn, and enlisted in the army.

    56

When the bullet burst into Jass's chest, he felt as if he had been hit by an

invisible steam train. The brute force of it knocked him to the ground,

senseless.

    He came to a little later, and had no idea where he was. It was still

    daylight, and there was this awful pain in his chest. Around him, he could

    hear a few whimpers for help and shouts of pain, and somewhere a long way

    away, a distant cheering, but otherwise all was quiet. He moved his hands,

    to see if he could, and then felt his chest. It was wet and sticky, and

    Jass knew it was his own blood.

    "I am dying," he thought, without any sense of fear. He prayed that death

    would end the pain, which was becoming unbearable. Just when he thought he

    could not stand it anymore, when he must scream to the very heavens to make

    it stop, his body was kind to him, and he passed out again.

    He drifted to the surface sometime later, and the pain was still there. It

    was dark now, or nearly so, and he could still hear the cries of wounded

    and dying men all around him. He tried to sit up, but that made the pain

    worse. Mosquitoes buzzed in his ears, and their bites added to his misery.

    He fell

    QUEEN 483

back on the ground, waited for something to happen, and commended his soul

to the mercy of sweet Jesus.

Jass and Henderson had journeyed to the North, to Richmond, Virginia. They

were given some peremptory basic training, their horses were requisitioned

for other purposes, and their regiment was assigned to Manassas. It was

a road and rail junction on a stream, Bull Run, which ran into the Potomac

River. The commanding officer, General Beauregard, was a splendid veteran,

who kept his soldiers from boredom by long hours of training. At first,

the green troops responded well, and a sense of camaraderie developed

among them. They lived in tents, ate simple food in almost ample portions,

and spent the long, oppressive summer nights singing songs of their youth,

or telling tall tales, or writing to loved ones. Those who were illiterate

found educated friends to write their letters for them, and Jass, who

longed for action, was a popular scribe.

    So the nights passed pleasantly enough, but oh, the days! The days were

    hot and unbearably humid, and the steamy weather enervated them, sapping

    their resolution as surely as it drained their energy. Their thick woolen

    uniforms chaffed at their perspiring bodies, and the endless hours of

    drill and instruction rubbed at their spirits. Chiggers burrowed into

    their flesh, mosquitoes sucked on their blood, and lice nested in their

    hair and clothes. They cursed their officers, cursed their wretched lot,

    and, above all, cursed those wretched Yankees, who had brought them to

    this hellhole, and were too chicken to fight *

    The day will come, their officers told them. The day will come. Toward

    the middle of July, rumors reached them that a vast Yankee army was

    amassing a few miles away. They were put on alert, but no attack came,

    and scouts reported that the Yankees seemed more interested in setting

    up camp than waging war.

    "All piss and wind," a disgruntled Henderson told his fellows, for he was

    anxious to fight, to get it done, and get out of this accursed place. But

    not to home. To some other, more congenial site of battle, and he prayed