The Ghost Apple (8 page)

Dad actually wrote to me about it. Think of that! It's the first I've heard from him since coming back to school. He said he'd “have Pinkman's head.” He is apparently very upset. Do we believe him? Dad with his polo shirts and his Republican shoes.

Everybody asked Kabaka about it in class, but he wouldn't even acknowledge it at first. He said, “Every American story is a slave narrative.” But on Wednesday, Professor Amundsen came to evaluate his teaching. Professor Amundsen is this soft faceless guy, sort of squiffy and blurred at the edges, and Kabaka was so angry that he was there. He stared at Amundsen for like two minutes in total silence. Then he gave this astonishing speech about how if Amundsen raped your sister and your sister gave birth then the child would be the child of a rapist just as much as he'd be the child of a person who'd been raped. He asked if it made sense to say that the child inherited some of the father's guilt. He said (I wrote it down): “What is inheritance? If you fertilize your cabbage plants with horse dung, do your cabbages turn into horses?” He kept using phrases like “the rapist Amundsen.” We didn't have the faintest idea what he was getting at until he said that Depatrickson White and Bish Pinkman III are probably cousins and if one was guilty, the other was guilty too. His point was that most black Americans have white ancestors, so how can you talk about inherited guilt? Then he said, “There is only now.”

I don't want to ramble about this any longer. Also I'm worried you'll think I'm giving you a hard time about the football thing. Also I don't want you to think I'm going nuts. It's just that all of this demands to be thought about! (Ask Max what he thinks about football. He'll back me up. How
is
Max?)

Anyway, I was trying to tell you that the reason I'm so fixated on Kabaka is that he does these things. He calls this man a rapist in front of everyone. Crazy! And he doesn't give a damn. It's part of his whole philosophy: Why should we observe the proprieties? Why should we pretend that we want to bring about change within the context of the system that already exists? What we really want to do is change the system.

I need you to understand what I'm talking about! If you don't understand, then I really
am
lonely and isolated. Okay? So listen to me. I'm talking about the difference between a liberal status-quo American and someone like Kabaka. There's a big difference. Some of my other professors, maybe they have the right opinions, maybe they support gay marriage and they're pro-choice, maybe a lot of them are even people Dad would call pinko nutjobs. Fine. Good. But their lives are soft and simple. They think what a tragedy it is that we have so much racial inequality, but meanwhile they're the ones who benefit. So it means that hypocrisy is the only political position available to them. They write a little book and then afterward it's like, Oh no, I'm an idiot, I forgot about black people again! Or else they do think about slavery but they think of it as an “institution,” a subject for scholarship, and meanwhile they're wearing jeans made in Guatemala by a kid paid thirty cents a day. These are nice people who use the phrase “African-American” because they're trying to be respectful, and they don't even think about how insulting it is. How long has it been since our own family lived in Africa? We've been here a lot longer than most white Americans. Kabaka says that basically all white Americans arrived after 1850 and before that it was mostly just black slaves and Indians.

You understand what I'm saying? Kabaka is something
else
. He's not just a professor who looks good in a suit and teaches us interesting things. He's like an alternative way of living in the world. I feel like I've woken up from the weird dream of upper-middle-class black America and now here I am, in History, which is an even weirder and less plausible dream.

Let's not argue about anything, okay? Not now. Sorry to be so serious. Does it help if I say I'm sitting here with my jeans around my ankles? I was checking the label and I was right: made in Guatemala. Should I take a picture of myself like this and send it to Kabaka?

 

Love to you and Max,

M

From

The Narrative of William White, a Fugitive Slave, Who Lived Twenty-Five Years in Hopeless Bondage, Containing Some Remarks on the Practice of Slavery in America and an Account of His Miraculous Escape (1845)

Chapter IX

When I was about fifteen years old, I was sold to Mr. Theophilus Pinkman, who was known, according to the custom in that part of the country, as “Colonel,” although he held no military rank, and, indeed, a coward’s heart beat within his breast. The Colonel was as cruel a slaveholder as Almighty God ever suffered to draw breath, and he used to whip his slaves savagely and indiscriminately, usually where no particle of fault existed, in the belief that frequent application of the tyrant’s lash was beneficial to the body and soul of his chattel.

The Colonel was a most intemperate man, and, for want of other amusements, being as we were almost completely isolated in that feverish and pestilential swamp, he used to become intoxicated most nights, and in this condition walk among the slave cabins. The Colonel was himself a slave to licentiousness, and many was the poor son, brother, husband, and father who was forced to bite his tongue, and check every impulse of love and fidelity, while his mother, sister, wife, or daughter was compelled to submit to the grossest and vilest indignity.

I knew of one slave, called “Platt,” of pure African descent, considered one of the most loyal slaves on the plantation, and so strong he could do in three weeks the work another slave could do only in six weeks of the most backbreaking labor. Platt had a young wife named Milly, as virtuous as she was beautiful, and together they had a son. But this happy family was born into bondage, and every slave knows that his happiness may be taken from him at any moment, and sold to the next slave trader who happens by, because his wife and child, and indeed his very self, withal the blood and the sinews of his body, are not his own. And so it was with Platt, who was sleeping together with his wife and infant son in their cabin, when he heard the Colonel approaching, almost helpless with intoxication, whispering the most foul and base indecencies.

In the months of July and August, when the heat becomes so intense in that place that the dew never falls for months at a time, the Colonel was in the habit of wearing only a sort of cloak or loose robe, soaked in cider vinegar to keep off the mosquitoes, and woe to the helpless bondsman and bondswoman who smelled that astringent vapor on the night air! The Colonel stumbled into the cabin and began shouting, saying that Platt had not finished with some piece of work or another, although there was no justice in the accusation, and, indeed, Platt knew very well what the Colonel intended and for what purpose he wished to be left alone with poor Milly.

Reader! Can you imagine the feelings of this young husband and father, as he listened with bowed head to his oppressor, who was wrapped in a winding-sheet and stank like all the dogs of blackest Hell? Platt did not move to leave, and the Colonel, maddened by the frustration of his licentious passions, produced a knife from his boot, and lunged at his slave, intending to kill him. Platt was more than a match for this villain, and he stepped aside and caught the Colonel’s arm, twisting it as he did so, in order to bring the soft-bellied man to his knees with pain, and then dealing him such a blow with his hardened fist that the white man’s life was nearly extinct.

A slave knows that the penalty for defending his honor and protecting his beloved spouse is death, and accordingly Platt fled to the swamp, where he lived for three weeks in the most wretched conditions. Another man might have run for the Free States, but he was reluctant to do so while his wife and child yet remained in bondage, and so, for want of an alternative, at the end of this time he returned to his work.

At first the Colonel seemed to have forgotten the events of that night, and Platt supposed that he had been saved by the workings of that very demon, corn liquor, which had brought on the attack of licentiousness in the first place. But, O Reader, he was wrong! One day while he was working in the field, he saw three white men approaching with pistols and shotguns at the ready. Platt knew that he could not run, lest he be shot down in the field, never again to see his wife and infant son in the light of this world, although, in truth, he had little hope of seeing them again if he should allow himself to be taken. But he put his faith in Almighty God and suffered himself to be led to the barn.

The manner of whipping on Colonel Pinkman’s plantation was to bind the victim by his hands to a high branch or roof beam, pulling the rope tight so that only the toes scraped the dusty earth. Then a rawhide whip was used, this weapon being favored over the bullwhip, with which a careless or drunken man might whip the life out of his victim after only a few strokes, thereby preserving the slave from hours, and perhaps years, of anguish, which was considered to be his due, and this for no crime other than that of his birth.

The Colonel was too cowardly to administer the punishment himself, and still fancied himself enfeebled by the blow dealt him by the husband and father whom he had sought to defraud of the rights that every white man knows to be his by natural law. These three men, contract laborers who would be considered mercenaries in any Christian country, undertook the responsibility, and Platt was whipped from morning until noon, when the men charged with executing this punishment, taking it in turns so that two might rest while one plied the whip, were exhausted by the heat. They cut Platt down and left him to bleed in the dust, and I saw him there, as the blood, which was the same bright red as the blood of any white man, turned the dust of the barn to mud. His back was lacerated so deeply that the flesh could have been turned back to expose the living entrails beneath. Platt was washed in brine, which was thought to prevent the lacerations from festering, but he survived only until about three o’clock in the afternoon, when he died of his wounds. If there is any justice in this world, he waits in heaven for Milly and his son.

All of this was common practice among the slaveholders in that part of the country. Platt was the only slave I ever saw challenge the Colonel’s right to commit outrages so vile that they offend against every sacred principle of Christian society, and he paid for it with his life.

This, then, dear Reader, is the price of your cotton shirt, and of your wife’s Sunday dress.

Minutes / October 2009 Faculty Meeting

The president called the meeting to order and wished everyone a happy Halloween. Before we got started, we should all help ourselves to a Big Anna® brand Banana Bran Muffin®. As we already knew, Tripoli had concluded its partnership agreement with Big Anna® Brands, a corporation that had been “revolutionizing food products and services” for over a hundred years, and together we hoped to do great things. The president wanted to thank William Beckford, professor and acting chancellor of the English Department, for his role in facilitating our discussions with Big Anna®.

John Kabaka, visiting professor of history and self-styled “enemy of globalization,” looked as impassive as a chess piece, but the secretary had not forgotten his passionate rebuke at the first faculty meeting, and he was interested to see what fresh mischief the professor had up his sleeve.

Most of the faculty, at least
80
percent, had retrieved a packaged muffin from the table by the door, and for a moment the crinkling and tearing of wrappers was the only sound. Then the president once again expressed her enthusiasm about this new partnership and observed, with the expressionless equanimity of one fulfilling a contractual obligation, that Big Anna® brand baked food products retained their glisten and freshness for months and months, even when they were removed from the package.

It pains the secretary to admit that he failed to take any notes during the first part of the meeting. All that remains to him are impressionistic memories: a monstrous image of Professor Beckford, who seemed, like an iguana, to blink without closing his eyes; Malinka West in a low-cut green blouse; Dean Benmarcus congratulating Hugo Ortega, who had just been named the first Big Anna® brand Professor of Arts of Sciences™; Matilda Yu choking on her Banana Bran Muffin; Malinka West again; Malinka West with her bright white teeth.

Indeed, the secretary had a dark moment as he sat gazing at Malinka West, unattainably beautiful as she was, and reflecting on the tawdry circumstances of his own life. For context, he had been fleeced by a car salesman just that morning.

But there was no time to worry about this. It was time to discuss the Pinkman Scandal.

Most of us were familiar with the details of the case, but the president gave a brief summary for anyone who hadn’t been paying attention. Following the death of Bish Pinkman Jr.—father of our own Bish Pinkman III and one of our most generous benefactors—Greeley Baker, professor of history, who did not seem to be present today, had written an article revealing not only that the Pinkman fortune derived from cotton plantations in Mississippi, but also that Tyrants wide receiver Depatrickson White was descended from a slave—a man called “Ned,” later William White, who subsequently escaped to the North—once owned by the Pinkman family.

All eyes were on Bish Pinkman III, who remained motionless, staring at his hands with a fixed watery glare.

Obviously, the president said, this was not a matter we needed to resolve on our own. The trustees and the senior administrators were already discussing it, and the Public Relations Office had issued the first of several press releases. What we needed to decide here was what action, if any, the faculty itself would take.