Chesapeake

  She shrugged her shoulders and proceeded with the lesson, pointing to the five Ns, and demonstrating that this symbol had the same sound in each of the four words in which it appeared. Cudjo repeated the instruction, and on the second repetition a light actually broke across his face, irradiating the room. That was the secret! All these symbols carried their own sound, and reading was nothing but the decipherment of those sounds.

  All that afternoon he and Mrs. Paxmore went over the letters of the rubric from the barrels until he had mastered each. Intuitively she knew that it was more important to do this than to start with the alphabet, for Cudjo himself had brought her this problem; it stemmed from his life, so its solution would have treble meaning.

  When day ended she returned to the hornbook and made the sounds of the letters, and he already knew letters like the D in Devon and F in Fithians, but when she got to L he was confused. In LONDON it had been pronounced the way she said it now, but in LB it had the sound of P. He repeated the sound: “Pound. Pound.”

  She stopped, looked at the rubric and realized that there was no simple way in which she could explain what an arbitrary abbreviation was. “You see ...” She retreated to the word PLNT and explained that this was merely a short way of writing plantation, and this he understood readily. But then there was the problem of LB meaning pound.

  “Learn the letters,” she said, thrusting the hornbook at him, and before he left she asked him to read the alphabet, and he got twenty-one of the letters right. He was, she told her husband that night, one of the brightest human beings she had ever tried to teach.

  Now it was Christmas, and the slaves had their week of holiday. While others gorged on roast pig and drank their whiskey, Cudjo stole away to Peace Cliff, spending hours on the lessons Mrs. Paxmore set. He met Mr. Paxmore and their handsome young son Bartley, and was invited to have Christmas dinner at their table. It was a sober affair, with silences he could not understand, but there was a spiritual warmth and the food was plentiful. Bartley was especially attentive, a boy of fifteen eager to know about the world.

  “Thee was in the south?”

  “I been.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Work, no food, Mastah whip.”

  “Is it better here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will thee get married some day?”

  This was beyond Cudjo’s understanding, and he looked down at his plate, the first he had ever seen. “Get him some more turkey,” Mrs. Paxmore said, and as soon as the meal was over, Cudjo wanted to go back to the learning shed.

  “Bartley will take thee,” she said, and the boy proved as capable a teacher as his mother. His pleasure was to have Cudjo recite the alphabet as fast as possible; they had races, and it became apparent that Cudjo had mastered every letter, every sound, but when they reached the numerals he was confused.

  Bartley was good at arithmetic and had often helped his father calculate tonnages at the boatyard, so he was able to explain it, and if Cudjo had been noteworthy in his ability to learn letters, at figures he excelled. In three intensive days, during which he saw little of Mrs. Paxmore, he mastered the principles of simple figuring.

  “He’s quite remarkable,” Bartley told his parents as the black man hurried back to the plantation at the end of the holidays.

  It was remarkable, too, that Cudjo could continue learning when he had so few materials to work with; he knew every grain that marked the hornbook. He could write in his sleep the message burned onto the back: “Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.” Mrs. Paxmore had informed him that this sentence was unusual in that it contained every letter of the alphabet; he recited it to himself at all hours, seeing the twenty-six letters pop up in order.

  But he required something more substantial, and in March of 1835 Mrs. Paxmore said, at one of their infrequent meetings, for Mr. Starch had become suspicious of his new hand and was keeping closer watch, “Thee can return the alphabet now. Thee’s ready for a book.” And she handed him a small, poorly printed volume called The Industrious Boy’s Vade Mecum.

  Cudjo held the book in his two hands, stared down at it, read the title almost accurately, then raised it to his face and pressed it tightly against his cheek. “I gonna know every word.” And he pointed to Industrious and Mrs. Paxmore explained that he was industrious in that he studied and learned so well. He then pointed to Vade Mecum and she started to explain that this was Latin, but she realized from teaching children that this was supererogatory; all he needed to know was the meaning. “It means go with me. It’s your helper.” But when he opened the book it fell to a page containing mathematical problems, many of which Bartley had already taught him, and he began to rattle off the answers at a speed that Mrs. Paxmore could not have matched.

  “A miracle has happened in that shed,” she told her husband that night. Then she smiled at her son and said, “Thee is a better teacher than I,” and she burst into tears. “Imagine, preaching to people that Negroes can’t learn.” She sat quite still for some time, then started tapping the table nervously with one finger. “I shall never understand,” she said.

  It was the book that became Cudjo’s undoing. It was so small that he could hide it in his trousers, not in the pocket, since his pants had none, but along the flat of his left rump, held there by a string passed between the middle pages. He was able to share his secret with no one, for he knew that if it were discovered that he could read, he would be sold south, so he looked at the book only when he could find a few minutes alone.

  The book had been written for boys nine and ten years old and told of selected heroes upon whom the boys should pattern themselves: Robert Bruce and the spider; Roland and the last battle; George Washington at Valley Forge. The level of difficulty was exactly right for Cudjo, but his quick mind soon absorbed the moral messages and he yearned to talk with someone about Robert Bruce, and why he was fighting. There was no one. So he memorized the selections, finding great pleasure in the simple poems which adorned the text:

  Brave Robert sat within his cell

  And watched the spider spinning well,

  Until he heard the battle call.

  He won the day, so must we all.

  But one November morning when the barrels were being rolled down to the plantation wharf, Mr. Starch heard Cudjo reading off the consignment brand: “Devon Plantation. For Fithians in London. Two hundred eighty pounds.” He leaped from his horse and grabbed Cudjo. “Where did you learn to read?”

  “I no read, Mastah.”

  “You just read that marking.”

  “I heard you speak it, Mastah.”

  “You’re a liar. You stand here.” And he rode among the slaves, asking questions, then came back roaring, “You’ve been seein’ Mrs. Paxmore.”

  “No, Mastah.”

  “You damned liar!” And he leaned over in his saddle and began whipping Cudjo across the shoulders. Cudjo naturally drew back, placing himself out of reach, and this enraged the overseer. Leaping from his horse, he lunged at the slave, ordering him to take off his shirt to receive the lashes he deserved. Cudjo delayed, so Mr. Starch ripped away the shirt, and in doing so, disclosed the end of string protruding from the top of the pants.

  “What’s that?” he bellowed, and with a powerful yank on the trousers, he tore them down and the hidden book fell to the ground.

  “Damn you!” he thundered, and he whipped Cudjo till his arm tired. Throwing the slave into the plantation sloop, he sailed to Devon Island to report the infraction to Mr. Beasley, but Uncle Herbert intercepted him at the wharf. “What brings you here?” he asked.

  “Caught this slave readin’. He’s been to Paxmore’s.”

  “Oh dear!” Steed sighed. “We really must do something about those damned Quakers.”

  “Where’s Beasley?” Starch asked.

  “Retired. And if you handle yourself well, you can take his place.” Uncle Herbert paused portentously, then added, “And perhaps mine, too, in due course.”
r />   Starch, inspired by this intimation, said brusquely, “First thing we do is whip this one into shape.”

  “Sell him south. I want no nigger on my place that can read.”

  “I’d say yes,” Mr. Starch said hesitantly. “But ...”

  “But what?”

  “He’s awful good at fixin’ machines. Has a true talent.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “He’s worth savin’, Mr. Steed. He really is.” Mr. Starch coughed, then said, “What I say is, rent him out to Cline for a year.”

  Uncle Herbert made a temple of his fingers and bit the steeple. To send a slave to Herman Cline was a fearful decision, to be made only in the worst cases. “We Steeds try to keep clear of men like Cline.”

  “But he cures niggers.”

  “You think he can cure this one?” Before Mr. Starch could respond, Herbert added, “I despise niggers who can read.”

  “Cline will put an end to that, believe me.” So Starch sailed south to fetch him.

  Cline lived on the Little Choptank River, south of Devon. There he and his wife occupied a stretch of low, wet land, half field, half swamp. On the scantiest of savings he had managed to buy at bargain prices four slaves whom no one else could handle, and by terrifying them with whip and fist, had converted them into acceptable workmen. They had drained some of the swamps, creating a fairly productive farm, and his success with these renegades conferred on him a title which meant money: Cline the Slave-Breaker. Planters in the region came to believe that for $150 Herman Cline could break the spirit of even the most difficult slave and transform him into a docile servant.

  He appeared one morning at the wharf, forty-seven years old, not overly tall or powerful. As he slouched up the path to the office, in his battered hat, ragged shoes, torn pants and loose homespun shirt, he carried a large wad of tobacco in his left cheek and a carved club in his right hand. It was unusual in that it terminated in a six-foot rawhide whip, tipped at the end. He held the club loosely, so that the rawhide draped twice in graceful loops; when he spoke he pointed the club at the listener, making the lash sway in the air. He was unshaved, unwashed and underfed, but his eyes moved with such quickness, taking in all aspects of a situation, that he created an impression of extraordinary energy and limitless will power.

  “I’m here,” he said.

  Uncle Herbert found him so distasteful that he made no attempt to welcome him, but this did not disturb the slave-breaker. He had business to do and wished to finish it. “Same terms as before. I get to work your boy one year. You pay me fifty dollars when I bring him back. Five months later, if’n he’s cured, you owe me the other hundred.” Steed nodded, and Cline shifted his plug of tobacco, looking for somewhere to spit. Steed indicated the door, and when this was attended to, Cline added, tapping his left hand with the head of the club, “And if’n he ain’t broken when I hand him back, you keep the hundred.”

  Uncle Herbert wished to be no part of this ugly transaction, so Mr. Starch said, “Agreed, Cline. But this time you’ve got a tough one on your hands.”

  “Them’s the kind I like.” He grinned in anticipation of the challenge, then added, “You agree like before. If I have to kill him to cure him, no fault of mine.”

  “That risk we take,” Starch said, and when Cudjo was dragged forth, Cline took one look at him and realized that this was going to be a difficult year. He said nothing; simply marched the big Xanga to the wharf, indicated that he was to get into the sloop, and got in after him. But before casting loose, he suddenly swung his club and began belaboring Cudjo over the head, knocking him down with the first blow and continuing to thrash him as he lay in the boat, striking particularly at his face.

  Mr. Steed and Mr. Starch, on the wharf, were startled by the violence of the attack, but the latter said, “That’s the way he always begins.”

  “It’s rather horrible,” Herbert Steed said, but his overseer nudged him. “Look behind. It’s good for our niggers to be reminded of what can happen.”

  And there on the grass behind the wharf stood seven or eight slaves from the big house, watching everything but saying nothing. Mr. Starch, spotting the girl Eden, went to her and grabbed her by the arm. “Don’t you be so sassy to Mr. Paul, or you gonna spend a year with Mr. Cline.”

  She did not try to escape his grasp, nor did she respond in any way to his threat. She merely looked at the retreating boat as it headed south for the Little Choptank.

  Herman Cline was a good farmer. Taking nine hundred acres of lowland that no one else wanted, he had patiently cut off the trees from one high spot after another, constructing by this method a series of scattered fields. By careful husbandry and incessant toil he had coaxed these fields into producing substantial crops, and if he could accomplish as much in the next twenty years as he had in the past twenty, he would one day have a farm capable of yielding real income.

  His help consisted of his wife, his two horselike daughters, the four slaves he had purchased and five other slaves who had been sent to him for discipline. These nine blacks lived in a small shedlike building with no window, no wooden floor, no furniture of any kind except a row of nails on which to hang their clothes. There was no fireplace, no utensils for cooking; their food was delivered in a bucket, from which they ate with their hands.

  On the Cline farm there was no Sunday. Half an hour before dawn on three hundred and sixty-five days a year, including Christmas, Mrs. Cline beat a length of iron, warning the slaves to be ready for work in thirty minutes. They toiled till sunset, with ten minutes’ rest at noon, and after dark each was responsible for certain additional tasks, such as chopping wood or cleaning the pigpens. The four slaves Mr. Cline owned were expected to work like this for the remainder of their lives.

  The five other slaves were treated with additional harshness. Every morning of the year Mr. Cline recited some arbitrary excuse for thrashing at least one of them: “The pigs wasn’t cleaned properly.” On the third morning it was Cudjo’s turn: “I caught you lookin’ at my daughter. When she passes, you look at the ground.” With his rawhide lash he beat Cudjo twenty times, then asked, “What you gonna do when my daughter passes?”

  “Look down,” Cudjo said.

  “You say Mastah when you speak to me,” and he lashed him ten more times.

  For food the slaves got a bucket of cornmeal mush, day after day after day. Every third day each got a strip of cured pork, which he hung on the nail assigned to him, gnawing from it at a rate to preserve something till the next strip appeared.

  The morning beatings were only the beginning. All day long Mr. Cline prowled his fields, descending upon his workmen at odd moments, or at odd bends in the road, leaping at them for their sloth and thrashing them till they bled. They must work every minute, and care for every item on the farm as carefully as if it were their own. Mr. Cline had one custom often seen among slaveholders: he would take a long rest in the afternoon, then an hour before quitting time he would appear lively and fresh. Scratching himself, he would leap into the middle of whatever job was under way, and would work like a demon for twenty minutes, till the sweat poured down his face. Then he would stop and say, “That’s the way a real man works, damn you.” And he would select some slave who had lagged and would lash him ten or twelve times, shouting at him, “I’ve shown you how to work, now, damn you, do it.”

  Christmas showed the Cline system at its worst. The nine slaves would know that elsewhere along the Choptank other slaves were enjoying a week of festivity, but his worked every day. On Christmas Day, half an hour before dawn, as usual, the iron gong would ring, the slaves would emerge from their earthen-floored cabin, and they would be led to some particularly odious task. At high noon Mrs. Cline would ring the gong again, and her husband would come to the slaves and say, “Well, you’ve done no work at all, but today’s Christmas.” When they reached their miserable shed they would find a bucketful of mush and on a greasy piece of paper one roasted chicken.

  When Cudj
o saw this on Christmas afternoon he had to control himself from bursting into bitter laughter. “At Devon plantations we has whole hogs and piles o’ chicken!” He was so outraged that he refused to fight for a fragment of this treat. He ate his mush and watched the other eight slaves tearing at the small bird.

  Mr. Cline did not hand out new clothing at Christmas, either. Each of his nine slaves had one costume, and that was all. He wore it every day, until it hung from his frame in tatters. Then Mr. Cline would scream, “You smell like an ox. Why don’t you care for your things!” and he would thrash the offender with the cowhide, and grudgingly throw the new clothes at him.

  The seasons along the Little Choptank were horrendous. In summer the mosquitoes were so numerous that hundreds would settle between elbow and wrist, all biting at the same time. In winter a fierce wind blew in from the bay and swept down on the unprotected shed in which the nine slaves huddled. It came through cracks in the walls like a string of needles, punishing the skin. When the temperature was two degrees below zero the slaves slept on the floor, each with a single thin blanket. They worked barefoot in the fields; the soles of their feet had cracks a quarter of an inch wide and the same deep.

  Why did nine powerful black men allow Herman Cline, who weighed less than any one of them, to mistreat them so brutally? The question can be answered only within a larger context. From Africa about eleven million slaves were exported, and more than half found cruel masters; the reasons for their submission are complex and terrifying. Primarily, they could be kept under control because they never functioned as a unit of eleven million human beings; they were parceled out, a few at a time, a hundred here, threescore there. And after they had been hidden away, all agencies of society conspired to keep them in bondage.