Queen

the evening, as was her habit, because she was still miffed with Jass,

  and the world, and she wanted him to cQme to her. She looked out of the

  window and saw her father walking to the big house with Jass. She prayed

  that Cap'n Jack was telling him about her desire to go to the wedding,

  about which she had poured out her distressed heart to her father for a

  solid hour, and that Jass, being the young Massa, would do something

  about it.

  Just in case God wasn't in a listening mood, she crossed her fingers and

  allowed herself to dream.

  28

  Jass loved his father's study. All the other rooms at The Forks

  reflected Sally's personality, and although she had been re

  sponsible for decorating this room, his father's untidiness pre

  vailed. The floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books, the

  clutter of heavy furniture, and the imposing oak desk sug

  gested a world where women seldom came-and they seldom

  228 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  did, except as occasional visitors, or as maids, to clean.

  James busied himself with the copious papers on the desk, for he was not

  looking forward to this interview with his son. Cap'n Jack waited near

  the door,

  James looked at Jass, and his spirit failed him slightly. The boy simply

  looked too young to be a serious participant in the conversation James

  had in mind, so he delayed matters by turning his attention to Cap'n

  Jack.

  "Our old friend Alfred is getting married at last," he announced, stating

  what was for everyone, by now, the obvious.

  Cap'n Jack was courteous. "Yes, suh, I hear, suh."

  James found the letter he pretended to have been looking for, which had

  never been lost.

  " You'll be coming to Nashville, of course, to valet master Jass and

  myself. But there's more-"

  He held out the letter. Cap'n Jack looked reluctant. Jass smiled to

  himself, for what was being played out was a continuing charade.

  " I cain't read, suh," Cap'n Jack lied reasonably. "Tain't legal."

  James was not in a mood to waste time. "For heaven's sake, you can read

  as well as I-- he began, but knew he was wasting his breath. Whatever the

  truth of the matter, Cap'n Jack would never admit his education, even in

  the confines of this room, where he had no enemies.

  "Oh, very well," James gave in, and glanced at the letter. "The president

  says that Alfred has requested you as his best man. Of course, you have

  my pen-nission."

  Cap'n Jack smiled happily. "Why, that's wonderful news, suh. Will you

  write that I accept?"

  " I already have," James said. "I thought you would like to know. Thank

  you, Cap'n Jack."

  Jass guessed that his father was simply procrastinating, that he had

  something more serious he wanted to discuss, with Jass, but was playing

  for time with Cap'n Jack. Please don't let it be about girls, Jass sent

  up an urgent prayer to heaven. They'd had a brief aimless discussion of

  morality some months ago, which ended with his father's admonition, "You

  know about girls, I'm sure. Don't ever be discourteous, or unmannerly,

  or, damn it, base, toward them," and had left

  MERGING 229

  whatever other information his son might need to Cap'n Jack, the men of

  the slave quarters, and the other boys at school. Jass had been even more

  embarrassed than James by his father's inconsequential ramblings and he

  now hoped Cap'n Jack wouldn't leave.

  That part of his prayer was answered, for Cap'n Jack didn't go. He

  hovered by the door, until James, who had returned his attention to the

  papers on his desk, looked up. "What is it?" he asked.

  "My daughter, suh, Easter. Annie's girl. She want so much to go to the

  wedding. Would mean a lot to her."

  "Well, of course she can go," James interrupted, completely aware of the

  not so subtle emotional blackmail that was being used. Any mention of

  Annie stiffed his conscience, reminding him of things he would rather

  forget. Still, some role had to be found for Easter.

  "She can maid Sassy. Angel can teach her." Angel was Sally's maid.

  "Yes, suh, thank you very much, sub. I tell her tomorrow, and she learn

  good." Cap'n Jack was duly grateful, but a slight twinkle of triumphant

  conspiracy passed between him and Jass. "Good night, Massa."

  Jass could hardly conceal the grin of delight that sneaked to his face.

  Cap'n Jack gave the merest wink to Jass before bowing to his master and

  leaving, and somehow Jass understood that the secret was to be kept from

  Easter for a little while at least, and that he would be the one to tell

  her.

  "Well," said James, when they were alone. "Would you care for some port?"

  Jass found himself caught in an agony of ambivalence, not for the first

  time that day. His father had never offered him port before, and part of

  Jass was cock-a-hoop that he seemed to have crossed some line of

  demarcation between boyhood and manhood with his father. Another part of

  him groaned inwardly. Almost certainly, this meant they were going to

  talk about girls.

  "Perhaps a small one, sir." He accepted the invitation, and James nodded

  at the decanter on his desk. Jass moved forward to pour himself a glass.

  230 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  In the hall, Sally was fiddling, picking dead buds from flowers in a

  vase, when Cap'n Jack came out of the study. She looked at him and he at

  her. They were old conspirators, and he left the library door slightly

  open, so that Sally could hear the conversation within.

  Then he looked for something equally trivial to do, and began trimming

  candles.

  Jass sipped his port and thought it wonderful. He had seldom drunk any

  alcohol, except at celebrations, and then only watered wine. He loved the

  taste of this sweet, thick liquid, loved the gentle fire that traced

  through his body as the wine did its work, and loved the small sense of

  equality it gave him with his sometimes distant father.

  "Do you like it?" James asked.

  "Very much, sir," Jass responded, nodding his head and taking another,

  confirming, sip of port.

  There was a tiny silence, and then James took the plunge.

  "It's never been easy for me to discuss personal matters with you, Jass,"

  he began, and, having begun, found it easier than he had expected. "There

  are things I thought I would not have to discuss with you, but because

  of your brother's untimely death-"

  He stopped, momentarily. A.J.'s accident had caused him terrible grief.

  Like Sally, he simply didn't discuss it with anyone, and tried not to

  think about it. It had become easier, of course. Time had healed the

  worst of the pain, although the aching hurt still washed across him in

  unguarded moments, causing, if only for an instant, an overwhelming sense

  of loss and of the unfairness of it. He looked at Jass, and could not,

  in all honesty, see in his eager sec
ond son an adequate substitute for

  his first.

  "With A.J. gone," he continued, "you will now inherit all this." The

  vague "all this" implied a considerable fortune. "We have never talked

  about it, and it's time we did."

  11 Yes, sir," Jass responded dutifully.

  "It is not easy, Jass," James said, wondering if he should call him

  James, "to be master of such responsibilities as I will leave to you. I

  hope, of course, that I will be with you for many years, and the

  assumption of your eventual role will be gradual. I will ease you into

  it, and you will always be able to come to me for advice and

  consideration."

  MERGING 231

  1 sound so pompous, thought James. Like my own father. What must the boy

  think of me? Why can't I come to the heart of the matter?

  "It is not easy being master," he said again, unnecessarily, and stopped

  again. We're getting nowhere, he thought.

  " But," he said, and knew it had to be now, "I won't always be here. And

  if anything should happen to me, I want you to be ready. Do you like the

  Perkins girl?"

  It came as a small bolt from the blue, and Jass was thrown by it,

  although the connection was obvious to his father.

  " Well, yes, I guess. Lizzie's charming" was the best Jass could manage.

  "She is also a most eligible heiress." His father, having taken the

  plunge, waded on. "'You're too young to even contemplate

  anything-serious-with her, and if circumstances were different we would

  not be having this conversation. But--

  Jass knew where they were going. In that "but" a whole future lay.

  It was apparent to Sally too, still fiddling with dead flowers in the

  hall, and to Cap'n Jack, still uselessly trimming a wick that could

  scarcely be trimmed any more.

  11

  -you will have to marry eventually, and I hope it will be sooner rather

  than later. I was not a young man when I married your mother, and I

  sometimes regret that I did not find her earlier."

  He had completely lost track of how to say what he wanted, he knew,

  although his goal still beckoned him, if only he could reach it. Why is

  it so.difficult? he thought again, although he already knew the answer.

  He was trying to control something that, ultimately, he did not believe

  was his to control. He lost his temper with himself.

  "You must have sons, Jass!" he announced angrily. "Sons to inherit what

  I have created here."

  As soon as he said it, his anger at himself increased, for he knew he

  sounded even more pompous than before. Jass was puzzled by his father's

  vehemence, but a second glass of port was making him bold.

  "Of course, Papa," he said. "I'm looking forward to being married one

  day. But I was wondering about-" He found

  232 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  the word difficult to say, for he was suddenly feeling a complex anger,

  too. Here he was with his father, drinking port and discussing his future

  as man and master, yet he was still being treated as an inadequate boy.

  He felt an intense, burning need to communicate to his father that he

  wasn't a boy anymore, he was a man, in charge of his own destiny. Suddenly

  he wanted answers from his father to some of the questions that had been

  puzzling him.

  "I was wondering," he repeated, "about love."

  James stared at his son, as if staggered by his impudence. Love, he

  thought, oh, love. That is the heart of it. That is what I should be

  discussing with him, and what I am trying to deny him. I am considering

  everything that matters--this house, this land, this estate, this family,

  this fortune-but not the thing that matters most. I have not considered

  his heart. Is that what my father did to me?

  To his son he said: "Love?"

  Jass began a confused apology. "Where that comes into it. I mean, I know

  all about girls and things, and getting married, and babies, all the

  fellows at school talk about that all the time, but no one's ever talked

  to me about love."

  It was eminently fair and reasonable, thought James, and completely

  unanswerable. He struggled to describe the indescribable. "Love is-"

  What? A young man's dream? An intangible, foolish, impractical something,

  dictated by the heart, not the head, which if undirected could sabotage

  everything he had worked for, all he had built, the tiny empire he had

  created. Yet it was a most basic right of any man-and, he knew, totally

  unpredictable, perhaps dangerously so. He had never questioned, would

  never have challenged, A.J.'s right to love whom he would, for A.J. would

  have loved the right woman, James was sure. A.J.'s sense of

  responsibility would have dictated to his heart, and he would have chosen

  a bride who would have been worthy mistress of this mansion. Why was he

  not so sure that Jass would do the same?

  "I hope you will find love," he assured his son, longing for Sally to

  help. "But marriage and love do not necessarily go hand in hand."

  They do, his heart insisted, they do. Let the boy love. But let him love

  wisely, his mind responded.

  MERGING 233

  "When I first met your mother, I thought she was the most beautiful

  creature I had ever seen, and I-wanted her-at that moment-"

  The unguarded thought had slipped out. So anxious was he to impress duty

  on his son that he was not embarrassed by the admission of lust.

  --but I didn't love her then, I didn't know her, I'd never spoken to her.

  Love came with knowledge. The more I came to know her, the more I came

  to love her, until now I cannot bear to be apart from her. "

  Sally's heart sang a sweet duet. This is my husband, whom I love. And

  this is my son, who has dared my husband to speak of love.

  "But we married for different reasons," she hardly heard James continue.

  "We married for mutual benefit; we married to have a family. Love came

  later."

  Whatever motives she had for wanting to overhear the conversation in the

  study now seemed irrelevant to Sally, for she knew her son would love

  whom he would, marry whom he must. She hoped they would be one and the

  same woman, but if not, she hardly cared, for the boy would be his own

  man, and that, for Sally, was all that mattered. Only one tiny cloud

  troubled her otherwise flawless horizon. She moved to the study and

  softly she closed the door.

  "Easter's turned into a fine girl," she said to Cap'n Jack.

  "Yes, missus," the slave replied.

  "Master James is very fond of her."

  "Yes, missus."

  Sally moved away, as if that were the end of the conversation, but, at

  the stairs, turned back.

  "Let us hope he doesn't become-too fond-of her." Her meaning was

  precisely clear, and Cap'n Jack looked at her steadily.

  "No, missus."

  Why did she fear this so? Why, in this moment of otherwise complete

  certainty about Jass's character, did she have such profound misgivi
ngs

  about a simple slave girl?

  Sally moved in what she often thought was a hypocritical hemisphere with

  regard to her son's libido. She knew, as did all Southern mothers, that

  most of their young men found their

  234 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  first sexual pleasures with slave girls, and that many of these young men

  continued to take that pleasure throughout their adult life. She knew-they

  all did-of older male friends who kept a black mistress, or several

  concubines, or of those who simply raped their slave women as and when the

  urge took them. It was seldom discussed by the women, and then only

  "behind the fan," but oh, how busy those fans could be, feeding the embers

  of gossip into lurid flames of speculation.

  In the more sensational cases, such as that of Mr. Herrisvale, only three

  counties away, who had taken his black concubine into the main house,

  into the very nuptial bed, relegating his true and lovely white wife to

  the second-best guest room, the fans had worked overtime, for every white

  woman could only too easily imagine herself in a similar predicament. The

  dear, sweet Mrs. Herrisvale had absolutely no recourse of any kind. As

  wife she was chattel, to be done with as her husband wished-in many ways,

  Sally frequently thought, no better than a slave-and no matter how much

  her family might rail on her behalf, the husband was lord of the estate

  and king of the lives of those who dwelt therein, and if he was of a can-

  tankerous nature, like Mr. Herrisvale, all the suffering Edna could do

  was bear the indignity with as much fortitude as she could muster. Her

  outraged brothers had demanded her return to them, with or without her

  substantial dowry, but Mr. Herrisvale had kept them at bay with shotguns

  and the full force of the law. "We can only be grateful," swooned the

  fanning gossips, "that our dear husbands are reasonable, faithful,

  Christian men."

  But were they? What woman could be sure that her husband was not finding

  some pleasure, at least, in the slave quarters, and if he was, what might

  this lead to? Surely Edna Herrisvale had put her complete faith and trust

  in her husband, and look at her now. Yet for many of the wives, the slave

  concubines were a considerable relief, for it meant fewer sexual demands

  on them. And a mightier relief too, on behalf of their daughters. for if

  the young beaux had no other outlet for their base desires, the virginity

  of every young Southern belle was potentially at risk, and for a girl to

  go to the altar already deflowered was a shame no mother could bear.

  Still Sally worried about Jass's fondness for Easter. She

  MERGING 235

  guessed that any eventual physical relationship with Easter would keep him

  satisfied and happy, for the realist in her knew that her son must be

  developing carnal needs, and she prayed that he would eventually find a

  bride who would not be too obtuse in the bedroom. Yet that other,

  maternal, side of her dreamed that her boy might be temperate of desire,

  that he would remain a virgin until his marriage, and that he would be as

  sweet and undemanding of his spouse in bed as he was in life. That this

  hope somehow emasculated her son was a demon fear she worked very hard to

  keep at bay.

  She wanted for Jass a simple life, she told herself, and Easter was an

  unnecessary complication.

  "Good night, Cap'n Jack," she said, and went up the stairs. If anyone had

  influence over Easter and lass it was Cap'n Jack, and she was relying on

  him to do his utmost to put restraints on their friendship.

  "Good night, Missus Sally," Cap'n Jack replied, and started turning down

  lamps.

  What Sally did not understand, for she had no knowledge of it, was the

  bitter complexity of Cap'n Jack's ambition. Unable to persuade Annie's

  new owner to part with his new slave, even for considerable sums of

  money, Sally had spent countless hours comforting Cap'n Jack, and

  believed that his pain had eventually healed.

  She was wrong.

  All the furious vows of vengeance Cap'n Jack had made the day Annie was