sold away still raged beneath his compliant exterior. He had no clear
idea of how to achieve his goal, or even what his goal might be, but he
had the slave's gift of patience, and fortune seemed to be playing
directly into his hands. The deep friendship of his daughter and Jass
held promise of future fruition, and the death of A.J. would eventually
elevate Jass to a position in which Cap'n Jack's primitive oath to
subvert his father's expectation of him would have some real hope of
success. The stories of Mr. Herrisvale and his black concubine had
encouraged exaggerated ambitions in Cap'n Jack, and the thought of Easter
as surrogate mistress of this mansion, however disparaged by the world
at large, put him at direct variance with what Sally wanted. If this were
not possible, if Easter's ascendancy, or his own, were
236 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
less spectacular, something else would happen, Cap'n Jack was sure, for
the actual focus of his triumph didn't matter. The revenge itself was all.
Leaving a few candles burning to light his Massas, young and old, to bed,
he left the hall and went out into the night.
In the study, James thought things were going rather well. "A family is
everything, Jass, in this world of ours. Without family we are nothing,
and you must start thinking of your future. You will meet many young
women, of course, at Nashville, and when you go to college-"
He felt the need to invite some comment from his son, since he was trying
to exercise such control over the boy's future. "Are you content with New
Jersey?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, very much," saidJass. "If they'll have me-"
"You won't have a problem there," James said. "Money talks, even to the
old Yankee colleges." He could have bitten his tongue off; he was even
denying his son's scholastic ability. So he looked for a compliment.
"Always remember that you are a highly desirable young man, if only
because of your position and your wealth, and you will be much sought
after. But you could do a lot worse than Lizzie Perkins. She's a fine
girl, and would make a splendid wife, I'm sure. Talk to her, call on her,
get to know her."
"Yes, sir." Jass was dutiful again.
"Good," said his father, anxious now for it to be over. "Well-that's
about it. Best to bed, eh? It's getting late."
"Yes, sir." Jass, who had been hoping for another glass of port, went to
the door.
James could not let it go at that. He'd botched the whole thing, had
probably confused the boy more than clarified anything, and felt that
nagging sense of guilt.
"I've been very proud of you, Jass," he said, with a sudden rush of
affection. "You've never let me down."
"Thank you, Papa." Jass was astonished. This was the closest his father
had ever come to an expression of love. A similar, sudden affection
flooded him, and the boy in him wanted to run to his father, give him the
biggest hug of his life, and tell him how much he loved him. The man in
him knew that such an action would only embarrass both of them and
prob-
MERGING 237
ably destroy the moment, so he smiled and pretended to be a drunk instead,
"And thank you for the port." He grinned and left the room, staggering
in mock inebriation.
James laughed. Jass was a good lad; he'd behaved beautifully in the face
of a difficult interview. Now that it was over, James couldn't remember
why he had thought it so urgent, why it couldn't have waited a day, a
week, a month, a year, for pressuring the young man to accept the concept
of an arranged marriage was something that could easily have been delayed
until the boy had sown at least a few of his wild oats.
He stared at the silver horse's head, and it reminded him again, as it
always did, of his own father, and of the bitter disappointment that
James had seen in his father's face the last time they had spoken. How
proud of me he should be now, he thought, with all that I have achieved.
Then he looked at the letter from Andrew lying on his desk, and it
reminded him of what John Coffee had said to him a week ago, and he
remembered why the necessity of the talk with Jass had seemed to have
such a pressing urgency.
29
Upstairs in his room, Jass undressed and slipped on his nightshirt. All
his senses were sparkling, and he decided he must be a little tipsy. Gee,
it felt good. He wondered if he dared sneak downstairs for another glass,
but he opened the windows, saw the light spilling onto the veranda, and
knew that his father was still in his study. He gazed at the stars, and
smelled the heady scent of jasmine. Crickets sang, frogs croaked, and
somewhere an owl hooted.
He turned down the oil lamp, and the room was bathed in moonlight. He got
into bed, loving the crisp linen sheets, and sank into the luxurious
embrace of the feather mattress, which he blessed his mother for buying
a year ago. Until then, all
238 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
the children had slept on sturdy, unyielding horsehair, but after A.J.
died it was as if his mother suddenly rejected the spartan upbringing they
had previously endured; she went on a shopping spree, replacing all the
bed furnishings in the children's rooms. She had even bought a new
mattress for A.J.'s bed, although, of course, he would never sleep on it.
Jass, lost in a fluffy cloud of eiderdown, looked at his brother's bed,
next to his own. It was kept freshly made up, the linen changed each week,
the sheets turned down by the maid each night, as if Sally believed that
one day A.J. would come home to her, and rest again where he belonged.
It should be moved out, he thought, knowing he would never dare to
suggest it to his mother. A.J. is gone. This is my room now.
That he had even had the thought astonished him. His mind was racing in
unfamiliar territories he knew must be a result of the conversation with
his father. He was James Jackson the Third. He was the young master now!
It was the first time he fully appreciated the implications that everyone
else had accepted the day A.J. died. He would inherit The Forks of Cy-
press, and its welfare and his family's welfare devolved onto him. He
would marry and have sons and they would inherit it from him and their
sons after them. A great dynasty flowered in his mind and suddenly he
understood the full importance of what his father had so obscurely
presented to him. Sweetened by the wine, the awesome responsibility did
not daunt him, but aroused and excited him. He saw himself dispensing
wisdom and justice at his father's desk, in his father's study, in his
father's stead. He would stand for public office, as his father had done.
He imagined himself as host at a great levee, his family around him, and
his wife by his side.
But who would she be, he wondered, and how would he know who was the
right woman for him? How would h
e know if he loved her, and how would he
know if the woman he loved could fulfill the role that her position as
his wife demanded? Would it be Lizzie? Did he love Lizzie?
The only answer he had was to the last question, and it was no. He didn't
love Lizzie. At least, he didn't think so. Certainly, he could see Lizzie
swarming around The Forks of Cypress, but he couldn't imagine Lizzie in
his mother's role, and
MERGING 239
surely could not imagine her as mother to his children. Maybe his father
was right, maybe love came when you got to know someone, and he determined
he would do all in his power to get to know Lizzie better, and see if love
developed.
Jass had only the haziest notion of what love might be. His sisters
seemed sure of it, their noses always stuck in those awful romances,
penny dreadfuls his mother called them, that were full of swooning
heroines and knights in shining armor, and Jass couldn't imagine himself
in that latter role. Mary Ellen had been so convinced of her love for
Abram Hunt that she made plans to elope with him when she was only
sixteen, hardly older than Jass was now. Abram was actually waiting at
the gate for her when Sally heard about it, and stopped them. A lot of
tears were shed by Mary Ellen before her parents relented and gave their
permission. And his cousin Mary Kirkman, in Nashville, did elope, with
Richard Call, who was Uncle Andrew's ADC. Old Aunt Eleanor was furious,
and vowed that she'd never speak to her daughter again, and when Uncle
Andrew went to try to talk her round, she had fired a shotgun at him.
So what was it that girls knew about love and he didn't? How did you find
out? Did you read books'? Did you ask girls?
Then again, his father had said that he would be attractive to girls, if
only because of his position and his wealth. He wondered how much his
inheritance would be, but had as little conception of the reality of
money as he had about love. He knew a sum had been made over to him at
his birth, as with his brothers and sisters-* and was told he would never
have to worry about money, bui lie had no idea what the original sum was,
or what it was now, for his father handled all those things. Nor could
he begin to estimate what his father must be worth. Leviathan had earned
over $100,000 in stud fees he knew, because the newspapers said so, and
horses were only a hobby for James, so what about his enormous holdings
in land? He supposed that he would have to take care of the money one
day, and he determined to make a closer study of financial matters in the
future.
A new and much more interesting fantasy developed. If he was so rich, so
eligible, so much sought after by potential brides, he would be able to
have his choice of the prettiest women around.
240 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
Images of every young woman he'd ever met flooded into his mind and
danced across his ceiling, led by Lizzie, in a dazzling array of
seductive beauty, and he allowed himself to be flattered and cajoled,
teased and flirted with by each and every one of them, the dashing eye
at the center of their hurricane of gorgeous attentions. Other,
darker-skinned, women appeared now, vying with the whites, and memories
of all the pretty slave girls he had ever seen jostled with their young
mistresses in his febrile imagination.
But the only one who made him smile was Easter.
If Jass's dreams were sweet with lust, his father's thoughts were filled
with foreboding. It cannot all be a house of cards, he thought, but
dreaded that it was.
He poured another glass of port. He shouldn't drink so much. He knew it,
his doctor had proscribed it, but he needed the comfort of oblivion now.
Surely he was unassailable? He had never done anything criminal or
illegal, he was president of the Alabama Senate, he was rich, and the
value of the land that he owned was enormous.
If he owned the land. There was the problem. He had never had a moment's
doubt about his right of title to any of it: He had paid for it, it was
all property registered with the requisite authorities, it was signed,
sealed, and delivered in his name.
"Damn you, Andrew!" he said out loud. "And damn me, too," he said a
moment later, more softly. "I should never have had any part of it." But
if he had never had any part of it, he would not be what he was now.
John Coffee had called a week ago, alone, without his family. The general
was in an expansive mood, and he and James behaved as they always did,
with considerable civility to each other, as if they were still friends.
They shook hands, and spent a pleasant hour discussing the affairs of
Alabama and the country, and gossiping about political enemies.
Then John was silent for a while, as if something was troubling him, and
stared out of the window.
"Andrew is determined upon the removal of the Indians," he said softly.
Everyone knew of Andrew's determination to persuadeor force-the remaining
Indians to migrate. Many had made
MERGING 241
the long journey to the promised sanctuaries in the West, but their
stories of deprivation along the way made miserable hearing. Many others
had simply refused to leave the land that was sacred to them, and were
suffering for their obstinacy. In six months, the final payment was to be
made to the Chickasaw, and they were obligated to leave their land. No one
knew how peacefully they might go, for the Cherokee in Georgia were
resisting every effort to make them leave.
"For God's sake, why doesn't he let them stay where they are?" James
said. "They have suffered enough."
John turned to look at him. Really, the man is a fool, he thought, a
weak, dangerous fool. But a gullible one.
"it is for their own good," he said reasonably. "They cannot live amongst
us as equals; they don't understand our ways, and have no desire to
learn. Their language is useless in a white society, and their
superstitions incompatible with our Christian religion. Nor can they live
amongst us in their tribal fashion. Their hunting grounds are lost to
them, and they have no understanding of the proper use of the good land
they occupy, and so they starve."
It was the usual justification for their removal. As more and more white
encroachments were made, legally or otherwise, on Indian land, the
condition of the native peoples was rapidly degenerating, James knew. The
election of Andrew to the presidency had only accelerated this. Sensing
a friend in Washington, Georgia extended its laws over the Cherokee in
its state, abolishing the tribal units, denying them the right to vote,
to seek legal redress in court, to prospect for the gold that had been
discovered on their land, and Indian land on which there was no farm or
village was appropriated for white settlement. It was an illegal
move-Indian lands
were actually under the protection of the federal
government-but Andrew had completely supported the state's actions.
Mississippi and Alabama had followed suit, and intertribal disputes,
rampant bribery and corruption among the white Indian agents, alien
diseases, the abuse of alcohol, and the Indians' failure to understand,
and therefore compete, in the white marketplace were only adding to the
Indian misery. Small bands of desperate Creek and Cherokee were attacking
white farms in Georgia. People were calling it a war, but all they wanted
was food.
242 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
"If they do not go, they will die," John continued. "If they do go, they
can live, in peace and freedom, governing themselves, in the new lands
in the West. The many treaties we have made with the more reasonable
Indians guarantee it."
It was a harsh position, James thought, but probably a realistic one. As
to the treaties, there had been so many, warranting so much that had
later been denied, they seemed irrelevant. His heart bled for the
disadvantaged, dispossessed race.
"But a number of liberal hearts are bleeding for the savages," John now
said. "The wretched Henry Clay is adamantly opposed to the removal, if
only to spite Andrew, and he has much support. They want to have the
treaties declared invalid." James knew this too; the newspapers were full
of it.
With guilt as its wind, fear, like an approaching, unwelcome storm,
appeared on James's untroubled horizon. Even if only one of Andrew's
treaties with the Indians was renounced, any of them could be, including
the one that governed this land. His land.
"Which treaties?" he wondered, with an outward calm he did not feel.
"Any of them," John echoed James's private thoughts. "All of them,
perhaps."
It was an old business, which James thought long forgotten, but it had
come back to haunt him.
"But we won the land in war! We paid them for it!" James almost shouted.
"They took the money! It is a contract in law."
"Well, yes, we did," John remained calm. "But we didn't pay them very
much, nothing like the true worth-"
"The land has no worth, it has no value, unless it is available for white
settlement!" It was so simple to James, he couldn't understand that it
could be questioned.
"Sometimes you sound exactly like Andrew." John smiled, as if to reassure
his troubled host, but actually having the reverse effect, which was what
he intended.
An awful realization hit James, somewhere in the pit of his stomach. I
am no better than the rest of them, he thought. Let the Indians have
their land, but other land, not mine.
"It is being said in Washington that Andrew obtained the
MERGING 243
treaty corruptly, by paying massive bribes," John continued. "Particularly
to the Colbert brothers."
He had used the singular "treaty," not the plural "treaties," and now he
added a clarification that might have been an afterthought but was, in
reality, well rehearsed.
"I mean the Chickasaw treaty."
James already knew that. "There were no bribes," he insisted, knowing he
was lying.
John sighed. "Well, actually, there were," he said. "And you were at the
heart of it, It would be a pity if evidence of them ever came to light,
don't you think?" Suddenly he was bored with James, and wanted the
business done.
James was visibly shaken, and John was satisfied. "I did nothing," James
insisted. "I bought my land and paid for it, and that is all."
"You also lent a very great deal of money to Andrew at that time." John
twisted the knife. "What do you think that money was for?"
James could only fall back on a lame excuse. "To pay for a war," he said.
John barely disguised his irritation. "Don't be naive," he snapped. "The
war was over. It was to ensure the victory."
There wasn't much more to do. "It is said there are letters between
Andrew and yourself that might shed more light on the matter. Andrew