Queen

laughing, golden, riding rainbows,

  Sometimes, too, he would dream of leprechauns, and if one of them looked

  exactly like Andrew, it was the generous Andrew of his youth, and he

  would take a little dust from the pouch at his side and sprinkle it on

  James, and James would

  MERGING 319

  be riding the rainbow too, sparkling with the magic powder, riding through

  iridescent, pfismatic light, the primary colors of life, down toward the

  crock of gold that nestled, as the leprechaun told him, at the foot of the

  rainbow, faster and faster, falling toward the glittering pfize that shone

  before him, failing, failing, until he knew that in a moment he would have

  it, the pot of fairy gold, the fabulous treasure that was beyond all

  reckoning. Falling, falling to a greater light whose source was only inches

  from his touch. But always before he reached it, he would wake up, and when

  he woke he was filled with a sense of loss, of something sought and not

  achieved, and the lack of it made him yearn to dream again.

  Sometimes he would not find the leprechaun in his dreams, and he would be

  astride Glencoe, galloping across the dewsoft emerald grass toward a great

  city he knew was Dublin. Others would fide beside him for a while, on

  animals not as fine as his, and just as he recognized them and waved to

  them in cheery greeting, Lord Fitzgerald and Pamela, or Oliver Bond or

  Uncle Henry, Eleanor or Sara or Jugs, their horses would fail them, and

  they would fall behind. Then Sean would appear, galloping, laughing, always

  laughing, until he too could no longer keep pace with the reckless James,

  and would fall behind.

  He would fide into Dublin, through shouting crowds, and all his friends

  would be there again, cheering with the mob, and James knew that he had

  just won a tremendous race. As suddenly, everyone disappeared, and he would

  be alone in the empty streets of the city, searching for them, and riding

  down a tiny, dark alley that led, he was sure, to the Liberties, the

  decrepit slums where all his friends were hiding. The houses would slowly

  give way to leafless trees and bushes ablaze with flowers, and he would

  find himself riding down avenues of endless, fragrant roses.

  Those roses stayed with him in his waking hours; he could not rid his mind

  of the image that the missionary had conjured up. He could not bear to hear

  stories of the Indians trekking west, for all the news that reached him was

  of nothing but deprivation and starvation and death. He did not want to

  know about the new treaty made with the holdout Cherokee at New Echota, for

  however magnanimous it seemed to be on paper,

  320 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  he knew it could lead only to the same awful fate, and while he blocked

  from his mind the picture of another nation walking west to its doom, the

  image that replaced it was one of endless rows, here to the horizon, of

  withering, lifeless rosebushes.

  Not even the recruitment of local young men for a small army out to drive

  the few remaining Lower Creek out of southern Alabama stirred James to

  any protest.

  There is nothing I can do for them, he told himself. I did everything I

  could. Yet even as he said it, he knew how great was the lie.

  39

  Wiliam Perkins caught a more contagious disease than the congestive fever

  that was afflicting James. Eventually it would prove fatal to his

  financial well-being and his wife's physical health, but there was no

  preventive medicine for it. It was called Land Fever, and an epidemic of

  it had swept the frontier states. As ever more Indians were removed, more

  Indian land became available for white settlement, and more white settlers

  flooded in.

  Perkins, a naturally cautious man, thought he was immune, but his wife's

  temperature soared as she heard the stories of the easy fortunes that

  were being made, and she communicated the virus to him. Perkins thought

  long and hard about a course of action, and finally made an eminently

  sensible decision. He asked the advice of Thomas Kirkman, who took him

  to see his father-in-law, his Uncle James.

  James had several reasons for offering generous help. It is always

  flattering when a successful student asks his teacher for advice, and

  Perkins had sought out and listened to James when he first came to

  Florence, and had done well. Now he had money to invest, not a lot but

  enough, and wanted to make more, if only to make Lizzie's financial

  future, already secure,

  MERGING 321

  impregnable. James guessed that the redoubtable Becky Perkins had already

  made plans to spend a good portion of whatever profit was made, but she

  amused him, and he loved to hear the gently told tales of marital woe from

  the henpecked husband. And then there was Lizzie.

  For whatever reason, James still cherished the notion that Jass and

  Lizzie would wed, and the constancy of their friendship gave him

  continuing hope. He gave Perkins some good advice, told Thomas to keep

  an eye on him, and wrote a couple of letters to influential friends.

  It worked like a charm. Perkins was offered and bought shares in a new

  development company, and within three months had doubled his money. Under

  Thomas's direction he also bought four lots in Tennessee, and within the

  same period sold them at four times their original cost.

  There was no stopping him now. Caution to the winds, and, increasingly

  against Thomas's advice, he bought land wherever he could find it for

  sale, only to sell it again, almost always at some profit. It was as if

  he had suddenly discovered the secret of Midas, and as his reputation for

  canniness increased, so did his profit, for it was generally reckoned

  that if he bought land, it was going to double in value overnight, which,

  in many cases, it did. Speculators, bankers, and simple settlers all

  rushed to the developments with which Perkins was associated, and it made

  him, for a time at least, something of a celebrity, and gave him a

  formidably increased bank account.

  The new money provided Mrs. Perkins with the fuel for her most

  extravagant dreams, which she indulged with increasing ostentation. They

  owned over eighty slaves on a plantation that needed fewer than half that

  number. Where she had once been Becky to her friends, she now preferred

  her given name, Pocahontas, and she began to dress in the Oriental style

  made popular by Dolley Madison years before, turbaned and overly

  bejeweled. The dinners she gave were famous for the sumptuous table she

  served and the troops of attendants she provided, a footman to every

  chair. She traveled, if only to visit near friends, with a considerable

  retinue of footmen and lackeys and page boys. This vulgar display of

  wealth made her unwelcome to some of her less fortunate friends, and an

  object of derision to the more successful, and so the tolerant Jacksons

  322 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN


  were called upon at least once a week. William Perkins would sit in the

  Study with James, supposedly seeking more counsel, but actually unburdening

  himself about his wife's demanding excesses. James, amused and astonished

  by

  his prot6gCs success, gave frequent warnings of prudence, which Perkins ac-

  cepted miserably, for his success terrified him.

  "There is nothing I can do," he said sadly. "They throw the money at me."

  James knew it was true, for he remembered the panic buying that had

  attended the sales of the Cypress Land Company, and while Perkins's profits

  were not quite in that league, they were still very handsome.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Perkins was perpetual shadow to Sally, wallowing in

  self-pity, weeping of the fool that Fortune had made her with this newfound

  fortune, and pouring out her grievances with the world. She understood that

  the new unfriendliness of so many of her neighbors was caused by "the

  green-eyed god," but it still hurt, and she couldn't pretend she didn't

  have money. Not when every coup of William's was broadcast in the

  newspapers, journals, and taverns as they happened. Nor was it her fault

  that William had been so astute in business, and they so obtuse. No one,

  it

  seemed, understood the problems that fame and fortune brought with them,

  and she had only dear Sally to turn to for advice. Not the least of her

  difficulties was disciplining the army of nigras she commanded.

  Lizzie called at The Forks more frequently than even her parents, and came

  because she wanted to see Jass.

  Her parents' newly increased wealth, and perhaps time, had calmed Lizzie.

  Still an exemplary Southern belle, she had started to develop a morbid fear

  that she was going to be left on the shelf. At any social gathering, at any

  picnic, ball, or levee, Lizzie was, at the beginning of the occasion, the

  center of attention, but she had begun to see that it was not because

  anybody actually liked her, but because she wasn't dull. All the most

  eligible young men would flirt with her, flatter her, and laugh at her

  jokes at the beginning of the evening, but as if they were passing the time

  with her until they were able to ascertain which young lady it was that

  they really wanted to be with or, in the case of the less bold, had

  summoned up enough Southern courage from Lizzie to approach the actual

  MERGING 323

  object of their affections. Even worse, Lizzie could not avoid the

  conviction that people were laughing at her behind her back-once they had

  done laughing about her mother.

  She dared not voice these fears to her mother, from whom she had learned

  her patterns of behavior, and anyway, how could you tell your mother what

  the world thought of her? She could not talk to her father because he

  would have been hurt, and she had seldom received sensible advice from

  her father on anything that really mattered, only the dictum "Talk to

  your mother." If she had friends she trusted, she might have confided in

  them, but Lizzie looked at her long list of acquaintances and realized

  that she didn't have any friends she would trust with such confidences.

  Instead she took a long, hard look in the mirror, and tried to work out

  what it was she was doing wrong.

  She was pretty, she could see, but so strong was her new fear, she could

  also see that she wasn't actually much more than pretty, as were most

  girls of her age. Certainly she was not flowering into any great beauty.

  Her nose was longer than it should be, her lips were thin, and there was

  a kind of bland ordinariness to her features. She tried to laugh

  flippantly at the image in the mirror, but in a moment of remarkable

  selfappraisal for one who was still quite young, she saw that most of her

  elaborately cultivated mannerisms simply made her look silly.

  Then the most awful truth of all appeared in the mirror. She had always

  understood, or been taught by her mother, that boredom was a maiden's

  lot, and so Lizzie had endured her boredom, thinking everyone else was

  doing the same. Her reflection told her she wasn't bored at all. She was

  lonely.

  A lifetime of that loneliness suddenly yawned in front of her. She

  considered the potential young men who might alleviate the terrifying

  prospect, and it dawned on her that her card was seldom filled in after

  the first three dances, and then only by older men, married men or

  relatives, who might have been taking pity on her. Toward the end of the

  evening Lizzie would always find herself sitting on the sidelines with

  the older women and, heaven forfend, the spinsters.

  Perhaps it was this knowledge that she was not the most desirable catch

  around that made her more determined than

  324 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  ever to catch Jass, but there was something deeper to it. As she became less

  brittle, she found herself liking Jass more. She no longer bothered about

  her parents' obvious desire for her to make a good union; she was motivated

  by something more intensely personal. She wanted to be with Jass because

  when she was with him, she wasn't lonely.

  There was another reason why Lizzie enjoyed going to The Forks of Cypress,

  and that was James. Lizzie was acutely aware of how ridiculous her mother

  looked, with her stupid entourage, and couldn't understand why her father

  didn't put some curb on the extravagance. The mirror told her why. Lizzie

  had not only subjected herself to the scrutiny of honesty, she had done the

  same for her parents. Her mother's vanity and desperate need to prove her

  worth and social standing now struck Lizzie as silly, and her father's

  subservient acquiescence to whatever her mother demanded seemed pathetic.

  This created a void in Lizzie's life, for she had a strong need of paternal

  guidance, and what was lacking for her in her own father she found in

  James. She would sit with him for hours, reading to him, or chatting,

  delighting him with scurrilous gossip of the small town that was their

  world, entertaining him, pampering him, and even gently flirting with him.

  Free of the constraints of family behavior, she dazzled him, for with him

  she could be what she had been trained to be all her life, the perfect

  Southern rose.

  James came to adore her, and looked forward to her visits with a special

  sparkle of excitement that almost no one else could arouse. He became

  jealous of her time, and especially of any time she spent with Jass, as if

  the father were rival to the son. At the same time, unaware of the

  contradiction, he encouraged Jass to see more of Lizzie, convinced of their

  suitability for one another. Lizzie, James thought, could give Jass the

  edge that he needed, for beneath her magnolia exterior was a determination

  of iron.

  Sally was suspicious of this new Lizzie at first, believing she was

  cultivating James in order to cement the idea of a union with Jass, but she

  could not easily ignore the evident affection that th
e two developed for

  each other. Sally was sure her first impressions of Lizzie had not been

  wrong, but obviously she was making a conscious effort to improve herself,

  MERGING 325

  which Sally applauded. She doubted that she and Lizzie would ever be close

  friends, but she was pleasant company now and, given the wretched excesses

  of her mother's behavior, deserved ten out of ten for effort, at least.

  Sally disRed cattiness in other women, and controlled any small tendency

  to it in herself, but occasionally she would give vent to a tinge of what

  she called "womanly smugness."

  Perhaps Lizzie has realized she isn~t such a catch after all, Sally

  thought, and has decided the rest of us are tolerable company.

  Jass, on the other hand, was becoming more and more of a catch, "a

  strapping young man" was the way Aunt Letitia described him, and no one

  was more aware of this than Easter.

  She adored him. She wanted to be with him for ever and ever, and it

  distressed her that she was seeing him less and less. He still came to the

  weaving house almost every day, but she thought it was from habit rather

  than from any real desire to be with her, because the familiarity that had

  once come naturally to both of them they now had to strive for. It wasn't

  easy anymore. He still sat in the old rocking chair at the end of the day,

  and puffed on the cob pipe, and talked about the world, but he avoided any

  physical closeness, and because there was this unspoken barrier between

  them, a limitation had developed in the way they talked to each other.

  Often he was silent for long periods of time, while Easter worked, and if

  she asked him what was wrong, he'd shrug and say nothing was wrong, or

  that she would not understand. Easter was convinced she understood only

  too well. In the old days he would have talked about anything with her,

  but now he had secrets, if only in one area. He would never talk about his

  feelings toward Lizzie, and the less he said, the more Easter wanted to

  know.

  That Lizzie was becoming more and more of a fixture in Jass's life was

  evident to everyone on the plantation. They rode together two or three

  times a week, laughed and joked together, and Jass delighted in showing

  her every aspect of the estate. If ever Lizzie expressed boredom with the

  details of farm life, Jass would laugh and say, quite loudly, that since

  she would be mistress of a plantation one day, she should learn

  326 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  how they were run. He never said that she would be mistress of this

  plantation, but the current view among the slaves was that it was only a

  matter of time. Parson Dick confirmed this to Tiara when he told her that

  at

  meals she took in the big house, Lizzie sat on ol' Massa's right, and

  behaved as if she were already mistress.

  "They gwine be married one day," Tiara said to Easter when they were

  sitting outside Tiara's shack one evening. Easter lost her temper, called

  Tiara an ol' bitch, burst into tears, and ran away to the weaving house.

  Tiara took it in her stride, nodded sagely, and looked at Cap'n Jack.

  "That gal bustin' her heart for summat she cain't ever have," she opined,

  and from then on all the younger slave girls would giggle and whisper

  amongst themselves whenever Jass went to the weaving house.

  Easter tried to talk about it with Cap'n Jack, but she'd seen little of him

  that summer; he was always in the big house nursing the ol' Massa. He spent

  what few hours he could with her, and she asked him about Jass and Lizzie.

  Cap'n Jack shrugged. -01' Massa want it to be," he said, "but young Massa

  ain't made his mind up."

  He laughed. "Wait till young Massa go Up South to college," he wheezed. "He

  gonna find girls there put Miss Lizzie in the shade of the ol' oak tree."

  Which made Easter more miserable than ever. Cap'n Jack knew this, but

  didn't try to soften the blow.