except once, and she was sure he must love his son. How could he not?
Queen bathed William, and sat in the nursery room feeding
him, while Abner sprawled on the bed, irritable because of the
heat. Queen was determined to find Davis, but could think of
no way to achieve her goal. There was the possibility that she
might run into him in the street, but she didn't want to leave
anything to chance. When William was satisfied, she put him
to bed in his cot, and then took Abner downstairs, to eat her
own meal in the kitchen, with the hotel staff. The bellhops
and kitchen staff were talking about the strike, in complete
sympathy with it, and full of praise for this man Davis, who
had come to town when the men first walked off the job, and
had inspired them to their present defiant stand. Filled with
pride, Queen wanted to ask them how she might find this man,
but dared not. This was too public a place, and she was already
aware that some element of danger attended Davis. After she
had eaten, she found Mrs. Benson, and asked if she might be
allowed to have a few hours rest, she was not feeling well.
Slightly to her surprise, Mrs. Benson was fussily concerned
for her welfare, and agreed - to her request. Queen went to her
room and waited until she was sure Mrs. Benson would be
having her dinner with her husband, for they always ate at the
same time. She put Abner on her hip and slipped out into the
night to find Davis.
She wandered the empty streets hoping that by chance he would appear, but
he did not. She went back to the scene of the afternoon's meeting, looked
around for some clue to his whereabouts, and saw a small, lighted tavern
across the road. Some men were drinking outside, squatting against the
wall, and she recognized a couple of them as strikers she had seen that
afternoon. She went to them, but although they gave her appreciative
whistles, they were wary of her, and ignored her. Adjusting Abner's shawl
so that his color could be clearly seen, she summoned her courage and spoke
to one of the men, and told him she wanted to find Davis. They shrugged and
QUEEN 695
tried to send her on her way, but she said she would make a scene if they
didn't help. She put on a fine performance, claiming that Davis had
promised her marriage but had dumped her, leaving her with his baby, and
she wanted to give him a piece of her mind.
Which was true, In her frustration with him-at his departure, at the
difficulty of locating him, and now the difficulty of getting to
him-Queen felt a genuine anger rising inside her. It convinced the men,
but still they resisted her, until Queen's voice rose, and she threatened
to call the sheriffs if they didn't help. The men begged her to silence
and had a whispered conversation among themselves. One went into the
tavern, and came out a few minutes later with another, older man, who
questioned Queen, and looked carefully at Abner. Her story or her
indignation, or both, convinced him, and he jerked his head to indicate
that Queen should follow him. He and the striker who had called him led
her to the back of the tavern, where the horses were tethered. They
mounted, and the older man pulled Queen up behind him, while the younger
rode with Abner in his arms.
They rode for a couple of miles into the night, the moon lighting their
way, until the farmland gave way to woods. About a mile into the trees,
by a small body of water, a river or an inlet, there was a shack, guarded
by two or three armed strikers. Queen could see at least two other black
men, with guns, watching them from the trees. The guards at the shack
accosted them as they brought their horses to a halt.
"She say she know him," the older man told them. The guards looked at
Queen doubtfully.
" White bitch?" one murmured. Queen was still on her horse, and reached
out her hand to Abner.
"This here my boy," she said.
The younger striker offered Abner for the guard's inspection, and they
looked from him to Queen. One of them told her to get down and wait, and
he went into the shack. Queen dismounted and took Abner. She stood
waiting in the hot, humid night, a little frightened by the guns, and
thrilling in anticipation.
After a few moments, the door of the shack opened, and Davis came out.
He stared at Queen, and emotions rose within
696 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
her that were too complex for her to begin to understand, for his face was
filled with amazement, and then with pain.
Then he smiled, a sweet smile.
"Is it you?" he said.
Queen nodded, not trusting herself to speak. And then a furious, blazing
anger began in her belly, surged through her body, and burst out of her.
"Yes!" she cried. "And this is your boy!"
She marched up to Davis and thrust Abner at him.
"Didn't you even want to see what he looked like?"
If Davis was surprised by her fury, he didn't show it. He stared at Queen,
then looked at Abner, and, gentle as a shepherd with a lamb, he took his
son from her, and held him close. Tears stung in his eyes.
"I knew he would be beautiful," he whispered softly to Queen. "Like you."
Queen saw his tears and almost started to cry herself, for his reaction to
his son was more than she had ever hoped might be possible. But still she
was angry with him, and loved him, all at once.
"I had enough of yo' sweet talk to last me a lifetime," she said, and
turned away from him. It was then that she saw that the strikers and the
guards were smiling at her, laughing even, and her anger churned. She
rounded on Davis.
"You got any idea what it's like for a woman, stuck on her own with a baby,
no man to turn to?" Like a festering boil, all the disappointments and
deprivations of her life, the loneliness and injustice, the hurt and the
misery, come to a hot and angry head, and were lanced by his tears. She was
yelling at him now, and at the guards and strikers, and at all men.
"I trusted you," she cried. "But, oh, you men, you gets what you want, and
then the hell with us women. You could have told me. You could have
written, but not even a word, or a letter-"
"I cain't write, you know that!" Davis said, trying to control his temper.
He had not expected her wrath, and he was hurt by it, and guilty.
"Could've sent a paper with yo' mark on it," Queen retorted. "That would
have been something-"
Suddenly he couldn't control his temper. His men were
QUEEN 697
laughing almost openly, and his anger raged within him, and matched her
own. He gave Abner to a guard, marched to her, grabbed her and kissed her
violently, harshly, beautifully, on the mouth, but she pulled away from
him.
"That's my mark!" he cried. "You had that! You got that! "
He would not let her go, and kissed her again. And this time she
responded to him, and kissed with all the passion that a life of
frustration and a year of missing him, of loving him, and wanting him,
and not having him, had engendered within her.
The shack was small and sparsely furnished, one room with a sleeping area
separated from the rest by a curtain. He brought her inside and dismissed
the strikers. They sat together for a while hardly talking, content to be
with each other. He rocked Abner to sleep on his lap, and the boy was
secure in his father's arms.
"He's a fine boy," Davis said.
"He's yo' son," Queen nodded.
He had not asked what had happened to her while they had been apart, but
now he did.
"Has it been hard for you?"
Queen thought for a while before responding. It had been hard, but she
had bome it, and now she had her reward.
... Tain't been easy," she said softly.
"I's sorry," he said. He looked at the sleeping Abner, and Queen
understood that it was time for something else to happen. She found a
blanket and made a rough bed for her baby, then faced her man. She went
to him, leaned up to him, and kissed him. He responded, but then stopped
her.
"No," he said. "Do nothing. I owe you love."
He picked her up, carried her to the bed, and laid her down. With
infinite care, singing her soft crooning lullabies, he touched her,
stroked her, kissed her, and each time she tried to respond, he told her
no. Slowly, taking forever, he freed her from her clothes, and himself
from his own. When she lay naked before him, he traced his tongue over
her entire body until he tasted every inch of her, and with his fingers
caressed her hair, her eyes, her mouth, her chin, her breasts, until she
698 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
thought she must faint from the beauty of it. He lay beside her, and the
warmth and hardness of him pressing against her was wonderful. She opened
her body to him, and her heart and her soul, and when they were joined as
one flesh she felt complete again, and whole, and all the trammeling care of
her life disappeared into a blaze of happiness that engulfed her.
Afterward, they dozed together for a while, and when she awoke he was still
there, it had not been a dream. But a sadness had settled on him.
"I cain't ask you to stay," he whispered. "It ain't safe."
"I don't care," she cried softly.
"I care," he told her. "I will not have harm come to you. Or him."
She shivered in fear for him, and he held her close.
"Should I be scared for you?" she whispered, and he could not hide the
truth from her. Too much was at stake.
"Why not?" he said. "I scared for me."
He wanted to rid her of her immediate fear, and explain the high, bright
future that he saw.
"This is where it begins," he said. "This is where the black man draws the
line, and says enough, no more. This is where the promise that was made
must be fulfilled."
She believed him, and would have followed him to the end of the earth.
Morning mist lazed over the river. The steel gray of dawn crept into the
sky, and filtered though the window of the shack. A new day was beginning,
but still they lay together.
"I gotta get back," Queen said.
"She be mad, yo' Missy?" he wondered.
Queen expected that Mrs. Benson would be mad as hell, but she didn't care.
A moment with Davis was worth a year of her anger. He made arrangements for
her safe return to Beaufort, and watched her ride away into the morning
with his son.
Davis had been shocked by his decision to desert Queen, although he could
never exactly pinpoint the moment when he had made up his mind to do it. It
might have been when she first told him of the child, it might have been as
they lay making plans for the future, or it might have been as the day
QUEEN 699
of leaving approached and the call that he heard to do something else got
stronger and stronger. He was ashamed at what he was doing to her, but did
not believe he had any alternative, for the general good was greater than
her particular need. Queen, he guessed, or knew, or persuaded himself,
would survive, and while it would be hard for her, she had a friend to
turn to in Joyce. He also hoped that the sisters would be kind to her, as
it seemed, in general, they had been,
He also believed himself to be worthless, and therefore not
worthy of her. Filled up with rage against the world, which
rage he contained when he was with Queen for he could find
no outlet for it, he believed that on ' e day that hate must explode
into some form of action or violence, and he did not want her
to be hurt by it. On the appointed day, he left the sisters' house
early, as had been planned. He went to his shack, put some
things in a bag, and began walking, away from Huntsville,
away from Alabama, away from Queen. He cursed himself as
he walked, and tried to console himself with the concept that
she had his seed inside her, the best part of him, but did not
convince himself. He made a vow that he would change his
wretched ways, that he would actively seek some effective role
in life, rather than passively accepting what life threw at him.
Later, when he found that role, he blessed Queen, for it was
she who had provoked him to it, and he thought of her fondly,
and his heart ached to see the product of their love.
He went to Atlanta, and got himself a job assisting a blacksmith, as
Abram had taught him, and was persuaded by the smithy, who was
politically militant, to join the local guild. So it was that he found
his voice, for the sense of brotherhood he obtained in the union was
miraculous to him. For the first time in his life he felt he was not
alone, that his grievances and anger were not unique to him. The shared
sense of purpose, the bloody-minded determination to take what was right-
fully, morally theirs, by combative action if necessary, thrilled him.
The words that he had kept contained inside him because he saw no point
in saying them burst out, and he became, in a short space of time, an
admired and respected orator, and a considerable asset to the fledgling
union cause.
It was the union that sent him traveling, to the center of industrial
unrest, and it was he who voiced the frustrations and
700 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
ambitions and dreams of his black brethren. Many of the slaves had been
dispossessed from their only homes, which were the plantations, they had few
skills to earn a living in this new world of freedom, and, if they had the
skills, they were cheated and abused by their new Massas, the bosses.
He took the high-minded words of the government to heart, and equality had
genuine meaning for him. He wanted no more than that for his brothers, but
he was determined to achieve at least that, and to take it forcibly if it
was not given. He also understood something that set him apart from his
br /> peers, and gave him a purer sense of purpose, a purer power, and a purer
ability to achieve his goals. He understood that it was not simply a matter
of black versus white, but of worker against boss. While his speeches were
directed primarily to blacks, he had the vision to include disgruntled,
unemployed whites in his embrace, although most rejected him.
The low-country plantations of Georgia and South Carolina grew rice and
fermented trouble. In this swampy land of tidal rivers and intolerable
summer weather, of disease and racist attitudes, the working conditions of
the field hands were intolerable. It was in Brunswick, south of Beaufort,
that the hands had revolted, as Queen had heard, and refused to obey their
martinet masters, many of whom were veteran Confederate officers to whom
the concept of free niggers was intolerable. Race riots had ensued, and
units of the national guard were called out. The end of slavery, the end of
an abundant supply of free labor, had revealed that many of the plantations
were not economically viable, and so the hands were employed in vile
conditions that bordered on paid slavery. Instead of being given their
meager wages in cash, the hands were given checks that could be redeemed
only at plantation stores, and so they were feudally bonded to their
employers. Without specie, cash money, they could not survive, as there
were few other jobs for unskilled men, and for most of them, the land was
the only labor they knew. Davis had come to Beaufort to try to improve
their conditions, but the plantation owners were completely resistant to
change, claiming they could not afford it, and even more resistant to
unions and a leader from somewhere else who incited their niggers to rebel,
or inspired disturbing ambitions.
QUEEN 701
Davis was no revolutionary. He did not want to overthrow the system; he
wanted the working black man's place within the system to be recognized.
It was a fine distinction, which many whites who heard him speak refused
to recognize, and to many he represented a potential for intolerable
violence. The horrors of the French Revolution, the destruction of an
entire class system and its egalitarian aftermath, were the foundation
of the fears of the white ruling class, and the winds of industrial and
social change that were sweeping through Europe fanned those fears into
fires of burning resentment against anyone who spoke of equality, of race
or class.
Yet there was hope. A black man in Beaufort, encouraged by Davis, was
determined to stand for mayor, and given the preponderance of newly
enfranchised black voters, he might very well win. This prospect was
deeply shocking to the whites, and, desperate as they were to find some
focus for their rage, some scapegoat, Davis was increasingly and un-
realistically seen as the single engine of black ambition. Davis laughed
at the attention, for no one man was responsible for these surging
changes; they were the consensus of the many. But he knew he could direct
the general mood to particular ends.
He also knew it was dangerous, and that the bosses, and many of the white
working class, could not let the situation in Beaufort continue. A
showdown was approaching, and Davis was ready for it, and did not fear
its possible consequences.
Until Queen came to him.
When he saw Queen standing in the moonlight outside his shack, his child
in her arms, his heart sank. She was part of his past, the other him, and
was safe there from danger. There was no place for her in his new life,
because that might bring harm to her, or the boy, and he could not bear
the thought of anything happening to her. She had suffered enough, and
partly because of him. His sense of responsibility to her was so profound
that he wanted her gone, even though her going would pain him as no fire
ever could.
But she was there, and he could not resist his heart. He had taken her
to him, and loved her as well as he could because he owed her so much.