Page 9 of Queen

wanted to go to Nashville and open a store, John would provide them with

  credit and supplies.

  BLOODLINES 67

  "What are we waiting for?" Washington cried, already chasing bison in his

  head.

  "Be careful," John said with a smile. "They're rough men there."

  He looked at the letter he was holding and passed it to James. It was

  from a customer in Nashville, Andrew Jackson-who was not related to

  them-and was full of complaints about the supplies he had received from

  them, and their prices.

  "He's a crusty curmudgeon," John grinned. "He's cross because he sold his

  cotton early, and the prices have gone through the roof since. I warned

  him, but he wouldn't be told."

  He grinned again.

  "Nobody can tell Andrew anything," he said. "He's as likely to fight a

  duel with anyone who tries."

  James had seen some of Andrew's correspondence before, voluminous, irate,

  and eloquently phrased. He felt a stirring in his soul, a call to

  something extravagant, a feeling he had not known since he first saw the

  land of America from the bow of the ship. This was the challenge he had

  been seeking, not just of the land, but of the men who inhabited the

  land. If his customers, frontiersmen, were all as cantankerous as Andrew,

  and if he could survive, and even win, against them, then he would have

  reason to be proud of himself. That would be an achievement, and of his

  own making, of his own doing.

  "He's a good customer," he said. "We'll do well by him."

  "Let's go!" Washington yelled, dancing about the room, shadowboxing an

  imaginary Andrew.

  They laughed, and drank a toast to the new venture. It was three months

  before they were ready to leave, but those weeks flew by in a welter of

  preparation and planning.

  "And watch out for yourselves," Uncle Henry cautioned them, as they were

  ready to leave. "There's Injuns there."

  Washington whooped, and James tingled with excitement, In all his time

  in Philadelphia, he had not seen an Indian. There were a few half-breeds,

  shabby, dispirited men mostly, often drunk, and with vacant eyes, as if

  they were looking for something they had lost.

  But they were not the real thing to James. They were not

  68 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  the warriors of the legends. Soon he would see them, the noble

  red-skinned savages on line horses, naked but for paint and brilliant

  feathers.

  Soon he would know the real America.

  Soon he would be a true pioneer.

  It was so close. Just a few hundred miles away. Just on the other side

  of the mountains.

  48

  The simple thrill of being on the road kept their spirits up for the first

  few days, and Washington took unalloyed delight in everything he saw. It

  amused James to be guide to his younger brother on their journey of

  exploration, for he knew the way, at least as far as Baltimore. They

  stayed with their brothers Hugh and Alexander, who were doing well in

  business, and organized the supplies to be delivered, at appropriate

  intervals, to them in Nashville.

  "Land," Hugh told them. "Buy every scrap of land you can, be agents for

  others' purchases, accept land as guarantee for credit, but get

  yourselves into land as fast as you can."

  From Baltimore, they were in virgin territory for both of them, but the

  road was well traveled by others, and they headed inland, to the new

  capital, at Washington. 'Me days were warm and sunny, the villages they

  passed through charming, and they spent the night in an inn where German

  was the first language. They arrived at their destination the following

  afternoon, and Washington laughed out loud when he saw the capital, a

  small village in the middle of a swamp with a few extravagant buildings

  rising out of the marsh. There were no rooms to be had at any of the few

  inns, so they slept in their wagon, delighted in the fireflies in the

  bushes, which they had never seen, and were attacked by mosquitoes all

  night long. They played sightseers for a day, gawking at everything, and

  stood outside the presidential mansion for half an hour hoping

  BLOODLINES 69

  to see Mr. Jefferson, but he did not appear. They loaded their wagon onto

  a barge and crossed the Potomac, to Alexandria, and suddenly found

  themselves in another country.

  They could not define why Virginia was different at first, but quickly

  realized it was because of the slaves. There was nothing else odd or

  unusual-Alexandria was a lovely city, of gracious red-brick buildings,

  built on a little hill that rose up from the river, but with more black

  people than they had seen anywhere else.

  "Slaves," Washington whispered in wonder. "They are all slaves. "

  They had seen a few slaves in Maryland, which was also a slave state, and

  a slave ship in Baltimore, but it was empty, as was the auction house,

  and they felt a little cheated. None of the blacks they saw on the

  streets there looked any different from those who were free, in

  Philadelphia, but they knew that here almost every black they saw was in

  bondage.

  They felt cheated again in Alexandria. Everyone, black or white, was

  simply going about their business, whatever that might be, and they saw

  nothing to justify the sermons they had heard denouncing the trade.

  Still, there was something different, some different manner or attitude

  between the faces, or perhaps it was only a different accent, or perhaps

  it was simply that they knew they had crossed an invisible line, and were

  now in unknown territory, where the rules were changed.

  They found an inn for the night, and talked freely between themselves

  about the slaves they had seen, who were not in any way remarkable, until

  they realized that no one else, in conversation, ever used the word

  slave. Darkies, nigras, niggers occasionally, if women were not present,

  or simply our people, but never slaves. They knew the servants at the inn

  must be slaves, but they seemed no different from servants on the

  Northern side, and the owners treated them no better or no worse than

  servants were treated in the grander houses in Dublin. Again, they were

  disappointed that the country they were in, which was exotic, was not

  exotic enough. James thought it was rather like going from Dublin to

  Liverpool: The accents and manners were different, and the laws, and you

  realized you were in a foreign country, but everything else was much the

  same.

  70 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  The following morning, as they were loading their wagon, they saw something

  that jolted them.

  A young black man was staggering down the street carrying a large box of

  something, and could hardly see over the top of it. Walking directly toward

  him were a couple of welldressed white businessmen, deep in conversation.

  They were on a collision course with the black youth, who, p
eering over his

  burden, saw them in time and, at the last possible moment, swerved out of

  the way. But a comer of the box clipped the arm of one of the whites.

  Without breaking his stride, or even seeming to look at what he was doing,

  the white man raised his cane and smashed it on the black youth's

  shoulders. The youth fell to the ground, and there was an awful crash of

  breaking glass inside the box he was delivering. The two white men walked

  on, and the black youth, after catching his breath, picked up his box and

  staggered on. He was weeping, but whether it was from the pain of the blow

  or because of the damage to his cargo, James and Washington could not tell.

  No one paid any attention to the incident but themselves. They said nothing

  to each other, but climbed into the wagon, flicked the horses, and drove

  away.

  They rode in silence for a while, each trying to come to terms with what he

  had seen, until Washington spoke.

  " I've seen as bad or worse in Dublin," he said. "The British treated the

  croppies no better."

  James nodded, for he had seen worse, but the incident soured their pleasure

  in their travels, until the countryside, the loveliest they had ever seen,

  worked some magic on them, and they thought themselves in Arcady. They rode

  through arbors of walnut and oak that bordered pretty farms, where horses

  grazed on flawless grass. The farmhouses were neat and ordered and painted

  white, and babbling streams and creeks called runs-Four Mile Run, Holmes

  Run, and Bull Runfed into lazy rivers.

  As the days passed by, they had the sense that they were climbing upward,

  higher into the mountains, and daily the scenery became more

  beautiful-grand but placid and peaceful. They saw snakes sunning themselves

  on the roads, but they slithered away when they heard the wagon. They heard

  birdsong that was beautiful, and saw squirrels and deer and

  BLOODLINES 71

  possum. They learned to be careful when they had to go into the bushes,

  because of a nasty little creature called a chigger, an insect that

  burrowed into skin and itched like blazes. Kindly innkeepers gave them a

  cure for it, a pungent oil based on turpentine, and everywhere they stayed

  they were treated with extraordinary civility, and a lazy, casual courtesy

  that was overtly friendly, yet curiously reserved.

  They never talked about slavery again, did not discuss it even between

  themselves, but came to accept the practice as the tradition in this part

  of the world. They did not see anything they considered as unfair or

  harsh treatment of the blacks, but their standards had adjusted since

  Alexandria, and things that might once have set their teeth on edge

  became an accepted fact of life.

  Each town or village they came to seemed prettier than the one before.

  Almost always there was a well-tended square, surrounded by churches with

  spires and lovely, white-painted houses, but after Charlottesville the

  villages became less ordered, less formal, newer in construction, and

  with an increasing abundance of log cabins.

  They crossed a small mountain range, and gasped at the splendor of the

  valley that lay before them that was called Shenandoah, and found

  themselves in another country again, a different and exciting country,

  for if eastern Virginia had been Arcady, then this, surely, was Eden.

  Their most extravagant dreams came true. They climbed the mountain range

  on the other side of the vast valley, and the people were rougher, if

  still as hospitable, and pleased to see the strangers, and desperate for

  news of the outside world. They had a sense of wilderness only recently

  tamed, and while they saw many farms, they also saw true pioneers,

  clusters of families who lived in log cabins, miles, it seemed, from any-

  where, even their nearest neighbors. Then they would come to a small

  town, and the wilderness would recede for a while, only to open up before

  them again as they traveled on.

  In the evenings they heard fiddlers more frenetic than any they had known

  in Ireland, and drank a clear white liquor called moonshine-for it was

  made by the light of the moonthat had the kick of a mule and produced a

  wondrous, dreaming drunkenness. They saw a revival meeting, the preacher

  on a wagon outside a church, practicing a brand of Christianity

  72 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  that provoked his congregation of simple hardy souls to an ecstatic fervor

  that was moving and slightly frightening.

  Sometimes they saw a few Indians, still not the naked, noble savage,

  painted and feathered, but a far cry from the drunken half-breeds of the

  city, Calm and self-possessed, they came to the little villages or simple

  trading posts to sell soft animal hides, or fish they had caught in the

  river, or trinkets of beads, and took in return the supplies they needed

  instead of money.

  They came down from the mountains through stands of magnificent pine or

  cedar, past gushing waterfalls and some small mountains that were

  perpetually shrouded in a mist that looked smoky. Now they came to

  rolling gentle hills, of grass so sweet that in the distance it looked

  blue. Up again into the hills, through woods that slowly gave way to

  fanns, and they saw fields of cotton and wondered at it, and played with

  some bolls of it, although they got prickles in their fingers. The

  weather was hot but it suited the land, and they saw slave gangs out

  picking the cotton, chanting work songs as they picked, and they thought

  it idyllic. Even the overseer flicking his whip occasionally, lazily, at

  the blacks, appeared to them to be a necessary functionary. They came to

  a river running through a deep gorge and were told it was called the Cum-

  berland, and that they were close to their journey's end.

  After thirty-five days of traveling, they arrived in the thriving

  settlement of Nashville. Dirty, disheveled, and unshaven, skins browned

  and necks reddened by the sun, they beamed in delight for they had

  arrived almost at the edge of the world, and were happier than they could

  possibly have imagined.

  9

  As far as James was concerned, Nashville was America, and

  the rest of the country could go hang. From the moment they

  rode into the town, he was so captivated by its simple vigor

  and pleasant aspect, its sense of isolation and independence,

  BLOODLINES 73

  that he could not imagine he would ever want to live anywhere else. It was

  Tennessee's oldest town, but established almost within the span of his own

  lifetime, so that he could feel part of its growth, and would be able to

  tell his children that he had been there from the beginning. It was a

  thriving community, with half a dozen brick houses already replacing the log

  cabins, and another hundred dwellings of clapboard. There were a dozen small

  shops and stores, which drew their supplies, as James and Washin
gton would

  do, from Philadelphia and Baltimore to the east, and New Orleans to the

  south. The local cotton farmers sent their crop to those same cities, for

  export to Europe.

  The land around Nashville had been settled by an early pioneer, John

  Donelson, who had made a treaty with the Indian tribes, Cherokee, Creek,

  Choctaw, and Chickasaw. To the south and southeast were immense tracts of

  Indian land, mostly Cherokee in Tennessee and Creek in Alabama, which were

  sacred to their traditional owners, and exempt from white settlement.

  Constant encroachments were made onto this land in violation of the

  treaties, and then the Indians retaliated. The Tennessee Militia, now under

  the command of Andrew Jackson, would trounce the raiding parties, and the

  usual result was that more Indian land would be ceded to whites. For the

  most part, the Indians near Nashville who lived on white man's land dwelt

  in uneasy alliance with their conquerors, but resentment simmered among the

  younger men, the braves.

  In the early days, the main route south from Nashville had been the river,

  which connected briefly with the Ohio and then flowed into the mighty

  Mississippi, and down into Louisiana. There was still considerable river

  traffic, but a new road, the Natchez Trace, a mere remnant of an old Indian

  path, led from Nashville, twisting and turning through the forests and

  beside the gorges, skimpy wooden bridges fording the streams, to Natchez.

  With the influx of settlers and merchants and speculators, the path became

  broader and well traveled, linking Philadelphia to New Orleans, a distance

  of two thousand miles.

  There was a plentiful water supply from the Cumberland River, good rain,

  sharp, snowy winters, and high, hot summers. A printing office published a

  weekly newspaper. There

  74 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  was no hotel or inn as yet, no industry of any kind, and the ambience of the

  town was pastoral, uncluttered by machinery or factory.

  Of the many settlers who had come to the district, to stay and farm, or

  move on in search of that elusive, ultimate, perfect pasture, many had

  prospered mightily. Land was abundant and cheap, and fortunes had been

  quickly made by some. Not all had been so lucky. The adventurers and

  speculators, the entrepreneurs and the farseeing, had taken the best of the

  land, and those less fortunate immigrants who had stayed had found what few

  acres they could on less productive soil. Dour, hardy, weatherbeaten folk,

  worn out by wandering, had pitched tents on rocky plots which could be had

  for a cent an acre, or squatted on Indian borders. They scratched out an

  existence raising tobacco or corn, and, the women more fertile than the

  land, swarms of children. Many of these children did not live beyond their

  first few months or years, and those who did were condemned to a life at

  least as harsh as their parents', unless they got lucky, or moved on.

  West, always west. It was the anthem of the frontier. Somewhere out west

  was the elusive crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, and few looked

  back to the East, or to Europe, for what they had now, no matter how

  little, or how much, was almost always more than what they had left behind.

  These white poor gave spice to James's appreciation of his new environment,

  for without the less lucky, how could the fortunate appreciate what they

  had achieved? While he believed that all men were created equal, and

  believed in equal opportunity, he did not believe in a leveled society,

  with no rich and no poor. It was the duty of the strong to protect the

  weak, but not to become weak themselves.

  The population of the town was cosmopolitan, reflecting America. English

  and Scottish and Irish and Welsh, German, Huguenot, and Scandinavian, and

  a few from the Caribbean Islands. There were blacks-a few free tradesmen,

  and enslaved laborers. Some Indians, like the Cherokee chief Doublehead,

  had adapted to the white man's ways, and had successful farms. Others lived