Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War

  “I expect so.”

  “They gonna pay you?”

  “Christmas gift, Massa? Christmas gift?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Why is Rufus scorchin’ that hog? That scorch make my teeth grate.”

  “Your tastin’ been funny since Jacob’s born,” Jesse said. “You want, I’ll go up to kitchen house, fetch you some of the Gatewoods’ Christmas.”

  “You see Mistress Abigail this mornin’? She looked right through me. Like it wasn’t me had brushed her hair every mornin’, a hundred strokes, way she liked it.” She paused. In another woman’s voice Maggie said, “Dear Maggie. You know how I care for you, child. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing, I can do. You do understand!”

  Jesse shivered. When Maggie talked like this, Jesse felt there were two women living inside of his wife and one of them would remain a stranger.

  “Mistress using that Franky for lady’s maid. Franky—straight out of the kitchen house into Mistress’s boudoir. You think Mistress ever give me my job back?”

  Jesse shrugged. Had any man ever been asked so many questions he couldn’t answer?

  Jesse gave her his gift: a six-inch slippery-elm tube. Maggie’s face lit up briefly.

  “What’s this?”

  “Whistle. Rufus showed me how to whittle it. Took me three nights whittlin’ it while you and baby Jacob was sleepin’.”

  Jesse blew a high trill. “Shapin’ that wooden ball inside without bustin’ the outsides, that was the sly part,” he said.

  Jack the Driver slashed into the thickest part of the hog and twisted his blade to see the juces run. “He ready,” he cried. “And he prime.”

  Men slipped poles under the carcass and hoisted it onto the plank-and-barrel table. Aprons shielding their faces, women raked blackened yams out of the coals. Iron frypans filled with green kale fried in fatback were set on the table. Some celebrants owned plate and fork, others only spoon and wooden bowl. Jack ran his butcher knife over his whetstone, whisk, whisk, whisk, and tested the edge on the hair of his arm.

  “Driver,” Rufus called, “we don’t need for you to be shavin’ that hog. We just want you cuttin’ him up.”

  The children went to the head of the line. If the food ran out, it wouldn’t be the children who suffered.

  Someone said, “Praise the Lord for His blessings.”

  Someone else said, “Amen.”

  “You want me to fetch your dinner?” Jesse asked.

  “Why you want to be with me?” Maggie stirred a circle in the dirt with her foot. She changed to her white-lady voice. “Jesse, I am not intended for you. No doubt you are an excellent man, but when I look, I see nothing I desire. I cannot make you happy.”

  Jesse’s voice was hoarse. “You make me happy, give me what you can.”

  Her dark swimming eyes turned away. “But I ain’t givin’ you nothin’. I lie down with you and I don’t feel nothin’. Nary a itch!”

  Jesse swallowed. “That child wrapped warm enough?” He tucked cloth under the sleeping infant’s cheek.

  The hog was speedily reduced. Rufus waved a ham hock. Grease streaked his chin.

  Gunshots roared from the big house as the masters celebrated the birth of their Prince of Peace. When Mr. Colt’s pistol boomed its shots, all the coloreds fell silent except Rufus, who howled like a dog. “Master got one of them guns you load on Sunday and shoot all week,” he whispered.

  “Master! Master!” children called as Samuel and his jolly guests came into the Quarters. Samuel put hard candies in every child’s hand.

  “Evening, Uncle Agamemnon. Hope you got sufficient to eat. Rufus, Ellie. I’m pleased that your new clothing fits you.”

  Rufus stepped out to shake Duncan’s hand. “Young Master, welcome home. Ain’t no good sawmill work goin’ on since you gone away. We loafin’ all the time.”

  Franky curtsied sillily. “Master Duncan, you right fetchin’ in your soldier suit. Was that you shootin’? Scared me half to death.” With focused concentration she aimed a mock rifle right at Duncan’s heart. “Bang! Hee!”

  Samuel said, “Jack, you’ve a grand bonfire and Hevener’s George has his banjo tucked under his arm, so perhaps we could broach the Christmas cask?”

  Though Jack was tone-deaf and indifferent to dancing, he said, “Master, you sure right there,” and sent Rufus for the whiskey.

  As if it were everyday business, Samuel beckoned Jesse. “Jack says you are making a good hand. I trust you are content.”

  “Land of milk and honey, Master,” Jesse said.

  “Uther taught you to read. Though your reading violates Virginia law, it speaks well of your urge for self-improvement.”

  “Oh, it were right hard to get words through this nappy skull,” Jesse said, rapping his head. With his mouth open his knuckles pro-duced a hollow “tunk,” and kids giggled but older folks looked at their feet.

  “Duncan, feel this man’s arm.”

  “Sir? May I ask . . .”

  “His arm. Can you encircle his arm with your hands?”

  Duncan formed a circle with his hands but did not apply it to Jesse’s arm. “No, sir. I believe I could not.”

  “Jesse, how much corn can you cut in a day?”

  Jesse shook his head. “I ain’t no great shakes at corn cuttin’. Ten, eleven acres ’twixt can and can’t.”

  “From can see at sunrise to can’t see at dark,” Gatewood translated. “Rufus here, a reliable man, can’t cut eight.”

  Rufus called out, “I ain’t no worker, Master. I was born for love.”

  Gatewood froze for an instant. Rufus slipped into the darkness. “Jesse, remove your shirt.”

  “Samuel, my friend . . .” Catesby cautioned.

  “Do you question my management of my property, or the instruction I intend for my sometimes wayward son?”

  Catesby’s face emptied. He turned on his heel and walked away.

  Jesse eyed the Gatewoods, father and son, for a fat moment before he moved slick as a snake shedding his skin and his shirt came over his head and onto the ground.

  “Sir?” Duncan said.

  “Now, Jesse, turn away, if you please.”

  Jesse’s black skin glistened and his shoulder blades were smooth prominences in the lift of his back.

  “Note his musculature,” Samuel Gatewood said, his finger not quite touching, tracing muscles from the shoulders to where they bunched above his hips. “Short-coupled and thick in the withers. Like one of Alex Seig’s Percheron stallions. And nary a mark on him. Planters who rely on the whip are fools. A whipped servant can’t work, and if time comes to fetch the speculator, a scarred man won’t command a good price. Thank you, Jesse.”

  Samuel’s guests, who’d only come to wish their own servants a Happy Christmas, stirred uneasily. Andrew Seig called, “Samuel, if you were to broach their cask, we could return to the comforts of your parlor.”

  Master Gatewood’s raised hand commanded silence. “And this is Jesse’s woman, Maggie.”

  “Master . . .” Jack the Driver warned.

  “Duncan, you are acquainted with Maggie.”

  Maggie broke into a luminous, tremulous smile as she took a step forward.

  With his finger, Master Gatewood turned Maggie’s face, one profile, then the other. She had the features of a pharaoh’s queen. “Servants like Jesse and Maggie are the firm foundation of Stratford Plantation. That’s right, isn’t it, Jack?”

  “Master, there’s folks waitin’ on that cask. Old George’s banjo anxious in his hand.”

  “Your child, Maggie—what do you call the boy?”

  She whispered, “Jacob. I call him Jacob because Jacob got to see the gates of heaven.”

  “Duncan, take the infant.”

  “Sir . . . I cannot.”

  “Maggie doesn’t object, do you, Maggie?”

  Silently, Maggie extended the infant toward the young white master.

  Maggie’s eyes cast Duncan adrift. His body felt light as
down. The baby stirred and put his tiny fists to his innocent eyes. Baby Jacob was just as white as he was.

  “It is not unknown for a young man to succumb to temptation,” Samuel droned on. “We pray that error, repented, may be converted into useful knowledge: the master’s assumption of his duties. Son, take this child who will one day be your servant: a field hand perhaps, a woods worker like Rufus or a house nigger like Pompey . . .”

  Duncan jerked his fist into the air and (Elmo Hevener said, afterward) his father flinched. But instead of striking a blow, Duncan pressed his hand to his mouth and bit down, his teeth sinking into the heel of his hand, and a fine spatter of blood sprayed Maggie and the infant and the boy growled the way a bulldog growls when it’s taken hold. Still growling, hunched over his hand, Samuel Gatewood’s son lurched up the lane toward the house. Frightened, the infant began to wail.

  In a strangled voice, Gatewood said, “Jack . . . Jack, you may broach the cask.”

  Maggie’s eyes flooded with tears. “Master, why are you doing this to us?”

  Samuel wiped his face with his linen handkerchief. He said, “You are unaccustomed to strong drink. Use a little sense, will you?”

  “Yes, Master,” Rufus called in the deadest voice imaginable. “We use all the sense we got.”

  “Pray put away your wraps,” Catesby Byrd urged Samuel’s guests. “I’m certain the Gatewoods intend you to stay for the dancing. They will rejoin us directly.” He spoke confidentially. “Please. It will demonstrate respect for the family.”

  Reluctantly, Andrew Sieg unbuckled his fiddle case. An oblong leather case another opened contained a harmonium, and Leona Byrd seated herself, with a childlike air, at the pianoforte.

  Sister Kate dozed in a wing chair.

  With Pauline against her knees, Cousin Molly read from Mr. Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.”

  Having done his duty by fire hazards and extinguished every candle on the tree, Pompey was sitting upright in the corner, feet stuck straight out, fast asleep. Though she usually retired when dancing began, Grandmother Gatewood perched on a straightback chair, hands folded patiently in her lap, eyes glittering.

  When Leona Byrd struck the first chords of the somber. “Lorena,” her husband cried, “Come, dear, this is Christmas. Tempo vivace if you please!”

  Elmo Hevener proposed to call figures and urged the gents to select their partners. Uther Botkin and Sallie were first on the floor.

  Though at first the music was ragged, it soon hit its stride and was at a racehorse clip when Abigail returned and motioned Catesby into the dining room. The house servants had hurried to the celebrations in the Quarters and hadn’t cleaned up. Ruined cakes slumped on the sideboard, platters were yellowed in congealed grease.

  “Dear Abigail . . .”

  “Oh, Catesby. I can do nothing with my husband or son. They are in Duncan’s room, Duncan crumpled on his bed, Samuel pacing! Samuel will have the filial obedience that is his due, and Duncan, poor Duncan, has taken leave of his senses. He begs him to rear that negro infant as his in the house.”

  “Duncan is young, too imaginative, he . . .”

  “He is confounded, Catesby. Entirely confounded. Duncan freely acknowledges his transgressions but will not see his plain duty. Catesby, both of them trust you, won’t you . . .”

  The tune “Leatherbritches” jangled from the parlor, and the floor vibrated from dancing.

  “Abigail, I cannot interpose myself between father and son.”

  “Catesby, Duncan dares to speak of matrimony!”

  Catesby had a headache behind his eyes and knew he had drunk too much. The road home would be snow-dusted and vacant, the harshest sound the jingaling of harness bells. “Dearest Abigail, may I find you a restorative?”

  She clutched him so close he could smell sweat under her perfume. “Catesby, I never have seen Samuel in such a state. The day his father was buried, Samuel went into the Quarters, accompanied by Omohundru the slave speculator, and banished—nay, sold—every one of his father’s concubines. The poor souls wailed and begged, but what else could Samuel do? Samuel despised his father’s lusts. He loves Duncan but would see him dead before he assented to any further improprieties.”

  A cry, a blow, an outraged shout, and Catesby Byrd jerked the hall door open as young Gatewood reeled downstairs, while his father bellowed from the landing above him, “Hell, boy, you might as well breed with that mare of yours!”

  Duncan bore the unmistakable mark of his father’s blow on his cheek. Samuel Gatewood cried, “That impudent slut has soiled my honor . . . your honor! She is your dependent! Your chattel!”

  Grandmother Gatewood peeped from the parlor, but Catesby shut the door firmly in her face.

  Snow blew across the lintel where Duncan had left Stratford’s door open wide, and Gypsy’s hoofbeats fled into the night. Samuel Gatewood descended clumsily, stupefied. No music came from the parlor. Samuel licked his lips. He said, “Wife, our son has returned to the Institute. Now I must be rid of his slut.”

  “Dear Samuel . . .”

  “Abigail, you would oblige me if you troubled me no more this night. I am a damnable fool. Perhaps you can reassure our guests.”

  Abigail took a deep breath and disappeared into the parlor, and moments later the two men heard Leona Byrd’s tinkling rendition of “Dixie.”

  Samuel inspected his puffy right hand as if it did not belong to him. He said, “My friend, I will thank you to fetch my driver, Jack, to my study. I have an ugly duty to perform.”

  Older guests murmured their goodbyes to Abigail—“We’d love to stay longer but ours is such an arduous journey . . .”—but younger spirits determined to see the evening out. Their midnight gaiety was feverish and promised headaches on the morrow. Gentlemen danced flamboyantly and visited the punch bowl as if they were thirsty. On the next day, some ladies were ashamed to recall their extravagances.

  Only Grandmother Gatewood was refreshed, her smile a bright gash.

  Two hours later when Catesby Byrd came back into the parlor, Leona lifted her hands from the piano keys and let go the pedal, which twanged.

  “Samuel Gatewood offers you his sincerest apologies, but believes it would be best if you were to repair to your homes. Uther, Jesse cannot take you home tonight. Rufus will drive in his stead.”

  “Jesse? Where is Jesse?”

  “Sir, I needn’t remind you that Jesse Burns is no longer your servant.”

  “Of course, of course. I must speak to Samuel. Samuel has always been a friend to us . . .”

  “As a precaution, Jesse has been placed under restraint. Samuel cannot allow Jesse to protest this . . . disagreeable business. Rufus will take you home.”

  “I will speak to Samuel Gatewood. I will.”

  “Master Gatewood is no longer at Stratford House, sir. He’s gone to fetch Omohundru.”

  THE FEEJEE MERMAID

  NEAR SUNRISE, VIRGINIA

  MARCH 10, 1961

  Veritas odium parit.

  —Ausonius

  A WIFE’S SILENCE can ring louder than the clapper of a bell. Alexander Kirkpatrick’s wife hunched herself into the corner farthest from the fire and clamored soundlessly. The fire popped and a barrage of sparks exploded onto the new floor of the first house Alexander Kirkpatrick had ever owned, and he wondered if they might set it afire. The planks at the hearthstone’s edge were pockmarked with black scars where other embers had flared and died while Alexander considered them. He wondered what flooring wood Samuel Gatewood had installed. On the single occasion Alexander visited the cabin during construction (it went up in two weeks in November), Gatewood wasn’t present. Jack the Driver was directing the gang, and Jack was patient with Alexander’s questions; oh yes, he was.

  Sallie said Gatewood was settling a moral debt: when Gatewood needed Jesse, Uther sold him; when Uther’s daughter and new son-in-law needed a place of their own, Samuel Gatewood had it built.

  Alexander shifted in the rocker—the c
abin’s only chair—and turned the page he hadn’t read. From the stillness of her corner, Sallie made it too noisy to read.

  How long must he bear this contemptuous silence? Two days after she lost his baby, in retaliation for one idle remark, Alexander’s wife lost her tongue. He wondered when she’d recover it. Daily, she toted kindling from the stack Gatewood had provided. In the morning she cooked oatmeal, in the evening ham and beans or beans without ham. She washed their plates. She drew water and scrubbed their clothes. Sometimes when she was busy, he was able to read his Juvenal, sometimes he could daydream his way back to Juvenal’s sordid, bitter ancient city, Roma Aeterna—but usually Sallie was too noisy.

  How much better it would have been had she brought the baby to term. A new Alexander, a second chance! Alexander had hoped for the best! He had! Assuredly he would have been a better father than his own. Was he a drunkard? Did he beat his wife—even when she provoked him terribly?

  How his mother had cosseted him, sharing bright daydreams whenever his father was out of the house. His mother was educated—youngest daughter of a Boston clergyman. In poetic revery, Alexander imagined her as a fragile china cup which by ill fortune found itself in some low waterfront saloon. Alexander did not know how his father had been employed, only that his work was sporadic and never provided for clothes or enough food for their table. When his father came home, reeking of spirits, and removed his belt, Alexander made himself invisible. Children can do that. While his mother cried for mercy, Alexander was under the table playing with his hands. His busy fingers were warriors or the chariots Mother told stories about; Roman soldiers’ chariots, colliding, upsetting, wrecking one another.

  Alexander preferred a life of dreams, not this: a one-room cabin in a rude country whose roads—mere traces really—positively deterred visitors. It had been two weeks since Sallie’s nattering father paid a call. Oh, Sallie talked then. So long as Uther was in their house, Sallie pretended all was well, conversing even with Alexander. As they stood on the porch waving Uther goodbye, Alexander said, “That was pleasant. I do enjoy a chance to exchange ideas with an educated man, even though he does not possess a first-rate mind.” Why hadn’t Sallie understood his nervousness, how he had to say something even though it might not have been precisely the right thing to say?