Liberating Atlantis Read online

  “Here you go,” he said. “Can’t weed, can’t pick cotton when the times comes, not in your boiled shirt and monkey suit. Tomorrow, you’ll be out there with everybody else.”

  “Don’t reckon I can keep up too good,” Frederick said. “I’m sore, and I’m stiff like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Oh, yes, I would. I know what a whipping does,” the overseer said. “I’ll cut you some slack at first—for the whipping, and on account of you don’t know what you’re doing and you got soft hands like a girl’s. But that’s only at first, mind. You don’t want me to get the notion that you’re a lazy nigger. Believe you me, boy, you don’t. Understand?”

  Boy? Frederick was at least fifteen years older than Matthew. But slavery succeeded not least by denying that Negroes and copperskins could ever be men. Unlike his grandfather, Frederick would never be Mister. When his hair went from gray to white, he would go straight from boy to Uncle.

  He still had to answer. “I’m not lazy, sir,” he said, showing none of the useless, hopeless rage that stewed inside him. Matthew might get his goat, but the overseer would never realize it. Frederick went on, “If you don’t believe me, you can ask Master Henry.”

  The overseer’s eyes were gray and chilly: chillier than the weather in these parts ever got. “Master Henry can afford to be soft,” Matthew said. “He’s the owner, and he can do what he pleases. Me, I’m just the overseer, so I got to be rough. And I’m the fella you’re dealin’ with from here on out. Not Master Henry, not no more. Me. Have you got that, boy?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” Frederick said at once. “I understand you real good. I’ll do everything I can for you.” Till I find out how much I can get away with not doing, anyhow.

  “You better.” Matthew nodded to himself. “Yes, sir, you better. ’Cause I got me all kinds of ways to make you sorry if you don’t.” He said not a word about Helen or about any of the unfortunate things that might happen to her if Frederick left him dissatisfied. He just walked out of the little slave cabin. Like any effective tyrant, he knew the people under his control could form pictures in their own minds far more fearsome than any he could paint for them.

  Frederick looked down at his palms. They were paler than the rest of his skin, as any Negro’s were: closer to the color his grandfather had been all over. Closer to the color Matthew was all over, too, but Frederick didn’t think about that. He had some calluses on those palms—he didn’t sit around the big house doing nothing. But his hands weren’t as leathery as that chunk of tanned cowhide he’d bitten down on during the whipping. Field hands who used shovels and hoes and rakes year in and year out got palms on which they could stub out a cheroot without even feeling it.

  Well, maybe you’ll get palms like that, too, Frederick thought gloomily. What he would get beforehand was a bumper crop of blisters. He hoped Helen had some more of the ointment she’d used on his back. His hands would need it, too. And so would hers.

  Slowly, almost of their own accord, his hands folded into fists. He made them uncoil. Even here, inside the cabin, such a gesture of defiance could be dangerous. If anyone walking by saw him and told the overseer or Master Henry . . . No, Frederick didn’t want that to happen.

  “But if I ever get the chance to hit back—” He broke that off short, too, even though he hadn’t said it very loud. He’d already told Helen what he’d like to do, and spoken defiance was reckoned worse than a gesture. A slave who talked defiantly could also plot defiantly. The whites feared plots above all else.

  Because they feared them, they ruthlessly stamped out every one they found. And, because they were so ruthless, they spawned more plots. Maybe they didn’t realize that. Maybe they did, and accepted it as part of the cost of doing business the way they wanted to. Frederick had hardly been in a position to ask.

  “If I ever get me the chance—” He broke it off even shorter this time. But the thought stuck in his mind as a burr might have stuck to his trousers. And, once stuck, it would not be dislodged.

  The morning horn sounded like a dying donkey. Up till now, Frederick had always heard it from the house: from a safe distance, in other words. It hadn’t had anything to do with him. He’d pitied the poor, sorry field hands who had to get up and go to work under the hot sun—or, sometimes, in the pouring rain.

  Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Fancy talk, but fancy talk with a point sharp as a carving knife’s. Now that horrible horn brayed for Frederick, and for Helen.

  “We got to get up,” she said.

  “I don’t want to,” he mumbled. Now that his back was finally letting him sleep, he wanted to make up for all the time he’d spent awake because he’d hurt too much to shut down.

  “We got to get up,” Helen repeated. “You want Matthew to reckon you’re a lazy nigger after all?”

  Frederick groaned. He groaned again when he sat up on the edge of the miserable cot. His stripes were better than they had been when he first got them, but they were still plenty sore. He didn’t want to put on the shirt Matthew had given him. But what he wanted counted for nothing in the plantation’s scheme of things.

  Helen wore a wool skirt, a cotton blouse, and a red bandanna on her head. Her shoes were every bit as formidable as Frederick’s. All things considered, they were well off. Frederick knew of plenty of plantations where the field hands wore rags and got no shoes at all. That might have made his outfit, and Helen’s, a trifle better. It didn’t come close to making them good.

  They ate cornmeal mush and drank coffee that Helen hastily made. Then they went outside. All the cabins were rapidly emptying. Whoever came out last got in trouble. Frederick had heard that a hundred times. Up till now, it had never mattered to him. It did today. He didn’t want the overseer screaming at him, not when he was sore and slow and didn’t know what he was doing.

  Copperskins and Negroes—men and women—lined up in loose ranks. Seeing their ragged formation, an Atlantean drill sergeant would have wanted to kill them all, or possibly himself. But Matthew didn’t complain about that. Slaves weren’t supposed to look or act military. If they thought they could fight, that would make them more dangerous to their owners.

  A copperskinned couple were the last to try to sneak into the formation. Their furtiveness had a plaintive air to it, as if they knew they’d get caught. And get caught they did. The overseer put his hands on his hips and looked disgusted. “So it’s Ed and Wilma this morning, is it? And you’re mudfaces! Not even niggers! You sure act as lazy as if you were.”

  The copperskins hung their heads. Frederick muttered to himself. If the last slaves out had been Negroes, chances were Matthew would have called them savages and asked them if they’d spent the time in their cabin putting on war paint. Something like that, anyhow. Whites played blacks and copperskins off against each other whenever they could. If you didn’t trust the slave working next to you, you were less likely to plan together and rise up, more likely to betray each other before your plot ripened into revolt.

  “Well, you’re here at last.” Matthew still sounded as if he hated every last one of them. Frederick wouldn’t have been surprised if he did. Overseers might have godlike powers over slaves, but they weren’t much in the white man’s world. Planters were what mattered there. What woman from a good family would want to marry an overseer? Had Matthew owned slaves of his own . . . But he didn’t, and he wasn’t likely to. He pointed towards a shed. “Come on, God damn the lot of you. Grab your tools and get to work.”

  With rakes and spades and hoes over their shoulder, they looked something like an army as they trudged out to the cotton fields. Again, though, a drill sergeant would have contemplated murder or suicide. No one tried to stay in step with his neighbors or to hurry. If the slaves had moved any slower, Matthew would have shouted at them—or else whacked them with the long, firm switch he carried in his right hand.

  They knew, all of them but Frederick and Helen, how much they could get away with. The two new field hands ha
d to pick it up by watching and listening. One of the first things Frederick noticed was how heavy and clumsy his hoe was. All the tools were like that. Even so, Henry Barford complained about how often they got broken. Frederick hadn’t understood that before. He suddenly did. Why should a slave care how he handled tools that belonged to his master? Make those tools extra sturdy helped, but only so much.

  The overseer pointed Frederick down a row of cotton plants. “You make God-damned sure you get rid of the weeds, hear?” he said. “But don’t you dare hurt the plants any. I’m gonna keep my eye on you, see how you make out.”

  “Reckoned you would,” Frederick said. He bent and assassinated something small and green pushing up through the dirt near the closest cotton plant. His breath hissed out of him as if he were a snake. Moving hurt like blazes. And the heavy iron head on the hoe made it clumsy to swing.

  Other slaves advanced up rows to either side of him. To his amazement, he had no trouble keeping up. They weren’t getting over a whipping. Why couldn’t they move faster? Again, the question was no sooner asked than answered. Why should they? It wasn’t as if they’d get anything for themselves if they did more work.

  When Matthew was shouting down at the far end of the slave gang, the Negro in the row to Frederick’s left paused for a moment and told him, “You don’t got to stay even with us, man. He see you workin’ like that after a whippin’, what’s he gonna want from you when you’re all right again? ’Sides, he see you workin’ like that, what’s he gonna want from the rest of us?”

  Frederick duly slowed down. If a few weeds got missed, well, how much would that matter in the grand scheme of things? Not enough to get excited about.

  He might have slowed down, but he couldn’t stop. Thwock! Matthew’s switch came down on a copperskin’s back. “Damn your miserable, shriveled-up honker turd of a soul to hell and gone, Bill, but you got to do somethin’!” the overseer shouted. “You stand there with your thumb corkin’ your asshole, you reckon I ain’t gonna notice?”

  Bill didn’t say anything. All the same, Frederick wouldn’t have wanted any man looking at him like that. If Matthew noticed, he affected not to. In his own way, he had nerve. Slowly, the copperskin got back to work.

  Sweat ran down Frederick’s face. It also ran from the backs of his hands to his palms, and stung the blisters that had swollen and burst there. And it stung the lash tracks on his back; his shirt didn’t soak it all up. His shoulders and arms started to ache from the continued unfamiliar motion of swinging the hoe.

  A copperskinned boy who couldn’t have been more than nine came by with a jug, a tin dipper, and a cup shaped from the dried skin of a gourd. “Want something to drink?” he asked Frederick.

  “Lord, do I ever!” the Negro exclaimed.

  The boy filled the cup with the dipper. How many other mouths had drunk from that gourd? When was the last time anyone washed it? Frederick wondered about such things . . . afterwards. In the moment, he cared about nothing but the lukewarm water sliding sweetly down his throat. He didn’t want to hand back the cup; he thought he could have emptied the jug. But the half-grown copperskin had other people to water. He wouldn’t want to go back to the well and fill up the jug again too soon. Reluctantly, Frederick returned the gourd.

  “Water?” the boy asked the slave in the next row, the one who’d warned Frederick not to push too hard. The slave made a production out of pausing to drink. Not even Matthew could possibly doubt that he deserved his moment of rest. So his manner proclaimed, anyhow. Frederick had the feeling the overseer could doubt anything he set his mind to doubting. If you were going to be an overseer, doubting was a talent you needed to cultivate.

  A couple of pregnant women carried food out to the work gang when the sun stood at the zenith. The rolls were made from barley, which wouldn’t rise like wheat. They were dense and chewy. Frederick didn’t mind too much. He thought he was getting more food this way. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was till he ate—and discovered that what he was getting wasn’t enough to do more than take the edge off his appetite.

  Watching the way things worked, he noted the plantation’s efficiency. The women with the bulging bellies couldn’t weed, but they could fetch and carry. The boy who brought the water jug around again was still too small to swing one of these heavy hoes. That didn’t make him too small to work, and work he did.

  Had the overseer set up this system? Frederick had known about it before, of course, but he hadn’t known about it. As a house slave, he hadn’t been caught up in it like a grain of wheat between millstones. Had Henry Barford worked it out, or his father before him? Or was it part of the lore all slaveholders knew, the lore they’d put together over hundreds of years? Frederick couldn’t have said for sure, but it looked that way to him.

  On a harsher plantation, the midday meal might have been smaller, or there might have been none. The break might have been shorter. Henry Barford wasn’t cruel for the sake of being cruel, and neither was his overseer. They were cruel simply because you couldn’t be anything else, not if you intended to own slaves and to get work out of them.

  A handful of free Negroes and copperskins had slaves of their own. From everything Frederick had ever heard, they made sterner masters than most whites. They had to—their animate property was less inclined to take orders from people of their color. They had to use colored overseers, too. That lowered the respect their slaves had for the overseers. But what other choice did such owners have? No white overseer would lower himself to working for someone he thought he should be bossing around. And so . . .

  “Come on, people!” Matthew shouted. “You done wasted enough time! Get to work, and put your backs into it for a change!”

  Whatever Frederick’s thought had been, it flickered and blew out like a candle flame in the wind. His joints creaked as he started hoeing again. He wasn’t used to this kind of work—no indeed. He didn’t know whether he dreaded getting used to it or not getting used to it more.

  Was this all he had to look forward to for the rest of his days? A hoe and a row? A shovel? A big sack at harvest time? If it was, wouldn’t he be better off dead?

  III

  When the horn’s bray woke Frederick for his second day as a field hand, he didn’t feel a day over ninety-seven. Every part of him ached or stung. Quite a few parts ached and stung. As he had the afternoon before, he got about a third of the way toward wishing he were dead.

  He’d fallen asleep right after supper. He’d come that close to falling asleep in the middle of supper, with his mouth hanging open to show off the cornmeal mush or the chunk of fat sowbelly he’d been chewing when his mainspring ran down. Somehow, he’d kept his eyes open till he and Helen got back to the cabin. But he didn’t remember a thing after the two of them lay down.

  Beside him, Helen groaned as she sat up. She rubbed her eyes. She had to be as weary as he was. The first words out of her mouth, though, were, “How’s your back?”

  “Sore,” he answered. “Better than it was. Not as good as it’s gonna be—or I sure hope not, anyways.” He made himself remember he wasn’t the only one with troubles. “How you doin’, sweetheart?”

  “Well, I thought I worked hard back in the big house.” She shook her head at her own foolishness. “Only goes to show what I knew, don’t it?”

  She didn’t call him twelve different kinds of stupid, clumsy jackass for costing both of them the soft places they’d enjoyed. Why she didn’t, Frederick had no idea. If it wasn’t because of something very much like love, he couldn’t imagine what it would be.

  The horn blared out again. This time, Matthew’s warning shout followed: “Last one out’s gonna catch it!”

  Frederick had taken off only his hat and his shoes. Putting the straw hat back on was a matter of a moment. Shoes were a different story. His fingers were stiff and crooked, his hands sore. He had a devil of a time tying the laces.

  Then he had to help Helen. Her palms looked even worse than his. “Should’ve put
your ointment on ’em,” he scolded.

  “I was savin’ it for you.”

  “Well, don’t, confound it,” he told her. He also kissed her on the cheek, not least because he knew she wouldn’t listen to him. Yes, that was love, all right, even if the words the colored preacher’d said over them didn’t mean a thing in the rarefied air the Barfords breathed.

  They weren’t the last ones out. The overseer unbent enough to nod to them as they took their places with the field hands. With the other field hands—Frederick corrected himself. “Ready for another go?” Matthew asked.

  “I’m ready,” Frederick said shortly. He resolved to die before admitting to the white man that he was anything less.

  “Well, all right.” Matthew was taciturn, too. But he could have been much nastier. Maybe he was wondering if Frederick and Helen would go back to the big house before too long. If they did, they would be personages even an overseer had to reckon with. Was he hedging his bets now? Frederick could hope so. That might make life a little easier. And even a little seemed like a lot.

  When a Negro couple didn’t come out, Matthew went into their cabin after them. The shouting and screeching and carrying on made everybody in the labor gang smile. “I slep’ through the blame horn!” the male slave in the cabin wailed.

  “You’ll sleep in the swamp with a rock tied to your ankle if you don’t get moving, you stupid toad!” the overseer said. In less time than it took to tell, both the slave and his woman were out there. If some of her buttons were still undone, if he had to bend down to tie his shoes, Matthew wasn’t fussy about such things. They were there. Nothing else mattered.