Nevertheless, Caleb had not forgotten. One day he took Jeremiah aside and asked him, 'Would you like me to teach you to read and cypher?'
The slave thought about it. He answered cautiously 'Your father, I don't know if he'd like that.' Most masters discouraged literacy among their blacks (sims did not count; no sim had ever learned to read). In some commonwealths, though not Virginia, teaching a black his letters was against the law.
'I've already talked with him about it,' Caleb said. 'I asked him if he didn't think it would be useful to have you able to keep accounts and such. He hates that kind of business himself.'
The lad already had a good deal of politician in him Jeremiah thought.
Caleb went on, 'Once you learn, maybe you can hire yourself out to other farmers, and keep some of what you earn. That would help you buy yourself free sooner, and knowing how to read and figure can only help you afterwards.'
'You're right about that, young sir. I'd be pleased to start, so long as your father won't give me no grief on account of it.'
The hope of money first impelled Jeremiah to the lessons, but he quickly grew fascinated with them for their own sake. He found setting down his name in shaky letters awe-inspiring: there it was, recorded for al time. It gave him a feeling of immortality, almost as if he had had a child. And struggling through first Caleb's little reader and then, haltingly, the Bible was more of the same. He wished he could spend al his time over the books.
He could not, of course. Chores around the house kept him busy al through the day. Most of his reading time was snatched from sleep. He yawned and did not complain.
His stock of money slowly grew, five sesters here, ten there.
Once he made a whole denaire for himself, when Mr. Pickens's cook fell sick just before a family gathering and Charles Gillen loaned Jeremiah to the neighbor for the day.
From anyone else, he would have expected two or even three denaires; from Pickens he counted himself lucky to get one.
He did not save every sester he earned: a man needs more than the distant hope of freedom to stay happy. One night he made his way to a dilapidated cabin that housed a widow inclined to be complaisant toward silver, no matter who brought it.
Jeremiah was heading home, feeling pleased with the entire world (except for the mosquitoes), when the moon light showed a figure coming down the path toward him. It was Harry Stowe. Jeremiah's pleasure evaporated.
He was afraid of the overseer, and tried to stay out of his way. Too late to step aside into the bushes, Stowe had seen him.
'Evening, sir,' Jeremiah said amiably as the overseer approached.
Stowe set hands on hips, looked Jeremiah up and down.
'Evening, sir,' he echoed, voice mockingly high. There was whiskey on his breath. 'I'm tired of your uppity airs-always sucking up to young Caleb. What do you need to read for? You're a stinking slave, and.
don't you ever forget it.'
'I could never do that, sir, no indeed. But al the same, a man wants to make himself better if he can.'
He never saw the punch that knocked him down. Drunk or sober, Stowe was fast and dangerous. Jeremiah lay in the dirt. He did not try to fight back. Caleb's law descended swiftly and savagely on any slave who dared strike a white man. But fear of punishment was not what held him back now. He knew Stowe would have no trouble taking him, even in a fair fight.
Man? I don't see any man there,' the overseer said. 'All I see's a nigger. ' He laughed harshly, swung back his foot.
Instead of delivering the kick, though, he turned away and went on toward the widow's.
Jeremiah rubbed the bruise on the side of his jaw, felt around with his tongue to see if Stowe had loosened any of his teeth. No, he decided, but only by luck. He stayed down until the overseer disappeared round a bend in the path. Then he slowly rose, brushing the dust from his trousers.
'Not a man, huh?' he muttered to himself. 'Not a man? Wel , let that trash talk however he wants, but whose sloppy seconds is he getting tonight.' Feeling a little better, he headed back to the Gillen house.
Summer wore on. The wheat grew tall. The stalks bent heavy with the weight of grain. Caleb and Sal y returned to Portsmouth for school. The sims went into the fields to start cutting the hemp so it could dry on the ground.
The sickness struck them then, abruptly and savagely. Stowe came rushing in from their huts at sunrise one morning to cry to Charles Gillen, 'Half the stupid creatures are down and choking and moaning!'
Gillen spil ed coffee as he sprang to his feet with an oath. Fear on his face, he followed the overseer out. Jeremiah silently stepped out of the way. He understood his master's alarm. Disease among the sims, especial y now when the harvest was just under way, would be a disaster from which the farm might never recover.
Jane Gil en waited anxiously for her husband to return. When he did, his mouth was set in a tight, grim line. 'Diphtheria,' he said.
'We may lose a good many.' He strode over to the cupboard, uncorked a bottle of rum, took a long pul . He was not normally an intemperate man, but what he had seen left him shaken.
As Jeremiah washed and dried the breakfast dishes, he felt a certain amount of relief, at least as far as his own risk was concerned. Sims were enough like humans for illnesses to pass freely from them to the people around them. But he had had diphtheria as a boy, and did not have to worry about catching it again.
A sadly shrunken work force trooped out to cut the hemp. Charles served soup, that being the easiest nourishment for the sick sims to get past the membranes clogging their throats. Then Gillen hurried back out to the sim quarters, to do what little doctoring he could.
