XLVI
I managed only an hour or two of sleep and woke abruptly at dawn. Midnight had lived only a few miles from here. Thinking of that, I knew that hope had found me. It played inside me like a fanfare, making me vibrate with the need to get to River Bend.
Sitting on the piazza, watching an ivory-billed woodpecker hammering on the trunk of an oak tree, I had an idea for how to convince the owner of River Bend to let me stay on his plantation. I retrieved my sketchbook and got quickly to work.
Luisa and I left as soon as we were dressed, with Isaac and the children waving good-bye to us from the lawn. The road north was pitted and muddy. She and I spoke of her childhood on an island off the South Carolina coast. She missed the ocean, most of all at sunrise, and said that it was her dream to have a small cottage by the beach. When the children were grown, she and Isaac would travel to Europe, perhaps even to Portugal.
Hours into our journey, with the sun nearing its noontime zenith, a creaky wooden bridge permitted us passage over a marshy river. Soon we reached a gate from which dangled a wooden sign of black letters on a white background: RIVER BEND. I released the latch and swung it open. All around us were fields of rice, shoulder-high and swaying in the breeze. Four black men and two women were stooping in a field a hundred yards away. Up the dirt road, a half mile away, stood a large three-story house on a small hillock.
Luisa gave a deep whistle and shook her head at having to enter a plantation.
“I apologize for making you do this,” I said. “If there was another way — ”
“I’m pleased to do it for you. I’m just glad I’m not staying.”
We rode up the muddy drive. Beyond the house was an endless horizon of pine, and on its south side was a large garden with hydrangeas, azaleas, and other flowering bushes.
We were met at the piazza by an old black man with closely cropped gray hair and one eye dimmed by a cataract. He wore ancient black velvet pants and what must have once been a white shirt but was now just tatters sewn together. He walked with a noticeable limp. The man told us hesitantly that his name was Crow. Luisa spoke for the two of us and asked if we could please meet with the master of the plantation. I looked around to see if I might get a glimpse of Midnight’s daughter, but there were no other slaves in sight.
Before Crow had a chance to announce our arrival, a white man in blue satin pants and leather slippers rushed out to the piazza. He looked down at us, hands on his hips, as though we were trespassing.
I had expected Luisa to take the lead with him, but she raised her eyebrows and whispered, “Go on, John.”
“Sir, I … I do indeed beg your pardon,” I stammered, “for the unexpected nature of our visit. My name is John Stewart, and I am a stranger to this lovely land of yours, having recently come from across the sea, from far- off Britain. It is my intention to draw and paint the magnificent birds of South Carolina and to later publish these in a volume in London. As I have not yet had the pleasure of sketching the birds of this particular area of the lowlands, I … I was of the … of the …”
Owing to the impatient glare of our prospective host, my words faltered.
“You’ve caught me at an awkward moment, sir,” he said irritably. “But if you will give me a few minutes, I shall meet you in the tea room.” Turning to the old black man, he snapped, “Crow, take care of Mr. Stewart.”
I took my sketchbook from the gig, since I wanted to show him my drawings. Luisa told me she would wait for me on the piazza. “My presence will only make things more difficult,” she observed.
Earlier, we had agreed that I would say that she was a friend’s slave from Charleston and that her name was Dorothy. The less that anyone at River Bend knew about her the better, as far as she was concerned. “If they get my name, they might get me,” she had said.
When Crow entered the room with a pot of tea and a platter of butter biscuits, I thanked him and asked for the names of the women portrayed in the various portraits that crowded the walls. He told me that the young lady with the defeated look was Mistress Holly.
“May I put to you a rather intemperate question?” I asked him. Upon receiving his agreement, I said, “Was this painted before or after her husband’s untimely death?”
Thoughtful fingertips played over his lips. Crow’s one good eye had a clear awareness. “Oh, that would ha’ been long befaw he died, suh. Le’ me see,” and here he gazed up toward the ceiling and wrinkled his nose. “I reckon it was painted in 1800 — that’d be twenty yea’s befaw Big Master Henry passed on.”
It was the same year I had met Daniel and Violeta. “And which of these men was her ill-fated husband?” I asked.
Crow pointed to a sandy-haired ox carrying a musket in one hand and a Bible in the other. His eyes were dull, and he looked rather like he might enjoy nothing so much as sleeping.
Edward joined me a short time later, apologizing profusely for obliging me to wait. Then, over the next half hour, he made it his aim to convince me that he was a simple man of modest needs. Given that the silver in his sitting room alone must have required two days of labor each week for a slave to keep properly polished, this was a rather pointless ruse. Nevertheless, to give a sop to Cerberus, I pronounced him most manifestly a man of simple but elegant taste. “These are perfectly charming surroundings,” I added.
Primped by my compliments, he consented with an eager smile to take a look at my sketchbook. He took time over each drawing, discovering some detail — a beak, a tail-feather, the glint of an eye — at which to marvel. This was not so much to praise my skill, though he did that often enough, but rather to draw attention to his own powers of observation.
I was about to ask him delicately about the possibility of my staying at River Bend, when the door to the parlor opened and in walked a skinny lass in an old white dress. She had dark, oval eyes, and her skin was bronze- colored. In her, I could see Midnight as he had been on that wondrous day of his arrival at our home in Porto. How lithe and handsome he had been! I had an overwhelming desire to run to her. My skin was tingling with the need to ask her about her father — to speak my heart to her as well.
Knowing that my father was responsible for the life of poverty and humiliation that this girl had inherited, my shame seemed to fix me in a snare; how could I even speak to her when she was sure to have spent her childhood cursing me and my family?
She carried biscuits for us on a platter, though we hadn’t yet finished the previous batch or asked for more. Edward explained to me that she was always engaged in some foolery or other, like bringing in sweets when there wasn’t any need. He winked at me as though we had established an intimate complicity, then said to the girl, “Morri, I used to think you had yourself a good head on them bony shoulders, but you are one silly girl. You think you can do anything you like, don’t you? But you can’t. You’re going to see that one day, sure enough — one day soon, I reckon. Now, get your troublesome black behind out of here ’fore I box your ears.”
“I’s real sorry,” she replied, but she did not seem perturbed by his reproach in the least.
I, however, should have liked to crash my fist into his face, which is undoubtedly why I thought of Midnight telling me:
Likely mistaking me for a friend of her owner, Morri gave me a disdainful look as she turned to leave.
I then summoned my courage and asked Edward if I might stay at River Bend for a week to draw the local birds. I held my fingers locked together on my lap as I spoke; I had noticed by now that white Southerners, like the English, regarded hand gestures as vulgar.
“But, Mr. Stewart,” Edward said, looking puzzled, “I do not believe we could offer you the conditions you are used to in Britain. It is a modest household, as I’ve said, and my wife is away at present. I myself am only here two or three days a week. I’m quite sure you would find River Bend a most primitive place.”
“I would need only a room and a single meal a day, Mr. Roberson.”
“Yes, but the niggers, they are likely to be troublesome at this time of year. The hot moist summers create a sort of frenzy in them. They’d dance all night were it not for the whip.”
“To tell you the truth, sir, I never even notice the Africans. None of their damned fool rascality will nettle me,” I said, giving what I hoped was a convincing performance.
“Yes, I imagine you find woodpeckers and wrens more appealing,” he said, grinning.
“Indeed so,” I said, laughing.
