She came swiftly to me as though to comfort a fallen child. In imploring tones, she said, “Oh, Mr. Stewart, no matter what you have been told, no matter what you have read, not all of us are dead to feeling with regard to the slaves. I myself have two good friends of the Negro race, more valuable than any other property I have ever owned. They have been of incalculable help to me in raising my children. Mr. Stewart, I beg you to understand. Many of us can plainly see that slavery is wrong not only for the Negro but for the white race as well. It is an evil.”
When she dabbed at the corner of her eye with a lace handkerchief plucked from her sleeve, it struck me that she was acting — and had been from the very beginning.
“The slave trade is a terrible thing,” she declared. “I believe that with all my heart. But it is too late for us.” She hung her head in sorrow and took a deep calming breath. “Slavery has been with us these past two centuries. It would be suicide to end such a tradition. In the North, there is industry and all the wealth it provides. Here, with our tobacco farms and small port, we could not make do without the labor of the Negro. That is what the editors of the North fail to comprehend.” She clasped her hands together as though to recite a fervent prayer. “We would perish without our traditions and our values. They are the ark we ride in. And yet the Northerners would wish to see us drown in a sea of blood. I do not believe that a Scotsman, of a race that has suffered for so long under the English, can see that as fair.”
Mrs. Munson agreed to send word to my boardinghouse of any helpful information that might be given her by her brothers. I left her house confused, wondering whether any of what I’d seen and heard had been genuine.
That evening, rain came down in dark, thunderous sheets, fanfared by lightning. Closing my eyes and recalling the first time Midnight left our home in Porto to follow a storm, worry consumed me. I spent the next hour hunched over my desk, writing again to my children. I told them that Alexandria was a beautiful city with a handsome wharf and that I was doing well. I also apologized again for leaving them and said that I would be back as soon as possible. I wrapped up two pairs of filigree silver earrings that I’d purchased at a jewelry shop that afternoon — roses for Esther and bells for Graca — and placed them carefully in the envelope.
After picturing them wearing my gifts, I began another note, this one to my wife:
Dearest Francisca, I am in a land where I know no one and am besieged by doubts. The Americans mostly either lie to me or ridicule me, and I sometimes have no idea what their intentions are. In my nightmares I am unable to understand Midnight — or even myself. You once told me that you would come with me anywhere, and I wish you were here with me now. But we are so powerless to protect those we love. I see that now more clearly than ever, and it is what most scares me when I wake in the morning. Then, I feel …
As I dipped my pen in my inkstand, it seemed pointless to add any more lines to a letter that would never be posted or read. I crumpled what I’d written and set my flint to it, then threw it into the fireplace and watched the flames separate me from Francisca again.
The next morning, the proprietress of the boardinghouse, Mrs. Van Zandt, suggested that I take my drawing of Midnight to the Slave Pen, where thousands of blacks were transported to Charleston and other Southern cities each year. “Though if you are looking for a nigger yourself,” she confided, “then you’d be better off at a private auction — the prices are much more reasonable.”
I was expecting a prison of colossal proportions, but it was only a three-story brick building painted a dusty tan. Its side yards were enclosed by high whitewashed walls that were spiked on top with nasty-looking shards of glass. Though unable to see over, as they were a good ten feet in height, I could hear the subdued conversations of the Negroes awaiting shipment and the morose clanging of heavy chains.
A slender, gray-haired man in striped trousers was standing in the doorway to the countinghouse, slicing a golden apple with a short knife. I introduced myself and learned his name — Coleman. He generously offered me a piece of his fruit, which I accepted. I then invented a story about Midnight designed to elicit a more positive reaction than I’d received from Mr. Reading: I was looking for a former servant of mine who had just inherited several hundred dollars from his father, a freed Negro who had been employed at my New York household. The man I wanted to find had been a slave in Alexandria but was sold elsewhere some seventeen years earlier. There would be a reward of fifty silver dollars for any person who might lead me to him. I asked if I might show Mr. Coleman my drawing.
He pointed his knife toward one of the side yards. “Ya know how many nigger bucks I’ve sold in Alexandria over the last seventeen years? I’d wager fifty thousan’ or more. So Mr. Stewart” — and here he squinted at me as though peering into a beam of light — “ya don’t truly think I’m fool enough to remember your Midnight, do ya?” He smiled maliciously.
“I was only hoping you might recognize — ”
“We ain’t runnin’ no asylum, ya know.”
“If you would do me the favor of just taking a look,” I said, unscrolling my drawing.
“Ugly rascal,” said Mr. Coleman, cutting another slice of apple. Then he looked up into the sky, in no particular hurry to comment. “Don’t look like it, but we’ll have sun today. That’s a good thing.” Mischief was dancing in his eyes when he looked back at me. “Know why?”
When I shook my head, he said, “You know anything ’bout turkeys, Mr. Stewart?”
“Our neighbor had a turkey named Marigold when I was a lad. She was — ” I was about to say
“Well, Mr. Stewart, when it rains, your Marigold and all her friends point their heads up toward the sky and open their beaks. They’re so goddamned ornery and bone-stupid that they can drown that way.” He pointed toward the yard. “Niggers ain’t got any more sense than turkeys. You can quote me on that. Yesterday, with all the rain, we had one buck drown in the mud. Don’t ask me how. That’s how stupid they are. He lost me six hundred dollars or more. So, Mr. Stewart, it’s better for my business when we have sun. And it’d be better for you if you forget about your Noonday Bell. He’s long gone. Prob’ly drowned in some mud somewheres.”
XXXIX
My encounter at the slave pen so upset me that I marched away in my rage toward a horizon of trees in the distance. I soon reached a neighborhood where Negro families were living on their own, in squat houses separated by overgrown lots. Two young lasses — no more than four and seven, I would guess — were playing up ahead, the larger rolling a rusted metal hoop, the smaller skipping. Both wore pretty pink ribbons in their closely cropped hair. I realized with a jolt that I had not seen a white person in several blocks. Furthermore, I was being stared at by several blacks sitting on porches, and now even by the girls themselves.
I walked toward the
They looked at each other, startled by my accent, most likely. The littler of the two dropped a smooth ivory pebble that had been hidden in her hand. Then, without warning, the larger girl shrieked at the top of her lungs. I jerked my hands up to protect my ears while she grabbed her sister’s hand and raced off. They ran to an old tilted house partially hidden behind a broad oak, fifty paces ahead. Once they’d reached the safety of the porch, the older one leaned over the railing and gave me a hard look. Her tiny sister, sucking her thumb, looked curious.
After a moment, a wide-hipped woman wearing a blue head scarf charged out the front door. The older girl pointed at me as though I were a bandit.
“Madam,” I called, “I was just asking the girls if they were sisters.”
She made several furious hand gestures. Then she gathered up her children and marched into her house, banging the door closed. “You’s made an enemy of Aunt Carolyn Gold, so you’s in a right bit a twisted trouble.”
When I turned toward this voice, my mouth dropped open: Standing on the rickety porch of a whitewashed house was an elderly woman in trousers and a waistcoat of homespun. Since she wore no shirt under the waistcoat, her bare shoulders and belly were plainly visible. I should have guessed her to be about seventy years of age, as her hair was gray and her posture stooped, yet her glassy black eyes were youthful and her cheeks as
