47

4.

From Sunday to Sunday to Sunday I ran water and messages for Mud Albert.

Mr. Stewart was the plantation boss and it was his job to organize the work that the slaves did. But Mr. Stewart relied on Mud Albert to direct the workers. No slave ever did anything bad under Albert because he was much kinder than any white boss would be. The white bosses thought that slaves were always lying but Albert was one of us; he could tell the difference between a malingerer and somebody who was really sick.

So Mr. Stewart would sit around talking to the white plantation workers while Albert oversaw the cotton picking, and even the processing of the cotton gin.

All us slaves hated the cotton gin, the machine used to separate the cotton from the seeds and chaff. It was like the hungry maw of Satan himself swallowing every pound of cotton we could deliver. If the cotton gin were idle Master would think that was because us slaves were too lazy to feed it. But Albert knew how to keep the machine going with the least possible amount of raw cotton and he knew to the bale how much the master needed to be satisfied.

And so all the slaves worked while Albert sent me to bring them water and to keep him informed about how everything was going. If somebody was slacking off or else if somebody was sick and couldn't work I'd tell Albert and he'd tell Champ and sooner than you could count to ninety-three the problem would be solved.

There were only two big problems in those first few weeks. The first was my hands. They were all red and dripping ever since my first day of picking cotton. Albert said that he didn't like the look of it but he didn't want to call the horse doctor either.

"Sometimes that crazy doctor jus' say to cut off whatever limb is hurtin'," Albert told me. "An' if'n he cut off yo hands that will be the end of you."

That was all I needed to hear. I carried the water by holding the buckets by their handles on either my wrist or in the crook of my arm and I kept my hands out of sight whenever Mr. Stewart came around to make sure that his slaves were working.

The other thing that happened was that the slave we called Nigger Ned, Number Twelve, died of pneumonia in his cot. Mud Albert tried to take the load off of Ned but by then he was too sick. Three days after my second Sunday in the slave quarters Ned couldn't climb out of his bed. By the next morning he was dead.

Master Tobias allowed us slaves to have a burial service because Ned had been in the slave cabin for many years. Ned was a good man and we all liked him. Nobody except for rascals ever had a bad word to say about him. The slaves all called him that terrible name because we didn't know any better and the white people said it just because they like the way it sounded.

The free colored preacher, Brother Bob, was too far away to make it for to give the sermon and so Master Tobias said that he would say some words.

We all walked to the slave graveyard in the evening after work in the fields. The slave graveyard was situated on the far side of the Master's big house. It was a small plot of land surrounded by a dilapidated picket fence. The slender slats of wood used as grave markers were crowded closely together. I remember that even in death the slaves would never have a place to spread out and rest.

Mr. Stewart let us leave the fields an hour before the sun set so that we could form in lines in front of the grave that Tobias had Champ Noland dig. They didn't give Ned a pine box after all he was just a field slave. Instead they wrapped him in one of those big burlap sacks and laid him in the ground.

I was standing in front of everyone because I was the smallest of the field slaves. I could see Big Mama Flore standing with the house Negroes across from the grave, behind Master Tobias. She looked at me once but I turned away. I was still mad at her for slamming that door and not saving me from Mr. Stewart. I hoped that she would feel bad in her heart because of the way I ignored her.

A row of jet black ravens stood along the slanted roof on the south side of the mansion. They numbered a dozen or more. The birds watched the funeral proceedings. Every once in a while they made comments in their dry, crackling voices. Back then we saw ravens as an evil omen. Now that I look back on that day I see that it was Master Tobias who should have worried about the portent of those birds.

My hands were hurting terribly. Most of the time I held them up to keep the worst pain away, but I couldn't do that at the funeral. At funerals you were supposed to keep your hands down.

"We come heah today," Master Tobias said after we were all in place, "to say good-bye to Nigger Ned, or as I always called him Slim."

Tobias, who was wearing work pants and a blue shirt, gestured toward the hole in the ground and then continued, "Slim was a good boy. He never asked for more or complained. We only had to beat him twice in my memory and he always worked hard in the field. You know all the niggers who work hard in this life will have a land of milk and honey after they die. The Lord don't want no shiftless slaves in heaven, only thems that has worked hard and showed that they are worthy of heaven's bounty " "Mr. Tobias!" a man's voice called out.

The ravens cried out and took wing at the sound of that

man's call.

All of us slaves, and Master Tobias too, turned to see a grand white man on a towering chestnut mare. He had great black mustachios and he wore a black suit with a white shirt. His hat was black with a small round crown

and a wide brim.

"Mr. Pike!" Tobias yelled. "What brings you to our neck

of the woods?"

Even though my hands were hurting me and my mind was hoping that Ned had been good enough to be allowed to slave in heaven, I was still indignant that somebody would interrupt a funeral and that the orator would stop his eulogy in order to enter into small talk with some acquaintance, regardless of his race.

"I was hoping that you could help me, Mr. Tobias," the

well-dressed stranger said.

"Why you dressed in Sunday best?" Tobias asked.

"I like my fine clothes," Pike answered in an arrogant tone. He moved his head around, exhibiting an unmistakable show of pride. His eyes opened wide while he did this and I could swear that for a moment his eyes were like

bright rainbows.

As almost two hundred pair of Negro eyes watched, the fancy white man dismounted his mare and sauntered toward Tobias. As he did so he let his eyes wander across the mass of black humanity.

"I lost a slave," Pike said.

"And you think he run the thirty-five miles from your plantation to mine?"

"I don't know," the man said. "Could be. The boy is called Lemuel. He's young, maybe fourteen, and a strange brown color. My wife wants him back. She thinks that he's a healer. But I think that he's just a shiftless ungrateful cur. Et my food and then run like a thief in the night."

"Well, if I see someone like that I'll tell you," Tobias said. "Now if you don't mind these slaves here is hungry and I have a sermon to finish."

Mr. Pike didn't seem too happy with being cut off for the benefit of a mob of black folk. He stood there for a moment too long, staring at Tobias. But he finally got the point and turned away. He climbed up on his magnificent mare and shouted for her to gallop off. With all of that noise Tobias had to wait until the rude visitor was out of earshot before he could continue with the sermon.

"Where was I?" Tobias asked. But we knew it wasn't for us to answer him. "Oh yeah. Slim was a good boy…" He called him boy but Ned was nearly as old as Mud Albert. "… better than some white men. Take that no good lowlife Andrew Pike. From the looks of him you'd think that he was better than any nigger. But it ain't so. That man right there sold me a horse that he said could work pullin' a plow or a carriage. He took two good slaves for it but it wasn't four days before Dr. Boggs told me that the horse had heartworm. When I complained, Pike didn't

even apologize. Took my niggers and left it for me to put his horse down.

"Ned, you can go up to heaven knowin' that you were a better man than that."

Tobias slapped his hands together as if he had dug the grave himself, or maybe it was that he felt dirty having to speak at a slave's burial. Anyway he walked away from the grave and up to his mansion. He left Mr. Stewart and nine or ten men armed with rifles to guard us while we sang over the death of our fellow man and friend.

Seeing those armed men was the first time I ever entertained the notion that white people were afraid of us. As I said, there were plenty of black folk at that burial. We could have overrun those few white riflemen and killed the Master and his plantation boss. We could have taken the Corinthian Plantation for our own.

For a moment I imagined screaming black men and women overrunning the riflemen, beating them with their own weapons and burning down the mansion. I saw the overboss and his men on their knees, begging for their lives like Pritchard had done when Tobias considered killing him. I saw us all sitting in the Master's dining room, eating ham, and putting our bare feet right up on his table.

I knew it was a sin to have these thoughts and it scared me to the bone. I started shivering, fearful that someone could see the blasphemy in my eyes. And if they did, and they told Master, I'd be in Mr. Stewart's killin' shack quicker than they could call my number.

"Are you all right, babychile?" Mama Flore asked.

She had come up beside me while I was having my evil thoughts and while all the other slaves were singing.

"Fine," I said, letting my head hang down and holding my wounded hands behind my back.

"Mud Albert told me that that dog Pritchard knocked you down and branded you," she said.

"It's okay. Albert put some lard on it and it hardly even hurt except if I move." I shifted around, making sure to keep my hands behind me.

"What's wrong with yo hands, sugah?"

"I got to go back to the cabin," I said. "Mud Albert said that he wanted me to clean out from under his bed."

Most of the slaves were singing "Blessed Soul." Flore reached out for me but I moved away and she only grazed my cheek with her finger. She called after me but I just ran, crying bitterly at my sad fate and for the soul of the slave they called Nigger Ned.