"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.
The first deaths came that evening. One was Rare, the powerful woodcutter who had replaced Joe. Not all his - strength sufficed against the illness that choked the life -. from him. The tired sims returning from the fields had to labor further to dig graves.
"I always feel so futile, laying a sim to rest," Gillen told Jane as they ate a late supper that Jeremiah had made.
"With a man, there's always the hope of heaven to give consolation.
But no churchman I've ever heard of can say for certain whether sims have souls."
Jeremiah doubted it. He thought of sims as nothing more than animals that happened to walk on two legs and have hands. That made them more useful than, say, horses, but not much smarter. He rejected any resemblance between their status and his own; he at least knew he was a slave and planned to do something about it one day. His hoard had reached nearly ninety denaires.
The next day, even fewer of the sims could work. Charles Gillen rode over to the Pickens farm to see if he could borrow some, but the diphtheria was there ahead of him.
Mr. Pickens was down with it too, and not doing well.
Gillen bit his lip at the smal amount of hemp cut so far.
Jeremiah had had just enough practice ciphering over the farm accounts to understand why: the cash Gillen raised from selling the hemp was what let him buy the goods his acres could not produoe.
After supper that evening, Gil en took Jeremiah aside.
"Don't bother with breakfast tomorrow, or with more soup for the sims,"
he said. "Jane will take care of all that for a while."
"Mrs. Gil en, sir?" Jeremiah stared at his master. He groped for the only explanation he could think of. "You don't care for what I've been making? You tel me what you want, and I'l see you get it." A gentleman to the core, Gil en replied quickly,
"Jeremiah, it's nothing like that, I assure you. You've very well." Then he stopped cold, his cheeks reds plainly embarrassed to continue.
"You've gone and sold me." Jeremiah blurted first, and worst, fear that came to his mind. Ever dreaded the announcement that would turn his life down. And Charles Gillen was on the whole an easy master; any number of tales Jeremiah had heard convinced him of that.
"I have not sold you, Jeremiah. Your place is here. Again Gil en's reply was swift and firm; again I trouble going on.
"Wel , what is it, then?" Jeremiah demanded. His master's hesitations set them in oddly reversed roles, thef probing and seeking, Gil en trying to evade the Jeremiah did when caught at something he knew wrong. Having the moral high ground was a new heady feeling.
He did not enjoy it long. Brought up short, Gillen I choice but to answer, "I'm sending you out to the fields tomorrow, Jeremiah, to help cut hemp."
With sick misery, the slave realized he would rather have been sold.
"But that's sim work, Mr. Gillen," he protested.
"I know it is, and I feel badly for it. But so many sims are down with the sickness, and you are strong and healthy. The hemp must be cut.
It does not care who swings the sickle. And I will not think less of you working in the fields, rather the contrary, because you have helped me at a time of great need. When the day that you approach me to ask to buy your freedom, be shall not forget."
Had he promised Jeremiah manumission as soon hemp-cutting was done, he would have gained a worker. As it was, though, the slave again protested, ' Don’t send me out to do sim work, sir."
Why not?" Gillen's voice had acquired a dangerous
" Jeremiah knew he was faltering and cursed it, but could not do anything about it. Charles a decent man, as decent as a slave owner could be was also a white man. He knew himself the equal , of farmers and townsmen; his son dreamed of leading the Federated Commonwealths one day.
He was assuradly far above both blacks and sims.
also felt the gulf between himself and his course. Even gaining his freedom would not it, certainly not in Gil en's eyes. But Jeremiah nother gulf, one with him at the top looking at sims below.
From Gillen's lofty perch, that one was invisible, but immensely important to Jeremiah. Even a slave superior to the subhuman natives of America, himself on things he could do that they would pable of.
Learning his letters was something of reminder that, even if his body was owned, his mind could still roam free.
Gillen, without understanding at al what he was shoving him down with the sims, as if there difference between him and them. Harry Stowe no difference either, indeed would relish getting on Jeremiah.
He had made that quite clear.
It’[s bad enough, but the white men already looked at Jeremiah. He had some status, though, among the neighborhood. It would disappear the instant t to the fields. Even the stupid sims would laugh open-mouthed, empty-headed laughs at him, and no better than themselves. He would never be st his authority over them again.
passed through his mind in a matter of seconds, the realization that none of it would make sense certainly not when measured against the denaires was losinsr every day. "It just wouldn't be right, sir," was the weak best Jeremiah could do.
He knew it was not good enough even before he saw Gillen's face cloud with anger. "How would it not be right? It pains me to have to remind you, Jeremiah, but you are my slave, my personal chattel. How I employ you, especial y in this emergency, is my affair and mine alone.
Now I tell you that you shall report to the field gang tomorrow at sunrise or your back will be striped and then you will report anyway.
Do you fol ow me?"
"Yes, sir," Jeremiah said. He did not dare look at Gillen, for fear his expression would earn him the whipping on the spot.
"Wel , good." Having got his way, Gil en was prepared to be magnanimous.
He patted Jeremiah on the shoulder. "It will be only for a few days, a couple of weeks at most. Then everything will be back the way it was."
"Yes, sir," Jeremiah said again, but he knew better. Nothing would ever be the same, not between him and other blacks, not between him and the sims, and not between him and Gil en either. One reason Gillen was a bearable master was that he treated Jeremiah like a person. Now the thin veil of politeness was ripped aside. At need, Gillen could use Jeremiah like any other beast of burden and at need he would. It was as simple as that.