When Jeremiah lifted the loose board in his room, he found his little flask of spirits was empty. "I might have known," he muttered under his breath. "It's been that kind of day." He blew out his candle.
He was already awake when Stowe blasted away on the horn to summon the sims, and him, to labor. He had been awake most of the night; he was too full of mortification and swallowed rage to sleep. His stomach had tied itself into a tight, painful knot.
His eyes felt as though someone had thrown sand in them. He rubbed at them as he pul ed on breeches, shoes and shirt and went out to the waiting overseer.
Stowe was doling out hardtack and bacon to the sims still well enough to work. "Well, well," he said, smiling broadly as Jeremiah came up.
"What a pleasure to see our new field hand, and just in time for breakfast, too. Get in line and wait your turn."
The overseer watched for any sign of resistance, but Jeremiah silently took his place. The hardtack was a jawbreaker, and the bacon, heavily salted so it would keep almost forever, brought tears to his eyes. If his belly had churned before, it snarled now. He gulped down two dippers of water.
They did not help.
The sims' big yellow teeth effortlessly disposed of the hardtack biscuits. The salt in the bacon did not faze them either. Jeremiah's presence seemed to bother them a good deal more. They kept staring at him, then quickly looking away whenever his eyes met theirs. The low-voiced calls and hoots they gave each other held a questioning note.
Those cal s, though, could convey only emotion, not real meaning.
For that, the sims had to use the hand signs men had given them. Their fingers flashed, most often in the gesture equivalent to a question mark. Finally, one worked up the nerve to approach Jeremiah and sign, Why you here
"To work," he said shortly. He spoke instead of signing, to emphasize to the sim that, despite his present humiliation, he was still a man.
Harry Stowe, who missed very little, noted the exchange.
Grinning, he sabotaged Jeremiah's effort to keep his plaoe by signing, He work with you he work like you, he one of i you til job done. No different. "Isn't that right." he added aloud, for Jeremiah's benefit.
The slave felt his face grow hot. He bit his lip, but did not Stowe's message disturbed even the sims. One directed hesitant signs at the overseer: "He man, not sim. Why work like sim!"
"He's a slave. He does what he's told, just like you'd better.
If the master tells him to work like a sim, he works like a sim, and that's all there is to it. Enough dawdling, now, let's get on with it."
The overseer distributed seythes and sickles to his charges, careful y counting them so the sims could not hold any back to use against their owners, or against each other, in fights over food or females. Jeremiah wished he had a pair of gloves; his hands were too soft for the work he was about to do.
He knew better than to ask for any.
As he started down a row of hemp plants, he saw the sims to either side quickly move past him. It was not just that they were stronger, though few men could match the subhumans for strength. They were also more skil ed which was really galling. Bend, slash, stoop, spread, rise step, bend . . . they had a rhythm the black man lacked.
"Hurry it up, Jeremiah," Stowe said. "They're getting way ahead there."
"They know what they're doing," the slave grunted stung by the taunt.
"Turn one loose in my kitchen and see what kind of mess you'd get." To his surprise, Stowe laughed.
Jeremiah soon grew sore, stiff, and winded. He did not think he could have gone on without the half-grown sim that carried a bucket of water from one worker to the next.
At first it would not stop for him, passing him by for members of its own kind. A growl from Stowe, though fixed that in a hurry.
Reluctantly, Jeremiah came to see that the overseer did not use his charges with undue harshness. To have done so would have wrung less work from them, and work was what Stowe was after. He treated the sims, and Jeremiah-like so many other beasts of burden, with impersonal efficiency. The slave even wished for the malice Stowe had shown on the path that summer night. That, at least, would have been an acknowledgment of his humanity.
Before long, he found out what it meant to have such wishes granted.
"Spread the hemp out better once you cut it, Stowe snapped.
Jeremiah jumped; he had not heard the l overseer come up behind him.
"Spread it out," Stowe repeated. "It won't dry as well if you don't."
"I'm doing as well as the sims are," Jeremiah said, nodding toward the long, sharp, dark-green leaves lying to his right and left.
Stowe snorted. "I could wear out my whip arm and they'd still be slipshod. I expect better from you, and by Christ I'll get it." His arm went back, then forward, fast as a striking snake. The whip cracked less than a foot from Jeremiah's eye. He flinched. He could not help it. "The next one you'll feel," the overseer promised. He paused to let the message sink in, then moved on to keep the sims busy.
Jeremiah had a shirt of dark green silk. He mostly wore it for show, when his master was entertaining guests. He had never noticed it was the exact color of hemp leaves.
Now he did, and told himself he would never put it on again.
The day seemed endless. Jeremiah did not dare look at his hands. He did know that, when he shifted them on the handle of the sickle, he saw red-brown stains on the gray, smooth wood.
Craach! "God damn you, Jeremiah, I told you what I wantedl" Stowe shouted. The slave screamed at the hot touch of whip on his back.
"Oh, stop your whining," the overseer said. "I've not even marked you, past a bruise. You keep provoking me, though, and I'll give you stripes you'll wear the rest of your life."
Several sims watched the byplay, taking advantage of Stowe's preoccupation to rest from their labor. Work more, work better, one signed at Jeremiah. Its wide, stupid grin was infuriatingly smug.
"Go to the devil," Jeremiah muttered. For once, he hoped sims had souls, so they could spend eternity roasting in hellfire.
He thought the day would never end, but at last the sun set.
"Enough!" Stowe shouted. This time Jeremiah had no trouble understanding the sims' whoops. He felt like adding some himself.
Stowe collected the tools, counting them as carefully as he had in the morning to make sure none was missing. His chilly gaze swung toward Jeremiah, "I'l see you tomorrow come sunrise. Now that you know what to do, I won't have to go easy on you anymore." The whip twitched in his hand, ever so slightly.
"No, sir, Mr. Stowe, you surely won't," Jeremiah said.
The overseer nodded, for once satisfied.
Jeremiah had been afraid he would have to sleep in the sim barracks, but Stowe did not object when he went back to his room in the big house.
Probably hadn't thought of it the slave decided. He stopped at the kitchen for leftovers from the meal Jane Gil en had cooked. They were better than what the sims ate, but not much. His lip curled; he had forgotten more about cooking than Mrs. Gil en knew.
His hands felt as if they were on fire. He could not ignore them any more. There was a crock of lard in the kitchen. He rubbed it into both palms. The fat soothed the raw, broken skin.
Jeremiah went to his room. His back twinged again when he took off his shirt. Stowe knew exactly what he was doing with a lash, though; he had not drawn blood. But Jeremiah remembered the overseer's warning. His aching muscles contracted involuntarily, as if anticipating a blow that was sure to come.