Even if he was often scapegoated, Julius himself was hardly an innocent. Being aware, however, of his place, he would never have suggested the boldest of their schemes, such as trying out their new dandelion wine behind the church house; or, “the white church,” as it was generally known, as religion had not been integrated in the town since the days Merian had attended service. In the time since the free Coloreds had switched over mainly to the Baptist church, where there was a section devoted to their exclusive use, and the slaves received their religious instruction on the plantations.
When the six boys were found drinking behind what was nevertheless a house of God, Reverend Finch whipped Cato, the two Darson boys, and Bastian Johnson. He sent word to the cabinetmaker about Julius’s behavior, not wanting to lay hands on another man’s property. Nor did he lay his hand on Caleum, although whether it was out of respect for the Merians or for some other reason of his own no one ever knew.
When the preacher sent word around to Magnus about what had happened, though, Magnus himself did beat Caleum, being very clear that the lesson was not for drinking but for the position he had let himself into.
“You shamed us,” he said to his nephew, with grave disappointment.
Caleum bore his punishment and was remorseful, never having thought guilt for his actions might spread beyond himself. It was a hard lesson, but he understood the truth of it when, later that summer, the two Darson boys began to tease him about the rumors they had heard regarding his father, Purchase.
“We heard your papa once killed a man.” George Darson taunted one day.
“You’re a liar,” Caleum replied evenly.
“Are you calling my brother a liar?” Eli Darson asked, approaching him.
“He is if he doesn’t take that back.”
“I will not!” George Darson shouted. “I heard it from my father, so if you call me a liar you’re calling my father one too.”
“I’m calling the whole lot of you liars,” Caleum said.
When he heard this, Eli Darson did not repeat his warning but, his fists balled and angry, rushed in at Caleum. Eli was a full two years older, but Caleum was big for his age and did not think twice about ramming his fist into Eli’s mouth when he came into range. The two were well matched, and fell to the ground wrestling, neither gaining advantage over the other, until George Darson joined in on his brother’s side.
The other boys circled them, uncertain whether to intervene or let them continue until they reached their own conclusion. Being attacked by both of the Darsons threw Caleum into a rage, and he began to pummel the younger brother, George, violently as Eli clenched his throat. He struggled to escape, then bent and gathered a handful of dry dust in his palm, which he threw into Eli’s face. When his opponent could no longer see he drove his fist into his gut, hobbling him, and squaring the fight again, as he momentarily faced only one assailant. Caleum continued to fight the brothers, angrier and angrier that the two of them should attack him together instead of choosing one to stand for both as fairness would have had it. Still, he proved their equal, beating both brothers badly, even though he took quite some blows himself.
When he arrived home later that evening, his eyes swollen, Magnus asked what had happened. Caleum said simply that the Darsons had told lies about his family, and he was no longer friends with them. He never once thought to ask his uncle whether there was any truth to their slander.
He ceased his studies soon thereafter, on the premise, as he argued it with Magnus and Adelia, that he had learned to read and calculate as well as he would ever need to know, and that he was due to be finished soon anyway. Miss Boutencourt, who was used to seeing the boys from the country cease their studies all of a sudden, was surprised when Caleum stopped, as he had been such a good pupil. If he was needed on his family’s farm, though, as he told her, there was little she could do about it, as that was the rhythm of life in that region of the world. It was in moments like this that she herself longed to live in one of the great towns of the colonies or, in bolder moments of dreaming, even London. But even though she had started her own voyage in Devonshire, she knew she would never see London in her lifetime, and perhaps not even Philadelphia.
Under her tutelage Caleum had mastered his primer and could now read as well as any boy in the colony. Having full command of arithmetic, he could also keep a ledger, so when Magnus tested his knowledge he was not only satisfied but duly impressed.
He also had to admit he was happy for the extra hand, as a shortage of labor was thwarting any ambition he might have had to expand on what Jasper Merian had started. How Jasper had always acquired workers was simply to pay them a wage above what they would make in the first years of starting their own farm, so men who thought they were heading west might be easily persuaded to receive a salary for a time, before going on to face the privations of the frontier. When they amassed capital enough they pushed on, one way or another, or else stayed on. However, men had seemed to evaporate the last few seasons, being either greedier for the far country or, for reasons of their own, unwilling to stay. It had become increasingly clear to Magnus that, if Stonehouses was to last, there were only two hopes: the first was if Caleum someday produced many children, as he knew he and Adelia would never be so blessed; the other was to make an investment in permanent labor.
He found slavery too unsettling to contemplate and so contrived to think of it by other fashions, but the truth was still there before him. Despite this reluctance, he knew it to be a logical course of action. Even so, he dare not capitulate to it so long as his father was still alive. And so Jasper Merian’s crippled existence in his upstairs room was all that kept Stonehouses from becoming like the places on the coast both father and son had worked so hard to escape.
That way of life was spreading, however, and Magnus did not think they would ever again do so well as when he and Merian had worked the land together and produced as much as any ten men between the two of them.
When Caleum finished his studies and began devoting himself to the farm, showing an interest in everything about the place, Magnus was relieved then from some of his anxieties and began to treat the boy from that point forth as more of an adult and partner.
Caleum still kept up his friendship with Bastian, Cato, and Julius, but now he was less prone to allow himself boyish pleasures and indulgences. When he would go to town on an errand for his uncle and happened to see one of his friends, he was just as likely to excuse himself as dawdle. Instead he would try to arrange some meeting for when he was not working. “I have to get back now,” he might say, “but let’s meet at Turner’s Creek on Sunday and see if we can’t catch a few fishes.”
He would spend the Sunday as carelessly as any other youth in the piedmont, but Monday morning his newfound devotion was again upon his face. Like his uncle, he had also begun to sense the pressure upon their way of life and knew what was at stake if they failed in their way of doing things.
It was years since Berkeley had been the isolated place Merian settled, and the frontier was now moved far to the westward. In that time other ways had come steadily to their area, so that there were very few who remembered what life there had been like before it was all conquered and brought under cultivation.