“I’m a mulatto myself,” he said proudly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Being comely, we mulattoes have therefore various certain experiences that define our existence and set us apart from the other adherents of our racial congruities.”
“Sir?”
“We mulattoes are different from most Negroes.”
“We is?”
“Of course, my child.”
“I reckon so, Mr. Douglass, if you say so.”
“I deedy doody say so indeed-y,” he said.
I reckoned he said that as a joke, for he chortled and looked at me. “Ain’t that funny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Cheer up, little Henrietta. Where are you from, dear?”
“Why, Kansas, Mr. Douglass.”
“No need to call me Mr. Douglass,” he said, coming from behind his desk and approaching where I sat. “My friends call me Fred.”
It didn’t seem proper to call a great man like him Fred, for the only Fred I knowed was dumber than doughnuts and deader than yesterday’s beer. Besides, Mr. Douglass was stout as a porcupine about the rules of me calling him “Mr. Douglass” at the train station before. But I didn’t want to offend the great leader, so I said, “Yes, sir.”
“Not sir. Fred.”
“Yes, sir, Fred.”
“Oh, come now. Get cheery. Here. Move. Have a seat here,” he said. He moved to a tiny couch that was as cockeyed and cocky-mamy as anything I ever seen. One side faced one way. One side faced the other. I reckoned the carpenter was drunk. He stood before it. “This is a love seat,” he said, motioning me over with his hands. He done it like he was in a hurry, impatient, like he was used to people listening to his thoughts, which I expect they was, him being a great man. “Would you like to sit here whilst I explain to you further the plight of our people?” he asked.
“Well, sir, I reckon that plight looks righteous bad now, till you furthers it.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Well, er, with people like you leading the way, why, we can’t go wrong.”
Here the great man laughed. “You are a country girl,” he chortled. “I love country girls. They’re fast. I’m from the country myself.” He pushed me down in the love seat and sat down on the other side of it. “This love seat’s from Paris,” he said.
“Is she a friend of yours?”
“It’s the city of light,” he said, sneaking an arm around my shoulder. “You simply must experience the sunlight coming over the Seine River.”
“Sunlight over a river? Oh, I seen it come over the Kaw many times. Every day in Kansas, in fact. It rains out there every day sometimes, too, just like it do here.”
“My dear,” he said. “You are a waif in the darkness.”
“I am?”
“A tree of unborn fruit.”
“I am?”
“Yet to be picked.” Here he tugged on my bonnet, which I quickly pushed back in place.
“Tell me. Where were you born? What is your birthday?”
“I don’t know exactly. Though I reckon to be about twelve or fourteen.”
“That’s just it!” he said, hopping up to his feet. “The Negro knows not where he was born, or who his mother is. Or who his father is. Or his real name. He has no home. He has no land. His station is temporary. He is guile and fodder for the slave catcher. He is a stranger in a strange land! He is a slave, even when he is free! He is a renter, an abettor! Even if he owns a home. The Negro is a perpetual lettor!”
“Like A, B, and C?”
“No child. A renter.”
“You rent here?”
“No, dear. I buy. But that’s not the point. See this?” He squeezed my shoulder. “That is merely flesh. You are natural prey to the carnal wisdom and thirst of the slave owner, that dastardly fiend of fiendishness. Your colored woman knows no freedom. No dignity. Her children are sold down the lane. Her husbands tend the field. While the fiendish slave owner has his way with her.”
“He do?”
“Of course he does. And see this?” He squeezed the back of my neck, then stroked it with fat fingers. “This slender neck, the prominent nose—this, too, belongs to the slave owner. They feel it belongs to them. They take what is not rightfully theirs. They know not you, Harlot Shackleford.”
“Henrietta.”
“Whatever. They know not you, Henrietta. They know you as property. They know not the spirit inside you that gives you your humanity. They care not about the pounding of your silent and lustful heart, thirsting for freedom; your carnal nature, craving the wide, open spaces that they have procured for themselves. You’re but chattel to them, stolen property, to be squeezed, used, savaged, and occupied.”
Well, all that tinkering and squeezing and savaging made me right nervous, ’specially since he was doing it his own self, squeezing and savaging my arse, working his hand down toward my mechanicals as he spoke the last, with his eyes all dewy, so I hopped to my feet.
“I reckons your oration’s done drove me to thirst,” I said. “I wonders if you have some libations around in one of these cabinets here that would help loosen up my gibbles and put me in the right understanding of some of your deepest comminglings about our peoples.”
“By God, pardon my rudeness! I’ve just the thing!” he said. “Would that I had thought of that first.” He fair dived for his liquor cabinet and pulled out a tall bottle and two tall glasses, pouring me a tall one and a short one for himself. He didn’t know but that I could drink like a man, having already gulped a bit of his hot sauce without his knowing and having absorbed rummy sauce with Pro Slave rebels out west who could hoist a barrel of whiskey down their throats and see double without a hitch. Even your basic pioneer settler church woman out west could outdrink any soft Yank who ate food stored in jars and cabinets and prepared in a hot stove. They could drink him right under the table on the spot.
He shoved the tall glass of whiskey at me and hoisted the short glass for himself.
“Here. Let us toast to the education of a country girl who learns about the plights of our people from its greatest orator,” he said. “Careful now, for this is strong.” He turned his glass to his talking hole and drunk it down.
The effect of that whiskey hitting his gizzards was altogether righteous. He sat up as if electrified. It throwed him. He shook and rattled a bit. His large mane of hair stood on end. His eyes growed wide. He seemed sotted right off. “Whew. That’s a sip, a sot, and a mop!”
“Why, you is right,” I said. I drunk mine’s down and placed the empty glass on the table. He stared at the empty glass. “Impressive,” he grumbled. “You means business, you little harlot.” He filled both glasses again, this time filling both to the brim.
“How’s about one for the plights of our people in the South who ain’t here to hear your speech on ’em?” I said, for I aimed to get pixilated, and his whiskey was weak. He poured another and I drunk mine down again.
“Hear, hear,” he said, and he followed suit, downing his a second time and looking bleary-eyed.
Mine’s was gone, but I growed to like the taste. “What about the pets who is in slavery, too, suffering in all the heat and cold without your word on ’em?” I said. He poured and I downed it again.
Well, that surprised him, seeing me throw that essence down so easy. See, I learned my drinking out on the prairie of Kansas and Missouri with redshirts, Pro Slavers, and abolitionists, of which even the women could drain a gallon or three and not get two-fisted so long as somebody else was pouring. It pushed his confidence a bit, seeing a girl outdo him. He couldn’t stand it.
“Surely,” he said. He refilled both glasses again. “Preach it, my country waif, sing that they needs to hear me everywhere in the world!” He was getting addled now, all his fancy prattling started to drop off him like raindrops bouncing off a roof, and the country in him begun to come out. “Nothin’ like a spree and a jag then a bout!” he barked, and he poured that weepy, sorry, tea-tasting willowy whiskey down his red lane one more time. I followed him.