On the eve of Big Anthony’s punishment — whenever white men put off punishment some theater was bound to be involved — Caesar visited Hob. Mary let him in. She was puzzled. Few visitors ever came to call, and men only when it was a boss with bad news. Cora hadn’t told anyone of the young man’s proposition.
The loft was full of women either sleeping or listening. Cora put her mending to the floor and took him outside.
—
OLD Randall built the schoolhouse for his sons and the grandchildren he had hoped to have one day. The lonesome hulk was unlikely to fulfill its purpose anytime soon. Since Randall’s sons had finished their education it was used only for assignations and all those different lessons. Lovey saw Caesar and Cora walk to it, and Cora shook her head at her friend’s amusement.
The rotting schoolhouse smelled rank. Small animals made regular habitation. The chairs and tables had been removed a long time before, making room for dead leaves and spiderwebs. She wondered if he had brought Frances here when they were together, and what they did. Caesar had seen Cora stripped naked for her whippings, the blood pouring over her skin.
Caesar checked the window and said, “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“That’s what they do,” Cora said.
Two weeks ago she had judged him a fool. This night he carried himself as one beyond his years, like one of those wise old hands who tell you a story whose true message you only understand days or weeks later, when their facts are impossible to avoid.
“Will you come with me now?” Caesar said. “Been thinking it’s past time to go.”
She could not figure him. On the mornings of her three whippings, Caesar had stood in the front of the pack. It was customary for slaves to witness the abuse of their brethren as moral instruction. At some point during the show everyone had to turn away, if only for a moment, as they considered the slave’s pain and the day sooner or later when it would be their turn at the foul end of the lash. That was you up there even when it was not. But Caesar did not flinch. He didn’t seek her eyes but looked at something beyond her, something great and difficult to make out.
She said, “You think I’m a lucky charm because Mabel got away. But I ain’t. You saw me. You saw what happens when you get a thought in your head.”
Caesar was unmoved. “It’s going to be bad when he gets back.”
“It’s bad now,” Cora said. “Ever has been.” She left him there.
The new stocks Terrance ordered explained the delay in Big Anthony’s justice. The woodworkers toiled all through the night to complete the restraints, furnishing them with ambitious if crude engravings. Minotaurs, busty mermaids, and other fantastic creatures frolicked in the wood. The stocks were installed on the front lawn in the lush grass. Two bosses secured Big Anthony and there he dangled the first day.
On the second day a band of visitors arrived in a carriage, august souls from Atlanta and Savannah. Swell ladies and gentlemen that Terrance had met on his travels, as well as a newspaperman from London come to report on the American scene. They ate at a table set up on the lawn, savoring Alice’s turtle soup and mutton and devising compliments for the cook, who would never receive them. Big Anthony was whipped for the duration of their meal, and they ate slow. The newspaperman scribbled on paper between bites. Dessert came and the revelers moved inside to be free of the mosquitoes while Big Anthony’s punishment continued.
On the third day, just after lunch, the hands were recalled from the fields, the washwomen and cooks and stable hands interrupted from their tasks, the house staff diverted from its maintenance. They gathered on the front lawn. Randall’s visitors sipped spiced rum as Big Anthony was doused with oil and roasted. The witnesses were spared his screams, as his manhood had been cut off on the first day, stuffed in his mouth, and sewn in. The stocks smoked, charred, and burned, the figures in the wood twisting in the flames as if alive.
Terrance addressed the slaves of the northern and southern halves. There is one plantation now, united in purpose and method, he said. He expressed his grief over his brother’s death and his consolation in the knowledge that James was in heaven united with their mother and father. He walked among his slaves as he talked, tapping his cane, rubbing the heads of pickaninnies and petting some of the older worthies from the southern half. He checked the teeth of a young buck he had never seen before, wrenching the boy’s jaw to get a good look, and nodded in approval. In order to feed the world’s insatiable demand for cotton goods, he said, every picker’s daily quota will be increased by a percentage determined by their numbers from the previous harvest. The fields will be reorganized to accommodate a more efficient number of rows. He walked. He slapped a man across the face for weeping at the sight of his friend thrashing against the stocks.
When Terrance got to Cora, he slipped his hand into her shift and cupped her breast. He squeezed. She did not move. No one had moved since the beginning of his address, not even to pinch their noses to keep out the smell of Big Anthony’s roasting flesh. No more feasts outside of Christmas and Easter, he said. He will arrange and approve all marriages personally to ensure the appropriateness of the match and the promise of the offspring. A new tax on Sunday labor off the plantation. He nodded at Cora and continued his stroll among his Africans as he shared his improvements.
Terrance concluded his address. It was understood that the slaves were to remain there until Connelly dismissed them. The Savannah ladies refreshed their drinks from the pitcher. The newspaperman opened a fresh diary and resumed his note-taking. Master Terrance joined his guests and they departed for a tour of the cotton.
She had not been his and now she was his. Or she had always been his and just now knew it. Cora’s attention detached itself. It floated someplace past the burning slave and the great house and the lines that defined the Randall domain. She tried to fill in its details from stories, sifting through the accounts of slaves who had seen it. Each time she caught hold of something — buildings of polished white stone, an ocean so vast there wasn’t a tree in sight, the shop of a colored blacksmith who served no master but himself — it wriggled free like a fish and raced away. She would have to see it for herself if she were to keep it.
~ ~ ~
Who could she tell? Lovey and Nag would keep her confidence, but she feared Terrance’s revenge. Better that their ignorance be sincere. No, the only person she could discuss the plan with was its architect.
She approached him the night of Terrance’s address and he acted as if she had agreed long before. Caesar was like no colored man she had ever met. He had been born on a small farm in Virginia owned by a petite old widow. Mrs. Garner enjoyed baking, the daily complications of her flower bed, and concerned herself with little else. Caesar and his father took care of the planting and the stables, his mother the domestic affairs. They grew a modest crop of vegetables to sell in town. His family lived in their own two-room cottage at the rear of the property. They painted it white with robin’s egg trim, just like a white person’s house his mother had seen once.
Mrs. Garner desired nothing more than to spend her final years in comfort. She didn’t agree with the popular arguments for slavery but saw it as a necessary evil given the obvious intellectual deficiencies of the African tribe. To free them from bondage all at once would be disastrous — how would they manage their affairs without a careful and patient eye to guide them? Mrs. Garner helped in her own way, teaching her slaves their letters so they could receive the word of God with their own eyes. She was liberal with passes, allowing Caesar and his family to range across the county as they pleased. It rankled her neighbors. In her degrees, she prepared them for the liberation that awaited them, for she had pledged to set them free upon her death.