Westfall, Slave to King Cotton

By Bonnie Stanard

Westfall, Slave to King Cotton strays far from Old South nostalgia by giving us a multi-dimensional picture of life on a plantation. It questions the "realities" of what we read about the South of 1858, where an aristocracy was based on race and depended on slavery. Westfall reveals the hope and dreams of the boisterous slave quarters as well as the refined big house. It is a companion novel to Kedzie, Saint Helena Island Slave and Master of Westfall Plantation, as well as Sonny, Cold Slave Cradle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9780986001963

Bonnie Stanard

Bonnie Stanard has been an editor, writer, and teacher in her native South Carolina as well as in Richmond, Atlanta, and Brussels. She is the author of six previous historical fiction novels, two children's books, and the chapbook Time Carries All Things Away. She has won various awards for her fiction, including InkSpot's list of Best Books of 2016 for Master of Westfall Plantation, the 2018 President's Book Award by Florida Authors and Publishers Association for the children's book Cat's Fur, and James River Writers finalist for Best Self-Published Novel of 2016 for Dust on the Bible. Her poems have won recognition with a Pushcart Prize nomination as well as placing in competitions such as Rash Award in Poetry, Carry McCray Award, River Poets Journal Contest, and Marsh Hawk poetry book contest.

Book preview

Puddin/Pumpkin.

PROLOGUE

Westfall Plantation, a gray-eyed home of destiny, was dual to the core. It was yoked with the extremes of luxury and poverty. Typical of other plantations on St. Helena Island, its big house was a showcase of symmetry and elegance. By contrast, the slave cabins were clapboard hovels with stick and mud chimneys. Beset with moral contradictions, both owner and chattel were slaves to the crop that produced fortune and depravity—Sea Island Cotton.

The extravagance of the island plantation houses was not to scale with that of Charleston, or even Beaufort, where old wealth—traders and ship builders—had erected opulent Georgian mansions. When the owners spoke of the houses they built, it didn’t occur to them that they had in no way hammered a peg or sawed a board, labor that had been done by bondsmen, likely negros.

Westfall’s big house had been constructed to flaunt qualities of superiority and family tradition. Above all, it was expected to assure visitors of the affluence and eminence, if not charm, of its owners. With fashionable wallpaper and Belgian carpets, its parlors, though conventional to a fault, were places where social graces abounded for persons of acceptable ancestry. Though the islanders were hardly as fastidious as Charlestonians in this regard, a person of good lineage was respected regardless of his behavior.

A practical necessity of refinement included grandiose size denoted by high ceilings, a foyer big as a ballroom, and more chimneys than doors. There were island plantations with grander big houses than that of Westfall, a source of pique for its owner.

On some plantations, the slave cabins were located for best visibility to visitors. The more slaves a man owned the more likely the cabins were in view, for the single most important factor in defining a man’s wealth was the number of slaves he owned. However, at Westfall the cabins were placed at a distance from the avenue of oaks, for the negros were rowdy and exuberant, traits offensive to gentlefolk.

Tropical storms were common on the island. While the eaves of the big house whistled and the windows rattled, the cabins quivered and wind drove through the cracks. Their shutters leaked and families squeezed together in their cots.

Living side by side with the affluent whites were the slaves, kept in squalid habitations with crude fittings. Such hovels were built to dispossess the inhabitants of their humanity. Regardless of how long and hard a slave worked, Carolina law denied him the right to own anything, least of all a house. Slave quarters contained no homes, just places to stay, no more personal than a camp fire.

Despite the filth and pestilence, the buildings kept out bears, wild cats, and boars, though the weather was another story. They were cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Rain dripped through the roof shingles. Smoke curled inside from the fireplace. Mosquitoes swarmed about the beds of a summer night.

As devastating as the physical hardship was the emotional one visited on the slaves by their owners. Without warning, many were sold or hired out without regard for family ties. The cabins became home to a lost ancestry.

Notwithstanding the transiency imposed on the quarters, a heritage survived. The slaves spoke an English-based Creole language known as Gullah, which contained African words. The older generation taught the young and kept alive their Gullah customs with stories, religion, music, cooking and farming traditions that were derived from West and Central Africa.

The stately big house and abject cabins served the purpose of the owner. It reserved to him a sense of racial superiority and guaranteed classes of inescapable order. Except for the creatures wandering the yard—the rodents, dogs, squirrels, ducks, geese, and guineas—Westfall’s population was encumbered with the past.

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER 1

GOODWYN FAMILY MOVES TO VILLAGE HOUSE

BEEF SLAUGHTER

SPRING 1858

Each year in May, Tilmon Goodwyn moved his family from the big house on Westfall plantation to his village house in St. Hellenaville, twelve miles away at the island’s only settlement where plantation owners had put up summer homes. The village was located on a bluff that benefitted from breezes off St. Helena Sound. Because Westfall was situated near marshes, it was considered unhealthy in the heat of summer.

The island, roughly fifteen miles long and four miles wide, was surrounded by other islands, some of which rose to sea level only at low tide and thus were uninhabitable. St. Helena Island was buffered from the Atlantic by Hunting Island and Fripp Island, while landward it was bordered by Ladies Island, which retained much of the rural character of St. Helena. Further inland was the town of Beaufort, the area’s commercial center where Tilmon did much of his trading.

On the portico of the big house, Tilmon arose from his chair and lingered in the night air as his wife Georgiana went inside. In the distance a horned owl gave the night a cadence of fellowship. He threw the blackened chub of his cigar into the yard where it bounced down the side of a stack of boards awaiting the carpenters’ tools. Two hirelings Tilmon had rented from his neighbor had begun to assemble materials to renovate the façade. Because of Georgiana’s condition, Tilmon had arranged for the noise and activity of construction to begin after the family vacated the manse.

The overseer Farley approached from the darkness and stood at the bottom of the steps, his hat in his hand. Begging your pardon, massuh… Farley’s subservience was a studied affect, for he was by nature a forceful man.

What’s the problem? Tilmon glanced at the bottom of one of his boots and scraped the sole on the floor edge. Dried muck sprinkled to the ground.

Massuh, Joe be scaring the other niggers. They say he’s hexed. Some of them won’t work wid him. Farley had complained so many times about Joe that he was hard pressed to find a novel misdeed to bring to Tilmon’s attention. Joe habitually ignored orders. The other slaves laughed and said he had such dirt in his ears he couldn’t hear, which was a credible explanation.

Bought the previous January at the Charleston auction, Joe had been a source of constant vexation to Farley, not only in the field but at any task he was given.

Joe rarely talked and when he did, he didn’t make sense, in part because previous injustices had singed his brain. He had been a free man living peaceably with his family in Virginia when he was deceived, seized, and sold into slavery. His venomous hate for white plantation owners obsessed him.

* * *

Upon his arrival at Westfall, Joe had been put in the cabin with Lettie and her son. Once Lettie discovered he wasn’t a sexual threat, she’d tried to befriend him.

Where’s your family? She had talked as she went about stoking the fire or sewing for the big house. You got chillun? Though he never answered, she had carried on conversations as if he’d been lost and just got back home. Jackey hadn’t heard so much talk from his mother in his entire life.

Joe always sat and stared at the fire.

Jackey is my onliest baby. He was borned the day after the stars fell.

The stars fell on the ground? Jackey had said.

People run in their cabins crying and falling on their knees. All the niggers thought it was Judgment Day.

Joe swayed in his chair. Hummed angrily. Stared at the fire. He had been as likely to throw the drinking gourd into the flames as use it. He had wiped his nose on Lettie’s tow sack. Blew snot into the fireplace. If he hadn’t been so accurate with snot, Lettie would have moved out of her place sooner than she did.

We going to the garden and get okra, she’d say of a Saturday as she and Jackey went out the door. Lettie was uneasy about leaving him in the cabin, for she had once returned to find burning firewood on their packed dirt floor.

In particular she had tried to draw him into conversation after whippings. Where abouts you come from? she said as he had sprawled on his cot, his back riddled with gashes. Jackey’s pappy was the houseman for two old ladies in the village. He had the asthma something awful…

Joe had twitched and farted.

Jackey stared at the welts on his back. He done got a lashing again.

Joe, why you get a lashing? Lettie had paused to give a cooked potato to Jackey.

Joe hadn’t answered.

He can’t talk. Jackey heard as much from the other shirttail boys.

Farley says he can talk. Lettie sat on a chair to eat her potato.

I’se going to see if he gots a tongue. Jackey had started for Joe’s cot.

Don’t go nigh onto him. He might bite. Lettie tugged Jackey’s shirttail to keep him back.

Weeks had passed and Joe hadn’t bathed. Lettie said, Great da! Your pong be worser than the hog pen. When you going to wash up yourself? Despite the filth of the surrounding quarters, Lettie didn’t abide uncleanliness about herself or her son. Her taunts hadn’t inspired Joe to clean himself up.

He had yanked on his own hair and stretched it into strings. The field hands called him Burr Head. His stare had worried Lettie most of all. She had become afraid of him and moved with Jackey into other cabins of a night.

She had protested to Farley so much that the overseer kept up a steady complaint to Tilmon, who eventually moved Joe to Rio’s cabin, which hadn’t improved his attitude.

* * *

The immediate problem, which had brought Farley to the portico, was not just an insult but a challenge. In front of the other field hands, Joe had thrown clods of dirt into Farley’s face. Had it been any other man, Farley would have lashed the breath out of him. However, Joe still wobbled from a flogging he’d gotten the previous week. Farley had become cautious about the man’s endurance and had been maneuvering to get him off Westfall. His implicit suggestions that Joe be sold were met with criticism of his own ability to manage the men. Joe was hell bound for disaster and Farley knew it, but he didn’t know it was going to happen that night.

You’ve tried putting him in the smokehouse? Tilmon said.

Yessuh, and he come out no bettern going in. Farley enumerated what were ample reasons to sell Joe. The man laughed at lashes, didn’t work, didn’t take orders, and stank offensively. Farley had more to say, but Tilmon interrupted him.

Give him tasks away from the field hands. Put him to helping Doll with the stock.

Yessuh. Farley took a deep breath and nodded even though he knew that would work about as well as a lamp without oil. His attempt to get rid of Joe had been jinxed from the start, for Joe had been spelled with despair so powerful no mojo could uncross it. Without much satisfaction from Tilmon, he headed to the quarters to see about heated voices getting louder than the music of a banjo. It was Saturday night, and a frolic meant Farley had a longer work day.

Tilmon expected to quietly install his family in his village house the next day while the island’s gentry was ensconced in St. Helena Episcopal Church listening to Reverend Chaffee’s sermon. Because it was the Lord’s day, such activity invited criticism for the Goodwyns, but Tilmon had more expectations of others than himself when it came to social conventions.

The delay in moving had been due to his wife Georgiana, who hadn’t attended church in some months. It was considered unseemly for a woman in the family way to be seen in public. Her eagerness to give secure posterity to the Goodwyn name blurred other ambitions. The Bible on their mantelshelf recorded no ancestry for her, for she had been an orphan raised in Charleston by a Baptist minister and his wife. She expected to compensate for her lack of lineage with more than their three surviving offspring. Her condition was a source of immense satisfaction to her.

In the previous days, wagonloads of furniture had been hauled from the plantation to the village house. Tilmon had borrowed a wagon from a cousin and a cart from his uncle. In return he freely loaned whatever was requested by relatives or neighbors. This exchange was comparable in spirit but materially unequal, for Tilmon was less likely to have what others needed. As a consequence, he, more frequently than his neighbors, borrowed goods.

As trunks had been locked and removed, a hollow emptiness increasingly echoed in the manse. Because Tilmon was as tall as any slave and strong as most, he had helped load heavy pieces, such as bedsteads and wardrobes. Though this was unusual, it came as no surprise, for he had been known to heave mired oxen from bogs, fell trees, or upright ditched carts, tasks usually reserved to slaves.

Tilmon didn’t shun physical endeavors like other men of his station, most of whom were descended from colonists awarded fiefdoms by the king of England. They brought to the New World a privileged perspective, one that assigned manual work to servants. Tilmon’s lineage dated back to Francis Coachman (1652-1699), who’d been favored by the king with a land grant to property in the Carolina lowcountry. Francis would have been offended to see his progeny engage in such unseemly undertakings. Nonetheless, Tilmon was more like Francis than unlike him in his dependence on slaves. Like as not, had Tilmon been born in New England where a great number of peasants settled to escape hardship, he would have inherited an expectation of living by the labor of his hands.

Because the family’s move disrupted Westfall’s everyday comings and goings, Tilmon became more guarded in his observations and had kept pushing Farley to assure that tasks continued in an orderly manner. Every year the transfer to the village came at a time when crops wanted ministrations. The fields got in grass as soon as they were hoed. Ditches filled with mud and needed excavation following rain. Banks slumped, allowing salt water to spill into lowlying fields and destroy crops. Acreage had to be replanted when sheep or hogs, those of Westfall or the neighbors, broke fences, got into fields, and ate seedlings. Tilmon had an ongoing irritant in a neighbor whose beefs frequently trespassed into Westfall fields.

In getting his family away from the plantation’s proximity to tidal marshes, he had made frequent trips to and from the village. Dust burrowed into the weave of his linen shirt with brass buttons. Dirt settled into the leather creases of his boots. While supervising the movers, he continued to preside over farming concerns. In spite of his devotion to his land, Tilmon would one day come to realize that his ownership was by no means the God-given right he presumed.

After days of procrastination, Tilmon’s wife Georgiana had allowed her belongings to be packed in trunks. Though she had dawdled with purpose, Tilmon attributed her considerable excuses to the delicacy of her condition. The timing of the relocation was unfortunate, for she was heavy with child, a condition of hopeful concern. Of the seven live infants Georgiana had delivered into the family, only three survived.

Heat had oppressed St. Helena Island all day, which had given urgency to their move. The warmer the weather, the sooner the dangerous miasmas arose from the marshes. Few if any whites braved summers nigh unto the mud flats, and some of Westfall’s fields were on land recovered from marshes.

* * *

In the distant quarters, a shindig grew muffled behind closed doors while families settled into their cabins for the night. There was no privacy in the quarters and few secrets. The negros were vociferous with laughter or tears, and everybody knew everybody’s sins and prayers.

The feel of the ocean was in the breeze, but not many slaves knew it was the ocean they felt. The brushes of air wafting through their cabins, depending on individual convictions, were charged with spirits or haints, which might be helpful or harmful.

Later than usual for a Saturday night, Farley made his way down the street. Whether or not they saw his face, people knew him by his heavy footfall. He poked his head, always covered with a wornto-the-slick felt hat, into each cabin in turn and confirmed the occupants. Among his duties at the end of the day was accounting for every field hand, though on Saturdays he accepted that young bucks, in making merry whatever the hour, shifted into different cabins after the count.

Except for Tilmon, no plantation owner on the island placed a negro in a position of such responsibility. Until Tilmon enlisted him as an interim overseer, Farley had been a driver working in the fields. It turned out Farley was as good as a white at managing the slaves, something Tilmon discovered while looking for a replacement for the overseer who’d run off. That Farley came at a fraction of the cost of a white mitigated whatever reservations Tilmon had had.

Given the chaos of frequent wagonloads going in and out of the yard, Tilmon had refused the slaves’ usual requests for Saturday passes to visit other plantations, which meant they were for the most part restricted to Westfall unless assisting with the move.

However, this didn’t affect the stableman Wink, who traveled the roads so frequently he carried an undated pass, which the patrollers honored. Wink ran errands, delivered and fetched people and animals, including family members, visitors, horses, dogs, and any other living soul. He transported tools, carts, and carriages that had been borrowed or loaned. Wink knew the island and the island knew him. In the past, Tilmon had made extra money by hiring him out to neighboring plantations on occasions when horses were difficult to train or took sick. There wasn’t a horse Wink hadn’t been able to train to a harness, and he was known to cure worms and lampas and was able to detect distemper before it spread to a herd.

After Farley disappeared into the night, Tilmon turned and went inside the big house, followed by the butler Iverson, who closed and locked the door behind them. Because Iverson was one of the few field hands who didn’t indulge in drink, Tilmon had elevated him to houseman following the death of his loyal servant Billy. To the ordinary run, this was an upgrade, not only in living conditions but in status, but Iverson had been loath to leave the quarters where his wife and children lived.

For the most part, the slaves considered their cabins habitations of uncertain duration. At Tilmon’s discretion, any person might be sold or hired out, and there was no way of knowing when this might occur. Despite the transiency and shifting about, Iverson was sentimental about his cabin. Westfall was all he had ever known as a home. The elderly woman who watched the babies and children during the day while parents worked in the fields was his mother, Mammy Livy. The cook Puddin had lived in their cabin as a youngster and was like a sister.

When he had lived in the quarters, his fellowship and soundness had strengthened the solidarity of the men and women. He stood by the hands, comforted them, and gave them guidance. He spoke at their secret brush arbor meetings. If they had a failing of faith, they came to him for help in understanding God’s will.

Iverson tried to answer their questions, but he had as many as they did. He wondered about the rightness and wrongness of obeying Tilmon, especially if that required giving up a child. The question he had posed to Brother Milton, What kind of God wills us to give up our chilluns to the massuh? had yet to be answered, though the Brother had visited the island numerous times and was able to read the Bible.

* * *

Wink had delivered a new servant to Tilmon’s village house and now was returning to Westfall. The waning sun had taken with it the heavy heat, leaving the night pleasantly warm. He quirted Nicky, for without a lantern in the dark, his wagon was in danger of colliding with another traveler. His new felt hat itched his prematurely gray hair, but he hardly noticed. He had been thinking about Puddin, the cook. For the many weeks he’d courted her, she’d brushed him away, too busy in the kitchen or too worried about one thing or another. He’d bought a ring, which she’d refused until he told her of a physical deficiency serious enough to send him to the auction block—Wink knew himself to be sterile. To Puddin, this supposed fault was an advantage, for she was determined to have no babies that might then be stolen from her. He smiled to himself when he thought of the night she had taken him into more than her cot.

As a matter of course, Wink traveled back and forth from the village to the plantation as much as Tilmon. His relative freedom—he went unaccompanied on errands—was the envy of other slaves, especially the field hands, a sight of whom had never been off Westfall Plantation, much less the island.

As the dark grew vaporous and clouds arose from the swampy undergrowth, a mysterious ball of light hovered above the ground and bounced in and out of the ditch some five rods before the wagon. This one was clear like a candle, but people had sighted them in colors of blue or yellow. Wink had heard that if a person tried to catch up with one, it stayed just beyond reach, but he was of an inclination to run from rather than at the thing. He whistled the tune The Gospel Train, to calm himself as well as to call on good spirits to protect him. The lights weren’t known as harmful haints, but on the other hand, many a person had died in the dark without reporting on what got them.

Westfall’s lights flickered through the trees. Giddiup-yer! Kwi! He drove Nicky to a gallop but eased off the quirt as they approached the carriage house. Tonight you is the most best horse on this here place… As he unhitched Nicky, he stroked the sorrel’s nose and scratched his ears.

When he wasn’t ferrying one or another of the family, Wink worked and lived in a quarter at the stables nigh unto the horses. He knew the animals better than Tilmon himself did and was such a good judge of quality that his opinion was respected by whites. Because his shanty was built adjoining the stables and removed from the other quarters, Wink had less opportunity to socialize with other slaves, though he freely exchanged gossip. He was one of the few laborers, along with household servants, not accountable to Farley.

Wink finished up with the horses, mules, and oxen. Though it was getting late, he shuffled toward the kitchen house, brushing dust from his shirt and trousers. Light streamed from the open door of the kitchen, a building connected to the big house by a covered passageway. Stacked on the porch were wood crates containing live chickens and ducks. Inside, stacks of boxes lined the walls, as well as firkins of corn and wheat flour, a keg of molasses. On the table were buckets and tubs of other goods. In the light, Wink’s brogans appeared white with dust. He scuffed them on the back of his pant legs. You gals going to work all night? he said to Puddin and her helper Mamba.

Puddin was packing potatoes into a crate. What you doing out here widout so much as a torch? One of the reasons Wink admired her was her eyes. By their aspect, he knew she was incapable of wanton cruelty. In the clarity of her brown gaze was fearless honesty.

Moon’s out. It be time you stuck your head out the door, Wink said, trying to get Puddin away from Mamba, who moved about the room stacking the last of several tins into a wood box. Mamba wore a small smooth stone around her neck for spiritual protection, for she sensed more keenly than others the agitation accompanying the move.

In Mamba’s cabin were considerable jars of dried herbs, snake venom, spider webs, crushed peach pits, pokeberries, and such, which she employed for ministrations to cure illness. Many a time Lettie had gone to her cabin for a powder or salve for Joe. She often returned to her place with a cloth wrapped around a stick, which she dipped into an oily medicine to apply to Joe’s cuts. Because Rio wasn’t as attentive to Joe’s lashes, Lettie and Mamba watched out for him.

Mamba’s time was spent, for the most part, washing and ironing the family’s apparel, bed clothes, towels, aprons, and such. The washing was done in the yard behind the kitchen, in big iron pots that boiled over an open fire. At the washhouse, not actually a house but a lean-to on the back side of the kitchen, she scrubbed and battered out dirt and stains. She usually did the ironing in either Puddin’s quarter or the kitchen to be near the fire to heat the irons. Only the kitchen fire burned continuously regardless of the weather. Between washing and ironing, Mamba helped in the kitchen and in some ways attended Georgiana, especially with ointments that preserved a youthful look.

Mamba sat heavily on a stool and sighed. Supper for the white folks had been chaotic. She and Anner had served the table instead of Kedzie.

Is the butcher knives bundled up? Puddin whisked several butter molds from a packed box and put them back on a shelf. There was less need for butter molds in summer because there was less milk. At that time of year, most of the cows gave birth. Milking chores stopped several months prior to the births to allow the cows to gain stamina in preparation for the new calves.

Them from supper is dirty and we is clean outa water. Mamba turned a tired face to Wink. Wink, git a bucket of water.

He crossed the room to the shelf where the bucket was kept and picked it up. You going to the village the morrow? he said to Puddin.

Reckon so. Iffen Missus be moving. I does what I can to get her to eat. The woman don’t have no meat on her to carry dat baby. There was still doubt in Puddin’s mind about whether Georgiana, who had taken more of her tonic than sustenance, would be able to make the trip the following day.

When Wink returned with a full bucket he stood outside the kitchen door and said, Here be water. His smile creased into dimples. He tipped his head back, a motion to beckon Puddin nearer.

Puddin went to the door. You need a invitation to bring it inside?

Wink stepped back and motioned her outside, away from Mamba. She followed him but as she reached for the bucket, Wink withdrew it. Just a trifling of appreciation. Dat’s all I wants.

You is already so appreciated your hair don’t stand still, Puddin said as he wrapped an arm around her waist.

I wants just a little taste of your sugar.

Puddin gave him a peck, but he took a bushel and spilled water on her bare feet. He set down the bucket. You smell good. He nuzzled her ear, put his face into her hair poking from her head rag.

Puddin pushed at him as he clung to her.

You is powerful mean to your man. Wink reluctantly let her go.

You don’t belong to me, Puddin said, taking the bucket in hand. She wasn’t in the mood for sweet talk. Kedzie, who helped in the kitchen and tended the dining table, hadn’t returned from picking blackberries, and Puddin had concocted a story to explain her absence at supper—said she’d sent Kedzie to the cellar to pack jellies, nuts, and such for the village. Kedzie, who was Dina’s daughter, wasn’t the sort of person to disappear without a word.

Wink gave her a knowing look that called to mind the night they had spent together. Sugar, you and me borned to belong. He urged his lips to hers, but before he got a kiss, Puddin said, Us niggers don’t have no belonging rights.

Wink poked a sprig of her hair under her head rag. I’se going to ask massuh for permission for us to marry.

Puddin put her fingers to his lips.

Mamba appeared at the door, a fiery light from inside rimming her ample body. What’s I going to wash these knives in?

Wink, carrying the water bucket, followed them inside. There’s a new nigger at the village house, he said, speaking of the woman he had transported earlier. Name of Minnie. The addition of a house servant surprised nobody. Tilmon had fewer such servants than most men in his position.

Mamba dipped water into a tin dish pan. Reckon Anner’s getting the help she’s been begging for? She hung the dipper on its peg.

Anner, nursemaid for Tilmon’s children, went with a running complaint about how much work she had to do, though not in the presence of the mistress or master. She wasn’t above claiming credit for work others had done in her eagerness to endear herself to Tilmon and Georgiana. As the Goodwyn children had grown older and the daughter and elder son attended boarding school, Anner had been assigned additional tasks as needed.

She also answered to Georgiana and served as something of a chambermaid, which she preferred to tending the children. In times when Georgiana wasn’t with child, Anner helped her into and out of clothes, from morning dress to carriage dress to day dress. She held hoops, buttoned buttons, tightened laces, and pinned pins. The proximity of such fashionable paraphernalia aroused her excitement and envy. In solitary moments, she tried on shoes, held up dresses to herself, or powdered her nose. She hadn’t yet become accomplished at styling hair, but took pointers when Mamba employed the curling iron on Georgiana’s hair or, as was becoming more commonplace, Margarita’s.

Anner had become the nursemaid when the previous one had been abruptly sent to Tilmon’s mother in Charleston some years earlier. The household servants hadn’t been able to figure out what wrongdoing Dina had committed to raise such ire as to be sent away. The mystery had given rise to rumors, which eventually turned into explanations, the most popular being that she had bewitched the Goodwyn baby that had died.

Don’t have no idea. But dat new woman don’t talk no more’n a tree, said Wink

As Mamba cleaned the knives, Puddin packed them in a box. When they finished, Mamba stretched her back and neck and removed the red and brown headrag she wore every day to keep from losing it to somebody borrowing it in the quarters. What’s come of Kedzie? She spending the night in the cellar?

She musta gone to see about Auntie Nell, said Puddin, fabricating another excuse for Kedzie’s absence. Go on home, Mamba. I’ll finish up.

Mamba grabbed two peaches from a basket as she took leave. She hummed a tune as she disappeared in the dark.

Puddin said, Reckon Rio took Kedzie to the village house wid the wagonload this afternoon?

Wink shrugged. For ought I know she be going wid you the morrow. He picked up his cup, hanging on a peg by the chimney. Everbody’s going the morrow.

By everybody, he meant the house servants, for the field hands remained on the plantation and kept working throughout the summer. By day Farley supervised as they fertilized, plowed, and hoed crops in weather that became increasingly hot until the heat boiled their spit. More than any others, the field hands knew the solace of summer winds, whether easy or harsh. At nightfall, they swam in the creek in their clothes and trudged home to sleep under the patched nets they called mosquito bars.

The negros remained at Westfall regardless of the weather while white families departed to avoid summer fevers attributed to toxic fumes that arose from the marshes. It was believed that blacks tolerated the weather better than caucasians and were less susceptible to the brackish vapors. Physicians supported the view by claiming that they breathed less air and threw off greater amounts of animal heat through their skin.

Everbody what bees here… Puddin poured Wink coffee from the master’s pot only at times when nobody was about, for it was superior in every way to the chicory coffee she made for the rest of the servants. And chicory was an improvement over the bland coffee slaves made of parched meal. She tipped up the pot, and out dripped enough to make a mouthful.

Puddin allowed Wink the big house’s coffee as long as Tilmon didn’t question her about her use of the supplies. On occasion, she took household foodstuffs without permission, to make plates for people in the sick house. Even if something came up short in the monthly accounting, the move to and from the village had explained many a mystery about goods gone missing.

Who is not being here? Wink said, inhaling the coffee scent.

Kedzie…that girl went for blackberries this afternoon and she can’t be picking berries in the dark. Puddin poured a vinegar sauce over cucumbers she had boiled.

She’s not wid Auntie Nell? Wink came behind her and tugged at her headrag.

I said that to keep her out of trouble. I ain’t seen hide nor hair of that girl. Something’s not right.

She’s bound to be in the big house while you out here fretting yourself.

Puddin turned to him and gave him an worried look. And where was she while Anner and Mamba put supper on the table for her?

He nuzzled her nose and tried for a kiss.

Stop dat!

You think she made a run for it? Wink tugged her closer.

Puddin impatiently pulled away from him. She’s got the grit. And she’s got good reason to run.

That Tilmon made use of Kedzie was known by most of the household servants. Wink was also aware of this. Hardly had the girl been installed in the big house to attend the dining room table when Tilmon had raped her and turned her into his concubine.

Wink licked the final drop of coffee from the rim and put the cup back on the peg. On leaving, he said, Good reason don’t mean she’s got a chance of gitting away. He knew the back lot well enough to maneuver in the dark, softly whistling as he went.

Puddin took off her apron and banked the embers in the fireplace. For the third time, she searched about the boxes and crates for a bucket of blackberries, supposing Kedzie might have brought them in when she hadn’t noticed. Because Kedzie, though nervy and sassy, was usually dependable, Puddin had reason to worry that something had happened to her.

She latched the shutters, locked the kitchen doors, and held the lantern up to walk the few steps to her quarter. In the years she had lived at Westfall, only one slave had successfully run away. Escape was such a perilous undertaking nobody believed it possible. Getting off the plantation was easy compared to getting off the island. In spite of that, the girl Mooey had apparently escaped the previous January in the midst of cold weather. Some people said it was proof she was bewitched, for only hoodoo could have saved her from freezing, not to mention gotten her across the Beaufort River.

Farley said Mooey had probably died in the woods, but without a body or any evidence of one, the slaves held out hope the girl had miraculously crossed the river and been saved by some kindly soul. Though this hadn’t been Mooey’s fate, the angels had sent a man to rescue her. During the harsh months of winter, she had been hidden in the parsonage of the Episcopal Church nigh unto the village. However, this had come to an end just weeks earlier, and she had been once again at large in the woods with no shelter. A second rescuer had appeared and provided her a hideout inside a dugout tomb in the Goodwyn graveyard, barely a mile from the plantation. This rescuer had been Rio, Westfall’s hireling carpenter.

A breeze too lazy to ruffle leaves prowled the darkness. It freshened Puddin’s skin, steamy from the heat of the fireplace. An owl’s hollow coo echoed in the distance. She entered her room and closed the door behind her. Because one entire wall was a chimney, the backside of the kitchen fireplace, her room was stuffy and warm. She unlatched the shutters for a breath of air. Her cot, unlike those in the quarters, was not attached to a wall, which allowed her to move it either near or far from the chimney, depending on the weather.

* * *

While Puddin was working in the kitchen, slaves in the quarters were settling in for the night. Weary children whined. Angry and anxious couples raised their voices. Mothers wheedled. Shirttail boys and girls squealed. People crowded into the single-room shanties, made of slab wood with shingle roofs and built in rows. The alley between them, called the street, though busy during the day with children chasing after cats, guineas, and chickens, was becoming virtually empty.

Once the nights gave up winter’s grip, shutters were left open to take in breezes that might stir. A few cabins came alight with candles, but most people simply went to bed in the darkness. Some of the younger slaves, attracted to candle-lit cabins, gathered and gossiped until Flurry appeared on the street. More often than Farley, she made the nightly check to confirm every slave was in the cabin assigned him.

Rio sat in his cabin and ate bacon and potatoes he had bought from Lettie, who sewed and repaired clothes for the white family. As a hireling, he had arrived at Westfall in January with another carpenter, and the two of them were contracted to Tilmon for a year’s service. By the terms of the contract, Rio was scheduled to return to his owner, Nicholas Jervy of the neighboring plantation, at the end of December. Rio’s trade as a carpenter served his owner well, but the day was coming when it would serve Rio well, allowing him to survive when many a freed slave, without food or coats, was niddered.

Though the primary task for the carpenters was to renovate the façade of the big house with a new piazza, numerous other projects had intervened—repair work on fences, out buildings, and quarters as well as putting up new cabins and a dog pen.

Rio had money, brains, and a temper he worked constantly to control. Above all, he refused to be worsted by whites, and he had recently learned of an injury more insulting than a flogging. It had commandeered his every thought until he’d figured out how to fight back and, if lucky, exact some measure of justice. The girl he loved, Kedzie, had been defiled by Goodwyn, who had used her for his carnal pleasure. Upon discovering this, Rio’s anger had overwhelmed him. He’d been so disgusted by the image of Kedzie in the arms of a white man that he had rejected her. From that moment, he set to planning just deserts for Tilmon.

Most cabins had rough-hewn furniture and plank walls with varying degrees of whitewash. Because there were no lofts, roof shingles provided the only bar to the sky, though some people laid boards across overhead beams and hid sundries up there. In every cabin, one wall was dominated by a ragged fireplace, which gave off soot that coated the exposed beams and gave the room a dingy, shadowy feeling.

By comparison, Rio’s cabin was shipshape. Above all, the doors and shutters fit together and opened and closed securely. The cracks in the walls had been chinked with mud, and the furnishings were those of a talented carpenter. He had added a wood floor.

He sat in a chair he had recently refurbished. It had been discarded in the village alley and instead of replacing the seat with cow hide, he had bought fabric, stolen cotton, and turned it into an upholstered chair. Wink had offered him three dollars for it.

Most people noticed Rio because of his appearance. He was a tribal-looking man with a face of broad features, a wide brow, nose, and mouth. Deep-set eyes. Until Tilmon ordered it cut, his hair had been long with ringlets that looked like shiny black nails.

Rio had caught the attention of the other slaves upon his arrival at Westfall, for he had worn a tailor-made wool coat, cleaner and neater than that of the others, though it had been of a size to fit a fuller man with shorter arms. Both he and the carpenter who came with him had worn leather shoes fitted for left and right foot. Every man in the quarters had envied those leather brogans and compared the size of his foot with theirs.

Rio had waited for an opportune time to carry through his plan. His patience served him well, for revenge that struck at the moment of insult laid bare the offender. Rio took his time.

With Goodwyn moving furniture from Westfall to the village, the days were hectic compared to usual. Even traffic on the public road increased as other lowland plantation owners hauled into the village. Rio’s days of waiting had dwindled to minutes as he watched for the candles to go out. Much of what he did to keep his sanity was enabled by darkness.

In the other cot lay Joe, who shared his cabin. A moth flew from under Joe’s bed, which the negros considered a bad sign, but Rio ignored it. Put some of this on your mouth. Rio laid a vial of liniment on the cot beside Joe. Mamba says it’ll cure that fever blister.

Joe made no response, kept on mumbling to Fanny, his woman in Virginia. In spite of Joe’s seemingly unintelligible sounds and unsociable behavior, he and Rio weren’t poles apart. Unlike some slaves who acted as if there was dignity in being submissive, they were men who saw dignity in lies and betrayal when dealing with whites.

Rio finished eating, sharpened his knife, and added pulverized red pepper to the sackcovers he had ready to wear over his brogans. No dog stuck its nose into tracks laced with pepper, which provided Rio protection from being hunted down.

After Flurry stuck her head in his door and passed on, making her nightly count of the slaves, Rio crept from his cabin, slipped the pepper covers over his brogans and tied them securely.

He climbed over the split rail fence and walked through the weeds and grass of the pasture. Because he had the vision of a cat, he was able to see in virtual darkness. Though the wind made no sound nor did the sky, he heard, as if from a great distance, his father, not the breathless gasps of his dying but a voice he knew from childhood. Don’t be afeard yet. It’s not at its worst, came to him as a whisper. Rio had heard these words as a shirttail boy. Whatever the circumstance, according to his father, it had never been at its worst. He took the voice as his father’s spiritual approval for what he was doing.

He crouched and stealthily advanced until he detected numerous dark humps ahead. He approached a beef and with a swift blow to the head and slash of his knife, dispatched it.

The smell of fresh blood commingled with a different scent, and he shimmied up a nearby tree. A shade, what looked like a ghostly amazon, approached. What you doing here? Rio whispered.

I come to help you, said Joe. The rest of the beefs had begun to stir and come to their feet.

A beef had been slaughtered and it was too late to save Joe, whose bare feet had scented the ground from their cabin to the dead beef Rio had just killed. Tilmon’s negro-hunting dogs never failed to catch a person once they got hold of the scent.

Even if Joe took to the woods and ran for his life, the dogs would run faster. Nonetheless, Rio tried to get him to leave. What he didn’t realize was that Joe’s hatred of Tilmon was as great as his. There was no turning back the man who had lost everything he loved—his family, his job, his self respect.

Rio hesitated only long enough to realize their fate was determined, whether or not he continued. There was no way to undo what had already been done. He swung the iron rod into another beef’s head.

Joe grabbed the knife. This one’s for Fanny, he said after slicing the throat. As they progressed from one beef to another, he said, This one’s for Jany…for Tyra… Over and over, Joe named his wife, his sons, his unborn child. Rio began to mutter as he hammered an iron rod into a beef’s head, This is for Kedzie…

Rio had concocted ways of telling Kedzie about the beefs. He wanted her approbation. In spite of all that had happened, he saw the looming end of their relationship as far worse than the disgrace of her conduct with Tilmon. He hoped to end their falling-out and get back together.

When the two men had slaughtered as many animals as they found, Rio stomped his feet where Joe had tracked, spreading as much peppery powder as possible.

As he left, the moonlight shone on the beef carcasses littering the pasture. Rio would look on fields littered with corpses again, but they would be those of white soldiers. The Union Army would put a shovel into his hand instead of the gun he wanted, but the shovel would change his life. On day-old battlefields, in the presence of a great number of lifeless bodies, he would see a vengeance to surpass anything he had wished on the white man.

Rio stole to the creek where he had stashed a clean shirt and trousers, followed by Joe, who waded in the shallow water, splashed himself, and then headed back to their cabin. Rio undressed and washed himself and his clothes. Behind a cypress root growing over the river’s brink, he secured his knife out of sight. With dry clothes on, he put on his brogans and covered them once again with sacks of pepper.

Upon returning to his cabin, Rio hid the wet clothes in the cavity he had dug under his makeshift stoop, a plank of floorboards. Joe’s wet blood-stained overalls were on the floor. He threw them into the fireplace, doused them with whale oil, and set them afire. As he fell asleep in his cot, his dream of Kedzie was so real he could hear the fine simplicity of her speech. He carried on a conversation with her in which they considered ways to get her out of the big house.

Mooey, a runaway from Westfall who prowled the woods at night, had been lolling about in the top of a live oak with limbs too thick for her thin arms to reach around. The tree posed no climbing challenge, for Mooey’s long fingers capably grasped seemingly smooth bark. From the branches, tangled hairs of Spanish moss floated in a breeze that brought with it the stink of blood. Though Mooey was for all practical purposes deaf and mute, her senses of touch, smell, and sight were superior to that of most people. Her keen eyesight spotted the shadows in the pasture. She saw Tilmon’s beefs rustle to wakefulness as a shade moved toward them. She saw the animals stumble to the pasture floor, one after another.

Of the two shadowy men moving among the beefs, one’s posture and manner of movement reminded her of Rio, who always walked with purpose in his tread. She trusted Rio. The previous March when Reverend Robert Chaffee attempted to return her to Westfall, she had slipped away from him only to find herself adrift in the woods without food or shelter. It had been her good fortune that Rio discovered her sleeping in the pasture. Of all the slaves on Westfall, he was least likely to expose her. Rio kept many secrets and he kept them well.

Whether the shadowy persons in the pasture were strangers or friends, Mooey