Hammer Come Down

By Kae Cheatham

Many pieces of fiction have presented various views of slavery-to-freedom. The majority are set in the era after the Civil War and rarely tell about people of color on the early frontier. Mountain men, businessmen, wagon guides, and more trekked west in the early 19th century. Many of these people were not slaves, and their contribution, from Jim Beckwourth (trapper and guide and discoverer of Beckwourth Pass, California) to George Bush (a pioneer in the Pacific Northwest where a section of Puget Sound still bears his name) are integral parts of American history.

Told in first person, Hammer Comes Down: Memoirs of a Freedman depicts the atypical life of Jason (born in the 1820), manservant to Tolin Cobb, heir to an Alabama plantation. Jason grows up knowing well the restraint demanded of a black man, yet always dreams of freedom. The 1836 Creek Indian war changes the lives of the two young men when the plantation is destroyed. Devastated by the loss of family and friends, Jason, is taken West with his master. There Jason survives various adventures at Fort Laramie, Independence, Missouri, and in Indian Territory. Each shows him different levels of Freedom, and he finds more than he ever imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kae Cheatham
• Release date: Mar 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370181889

Kae Cheatham

Kae Cheatham (a.k.a. K. Follis Cheatham) has published more than a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction. Her juveniles' biography, of American Indian activist Dennis Banks, was a SPUR Award Finalist. Poetry and articles have appeared in many national publications. She has edited for publishing houses and magazines, and worked as a writer/photographer stringer for a rodeo magazine. Kae has several fiction titles about the American West with emphasis on ethnic minorities.These historically-accurate stories have also given her a basis for world building in her social Science Fiction titles. Her freelance editing and book production has helped produce a decant of recent titles for several authors. She lives and works in Helena, Montana.

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Hammer Come Down

© 2012 Kae Cheatham

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

KAIOS Books

P O Box 442

Helena, Montana USA

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental. Portions of this book are derived from the YA novel Bring Home The Ghost © K Cheatham, 1980, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Book layout and cover design by Get It Together Productions

Dedicated with love to Nisah and Onika, my wonderful children, who have always been supportive of my endeavors.

Contents

PROLOGUE

Part 1 - CHANGE

Part 2 – NEW PERCEPTIONS

Part 3 – EMANCIPATION

Part 4 – FULFILLMENT

EPILOGUE

Author’s Notes

History

About the Author

More Titles by Kae Cheatham

Prologue

I know exactly when I got tossed into a whole new life: on a rainy night, standing in the stable on the Cobb place. It was there that Tolin Cobb asked me the Freedom question, and I can pluck that moment up from my thoughts like it was yesterday. Jason! What would you do if you were free? he asked me. If you were free and had no ties or bonds. You could do anything! What would you do?

Sometimes I wonder how things would have gone if I had stared into my shoes and mumbled something stupid. I’d been taught to do that. Had it drummed into me over and over since I was little. But with Tolin, my bobbing and grinning just seemed to get him riled; that was why some of those slave restraints weren’t as tight on me. Not saying I was some free-talking, impudent nigger. No, no. I was cautious. Plenty cautious. But there had been times when I glimpsed another way of doing things, which kept me wondering and looking and hoping.

Certain events had set up for that night; set me up for what was to come. One time was when Tolin’s mama died. He was three months into thirteen; I was midway eleven years. He had made the long ride to fetch the doctor for his ma, but by the time he got back, Miz Nancy Cobb, had passed from us. Mistuh Willis Cobb was crying. Most of us bondsmen, too, even some of the menfolk, and naturally so, since anybody over fourteen had been brought to that Alabama land with the Cobbs, the rest of us was born there; and Miz Nancy Cobb had set a firm rule that nobody was to be sold—not for any reason. Mistuh Cobb, hard as he seemed, held to that. Anyway, we all grieved for the loss of that kind lady, and worried that now that Miz Nancy wasn’t around would we still get protected from usual slave problems. It wasn’t ’til late evening anybody noticed Tolin wasn’t around.

Tolin! Mistuh Cobb’s voice had sounded like a cannon shot, and he asked me where his son was. I only shook my head and hoped I wouldn’t get the blame for his being gone. You find him, boy, Mistuh Cobb ordered me. You find Tolin and bring him home!

Yessuh. I took off right quick, knowing my duty. I was, after all, Mistuh Tolin’s boy, the one always to be on hand and do for him, the way Jake was for Mistuh Cobb. So I hustled hard down toward the gristmill where Tolin would have me fish with him in the fall. We always did boy things like fishing and tracking game and trying to spear frogs. I also listened to him grumble about his pa’s demands and fuss that there wasn’t a proper school for him to go to; or he’d talk on and on about his dreams of being a teacher and doing scholarly stuff. He’d been trying to get me to tell him things about me—personal things—but I’d been warned not to get too friendly, no matter how he seemed.

Mistuh Tolin! I called. Your pa wants you home. Mistuh Tolin! I knew he didn’t like to cross his pa. But his ma had held his heart, and I knew Miz Nancy’s dying had hurt him bad.

Well, I found him straightaway, right where we had been when he last had me go out with him. Your pa’s worrying for you, Mistuh Tolin. I puffed to a stop and looked around, shocked by what I saw. He had taken an axe and felled the little trees and girdled the big ones, and he stood there with that axe in his hand, staring at me such that I wasn’t sure if I’d be the next thing whacked.

Jason. His voice was a gritty whisper and he let go the axe. Then he slumped to the ground with sobs that nearly shook the earth. She’s dead, Jason. My mama’s dead.

His pain seemed to fill up the whole little glen, and it rolled into me, reminding me of two years back when my mama had died. I sat down beside him and when his tears was gone, we talked. Not regular master/slave talk, with him making statements and me agreeing; we really talked. Talked about our mamas and how good they’d been. We both told what in this world we liked and didn’t like, and we talked about the times when little joys was with us and no one would listen....

Another landmark: that next harvest time when Tolin went against his pa and Jake and all convention, and gave me some schooling. It was after an argument with his pa. Tolin wanted to set us all free and hire us for wages. It’s not right owning people! he had declared.

You’re sounding more like your mother every day, Tolin. I loved her dearly, but she never understood economics, Mistuh Cobb said.

Tolin stomped out of the stable, grabbed my arm, and tromped us up the hill to the woods behind the graveyard, arguing about his pa all the way. He showed me this newspaper he had got hold of on a trip to Huntsville. The Appeal, he said it was, and then got furious because I couldn’t read it. When his rage calmed, he said, I’m always talking about being a teacher. I might as well start right now.

And he did. He made me read most of the things his ma had taught him. One I really liked was Jason and the Golden Fleece. Mistuh Tolin started me out on that so I’d know right off how to read and print my name. Parts of that story I still know by heart: ...and Jason reliant on God, threw down his saffron mantle and stepped to work. Flame by craft of strange witch maiden, harmed him not...

Not only was the character named Jason, but that part about flames reckoned to me, too. In the cane fire the summer of 1827, while pulling Mistuh Tolin to safety after his horse threw him, I got burned bad. I still have the scars and was abed for a long while from that. Miz Nancy Cobb had even wanted to set me free for saving her boy (manumit was the word she used; I never forgot that once Mattie told me what it meant), but Mistuh Cobb would have none of it. He didn’t see me a nine-year-old; he saw me full grown and working twice as hard. But he did take me out of the fields and named me Mistuh Tolin’s boy-servant. I was given over to Jake to learn the blacksmith trade. More fire there.

Anyway, before I was twelve, I could read and form my letters, and do sums. I didn’t tell a soul, though. Readin’ is a fool’s dream, Jake had declared after a secret visit from a black preacher who wanted to teach Bible reading. And readin’ niggers don’t stay with any one masta too long. Jake was Mistuh Cobb’s manservant who had served Mistuh Cobb’s daddy before him, carrying powder and shot at the battle of King’s Mountain during the war. The oldest on the place, Jake was daddy of Seth and Skalley, who was like a mama to me. So I knew how Jake would have felt about my new skill.

But Tolin only got mad if I didn’t seem interested, and he brought books and magazines from town for the times when we’d go away from the farm and could do what we wanted. He knew I especially like the magazines that told about the Great American Desert, or had tales of men trapping beaver and trekking through mountains and snow.

All that was after the cane fire, or maybe because of the cane fire, after I got moved into the cabin by the stable with Jake and his woman, Bitty, where I could look out onto the big frame house on its rock foundation where the Cobbs lived. My pa had built that house, and although I never knew him, he was another tiny break that kept slavery from binding me tight.

My ma loved the Taits’ Marcus something fierce! Ma had been brought from North Carolina with the others especially to be mate for Bitty’s oldest boy, Geminie. But Geminie got killed in ’14 in the first Creek War. Geminie got killed and so did August and Tante. So Ma was unclaimed—’til Marcus showed up. After his owners sold him off to Mississippi, she wouldn’t take up with no other man. Nearly got sold off herself because of that. Miz Nancy Cobb saved her, though. Well my pa, along with being one of the best carpenters around, had some real different ideas about things. While he was building the Cobb house and making my ma real happy, he also set seeds that was to sprout in ways no one could know. He taught my ma how to say Mistuh, and not Massa. Taught her how to say it so it didn’t sound disrespectful, and she taught me. And he made my ma promise to get me to hold my head up. He told her that a man’s eyes should be looking out, not down, otherwise he’d always be walking in circles.

I sometimes wonder who or what got my pa thinking different to be like he was and pass that little bit on to me. I wonder if he ever got his Freedom. As I was to learn, Freedom was more than not being scared of a whip, or having to do some white man’s bidding. You could have it legal and not be free at all. There are lots of folks that way, black and white.

But back to when Tolin asked me the Freedom question. I’d have to say the lead up started in winter of 1836....

Part 1 – CHANGE

Jason! Jason! Mistuh Tolin came riding up in a rush a bit after midday. It was late January, and warm, with crocuses already pushing purple and yellow heads through the dead oak leaves in the flower beds by the house. We’re going to Florida! he announced as he reined up his sorrel gelding. I enlisted in the militia."

I sighed heavy and pressed the swage on the red-hot iron while I twisted the round bit.

Well, suh, Jake said from where he sat by the door cleaning tack. I don’t want to be around when Massa Cobb hears this.

Mistuh Tolin had been hinting at joining the Florida fighting since late November when the first news came about the war. The talk set Mistuh Cobb hot mad ’cuz he wanted Mistuh Tolin with him at the farm. You always brag up to me what a fighter Aaron was, Mistuh Tolin had hollered once. Aaron would have been Mistuh Tolin’s older brother, excepting that he got killed back in ’14 only one month after the Cobbs settled in Alabama. And that next spring, when Tolin was just a babe in arms, he had an eight-year-old sister die of fever; so he was Mistuh Cobb’s only child. Thought you’d be glad to see me taking a stand, he went on. Mistuh Cobb had frowned and said, The fighting that killed Aaron was for our land. Our home. Something you don’t seem to take much pride in.

Your pa ain’t gonna like it, Mistuh Tolin, I agreed with Jake.

It doesn’t matter, he said with a harsh laugh. I turned twenty-one last week and I’ll be damned if I’m going to rot here any longer, tending his confounded cotton so he can go into debt with horses!

Mistuh Cobb had backed clean out of farm work after Miz Cobb died. Before that, he’d always been out there in the fields getting sweaty and dirt tired like everyone else: hauling a sledge or driving a mule in front of the harrow. But after Miz Nancy died, he left it up to Mistuh Tolin, and him just thirteen. He left all the planting matters, all the cotton selling, all the care for us Negroes up to Mistuh Tolin. But it was Seth, Jake and Bitty’s last son and the head field hand, who really managed the place; Mistuh Tolin knew that even if Mistuh Cobb didn’t.

You should be takin’ a wife, Massa Tolin, Jake advised. Your daddy’s gettin’ old. Needs to see some grandbabies.

Hush, Jake. You might be able to talk around my pa, but it won’t work with me. We’re going, Jason. We have to be in Tampa by mid-March. Mistuh Tolin dropped the reins over the rail and walked away in a huff.

Jake shook his head and led the sorrel for currying. I kept pressing and twirling iron.

I did all the blacksmithing now. I was nineteen. Jake was in his sixties. Maybe older. Only thing he remembered for sure was that he was nearly grown the year Crispus Atticus went down under British fire. Crispus Atticus had been memorable news to all the menservants who carried powder and shot in the Revolution.

I don’t know as Mistuh Cobb’s gonna let me be goin’ to Florida, I said to Jake. He’s countin’ on money from my forge work. Mistuh Cobb had kept me tight on the farm for nigh onto three years, frowning even when it was revival-meeting time. It wasn’t just my work for the farm, but he hired out my skill to earn him extra money for better livestock feed. He had himself a good string of race horses; I used to jockey for him ’til I got too big.

He’s got no choice in it, Jake said quietly. I looked to him to continue. You’re Massa Tolin’s man, not his. Papers was transferred when you was young, after that cane fire.

What about those threats you used to give Mistuh Tolin about his pa sellin’ me off?

Oh, that was real enough for a while. Massa Cobb had rights to do that ’til little massa come of age.

I studied the nose of the auger I’d just finished, plunged it in a bucket of water to cool, and started worrying. I couldn’t see why Mistuh Tolin should go down to Florida to fight the Seminole Indians, but he had been mighty restless of late. Maybe Jake was right. Mistuh Tolin needed a wife.

I was thinking woman myself. Not about one of the girls I’d meet at the revivals who’d be dressed out in their best calico prints and eyeing up the men. Used to be I would get one of them off into the shadows and she’d let me put my hands in warm places that weren’t to be talked about. But now it was different.

Most folks had figured that me and Carrie would settle in together. Carrie, Bill and Judith’s oldest, was just three years younger than me. But for the past few months I’d been noticing Louisa a lot more. Louisa was the only slave that wasn’t part of a family that come with the Cobbs from North Carolina. I remember when she showed up, twelve years old, getting towed along by Mistuh Cobb with some new horses. Mistuh Cobb had traded one of his brood mares and seventy-five dollars to a Georgia man to get them all. Mistuh Tolin started to rage.

All right! his pa had roared. I know I said no more livestock, but they’re good stock, and... He scratched his jaw and looked at the raggedy girl. That man meant no good for this child. Look at her.

We weren’t gong to buy any more horses, and definitely no more people!

What would you have me do? See her die from disease, or sold for concubinage? I know you think I’m hard, Son, but I can’t stand to see any living thing abused.

Mistuh Tolin didn’t say any more. But folks talked plenty down in the quarters.

That child’s had it rough, Mattie said that night after she had cleaned the girl up. Louisa was asleep in Mattie’s and Horace’s cabin while Mattie told what she’d learned. Her mother’s some poor white up Bowdon way, and this girl been shifted around all her life. Give to a slaver when she was five, she remember.

She’s high-toned, Bitty said like a warning. She’d probably be better off down in the cities where there’s a place for them types.

She’s mulatto, just half white. Got to be octoroon to dance at the rich folks’ balls, Mattie said. Don’t know why you’d want to wish that kind of whorin’ life on her anyway.

She’s light enough to be octoroon, Bitty kept on.

But by ’36, didn’t nobody talk Louisa down. At fifteen she worked hard in the fields, never expecting special treatment just because she was light skinned. And she had rounded out nice like a woman. Her lips invited closeness. She knew how to wrap her head in bright cloths so that it made her large dark eyes seem even bigger. When I thought about Louisa it was different from how a girl had ever made me feel. I didn’t want to just lay with her in the dark; I wanted to be with her all the time. Maybe Mistuh Tolin needed a special woman to make him feel that way.

Jason, look at this, Mistuh Tolin said that evening. He’d come up to my room that was over one end of the stable where I’d been living since I turned sixteen. He held a paper out to me. Militia Meets Battle, the headline read.

It’s going to be good. It’s going to be exciting! For once I’ll feel like I’m doing something worthwhile. Mistuh Tolin strode around the room while I read the account of a skirmish with the Seminoles on the Halifax River. Four men in the militia got killed.

I read another article while Mistuh Tolin talked about important decisions and giving hisself over to a cause. This other article was about the Indian-Negroes—Negroes who lived and fought with the Seminoles. The article claimed they were the hardest, meanest fighters ever, and it was the duty of every American to take up arms and put down this rebellion before it spread to the plantations and started riots among the slaves. I wondered what it would be like to live with the Indians. I thought about things I had read in stuff Mistuh Tolin brought me on occasion, about teepees and hunting buffalo and horrible tortures for enemies. I knew the Seminole weren’t like those wild tribes out west, but more like the Creek Indians that owned stores and grew crops here in Alabama. Some of them had slaves, too. Maybe these Negroes down there were just Seminole slaves, fighting for their masters, like Jake and his boys did back in ’14 for the Cobbs.

Maybe you should get yourself a wife, suh. I hear that can be plenty excitin’. I shoved my shirttail in my pants and hoped he would leave soon so I could go down to the quarters.

You’re beginning to sound like Jake. That’s a sure sign we need to get away. I stayed silent, and he frowned at me. You want me to leave you alone, don’t you?

I gave him back the newspaper, not daring to say my thoughts. I hoped Louisa wouldn’t get busy doing something and not have time for me this evening.

He slapped the newspaper against his trousers as he walked around my tiny room. Marvena Caulborne, he stated suddenly. I’ll marry Marvena first thing when we get back from Florida. Does that make you happy? He stalked out the door and down the steps. Go on and find that Louisa girl, he called back. I won’t bother you anymore.

Marvena Caulborne? I wondered as I pulled my galluses onto my shoulders. That sounded lots of ways like a mismatch. Planter Nathan Caulborne was the closest neighbor to the Cobbs, and while Cobbs were barely getting by, word was Planter Caulborne shipped more than two hundred bales of cotton each year. He had a lot more land than Mistuh Cobb, and along with the cotton plantation, he had a big farm and house in Union Springs.

I first saw his plantation when I was twelve and riding race horses for Mistuh Cobb. A big two-story house with wide porch. House servants, yard servants, stable servants. None of them had anything at all to do with the field hands. White folks envied that plantation a lot, but us in the Cobb quarters didn’t think much of it. We were regular family groups at Cobbs, with everybody knowing and loving and holding onto everybody for the long term. Like a clan or a tribe, with even Mattie and Horace, who took care of the Cobb house and grounds, having their own little place and patch of garden.

Caulborne had a whip-carrying overseer to work his thirty-five male field hands. The quarters for those bondsmen and their families were wooden barracks with dirt floors, not sturdy decent cabins with laid-in floors like we had. That’s how come his place got hit bad by the whooping cough in the winter of ’32. He lost eight slave children and two adults that year. His crops came in good, and that was all he seemed to care about. Our Margaret died that year, and her newborn. Skalley took care of the three other children, along with her own two, just like she took care of me when my mama died. Skalley couldn’t speak none at all, but she had a special way about her.

I blew out the lamp and went down the steps to go to the quarters. My shirt fit tight since it was really too small. I had been wearing Mistuh Tolin’s hand-me-downs for most of my years, and I’d caught up to him in growth. Both of us were nearly six feet tall, but I had broadened out from my smith work. I asked in the quarters once if my pa was tall and broad. Skalley, who’d been dumb all her life, smiled and nodded he was. Bitty told me I looked just like him, strong-jawed and handsome, she said. I’m not too sure about that handsome part; I think my nose sticks out too far and my chin’s a bit long.

What Massa Tolin want wid you, anyway? asked a soft voice. Louisa was leaning on the side of the stable, her eyes bright even though her face held a slight frown.

Come on over here, girl. You spyin’ on me? I put my arm around her and we started for the quarters. She was warm and smelled like springtime. I slipped my hand under her shawl and pulled her closer.

I’s just waitin’ for you. Saw him runnin’ up the steps. He have another yellin’ session with his pa?

What makes you say that?

Anytime him and his daddy argues, or if somethin’ goes wrong for him, he’s always off to find Jason. Where’s Jason, Massa Tolin always want to know.

I slowed us near a thick stand of oak and backed her into the trunk of one. What you got against Mistuh Tolin that you’re talkin’ about him that way? I pulled the cloth wrapping off her hair and touched the softness. Smooth brown hair, like white folks, with just a little bit of wave.

I don’t got nothin’ against him, ’ceptin’ he’s always takin’ you off. I kissed her lips. She smiled and, standing on tiptoes, kissed me back, her arms around my neck.

I felt like I’d drunk too much mead and I drew a long breath.

You didn’t tell me what he wanted this time, she kept on.

Oh. He was telling me more about Florida.

Florida! What’s that?

A state—a place, like here, but... I couldn’t really explain, and what I could say might give away how much learning I really had. He’s takin’ me with him down there in March when he goes to fight the Seminoles.

So he think, but I bet Massa Cobb put a quick fix on that.

Mistuh Cobb don’t have no say in it. And I felt a pint of irritation that I didn’t have any say, either. Louisa went real quiet and leaned into my shoulder. What? I asked.

I don’t like it. She shook her head. I heared about that war, and talk is it’s got white folks lookin’ crosswise at all the slave people around here. It’ll be worser down there.

I kissed her neck, wanting to ignore the truth of her words. She pushed me back. I bet if you told him you didn’t want to go, he’d change his mind. Massa Tolin wouldn’t go nowhere if he had to go alone.

I got no right tellin’ him something’ like that. I backed from her, trying to bury my worries. Besides. I ain’t never been to Florida.

How long am I gonna have to stay here sayin’ strong prayers? she asked, her voice low.

Dunno. A few months.

A few months. Lord, I hate it when you go off.

I reached for her again; she let me pull her close and kiss her tan face. Her arms gripped me around the neck something fierce and her lips found my mouth. She kissed me hard, then soft and filled with so much loving I thought I was going to melt. Her body and mine seemed to fit together and I wished it was black dark and we were in a lonely place. I finally got my wits and tried to laugh a bit, startled by the wild feelings she set off in me. Hey, I ain’t goin’ tomorrow, Louisa. We got a couple of months.

She framed my face with her callused hands and nodded. Yeah. A couple of months.

We started on to the quarters, her worry latching onto mine and making a big lump of concern deep in my gut. Mistuh Tolin’s talkin’ about marryin’ Miz Marvena when he gets back, I said, hoping to cut into her brooding. So maybe he’ll be quick about this war stuff.

Yeah. I heard her draw a shaky breath. Well, when you gets back, I think that be time for me to move my stuff up to your room.

My heart jumped funny and I squeezed her