in the very middle of the day, something he ain’t ever hardly do no more. I’m warned of his coming before I even see him ’cause outside the slave quarter goes allover hush except for the trumpeted-up sounds of slaves attending to hard work. The repeated greeting comes out like blackstrap molasses, bitter as it is sweet, “Good afternoon, Marse Charles,” and it ripples all the way to my doorstep. But the wave of fawning gives me time to sugar up my countenance so I’m smiling like I ain’t got a thing to hide when my marse comes charging into my cabin.
He sits hisself right down in the center of my bed, says, “It’s to be war, May Belle. Do you know what that means?”
I ain’t say nothing, ain’t know what to say. I’m sweating. It’s one of them blazes-hot days that drag long, never-ending, what with tending to my work round the plantation. The sick and the soul tired, the overworked and the underfed. War, my marse is saying, and nervous sweat drips down my spine like lazy sap off a sycamore. Is he asking if I know the meaning of the word?
“Where’s that girl a’ yours?” Marse Charles looks round my little home like the cramp of it displeases him. I smile so that he keeps his eyes on me instead of picking out anything that might be amiss. But I don’t like him asking after Rue and I know I can’t answer the truth, which is that my Rue’s like as not off mischiefing with Varina, his white daughter.
“Rue ain’t here, suh,” I tell him. “I sent her to look over Homer.”
“Who?”
“Field hand what fell over in the heat yesterday.”
“He malingerin’?”
“No, suh,” I say. “Homer done fell over onto his threshin’ knife.”
Marse Charles grunts. “You teachin’ yo’ girl yo’ knowledge?”
“Sure am,” I say, and that much is the truth. Ain’t that the deal I have with my marse? He keeps my child in his ownership and I make her worth the owning. Marse Charles has far sights. Already he’s thinking when I’m dead and gone he’d like to have another healing woman trained up. I can’t fault him that, or fault Rue neither. Ain’t every woman’s daughter made from the death of the mama, somehow or another?
“War,” Marse Charles mutters.
So we back on that? I shift from foot to foot impatient to have him outta here but not fool enough to let him know it. I do not wish Rue to be witness to this visit. My child may be knowledged in healing, but she don’t know nothing of the ills of the world, and I intend to keep it that way long as I’m alive and able.
Marse Charles unbuttons his shirtsleeves at the wrists, rolls the cuffs up; he’s mad enough to near rip the good fabric.
“This bastard Lincoln, he’s took the reins and now he’s smartin’ at the loss of us Southern states,” he says. “As well he might, seein’ as we make all a’ America’s worth on our goddamned backs. Now we Southerners are seein’ our own way, son of a bitch won’t let us go free.”
Marse Charles leans his big body back. My thin mattress in its creaky wood frame shifts noisily beneath him. He works at the worn leather of his belt, struggles to reach the buckle under the paunch of his belly. When we was both of us young and his stake was new, Marse Charles was lean, strong. Ambitious. Now he’s the most prosperous landowner for miles and miles. His fields spread; his body do too.
“It’s an ungodly business, Belle. I’ve just had a letter from an associate who witnessed the siege. He’s thinkin’ on sellin’ his slaves all away. Better that, he’s sayin’, than the Northern hounds descendin’ to take his property away by brute force. Cussed coward.” Marse Charles punches his meaty fist into his empty hand. “I sure ain’t of the same mind.”
I’m glad to hear it. Every soul sold away feels to me like flayed skin ripped off the flesh. I keep my face peaceable.