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Bob wrenches a foot clear of the mud, plants it on a rock, and uses this as a foundation on which to pull the opposite one free. He risks a glance back at the abandoned boots. “Do the bloody plans call for a pair o’boots there?”
“They call for a shrubbery!” a
“What would the Vicar of Blenheim know about planting-season?”
“As much as I know about being a vicar.”
“And that is as much as I know about being a country gentleman,” says the Duke of Marlborough, gazing fretfully across a half-mile of mud and stumps at the still-building pile of Blenheim. “But we must all adapt-we must all learn. Except for Abigail, who is already perfect.” Abigail gives him a skeptical look and a cup of chocolate. Bob squelches another step closer. The gaze of (formerly) Colonel, (and now) the Reverend Barnes strays back to the great map, which looks ever so fanciful when contrasted against the gloomy reality outside. His eye wanders across the orderly geometry of the plan until it fixes upon a wee Chapel and a nearby Vicarage.
Marlborough says, “We shall mount a last Campaign from this tent, and pick off the vermin who are drawn hither by the intoxicating fragrance of Bob’s boots. Bob shall study how to look after plants, Barnes shall learn how to look after souls, I shall learn how to be idle, and Abigail shall look after all of us.”
“It sounds as if it ought to work,” says Bob, “so long as my brother does not show up.”
“He is dead,” Marlborough avers. “But if he shows up, we’ll shoot him. And if he recovers, we’ll pack him off to Carolina, where he may work alongside his offspring. For I am told that you are not the only Shaftoe, Bob, to have turned over a new leaf, and become a tiller of the soil.”
Bob has finally reached the tent’s threshold. “It is a strange fate indeed,” he mutters, “but only fitting.”
“Why fitting?”
“Jack, Jimmy, and Da
“If you are going to make such jests,” says Barnes, “you are welcome to stay out in the rain.”
Carolina
“I SPIED ’EM AGAIN this morning, Tomba! The weather cleared, just after sunup, and I looked to the West and saw ’em, all lit up by the red sun shining in off the sea. A line of hills, or mountains if you please. Laid out, waiting for us, like baked apples in a pan.”
Tomba is lying face down on the sack of desiccated pine-branches that answers to the name of bed here, in the indentured servants’ quarters of Mr. Ickham’s Plantation. Not for the first time in his life, his back is striped with long whip-cuts. Jimmy Shaftoe hauls a sopping mass of rags out of a bucket, wrings it out, and lays it on Tomba’s raw flesh. Tomba opens his mouth to scream, but makes no sound. Da
“Game,” says Tomba, “and Indians.”
“Tomba, look at the state you’re in, and tell me Indians are worse than the Overseer.”
“Nothing’s worse than him,” Tomba admits. “But I’m in no condition to run cross-country for seven days.”
“Then we wait until those stripes are healed. Then we do it-”
“Boys, you do not understand. There will always be something. The Overseer knows how to keep men downtrodden. Especially black men. I didn’t understand that, when I came here. It’s different, the way he treats me. Look at my back, and tell me it isn’t so.”
Lines of fire run in parallel courses across the walls of the shack where the sun glares between unchinked wall-planks. A pig roots outside, undermining the corner of their dwelling, but they can’t shoo it away or eat it because it is the Overseer’s pride and joy. They can hear him now, bellowing in the distance. “Jimmy? Da
“Lookin’ after our mate you just beat half to death, you bastard,” mutters Jimmy.
“I want to see red necks on the lot of you,” says Tomba, repeating the Overseer’s favorite aphorism. “Tomorrow, red necks all around, save for this Blackamoor-there’s only one way to give him a red neck and that’s with the lash.” Tomba gets his hands underneath him, and pushes himself up on to all fours, then hangs his head low and lets his dreadlocks sweep the floor, he’s so woozy.
“Jimmy? Da
“You’re right,” says Tomba, “he means to kill me today. It is time to unpack.”
“Then unpack we shall,” says Da
He bends down and seizes the hay-bag that served him for a bed, and rips it open from one end to the other. Out tumbles an elongated bundle. Jimmy snatches it and tears away several rope ties. The two Shaftoes work together to unroll the bundle, Da
“You’re a damned liar!” bellows the Overseer, and hammers the door open with the butt of his whip-handle. He stops, framed in the entrance, unable to see into the darkness of the shed. He can hear, though, the unexpected sounds of two gently curved blades-a longer one and a shorter one-being whisked from their scabbards. Perhaps he even glimpses the unaccustomed sight of Carolina sunlight gleaming from watered steel.
“Don’t tell us,” says Da
“What-get back to work, you lazy bastards! Or I’ll give you more of what Tomba got!” The Overseer steps into the shed, and raises his whip; but before he can bring it down, steel skirls past his ear, and the amputated lash drops to the dirt floor at his feet. Tomba staggers outside and closes the shed door behind himself. He squints about at several acres of mud, which he knows to be red in color, though it looks gray to him because his vision has gone black and white. A big white house stands at one end. Indentured servants toil with mattocks and shovels. Behind him, the Overseer has become uncharacteristically silent. Perhaps his eyes have adjusted to the point where he can see he’s locked in a confined space with a pair of enraged Samurai.
“There’s more’n one way to make a red neck,” Da
Jimmy and Da
“Let’s head for the hills, boys.”