Liberating Atlantis

"I could go back. Mistress Clotilde ain't mad at me, 'cept 'cause I'm attached to you. Master Henry, he ain't hardly mad at me at all. Yeah, I could go back." Helen set a careful, gentle hand on Frederick's shoulder, well away from any of his welts. "Sooner stay 'longside of you, though."

Tears welled up in Frederick's eyes. Pain? Weakness? Fury? Love? All of them together, probably. Even so, he said, "You won't think that way when you got to start doing a field hand's work."

"It won't kill me," Helen answered, her voice calm. And she was likely right. A smart planter and a careful overseer didn't work field hands to death. What was the point of that? You couldn't get any more work out of them if they died, and you wouldn't be able to sell their corpses, either.

"God bless you," Frederick said.

"I love you."

"You must." Frederick didn't say what they both knew. Work in the fields might not kill a slave, but it was harder than any job in the big house. And they wouldn't be eating pretty much what the Barfords ate any more. Maize meal, barley meal, molasses, bitter greens, every once in a while some smoked sowbelly or bacon…

It was enough to keep a body going. It wasn't much more than barely enough. Over the years, slaveowners had learned exactly how little they could get away with feeding their two-legged property. You heard about fat house slaves all the time. You even saw them every so often. But Frederick would have bet all the little he owned that nobody in the history of the United States of Atlantis had ever seen a fat field hand.

"Sooner or later, they'll call you back to the big house. When they do, I'll go, too," Helen said. "Me, I bet it's sooner. Ain't none of the damnfool niggers there can do for the Barfords like you do. They'll see. They can't help but see, once they get over bein' mad with you."

Frederick hoped she was right. But hoping wasn't the same as believing. What he believed was that Clotilde Barford wanted him dead. Five lashes weren't enough to make her happy. Ten lashes wouldn't have been, either. He'd humiliated her in front of all the ladies for ten, maybe twenty, miles around. They'd seen her sit there dripping, with a scallion on her eyebrow. After that, she probably figured even killing was too good for him. Maybe she'd enjoy watching him sweat and fumble in the fields till he finally wore out. He was sure she'd enjoy it more than recalling him to the big house.

"How's your back?" Helen asked.

Worrying about Mistress Clotilde had almost let him forget his pain for a few seconds. Almost-but not quite. "Hurts," he said.

"Well, I reckon. You don't care to know what it looks like-best believe you don't," Helen said. "Want I should put on more ointment?"

"Let it go for now," he answered. The less she touched it, the less he would be reminded of it. "Maybe I can sleep."

If he could sleep, he wouldn't feel a thing… unless he started to roll over onto his back. Try as he would, though, he couldn't make his eyes stay closed. He hurt too much for that. An undyed, unbleached cotton shirt, loose enough so it wouldn't cling to the wounds on his back. An undyed pair of trousers of wool homespun. Thick wool socks, undoubtedly knitted by one of the slave women on the plantation. Stout shoes that were more than a little too big. A ratty straw hat. Put it all together, and it was the outfit a field hand wore. Matthew the overseer delivered it to Frederick, and its feminine equivalent to Helen.

"Here you go," he said. "Can't weed, can't pick cotton when the times comes, not in your boiled shirt and monkey suit. Tomorrow, you'll be out there with everybody else."

"Don't reckon I can keep up too good," Frederick said. "I'm sore, and I'm stiff like you wouldn't believe."

"Oh, yes, I would. I know what a whipping does," the overseer said. "I'll cut you some slack at first-for the whipping, and on account of you don't know what you're doing and you got soft hands like a girl's. But that's only at first, mind. You don't want me to get the notion that you're a lazy nigger. Believe you me, boy, you don't. Understand?"

Boy? Frederick was at least fifteen years older than Matthew. But slavery succeeded not least by denying that Negroes and copperskins could ever be men. Unlike his grandfather, Frederick would never be Mister. When his hair went from gray to white, he would go straight from boy to Uncle.

He still had to answer. "I'm not lazy, sir," he said, showing none of the useless, hopeless rage that stewed inside him. Matthew might get his goat, but the overseer would never realize it. Frederick went on, "If you don't believe me, you can ask Master Henry."

The overseer's eyes were gray and chilly: chillier than the weather in these parts ever got. "Master Henry can afford to be soft," Matthew said. "He's the owner, and he can do what he pleases. Me, I'm just the overseer, so I got to be rough. And I'm the fella you're dealin' with from here on out. Not Master Henry, not no more. Me. Have you got that, boy?"

"Oh, yes, sir," Frederick said at once. "I understand you real good. I'll do everything I can for you." Till I find out how much I can get away with not doing, anyhow.

"You better." Matthew nodded to himself. "Yes, sir, you better. 'Cause I got me all kinds of ways to make you sorry if you don't." He said not a word about Helen or about any of the unfortunate things that might happen to her if Frederick left him dissatisfied. He just walked out of the little slave cabin. Like any effective tyrant, he knew the people under his control could form pictures in their own minds far more fearsome than any he could paint for them.

Frederick looked down at his palms. They were paler than the rest of his skin, as any Negro's were: closer to the color his grandfather had been all over. Closer to the color Matthew was all over, too, but Frederick didn't think about that. He had some calluses on those palms-he didn't sit around the big house doing nothing. But his hands weren't as leathery as that chunk of ta

Well, maybe you'll get palms like that, too, Frederick thought gloomily. What he would get beforehand was a bumper crop of blisters. He hoped Helen had some more of the ointment she'd used on his back. His hands would need it, too. And so would hers.

Slowly, almost of their own accord, his hands folded into fists. He made them uncoil. Even here, inside the cabin, such a gesture of defiance could be dangerous. If anyone walking by saw him and told the overseer or Master Henry… No, Frederick didn't want that to happen.

"But if I ever get the chance to hit back-" He broke that off short, too, even though he hadn't said it very loud. He'd already told Helen what he'd like to do, and spoken defiance was reckoned worse than a gesture. A slave who talked defiantly could also plot defiantly. The whites feared plots above all else.

Because they feared them, they ruthlessly stamped out every one they found. And, because they were so ruthless, they spawned more plots. Maybe they didn't realize that. Maybe they did, and accepted it as part of the cost of doing business the way they wanted to. Frederick had hardly been in a position to ask.

"If I ever get me the chance-" He broke it off even shorter this time. But the thought stuck in his mind as a burr might have stuck to his trousers. And, once stuck, it would not be dislodged.

The morning horn sounded like a dying donkey. Up till now, Frederick had always heard it from the house: from a safe distance, in other words. It hadn't had anything to do with him. He'd pitied the poor, sorry field hands who had to get up and go to work under the hot sun-or, sometimes, in the pouring rain.