Liberating Atlantis

Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Fancy talk, but fancy talk with a point sharp as a carving knife's. Now that horrible horn brayed for Frederick, and for Helen.

"We got to get up," she said.

"I don't want to," he mumbled. Now that his back was finally letting him sleep, he wanted to make up for all the time he'd spent awake because he'd hurt too much to shut down.

"We got to get up," Helen repeated. "You want Matthew to reckon you're a lazy nigger after all?"

Frederick groaned. He groaned again when he sat up on the edge of the miserable cot. His stripes were better than they had been when he first got them, but they were still plenty sore. He didn't want to put on the shirt Matthew had given him. But what he wanted counted for nothing in the plantation's scheme of things.

Helen wore a wool skirt, a cotton blouse, and a red banda

They ate cornmeal mush and drank coffee that Helen hastily made. Then they went outside. All the cabins were rapidly emptying. Whoever came out last got in trouble. Frederick had heard that a hundred times. Up till now, it had never mattered to him. It did today. He didn't want the overseer screaming at him, not when he was sore and slow and didn't know what he was doing.

Copperskins and Negroes-men and women-lined up in loose ranks. Seeing their ragged formation, an Atlantean drill sergeant would have wanted to kill them all, or possibly himself. But Matthew didn't complain about that. Slaves weren't supposed to look or act military. If they thought they could fight, that would make them more dangerous to their owners.

A copperski

The copperskins hung their heads. Frederick muttered to himself. If the last slaves out had been Negroes, chances were Matthew would have called them savages and asked them if they'd spent the time in their cabin putting on war paint. Something like that, anyhow. Whites played blacks and copperskins off against each other whenever they could. If you didn't trust the slave working next to you, you were less likely to plan together and rise up, more likely to betray each other before your plot ripened into revolt.

"Well, you're here at last." Matthew still sounded as if he hated every last one of them. Frederick wouldn't have been surprised if he did. Overseers might have godlike powers over slaves, but they weren't much in the white man's world. Planters were what mattered there. What woman from a good family would want to marry an overseer? Had Matthew owned slaves of his own… But he didn't, and he wasn't likely to. He pointed towards a shed. "Come on, God damn the lot of you. Grab your tools and get to work."

With rakes and spades and hoes over their shoulder, they looked something like an army as they trudged out to the cotton fields. Again, though, a drill sergeant would have contemplated murder or suicide. No one tried to stay in step with his neighbors or to hurry. If the slaves had moved any slower, Matthew would have shouted at them-or else whacked them with the long, firm switch he carried in his right hand.

They knew, all of them but Frederick and Helen, how much they could get away with. The two new field hands had to pick it up by watching and listening. One of the first things Frederick noticed was how heavy and clumsy his hoe was. All the tools were like that. Even so, Henry Barford complained about how often they got broken. Frederick hadn't understood that before. He suddenly did. Why should a slave care how he handled tools that belonged to his master? Make those tools extra sturdy helped, but only so much.

The overseer pointed Frederick down a row of cotton plants. "You make God-damned sure you get rid of the weeds, hear?" he said. "But don't you dare hurt the plants any. I'm go

"Reckoned you would," Frederick said. He bent and assassinated something small and green pushing up through the dirt near the closest cotton plant. His breath hissed out of him as if he were a snake. Moving hurt like blazes. And the heavy iron head on the hoe made it clumsy to swing.

Other slaves advanced up rows to either side of him. To his amazement, he had no trouble keeping up. They weren't getting over a whipping. Why couldn't they move faster? Again, the question was no sooner asked than answered. Why should they? It wasn't as if they'd get anything for themselves if they did more work.

When Matthew was shouting down at the far end of the slave gang, the Negro in the row to Frederick's left paused for a moment and told him, "You don't got to stay even with us, man. He see you workin' like that after a whippin', what's he go

Frederick duly slowed down. If a few weeds got missed, well, how much would that matter in the grand scheme of things? Not enough to get excited about.

He might have slowed down, but he couldn't stop. Thwock! Matthew's switch came down on a copperskin's back. "Damn your miserable, shriveled-up honker turd of a soul to hell and gone, Bill, but you got to do somethin'!" the overseer shouted. "You stand there with your thumb corkin' your asshole, you reckon I ain't go

Bill didn't say anything. All the same, Frederick wouldn't have wanted any man looking at him like that. If Matthew noticed, he affected not to. In his own way, he had nerve. Slowly, the copperskin got back to work.

Sweat ran down Frederick's face. It also ran from the backs of his hands to his palms, and stung the blisters that had swollen and burst there. And it stung the lash tracks on his back; his shirt didn't soak it all up. His shoulders and arms started to ache from the continued unfamiliar motion of swinging the hoe.

A copperski

"Lord, do I ever!" the Negro exclaimed.

The boy filled the cup with the dipper. How many other mouths had drunk from that gourd? When was the last time anyone washed it? Frederick wondered about such things… afterwards. In the moment, he cared about nothing but the lukewarm water sliding sweetly down his throat. He didn't want to hand back the cup; he thought he could have emptied the jug. But the half-grown copperskin had other people to water. He wouldn't want to go back to the well and fill up the jug again too soon. Reluctantly, Frederick returned the gourd.

"Water?" the boy asked the slave in the next row, the one who'd warned Frederick not to push too hard. The slave made a production out of pausing to drink. Not even Matthew could possibly doubt that he deserved his moment of rest. So his ma

A couple of pregnant women carried food out to the work gang when the sun stood at the zenith. The rolls were made from barley, which wouldn't rise like wheat. They were dense and chewy. Frederick didn't mind too much. He thought he was getting more food this way. He hadn't realized how hungry he was till he ate-and discovered that what he was getting wasn't enough to do more than take the edge off his appetite.