The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson Read online

  A boy brought us some plates of food. It wasn’t much—bacon and biscuits, a bit of potato, all of it cold and greasy—but we were hungry, so we ate and licked the plates to get every scrap we could. After we ate, we were let off the chains to go relieve ourselves. Then we were locked together again, given one blanket each, and the lantern was taken away.

  We were not in total darkness however. Outside there were torches, and through the slats in the barn their light jumped and flickered against the walls. A strange burnt scent filled the air, and I heard wagons rattling past, and a little ways off the plodding feet of horses, and what sounded like wooden gears turning one against another.

  “What’s going on out there?” I asked.

  “Grindin’ season,” Henry answered.

  “Grinding what?”

  “Cane.”

  “How late are they going to work?”

  “Maybe all night. Maybe till midnight. Then back befo’ dawn. It won’t be over till a frost come or the last plant get cut.” Then he picked up his chain and rattled it, laughing. “Welcome to cane country, boys. If the work don’t kill you, the skeeters will.”

  I rose up and twisted my body to look out through a crack in the wall. Another wagon rattled past, the bed heaped with stalks of cane.

  “Sunup to midnight?” I asked.

  “If you lucky,” Henry answered. “Befo’ sunup in some places.”

  Bessle stirred beside me and he, too, tried to rise up and look out. “You worked cane before?” he asked.

  “Cane, cotton, rice. You think cotton kill you? You think rice hard? Cane kill you faster than anythin’. You learn soon enough.”

  Bessle and I eased back down and leaned against the wall.

  “They ship it out downriver,” Henry said. “That road we up on, that be the levee road. You take a look tomorrow and you see a dock fo’ every big house.”

  “I seen ’em,” Chloe said.

  “That right. Every big house,” Henry said. “Boats come up the river, pick up barrels of sugar. You see.”

  I watched the torchlight dance against the walls of the barn and listened to the creak of the gears and wagon wheels, the shush of cane being unloaded.

  Henry kept on. “That levee hold back the river,” he said. “They ain’t even supposed be no land here. That river flood and break the levee, the whole mess gonna get washed away. Us too. Us first prob’ly.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. I could feel them wetting up on me. I don’t know why, but I’d thought of Mama just then. I hadn’t thought of her since we’d stepped off the boat and been herded into the pen. Before that, if she’d come into my mind, I’d pushed her away. Henry must have felt some change in me, because he said, “Where you came from, Sprout?”

  “Don’t call me Sprout,” I said.

  “All right. Ain’t no need to get yo’ hackles up. I call you Shoot. That suit you? You big on the outside, but you ain’t quite growed on the inside. That the way I be lookin’ at it.”

  Chloe said, “I wish I warn’t growed.”

  But Henry was looking at me. “What ’bout you, Shoot? You growed all the way on the inside yet?”

  “I reckon not.”

  “Ain’t none of us growed,” Henry said. “We all massuh’s little chirren. Me too. Big old man like me cain’t even keep hold of his family.” He sniffed a little, and then asked again, “Where y’all came from?”

  That was when we talked some. Bessle and I told our stories. His family had been sold all over the place too. We’d both watched our fathers chained together into a coffle that was led down a road heading south.

  “Trader,” Henry said.

  I nodded dumbly.

  “Papa’s trader took him by land. Ours took us by ship,” Bessle said.

  “He prob’ly bringin’ ’em here,” Henry said. “They might get sold close by. Most of this land be sugar, and sugar need slaves.”

  Bessle gave a choked little sob and then was quiet.

  Henry added, “Aw, fo’get ’bout it. You ain’t never find him.”

  I asked Henry where he came from and he said a place in South Carolina where he worked rice. But then he was sold downriver. He’d worked cotton some, and cane for two years, tried to run away twice, was sold for that. He had a wife and two children he’d left behind in South Carolina. He heard his old master had died, and the slaves were sold, families split up just as mine had been. He reckoned his wife had taken up with someone else by now. He couldn’t blame her, he said.

  Chloe told us she came from a place in Alabama where she’d been a house servant. She’d left behind a sister and a niece. She’d been used hard, she said, and she hoped things would be better with Master Wilson. We all knew what she meant by used hard, and we didn’t answer, the three of us, as if by being male, we were as guilty as any white man who had taken her that way.

  The silence grew and Chloe started crying. We could hear her snuffling and sniffing and trying to keep it quiet. I could feel her shoulders shaking next to me and with each shake our chains rattled just a little, and against this sound was the background noise of the sugarhouse and the work going on there, the torches outside flicking a little light against the far wall. Finally Henry said, “God help us.”

  At the beginning of that day I had believed in God. But that night in the barn at Lidgewood I could feel God leaching away from me, just like the warmth in the air leached away as nighttime trenched itself in.

  Off in the distance we heard a wild scream.

  “Panther,” Bessle said, and this stopped Chloe’s crying and caused her to pull her body closer to mine.

  I smelt the scent of coffee left in Chloe’s hair from the sack she’d leaned against in the wagon bed. After a while she fell asleep and her head dropped against my shoulder, and I dared not move for fear of disturbing her. Henry soon knocked off with deep, resonant snores that Bessle and I stifled giggles against. Then Bessle nodded off and I was left awake.

  Besides us, there were animals in the barn that night: a cow with a bleating calf, horses and mules, rats and mice whose feet scurried and scratched in the darkness, mosquitoes and gnats and spiders, an owl that had swooped out at dusk and would swoop back in at daybreak. I flicked something away from my face, flicking, that is, as best one can with heavy chains on the wrist. Chloe sighed in her sleep and threw her one free arm around my waist. Finally I, too, slept, with the scent of coffee lingering in Chloe’s hair so close to me, and the sounds of wagons going by and the cane being ground, gear squeaking against gear, and the endless plodding of hooves.

  Was it the silence that woke me? Or the barn door screeching open? All I know is that suddenly my eyes were awake and there was a man with a lantern standing in the opening of the barn door. I was struck by how quiet it was, all the work outside having ceased. The man came closer and held the lantern up over us and in its light I saw that it was Master Wilson.

  He set the lantern down and pulled a key from his pocket and leaned over, unlocking Chloe from me. The chain he loosened from her wrist thudded to the ground.

  “Massuh?” Chloe muttered sleepily.

  And then he had her by her arm and pulled her to her feet. “Get the lantern,” he said.

  Chloe picked it up and he dragged her away from us, the light and the two of them disappearing into an empty stall. Through its slats I could see their shadows as Master hung the lantern from a beam.

  “What’s he doing?” Bessle asked.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Henry said in a rough whisper. “Be quiet.”

  And so we were quiet.

  What else could we do? The sounds coming from the stall where Master Wilson had taken Chloe said everything that needed to be said. Grunts. Scuffling. A slap. Flesh smacking against flesh.

  I cannot say that soon it was over, although that is most likely true. But it is also true that in that moment time was stretched taut. It was as if time would pull itself into forever, that the sounds of Master Wilson taking Chloe would never en
d, and when they did finally end, it felt like time could have snapped and thrown us, like a slingshot would, through the roof and into the dark sky. “Get dressed,” I heard him say.

  Chloe was returned, chained to me once more. I kept my eyes closed, but as Master Wilson left, taking the lantern with him, I opened them and I saw by its swinging light one piece of straw hanging from Chloe’s hair. And then it was darkness again. I felt her move away from me, but I tugged the chain and pulled. I just wanted to comfort her, to put my arm around her and let her cry, but Chloe gave a hard yank on the chain and curled alone into the straw. She did not cry.

  Eventually I heard Bessle’s breath slowing, and Henry’s deep snores again. I sat in the dark listening. I could tell that Chloe did not sleep and she could tell the same of me, for after a while she asked in a fierce whisper, “Ain’t you gonna sleep?”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  She laughed a little. “Uh-huh. You gonna stay awake and protect me?”

  “I wish I could,” I answered.

  She was silent then. The calf in the stall at the end of the barn bleated once and then rustled in the straw, snuggling up to its mother, I presumed. And then briefly, once again, I thought of my own mother and how I had snuggled up to her as a young child.

  I heard the straw shift beside me and felt the chain go slack. Chloe moved closer. She leaned her head against my shoulder. “I wish you could too,” she said. “Protect me.”

  I AWOKE JUST before dawn to the sounds of cane work starting back up. The clink of tack, the snorts of horses, the crack of an axe splitting wood for fires, and the four-whack rhythm of cane being cut for the mill. Eventually Chloe stirred, then Bessle, and finally Henry, and we sat there, quietly talking as morning came on, and the slaves outside worked. Chloe stayed close to me during this time, still resting her head on my shoulder. The scent of coffee was gone from her now, replaced by the smell of hay, and beneath that, the swampy scent of Master Wilson.

  Henry gave us a brief description of grinding season; of steam or horses turning the rollers that smash the cane stalks, how the juice rolls into a vat and is heated in a large kettle, the impurities skimmed off. Always, just at the right time, the juice must be moved to the next kettle, from cooler to hotter fires until finally it is ready for striking, being drawn off and poured into the cooling vats.

  “Most likely we gonna work cane,” Henry said. “You get a feel fo’ it. You mess the whole batch if you ain’t got no feel fo’ it. White man lose money, they hell to pay then.”

  “You ever tasted sugar?” Bessle asked.

  Henry said he’d tasted raw cane and molasses. Bessle and I had never tasted sugar, or syrup, or honey, but we’d had molasses. Chloe said she’d tasted sugar once, when she stuck her finger in the sugar jar and licked it off.

  “You get caught?” Bessle wanted to know.

  “Naw,” Chloe answered.

  “This place puny,” Henry said. “You hear those horses goin’ round? That the mill. Steam mill a whole lot mo’ work. Gotta keep the boiler fed, and the cane comin’ in faster. All the coast turnin’ to steam these days.”

  “Coast?” I asked.

  “That what they call it. It short.”

  “Short for what?”

  “German Coast,” Henry said. “This side of the river be the German Coast, and it all goin’ to steam.” He shook his head and added, “Steam-powered sugarmill, hell on earth.”

  After a short time a white man came in and let us off our chains to go relieve ourselves and walk around briefly. We were then shackled up in the same order as before, and a young boy brought us plates of food, and we ate with our fingers again and cleaned the plates with our tongues. The sounds of the sugarhouse continued monotonously, the horses plodding the mill into action, wagons coming and going, while in the fields the cane was cut. Daylight came on stronger, and soon enough Master Wilson came to load us once more into the wagon. The four of us were still in our places: Henry resting his arms on his knees, Bessle and me, the same, and Chloe curled into me again with her head leaned on my shoulder.

  There would be many times to come I would feel something like a spirit, cold and hateful, passing between Master Wilson and myself. I would feel it the day I killed him, just as I felt it on this day, when Wilson saw Chloe curled against me. That dark spirit coiled between us, touching me with the frosty points of its fingers. Chloe straightened up and moved herself away from me. “Mornin’, Massuh,” she said, lowering her eyes to the ground.

  “Get up.”

  We rattled our way into standing positions, and stood facing Wilson. He slid his fingers into the pocket of his shirtwaist, extracting once again the key to our shackles. Chloe stiffened as Wilson lifted her wrist, mine along with it, and pawed the key into the lock and turned it. My own body went taut, as if I might spring on him this time, as if I might not allow him to rape her again. As if . . .

  I would do nothing. I would stand there, in my place, and listen to the same sounds coming from the stall as I had listened to the night before. Master Wilson led Chloe away, and the space where she had been emptied, like air rushing across the cavity left by a pulled tooth. Their feet crunched in the straw, and then stopped. At the other end of the line Master Wilson chained Chloe to Henry. I felt a sudden exhaustion at the relief of this, and without thinking I shook my head to clear it. Then I shook my arm, where Chloe had been chained, to get the blood flowing again.

  Wilson stepped back to me and leaned into my face. “You like that, boy?”

  I wasn’t sure what he was asking. I wasn’t sure if the correct response was yes sir or no sir.

  “Yassuh?” I ventured.

  I suppose I guessed correctly, for he went on to say, “Uh-huh. What’s your name again? Persimmon?”

  “Yassuh.”

  “Persimmon Surley?” he said.

  “Yassuh. Folks call me Persy, suh.”

  “Is that right? Well, you’re a Wilson now, boy. Persimmon Wilson. Has a better ring to it, don’t you think?”

  “Yassuh,” I answered truthfully, for what did it matter, trading one white man’s name for another, as if I didn’t already know my position in life. I felt that spirit swirl between us again.

  “To the wagon,” Wilson said.

  We walked in a line outside. The sun was bright now, and I blinked against it.

  “Get in.”

  We loaded ourselves into the wagon bed and nestled among the cargo. Wilson climbed into the driver’s seat and chucked the horses into moving forward. Chloe now sat across from me. She looked up and gave me a sad smile, and shook her head, for she already knew her future with this man.

  It was early evening when Wilson finally turned the wagon off the levee road and down onto a tree-lined lane. As the wagon dipped lower I felt the air grow still. The breeze we’d felt on top of the levee disappeared among the fields where crews of Wilson’s slaves slung their knives into felling cane. I strained to get a look at the big house at the end of the lane. Like all the rest I’d seen, this one was two stories with a large gallery along each floor. On the upper gallery I could see open double doors with white curtains hanging limp in the heat. As we pulled closer the curtains parted and an older slave woman stepped out and walked to the railing, where she looked at us before turning around and stepping back inside, the curtains falling behind her to droop once again in the humidity.

  Master Wilson pulled the horses to a halt, and a young boy stepped out of the shadow of the house to take the reins. “Get out,” Wilson said as he swung his legs off the wagon and jumped down.

  Our chains clanked as we unloaded ourselves and stood before him. Wilson took the key out of his pocket and unlocked each one of us. We stood there rubbing our wrists where the shackles had been. “If you try to run,” he said, “you’ll get a whipping like you’ve never seen. I don’t tolerate runaways. And I don’t tolerate shirkers. Do your work and you’ll be treated well.”

  “Yassuh,” we muttered.

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nbsp; “You’re on Sweetmore Plantation, boys. Stand here. Someone will be by to get you. Chloe, come with me.”

  And with that, she left. I watched as she followed Wilson, three steps behind him, to the back of the house. Her homespun dress swayed with her walk, the worn soles of her shoes showed with each step. Her braid fell down her back and swung across her shoulders in rhythm. Around the corner and she was gone. I would not see her again for over a month.

  Did I think of her during this time? Only a fool would think I did not. I will not endeavor to tell you how much, or how often, only that I thought of her during every particular I had to learn about this new place and the work I would be doing there. Chloe haunted me. She haunted me even more than my own mother, and this is true to this very day, where I now sit in a jail cell listening to the nib of my pen scratch across the paper.

  I was occupied, of course. I was thrown into the tail end of grinding season, and during those two months the lessons, the things I had to remember, came at me like a flood. There was the primary concern of how best to do my work each day, which turned out to be two nine-hour shifts of fieldwork, one cutting cane, the other hauling it to the sugarhouse. We did not take Sundays off during grinding season.

  On the first day of cutting cane I was handed a long-handled knife. I learned how to hold and wield that knife. I learned the four strikes it takes to bring down a cane plant. And once it was down, I learned to move quickly and fluidly, with the least amount of effort, on to the next plant.

  Sweetmore Plantation did in fact have a steam-driven mill, with two chimneys on either end of its sugarhouse spewing dark columns of smoke into the air. I suspected that Henry was right; I would have preferred the plodding pace and rhythm of a horse-powered mill. I came to think of the sugarhouse itself as some demonic creature from the depths of hell, a creature that spewed smoke and ate up firewood and wagonloads of cane for eighteen hours every day. A creature that ate up lives as indiscriminately as it ate the cane. We worked seven days a week, as I have said. There was no break, no rest, our only consolation was that rations were plentiful, the food cooked for us three times a day and served in the fields.