Eric Flint: 1824: The Arkansas War

"You'll be damned if you don't," Julia hissed. She leaned over and laced her fingers together. "Exactly how much of our debts will this New York fellow assume, Sam?" she asked.

Good news, finally. "Every penny, Julia. Dick, you hear that? And he'll assume the financial burden of any further lawsuits arising from the-ah-"

How to put it?

Julia did it for him. "None-too-detailed nature of the books." She gave her more-or-less-husband a sharp glance. "Such as they are."

Johnson flushed. "Hey, look:"

"Dick, the school would have lost you money anyway," Sam said forcibly. " Did lose you money, even before you had a chance to open the doors. So be done with it. At least this way, you walk out free and clear. You have enough other debts to worry about."

Johnson just stared at him. Julia took advantage of the silence to speak again.

"One condition, Sam. This New York rich man has to agree to it, or we won't."

"What's that?"

She looked through the open window. Outside, the sound of girls playing in the yard carried easily. "Imogene and Adaline get to attend the school. All expenses paid. If we decide to send them."

Sam couldn't help but laugh. "Well, that won't be a problem. Mr. Smith asked me to pass on to you that he'd especially like your children to attend. And he offered to pay for it himself. That's because-ah-"

To Sam's relief, that stirred up Johnson's combative instincts. "Because they're famous," he growled. Again, he blasphemed. "God damn all rich men."

The senator's curse could have been leveled on himself and his New York benefactor, of course, as much as on the southern gentry who vilified him.

We are sinners all, Sam thought to himself. It was a rueful thought, as it so often was for him these days.

The senator looked to Julia, now. "Are you sure about that, dearest? I don't like the idea of our kids being that far away."

Her face got tight. "You know any other school will take them, outside of New England-where they'd be just as far away? And even if there was one:"

She took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice started rising.

"What happens if you die, Dick Johnson? It don't matter what you think. By law, those two daughters you spoil so badly are your slaves."

"I freed you!" he protested.

"Not till after the girls were born," came her immediate rejoinder. "Richard Mentor Johnson, how in the world can a lawyer like you be that deaf, dumb, and blind?"

It was a good question-and the wide-open mouth of the senator made it perfectly clear that he'd never even thought about it. By Kentucky law, as well as the law in any slave state, a child born to a slave inherited the legal status of the mother, not the father. That was in complete opposition to the standard way of figuring birth status as usually applied to white people. But the South's gentry had made sure and certain that their frequent dalliances with slave women wouldn't produce any legally and financially awkward children.

As foul a breed of men as ever lived, was Patrick Driscol's assessment of southern slave-owners. Sam felt the categorization was far too harsh, as was so often true of Patrick's attitudes. But he didn't deny there was more than a grain of truth to it. Slavery corrupted the master as much as it degraded the slave. If there was any true and certain law of nature, there it was.

"Long as you're alive," Julia continued, "we don't got to worry none. But if you pass on, the girls are just part of your estate. And you got debts. Lots and lots of debts. You think your creditors will pass them over?"

"I'll free them, too, then. Tomorrow!"

She shrugged. "Good. But you trust judges way more than I do. With all those creditors circling like vultures, won't surprise me at all to find some judge will say the manumission was invalid."

The next words were spoken very coldly. "They'll be pretty, real pretty, give 'em another three or four years. But they inherited my color, too-enough of it, anyway-along with my looks. They'll fetch a nice price from some slave whorehouse somewhere. Your ghost can watch it happen."

"It's not unheard of, Dick," Sam said.

The senator was back to gaping. Again, obviously, never even having considered the matter. The man's blindness could be truly astonishing at times. The same blindness that led him into one financial disaster after another. Not so much because Richard Mentor Johnson was dishonest or rapacious as because it never seemed to occur to him that friends and relatives and acquaintances of his might be.

One of the house slave women came into the room. "Dinner's ready, Miz Julia."

One black woman addressing another as if she were a white mistress. The world had a lot more crazy angles in it than most people wanted to admit. Much less allow.

Imogene and Adaline were on their best behavior at dinner. That might have been because of Sam's presence, but he didn't think so. It was more likely because their mother had drummed it into them over the years. Dinner at a great house like Blue Spring Farm was rarely a small and private family affair. And so the girls of the family would act proper, they would, or they'd suffer the consequences.

The dinner table seemed as long as a small ship, with tall and stately candlesticks serving for masts and sails. Johnson at one end; Julia, presiding over the meal, facing him at the other. With, in two long rows down the side, well over a dozen other people in addition to Sam and the children. Disabled war veterans or their widows, for the most part. But there was also one of nearby Lexington's prominent lawyers, and one of the local plantation owners.

Sam wasn't surprised to see them there. Not all of the South's well-to-do disliked Johnson. Many admired him. That was true, starting with the president of the United States himself, James Monroe, who came from Virginia gentry. As always, in Sam's experience-contrary to Patrick Driscol's tendency to label people in sharp and definite categories-attitudes and habits blurred at the edges. Blurred so far, often enough, that no boundary was to be seen at all.

Fine for Patrick-the "Laird of Arkansas," in truth, even if no one used the term to his face-to sit up there in the mountains and divide the world and its morals into black and white. Sam lived down here in a world of grays and browns, just about everywhere he looked. And:being honest, he was more comfortable in that world. He had plenty of gray in his own soul, as young as he might be, and he'd always thought brown to be the warmest color of all.

"Clay's going to make a run for it," the plantation owner predicted. "In fact, he's already started."

The lawyer sitting across from him laughed sarcastically. "What else is new? Henry Clay was dreaming about the presidency while he was still in his mother's womb. More ambitious than Sam Hill, he is."

Johnson smiled into his whiskey tumbler. So did Sam. It was the same smile, half derisive and half philosophical. The difference was simply that the senator's tumbler was half full and Sam's was:

Empty, now that he looked into it. How had that happened?

"Don't make light of it, Jack," cautioned the lawyer. "I'm thinking he's got a very good chance at getting what he wants. With Monroe gone after next year, who else does it leave? Beyond Quincy Adams and the general, of course-and they've both got handicaps."

"Andy Jackson's the most popular man in America!" the senator stoutly proclaimed.

The lawyer, blessed with the name of Cicero Jones, gave him a look that might have graced the face of the ancient Roman statesman after whom he'd been named-just before he fell beneath the swords of the Second Triumvirate.

"Maybe so, Dick. But:"

For an instant, Jones's glance flicked toward Sam. Then he looked down at his plate. "But not as much as he used to be," he concluded glumly.