Calvin Baker - Dominion

Caleum’s fears all left him then and he was overjoyed, as he could not have imagined just hours earlier. When he held the child he had no sight for anything else. It was a feeling unlike any he had known, as he looked on the boy’s shriveled new face, like a bud on a vine that had yet to fully open. The child was so small Caleum could fit him in one of his outstretched hands, though he was careful not to do so for danger of dropping him.

At last he turned to Libbie and stroked her face as she recovered from the long labor. “How are you feeling?” he asked, looking at her where she rested.

He could tell how much her ordeal had taken from her, but her dread at least had lifted and she was no longer afraid. Too tired to speak, she merely smiled at her husband.

As they gazed at the child together, what sprang first to Caleum’s mind was that, coming so close after Merian’s death, the boy must somehow be blessed by the departed. To honor the connection, he suggested they name him accordingly.

Libbie nodded in assent when he told her. “I think Jasper is fitting. But I also had in mind John.”

“That is also a good name.” Caleum negotiated, wanting to give her what she wanted. “We can give him both.”

So they named their first child together John Jasper, and Magnus and Adelia were nearly as pleased as the parents to be made grandparents, or granduncle and grandaunt, such as it was. To give thanks, Magnus declared the next day a holiday for all of Stonehouses, so they might celebrate Libbie’s motherhood.

How long he stayed with them though, or, rather, how short a while, was soon the cause of great desolation. The child for whom it had been so difficult to gain life only held on to it until the end of his first week, when they found him dead atop his mother’s breast.

“He seemed perfectly healthy,” Adelia said with despair, coming over from the other house after she learned the boy had passed away, “but God strikes and snatches what He will.”

“It is true,” Claudia agreed, as she tried to coax the child from its mother’s arms. “And for all His own reasons He did not give the boy this day as He did the ones before it.” She had seen so many little ones whisked back away in her work, she knew whereof she spoke.

Libbie, though, shunned Claudia’s hands, refusing to let go or relinquish the boy’s lifeless body. She went on holding her baby in her arms the rest of that day.

Caleum had the opposite response. Pretending a coarseness that had known greater suffering than was in his history, he refused to look on the corpse at all, saying there was no reason to glance back.

He sent word over to the carpenter to come make a box for the body and instructed one of the overseers to dig a grave in the far valley, which was their graveyard at Stonehouses.

So its ranks swelled, from two who were very old — and one very old for its kind — to three, and their average age fell considerably.

Everyone was pained to witness such misfortune befall a couple so young, but Magnus, in his grief, thought it to be more than just bad luck. “Somebody cursed us,” he said, speaking roughly. “I seen it among the slaves in Virginia. Somebody is trying to punish Stonehouses.”

In his mind no one was above suspicion, and he soon began to sow his dark fears all around, so that everyone began to regard the others nearby with distrust. Each listed the possible culprits in his head, and, though no one had real grievance, any could have been envious of them at Stonehouses.

Understanding he would never sort out one person, but that ultimately nothing less than their future safety depended on acting swiftly, Magnus did something very rash immediately after the funeral.

On the other side of the valley was a slave called Sam Day — who was married to Effie, a free woman who worked as a maid in the barns of Stonehouses — and who was rumored to be very powerful with roots and the like. He served not only the other slaves but, through intermediaries, much of the free population as well — either when something happened that the doctor could not cure or when they were taken with superstition because of something no one could explain and turned to him. When the child died, although it was not uncommon for such to happen, it was him Magnus sent for in his grief.

When Sam heard from Magnus’s messenger what had happened at Stonehouses, he sent word back, first with questions and finally with the prognosis that the new house had not been properly blessed when they built it. It was easy enough to remedy, he said, but the ritual must be performed by him in person.

“Well, where is he?” Magnus asked the boy he had sent on the errand.

“They don’t allow him to leave his master’s place,” the boy answered.

Desperate, Magnus resolved to find a solution. The next day he left Stonehouses early in the morning, saying only that he had business beyond its gates. Where he went then was to see Sam Day’s master, a man named Michael Smith.

Smith, being Christian, detested Sam’s practice of magic, and when Magnus showed up, saying he had come to see him about his slave Sam, Smith grew irritable just to hear the man’s name.

“I would sell that troublemaker Sam Day for the next hundred pounds I saw,” he said.

“I just wanted to see if it was possible to hire him from you for the season.”

“Hire him? For what?” Smith asked. “You could find better workers among your womenfolk.”

“That may be so, but I’m short of hands this season, Mr. Smith, and they say he is a strong-bodied worker. Plus his woman is at Stonehouses, which I figured would make it an easy adjustment for him. I have ready cash.”

“If I hired him out to you, Magnus, I’d never know the end of it,” Smith said. “He would run, I swear to you he would. For a hundred pounds, though, I would sell him clean and free of any claims.”

A hundred pounds was a very good price for a man in his prime, and Magnus looked at Smith to see whether he was only talking idly. When he saw Smith meant what he said, Magnus made a counterproposal. Though it was never his intention to do so, the low price coupled with his own need overtook him and all his higher principles almost before he knew it. “I can give you seventy for him,” he said, although he knew it was less than any man was worth.

“A hundred is my price,” Smith repeated. “You say you need a man and have ready cash. You’ll never get a better price than that on a slave good as Sam.”

“It seems like he causes you a lot of trouble, Mr. Smith. You should just let me take him off your hands,” reasoned Magnus, who had grown expert at bartering in the marketplace each year. When Smith moved down ten, he offered to close the deal. “Since we’re only that far apart let’s just split the difference.”

“It is done,” said Smith, though he did not shake. He only rang a bell and instructed the servant who appeared to go fetch Sam Day from out his indigo fields.

* * *

Sam had been taking a much-needed break from work, resting his head on a cool rock in a little gully that hid him from sight, when he heard footsteps approaching his resting place. He stood up and looked around to see Smith’s boy from the house, calling his name.

“What you want with me?” Sam asked, taking up his work so it seemed he had never ceased. He was immediately tired out again, though, and took out his annoyance on the boy.

“Master Smith want you to come round right now,” the boy told him.

“Well, what he want with me, boy?” Sam asked with irritation. “You too thick to know that?”

“He sold you, Sam!” the boy cried. “He sending you away!”

“Boy, stop meddling with me and get from out of here,” Sam barked, raising one of his hands, which was permanent black from the indigo, to shoo the boy off. When the boy left, he went back to the spot where he had been resting and took back up his pillowstone.