Tim Bowling - The Tinsmith

Robert and Tom, Caleb’s oldest boys, came and lifted their father off the ground and carried him away. Soon just the overseer remained in the lamplight.

“If the nigger’s young,” he said, “there’s something else that gets cut. You hear, bright boy. Don’t go thinking on that girl too much. He almost believes you’re not a nigger like the rest. But I’m not fooled. I know what you are. Yellow. I saw it from the very first day. Skin doesn’t fool me. I see right past that. I know you. And the day’s going to come when he knows it too.”

He spat into one of the pools of Caleb’s blood and strode away.

He had nowhere to go. Unwanted in the shacks, he lacked the stomach for the big house. So he shivered in the barnyard and watched the tomcats slink out of the shadows and sniff at the shiny pools of Caleb’s blood until he couldn’t stand it anymore and chased them away. Closer to the post, he saw the mangled flesh of the ear, the little splotch of blood on the ground beneath it. The longer he stood there, the more the ear looked like an eye gazing at him through red tears, trying to see who he was beneath his skin.

Finally the silence became too much and he tried again to think of where he could go to get away from it. There wasn’t anywhere. He shivered in the faint moonlight, relieved at least that Jancey wasn’t going to be taken away and sold. He could be alone for a time, knowing that he and Caleb had prevented that. Daney always said that she could bear anything so long as her children were not taken from her. But he wanted the alone time to be short.

Instead, it drew on. Caleb lay insensible after the whipping and the master ordered the overseer to leave him be.

“Take him a bit of blood pudding, John,” the master said. “That’ll revive him. Just so long as he doesn’t think it’s from the hog he stole, mind. But I doubt he’ll steal another just for a bowl of pudding, not after last night. Caleb’s not stupid. He was always quick to learn.”

Then the master turned to the overseer. “I have to let him recover, don’t I? He’s no good to me if he can’t work.”

The overseer nodded and left the room.

“Go on, John, get a bowl of pudding from Charlotte. And have a bowl for yourself. You were right to tell me. No good comes from letting crimes go unpunished.”

So he went into the kitchen and asked for one bowl of blood pudding. “For Caleb,” he pointed out when Charlotte ignored him. “Master said for me to take him some.”

Charlotte was a fat, frowsy-haired woman about ten years older than he, and she had always been especially nice before. Caleb had told him to watch out. “She got her eye on you,” he said with the sad smile he always wore when he talked about relations between men and women.

But Charlotte’s eyes were flint-hard as she gave him the bowl. He took it and stepped outside into the bright sunshine. It was a cold morning, and the frost was only just lifting. The hogs screeched down at the sheds. Orlett and the male hands would be there. He decided he’d join them, show that he wasn’t so favoured that he didn’t have to work.

He walked along the dirt road to the shacks. The squat Dunker church glowed whitely far ahead of him, and the woods loomed dark black beyond. Jabeth said he’d heard of runaways hiding out there for months at a time. “Whar you think yore coons go?” he said. “And those stalks with no cobs on them? They’s always some poor nigger running through here now. Pretty soon, when the war come, you won’t be able to hunt no game at all for all the niggers and patrollers gettin’ in yore way.”

It was quiet at Caleb’s shack. Daney would be sewing clothes with the other black women. If Caleb had come to himself a little, they could have a private talk. Maybe he could remind Caleb to tell Daney the truth. He knocked softly and waited. When no one came, he opened the door and stepped inside.

Sunlight fell in long splinters on the worn planks. At first, he didn’t see anyone in the small space, but as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he noticed Caleb lying on a low bed in one corner. Next to him, on a wooden stool, sat Jancey, her head in her hands, her dark hair hanging loose. He cleared his throat, but she did not look up. For a few seconds he stood motionless, wondering whether he should leave, but the smell of the pudding reminded him of his errand. As he stepped toward the bed, the floorboards creaked and Jancey sprang to her feet, her eyes wide.

“Master wanted me to bring Caleb some pudding.” He lowered his eyes, afraid of her beauty. She was but fourteen, tall, yellow-skinned like her mother, with a handsome figure even the faded calico dress couldn’t hide. Sometimes, it was true, he found himself admiring the curves of her breasts and hips, but he always brought himself up short. Daney and Caleb still spoke of Jancey as if she were a child, and he did not want to upset them. Besides, he wasn’t much older than her; he hardly understood the feelings in his own body.

She had relaxed slightly by the time he looked at her again.

“Put it on the table,” she said and pointed.

The table was beside the bed. As he put the bowl down, he took a closer look at Caleb. He lay on his stomach, his torn back uncovered and smelling of some mixture of herbs. The skin was raw and pink-ridged in places, the black like burnt bacon. Caleb appeared to be asleep.

“How could you do it? How could you?”

Her voice broke and large tears filled her eyes.

“You know he didn’t steal no hog.”

He forced himself to meet her gaze. He yearned to tell her the truth, but it was as if Caleb spoke to him, saying, Not yet, it’s not safe yet, just wait.

He listened. His lips moved but no words fell from them.

“We thought he was going to die,” she said. “He’s too old for such a whipping. Mama said she’d never seen so many lashes. If Tom and Robert hadn’t got hold of her, she’d have run out and grabbed the overseer’s arm.”

He swallowed hard. “How is he now?”

Suddenly her whole body stiffened.

“What you care? You got what you wanted. Ain’t no marks on your back.”

It was time to go. He wished he could do something for Caleb, but nothing occurred to him. As he turned to the door, it burst open and the overseer, Orlett, strode in. The shack filled with the ferocious barking of the large bull mastiff straining at the leash in Orlett’s right hand. In his left, he held a shotgun. Behind him stood Cray, the huge mulatto that the overseer had brought with him when he’d arrived at the farm. This man was younger than Orlett and powerfully built; his head sat like a cracked boulder on his shoulders. From the largest crack an uneven group of dull teeth stuck out. The skin around the cracks was light brown and he had ears the size of jug handles. Because he had been away on an overnight errand on the night of the whipping, his presence now seemed especially disturbing.

The overseer appeared to laugh as he surveyed the room, but it was impossible to tell because of the barking. At a sharp jerk of the leash, however, the mastiff quieted and sat bristling on its haunches.

“Well now, I didn’t figure you’d pay much heed to my advice, but I figured you’d last a mite longer than one night.”

With the dog growling at his side, Orlett walked over to Jancey. She was panting, her arms crossed over her chest, her wrists together near her throat, the way Caleb’s had been together. Orlett let the leash drop to the planks and told the dog to stay. Then he reached up and ran a blunt finger along Jancey’s jaw line. “Very comely,” he said. “Almost as bright as you, boy. Generally I like them darker, but a man must always be prepared to make exceptions.” He turned to the mulatto. “Cuff him to the bedpost, Cray.” Both the snarling dog and the gun were pointed at John as the mulatto carried out the order.