Tim Bowling - The Tinsmith

“Quite right, sir, quite right.”

The stranger moved to the edge of his chair.

“Your timing couldn’t be better,” he said. “There’s a great need for labour in the South just now. Mr. Wych of Columbia has instructed me to purchase as much good stock as I can. But, of course, good is the word. I don’t want no bad niggers, nor no old and sickly ones neither. There’s no profit in dealing in scrubs.”

The master scowled. Delicately he picked a fleck of cigar off his bottom lip. “I leave you to discuss all that with Mr. Orlett. What I wish to know is the price you’re willing to pay. I don’t part with my property easily or gladly.”

McElvane smacked his lips appreciatively after sampling the liquor. He said, “For a good field hand no more than twenty years old, a thousand at least and mebbe more. Boys over ten almost as much. Women and girls not so much, unless there’s some likely breeders.”

Orlett stuck his thumbs under his suspender straps. “And if they’re good-looking wenches too, that’s a premium as I understand it.”

McElvane nodded. “There’s buyers who’ll pay tall prices for that, yes. How old?”

“Two of them. Thirteen and fourteen.”

John’s heart constricted. He closed his mouth tight to keep his breathing in.

“When you say tall,” the master said, “what figure do you have in mind?”

The trader scratched his chin with a knuckle. “If the girls are good-looking and bright, mebbe four thousand for the pair.”

Daney always said she could…

“John, please fill our guest’s glass.”

His limbs numbed. He moved without feeling himself move. She could bear anything so long as her children… He poured the liquor and withdrew.

Numbers were mentioned, of slaves, ages, skills. Their prices. House slaves? John did not realize that house slave referred to him. He could not shut out Daney’s face. It seemed to stare through the window. It seemed wet with tears, except they were as red as what had dripped off Caleb’s ear.

The overseer pushed his chair back loudly and left the room. The trader smiled broadly at the master.

“Even if it don’t come to war, you’re right to sell now. Just the talk of war has drove the prices very tall. On the plantations, they want to increase production as fast as they can, before a war shuts down the shipping channels to Europe.”

“Sometimes, Mr. McElvane, circumstances make these decisions for us. I’ve grown old. The world is no longer what I would like it to be.”

The trader fidgeted on his chair. “Ah yes,” he mumbled and looked at the door almost longingly.

John guessed at the trader’s impatience for the overseer’s return. Orlett’s absence was unnerving. Why had he gone? Why had the day fallen so still, with not even the birds chirping anymore?

“These days,” the trader said, “you can’t judge no dependence at all in a man. There’s a lot of sharps around. But I don’t deceive any man if I’m awise of the fact.”

“I’m certain you don’t,” the master said. “Mr. Orlett would not have invited you here if you were not to be trusted. We were prepared to go to auction in the village if necessary, but I prefer a more private arrangement farther afield. It is how I have always bought my slaves.”

John could no longer keep his tongue. “Master, you’re not selling Jancey? You said if the thief was caught that you would not sell…”

“Circumstances change, John. Of course I meant what I said, but the times are conspiring against us.” He placed his cigar down as if it was made of glass. Just exhaling the cigar smoke appeared to tire him. “These decisions do not please me.”

Orlett returned, his face tight. A long muscle throbbed in his neck. “I need to talk with you.”

The master hesitated, then rose slowly. “If you’ll excuse me, sir.” He and Orlett put their heads together on the far side of the room. A minute passed.

“Search before you do anything else.” The master finally lifted his head. “Use the hounds. But don’t release them. There mustn’t be violence.”

The overseer scowled. “Four thousand dollars,” he whispered fiercely. “Think on it. There’s a faster way to recover them.”

“Not yet.” The master turned back to the trader with an apologetic smile.

McElvane’ s shoulders slumped. “I reckon the girls you mentioned is run off? I can wait if they’re as prime as you say, but only if we come to terms on some others. If we don’t, I got to get back on the road.”

“Oh, we’ll come to terms,” Orlett said and gripped his own thigh hard. “You might as well come and have a look now. I’ve rounded them up in the barn.”

“Jacob, you’ll remember what I said?”

“Of course.” Then the overseer said something low.

The master looked over at John. He looked for several long seconds. His eyelids fluttered. The blue veins darkened at his temple as he turned. Weakly he said, “You best go along too, boy.”

As soon as he stepped outside, the mulatto jumped him and wrestled him to the hard ground, snapping the cuffs back on. The steel struck hard against his wrist bones. He gasped with the pain.

Orlett said to the trader, “The master here’s been overly kind to his niggers. It’s his habit, formed I believe by his late wife. I’m trying to save him from himself.”

McElvane frowned. “Sometimes a man reaps what he sows. But I don’t favour violence any myself. A good nigger don’t need it and a bad nigger don’t change on account of it.”

“No? Well, I can’t say that’s been my experience.”

John’s chest heaved. He felt tears sting his eyes as he blinked hard at the master, in shock, unable to speak. Surely the master did not favour such violence toward him. After all, John knew himself to be different from the others—why else had he been chosen to serve at the house? But the master did not meet his gaze. He had already turned his back.

The overseer stepped into the barn. “Put him with the others, Cray,” he said.

The faces were familiar, but not the fear and bewilderment on them. A dozen men, including Daney’s two eldest sons, and three boys, the youngest barely ten years old, stood shivering in the straws of light falling through the chinks in the walls. John was both relieved and concerned not to see Caleb; the old man was probably too damaged to be sold. The boys wept, and Motes, who was nigh on sixty years of age, softly sang, “There’s a better day a comin’, will you go along with me? There’s a better day a comin’, go sound the jubilee.” Even though the hog-killing was done, the air still had a bloody smell. Not even the manure of the stables could quash it.

The others wore handcuffs too, but also leg shackles attached to iron balls. And they were joined together by chains. When John was shoved into the group, a new smell hit him: the reek of fear, the rankness of bodies responding to the slave’s worst nightmare. He could hear the unvoiced prayers, Oh, Lawd, don’t let me be parted from my own. Suddenly he understood what Daney had always told him: he was no different, he was exactly the same. He understood it now in his body, in his own trembling, in his sweat, the hatred rising at the back of his throat like burning bile.

Hands on hips, a goose-quill stuck between his teeth, Orlett addressed them.

“You’re going to be sold. But whether you end up in a good home depends on you. Mr. McElvane here represents important businessmen in South Carolina, and they don’t want any bad niggers. If they get them, those niggers go straight to the rice fields. And the masters there aren’t like what you’ve been used to. You’ve had it soft a long time. That time’s done.”

He turned to the trader.