Tim Bowling - The Tinsmith

The door would open on them and it would not bring their deliverance. If he understood that much, then Daney did too. But her terrible hope distracted him from his own fate. He could see the girls running, their pretty faces scratched by branches, he could see them turn in terror at the baying of the bloodhounds. But maybe they were not alone, maybe something else had been arranged. One of the free blacks might have agreed to help. He looked at Daney and saw that Garney had gone to sleep in her armless embrace, his head lifting slightly with each great breath of her body.

Some time later the door opened and the overseer stepped in.

“I’ve got something to show you,” he said and moved aside as the mulatto shoved Daney’s girls ahead of him. They were gagged with burlap strips that made the terror in their eyes more apparent. Daney screamed. As she struggled to rise against her chains, Garney slid away from her. “Noooooo! Lawd noooooooo!” She kicked her legs on the planks until it seemed her shoulders pulling forward with her weight must tear out of their joints.

Tom and Robert shouted at the overseer, but this only made him laugh.

“I expected a harder time of it, but I guess you niggers have had it so easy for so long that you don’t even have it in you to run. I could probably unchain the whole lot of you and give you two hours to start and still have you all back in this shed by sunup. Cray, kindly give that boy there a reminder of how much I favour silence.”

The mulatto ambled heavily over to Robert and punched him, hard and fast, in the face. Blood spurted from Robert’s nose. Daney’s screams intensified.

When they subsided again to moans, the overseer said, “You’ve all been sold now, so I’ve no cause to worry about the shape you’re in. Besides, where the trader’s taking you’s no short journey. You’ll have time to heal before you’re sold again.”

The girls’ muffled cries spread through the air. On hands and knees they crawled to their mother. Daney’s neck tightened until the sinews threatened to snap.

Orlett ordered the mulatto to pull the girls up. Cray did so mechanically, easily. “There’s a better day a comin’,” sang Motes with his head lifted and his eyes rimmed with tears. “Won’t you come along with me?” Daney’s girls went limp, all the fight drained out of them. No wonder their hands hadn’t even been tied. The overseer slapped them both on the backside as the mulatto took them by. Daney moaned, a froth of spittle on her lips, and shook her head from side to side. The boys were sobbing heavily again.

John sprang up and launched himself, his hands forming a cross before him. But the overseer saw him coming. He jumped aside and expertly stuck one foot out. The planks rushed up to meet John. His face hit hard. Before he could even roll over, Orlett pressed a boot down so hard on the back of his neck that he could barely breathe.

“Goddammit, Cray, why isn’t he chained like the rest?”

“You never told me to.”

Orlett cursed. “Do it now then.”

“Don’t have no mo’ irons.”

“Then go and find some, for chrissakes! And take the girls with you while you’re at it. There’s time tonight to deal with this boy too.” The overseer kept his weight pressed down hard.

Daney’s moans rose to screams again as the mulatto drove the girls out of the shed. Then, with the door shutting out the brief light, she suddenly fell quiet. Only the boys’ snufflings could be heard.

John’s neck flashed with pain. He struggled to twist his head sideways an inch to allow a little air into his lungs. Daney’s voice reached him dully. She was pleading with the overseer.

“If they got to go, let me go with them. I’m a good worker. You know it. Please let me go. I can pay you. I have some money. I’ll give it to you and you can let the trader take me away for nothin’. Please, I got to go. They jes babies still. Please, massa, please, I’ll do anything only let me go with them. They jes babies.”

John wanted his neck to snap and he wanted even more to rise up without cuffs and wrap his hands around the overseer’s throat and squeeze until he saw the tiny eyes bulge and turn the same red as the red on Caleb’s back.

The overseer said nothing. But now a different sound, even more terrible, filled the shed. Motes was weeping in great, heaving gasps. The shame of it surged through John’s body. He readied himself to focus it into one desperate act of strength when the door opened again and the iron snapped around his leg. The pressure came off his neck. The mulatto grabbed him under the shoulders and yanked him up.

The overseer looked straight at him, as if Daney’s pleading had deflected his hatred. “I can’t let you go out into the world, bright boy, without the world knowing what you are. And I want you to know too. Bring him, Cray.”

In minutes John was back in the barn, his hands chained to the wall, his legs also shackled together. The mulatto had stripped him. The cold bit into his skin, but John promised himself that he would give no satisfaction. He imagined Caleb going to the whipping post to protect his family and Daney pleading to do the same. He would not give the overseer anything but hatred. And yet he wanted to live. Life was more precious than ever because it meant the future and the future meant his hands around the overseer’s throat.

Even when they tightened his chains and applied the first coat of tanning to him, he understood that worse was coming. Tanning wouldn’t last; it was merely a gesture. He knew it, Orlett and Cray knew it. Something deeper than the surface of the skin was involved. The fear came into him and he could not stop it. His stomach swayed, his groin tightened. He closed his eyes against the flickering oil light, heard the hiss of the coals.

When the iron sank into his cheek, he did not think he would survive the searing pain. Then he did not think at all. There was no thought except the pain, no sight except the pain, no sound, no past, present or future. Only the pain.

He did not know how long he lived inside it. Or when he passed out of it and woke to it again. The barn was dark and quiet. He shook the whole length of his naked body as he watched his white breath float up to the rafters where an owl ruffled its wings. Something scurried in the straw. A strip of moonlight fell straight down and just missed his feet. They were dark in the darkness. His thighs too. He could not see his arms or his hands chained behind him. But he felt the darkness on him, inside him, beating there. With relief, he became aware of his genitals. Then he returned to the pain. Whatever they had done, they had done to his face.

He lay in the soft night sounds of the barn and stared at the strip of moonlight. The overseer was right. As he lay there, John knew exactly what he was, and he knew also what that meant. Between the pain on his face and the desire for the future to hurry to him, he passed the hours until cock-crow.

As the darkness lifted, the mulatto returned. Expressionless and silent as always, he undid the wall shackles and drove John, still naked, the hundred yards across the frozen mud, then the crisp, tinsel-like grass, to the big house.

The overseer sat at the kitchen table, his face greasy with egg and bacon. Behind him, Charlotte gaped, her hand pressed to her cheek.

“Give him some bacon,” Orlett said to her.

The mulatto shoved him into a chair. John did not look at either Charlotte or the plate when she brought it over.

“Go on, eat,” the overseer said. “You got to keep your strength up. Unless you want to die of starvation even before your new life starts. What’s the matter? Don’t you want to know what it’s like to look like a nigger same as the others?”