Dolen Perkins-Valdez - Wench

As the different scenarios passed through her mind, she saw a figure that looked to be about Philip’s size approaching from the distance. He was flanked by two men holding him by the arms. Lizzie shaded her eyes with her hand. From where she stood, it looked as if Philip’s legs were chained. As the three men got closer, she heard the telltale clink of metal against metal. She clutched the arm of her broom.

The men led Philip to a tree just off the edge of the pond. It was a scrawny young pawpaw tree that even in the height of summer had never bore any fruit. Nor was it full enough to offer very much shade. They chained him to the tree and walked away. Philip scooted along the ground until he was beside the tree and rested his back against its narrow trunk.

Lizzie leaned the broom against the wall of the cottage. She wiped her palms across the front of her dress. Even though she could not make out Philip’s face, she knew he had already been beaten. He did not have the walk of a beaten man, but she knew how such things worked. He had been beaten and left out in the hot sun.

She heard someone moving inside the cottage, and it startled her. She pulled open the door and saw Drayle moving about the room, packing a bag. “Drayle? What did you do to Philip?”

He ignored her and continued to move around the room. She watched as he put the tin cup and plate he used for camping into the bag.

“Where are those socks you mended for me?”

She went into the bedroom and took a thin pair of socks out of the drawer with a patch across the toe. She returned and gave them to him.

“Talk to me, Drayle. What’s happening?”

“Hand me my fishing rod.”

She took the rod out of the closet. Considering the time of day, she knew he would probably camp overnight. But surely he didn’t plan to just leave Philip there.

He hoisted the pack of supplies over his shoulder and finally turned to her. “Don’t you even think about going near him, Lizzie.”

“What?” She tried to shame him with a certain look she used now and again. “You’re going to just leave him there?”

“You hear me? This is between me and him. Don’t you even think about going near him. You or nobody else, but especially you.”

Surely he didn’t plan on leaving Philip out there all day and night. There wasn’t much shade out there, and the Ohio sun was as hot as the one in Tennessee.

She remembered when she was a child and still lived on the plantation in Weakley county where she was born there had been a dog that hung around the slave cabins. It hadn’t belonged to anyone in particular and no one had ever given it a name. They just called it “Dog.” The dog lived on scraps thrown to it here and there when the slaves had finished eating. As it got old, its back legs started to give out. So it took to sitting around more and more until finally it stopped walking altogether. No one had the heart to kill it. One morning, as the slaves went off to the fields, someone placed the dog in a shady spot near a tree.

When the children gathered around the tree that evening to hunt for the sticks they used for toys, they discovered the dog lying in the same spot where it had been left. One of the children called his father who came and picked up the dog’s lifeless body. He told the children to run along, and he went off somewhere to bury it. Lizzie could remember the dog’s skin: it had been raw and peeling beneath the dog’s thin brown and white pelt. She had dreamed that night of what it must have felt like to be that dog, becoming so hot until her vision blurred and she could barely suck in enough air to cool herself. She had heard of adults complaining of such symptoms while working the field all day, but even they wore hats to cool themselves. The dog had been unable to do anything to lessen the punishment of the sun once it moved its position in the sky.

“Who’s going to feed him and give him water?” she demanded.

“You stay away from him, now. You hear me?”

Lizzie must have looked as if she intended to follow no such order because his voice turned cold.

His words were slow. “I’m going to leave instructions for the hotel servants to keep an eye on that tree.” he spoke of the tree as if it existed and Philip didn’t. “If I so much as hear that you or anyone else has gone near it, I will have Nate whipped until he’s black and blue.”

Lizzie froze. He had never threatened to do such a thing. Nate had never been whipped in his life.

“Nate? Whipped? have you lost your mind?”

She felt it and saw his hand swing back at what seemed like the same time. It happened so quickly she didn’t have time to dodge out of the way.

“I have told you time and time again to watch your mouth when you are talking to me. You are just a woman and, on top of that, nothing but a slave woman.”

The blood on Lizzie’s lip didn’t taste like anything. It wasn’t salty like sweat or sweet like mucus. She lapped it up with her tongue and squeezed her lips together.

His eyes were red, the look of a parent who has just slapped his child. She had seen that look in Big Mama’s face before.

“I’ll be back in a day or two,” he said. He turned away from her and left her standing there wearing a new feeling.

At first, no one dared go near Philip because they did not know who had been set up to watch him. The slaves watched the hotel servants and the hotel servants watched the slaves. Lizzie, Reenie, and Mawu tried to devise ways they could sneak out in the middle of the night and get him water. Philip was tied to a tree right at the edge of the water, a tree easily visible from any of the nine cottages surrounding the pond and also from the hotel’s main lounge. The white women set up a picnic nearby on the first day and watched him while they ate. Two children threw rocks at him, narrowly missing for the most part.

George spent the first couple of days watering the flowers along the water’s edge. When he got close enough for the water to reach him, he doused Philip down. Philip tried sticking his tongue out and drinking water that way. On the second day the two men got smarter, Philip digging a hole in the ground and George managing to fill the hole with water. Philip used his tongue to lap up the water before it soaked into the surrounding dirt.

Another day went by and Lizzie walked by the tree, close enough to Philip to see that his lips were white and cracked. He tried to say something to her, but his words got muffled by his swollen tongue. Lizzie went to Reenie’s cottage and sat in a chair while Reenie folded clothes.

“We can’t just leave him out there,” Lizzie said. “It’s too hot.”

“He can survive,” Reenie said. “Philip a strong man. Strong as an ox.”

“That’s what everybody thinks about him.” Lizzie shook her head. “But he ain’t strong as people think. He’s got a soft spot. I’ve seen it. And it’s probably worse now that he’s got that woman on his mind.”

Reenie picked up Sir’s overalls and folded them down the front of her dress.

“And Drayle ain’t never been too hard on none of his slaves, let alone Philip.”

Reenie stopped folding and eyed her. “Every slave got the survivor in him. You don’t got to get beat every now and then to remember how to make it through something.”

Lizzie tried to believe what Reenie was saying.

The next morning was the fourth day since Drayle had left and no one had been allowed to feed or water Philip. It was only because he moved a bit here and there that they knew he was still alive.

The three women sat on the steps of Mawu’s porch. George came and sat down on the grass in front of Mawu’s cottage.

“Somebody done fed and watered him,” George said.