Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

You learn Inez?

You watch the bird on the branch. The bird gets sharper by your watching and the bird not knowing.

You learn Georgiana?

Quiet and careful. What will it do? A hen you know. How it moves, how it eats, how it lays eggs, how it sleep. But a bird on a branch …

WHOLE DADDY WAS JUS TEN OR ELEVEN when he came to Sabine Hall — bout your age — and he spent forty-four or forty-five years there. Came when Cuthbert Page was leaving for the war. Last time Whole Daddy saw him live or dead. Night before Page left, Whole Daddy dreamed of him counting money. The next morning, Page gathered up his traveling shoes. And left them unworn, cause it seemed he wasn’t gone but a quick minute when the letter arrived, He dead.

Ten or eleven when he came, but his memory already long. No day dawned befo he came to Sabine Hall. He often told about his firs job where he lay on the cold floor next to his master and mistress bed. Wake them at the proper hour. Help them bathe and dress. Check they commode. Smell their waste to see if it healthy. Clean and wash the commode. When he got a lil muscle, they sent him to work the fields. He slept in a lil hut-shack. No window in his hut-shack. The only light get in when you come in or leave out the open door. Wind and rain come in and the cooking smoke won’t go out. A lil hut-shack to worry the head down on the bare floor, beaten earth, perhaps a toss or two of straw, but don’t worry that. So tired usually you eat dinner raw and sleep befo you rest yo eyes and befo yo feet member if it’s Monday or Friday. But he was honery. After they work him hard, he’d run off and hide out in the woods a few days. Then he’d come back and take his whooping. Traded him in when they got tired of whooping him. Like I said, he was honery. He never found a place to rest his hat. Farm to farm, bent over in the fields season to season, sun to sun, seasoned on one farm or another, farm to farm, a new master each year, workin side by side wit his master in the field, farms so po and shabby he be lucky if nother nigga there to pass time wit. Farm to farm, field to field, till he landed at Sabine Hall.

Cuthbert Page was the most famous man in Rains County. He once traded with this judge in Yawkatukchie a passel of crazy niggas fo a passel of uncrazy ones. The uncrazy niggas carried him home on their backs. Burpin drunk and laughin.

He work fast and hard like a reborn man. Ran rough and smooth over raw country people. From where? Rumored London, Scotland, Wales, Ireland.

She knew those places from maps.

Niggas taught him his daily bath. He repaid in kind. Any nigga could go to his back door, plate in hand. And he learned them to speak the English language without corruption. I don’t want no dummies round my son, he said. What he hear, see, speak, he learn.

Then he ran off to Greek.

Massa and Missus have gon far away

Gone on they honeymoon a long time to stay

And while they’s gone on that lil spree

I’se gon down to Memphis pretty girl to see

Greece, she said. I know where that is. Geography was her favorite and best subject. She pondered the globes of people’s eyes. Studied longitude and latitude, the lined bottoms of feet and the palms of hands, measuring degrees.

Said one or two words to his son, the mamma being still and dead, and no more turn his head, and run off to war. Stabbed to death wit an ear of corn.

Three days after he died, a hailstorm hit the county. Fist-sized ice fell from the sky and knocked out the windows, punched holes in the roof. A storm came every day at noon fo three days and lasted exactly three minutes. (Whole Daddy timed it.) Calhoun Page the son took it as a sign. He wrapped himself in mystery, devoting his time to fasting and praying.

He decided to free any nigga wanna be free. By county law, he couldn’t free no nigga. So he offer to buy them safe passage to Canady or Library.

Canada? Liberia? she said. I know where they are. I can show you on the map up there. Pointing to the red-tacked map nailed to the wood-eyed wall.

Some niggas went. Whole Daddy stayed on. Canady and Library, them jus words.

Page drew up a deed so if he died the niggas would own some land. Everything legal. Written in stone.

Page opened his front door to any nigga who wanted to sup at his table. And that ain’t all. Built two or three lil red schoolhouses, learned over by the best teachers in the county. Teach the niggas figgas along wit words. He built fifteen chapels with the best wood, full of preachers of strong lungs and learning. He prayed with the niggas, led them in song, caught the motion of their bodies and did as they did. Preach in any pulpit that grant him privilege. Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that ye also have a master in heaven. And he wrote letters to the newspapers.

Always I felt the moral guilt of it, felt how impossible it must be for a master of men and an owner of souls to win his way to heaven. I must give an account of my stewardship. My sins form a part of those hidden things of darkness, which are linked by a chain into the deepest realms of hell.

Page fired the overseer, some dandy from a Memphis garbage heap. Page wouldn’t honor white trash wit his spit. He sold the driver, an evil cuss ripped from a cruel vine. He wasn’t much good nohow. His whip create more sound than pain. Seeing that was the case, he took Whole Daddy outa the fields and put him in charge of em.

Whole Daddy ran a tight ship. He rung the bell before daybreak. He kept the books — he wrote in the neatest hand of the county — and if a slave sweat a good day, a good week, a good month, a good season, he allow them what Page allow them, time to work off the tation, be drovers, drivers, steamboatmen, draymen, carpenters, store clerks, and what have you — good works to make cash.

Whole Daddy. Overseer in name and title only. Spent most his time overseeing Page’s garden and his own. Raising the hogs. And tending the horses.

Horses? They had horses on the tation?

Did he wear a hat? Hatch asked. R.L.: when he went out West.

Hush, Sheila said. Hush.

Did he listen to all that cowboy music?

Hush.

Do dogs have hair? Horses, you bet. Whole Daddy knew him a horse. He’d heat an iron bar red hot—

She saw it, like the tip of a dog’s red dick.

— then he’d hammer it til it sent out a shower of sparks. He’d put that hot shoe on a horse. It smelled like burnt horn. And the horse would turn its wise eyes and say, Alright there, Mr. Whole Daddy. Go on. I won’t make a fuss.

The warm air and sun breathed strong passion in Pappa Simmons as he spoke.

Rarely did Whole Daddy leave home without bridle, halter, blanket, girt, horsewhip, and saddle. Go ridin off holdin the reins stiff like he was frozen to death. He rode some of Page’s horses into the grave.

Whole Daddy was a cowboy?

Not exactly. A drayman, drawing work from the harvest horses. And Page’s coachman too. Drive him wherever he need to go.

Pappa Simmons shut his eyes. Two eyeballs under two closed lids, bulging the skin out, protruding bellies.

So those last thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two years befo Juneteenth, Whole Daddy lived the good life. Walked on time-slowed feet. He would overseer and dray and go to auction and purchase niggas.

Well, this one auction, Whole Daddy bought these two girls fo his own private matters.

Those ten or eleven years befo Whole Daddy came to Sabine Hall, those eight or nine years he was there before Cuthbert died, Whole Daddy had put so many long years in the fields his shoulders bent like cane stalks. These two Indians were field-bred too. The same slumped shoulders. The same black tongues. Indian girls.