Horrible Harvest

The river was bloodless. At the surface. Tranquil without show. The current bent and swirled all about without haste. The water moved with a calmness. Toward nothing. Away from nothing. Into itself and around. Building circled wakes upon itself. Gentle-like.

Tate stood on the bow of the boat, holding to a rope tied to a lead weight. He give it a toss. It sunk, found the bottom, and he pulled the slack taut. “By the mark one,” Tate said while making him a notation in his leatherbound journal.

I set at the stern, holding the oars out the water, ready to dig into the river at his command. “What’s that mean?”

“Not but a fathom deep here.”

“Fathom?”

“Six feet.” He tossed the weight, let it settle and called out again. “By the mark one.”

“Why you yell it out like that?”

“Habit. It was the way I was taught.”

“By the sea captain?”

“By the sea captain. Marcus Arnaud.” Toss. Settle. Pull. “By the mark one and a half.” Notation.

“He a nice fella?”

“He was a fella. No nicer than the next. No meaner either.”

“He taught you schooling.”

“By the mark two. He did.”

“Seems he was nicer than most.”

“Most what?” Notation.

I give a shrug. “Fellas.”

“He gave me schooling. It’s true, but you see what good it did me. I’m sounding a river from the bow of a cracker’s rickety boat. I’m owned by a rich man with a dark heart. Little white boy rows me around asking me fool questions. Education done all that and a lot more nothing for me.”

“Just passing the time.”

“Time passes without your help. By the mark two. You should know education changed the inside of me, but ain’t a thing I can do to outlearn what it is to be black around here. Captain, he did me a disservice if he did anything. Hell of a thing to have all this education without the Devil’s chance it’ll break towards opportunity. I’ve become the worst thing one man can be to another.” Notation.

“What’ve you become?”

“By the mark three.” Notation. “His treasure. No amount of schooling will ever free me from that.” He set down.

“You done?”

“You in a hurry?”

“S’pose not.”

He breathed in deep, taking in a whiff of the river air. Felt to me like it breathed back. “Let’s just float. Glide for a bit. I like gliding. Feels like being unhooked from gravity.”

“Don’t know why you’re doing all this sounding. River’s plenty deep.”

He didn’t answer. The silence of it unsettled me.

“You hear me?”

“I heard you.”

“Seen boats big as our house come through this way. Further out.”

“Further out isn’t the problem. Ships have to dock and unload. I have to find where it’s deep enough for that without having to build a pier from the shore to Timbuctoo. These boats are as big as castles.”

I looked to the shore and then back to the deep of the river, catching the reflection of the stars in the slosh of the current. “You gonna to build a pier on Daddy’s property?”

“I don’t know whose properties whose. I just know further upriver you have to go far out to get past the shallow. Found an old map that suggests the channel curves in towards the shore somewhere around these parts.” He breathed in deep again and shut his eyes as he let loose of it through his nose. “That somewhere is here.”

“In front of Daddy’s property.”

“If you say so.”

“He gonna buy Daddy’s farm? Mr. Miller. Build him a port?”

“Master Miller own’s the world. He don’t need to buy your daddy’s farm.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He turned eyes on me. “Your ma- She seems smart.”

“She is.”

“Your daddy and her, they don’t fit. Together, I mean.”

“I don’t know what fits what.”

“How she end of up here? Taking beatings from a cracker on the edge of the Ashley. Keeping house and cooking meals for the likes of fools like her husband and that big brother of yours.”

“Douglas ain’t but a brother by half.”

“So, he come with? She didn’t bake that demon in her belly?”

“No, sir.”

“That makes sense, and don’t call me sir. Man like your daddy will take a lash to me if he hears you call me sir.”

“What should I call you then?”

He give a half smile.

“What?”

“That’s the first time anyone’s ever asked me that. Never had a say in what folks call me.”

“Why?”

“Why? Good Christ, boy. Don’t you know how slaving works?”

I shrugged.

“Call me Tate.”

I nodded.

He stood back up and resumed his sounding.

“That Kenneth. He seems friendly.”

“Friendly? I guess.”

“I ain’t had a real friend before.”

“You have fake ones?”

“No. I’m just saying I got Charles, but we go knuckles on one another about twice a week. I’m thinking real friends don’t do that.”

“That’s the kind of thing brothers do.”

“Right, so I was just thinking it would be nice to have a friend. Like Kenneth. You think he’d be my friend?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“You got a secret stash of money somewhere?”

“No.”

“You own land? I mean more than this pea-sized rice farm.”

“No.”

“You a slaver?”

“No.”

“Then no, Master Kenneth will not be your friend. His daddy won’t allow it. You got nothing Master Miller wants. His boy only makes friends with the plantation swill. That ain’t you, boy. You’re a different swill all together.” He set back down.

“You wanna glide some more?”

A gust of wind pulled droplets of water from the tops of the marsh grass and give us the tiniest of mist. Tate welcomed it. He stared out toward the opposite shoreline. “Master Miller ain’t gonna buy your daddy’s farm. He’s gonna own it, but he ain’t gonna buy it.”

I didn’t say nothing.

“Your Daddy’s got a bad temperament, doesn’t he?”

“Bad as I’ve ever seen.”

“I wager Master Miller in a good mood could match him. When he’s conniving to build his treasure, he’s in an evil temperament.”

“Wha-choo saying?”

“I’m saying when evil comes against bad, there ain’t no good left to be had.”

“Mr. Miller and Daddy ain’t against one another.”

“That’s what your daddy thinks. He’s about to lose his farm, and Master Miller’s going to find a way to take it without much in the way of pay.” He held up his journal. “Mr. Stockton will be here tomorrow to get this book from me. When Mr. Miller gets hold of it, he’s going to know what he already suspected.”

“What did he suspect?”

“Your daddy’s property is the best and cheapest place to put up a receiving dock for his merchant ships. If there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the channel that runs right along this shoreline here is the rainbow’s end.”

“Suits me.”

“That’s what you think.”

“Daddy will sell. For a fair price.”

“He ain’t going to get a fair price. Rich man like Master Miller don’t get rich buying things. He get’s rich by taking things. Ugly is on the horizon.”

I give a pause. “Daddy ain’t gonna like that at all.”

“I expect not. Evil comes against bad. That’s nothing but a whole lot of collateral damage.”

I set in harmony with the rock of the boat. “Why you telling me all this?”

“I don’t know. Shouldn’t. That’s for sure. It comes back on me, and I’ll get shackled to the bottom of this here river. Maybe it’s because you been manning the oars. Any other white would’ve had me row, sound, wash his damn feet. Didn’t even occur to you to find luxury at the bent back of a slave.”

“I like to row.”

“Maybe or maybe you just like to do your part. That’s a good quality to have. Whatever the reason, you saved me ache. God knows I got more than I know what to do with.” He turned to me again. “We get to the shore you take this one word to your momma. Run.”

I didn’t offer no reply.

“Run. You get your momma, your brother Charles, the other one if you want, but little I know of him, I’d leave him be, but you and the others, y’all should just run far and fast from here.”

“We ain’t got money to run.”

“You got family?”

“Up in Connecticut. Grandaddy. Uncle. Aunt. Cousins.”

“Get to them. Crawl if you have to, but you get gone from here. Quick as you can.”

A whistle come from the shore. Douglas was waving us in.

“He’s corrupted, that one. He’s your daddy’s shadow. ‘Cept he don’t cast in the day. He finds form in the dark.”

I lifted the oars and placed them in the river with care, like I was trying to find just the right spot. “Momma says he deserves pity on account of what happened to his ma.’” I dug a single oar into the water to turn us about.

“We don’t pity the Devil for getting kicked out of heaven.”

I put my might and effort into rowing to the shore. “Momma says he was just a boy. Douglas, I mean. Not the Devil. Says he got put upon by misfortune and a malady for a father. Raised by a wolf, he was. Had no choice but to be one himself. That’s what momma says.”

“Same wolf is raising you.”

“Nah. He ain’t. Momma raises her boys. Daddy raises hell. That’s what momma says.”

“You put a lot of stock in what your momma says, don’t you?”

I nosed us into a thicket of marsh grass. “It’s like you said. She’s smart.”

He give a lean toward me. “Let me tell you something about that. There will come a day when you feel that you’ve grown smarter than your ma. Happens to every boy. That day comes, you remember these words I’m about to say to you. You ain’t.”

“That day come for you? When you thought you was smarter than your ma?”

He cast his stare to the wake of the boat. “My ma was sold before I got smart. While I was sailing around the cape. Arnaud raised me.

“You smarter than him?”

He sighed. “All I’ll say on that is that the day he died, I outsmarted him.”

I give a shrug. “Guess he wasn’t a nice fella.”

“No meaner than most either. That’s the problem with this world. It’s just plain mean. Every bit of it.”