Property (Vintage Contemporaries) Read online

  My eyes flew open. I jumped up and ran for the bedroom door, but I tripped over a footstool and fell headlong across the carpet. As I got to my feet, I heard a shout from outside, then my husband’s voice, cursing. I opened my bedroom door just as his door was opened. A lamp sputtered, someone came out into the hall. It was Sarah. I stepped behind the door, laying my cheek against the wood, listening as she hurried toward the landing.

  Another door opened, the doctor’s. He spoke to her, she answered, but I couldn’t make out what they said. There was more light, the heavy sound of my husband’s boots, then his voice. “They’ve set the mill on fire,” he said, and Dr. Landry replied, “I’ll dress and join you.” My husband was halfway down the stairs. “Stay in your bed,” he called back. “There are hands enough.”

  How could the mill be on fire? I’d just been looking toward it. I felt my way to my dresser, lit the lamp, and went to the window. It was true. There were no flames, but there was a deep red glow to the blackness in that direction. I heard shouts downstairs, my husband appeared on the lawn, running, and from the quarter two men bearing torches came running to meet him. The doctor’s door opened again, his footsteps faded as he hurried downstairs. After a few moments he too appeared below me, walking briskly toward the fire.

  My heart smote me. It was this way that night: the sounds of doors opening and closing, the clatter of boots on the stairs. But it was different too. It was clear and cold. When I woke up and looked out my window, I could see the flames and smoke billowing up above the trees. I never did see Father leave the house, and I never did see him again. I heard Mother’s voice, then a man’s voice I didn’t recognize, more doors closing, someone riding away. I leaped from my bed and ran into the hall calling for Mother, but she didn’t answer. I found her in the parlor with our housemaid Celeste; they had only one lamp lit between them and the room was cold. Mother’s crochet hook glinted amid the lace she was frantically working. Celeste was darning a sock. I wanted to throw myself in Mother’s lap, but I knew she would scold me. “What is happening?” I said. Mother looked up, hollow-eyed, her mouth in a grim line, shadows from the lamp playing over her cheeks. She’s frightened, I thought. She’s more frightened than I am.

  “They have murdered him,” she said.

  “Father!” I cried and ran to the door.

  “Manon,” Mother shouted, jumping to her feet. “Don’t go out there.” She came to me and took me in her arms and I wept. I couldn’t understand what had happened. “The driver has gone for your uncle,” Mother said, “and we must stay inside until he comes.”

  That night I slept in Mother’s bed. In the morning she refused to get up, refused to eat, sobbed and muttered wild accusations by turns. “She mad with grief,” Celeste said.

  Late in the afternoon my uncle arrived and I was allowed to leave the house. “Stay away from the quarter,” he said, “and stay away from the gin.” All night I had wanted to run, and as soon as I was outside I did run, as hard and fast as I could, across the lawn and down the road to the river landing. I wanted to keep running forever, but I came to the end of the dock. The water swirled at my feet, the wind lifted my hair. No steamer was in sight. I raised my arms above my head and called out “Father, Father,” in a transport of suffering. But of course there was no answer; Father was gone.

  What happened then? A blackness suffused my memory. I was sick for some time. But before that.

  Before that, I turned back and saw two negro boys standing at the edge of the dock, watching me curiously. They were dressed in rags, their feet bare. One wore a rough jacket made of quilted sacking, the other had fashioned a cape from what looked like a scrap of horse blanket which he held tight around his thin shoulders. I judged them to be twelve or thirteen, my age, though I was several inches taller than they were. I wasn’t afraid of them. I didn’t think I had seen them before.

  I approached the boys. When I was close, the taller of them said, “Your pappy is dead.”

  “I know it,” I said.

  “He kilt in the fire,” the other said. “A big beam fall on him.”

  “Did you see it?” I asked. “Were you there?”

  The taller boy squatted down on the grass, rubbing his hands together for warmth. “My auntie say your pappy set that fire hisself and shot hisself in the head, so he dead already when the beam came down on him.”

  “You’re a liar,” I said.

  “That’s what my auntie say,” he replied, keeping his eyes on his friend, who nodded his head in agreement.

  It was a lie, of course. It was not possible that Father would do such a thing. It was an outrage that they should seek me out to tell me this lie which they had made up just to hurt me. My sadness and confusion turned to rage. I wanted to kill the boys and they seemed to know they should be afraid of me, for when I said, “You’d better run,” they took off like scared rabbits and didn’t stop until they were out of sight behind the house. I stood on the dock, shaking with fury.

  It started to rain, but I couldn’t move. I just stood there until I was soaked through and my teeth were chattering and then I stood there until it was getting dark and Celeste came out and found me. By the time we got back to the house, I was delirious with fever.

  I never told anyone this lie the boys told me. Perhaps it never happened and I only dreamed it when I was sick. The doctor and my uncle agreed that Father’s death was an accident. Mother always said he’d been murdered. They never did find out how the fire started.

  Lies, I thought, lies without end. We lived on them, all of us, all the time.

  The image of Sarah as I had seen her leaving my husband’s room filled my head, banishing these unendurable recollections. Her hair was all undone, her eyes bright, she was wearing a loose dressing gown I’d never seen before and a dark mantle pulled over it. I had only the quickest look at her in the lamplight, but I’d seen a great deal. And so had the doctor, I didn’t doubt, when he opened his door and spoke to her. What had he said? My head began to hammer. The room was so hot I was suffocating. I staggered to the dresser and poured out a glass of water, drank half of it, then poured the rest down the front of my shift. It was as if someone had slapped me. In the distance I could hear shouting, the tolling of the bell. I gripped the table and hung my head forward, trembling from head to foot. A feeling of dread crept over me as I realized that I was laughing.

  ALL NIGHT I prayed myself a widow, but to prove there is no Supreme Being who hears our prayers, in the morning Sarah came to my door with the message that my husband had gone to his brother’s house and would not return until dinner. He wants to borrow more money, I thought, and he will be in a foul humor when he returns. “Has the doctor gone as well?” I asked.

  “Yes, missus,” she said.

  “Then I won’t go down. Just bring me bread and coffee and a little Creole cheese.”

  “Yes, missus,” she said again and went out.

  I fell back among the pillows and closed my eyes against the racket of my thoughts. Through it, I could hear the same scratching in the wall I noticed last night: a mouse or squirrel doing no end of damage. Good, I thought. Eat a little every day until it all falls down around our ears. I heard Sarah on the stairs and roused myself. I was washing my face at the stand when she came in with the tray. “Is the mill burned to the ground?” I asked, bathing my face with my hands.

  She put the tray on the side table and stood with her back to me. “I don’ know,” she said.

  I patted my face with the hand towel, studying her back. Did she know I saw her last night, leaving his room? “I hate it when you pretend to be stupid,” I said.

  This appealed to her vanity, which is immense. “They put it out,” she said. “Only the roof was half-burned and the rest fell in from the water.”

  “Too bad,” I said, leaving her to guess if I’d hoped for more or less of our ruin.

  I sat at the dressing table, touching the dark circles beneath my eyes while she poured out the coffee and broug
ht it to me. As she leaned across me to place the brimming cup in the only space clear of bottles or pins, her reflection obscured my own. Her eyes were lowered, her hand steady, a single line of concentration on her brow all that gave evidence of any feeling about what she was doing. A very different look from the one I’d seen in the night as she rushed from my husband’s bedroom. A flood of anger rose in me, right up to my throat, so that I gasped for air. In panic, I raised my hand, and as I did I knocked her arm. The cup tipped out of the saucer, splattering coffee across the dresser. I leaped away to keep it from running onto my gown. “Why are you so clumsy?” I exclaimed. Sarah grabbed the hand towel and began mopping up the mess. I went to the window. It was already hot; the sky was the color of lead. “I can’t stand much more,” I said.

  ACCORDING TO MY husband, the conflagration at the mill only proves that he is a flawless manager, far more intelligent and efficient than my father, who might be alive today if he’d had the benefit of his son-in-law’s advice.

  The fire was started by a man who had been whipped for being too slow in the field. He told two of his fellows of his plan and they informed Cato, the driver, who made it his business to know at every moment the whereabouts of the malcontent. Late last night, when Cato learned the plotter had not been seen in the quarter since supper, he followed the procedure my husband had given him. He ran to Mr. Sutter’s house and bid him come to the mill at once. He then dispatched two men to alert my husband and another to ring the bell, summoning all hands to the scene. The culprit had managed to pull a few bales of hay inside the mill, douse them with kerosene and light the blaze, but as he came out the door Mr. Sutter ran up with his rifle and shot him. He is now in shackles awaiting justice. The bucket line, swiftly organized, proceeded to extinguish the flames. The roof was not a great loss, my husband maintains, as it had needed repairs. Indeed, the lumber is already cut.

  “Then everything is as it should be,” I observed.

  “I wish that were true,” he said, with a glance at Sarah that meant he could not convey some news of great import before a witness. This irritated me. “Come to my office when you have finished eating,” he said seriously. “I must speak to you in private.”

  “As you wish,” I said. When he was gone, I dawdled over my coffee. Sarah cleared his place and went out, leaving me alone. The room was quiet, but not for long. No sooner had I taken a deep breath than I blew it out in a huff at the grotesque babbling and clatter just beyond the doors. It was Walter, set loose on the lawn. There is never a moment’s peace in this house, I thought. Then I got up and went to hear my husband’s report from the outside world.

  As soon as I was inside his office, he bade me close the door. He was in an agitated state, unable to sit down. He insisted that I be seated as I would not be able to stand before the ghastly news he had to relate. I was weary from lack of sleep and in no mood for his self-important fantasies, but there was something odd about him, something new that interested me. Of course he looked haggard; he’d spent the night fighting the fire and the morning on horseback, but it wasn’t fatigue that had put such hectic color in his cheeks and a queer darting light in his eye. I took my chair willingly enough and gave my attention to his story.

  Near dawn, when he was returning to the house, having extinguished the fire and much relieved that it had not altered his fortunes, a boy he recognized as belonging to his brother Charles rode up with an urgent summons. He was entreated to come at once to Charles’s plantation, Chatterly, and to bring Dr. Landry if he was still on our property. My husband and the doctor rode out together, arriving in time to find the family at breakfast, but an anxious and hurried meal it was. Maybelle, my sister-in-law, was prostrate from terror and exhaustion, their daughters were packing to leave for the safety of New Orleans; their son, Edmund, a boy of fifteen, had persuaded his father to let him stay.

  The day before, three runaways had broken into the larder at Chatterly. They had canvas sacks, which they filled with whatever they could carry. The cook, spying them from the kitchen window, raised the alarm. Charles happened to be in the yard, speaking to the farrier. He took up his pistol and came running, arriving in time to wound one of the men, though not seriously enough to prevent their escape. They made for the woods, where, in spite of heated pursuit by hounds and horses, they were not to be found. It was as if the forest had swallowed them up.

  Late last night, at perhaps the very hour our mill went up in flames (my husband assumed his most ponderous tone to remind me of this coincidence), a stableboy, walking back to the quarter at Chatterly, was assaulted by two of these men brandishing machetes. They beat him, then hacked off both his arms and legs, leaving him to die. “Tell your master we done this because he shot one of our men,” they told him. The unfortunate boy lived only long enough to deliver this message to the overseer.

  “What are we to do?” my husband concluded. “Open our larders to every runaway who is tired of working so that those who are faithful will not be murdered? What can they possibly imagine will be the result of such unconscionable savagery?”

  I made no response. Indeed the story had shocked me, and I found myself calculating the amount of time it would take a man to walk from my brother-in-law’s plantation to this one.

  “Suppose it had been Edmund?” my husband speculated. “That is what has put poor Maybelle under the doctor’s care.”

  “What will you do?” I asked.

  “Of course, we’ll raise a patrol and apprehend them,” he said. “It’s damned bad timing. Between hauling timber and the mill repairs I’m shorthanded, but I’ve no choice.”

  “But if the dogs failed to find them before . . . ?”

  He stopped before me, stroking his mustache, his eyes narrowed. He was trying to decide whether to tell me something more. “They found a structure in a tree,” he said. “A house of sorts, with all sorts of comforts, a washstand, a mattress, a tin of tobacco, there was even a deck of cards.”

  “Then they have been there for some time.”

  “The sheriff has estimated there may be as many as one hundred.”

  “Surely that is an exaggerated figure!” I exclaimed.

  He left off worrying his mustache and looked at me thoughtfully. “We can only hope you are right,” he said.

  IN SPITE OF the elaborate secrecy with which the planters will veil their scheme to avenge this crime at Chatterly, there can be little doubt that the negroes there will know everything about it before they ride out, and that these runaways will be informed. Else why would they have taken such a risk and warned the very people they plan to rob of their intention to rob them? My husband marvels at their savagery; I am more astounded by their boldness. It must be their intention to lure their enemies into their neighborhood, where they have somehow learned to survive, even to flourish, and then to cut them down. The woods abutting Chatterly are on low, swampy ground; the undergrowth is impenetrable, full of snakes, thorn bushes, and all manner of stinging insects. Even with oxen it is difficult to haul out much timber, as Charles never stops pointing out, though it’s much the same here. In such a place a man on horseback must be an easy target for a man who has contrived to live in a tree.

  These were my thoughts in the afternoon as I sat in my room at my sewing. They filled me with trepidation, for we are outnumbered here, as everywhere along the river, and when the planters band together on a hunt, their houses and relations are left undefended. But there was also the thin, scarcely voiced hope that my husband might go out and never return. I had set Sarah to ripping an old gown for quilting, and the repetitive whine of the tearing silk punctuated my musings. Her baby made small congested sounds in its crate. I could see its dark hand moving against the slats. She sat with her back to it, methodically tearing the cloth, absorbed in the task, or so it seemed. I wondered how much she knew about my husband’s urgent errand. Did she share my timid wish that it might put her master in danger? I could not ask this question, yet I had a desire to hear her speak. “
What did the doctor say about Walter?” I said.

  She glanced up at me, then back to her work, her expression as blank as a death mask. “He don’ hear.”

  “Did he make any recommendations for treatment?”

  “All master say is he don’ hear.”

  “Does that one hear?” I asked, gesturing to the baby. For answer, Sarah laid the cloth in her lap, turned toward the creature, and clapped her palms together, making a sharp crack, like a shot. The baby’s hands flew up above the top of the box and it let out a soft cry of surprise. Sarah turned back to her work, her mouth set in an annoying smirk.

  “Why not just answer me?” I protested. She had come to the hem of the gown, which she pulled free of the skirt in one long shriek.

  LATER, WHEN MY husband came upstairs, I heard his footsteps stop before my door. He had drunk wine and brandy at supper, as he often does when the prospect of murdering negroes is before him. I lay still, staring at the doorknob, but it did not turn and presently he went on to his own room.

  When Walter was born, I lost what little desire I had for my husband. I knew he was driven to my bed because he feared he had fathered the only son he would ever have. I was nearly blind with resentment and could only get through the ordeal of our conjugal encounters by recourse to a steadily waning sense of duty. I’ve no doubt my repugnance showed. I was too proud to beg for my freedom, my husband too absorbed in his own passion to notice my suffering. My revulsion turned to resistance and I discovered that this inflamed him further, that it could be useful as a means of bringing the unpleasant process to a speedy conclusion. And so I practiced a mock resistance. Afterward I wept with frustration while my panting husband collapsed at my side. “Don’t cry,” he said, patting my shoulder as he drifted off to sleep. “We will have a child. I’m sure of it.”

  It was not long after my consultation with Dr. Sanchez that I found the means to make my husband quit my bed. Indeed, Dr. Sanchez unwittingly provided it—it was the sleeping tincture. I found that if I drank two glasses of port at supper and took two spoons of this excellent medicine before getting into bed, I was so perfectly indifferent to my husband that I could endure his embraces without feeling anything at all. I offered neither encouragement nor resistance; I was there and not there at the same time. This frustrated him beyond endurance. He pushed and pulled at me, repeated my name, all to no avail. One night, after only a few weeks of this campaign, he pulled me up roughly by my arms and slapped me hard across the face. I smiled and fell back on the pillow, tasting blood. I brought my fingers to my lips, smearing a little of the blood across my cheek. Abruptly he pulled away from me and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face between his hands. “Manon,” he said. “What are you doing?”