The strong stench of tar required my linen hat tie be brought across my mouth and nose as we walked past the sheds. I listened intently as my father and Starrat, the overseer of the Waccamaw plantation, discussed yield. The heat was damp and relentless, hugging my skin and weighing down my underdress with perspiration.
I didn’t like Starrat. Not at all.
Just one look at the whipping post I’d seen when we’d first visited had immediately set me against him. Father had already asked him to remove it once, and had apparently been ignored. A rope was affixed to it now, hanging limply down near the scuffled dirt below. The sight of dried blood and the smell of urine turned my stomach. It wasn’t the first such post I’d seen. And certainly, I’d seen them occupied: a poor soul half hanging, half standing as they bore the punishment for some unknown indiscretion or petty crime, blood the same color as my own, running in bright red rivulets against dark skin.
I shuddered. But never on land we owned.
I would speak to my father again about this. Perhaps the previous owner had run his business with a severe hand, but that didn’t mean it should stay that way.
Starrat was a portly sort with a brusque manner and the vague odor of something stronger than ale sweating from his pores. His face was a few days past a clean shave, which smacked of laziness rather than the cultivation of a beard. It was still too hot for beards in late summer.
Frankly, there were a few too many small mulatto children running around the slave dwellings for my liking.
I could see Quash watching them too. Their skin color matched his own. Quash’s mother, Betty, was of indeterminate age and resided at our Wappoo property. A woman with stronger hands I’d never met. She used those hands for a skill usually undertaken by Negro men: to grapple marsh grasses without cutting herself, twisting and threading them into baskets woven so tight we could carry water if necessary. Those capable hands were black as the pitch in the barrels we were currently inspecting. Sometime in the past, an overseer or some other white man had planted the seed of Quash, who had grown up to become our most trusted driver.
I wondered if Quash knew or cared who had sired him. I was ashamed to admit it had never crossed my mind before now. We’d inherited him along with nineteen other slaves at our Wappoo property. Then Father had bought both this acreage and the one we’d visited a few days ago, deep inland on the banks of the Combahee River, and these properties had far more slaves apiece. A necessary evil, my father had counseled me. Impossible to build a new world without able-bodied help. Unfortunately, our new world also came with “necessary” hard-handed overseers already in place. Like Starrat.
“You can send word down to Miss Lucas at Wappoo if you have any delays or changes to things we’ve discussed.” My father shook out his kerchief and mopped his brow and the back of his neck again.
The heat was rolling and oppressive. Rather than a cooling breeze off the water, the air off the churning, brackish Waccamaw River seemed to press the heat more firmly upon our shoulders.
Starrat barely glanced in my direction. “Sir, I can just as easily send the note to Beale in Charles Town, it would reach you sooner.” That he made mention of our merchant contact, Othniel Beale, with so much familiarity made me wonder how much business he was conducting outside of his official capacity.
“Be that as it may, I’d prefer Mistress Lucas to be aware of all that is relevant here so that she may take it into account. She will be keeping my records.”
“And does Miss Lucas have other male assistance at Wappoo? An overseer to help with the business side of things? Or keep her Negroes in line.” Starrat glanced at me, his gaze shifty.
Inwardly, I bristled.
“Mistress Lucas is more than capable, I assure you,” my father returned curtly. Starrat either didn’t notice or ignored the warning in my father’s tone.
“Well, if you don’t discipline these savages, who’s to say they won’t rise up and overpower their owners. I keep my Negroes well in hand, sir,” Starrat boasted with a hard tone that spoke of necessary violence.
It was difficult not to look over at the whipping post while he spoke.
Papa tucked his hand into his pocket and brought out a small case of tobacco and his pipe.
Starrat brought his pipe out also, and my father offered him a pinch of tobacco. They ambled toward a little cooking fire that was left smoldering for much of the day, only stoked up at mealtimes.
“They are my Negroes, Starrat,” my father said with an edge that brooked no argument. Clearly, his patience with Starrat had been sorely tested.
My father grabbed a piece of straw from the ground and stuck it into the fire. A small flame flared, birthing a smoke tendril that curled and plumed. He lit his pipe, puffing the ’bacca until it lit, then flicked the straw to the fire. “I am the owner of this property and them too. You, however, are employed at my indulgence.”
The atmosphere turned frigid, and I tensed at my father’s immediate engagement.
“And I would rather receive correspondence from my daughter. She has our Negroes well in hand also,” he added.
Starrat sneered, though he attempted to hide it.
Nodding toward the whipping post, my father went on, “Excessive labor or brutal punishment can incite revolt. I’ll not have that occurring on my land … or my conscience.”
I knew right away I would not be visiting out here much after Father’s departure. I only hoped Starrat was trustworthy in business and would be no trouble in that regard. At that moment I had a choice to meet his eyes and show my mettle, but I decided not to throw down the gauntlet and make an enemy. He scared me, and I worried he would see through my bravado. I asked myself if avoiding his look was a cowardly act or a smart one.
I continued to gaze innocently about and my attention was caught by some slave women carrying bundles of sticks back toward the dwellings. “Oh,” I exclaimed, genuinely surprised and disentangling myself from Papa. “Look at their skirts. It’s just like back home in Antigua.”
We all turned to look. The women dropped their gazes to the ground when they noticed us staring at them and hastened their steps, their faded blue sack skirts swishing against dusty dark skin. I was instantly aware I’d made them the focus of Starrat’s attention.
Starrat made a wet snorting sound behind me, coughing something up his throat. I turned just in time to see him spit a splat of red-tinged yellow slime to the ground. My stomach roiled, the sight not helping much in the heavy damp heat. “Indigo,” he confirmed with a wet growl. “Negro quality. Not quite the stuff you’re used to seeing, I’m afraid. I let them grow a bit here and there.”
“Interesting. Are you harvesting it?” my father asked.
“One can’t grow it in proper quantities if that’s where you’re headed, sir,” he said dismissively. “Many have tried and failed. It’s just not the right soil here. And certainly getting it into a tradable form is beyond what these folk are capable of.”
“I’ve heard the French have some indigo growing down in Louisiana,” my father mused. “Certainly the terrain in the Indias is different. But I hear Louisiana may be more akin to our terrain and climate.”
“Well, they don’t get frost down there,” Starrat said importantly. “I suppose that’s the difference.” His stubby fingers, the nails impressed with dirt, scratched at his rough whiskered chin. The color of the stubby growth was mottled like a mangy dog.
I nodded in agreement. “I suppose it is.”
After a meal of bread, cheese, and peaches that we shared with our overseer, we summoned Quash, who had disappeared to eat his own meal. Bidding farewell to Starrat, we loaded up some supplies of butter and rice and enlisted his promise to send updates to me at Wappoo on a monthly basis at the very least.
After loading the wagon onto the Georgetown ferry, my father and I found a spot on a wooden bench. The water swelled dark in the fading light, the breeze was blessedly cool. Papa turned toward me. “What is being carried on the mill wheel of your thoughts, dear Betsey? I can almost hear the creak and groan as you think.” Somehow, with his imminent departure, I clung to the love bound up in that childish nickname.
“We are making much pitch and tar for the shipbuilding industry,” I answered. “Should we not also plant many more live oaks for wood? They are the best for shipbuilding, are they not?”
“Yes, the hardest for sure. Though they take fifty years or more to reach a size that can be harvested.”
“Well, we should always look to the future. You taught me that. I should like permission to plant more live oaks at Wappoo, Papa.”
“Of course.” My father chuckled. “Permission granted. Anything else?”
“And I should like to speak to Mr. Deveaux about what other crops we may attempt, perhaps even indigo. I don’t believe for an instant that it can’t be done.”
“Be careful not to make an enemy of Starrat, Eliza.”
“I’ll be careful, sir.” I paused. “Could another be found to oversee the property? He’s such a horrid man. I know it wouldn’t be easy, but—”
“Horrid though he may be, Starrat knows that land better than anyone. He performs. The land is profitable. For us to remove him now … could set us back irreparably.”
“Of course, Papa.” I didn’t want to appear as though I could not handle the difficulties, so I stopped pressing. “You are right, of course. Thank you for asking him to remove that whipping post. I don’t like it. We should have stayed to make sure he obeyed this time.”
He dropped his voice. “Not as many people have as free a mind and affection as you do, Eliza. Not many understand that we accord a certain friendship and respect to our Negroes. And ’tis a dangerous pursuit.”
My hands gripped the railing of our vessel. “Why, Papa?” I implored quietly. We had had this discussion before on the topic of my dear friend Benoit in the Indias. Ben and I had grown up together as children; of an almost exact age, our friendship was indulged by my parents with amusement. Likened to a fairground curiosity. Indeed, as soon as the novelty wore off for my mother I had been sent to England for schooling, at a younger age than most. But upon my return, years later, our friendship was renewed, stronger than ever, and of sudden great concern to those around us. Especially my mama. I argued that it was simply impossible to put aside fond childhood memories. And Ben was so clever. I learned so much about plants and flowers from him; knowledge passed down by his grandmother. I credited him with my love of botany. It was probably the reason my father allowed it so long. Why should our friendship with Negroes cause danger? I’d begged my mother once when I was six years old. Papa talks business with Cesar. He often tells me how wise he is. I’d earned a violently smarting backside and no supper for that flippant remark.
After the slave uprising of 1736 in the Indias that had seen the execution, by burning, of our dear Negro Cesar the following year, I was forbidden to continue my friendship with Ben. The failed revolt and its consequences had set our Negroes to wailing and singing in the night for weeks, while I, having just returned from England, shivered in my bed.
Of course that didn’t stop a headstrong fifteen-year-old girl. So I would wander over to the fields under the guise of getting some air as many times as I could get away under my mama’s watchful eye. Her increasingly plentiful maladies meant that was more often than not.
My father had been deeply troubled and saddened at the loss of Cesar. And I couldn’t help but want to beg why he hadn’t intervened to save his life. Even while I knew that politically my father’s hands were tied. Even Ben himself had started drawing away from me. It was as if some invisible divide had sprung up overnight, and it took my naïve self a while to realize it had always been present. It didn’t hurt my heart any less. For days and weeks I would arrive down the track, past the sugarcane, through the trees, out of breath, to the edge of the field I knew Ben always worked, only to find strangers’ distrustful eyes warily watching me. I was welcome no longer.
“The danger is not from the Negroes, dear ’Liza.” My father’s reply jarred me from this dismal reverie. “But from the folk in town and roundabouts. You must be very cautious; people will be watching.”
“That whipping post needs to be removed in any case,” I insisted. “You’ve often said ‘one can always judge a man’s character by how he treats those beneath him.’” I didn’t need to fill in what I thought of Starrat’s character.
Father nodded. “It’s true. And violence begets violence.”
“You don’t think there will be a revolt here like there was in Antigua do you, Papa?”
“I fear if there is but even a whiff of some uprising, the suspects will surely be hanged before questioning. You never want to be standing too close to someone accused. Think of poor Cesar. I know you think I could have prevented what happened to him, but it was out of my power.” He cleared his throat.
I laid a hand gently on his arm. “I know, Papa.”
Glancing at Quash, I imagined I saw his back stiffen. My father wasn’t as quiet as he intended. Or perhaps he meant to impart a warning. But Quash would never be involved in such a thing. Surely. Then again, neither would Cesar have done so. Or so we’d thought. And now we would never know if he was innocent or guilty.
“I should hate to lose anyone else,” Father added softly. After that he grew very quiet as he often did when we had occasion to talk of Cesar.