Sapphira and the Slave Boy (2012)__________________
“Willa Cather’s book,
rat eaten rain ruined
beside me, found in
a Stone House on a
mountain in California.
Book of the prairies,
woman of the prairies
writing on stone.”
—John Wieners,
Ace of Pentacles
—For the Voices
Though Martin’s visit proved to be a long one, I saw very little of him. I never asked the young man to come down to the mill; indeed, I put my nephew out of my mind as much as possible.
I realized that it meant a great deal to Sapphira to have this foolish, wise-ass young fellow about the place. Certainly, Martin was very attentive to her— chatting with her on the porch in the morning, tea with her in the afternoon, cribbage with her after supper.
________________________
One night when I was sitting at his reading-table, I heard a knock at his door. "Come in," I said and Samson appeared.
"Yes, Samson. What is it?"
The tall mulatto stood uneasily before me. "Mister Henry, I’d like to speak to you about something I got on my mind, but I don’t rightly know if it;s my place to say anything."
"Speak up, Samson."
_________________________
"Mr. Henry, I’m afraid Mr. Martin be bothering Tyrone a bit too much."
I looked up and frowned. "Bothering him? What do you mean? How bothers him?"
"Well, sir, you know how them young guys is. They likes to fool round a pretty boy, even if he’s colored. I don’t say he means no harm, but Tyrone ain’t used to messin’ around with white guys, and he seems kind-a scared-like all the time. I know you wouldn’t want to see harm befall Tyrone."
"Shut the door there behind you, Sampson. Now tell me: what have you seen goin on?"
____________________
"Not rightly speaking, sir. But awhile back Tyrone was pickin’ cherries in one of them big trees behind the smokehouse. Me an’ Jeff was in the smokehouse, an’ we heard him holler like he was hurt or somethin’. We both run out an’ seen Mr. Martin standin’ at the foot of the tree.”
“Before we come, he’d been standin’ on the chair Tyrone took to climb up with. I seen the mud off his boots on the chair-bottom. The kid was scared fo’ sho’, Mr. Henry. Tyrone be tremblin’ like a leaf an’ lookin’ down scared like.”
“I got him down, an’ Jeff hepped him to the cabin. I may be wrong, but I didn’t like it."
_______________________________
My face turned a dark flush. "I’ll keep an eye on my nephew, Samson. Sometimes a boy will make a fuss over nothing, you know."
"Yes, sir. I never seen Tyrone do nothin’ queer nor unbecomin’ when he comes an’ goes."
"Nor have I. Tyrone’s a good young man, and I’ll look after him."
"Thank you, sir. Good night, Mr. Henry." Samson withdrew, but his face looked like he wasn’t reassured.
___________________________
I closed my book and began to move slowly about the room. In a flash I realized that from the first I’d had distrusted my nephew, though he had never thought of him in connection with Tyrone.
To me Tyrone was scarcely more than a boy. It was my habit to refer to him in that way. In reality, of course, Tyrone was a young man. My three daughters had married when they were younger than Tyrone was now.
Indignation flamed up in him as I paced the floor; against my nephew and the father who begat him, against all my brothers and the Colbert blood. My own father I could hold in reverence; he was an honest man, and the woman who shared his laborious and thrifty life was a good woman.
_________________________
But there must have been bad blood in the Colbert Family Tree back on the other side of the water, and it had come to light in my three brothers and their sons. I knew the family inheritance well enough. I had my share of it.
But since my marriage I’d never let it get the better of him. I’d kept my marriage vows as I would keep any other contract.
I got very little sleep that night. When the first blush of the early summer dawn showed above the mountain, I rose, put on his long white cotton milling coat, and went to bathe in the shallow pool that always lay under the big mill-wheel.
This was my custom, after the hot, close nights which often made sleep unrefreshing in summer. The chill of the water, and the rays of gold which soon touched the distant hills before the sun appeared, restored my feeling of physical vigor. I came back to my room, leaving wet footprints on the floury floor behind him.
__________________________
Having dressed and shaved, I put on my hat and walked down along the mill-race toward the dam. I didn’t know why, but I felt strongly disinclined to see Tyrone this morning. I didn’t want to be there when he came to the mill; it would not be the same as yesterday. Something disturbing had come between us since then.
For years, ever since he was a child, Tyrone had seemed to me more like an influence than a person. He came in and out of the mill like a soft spring breeze; a shy, devoted creature who touched everything so lightly.
Never before had anyone divined all my little whims and preferences, and been eager to gratify them. And it was for love, from dutiful affection. Tyrone had nothing to gain beyond the pleasure of seeing me pleased.
Now that I must see him as a grown up young male, enticing to men and women, I shrank from seeing him at all. Something was lost out of our sweet companionship; for companionship it had been, though it was but a smile and a glance, a greeting in the fresh morning hours.
__________________________
It was a little past midnight, and Sapphira had been asleep for an hour or more, when she was rudely awakened. Tyrone had suddenly woke her up and was calling out, like someone startled.
"Yes, Miss Sapphy, here I is. Whassa matter, mam?"
"Nothing at all is the matter. Have you gone crazy, Tyrone, waking me up out of my sleep like this?"
"Oh, you called out, Missy. You sho’ly did. An’ I was havin’ bad dreams about you."
"Be more careful what you eat, and don’t wake me with your bad dreams. You know if I’m once wakened it’s hard for me to get to sleep again."
_________________________
"I’m dreadful sorry, Missy. I was sure I heard you callin`, an’ I feared you was taken bad, maybe. No, mam, I won’t come in thoughtless agin. Maybe I better run down to Ma’s cabin tonight, if I’m a-goin` to be res’ less an; disturb you?"
"You get right back in bed with me, Tyrone, and control yourself properly. I won’t have such crazy behavior.”
"Yes, mam." Tyrone got back in bed with Sapphira his Mistress, pulling the sheets up over his naked body. went out and closed the door softly behind her. He wrapped the quilt about his shoulders. He did not lie back down; he would wait until it was time to roll out of bed and put on his clothes.
__________________________
His waking up his mistress had been a ruse. Tyrone had had no nightmare, but he had heard something—a cautious, barefoot step on the wide stairway which led from the upper chambers down into the next floor where Sapphira and they slept in his Mistress’ bed.
The stair treads always creaked a little; the dampness of the air kept the wood from drying thoroughly.
When the Mistress went back to sleep, Tyrone told himself that if he heard that stealthy step again, he’d run down the hall and out the back door, over to his mammy’s cabin. He believed someone upstairs was listening as intently as he was. It was a horrible feeling. He knew who it was—it was Martin who had the hots for him. He wanted to have sex with Tyrone. After all, his aunt was getting it.
If Tyrone had a head start on him, he knew he could outrun him. But then there was the curved oak banister of the stairway, smooth as glass; anybody could slide down it without making a sound. Once he was in the hall, he wouldn’t have the start of him. He would be there—grabbing and feeling him up.
__________________________
At last the first grey daylight came through the wide windows at the foot of the stairs. It gave him a feeling of safety so sweet that he cuddled his head in his pillow and dozed a little. For hours the object of his terror had been fast asleep in his upstairs chamber. When Martin heard the sound of voices in his aunt’s room, he had shrugged his shoulders and gone back to bed.
As the grey light grew stronger, Tyrone rose very softly and dressed—a simple process, since in summer he went barefoot and slept in the nude. He had to tighten his belt round his waist and slip on a calico shirt over his head. He tiptoed down the long hall and ran out into the flower garden.
_______________________
The sun was just coming up over the mountain. Fleecy pink clouds were scattered about the sky, and the distant hills had turned gold. A curling mist hung over the low meadows down by the mill dam.
The dew from the shrubbery was dripping in splashes upon the brick walks, and on the boxwood hedges the silvery spider webs trembled with glistening water drops. The tea roses and bleeding-hearts hung heavy, as if they would never rise again.
Nobody was stirring in the negro cabins; their overgrowth of trumpet vines and gourd vines was so wet that by running into them you could take a shower bath. It made your skin pretty, washing your face and arms in the dew.
Oh, this was an awful place! Tyrone didn’t believe there was a worst spot in the world than this right here. He felt so down and depressed—and his heart was beating just about as hard as it did last night when Sapphira was going down on him.
________________________
Sapphira was a dinge queen—she loved young black meat. She’d wrap her legs around his neck & squeeze—just like those twisting bougainvilleas wrapping around all the vine-covered cabins, every inch of him crawled when she kissed or touched him.
Every night Sapphira told fat Lizzie and Bluebell to make her bedroom nice and clean and romantic. After all, when the Mistress wanted to do the down-low, she wanted some decent Southern Bell luxury and wholesome aristocratic pampering.
Down yonder was the mill—where me "the Master so kind and so true" slaved away to provide Sapphira with her spoiled whitey lifestyle. It was worth it just to be rid of her. So I’d let my wife Miss Sapphira do just about anything she wanted—after all the slaves were all hers anyway. Given to her when her rich Charlestown father after he kicked the bucket.
Even so, young Tyrone always had kind words for me and Miss Sapphira. At least until rotten Martin showed up. But that couldn’t be helped. As long as Tyrone took care of the old witch, I wouldn’t have to go to bed with her or be around her.
Our unhappy marriage was simply one of the usual so-so ho-hum marriages of convenience—Sapphira being spoiled by her wealthy parents and coming from a highly respected Southern family.
I was a just a simple working-class miller with a small plantation out in the sticks west of Charleston. But Sapphira needed to get married or eventually she’d end up an old maid. So her family forced her into marrying me—after all she wasn’t getting any younger. She married me late anyway—when she was already a cranky, bitchy, bossy and headstrong 24-year-old thing
______________________
And to think I might have lost all this supposed married bliss and domestic happiness these last few weeks, if my nephew Martin had got a hold of Tyrone and had sex with him. I could stand my wife doing the down-low with the young studly black kid—because I trusted the youth like he was my own son. He was young and naïve—he knew he was doing me a favor. But somebody had to do it…
_______________________
Miscegenation in the antebellum Deep South was a rampant and fairly acceptable arrangement before the Civil War—and many generations of mulatto offspring owed their existence to a bored husband with young slave concubines. Or, in my case, a bored wife who as yet hadn’t got pregnant but had to be satisfied somehow.
Tyrone was my young proxy—thank the Lord. I slept in the mill every night. But my skanky nephew was another story—along with all my other brothers’ spoiled-rotten offspring. Bad Seed ran thru my Family Tree—I’d be the first to admit it. They had no sense of decent human propriety or any kind of dutiful Christian responsibility to themselves or their family.
The decadent Southern slave system stretched all the way from Charleston to New Orleans—and from Atlanta all the way up to Memphis. The antebellum South back then—was just a vast rambling, rotten, decaying, stinking cesspool of what was going to happen to the rest of the country once the Confederacy began its disastrous push toward Deep South Whitey Supremacy and Expansion Westward.
The Carib Empire of rum, cotton, cane, molasses and black slavery was no different than the Northern poor white trash emigrant, indentured servant slave system. In fact, after the Civil War the steel, railroad and oil Barons simply continued ravaging the country all the way to the Pacific—and kept going. With their own twisted, cynical brand of abject Human Slavery and Cheap Labor.
__________________________
But for now, in these last days of the Antebellum South, their Southern leaders ruled the Senate and the Courts—jealously guarding their will to plunder and greed for even more power. Already plans for spawning the Carib Empire westward beyond the Mississippi to the new states entering the Union was well-planned out and already in motion.
The orange and citrus Plantations of the Southwest were part of the planned spread of racial slavery on the books—this time for the cheap Hispanic workforce sucked up and commandeered from the Mexican wars already planned and the various provoked revolutions in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
The Spawning of the Deep South Empire—was spreading North and West slowly but surely. And all that haughty Whitey Aristocratic hubris and much too much down-right down-low Greed and Avarice was showing no signs of ever stopping.
The Texas, Louisiana and Gulf of Mexico Oil Barons would outpace the old Northern Steel and Railroad Crowd—and the whole Country would turn into a vast dark Plantation that would make Rome look like a Piss-Bucket of SPQR slime & shit.
________________________
What could the Abolitionists and that Lincoln Emancipation crowd of Yankee do-gooders do anyway? Other than do their slave-running with their so-called Freedom Railroads and smuggling the Negros up North and to Canada?
It would take forever for the Senate to change—and the Supreme Court with its Southern sympathetic dictates like the Dred Scott Cast would surely guarantee that the Black Labor Force was kept in bondage—with no more rights than the poor white trash Emigrants flooding from destitute war-torn Europe into the slums and ghettos of New York City.
__________________________
And so, I went along with my so-called marriage to Sapphira with her Virginia tainted tradition of doing what they’d always done—treating the Blacks like subhuman slaves, cohabiting with them and producing offspring for their whole decadent Cotton-Cane-Slave System.
Not only slaves inherited from one whitey generation to another in the fields and cities—but also breeding more of them in bed for future field hands, valets, cooks, maids, horsemen, butlers. Or like Tyrone being used as nothing more than a Mandingo kept man—for the sexual pleasures of a spoiled aging leisure-class Southern woman with nasty habits. What else could I do—fight the whole ingrained cultural tradition of the State of Virginia?
_____________________________
But one thing I didn’t have to stand for—and that was permitting Sapphira to encourage and allow the blacks who worked at my mill to be used and taken advantage of by my no-good white trash rotten perverted decadent relatives from Charleston.
My despicable nephew Martin was a hundred times worse than the cloying, simpering leech that he was around Sapphira—trying to weasel his way into our minor respectable Estate, my honest small milling business and the nice mansion I built for my so-called wife. My ne'er-do-well mooching nephew Martin—wasn’t going to worm his way into a cushy position of debauchery and lassitude with me still aournd.
__________________
Martin was a untrustworthy, sneaky, effeminate free-loader kicked out by his own father, my own no-good Charleston brother. Our Colbert clan was nothing more than a bunch of blood-sucking leeches and despicable free-loaders anyway.
The South was full of parasitic curses just like them—just waiting to move past the Mason-Dixie line and westward past the orange groves and desert to the vineyards and coastal Gold Rush cities of San Francisco and further north to Alaska.
______________________
In the meantime, there was plenty of time and young black Mandingo slave trade to occupy the perverts and somebody like Martin. One of the reasons they got him out of Charleston high-society—was the miscreant’s foul inclination toward Negritude sex and especially all his outrageous youngmale Mandingo carrying-on’s that shamed all of White Society to no end.
It was fairly acceptable to have young black slaves as valets, butlers, horsemen and things like that. But it had to be kept discrete and in the closet—there could be High Society Scandals and all that. But it all had to be done behind closed doors—discretely, demurely, with a dash of Southern gentility. Unless, of course, you were extremely rich and powerful—then you could get away with just about anything.
For example, Senator William DeVane King of Alabama, the slutty male-whore wife of President Buchanan, yes indeedy. They lived next door to each other in Washington and each had their own perverted outlandish penchant for young black studs.
Andy Jackson even called Senator King by the derogatory name of “Miss Nancy”—because of the Senator’s miscegenal bedroom love-affairs. Plus all the young handsome arrogant black valets and horsemen—that King was always parading around the Beltway with in fancy expensive carriages taking him to the Senate and schmoozing with other high-class dignitaries and DC dinge queens.
Later in Cuba when King was briefly Vice President, down there where he hoped the climate would help him escape his TB fatal illness—he died in the arms of his favorite young black valet in a dumpy rotting plantation on the outskirts of Havana.
His Biloxi plantation, “Black Oaks” named for the all the young black studs who King kept there as male concubines and entertainment—soon fell into stinking decay and hushed disrepute, ignored by the scandalized str8t Alabamians who shunned the evil hell-hole as a Dante Plantation of the Damned.
______________________
Martin was just as bad as despicable King—he could hardly conceal his despicable dinge addiction to goodlooking young Mandingo slaves like Tyrone.
The minute Martin got a look at Tyrone—he had only one thing on his white trash miscegenal mind. To do exactly what Sapphira had been getting away with for quite some time no—and that was getting as much Tainted Love outta poor Tyrone as she could.
Both Sapphira and Martin had their minds made up. Martin was already shockingly and vaingloriously buttering up Sapphira from morning to night—and she let him do it because she loved all that Southern Gentlemanly skanky male attention salving her lascivious luxuriating lovely twat. Martin knew how to flatter vain bored women like Sapphira—during tea time, while during cards, during long humid evening soirees on the decadent verandah.
