Liberating Atlantis

II

The morning after: one of the more noxious phrases in the English language. It must have seemed pretty noxious to Henry Barford. He'd come downstairs the afternoon before to view the catastrophe. Unless you were dead, you couldn't help coming to take a look at something like that. He hadn't been dead, but a wobble in his walk said he'd already been tight. He'd looked, shaken his head, and gone back to his bedroom. And he'd finished the serious business of getting drunk.

And now, on the morning after, he was suffering on account of it. His skin was the color and texture of old parchment. Red tracked the yellowish whites of his eyes the way railroads were starting to track the plains of Atlantis east of the Green Ridge Mountains (only a few reached across them; the southwest was the USA's forgotten quarter). His hands shook. His breath stank of stale rum and of the coffee he'd poured down to try to counter the stuff's effects. His uncombed hair stood up in several directions at once.

He looked at Frederick with a certain rough sympathy on his face. The Negro felt at least as bad as the white man. But what Frederick knew was fear for the future, not regret for the past.

"Well, son," Henry Barford rasped, "I am afraid you are fucked."

"I'm afraid so, too, Master Henry," Frederick agreed mournfully. He was a year or two older than the man who owned him, but that had nothing to do with the way they addressed each other. The brute fact of ownership made all the difference there.

"Matter of fact," Barford continued, "I am afraid you fucked yourself."

"Don't I know it!" Frederick said. "That God-damned floorboard! Take oath on a stack of Bibles piled to the ceiling, sir, I didn't know the end had come up."

"I believe you," Henry Barford said. "If I didn't believe you, you'd be dead by now-or more likely sold to a swamp-clearing outfit, so as I could get a little cash back on your miserable carcass, anyways."

Frederick gulped. Slaves in that kind of labor gang never lasted long. The men who ran the gangs bought them cheap, from owners who had good reason for not wanting them any more. They fed them little and worked them from dawn to dusk and beyond. If that didn't kill them off, the ague or yellow fever or a flux of the bowels likely would. And even if those failed, the swamps were full of crocodiles and poisonous snakes and other things nobody in his right mind wanted to meet.

Barford paused to light a cigar: a black, nasty cheroot that smelled almost as bad as his breath. He sighed smokily. "I believe you," he said again. "But no matter how come it happened, what matters is, it did happen. My wife, she's mighty mad at you-mighty God-damned mad."

Frederick hung his head. "I'm sorry, Master Henry. I'm sorrier'n I know how to tell you. I tried to apologize to Mistress Clotilde last night, but she didn't want to listen to me. Honest to God, it was an accident." He hated crawling. If he wanted to save his own skin, though, what choice did he have?

"One more time, Fred-I believe you," Barford said. "What I believe right now… don't matter one hell of a lot. Something like that happens when we're sitting down to dinner by our lonesomes, maybe you can say 'I'm sorry' and get away with it. Maybe. Shit goes wrong. I know that. Everybody knows that. When you go and ruin somethin' Clotilde's had her heart set on for months, now, and when you make her look bad in front of all of her friends… And we ain't even talking about how much all the fancy dresses that got ruined cost, not yet we're not."

How close had he come to selling Frederick-and maybe Helen, too-for whatever he could get? (This was the first time in his life Frederick was halfway relieved none of their children had lived-they would have been sold, too.)

Gowns of silk and lace and endless labor didn't come cheap. Frederick knew that, all right. He remembered his mistress complaining about how expensive the dress she'd worn to the gathering-only one of the gowns Frederick had wrecked-was. All the money he'd saved… He didn't offer it. It not only wouldn't be enough, it would be so far from enough that the very offer would seem insulting.

Henry Barford blew out another ragged puff of smoke. "So I got to make you sorry for real," he said. "Won't be any peace in this house till I do. And you know you've got it coming. Can't hardly tell me you don't."

"Reckon I've got somethin' comin'," Frederick said cautiously, "but what do you mean, 'make me sorry for real'?"

"Well…" His master stretched out the word in a way he didn't like. "My wife and me, we spent some time last night talkin' about that." Most likely, Clotilde had spent the time talking and Henry listening. He stared at the coal on the end of the cigar, and at the thin column of smoke rising from it. He doesn't want to tell me, Frederick realized, and ice spidered up his back. At last, Barford spoke again: "What we decided was, we got to give you five lashes and send you out to the fields. Don't like to do it, Fred-wish like hell there was no need. Got to, though. Damned if I can see any way around it."

"Ohhh!" The air wheezed out of Frederick as if he'd been hit in the belly. He'd known they would have to punish him, but… "Is that really fair, Master Henry? I didn't hurt anybody, and five lashes're sure gonna hurt me."

"Got to do it." Barford didn't sound happy about it. To give him his due, he didn't enjoy hurting his animate property, as some masters did. But he did sound very firm, and he explained why: "Isn't just on account of you mucked up Clotilde's fancy gathering. Those dresses you ruined… Only way I can keep some of those damned biddies from going to law with me for hundreds and hundreds of eagles is to show 'em I made you sorry. Clotilde wanted I should give you ten, but I managed to talk her down some."

"I'll-" Frederick bit down hard on what was about to come out of his mouth. I'll run off was the last thing a slave wanted to tell a master, especially when it was true.

Biting down hard didn't do him the least bit of good. "You'll do no such damnfool thing," Henry Barford said, as if Frederick had shouted the words in his face. As if to underline that, Barford drew a flintlock pistol from his belt. It was an over-and-under affair, with a bullet in the top barrel and a charge of buckshot in the lower one. Percussion revolvers could fire many more rounds, but at short range a piece like that one would kill a man quite nicely. "Now you come along with me. We'll stash you away till tomorrow mornin'. Don't do anything stupid, or I'll be out even more jack."

"What about me?" Frederick asked bitterly as he got to his feet.

"Hey, I wish you didn't do it," his master said. "But you did, so this is what you get. Step lively-but not too lively. You don't want to know how good a load of double-aught buck'll ventilate your carcass. Believe you me, you don't."

Frederick did believe him. A bullet as fat as a finger wouldn't do a body any good, either.

Tied to the whipping post. The plantation had one. Frederick couldn't imagine a plantation without one. But it didn't get used much. Yes, Henry Barford might have made a much crueler master. Which, of course, did Frederick not an eagle's worth of good, or even a cent's.

I should have tried to run away last night, he thought as the overseer stripped the shirt off his back and shackled his wrists to the post. But the slave cabin where they'd stuck him was fixed up to make it next to impossible-and it had been guarded, too.

House slaves and field hands watched the proceedings with wide eyes. Frederick didn't want to think about the expression on Helen's face. And he especially didn't want to think about the expression on Clotilde Barford's. He understood Helen's anguish. But the master's wife looked as if she was right on the point of reaching a climax. Would she, when the lash began to bite? Frederick feared he'd be too busy to notice.

After he'd been manacled, Henry Barford slipped a thick piece of leather into his mouth-cut from a belt, or maybe from a harness. "Bite down on that there," the master said. "It's supposed to help a little."

How do you know? Frederick wondered. He couldn't even ask, not unless he spat out the strong-tasting leather. He didn't. Instead, he settled it between his jaws as best he could. Anything to distract him from what was about to happen.

Barford stepped away. "Reckon all of you've heard why we got to do this," he said to the assembled slaves. "Doesn't make me happy. You know me. I like it when things go smooth. But when they don't, you got to set 'em to rights, and that's what we're gonna do here. You ready, Matthew?"

"Sure am," the overseer replied. He didn't sound pantingly eager, the way some men in his line of work would have. Instead, he was as matter-of-fact as if Barford had asked him if he were ready to shear a sheep. Whip a nigger? All part of a day's work, his voice seemed to say. That might have been more daunting than if he had seemed to look forward to it.

"All right, then," Barford said. "Five lashes, well laid on."

Frederick closed his eyes. Well laid on. Why say such stupid things? What else was Matthew going to do? Tap him with the whip? Frederick wished the overseer would, but what were wishes worth?

Snap-crack! Frederick jerked and groaned. That wasn't a lash, was it? It had to be fire across his back. Without the rude leather mouthguard, he might have broken teeth biting down. For some reason, he wasn't much inclined to be grateful to Henry Barford.

"One," the master said solemnly.

Snap-crack! Frederick had told himself he wouldn't scream. So much for good intentions. The leather muffled his howl, but didn't block all of it.

"Two," Henry Barford intoned.

Snap-crack! More of the shriek escaped this time. Frederick wanted to die. And he wanted to kill everyone who'd had anything to do with this. Clotilde Barford, Henry Barford, Matthew… They could all perish. Horribly.

"Three."

Snap-crack! As these things went, Matthew was merciful. He didn't lay stripe on top of stripe, which would only have added to Frederick's torment. But these things didn't go very far in that direction. Frederick howled like a dog run over by a brewery wagon.

"Four," Henry Barford said.

Snap-crack! Shrieking louder than ever, Frederick hardly realized it was over. The flames consuming his back ate up the whole world. He slumped against the post, utterly exhausted. Tears and snot and sweat ran down his face. Something wet ran down his back, too. He barely cared if he was bleeding to death back there. If he was, everything would be over soon.

"Five," Barford said. "That's the end of it. Let him loose, Matthew, and help him to the cabin. I expect his woman'll take care of him from there."

"Right you are." Matthew was as businesslike unlocking the manacles as he had been fastening them or delivering the whipping. When Frederick spat out the piece of leather Henry Barford had given him, he didn't quite spit it at the overseer's feet. "You need to lean on me to walk?" Matthew asked him.

"Let me see." Frederick managed a couple of steps away from the post. The world swayed around him. Seeing him so shaky on his pins, Matthew grabbed his elbow with a strong right hand to steady him. The hand that whipped me, Frederick thought. He was glad for its support even so.

The overseer steered him toward one of the field hands' cabins-not the closest, but one that had stood empty since the old man who'd lived there gave up the ghost. "Show's over," Henry Barford told the rest of the slaves. "Get on back to work. It ain't like you got nothin' to do." Frederick heard him as if from very far away.

Three rickety wooden stairs. If not for Matthew's hand under his elbow, Frederick might not have made them. But he did. It was dark and musty inside the cabin. A couple of stools, a cot, and a chamber pot-that summed up the furnishings. "Lay down on your belly," the overseer said. "Your gal, she's got a pot of ointment to slather on you. You'll be ready to go out and weed in a couple of days."

Frederick wouldn't have lain down on his back for all the gold in Terranova. The straw and maize husks in the mattress rustled and crackled as his weight came down on them. The bed creaked. He wondered if it would break, but it held. The musty smell got stronger. Sharp things poked him through the worn-out mattress ticking. So this is how field hands live, he thought dully.

"I got to go keep an eye on things," the overseer said. "Soon as you're up and about, I'll be keepin' an eye on you."

He clumped across the floor and was gone. Softer footsteps came across the cabin toward Frederick. "You were brave," Helen said. "You stood it as good as anybody could have."

"I'll kill them all," Frederick whispered in a voice no one who wasn't right beside him could have heard. "Every last one of them. You see if I don't."

"'Course you will, sweetheart," Helen answered, as if he were a little boy. "Now you hold still while I put this stuff on you."

She dabbed it on with gentle fingers. It hurt anyway. Frederick jerked and twitched at every touch, almost as if he were under the lash again. "What's in it?" he asked, as if he thought it hurt him because of what it was made from.

"Lard and honey," Helen said. "Got it from one of the cooks. He said it'd soothe you-some, anyways-an' it'd make the stripes less likely to fester."

"Maybe," Frederick said through clenched teeth, meaning, You must be joking. Nothing could soothe his poor, abused flesh. Wishing he could drown the plantation in white men's blood came closest, but even that was no more than a momentary distraction. "How bad does it look?"

"How bad does it feel?" Helen countered one question with another.

"Couldn't feel any worse," Frederick said, which wasn't quite true. This ache was bad. The venomous sting of the lash striking him… that had been even worse.

"You're gonna have scars," Helen said sadly. She made haste to add, "Ain't like you'd be the only one. Plenty of slaves do."

"Scars… They'll pay for every damned one. So help me God, they will." Yes, rage was almost enough to vanquish pain. What would Victor Radcliff have thought if he could have seen his grandson's split and bleeding back? Would he have been proud of the United States of Atlantis?

"Hush," Helen told him. "Just you hush, now. Don't go talking crazy talk-don't go talking stupid talk. You land yourself in even more trouble than you're in already."

That was good, sensible advice. Good, sensible advice came easy when you hadn't just taken five lashes, well laid on. Frederick didn't want to listen to it. Whether he wanted to or not, some sank in. "Didn't only get me in trouble," he said dully. "Got you thrown out of the big house, too."

"I could go back. Mistress Clotilde ain't mad at me, 'cept 'cause I'm attached to you. Master Henry, he ain't hardly mad at me at all. Yeah, I could go back." Helen set a careful, gentle hand on Frederick's shoulder, well away from any of his welts. "Sooner stay 'longside of you, though."

Tears welled up in Frederick's eyes. Pain? Weakness? Fury? Love? All of them together, probably. Even so, he said, "You won't think that way when you got to start doing a field hand's work."

"It won't kill me," Helen answered, her voice calm. And she was likely right. A smart planter and a careful overseer didn't work field hands to death. What was the point of that? You couldn't get any more work out of them if they died, and you wouldn't be able to sell their corpses, either.

"God bless you," Frederick said.

"I love you."

"You must." Frederick didn't say what they both knew. Work in the fields might not kill a slave, but it was harder than any job in the big house. And they wouldn't be eating pretty much what the Barfords ate any more. Maize meal, barley meal, molasses, bitter greens, every once in a while some smoked sowbelly or bacon…

It was enough to keep a body going. It wasn't much more than barely enough. Over the years, slaveowners had learned exactly how little they could get away with feeding their two-legged property. You heard about fat house slaves all the time. You even saw them every so often. But Frederick would have bet all the little he owned that nobody in the history of the United States of Atlantis had ever seen a fat field hand.

"Sooner or later, they'll call you back to the big house. When they do, I'll go, too," Helen said. "Me, I bet it's sooner. Ain't none of the damnfool niggers there can do for the Barfords like you do. They'll see. They can't help but see, once they get over bein' mad with you."

Frederick hoped she was right. But hoping wasn't the same as believing. What he believed was that Clotilde Barford wanted him dead. Five lashes weren't enough to make her happy. Ten lashes wouldn't have been, either. He'd humiliated her in front of all the ladies for ten, maybe twenty, miles around. They'd seen her sit there dripping, with a scallion on her eyebrow. After that, she probably figured even killing was too good for him. Maybe she'd enjoy watching him sweat and fumble in the fields till he finally wore out. He was sure she'd enjoy it more than recalling him to the big house.

"How's your back?" Helen asked.

Worrying about Mistress Clotilde had almost let him forget his pain for a few seconds. Almost-but not quite. "Hurts," he said.

"Well, I reckon. You don't care to know what it looks like-best believe you don't," Helen said. "Want I should put on more ointment?"

"Let it go for now," he answered. The less she touched it, the less he would be reminded of it. "Maybe I can sleep."

If he could sleep, he wouldn't feel a thing… unless he started to roll over onto his back. Try as he would, though, he couldn't make his eyes stay closed. He hurt too much for that. An undyed, unbleached cotton shirt, loose enough so it wouldn't cling to the wounds on his back. An undyed pair of trousers of wool homespun. Thick wool socks, undoubtedly knitted by one of the slave women on the plantation. Stout shoes that were more than a little too big. A ratty straw hat. Put it all together, and it was the outfit a field hand wore. Matthew the overseer delivered it to Frederick, and its feminine equivalent to Helen.

"Here you go," he said. "Can't weed, can't pick cotton when the times comes, not in your boiled shirt and monkey suit. Tomorrow, you'll be out there with everybody else."

"Don't reckon I can keep up too good," Frederick said. "I'm sore, and I'm stiff like you wouldn't believe."

"Oh, yes, I would. I know what a whipping does," the overseer said. "I'll cut you some slack at first-for the whipping, and on account of you don't know what you're doing and you got soft hands like a girl's. But that's only at first, mind. You don't want me to get the notion that you're a lazy nigger. Believe you me, boy, you don't. Understand?"

Boy? Frederick was at least fifteen years older than Matthew. But slavery succeeded not least by denying that Negroes and copperskins could ever be men. Unlike his grandfather, Frederick would never be Mister. When his hair went from gray to white, he would go straight from boy to Uncle.

He still had to answer. "I'm not lazy, sir," he said, showing none of the useless, hopeless rage that stewed inside him. Matthew might get his goat, but the overseer would never realize it. Frederick went on, "If you don't believe me, you can ask Master Henry."

The overseer's eyes were gray and chilly: chillier than the weather in these parts ever got. "Master Henry can afford to be soft," Matthew said. "He's the owner, and he can do what he pleases. Me, I'm just the overseer, so I got to be rough. And I'm the fella you're dealin' with from here on out. Not Master Henry, not no more. Me. Have you got that, boy?"

"Oh, yes, sir," Frederick said at once. "I understand you real good. I'll do everything I can for you." Till I find out how much I can get away with not doing, anyhow.

"You better." Matthew nodded to himself. "Yes, sir, you better. 'Cause I got me all kinds of ways to make you sorry if you don't." He said not a word about Helen or about any of the unfortunate things that might happen to her if Frederick left him dissatisfied. He just walked out of the little slave cabin. Like any effective tyrant, he knew the people under his control could form pictures in their own minds far more fearsome than any he could paint for them.

Frederick looked down at his palms. They were paler than the rest of his skin, as any Negro's were: closer to the color his grandfather had been all over. Closer to the color Matthew was all over, too, but Frederick didn't think about that. He had some calluses on those palms-he didn't sit around the big house doing nothing. But his hands weren't as leathery as that chunk of tanned cowhide he'd bitten down on during the whipping. Field hands who used shovels and hoes and rakes year in and year out got palms on which they could stub out a cheroot without even feeling it.

Well, maybe you'll get palms like that, too, Frederick thought gloomily. What he would get beforehand was a bumper crop of blisters. He hoped Helen had some more of the ointment she'd used on his back. His hands would need it, too. And so would hers.

Slowly, almost of their own accord, his hands folded into fists. He made them uncoil. Even here, inside the cabin, such a gesture of defiance could be dangerous. If anyone walking by saw him and told the overseer or Master Henry… No, Frederick didn't want that to happen.

"But if I ever get the chance to hit back-" He broke that off short, too, even though he hadn't said it very loud. He'd already told Helen what he'd like to do, and spoken defiance was reckoned worse than a gesture. A slave who talked defiantly could also plot defiantly. The whites feared plots above all else.

Because they feared them, they ruthlessly stamped out every one they found. And, because they were so ruthless, they spawned more plots. Maybe they didn't realize that. Maybe they did, and accepted it as part of the cost of doing business the way they wanted to. Frederick had hardly been in a position to ask.

"If I ever get me the chance-" He broke it off even shorter this time. But the thought stuck in his mind as a burr might have stuck to his trousers. And, once stuck, it would not be dislodged.

The morning horn sounded like a dying donkey. Up till now, Frederick had always heard it from the house: from a safe distance, in other words. It hadn't had anything to do with him. He'd pitied the poor, sorry field hands who had to get up and go to work under the hot sun-or, sometimes, in the pouring rain.

Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Fancy talk, but fancy talk with a point sharp as a carving knife's. Now that horrible horn brayed for Frederick, and for Helen.

"We got to get up," she said.

"I don't want to," he mumbled. Now that his back was finally letting him sleep, he wanted to make up for all the time he'd spent awake because he'd hurt too much to shut down.

"We got to get up," Helen repeated. "You want Matthew to reckon you're a lazy nigger after all?"

Frederick groaned. He groaned again when he sat up on the edge of the miserable cot. His stripes were better than they had been when he first got them, but they were still plenty sore. He didn't want to put on the shirt Matthew had given him. But what he wanted counted for nothing in the plantation's scheme of things.

Helen wore a wool skirt, a cotton blouse, and a red bandanna on her head. Her shoes were every bit as formidable as Frederick's. All things considered, they were well off. Frederick knew of plenty of plantations where the field hands wore rags and got no shoes at all. That might have made his outfit, and Helen's, a trifle better. It didn't come close to making them good.

They ate cornmeal mush and drank coffee that Helen hastily made. Then they went outside. All the cabins were rapidly emptying. Whoever came out last got in trouble. Frederick had heard that a hundred times. Up till now, it had never mattered to him. It did today. He didn't want the overseer screaming at him, not when he was sore and slow and didn't know what he was doing.

Copperskins and Negroes-men and women-lined up in loose ranks. Seeing their ragged formation, an Atlantean drill sergeant would have wanted to kill them all, or possibly himself. But Matthew didn't complain about that. Slaves weren't supposed to look or act military. If they thought they could fight, that would make them more dangerous to their owners.

A copperskinned couple were the last to try to sneak into the formation. Their furtiveness had a plaintive air to it, as if they knew they'd get caught. And get caught they did. The overseer put his hands on his hips and looked disgusted. "So it's Ed and Wilma this morning, is it? And you're mudfaces! Not even niggers! You sure act as lazy as if you were."

The copperskins hung their heads. Frederick muttered to himself. If the last slaves out had been Negroes, chances were Matthew would have called them savages and asked them if they'd spent the time in their cabin putting on war paint. Something like that, anyhow. Whites played blacks and copperskins off against each other whenever they could. If you didn't trust the slave working next to you, you were less likely to plan together and rise up, more likely to betray each other before your plot ripened into revolt.

"Well, you're here at last." Matthew still sounded as if he hated every last one of them. Frederick wouldn't have been surprised if he did. Overseers might have godlike powers over slaves, but they weren't much in the white man's world. Planters were what mattered there. What woman from a good family would want to marry an overseer? Had Matthew owned slaves of his own… But he didn't, and he wasn't likely to. He pointed towards a shed. "Come on, God damn the lot of you. Grab your tools and get to work."

With rakes and spades and hoes over their shoulder, they looked something like an army as they trudged out to the cotton fields. Again, though, a drill sergeant would have contemplated murder or suicide. No one tried to stay in step with his neighbors or to hurry. If the slaves had moved any slower, Matthew would have shouted at them-or else whacked them with the long, firm switch he carried in his right hand.

They knew, all of them but Frederick and Helen, how much they could get away with. The two new field hands had to pick it up by watching and listening. One of the first things Frederick noticed was how heavy and clumsy his hoe was. All the tools were like that. Even so, Henry Barford complained about how often they got broken. Frederick hadn't understood that before. He suddenly did. Why should a slave care how he handled tools that belonged to his master? Make those tools extra sturdy helped, but only so much.

The overseer pointed Frederick down a row of cotton plants. "You make God-damned sure you get rid of the weeds, hear?" he said. "But don't you dare hurt the plants any. I'm gonna keep my eye on you, see how you make out."

"Reckoned you would," Frederick said. He bent and assassinated something small and green pushing up through the dirt near the closest cotton plant. His breath hissed out of him as if he were a snake. Moving hurt like blazes. And the heavy iron head on the hoe made it clumsy to swing.

Other slaves advanced up rows to either side of him. To his amazement, he had no trouble keeping up. They weren't getting over a whipping. Why couldn't they move faster? Again, the question was no sooner asked than answered. Why should they? It wasn't as if they'd get anything for themselves if they did more work.

When Matthew was shouting down at the far end of the slave gang, the Negro in the row to Frederick's left paused for a moment and told him, "You don't got to stay even with us, man. He see you workin' like that after a whippin', what's he gonna want from you when you're all right again? 'Sides, he see you workin' like that, what's he gonna want from the rest of us?"

Frederick duly slowed down. If a few weeds got missed, well, how much would that matter in the grand scheme of things? Not enough to get excited about.

He might have slowed down, but he couldn't stop. Thwock! Matthew's switch came down on a copperskin's back. "Damn your miserable, shriveled-up honker turd of a soul to hell and gone, Bill, but you got to do somethin'!" the overseer shouted. "You stand there with your thumb corkin' your asshole, you reckon I ain't gonna notice?"

Bill didn't say anything. All the same, Frederick wouldn't have wanted any man looking at him like that. If Matthew noticed, he affected not to. In his own way, he had nerve. Slowly, the copperskin got back to work.

Sweat ran down Frederick's face. It also ran from the backs of his hands to his palms, and stung the blisters that had swollen and burst there. And it stung the lash tracks on his back; his shirt didn't soak it all up. His shoulders and arms started to ache from the continued unfamiliar motion of swinging the hoe.

A copperskinned boy who couldn't have been more than nine came by with a jug, a tin dipper, and a cup shaped from the dried skin of a gourd. "Want something to drink?" he asked Frederick.

"Lord, do I ever!" the Negro exclaimed.

The boy filled the cup with the dipper. How many other mouths had drunk from that gourd? When was the last time anyone washed it? Frederick wondered about such things… afterwards. In the moment, he cared about nothing but the lukewarm water sliding sweetly down his throat. He didn't want to hand back the cup; he thought he could have emptied the jug. But the half-grown copperskin had other people to water. He wouldn't want to go back to the well and fill up the jug again too soon. Reluctantly, Frederick returned the gourd.

"Water?" the boy asked the slave in the next row, the one who'd warned Frederick not to push too hard. The slave made a production out of pausing to drink. Not even Matthew could possibly doubt that he deserved his moment of rest. So his manner proclaimed, anyhow. Frederick had the feeling the overseer could doubt anything he set his mind to doubting. If you were going to be an overseer, doubting was a talent you needed to cultivate.

A couple of pregnant women carried food out to the work gang when the sun stood at the zenith. The rolls were made from barley, which wouldn't rise like wheat. They were dense and chewy. Frederick didn't mind too much. He thought he was getting more food this way. He hadn't realized how hungry he was till he ate-and discovered that what he was getting wasn't enough to do more than take the edge off his appetite.

Watching the way things worked, he noted the plantation's efficiency. The women with the bulging bellies couldn't weed, but they could fetch and carry. The boy who brought the water jug around again was still too small to swing one of these heavy hoes. That didn't make him too small to work, and work he did.

Had the overseer set up this system? Frederick had known about it before, of course, but he hadn't known about it. As a house slave, he hadn't been caught up in it like a grain of wheat between millstones. Had Henry Barford worked it out, or his father before him? Or was it part of the lore all slaveholders knew, the lore they'd put together over hundreds of years? Frederick couldn't have said for sure, but it looked that way to him.

On a harsher plantation, the midday meal might have been smaller, or there might have been none. The break might have been shorter. Henry Barford wasn't cruel for the sake of being cruel, and neither was his overseer. They were cruel simply because you couldn't be anything else, not if you intended to own slaves and to get work out of them.

A handful of free Negroes and copperskins had slaves of their own. From everything Frederick had ever heard, they made sterner masters than most whites. They had to-their animate property was less inclined to take orders from people of their color. They had to use colored overseers, too. That lowered the respect their slaves had for the overseers. But what other choice did such owners have? No white overseer would lower himself to working for someone he thought he should be bossing around. And so…

"Come on, people!" Matthew shouted. "You done wasted enough time! Get to work, and put your backs into it for a change!"

Whatever Frederick's thought had been, it flickered and blew out like a candle flame in the wind. His joints creaked as he started hoeing again. He wasn't used to this kind of work-no indeed. He didn't know whether he dreaded getting used to it or not getting used to it more.

Was this all he had to look forward to for the rest of his days? A hoe and a row? A shovel? A big sack at harvest time? If it was, wouldn't he be better off dead?