While at the gentlemen’s college his guardian had selected for him, Danford Fortegeist had dressed the part, made the rounds of dinner parties and cotillions, shook the proper hands, but, the whole while, since he had from the cradle discerned with a naturalist’s eye that plants, ani- mals and all the systems that surrounded them ran by patterns (if it were God’s or the Devil’s, no matter!), he had lined up the influential folk he met, like winds carefully released from Aeolius’ bag, so that he purchased the entire county of his birth, when he returned home, parlaying his understanding of agriculture and economics and his inheritance into forty thousand acres of living, breathing laboratory.
He didn’t consider himself Emperor or God, but explorer/scientist/gentleman in the new or- der of society, ahead of the approval of his fellows at that point in time. Within the Bible, which he still read on Sundays from an unexamined habit of his own rearing, his closest affinity was with Abraham, willing to sacrifice, willing to be head of a great nation, though he had no desire to walk anywhere near that close to God, unless there was an as yet unforeseen payoff in it for him.
He had room and money to try many things, but was keenly aware of how short his lifespan could be; on this point, he often bartered with his Maker. Every square inch of the country- side had a purpose, even if it were fallow. Here was tobacco, there was wheat; rice next to the long-staple cotton of his family’s heritage, a field of sugar beets next to a field of shortstaple cotton whose durability impressed him.
His looms made the rough linen that clothed his workers, and the strong, slow dark river turned trees from his forest into planks and kernels of his wheat into flour, when its waters were channeled properly.
Danford developed his own currency that didn’t resemble the fly-away paper money of the day. The paper was heavy, the writing reddish and crudely engraved on whitish paper. The folks of the County called them Master’s dollars and they could be used at the Mercantile or Livery or saloon or freight office in town for local things, since Danford owned them all. He owned every door knob, pickaninny, and bolt of cloth, and folks within the County used this currency to transfer value between Danford’s various enterprises with almost no writing; just a little reckoning once a month. And it certainly kept the population at large from building up any sort of pile of pilfer off of the books. Nowhere to go to spend it that they wouldn’t be spotted. Certainly not going to leave the County with it. Only Robert and Zachary, the Outside man, knew where Master kept some of the currency he used to commerce with the outside world.
Danford sought an advantage by procreating with his female slaves to multiply his workforce, since the law spelled out the continuity of ownership of a child born to a female slave. Having once tried the process with Rebekah, the attractive fifteen-year old daughter of his millwright, he found cross-racial fornication to be the uncomfortable opposite of orderly: rather smelly, messy and unnecessarily emotional; draining, on the whole. Fruitless, he traded her for two scrawny toddlers and their mother through which he immediately achieved the returns he desired. From then on, pretty virgins became trading stock for two or sometimes three bucksprouts; bigger numbers, more quickly, than he could have achieved by prosaic copulation.
Those first two emaciated children, arriving in the Rebekah trade, allowed Danford another experiment. He assigned one to House and one to Field and raised his new House boy in paral- lel to his biological son, the product of his own successful match with an Atlanta belle of good breeding, attached to him by marriage the same year he planted the first of the sugar beets.
The young House boy was called Fancy because it suited his Master to fill him with all manner of learning and serving as an experiment in culture. During his first years, he stayed with Betsy, the cook, in the good Quarters. He ate when Master’s son, James, ate at the low, blue table, near him, ready to be finished whenever James was, so he learned to eat quickly. He listened, won- dered, pondered and practiced on his slate, while James’ tutor lectured and examined James in Master’s study or on the screened porch, if it was very hot.
After midday, he learned to help at the forge while Earnest, the smith, sharpened tools. He watched with admiration as Earnest changed a chunk of glowing iron into an axe head or the blade of a hoe.
Earnest had lines on his back from something called Lightin-Out. That must have hurt. Fancy never wanted to do that. They talked about a lot of things. Earnest told him that before Fancy was born, Master had made Earnest bunk in the good quarters with Betsy for a while
but when no children came of it, he moved him back out.
“Not right," said Earnest. “Wouldn’t do it." Earnest had a wife somewhere. Unlike Earnest, oth- er men weren’t of the Book. When Master gave Betsy other roommates, she had several babies. Fancy was like family with some of them, some older, some younger. Earnest told him Master’s experiment with Fancy was something new.
For a long time, Fancy was confused about mothers and fathers. It turned out one of the field hands, Emma, was his birth mama. He caught glimpses of her most days and got to say hello to her almost every Sunday. She said he was really from a place he could never see and from good people he would never meet. He should be proud. He didn’t understand that, either.
Once a year, on what they said was his birthday, Betsy let his mama come to where he was sleeping to tell him stories. Fancy was a little scared of Emma, at first. She had scar-dots circling her face and eight long, deep scars on her back, like Earnest’s.
When he turned three and then four, she described a jungle with vines like ropes, leaves as big as shutters, and strange mouth-watering fruit. Past his bed crunched animals bigger than wagons, slithered snakes more poisonous than Cottonmouth, slunk cats sharp as saw blades. She told him of his Songhai relatives and their stories.
On the story night of his fifth birthday, she gave him his name: Bì-bìrì meaning cords-into- rope, when he could be trusted to never tell anyone and if he did, the story-visits would have to stop. He also learned to say: ęnu, mouth; eti, ear; and owo, hand. Emma told him a monkey story and laughed. Then, snuggling against Emma in the bed, Timbuktu of a thousand lights spilled like a lingering sunset onto the hills of his knees. Camel trains carrying gold and salt trekked across his blankets to the markets of Arabia. That night, he was of Benin and Mali, Songhai and Morocco. What dreams.
The night he turned six, Emma had him imagine himself in the heart of her stories. He became Brother in a cornfield scaring the crows off his own family’s field. He became Sister, washing clothes in the shady shallows.
He was Mother, cooking at the hut fire; Father, sleeping after a dance. He was little Boy caught, scraped and dragged, rope-chafed, marched away from his village home, huts burning, head shaved, branded, stuffed into a boat like a floating box. The lightning bugs outside the window were frantic eyes. He startled, felt the scratchy hands of Emma cupping his cheeks. “You was born here, but all around you is laundry-Sister, cornfield-Brother, cooking-Mother, singing-Fa- ther. They are here."
Fancy got up and looked out the window. A light moved from one room to the next in the Big House.
“You cannot talk of our story, Bì-bìrì. Like your name, it must be your story only; something for you and me to know. For now." He sensed her deep anger and the urgency behind the stories, as though they didn’t have much time.
More things he didn’t understand.
At five years old, Fancy eyed some of the pretty orange nails on the anvil that he wanted to show Master James. He grabbed them in a hurry, while Earnest’s back was turned. The bits of iron seared his palms and fingers, binding themselves to his flesh. He bared his teeth and screamed without stopping until Betsy put a poultice on his hand; his first experience with in- tense physical pain.
The scars formed raised angry lines across his right palm and fingers that looked like the lines on Earnest’s back. When they cracked open, it made it hard to write or hold the file or do any- thing. For a while, he couldn’t even play marbles with James till he practiced with his left hand a lot. It took a while to read his own handwriting on the learning slate.
Sometimes, the boys had free time, usually when Master was traveling and the tutor took a glass of juice, his cigar and a book onto the screened porch by himself. Fancy and James and occasionally Litany, the tutor’s daughter, played marbles or Hide-the-Switch or rolled hoops. At Easter, when Fancy was six, children from the next plantation visited and they played Duck on the Rock. Fancy tossed the ball and raced and laughed. Maybe he laughed too loud. Their game stopped all of a sudden and James told him it was because of grown-ups who didn’t hold with Master’s experiment.
One day, it was just Fancy and Litany. What started as cartwheels down the long green mel- on-scented grass slopes turned into wrestling and then rolling together whumpity down the big hill behind the manor house. The high-pitched voice in his head kept singing “yippee’ and when they stopped rolling and he sat up straddle of Litany, he felt his loins move and he passed 'yippee’ and was into new territory.
Betsy snatched him up by the armpits and hissed: “You go on in the house now, Miss Litany, before you daddy sees what you been playing at." She skewered Fancy with a look. “Ain’t you learned nothin’, 'cept numbers and names?"
He involuntarily thought: Homo Sapiens Negroides, as he’d been taught with Master James. In front of a long mirror, he had been told to strip off his clothes alongside a detailed drawing of a white boy. Master James made scratching sounds on his slate while the Tutor pointed out Fan- cy’s dissimilarities: “Notice the disproportionate bone length of the thigh." When James held up his slate with a scarecrow drawn on it, Fancy laughed explosively. He had expected to see himself formal-science looking. The Tutor caned him twice on the thigh.
By age seven, Tutor said Fancy could take instruction well enough to help Betsy in the kitchen.
She gave him washing and peeling jobs and sometimes let him measure and stir.
When he turned eight, he was also allowed to ride in the mule cart with Long Jake, the teamster, when he went to town for supplies.
One day the list said: a packet of needles, a spool of pink thread and a small bag of peppercorns. Long Jake was waiting alongside the front door of the store, with the cart. The total came to two- eighty-one.
Fancy said to the shopkeeper: “Here’s three," and handed over the three one-dollar coins.
The shopkeeper dropped them in his apron pocket and held out his hand again. “Now then, one-eighty-one," he said.
“That’s all they give me; I give you three!" Fancy was outraged. For this counting he didn’t need his slate. “Not just one dollar, I give you 'em all! Look on the floor, maybe! I give you three! NO!!"'
The shopkeeper’s hand crashed down across his face and Fancy collapsed in a pile, hitting his head on the floor.
Long Jake carried the purchases in paper in his pocket with a note for Master. Fancy, fuming and bruised, walked alongside the rig. “I didn’t lose it; I give it to 'im!" His head throbbed and his face felt huge.
“Take it slow now. I mean, real slow." Long Jake stopped the buggy so Fancy could climb on. “Let 'em think you is dumb."
“I ain’t dumb."
“No, I know you ain’t dumb. Point is, if they think you is dumb, you’s gonna be alright. And slow and easy fit right into dumb." He gnawed on his lower lip a moment. “Only one way outa this now. If you don’ member losin' them dollas on the way there, best 'member losin' them before we gets back. They’s lost, but you ain’t. Yet."
Busy with a neighbor in his parlor all that afternoon and evening, Master wasn’t informed of the incident until the next day after breakfast. Robert, the inside man, ventured: “Robert give out ten strokes of the cane yesterday, Master, on Fancy for losing shopping money. Store account still says $2.81 owing. Do we pay that?"
Master Fortegeist was now an Assemblyman who believed in wisdom and progress. He templed his fingers in front of his face, elbows on the table. The old mantle clock ticked away a minute. “Let Fancy decide how to repay that, Robert," he said, after some thought. “I wonder what choices he will make if the cost is a dollar a lash on Emma’s back. Or would he substitute four lashes at twenty-five cents each on Earnest’s back? Maybe we can offer him ten cents a lash on his own back; or a penny a lash on … your back, Robert!"
Robert’s eyes widened and he bit his lower lip.
“I’m just playing with you, Robert! Don’t look so grim! Have him choose today. Administer tomorrow. I’m curious how our young Fancy will resolve this dilemma. Never too young to discover that life is about trade-offs. Isn’t that so, Robert? And, of course, we pay our debts."
Furious with the injustice, at sundown, Fancy reported to Robert that he would take as many lashes as he could, which in his brave, angry, seven- year-old mind was seven or eight, may- be more if he could hold his breath a lot and bite something between his teeth. He would ask Earnest to hold still for four lashes, since he was strong and healthy and had done it before and probably already knew about breath holding. That would make probably almost $1.80, if he had done his slate right. Though he didn’t want to ask her or hear her cry of pain, he was sure Emma would take one lash for him, since it was just one and worth a dollar and she was family, and he knew she would forgive him. That would make $2.80.
As dawn lit up the trees, fences, grass and whitewash of the plantation and chickens clucked,
, crickets clicked and milk drilled into the buckets in the barn, Emma came to the kitchen door. "Betsy, I need the boy," she said. Fancy had already built up the fire, so it was okay timing.
“Just get him back… you know… for Robert." Betsy gave Emma a soft look.
In air thin and crisp, Emma led the way past the store house, past the good Quarters of the House servants, past the patch-planked Quarters where the field-hands and Earnest lived.
At the old footbridge cross the river, slick with moss and loose with rot, Emma said: “Bì-bìrì, you smart, but there ain’t enough time to let you understand what being owned is about and what being sold is. You been young and that’s one thing. But when they whip you at that post that gonna be over. You think you is part Master and part Earnest and part everybody and you ain’t. You black and you Songhai and never did sposed to be here."
Emma snatched him suddenly from behind and hugged him to her. She wrapped her legs around his and threw their bodies into the water. She was thin as a frayed thread, but her arms were strong as ropes.
Daniel Fortegeist was vexed with this unexpected and unnecessary loss.