hated with such passion.
“You’re carrying on like a raving fool,” Angus declared, “because you know this for a fact—Peggy McLean should thank heaven she was prevented from marrying you.”
“It—” Judson could barely speak. “—it must give you great pride and satisfaction to say that about your own flesh.”
“It gives me great sadness.”
“You vile, lying old —”
Unable to continue, he wheeled and rushed away down the veranda. Angus shouted after him:
“At least you can have the decency to keep yourself from her presence. She knows your wicked purpose for calling at McLean’s! ‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery—’”
Scarlet again, Judson stalked straight ahead, fearful that if he turned back, there would be blows struck—or worse. It required an act of total will for him to continue toward the main door of the house as Angus’ voice grew more and more shrill:
“‘But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart—’”
Judson slammed the door, stormed past the startled house blacks who saw his thunderous look and glanced away.
He raced up to his room, tore off his sweated shirt in exchange for a new one. He hated his father. Yet surely some of the guilt for these dreadful confrontations was his. He took pleasure in tormenting the old man, in revenge for the old man tormenting him. What in the name of God was wrong with him?
Even Donald’s faults were mild in comparison. In their father’s eyes, Donald’s chief sin was his conviction that the oppressive taxes and restrictive policies of Britain could no longer be borne. To that iniquity Judson added a score more, from adulterer to defender of slaves—
Ten minutes later, he was galloping one of the dirt lanes that crisscrossed the plantation. His saddlebags bulged with two unopened jugs of rum.
Judson saw black heads turn in the fields. One slate-blue face burned bright: the buck Larned, bare-shouldered, risen like some demonic figure from his weeding among the ear-shaped leaves of the tobacco plants.
Larned watched him ride on, and it seemed to Judson that his back was afire from the slave’s venomous glare. Judson was a white man, and Angus Fletcher’s son. No matter what he’d done for the wench Dicey, Larned would surely twist it so that it acquired a practical—a despicable—motivation: to preserve the wench for further work, perhaps. Or sex with Judson himself. What the hell was the use of trying to intervene if it generated so much hate from all of them?
That Judson understood how the whole slave problem had gotten so thoroughly out of hand in a hundred and fifty years didn’t mitigate his sense of outrage—or his sad conviction that the system would produce continuing friction and violence unless it was abolished.
The agricultural economy in which he’d grown up was based on grueling physical labor. So he really couldn’t fault the people of the southern colonies for buying black workers in preference to white ones when the latter were far less desirable.
Men such as his grandfather, for example, could be counted on to work for their buyers only until the expiration of their indenture contracts. Of course his grandfather hadn’t been willing to wait even that long!
The problem of finding a stable work force had grown still more difficult early in the century, when some combination of geniuses in the mother country had conceived the idea of clearing Britain of many of its undesirables—thieves, pickpockets, whores—whose crimes weren’t quite serious enough to earn them hang-ropes. The answer was to transport them across the ocean at three to five pounds a head, to be purchased on arrival for negotiated periods of servitude. But just exactly like the man who voluntarily indentured himself, transportees eventually were eligible for freedom—earned legally or, sooner, by
“You’re carrying on like a raving fool,” Angus declared, “because you know this for a fact—Peggy McLean should thank heaven she was prevented from marrying you.”
“It—” Judson could barely speak. “—it must give you great pride and satisfaction to say that about your own flesh.”
“It gives me great sadness.”
“You vile, lying old —”
Unable to continue, he wheeled and rushed away down the veranda. Angus shouted after him:
“At least you can have the decency to keep yourself from her presence. She knows your wicked purpose for calling at McLean’s! ‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery—’”
Scarlet again, Judson stalked straight ahead, fearful that if he turned back, there would be blows struck—or worse. It required an act of total will for him to continue toward the main door of the house as Angus’ voice grew more and more shrill:
“‘But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart—’”
Judson slammed the door, stormed past the startled house blacks who saw his thunderous look and glanced away.
He raced up to his room, tore off his sweated shirt in exchange for a new one. He hated his father. Yet surely some of the guilt for these dreadful confrontations was his. He took pleasure in tormenting the old man, in revenge for the old man tormenting him. What in the name of God was wrong with him?
Even Donald’s faults were mild in comparison. In their father’s eyes, Donald’s chief sin was his conviction that the oppressive taxes and restrictive policies of Britain could no longer be borne. To that iniquity Judson added a score more, from adulterer to defender of slaves—
Ten minutes later, he was galloping one of the dirt lanes that crisscrossed the plantation. His saddlebags bulged with two unopened jugs of rum.
Judson saw black heads turn in the fields. One slate-blue face burned bright: the buck Larned, bare-shouldered, risen like some demonic figure from his weeding among the ear-shaped leaves of the tobacco plants.
Larned watched him ride on, and it seemed to Judson that his back was afire from the slave’s venomous glare. Judson was a white man, and Angus Fletcher’s son. No matter what he’d done for the wench Dicey, Larned would surely twist it so that it acquired a practical—a despicable—motivation: to preserve the wench for further work, perhaps. Or sex with Judson himself. What the hell was the use of trying to intervene if it generated so much hate from all of them?
That Judson understood how the whole slave problem had gotten so thoroughly out of hand in a hundred and fifty years didn’t mitigate his sense of outrage—or his sad conviction that the system would produce continuing friction and violence unless it was abolished.
The agricultural economy in which he’d grown up was based on grueling physical labor. So he really couldn’t fault the people of the southern colonies for buying black workers in preference to white ones when the latter were far less desirable.
Men such as his grandfather, for example, could be counted on to work for their buyers only until the expiration of their indenture contracts. Of course his grandfather hadn’t been willing to wait even that long!
The problem of finding a stable work force had grown still more difficult early in the century, when some combination of geniuses in the mother country had conceived the idea of clearing Britain of many of its undesirables—thieves, pickpockets, whores—whose crimes weren’t quite serious enough to earn them hang-ropes. The answer was to transport them across the ocean at three to five pounds a head, to be purchased on arrival for negotiated periods of servitude. But just exactly like the man who voluntarily indentured himself, transportees eventually were eligible for freedom—earned legally or, sooner, by
Similar Books
