The Known World - Edward P. Jones [166]
Mama’s little biddy baby gon git it all real sweet
Mama’s little biddy gon git it all nice and sweet . . .
The glee spread throughout the baby’s body. He began clapping his hands, not as any sort of applause but because there was so much happiness in his body that this was the only way he could release some of it.
Celeste looked down the lane, where there was now a larger crowd, her husband and two children among them. The little twins named Henry and Caldonia came tottering out of their cabin and Loretta lowered the lantern just a bit so that all might get a better look at the children. As she brought the lantern down, the shadows of the twins that had been resting on the ground behind them grew and grew so that by the time everyone had a good look at the babies, the shadows were as tall as the children.
Celeste learned the next day, Friday, that Caldonia, with a recommendation from Louis, had made Elias overseer. The two men would become close over the next days.
That Friday, too, Ray Topps, the man from Atlas Life, Casualty and Assurance Company returned and had no trouble getting in to see Caldonia. He came with Maude. A widower with nine children, including three unable to walk and one unable to see or hear, a man who had failed at his patent medicine business, Topps had many papers, which he was anxious to show Caldonia. All the papers had the name of the company spelled “Aetlas.” “Unfortunately,” he explained, sitting next to her on the settee, “there seems to have been an abundance of E’s at this particular printer’s. But I assure you we have always been known as Atlas and we always will be. Your children will know us as that, and so will your grandchildren. Their children will know the same.” For the moment, with all the talk of children, he forgot he was talking to a childless widow. “You get the meaning I’m trying to convey to you, Mrs. Townsend,” he said, seeing his mistake. And Caldonia said that she did.
Topps told her that for 15 cents a head every two months, her property, each working slave over five years old, would be protected from just about everything God could think up: Getting kicked in the head by a mule while working a field. Dying from tainted food—as long as a doctor could certify the food was not simply rancid and that any normal person could have eaten it and not have the same death visited upon him. Breaking a neck in a well after falling down in it while cleaning it out. Getting bit by a snake of one foot or longer while working in the fields or the barn or the smokehouse or the tobacco barn or the corncrib; said snake, alive or dead, with suitably missing fang or fangs, would have to be produced to collect on the policy. Slave death by mad dogs in fall, winter or spring was compensable; canine madness in the summer was an “ordinary act of God,” to be expected, so the policy was mute about that season. Nothing came from the loss of an arm or of one or both eyes, because such losses were not the best indicia of how much work a slave could still perform. Being hurt in any fashion by duly authorized slave catchers was compensable; plain citizens, opportunistic slave catchers just out to make a dollar, hurting a runaway would make that provision in the policy null and void. Being killed or injured by a neighbor while walking across a neighbor’s property while on some errand “of consequence” for the master or the mistress or their issue. No money for a slave hurt or killed by someone while said slave was visiting his family on another plantation. Being accidentally shot while assisting the master/mistress/their issue while hunting or while traveling with said people as long as travel was of three days duration or longer. Being struck by lightning while working in the field as long as recuperation