• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1564 0

have been able to get away with calling it a work-related injury, as long as the agent did not come and see Stamford for himself.) Those work-injury policies would come about because an agent in South Carolina would write to Hartford to tell them that many of his clients were asking about insuring slaves hurt while doing their jobs. Men and women were losing limbs, getting sick from any number of ailments directly related to their jobs, the agent said in his letter to Hartford, and his clients wanted some relief for that. At the time of Stamford’s beating, there was a policy, for a premium of 25 cents a month, that would have paid Caldonia if he had died. It would not have paid the price Henry paid for Stamford, $450, because Stamford was now much older. But the money would have gone a long way toward purchasing someone else, someone stronger and no doubt more able to stand up for himself.

The Atlas man had come the day of the beating because Maude had sent word to him that her newly widowed daughter needed all the help she could get. Maude had policies on all her slaves. Riding away that day, the Atlas man noted in his mind that next time he would have to insist on seeing the mistress of the house and not settle on an answer from a male relative who did not know the benefits of Atlas products. A negative response, the people in Hartford had taught, was only the groundwork for a positive one.

Stamford did not go after Gloria again, or Cassandra. Though the hant was gone from his cabin, he began to think that he was not long for the world, that no young stuff would ever love him again. He became most difficult and got into even more fights with men. He even cursed children when an adult was not around to shoo him away. The children in the lane started saying that he was a man who had sworn off all human food. Stamford now ate only nails, they said, rusty nails, and drank only muddy water, the muddier the better.

He met up with a slave from a neighboring plantation and that man gave him from time to time a brew that the man claimed was better than the whiskey white men drank. The basic ingredient of the brew was potatoes that had been fermenting for months. There were other things in it, mostly just what the man happened to find at hand—leaves, dead insects, chicken feet, newspapers, dirty rags, brackish water. It all went into the brew. And for a while a body after drinking it would fall into a nice state, a place the brew man liked to call heaven on earth. The effect was brief and if the drinker did not go to sleep right away, a headache would come on that was worse than a tree falling on his head, for it was only men who drank the stuff.

A little more than three weeks after Clement beat him, Stamford came walking down to the lane. He had drunk some of the brew the day before and his head was paining him. His vision was blurry. It was Sunday afternoon and it was raining. He didn’t remember where he had been, but he was heading now to Delphie’s cabin. The muddy lane was empty except for Stamford and one of the three cats on the place who didn’t mind being out in the rain.

He knocked on Delphie’s door and she opened it before there was a need for a second knock.

“I been puttin my mind to studyin on why you and me don’t get together,” Stamford said. His head, though in pain, was clearer than it had been that morning, but it wasn’t clear enough for him to know the entire difference between right and wrong.

Delphie said, “What?” She had helped him heal after the fight with Clement as best she could, and when she saw him take a turn toward something else, she had gone on about her business.

Stamford grinned. The road to young stuff takes you through the forest of wide grins, the man had advised when Stamford was twelve. But young stuff is worth it. Stamford grinned some more. “You and me. Us together. Me and you puttin up together and bein as one little family, is what I’m sayin.” If he couldn’t get young stuff, he would take what he could get. Winter would be there before he knew it.

Delphie stepped out of the cabin.