Chapter 15: The Glove and the Lions

Tommy Baker’s first decade had been reasonably happy. He was a slave, and he had work to do since he was quite small. Almost everybody he knew was a slave, however, and all of them had to work. His Mama was patient and good to him, and his Mama was most of his world.

Then his Mama got sick. He got sick, too, and when he got better, his Mama was gone.

Aunt Ellie came for him. “I miss your mama, too,” she said. “Rose was like a big sister to me when I came on the plantation. I lost Pete, too, but Sally got better. Will you come with me and take Pete’ place as Sally’s big brother?”

Sometimes, it seemed to Tommy as if Sally had replaced Pete in his life, instead. Pete had been younger and followed him around. Now, Sally took to following him around. But they ate together and slept in the same cabin. On the coldest nights, Sally slept in his arms.

Massa Baker bought a few new hands, but only a few. Come picking time, he ordered Sally, and even children younger than she, into the lines. Tommy tried to teach Sally how to pick and to pick his own amount, too. She learned a little, but his pickings didn’t weigh enough. He got lashing, but they didn’t go too far because they didn’t want the welts to slow him down the next day.

Even though they didn’t whip Sally for her low weight, she cried that night.

“You could have done it if you weren’t helping me,” she said. “You got a whipping for helping me.”

The next day, she shook off his help. When he could spare her a glance, she was doing better. Again, when weighing time came, she was light, but she had more than the day before.

“Make a hundred and fifty pounds tomorrow,” Massa Baker said, “or I will whip you.”

They each got their set weights the next day. As the moon went to full, they could see longer. Even Massa understood that they needed some sleep, though, and did the weighing about midnight.

They got through picking season, and Massa Baker provided two hams for Christmas.

As time went on, there were new slaves. Two who would become important to Tommy were Marcus and Jason. He heard all about Jason first. He was a trained blacksmith, and Massa Baker had bought him special. The plantation’s old blacksmith had been another victim of the yellow fever.

The smithy was near the barns, and Tommy looked in occasionally. The blacksmith kept a fire going summer and winter, and Tommy could sometimes see Mike, a boy a few years older, kneeling close to the fire. Jason was a big man with huge muscles in his arms. Often you could hear his hammer ringing all around the home place.

Life started to fall into a new pattern. When he wasn’t chopping weeds in the cotton fields, he was pulling weeds in Aunt Ellie’s garden patch. Sally cuddled into his arms every night that it wasn’t too hot to be against another person.

While the new pattern had to adjust to the needs of the seasons, one season was much like the season of the previous year.

His cock began to get hard at night, and Sally asked what that was once when she felt it. He tried to get her to sleep in her mother’s arms, but Aunt Ellie didn’t want that, and Tommy couldn’t explain.

Then Marcus became important. First, he was important to Aunt Ellie. He’d come into the plantation not long after Jason, but none of them had noticed him much except as another hand making Massa Baker less demanding on the young ones like Sally.

Then Aunt Ellie noticed him in another way, and he noticed her, too. He started sleeping in their cabin some nights.

Nights he did, Tommy heard sounds from the side of the cabin where Marcus and Aunt Ellie slept. He made sure that he and Sally slept on the other side. He got Sally into his arms, and his back was turned to Aunt Ellie. That put him between Sally and them. She couldn’t see anything, but she could probably hear plenty. He could.

The problem with that was that his cock always got hard when he heard them. When he woke one morning, Tommy found white stuff dried on the inside of his pants. Listening to the other boys, he learned enough to guess that this was jism.

Even though it scratched when he had it on the inside of his pants, he slept with his pants on from then on.

He was assigned to help Jason. A horse had stepped on Mike’s foot. Jason showed him what a bellows was, and how to work it to get the flame hotter.

“You keep the fire going at all time. I’ll tell you when to put charcoal on the wood fire and when to use the bellows,” Jason said. “That’s all you have to do. I’m not going to teach a buck young as you about the real work.”

Later, though, they brought in a mule named Socks to have all his shoes replaced. Socks had a well-earned reputation for being ornery. Jason tried to get the worn shoes off, and Socks didn’t cooperate.

“Don’t just stand around, boy, help with this animal,” Jason said.

So, Tommy took Socks’s lead rope. “All he’s going to do, Socks, is give you a brand new set of shoes,” he said. “Why fight Jason? He’s not the man who makes you pull a plow all day in the hot sun.”

He kept talking while Jason got the shoes off all four feet.

“Now hold him still while I get these nails out,” Jason said. “Reason that shoe came loose was that it wore down to wear out two nail heads.”

He got out the nails and measured a horseshoe against a hoof.

“Rear hooves are bigger,” Tommy told him.

“I noticed that. We’ll get these on, and I’ll look at his front hooves. You think he really understands what you tell him?”

“He quiets when you talk to his face. Does he understand? Socks is a mule. How can you tell if he understands? Some horses, now, would do what you told them to do. Not any mule; sure not socks.”

“Now put on some charcoal and get the fire real hot.”

From that day on, though, he handled the animals, if not the metal, along with Jason.

All the young bucks on the plantation were housed together in a single shed instead of in their mothers’ cabins after a certain age. Tommy was assigned to that shed. Tommy felt two ways about this. On the one hand, he now wasn’t bothered by hearing Marcus and Aunt Ellie. On the other hand, Sally would be, and he couldn’t do anything to shield her.

Not long after he was taken out of Aunt Ellie’s cabin to live with the other young bucks, the white people got all excited by a war. They kept hearing about it, and there stopped being new clothes at Christmastime, and salt was hard to get.

When Massa Baker went off to war. Miss Mary, his wife, ran the plantation. The workers cooperated, and there were no more lashings.

The bucks who had been in the young bucks’ shed longest had found a way to sneak out at night to be with the wenches. Gradually, more and more found out how they were getting out until even Tommy learned.

He learned other things, too, and Chrissy taught him best. Chrissy had a baby, and said it was his. Massa not being around to name him, she called him Tom. Miss Mary didn’t say she couldn’t. But Baby Tom died his first winter.

The Army came by and said that they were free. Later, the Bureau gave them some food. They gave out land, too, but Miss Mary had records that said he was too young.

Miss Mary wanted him to stay, but she said she wouldn’t have any money for pay until after picking time.

Aunt Ellie went with Marcus who got land. They had two children younger than Sally, a girl named Dorcas, and a baby boy named Mark. Marcus said that Tommy could live with them if he worked the land. Sally acted real glad that Tommy was back. They hadn’t been that far apart on the plantation, but they both had work to do, and Sally had never had business in the smithy.

They put together a two-room shack, with him doing as much work as Marcus.

With the littles, especially Mark, Aunt Ellie could do only a small amount of Farm work, Sally could now do more. Marcus had 40 acres and no mule. He insisted that they plant all 40, and that meant a hell of a lot of hoeing. What with the cabin, they couldn’t plant 40, but Tommy guessed that they had more than 39 planted. Most of it was cotton, but they had a truck garden and a corn field.

There was a school started not two miles to the west of their place. With their crops in the ground, Sally started to go to the school most days.

Marcus and Tommy went to the night school when the farm hadn’t worn them out and it wasn’t raining too hard. There were mothers nursing in the class, and Tommy told Aunt Ellie that she could go until Mark could walk.

The teacher divided them up, and people in their area went Monday and Thursday. One Monday, Aunt Ellie went with them. They left Sally to mind Dorcas, and Tom carried Mark more than half the way. When Mark started rummaging in his shirt and finding nothing, he handed him back to his mother.

Both Dorcas and Sally were asleep when they got back. Some other nights, though, Sally could explain to him what he had studied. She had started before he did, and she attended more often; she was ahead of him.

Picking season, they all worked; none of them went to school. They had three people in the fields as long as they could see. Whoever wasn’t picking was minding Dorcas and Mark. When he was with the children, Tommy had to take Mark to Aunt Ellie when he got hungry. During the full moon, at least two of them were picking at any time at night.

Tommy had to admit that Marcus worked more hours than even Tommy did.

After he sold the crop, Marcus bought a mule. He got a plow from the general on credit; mostly, the general insisted that you had a crop in the ground before he sold on credit, but he could see that the price of a mule would swallow a year’s picking.

They went back to school. One night, Aunt Ellie fed Mark and set out without him. The night was chilly, but dry. When they left the school, though, a hard, cold rain was falling. The wind was hard, but gusty. First it blew from your right and left that side sopping, then it turned to your right, and had that side wet and freezing.

“Thank God we left Mark at home,” Aunt Ellie said. “He would freeze in this weather.”

“Thank God!” Tommy echoed. Mark could walk, now; at least he could stagger. On a walk like this, though, they -- mostly Tommy -- would be carrying him. He felt tired enough making his own way.

When they got to the house, it was not much warmer than outside. Dorcas had run out while Sally was changing Mark. She’d put him naked on the floor to chase after her. Dorcas, with a head start and the cotton to hide in, had been hard to catch. She had not returned until she had been soaked in the rain. Sally had been even later, not starting towards the house until she had seen that the door was open.

When she got back, Dorcas was shivering by the fireplace. The fire had gone down to coals, and Dorcas had tried to get it going again by putting wet wood from outside on it. Now, it was totally out, and rain was coming down the chimney. Mark had crawled around both rooms, pissing as he went. That wasn’t unusual, but he had nothing covering his cock when he did.

After shutting the door, Sally decided that Mark was her first problem. She headed towards him. He scuttled to the safest place he knew, under the table in the kitchen. The table was supported on one side by the wall and on another by the fireplace. It had one leg. The far corner was where Mark liked to hide. As Sally crawled towards him, he took a shit.

Tommy, Aunt Ellie, and Marcus didn’t learn all that until much later. but they came home to a house that was cold, a little wet, and stinking.

Aunt Ellie and Marcus slept in the kitchen. The younger ones slept in the front room. Now, the couple had to sleep in the room that stank worse.

When they got back, Tommy, Aunt Ellie, and Marcus didn’t even take time to dry off before they went to work to put the room right. Tommy got a shovel and a wet stick from the firewood box outside the door. he used that to scrape as much yellow shit a he could out of the corner. He was bringing some wet straw back the house when he saw Marcus sitting down with Sally over his knee. Sally deserved a spanking, but he could hear the smacks from the front room, and that sound and Sally’s sobbing seemed to go on forever.

“You were too hard on her,” he told Marcus when Sally had staggered into the front room to cry herself to sleep. “Either one of these two is hard to control. Sally had to decide which one to go after. She may have decided wrong, but she isn’t that old herself.”

“You think she isn’t big enough to watch the two of them?” Marcus asked. “Maybe you should stay home with them, instead.”

Marcus had spoken out of anger, but Tommy didn’t have another chance to go to night school unless Aunt Ellie -- or occasionally Marcus -- stayed home. And Marcus only stayed home if it was raining hard or the farm labor had exhausted him, and he saw to it that Tommy worked as hard as he did.

He got to school so seldom, that the class had gone beyond him, and he struggle to understand what they were talking about

Slowly, Tommy took responsibility for the mule. Marcus hadn’t even given him a name or learned the name he already had. Johnny was tempted to call him Marcus, but he called him ‘Snort’ instead. The second year that they had him, Johnny did the plowing.

When Aunt Ellie got so big with her next child that she didn’t want to take the trip to school, they had divided the class into those who had learned something and those who had not. He was in the class of those who had not.

Most of the women in class were married, and he didn’t meet many others. The unmarried girls he did meet let him know that they weren’t interested in a man without a grant.

Part of his pattern while caring for Snort became relieving himself of the urges in the back of the pasture and then, when they built one, in the stable. Sally was in school, but he had to be careful that Dorcas didn’t see him. She was curious about everything.

With Aunt Ellie and Marcus in the other room, he couldn’t see anything. He could hear, though. In warm weather, he would sleep against that wall. The sounds he heard joined the memories he had to excite him for his times in the barn. In cold weather, though, Sally still wanted to sleep next to him. Now, Dorcas would sleep on the other side of Sally. He didn’t want Sally to hear or Dorcas to ask questions, and Dorcas asked questions about everything.

After little Abe was born, he slept in that room, and the sounds which aroused Tommy stopped for a while. There were a lot of other sounds, but Abe’s crying wasn’t for Tommy.

One night, Alice woke up and screamed. She rushed to him, sobbing.

“I’m bleeding,” she said.

“Where?” She showed him. “Women do. You’re a woman, now. Show your mama, but don’t scream.”

Sally went in and showed Aunt Ellie. There was a little excitement, but they all got to sleep. Sally didn’t go to school that day, but she went the next.

“You be careful around boys, now,” he told her a week or so later.

“I’m not talking to boys. I’m saving myself for you.”

“Good!” As long as she wasn’t going to let boys take advantage of her, the reason she gave didn’t matter. After all, she would change.

If he didn’t take Sally’s dedication to him very seriously, Sally did. Sally was not only serious, which girls were about their commitments at that age, her commitment was permanent, which was quite unusual at that age.

The first time Sally told her mother, Aunt Ellie took it as lightly as Tommy did.

When she still said it a year later, Ellie began to worry.

Meanwhile, Sally had moved from Teacher Purcell’s class to Teacher Nelson’s class She was only going to school in the afternoon. She either studied or worked on the farm mornings. Boys her age were easier to avoid if she wanted to. She seemed to want to, as she neither started to school early nor returned late.

When Sally had been born, the only hopes a mother could have for her daughter was that she avoid disasters. If the girl grew into a slave instead of dying in a plague (or, for that matter, an isolated childhood disease), if she did not try to escape and be chewed to death by the pursuit dogs, and if she didn’t conceive a child too young and die from a childbirth before her pelvis was wide enough, then a mother should express gratitude.

Now, the possibilities were wide open. Women were getting married, and most of them married landowners. If there were only a few single landowners left, then most of the boys her age had some chance to inherit land someday. They kept hearing that Congress hadn’t decided, but men in the township had died, and their families were still farming the land.

Boys a little younger than Sally would finish the entire common school. The teachers kept saying that this was what most northern children did. If they didn’t get land, they probably could qualify for some northern-type job.

Much as she loved Rose’s son, he would never get much farther than he’d got now, than he’d got when the soldiers had told him he was free. Marcus gave him house room while he worked, and someone else might give him house room and pay. He was learning to read fairly well, although not as well as she could, let alone Sally and Marcus.

Marcus had two sons of his own, Dorcas was his daughter. Tommy couldn’t expect to inherit.

Sally could do better when she was a bit older, and all the women who had lived on plantations agreed that their daughters should wait longer than they had been allowed to.

Meanwhile, Sally had made up her mind, and she and Tommy slept in the same room. Ellie really wished that they didn’t.

Tommy felt Aunt Ellie’s coldness towards him. There was nothing he could do about it. Marcus, he knew, thought of him as something Aunt Ellie brought with her. With a mule to do the plowing, with Sally real good at picking and home half days to hoe, With Dorcas beginning to order the boys around so that Aunt Ellie could do more farm work, he wasn’t really necessary. He eased Marcus’s workload; he took better care of Snort than Marcus ever would. Still, they could get along without him if they needed to.

It was a dry, warm night. They all were sleeping as far apart as they could. Dorcas took the window; Sally had the door open and was lying mostly in the opening; Mark lay against the door so he might catch a breeze, but he was far enough from Sally to miss her body heat. Tommy, as he usually did on warm nights lay against the inside wall with his head close enough to the door to hear what happened in the bedroom but far enough that nobody would kick it coming in and out of the bedroom.

Aunt Ellie and Marcus had taken Abe with them to night school. When they came home, they made Sally move out of the doorway so they wouldn’t step on her as they came in. The lantern’s light woke Tommy, but a minute later it went into the inner room. He could hear them setting Abe in the crate that they used for a crib. He could hear them lie down, but the lantern still shone under the door.

Instead of going to sleep after their long day’s work and their walk home, they were going at it. He could tell that they were trying to be quiet, but they weren’t quite successful

Then Sally, totally bare, snuggled up against him.

“You crazy girl?” he asked. “It’s too hot!”

“Hush. You’ll wake Dorcas.” Mark, they both knew, would sleep through a thunderstorm when once asleep. Marcus and Aunt Ellie were busy right then; he knew, but he had hoped that Sally wouldn’t.

He could feel her ass press into his belly. His face was in her hair.

“You don’t ever look at me,” she continued. “I’m different now.” She pulled his arm around her and his hand to her small, but quite exciting teat. Her nipple was already standing up when his fingers met it, but it stood up more.

“We shouldn’t...”

“Hush. And I have hair, now.” She pulled his hand -- not resisting, although it should -- to her now furry groin.

She slipped down his body. Her ass, instead of pressing into his belly, pushed against his pants-covered cock. That was enough to set him off.

“You can’t do this!” He said. He pulled his hand out of hers and used his left arm to roll her a little away. He delivered a stinging slap to her ass.

“Ow!”

“Now, who’s waking people? Get to your place before your mama comes out.”

“She’s busy.” But Sally did scamper to the doorway and cover herself.

He thought he heard Aunt Ellie say something, but then Marcus cursed. He realized that they were just finishing, and they hadn’t heard anything from outside their room.

He could stand Aunt Ellie’s coolness, but he didn’t think he could stand Sally’s heat.

Miss Mary had wanted him to stay and work for her. Maybe she still did. The old plantation was a long ways away. But he’d go and ask.

It was hardly the season of heaviest work, but Marcus hassled him about leaving the place for a day, especially as he couldn’t say why.

“Why do you need a whole day? Look how far Sally walks and walks back after dinner.”

He didn’t tell Aunt Ellie why, either, but she packed him a dinner.

It was harder to find the old place than he thought it would be. When he got there, though, Miss Mary seemed to remember him. That didn’t do him much good.

“I put the place out on shares, now, Tommy. Even if I had a place empty, it’s too late to plant. I’d say ask after Christmas, but I don’t think any of them are leaving. You can talk with Jason. I have a different arrangement with him.”

Jason was in the old smithy, doing work for a white man Tommy had never seen.

“I have an apprentice, already,” he said. “He helps with the iron, not just the animals. We don’t really get enough business to justify the two of us, and Miss Mary takes a share for the use of the land and tools.”

He knew the way back, but the walk felt even longer. Aunt Ellie had saved him some supper.

“You look like you didn’t get any,” Marcus told him.

Later in the year, though, Marcus found him an escape.

“When I married your aunt,” he said, “I took on what was hers. You’re welcome here as long as you want.”

“Thank you, Marcus.” Considering that “here” was a cabin that he’d helped build and a garden that he tended, his thanks were not that sincere.

“You’re good with the mule, though. Now, the general -- you know the general that runs the store?”

“I’ve been there.” Marcus ran a sheet to buy on credit. Aunt Ellie’s name was on that sheet, and she had taken Tommy and Sally there to buy them clothes. Tommy’s name wasn’t on the sheet, and he didn’t get cash for his work.

“Word is, the general is looking for a man who knows mules. I reckon he’ll take a boy who knows them as well as you.”

Tommy was a man who knew mules. There were plenty of other men who knew them better, though, even if Marcus wasn’t one of them.

“Can I ride Snort there? It’s not far, but he’ll see me with a mule.”

“You can try.”

He succeeded, although he had no saddle and only a rope around Snort’s head for a bridle. Every time they got to a branch in the road, Snort thought the other turn more interesting. Tommy got his head turned in the right direction, though, and Snort decided to follow his nose.

When he got to the store, though, some woman was behind the counter.

“I’m looking for the general,” he said.

“He’s in the house. If you want credit, he has to handle it. Otherwise, I know the store just as well as he does.”

He left the store and looked at the house. It was close, but it was small and at an angle. He couldn’t tell what was the front of the house.

He ducked in the store again. “What door do I use?” he asked the store woman.

“Either one. They’re Yankees.”

With that encouragement, he left Snort tied to the hitching rail and walked over to the house. He knocked and took off his hat. He’d worn a hat particularly so he could do that.

A man opened the door. “Come in quickly,” he said, “or he’ll escape.”

Before he could something snaked by his knees. Trained by Dorcas and Mark, he dropped his hat and grabbed. He turned the child around, held him above the floor until the door shut behind him, and then put him down facing away. The child raced away, saw that there was no escape that way, and tried to turn. Instead, he collapsed on the floor.