Uncle Robin sighs. “Well, I guess Lincoln went on and crossed Swille. Swille was downstairs calling Texas when I got off duty a half-hour ago. I knew that Lincoln was a player. Man, he was outmaneuvering Swille like a snake. Me and him winked at each other from time to time. Ugliest man you want to see. Look like Alley Oop. When Swille brought out the Old Crow, Lincoln’s eyes lit up. You suppose it’s true what that Southern lady said about Lincoln being in the White House drunk for six hours at a time? I understand that Grant is a lush, too; what’s wrong with these white people?”
Aunt Judy’s thigh rubbed against his. Their shoulders touched. She took a sip of champagne. “You should see Ms. Swille. She drinks like a fish. Won’t eat. Look like a broomstick. I went into the room the other day and look like Mammy Barracuda had a half nelson on the woman. They stopped doing whatever they were doing, and I played like nothing was unusual. Then, later on in the day, Barracuda came into the kitchen, and we turned off the radio because we were listening to Mr. Lincoln’s address, but she caught us. She asked us did we know what Emancipation meant, and we sort of giggled and she did too. Then Barracuda showed us the Bible where it say ‘He that knoweth his master’s will and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.’ ”
“I never read it, but I figured something like that was in it.”
“She said that we were property and that we should give no thoughts to running away. She say she’d heard that 40s, Quickskill and Leechfield were having a hard time of it and that Quickskill had gone crazy and was imagining that he was in Canada. She said that she always knew Quickskill was crazy. As for Canada, she said they skin niggers up there and makes lampshades and soap dishes out of them, and it’s more barbarous in Toronto than darkest Africa, a place where we come from and for that reason should pray hard every night for the Godliness of a man like Swille to deliver us from such a place.”
“What’s wrong with that woman? Seem like the older she get, the sillier she get. In the old times people used to get wiser the older they get. Now it’s all backwards. Everything is backwards.”
“She treats that Bangalang like a dog. Whips her. Today for dropping a cake. Sure is a lot of whipping going on up there. They whips people when they ain’t even done nothing. They had a party the other night — the gentlemen from the Magnolia Baths, and they was whipping on each other too.”
“It’s the war, Judy. Making everybody nervous. As soon as old man Swille heard about the Emancipation you should’ve seen him. That cigar bout jumped out his face. He started cussing and stamping his foot. He called Washington, but they gave him the runaround. The boys in the telegraph office called him Arthur and made indignant proposals to him, so he say. Them Yankees are a mess. Well, the Planters have been driving up to the Castle all day now. Those Planters are up to no good.”
The bottom of her foot moved across the top of one of his. The top of his right thigh was resting on her hip. He was talking low, in her ear.
“Rub my neck a little, hon.”
He began to rub her neck.
She sighed. “That’s nice.”
“Did you hear what the runner up from Mississippi said?”
“What, Robin?”
“Say he saw Quickskill’s picture in the newspaper way down there.”
“Was it a personal runaway ad that old man Swille put in there?”
“No, it was something about a poem of his.”
“Oh, that must have been the poem I heard Cato discussing with Swille. All about him coming back here. I didn’t see him come back. Did you hear anything from the fields?”
“Nobody seen him here.”
“Say Ms. Swille showed him the combination to her safe.”
“That Quickskill. Boy, he was something.”
They both laugh.
“Remember that time, Judy, when he complained to Massa Swille that Mammy Barracuda would always serve his dinner cold and put leftovers in his meal?”
“Sometimes she wouldn’t even put silverware out for Raven.”
“She didn’t like it because he was Swille’s private secretary and sat at the table with the family.”
“She didn’t like anyone to come between her and Arthur, as she calls him.”
Aunt Judy turns to him and puts her arms around his neck, their abdomens, thighs, touching, her cheek brushing against his as she places the champagne glass on the table next to the bed.
“Want some more?”
“I’ll be drunk, Robin. I have to get up tomorrow at six and get breakfast.”
“One more. For the Emancipation.”
“Won’t do us any good. He freed the slaves in the regions of the country he doesn’t have control over, and in those he does have control over, the slaves are still slaves. I’ll never understand politics.”
Robin is sitting up, the covers down to his naked waist. He picks up the champagne bottle and pours.
“That’s Lincoln playing. Lincoln is a player. The Emperor of France’s secretary called up here and told Swille not to show up to that party for the royal people next week. Swille tried to get through to the Emperor, but the secretary refused, and when Swille called the Emperor by his first name, the secretary said to Swille, ‘Don’t you slave peddler ever be calling him that again,’ and hung up, in French.” They laugh. “Is Ms. Swille still on her strike?”
“Is she! Today she called me and Bangalang her sisters and said something about all of us being in the same predicament. Me and Bangalang just looked at each other.”
“She used to be so beautiful.”
“Wasn’t she so! The belle of the Charity Ball. Horse rider. Miss Mississippi for 1850, same time Arthur got his award.”
“When do you think they’re going to tell her about her son?”
“You mean how he got eat — Oh, that reminds me. I mean to tell you. Speaking of the dead. Well, Bangalang told us today that one of the children was out in the cemetery and they wandered into the crypt where that old hateful Vivian, Arthur’s sister, is, and that the child saw …”
“What … what she see?”
“As she said, she heard somebody talking and he went inside, and the child saw Massa Swille and the man had done taken off the lid from the crypt and was on top of his sister and was crying and sobbing, and that he was sweating and that he was making so much noise that he didn’t even notice the child and the child run away, and the child say he saw Vivian’s decomposed hand clinging to his neck.”
“That kid’s got to be telling a fib, Judy. I told you about letting those children play in the cemetery.”
“But, Robin, ain’t nothin in there but dead folks.”
A low moan of a solitary wolf can be heard.
“Oh, there go that wolf again. I hope he’s not out there all night again. Judy … Judy?”