Wild Seed

“What does that matter?”

“It does not matter. You are a man to whom it need not matter. I thought he could be a good husband. On the ship, I worried that I could not be the wife he needed. I wanted to please him. Now I can only think that he will never let me go.”

“Never?” Isaac repeated with gentle irony. “That’s a long time, even for you and him.”

She turned away. Another time she might have been amused to hear Isaac counseling patience. He was not a patient young man. But now, for her sake, he was desperate.

“You’ll get freedom, Anyanwu,” he said, “but first you’ll have to reach him. He’s like a tortoise encased in a shell that gets thicker every year. It will take a long time for you to reach the man inside, but you have a long time, and there is a man inside who must be reached. He was born as we were. He’s warped because he can’t die, but he’s still a man.” Isaac paused for breath. “Take the time, Anyanwu. Break the shell; go in. He might turn out to be what you need, just as I think you’re what he needs.”

She shook her head. She knew now how the slaves had felt as they lay chained on the bench, the slaver’s hot iron burning into their flesh. In her pride, she had denied that she was a slave. She could no longer deny it. Doro’s mark had been on her from the day they met. She could break free of him only by dying and sacrificing her children and leaving him loose upon the world to become even more of an animal. So much of what Isaac said seemed to be right. Or was it her cowardice, her fear of Doro’s terrible way of killing that made his words seem so reasonable? How could she know? Whatever she did would result in evil.

Isaac got up, came to her, took her hands, and drew her to her feet. “I don’t know what kind of husband I could be to … to someone like you,” he said. “But if wanting to please you counts for anything …”

Wearily, hopelessly, she allowed him to draw her closer. Had she been an ordinary woman, he would have crushed the breath from her. After a moment, she said, “If Doro had done this differently, Isaac, if he had told me when we met that he wanted a wife for his son and not for himself, I would not have shamed you by refusing you.”

“I’m not ashamed,” he whispered. “Just as long as you’re not going to make him kill you …”

“If I had the courage of your mother, I would kill myself.”

He stared at her in alarm.

“No, I will live,” she said reassuringly. “I have not the courage to die. I had never thought before that I was a coward, but I am. Living has become too precious a habit.”

“You’re no more a coward than the rest of us,” he said.

“The rest of you, at least, are not doing evil in your own eyes.”

“Anyanwu …”

“No.” She rested her head against him. “I have decided. I will not tell any more brave lies, even to myself.” She looked up at his young face, his boy face. “We will marry. You are a good man, Isaac. I am the wrong wife for you, but perhaps, somehow, in this place, among these people, it will not matter.”

He lifted her with the strength of his arms alone and carried her to the great soft bed, there to make the children who would prolong her slavery.

Book II

Lot’s Children

1741

CHAPTER 7

Doro had come to Wheatley to see to the welfare of one of his daughters. He had a feeling something was wrong with her, and as usual, he allowed such feelings to guide him.

As he rode into town from the landing, he could hear a loud dispute in progress—something about one man’s cow ruining another’s garden.

Doro approached the disputants slowly, watching them. They stood before Isaac, who sat on a bench in front of the house he and Anyanwu had built over fifty years before. Isaac, slender and youthful-looking in spite of his age and his thick gray hair, had no official authority to settle disputes. He had been a farmer, then a merchant—never a magistrate. But even when he was younger, people brought their disagreements to him. He was one of Doro’s favorite sons. That made him powerful and influential. Also, he was known for his honesty and fairness. People liked him as they could not quite like Doro. They could worship Doro as a god, they could give him their love, their fear, their respect, but most found him too intimidating to like. One of the reasons Doro came back to a son like Isaac, old and past most of his usefulness, was that Isaac was a friend as well as a son. Isaac was one of the few people who could enjoy Doro’s company without fear or falseness. And Isaac was an old man, soon to die. They all died so quickly …

Doro reached the house and sat slouched for a moment on his black mare—a handsome animal who had come with his latest less-than-handsome body. The two men arguing over the cow had calmed down by now. Isaac had a way of calming unreasonable people. Another man could say and do exactly what Isaac said and did and be knocked down for his trouble. But people listened to Isaac.

“Pelham,” Isaac was saying to the older of the two men—a gaunt, large-boned farmer whom Doro remembered as poor breeding stock.

“Pelham, if you need help repairing that fence, I’ll send one of my sons over.”

“My boy can handle it,” Pelham answered. “Anything to do with wood, he can handle.”

Pelham’s son, Doro recalled, had just about enough sense not to wet himself. He was a huge, powerful man with the mind of a child—a timid, gentle child, fortunately. Doro was glad to hear that he could handle something.

Isaac looked up, noticed for the first time the small sharp-featured stranger Doro was just then, and did what he had always done. With none of the talents of his brother Lale to warn him, Isaac inevitably recognized Doro. “Well,” he said, “it’s about time you got back to us.” Then he turned toward the house and called, “Peter, come out here.”

He stood up spryly and took the reins of Doro’s horse, handing them to his son Peter as the boy came out of the house.

“Someday, I’m going to get you to tell me how you always know me,” Doro said. “It can’t be anything you see.”

Isaac laughed. “I’d tell you if I understood it myself. You’re you, that’s all.”

Now that Doro had spoken, Pelham and the other man recognized him and spoke together in a confused babble of welcome.

Doro held up his hand. “I’m here to see my children,” he said.

The welcomes subsided. The two men shook his hand, wished him a good evening, and hurried off to spread the news of his return. In his few words, he had told him that his visit was unofficial. He had not come to take a new body, and thus would not hold court to settle serious grievances or offer needed financial or other aid in the way that had become customary in Wheatley and some of his other settlements. This visit, he was only a man come to see his children—of whom there were forty-two here, ranging from infants to Isaac. It was rare for him to come to town for no other purpose than to see them, but when he did, other people left him alone. If anyone was in desperate need, they approached one of his children.

“Come on in,” Isaac said. “Have some beer, some food.” He did not have an old man’s voice, high and cracking. His voice had become deeper and fuller—it contributed to his authority. But all Doro could hear in it now was honest pleasure.

“No food yet,” Doro said. “Where’s Anyanwu?”

“Helping with the Sloane baby. Mrs. Sloane let it get sick and almost die before she asked for help. Anyanwu says it has pneumonia,” Isaac poured two tankards of beer.

“Is it going to be all right?”

“Anyanwu says so—although she was ready to strangle the Sloanes. Even they’ve been here long enough to know better than to let a child suffer that way with her only a few doors away.” Isaac paused. “They’re afraid of her blackness and her power. They think she’s a witch, and the mold-medicine she made some poison.”