Chapter 25 A Story of Slavery
Casey took a swig from his ever-present bottle. The Irishman had been
drinking all evening, and was more than three sheets to the wind now. His face,
ruddy from sun and alcohol and looking much older than his thirty one years, was
deeply troubled.
He waited until the old Negro had finished a verse and then broke in,
"Lester, we're going to burn in hell, you know that, don't you?"
Lester paused, lowered the harmonica, and stared into the depths of the
fire. "Yes suh, Mr. Casey, I s'pose we will."
Casey reached his hand out toward the fire and held it for a moment above
the burning wood, until the heat became unbearable, and he was forced to pull it
back. "That was ten fleeting seconds, Lester. Compared to all eternity. My
God, lad, what have we done?"
Lester started in on a second chorus of "Yellow Rose", this one slower
than the first.
Casey took another pull from his bottle. "And what I don't understand,
Lester, me boy, is why you did it. They'd never have done it without you. Not
if they lived until golden coins fell from rainbows. Those louts wouldn't have
had the brains. Or the guts. Where did you come up with that notion of
pretending we were Indians?" Casey chuckled to himself. "And were we not the
quietest lot of Comanches in the history of the world?"
"And where in the divil did you get that redskin voice? Although I have to
admit you sounded more like an Indian than some of the Indians I've known. And
that's the Lord's truth."
The old Negro lowered the harmonica again, as he stared intently into the
campfire. Then he sang two verses of "Yellow Rose" in his rich baritone voice.
There's a yellow rose in Texas
That I am going to see
No other darky know her
No one only me.
She cried so when I left her
It like to broke my heart
And if I ever find her
We nevermore will part.
Casey looked at Lester strangely. He had never heard those words to the
familiar tune before.
"Mr. Casey?" Gone was Lester's smooth as southern molasses Negro dialect.
Casey looked at him, surprised. "Yes, Lester?"
"You're a good man. Not like the rest of these ignorant fools. Can I tell
you a story? Can you keep a secret?"
"Until the Shannon River runs north and south, me lad. Speak."
Lester studied the dancing flames for a long moment before taking a deep
breath and beginning. "Mr. Casey, I was born a slave in 1825, sixty-two years
ago, in Louisiana. I chopped more sugar cane than you can shake a stick at
before I was nine, when my master," Lester spat into the fire, "moved to New
Orleans. Ever been to New Orleans, Mister Casey? They play some sweet music
there; always have. That's where I picked up my first harmonica, you know."
"But I wasn't much more than a boy, only sixteen, when I ran away to
Texas, back when Texas was a Republic. I thought a Republic would be free, Mr.
Casey. For everybody, black and white. And it was, for a time.
"I'd only been there maybe a year when I met a beautiful girl out there in
east Texas. Lenora was her name. She was half-Comanche and half-Negro, and
after we had known each other for a few months we were married, in the Indian
tradition. Her family was good people, Mr. Casey, every last one of them. I
learned a few Comanche words from them, and I never forgot them."
"And we were happy as could be for a few years, until Texas came into the
Union in '45, as a slave state. Pretty soon we heard that the slavers were
rounding up all the black men, even the free ones, and I knew my days of freedom
were numbered. Lenora favored her mother, an Indian woman, and I told her to
forget about me, to go back to her Comanche people. But she told me she would
rather be a slave with me, Mr. Casey, than a free woman without me." Lester's
voice broke for a second; he took a deep breath, paused, and gathered himself.
"That's the kind of woman she was."
"I had to beg her to leave me, and even then she wouldn't have done it
except for the fact that she was expecting our baby. But then she took sick
during the pregnancy, just before she was going to go home to her family, and
the slavers caught us both."
"Seven months later, Lenora had the baby, while we were working on a cotton
plantation out in east Texas. We named the child La Reine -- that means "Queen"
in French, you know -- But she was a breech baby, Reenie was, (that's what we
called her, Reenie) and the birth was too much for Lenora, and she passed on
when Reenie was only a week old."
Lester paused, and looked sadly in to the campfire for a long moment.
Then he lifted the harmonica to his lips and played another stanza of "The
Yellow Rose", this one even more dirge-like than the ones before.
Then he lowered the harmonica and turned back to the Irishman. "Mr Casey,
most folks don't know it, but the words I sang a minute ago were the original
words to that song. It was written to honor a beautiful young mulatto woman who
helped Sam Houston win the Battle of San Jacinto by passing along information
about the Mexican forces."
Casey looked at Lester with a doubtful expression; he'd heard people of
mixed blood being described as 'yellow" often enough; but he'd lived in Texas
all of his adult life and he'd never heard that story. But the glow of the
campfire showed the solemnity in Lester's gaze, and he was convinced that the
old man was telling the truth.
"It's true, Mr Casey, the Lord strike me dead if it isn't. But that's not
important." Lester played another stanza, this time with heart-breaking pathos.
"Lenora was "my" yellow rose, Mr Casey."
"After she passed on, I tried to make some kind of a life for Reenie.
Those years before the war weren't too bad. We were slaves, but our master
seemed a decent sort, and I worked in the fields, and played a little music in
the evenings, just like I do here, during the years that Reenie was growin' up."
"But after the war began, in '61, things started goin' downhill. By the
middle of the next year, the man who owned our plantation could see that the
Yankees were bound to win the war eventually, and he grew bitter and life got
harder for all of us."
"But then, what should have been the happiest event of my life turned into
the worst."
"By early 1863, the owner of the plantation had sent me and Reenie on to
another piece of property of his, that he'd picked up cheap during the war.
Reenie was eighteen then, and she was just as pretty as she could be."
The Irishman watched as Lester's soulful brown eyes became bright with
the pride of fatherhood and the joy of remembrance, but the sparkle lasted only
a moment, before dying out like the embers of a campfire, leaving a mist of
unshed tears in its place.
"One day, in March of that year, while she stood at the door to the parlor,
Reenie overheard the master's son -- Mister Robert -- and a few of his friends,
talking about the Emancipation Proclamation -- word had finally reached our part
of the country that all the slaves in the Confederacy had been set free back in
January by Mr Lincoln."
"Well, Reenie dropped her tray of drinks in joy at this news and ran
outside, jumping and dancing for joy, singing, 'We're free! We're free!' Soon
there were a dozen of us slaves gathered around her listening to the news and
singing and praying and talking about how the jubilee had finally come."
"But then, Mister Robert and his friends, who'd heard all the ruckus, come
runnin' outside, sized up the situation, and while his friends kept us back with
guns, Robert yelled, "'I'll show you who's free, you nigger bitch! Round up all
the niggers, boys. We're gonna teach them who's boss in Texas!"
" 'You understand me?' " Mister Robert bellowed when the slaves had all
been assembled a few minutes later. "Abe Lincoln's word don't mean no more'n a
bushel of horseshit down here! And just so you all don't get no uppity ideas
about bein' free, I'm gonna teach this little loudmouth a lesson!' "
"And they ripped Reenie's clothes off, stripped her naked right there in
the yard, in front of all of us, and Mr. Robert tied her to a hitchin' post and
gave her a terrible whipping, screaming and cursing at her with every stroke.
While his pals cheered him on."
Casey could see that the old man's eyes had filled with tears, and his dark
brown hands were clenched in the vehemence of an ancient rage. After taking a
moment to calm himself, Lester began again.
"He whipped Reenie's back until it was bloody, Mr. Casey. And then he had
his friends turn he around so that she faced him. And then he ..." Lester
couldn't finish the sentence and his voice trailed off while his shoulders
convulsed in silent grief. After a few seconds Lester gestured with his hand
for Casey to pass him the bottle.
Casey, who had never known the old Negro to touch a drink, passed him the
bottle of rye.
Lester upturned it to his lips for a moment, and took a swallow of the
harsh liquor before continuing. "That was more than twenty years ago, Mr
Casey, but I still wake up in the middle of the night sometimes hearing the
sound of that whip and Reenie's terrible screams."
"When he got finally got tired of whipping her, Mister Robert turned
around and yelled, " 'Any of you other niggers here think they're free? No?
Well, it's a good thing, goddammit! Now get yer black asses back to work!' "
"And the overseers sent us all back to the fields."
"Old Sally, the cook, told me later that Robert and his friends untied
Reenie then and took her back into the house, into the parlor, and locked the
door. And they ... and they," Lester was sobbing audibly now, as he told the
story, "kept her in there all night. Sally told me that she could hear them
drinking and laughing, and Reenie begging and crying. She'd never been with a
man before, Mr. Casey, and those animals..."
Old Lester took another sip of Casey's whiskey, as he tried to pull himself
together.
"The next morning Sally told me that Robert sent his friends home with the
words, "Y'all come back next Saturday night and we'll have us another party with
our little nigger bitch here, boys! And remember, she's free!!" Mister Robert
laughed at his own joke -- "She won't cost you a New Orleans nickle!"
"Later that evenin', Mr. Casey, we found Reenie dead; my beautiful child
had taken her own life out of shame and despair."
Both men had tears in their eyes now. Lester poked idly at the campfire
for a few moments before taking a deep breath and continuing.
"I vowed that night that I was going to avenge Reenie's death, Mr Casey. A
long time passed before I would get a chance to get even with Mister Robert, and
by the end of '64 the Confederacy was on its last legs, and things were pretty
well falling apart all over the south. Robert went out to a party on Christmas
Eve that year, and came home late that night, drunk and alone."
"I happened to be sittin' up playin' softly on my harmonica, when I heard
him ride up. Nobody else was up and about, and I took my chance, Mr. Casey. I
hit the bastard over the head with a shovel, not to kill him, just to knock him
out. And then I carried him down the road, in my own arms, out to the lake, to
that evil-looking oak tree -- you know the one."
Insight shot through Casey, sobering him up like a jolt of electric
current. The eerie arms of the spreading oak tree by the swimming hole had
often reminded him of tales he had heard of banshees, the Irish spirits who
manifest themselves at every death.
"When he regained consciousness, I hanged Robert Wilson from that tree.
That same cursed tree that Reenie had hanged herself from just the year before.
As sure as my name is Lester Jefferson. And I watched that white devil splutter
and choke and die. And then I hid in the trees, so that I could see Henry
Wilson's face when he found his only son hanging from the same tree where I had
found my only daughter."
