Peter protested, "I think you've done that already."

Selby shook his head. "No. I mean with the name." Then, looking quickly at Melissa, he asked, "You know how we've always liked our hills here, Melly? Especially that big one north of the top pasture?"

Melissa nodded, wondering why her father had mentioned that.

He continued, "Yes, this place has always been known around these parts for its hills and rises. A lot of grumbling about plowing on slopes. But, for me, I like it better this way than looking out over two thousand acres of flatland. That gets a little tedious for a man over the years, I think. Flatness for miles and miles."

Melissa could stand it no longer. "Papa! What are you getting at?"

"Hold on! Hold on, Melly! There's not just you now. There's Sonny to consider, too. See how patient he's sitting there. And that's not surprising to me, neither. Sonny's always been good and patient. I'm proud of you, Sonny," Selby said, speaking to Peter, but not looking at him. "Lots of times you didn't know where you were standing. You didn't know which end was up. Where you were going. Where you had come from. And that's why I thought..."

Peter and Melissa both waited eagerly for his next words.

Fumbling with a bone-handled knife, Selby said, "You know, though, that if you don't like this idea, Sonny, you don't have to agree!"

Peter nodded.

Raising his head, finally looking into Peter's face, Selby said, "I see no reason you shouldn't call it . . ." He paused. "Dragonard Hill."

Peter's face went ashen. Again, Selby had completely 244.

taken him by surprise. Looking across the table at Melissa, he still did not speak.

Reaching toward her father, but looking at Peter's dumbstruck face, Melissa said, "I think that's wonderful, Papa! Wonderful!" She understood the gesture. Dragonard. Dragonard Hill.

Selby fidgeted, still not knowing Peter's feelings. "We do have all these hills here. And in no time at all, those hills are going to be the real plantation. That's where the green cotton is growing, and that's your big future, Sonny. Cotton."

Peter interrupted, "Before I say anything, Father . . . Melly. Before I say what I think, can I ask you one thing?"

Selby nodded.

Peter asked soberly, "You do know what that name means, don't you? What it stood for in the West Indies?"

Selby tossed his hand in the air. "Pshaw. What it stood for? Who gives a damn what it stood for? It's here that it counts, Sonny. Here." He banged on the table with his fist.

Shaking his head in amazement, Peter said, "I never thought I'd have this much of a home. Have these kinds of ties to anything."

"Exactly. Ties,' " Selby shouted. "That's just what old Judge Antrobus said. The judge might strike a lot of men as a windy old cuss, but he's got some sense to him. As well as feelings. And the judge said the same thing to me: 'Ties. Name it something that'll give Peter some ties.'"

Peter slowly began to smile appreciatively. And combing his fingers through his silky black hair, he said, "Dragonard Hill. It gives me . . ." Peter looked across the table at Melissa and corrected himself, "It gives us our own real start."

Melissa nodded in agreement, a flush to her cheeks, biting her lower lip with excitement.

Peter's tone then became serious. He turned to Selby and said, "But only on one condition."

"What's that?" Selby asked.

Peter said, "On the condition that while you're still..." He hesitated.

245.

Selby ordered, "Say it. You mean till I croak."

Peter nodded. "Until then, Father, I insist we still call it 'the Star.'"

It was the second time for Selby to bang the table this morning. He said, "By God, then, Sonny, we've got us a deal. We're the Star until I decide to croak. But when that happens-not before-you take down that old wooden star hanging over the gate out front, and this place is called 'Dragonard Hill.' And you'll be the full master of it."

Melissa and Peter looked across the table at each other, and then, quickly jumping from her chair, Melissa leaned over her father and hugged him, embracing the goodness and kindness inside his gruff facade.

And holding her father, Melissa remembered the wish that she herself had made long, long ago on the eve of the year 1800.

Melissa had wished then that she would never see the day that her father died.

Nero knew that one of his prayers had been answered, the prayer for Peter's peace of soul. Melissa and Peter Abdee were happily married; they had one daughter and were expecting * their second child. Their home was the Star.

Seeing them living happily on the Star, Nero wondered if he had been wrong by praying long ago for Dragonard. Had Dragonard really been that good? Would the black people have had as good a home on Dragonard as Nero felt that Peter would give to the people of the Star?

Nero's recollections of Dragonard were still painful. The trouble there had started when Manroot had hanged himself. Manroot's wife, Seena, soon after had become the lover of Calabar, and together they had made trouble in the slave quarters. Calabar and Seena had held secret meetings at night for the rebellious blacks on Dragonard.

Calabar and Seena began to meet secretly with slaves from nearby plantations to preach their gospel of destruction.

The troubles grew as the slaves' on neighboring 246.

plantations talked to one another with drums. Those drums echoed only at night, a steady rhythm that came from beyond the rolling hills of sugar plats when the moon was high hi a sky streaked with clouds.

Then, one night the rattan flap of a windmill was set afire. A week later, a torch was put to the second windmill, and the breeze softly twirled the blazing flaps like a carnival pin wheel.

Naomi became frantic. She screamed that she was going to lose everything. Nero had never seen his mistress in such an uncontrollable state.

Richard Abdee told Naomi to flee to Basseterre. But she did not want to leave Abdee alone on Dragonard. She knew that the black people-even the Fantis- wantedto kill Abdee. Calabar had preached well.

Nero how saw the great house at Dragonard as a red strip of fire gashed against the sky, the roof bursting with flames, and he still heard the mutinous cries from the slave quarters.

Nero remembered the sudden burst of black faces as the slaves rushed up the hill with the machetes in their hands.

That night, Nero found the cook, Sugar Loaf, lying dead on the kitchen floor. Her black throat had been slit for remaining loyal to her white master.

From the kitchen, Nero ran to the center garden of the greathouse. The ceiling there was afire, and Nero saw Calabar going toward Naomi with two knives.

As Nero rushed to stop Calabar, there was a loud cracking sound over his head, and the tenting started to fall from the ceiling. The last thing that Nero saw was Naomi tugging lengths of burning brocade from her face and Calabar lying on the floor under a blazing crossbeam.

When Nero regained consciousness, he asked where his mistress was.

No one would tell Nero about Naomi. The only story that Nero heard was about Seena. She had been found in the tack room. She had been found dead but still clutching Richard Abdee's splayed-tip whip. He then was believed to be dead, because no one used the Dragonard's whip but Abdee.

247.

The slaves who had not ran from Dragonard were seized by the British soldiers. The soldiers shackled them and chained them together. Then they took them away from Dragonard in wagons.

Nero was among those captured slaves. And on his ride to Basseterre that night, he saw the country road lined with the slaves who had escaped from Dragonard. But they were dead now. Hanged along the road by their necks. Nailed to stakes. Pegged to the ground. Decapitated. Nero saw innocent black people lying slaughtered among the troublemakers. It was a carnage of both good and bad.

It was then that Nero thought that there was no god who could answer his prayers. His home had become "Trouble Island," and he felt that all Africans had lost their only hope for freedom.

But now, on the Star, Peter Abdee was revitalizing Nero's hopes again. Perhaps Peter would give the black people a safer place in this world of white men than his father had done.

The only similarity that Peter Abdee bore to his father was the cornflower-blue eyes. And the hereditary equipment that had originally angered Peter now had become the means to sow a second child in the womb of his wife.

Nero just hoped now that Peter was not taking Melissa's recent illness too gravely. Her second pregnancy was more difficult than the first. Melissa was not well.

Chad and Qaudia Tucker took Monk beyond their cabin to the woods. Qaudia Tucker was carrying a flour sack filled with rocks. She wanted Monk to think that she was carrying the money. It was her plan to keep Monk from believing that she and her husband had not buried their money.

Monk went soberly along with the Tuckers. He knew that there was no money in the flour sack, because he had seen them bury it under the chinaberry tree. This ploy only made Monk have more hatred for the Tuckers. He hated them for thinking that he was so stupid.

But Monk suspected that Chad Tucker had a plan of 248.

his own tonight. Tucker had seen Monk with Lilly, and he had told Monk to have Lilly meet them in the woods near the cabin tonight. Tucker had said that he wanted Lilly to be part of their group, to make it sex for four. But Monk knew that Claudia did not like sex now, and he suspected that Tucker wanted to do something else tonight.

Claudia Tucker now sat on a log, and holding the flour sack of rocks in her lap, she said, "I don't think that black wench of Monk's is going to turn up for you, Chad. I think the next time you see her, you should touch her up with that hornet."

"Any wench not turning up when she's told to will get more than the hornet," Tucker muttered. "She'll get the whip."

Stifling her boredom, Claudia said, "Just the same, I'm glad we didn't ask her to come to the house. Don't fancy no nigger wench stinking up my house with her juices."

Tucker was still angry with Claudia for saying that he had not given her a child. He ignored her now and said to Monk, "You sure you told that Lilly wench where to meet us?"

Monk nodded vigorously. "Just like you says, Master Tucker, sir." He was thinking about the right tune to steal the money from under the chinaberry tree.

Sidling up to Monk, Tucker asked, "Is that Lilly as hot as she looks, boy?"

Monk nodded. He knew that Lilly was not going to come here tonight. He had told her to stay in Nigger-town.

Chad insisted, "How hot is she?"

Monk did not like to talk about Lilly this way. She slept with other men in Niggertown, but Monk still wanted her for himself. He wanted to run with her from the Star.

To keep Tucker quiet now, Monk said, "My Lilly is really something, Master Tucker, sir. She's really something special."

"Tell me."

"Rather shows you, Master Tucker," Monk answered, wanting to hit Tucker now.

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But Tucker would not let the subject drop. He reached to Claudia, and putting his arm around her, he said, "Supposing Claudie here was just"-he smiled- "a nigger wench."

"Chad!" Claudia protested.

Still ignoring her, Tucker continued, "Just say that Claudie here was a common nigger slut, Monk. You show me how you'd get started pestering her. How you would start feeling and petting and touching her up and laying her right down here on the dirt. Show me, boy."

Monk hesitated. Claudia plainly did not want sex. But Monk realized that Tucker might want to humiliate her for revenge.

He was right.

Tucker turned to his wife now and ordered, "Claudie! Hoist up that dress of yours and lay down here on the ground. Play you're a nigger. A nigger wench who talks all the time about peckers."

Claudia gasped.

Tucker grabbed the sack of rocks from her arms and dropped it to the ground. Next, he seized one of her pendulous breasts and threatened, "I twists this tit right off you, bitch, if you don't obey me. Get down . . . nigger!"

"But the . . ." Claudia looked at the sack. "What about the money?"

"Money? Forget about your money." He laughed at her.

"What about my ague, then? You ain't telling me you're forgetting about my woman's ague?"

"Screw your ague, bitch."

Seeing the rage hi her husband's eyes, Claudia quickly lifted her flimsy dress over her head and leaned hesitantly back on the ground. She whimpered, "This cold might bring back my ague, and then you'll see."

"I said screw your ague!" Tucker then told Monk to drop his pants, take off his shirt, and climb onto Claudia.

Monk asked, "Don't you want pleasuring, too, Master Tucker?" This was the first time that Tucker had ever let Monk have first mounting.

Tucker said, "I wants to see you screwing that nigger 250.

whore down there on the dirt. I want to see you screwing the tar out of her. I want you to get her screaming and shouting for that big hot pecker of yours. I want to hear her saying how beautiful that meat of yours feels inside her stinking pretty. And then, when I hears her screaming for more of that thick prick of yours, boy, then I comes in. I comes inside her, too. But I ain't coining in her pussy tonight. I ain't giving her pussy the privilege of holding my white pecker. I'm driving up her bung-hole. And with no goose fat, neither. I'm going to cornhole this nigger bitch dry!"

"Chad! Why you doing this to me?" Claudia tried to raise herself from the ground.

'Kicking her elbows out from under her, Tucker said, "You wanted a baby, didn't you?"

"Chad!" she wailed.

"You said you're too good for Porkchop. And you being so goddamned much smarter than poor Maiy Crandall, I'm giving you Monk here for free."

"I ain't wanting Monk's baby."

"Well, you being so goddamned smart, why don't you grow one up your shithole? Because that's where I'm going to plug you ... nigger wench!"

Turning to Monk, Chad Tucker ordered, "Go on, now, boy."

Monk obediently directed himself toward Claudia. His phallus was already bobbing up and down in the perverse excitement of this arrangement.

Watching Monk climb onto his wife, Tucker hissed at her, "Nigger. Nigger wench." Then, fumbling with the buttons on his fly, he coaxed Monk, "Call her a nigger, boy. Call her your nigger bitch."

Monk stared down at Claudia's pudgy face and said, "Sure, she's a nigger bitch. This is a nigger bitch-whore, ain't you... bitch?"

Strangely, the words had a strengthening effect on Monk. He Eked this idea of debasing the white woman, especially this white woman who had ruined so many years of his life. She had threatened and trapped him, and now he could not only bring her down to being his equal, but put her beneath him. And compared to 251.