Unlike Roland, Peter did not call Selby Pa. He called him Father. The propriety of the title seemed to alleviate the fact to Selby that he had no blood ties with the boy. Peter learned to address Rachel Selby as Mrs. Selby, but always more warmly than she ever spoke to him.

There was only one trait in young Peter that Selby did not appreciate. But he had nobody to blame for it but himself, as it was in their rides around the plantation that Selby had first allowed him to play with a leather riding crop.

Peter loved to hear the whistle of the riding crop as he slashed it through the air. At first, his happy laugh warmed Selby, a laughter that tumbled out of Peter's mouth as he swung the crop back and forth. But later Selby became worried when Peter hit the black children with the crop, running into a group of children who were pulling weeds around the house and chasing them in all directions.

Castigating Peter as gently as possible for playing so roughly with the crop, Selby warned him that they did not whip people here on the Star. Selby tried to teach Peter that it was not right to hurt the Negroes that way, telling him that if he hurt Negroes, they they could not work. It was bad.

Childishly protesting that he was only playing a game, Peter did not sulk for long, and when he started swinging the crop again, it was against a gardenia bush. The bush was more fun to whip than the children. The bush sprang back at Peter and did not run away. Peter soon forgot about whipping Negro children.

One afternoon in his sixth year, Peter was playing contentedly in the backyard of the big house with the riding crop, slapping it onto the ground and watching the dust rise in clouds.

81.

Suddenly Ta-Ta appeared from what seemed to be nowhere and snatched the crop from his hand and shrilled, "Dragonard! No! No! No! No!"

Surprised to see Ta-Ta outside the house, Peter looked up at her face, and his cornflower-blue eyes widened with fear.

Ta-Ta was relentless with him, shaking him by his small shoulders and scolding, "Not like your father. No! No! No! No!"

Peter had barely spoken to Ta-Ta in the last four years. He and Melissa had often sneaked up to the top of the house and tried to peek at Ta-Ta in her attic room. When they saw her sitting in a rocking chair, they would run laughing down the stairs. Ta-Ta seldom came down to the main part of the house anymore, and Peter thought that she was a witch.

Confused by her words now, as well as not knowing how or why she had come down here to the yard, Peter broke away from her grasp and ran for the only father he knew-Albert Selby, the man who took him riding and taught him about the Star.

"See that?" Chad Tucker asked Monk.

Tucker and Monk had been walking on a wooded path that cut behind the big house and had seen Ta-Ta snatching the riding crop from Peter.

Monk kicked at a wood chip as he strolled alongside Tucker. Walking with his hands tucked inside the waist string of his baggy white pants, he still smirked at the spectacle of Peter and Ta-Ta. To Monk, Peter and Ta-Ta were just a white boy and an old wench. The last four years had made Monk part of the Tuckers' life. He had not seen much of the big house, but from what he had seen, he knew that he was happier living with the Tuckers in their shack.

Everything about the big house and Albert Selby angered Chad Tucker, though. He was still irritated about the idea of growing green cotton on the Star. It not only meant more work for him, but Selby was talking about organizing a special gang of workers for planting green cotton. Tucker feared that such an action might mean an exact count of the slaves. In the last 82.four years Tucker had secretly sold twenty-three black people from the Star. Monk had been helping him lately in these late-night sales, too.

Chad Tucker contaminated the Star; his presence here brought an evilness to this land like a hurricane carried havoc and destruction.

He was always quick to belittle Selby and his household when he could. He now said to Monk on the path, "That old nigger wench was drunk as a coot."

"What's she drunk from?"

"Whiskey. Selby gives it to her. I know."

Keeping his eyes to the path, Monk asked, "Why's the niggers at the big house allowed to drink whiskey, but down in Niggertown they gets in trouble if they even sniffs a jug of corn?"

"Because niggers up here are supposed to be special," Tucker sarcastically explained. "These are house niggers'" He spit.

"What's me, then?"

"You're kind of a special house nigger yourself, boy. You're special because you were assigned to me." Tucker strutted now with his own importance. He boasted, "And when I gets through teaching you about whipping and selling niggers, boy, you'll be the most special nigger on this whole goddamned plantation."

Monk was fourteen years old now, and although he was not as tall as Chad Tucker, he was much bigger than the other black boys his own age on the Star. Monk's broad shoulders were already capped with muscle, and his biceps were round with strength from the four years' work that he had been doing with Tucker.

A life outdoors had given Monk's skin the glossy color of amber. His coarse hair was still closely cropped against his skull, leaving a straight black line above his almond-shaped eyes and prominent cheekbones. Monk was developing the brutish perfections of a fine physique. He also was becoming an ambitious young man He wanted to make something out of himself, and he suspected that Chad Tucker could help him to do it.

83.

Monk said to Tucker now, "Guess I am pretty special if I gets to go selling niggers with you at night, Master Tucker, sir."

"Shhh!" Tucker said, looking around him at the afternoon shadows in the forest. "I told you not to mention that, you crazy bastard. If old man Selby even hears I got me a little business on the side, he'll turn me in to the law."

Looking cautiously around him, Monk said, "I didn't mean no harm, Master Tucker, sir."

"I know you didn't, boy. But you got to be careful all the time."

The two men continued walking quietly until Tucker asked, "What would you like to do tonight? We got us those two bucks spotted. .." He looked carefully around him now in the woods. "We got those bucks, Priam and Toby, almost ready to sell to George Gresham. Do you want us to go scare them a little more? Or would you rather we go down to Niggertown and get us some poontang for sharing?"

The idea of finding some poontang, a lusty young black girl, excited Monk now But he knew that if he chose to go to Niggertown after a girl tonight, Chad Tucker would insist on joining him. Lately, as Monk had been finding his way around the plantation, he was discovering that he had a better time with a female without Tucker being there, too. Lying alone with a wench seemed to be more natural to Monk. He was losing interest in the threesomes that he had with Chad and Claudia Tucker in their shack. And going poon-tanging with Tucker was no different from what they did with Claudia. Chad Tucker always selfishly insisted on riding the woman, while Monk had to wait to take the wench when Tucker had finished with her, or sometimes Monk just had to let his excitement explode in the girl's mouth while Tucker was sprawled in the place where Monk wanted to be. Also, the prospect of using the perforated paddle on Tucker's bare buttocks as he was lying astride a girl filled Monk with little excitement. He knew, too, that Tucker was wanting more than the hornet from him now. Although Tucker had not 84.come right out and asked Monk for it as of yet, he knew by Tucker's constant references to the size of Monk's masculinity, and how Tucker had been squeezing his hirsute buttocks lately when Monk was paddling him, that he wanted Monk to do something that disgusted him, an act between two men that had nothing to do with true manhood.

But Monk also knew that he had little freedom in what he did on the Star. He realized that as long as he kept Chad Tucker happy, humoring his selfish whims, his own life would be easy. Monk did not want to be sent to work for long hours in the fields, or given one of the menial jobs in the stables or the storehouses. The Tuckers were Monk's protectors on the Star, and to get what he wanted, he had to play dumb to Tucker's perverse insinuations and hope that he could find a wench for himself when the Tuckers were not closely observing him.

Trying to sound excited now by Tucker's two suggestions, Monk answered, "I think we should go scare Priam and Toby some more. I think I gots a lot to learn from you about whipping . . . Master Tucker, sir."

Tucker beamed under the praise from the young boy. Whether he realized it or not, he had allowed himself to become more friendly with a Negro than he would openly admit. "I'll teach you all I can. But the next thing we have to do is try to get you a nice pair of leather boots. Just like mine," he said, looking down at his own shiny black boots, which stopped just short of the round caps of his knees.

The idea of getting boots instantly appealed to Monk. To have a pair of boots-even shoes-would move him one more notch up above the other slaves. He said, "I sure would like my own boots, Master Tucker, sir."

Tucker continued loftily, "Breaking in slaves, a man needs himself a good pair of boots. Boots are as important to a man as his whip."

Monk knew that Tucker liked to talk about whipping almost as much as he actually liked doing it. The subject excited him like sex.

Tucker continued to explain his own peculiar idea of discipline to Monk as they walked between the banks 85.

of ferns spilling onto the path. "See, boy, first of all you get your slave to go and fetch the whip for you. And then, when he brings the whip to you-bringing it to you in his mouth like a no-good dog-you take it from him and make him kiss it. That's right. You make your slave kiss it. Kiss the whip right on the handle where you'll be holding it when you're whipping the dirty bastard. Then you make your slave get right down on the dirt and kiss the toes of your beautiful boots. And if your boots are just a little bit dusty, or has some muck on them, you make your slave clean your boots for you before you give him the privilege of feeling the sting of your whip."

Tucker spoke now as if he were in a spell. "Yeah, boy, leather boots are as important to a master as a whip when he's breaking in a slave. You bet. That's what makes a man feel like a real master-a pair of boots and his whip. Not a"-he laughed scornfully- "not some damned hornet, like old Selby says to use on a slave."

"Where you learns so much about being a master, Master Tucker, sir?" Monk asked earnestly.

Tucker laughed softly as he rubbed his hand over the bluish shadow of beard showing on his cleft chin. "It just comes naturally, boy. It just comes naturally to you if you're man enough."

Monk laughed too. "I sure sees you treating those niggers like you're man enough."

The role of playing teacher appealed to Tucker. He bragged, "You hears them niggers calling me their 'master' don't you, boy?"

Monk nodded, remembering how Tucker mistreated the black people in Niggertown. They had no choice but to call Tucker whatever title he told them to call him. They were frightened of the consequences.

Tucker continued, " 'Course, old man Selby, he would split a gut if he knew who those niggers call the real master on this place. But none of those niggers will go telling Selby about it, because they know what they'd get from me if they did. They'll get whipped and then sold!"

"Those niggers won't tell on you, Master Tucker, sir.

86.They do only whats you tells them to do. You can makes them say or do anything you wants, and they do it withouts telling Selby."

Planting his arm warmly around Monk's naked shoulder again, Tucker walked along, saying, "I learned a lot about mastering from my daddy. My daddy wasn't what highfalutin people like your Selbys would call a respectable citizen. My daddy first came to this country instead of going to prison back home in England. The judges back hi England gave my daddy a choice of going to jail for killing a man over there or coming here to work in America!"

"Some choice!" Monk scoffed.

Chad Tucker grinned in agreement. "And it was my daddy who told me, 'Son, what you make of yourself in life is what you make people call you. If you let a man get away with calling you shit, then shit is what you're going to be for the rest of your days.' Yes, it was my very own daddy who first taught me to be called master. People who ain't master is shit, he says, and they gets to be treated that way."

Monk sobered. "Being black, 'course, I ain't got no daddy to teach me such things."

Tucker looked quickly at Monk, and before he realized what he was saying, he blurted, "What the hell? You got me!"

Monk nodded. "Sure, Master Tucker, sir. Mighty grateful for you, too. But I'm still black."

After thinking momentarily, Tucker said, "Who knows, boy? You might have a daddy almost as good as my daddy was. No saying you don't have any black blood in you. I can't say you ain't a nigger. But by the yellow color of your skin, you're not hundred percent nigger. You must have some human blood in you. So, who knows? You might have a daddy who gives you that light coloring. You know, you wouldn't be the first one!"

The idea of having a father delighted Monk. He walked taller now, proud that he might have a father somewhere in the world, a person he did not even know existed. But the idea of having a mother did not enter Monk's mind. Who cared about the woman who had 87.

birthed him? He did not know where his mother was, nor did he want to know. He thought only about men and manhood, because that's what he wanted to be-a man!

Soon, as Monk and Chad Tucker came out of the woods at the crest of the knoll, they saw Claudia Tucker waiting for them in the doorway of their small shack nestled among the chinaberry trees in a dirt basin. She idly kicked at the chickens pecking around her feet in the doorway as she examined a sore on the knuckle of her left hand.

Tucker stopped, and staring wistfully down at the dilapidated cabin, he dropped his arm from Monk's shoulder and said, "Lucky to have me a good woman like my Claudie, I am. A man needs himself a good woman, too, a woman who's willing to give him every day of her life. Just like my Oaudie." Then, moving his bottom lip under his front teeth, he tightened his mouth to shrill a whistle at her as he began lumbering down the slope to the cabin.

Looking up at the sharp sound of the whistle, Claudia stood by the door and began to wave at the two men.

Following closely behind Tucker, Monk's heart beat fast as he wondered what Chad would do if he knew that his treasured Claudie lately had been trying to entice him alone into the woods at night. He wondered if Chad Tucker suspected that Claudie-like Monk- was also getting tired of being three in a bed. That she was trying to tempt Monk into pleasuring her without Tucker taking part in the arrangement. That she was trying to get Monk to bed with her when Tucker was not in the cabin.

Standing in the doorway, Claudie called, "Got something cool for my two workers to drink, I do!"

"Want something more than a cool drink," Tucker answered as he thumped past Claudia into the shack, squeezing one of her pendulous breasts as he went in front of her.

Qaudia's eyes momentarily followed her husband into the cabin, and then, looking at Monk following closely behind him, she arched herself, so he could pinch her too.

88.But Monk knew that he could not take such liberties with a white woman, even if that white woman and her husband did include him in their marital arrangements. Being a slave, Monk still had to address Tucker with proper respect, and he certainly could not go around pinching a white woman, even if that white woman seemed to want such liberties taken with her.

As Monk passed in front of Claudia, she reached out her pudgy arm and quickly squeezed him in the bulging crotch of his pants, following her obscene gesture with a surreptitious wink and a whisper, "Big black prick!"

Monk was the most potent Negro buck that Claudia Tucker had ever known.

Ta-Ta sat in her attic room these days and saw the world below her. She saw the distant furrows of the upper fields and the black people ,picking their way down the rows of cotton in the lower fields. She saw the roofs of Niggertown and saw the treetops of the forest.

In the far distance, Ta-Ta saw the public road that led to Troy, and at night she often saw lanterns moving by the road in the dark, and she could see the rights in Tucker's cabin.

From Ta-Ta's attic room high in the big house, she could also see the yard directly below her. She had watched Peter slowly becoming part of the Selby family. Ta-Ta often thought that she was watching him forget who he really was. She had to act as Ms guardian angel when she saw him becoming friends with a whip the way his father had. The dragonard.

Ta-Ta's memories of Dragonard were too strong to forget. They often became so intense for her that she had to scream them out of her head.

The rum helped to ease her pain of remembering too much. When she had first come to this attic room, there had been a demijohn of rum in one corner. It belonged to her new master, Albert Selby. Now, every three days, he left a bottle of rum outside the door for her. Albert Selby never troubled her by talking, so she knew he was a good man.

Cradling the rum between her legs, Ta-Ta sat in her rocking chair and stared at the world beneath her. But 89.

instead of seeing pine trees and cotton fields and wagon trains moving slowly to the cotton gin in Troy, some days she saw rolling sugar fields and the drooping fronds of palmetto trees and flocks of kiskadees flying across a blue sky with sea-swept clouds. She saw the island of St. Kitts.

Ta-Ta had found a box of wax crayons sitting on the stairs, and taking them into her room, she had set about drawing the good things on her wall. She drew her mistress's bed. She made a rough outline of the mirror and dressing table. She had used a yellow crayon to color her mistress's long hair.

Every morning now, Ta-Ta stood behind the picture of her mistress on the wall and pretended to be brushing her hair just as she used to do. Her mistress was Honore Jubiot. Some days Ta-Ta would fasten an opal necklace around her mistress's slim neck.

Ta-Ta's crude drawings covered more and more space on the walls of her room at the Star. When her memories became fierce, she drew outlines of the men who had stolen her from east Florida, and then she punished them for doing it. She beat the walls that had the pictures of the men who had hurt her.

The memory of their masculinity was stuck in Ta-Ta's mind, and she drew phalluses between the men's legs and then slashed those monstrous things with a red crayon-blood.

Ta-Ta had many good and many bad things to live with now, and they all surrounded her on the walls. The dressing mirror. A hymnal. The opal necklace. The packing trunks. A baby with the name Pierre. Her mistress dying. The phalluses. Ropes that coiled like snakes. The whip that bit like a dragon's tongue. Dragonard. She had drawn them all on the walls in the attic room at the Star.

5.Traps

The manor houses of the American South were a world within themselves, domains set off from the activity in the other parts of the plantation. They often existed in total ignorance of what the slaves and hired white help did in their own private hours.

The social exchanges between the families of the big houses flourished mostly at church gatherings, picnics, and barbecues, all entertainments organized exclusively for the planters.

Apart from those meetings, another occasion on which the Southern families assembled was for what they called a crush or a ball. When the houses were large enough, the guests would be invited to stay overnight, or even for the entire weekend.

But when the houses were small, or the owners did not like entertaining on such a grand scale, then those socials were really not more than what could be honestly termed a supper.

Rachel Selby, steeped in her strict religious heritage, saw fit to open the doors of the Star for a supper, but nothing larger. The idea of entertaining guests overnight in her house was unthinkable. She had known of white men performing lewd acts at night, respectable hosts even offering Negro girls as bed wenches to the male visitors for the duration of their stay, and she certainly was not going to have any activities like that festering under her roof. A supper would have to suffice for her husband's Mends.

Being a teetotaler, Rachel Selby denied her supper 90.91.

guests alcohol. Whenever gentlemen came to the Star, it was Selby who saw that there was a plentiful supply of corn whiskey stashed outside in the stables, waiting for them when they felt like a walk in the evening air. But, ostensibly, the Selbys served a nonalcoholic punch at their parties, a pink and often overly sweet beverage called strawberry shrub made from a recipe Rachel Selby had inherited from her august forebears.

Regardless of how many opportunities Rachel had to ruin the gaiety of a supper at the Star, the neighboring planters accepted the invitations out of their fondness for Albert Selby.

There was only one man who refused to come to the Star's supper. He was Judge Tom Antrobus, Selby's oldest friend and confidant, as well as his legal adviser. Judge Antrobus had an innate distrust for anybody who was a descendant of Peregrine Roland, and always preferred to meet Selby away from the Star. He hated that land.

Five days before the night of the supper at the Star, the rooms had been chosen for entertaining and the work had begun on them. Double coats of Beardsmore wax were applied to the mahogany flooring. The two chandeliers were lowered and polished. The Oriental carpets were taken outside to be beaten and left to breathe in the shade of the elms, safeguarding the rich burgundy, yellow, and blue dyes against bleeding in the direct heat of the sun.

The portieres in the parlors were held back from the tall windows by black children, while Negresses balanced themselves on tall ladders as they shone the large panes of rippled glass.

The three best services of dishes-a set of pale-blue Sevres, one of yellow-and-green Doulton, and a full service of white Federal-were all carefully arranged on the long walnut dining table, to be counted, then carried into the kitchen, where they were washed and dried, and finally brought back into the dining room and set on the sideboard in neat piles of twelve for serving.

While the activities progressed at a feverish pitch in the dining room and the two adjoining parlors, preparations moved at a similar pace in the kitchen.

92.The Star's head cook was a tall, proud Ashanti woman who, because of her height and lofty attitude, had long ago been named Storky. So great was her importance at the Star that the other Negroes all called her Miss Storky.

It was with Storky that Rachel carefully went over the menu for supper, being reassured by the calm-mannered cook that some of the dishes had been started and the ingredients for the rest were aU at hand in the larder or the springhouse.