ISSN 1758-6488
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The Storyteller Fiction |
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“I’ll do the refusing, not you.”
“Father. He’s… he’s… a sodomite.”
That brings the old man up short, but he doesn’t yet lift up his eyes from the accounts. “Is he now?”
“Every year he comes here and buys a boy, and from the way he handles them it’s plain what his purpose is. I ask him what he wants them for and he says ornament.”
He finally looks at me. “Hmm. A terrible thing, if true.”
“Look at how he dresses. Look at his eyes!’
“What do you think happens to the fancy stock? Why do you think there are so many mulattoes? Boy, you’ve been believing some of your own stories.” He shrugs like he’s under a yoke. Something makes his hand shake and suddenly he throws down the quill. “Look, being cornholed is not one jot worse than picking cotton in summer. What our customers do with their property is not our business. Selling is. So get out there and sell your little friend.”
This has been coming for some time. It’s been swelling up inside me. I hear myself say, “I’ll buy him myself instead.”
That makes my pappy blink. I push on. “I need a manservant, I’ve been saving for months.”
I have been, without realising and it was for just such a moment as this. I’ve just told the truth.
My father blinks again. “Well, if you can pay the price.” My father chuckles. “The little sodomite will just have to find another boy to buy.”
It gives me great pleasure to crunch across the ice to Jason Jackson Turner and tell him, that there has been a mistake, that George had already been reserved for sale.
He smiles at me like something amuses him. “Forgive me, dear boy. If I had known I would not have trespassed.” I didn’t like the greasy way his eyes latched on to mine, or his smile.
Then as airily as if selling a boy, buying a boy were nothing, he went about his inspections. He bought the Griffe we had in from Cape Giradeau.
My father counts the money.
Tonight the wind whistles round my room and it is cold, and there is George, looking uncertain. I’ve given him some of my old clothes to wear, so he looks respectable, if not yet a manservant.
In my heart, I know what I am. I am a negro lover, one of those crawling, two-faced, cowardly men who love the brown eyes, the soft voices more than they love their own kind. I try to hide it, but my father knows and sees it. What perversion is it to prefer the black man and his whelps to your own species? And to spend a lifetime, hiding this secret in your heart? When the black men are freed, I shall rejoice. But I shall lose them, too.
What will I do with George? I don’t want somebody to dress me or polish my boots. I want a friend. “It’s cold,” I tell him. “We’ll have to share a bed.”
I’ll tell my father some story in the morning.
