“I am an emissary of good,” the man in the stuffy black suit tells himself. John Prescott is sweating bullets, not so much because of the stifling Virginia heat as much as his anticipation of the matter at hand. He examines the billing in his lap, listing the various Negroes up for sale. The Society had entrusted two thousands of dollars to him, with the hopes of possibly purchasing the freedom of five or six. Depending on various marketable characteristics, a slave could fetch upwards of fifteen-hundred dollars; he hopes it won’t quite come to that again. This was a program they had undergone now for some years, raising funds up North to buy slaves in order to make Freemen out of them. It is Prescott’s eighth such mission already, and by the surly looks and the whispering air that seems to follow he appears to be earning an infamy among the traders and planters in the crowd.
The auction begins in its usual fashion, the ungainly tall auctioneer calling this unsavory proceeding to order. A young man is brought forward and the pitch is made, “We have here a gen-u-ine article, gentlemen, not more than eighteen years of age. The owner is selling at no fault, gentlemen, no fault! Cotton planter, needs money. Will the bidding begin at three hundred dollars? Anybody?” The man is stripped down and forced to turn around for the crowd, to prove he has no marks or scars. With a grand sweep of his arm, the auctioneer declares in his sing-song tenor, “New as the day he was born, gentlemen, not a mark upon him! Sweet as a lamb, and a regular church goer- You sir! I have three hundred dollars, do I have three-fifty-” And so on, the fast pace of the bid coming to a halt at seven hundred eighty-five dollars, to a squat miller from Louisa County.
John waits with bated breath, absently gnawing at the end of his thumbnail as he watches the proceedings unfold. The first Negro or two are always fine-grade, fetching a high price and riling up the buyers. He can feel it as well as any, a prickling disquiet – ‘antsiness,’ his mother called it. A visceral chafing that can only right itself with the transfer of hard currency for a sacred human soul. It’s a damnable thing, and Prescott wonders if the fellows in the crowd appreciate the immensity of their prospective venture. He wonders if they too enjoy that same feeling of power at owning - at least on paper - not a lesser but an equal being. Monstrous power, a feeling of absolute worth with an unbridled inflation of the self. Like Christ standing atop the pinnacle. John is breaking into a cold sweat, thinking about it. With two thousand dollars, he might stand atop that pinnacle four, five, possibly six times today.
The next up for bid is a woman, middle-aged (at around thirty) and not exciting much interest. The auctioneer, sensing the general reluctance starts the bidding at a low fifty dollars. John kicks it off with an embarrassingly shrill “Fifty!” The bid wavers there for a bit, the auctioneer adding “She’d be great around the house. Mother of five - sold separately - good with children. Do I hear seventy-five dollars? Even sixty? You sir! We have sixty dollars, sixty dollars-” Prescott looks over across the lot towards his new rival, a fat fellow with his thumbs hitched in the lapels of his seersucker suit. “Seventy!” John adds, hoping the price won’t rise beyond a hundred.
“Hundred-fifty,” the seersucker man says with a haughty look in the abolitionist’s direction. The auctioneer looks at John, who looks at the woman, then the ground, and at last shakes his head in acquiescence. “Hundred-fifty, to the man from Nelson!” the auctioneer announces triumphantly, before going into the next article. The blisteringly hot hours drag on in much the same way, with Prescott unable to secure any bids due to the malfeasances of others. He was beginning to feel desperate, the queue of prospective slaves growing ever thinner as day slips away. His gnawing antsiness and festering agitation; it reminds John of the sickness attributable to opium fiends one finds round the ports.
“Just go home, Sweaty,” says a swarthy farm manager from distant Scott County. “You don’t look so well,” he adds with a smirk, taking a big bite out an apple as he does so.
“I’m on a mission of good,” John stammers back unconvincingly. He can’t go back empty-handed. One would do, at least one. It took a week’s travel to get out here, and a failure might mean never getting sent back by the Society.
“Alright gentlemen, alright. Been a long day, yessirs, and we’re nearing the end of it. I’ve got here,” gesturing toward a shackled slave to his right, “not the bottom of the barrel but a bit of a troublemaker. His fool owner taught him to read, s’been bounced around place to place ever since. Uppity, gentlemen - not mean - and useful smart to boot. Do I hear two hundred fifty? Two hundred fifty dollars, gentlemen, can read and keep books.” A shopkeeper from Greenbrier finally makes the first bid; the time was now or never. Prescott raises his voice as best he can, “Three hundred dollars!” With that, a flurry of hands and nods and shouts follow.
Five hundred from the Nelson seersucker, six from a Carolina captain. And at every interim Prescott raising the tally, intent not to be defeated by a bunch of Southern slavers nor be denied his brief trifle. Eight hundred, one thousand, as the bid climbs even higher, it’s down to John and the seersucker. John is quite literally quaking with the bid-fever. He must win this man. Finally, from seventeen hundred he wagers it all- “Two thousand dollars!” The gentleman from Nelson pursues no further and with a derisive smile the auctioneer announces, “Two thousand dollars, to the naysaying Yankee. A fool and his money, gentlemen…”
Elated, John bounds back round to the rear of the platform to breeze through the formalities: sign here, count money, sign there, and exeunt. A title is given him, a slip of paper worth infinitely more than all the money ever printed, the ink his name is written in not yet dry. Worth a man, an equal man. John can hardly believe it, though it’s by no means his first time. He revels atop his pinnacle, his ecstasy, and hardly notices when his man Cuthbert clears his throat.
“So sir, you mean to say I’m free now?”
“Yes, yes of course, sir. Here is what is entitled to you.” And with a godlike reach John Prescott transfers that weighty title to the very man it represents, an injustice of time and space again fixed. They climb into his trap, two self-owning individuals, and begin their northward journey. “I am an emissary of good,” an again-mortal Prescott thinks to himself satisfactorily, and he begins to dream about his next goodwill mission.
No comments:
Post a Comment