Peabody and Squires

PROLOGUE 

Waking up on the cold dirt floor, the only part of my anatomy that didn’t ache were my eyelids. Opening them, I stared at the cracks in the ceiling where the water came in during the spring rains, and wondered how long I could procrastinate before getting on the roof to cover them up. With no heat in the shack, the only thing I hated worse than getting up in the morning, was getting up during the winter and those months were not far off. The pain in my joints, aggravated by the cold ground, stalled any desire for movement. I had surrendered my bed the previous summer, to my daughter and her two children after her husband’s murder. I gazed at my wife muttering in her sleep about a mischievous grandchild that wouldn’t respond to her commands. Smiling, I was thankful Hallie was the disciplinarian, as I had no spirit for chastisement. I was the dreamer, always placing myself somewhere faraway leading the charge against injustice. Or perhaps rescuing the princess in the tower, from the oncoming hordes of barbarians. Whatever the challenge,. my imagination transcended reality, restoring a spirit that would have otherwise been crushed, by the experience of living as a nineteenth century slave in antebellum Virginia. Finally, I turned on my side to watch Hallie sleep. The rise and fall of her breasts, enticed me to reach over and run my hand up through the cleavage, touching her firm skin with my thumb and little finger, hoping to suggest a quiet arousal. Hallie removed my hand, placed it back on my hip and whispered:

If you need something warm and fleshy in yo hands, you go and milk the cow and let this woman get her rest.

Laying my head back down, I laughed quietly before pulling the blanket off and sitting upright.

I’ll be back again tonight and they’ll be no cows to milk then. I respond.

By the time I got the fire lit, my two grandchildren were up and fighting for position behind the old tin stove, shivering and hoping the heat would soon begin radiating back to them. I threw the iron skillet on the hot metal surface and began frying pork rinds and bread. Hallie eventually sauntered sleepily into the kitchen, put her arms around my waist from behind, and rested her cheek against my back trying to grab another minute of sleep. I moved back and forth from the stove to the table, trying to serve the food with my wife still attached to my hips. This was too much to contain the laughter of the two little girls. Pretty soon, they had attached themselves to Hallie and I was pulling a train behind me. Grandma could always start everyone’s day with a laugh.

When you gonna fetch some eggs, steada chuckin all dis pig fat at me Hallie would tease.

"Woman, I’m here to offer sustenance, not a banquet.

When the family was fed, I moved outside to milk the cow, chop the wood and see the mules had hay and water. After completing the initial daily chores, I headed for the master’s house, where I performed special duties, that had spared me a lifetime of toil in the tobacco fields.

It was the custom to drop by the other shacks to bid a good morning to my neighbors. Two elderly gentlemen, twenty years my senior greeted me from the porch, to voice their complaints about the treatment of the field hands and what I should be doing about it, since I had the ear of the master on a daily basis.

Young man, you tell Massa Calhoun, I has to see him bout sumpin important. Reggie would shout.

I don’t expect he’s gonna come out here on the run, and you’re not allowed in the house I answered.

But you are, and we need fresh manure for de vegetables.

You two create enough fertilizer, from all those horse tales you concoct

.Both men were fourth generation Africans, whose ancestors were taken from the Gold Coast in 1740 and deposited in a market place in the Carolinas. Family histories were passed down on the only Black classrooms in the old South…the front porch. Often factual parts of the lessons were lost in the telling. I always felt both men took creative liberties to enhance some of the history. According to Reggie, his great-grandfather stood six feet seven inches and garnered the highest price for any slave prior to 1800, and was once reported to have knocked out a 1000 pound bull with a single punch between the eyes. Old Nick once described his great uncle to having fathered over one hundred and fifty children in an Indian village, creating the beginning of what now is known as the Blackfoot tribe. Children would gather around their grandparents and hear events related, that always made their lives sound like they were living in paradise. They’d be continually reminded, they wouldn’t have it so good if folks before them hadn’t paid the price. Before listening to the grievances of the two veterans, promising like a loyal steward to carry them to the top for discussion, I respectfully received my daily ritual and heard the lineage of both families, as to who begat who and when. While each of them corrected each other, debated the facts, stopped in mid sentence to fill their pipes, stopped again to hit the spitoon beside their rockers, children were climbing in an out of their laps to seek the comfort of these trusted patriarchs. Although cruelty at the hands of the field bosses was something both of them had lived with all their lives, they were the eternal optimists.. Having one of their own so highly regarded by the white owners, gave them full confidence in this.

Boy, I can’t understand, if you be working in that big house, why you ain’t livin there too. There sure be enough rooms upstairs fer your whole family

My dear old friend, I feel lucky just to be snitchin some cornbread out at night in an old sock. It’ll be my spirit livin upstairs after I’m gone

Yeh, me too, only I’m comin back to haunt the place, Reggie joked. Then they’ll be missing more than cornbread from dat kitchen.

Reggie was forever complaining on the mismanagement of the plantation, the treatment of the workers and continually wondered why the inhabitants of the richest tobacco farm in Virginia, had to smoke dust in there own pipes. Old Nick thought it was a transgression, [a word the reverend used each Sunday in Church], that Black children were not allowed to learn the basic studies being taught to whites. When they were reminded, I regularly conducted reading classes for the children, they retorted,

It had to be in secret, and they’d all be punished if it was ever found out. Old Nick stated.

You had to be on your toes with these two, who were ready to retaliate to any comments that inferred you were letting the master of the hook.

If Mr. Lincoln gets elected, they’ll be colored men sittin in the congress some day. and then joked his bags were packed and he was ready to go.

These two old fellows would leave my head spinning, as I strolled to the main house wishing I could get an audience with the great men in Washington. I would take Reggie and Old Nick with me and let them make their case.

I was born Andrew Joseph Sutton on a plantation in South Georgia, some sixty years ago, when our great country was only twenty-two years old. I began my entry into the world in a chicken coup, when my mother felt her water break while fetching some eggs for breakfast.

I was lying flat on my back screamin, and everyone was standin over me, yellin, get up girl, the man wants his boiled eggs, Momma said.

The slave owner, so disgruntled over the lateness of his morning meal, sold the woman and her child off to a Virginian for a plough horse. Regardless of my father’s pleading not to separate him from his wife and new baby son, Sarah Mae Sutton was on her way to a tobacco plantation, just south of Richmond. The trip took an agonizing four days on the back of a hay wagon, she had to share with two goats and a crate of ducks. "I thought the noise of dem ducks would have my baby quackin, before he spoke a word, Momma told her friends.

For most of the trip, the driver refused to make regular stops, which prevented Sarah from relieving herself, then complained of the smell from her clothes and lectured her about the importance of hygiene and cleanliness. On the fourth day when I needed changing, she ripped up her only extra blouse for a diaper. How she prayed for this trip to be over and dreamed of bath water and a change of clothes. She stared at the only memory she had of her man Henry and marveled at such a resemblance in this tiny baby.

When the wagon rolled into the plantation yard of Bellhaven, Sarah’s new home, two older women were there to help her from the wagon. One taking the baby, while the other helped Sarah stretch her cramped legs, by walking her around in a circle..

Girl we gotta get you bathed and in some clean underwear. You smell worse than them goats Cassie blethered.

Alistair Calhoun the overseer came out to greet the wagon and take inventory of the goats and the duck crates

There’s five ducks missin. You sho that driver didn’t sell em to some farmer along the way? he shot at Sarah.

No suh. He’d probably sell me fust before he let any of dem ducks get away.

Take her over to Aunt Jemmie’s shack and tell the old woman she gonna have company Calhoun stated after giving Momma the once over.

Weeks later, when Sarah was settled in to a job making bread in the master’s kitchen, she brought me with her and set me on the kitchen counter for everyone to adopt and enjoy. And enjoy they did, marveling at the beauty of the child I’m quoting the help. My skin was so light, the result of some

infiltration into the bloodline generations before, Sarah was often questioned about whether she’d taken up with a white man, but Momma was always quick to defend the undying loyalty she held for her man Henry. I made as much of a hit with the masters wife, and as the years progressed, I became a regular fixture in the home as a playmate to the children, William and Dora. We were inseparable for years, until William went off to boarding school and Master William Calhoun began his transformation to William Calhoun the Master. A natural part of southern maturation, that would prepare him for the management of his inheritance. My fair skin had much do with allowing me to be schooled with the other children. If someone complained about violation of state laws banning the teaching of Blacks, Elvira Calhoun was ready to claim me as a long lost nephew. I was a very quick learner and picked up reading and arithmetic faster than the other two children. The tutor, Elvira’s cousin, Mr. Edwin Brown who came to the house four times a week would comment,

It seems like such a tremendous waste, for our maker to squander all that intelligence on a colored child

He nevertheless gave me equal time with the lessons. By my twelfth birthday, I was tutoring both the other children, as well as helping Elvira Calhoun with her credit and debit reports for the plantation account. It all began when I was looking over Elvira’s shoulder one afternoon, and caught an oversight of expenditures by the foreman that didn’t tally with the receipts on hand. It later cost the foreman his job, saved the Calhouns three hundred dollars and guaranteed me a permanent place in the office. As the years turned into decades, my accounting skills saved the Calhouns thousands of more dollars and gave me access to the tremendous collection of books in the library. My appetite for reading history, science, philosophy, literature and particularly adventure novels, allowed my mind and spirit to wander the four corners of the earth.

I entered the house every morning through the kitchen, where I was greeted by the aroma of fresh coffee and cinnamon bread. By the time I reached my desk in the office off the livingroom, my caffeine and sugar levels were at a peak. Regarded as someone very important to the family, the house crew gave me priority for anything I requested, which was usually food staples to sneak back home to the family at night.

Baby, you come on over here, I got somethin hot in my oven for you, Linnie would laugh and tease.

Before I got to my desk Dora, who was now managing the plantation full time with brother William, met me with the itinerary of work for the day which often included personal correspondence.

Andrew, did you complete the statements on the grain bills and get the bank deposit ready like I asked you, Dora would inquire.

"They went out Monday Miss Dora, along with your letter to Mr. Dun-

V

can.

Because of my attention to John Keats and Robert Browning, I taught myself proper English composition and grammar and could prepare letters and documents on a level with the legal community. Dora would have me write to the local politicians, offering her services for the election campaigns. So impressed by her lengthy proposals for better government, one gubanato-rial candidate recruited her to write his speeches. It was through these speeches, I infused the candidate’s vocabulary with phrases like"

a necessity for Black educators and showing sensitivity towards human dignity which is the Christian way.

When he was voted into the governor’s office, Dora was invited to the inauguration, and I received two old dresses for Hallie and a pair of William’s suspenders to replace the piece of rope on my trousers…Life was good.

While my relationship with Dora was mutually favorable, I was never certain how I stood with William Calhoun, my boyhood chum. My administrative skills were appreciated, until the day I defeated him at a chess game. He stated that evening at dinner, after he’d ingested a bottle and a half of french burgundy that,

The nigger has learned how to manipulate the chess board, and might best be served, working with his own kind in the fields

When Dora reminded him of what a full time bookkeeper would cost, and how difficult it is to find someone you can trust, the matter was dropped. As the years passed and cases like Dred Scott were discussed among the whites, of whether the colored people were capable of rising up and starting a revolt, William would invite me to share my opinions. Arousing what psychology I could from my instincts, I would assure William,

that any master who loved his slaves in the manner that God had laid down to Moses, could scarcely worry about revolt. As you and I both love our Heavenly Father, neither of us could have him see us with vengeance in our hearts. As the good book states vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. Not yours, not mine, but only His."

Relieved that the spirit of one of his own was full of such biblical inspiration, William never made any connection, that the message included him as well.

Evenings in the Calhoun livingroom were often spent entertaining guests from out of state and occasionally out of country. One guest was Emelyn Pryor, a contributing editor to the London Times, who had spent the last number of years writing supportive articles of the British army’s efforts abroad. His stories of the Crimea, Egypt, and the great battles to overcome the mutinous rebellion of 1857 in India, had an arresting effect on me., Being invited to listen in on the discussions, I amused Pryor taking reams of notes and flooding him with hundreds of questions.

You’ll have to forgive Andrew Dora would say, He’s the perennial student, always eager to learn

Pryor was so impressed with the intensity of my inquiries about the British role in India, he left me a copy of a recently written editorial, that documented the campaigns in each of the towns and villages, until the final battles took place in Lucknow and Cawnpore, when the Governor General in Calcutta declared a final victory for the British.

If you have any difficulty understanding the text, I’m sure William will be happy to explain it to you Pryor stated somewhat condescendingly.

Later I would return to my office, tabulate my notes in a folder, then file them for future reference. When I returned to the shack that first night, when the family was asleep, I read and reread the twelve full page Times editorial of the Indian rebellion, that included maps of the cities and provinces. I tried to keep my head up, but eventually succumbed to sleep, while the candle wax melted down into and through the cracks in the old wood table..

The next day, when I sat at my desk, my attention was divided three ways between my ledger, a book I was reading and the view through the window to the workers in the yard. It was not unusual for me to catch sight of a field boss harassing a worker, while Reggie yelled obscenities from his front porch.

What’s wrong with you. Yo brain shrunk smaller than yo pecker. That man’s doin his best.

Shut the fuck up or I’ll come over there and kick yo Black ass the field boss would snarl.

They’d be sendin a boy to do a man’s job. Reggie would reply.

And this went on day after day. Before long though, I was back on the island with Robinson Cruscoe, my imagination carrying me along the white sand beach, my parrot on my shoulder. Dafoe, Swift and Cooper must have had a wander lust to allow these characters to entice them away from their ordinary existences. Losing myself between the covers of any book liberated my senses, but when I had to return to reality, it was always a shock. Like the cripple who goes to sleep and dreams he can run and jump only to awaken to his limbs that are still frozen. Dickens had peaked my interest for England. Home of the world’s greatest navy, and birthplace of King Richard who led the forces to the crusades.

Focusing back to Reggie and Old Nick across the yard, I wondered how their lives might have turned out with a different scenario. What if they’d been born out of slavery, into a life that allowed them to make decisions that changed the face of history. Not necessarily into royalty or great wealth, but into positions where the strength of their character could change wrong to right, while discovering the other side of the mountain. What if two valiant knights rose up, bigger than life itself, and came back to Virginia to challenge the damnation brought on my brothers and sisters. Men whose courage was willing to oppose two centuries of inhumane tradition, and overturn the national laws regarding slavery.

It certainly was something to consider. I have written a few short stories from experiences I’ve had on the farm, but never taken the giant leap at a novel. I knew I would have to do this secrecy. Any suggestion by a slave, that would encourage anything beyond servitude, would certainly result in a loss of my position, not to mention the tighter reign it would bring on the rest of the workers.

Never the less, it was time for me to sculpt my own heroes, take them on a courageous adventure, allowing me the greatest escape of my life.

Removing a piece of paper from the drawer, I dipped my pen in the ink and began to write. Peabody and Squires…Chapter One.

CHAPTER ONE 

Peshewar, Northwest India May 14 1857

With the rising of the sun, came the lament of the muezzin from the city tower, exhorting the enlightened to get on their knees and give praise to their maker.

Get up my brethren, it is better to pray than to sleep. The melodic urging is heard throughout the city, where many of the faithful set down their tea glasses and prepare for their daily appeal for God’s blessings.

Standing with his coffee cup on the second floor balcony at the officer’s quarter’s that housed the families of the 66th regiment of the British army’s northwest field force, the African looked out over the minarets, tower’s and golden mosques of the city. He wondered how many of his own troops were aroused enough to get up and bow to the east. Dropping his head, to allow his six foot four inch frame through the doorway, he returned back to his quarters and proceeded to the bedroom where his wife slept. At age fifty-four, his body was as firm and muscular as it had been thirty years ago. His shoulders straight as oxen yokes, above a torso that tapered passed a tight waistline to thighs grown hard from years in the stirrups.

Passing an opened version of the King James bible, he stopped to place a marker in the Book of Job. Starting his day with his own private devotional, left him invigorated with the power of the almighty. He stared for the longest time at the figure of his sleeping wife, thinking of the consequences she had paid to follow him. He had met her twelve years ago, at a school he visited to offer a recruitment speech. She had just turned twenty and was working in the deans office and agreed to show him around the campus. She was tall and lithe, with lips so sensuous, he couldn’t stop wondering how they would feel against his. After sharing a glass of lemonade on a bench in the rose garden, they agreed to exchange letters and did so for the next year with Peabody returning on occasion for a dinner date.

A year later when the daughter of a Brahmin Hindu announced to her father, she planned to marry a Black African Christian, she drove a permanent wedge between herself and her heritage. She had to decide between her family and her development as a woman. This meant putting emotional and physical longing, over traditional customs of planned marriages. Her father had chosen the son of a rich maharaja, that would have connected the blood lines between two very wealthy families. In later years, the void that remained in her heart from surrendering her family, was replaced with the fulfillment of a devoted husband’s love and two beautiful sons. The passion she felt for her him, gripped her thoughts throughout every waking moment of the day. She could be as mesmerized by his figure in a dress uniform, glancing across the floor at her in the officer’s club, as she was eyeing his naked frame stepping out of a bath.

Most of their separation caused by wars, filled her with the dread of one day being permanently alone. She hated it and he knew it. Yet the gentle strength he displayed, not only in their lovemaking, but in the quiet understanding of her moods swings, never prompted his questioning.

I’m off now my love he whispered, can I get you anything?

She rolled over and pulled on the collar of his tunic, until their mouths were joined, before tenderly biting his bottom lip.

Yes, you can come fill my loins, until I’m ready to send you away

He kisses her again.

Ah my queen, in a few short hours I’ll return and grant your every request

Kissing her fawn colored cheek, he looks in on the sleeping children, before descending to the street below, where he is picked up in a surrey and driven to brigade head quarters. On his way up the cobblestone street, he notices a crowd of soldiers gathered in the courtyard and motions the driver to take him over to learn what the commotion is. On his approach, he sees two men tied to a wagon wheel being flogged, under the supervision of one of the brigade majors. The African, a full colonel, jumps from the surrey and loudly commands a halt to the flogging. Examining the open bloodied scars of both men, he recognizes them as infantrymen under his command and challenges the major as to the reason for the whipping.

They were caught stealing food rations from the mess hall and need to be punished said the major.

These men are Ghurkhas assigned to my brigade. If there is any punishment to delve out, it will come from me. Is that all major?.

Heeding the superior’s request that would eventually become a command, the major turns the men over and with an abrupt salute removes himself to brigade headquarters. The colonel learns from the accused, they were taking food to a starving Nepalese woman, who was left with three children, when her husband was killed by a British artillery unit. They had mistaken his caravan for a rebel force from inside Afghanistan. Satisfied with the promise from both men to never repeat such an offence, the colonel allows them to be dismissed back to their barracks, knowing he will have their eternal loyalty..

Following two major battles with British forces in 1816 over boundary disputes from the Kashmir border in the west, and Bhutan in the east, the Gurkha columns under the leadership of Prithi Narayan Shah, the King of Nepal, secured a peace treaty with the British at Sugauli. In these battles, the British developed a great respect for the Ghurkha fighters. Later under terms of the treaty, many of the Gurkhas were allowed to volunteer for units of the East India Company’s army. From these enlistees, the first Gurkha brigade was formed and since that time, have been fighting alongside British soldiers in Afghanistan in 1842, the first Sikh war of 1846 and the Second Sikh war of 1848, where the colonel commanded his first Gurkha regiment. A great transfer of respect and admiration for these men and their leader was established during this battle. Today offered a great opportunity for the colonel to firm that relationship and he wasn’t going to pass it up.

Crossing the parade grounds, he was met by a ten year old boy named Sica who dusted off the sand from his boots for an anna coin.

When can I join the corps sahib, I’m very brave and a straight shot

As soon as you’re a man with hair on your face and a shoulder wide enough to carry a musket, the colonel would answer.

Walking up the steps to the headquarters, his aide met him with information that General Lawrence, the post commander wished