Rainbow Plantation Blues

RAINBOW PLANTATIONBLUES

Robert L. Sheeley

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

Rainbow Plantation Blues

Copyright © 2008 by Robert L. Sheeley

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-0-595-44468-7 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-88795-8 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse Rev. Date 10/28/08

Dedication

This novel is dedicated to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered men, women, and youth, of all races, colors and creeds, who lived and suffered in the United States Slaveocracy.

By slaveocracy, I mean those social conditions which were addressed—and are still being addressed—by the abolitionists, civil rights activists, Native American rights activists, feminists, the labor movement, and gay liberation activists, who—since 1619, when the first African people were brought to the Americas—have helped to bring the United States closer to the egalitarian democracy most of its citizens hope for.

In the immortal words of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a man for whom the author—a Black, Gay American man—personally feels deep gratitude:

No lie can live forever.

Acknowledgments

Gladys Reydman discovered I was a writer, and encouraged me to write this novel. She also served as a computer-consultant for my editor.

At one point in the process of completing this novel, I tried to type, and the results were not pretty. So, my typists Adam Syed and Greg Faber—whose skills I couldn’t acquire to save my life—were crucial and greatly appreciated.

I thank my editor, Barbara Louise—author of Horned Humons in a Strange Utopia—for her tireless dedication to this project. Her level of dedication and belief in this story could not have been bought for a million dollars, and were the equivalent of my own. Our fifteen grueling months of sitting for hour upon hour in front of her computer—with all of our high and low points—will remain one of my most cherished memories. (As they will mine—Ed.) As I look back, every tiresome minute of meticulously examining, re-writing, and re-examining every, word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, and storyline of this novel with her was worth it.

I also want to thank Frances Dostal, grammarian extraordinaire, for her last-minute help with spelling oddities and punctuation problems.

Most people have to work some mundane full-time job, or two or three, just to make ends meet, but the Universe—by giving me HIV and forcing me to simplify my life—freed my time. I was able to sit in coffee shops all day, writing and reflecting, while working only part time, and still maintaining a comfortable lifestyle.

Unfortunately, I cannot thank by name the many writers from Writers’ Digest publications who helped this neophyte novelist out of the dark.

Lastly, I would like to thank all of my novel’s characters—from Jonathan and Kumi to all the nameless ones—for calling on me to write their story, a story whose time has come, whether my detractors like it or not. These characters have provided me with one of the greatest spiritual journeys of my life. I am eternally grateful.

Robert L. Sheeley

Autumn 2006

At a national-chain coffee shop

University Heights, Ohio

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 1

Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him; for he loved him as he loved his own life.

I Samuel, 20:17

Take good care of Rainbow and the niggers. Especially that young buck Kumi. They will produce massive wealth for you as— he coughed uncontrollably for several seconds—they have for me. As he lay on his deathbed, Saul Bartholomew Thomas, Southern aristocrat and wealthy plantation owner, spoke his last words of fatherly advice to his son and heir, Jonathan. The French pox—the inevitable legacy of his sexual carousing in the slave quarters—had quickly gotten the better of him and he was fading fast.

How could such a great and powerful man end up in such a state? Jonathan thought to himself. He and his father had never been close. They had often disagreed, never really trusted one another, and had sometimes gone for several months without speaking. Still, an overwhelming sense of remorse overtook the young man. The pathetic summation of his father’s life seemed unjustified and unfair. No one else in South Carolina has reached the heights of power and glory as my father. And Rainbow Plantation is the envy of the South!

The thought of it all was too distressing for Jonathan. He reached for his violin. I’ll play the violin for you, father. Perhaps it will comfort you.

Yes. Please do. It’s been a blessing from heaven to have a prodigious son.

You’re so kind, but I hardly think myself prodigious. My skill is not entirely innate. I’ve spent many years in practice, remember?

Yes, I remember. I still believe you have a bit of natural aptitude. Please begin, son. I would love to hear you one last time.

Certainly of extraordinary talent, Jonathan glided his bow across the strings without ever having to look at sheet music. He played Bach and Beethoven, making it seem as easy as walking or talking, eating or sleeping. He even kept a few original compositions of his own creation in his head. Everyone who heard him play marveled at his ability and was shocked to discover he did not play professionally in the New York Symphony or in Europe. In spite of his gift, he did not really care about music. It was merely a relaxation tool and something to do. He had other interests. He was educated in constitutional law, versed in Elizabethan and Periclean history and he spoke fluent French.

Jonathan played for his father. While he did so, he thought about his home, Rainbow. Ah, Rainbow. The family pride for two generations was certainly spectacular. Walking along the one-mile-long carriageway lined with thirty oak trees, fifteen on each side, there was not a blade of grass out of place. He was always elated when the pure white, two-story mansion appeared, with its majestic Ionic columns surrounding the entire house and its sparkling windows. At the center of the circular carriageway, at the main entrance, rose bushes surrounded a small, man-made pool. A miniature replica of Michelangelo’s famous statue of David, stood in the center of the pool. When the season ended, the rose petals fell into the pool and floated on the surface like a quilt across the water. Thomas Senior had named his plantation Rosewater for the first year he and his family had occupied it. But one day, when he had been walking the grounds after a rainstorm, he noticed a huge rainbow arching over his mansion. It had so moved him that he decided to change the plantation’s name to Rainbow.

Upon entering the twenty-nine-room house, which guests sometimes referred to as the little Parthenon, the visitors saw nothing but the most exquisite early Victorian furnishings. Beautiful frescoes lined the walls of the hallways. They depicted idealized scenes of a tranquil, normal family life for Saul Thomas from boyhood through the creation of his own family and Rainbow Plantation. A fifteen-foot crystal chandelier, imported from Paris, hung at the center of a grand, spiral staircase. Rainbow sat on a four-hundred-acre estate surrounded by lush greenery and immaculate gardens as far as the eye could see.

Hidden behind a row of trees, just off the manor house, sat three rows of six small, dilapidated, windowless shacks. Four to five slaves were crowded into each shack. Saul Thomas and his overseers had often called this area niggertown or niggers’ row. Their proximity to the manor house helped Massa Thomas—as the slaves called him—keep an eye on his chattel. The trees that concealed niggertown helped the Thomas family and any guests forget the squalor of slavery, the South’s peculiar institution.

Rainbow, our beloved Rainbow, the young man thought as he played. He had a romantic gleam in his eye and a slight peevishness in his heart. Suddenly the old man gasped frantically for air, waking Jonathan from his daydream. Panic-stricken, he stopped playing. Father! Father! he screamed. What’s the matter, father? He turned to an elderly slave woman cowering in a corner. Go get help, Nay-Nay! Quickly! Don’t dawdle!

Yes, Massa, Nay-Nay nervously muttered, and stumbled out of the bedroom.

Not knowing what else to do, the young man knelt at his father’s deathbed to pray. Within seconds, the coughing and gasping stopped. Without looking up, Jonathan knew the end had come. His father was dead at sixty-seven. Jonathan stood up and stared at the corpse. The old man’s eyes were open with fixed pupils. With an eerie feeling, Jonathan reached out and pulled his father’s eyelids shut. Then he pulled the covers over Saul’s face. His lifelong tension-filled relationship with his father prevented Jonathan from crying, but he did feel a hint of genuine sorrow. Mostly, he thought about what his father’s death would mean for his own life.

A few minutes later, Nay-Nay came rushing back into the bedroom with Isabelle Thomas, his mother. The widow and the slave woman stood together in the doorway speechless, realizing they were too late. Young Jonathan was standing over the covered body, playing his violin.

Saul Thomas’ funeral was held shortly thereafter. People from all over the South came to pay their respects. High profile business leaders and their wives, along with members of the national and state legislatures attended. President Zachary Taylor sent a message of condolence. Isabelle gave a command performance as the grieving widow, but secretly, she wanted to spit upon her husband’s lifeless body in plain view of the other mourners. The emotional wounds he had inflicted upon her were that deep, and the scars would never heal.

My dear friend and former colleague, Saul Thomas, was a brave, virtuous, moral and God-fearing soul, said the handsome Senator Johnson in his eloquent eulogy. This earth has lost a benign spirit, but heaven has acquired an angel!

Most of his listeners shared his views. But many other people shared Isabelle’s.

I shall not fail to carry on the proud and honorable legacy of my father. Jonathan was in Columbia to see Mr. Anthony Taylor, his late father’s estate lawyer and old friend.

Your will to do so is the least of my worries, young man. But you haven’t been in residence at Rainbow for quite some time. Are you sure you’re—

You have my word, Jonathan said, annoyed. I’m well aware of your long history with my father and Rainbow Plantation. I will respect that and not disappoint you.

In his early teens, Jonathan had been sent up North to Phillips Exeter Academy preparatory school in New Hampshire, and then on to Yale University in Connecticut. He had arrived back home permanently just weeks before his father’s death. After so many years away, he was hardly recognizable to anyone who had known him as a boy.

Much like the perfect male beauty personified in the David statue adorning the entrance to Rainbow Plantation, Jonathan was now a living example of Michelangelo’s ideal of male physical perfection. He was five-foot, ten-inches tall. He had thick dark hair, hazel eyes, a generous mustache, a clear olive complexion and a smooth muscle-toned physique. His pleasant baritone speaking voice, his good manners, and his graceful masculinity complemented his physical appeal. In public, the female sex constantly fawned over him. Well, I do declare, Mr. Thomas. You are an irresistible target for the charms and affections of the gentler sex, they had often said.

Even some Rainbow slaves could not help but notice. Massa Thomas, you sho’ done comes up to be a mighty handsome man, Sir! The missus ought be real proud, Nay-Nay had said.

Jonathan was uncomfortable with so much attention. He was quiet and rather shy, some said like his father. He did not have a natural urge to flirt back or to even acknowledge a compliment from a belle or a slave. He just smiled, tipped his hat to the belles, and moved on about his business.

I shall be in touch with you, Mr. Taylor, in reference to matters regarding my father’s estate, Jonathan said as he entered his coach for the long ride back to Rainbow.

The ride from Columbia to Rainbow took him through the quiet and serene South Carolina countryside, but Jonathan’s inner world was not so peaceful. His exposure to the ideas of Northern abolitionism and liberal politics had greatly affected his already shaky outlook on slavery, the South’s peculiar institution. Could one man’s bread and butter be born of another man’s blood and sweat and still be totally ethical? He often thought to himself.

He had attended the popular Negro minstrel shows in the North in which white men dressed in torn and tattered clothes, blackened their faces with burnt cork and portrayed the slaves as happy, singing and dancing Sambos on stage. These images were permanently etched in his mind. But so were the messages of emancipation and freedom he had read in the abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator.

Sometimes some of his abolitionist classmates had talked him into attending anti-slavery meetings. The heated debating and fiery oratory he had heard made a lasting impression on him: Whites must compete with slave labor under these conditions all over the country. It drives our wages down and makes it harder for us to find work.

Never mind all of ‘at, Sir, had said a man with a cockney accent. We don’t ‘ave no slavery back in me merry ol’ Englan’! An ‘onest day’s pay for an ‘onest day’s work is what we ‘ave, Mates! Black, white, or what ‘ave you!

Jonathan had also met plenty of Northern whites who were just as pro-slavery as any Southern planter. In the end, he realized that attitudes in the North about slavery, emancipation, and Negroes were mixed. He suspected that the same was true in the South and in England. However, the Southern establishment had a greater stranglehold on public opinion than did the North. So any opposition to slavery was effectively silenced, creating an atmosphere of fear, taboo and even shame around the idea of emancipation.

Another disturbing topic for Jonathan was his father. I wish I knew more about him, he had thought. Maybe that would help me to understand myself better.

We’s here, Massa Thomas, Sir, Jonathan’s frail and aging slave-coachman, Goobie, said as he opened the door for his new owner. Jonathan sat staring blankly ahead. It was as if his soul had left his body and only a hollow shell remained.

Old Goobie gently shook Jonathan’s shoulder. Massa Thomas, Sir. We’s here, Sir, he whispered.

Jonathan snapped out of his trance. Oh, don’t mind me, Goobie. My mind was elsewhere. Put the carriage away and take the horses to the stables. I’m going to walk the grounds.

Yes Sir, old Goobie replied dutifully.

The blazing hot South Carolina sun was still beating down and the plantation’s daily operations were in high gear. The atmosphere resembled that of a small town. Slaves scurried about doing various chores. Very young black children laughed and giggled, jumped and played, oblivious to their impending plight of life-long servitude. Whip-toting, tobacco-chewing Appalachian overseers with foul tongues patrolled the grounds.

Sometimes, the slaves sang as they worked. Their songs had a spiritual undertone and almost always had hidden messages:

"Midnight hour when da chariot come

I’m a goin’ home to da promised land.

Midnight hour when da chariot come

Gonna see da star, gonna take his hand."

Tobacco and cotton had always been Rainbow’s chief crops. Slaves toiled nonstop from dawn till dusk in the fields, rain or shine, producing all the wealth the Thomas family enjoyed. The overseers were always ready and willing to flog any slave perceived as not working to standard. Saul Thomas had become a well-known and respected South Carolinian and had won several terms in the state’s legislature. But Thomas had been a brutal master. When home from the capital at Columbia, he had liked to go secretly to niggertown in the middle of the night to watch his slaves fornicate in front of him while he masturbated and ejaculated onto their sweaty bodies. He had especially liked to watch Jesse and Nia, a young, married slave couple he owned. Their bodies were still firm and productive and Jesse could perform with several different wenches in one night.

That seed ox will breed herds of slaves for my plantation, Saul had occasionally bragged—while puffing on a cigar—to the overseers and his colleagues at the legislature. That nigger boy of mine sure likes his snatch.

Jesse’s forced sexual activities at night had always left him exhausted in the fields during the day, so he had gotten more than his share of the lash from the overseers. Most Rainbow slaves welcomed the death of ol’ Massa Thomas as a merciful providence from da Lord.

Hello, Massa Thomas, Sir.

Good day, Sir, said some slaves as Jonathan—their new owner—strolled past them as they worked in the sweltering heat.

As Jonathan watched the slaves work, he remembered that, as a boy, he had not thought much of or about the Negroes. He certainly had not thought of them as people.

Most of the adults around him had not thought of slaves as people either. Cattle, chickens, hogs, niggers, horses, mules, what’s the difference, was what he constantly had heard from his father and the overseers. However, as a child, he had played with the pickaninnies, the black children, frequently. Slave children at Rainbow did not receive shoes or clothing until the age of eight or ten, when they were ready to begin working. They ran and played around the plantation completely naked. They were dirty and unkempt from sleeping on the dirt floors of their shacks, and their parents, having to toil relentlessly, had little or no time for them. They were fed food scraps, mixed with corn meal paste, out of pig troughs. Their young souls, along with those of the white children, were unaware of the harsh world around them. They still laughed and played innocently, reveling in their curiosities, just as they had done during Jonathan’s boyhood.

Bet you can’t catch me, boy, little Jonathan had said.

I bet I cain, little Kumi had said.

Those were the games they had played as they giggled and ran after each other on the plantation grounds and in the woods.

Kumi had been a slave boy who was the same age as Jonathan. His actual date of birth, as with most slave children, had been recorded in the plantation’s livestock journals. When Nia, his mother, had gone into labor with him, she was toiling in the cotton field. The overseers had forced her, and all pregnant slave women, to squat and give birth right then and there, in plain view of everyone else, and in the boiling heat. The minute her maternal labor was over, her manual labor had resumed without a moment’s rest and without a second thought.

Kumi and little Jonathan had been very fond of each other and had played together the most. Little Jonathan had thrown rocks or sticks and commanded Kumi to fetch them. Or, he had told Kumi to get on his hands and knees and then rode his back like a horse.

In between their child’s play, they sometimes had sat under a tree in the woods while little Jonathan read biblical passages to Kumi.

He had known that South Carolina law forbade teaching blacks how to read. Lawmakers feared that literate slaves would be unmanageable and would soon begin to demand their emancipation. Little Jonathan had not equated reading to Kumi as the same thing as teaching slaves to read, however.

"Unto the women, I will greatly multiply

Thy sorrow and thy conception;

In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and

Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

He’d continue:

"Servants, be obedient to them that are thy masters

According to the flesh, with fear and trembling,

In singleness of heart, as unto Christ."

Little Jonathan had read the passages adults most often read to him. He had sincerely wanted to enlighten Kumi. Kumi, full of wonder, had been eager to listen and learn, no matter what the passage actually said.

Jonathan’s favorite biblical saga had been the story of David and Jonathan in the books of Samuel. Isabelle had once told her boy that his name derived from the story. Little Jonathan Thomas had been thrilled to learn that his name was in the Bible, and he felt special. It had impelled him to read the story over and over to Kumi, whose African name, he knew, was not in the Bible. Jonathan had read it so many times that Kumi had the story memorized. Over time, he had heard more in the story than Jonathan’s name.

Another interest the two boys had shared was their curiosity with each other.

Why is your skin so dark, boy?

I don’t know. My mammy say da Lord made me like dis!

I heard a doctor say once that Negroes have leprosy, and that’s why they’re so black. But why did God give you leprosy?

I don’t know. What’s leprosy?

Little Jonathan had burst into laughter. Boy, you’re so dumb! It’s a sickness, you know, a disease.

Well, I sho’ don’t feel sick, Massa Jon.

They had both paused a minute to ponder their thoughts.

Well, can’t you wash that black off? Jonathan had asked.

No! Hit don’t come off.

Little Jonathan had rubbed Kumi’s skin as if trying to wipe off his color.

See, Massa Jon. Hit don’t come off.

Little Jonathan had looked at Kumi’s skin with a perplexed look on his face.

Massa Jon?

Yeah boy.

Do you got one of these? Kumi had asked, pointing to his penis, under yo’ trouser?

Yeah. I got one, but mine is clean. It’s not black like yours, boy.

Well, do hit work like mine do, Massa Jon?

I guess so. Wanna see mine, boy?

Little Jonathan had pulled down his trousers, lifted his penis with his right hand, and, full of pride, showed it to Kumi. See boy. Mine is clean.

Kumi had marveled at Jonathan’s penis.

These are white, too, he had said,