Sipping the coffee and clutching the moneybag in her lap, Claudia sat with the quilt wrapped around her and waited for Chad to come back to the cabin. She wanted to tell him how they could get money out of the dumb Crandalls.

The rain stopped that day, too.

The sun began glowing faintly through the clouds, but as the mist cleared away, the sun became bright in the sky.

The weather turned warm. The damage of the long rains was soon dried. And the Star suddenly bloomed, with its people feeling that it was springtime at last.

This particular morning, the rich sound of Nero's voice drifted from inside the front stall of the stables. He was brushing down Peter's mare and singing a West Indian song. It was a song with no words, just a rhythm comprising humming and warbling rising from deep down inside Nero's throat.

Peter worked across the stable from Nero, examining 165.

the legs of a foal, wondering if he could get a trotter from this sprightly black horse. His concentration was suddenly broken by someone calling to him from outside the stable.

Listening, Peter heard, "Master Peter, sir? Master Peter?"

Rising reluctantly to his feet, Peter brushed the bits of straw from his white breeches, and picking at the tight nankeen shirt that clung to his chest with perspiration, he strode out from the sweet smell of the stall toward the open doors.

He saw a small black boy coming toward the stables, hurrying across a small field of daisies from the big house. It was Ruben, a small black boy who ran errands for Storky. He was carrying a cloth-covered tray in his hands now.

Peter stood in the doorway and smiled as Ruben stopped a few yards from the stables. Holding the tray rigidly in front of him, Ruben threw back his shaved head and announced in a loud voice, "Miss Storky, she sends me with this coffee and pecan cookies for you, Master Peter, sir."

Peter nodded. "Thank you, Ruben." He liked to be particularly warm to the black children of the Star.

"Do you wants to drinks it in the shade, Master Peter, sir?" Ruben shouted.

"Just a minute," Peter said, looking over his shoulder. "How many cups you got on that tray, Ruben?"

The boy blinked at Peter in astonishment. He answered, "One cup, Master Peter, sir."

Nodding in the direction from where Nero's voice was drifting, Peter said, "I think we're going to need two, Ruben."

Ruben listened to the singing and blinked again. He recognized the voice as that of a black man. Ruben was new to the big house and did not know that Peter was more generous than most white people. This was not what he had been raised to expect. He asked with astonishment, "You wants me to runs back to Miss Storky for a cup for ... him? Is that what you wants, Master Peter, sir?"

Peter nodded. "Think you could?" - 166.

The black boy's face suddenly broke into a wide grin. He said, "Runs? Heck, Master Peter, I can runs. I can runs faster than a hound dog."

Walking toward Ruben, Peter bent to take the tray from the boy's arms and said, "Then let's see you do it. And if you're back here by the time I count to fifty, Ruben, I'll let you have one of these nice fat pecan cookies."

Ruben's eyes widened at the prospect of getting such a treat Quickly kneeling on the ground next to Peter, he looked across the field at the big house and said, "You start counting, Master Peter, sir, and I starts running."

Peter began, "One, two, three ..."

Rubea was off. His sturdy brown legs carried him across the small field of daisies, and Peter stood watching him bound toward the back steps of the big house.

But halfway across the flowering patch, the figure of another Negro jumped from the grass. It was Posy.

Peter had completely forgotten about Posy being nearby. He had come to the stables earlier this morning looking for empty liniment bottles. He wanted to use them as vases for the daisies he picked, and was planning to take them into the big house for presents. Posy was eighteen years old now, and although he was tall and sturdy, he still was effeminate and had made no advances toward manliness.

Now Posy stood in the daisy patch waving his arms at Ruben. He shouted, "You keeps off my flowers, nigger brat. You keeps off my flowers."

Peter laughed as he watched Posy berating Ruben, who did not slow his fast strides.

It was not until Ruben had disappeared around the Mac clump by the back steps of the big house-and Posy had settled down on the ground again with his collection of liniment bottles and pile of flowers-that Peter called to the stable, "Hey, Nero? Want to grease your throat?"

Nero suddenly appeared in the door. He wore only his white knee-length breeches, his chest streaming with perspiration. Wiping his forehead and running his hand 167.

over his wiiy hair, he said to Peter, "Ain't been working hard enough to deserve no big treat, Master Peter."

But Peter insisted. "Well, you've got a coffeecup coming, so you better get ready to use it." Usually by coffee time Nero was already away from the stables, already exercising the mare.

Sliding the curry comb from his wide hand, Nero tugged up his pants and reached for his shirt, which was hanging from a wooden peg at the side of the big door.

"You don't have to get dressed for coffee," Peter protested, but impressed nonetheless that Nero had , offered to put on his shirt.

As the two men were taking their first nibbles of Storky's pecan cookies, they heard a loud panting coming across the daisy field. Looking, they saw Ruben dashing toward them. Posy sat upright again, protectively clutching his armful of flowers.

Remembering his bargain with the kitchen boy, Peter resumed counting loudly, ". . . thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight..."

Ruben slid to a dusty halt in front of the stable at Peter's count of thirty-nine. Holding a blue-and-white cup in one hand and its matching saucer in the other, he looked anxiously at Peter and asked, "Did I makes it, Master Peter, sir?"

"You got here by thirty-nine," Peter answered.

Not knowing his numbers, Ruben asked wide-eyed, "Is that winning or losing the cookie, Master Peter, sir? Thirty . .. nine?"

Holding the plate of cookies to Ruben, Peter assured him, "That's winning the cookies. Thirty-nine out of fifty is winning the cookies by a long shot, Ruben. Go on, take three! And, here, take a couple more to give Posy over there. I bet he likes cookies, too."

"Posy just likes flowers!" Ruben said, gnawing into his first cookie with one large tooth.

"But he can't eat flowers. Go on. Take a couple to him. And make sure you give them to him, too. I'll be watching you."

Ruben departed happily, skipping toward Posy to give him his cookies, too. Then both boys walked toward the big house together.

168.

When Peter and Nero had both finished drinking their first cup of coffee, Peter moved to refill Nero's cup. But Nero quickly reached to take the white pot from Peter's hand to pour for himself.

Refusing to accept Nero's gesture, Peter divided the remaining coffee between them and said, "You sure must have had some good training, Nero. I've never seen a person-a white man or black-who had so much consideration as you."

Nero grinned. "It goes back a long ways, Master Peter." His voice was not deep when he spoke, but soft and gentle.

Peter asked, "They taught you good in the West Indies, didn't they?"

"Oh, Master Peter!" Nero laughed. "It goes back a lot further than the West Indies. When I was no bigger than that Ruben sprout, I was bought off a Portuguese slaver by the Roman Church. That was way down in Brazil. That was years ago, Master Peter."

"The Roman Church? I didn't know a church owned slaves!"

"They do in Brazil. The priests and those women they call nuns in the Roman Church."

"Papists?" Peter had heard about the papists. They were mostly Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Selby had told him that New Orleans had been a hotbed of papists. Also, some of the Witcherley family were supposed to be papists, too.

"Those are the ones, Master Peter. But I can't complain about them. Not that I complain about white folks. But I've got to admit that those papists treats then: niggers better than the other Portuguese men do in Brazil. Those working down in the mines. Those niggers have it bad. The Portuguese people, they gets real mean."

Peter vaguely remembered then that Nero had told Mm-or somebody like Storky, who had repeated the story-that he had worked in Brazil. But he had never realized that priests had once been his masters, too. Anxious to know more, Peter asked, "I can understand what work a slave can do on a plantation, or even down in a mine. But what did you do in a church, Nero?"

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Grinning again, Nero said, "Oh, Master Peter! They finds a lot of works for niggers to do everyplace. Especially the strong ones. Even the young ones, like I was at that time. Must have been twelve years old when I was promoted from fetching for the priest. The priest liked his fetchers to be young, and at twelve years old I was getting too old for the padre, and so he sent me to the nuns."

"Nuns? Those holy women who pray all the time and wear long black veils?" Peter asked, feeling an excitement in himself.

"Some of them had veils, Master Peter. And were supposed to pray and not visit with each other. But some of them were daughters of rich folks and lived in the convent for one reason or other, and they got to carry on like most women." Nero paused, smiling. "I remember, I had one mistress who was hornier than anything I sees later on at Miss Naomi's house. . . ."

Then Nero stopped abruptly. Lowering his head, he confessed, "I keep forgetting when I talk to you, Master Peter. I keep forgetting you are a white man. I could just talk to you till my tongue falls out,"

"Talk to me?" Peter laughed. "Hell, you hardly say anything, Nero. You never talk to a soul."

Nero shrugged his shoulders. "You're right, Master Peter. I don't talk as much as I think I do. But then, you ain't much of a talker yourself."

"You're right," Peter admitted.

Nero sat staring at his big hands, the fingernails looking like clear spatulas over the pinkness. He said soberly, "When I was your age, Master Peter, I talked too much. I talked to anybody. But then ..." Nero took a deep sigh. ".. . Then something happened to my hopes."

Peter did not press Nero to explain what his disappointment had been. But knowing that Nero was not troubled by talking lightly about sexual matters, Peter playfully slugged at Nero's strong bicep and said, "I bet you had yourself some good times in that convent." '

Nero agreed by suddenly cupping the crotch of his breeches with both of his hands.

He began to tell the story.

170.

"There's one woman from Brazil I really remembers, Master Peter. One real low woman. She called herself Sister Honoria. But she was no holy sister. Excuse me for speaking about white ladies, Master Peter, but Sister Honoria was just a plain trashy white wench who had to come to the convent so her family would not marry her to a skinny cousin.

"That Sister Honoria just couldn't get enough of being pestered ... in both holes. Getting pestered by me and . . . Not bragging, Master Peter, but I always have been pretty big, even back then when I was not much older than that Ruben boy. So I pesters the sister in the front, and she was getting pestered at the same time by another buck almost as big as you yourself in her back hole. Now, that's a lot of pecker for any woman to be taking. But that wasn't good enough for her. She had a third person, a woman she had tonguing around her front hole while I was donging the same place. No, it just wasn't sisterlike at all. But the funniest thing, a thing that scared me at first when she told me to do it. But later I didn't mind when it was time for me to do it- when I was finally to be sold. Let me explain.

"The convent decided to sell me because the mother superior said I was getting too big in my pants, and so Sister Honoria had to give me up as her secret boy. She didn't want to lose my pecker, so she made me put wax -you know, melted wax from a candle-around my pecker so she could make another pecker just like mine. You know, a whole wax pecker. Hard and everything. And that's what I left her using on herself. A wax pecker like mine. And who knows? Maybe she's still using it today ... if she ain't got so hot that it's melted all up inside her.

"Many times after that I thought I was going to melt myself. The convent sold me to a tin mine there in Brazil, and down in that mine it was hot as blazes, and I saw niggers who hadn't seen no sunlight in ten, twelve years. You say a nigger ain't white, but down in them tin mines they looked gray just like some big old rats. They still got them down there now, but I don't suggest you go looking, Master Peter. You'll just get sick to 171.

your stomach. If the sight don't get you, then the stench will. Living their whole lives down there, they don't get out to do nothing. They eats and shits and everything down in that deep black hole in the world. About the only thing they don't do is pester.

"That's why I got out, because of pestering. From Brazil, I was taken to the island in the West Indies called Montserrat by a man called a company holder. He owned part of that Brazil tin mine, and he saw me the day I was being lowered down in the hole by a rope. He had a raging fit, I hears later, and he got me pulled out and taken to where he said I would be more helpful and all. He wanted me to breed with some of his wenches living on his island. He took me to his home in Montserrat.

"On Montserrat I meets a lot of new niggers, especially wenches, but the cleverest nigger I ever did meet anywhere was a skinny little wench called Naomi. She was just dusting tables in the greathouse at that tune. Oh, Naomi was as bright as a new brass button. Brighter than she was pretty, too. Naomi was nothing but skin and bones to look at in those days. But that didn't stop a gal like her. Oh, no. Miss Naomi sets her eye on that rich Frenchman who owns us, and seeing that he owned her, Naomi saw that he was the only man who could set her free, and to do that, Naomi saw she had to gets more in his good favors. She sets right out to do that, too, and in no tune at all she was married to him. A nigger wench dusting parlors one day, and the next day she was married to a fine white Frenchman. Ugly and old and fat, but a fine Frenchman just the same. Now, if that ain't something for a skinny wench to get herself, I don't know what is.

"But that marriage don't last for no time at all, Master Peter. That Frenchie got himself into a bad accident the night of their wedding. I ain't saying it was Naomi's fault. There was no proof or saying that she led him off that balcony that night. But he fell to the sea, and he died. And I know...

"I shouldn't be laughing at niggers' wicked ways, but, oh, Master Peter, that Miss Naomi sure knew how to do 172.

things more wicked than anybody else, black woman or white. She got her freedom. She got to be head of her own household then. And so she sells all the niggers she don't likes, which was most of them, because Miss Naomi didn't like other niggers one bit, and keeping only a handful-including me-she takes us all with her from Montserrat to another island there called St. Kitts.

"St. Kitts was where Miss Naomi opens up her house. She opens it up in the capital of St. Kitts, called Basseterre, on a wharf there called Barracks Lane. And then that was when she really starts making lots of money and making herself looks like the prettiest nigger in the whole Caribbean. She forgot all about being skinny. She could buy herself anything she wanted, she was making so much money. But she was a worker. She worked even at bossing people around to do things for her. Even bossing around poor-trash whites. Providing amusement for the white gentlemen customers who come to her whorehouse there on Barracks Lane.

"There's no other word for it than whorehouse, Master Peter, but it seems a shame to call a place as fine as that a whorehouse. It was more like a showhouse. She had real big shows there. In fact, Miss Naomi had everything right there that a white man could want for. If a white man said he didn't want nothing, then Miss Naomi would tell him why he had to have something. She figured out lots of things. She even figured out that lots of white men on St. Kitts didn't really like owning nigger slaves. She said they felt 'guilty' about owning and mistreating niggers.

"So to keep them white men from feeling too guilty, Miss Naomi helped them. She whipped them just like they whipped their slaves. You know, she punished them for doing what she always called their sins. Oh, those whiteys there loved that word, 'sins.'

"And not just Miss Naomi whips them white men. She had all kinds of other folks working and whipping for her and getting paid for it by the white men. It was something you'd really have to see to believe. And you know, Master Peter, it might sounds awful and bad to you, but after keeping all this penned up inside me all 173.

these years, just talking about it makes me feel like I'm seeing old friends. A lot of old friends I knows and loves and ...

"Me. I never was much good myself at whipping people. Fact, Miss Naomi always told me I should be a lot meaner than I was. She told me I should really learn to hate white folks. But no matter how hard I tries to be mean, Master Peter, I just couldn't find hate in me. I just couldn't do all those things she told me to do.

"I remembers one woman . . . Mistress Arabella Warburton. Yes, that was her name. Mistress Arabella Warburton. And, oh, Master Peter, did she want terrible things done to her. She'd beg for it, too. She'd beg for us black boys to slap her face with our peckers. She liked to have her face slapped with a soft pecker more than a hard one, because a soft pecker meant that she wasn't exciting enough to a man to make him hard, and she liked to be punished and made fun of that way. She liked to be pissed on, too. All over her face. She'd beg for it. It sounded awful. Just like some bedpot begging you to fill it. I didn't like it at all, not what that Arabella Warburton wanted. In fact, most days at Miss Naomi's house I wasn't very happy one bit.

"But then when Master Abdee came along, I guess, my life took a turn for the good. I got to go live out in the country then. That's what I like. I like life in the country. I like life here at the Star. And back then I liked moving with Miss Naomi to Master Abdee's plantation on St. Kitts.

"Master Abdee was an Englishman. An Englishman who came to St. Kitts to whip slaves. But to whip real slaves, not white men playing at being slaves to women in a whorehouse. See, the English government on St. Kitts used to have a special man to whip slaves in the main square of the town. The capital, called Basseterre. And that's how Miss Naomi came to meet Master Abdee. He was a horny big white man and found his way to Miss Naomi's house right away. Or maybe I should say, Naomi found her way to him.

"Miss Naomi was no streetwalking whore, Master Peter, but she sure lit out of the house when she heard 174.

that Master Abdee was in town. She knew what a heap of good it would do for the name of her whorehouse to have people knowing she had been to bed with the new dragonard.

"Dragonard. That was the name of the British whip-per. He was called the dragonard. The word comes from the name of the special whip he used. Because the tip of it was split just like the tongue of a dragon is supposed to be.

"Only for a short time, though, was Abdee, the dragonard, on St. Kitts. It made all the English people mad, too, that he took the job, because Abdee was a real proper Englishman, just like the other planters there. But he had taken a job that only some white-trash person should be working at. And he did it for the same reason he did other things, I suppose. He did it for no reason at all. Master Abdee just did things. That's why he and Miss Naomi hit it off so good, I guess. Miss Naomi always said to me, 'Nero, that Abdee is the only white nigger I ever did see.' But it wasn't as if she and Abdee was in real love with each other. Like snuggling sweethearts. They just got on like good friends. They made love, but they didn't hold on tight to each other like most folks. They were different from other lovers. I remember even before Abdee moved Miss Naomi into his house, he didn't come down to see her in Basseterre for months and months sometimes. That was when he got married to the Frenchwoman.

"But marrying a Frenchwoman didn't change things much for Abdee. Except that he was rich then. And got himself that sugar plantation. It was first called Petit Jour. That was the name of the plantation before the Frenchwoman married Master Abdee. Petit Jour. It means twilight in French talk, they say. Petit Jour. That's a pretty name, but Abdee changed it to Dragonard, and Dragonard got itself a real bad name toward the last.

"Abdee named the plantation Dragonard after his whipping job. The Dragonard Plantation. But that made English folks hate him even more. They tried to forget they did such bad things. But Abdee didn't forget. He didn't care. He just went on as he pleased. Planting.

175.

Buying more niggers. And getting all the wenches pregnant. Including Honore.

"Mistress Honore was the name of Abdee's wife, the Frenchwoman, Master Peter. 'Course, nobody on the plantation ever saw the baby that Abdee planted in her, because Abdee got too mean for her to live with him, so she left. Off Mistress Honore set with her maid, leaving Abdee and Dragonard and everything.

"I don't recall right now the name of Honore's maid, because that was all before my time. But there was always some talk about the maid and Mistress Honore in the kitchen at Dragonard. They had sailed off for France quite a few years before the troubles came to Dragonard.

"Those troubles, Master Peter, those troubles are what ruined everything for everybody. Abdee is gone now. Miss Naomi is gone. All the niggers are killed or sold or run away. Everybody is gone and dead. Killed on Trouble Island. And St. Kitts got to be Trouble Island because of the nastiest nigger I ever knew. That's why I only calls it Trouble Island now, Master Peter. A freed nigger called Calabar made it that way. Not a white man, Master Peter, but a black one of my kind, and I'm even ashamed to say that...

"Ta-Ta! That was the name of Mistress Honore's maid. I remembers now. Ta-Ta. She went to France with Honore on the ship long before ...

"Is something wrong, Master Peter?

"Master Peter, if I said something wrong, I hope that God strikes me dead. You're the last person I wants to do anything wrong to, Master Peter. We're friends. I only talks to you like this because we're friends, and . . .

"Master Peter! Please sit back down, Master Peter. I don't know what I told you wrong, but you ain't looking too good, Master Peter.