That went on till his father died. Denmark was full grown and had some money set by. No one knew his father in Camelot so it didn't matter he was dead, as long as nobody went back to Savannah to try to follow up on something Denmark wrote in his father's name. Not that Denmark didn't worry for a while. But when it became clear that it was all going well, he started to fancy himself a real man. He decided to buy himself a slave of his own, a Black woman he could love and get children from the way his father did.

He chose the one he wanted and had an attorney buy her for him, then went to pick her up in the name of his father. But when he got her home and she found out that a Black man had bought her, she near clawed his eyes out and ran out screaming into the neighborhood that she wasn't going to be no slave to a Black man. Denmark chased her down, getting no help from the other residents of Blacktown– that was when he realized they all knew he was free and resented him for it. It all came down to this, from his woman and from his neighbors: They hated being slaves, hated all White people, but more than anyone or anything else they hated a free buck like him.

Well, let them! That's what he thought at first. But it grew so he could hardly bear the sight of his woman, chained to the wall in his tiny room, cursing him whenever he came home. She kept making dolls of him to try to poison him, and it made him good and sick more than once. He didn't know a thing about poppeting. He'd spent all his effort learning the White man's secrets and knew nothing about what Black folks did. He came to the day when he realized he had nothing. He might fool White folks into letting him keep the results of his own labor, but he was never going to be White. And Black folks didn't trust him because he didn't know their ways, either, and because he acted so White and kept a slave.

Finally one day he knelt down in front of his woman and cried. What can I do to make you love me? She just laughed. You can't set me free, she said, cause Black folks are never free here. And you can't make me love you cause I never love him as owns me. And you can't sell me cause I tell my new master about you, see if I don't. All you can do is die when I make you a right poppet and kill it dead.

All that hate! Denmark thought that rage was the ruling principle of his own life, but it was nothing compared to what slaves felt. That was when Denmark realized the difference between free and slave– freedom stole hate away from you, and made you weaker. Denmark hated his father, sure, but it was nothing compared to his woman's hate for him.

Of course he had to kill her. She'd laid it out so plain, and it was clear he wasn't going to change her mind. It was just a matter of time before she killed him, so he had to defend himself, right? And he owned her, didn't he? She wouldn't be the first Black woman killed by her master.

He hit her in the head with a board and knocked her cold. Then he bundled her into a sack and carried her down to the dock. He figured to hold her under the water till she drowned, then pull her out of the sack and let her float so it didn't look like murder. Well, he had her under the water all right, and she wasn't even struggling inside the sack, but it was like a voice talking in his mind telling him, You killing the wrong one. It ain't the Black woman killing you, it's the White folks. If it wasn't for the White folks, you could marry this girl and she be free beside you. They the ones she wants to kill, they the ones you ought to kill.

He dragged her out of the water and revived her. But she wasn't right after that. It might have been the blow to the head or it might have been the water she took on and the time she spent not breathing, but she walked funny and didn't talk good and she didn't hate him anymore, but everything he loved about her was dead. It was like he was a murderer after all, but the victim lived in his house and bore him a baby.

Oh, Denmark, he was a sad man all the time after that. The joy of fooling White folks was gone. He got sloppy with his work, doing it late, and his customers stopped hiring him– though of course they thought it was his White master they were firing. The Black people around him hated him too, for what he done to his woman, and he had to watch all the time to keep them from getting any of his hair or fingernails or toenails, or even his spit or his urine. Cause they would have killed him with that, if they could.

His son Egypt got to be four years old and Denmark prenticed him to a Black harness maker. Had to do all kinds of pretending, of course, that it was a White man who owned the boy and wanted him trained to be useful on his plantation, and it cost nine pounds a year, which was most of what Denmark was earning these days, but the paperwork went well enough, and even though Egypt was treated like a slave, he was learning a trade and there'd come a day when Denmark would tell him the truth. You free, boy, he'd say that day. Egypt Vesey, no man owns you. Not me, not nobody.

When Egypt was gone, the last light went out of the boy's mama. The day Denmark saw his woman drinking varnish, he knew he had to do something. Stupid as she had become, she hated her life and hated him. He agreed with her. Maybe he hated himself even more than she did. Hated everything and everybody else, too. It was chewing him up inside.

That was when he met Gullah Joe. Joe came to him. Little Black man, he suddenly appeared right in front of Denmark when he was in the dirt garden peeing. He wasn't there, and then he was, holding a crazy-looking umbrella all a-dangle with strange knots and bits of cloth and tin and iron and one dead mouse. “Stop peeing on my foot,” said Gullah Joe.

Denmark didn't have much to say. Piss just dried right up when Gullah Joe said so. Denmark knew he must be the witchy man they were always threatening him with. “You come to kill me, witchy man?” Denmark said.

“Might,” said Gullah Joe. “Might not.”

“Maybe you best just do it,” said Denmark. “Cause if you don't, what if I kill you?”

Gullah Joe just grinned. “What, you hit me with a board, put me in a sack, drown me till I can't walk or talk right?”

Denmark just started to cry, fell to his knees and begged Gullah Joe to kill him. “You know what I am! You know I'm a wicked man!”

“I'm not God,” said Gullah Joe. “You gots to go see him preacher, you want somebody send you to hell.”

“How come you talk so funny?”

“Cause I not no slave,” said Gullah Joe. “I from Africa, I don't like White man language, I learn it bad and I don't care. I say people talk real good.” Then he let loose a string of some strange language. It went on and on, and turned into a song, and he danced around, splashing up the mud from Denmark's pissing all over his bare feet while he sang. Denmark felt every splash as if he'd been kicked in the kidneys. By the time Gullah Joe stopped singing and dancing, Denmark was lying on the ground whimpering, and there was blood leaking out of him instead of Piss.

Gullah Joe bent over him. “How you feel?”

“Fine,” Denmark whispered. “'Cept I ain't dead yet.”

“Oh, I don't want you dead. I make up my mind. You be fine. Drink this.”

Gullah Joe handed him a small bottle. It smelled awful, but there was alcohol in it and that was persuasive enough. Denmark drank the whole bottle, or at least he would have, if Joe hadn't snatched it out of his hands. “You want to live forever?” Gullah Joe demanded. “You use up all my saving stuff?”

Whatever it was, it worked great. Denmark bounded to his feet. “I want more of that!” he said.

“You never get this again,” said Gullah Joe. “You like it too good.”

“Give it to my woman!” cried Denmark. “Make her well again!”

“She sick in the brain,” said Gullah Joe. “This don't do no good for brain.”


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