His journey to our land was roundabout. For three years, he traveled south and east through paths that had been cut through trees by our people. He rode up to cabins where men had seen their youth depart, in their quests to make fortunes on our land. He smiled and used deference and his beautiful face as weapons, for fading men want to be reassured that their shoulders haven’t narrowed, and their bellies haven’t sloped. A few times, when Samuel rode his horse up to homes, he encountered widows, and after charming a meal from these women and a night’s worth of sleep on the porch or barn, he rode off with no warning. Samuel had no use for grown women; he despised these bleeding, musty animals. In their weakness, women wanted to dump a burden in a man’s lap.
He had thought himself free of the nature of men, until one day, many months into his journey away from his homeland, he saw Negroes working in a tobacco field. It was midday and a time of rest, but children everywhere are the same and though the day was warm, the small ones ran around the tobacco, laughing. Among their number Samuel saw the prettiest little brown girl, with her hair in short plaits. She was playing a game of tag. Her milk teeth were very white. Her eyes large and brown. Samuel felt a rush, such as a man feels heat for a woman. He knew he wanted to stay at this farm, simply to be around this little girl.
So he stayed three months and had not imagined he would leave until one day his passion ruled him. He was returning from the outhouse and came upon the little girl. She was throwing corn to the chickens and calling to them. An animal overtook Samuel. He grabbed the little girl, placed his hand over her mouth, and ran with her back to the outhouse. Afterward, he did not try to dry her eyes or keep her from weeping. No one would believe a Negro girl’s accusations of a white man. And even if she was believed, no one would care. The next morning at breakfast, Samuel’s happiness was overwhelming. He had slept dreamlessly and deeply, and when he awoke, he conducted himself as if nothing had happened.
Samuel did not feel morally bankrupt. To the contrary, he believed that he had been seduced by the child he’d assaulted, that the little girl had flaunted her beauty before him and that as a man, he had been helpless. Her Negro status was even more to blame, for hadn’t his father taught him that Negroes were descended from Cain? Though a child, the little girl belonged to an inferior group, and Negresses were known purveyors of temptation for white men. Samuel had not dragged his own daughter or even the child of someone white into the outhouse—he would never do such a thing. Samuel had taken a Negress and he was a white man. He was the surveyor of a kingdom that God had given him, and he was a white man. In fact, Samuel had honored the little girl with his seed: he was a white man. And Samuel was certain that the little girl felt honored—after all, he was a white man.
No consequences occurred after that day, and Samuel watched the little girl for weeks, stalking her, so that he could capture her and steal her away to the outhouse again and again. It was a source of such great pleasure, until the afternoon when she turned limp in his hands. He did not fill with panic. His sense of power had inebriated him, coddling him in tranquility. He left the little girl slumped in the outhouse, not caring whether she was alive or dead. In the dwelling of his host, he sat for a delicious supper, and then regretted to inform him that he had strayed from his home too long. Samuel confessed that his mother was sick, and though she had been in the fine care of his other siblings, it was time for Samuel to return. He’d neglected his filial duty. A few weeks later, he arrived at the large plantation of a man who lived outside of the city of Savannah.
The Monster Finds a Sanctuary
Samuel was twenty-one and living on a vast establishment on an island off the coast of what was now called Georgia. There he was overseer for nearly one hundred slaves who grew tobacco for their owner, a man named Ezekiel Waterford, who owned a second property as well. The other place was a far more lucrative plantation where rice was cultivated; it had five hundred slaves, and three more overseers. As Samuel had done at his previous appointment, he had knocked on the door of the plantation house—this time on the back door—and shown his lovely face. As usual, his charm and beauty had resulted in his welcome. It was at this rice plantation that Samuel had heard about the lottery for land in the state, that parcels of a bit more than two hundred acres would be granted to lucky white men and white widows who won.
Ezekiel was a man whose wealth had been inherited. He dressed as if for visitors every day, only to walk down to the small, whitewashed building that was designated the plantation office. There, Ezekiel sat in a chair at a walnut desk that his grandfather had imported from England and moved papers from one side of the desk to the other. He stood at the window and surveyed his property, though he could not see his slaves because the land where they worked and were overseen by Samuel was some great distance from where he lived and worked himself. Ezekiel was not a hardworking man, and yet Samuel longed to model himself after him—to wear shirts of fluffy whiteness and close, dark breeches that never were stained with sweat or dirt, with shiny black shoes that made impressive noise when Ezekiel walked upon the floor of his house or office. But such a noise would not be made if Samuel remained an overseer. He could not earn enough money to own even one Negro, let alone build a big white house with outbuildings surrounding it. Samuel would not have a cot in his office upon which he could assault the slaves that he owned. He needed to make something of himself.