Sold Down the River.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a
man.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.
We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of
the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It
seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for
studying the oyster.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.
When Roxana arrived, she found her son in such despair and misery that
her heart was touched and her motherhood rose up strong in her. He was
ruined past hope, now; his destruction would be immediate and sure, and
he would be an outcast and friendless. That was reason enough for a
mother to love a child; so she loved him, and told him so. It made him
wince, secretly--for she was a "nigger." That he was one himself was far
from reconciling him to that despised race.
Roxana poured out endearments upon him, to which he responded
uncomfortably, but as well as he could. And she tried to comfort him,
but that was not possible. These intimacies quickly became horrible to
him, and within the hour he began to try to get up courage enough to
tell her so, and require that they be discontinued or very considerably
modified. But he was afraid of her; and besides, there came a lull, now,
for she had begun to think. She was trying to invent a saving plan.
Finally she started up, and said she had found a way out. Tom was almost
suffocated by the joy of this sudden good news. Roxana said:
"Here is de plan, en she'll win, sure. I's a nigger, en nobody ain't
gwyne to doubt it dat hears me talk. I's wuth six hund'd dollahs. Take
en sell me, en pay off dese gamblers."
Tom was dazed. He was not sure he had heard aright. He was dumb for a
moment; then he said:
"Do you mean that you would be sold into slavery to save me?"
"Ain't you my chile? En does you know anything dat a mother won't do for
her chile? Day ain't nothin' a white mother won't do for her chile. Who
made 'em so? De Lord done it. En who made de niggers? De Lord made 'em.
In de inside, mothers is all de same. De good Lord he made 'em so. I's
gwyne to be sole into slavery, en in a year you's gwyne to buy yo' ole
mammy free ag'in. I'll show you how. Dat's de plan."
Tom's hopes began to rise, and his spirits along with them. He said--
"It's lovely of you, mammy--it's just--"
"Say it ag'in! En keep on sayin' it! It's all de pay a body kin want in
dis worl', en it's mo' den enough. Laws bless you, honey, when I's
slavin' aroun', en dey 'buses me, if I knows you's a-sayin' dat, 'way
off yonder somers, it'll heal up all de sore places, en I kin stan'
'em."
"I do say it again, mammy, and I'll keep on saying it, too. But how am I
going to sell you? You're free, you know."
"Much diff'rence dat make! White folks ain't partic'lar. De law kin sell
me now if dey tell me to leave de State in six months en I don't go. You
draw up a paper--bill o' sale--en put it 'way off yonder, down in de
middle o' Kaintuck somers, en sign some names to it, en say you'll sell
me cheap 'ca'se you's hard up; you'll find you ain't gwyne to have no
trouble. You take me up de country a piece, en sell me on a farm; dem
people ain't gwyne to ask no questions if I's a bargain."
Tom forged a bill of sale and sold his mother to an Arkansas
cotton-planter for a trifle over six hundred dollars. He did not want to
commit this treachery, but luck threw the man in his way, and this saved
him the necessity of going up country to hunt up a purchaser, with the
added risk of having to answer a lot of questions, whereas this planter
was so pleased with Roxy that he asked next to none at all. Besides, the
planter insisted that Roxy wouldn't know where she was, at first, and
that by the time she found out she would already have become contented.
And Tom argued with himself that it was an immense advantage for Roxy to
have a master who was so pleased with her, as this planter manifestly
was. In almost no time his flowing reasonings carried him to the point
of even half believing he was doing Roxy a splendid surreptitious
service in selling her "down the river." And then he kept diligently
saying to himself all the time: "It's for only a year. In a year I buy
her free again; she'll keep that in mind, and it'll reconcile her." Yes;
the little deception could do no harm, and everything would come out
right and pleasant in the end, any way. By agreement, the conversation
in Roxy's presence was all about the man's "upcountry" farm, and how
pleasant a place it was, and how happy the slaves were there; so poor
Roxy was entirely deceived; and easily, for she was not dreaming that
her own son could be guilty of treason to a mother who, in voluntarily
going into slavery--slavery of any kind, mild or severe, or of any
duration, brief or long--was making a sacrifice for him compared with
which death would have been a poor and commonplace one. She lavished
tears and loving caresses upon him privately, and then went away with
her owner--went away broken-hearted, and yet proud of what she was
doing, and glad it was in her power to do it.
Tom squared his accounts, and resolved to keep to the very letter of his
reform, and never to put that will in jeopardy again. He had three
hundred dollars left. According to his mother's plan, he was to put that
safely away, and add her half of his pension to it monthly. In one year
this fund would buy her free again.
For a whole week he was not able to sleep well, so much the villainy
which he had played upon his trusting mother preyed upon his rag of a
conscience; but after that he began to get comfortable again, and was
presently able to sleep like any other miscreant.
The boat bore Roxy away from St. Louis at four in the afternoon, and she
stood on the lower guard abaft the paddle-box and watched Tom through a
blur of tears until he melted into the throng of people and disappeared;
then she looked no more, but sat there on a coil of cable crying till
far into the night. When she went to her foul steerage-bunk at last,
between the clashing engines, it was not to sleep, but only to wait for
the morning, and, waiting, grieve.
It had been imagined that she "would not know," and would think she was
traveling up stream. She! Why, she had been steamboating for years. At
dawn she got up and went listlessly and sat down on the cable-coil
again. She passed many a snag whose "break" could have told her a thing
to break her heart, for it showed a current moving in the same direction
that the boat was going; but her thoughts were elsewhere, and she did
not notice. But at last the roar of a bigger and nearer break than usual
brought her out of her torpor, and she looked up, and her practised eye
fell upon that telltale rush of water. For one moment her petrified gaze
fixed itself there. Then her head dropped upon her breast, and she
said--
"Oh, de good Lord God have mercy on po' sinful me--I's sole down de
river!"