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In that moment, Willie felt a strange calm wash over him. If he had believed in God, he would have thought it was a sign of the Lord protecting him. Willie raised his arm and did what he could to block the blow. The pain was severe but it wasn’t the worst he had endured at a white man’s hands. Blood started to trickle from Willie’s hand as the snaking whip came down again, this time on his head, knocking him to the ground.
Even though Willie anticipated the blow and was able to grab hold of the whip, it wasn’t enough to throw Keegan off balance. The pain flowed through his body like an electric shock and he was barely able to hold onto the whip. The flash of the pain blinded him and he fell to his knees. Willie’s grasp on the whip was weak, making it easy for Keegan to bring the heavy leather down on his body again and again.
The kitchen was busy with activity when Jeb, still in his stable clothes, burst into the room. Even at 18, he was a commanding presence, well over six feet tall, with blazing dark, brown eyes and skin.
“Boy, what’s wrong with you?” one of the women protested. “Cain’t you see we busy?”
Lizzie, Jeyne, and a half a dozen other women were in the kitchen hurriedly preparing food for the five-course meal for the Whites and their dinner guests.
“Where’s Sallie?”
“She busy cutting up potatoes,” one of the women told him, as he looked around frantically.
“I ain’t got no time to talk,” Sallie said curtly as Jeb approached her.
“It’s important, Miss Sallie,” Jeb insisted. “It’s Bessie.”
Sallie didn’t stop when she heard her daughter’s name. She kept cutting. “What she want?”
“She sick.”
“What’s wrong with her now?”
Jeb looked around. All eyes were on him. “What boy? I ain’t got all day,” Sallie said impatiently.
“She at Miss Sarah’s.”
Sallie stopped. Miss Sarah mixed herbs and treated the slaves when they were sick. Sallie snatched the towel from her shoulder and threw it to the side.
“Gotdamn that girl!” she said as she snatched off her apron. “I send her ta’ the wine cellar ta’ get one bottle of wine for the cookin’, and now she sick. Anythin’ ta’ not work.”
“No, Miss Sallie, it ain’t like that...” All the women slowed down in their work to hear. Jeb leaned in close. “Keegan...he…he hurt her.”
Sallie’s face fell. All the women stopped what they were doing.
“Oh Lord!” Sally dropped everything she was doing and bolted out the door. One of the women ran after her. The rest of the women just stood there.
“We can’t stop now y’all,” Lizzie said. “We can grieve for Sallie later. Right now, we got to finish dis here—”
“That ain’t all,” Jeb interrupted. “Willie walked in on it. Keegan got mad and beat him.”
Lizzie turned to Jeb, her face darkening. “How bad?” she asked. The question was more rhetorical than anything. Tears sprung to Lizzie’s eyes but she turned away before they could stain her cheeks.
Jeyne looked at Lizzie then back at Jeb and demanded, “How bad, Jeb?”
“He at the shack,” he said to Jeyne slowly. “Me and the others found him and carried him from the shed but...”
Jeyne’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle a scream. In the haste of her departure, she didn’t even hear Lizzie call her name.
Jeyne ran as fast she could towards the slave quarters, but it wasn’t long before her legs buckled under her and she collapsed in the dirt. Seconds later, she felt herself being held tight.
“Ain’t nothin’ we can do for Willie now, chile,” she heard her mother say. “We just got to keep on workin’.”
Jeyne began to cry. “No, I cain’t! I cain’t! I won’t!”
“We ain’t got no choice.”
“But why, Mama? Why?”
