“Who’s going to feed him and give him water?” she demanded.

“You stay away from him, now. You hear me?”

Lizzie must have looked as if she intended to follow no such order because his voice turned cold.

His words were slow. “I’m going to leave instructions for the hotel servants to keep an eye on that tree.” he spoke of the tree as if it existed and Philip didn’t. “If I so much as hear that you or anyone else has gone near it, I will have Nate whipped until he’s black and blue.”

Lizzie froze. He had never threatened to do such a thing. Nate had never been whipped in his life.

“Nate? Whipped? have you lost your mind?”

She felt it and saw his hand swing back at what seemed like the same time. It happened so quickly she didn’t have time to dodge out of the way.

“I have told you time and time again to watch your mouth when you are talking to me. You are just a woman and, on top of that, nothing but a slave woman.”

The blood on Lizzie’s lip didn’t taste like anything. It wasn’t salty like sweat or sweet like mucus. She lapped it up with her tongue and squeezed her lips together.

His eyes were red, the look of a parent who has just slapped his child. She had seen that look in Big Mama’s face before.

“I’ll be back in a day or two,” he said. He turned away from her and left her standing there wearing a new feeling.

THIRTY-FOUR

At first, no one dared go near Philip because they did not know who had been set up to watch him. The slaves watched the hotel servants and the hotel servants watched the slaves. Lizzie, Reenie, and Mawu tried to devise ways they could sneak out in the middle of the night and get him water. Philip was tied to a tree right at the edge of the water, a tree easily visible from any of the nine cottages surrounding the pond and also from the hotel’s main lounge. The white women set up a picnic nearby on the first day and watched him while they ate. Two children threw rocks at him, narrowly missing for the most part.

George spent the first couple of days watering the flowers along the water’s edge. When he got close enough for the water to reach him, he doused Philip down. Philip tried sticking his tongue out and drinking water that way. On the second day the two men got smarter, Philip digging a hole in the ground and George managing to fill the hole with water. Philip used his tongue to lap up the water before it soaked into the surrounding dirt.

Another day went by and Lizzie walked by the tree, close enough to Philip to see that his lips were white and cracked. He tried to say something to her, but his words got muffled by his swollen tongue. Lizzie went to Reenie’s cottage and sat in a chair while Reenie folded clothes.

“We can’t just leave him out there,” Lizzie said. “It’s too hot.”

“He can survive,” Reenie said. “Philip a strong man. Strong as an ox.”

“That’s what everybody thinks about him.” Lizzie shook her head. “But he ain’t strong as people think. He’s got a soft spot. I’ve seen it. And it’s probably worse now that he’s got that woman on his mind.”

Reenie picked up Sir’s overalls and folded them down the front of her dress.

“And Drayle ain’t never been too hard on none of his slaves, let alone Philip.”

Reenie stopped folding and eyed her. “Every slave got the survivor in him. You don’t got to get beat every now and then to remember how to make it through something.”

Lizzie tried to believe what Reenie was saying.

The next morning was the fourth day since Drayle had left and no one had been allowed to feed or water Philip. It was only because he moved a bit here and there that they knew he was still alive.

The three women sat on the steps of Mawu’s porch. George came and sat down on the grass in front of Mawu’s cottage.

“Somebody done fed and watered him,” George said.

“Who?” Lizzie asked.

“I don’t know. One of the coloreds at the hotel, I reckon.”

Mawu sucked her teeth. “Them people ain’t never helped nobody but theyselves. I doubt it.”

“Why do you think somebody fed him?” Lizzie asked.

“Cause look at him. He look a little better today than he did yesterday,” George said.

“I haven’t gotten close enough to see,” Lizzie responded.

“I did. And as far as I know, he ain’t had water in two days. Can’t nobody survive that long in this sun without at least a dip or two of some cool water.”

“Maybe it was that Quaker woman,” Mawu said.

“I ain’t seen her in a spell,” Reenie said.

“She could be sneaking on the property at night,” Mawu said. “Maybe.”

“Maybe it was one of those abolitionists,” Lizzie offered, thinking of the pamphlet.

“Look,” George said. They all looked east and saw the group of white men returning, long fishing poles hanging from their shoulders.

The women stood, their respite over. Lizzie hastened back to her cabin, eager to convince Drayle to end his punishment of Philip. Over the past couple of days, she had decided to try the tactics she’d used on him in the service of her children. She would not refuse him this time.

When she heard Drayle’s footsteps swishing through the grass, she met him out on the porch and pushed him into the wooden rocker.

“Let me help you with your boots,” she said.

She pulled each boot off and lined them up beside the door. Then she pulled off his socks and massaged his feet. They stank like the outdoors, but she rubbed them anyway, paying particular attention to the large bunion on his right foot.

He enjoyed her attention for a few minutes before smiling down at her.

“Lizzie?”

“Hmm?”

“If I tell you that I’ve already decided to sell Philip, will you still take care of me?”

She dropped his foot and it fell with a thud onto the wooden porch.

“For real?”

He nodded.

She studied him for a moment, then leaned down and kissed the stinking, sweating toe.

This time, Philip and George joined them. The four slaves sat mute before Lizzie as she read.

What is the denunciation with which we are charged? It is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to declare the enormity of the sin of making merchandise of men,-of separating husband and wife,-taking the infant from its mother, and selling the daughter to prostitution,-of a professedly Christian nation denying, by statute, the Bible to every sixth man and woman of its population, and making it illegal for ‘two or three’ to meet together, except a white man be present! What is this harsh criticism of motives with which we are charged?

“Slow down, Miss Lizzie. I don’t want to miss a thang,” George interrupted.

Lizzie’s next words were slow and deliberate:

The South is one great brothel, where half a million of women are flogged to prostitution, or, worse still, are degraded to believe it honorable. The public squares of half our great cities echo to the wail of families torn asunder at the auction-block; no one of our fair rivers that has not closed over the negro seeking in death a refuge from a life too wretched to bear; thousands of fugitives skulk along our highways, afraid to tell their names, and trembling at the sight of a human being; free men are kidnapped in our streets, to be plunged into that hell of slavery; and now and then one, as if by miracle, after long years, returns to make men aghast with his tale.

Lizzie stopped reading. She paused for a minute although no one asked her to explain.

Drayle told Lizzie that while camping he had decided to let Philip go. But first, the barber would have to agree to a price Drayle would set himself. A price that would allow him to buy another slave with a reputation as good as Philip’s. He had come to this decision because Reenie’s man had convinced him the slave would be no good anymore. He would either try to flee or spend the rest of his days resenting Drayle for it. Philip had a permanent pass that allowed him to run Drayle’s errands or exercise the horses throughout the woods. Sir insisted that those days were over. And even though Drayle objected, Sir ominously reminded him that some slaves had even killed their masters over such disappointments.