New York - The Novel

some good behavior,” said the planter. And I was looking around, unable to believe this was happening. “Turn your face back,” the planter said.
    And then the foreman gave me the first lash.
    I had never been struck with a whip before. That only time the Boss had given me a whipping, when I was a boy, had been with his belt. But the whip is nothing like that at all.
    When that whip lashed across my back, it was like a terrible fire, and a tearing of flesh, and I was so surprised and shocked by it that I screamed out.
    Then I heard the whip whistle and crack again. But this lash was worse than the first. And I leaped half out of my skin. And as I did so, I saw the planter watching me to see how I was taking it. The third lash was so terrible I thought I was going to burst with the pain of it; my head jerked back so hard, and I felt my eyes starting out of my head. And they paused for a moment, and my whole body was shaking, and I thought maybe they’d done with it. And then I saw the planter nod to the foreman as if to say, “That’s about right.”
    “I never stole,” I cried out. “I don’ deserve this.”
    But the lash fell again, and after that again, and again. I was on fire. My body was straining and slamming into the post in agony. My hands were clenching so hard on the manacles that the blood was coming from myfingers. By the time he had given me a dozen lashes I thought I was going to die; but still he went on until he had given me twenty lashes.
    Then the planter came close and stared at me.
    “Well, nigger boy,” he said, “what have you got to say?”
    And I was just hanging there against that post, at over fifty years of age, whipped for the first time in my life. And all my dignity was gone.
    “I’m sorry, Boss,” I cried. “I’ll do whatever you say.”
    “Don’t call me Boss,” he said. “I’m not a damn Dutchman.”
    “No, sir,” I whispered. And if I had anger in me, that whipping was so terrible that I would have licked up the dust if he’d told me to. And as I looked into his eyes, I was so desperate.
    “Don’t speak to me,” he said, “unless I tell you to. And when you speak to me, you thieving buck nigger son of a bitch, you look down at the ground. Don’t you ever dare look me in the face again. Will you remember that?” Then, as I looked down at the ground, he called to the foreman: “Give him something to make him remember that.”
    Then the foreman gave me ten more lashes. At the end I believe I fainted, for I do not remember being taken down and thrown into the shed.

    I worked half a year at that farm. The work was hard. During the winter when the snows came, the planter had a forge and we slaves were taught to make nails, which we did for ten hours a day; and those nails were sold. We were always put to work earning him money in some way. He fed us enough and kept us warm, so we could work. And even if we’d thought of it, we were too tired by the end of the day to give any trouble. I wasn’t whipped again; but I knew that if I gave him any cause, he’d do it, and more.
    And all this made me consider how fortunate I had been during the years when I was owned by the Boss—when every year men like Mr. Master were taking maybe thousands of Negroes to the plantations, where conditions would be similar, or worse. And it filled me with sadness to think that this was the lonely life, without their children, that my parents must have known.
    In the spring, we were put back to work in the fields again, digging and plowing. And I was at work about noon one day, all caked in mud, when I saw a light covered cart rolling up the lane, and a man and a woman getout and go into the house. Some time later the planter came out and shouted to me to come over, so I hurried to him. And as I stood in front of him, taking care to look down at the ground, I heard a rustle of a dress on the veranda; but I daren’t look up to see who it was, and then I heard a voice I knew saying: “Why, Quash, don’t you know me?” And I realized it was Miss Clara.

    “You’ve changed, Quash,” Miss Clara said to me, as she and Mr. Master brought me back to New York. “Did he mistreat you?”
    I was still too ashamed of being whipped to tell her, so I said: “I’m all right, Miss Clara.”
    “It took us a while to find out where you were,” she told me. “My mother refused to tell who she sold you to. I had people asking all over town. We only found out the other day.”
    I asked