“Wait till tomorrow,” Covey barked. “It’s still the Sabbath.”
“Yes, sir,” said Fred, and disappeared around the house. Amelia bent over her flowers.
A thought was breaking through the thick layers of Covey’s brain. Damned if that fresh nigger didn’t sound just like one of those city slickers! The way he had measured that opening! I’ll bet he can figure!
It was a staggering thought and struck him unprepared. Full on like that, it was monstrous. But when the first shock had passed—when the ripples sort of spread out—he calmed down and began to cogitate.
He went back over what Captain Auld had said—how the buck had been ruined by the Captain’s city kin, coddled and taught to read until he was too smart for his own or anybody else’s good.
“Take it out of him!” Captain Auld had stormed. “Break him!”
And he had promised he would. Well!
Covey was so still that Lucy, coming to the door and peeping out, thought he was dozing. She went away shaking her head. Poor Mr. Covey! He’s not himself these days.
He was turning it over in his mind, weighing it. Really big plantations all had some smart niggers on them, niggers who could work with tools, niggers who could measure and figure, even buy and sell. Naturally he hated such niggers when he came across them in town, often as not riding sleek, black horses. But having one on your own plantation was different. Like having a darky preacher around, like being a Colonel in a great white plantation house with a rolling green and big trees.
The last faint streaks of color faded from the sky. For a little while the tall pines in the distance loomed blade against soft gray. Then they faded, and overhead the stars came out.