The Missus wanted Jake, that was plain. There she stood on the balcony, showing Jake her titties. The Missus would take him, too.
Felice knew that she would have to give up on him and do it immediately, or else risk bad trouble. The Captain was gone--despite his stinking breath the Captain would sometimes take up for Felice, just to be contrary. But she belonged to the Missus, not the Captain. If the Missus got too jealous, she might even sell her.
Several old, ugly men had cast glances at her when they came to visit the Sculls. They looked like rich men, too--one of them might buy her and use her harder than the Missus did. In Cuba, she had seen bad things happen to slaves: brandings and horsewhippings and even hangings. The Missus had never done anything that bad to her, but if she got sold to some old ugly man, he might chain her and hurt her bad.
Jake wasn't worth such a risk--nothing was worth such a risk. But it still made her fill with sorrow, that the Missus would take the one person who was sweet to her.
Once they got inside the house Jake didn't know what to do, other than set the water bucket on the stove. Felice had gone silent; she wouldn't speak at all. She wiped away her tears on her apron and went about her tasks, looking down. She wouldn't turn to him again--not a ^w, and not a look. It was a big disappointment. He thought he had about persuaded her to slip out some night and meet him behind the smokehouse--then they could kiss all they wanted.
But that plan seemed to be spoiled, and he didn't know why.
He was about to leave in dejection and go back to the ranger stables, when old Ben Mickelson, the skinny, splotchy butler, came in, shaking from drink. Ben wore a shiny old black coat and took snuff, sniff+ so loudly that it caused Jake to flinch if he happened to be nearby.
"Madame would like to see you upstairs," old Ben told him, in his dry voice. "You're late as it is--I wouldn't be later." Old Ben had an ugly way of pushing out his lips, when he was spoken to by anyone but the Master or the Mistress. He pushed them out at Jake until Jake wanted to give him a hard punch.
"What am I late for? I ain't been told," he said. The thought of going upstairs made him more and more nervous.
"I ain't the Madame--if she says you're late, I guess you are," old Ben said.
In fact, Ben Mickelson hated young men indiscriminately, for no better reason than that they were young and he wasn't. Sometimes he hated young men so hard that he got violent notions about them, notions that affected him like a fever. Right at the moment, he was having a violent imagining in which young Jake was being chewed on by seven or eight thin hungry pigs. There were plenty of thin hungry pigs running loose within the town of Austin, too. It was against the ordinances, but the skinny, half-wild pigs didn't know there was an ordinance against them. They kept running loose, a menace to the populace. If six or seven of the wild pigs cornered Jake, they would soon whittle him down to size. Then the Madame wouldn't be so anxious to get him between her legs, not if he was well chewed by some hungry pigs.
Old Ben was violently jealous of the Madame and her lusts. Once, years before, in a moment of anxious weakness, Inez Scull had pulled Ben's pants down in a closet and coupled with him then and there. "You're an ugly old thing, Ben," she told him, after the brief act was over. "I don't fancy men with liver spots, and you've got 'em." Ben Mickelson was a little crestfallen. Their embrace, though brief, had been passionate enough to dislodge almost every garment hanging in the closet. He thought he might expect a compliment, but all he got was a comment about his liver spots.
"I expect it's the climate, Madame," he said, as Inez Scull was fastening her bodice. "I never got spots when we lived
in Boston." "It's not the climate, it's all that whiskey you drink," Madame Scull said, whereupon she left and never touched Ben Mickelson again. For days and weeks he lingered by the closet, hoping Madame Scull would come by in a lustful state again--s lustful that she would be inclined to overlook liver spots. But what had occurred in that closet, amid ladies' shoes and fallen dresses, was never repeated. Years passed, and Ben Mickelson got bitter. Jake Spoon, not yet eighteen, with his dimples and curls, baby fat still in his cheeks, would not likely be liver-spotted, and that fact alone was enough to make Ben Mickelson hate him.
Jake looked at Felice, as he stood at the foot of the stairs, but Felice would not meet his eye. He thought he saw tears on her cheeks, though--he supposed she still ached from the beating.
Felice turned and took up her broom, so old Ben wouldn't see her tears. Old Ben had to be watched and avoided. He was always poking at her with his skinny fingers. But the threat of his fingers didn't cause her tears. She cried because she knew she would have to hold herself in, not let herself start feeling warm about any of the boys that came to the house. The Missus wanted all the boys for herself. Jake had been kind to her, helping her carry water and doing little errands for her when he could.