Reparations

Reparations on Nigger Hill

“Excuse me!” Jonah Peeble put as much force into his voice as he could... and it cracked...

“What’s the problem?” Jud Masterson took off his hat to scratch his bald, white scalp.

This yokel really didn’t know what the problem was?

“I’m personally offended by that word.” Now his voice was back under control, or so he thought- he filled it with as much moral indignation as he could.

Jud raised an eyebrow. Then it occurred to him... “What, you mean nig- Oh.” The look of realization which blossomed on his face was almost comical. “Well mister, I weren't tryin' to say nuthin’ by it. Truly, that’s nuthin’ more’n the name of the hill. I’m sorry friend.”

Peeble recoiled at this country bumpkin’s terming him as a friend, he chose his friends better than that.... Besides, he doubted the sincerity of Jud’s apology and he wasn’t going to let him off so easy.

He decided to dig into the fool: “Perhaps you really are sorry. But even and idiot would know that's not the name of any hill! I promise you it doesn’t say N-I-G-G-E-R on the map! So are you an idiot?”

Jud took his hand out of his overall pocket and balled it into a massive fist, his long face drew into a menacing scowl, “Now wait jus' one holy minute mister Jonah, I think I heard you speakin’ insult to my name!”

More like the great lump was beginning to think- period. But the angry look on his stupid face urged Jonah to keep silence; though he never would admit it was out of fear.

“Now, maybe you city folk have a different way of speakin’ to yer feller man, but I ain’t gonna tolerate no more insult. I ain’t never had a need to look at no map, but I know the name of that hill all the same, and if that offends you, you already got my apology. Take or leave it, yer choice- but you best watch yer tone!”

Jonah braced himself for the thundering blow he expected- but it never came. He eyed the country man with caution. Jud Masterson was like a caveman, or an ape, practicing civility. No punches were thrown -yet- but who knew how long this façade would conceal the brutish oaf within.

He wasn't being afraid he was just being smart. He ran a sweaty palm through his flame red hair, adjusted his suit jacket, and at last replied, “Of course.”

Jud nodded, and his angry countenance relaxed once more into an easy going, and not-very-bright expression of placidity. “Good. Well you wanted to hear 'bout Nigger Hill, so I’ll tell you. Long as you mind the difference between city 'n country manners.”

Jud had used that word again! Jonah swallowed his tongue so he wouldn’t speak his mind. He forced himself to nod, despite the injury it did his pride. The fact that the slack jawed idiot was a blatant racist was undeniable, but it was better left unsaid.

“Ah shucks, I didn’t mean to go n' say it again. Sorry, I got myself heated up, and I forgot is all. Lemme tell you the local legend about- The- Hill; and how it came to be named that word you don’t wanna hear.”

The apology was once again, a load of country cow shit- but that was easy to overlook: the story was finally coming out.

“This was a long time in the past, back 'fore Abe Lincoln ever made the ‘Mancipation Proclamation, but when black folks could still live free if they somehow made it to the North- well they could live free in a sense. Freer than they could in the South, in any case. Back then there wasn’t no such thing as really free because even after a feller made it here he’d a have to always be a-watchin’ o’er his shoulder. It warn’t legal fer Pennsylvania's citizens to go n' round up fugitive slaves, but legal or not- a lot of 'em tried to do it anyhow... for the money....  'Course there were also bounty hunters- chain men- from the South you see. There warn't nuthin' stoppin' those Southern slavers from trouncin’ on over the Mason-dixon line and haulin’ ‘em back in chains.”

Jonah nodded, and quietly checked the tape recorder in his pocket. He’d have to listen a couple more times in order to fully decipher this simpleton’s back-wood idiot manner of speech.

Jud continued in his redneck tone, “Well now in those times, there was folks tryna slip on out their shackles 'n sneakin’ up to the hills 'round here, but they’d usually keep to themselves- fer safety. Well this one feller, a big black feller who calls himself Jim Freeman comes up outta the South one day, an’ even though it’s Summer an’ hotter than the devil's own armpit, he’s wearing a longsleeve shirt and heavy gloves. Well people said he was lookin’ like he just ran round the world entire an' he crawls up to the town commons n' passes out. The town’s people gather round n' try to cool ‘im off, and when he comes to, he starts a-talkin’ ‘bout the horrors he ‘scaped from. Start’s talkin’ all ‘bout his white masser and tellin’ how he was what nowadays we'd call one a them sadichists- the kinda person who really gets off on causin’ other people pain."

      Jonah nodded. He tried not to correct sadist, and bristled at someone trying to explain a term they couldn't even correctly pronounce. He listened:

      "Some of the people who lived in the North back then were real against slavery, they thought it was brutish and uncivil like- they all heard the stories of whippin’s and other cruel and inhumane treatments. But this feller starts to tellin’ ‘em how he was treated and then he lifts up his shirt and shows ‘em his scars an says, ‘these ain’t from discipline, but fer my massa’s pleasure.’ An' he’s got his chest all mutilated and gnarled. An’ those folks he’s tellin’ start to get real uncomfortable. But then he takes of his gloves an’ he aint have to say nuthin’... he just holds up his hands.”

Jud's eyes were wide and intense as he held up his own hands in a dramatic gesture, “An’ the poor feller ain’t got no finger nails- only ugly wounds where they should’a been. Now it aint been fer no punishment, mind you. His master had tore off his finger nails fer fun- nuthin’ more’n that. So now the townspeople are startin’ to get angry- not at Mr. Freeman, 'course- but at his master. That’s when Jim tells ‘em all that he’s gotta go back. At first they think warn't thinkin' right... maybe he’s just delirious, from a heat fever or the like. But he starts cryin’ an’ they all hush up- an' you'd hush up too if you saw a big man like that cryin' the way he did. He says then, he must go back because of what his master said when he was a-pryin’ off those fingernails in the grain shack out back. An’ Jim says, ‘I gots to go back, cause that old devil knows my Maggie is pregnant- while he was pluckin’ my nails he got right in my face and asked me what I was thinkin’ of namin’ the baby- an’ I started screamin’ at ‘im but all he did was laugh n’ laugh an’ leave me locked up in that shack bleedin’ from my fingers.”

Jud looked at his own hands with a kind of phantom horror and then let his trembling fingers slowly fall.

“Only thing is, Jim come to find that shack ain’t locked at all. That sadichist who he done run away from left it unlocked deliberately, an’ aint nobody knows why- but if you ask me the answer ain' too hard t'figure. His old slaver was a devil, that’s for sure- maybe even the Devil, because he left that shack door open as the worst form a torture that an evil man could devise- cause ain't no physical pain as unbearable as what they call psychiatrical pain. That devil left it open as a way of tauntin' poor Jim, as a way of sayin' ‘you know damn well what I’m going to do to yerwoman and to yer child, and there ain’t nuthin’ you can do to stop me.’ As a way of sayin', ‘you know and yer still gonna run- because as scared as you are 'bout what I’ll do to them, yer a hell of a lot scareder about what I’m gonna do to you if’n you stays to find out.’”

Jonah felt wobbly on his feet- and his mind buzzed with disjointed thoughts: horror that the atrocities of the past should ever have occurred... general disgust towards racists- an accusational disdain towards Jud the hillbilly… a kind of vague fear.

Yes, he was afraid- not of any of the particulars of Jud’s story- but of the unspoken threat which he knew must lie beneath the civility of the modern age: the threat of retribution.

        He’d heard terms like reparations thrown around, black countries and communities wanting compensation from the governments which profited off their exploitation in the past… As if modern cash could account for sins buried in the past... And who'd pay for it anyway? White tax payers like Jonah? He wasn't guilty. Being white wasn't a crime. He wasn't a slave owner any more than modern blacks were slaves! Paying modern blacks just because their great grandparents were slaves, just didn't make any sense.

       And randomly giving the descendants of slaves a handful of cash wouldn't be fair. It'd put whites at a disadvantage. In a way, it would be racist to just give a bunch of blacks free money. Releasing the slaves and then granting them civil rights was plenty!

        Sure, the past was a shame, but the present shouldn't have to suffer for it. At least most people were smart enough to oppose reparations- it would never happen.

      Jonah's real fear was of something a lot less reasonable and a lot less financial- a repayment plan which charged an eye for an eye.

What if one of them decided it was time to get even for centuries of injustice and happened upon him as the victim for that exchange?

But why would black people target him, he wasn’t a slaver or a racist!

        He was the complete opposite of a racist. As far as he knew his ancestors were good people, if he found he was the descendent of a slave owner he’d happily disown his very name. He let the fear dissolve in his own self-righteousness- violence against him wouldn’t be justified… But then again, neither had the violence against them been just...

Before Jonah could let his thoughts spiral any further, Jud picked up again. “Well now, Jim Freeman, as he calls hisself, is tryin’ to get back to his feet but he’s shakin’ like an aspen in the wind- maybe on account of exhaustion, maybe on account of pain, but I think mostly on account of desperation. And the townspeople crowd around him, and one'a them hollers, ‘Go get a carriage!’ an’ before you know it all the young men in the town have got their horses 'n their rifles an’ are rallyin’ aroun’ this half-dead black feller. I tell you ain’t nuthin’ like that ever happened before or since, but a whole posse of angry white folks gathered around him and made his mission their mission. Well they rode out that in a fury, the same way lightning rides outta the clouds- they made it to the plantation in a day of hard ridin'.”

He was nodding, as if to validate his own words, “Now nobody really knows what happened at the plantation, because the men who came back wouldn’t hardly say nuthin’ about it... other than to say they'd seen the foot of Hell itself, an’ you could tell from the looks in their eyes that they had seen some horror’s worse’n yer worst imaginings- an’ the fact that they kept silent about it even when the nights grew long and the alcohol flowed…. That alone tells you just how awful those things they seen must'a been; and I for one am right glad I aint have to know what it was that haunted them so. But however it happened, they came back with Jim and his pregnant wife, a pretty little lady named Margaret. They say she looked too terrified to breath. An' who can blame her?"

       Jud widened his eyes, and nodded.

Then he continued “An’ now the whole town is in an uproar, the women all wanna know what happened, but the men don’t wanna say. An’ Margaret is cryin’- no sobbin’- for relief. An' Jim is too. Even some of the men are cryin’, but it aint appear to be for relief so much as grief at what they seen. An for the next ten years or so the story ain’t got nuthin’ to tell. Jim married Margaret early on, -married her all official like, since they can't of done that back in hell. An’ they moved out into the woods, to yonder hill an’ that’s how it got the name what you don’t wanna hear. They mainly kept to theyselves, an’ the men from the town prolly preferred it that way, seein’ as how the sight of that family always threatened to bring back some bad-awful memories from the night of the rescue. Now Old Jim and Margaret Freeman had themselves quite a few young’uns- ten to be exact. An’ the young’uns didn’t keep to themselves the same way- because them's ain't ne’er seen the horrors that made their folks so silent in the company of others. Now maybe fourteen or so years later, the first born is grown enough to work, and their youngest is maybe less than five- and then Civil War breaks out, an’ all those young men who rode to the plantation that horrible night are riding once again- this time to war.”
Jud paused, with a look on his face that bespoke disbelief. “Now this next part is just so damn strange, I know you ain’t gonna believe it but it’s the God’s honest truth- so far as I been told by my daddy who was told by his, who was told by his, and he by his.”
“Go on.” Jonah’s voice wavered.
“Well, now as the war went on, man after man after man went to join the Union forces. And when the last man who’d been a member of Jim’s posse all those years ago rode out- the very day that feller rode out- a stranger came into town... almost as soon as the last had gone. His face was gaunt and his hair was red as flame. Red like yours. Feller strode up to the tavern an’ put down money for whiskey. An’ don’t you know he’s got his'self a Southern accent? Of course that made folks a right bit suspicious of him- and so they asked him his name, and his reply, ‘I’m just a man of the people.’ Maybe that put some'a them at ease, maybe they thought he was a spy for the damn confederates-" Jud punctuated this with a spit in the dirt, and continued:

     "I don’t right know if'n he was or wernt, but the fact is he was unarmed, and so they let him be- and he drank glass after glass after glass of whiskey an' he paid with silver. The second the sun went down he stood right up, straight and sober like, lookin’ like he aint never seen a drink in his whole darn life, and he walks out into the night.”

“Come sun up, two young’uns who weren’t yet old enough to fight were out huntin’ in the woods around Nigger Hill, an’ what they find up there sends ‘em both back to town screamin’ for help. But by the time help gets up there it’s too late. Hell it was far too late when the boys found ‘em. Everyone from old Jim down to the youngest Freeman had been flayed open an’ they had all been done in plain view of one another. Now Maggie an’ the children, they’d all passed away by the time the townspeople had arrived... but poor old Jim he was still pitiful 'live. There was nuthin’ anyone could do to save him, not in the state his body was in. In fact he might'a not wanted to be saved- even if they could, not what with the misery his poor mind must'a been in. Poor feller, after seein’ what he seen done to his family- an' in his very own home: Death would be a mercy! Now Jim was shakin’ worse’n a aspen in a goddamn tornado- and there’s little droplets of blood flying off his open body every time he trembles. An’ he forces out these words, ‘My massa, Amanoff Peeple, he come back. I’ll get ‘im. If I have to visit his children’s, children’s, children, I’ll get him back.’ an’ then he dies and that must have been a blessed relief for poor Jim.”

Peeple! That had given Jonah a start, it sounded almost like his own name, Peeble. Thank God he’d never heard of any great-grand relatives by the name Amanoff. He’d hate to know that he had a relation- however distant- to such a terrible man. It'd sully his image.

       “Now, since the young men were away, it ended up fallin’ to the old men to give the Freeman family a proper burial, an' that they did. But…” Jud’s voice wavered and when it came back it had a lower, almost unpleasant tone- distinctly emotionless, it was the kind of tone which would have been fitting on magistrate as he declares a death sentence:

       “Jonah Peeble, everythin’ I done told you so far about the legend of Nigger Hill has been documentated fact- if’n you were fixin’ to verify anything I’ve said you could jus' stroll on over to the town hall and take a look at those records, or if you gots yourself one of them smart phones you could probably check them files right now and you'd see: I aint told you nuthin’ but the Lord's truth... That bein’ said, what I am 'bout to tell you now; it don’t exist in no library nor in any filin’ cabinets, but it exists all the same an’ its as real as everythin’ I done told you so far 'n I ain’t got nuthin’ to offer you besides my own word on that account.”

       Jonah leaned in, to hear what Jud was about to say- his voice was now so low it was barely a hush.

       “Now the Freeman family had found peace durin’ their lives up there on the Hill, so the reveren' an’ the other town elders decided that buryin’ them near their home would assure them peace in death as well; but they didn’t just bury that poor family in the place where they lived. They buried ‘em in the place where they died, an' what a gruesome, awful end they had. Now, I understand they meant good by burying the Freemans up there, but it was one of them nice soundin’ ideas that ain’t such a good idea in practice.”

      Jud was pointing to in the direction of the hill, in a gesture that looked subconscious- perhaps even unwilling. “They was buried up there, all them years ago, Mr. and Mrs. Freeman an' all them young’uns- an' that was long, long ago. Since then the house has fallen to pieces, 'course, and been reclaimed by the very forest where-abouts they enjoyed they's short freedom. Even their grave markers are buried in leaves and vines, and the like- you can’t find 'em now, at least not by lookin’. But the thing is... the place remains… the cursed place where they suffered an' lost. An’ their graves are still there, you can feel it in the air, it’s a sad place an’ an angry place, an’… you can feel it in the ground.”

       Jud raised his hand and let it tremble. He bounced his eyebrows to show that this was a deliberate gesture, not the wasting effect of old age. But Jonah didn’t understand what it meant.

        “The place is unmistakable. .” He said it the way a child swears to their parents their closet is infested with monsters- with unquestioning belief. “The ground, the trees, even the air itself! You can feel it alright. I told you that poor Jim Freeman was shakin’ like a leaf in a tornado when he died right?”
Jonah nodded.
“Well, what I didn’t tell you is that he kept on shakin’ even after he stopped breathin’ an’ his heart stopped beatin’, just kept tremblin’ like an engine that aint know how to run outta gas. At first they ain’t even realize he was dead cause he was movin’ so much- not until they started to think about killin' him for pity. When they began to talk about puttin’ him out of his misery or atleast movin’ him somewhere less terrible. That’s when they got real close- an’ you might think they should’ve gotten closer sooner but remember what poor Jim must’ve looked like. What are you s’posed to do for a man beyond the help of medicine an' miracles? Anyway they discovered that Jim ain’t respondin’ an’ then they find he ain’t breathin’ so they figure he must be dead even though it don’t seem natural… So they buried him…”

        Then Jud chuckled, and that was a jarring sound after such hushed strangeness, “Mr. Peeble I know the look you’re givin' me. You don’t believe a goddam word! I don’t blame you, I didn’t believe it when my pops first told me the tale- thought it was jus' a clever way to scare us young'uns into good behavior. I know I said all I had to offer was my word, but I s'pose that ain’t so true after all. You see, there’s a reason I believe the tale, an it wern’t because it was handed down from the reverend an' my own great-great gran poppy and his brother- not to mention the rest of the town. It’s because I been to the Hill and I seen some proof I couldn’t deny no matter how bad I might've liked to!”

       Jonah knew, before he'd even heard this simpleton's idea of 'proof' it’d either be a crude misunderstanding of natural phenomenon or a setup- he eyed him with a thick lens of skepticism.

          “You still have that look, Mr. Peeble- like you think I’m either lyin’ to you or just about the stupidest fool God done put on this green earth! Put I’ll tell you my proof, and if you don’t believe me I’ll show you! This is the part that beats it all to hell: the place where Ol’ Jim’s buried still shakes, to this day. It trembles, and the whole of Nigger Hill stays hush-quiet to hear it. It’s not strong but you can feel it- like a tremor under your feet, as you approach big Jim's final resting place. I figure, if some fool were to dig up his bones they’d just 'bout dance around!”

      Jonah knew bull shit when he heard it, and this was about as stinky-fresh as it came. He shook his head, but before he could speak-

      “Come with me if'n you doubt! We’ll go to the Hill: you’ll see I’m tellin’ you the Lord's honest truth, or you’ll see that I’m lyin’ an’ then you can call me whatever kind of chicken shit you want! It ain’t right by the town, we ain’t s’posed to bring outsiders to the Hill- not even to tell ‘em where it’s located. But what good is there in a secret?”

      Jonah threw his hands into the air, and his voice cracked again, “Alright Jud, go ahead and blow my mind.”

       Jud nodded, and turned on his heals- he cut straight into the woods, leaves and shrubs slapped against the legs of his overalls. It took Jonah a moment to realize by Jud’s wordless response that he was leading the way.

       He hurried into the woods to keep after him.

       The ground was soft and uneven, compared to the concrete he was used to it was treacherous under the foot. A snag- maybe a root or a branch caught his shoe lace and he stumbled through the underbrush. He landed hard on dirt and sticks, kicking up leaves behind him.

        "Damnit!" He hated the forest. He didn't know the names of the different trees that pressed in on him, but he did know he hated them all. He wondered how that black family could ever have enjoyed living out here. Like a bunch of animals.

       Jud turned around, a look of impatience across his face- it wasn’t a rude expression, more an impression that he couldn’t understand how a person could be so clumsy and slow.

When Jonah picked himself up, silently musing that Jud wasn't so different from the Freemen for liking the forest. Stupid people came in all shapes and colors, afterall. He watched as Jud started off again, deftly moving through the brush. Jonah scrambled after him.

He watched his feet as he ran, but if that helped him it wasn’t by much- stones and knobs stubbed against his toes and he spent another five steps trying to retrieve his balance.

        It wasn’t terribly obvious, but the ground he covered was gently sloped- upwards they climbed.

When he did glance up to make sure he wasn’t losing track of his bumpkin guide, branches and vines lashed  his face and he cursed again. The gentle slope gradually steepened, and the ground became dryer. 

Jonah slicked a sheen of sweat from his brow and panted, “Jud! How close?”

Jud came to an abrupt stop, and Jonah who was less competent on his feet drove headlong into his back.

They both stumbled forward and Peeble fell to the ground, Jud backed up…

Jonah heaved to catch his breath, but found it to be an impossible task- and not only because he was physically spent, but because he was in shock: the ground trembled.

The ground directly beneath the spot where he lay trembled. In fact, if he’d been thinking of the experience academically he might have observed, the way the pebbles bounced beside him and the way the roots seemed to dance up through the dust.
   
        But he didn’t notice those minute details- at least not part for part. Instead the entire ensemble meshed together and surrounded him in an atmosphere of awe and dread.

Jud was hollering something- Jud, whom Jonah had all but forgotten in this moment of paranormal strangeness- was hollering something. But his voice, and all sounds, were nearly lost amid the buzzing in Jonah's ears: the penetrating vibrations of the trembling hill top.

Jonah looked up, and even though Jud had now fallen deathly silent, the look of terror on his face as he looked back and forth was clearer than words ever could be.

The quaking earth shook all the more violently, and the sound crescendoed, so Jonah began to worry that the hill might erupt or cave in.

Jud let out shriek that pierced the deafening thunder and turned heel, he vanished into the thick and forbidding forest, and Jonah was left alone…

But he didn’t feel alone.

The vibrational frequency of the hill beneath him started to produce sound waves which began to register as pitch- at the lower limit of his human ears.

       The consistency of the dirt gravel around him started to change. The ground no longer felt solid, more like a very dense fluid.

       He didn’t sink- not quite, but the particles moved out from under his body weight, as if he lay on very thin sand instead of dirt.
He knew he was in danger, this patch of earth was trembling into quicksand. He bucked and tried to free himself by gaining his feet, but the shifting of his weight caused him to fall a bit deeper into the shuddering earth.

The sound in his ears was clearer now- not at the vague limit of the range of his hearing but clear and painfully loud.

It sounded like a human voice, calling a name: Peeple!

“Jud!” His plea came out as a desperate cry, “Jud! Help me!”

There was a hand on his shoulder- from behind him- and even amid the insanity of the moment, he breathed a sigh of relief. He knew what would have happened if Jud hadn't come back.

He turned towards his savior, but first caught sight of the hand which gripped him- it was ancient and brown, grimy with years of dirt- terrible scars decorated the tips where fingernails should have been.

It shook with the ground around him, and Jona Peeple started to sink into the sin stained earth.

And he thought: This isn't fair, I'm not-




----------------------------------------------------
that's the end of the story, here's my thoughts:

So... I feel awkward posting this story, not simply because of my use of the n-word as a white author, but also because of the topics of slavery and the injustices of the past. Ditto the covert racism of the present.

In my head these issues are swirling and complex. Writing about them helps me wrap my head around them a bit.

Less than 10 percent of white americans support the idea of reparations for slavery... Why?

Jonah was scared of reparations. He was only concerned with the impact on him. But he shouldn't have been. Ghost story elements aside- reparations are never going to hurt white people. They're going to help bring the descendants of slaves closer to the economic standing they should have today- were slavery never a thing.

Again, NOT a bad thing for white people.

If you are afraid of reparations... don't be.
...

Did you know: though the US government has never paid a dime of reparations for slavery- however, they have paid compensation to slave owners during forced emancipation...

If you haven't thought about reparations, start by reading about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparations_for_slavery#United_States

https://www.history.com/news/reparations-slavery-native-americans-japanese-internment