Franklin's Backstory: A Where Fortune Lies Novelette

Before Franklin was born Master Purdy razed almost all of the haphazardly built slave cabins and replaced them with four long rectangular whitewashed building. The structures were built on stilts to prevent the hiding of valuables and had gaps between the floorboards so they could be easily cleaned. There was no fireplace. Meals, summer and winter, were cooked in a pit outside the dormitory. When it rained so hard that a fire couldn't be started the slaves ate hard bread and raw vegetables and raw bacon.

The birthing labor of Wandy—the mother of Franklin--came on so suddenly that she didn't have time to make it to the infirmary. On a muggy, rainy Sunday afternoon just as she laid down to take a nap, Wandy gave a small gasp, then let loose a blood-curdling scream. The women did what they could to help—holding her hand, wiping the sweat off her face, collecting fresh straw, running to the infirmary for the midwife. The men congregated in the other end of the dormitory and talked because it was no use trying to sleep or concentrate on a game or anything productive with a woman screaming away in childbirth. Six hours later under dim candlelight held up by the shaky hand of Wandy's sister and in full view of whoever cared to observe, Brigham was born. Wandy named his Brigham before the cord was cut and he was put to her breast. It was a stroke of good fortune that the overseer hadn't been present because he had a habit of bestowing whimsical names on the slaves for his own amusement. Among Brigham's peers were a Buttercup, a Chocolate Seneca, and a Muddy Cuff. The name Franklin came later in his life.

Being 'scientific' the master allowed Wandy a month in the infirmary to recover, which was more than the time allotted on other plantations. Kindness had nothing to do with this policy. Master Purdy had observed that nothing diminishes long term productivity in a slave woman like putting her to work too soon after giving birth. "Good sense sometimes appears like kindness," he would say to his fellow planters. "I ain't a kind man as far as niggers are concerned, you all know that, but I pride myself on being a scientific man." Purdy visited the mother and child several times and had both examined thoroughly in his presence. With the mother it was to personally assess her rate of recovery and make observations in his journal. With the baby he also made notes, but what shone on his face was pride of ownership.

Brigham gained the reputation of being a more than a usually pesky small child. He always talked, even when he was too young to make sense he babbled all the hours he was awake. He seemed to have a knack of getting himself into situations that most children managed to avoid such as stuck in a hollow of a tree or on a floating log in the middle of a pond. The other slaves loved him for providing grist for their story mill. Every other day he'd either say something or do something that would make them shake their heads and laugh. Brigham was often a recipient of a special treat—a peach smuggled in from the Master's garden or a streak of lean in his beans or a wagon the size of his small palm whittled out of pine.

Brigham's earliest memory was that of wandering around the yard in front of the dormitory. It must have been Sunday because the slaves were working in their own gardens. There was a pot on a tripod over a fire where a stew simmered. There was an old man sitting on a split log telling a story—always someone had a tale to tell. Likely it was a yarn filled with strange animals and superhuman creatures or a story from the Bible, although Master Purdy frowned on his darkies getting the Word. It would only confuse them, muddle their dim intellects with concepts they couldn't possibly understand and give them false hope in a redemption that was far from likely. Brigham would later hear Master Purdy claim that slaves on earth, if they were good and obeyed their masters, could hope to become slaves in heaven, which though not quite a perfect state of grace was certainly a better situation than the pagan kings who ended up roasting in the fires of hell.

Young Brigham, in this first memory, hadn't arrived yet at the age of making distinctions between those that had property and those that were property. He remembered an old woman singing. There were few early memories where singing was absent. He must have asked her why she was singing because he remembered her saying, "I sings 'cause the Good Lord gave me breath!" He remembered staring at her face fascinated by her thousands of wrinkles whose intricate pattern seemed to have been stitched or etched into her by a skilled artisan. He wandered into the vegetable garden and started to pull up a plant like what he saw a man doing. This earned him a smack on his rear end, the blow delivered with more sound than fury.