Wanted

Chapter 52

McCarthy was sitting at his seat at the kitchen table, sipping on his glass of whiskey, listening out for the sporadic sniffle and gasp for air that came from the sleeping boy who had obviously been crying in his sleep.

He didn't know why he was compelled to listen to it. He'd only meant to come in to get himself a little refill of his nightcap. He had planned to go back into the living room where he had been reading the Bible in front of the fire alone searching for answers. His wife had gone to bed early, without him.

'His wife was right, there was more to the boy than stubbornness, but he sure didn't show it,' McCarthy thought.

His father would tell him to get rid of him. "Not worth the effort," he would say. He had no tolerance for weakness and even less so for anyone who gave him any trouble, and in his eyes, trouble was anything that didn't bend to his will.

"I'm running a business, not a charity," he used to tell him, but business had little to do with it. It was much bigger than that.

His father didn't need to flog 'his negros'. He didn't even need to raise his voice, didn't even have to threaten them. He had something much worse to make them obey.

For most part he treated his slaves very well. The handful of slaves he owned, were the best dressed, best fed and most educated negros there was. They seemed to almost be part of the family. Almost. For if he perceived them of even the slightest wrongdoing, he sold them away from the life they knew to the worst there was, and that without a warning or a second chance. He liked to get them when they were still young and prided himself at building them up 'from nothing' as he used to say, and for this he expected their eternal gratitude and unquestioning obedience. McCarthy suspected that it was nothing more than a game to his old man, which meant that every so often he had to find a reason to replace one of them. He once sold a man for pointing out to him that he had taken down the wrong measurements for a big job. The fact that the man had saved him a lot of money and losing face in front of his customers by correcting the mistake meant nothing to him.

His father couldn't abide anyone contradicting him. He hated being wrong but even more so hated the mere idea that anyone could contemplate him to be wrong.

Despite the freedom of movement, they seemed to enjoy none of them dared to run away. They knew he'd go to hell and back to retrieve them and only to sell them for pittance anyway. He never talked about it. The selling and buying. As if it never happened. That way, he kept his own illusion alive that he was loved and admired, not feared and hated.

Obviously, he didn't sell his children, but his treatment of them was not dissimilar. McCarthy always thought it strange how his constant rejection stung more than any belt could ever have, while his rare affection and approval felt like a drug that made all pain and self-doubt vanish instantly. The man was larger than life. A hero one minute, a scary monster the next, and McCarthy had hated him from the time he was knee high.

It had to be said however, that in McCarthy's estimation, his brothers and sisters had it a lot worse than he did. As the oldest, whose mother died in childbirth, he had been raised by his loving aunt and uncle until the old man remarried and took him back when he was around seven. For most part of his youth, his father's rejection remained a constant in McCarthy's life, even after that. His half brothers and sisters however were constantly alternating between being the old man's favourite to joining their oldest brother as an outcast. They never realised that they should be allies not foes. To his father it was all a game.

"Relationships are all about power, nothing else matters," he once told him and meant it. Love, compassion, friendship, partnership, equality were all illusions of the feeble-minded and immature, according to him. More than once, McCarthy tried to feel sorry for the hated and lonely man, but any attempt in reaching out to him ended up in his father tearing into him for all the wrong choices he had made in life.