Emerald-Green Eyes

But this was the South of the early nineteenth century.

* * * *

Seven months later, when a harried and perturbed mother of the slave woman, Sally Mae, tracked her down in a hay hut at Briarton, it was as the older woman surmised. Sally Mae was on her back in the hay, her torso propped up on her elbows, her legs bent and splayed apart, panting hard, and staring into the emerald-green eyes of a snorting, grunting, and straining Tyler Smithson, who was on his knees between her thighs, pumping her hard and deep with his hard, throbbing cock.

The tableau as the mother saw it was so similar to that now being played out in the upstairs of the mansion house—that of a young mother trying hard to give birth—that the mother nearly laughed, albeit an ironic, bitter laugh. The difference here was that the man was trying to put another baby up there inside Sally Mae and up at the house a mother was trying to push a baby out.

Sally Mae was just three weeks shy of having birthed, early, her own emerald-green-eyed baby off Jarid. But already another Smithson was trying to seed one up inside her—and as fertile as Sally Mae's maternal line was, there was every reason to believe it would take. A healthy, good-looking, broad-hipped, big-breasted woman like Sally Mae would be dropping babies, some half white, some full dark, every nine months for nearly two decades. In terms of plantation economics, of course, this was all to the good. A Smithson couldn't own enough slaves, even if he had to seed some of them himself.

The mother, who had had her turn in the same position with the old man several times decades earlier, the results of which included Sally Mae, just looked at them with disdain. There was nothing she could do about this. She had warned Sally Mae to stay away from the Smithson men, but even as she'd done that, she'd known how futile any such attempt would be for her daughter.

"Sally Mae, I does hope you be finished there shortly. You be needed up at the big house. It be Mistress Susan's time."

"Yas em," Sally Mae answered, making some effort to close the front of her rumpled dress across her breasts. She was embarrassed her mama had seen Tyler pawing and fucking her, but there wasn't a damned thing she could have done about it. She knew what to do about it as soon as her mother had walked off, though. She wrapped an arm around the old man's head, pulling his lips into alternating between her nipples to suckle breasts aching to release mother's milk. And she wrapped her legs around his buttocks, holding him close into her, while she moaned something fearsome, worked the muscles of her passage in a way usually saved for the strong, muscular field hands she usually laid with nowadays. In short order Tyler ejaculated and rolled over to the side. He reached for a bottle of liquor and muttered. "If your mistress is dropping, you'd best go to her."

They were the sweetest words Sally Mae had heard from the old bastard—her father—during his whole visit.

When she arrived at the house, Mistress Muriel and Massa Jarid were just returning from a horse ride. In the foyer, she let them know, "I'm going up to Mistress Susan now. Her time has come."

As she went up the stairs, she heard Muriel castigating Jarid in a shrill voice. "The time has come to see how many heads your darling offspring has."

"What in the hell does that mean, Mother?" Jarid tossed back at her.

"It's the time of reckoning, son. I told you you couldn't marry her. I told you it would be disastrous."

"We've been over this a hundred times, Muriel. Cousins marry cousins all the time, and the children turn out just fine."

"Not after generations of inbreeding such as was never seen before. And, you silly young man, you should know. You should know what has been happening in the world of the Smithsons. God, you are identical to the man. Did you really think you inherited his identical looks through me? Susan's not just your cousin, Jarid. She's your half sister as well. Tyler isn't just her father. He's your father too. John Livingston was sterile. Tyler, my brother, impregnated me with you. Now how many degrees of incest is that? Shall you count the heads when they pop out or should I? But I have a better idea. I am going to my bedroom and strip down to nothing. I suggest you find a bottle of our best liquor—if Tyler hasn't drunk it all already—and join me in the celebration of the advent of the next generation of emerald-green-eyed Smithsons."

Hours later, a deeply concerned Sally Mae was shushing and trying to cover the cries of the newborn son. An exhausted but otherwise only slightly damaged Susan was looking at her on-the-other-side-of-the-divide half sister with begging emerald-green eyes, desperately needing a solution to appear.

"You see, Sally Mae, I have to do something. He'll kill me. They'll put me down, or send me to an asylum. That's what they did to my mother, you know."

"Hush, hush, Mistress Susan. It'll be all right. Here's my mother now." Sally Mae moved over to the doorway, showed the baby to her mother, and the two women conversed briefly. The mother took the baby and moved over to beside her mistress' bed. Sally Mae left the room.

"He's beautiful, Mistress Susan," the mother cooed. "Just look at him. He's got your eyes."

"Of course he does," Susan answered—neither woman seeming to think how idiotic that comment was. How possible would it be for a Smithson baby in this mess the family had sunk into not to have emerald-green eyes? But it seemed to calm Susan down and she reached over with a finger and let out a little sob as the baby wrapped the fingers of a tiny hand around her index finger.

"I can't let him go," Susan sobbed. "They'll take him from me."

"No ma'am, you can't—and they sure as hell won't take him. But we saw this pos'bilty comin'. If you feel strong enough to travel, we have travelin' set up. We call it a railroad. It takes folks of ours north. There would be someplace for you to go. And we have some money put together to help you."

"But I can't . . . not by myself."

"Why of course you can't by yourself, honey. I sent Sally Mae to get Samuel. He gonna go with you. Unless you don't want him to go . . ."

"Yes, yes, I want him to—"

At that point the young darkie, Samuel appeared, looming at the door, his powerful, muscular body filling the space of the doorway, his face a study in contrasts of fear and joy and concern.

"He be mine, t'ain't he?" the big black muttered, almost beyond himself with emotion. "The boy be mine. Sally Mae told me."

"No time for talk," Sally Mae's mother said. "You two best be gone. Where's the others—the Smithsons—Sally Mae?"

"The old man is drunk on his tail in the hay house. Mistress Muriel and Massa Jarid, they'sa drunk too, but they'sa also fuckin' away in mistress' bed. Won't have any more trouble from the three of them until sometime mid morning, I allow."

Off in a world that now encompassed only Samuel, her, and the baby, although she was working at rising from the bed and reaching for her cloak, Susan answered Samuel's question. "Yes, of course, he's yours, Samuel," as she displayed her milk-chocolate son. "He's got your eyes."