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A Curious Fragment

Short Stories

A Curious Fragment

A Day's lodging

A Nose for the king

A Piece of Steak

A Wicked Woman

All Gold Canyon

Brown Wolf

Created He Them

Four Horses and a Sailor

Just Meat

Love of life

Make Westing

Nam-Bok the Unveracious

Negore, the coward

Nothing That Ever Came to Anything

Semper Idem

Small-Boat Sailing

That Dead Men Rise Up Never

That spot

The "Francis Spaight"

The Apostate

The Chinago

The Heathen

The Hobo and the Fairy

The Human Drift

The story of Keesh

The Sun-Dog Trail

The Unexpected

The white man's way

Trust

When God Laughs

Yellow Handkerchief







[The capitalist, or industrial oligarch, Roger Vanderwater, mentioned in
the narrative, has been identified as the ninth in the line of the
Vanderwaters that controlled for hundreds of years the cotton factories of
the South. This Roger Vanderwater flourished in the last decades of the
twenty-sixth century after Christ, which was the fifth century of the
terrible industrial oligarchy that was reared upon the ruins of the early
Republic.

From internal evidences we are convinced that the narrative which follows
was not reduced to writing till the twenty-ninth century. Not only was it
unlawful to write or print such matter during that period, but the working-
class was so illiterate that only in rare instances were its members able
to read and write. This was the dark reign of the overman, in whose speech
the great mass of the people were characterized as the "herd animals." All
literacy was frowned upon and stamped out. From the statute-books of the
times may be instanced that black law that made it a capital offence for
any man, no matter of what class, to teach even the alphabet to a member of
the working-class. Such stringent limitation of education to the ruling
class was necessary if that class was to continue to rule.

One result of the foregoing was the development of the professional story-
tellers. These story-tellers were paid by the oligarchy, and the tales
they told were legendary, mythical, romantic, and harmless. But the spirit
of freedom never quite died out, and agitators, under the guise of story-
tellers, preached revolt to the slave class. That the following tale was
banned by the oligarchs we have proof from the records of the criminal
police court of Ashbury, wherein, on January 27, 2734, one John Tourney,
found guilty of telling the tale in a boozing-ken of labourers, was
sentenced to five years' penal servitude in the borax mines of the Arizona
Desert.--EDITOR'S NOTE.]


Listen, my brothers, and I will tell you a tale of an arm. It was the arm
of Tom Dixon, and Tom Dixon was a weaver of the first class in a factory of
that hell-hound and master, Roger Vanderwater. This factory was called
"Hell's Bottom" . . . by the slaves who toiled in it, and I guess they
ought to know; and it was situated in Kingsbury, at the other end of the
town from Vanderwater's summer palace. You do not know where Kingsbury is?
There are many things, my brothers, that you do not know, and it is sad.
It is because you do not know that you are slaves. When I have told you
this tale, I should like to form a class among you for the learning of
written and printed speech. Our masters read and write and possess many
books, and it is because of that that they are our masters, and live in
palaces, and do not work. When the toilers learn to read and write--all of
them--they will grow strong; then they will use their strength to break
their bonds, and there will be no more masters and no more slaves.

Kingsbury, my brothers, is in the old State of Alabama. For three hundred
years the Vanderwaters have owned Kingsbury and its slave pens and
factories, and slave pens and factories in many other places and States.
You have heard of the Vanderwaters--who has not?--but let me tell you
things you do not know about them. The first Vanderwater was a slave, even
as you and I. Have you got that? He was a slave, and that was over three
hundred years ago. His father was a machinist in the slave pen of
Alexander Burrell, and his mother was a washerwoman in the same slave pen.
There is no doubt about this. I am telling you truth. It is history. It
is printed, every word of it, in the history books of our masters, which
you cannot read because your masters will not permit you to learn to read.
You can understand why they will not permit you to learn to read, when
there are such things in the books. They know, and they are very wise. If
you did read such things, you might be wanting in respect to your masters,
which would be a dangerous thing . . . to your masters. But I know, for I
can read, and I am telling you what I have read with my own eyes in the
history books of our masters.

The first Vanderwater's name was not Vanderwater; it was Vange--Bill Vange,
the son of Yergis Vange, the machinist, and Laura Carnly, the washerwoman.
Young Bill Vange was strong. He might have remained with the slaves and
led them to freedom; instead, however, he served the masters and was well
rewarded. He began his service, when yet a small child, as a spy in his
home slave pen. He is known to have informed on his own father for
seditious utterance. This is fact. I have read it with my own eyes in the
records. He was too good a slave for the slave pen. Alexander Burrell
took him out, while yet a child, and he was taught to read and write. He
was taught many things, and he was entered in the secret service of the
Government. Of course, he no longer wore the slave dress, except for
disguise at such times when he sought to penetrate the secrets and plots of
the slaves. It was he, when but eighteen years of age, who brought that
great hero and comrade, Ralph Jacobus, to trial and execution in the
electric chair. Of course, you have all heard the sacred name of Ralph
Jacobus, but it is news to you that he was brought to his death by the
first Vanderwater, whose name was Vange. I know. I have read it in the
books. There are many interesting things like that in the books.

And after Ralph Jacobus died his shameful death, Bill Vange's name began
the many changes it was to undergo. He was known as "Sly Vange" far and
wide. He rose high in the secret service, and he was rewarded in grand
ways, but still he was not a member of the master class. The men were
willing that he should become so; it was the women of the master class who
refused to have Sly Vange one of them. Sly Vange gave good service to the
masters. He had been a slave himself, and he knew the ways of the slaves.
There was no fooling him. In those days the slaves were braver than now,
and they were always trying for their freedom. And Sly Vange was
everywhere, in all their schemes and plans, bringing their schemes and
plans to naught and their leaders to the electric chair. It was in 2255
that his name was next changed for him. It was in that year that the Great
Mutiny took place. In that region west of the Rocky Mountains, seventeen
millions of slaves strove bravely to overthrow their masters. Who knows,
if Sly Vange had not lived, but that they would have succeeded? But Sly
Vange was very much alive. The masters gave him supreme command of the
situation. In eight months of fighting, one million and three hundred and
fifty thousand slaves were killed. Vange, Bill Vange, Sly Vange, killed
them, and he broke the Great Mutiny. And he was greatly rewarded, and so
red were his hands with the blood of the slaves that thereafter he was
called "Bloody Vange." You see, my brothers, what interesting things are
to be found in the books when one can read them. And, take my word for it,
there are many other things, even more interesting, in the books. And if
you will but study with me, in a year's time you can read those books for
yourselves--ay, in six months some of you will be able to read those books
for yourselves.

Bloody Vange lived to a ripe old age, and always, to the last, was he
received in the councils of the masters; but never was he made a master
himself. He had first opened his eyes, you see, in a slave pen. But oh,
he was well rewarded! He had a dozen palaces in which to live. He, who
was no master, owned thousands of slaves. He had a great pleasure yacht
upon the sea that was a floating palace, and he owned a whole island in the
sea where toiled ten thousand slaves on his coffee plantations. But in his
old age he was lonely, for he lived apart, hated by his brothers, the
slaves, and looked down upon by those he had served and who refused to be
his brothers. The masters looked down upon him because he had been born a
slave. Enormously wealthy he died; but he died horribly, tormented by his
conscience, regretting all he had done and the red stain on his name.

But with his children it was different. They had not been born in the
slave pen, and by the special ruling of the Chief Oligarch of that time,
John Morrison, they were elevated to the master class. And it was then
that the name of Vange disappears from the page of history. It becomes
Vanderwater, and Jason Vange, the son of Bloody Vange, becomes Jason
Vanderwater, the founder of the Vanderwater line. But that was three
hundred years ago, and the Vanderwaters of to-day forget their beginnings
and imagine that somehow the clay of their bodies is different stuff from
the clay in your body and mine and in the bodies of all slaves. And I ask
you, Why should a slave become the master of another slave? And why should
the son of a slave become the master of many slaves? I leave these
questions for you to answer for yourselves, but do not forget that in the
beginning the Vanderwaters were slaves.

And now, my brothers, I come back to the beginning of my tale to tell you
of Tom Dixon's arm. Roger Vanderwater's factory in Kingsbury was rightly
named "Hell's Bottom," but the men who toiled in it were men, as you shall
see. Women toiled there, too, and children, little children. All that
toiled there had the regular slave rights under the law, but only under the
law, for they were deprived of many of their rights by the two overseers of
Hell's Bottom, Joseph Clancy and Adolph Munster.

It is a long story, but I shall not tell all of it to you. I shall tell
only about the arm. It happened that, according to the law, a portion of
the starvation wage of the slaves was held back each month and put into a
fund. This fund was for the purpose of helping such unfortunate fellow-
workmen as happened to be injured by accidents or to be overtaken by
sickness. As you know with yourselves, these funds are controlled by the
overseers. It is the law, and so it was that the fund at Hell's Bottom was
controlled by the two overseers of accursed memory.

Now, Clancy and Munster took this fund for their own use. When accidents
happened to the workmen, their fellows, as was the custom, made grants from
the fund; but the overseers refused to pay over the grants. What could the
slaves do? They had their rights under the law, but they had no access to
the law. Those that complained to the overseers were punished. You know
yourselves what form such punishment takes--the fines for faulty work that
is not faulty; the overcharging of accounts in the Company's store; the
vile treatment of one's women and children; and the allotment to bad
machines whereon, work as one will, he starves.

Once, the slaves of Hell's Bottom protested to Vanderwater. It was the
time of the year when he spent several months in Kingsbury. One of the
slaves could write; it chanced that his mother could write, and she had
secretly taught him as her mother had secretly taught her. So this slave
wrote a round robin, wherein was contained their grievances, and all the
slaves signed by mark. And, with proper stamps upon the envelope, the
round robin was mailed to Roger Vanderwater. And Roger Vanderwater did
nothing, save to turn the round robin over to the two overseers. Clancy
and Munster were angered. They turned the guards loose at night on the
slave pen. The guards were armed with pick handles. It is said that next
day only half of the slaves were able to work in Hell's Bottom. They were
well beaten. The slave who could write was so badly beaten that he lived
only three months. But before he died, he wrote once more, to what purpose
you shall hear.

Four or five weeks afterward, Tom Dixon, a slave, had his arm torn off by a
belt in Hell's Bottom. His fellow-workmen, as usual, made a grant to him
from the fund, and Clancy and Munster, as usual, refused to pay it over
from the fund. The slave who could write, and who even then was dying,
wrote anew a recital of their grievances. And this document was thrust
into the hand of the arm that had been torn from Tom Dixon's body.

Now it chanced that Roger Vanderwater was lying ill in his palace at the
other end of Kingsbury--not the dire illness that strikes down you and me,
brothers; just a bit of biliousness, mayhap, or no more than a bad headache
because he had eaten too heartily or drunk too deeply. But it was enough
for him, being tender and soft from careful rearing. Such men, packed in
cotton wool all their lives, are exceeding tender and soft. Believe me,
brothers, Roger Vanderwater felt as badly with his aching head, or THOUGHT
he felt as badly, as Tom Dixon really felt with his arm torn out by the
roots.

It happened that Roger Vanderwater was fond of scientific farming, and that
on his farm, three miles outside of Kingsbury, he had managed to grow a new
kind of strawberry. He was very proud of that new strawberry of his, and
he would have been out to see and pick the first ripe ones, had it not been
for his illness. Because of his illness he had ordered the old farm slave
to bring in personally the first box of the berries. All this was learned
from the gossip of a palace scullion, who slept each night in the slave
pen. The overseer of the plantation should have brought in the berries,
but he was on his back with a broken leg from trying to break a colt. The
scullion brought the word in the night, and it was known that next day the
berries would come in. And the men in the slave pen of Hell's Bottom,
being men and not cowards, held a council.

The slave who could write, and who was sick and dying from the pick-handle
beating, said he would carry Tom Dixon's arm; also, he said he must die
anyway, and that it mattered nothing if he died a little sooner. So five
slaves stole from the slave pen that night after the guards had made their
last rounds. One of the slaves was the man who could write. They lay in
the brush by the roadside until late in the morning, when the old farm
slave came driving to town with the precious fruit for the master. What of
the farm slave being old and rheumatic, and of the slave who could write
being stiff and injured from his beating, they moved their bodies about
when they walked, very much in the same fashion. The slave who could write
put on the other's clothes, pulled the broad-brimmed hat over his eyes,
climbed upon the seat of the wagon, and drove on to town. The old farm
slave was kept tied all day in the bushes until evening, when the others
loosed him and went back to the slave pen to take their punishment for
having broken bounds.

In the meantime, Roger Vanderwater lay waiting for the berries in his
wonderful bedroom--such wonders and such comforts were there that they
would have blinded the eyes of you and me who have never seen such things.
The slave who could write said afterward that it was like a glimpse of
Paradise! And why not? The labour and the lives of ten thousand slaves
had gone to the making of that bedchamber, while they themselves slept in
vile lairs like wild beasts. The slave who could write brought in the
berries on a silver tray or platter--you see, Roger Vanderwater wanted to
speak with him in person about the berries.

The slave who could write tottered his dying body across the wonderful room
and knelt by the couch of Vanderwater, holding out before him the tray.
Large green leaves covered the top of the tray, and these the body-servant
alongside whisked away so that Vanderwater could see. And Roger
Vanderwater, propped upon his elbow, saw. He saw the fresh, wonderful
fruit lying there like precious jewels, and in the midst of it the arm of
Tom Dixon as it had been torn from his body, well washed, of course, my
brothers, and very white against the blood-red fruit. And also he saw,
clutched in the stiff, dead fingers, the petition of his slaves who toiled
in Hell's Bottom.

"Take and read," said the slave who could write. And even as the master
took the petition, the body-servant, who till then had been motionless with
surprise, struck with his fist the kneeling slave upon the mouth. The
slave was dying anyway, and was very weak, and did not mind. He made no
sound, and, having fallen over on his side, he lay there quietly, bleeding
from the blow on the mouth. The physician, who had run for the palace
guards, came back with them, and the slave was dragged upright upon his
feet. But as they dragged him up, his hand clutched Tom Dixon's arm from
where it had fallen on the floor.

"He shall be flung alive to the hounds!" the body-servant was crying in
great wrath. "He shall be flung alive to the hounds!"

But Roger Vanderwater, forgetting his headache, still leaning on his elbow,
commanded silence, and went on reading the petition. And while he read,
there was silence, all standing upright, the wrathful body-servant, the
physician, the palace guards, and in their midst the slave, bleeding at the
mouth and still holding Tom Dixon's arm. And when Roger Vanderwater had
done, he turned upon the slave, saying--

"If in this paper there be one lie, you shall be sorry that you were ever
born."

And the slave said, "I have been sorry all my life that I was born."

Roger Vanderwater looked at him closely, and the slave said--

"You have done your worst to me. I am dying now. In a week I shall be
dead, so it does not matter if you kill me now."

"What do you with that?" the master asked, pointing to the arm; and the
slave made answer--

"I take it back to the pen to give it burial. Tom Dixon was my friend. We
worked beside each other at our looms."

There is little more to my tale, brothers. The slave and the arm were sent
back in a cart to the pen. Nor were any of the slaves punished for what
they had done. Indeed, Roger Vanderwater made investigation and punished
the two overseers, Joseph Clancy and Adolph Munster. Their freeholds were
taken from them. They were branded, each upon the forehead, their right
hands were cut off, and they were turned loose upon the highway to wander
and beg until they died. And the fund was managed rightfully thereafter
for a time--for a time only, my brothers; for after Roger Vanderwater came
his son, Albert, who was a cruel master and half mad.

Brothers, that slave who carried the arm into the presence of the master
was my father. He was a brave man. And even as his mother secretly taught
him to read, so did he teach me. Because he died shortly after from the
pick-handle beating, Roger Vanderwater took me out of the slave pen and
tried to make various better things out of me. I might have become an
overseer in Hell's Bottom, but I chose to become a story-teller, wandering
over the land and getting close to my brothers, the slaves, everywhere.
And I tell you stories like this, secretly, knowing that you will not
betray me; for if you did, you know as well as I that my tongue will be
torn out and that I shall tell stories no more. And my message is,
brothers, that there is a good time coming, when all will be well in the
world and there will be neither masters nor slaves. But first you must
prepare for that good time by learning to read. There is power in the
printed word. And here am I to teach you to read, and as well there are
others to see that you get the books when I am gone along upon my way--the
history books wherein you will learn about your masters, and learn to
become strong even as they.

[EDITOR'S NOTE.--From "Historical Fragments and Sketches," first published
in fifty volumes in 4427, and now, after two hundred years, because of its
accuracy and value, edited and republished by the National Committee on
Historical Research.]




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