And his shape was not like the shape of a nigger when he gets old. He was straight in the back, not tall, a little broad, and his face was still all the time, like he might be somewhere else all the while he was working or when people, even white people, talked to him, or while he talked to me.
It was just the same all the time, like he might be away up on a roof by himself, driving nails. Sometimes he would quit work with something half-finished on the bench, and sit down and smoke. And he wouldn’t jump up and go back to work when Mr. Stokes or even Grandfather came along.
So I would give him the tobacco and he would stop work and sit down and fill his pipe and talk to me.
“These niggers,” he said. “They call me Uncle Blue-Gum. And the white folks, they call me Sam Fathers.”
“Isn’t that your name?” I said.
“No. Not in the old days. I remember. I remember how I never saw but one white man until I was a boy big as you are; a whisky trader that came every summer to the Plantation. It was the Man himself that named me. He didn’t name me Sam Fathers, though.”
“The Man?” I said.
“He owned the Plantation, the Negroes, my mammy too. He owned all the land that I knew of until I was grown. He was a Choctaw chief. He sold my mammy to your great-grandpappy. He said I didn’t have to go unless I wanted to, because I was a warrior too then. He was the one who named me Had-Two-Fathers.”
“Had-Two-Fathers?” I said. “That’s not a name. That’s not anything.”
“It was my name once. Listen.”
II
This is how Herman Basket told it when I was big enough to hear talk. He said that when Doom came back from New Orleans, he brought this woman with him. He brought six black people, though Herman Basket said they already had more black people in the Plantation than they could find use for. Sometimes they would run the black men with dogs, like you would a fox or a cat or a coon. And then Doom brought six more when he came home from New Orleans.
He said he won them on the steamboat, and so he had to take them. He got off the steamboat with the six black people, Herman Basket said, and a big box in which something was alive, and the gold box of New Orleans salt about the size of a gold watch.
And Herman Basket told how Doom took a puppy out of the box in which something was alive, and how he made a bullet of bread and a pinch of the salt in the gold box, and put the bullet into the puppy and the puppy died.
That was the kind of a man that Doom was, Herman Basket said. He told how, when Doom got off the steamboat that night, he wore a coat with gold all over it, and he had three gold watches, but Herman Basket said that even after seven years, Doom’s eyes had not changed. He said that Doom’s eyes were just the same as before he went away, before his name was Doom, and he and Herman Basket and my pappy were sleeping on the same pallet and talking at night, as boys will.
Doom’s name was Ikkemotubbe then, and he was not born to be the Man, because Doom’s mother’s brother was the Man, and the Man had a son of his own, as well as a brother. But even then, and Doom no bigger than you are, Herman Basket said that sometimes the Man would look at Doom and he would say: “O Sister’s Son, your eye is a bad eye, like the eye of a bad horse.”
So the Man was not sorry when Doom got to be a young man and said that he would go to New Orleans, Herman Basket said. The Man was getting old then. He used to like to play mumble-peg and to pitch horseshoes both, but now he just liked mumble-peg. So he was not sorry when Doom went away, though he didn’t forget about Doom.
Herman Basket said that each summer when the whisky-trader came, the Man would ask him about Doom. “He calls himself David Callicoat now,” the Man would say. “But his name is Ikkemotubbe. You haven’t heard maybe of a David Callicoat getting drowned in the Big River, or killed in the white man’s fight at New Orleans?”
But Herman Basket said they didn’t hear from Doom at all until he had been gone seven years. Then one day Herman Basket and my pappy got a written stick from Doom to meet him at the Big River. Because the steamboat didn’t come up our river any more then. The steamboat was still in our river, but it didn’t go anywhere any more. Herman Basket told how one day during the high water, about three years after Doom went away, the steamboat came and crawled up on a sand-bar and died.
That was how Doom got his second name, the one before Doom. Herman Basket told how four times a year the steamboat would come up our river, and how the People would go to the river and camp and wait to see the steamboat pass, and he said that the white man who told the steamboat where to swim was named David Callicoat.
So when Doom told Herman Basket and pappy that he was going to New Orleans, he said, “And I’ll tell you something else. From now on, my name is not Ikkemotubbe. It’s David Callicoat. And some day I’m going to own a steamboat, too.” That was the kind of man that Doom was, Herman Basket said.
So after seven years he sent them the written stick and Herman Basket and pappy took the wagon and went to meet Doom at the Big River, and Doom got off the steamboat with the six black people. “I won them on the steamboat,” Doom said. “You and Craw-ford (my pappy’s name was Crawfishford, but usually it was Craw-ford) can divide them.”
“I don’t want them,” Herman Basket said that pappy said.
“Then Herman can have them all,” Doom said.
“I don’t want them either,” Herman Basket said.
“All right,” Doom said. Then Herman Basket said he asked Doom if his name was still David Callicoat, but instead of answering, Doom told one of the black people something in the white man’s talk, and the black man lit a pine knot. Then Herman Basket said they were watching Doom take the puppy from the box and make the bullet of bread and the New Orleans salt which Doom had in the little gold box, when he said that pappy said:
“I believe you said that Herman and I were to divide these black people.”
Then Herman Basket said he saw that one of the black people was a woman.
“You and Herman don’t want them,” Doom said.
“I wasn’t thinking when I said that,” pappy said. “I will take the lot with the woman in it. Herman can have the other three.”
“I don’t want them,” Herman Basket said.
“You can have four, then,” pappy said. “I will take the woman and one other.”
“I don’t want them,” Herman Basket said.
“I will take only the woman,” pappy said. “You can have the other five.”
“I don’t want them,” Herman Basket said.
“You don’t want them, either,” Doom said to pappy. “You said so yourself.”
Then Herman Basket said that the puppy was dead. “You didn’t tell us your new name,” he said to Doom.
“My name is Doom now,” Doom said. “It was given me by a French chief in New Orleans. In French talking, Doo-um; in our talking, Doom.”
“What does it mean?” Herman Basket said.
He said how Doom looked at him for a while. “It means the Man,” Doom said.
Herman Basket told how they thought about that. He said they stood there in the dark, with the other puppies in the box, the ones that Doom hadn’t used, whimpering and scuffing, and the light of the pine knot shining on the eyeballs of the black people and on Doom’s gold coat and on the puppy that had died.
“You cannot be the Man,” Herman Basket said. “You are only on the sister’s side. And the Man has a brother and a son.”
“That’s right,” Doom said. “But if I were the Man, I would give Craw-ford those black people. I would give Herman something, too. For every black man I gave Crawford, I would give Herman a horse, if I were the Man.”
“Craw-ford only wants this woman,” Herman Basket said.
“I would give Herman six horses, anyway,” Doom said. “But maybe the Man has already given Herman a horse.”
“No,” Herman Basket said. “My ghost is still walking.”
It took them three days to reach the Plantation. They camped on the road at night. Herman Basket said that they did not talk.
They reached the Plantation on the third day. He said that the Man was not very glad to see Doom, even though Doom brought a present of candy for the Man’s son. Doom
