Simon

From a position so low, welcome to the highest level imaginable.

The old, rusty bell echoed over the field. The slaves responded by slowly making their way from the huts out into the rows of billowing white flora. They began filling the sacks slung over their shoulders with the plucked cotton. 

Simon was born a slave. He had been picking cotton since he was a child. Actually, Simon's mother said when he was a baby and she carried him for the first time into the field, she was picking the cotton and looked around to see Simon holding up a small ball of cotton he had just seized. She saved that cotton ball and would sit perched on her beloved wooden chair and tell anyone who would listen it was his first cotton he picked. She hung it on the wall in the cabin on a piece of string. 

Over the years, Simon first enjoyed, then grew tired of hearing that story, but Simon was actually very good at picking cotton. He once got a hint his father had been good at picking cotton, too. 

Simon didn't remember his father. He once tried asking his mother but she wouldn't speak about him. He asked a couple of other older slaves if they remembered his father, but they seemed reluctant to say anything, basically leaving it that his father had been sold to another plantation when Simon was very small. 

Simon always felt something was being concealed. He wasn't being told everything, but there was nothing he could do about it. 

Simon was very admired for his youth and strong frame. Master Jenkins instructed the overseers to never whip Simon as they would damage him. He was a delight to gaze upon by both black and white people. Master Jenkins would hear what an impressive slave he had out in the field, the young Simon. No, no one was ever to raise a whip to Simon and damage his body. 

As Simon grew older, he noticed a lovely young girl who worked in the fields. When Simon was old enough, he told his mother he wished to have his own cabin and start his family and he intended to marry the young girl-in-question. His mother smiled approvingly. 

Simon was set up in a cabin near his mother. He had everything planned for his new life with his new bride and on the day he was going to ask her to be his wife, he learned she was sold to a plantation far away. 

Simon was devastated. The circumstances varied. One story was Master Jenkins didn't know when he agreed to sell her that Simon wanted to marry her. Another was an overseer arranged the sale to spitefully make Simon unhappy. Whatever the details, Simon completely closed down. 

Master Jenkins had wanted Simon to father many children, fine young slaves to work the field, but Simon would have no other woman; partly he felt betrayed that the woman he loved was taken from him so abruptly. When other young women were offered to Simon, he'd have nothing to do with them. Hired hands would instruct young girls to work near Simon so he would see them. Simon would look at the girl, standing there, afraid, then he'd turn away. 

One night, as Simon settled down to sleep, the door burst open and a terrified young girl was shoved in, completely naked, eyes wide with fear, and the white man behind her slammed the door closed. She clenched her hands and arms over her breasts and covered herself as Simon lay there on the bed and he looked at her. Again, he just turned away to drift off to sleep. The hut was silent except for the girl's tearful cries, so finally Simon slid over on the bed so she could at least lay down, but he would have his back to her. The girl nervously approached the bed and reclined on her intended side. Simon made no move. She slowly brought her hand up to his broad shoulder to steady herself, then curled in close. He still didn't move. She drifted off to sleep, as did he. 

Simon awoke the next day to find the girl gone. Just as well, he thought. He stood up and proceeded out the door as the bell sounded, grabbing his sack hanging near the door. 

At Master Jenkins behest, overseers tried to find out why Simon wanted nothing to do with any girl. The overseers would ask other slaves, even hinting about the one girl that was sold, but no one would give a word what it was about. They knew, but they weren't telling.  

Slaves weren't allowed to read and write, but that was a rule that really made no sense if slaves were to even follow the simplest rules. When a slave was told to start picking cotton on a certain row, the fourth or fifth row, they had to know how to count and thereby know numbers. Simon wasn't sure if the white overseers didn't realize this or were aware and just saw no way to prevent the matter. Slaves had to count how many sacks of cotton they picked every day as well. 

Simon also realized when the cotton was weighed on the scale, they were learning numbers if they were good and picked enough cotton or were bad and got whipped. When the sack of cotton was weighed, of course Simon watched to see if he had done well. He saw where the approving number was. The sack full of cotton had to reach the certain number and that meant no whipping. 

Simon knew they all had to be seeing that same number, that same counting, but they said nothing. 

The young girl who had been brought to Simon for him to impregnate did not meet her requirement of cotton one day, so she was whipped. Simon watched her being whipped, then turned away. She was punished yet again for failing at her duties, he thought to himself. She didn't entice him as a woman, so that was humiliating for her and now this. He watched her shaking as she tugged back on her shredded shirt. 

Simon went to his hut, picking up a small rock along the way. He hung up his sack and sat on the edge of his bed. He stared at the wall, then held up the rock. He scratched the number for no whipping, the number on the scale, on the wall beside his bed. He dug the grooves deep. Three shapes; a line and two circles. He chipped at the wood even more. He would never forget this amount. He chunked the rock across the room and settled down for the night.    

Simon's mother passed away. She was too old to work in the fields anymore and just did light work to keep her busy, sitting on her beloved wooden chair. She never did tell Simon what become of his father. 

Simon went to her cabin to retrieve any personal effects and there was the cotton ball that had been hanging on the wall for a good eighteen years. Simon took the cotton ball and the string, also retrieving the chair and a kerchief she always wore, and left the cabin. Someone else would move in. 

Simon sat at home, staring at the first cotton ball he ever picked and then looked at his bag, hanging on the wall. He hung the cotton ball on his own wall, near the bag and went off to sleep. 

The next day, Simon went to work and picked his cotton, all the while rolling small amounts of cotton to conceal in the kerchief inside his waistband on his pants, like a pocket. He finished his days work, then got home and opened the kerchief to look at the cotton. It was small, but it was a start. The next day, he did the same thing. He was careful to conceal the cotton he was hiding in a safe spot in the cabin, an old metal pot, where it wouldn't be found. 

After a couple of days of doing this, Simon woke up to hear shouting and laughter coming from outside. He stepped out of his cabin and looked toward the Jenkins manor, far off in the distance. There was music as well. All upstairs was lit up and illuminated like the stars in the sky, shining bright on a muggy, dark night. Simon watched them, obviously celebrating a marriage or productive season, then turned and entered his cabin once more. He stared at the cooking pot that contained the secret cotton within, then stared at the three symbols he carved on the wall. A line and two circles. 

Simon secretly amassed some more cotton, took it home and concealed it, then decided he had sufficient. Using a long, slender vine he cut from a branch outside, Simon took the cotton out of the cooking pot and placed it in the bottom of the cotton bag, then using the vine like thread on a needle, he poked the vine through the bag, stitching it across the cotton like a net, securing it in the bottom of the bag. The cotton was mashed down so low and the vine tightly drawn across it, it was virtually undetectable.

Simon picked his cotton, with the secret amount hidden at the bottom, then with the bag full, he carried it to be weighed. He watched intently to see if anyone noticed the bottom of the bag. 

No one did. 

Requiring at least three bags of cotton a day, Simon picked his two more bags and carried them to be weighed. Still no one was wiser about the false bottom. 

Simon continued this procedure for three days, then on the fourth day, he let the vine loose so all the cotton fell out. He didn't want to get over-confident. Come the next day, he did the same; picking the cotton, but tucking small balls of cotton into the scarf at his waist. He accumulated a decent amount of cotton again, this time tucking it under his pillow during the day, which would make a good cover if someone did find it, and he managed the same outcome with the cotton pressed down into the cotton bag and stitched into the bottom of the bag. 

This time, he let the cotton remain for two weeks, then pulled the vine to set the cotton free. 

Simon wasn't sure how much cotton he was having weighed over and over again. He got the impression from an overheard discussion about a jar of whiskey that seemed to equal his amount, to the best of his estimation, of about ten pounds, maybe a bit more. 

The next time the bag was weighed, Simon released the vine. He had an idea about how much cotton he was amassing at the bottom of the bag now, but still he hadn't managed all the counting terms. If what he had been doing was ten pounds, then a little more could be that, plus half, and if he doubled, then he'd double his deception. 

Simon let it vary what he did and for how long. The jar was about the same size as the cooking pot, so he'd measure with that. It really was easy to fill the pot up twice, pack all that cotton in the base of the bag, then stitch it up to keep it from falling out. Depending on just his random thought, Simon would release the cotton when he felt like it. Even if the bundle were to be detected, all he had to do was snatch out the vine real quick and he'd say he didn't realize there was some cotton still in the bottom of the bag, so  it was a good thing the overseer caught his mistake! 

Then it would all start again. 

Simon's thinking in doing this deed was to make his count look better and prevent him from being whipped, since he wasn't showing any interest in fathering children by slave women. The possibility of longing for the woman taken from him or that he just felt betrayed by her removal, Simon wasn't sure which was likely. Sometimes it felt like the latter. 

By the time it reached a year of Simon's deception with the cotton, he had accumulated quite a record, but he didn't know. Turned out when he allowed an average ten pounds of cotton to be counted for a week, that came up to potentially two hundred pounds of cotton that was missing. If he did it longer, and he did let the hidden bottom go for at least a month on occassions, then that was close to eight hundred pounds. If he did it even more like fifteen pounds of cotton, which all he could count that as was ten-and-a-half, then obviously it was reaching even higher numbers. 

Simon sought to double the false bottom from what he knew to be ten pounds, making it ten and ten, his best at counting. Eventually, he achieved this amount, stitched up the bottom and journeyed on his way. A slave could be required to fill the cotton bag three times, totalling three hundred pounds, but Simon was only doing two-hundred-and-forty, all the while being credited for three hundred. 

My, what a valuable slave Simon was turning out to be. Master Jenkins asked if he was still showing no interest in females. The overseers said they hadn't noticed any difference. Simon decided he needed to rectify that suspicion and the girl who was brought to him and stayed with him should fit the bill. Simon saw her carrying a bucket of water one day. He contemplated offering to help. He really wasn't pleased he'd been so distant with her and now he sought to make amends. 

 

Maybe he could carry the water for her. Even if nothing happened, at least the overseers would have positive reports for Master Jenkins. Simon retrieved his mother's chair and set it along the path where he had seen her carrying the water. He would sit and wait for her, then offer her to rest on the chair while he filled her water buckets. 

When Simon saw her approaching with two empty buckets, he ran to her aid. He offered polite chatter and a nice smile, but she seemed embarrassed about how she was done toward him then with him, that he showed no interest. She really did seem very nice. Maybe he shouldn't have been so cold. He decided to try again and suggested she sit and relax while he filled the buckets with water and carried the buckets for her and was even friendlier. This time things seemed to go a little better. Simon also saw an overseer watching from the distance. 

This was also when Simon realized he had let the two ten count, otherwise known as twenty pounds of cotton, sit at the bottom of the bag for almost three months. He immediately yanked the stitch next unloading to empty the bag before anyone noticed. Thankfully, all their concern was with his talking to the young girl, it seemed. 

But Simon had truly done his damage. Twenty pounds of cotton, three bags a day, was sixty pounds of cotton that didn't exist. Seven days a week equalled four hundred-and-twenty pounds of cotton unaccounted for. Four weeks a month amounted to over fifteen-hundred pounds of cotton nowhere to be seen. With five hundred pounds of cotton in a bale, that was three bales missing from a month. Two months was six bales. Figure in all the other amounts he had perpetrated, more bales vanished. 

Unbeknownst to Simon, the theft and suspicion was all zeroed in on the shipping. Something was happening on the riverboats, on the docks, was the conclusion. Was one plantation owner or white delivery man or someone in the offices responsible for the missing cotton, seeking to sell it somewhere else and pocket the money himself? Simon may have disapproved, but two slaves were whipped to emit a confession from them over what they had done with the cotton, but they knew nothing. 

Strange that no one thought to journey back to the plantations. It had to be in shipping. 

And Simon, young Simon, was totally unaware of everything, save what he himself was orchestrating. 

After a couple of more months and Simon not increasing his hidden amounts, but not decreasing them either, the accusations finally began reaching the plantations. Obviously someone was lying in the numbers and taking a payoff. Couldn't be the slaves. What on Earth could they possibly be doing? Simon carried his bag containing ten-and-a-half in the bottom to be emptied and just had a hint of something being off, so he casually grabbed the vine and pulled it loose. No one paid any attention to a slave covered in leaves or twigs or random vines and such, so a vine dangling from his person gained no notice. He waited a couple of days before he started pocketing the balls of cotton again, with the intention of starting up with a new false bottom in about a week or two. 

He never got to do so. 

Simon was awoken from sleep one night to voices outside. He ventured out into the night to realize the yelling and shouting was coming from the big house. A woman was yelling. A man yelled back. Then something broke. The woman screamed. Other than a few lights on the ground floor, the house was dark. There was a moment of silence, faint voices talking, then quiet. Simon was just about to enter his cabin when a gunshot rang out. He looked back to its source of origin, namely the manor. After a while, he heard the hooves of horses clopping on the road out front, joined by jostling wagon wheels. Someone was leaving. Then he heard another yell. 

Nothing else seemed to be happening, so he returned to his cabin, but he didn't sleep. He sat on the bed and stared forward. In the bright moonight, he could see the line and two circles. He was actually about to nod off when he heard a commotion outside once more. Slowly he opened the door to look out into the darkness. He stepped onto his porch and saw a faint silhouette in the distance, making its way down the pathway to the slave quarters, for some inexplicable reason. The figure was easy to detect in light clothing. Simon realized it was Master Jenkins. He was wearing his nightshirt, but didn't seem to have on any pants or shoes, so his pale legs were easy to spy as well. He was talking to himself, very loudly. 

"I don't know who did it," Simon heard Master Jenkins say, "the harridan was responsible, not me. Her and her boyfriend." 

Master Jenkins stepped on a twig and winced in pain. He all but seemed to be crying. 

"I didn't do it, she did," he cried again. Master Jenkins appeared to be wet for some reason, like perhaps he'd been drinking and stumbled. The rotund man revealed he had a rope over a shoulder. He tossed it up into the tree branches where it came back down. He was crying again. Just stood there, crying. 

Simon detected what Master Jenkins was about to do and why. He reached into his cabin and grabbed his cotton bag. Slowly he stepped outside and watched Master Jenkins climb up on the nearby chair his mother loved so much, still setting outside, then Master Jenkins put the rope as he had made it around his neck. He had fashioned it into a noose. With each gesture Master Jenkins made with his intentions, Simon stepped closer with the bag. 

"Her and her boyfriend," Master Jenkins slurred again. In the darkness and in his current state, he couldn't see Simon at all. 

Simon watched as the elderly man kicked at the chair with his foot. He yelled ouch with the first kick, then the chair fell over, leaving Master Jenkins suspended in mid-air. 

The elderly man slowly turned as he gasped at the rope. He did claw at it out of instinct, but as he spun, there was Simon, standing in the dark. Master Jenkins couldn't see precisely who it was, but suddenly the black silhouette held the cotton bag upside-down, snatched at the base, removing the thin vine, allowing glowing white cotton to tumble out of the bag and be seen on the ground below. 

As his eyes bulged and his tongue protruded from his gasping mouth, Master Jenkins now realized where the missing cotton had been going. His last thought was the revelation of what had been happening to the cotton. He knew where the cotton had disappeared to, but now he knew no more. His body ceased all movement and just swayed in the night air. 

Simon bent down to pick up the cotton and shove it all back in the bag, as quickly as he could. White cotton at night was easy to see, but Simon decided he better hurry. As he grabbed at the cotton, his eyes observed the toppled chair, his mother's favorite chair. Something was scratched on the bottom, but in the darkness, Simon couldn't make out what it was. Once he had what all of the cotton he could gather, he returned to his cabin and closed the door, then hung the cotton bag up where it belonged. He left the chair because if anyone remember he had never taken it back inside, they'd know he had been out there. 

Then it was morning. 

The bell rang, but this time, as Simon stirred to begin work, there was gunshots. 

The slaves all exited their cabins to behold a horrible sight, that being Master Jenkins suspended from a tree. Some of the women screamed in horror. Simon decided that would be his best cover and he burst out the door and ran into the open, completely naked, as if he was too startled and too unintelligent to properly dress himself. Plus he did serve as a distraction from the tragedy they were seeing. An assortment of slave women standing nearby went from shock at Master Jenkins to amusement at Simon's lack of attire.  

"Simon," an old slave called to him, "get back inside and put on your drawers!" 

Simon hurried back toward his cabin and closed the door. He deduced that would surely clear him of any likely involvement, whatever the determination might be. Simon put on his pants and a shirt, then stepped back outside, seeing that one of the women who he realized had been standing there before when he raced out unclothed was the same woman who was, once again, thrown into his hut completely naked so long ago, then he helped to carry her water. She was smiling and laughing. Simon felt a strange sense of balance had occurred. 

Simon stepped forward, seemingly wide-eyed and innocent, standing among the other slaves, setting his foot down on a stray ball of cotton he had missed the night before, before anyone else spied it, virtually standing in the same position he had been in earlier.  

"What happened, Massa Clyde?" an old slave asked.

"Been some thievin' going on," the man on the horse with a gun in his hand yelled. He ordered two slaves near the tree to cut Jenkins down. Already some other white people were making their way down to the tragedy. 

"What sort of thievin'?" the old slave asked. 

Clyde on his horse rared up trying to turn around to face all the slaves, or as best he could. 

"Never you mind," he answered. "Just that the law came after Mr. Jenkins and this is the result, cruelly taking the life of an innocent man!" 

"Will we be sold?" a slave woman asked, and there was something Simon had not anticipated. 

"There won't be any selling any time soon," Clyde growled, "and Mr. Jenkins brother will probably take over the plantation and decide what he wants to do with all of you." 

Simon had seen Mr. Jenkins' brother once or twice. He seemed much nicer than his brother here, now being carted off back to the manor under cover of a sheet. As the overseer, Clyde, departed as well with a final instruction, "get yourselves to the field as soon as possible," Simon overheard a mention of cotton that was disappearing and nobody knew why. 

With the stray ball of cotton clenched between two toes, Simon made his way back to his cabin to get his cotton bag. As he did so, he observed the girl again, still laughing at seeing him completely unclothed and seemingly bewildered by the unexpected events. 

Simon smiled back at her. Quickly he entered his cabin and upon retrieving the cotton bag, he spun his leg up to remove the cotton ball from his toes and gingerly dropped it within the bag, then exited once more. He stepped back out of the cave, bag in hand, and as he passed the turned over chair, he stopped and looked at what he had seen on the bottom of the stool. There was scratching on the old wood. Familiar scratching. 

Simon looked closer and realized the scratching was three symbols; a line and two circles. 

Simon thought about the chair his mother had loved so much, she hardly let him sit there. He suspected he knew who made the scratches, to remember how much cotton he had to pick, and that he got in trouble for it and sold long ago. Simon wondered what exactly he did to get in trouble, to be removed from his wife and son as he was done, but it seemed obvious to him now why she loved that chair so much. Why she sat on it every chance she got. 

The young woman hadn't gotten far, so Simon hurried his step to catch up with her.