Addendum, October 5, 2014: This story was started on February 3, 2014, prior to the writing, filming and broadcasting of Season 4. At that time there was a significant gap in Cullen's backstory: he had never once uttered the name of his firstborn son. In Episode 410, the name of Cullen's lost child is finally given as Joshua. In the interests of canon continuity, I hereby present Joshua Gabriel Bohannon, affectionately and extensively known as "Gabe". For the full rationale, please see Chapter 88, which was posted shortly after the airing of 410. While this is undeniably retconning, I hope it is both logical and unobtrusive.

Note: By its very nature this story touches on sensitive issues of race and equality. The views expressed are not mine, but those of the respective characters as interpreted from canonical and historical sources. Only by understanding how pervasive such views were can we understand how humans could come to such a pass, where in a system of slavery is thought of as inevitable, inescapable, and even normal. Only once we understand this can we hope to prevent it from happening yet again.

I am in no way attempting to sanitize the protagonist of this story. Great effort has been taken to exam his canon portrayal and the psychology of the backstory given to him by his creators and screenwriters, and this portrayal is an attempt to get behind those inscrutable eyes and to extrapolate what he might have been like before the trauma of war and devastation changed him. Those who have read my other works will know that is what I do. If you wish to discuss this interpretation, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Mudded

"…I wish
myself were mudded in that oozy bed
where my son lies…"

from The Tempest

Chapter One: Summer Morning

The clatter of the stove-lid in the kitchen below woke Cullen Bohannon with an unpleasant jolt. He had been deep in a dark and indistinct dream, and he was slow to recall why he could not just burrow under the light cotton quilt and curl against Mary's inviting body and slip back into slumber. The room was dark: not even a faint grey glow showed at the edges of the curtain. But downstairs Bethel was awake, and laying on his breakfast. It was time to get up.

Carefully he lifted his corner of the sheet, easing it across his chest and slipping it between his body and that of his slumbering wife. His left foot slid off of the edge of the feather tick and settled softly on the rag-rug. He tightened the muscles of his abdomen and sat, his spine creaking its protest at the motion. There was a sharp stab of pain from his right hip, but he ignored it. Getting a body moving in the morning was not without its discomforts, particularly at this time of the year.

He turned slowly, letting his other leg find the border of the mattress and sink down to join its mate. Then he let his arms flop down between his knees, elbows resting heavily on his thighs. Breathless he listened to the soft exhalations behind him, and when he was satisfied that he had not woken his wife he allowed himself the luxury of a tired sigh.

He hated summertime, he truly did. Up before dawn in the muggy heat not entirely dissipated by the short night. Fourteen hours of sunshine, and enough work to fill three times that. And his work didn't end at nightfall, either, when everyone else went back to their cabins and whatever leisure there was strength to enjoy after a long, hard day. He'd been up until nearly midnight, bent over the dining room table by the light of the best lamp; tallying, figuring, worrying. Finally Bethel had bestirred herself from her bed to shoo him upstairs, threatening to hide the ledgers and the almanac if he didn't obey her. He had gone, meekly. Bethel was the only person he had ever taken naturally to obeying, and in any case he had been so tired that another half-hour would have seen him curled up under the sideboard, fast asleep with his boots still on.

The one consolation that came from running himself ragged was that his worries could not come between him and his pillow, save in the form of deep, vague dreams. He didn't lie awake, tossing and turning as he did in wintertime. He slept the sleep of the dead, for as long as his short night lasted, and he woke each morning with a head that felt like it was suffering through the aftermath of a glorious drinking spree. It came from working long hours in the heat, he knew, but if there was a cure for summer sun he hadn't found it yet.

Stifling his groan he hauled himself to his feet. The mattress rocked a little behind him and Mary stirred. Cullen froze, squinting over his shoulder in the darkness and wondering anxiously whether he had roused her after all. She was a light sleeper and a habitually early riser, but she had been down the last week with something Doc Whitehead delicately called "a womanly complaint" and she needed her rest. When she fell still again he breathed a little easier, and he moved on bare and silent feet around the end of the tall bed. Navigating blindly through the familiar room he found the chair in the corner where she always laid out his clothes for him, and peeled off his nightshirt before groping for his drawers. He bent his back full-on into its ache and stepped into them, then found his undershirt and tugged it over his head. It smelled strongly of sunshine and homemade soap, and he fumbled at the buttons with calloused fingers. Then he gathered up the remaining garments and padded to the door.

He had greased the hinges two nights ago, and they swung smooth and soundlessly. Out in the little corridor he drew the door closed with care, lest it should bang against the post and disturb his sleeping wife. Passing the door of the nursery with the briefest longing glance, Cullen went to the stairs and descended with care, keeping close to the bannister so that the steps would not squeak. From the front entryway a narrow strip of lamplight filtered through the dining room from the kitchen, and by its glow he pulled on stained but clean cotton socks that by the end of the day would be foul and sticky. He sat down on the bench by the front door to pull on his trousers, hauling them slowly up each leg like an old man and hoisting himself only long enough to drag them over his backside. Sluggishly, shoulders stretching tortuously, he got his arms into the sleeves of his coarse cotton workshirt and did up the front. He tucked the tails into his pants and eased first one suspender and then the other up into place. His work-boots were waiting on the floor, and he fought with the stiffened leather, dragging them on at last with twin grunts of grim satisfaction. His head felt light after these exertions and he sat still, stealing a moment's rest before the rigours of the day.

From the kitchen the sounds of breakfast were coming more quickly now, and his nostrils perked at a familiar scent. It roused in him the will to bestir himself, and he shuffled down to the other end of the hallway and through the dining room to the kitchen. Bethel stood at the stove with her back to him, measuring out flour with an old teacup. On the stovetop thick slices of side meat were just beginning to sizzle in their pan, and beside it the hominy was simmering, but it was the copper pot on the back of the stove that held Cullen's eye as he shambled up to lean against the doorpost.

"Coffee?" he grunted, squinting in the lamplight with eyes still crusted in sleep.

"Be ready direc'ly," Bethel said, moving from the worktable to the stove with a practiced grace that belied her years. "Drink it too soon, an' you won't get nothin' but brown water. Sit down an' wait like a gentleman. I'll bring it through when it's done."

Instead of retreating to the dining room as requested, Cullen shoved himself off of the door and flung one lean leg over the bench that ran along the side of the table. He planted his elbow and flicked his thumb along each eyelid to wick away the sharp residue on his lashes. "You had a look outside yet?" he asked. "Think we might get rain?"

"You don' want rain," Bethel said firmly. She managed to keep most of the exasperation from her voice, but her impatience with his perpetual blunders was plain. "It rain today, you'll never get them plants topped, an' Elijah say they need toppin' bad."

"I know that," Cullen grumbled. The plants had to be topped all right, but they had been at it for four days straight and he could have done with a rest. "That's what I meant."

She cast him a knowing look over one bony shoulder, but she only shook her head and turned her attention back on the stove. She flipped the bacon expertly and then moved to take down a small iron skillet from its peg on the wall. From the breadbox she produced two of yesterday's biscuits and brushed them deftly with a little melted butter. She placed them on the skillet and, with her hand wrapped in a dishtowel, opened the door of the oven and slid them inside. From the dish dresser she took a cup and saucer, and deposited them in front of her young master. She hooked the coffee pot from off the stove and poured him a full measure of the rich dark fluid. The tantalizing scent rose up in a head of steam, and Cullen closed his eyes blissfully. He reached for the little bottle of sorghum syrup that stood on the table and tipped some into his cup. That he was taking sorghum in his coffee was a secret between him and Bethel. Mary would have been horrified to know her husband was resorting to this economy in one of his few luxuries, but they were running low on store sugar and there would be no money coming in until the tobacco was picked and cured and sold.

He curled his hand around the cup, fingers flinching back a little from the heat. It was still too hot for drinking, but he took the handle anyhow and slurped a little across his tongue. The fierce warmth of it shrivelled his taste-buds and settled down into his chest, and he could feel himself beginning to wake up properly.

Bethel was back at the stove, stirring the hominy with a critical eye. Then she put another pan on to heat and went back to starting her dough. "Lottie ought to join you out in the fields today," she said. "Nothin' for her to do 'round this here house."

Cullen shook his head. "It's no work for a girl," he said. "She'll catch sick, and then where'll we be? 'Sides, I need her here in case something goes wrong with Mary. How would you take care of her and Gabe and come to fetch me all at once?"

"That chile goin' grow up spoilt if you don' teach her to do what needs doing," Bethel warned. "She ten years old now; old enough to do her share."

"She does her share," said Cullen. "It's harder 'n you think keeping a three-year-old boy entertained, and she helps in the house and she hoes the vegetable patch. She was a good help with the seedlings, and come curing time she'll be so busy hauling wood chips to the fire you'll think she's run off."

Bethel turned, floury fists planted on the hips of her broad work apron. "I know jus' how hard it is keepin' a boy entertained," she said. "An' when you see that boy grow up an' start workin' hisself to the bone while some shif'less li'l girl as ought to be out in the fields is wranglin' him into lettin' her hang 'round the house like this a hundred-hand place an' she Miz Sutcliffe's hair-dressin' maid, then you tell me how hard that be!"

She wiped her hands wrathfully and flipped the slices of side meat onto two plates. One she set aside to cool, and the other she balanced on the stove shelf where it could keep warm. Bethel tipped a dollop of grease out of the used pan into the clean one. Then she set about mixing the rest of the drippings with a helping of coffee and stirring in pinches of pepper and mustard for gravy. Cullen took a long draught from his cup, savouring it despite his scalded tongue. The sorghum left a faint medicinal taste, but the brew was strong and sweet and his veil of fatigue began to lift in earnest. His stomach was grumbling now as the wholesome smells of breakfast grew stronger, and he knew he could find the courage to face another day.

Bethel disappeared briefly into the pantry and emerged with two large brown eggs. With one in each hand she cracked them on the side of the greased frying pan and opened them into it. They sizzled enticingly and Cullen hastily downed another swallow of coffee as his mouth began to water. Another summertime nuisance, his constant voracious appetite. It had never much troubled him in prior years, when the smokehouse was full and the larder was burgeoning and there was money in the bank in Meridian. Then he'd just gone ahead and eaten his fill. This year, however, when he was counting pennies and figuring when each row of the garden might be ripe and keeping a perpetual anxious eye on the tobacco lest a moment's inattention should cause the crop to fail, it was yet another plague to cope with. Last year's crop had been a poor one, and for all the assurances from Nate and Elijah that it had been a bad year and nothing more Cullen fretted. He wasn't much of a farmer, but he could read; tobacco was a demanding crop, and it tired out the soil. If his soil was no good anymore they wouldn't get much of a harvest however hard they worked.

The hominy was ready, and Bethel heaped a generous helping onto the warming plate. She gave the gravy a last energetic stirring and strained it through a cloth into the china gravy boat that Cullen's mother had brought with her from Charleston almost forty years ago. While it settled she opened the oven door and took out the biscuits, now warm and golden. These too she slipped onto the plate, and then flipped the eggs out of the pan deftly, without breaking the yolks or tearing their crispy lacy edges. Finally she turned and looked at the young man.

"You goin' eat out there like you ought to?" she said, jerking her chin at the dining room door. It was more of a command than a question, but Cullen gave her one of his most charming grins.

"No one out there for me to talk to," he said. "I'll get lonesome."

She scowled, but only half-heartedly, and set the plate and the gravy before him. He poured the fluid liberally over the ham and hominy. A moment later she was back with knife and fork.

Cullen looked at his plate, restraining the urge to tear into it like a starving man. "Eggs and side meat?" he said wearily, thinking of their dwindling stores and the long months until November. "Bit extravagant for one meal."

"You eat every mouthful of that, you hear me?" Bethel demanded. "You goin' out in that dew, you need a good breakfast inside you. No sense you getting' youself laid up in bed too, now is there?'

The savoury grits soured for a moment in Cullen's mouth as his thoughts shifted to Mary. The doctor hadn't offered much by way of explanation for her illness, and had prescribed nothing but rest and nourishing food. For this opinion he had been paid two dollars, which Cullen couldn't really spare. Doc Whitehead was a good sort, and would have let the fee pass if he'd suspected, but Cullen had been determined he should not suspect. If a man couldn't scrape together a couple of silver Liberties for his wife's medical treatment he wasn't much of a man at all. He was far more worried about Mary than the money, for she had been wan and listless for days and could not even muster much interest in their son.

He tried to put the thought from his mind and broke a biscuit in half. He bit into the warm shell, hard and faintly stale despite Bethel's skillful reheating. He missed having fresh biscuits at breakfast. In the summertime he rose so early that the stove wasn't yet hot enough for baking; in another hour Bethel would serve up a fresh batch for Mary and Gabe, and keep a couple back for him to eat tomorrow. He sopped the quickbread in the gravy and munched, telling himself to enjoy what he had.

The side meat was done just how he liked it, and the treat of being able to have it with an egg cheered him. He took another forkful of hominy and washed it down with his coffee. Bethel was hard at work on her bread dough now, mixing flour and water and salt with her starter.

"You comin' up to the house for dinner today?" she asked.

"Doubt it," said Cullen. His stomach was beginning to feel comfortably full now, and the effort of eating like a civilized person was no longer so onerous. "Waste of time, and I'll be too much of a mess to come in the house."

"A hot dinner wouldn't do you no harm," Bethel grumbled. "Maybe I'll sen' Lottie down with something nice."

"Maybe you won't!" Cullen protested. "You know how that looks. I'll take my dinner with me, same as always. You want to give us a treat, send Lottie with a bucket of cold water 'bout two o'clock." He chewed thoughtfully. "Make it two buckets: she can use the wheelbarrow to tote them."

Outside the sky was fading now from grey to the nascent indigo of morning. Hurriedly Cullen scooped up the rest of the hominy and shoveled it into his mouth. He got to his feet, draining his coffee cup as he rose, and snagged the second biscuit from his otherwise empty plate. Bethel was tying the cooled pork into a napkin with two bread-and-butter sandwiches and a peach. She turned and handed it to him, holding him for a moment with a searching and thoughtful gaze.

"It goin' be a hot one today, Mist' Cullen," she said, brushing fondly at a stray crumb on his collar. "You be sure an' take care."

He grinned. "How would I ever get by without you fussing over me?" he teased.

"I don' know," she said frankly. "Bes' hope you never have to find out."

Cullen snorted and took his hat from its hook. He wore a cheap straw when he was out in the tobacco: no sense in ruining a good hat. Planting it on his head, slightly canted over his right eyebrow, he gave Bethel's hand a quick squeeze. "If Mary takes a turn you send that girl out to fetch me, you hear?" he said.

"You think I wouldn't jump like a June bug to get you out of them fields for an hour or two?" Bethel said. More gently she added, "Missus ain't goin' take a turn: don' you worry 'bout her. Be up on her feet in no time."

He offered her a small grateful smile for this reassurance, and then he was out the back door and into the predawn gloom. He could hear the distant sound of voices past the willows, where the Negro cabins stood. The henhouse was still silent, its denizens waiting for daylight to raise their accustomed ruckus. Only Jeb, the aged possum-hound, was abroad at this hour, waiting eagerly to greet his master. Cullen stooped to scratch the dog behind his flopping ears, offering the rapidly cooling biscuit. Jeb devoured it eagerly and then loped off in the direction of the cabins. His arrival would alert Nate and Elijah that the boss was abroad, and they'd hurry to finish their breakfasts and join him.

The first stop on the morning circuit was the stable, where the horses waited to be fed and watered and brushed. Cullen hauled open the left half of the broad double door and slipped inside, stepping over the tongue of the buggy that now only saw regular use on Sundays. In the first year of their marriage, he and Mary had taken great pleasure in afternoon rides, touring the county that he knew as well as his own skin and that she was only just discovering. Those had been better times, however, and he could not often be spared from the land even to transact necessary business in town. The matched Morgans they had brought from New York State to pull it were now the only horses on the place, for Cullen had sold his hunter in the spring to help make up the tax money that hadn't been covered by the proceeds of a poor crop. Pike and Bonnie were beautiful horses, strong and patient and tireless, and they were as good for riding as for driving. They stirred in their stalls at Cullen's familiar scent, and Bonnie nickered impatiently.

"Easy there, girl," Cullen called. "I'm coming." He took the tin feed pail from its hook and began filling it with the heavy wooden scoop tied to the side of the bin. He didn't wonder that the horses were restless: all week he had been without the opportunity to ride them, and they had had to be content with Lottie leading them around the yard before supper. Damn the tobacco and its endless coddling, but if he didn't coddle it he wouldn't be able to feed his people this winter, nor give the government its due, nor keep the land or a roof over his wife and child. Chafe though he might against the eternal futile labour of the farm, he couldn't see any honourable escape from it.

He shook out the feed for the horses and put down the pail so that he could stroke their velvet noses while they ate. Bonnie needled at this distraction, but Pike focused placidly on his breakfast. He was rewarded by a thorough rubbing of his ears and neck. Cullen supposed he ought to go down and take care of the mules, but he hesitated. The two teams that did most of the heavy labour – ploughing, hauling, breaking up soil, pulling out rotted tree stumps – were reliable, but they were ugly and they were stupid. He had never much cared for mules, and in this solitary moment before the slaves came up to the stable he wanted to enjoy his time with his horses.

Someone had filled the trough last night, and so Cullen was spared the dreary trudging to and from the well. He took the curry-comb from its peg and climbed over the gate of Pike's stall to rub him down. It wasn't Cullen's responsibility to muck out the stalls, but if the others didn't turn up by the time he was through with the brushing he thought he just might do it. Anything to keep away from the mules, which in the last couple of years he had come to resent as a symbol of his general discontent. But no sooner had he scrambled over into Bonnie's sanctum than a dark shape appeared silhouetted against the faint gathering light in the doorway and Nate's voice rang out.

"Morning to you, Mist' Cullen," he said. "She goin' to be a hot one."

"So I've heard," Cullen said. He heard the rattling of grain on tin and knew that Nate was dishing out for the mules. He curried more swiftly now.

"Bethel said she were goin' to have a word with you 'bout Lottie workin' in the fields." There was a guarded note to Nate's tone now, as if he intended to take a measure of his master's mettle based upon the response to this statement. Long ago Cullen and Nate had been playmates, charging about the plantation like a matched pair of hellions, one white and one black. Cullen had gone away to university and left a lanky and high-spirited youth behind. He had returned to find a man who, for all their shared childhood, was more a stranger than a friend. To this day he didn't understand what had come between them in those years apart. Sometimes he wanted to talk about it, if not with Nate then with Mary, but he didn't quite dare. He knew what Mary, at least, would say.

"I told her no," he said. "Lottie's too young to be working in wet tobacco, and with Mrs. Bohannon abed I want her near the house. The radishes need thinning: she can do that instead."

There was an inscrutable grunt from the other side of the stable. Lottie was Meg's daughter by her abroad husband, a cotton foreman at the neighbouring Sutcliffe plantation. Nate's interest in the child had initially puzzled Cullen, until he realized that his old friend held something of an unrequited candle for Meg. Of course, fondness or not, it was only basic human consideration to worry about a ten-year-old pulling suckers in a dew-soaked field. It was certainly known to be done. Most of the neighbours were cotton planters, but those who did raise a field or two of tobacco on the side indulged in the unhealthy practice of sending young slaves out to tend the growing plants. Except at transplanting time, when every pair of hands was needed to roust the seedlings from their beds and move them out into the furrows, Cullen kept Lottie well out of it.

Elijah had joined them now, and Cullen led Bonnie out of her stall so it could be raked. He kept an arm on her neck, murmuring to her and drinking in the earthy scent of her mane. He took a wizened carrot from the dwindling sack and fed it to her, wishing he had a lump of sugar to offer instead. He didn't mind doing without himself, but depriving those he cared about – human and animal alike – was hard on a man's pride.

Elijah worked with the efficiency that only an old labourer can. He was a remnant of better days, when the plantation had flourished under Cullen's father and there had been thirty Negros working under the one-time foreman. Now he turned his hand to anything, like everyone else on the place, and he was wise enough or merciful enough to keep from reminiscing about happier times. All that was left of those old days was Elijah and Bethel and the land itself; though where once seven hundred of the thousand acres had been cultivated there were now less than a hundred, and those hundred growing less fruitful with every passing year. Though he rotated his tobacco from field to field each year, planting wheat or feed corn in its former spot, Cullen suspected the ground was about used up. He had thought of trying to break up some of the pasture land, but that was a huge task for three men to tackle in addition to all the other labours of the year. He didn't know if he even had the right to call his land a plantation anymore, but hell if he was going to settle for raising his son as nothing but a poor farmer.

The old man backed out of the stall and Cullen took up a pitchfork to spread fresh straw while Elijah trucked the muck barrow out to the mulch heap. When the tobacco was in they'd load the wagon with the foul-smelling stuff and spend day after stinking day churning it into the worn-out soil. Cullen cleaned Bonnie's hooves and led her back into the clean stall, then took Pike out just in time for Elijah's return. When the horses were settled and Elijah went to repeat the process with Nate and the mules, Cullen laved his hands in the wash-bucket and left the stable.

Dawn was breaking, rose and carmine on the horizon. By its light he could make out the shapes in the dooryard: Lottie's skinny calico-clad shadow scattering corn for the chickens, and her strong-backed mother coming up the hill from the cowshed with the milk pails. Cullen raised a hand in greeting to Lottie and hurried to open the back door for Meg.

"Thank you, Mist' Cullen," she said politely as she turned sideways to pass through. Almost instantly she was engulfed in Bethel's scolding, and Cullen eased the door closed and moved stealthily out of range.

He came upon Lottie just as she was finishing with the chickens, and she dropped him a curtsy that made her many pigtails bob. "Mornin' Massa," she said. "Ma say maybe you put me in the fields today?"

"No," Cullen said firmly. He wondered just how enthusiastically Bethel had put forward this notion, and was relieved he had only five slaves if it meant he didn't have to have this conversation more than two more times. "I want you to help Bethel look after Mister Gabe, and I want you to see about thinning them radishes. If the peas need tying up again, you find some good stakes in the woodshed and take care of it. And look in on Mrs. Bohannon from time to time; see if she needs anything."

"Yassir," the girl said. "Missus Bohannon… she ain't goin' die, is she? Ma says sometimes ladies with troubles, they die."

Swallowing the flutter of terror that rose in his throat at this possibility, Cullen shook his head. "No, she's going to be just fine," he said.

"Then maybe she goin' have a baby?" said Lottie hopefully. "I'd be a good nurse for a baby, Mist' Bohannon; honest I would."

"I know you would, but she's not having a baby neither," said Cullen. "She's just a little poorly. A few more days' rest, that's all she needs: but you take care of her now, Lottie. I'm relying on you."

The girl's chest puffed out a little. "Yassir, you can rely on me!" she proclaimed. "Ain't I looked after Mist' Gabe like he my own li'l brother? I wisht Mrs. Bohannon would have 'nother baby. Ma cain't."

Cullen frowned at this revelation. "What do you mean, Ma cain't?" he asked.

Lottie shook her head wisely. "On account that no-good new overseer at Hartwood don' like Pa havin' comp'ny. Ma says unless'n that white trash die or move off down south for the wages, she ain't never goin' have 'nother baby."

"Oh." While a trifle startled at the apparently frank discussion Lottie had had with her mother on the subject, Cullen was tremendously relieved to know the problem was a logistical one. For a moment he had been fearing for Meg's health, and one more such worry was likely to prove more than he could stand. "Well, you run and help Bethel with breakfast, then, and you mind her. Though pr'haps," he added with a conspiratorial wink; "you might tell her I said if there's a spare biscuit going she should give it to you."

With many a "yassir" and a "thankee sir", Lottie ran off towards the house, narrowly missing a collision as Meg came out with the slop bucket for the hogs. For a moment Cullen stood where he was, half expecting the woman to come to him with her own roundabout approach to the question of Lottie working in the fields. When she did not he decided that Bethel must have shared his decision, and headed off to the well.