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The rich man and the fool

Robert R. Hostetler

Cyrus Stamps owned a sprawling plantation, the largest of its kind.

One day Master Stamps – for that’s what his slaves called him, and he owned more slaves than any other man in the county – woke up screaming from a dreadful nightmare. He thundered

Photo: P.P. Pauls

down the stairs of his white-columned mansion and barrelled into the kitchen, where a white-whiskered slave bent over his breakfast, his hands folded in prayer.

“Thomas!” he thundered at the slave. The black man raised his head. “If you want to give thanks for your food, old man,” Stamps growled, “then thank the man whose kitchen you’re eating it in!”

The slave’s lips spread to reveal a tidy row of teeth, yellowed with age. “I do thank you, Mas’ Stamps. But I thank the Lord, too, that though I am a slave, I’m slave to a rich man.”

Stamps interrupted him. “Thomas,” he said, “I don’t have time for your prattle about God. I got something more important on my mind. I had a dream last night, Thomas. Seemed as real as you do. Still does. The dream told me, plain as the nose on my face, ‘The richest man in the valley will die tonight.’ ”

Thomas’s eyes widened, for both knew who that was.

“Get the buggy,” Stamps ordered. “We got us a job to do.”

For the rest of the day, Stamps and the slave Thomas rode about the county in the rich man’s stately carriage. Stamps’s nostrils flared like a lathered horse, as he worked to turn back the prophecy of the dream.

He went to his lawyer’s office in the courthouse, where he had a battery of papers drawn up. The lawyer stared at him like he’d just given birth to a baby in the middle of his fancy office rug. Of course, Stamps said nothing about the dream, for fear that the lawyer might figure out his plan.

He left the courthouse, patting the pocket which held the documents, and instructed Thomas to turn the buggy and head back in the direction from which they’d come. It seemed to Thomas that the sleek horses couldn’t go fast enough for Master Stamps. He kept leaning forward and urging the slave to “git ’em up”.

At his master’s direction, Thomas steered past the Stamps plantation and headed for the parcel of land that lay just to the west of his place. The old slave’s face wore a searching look as he reined in the horses in front of the Compton mansion. Mr. Compton and Mr. Stamps had had a running feud for five years over some land that both men claimed along their common border.

Stamps bounded up the stairs of the mansion like he was calling on a sweetheart. Compton, of course, eyed him with suspicion; but they were soon walking into the house, Stamps chattering away like they were old friends.

The sky was darkening when Cyrus Stamps finally skipped down the wide stairs and jumped into the buggy. Compton waved from the doorway, blushed and smiled in a puzzled way.

As Thomas turned the buggy back home, Stamps sat in the back, cackling like a hen that’s just laid. “Hoo-wee!” he called, slapping a knee. “Thomas, you’re slave to the smartest man in the state – probably in the whole country! Hoo-wee! Compton didn’t know what hit him. He stared at me like I’d just sprouted a second head! Same kind of look the lawyer gave me earlier today.” He was nearly shouting. “I told that old fool that our fussin’ and fightin’ had got to stop, and we needed to make peace, being the two richest men in the valley and all.” His eyes sparkled like fireflies. “I told him that as an act of good will I was bringing a paper all signed and proper that would make those acres we’d fought over all his, free and clear. And what’s more –” A fit of giggling, interspersed with a hacking cough, overtook him; but he cleared his throat and continued. “What’s more, I said I was throwing in half my slave holdings! D’you hear that, Thomas? Not you, o’ course, but you see what it means, don’t you? Compton’s got almost twice as many slaves as I got now. Hoo-wee! That dream can’t touch me now, Thomas! No sirree! You know why? ‘Cause I ain’t the richest man in the valley no more, Thomas! Compton is! He’s the richest man in the valley!”

“You hear me?” he cried. “Thomas! You hear what I’m saying? I’m talking to you, Thomas!”

Stamps leaned forward to touch the whiskered slave. It was then that he realized that the horses were walking home by their own direction. The slave no longer held the reins.

The richest man in the valley had just died.

Robert R. Hostetler lives in Hamilton, Ohio.

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Last modified May 26, 2000.

© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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