Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [112]
“Feel it,” he said.
I reached down and took one of the tender stalks in my fingers, enjoying its smoothness and breathing in the humid odor of the earth and the few inches of water in which it grew along with its thousand thousand sisters.
“The little darlings,” he said, “they be needing the support, and it is time. The tide has gone all the way out, so the creek is more fresh water than salt, and the marsh been cleaned by the upstream waters.”
About thirty or so slaves stood at the gates, waiting for his command. He raised a hand above his head.
“How long will you be staying here, mas’? You going to stay long enough to see the harvest?”
I shook my head, feeling myself informed with my new way of thinking.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I believe I will return to New York quite soon. Possibly within a few days.”
“Is that true?” He kept his hand raised above his head.
“Yes,” I said with a nod, amazed that my resolve had stuck with me and at the same time wondering what my cousin might be thinking if he could overhear this conversation.
“Then we got to work quick,” Isaac said, making a pulling motion and drawing his hand back to his side.
The slaves bent to their work, opening one by one the doors of the small dams and standing back as the water trickled in from the marsh and the creek beyond. Though the water level rose slowly, the sharp stink of the salt rose quickly to my nose.
Bring the river
[the slaves sang out]
Bring the river
To the garden.
Bring the river
Bring the river
To the garden…
Bring the river
Bring the river
To the gar-ar-den,
Bring the river
To the garden
Oh, mah Lord…
Here was a striking event, the way these people brought the work and the singing together, making one lovely melody of sound and physical labor. They moved slowly and deliberately, as did their voices, and the effect put to shame all the music I had ever heard in the synagogue, and certainly any stray songs I might have heard trickling from the churches in my city of a Sunday.
Oh, bring the river to the garden!
“So you see,” Isaac was saying to me, “the fresh water floods in, and lifts the stalks, and keeps them lifted until they are strong enough to stand on their own, which is the time when we open the flood doors at the bottom of the field and drain the water down. In a moon and a half…it will be ready…”
“A moon and a half,” I said.
“A month and a bit more,” he said.
“And then the harvest?”
“And then the harvest.”
“So, Isaac, you employ here knowledge of the plants themselves—”
“Yes.” He nodded his head.
“And the growing season.”
“Yes.”
“And a knowledge of the tides.”
“Oh, yes, the tides, very important.”
“And the mixture of minerals and such in the water.”
“Yes, oh, yes.”
“And the climate.”
“The sun, you mean? Yes, yes, sun and moon. In Africa they pay as much attention to the cool light of the moon as they do to the heat of the sun.”
“But you have never been there?”
“Mas’, I been there. I am there now. I am there always. I make Africa here.”
A shout went up from the flooded field. The slaves went running, and we followed after.
The girl who had stood full-bellied at the flood-gate now bent over, doubled and doubled again.
Her water had broken, spilled out into the flooding field.
A good sign! All these slave folks cried out.
My second birth here in my short stay on the plantation! I should have been taking this as a sign of rebirth, in myself, and in the life around me. And yet in me rose up so suddenly—I could not then say why—such gushing waters of regret that I wanted to drown myself in my own confusion.
Chapter Forty-seven
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Is a Decision Near?
And how did you enjoy the flooding of the rice plants?” my uncle said to me that night when the first course of our evening meal was set before us.
(My uncle, about whom more in a moment, was sitting in front of a full plate of food—meat, rice—a bountiful meal produced by Precious Sally the slave cook