Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [125]
“What do you know about rice farming? Everything you have here comes from the Africans.”
“Then perhaps I shall depart this world at an early date,” my uncle said, “and give you the opportunity to work sooner as a sole trader.”
“Is that what you wish?” my aunt said.
“No, no, no, no. I do not wish that. But if I did leave early, you can sell The Oaks, and sell the slaves and have enough money to move to town and establish yourself in business.”
“And me? Where would that leave me?”
My cousin’s voice turned almost to a childish whine.
“Working with your mother,” my uncle said.
“This is the only work I know,” my cousin said. “Here, at The Oaks.” He paused, as if contemplating some important fact. “But if we had to sell all this, I suppose…”
Rebecca began crying all the louder.
“Rebecca, please,” Jonathan said.
Rebecca stood up and pointed her finger at Jonathan.
“I am a lady in distress. To think you’d sell all these people!”
“You are not a lady,” my aunt said, “none of us is a lady. In fact, you’re much more like a child, with your childish notions of teaching these slaves to read.”
“Be quiet, Mother, please,” Jonathan said. “Rebecca is doing a fine thing.”
“I am pleased you say so,” Rebecca said. “Of late I haven’t been sure what you thought of my work.”
My aunt, her mother-in-law, ignored her remark.
She said directly to Jonathan: “And are you doing a fine thing too? Cavorting with the—”
“That will be enough,” my uncle said, making it seem as though speaking were as much a chore as lifting. “All this talk about my departure is quite premature and it is putting a terrible strain on my old corpus and I want to end it right now. Do you hear me, Jonathan?”
“Yes, sir,” my cousin said.
“Mother?”
Silence for a moment. Then she made a reluctant, “Yes.”
“Daughter?”
“I will be silent,” Rebecca said.
“Thank you,” my uncle said. And then he turned to me.
“Nephew?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He has nothing to do with this,” Rebecca said.
“Is he teaching them, too?” My aunt turned to me and made a smile close to a leer—it was sickening to see this woman do such a thing with her mouth.
“Are you?”
I did not know what to say.
“Mother, please,” my uncle said.
“You sound like him,” my aunt said, pointing to Jonathan.
“I am his son,” Jonathan said.
“And whose sons are yours?” my aunt said to him. “Or daughters!”
At which point Rebecca made a wailing noise, like something you feared as a child you might hear at night in the dark.
Bam!
My uncle slammed the heel of his hand on the table, rattling dishes.
“I will not have this kind of talk at my table,” he said. “I will not!”
All of her offensiveness disappearing in an instant, my aunt now began to cry.
“Mother,” Jonathan said, “if you are going to become a sole trader you must not give in to tears.”
My uncle turned to him with a fury I had not seen before.
“Your mother will not speak to you anymore about these matters and you—you will not speak to your mother in this fashion.”
“Yes, sir, sorry, sir,” my cousin said, suddenly remorseful.
Rebecca went on crying even as my aunt’s weeping subsided.
I noticed just then that the slaves had left the room.
How I wish I had followed them, to the barns or the fields, wherever they had fled, because the next minute brought the sound of men and horses outside the house and then someone striding up the front steps of the veranda and knocking loudly at the door.
“Nevermore!” I said.
“What is that?” my cousin asked.
“I’ll go,” I said.
“Ask Black Jack,” my uncle said.
I paid him no mind and left the room and went to the front door.
Which I opened and felt the shock of seeing once again the silver-haired man in the top-hat who had boarded the boat in Perth Amboy and beat the horse and slave in town. Behind him just beyond the house waited men on horseback, Langerhans and his crew, and one or two others whom I did not recognize.
“You again?” he said. “These then are your people?”
“May I ask you what your business is, sir?”
“That is precisely the question I have come to ask here, and as it turns out I have come