Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [148]
And yes, he dreamed. But of what, on awaking, he could not recall. It grew quite hot and he took off his shirt and marveled at how the drops of water pooled on his chest. Now he imagined more wildly while awake than he had while sleeping.
What if his skin turned pale and he stood up, a white man in rags, shirtless, and decided that he would wander to town.
Take his time. Dawdle. No one to shout at him about returning to work.
In town, he would check in at the shipping office.
A ship to England where all those authors lived?
Yes, he would pay with his white money and shop quickly at some of the nearby stores and return with a wardrobe adequate for his journey.
And then board.
And sail!
Away, away across the ocean, the waves rolling beneath the ship, the ship moving in a direct line across the heaving water toward London.
But why not return to the old country?
No, no, too many slavers there still. He heard the stories.
The stories.
He lay there beside the creek, eyes closed now, listening to vagrant murmurs from the current and the leaves above his head.
Thoughts of his father drifted through his mind.
And how did he himself compare to this man?
He had now reached this age, and he had nothing, no wife, no child. Only the work to which he was bound by (invisible but nonetheless strong strong) manacles. Some friends, a slender thread tying him to Liza. Animals he liked. Now and then a woman.
At least his father had a son.
Father worked himself into drunken lassitude.
He himself, thinking of running, running, but where?
Anywhere.
If he could only…
If he could…
Put these Jews and Christians all behind him and ascend into the sky with the great gods who would grow wings on him if he dared to try…
Wings…flying into the ultramarine ocean of sky, sky of ocean not far away. Over to London, perhaps even to Africa! Dozing, musing. He slept.
And awoke, the sun now much lower in the sky. And such a certain stillness in the air that made it difficult for him to imagine that anything else was going on anywhere else on the plantation, in the county, in town, in the ocean or sky, in the entire world as he knew it.
Except that he probably should move along toward pretending to work. It set a bad example when an overseer oversaw as little as he did. Nevertheless, the Jews did not seem to care. Except for the young master, who seemed happy with nobody, nobody seemed unhappy with him. With a yawn and a sigh he picked himself up and headed back toward the cabins, seeing no one, passing no one.
Now the sky was turning darker than the earlier blue, giving him unaccountable thoughts about his own color and how he might, or the gods might, change it, lighten him or darken him, however they would have it.
The sun does that to white folks.
Dark-tinged Langerhans, for instance.
Oh, Okolun, may you burn that Langerhans to a dark crisp that he might know the pain of enslavement!
He was enjoying this thought when the old witch woman met him at the door of his father’s cabin.
“What you doing here?” he said. “Where’s my Daddy?”
“Went away,” the old woman said, her voice deepening as she, oh, yes, oh, yes, spoke through herself in his father’s voice. The power of it knocked him backward into the yard.
“What?”
He dusted himself off and returned to the door.
“Daddy?”
“Gone,” the voice said. “Gone with your Mama!”
“Gone what?”
He pushed in through the narrow space and saw no one but the old crone.
“Gone where?”
“Gone, I’m gone. Come in here! A last word for you. Poor woman couldn’t hep herself. Master took it from her. These years, I hide it from you.”
“What, Daddy? What are you saying about my Mama and the master?”
“Sorry, my boy. So sorry. One night, a dark night, he come to the cabins. Found her sitting on the step. Where was I? Out dancing to the drum way off in the forest. I come home, everthing changed. Here you come. That’s why she drowned herself after she birthed you. All these years…”
Isaac grabbed the woman by the throat. His first thought was to wring her neck like a chicken,