Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [155]
Why some men turn their lives into the duty of making kindnesses for others and why some turn toward making other people squirm and even suffer there is no answer, is there? Who could say? Who knew, who knew?
He asked her about her reading. He gave her some new books.
Just before she left for her ride back to the plantation, he took her hands in his—it was the strangest thing that had ever happened to her—force she knew, anger she knew, worry she knew, pain she knew, but never this before, never this—and stared deeply into her eyes.
Just before she went out the door, he said, “I wish you a good future, Liza.”
Chapter Seventy-three
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A Meeting
The air in the kitchen that morning roiled thick with the odor of frying meat and baking breads while Precious Sally prepared my breakfast in silence. I ate in silence. Until the hour when Jonathan and I made our departure from The Oaks in the carriage, rolling along the leafy trail that led to the main road, I did not speak a word aloud.
Finally, I could not help myself.
“Explain to me again, Cousin, just what are we going to hear?” My mind was filled almost entirely with thoughts of Liza. Politics was not something to which I wanted to give any thought.
“Here is the essence,” Jonathan had said to me as we rode to town. “You’ll recall my brother-in-law, Joseph Salvador, who sits in the legislature?”
“Yes, I remember him. Tall, red-haired? With a nose that looks as though it’s been flattened by a spoon?”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way. But yes. He has invited us to this gathering, to which he has gained entry by virtue of his service in the legislature.”
“And they are discussing what?”
“The perils of nullification, the possibilities of secession.”
“Nullification?”
“The state of South Carolina rejected some years ago the principle that the federal government might set tariffs for all the states. It was hurting our merchants and farmers.”
“And secession?”
“A more drastic proposal. If Henry Clay had not persuaded Congress to pass a bill keeping tariffs low, it might have found more backing.”
“I am thinking,” I said, “that if New York City seceded from the Union, we might form our own sovereign island. And make our own navy of the river barges that go back and forth to Albany, capital of another country.”
“It is amusing to think of these matters, yes, Cousin, if you are not from South Carolina. Here it is deadly serious.”
“Money is always a serious matter,” I said.
“Oh, yes, and add to that a matter even more serious, and you have a palimpsest of trouble.”
“A palimpsest?”
“One matter laid upon another.”
The day was hot, dust rose in columns toward the branches of the leafy oaks, and we stopped speaking for a while.
After a time my cousin inclined his head toward me and said, “You are very quiet, Cousin Nate. Are you feeling poorly?”
“Just fine, Cuz,” I said, taking a deep breath, so that I did not allow myself to spew out everything that I wanted to say.
“Quite hot today,” he said, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. “Makes you almost wish you were a nigger, does it not? You’d be used to this heat, having lived your life in Africa. Or having a father who lived there.”
“Your slaves,” I said, “most of them I think were born here, of parents who were born here.”
“Yes, but back of every one of them, you find an African.”
I paused to ponder that, musing about all of the mysterious Africans standing in long rows behind my Liza. I knew where I came from, and I wondered, wondered about her. All my wondering rose up with the billowing towers of dust.
In town