Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [156]
My cousin’s brother-in-law, Joseph Salvador, the red-haired Jew from Charleston, stood in the thick of it.
“If we are to live as real men,” he said, “then we can only be governed by a union of free men.” He pointed to a man across the veranda from him. “I am a real man. And you are a real man.”
“Indeed,” the man said, touching a finger to his collar. “But what do you mean by ‘real’?”
“Free,” said Joseph Salvador. “A real man is a free man.”
Another man spoke up. “But are we now free?”
“Not until we govern ourselves,” said Joseph Salvador. “To give power to a federal government that is made up of no one makes no sense to me. Real men are states’ men. And a government with no state is not a real government.”
“Especially a government that may one day tell us we cannot hold slaves,” the same man Joseph Salvador had addressed now spoke up.
“A government whose very fortress sits at the entrance to our harbor,” said another man.
My cousin leaned toward me and said in a whisper, “He is the head of our bank.”
Tariffs, money, slaves, the conversation continued for a while, leaving my head both swirling with matter-of-fact thoughts and oddly disposed to dreaming. Liza, yes, she was on my mind. A slave. And might she one day be freed by federal fiat? Become a real person? Her eyes, her mouth, her hair. None of these men would wish it so. Was she real, or only a dream person? The way she touched me. Her fingers on me. Her beating heart. The perfume of her steaming breasts and loins. The flavor of her color, the vinegary smoothness of her flesh to my tongue. The anti-federals wanted to keep her a slave, the federals wanted to free her. And so where did I stand?
The meeting—and my daydreaming—went on for hours. After it adjourned Joseph Salvador joined us in the yeasty warm half-light at a local tavern.
“And what did you think, Mr. New York?” he said to me while we tore apart two roast birds and drank tankards of vinegary ale.
“Of the meeting?”
“Of course, of course, the meeting.”
I chewed, swallowed, washed the food down with ale, dabbed at my lips with my coat sleeve.
“It put forward an interesting perspective.”
“Merely interesting? It shines a light on a path, I believe. And if we follow it, both terrible and wonderful things may occur.”
“Secession, you mean?”
“That, yes.”
“We are all—” and I had never thought about this before but the thought came naturally—“one family, all of us in the various states, and so secession seems wrong to me. Rather like a son declaring he is no longer part of a family.”
Now my cousin spoke up.
“Your example is flawed, Nathaniel,” he said. “The states are not children. If it is a family, it is a family made up all of fathers.”
“Brothers, perhaps?”
“If you will.”
“If half of the brothers withdraw to make their own family, what happens to the others?”
Joseph Salvador made an answer, but I was withdrawing at that moment back into those thoughts of Liza, enhanced, no doubt, by my draughts of ale. Her eyes, one the color of dawn, the other the color of trees.
“The truth!” my cousin said, jarring me from my reverie by pounding his fist onto the table.
“Don’t push the man,” Joseph Salvador said. “He is new to our ways.”
“No, I want him to tell us the truth,” my cousin said.
“The truth?” I looked up from my ale, wondering about the nature of the question.
“If you could live here like us,” Joseph Salvador said, “you would, would you not? Away from your cold climate, at ease on a plantation, or, urban fellow that you are, enjoying yourself in this city.”
“And,” my cousin put in, “You would