Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [169]
“‘You!’ He made a sound like a man has taken a long drink of water.
“Over and over again that night—it happened again and again. Once I pushed him away and he slapped me. After that he did whatever he wanted, like a child discovers he can get free sugar candy whenever he wants. Next morning I didn’t feel so good, in my heart, in my everything. And it wasn’t just me, it was the ocean. I ran on the sand, I dug my holes in the sand, I dug for those crabs, but I had never been on the water before, so I didn’t know if it was the rolling ship or what he was doing to me that was making me feel so bad.
“I suppose it was both, water and awful man, and his breath smelled like nothing I had ever smelled before, until I went out here into the swamps.
(I was truly shaking by then, shaking and shaking, the story producing in me a fever such as I had never known. And the light had faded and it would soon be time to move.)
“We got off the boat in Charleston and he took me to his rooms in a hotel, and he made me serve him like a slave. He had these meetings to tend to and he always took me with him. Sometimes the other men there stared at me, stared at him, but he didn’t pay no mind, except when now and then he would grab me by the back of my neck and pull me up so that I had to stand on my toes, and he’d say, in a big voice, ‘The question is property, gentleman, property, property. Can a tree think? Can a horse pray? Does a nigger have a soul? I ask you that, I ask you…’
“Every day it was like that, every night he attacked me, treating me like a dog. There was a time or two when I could have run off but I couldn’t get my feet to move, and where could I get my feet to go? I didn’t know anybody where I was, didn’t even know where I was until later. He just kept me with him, like his pet dog.
“Now, through all this, I saw lots of slave people on the street, and one day when I was alone in the room in the hotel I leaned down and called to a strong-looking man, ‘Hey, hello?’
“And he looked around, looked up, saw me waving to him, begging him with my hands and eyes, but he kept on walking.
“Darn, it near broke my soul to see him walk away without helping me. But a little while later, when the man was still out at one of those meetings, came a knock at the door, and it was a hotel maid, and behind her stood the black man I called to on the street.
“‘I’se knowed sumpin’ is wrong,’ the woman said to him, and he nodded, and they talked to me and I told him I was a free boy and the man had stolen me away from New Jersey.
“‘Darlin’,’ the woman said, ‘we got to help you.’
“She sounded so much like my Ma, it made me cry.
“‘Darlin’, you going to be all right.’
“They asked me about the man, and I told them he left the room every morning, and so they told me they would come back the next day.
“The next morning, after waiting for the bad man to leave on his business, quick as lightning they stole me out of that room, and took me downstairs, and they wrapped me up in cloth and put me in the cart with all sorts of tarps and ropes, me burrowed underneath, and they rode me somewhere to where I could smell the water. I could hear the talking, I could hear shouts and I could hear dogs bark and I could whistles and bells. We stopped and they took me out of the cart and onto the boat, and my heart felt so good, I am going back to Amboy! I felt like I could nearly fly there like a bird I felt so light and uplifted!
“The boat went up the river to the creek and took me to the brickyard at the plantation, and there the niggers hid me for all this time, and even when I didn’t even know it turned out I was waiting for Liza and you to come for me.”
Shadows filled the spaces between the trees and we were up and moving, even as the trees themselves began to fade into the general dark.
“We are going to do that,” I said.
“Oh, I pray you, sir, please, because I do so want to get home. My Ma will be thinking long ago I was dead, and I feel that way, I’ve been so much put upon. But in my heart—”
I was listening to him and his pathetic tale, but I