Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [21]
When the tide recedes and I climb down to walk among the sea-wrack and detritus, the delicious stink of life freshly delivered up by the waves, salt and sun and ammoniac air all mixed together, oh, I know I know, at least I think I know, that the miracle of God making man from clay and then woman from man’s clay might be a wonderful metaphor for our creation from the slightly moist and highly compacted earth and sand left behind when the tide went out for a million years. And the spark of lightning, like some old mining prospector’s last match, or first, breaks into fire, and heats up life’s dinner, first and foremost, once and for all.
Some say the world began in fire, some say in water. Why such opposites? Unless we need to embrace both and all the elements when we think of the extraordinary event that is life?
The bits and parts of living things came together in the oceans to make the fish.
One fish crawled on its stubby legs up onto the beach, and returned again and again. And then another and another.
Did the fish become clay?
The gods molded out of wet clay a man, and then a woman. Or a woman, and then a man. And breathed breath into them.
A complicated story made simple or a simple story made complicated? All these variations, leading back to mystery.
Out of water, out of clay our mother was born.
These meanderings I offer as I try to tell the story.
Chapter Eight
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The Auction
Fear, hope, love, hate, illusion, dismay boiled up in the Charleston market, known as the center for slave auctions in the region. Buyers and sellers came from far and wide to attend. And sell and buy. A large crowd wrestled about in the interior of one of the low brick market buildings, and my cousin feigned surprise. There were no longer any fresh shipments of Africans, as he explained, so this was only local chattel, slaves from farms in this county, neighboring counties, and other southern states, some of them—he tried to make a joke—from almost as far away as Africa itself.
“I myself,” he said, “have not come here for a rather long while, since we have most of our needs taken care of by our own slave families. That is, breeding and such for new hands. The boy, Isaac, who carries your bag, he was bred on our property. But now and then we do need to come here, and the prices, I have to say, have risen quite sharply since the African trade ended.” He paused and stood in quiet thought amidst the din. “Now, do not worry if you feel struck almost by a physical blow as you watch. I recall the first time I came here, Father had me accompany him when I was a boy, and it struck me that way.” He then fixed me with a stare, as though he were a scientific investigator of some sort, straining to detect my response.
I did respond. I felt myself becoming overtaken by the noise, by the sight of the bare-backed blacks, men and women, standing in chains, some of them muttering to themselves, a few of them praying aloud, one or two of them even singing, as if no one else could hear. It reeked in here something together like a sick room and a back street after a hot rain in summer. Given the sweat pouring out of me, I had to imagine the other men milling about here were effusing doubt and worry as much as the slaves were sweating in fear. I had a mad impulse to rush up to the manager and grab the keys that dangled from the belt at his waist, and unlock each and every lock on every chain and set these people free. Especially the women. It seemed so cruel to keep these females in chains, as if unchained they might do someone harm. And it was quite astonishing to me that most of the slave men and women remained so calm, and that the free people in the room were acting in such a frenzy.
The white men, some of them of a company arranging the