Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [26]
“Our family remained with the majority,” my cousin said. “Rebecca’s family left with the secessionists.”
“I hope that has not made trouble for you,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” my cousin said, “but pleasant trouble. Rebecca, would you say it has spiced things up a bit between us?”
“Yes, it is very romantic,” she said, “to meet across the line of dispute. Like Juliet and Romeo.” She looked at me in a way both shy and inquisitive. “Do you have a Juliet at home?”
“I have a Miriam,” I said, and the words struck me like pellets from a gun. Yes, I did, did I not? My Juliet? I had never thought of her that way before.
“That is sweet,” Rebecca said. “Do you miss her?”
“I have not been away that long,” I said. “But I am sure I will.”
By this time in our journey my coat was soaked through, as was the handkerchief I used to dab the rivulets of sweat from my face.
“The weather here,” I remarked, happy to change the subject, “it takes some getting used to.”
My cousin laughed deep in his throat, but, I was noticing, however deep his merriment seemed somehow forced.
“We are born into it here,” he said. “The amusing part is that the Africans themselves have some trouble with the heat.”
Rebecca leaned across my cousin’s chest and touched me on the arm.
“The worst is not the heat but the sickness. The fevers and agues that abound in this part of the country, they sometimes grow ferocious. With the swamps to the north and west and south and the ocean to our east, it is as though we live on an island, and now and then we find we have an unwanted visitation in the fever. A torrent of it swept through the county last year and took half a dozen of our people. The Africans, in fact, call it ‘The Visitor.’”
“So,” I said, taking a deep breath and hoping to lift us out of the momentary slough we’d fallen into, “you are comparing me to a disease? I am, after all, just a visitor.”
The two of them laughed.
“And quite welcome,” my cousin said. “That is true, is it not, Rebecca?”
She reached across my cousin and touched me again, giving me cause to think how fortunate any child of hers would be, to know a mother’s touch so gentle.
“Yes, yes, absolutely. Why, we have had no guests in a long while and we’re all looking forward to getting to know you.”
“Yes, yes,” my cousin said, “though with all this talk about disease, you will be quite sick of all of us long before the time comes for you to depart.”
“I doubt that,” I said, but then what did I know at the time?
***
It was growing late, but there remained a part of the city my cousins wanted me to see, the lovely turns of road where the town met the ocean, and we had one more errand to run, so we headed to what he called The Battery. There we stopped the carriage and admired the pretty houses (with their white columns and plentiful flowering trees and vines, quite different from our staid northern brick facades) and gazed awhile at the ocean. Fort Sumter lay a mile or two offshore, like a man-made shoal, and the sun showed silver off the placid sea. Few creatures moved around us, and the heat lay heavy on everything, settling in our lungs. I could imagine that even the ocean had stopped for a while beneath this weight of sun, the ceaseless waverings of its surface and perhaps even its deeper current flows. I could imagine that standing here over and again, time itself might seem to have a stop.
“But we must go now,” my cousin said, speaking as if to contradict me and rousing me from my overheated reverie. “Liza is waiting.”
And so we headed away from the sea, rolling back to the pier where in the small enclosed market I had first seen the auction of dark human beings. There a woman emerged to meet us, carrying baskets in each hand, a bright turban atop her head, her face a splendor of mahogany cheek bones and bright green eyes and a straight nose that made her look more Hebraic than African.
The sight of her made me shiver in the heat.
Rebecca smiled as the slave girl approached.