Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [76]
“And what is that?”
“Our special place, as she calls it, a community where massas and slaves no longer exist and Jews and gentiles live in comity, and Indians, too, who worship only the wind in the sky.”
“It sounds like a lovely plan,” I said. “How shall you do it?”
“If it were a plan, we might begin,” my cousin said. “As for now, it’s only an idea mingled with a dream.” He took a deep breath, as if inhaling the very idea he was speaking of. And then spoke again in a voice quite different. “Her dream.”
“And not yours also?”
“I am more practical.” Something sparked in his eyes, and I believed him to be considering, considering the necessities of such a vision.
“And yet you let her dream.”
My cousin laughed in as dark a way as I had yet heard him.
“Dreams, Cuz, are dreams…”
(Looking back I recognize that this was the high point of our acquaintance, his talk of dreams, and my attempts to see such good things in him as his talk would imply.)
Suddenly, overhead in the clear sky, a flock of pigeons erupted across the space, as if freed by the hand of some Manhattan boy who had been keeping them on a rooftop.
A loud crash echoed through the glade and I dodged instinctively at the sound of it while the horses did nervous jigs about their tethers.
This was cousin Jonathan, having fired his pistol into the air, watching a bird fall toward the treetops.
“Very good,” I said. “Good shot.”
“Will you try your eye, Cousin?” he said.
“The birds are gone,” I said, looking to the sky.
“They’ll be back,” he said.
“Then of course I will.”
“Are you a good shot?”
I immediately thought about my pistol in the bureau drawer back in my room.
“We have a number of moving targets in New York City,” I said, “beginning with our immigrant rats. But I have not yet tried my hand at such sport. But will you fetch that bird?”
“For what?”
“For our supper.”
“No need, no need. Thousands like it will fly past at any moment. You just need take a shot at the sky and it will bring down another piece of supper. Or two more. Or three.”
“Paradise,” I said. “Manna. Food falling from the skies, forever.”
“We do have to shoot them,” Jonathan said. “So not Paradise exactly. But a workable Eden on earth, between our pistols and the crowds of nature.” He held the weapon out to me.
“Would you like to try?”
“The sky is empty of birds just now.”
“They will return.”
“Some other time, perhaps,” I said.
My cousin bowed his head toward me and fit his pistol back into his waistband. He pointed to the creek.
“And now to the water,” he said.
From the fine sack he had carried with him at the saddle, he extracted two rods with line and hooks. He reached into a rough sack he also had carried with him and extracted some lively worms one of the slaves had dug up for us early in the day and hooked one and then handed me the other. Its wriggling presence made coolness on my palm and I watched it squirm a little before following my cousin’s instructions and skewering it on the hook. Within moments we cast our worms into the gently moving stream and sat quietly to await whatever came next.
The hot morning sun inched above the treetops at our backs. Hawks circled overheard. In the distance dogs cried out, while I settled into the still business of fishing wherein such minute motions as the light current running against the line where it entered the water made patterns fascinating to the eye.
“Ah,” my cousin said, sinking down to a place on the vine-covered ground, “this is Paradise.”
“It is lovely,” I said, sinking along with him. “I have never fished much before this, Cousin. Except perhaps to throw bricks into the passing Hudson.”
He laughed and stretched his booted feet out before him while holding his rod high.
I followed suit, and then, as he lay the rod at his side, did the same, for the pleasure of quietly doing nothing and yet having the right to say you are doing something after all. He passed his flask to me, and I took a sip, and handed it back to