Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [77]
A fish jumped in the creek, its silver sides catching the sun and winking it back at me.
“In the best of all possible worlds,” my cousin said as he jiggled his pole so that the line danced at the water line, “we will live off the fish we catch and the slaves will be free and all will be well with all of us and the world.” He took a breath, slowly, as if inhaling a pipe. “A fine dream, is it not?”
“A fine way to see things,” I said, pausing a moment to gaze down into the current. “Of course someone else will have to work the plantation.”
“New Africans,” he said. “Each year we’ll bring in new slaves and gradually free them also. That is my wife’s idea.”
“But the trade across the ocean has ended,” I reminded him.
“We will restore it,” he said.
“Our government will never do that.”
“Our new government will,” he said.
“A new government? And which is that?”
“A confederacy of Southern states become a separate nation.”
Now I should record my astonishment at his declaration, but I couldn’t say how I would have responded, because of a sudden my pole came alive in my hand.
“Whoa! I have a bite!”
“Indeed you do,” said my cousin, watching with delight as I raised and lowered the pole to the pull and tug of the creature on the end of my line. I eased it out of the water and watched it dance on its tail on the surface—a blue and green and yellow-gilded fish as long as my forearm—when we saw another creature bobbing about in the water just upstream.
We both jumped back in astonishment as a dark-skinned man with a bald head that showed off the earth-color of his skull came stumbling out of the creek, water running off him in gushets, and collapsed in front of us.
“My God!” I said, staring at the man who lay prone before us. “He is nearly drowned.” Suddenly the image of the young dark boy from New Jersey came to my mind, and I felt an acute instant of desperation at how he himself, wherever he might be in our region, must surely desire to run, to flee across water and follow a path that would take him back to freedom.
“He was not swimming for pleasure, I am sure,” my cousin said. He stood there, hands on hips, regarding the fallen creature. “Damned fool is running south. He should have stayed north of the creek.”
“Running?”
“Yes, a way for slaves to exercise their limbs,” said Jonathan.
“What?” I said.
My cousin touched a finger to his lips.
“Hush!” he said with a menacing sort of hiss.
High above us a hawk circled, and smaller birds sang, as they had been singing, since sunrise. The fish flopped about on the creek-side, the water gurgled in the sun. And in the distance came the high whining song of those dogs we had been hearing for a while.
“Ohhhh.”
The slave just then reached up and grabbed his leg.
Jonathan kicked at him, and tore at his own coat pocket where he had stowed his pistol.
“Away!” he shouted at the slave, still kicking, as though trying to shy away a rampant dog.
“Sorry, massa,” the slave said, clinging to his leg.
“You are going to be sorrier still,” Jonathan said, cocking his pistol. “Release me!”
“Cain’t,” the slave said with a moan.
Jonathan drew back a step, dragging the clinging slave with him, and still threatening the man with the pistol.
“I said release!”
“No,” I said, wishing desperately that I had not left my own pistol behind.
“I have him,” my cousin said, turning to me with a gleeful stare.
He gestured with his pistol.
“Get up,” he said to the man.
“Getting’ up, massa,” the man said, releasing my cousin’s leg and slowly pushing himself to his feet. He stood trembling. Water had soaked his ragged clothes so that they clung to him like a second skin, accentuating his already thin appearance. He had a long bullet-shaped head and large front teeth, which chattered uncontrollably not from the water, which was quite warm, but from fear. Even at this distance I could smell the stench of it pouring off him.
“He is confused,” I said. “Put the weapon aside.”
“He certainly is,” my cousin said. “He is a fool