Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [86]
“Is that the rice?” I said.
Isaac shook his head.
“Few weeks ago, we planted the seeds and then we flood the field to make them grow. We call that the sprout flow. It covers the seeds and we keep the water in the field until the sprouts come out. What the folks do now is pull up weeds. Soon now, we drain the water and the sprouts grow more. We flood the fields again, that is called the point flow, and the water covers up to the top of the plants. Then we drain a little more—”
“How do you know when to do all this?”
“We watch the plants, we watch the tides, we watch the moon. You want to hear how it finishes?”
“Certainly.”
“We leave the plants half in water till they can stand up on their own, then we drain the rest of the field. That’s when the hard weeding work comes, and after that we let in the water to cover all the plants again and leave it that way until the early fall.”
All the while he was speaking I was watching the slaves in water to their ankles move up and down the half-submerged furrows, bent over and waving their hands and their hoes to take out the weeds. There was a tinge of brine in the air, and this turned my thoughts to the ocean I had traveled to reach this place, even if keeping the coast in sight most of the while, and the tides that washed in salt, and the pure creek water that flowed back in after the tide pulled out, and the waxing and waning of the moon. I tried to imagine the ocean voyage made by many of the slaves who worked here, but such an event lay beyond anything I could picture.
“Come,” Isaac said, with a gesture of his hand, and led me out into the field. The water sucked at my boots and I splashed myself up to my knees as we plodded along. Here in the middle of it the briny odor grew stronger.
The slaves—men and women of varying ages—stared at us as we approached, pausing only a second or so and then returning to their stooped postures as they moved along the rows.
Another master, I decided, that was how they saw me, the way beasts in the field might respond—and I disliked myself for the thought.
“It smells of the ocean,” I said.
“The ebb and flow of it makes for a mix of salt and fresh water,” Isaac said. “We learned how to do this across the water. It makes for good crop.”
“You learned in Africa?”
“The people from there learned,” he said, “They brought it here, and taught us how to do it.”
We had kept on walking as we talked and now we had reached the other side of the field and climbed out of the water onto the berm that made a border between the rice field and the marsh that bled out into the creek.
“And next, the harvest?”
Isaac held his arms out wide and then took up an invisible scythe and began to sweep it across the tops of our feet.
“We take the rice hook and cut the plants and lay them out to dry.”
“And after the harvest?” I said, stamping my boots on the ground and seeing the water spray out of them. I felt childlike, and at the same time a bit weary, because even as I walked and talked, the slaves kept bent to their labor.
“After the harvest?” Isaac’s eyes went watery for an instant. “After the harvest, yes. Much to be gained.”
“But how is it done?”
“In the old days across the water this is how it was done. We take the mortals and pestles—”
“Mortars, do you mean?”
“Mortars, that’s right! And we pound the rice to remove the outer husk, then we lay it onto the fanners, the flat baskets, to do what you call in English winnowing. We shake the basket back and forth, back and forth—” He held his hands out as though he were holding a basket in front of him and shook them, shook them—“and the husk falls away.”
He turned his head and pointed to the creek. “Comes the flatboat, and they take it away to town…”
“That takes a lot of time and fortitude,” I said, “to thrash the rice and hull it that way. And