Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [94]
I cannot tell you how different it is here from New York. Beginning with the air itself, which is a not-so-delightful mixture of warm water and various natural perfumes. Here and all around a certain stillness has overtaken men, though surely only for the moment. The odor of the port, the odor of horses, these are familiar. But out in the country, which is where I write you from, the land is hot, damp, and marshy, and the sky is laden with large thunderheads that float above us, never stopping, like some grand oceangoing armada. Even inland about fifteen miles, water is everything. As I write to you I must pause and take a sip from the glass at my writing table. In the rice fields the “driver,” as the one who drives the labor force is called, must work the small dams that keep water from the creek out or, opened, let it in, to flow across the newly growing stalks of this precious grain. There is a rhythm to it which has been explained to me and over the past week or so I have seen a number of demonstrations, though I have not yet mastered it.
Even though I am a Master.
Will you be my Slave?
A jest.
Isaac is the slave who serves as the overseer in the rice fields. He is one of three “drivers,” working in the brickyard and the other fieldwork and wood-cutting cadres. He has been in charge of showing me how the rice-planting is done. Though we do not always get along, for a slave—but listen to me talk!—he is a proud, almost arrogant sort of fellow—yet I have found him to be the most knowledgeable person on the plantation when it comes to the agricultural questions.
The overseer is usually a free man, but Uncle has put Isaac in charge because he commands the respect of all the others and is completely loyal to the family. I hear stories about cranky and rebellious slaves who must be severely disciplined in order to keep them in line. But on our plantation—well, look what I have written! “our”!—on Uncle’s plantation firmness and kindness seems to work just as well as physical punishment and the kind of disdain and spite that seems to rule in other places.
For an example of the other sort I can tell you about what we witnessed when on a sojourn to town—Charleston—just the other day.
We had come in to have lunch with the family of my cousin Jonathan’s wife Rebecca and it was a very agreeable time in their house on Society Street, only a few blocks from the water. The house is a three-story wood and white-washed-brick affair, with the face that it shows to the street wearing a rather blank brick stare. The entrance is reached by a walk through a gate to the left of the façade and a short path to the steps leading to a wide veranda that sweeps around the west side of the house and looks out on a lovely garden which is blocked from sight from the street by tall hedges and a rather majestic magnolia tree.
On the veranda when we arrived was a large black woman—she could be the sister of Precious Sally who cooks at The Oaks plantation—sweeping the floor. She greeted us warmly, and invited us inside, where Rebecca’s mother and father were waiting in the front sitting room. The room reminded me a good deal of home, because it had curtains that cut out the light and noise of the street, and many family portraits on the walls, and several sets of silver candlesticks. Rebecca’s father, Louis Salvador, was the son of one of the first Jews to serve in the army of our Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War. Her mother, born Elena Suares, was the child of two immigrants from the Indies.
“We arrived with nothing,” she said. “And now we have everything.”
And, indeed, if you count the pretty house and garden and the many sets of candlesticks, and dishes and paintings and silverware, and their children, with Rebecca the oldest and three younger brothers, Joseph, Louis, and Abraham, and their