The End of the World and Beyond

by Avi

  Someone else to fear, then.

  We walked out. A hoe was leaning against the house. Fitzhugh snatched it up and tossed it to me. “Follow me. It’s time for you to get to work.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  In Which I Meet Bara.

  Fitzhugh led me up an incline, across open fields, heading near the stand of trees where I had seen this Bara working.

  “It’s planting time,” he said. “We’re going to a seedbed.”

  Being ignorant of what he was talking about, and exceedingly on edge, I said nothing. Indeed, I walked as slowly as I dared, not wishing to meet another objectionable person. I would have given much to be alone.

  We came under some trees, where a large square area had been cleared. The soil there was covered by what looked to be a layer of gray ash. Squatting on his haunches, his back to us, I presumed, was Bara.

  “Bara,” Mr. Fitzhugh cried out. “Here’s Oliver. In place of Clark.”

  The man stood up, turned and faced me. Immediately I saw that he was not a man, but a boy only somewhat older than me.

  I had witnessed some black people in England who were either laborers or servants. There were never that many, nothing such as I had already observed in Maryland, from the quay through the streets of Annapolis. And in England, whether these black people were slaves or not, I readily confess I never knew and never asked. Let my excuse be I had never been so near to a black person as I was now. As I looked upon this boy with a mix of unease and curiosity, my only concern was how he would treat me, following Fitzhugh’s command that we get along.

  Bara was taller than me, so that I had to look up. His neck was somewhat long, his shoulders broad, arms bare, sinewy, tight with muscle. His clothing was rough: old trousers and a sleeveless jacket, both articles made of cheap linen.

  His hands were large, with long fingers. His narrow feet were bare. His hair was black, thick, and tightly curled. As for his face, which was almost ebony, it was thin, almost gaunt, his nose small. His mouth, thin lipped, neither smiled nor frowned—indeed showed no emotion—as he studied me intently.

  I also observed how still he was. Indeed, as I would come to know, Bara had a way of standing self-contained, almost as if he were breathing, though of course he was. It was as if most of what he was, was within, and he had little desire of letting anything out.

  When he first considered me I perceived no feeling, but his eyes took command. His look seemed to survey, evaluate, and appraise me yet no word was spoken.

  “Teach him,” said Fitzhugh to Bara. “He needs to get to work.” With no further words, the old man left.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  My First Time with Bara.

  For some time, we two boys stood in silence, each of us trying to appraise the other.

  “What’s your name?” Bara finally asked in a voice that told me no more than his expression, though his English was much like mine.

  “Oliver.”

  “He own you?”

  I nodded.

  “Indentured?”

  “Transported convict.”

  He cocked his head slightly to one side and waited for me to say more.

  “I was convicted of a crime,” I admitted. “In England.”

  “A thief,” he said, though there was no judgment in his tone. “What crime did you do?”

  “Stole money.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty-three shillings. I was transported here. Mr. Fitzhugh bought me. I’m to stay seven years.”

  “‘Oliver’ your real name, or one he gave you?”

  “My own. Did he give you your name?”

  “My parents gave it to me. From Guinea, but I don’t remember them. How old are you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Young thief.”

  “Why are you here?” I ventured.

  “Fitzhugh’s slave.”

  “How old are you?”

  “More than you, I’d guess. But not by much.” He turned to look at the ash on the ground. “You know anything about growing tobacco?”

  I shook my head.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I suppose then I have to teach you everything.”

  I could only nod and wait for instruction.

  He studied me for yet another while. “You mind that it’s me that will have to learn you?”

  “Should I?” My voice trembled.

  “Me being black. A slave. You being white.”

  I could not hold back. “I don’t know anything about tobacco,” I said, my voice suddenly breaking. “I don’t know where we are. Or about Fitzhugh. Or where I am. Or you. I don’t know anything.” As tears coursed down my cheek, I stood there ashamed, my head bowed. Given the choice I would have just as soon died then and there.

  Bara only said, “Tears won’t get you much.”

  I wanted to say, “I just need a friend,” but could not find the words, and besides, I was fearful this Bara would rebuff or mock me.

  When I finally forced myself to look up, he was still observing me. “You’re right then,” he said. “You know nothing.” Again, it was not a judgment. It was a fact. As for friendship, he said naught.

  Feeling powerless, but wanting to say something, I said, “Who was Clark?” giving the name of the person I heard Fitzhugh say I was replacing.

  “A boy like me. Maybe younger. Slave.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Bara lifted his shoulders and let them drop. “The old man killed him. He’s like that. Any idea why you’re here?”

  “To labor.”

  Bara said, “You’re Clark’s replacement. He was all right. About your age. I liked him well enough. But he didn’t think. A noddy. He let slip he was going to run away. Fitzhugh acted first.”

  “I heard Fitzhugh brag he killed someone,” I said.

  “Clark, probably.”

  “Did you see him do it?”

  “Didn’t have to. Clark just disappeared.”

  I stared at Bara. He went on: “So if you think about running away, better keep your thoughts silent or you’ll replace Clark in another way.”

  Bara said it just like that. Bluntly. But knowing I was the replacement for that murdered boy made me feel ill.

  Bara said, “So I guess the first learning I can give you is: Don’t ever talk back to the old man. Just listen. Do what he asks. Make sure you know that. Another thing, he’s quick to malice and you’ll never know why. Violent. Drunk. No friends I ever noticed. If he has mercy, I’ve never seen it. He’s got a horse and hogs and cares more for them than us. We’re just his tools, his servants, nothing more.”

  Bara considered me for yet another long while, as if trying to make up his mind what else to say or do. Then he bent down, to reach into a small leather bag that lay by his feet. He brought something out and opened his hand before me. In his palm lay powdery brown specks.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Tobacco seeds. This is planting time. It’s the way we start. Around here, that’s the way everything begins.”

  “When does it end?”

  “Never,” he said, and that one small word settled upon me like a thousand pounds of weight.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  A Brief Digression about Tobacco.

  To fathom the world into which I had come, you must learn—as I had to—about tobacco, the word given into English by the island people of Haiti.

  In our ancient English language, to be a “sot” meant one was a dolt, a blockhead, a stupid person. So it was that “sot-weed” was a common term for tobacco. Which is to say, some people believed that smoking tobacco turned you into a “sot,” or the smoking thereof is something that sots did.

  My father, who drank far too much and suffered m
uch for it, loathed tobacco. No friend of English kings, he oft quoted King James the First’s remark that tobacco was “a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembles the horrible smoke of the pit that is Hell.”

  England, and Europe, however, had gone mass mad for tobacco. Thus, in the new world, tobacco was king. More than king: It was everything. The entire Chesapeake Bay area was called the “Tobacco Coast,” because it was so given over to the cultivation of that weed. It was the economy. Indeed, as you might recall from my account of the convict sale, tobacco itself was often used as money.

  To grow it, care for it, harvest it, and send it on to England and Europe is a process that extends from spring to late fall. Bara and I worked at it every day from early light to early shadows, often in the summer’s greatest heat. Endless hours with a hoe for weeding of the big green-leafed plant that grew as high as seven feet. Constant picking off damaging bugs, working among plants with fumes so noxious that being midst them sometimes made me ill and dizzy.

  There followed cutting, staking, and drying until the time came for packing the leaves into barrel-like containers called hogsheads—four feet high, two and a half feet in diameter, weighing more than a thousand pounds when full—which were used for shipping.

  A sloop would come up the Chesapeake, tie up at Fitzhugh’s wharf—and countless other wharfs along the bay—collect the tobacco hogsheads to bring back to Annapolis, where it was graded, sold, and sent on to England and Europe.

  The point is, tobacco was the chief and sometimes only cultivated crop, often the sole source of income, the primary foundation of wealth by the bay. For Fitzhugh, it was the sole means by which he lived and came to own me.

  To put it precisely, I had become a sot-weed slave.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  How I Survived My First Day of Labor.

  Following Bara’s instructions, I worked the hoe for the rest of that day. I broke the earth, made rows, placed tiny seeds in the ground. Bara was firm in his directions, finding fault to be sure, but never harsh. For that I was grateful and did the best I could. We hardly talked, and when we did it was confined to work. It was clear: He was in charge. I tried not to think, just worked. Now and again I wiped tears away, but if Bara observed this, he said nothing.

  His silence became my silence.

  I have no idea how long we labored, enough to make me long for the work to end. Recall that my day had begun in Annapolis, at dawn, so the hours were long. Save for a bit of bread, I had eaten nothing. We stopped work only when the shadows of the trees crossed our working space.

  “Time enough,” Bara announced.

  I felt much relief.

  Then he and I walked back—me following—to Fitzhugh’s house. As we went along he said, “Don’t talk to me in the house. He thinks everyone is after him.”

  “Are they?” I ventured.

  “Should be.”

  Before we went into the house, Bara led me into the hog pen. The great hogs, clearly knowing him, gathered round, grunting and snuffling. From a large wooden box, Bara gathered up an armful of corn ears and dropped them onto the ground. The hogs began to eat loudly.

  I said, “Fitzhugh told me they were hurtful.”

  “They bite. But one of our jobs,” he said.

  We entered the dim house. Fitzhugh was at the table, working on a leather harness by the light of a single candle. A few metal tools lay nearby. As we came in, Fitzhugh looked up at Bara. “Will he do?”

  “Will.”

  The old man reached down and lifted an earthenware jug to his mouth and drank. It smelled like rum. Then he made a flicking motion toward the hearth. It seemed to be a signal because Bara went to it. With a long-handled wooden spoon, he scooped out some yellow stuff from the iron pot and plopped it into three wooden bowls.

  Fitzhugh watched as if appraising how much was ladled.

  Bara handed a bowl to Fitzhugh, one to me, and kept one. The old man had the most. Then Bara went to one of the walls and sat down against it. I joined him.

  We had been given no spoons, so using his fingers, Bara began to scoop up what was in the bowl and eat. Now and again he licked his fingers.

  I stared into the bowl, wondering what I had been offered. Food, yes. But what? A yellow mush. Beans. Some chunks of meat. All mixed together. I looked to Bara.

  Low voiced, he said, “Hog meat and hoecake.”

  “Hoecake?”

  “Corn.”

  “No talking,” shouted Fitzhugh.

  Following Bara’s example, I scooped some out and began to eat. It was gritty and bland, with only remnants of meat to chew. But it was food and I was glad to have it. Noticing that Bara ate slowly, I did the same.

  When we finished eating—all too soon—Bara and I remained sitting. I was still hungry and licked my fingers. Now and again I glanced at Bara, trying to guess what to do. Bara stared straight ahead. He didn’t speak, so I didn’t either.

  Fitzhugh continued to work, bent over his table like some foul troll. Now and again he’d pause and, frowning, peer at us, as if to make sure we remained in place. I think I heard him mumble to himself. Outside, it was completely dark, the cabin that much dimmer. I struggled to keep my eyes open.

  At length, Fitzhugh completed his work. He shut the door—fixed it with a latch—and shuttered the window.

  From the wall, he took down the musket and placed it by what I had supposed was a bed. He kept the pistol in his hand, blew out the candle, and lay down. In all this no words were spoken.

  Save for the moonlight that leaked through gaps in the shutters, the cabin was dark.

  As if Fitzhugh’s actions were a signal, Bara stood up, prodded me on the shoulder, and went toward the ladder. Climbing, he paused once and looked at me. I took his meaning and followed slowly.

  We crawled into a dark space, a close, bare attic loft. Some moonlight was visible in the cracks of the loft walls. By then, my eyes had grown accustomed to such light as there was.

  Bara drew near and whispered, “Be careful. He’ll be testing you.”

  “How?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Please, can we talk?”

  “No. He’ll be listening.”

  He lay down on the wooden planking some distance from me. I also got down, my bones aching.

  Within moments I heard Bara’s sleeping breath.

  I was exhausted, yet I could not sleep. The floor was bumpy. I was cold. From below I heard mutters and rumbles, and now and again a snore.

  I reached into my pocket. In panic, I could not find that bit of Charity’s lace. Then I touched it. I took it out, felt it, and even kissed it. “I will find you,” I whispered to myself, and then replaced it.

  The moon must have moved, so the darkness pressed on me, enveloping me like a suffocating cocoon. I told myself I had little choice but to endure. Then I recalled Bara’s words about Fitzhugh: “He’ll be testing you.”

  I tried to imagine what might happen but could not. I only knew I had no desire for tomorrow to come, but would have been content to sleep forever.

  It was not to be so.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  In Which I Portray a Singular Kind of Life.

  I must have slept, for Bara woke me at dawn and we went forth to work, hoes in hand. When Bara and I crawled down the ladder, the old man was still asleep—still snorting—on his pallet. Where infants might clutch a poppet, he had his pistol. As I would learn, Bara seemed to have a clock within that told him to get up before Fitzhugh; his way of avoidance.

  Outside, the weather was gray and gloomy, with occasional spits of cold rain. It made me shiver.

  Instead of going directly to the fields, Bara went to the stable, more of an open shed where the horse was kept. He
took up an armful of what looked like dry grass from a big box and dropped it in front of the horse, which whinnied in appreciation and began to feed.

  Next, he went to the hog pen. The hogs, seeing Bara, pushed about, grunting, clearly knowing he was there to feed them. This he did, hauling corn from a large box and throwing it on the ground. The hogs began to eat noisily.

  “We going to get any food?” I inquired as we walked out to the fields for my first full day of work.

  “What we ate last night,” he said, “is what he gives. You’ll get some again this evening. And every evening.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “Fish, now and again.”

  “From the bay?”

  He nodded. “We’ll be the ones to fetch it and only if he lets us.”

  We went forth to work, hoes in hand. Having no choice but to deny my hunger or tiredness, I set about with my hoe as did Bara. He worked with care and I did my best to imitate what he did. All the while he continued to instruct me so I learned the work to tedious perfection.

  The day remained wet and only a little less chilly though my labors had made me somewhat warm. I was full of questions, about Bara, his life, Fitzhugh, and what to expect on this small plantation. I chose however to wait for him to speak, being timid about doing or saying anything that might hinder his friendship or, worse, turn him against me.

  As I was working, I chanced to notice a half-inch six-legged beetle, its round back mottled brown and black. It had a long nose such as I had never seen on an insect. On my knees I observed its slow progress. “What’s this?” I called out.

  Bara came and looked. “Big nose weevil,” he said.

  I prodded the creature with a finger and watched as it moved faster.

  That’s when I heard Bara suddenly say, “Get up.”

  I jumped only to see that Fitzhugh had crept up on us. It was almost as if he had waited for me to have paused working. In his hand was a wooden rod. His pistol was in his belt. So was a knife.