by Robin Lloyd
Townsend walked with his grandmother out the front door where an open chaise volanta was waiting for them. The postilion was a small slave boy who helped Doña Cecilia into the carriage. He had a big smile, and large dark eyes—an easy manner about him. He looked like he was about thirteen years old.
“Take us out to the chapel, Julio,” she said in her soft voice.
“Si l’ama.”
“Julio is the son of Mercedes.”
“The one who spoke English.”
“Yes, that’s the one. She’s trying to buy his freedom now, something the laws allow here in Cuba. He could be free in a few years. My hope is he will stay here at the plantation. He likes animals, and he’s a quick learner.”
They soon were bouncing along the plantation’s rutted roads. In the distance, Townsend could see a team of oxen plowing the fields. His grandmother told him how she was born and raised at Mon Bijou. She’d lived here all her life except for the years she spent in Paris for her education. For Townsend, the landscapes of undulating green on the three-thousand-acre estate were enormous, but the core of the plantation seemed like a small village. It was home to four hundred slaves and little more than a handful of white people. They arrived at a small community of yellow and white houses for the sugar makers and the engineers. There was a certain beauty in the austere simplicity of the terracotta-roofed buildings, but in the distance Townsend could see the slaves laboring in the fields, and the cruel crack of a whip reminded him that there was nothing charming about plantation life.
Just below the sugar mill, she pointed out a small stone chapel with its steeple and a cross, and asked Julio to pull to a stop.
“This is what I wanted to show you. My grandfather built this. This chapel represents why this land is so important to me. My parents were married here. So was I. My children were all baptized here. There has been happiness and sadness within those old stone walls. The funeral services were held here for my husband, Rafael Vargas—your grandfather. And then a few months later for my two daughters, your mother’s two younger sisters. They all three died from a yellow fever outbreak. We call it the black vomit here. ¡Que tragedia, verdad! What a tragedy! They are all buried over there in the family graveyard.”
She pointed over to a small cemetery surrounded by a stone wall. A cluster of tightly packed bamboo trees grew near there amid some palm trees. Townsend could hear the quiet moan and wail of the wind through the bamboo.
Tears filled her eyes.
“So I think you can see why every tree, every cane field here at Mon Bijou is like part of my soul. I thought your mother felt the same way. She was born here like I was. But I was wrong.”
“What happened to change things?” he asked.
Doña Cecilia paused and then sighed.
“In 1840, suddenly Rafael was gone, and I had to manage the plantation on my own. It was a terrible time. There were slave rebellions mounting. But I managed. A couple of years later when your mother was eighteen years old, I needed to find a suitor for her. A sensible marriage. I chose an appropriate Spanish gentleman, a merchant, who I remain quite fond of. As you know in Cuba, those who are from Spain have more privileges than those of us born here. Esperanza could have lived well. He was wealthy and highly ambitious, and would have supported her in a grand way. I thought it was all settled. They were to be engaged. Then your mother found your father. Imagine, he was nothing more than one of the temporary engineers on the plantation. He was an American ship captain who had taken seasonal work with us as an engineer. Of course, I was horrified. Your father was beneath her.”
Townsend was silent at this insult. He noticed that she didn’t make the connection with his own life as a ship captain.
“I still do not know why she did that to me,” she said, shaking her head.
“I guess they were in love,” Townsend answered simply.
Doña Cecilia raised her eyebrows and then looked away. An awkward silence descended on them, and she told Julio to take them back to the house. As the volanta thumped along the rougher sections of the road, Townsend again heard the crack of a whip and one of the slave drivers yelling. Then came the melodic chanting of the slaves and the grinding noise from the sugar mill.
“I still believe as a daughter of mine, her first duty was to her family, but your mother was stubborn and willful. Hot-headed,” she said emphatically. “Julio, Más rápido. Go faster.”
“Sí l’ama. ¡Arre! ¡Arre!,” he cried out as he whipped the horse in a way Townsend thought unnecessarily cruel. His grandmother didn’t seem to notice and turned to Townsend with an ingratiating smile. He noticed there was a slight quiver on one side of her mouth.
“When she eloped with your father, she told me she never wanted to see me again. Dios mío, no sabes el dolor que sentí. You don’t know how painful it was. I sat in her empty room for days. I was sure she would come back.” Her voice cracked.
“When I found out your mother lived near Baltimore in the town of Havre de Grace, I wrote her time after time. She only wrote back once and that was to tell me she no longer recognized our family name, Vargas. Every year I would write, but I never received a reply.” Townsend remembered his mother’s distress as she crumpled up letters and threw them in the fire. He could see her face even as he looked at his grandmother’s.
“Did she ever mention my letters?”
He lied and shook his head.
At that moment, Townsend almost wanted to comfort his grandmother, but didn’t, and she breathed deeply and composed her face.
“I have arranged for the overseer to show you the mill and the slave quarters over the next two days. He knew your mother well. It’s important for you to see how the plantation works. ¡Ay, Madre de Dios! I am so glad you are here. You remind me of my former husband with that handsome face of yours.”
It was still dark outside at 5:00 a.m. when the plantation bells at Mon Bijou began clanging, signaling another work day had begun. Townsend sat up and sipped the café con leche the servant had brought him. Outside he could hear the night chorus of tree frogs chirping away. After three days at the plantation, Townsend was beginning to know the routine. He heard the clopping of hooves outside the manor house, dogs barking, and then the crunch of heavy footsteps followed by the squeak of the front door opening. It was the overseer, who had come to fetch him before he made his early morning rounds of the estate. Townsend did not like the man, a powerful, thickset Scotsman with a full gray beard. The young captain found him to be surly and garrulous. He had already spent one day with him at the sugar mill. He’d seen how the cane was thrown into steam-powered crushers, squeezing out a steady stream of clear greenish liquid that was then boiled and skimmed in large copper cauldrons. He could still hear the clank of the steam engine and the grinding of the cane and in the background, the rich mournful voices of the slaves.
This was Townsend’s last full day at Mon Bijou. As usual, he and the overseer, whose name was William McKintyre, set out on horseback past the barracoons where the slaves lived. The big Scotsman led the way on his small gray horse with a pack of four Cuban bloodhounds following behind.
They came upon teams of slaves with broad-brimmed palm hats trudging out of the thatched-roof barracoons as they were loaded onto sturdy ox carts with high slatted wooden walls. A few of them had iron manacles around their ankles, a chain connecting them suspended from the waist. A collar with three hooks was around their necks and a coupling chain was secured to each collar. McKintyre laughed with a sadistic gleam in his eye and let his whip loose. Townsend flinched at the cracking sound and the sight of the bloody scars on the men’s backs.
“Runaways,” said the overseer with a cold sneer. “Fear is whit these Africans understand. T’ain no kindness to be given niggers. It’s th’ only way they can be kept in order.” The Scot seemed unaware of Townsend’s discomfort. “Twenty-five lashes th’ first time they run an’ th
ey’ur sent ta th’ fields in chains,” he snarled in his distinctive Scottish brogue. “If they da it again, fifty lashes an’ solitary confinement. Cayenne pepper an’ rum keep th’ wounds from gettin’ infected.”
Townsend grimaced in disgust. Slavery came from the devil. That’s what he wanted to tell the man, but he decided to keep his thoughts to himself. He turned away, his gaze settling on the fields in the distance. He could see the unwieldy carts heavily loaded with their human cargo as they lurched down a muddy path, tumbling and swaying, into a sea of tall sugarcane. Spanish slave drivers called contra-mayorales, each armed with a pistol and a cutlass, long whips dangling ever ready at their side, followed closely behind on horseback. “What a fine piece of hell this is,” Townsend murmured quietly to himself. What he saw was filling a blank page for him. This had been his mother’s home. It was another world entirely from their life in Havre de Grace. This was what his mother had grown up with. This is what she had left behind, and had never wanted to return to.
By the afternoon, the garrulous Scotsman was more friendly than usual—likely thanks to the flask he kept swigging from. It was Townsend’s last chance to question the man. “My grandmother said you knew my mother. What was she like then?” he asked.
“Ah, yes. Indeed I did know Esperanza. A pretty lass, your mother was. High-spirited. Always wanted the last word.”
The Scot paused for a moment as he looked away, and then brought his gaze back to Townsend.
“I don’t mean no disrespect, but your mother an’ I didn’t see eye to eye on many things. I suppose you know, she fought wi’ yer grandmother. Like two cats they were, howlin’ and hissin’ at each other. I knew your father too. Oh yes, I knew him as well. He was one of the seasonal engineers here. He was of th’ same mindset as yer mother. They both wanted to help the niggers, givin’ those black monkeys all kinds of expectations. I think he was a bad influence over yer mother, if I may say so. The two of them would go and talk to some of th’ slaves, spreading all sorts of foolish notions.”
“Foolish notions? That’s hardly the way I think of my mother or my father.”
“Ha! They thought the slaves had th’ right ta be free. We had some English slaves then, you know th’ ones taken from th’ Bahamas and Jamaica twenty to twenty-five years ago. Well, yer mother was encouragin’ them ta run away. We couldn’t have that so we sold most of those English slaves off. The ones we kept, we gave them the names of dead slaves so they no longer had their old identities, or any rights either.”
McKintyre chortled with a dry, weary laugh. Townsend remembered his mother telling him why she volunteered to help the runaways that came through Maryland. She had talked about the hard road ahead for the black people. They have no way back, she told him. They have to find a way forward.
“Would ye want to know somethin’ else about yer mother?” asked the Scotsman, his voice beginning to slur and his eyes hardening. He pulled out his flask again. His face was getting redder.
“No, I don’t think so,” Townsend replied, sensing that the man was drunker than he realized.
“Well, since you been askin’ about her, let me tell you something. She broke your grandmother’s heart. Plain and simple. It was a cruel thing to do, leavin’ th’ way she did. This land means everything to Doña Cecilia.”
The man took another long drink from his flask.
“But then yer here now. The poor woman needs a grandson like you to help manage things. I haven’t seen her this happy in years. Come with me, laddie. I am gonna show you where these darkies live.”
It was the first time Townsend had been taken inside the walled slave quarters. McKintyre walked in past a heavy wooden door guarded by four chained bloodhounds with whip in hand, a pistol and a Bowie knife attached to his broad leather belt. Some of the women were tending a small charcoal fire outside in the center of the quadrangle where they were boiling water. They lowered their eyes as McKintyre approached them. When the Scot cracked the whip, some of them got down on their knees and began pleading for him to have mercy. Small, naked children clutched their mothers’ calico dresses, their big eyes filled with fear at the sight of the white man.
McKintyre made his rounds, inspecting the small dark rooms with their clay floors and dirty walls to make sure there were no field slaves hiding out. For a moment Townsend thought he was back in Havana’s city prison, but the difference was he was now one of the jailors. Entire families huddled in a cramped space no bigger than what he’d been put in. He looked at some of the women apologetically, wanting to let them know he was not part of this cruel system, but he could tell they saw him as one of the overseers—just another cruel white man.
McKintyre showed Townsend how he was training a new batch of young dogs. They were not like American bloodhounds, but looked more like English mastiffs, tan, brindle-colored with a solid build and a short muzzle. The Scot called a slave boy over who was playing with a puppy. Townsend couldn’t believe his eyes. He knew the boy. It was Julio, his grandmother’s postilion.
“Over ’ere boy, show this gentleman how you can train th’ dog.”
Townsend could tell the boy recognized him, but he remained silent. McKintyre threw the boy a stick and told him to beat the dog and then run away. “Sí, l’amo,” Julio replied, his face transforming from a smile to a sneer. With no word spoken, this mild-mannered boy tied up the puppy with a short leash and began beating it with the stick. Again and again, he struck the animal, causing the dog to yelp and howl in pain.
“From th’ look of it, that nigger boy, he will nat want ta play wi’ that dog too much longer,” McKintyre chortled with a throaty laugh. “He’s learning the rough and tumble of the slave business.” The overseer explained how the dog begins to associate the beating by the boy with all Negroes, and then pretty soon it will just want to tear any black man apart.
“That’s how we train our dogs,” he said proudly. “Those Southern planters in Mobile pay good money for our dogs.”
Townsend could take it no longer.
“See there now, this cruelty has to stop,” Townsend shouted to McKintyre. He grabbed Julio’s arm and took the club away from him. The dog was growling and snarling.
“You’re nothing but a brutal animal, McKintyre!”
The overseer glared at him, and told Julio to run off. The Scot didn’t say anything to Townsend as they walked out of the barracoon quarters together. Townsend was never happier to hear the sound of the plantation bell, signaling the break for the afternoon meal. He mounted his horse, and pushed him to a fast gallop, cursing McKintyre as he rode. At the stone manor house, he gave his horse to one of the stable boys waiting outside. His anger was muted by the sight of his grandmother, and the bounteous meal awaiting him. Well-dressed butlers in their white jackets had put the steaming platters of food onto a table on the stone veranda—everything from a richly spiced planters’ meat and vegetable stew called ajiaco to roast pork garnished with olives and raisins and smothered in onions. The side dishes were equally appetizing: yellow saffron rice, fried green bananas called mariquitas, black beans with chopped onions, and ochre and tomatoes glistening with lard. All this was served with a Spanish red wine.
Townsend suddenly felt guilty at the sight of all this food. He was troubled by how in just three days he had grown accustomed to this pandering, with house servants tending to his every need from dawn to dusk. He could see how easy it would be to fall into this sleepy, languid rhythm of a planter’s life where servants hovered everywhere. It was like a narcotic, gently numbing his senses so that he could no longer feel empathy. He picked at his food.
“Is there something troubling you, Everett?” his grandmother asked. She clapped her hands and called on one of the servants to remove the plates, and then beckoned to another to bring the dessert.
“It’s your overseer, McKintyre. He’s a monster! The punishments for runaways are severe, way too harsh. Ev
en the training of the dog I witnessed—your young postilion boy ordered to beat a puppy until it became vicious! I have never seen such cruelty. The way the man treats your slaves will produce the same result. They will attack the hand that beats them.”
He had expected his grandmother to be shocked at what he told her about the Scotsman, maybe even to be appreciative of his observations. At first she glanced up at the servant bringing the bowls of guanábana ice cream, and then she turned to him with a sullen stare. She seemed transformed, the sides of her mouth turned down, her expression brooding and furtive. The silence at the table seemed to go on forever. Finally she gave a great sniff and lifted her head as she took her first spoonful of the sweet, fragrant ice cream.
“Why, Everett, you remind me of your mother. She also couldn’t stand the sight of disciplining slaves, but in fact here at Mon Bijou we are just following tradition. Mr. McKintyre learned everything from my husband, your grandfather, who was more lenient than some here on the island. In fact, I don’t know what I would do without the Scotsman. He manages everything so well. As for Julio and the training of the dogs, that is for the boy’s own good. Mr. McKintyre wants young Julio to learn how to be a field slave driver, what we call a contra-mayoral. He is just trying to teach the boy how to be tough. Julio will need to learn how to be hard-nosed if he’s going to handle the whip and discipline field slaves as his job.”
She reached for her coffee, her face tight-lipped, revealing what he thought was the tiniest touch of contempt. Then she smiled ever so faintly. Her voice was soft.
“I should tell you something about the sugar business, querido. It’s unfortunate, my dear, but true. The overseers may be cruel and unreasoning, perhaps crude in their methods, but what choice do they have? If you had seen the plantation uprising here twenty years ago, you would understand. Any plantation owner will tell you that it’s more important to be feared than loved.”
