“Cap’n, you’ve got to give the men their ease when they’re off-duty.”
“I have to do nothing except instill in them discipline and bring this ship to port.”
“Begging the Cap’n’s pardon,” Mr. Hawkins’ tone slithered from his toothy smirk, “I take it that you will not be needing a belly warmer again tonight? I can’t bring her myself, I’ve a Cargo net to construct.”
Serving to distract me from the shaming sting of Mr. Hawkin’s words, the sky darkened by degrees. Never had I seen so severe a squall. The water mirrored the dark skies, and warring elements entombed it. Lightning shot through the sky with a brazen temerity that struck even the most hardened among us with terror to our souls. The wind, a devil’s howl, spat torrents of rain upon us. We brailed our sails, preparing to furl them though the waves tossed us ’til the deck nearly met the water.
I sought solace in my cabin, to spend yet another contemplative evening wherein I struggled to reconcile what we might have wrought with this dreadful business. Duty compelled me to see it through. I filled a cup halfway with New England rum. When I embarked in the business of slaving … when a man senses a wrong, a wrong he finds himself every bit the culprit, he strives to cover up his suspicions, even from himself. I had reached the improbably sage conclusion that a man’s soul was one thing, his trade quite another.
Dead men visited my cabin at night while I dreamt, peering with sightless eyes and brine-rotted skin. They bade me to follow them. My worn mattress felt stuffed with corn cobs. I awoke to find that a woman shared my bed with me. My belly warmer. The sheets failed to hide the smooth curves of her feminine frame. My hand reached for the soft curls of her hair, while my other hand rested near the small of her back. I leaned over her. The bed was damp. I pulled back the covers to see blood pooling into my bed. Her back was cross-hatched with open scars from which small maggots, like so much boiled rice, wriggled loose.
The woman with the kerchief rolled over.
Purplish bruises covered her sunken chest, and her empty eye sockets peered into my soul, chilling my heart. Her jaw strained opened and closed. I heard her voice, though her movements did not match her words. “No one will know. No one listens. No one cares.”
That morning, I ordered the men to scrape our name from the hull of our ship. We await Death and Judgment. Let other ships think us outlaws. Better we sailed without a name, especially a name that reminded me of home.
The latticework proved a vain endeavor.
I was stirred from the fitful respite that passed for slumber—the hold beckoned me. As I crept down the stairs, the immensity of the silence struck me like a physical blow. Only the planks thundered overhead with the crew’s trampling feet. None of the men dared enter anymore for there were no midnight revelries to be had. Sallow torchlight created looming shadows. The smell of sweat and unwashed bodies mixed with expelled waste assaulted my nostrils. I imagined the heaviness of bowels that it must have taken, the extreme need to relieve oneself, yet being taunted by a lone bucket too many strides away. With barely enough room to sit up, to have to crawl over rows of bodies while chained to another, it was better to ease oneself where he slept.
What remained of the Cargo waited on Njinga. Barely moving, content to lie in their blood and mucous, their emaciated bodies grated against their sleeping berths, the motion of the waves scraping away their flesh. They still didn’t make a sound, not wanting to give any ears the satisfaction of their moans. A low mumbling drew my attention. I made my way to the rear of the hold only to find Njinga chanting to himself in whatever tongue he spoke. I recognized the reverential tone as a prayer. Suddenly, I could hear his words in my head.
“Father, let our bodies die that our spirits may go home free and receive us. Let their magic steal the earth. Ours shall steal the sky.”
His eyes flicked open, coal black peering into me—as if his spirit flooded my soul and engulfed the hold with a crypt’s quiescence.
I am the first to realize that we will never see home again.
§
The 30th of October, 1651
Damn this ship of death. Almost five months at sea, the last two weeks spent drifting after the storm broke, the wind dropped, and the waves calmed. We spread every available bit of canvas during our few good winds, but most days, the sails hung limp. Lifeless. The three masts of my once beautiful ship now only reminded me of a forlorn Golgothan hillside. We were a floating sarcophagus, an entity of desolation and fear, on a voyage to hell with a freight full of good intentions.
By my calculations, we were spitting distance from the shores of Bermuda, but no mewing gulls signaled nearby land. No black skies, no raging seas, only endless mist guided our days; an interminable gray, an imperfect misty dawn that heralded only further considerable horizon. A preternatural stillness matched by that of the cargo hold. Only Njinga remained. Sitting in the silence, eyes piercing the darkness with his faraway gaze. He cursed us, I know he did. Him and his heathen ways. I sealed him in his tomb of pressing bodies, the hold no longer my concern.
We had become a ghost ship that haunted the seas. I watched my own men grow sick and die. Mr. Hawkins was the last. So afflicted with a case of coast scurvy, his whole skin grew transparent with his swelling. His eyes sunk into his skull, his suffering was agony to witness. My fate would not be the same. I raised my pistol to my head. I heard Njinga’s laughter in my head by day and by night. I feared that he might not let me die.
And I was out of rum.
Ah Been Buked
Monologue. Spoken by Viney Scott. Recorded at Parsons, Indiana, by John Henry Freeman, June 1935
It’s best to leave some things forgotten.
Lord have mercy on my soul. Have mercy, have mercy, have mercy. I don’t know why you want me to talk about all this in the first place. This here’s a spirit stone, and I come out here to make sure it ain’t been covered up. Things need tending to. No, I suppose not all things ought to be forgotten. Feels like I done been around here some thousand years or some such; moving, settling down, and moving again. ’Course I ain’t been around quite that long, it just seemed that way when I got to thinking back.
§
I was nine years old when I watched my Poppa be whupped to death. You ever been to a zoo? It don’t matter none iffen you couldn’t see the bars or chains. Look into their eyes and you could see that even beasts of the field know when they ain’t free. Being in a cage did funny things to the body’s mind.
§
“What you staring at, nigger? Don’t you go on get no ideas about running off.” Young Marse Chapman would say to me when he caught me staring off at the hills. Then he’d crack that whip. Let it land right next to me to give me a start. I was the same age as young Marse Chapman. He had a special hate in him, even then. I tried to stay away from him in case his hatred was a-catching.
Lord help a colored who ran off, iffen they caught him.
Old man Marse Chapman was always away on business. He left the young marse in charge. Used to be that we had a colored overseer, Uncle Moses, running the field coloreds. Though black like the rest of us, with a little bit of authority, he forgot who he was and where he came from. But young Marse Chapman was coming of age and was eager to prove himself. Told Uncle Moses he was too soft on us and took over. Young marse was generous with the bull whip.
§
I did little jobs to help the field coloreds: toted brush and bark, rolled up little logs, carried water around to our mens folk, and swept the yard. Mrs. Annalynn, old man Marse Chapman’s wife, took a shine to me early on, and I spent many a day on her lap. With my thick braids of hair and my knobby-kneed li’l self sticking out of the burlap sack that passed for my dress, she said I was the smartest colored in the Ohio River Valley. Few of us coloreds had anything to do with no reading or writing as weren’t no schools for us back then. And I wasn’t one much for figuring anyhow. My smarts were in keeping my eyes and ears open and my mouth shut. Sometimes I wondered whether M
rs. Annalynn was trying to make herself feel better by taking me on. Owning other folks twisted a body up inside as much as it twisted up those you owned.
Mrs. Annalynn straddled her horse like a man, one leg on either side, and I rode behind her. Old man Marse Chapman hated it, saying that it wasn’t none too lady-like. Mrs. Annalynn told him that he never seemed too terribly interested in ladies. Then she asked how Miss Clara rode. Not that she said, “Miss Clara”; but the dead need respecting and I don’t speak like that. They never spoke much about it after that.
§
Aunt Clara.
We called everyone aunt and uncle out of respect, but Aunt Clara really was my kinfolk. After Mammy was sold, she watched out for me. When I asked her about the mole under my left eye, she said it was a black tear drop. I “cried for all of us,” she said.
The field coloreds called Aunt Clara a conjurer.
One time, Uncle Moses tied her up to be beaten. There she was, all spread out for everyone to watch. Even those who resented her light skin didn’t want to see her whupped. They feared for anyone who had to face the whip. But I saw her eyes. She weren’t scared none. She just stared all boldly at him, practically daring him to whup her. Then Uncle Moses turned and walked away, like he forgot where he left her. No one was allowed to touch her.
One day, a cough settled in old man Marse Chapman’s chest. A fever burned him up dead. Folks said he became a haunt, swore they saw his spirit walking about the shotgun houses. All I know was that Aunt Clara’s eyes weren’t so bold after that.
§
I opened the gates for Mrs. Annalynn, then rode into town with her to buy supplies. Afterwards, she wanted me to sit with her in the kitchen. That turned a few heads, because field coloreds never was allowed in the house, and house coloreds never worked in the field. But Mrs. Annalynn said that I had “special dispen’sion.”
I think I was like a doll to her, someone safe for her to tote around and be her friend, who didn’t talk back, but could keep her company. I was still surprised when she asked me, “Do you want to live with me in the big house?” She had an odd, dreamy sort of look in her eyes, as if she were already lost in special plans. Or hopes.
“I want to be with my Mammy.” I don’t know what got into me. My Mammy had long been sold off. I couldn’t even remember her eyes.
Mrs. Annalynn grew red-faced, like I’d slapped her. Betrayed her worsen if I stole her prize cow and sold it to the neighbor she feuded with next door. Something cold replaced the light in her eyes. I knew that look from Uncle Moses’ face. That was the last time she asked me anything.
I couldn’t hate her, though. She just wanted a child to call her own again. No shame in that.
Only hurt.
§
Most days blurred into the next. Lying in my pallet on the floor, I slept until the guinea fowls woke me up. Well, until the roosters joined in. An old bell donged on some plantation up the road a ways, then more bells added to it, like the clanging was on a morning stroll up the road. By four in the morning, young Marse Chapman straddled his horse, a big, monstrous, wild-eyed beast that had a devil in him. Riding down to us, young Marse Chapman picked ham out of his teeth with a long shiny goose quill pick. The rising wind carried the smell of sow belly frying past the shotgun houses. The smell of hoecakes and buttermilk soon followed. The kitchen from the main house had different smells coming from it: cakes, hams, chicken and poke, taters and good egg and pone bread. Most times, I was lucky to get li’l pieces of scrapback each morning. We worked from sunup to sundown in family groups, that way we could help each other when someone got behind.
§
No, a spirit stone wasn’t like a head stone, though sometimes it feels like a grave marker. Aunt Clara taught me about them. A spirit stone kept a part of a person’s spirit so that they were bound to whoever owned the stone.
I dreamt that ivy took hold of it and dragged it away from me.
§
Hills bumped up all around the Chapman house, and the land stretched on far as the eye could see. A creek, cold and bubbly, crept through two caves before it passed through the property. It separated the row of shotgun houses the coloreds had from the rest of the estate and emptied into the river.
The Chapman’s house, white and proud with all of its columns and iron gates, stood right along the road. A porch ran the full length of the house. Old man Marse Chapman rocked back and forth on the porch, sipping at his glass of lemonade while Aunt Clara fanned him.
I don’t know, maybe I was sixteen about then.
My favorite place was where the creek passed through the caves. It was near dark, but I wasn’t worried none. I was supposed to be fetching water, but folks knew I had a way of lingering whenever I went. Whispers carried on the breeze. I tell you what, my poor little heart pounded so hard, I thought it was going to jump out my chest and swim upstream. I knew they could only be one thing: patrollers.
Sometimes we called them buskrys, poor white folks who had no slaves of their own, but who tracked runaway coloreds. Iffen they caught a lone colored out by themselves with no pass—’cause you had to have a permission slip to be off or away from your Marse’s property—they would catch you and whup you or just sell you to a trader themselves. Iffen they returned you to your Marse’s, he’d turn around and give you a proper whupping for running off.
So, I held my breath and crept along.
I listened carefully, trying to figure out where they was coming from, then I heard this woman speak with a slow, deep voice that made you snap to attention. I recognized her voice, which boldened my steps to find out who she was meeting with. I crept and I crept, not noticing the drop off til I was already tumbling down.
“Land sakes, Viney,” Aunt Clara yelled at me. “You gave us a start. We thought them patrollers had us for certain.”
As I dusted the leaves and dirt from me, a round-faced little boy crouched behind her.
“It’s all right, Frederick, it’s just Viney. She’s clumsy and noisy, but we’re safe. Me and Frederick were trying to figure out how to get this here paddle boat ’cross the river. Think you could get him to the other side?”
Aunt Clara only worked in the house and wasn’t used to no real work, leastways so I thought. Maybe she worked one of her charms on me as she was so good at getting out of work.
“That li’l thing. I rowed bigger’n that for Mrs. Annalynn. I’m stronger ’n most men after working in the field for so long.”
“His mother’s waiting for him over the river.”
Frederick’s big brown eyes would haunt my dreams forever iffen I said “no.”
The current was strong, but it hadn’t rained in a spell, so we weren’t in for too much paddling. My skinny, little arms trembled every time I set my oar to water. It wasn’t the cold that sent a shiver up me and gave me goose flesh, it was the whupping I knew young Marse Chapman waited to give me should I get caught. Too scared to dare whisper to Frederick, I locked my eyes on the nearing shore, focusing on what Aunt Clara told me to tell them when I reached it.
As I neared the bushes on the other side, I realized I never even thought about what might lay across the river. Never had no account to since my whole world was Marse Chapman’s farm. The world may as well have been flat with us threatening to fall off the edge. Other slaves talked about the other side of the river like it was the Jordan River and all freedom danced beyond it. I figured whatever was on the other side probably had marses and bullwhips and traders like anywhere else.
As soon as the boat bumped the shore, I started praying. Frederick clutched the back of my dress, wrapping up in the folds as if they were curtains. The dark had a funny way of pressing in on you from all sides. Even tree limbs seemed stark and unfamiliar in the gloom. I knew I wasn’t alone.
Hands reached down and started to pull me up. I swooned, nearly dead from faint.
“Menare.” I yelled what Aunt Clara told me. She said it was from the Bible. “Menare. Menare. Menare.”
“Shh, girl,” the bushes whispered with urgency. “We heard you the first time. Who else would be out here?”
That was when I first saw him. Zias.
Zias was a great big buck of a boy. No scars ran along his fine, dark skin, near as I could tell. And his soft, brown eyes had a sparkle to them. Full of hope. And freedom. Weak as I was, I slumped in his huge, strong arms.
“You hungry?” he growled. His gruffness held a gentleness in it, like he didn’t know how to sound tender. But he tried.
“Yes’m” was all I trusted myself to say. I trembled as I ate. I don’t know why. I wasn’t cold, and I no longer feared young Marse Chapman’s bullwhip.
I rowed poor colored across the river, most every Saturday afternoon and Sunday night, just to see Zias.
§
Aunt Clara taught me lots of things about men and women. Told me that some Marses handed out permission slips for colored to get married.
§
I only knew Zias once. It was beautiful, and I didn’t need no marse’s permission for it.
§
Young Marse Chapman, not so young by then, was quick to stop men. “Whose colored are you?” he’d always ask. Iffen the slave was reedy or sickly looking, young Marse Chapman would say, “You can’t see my gals. You ain’t good stock.” Zias belonged to Marse Chapman’s Uncle Silas, who started sending him around. Marse Chapman took one gander at Zias, tall and husky, like he was bigger and stronger than a horse. Normally, he’d have planned to use him as breeding stock, studding him worsen a horse. But Marse Chapman didn’t like how Zias and me snuck glances at one another. His eyes got full of the devil whenever Zias came around.
Young Marse Chapman’s big, mean self studied me. Not like he watched the other coloreds, but like I was a flower that he waited for the right moment to pluck. That worried my li’l soul. Nothing was more frightening than the devil showing mercy.
There was no room in his foul heart for anything close to love. Some folks whispered that young Marse Chapman intended to have me for himself. Maybe that li’l shriveled thing Marse Chapman called a heart pumped more of its hate through his veins not standing for anyone around him to have what he couldn’t. I was his prize, and he meant to have me.
The Voices of Martyrs Page 4
