A Dandelion for Dereau

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  1

DURING LATE 1806, NEAR the coast of Lower Guinea, Taku, a young, pregnant, woman of the Susu tribe, jabbed at the leaf-covered ground with a sharp stick, and pried up edible roots. The morning was misty and hot. She was tall and attractive, in her mid twenties. Her curly black hair was adorned with a yellow flower. Her oval face was smooth, and her black eyes emitted peace and friendliness. A long, red and white striped, shawl-like, gingham cloth accented her smooth black skin. It was draped over her shoulders, wrapped around her torso a few times, and tied around her waist. The ends hung skirt-like to her knees.

Her usual stature was straight and upright, but suddenly she bent forward and cringed with the first of oncoming labor pains. As the pains became more frequent and intense, she crouched amidst some dense moist foliage and broke off two long, wide, green leaves. She lay down upon them, and after a short time of painful, silent, labor, gave birth to a son.

He cried as she bathed him in a nearby puddle of clear rainwater. She felt weak. There was a dry place beneath the trunk of a large old toppled tree. She wrapped her infant in a fold of her gingham garment, and slept there until mid-afternoon, when again, the child cried, and she nursed him.

With a green, string-like vine, Taku bundled the roots she had dug earlier. She tucked the roots under one arm, her child under the other, and after a two-hour walk, arrived at her village by nightfall.

The village was a large circle of some twenty dome-shaped huts made of mud, sticks, leaves, bark, and thatched grass. The hut entrances were low archways that faced toward a community fire pit near the center of the circle, where a fire burned low, and was surrounded by various sized scorched flat rocks.

The father, Alut, was medium built, stout, middle-aged, and wore a loincloth. From each of his pierced earlobes hung a white, three-inch, quarter-moon shaped piece of bone. He smiled, and hurried toward her, and gently took the child. They entered their hut. Later, as the fire crackled high in the darkness, Alut and Taku showed their newborn son to the others of the village. As they admired the child, Alut said with great pride, His name is Kwal.

When Kwal was six, Portuguese slavers raided his village. He and some other children played in the nearby thick underbrush where they pretended they were on a hunt, and stalked imaginary prey. When they heard loud shouts and screams from the village, they ran and hid. The slavers hacked at the huts with machetes and swords, and threw ropes and nets at anyone they saw who tried to flee. They chased, snared, and tied many of the villagers, then took them along the paths and trails that led to the nearby Atlantic seashore.

When the children were certain the Portuguese were gone, they cautiously approached the remnants of their homes. Many huts were collapsed and destroyed. Kwal ran to his hut in search of his parents. They were not there. As others returned, Kwal searched the shambles of the village for his parents. He thought they would appear at any moment, but they did not.

As the confusion in the village mounted, Kwal returned, and sat silent at the entrance of his half-fallen hut. He was afraid, and watched in horror as some young adults knelt and beat the earth with their fists, and wailed in grief over two old men who lay dead near the fire pit, their bodies slashed and ran through with swords. Frantic children called for their parents. Nervous parents tried to locate their children. As it became evident who the missing were, the afternoon brought disappointment and grief to those left in the village. Kwal sat and wept.

As he sat helpless and in despair, Kwal noticed the shiny, sharp, broken-off tip of a sword blade near his feet. It was around eight inches long. He sensed it was a special find, and attached great value to it. Fearing an elder would later demand it from him, he hid the metal piece beneath his hut wall. A few feet away, in the leaves, he noticed one of his father’s white bone ear ornaments. It was bloody. When he bent for a closer look, he saw that half his father’s left ear was attached. He cringed in fear and sadness, and realized his parents were captured. He hid it with the piece of sword blade. Someone called out, Children, if you cannot find your parents, sit by your hut. Kwal sat by his hut as darkness fell.

Later that night, the survivors of the raid sat in a circle to decide what would be done. Parents who lost children in the raid adopted the smallest orphaned children. Other relatives adopted older children such as Kwal. There were sixteen in all. Kwal was adopted by his Uncle Polopol. The group decided they would move the village three days travel away, to evade any slavers who might return. Later, everyone tried to rest. The elders refused to revive the village fire because they feared the Portuguese would see the flames and return. Kwal missed the evening firelight that he was accustomed to. There was a slight breeze. A white glow from the risen half-moon scattered slivers of light between the movement of the limbs and leaves of the treetops. The breeze soon slowed, the leaves became still, and the familiar screams and murmurs of the night birds and animals filled the air. Kwal slept.

At dawn, Kwal was instructed by his uncle, Polopol, to bring his parent’s possessions to him. Inside the sagged hut he found his father’s short wooden hunting spear, some bowls fashioned from large seashells, a small piece of blue gingham cloth, and three fetishes; the skull of a sea snake, a tortoise shell, and the rib of a monkey, all cleaned by a nearby colony of ants. He took the sword tip from beneath the hut wall and wrapped it in the gingham cloth. The ear ornament with his father’s flesh attached was gone. At first, he was reluctant to reveal his treasured piece of sword blade to his uncle, but later did so as a matter of honor and respect because his uncle adopted him. His uncle took all of the items, and told Kwal he would keep them for him.

Kwal’s uncle, Polopol, was short, and in his late thirties. A wild boar kicked him in the small of the back when he was younger, and he never fully recovered. He walked bent forward in a half-stoop, and used a tall walking stick. He often grimaced in pain from the injury, but still hunted and performed his daily tasks.

Polopol, like the others of the tribe, had great faith in the spirits that guided him through life, and kept fetishes that connected him to those spirits. One of those spirits resided in the bleached leg bone of a wild chicken, another in a rock that he used to kill a cobra.

Polopol was fond of the broken piece of sword blade. Years before, at the coast, where he went to trade fresh monkey meat for some blue and red gingham, he was offered some tobacco if he would skin a small crocodile. When he agreed, the sailor loaned Polopol the first knife he ever used. Kwal’s piece of blade was the answer to Polopol’s dream to own a knife. He fashioned a handle for it, and intended to keep it. He thought Kwal would forget about it, but Kwal asked about the metal piece quite often, and Polopol had second thoughts about what he saw as thievery from an orphaned relative. Polopol, heavy with guilt, sought spiritual council.

He returned to the site of the raided village to visit a gingerbread tree that housed one of the spirits he often consulted for guidance. As he sat beneath the gingerbread tree, he noticed that something white rested in the crotch of the first limb. He climbed up for a closer look, then reeled backward in shock when he recognized an ear ornament that once belonged to Alut, Kwal’s father. Polopol rushed back to the new village. The tree-spirit at the raided village showed me your father’s ear bone. It was a sign. I must give you the sword tip.

If you think the spirits want me to have it, I will take it, Kwal said. Kwal explained that he found the sword tip and his father’s ear ornament on the very day of the raid, and that the flesh from his father’s ear probably attracted an owl, or wild cat, that carried it to the tree with the ornament attached.

Yes, Yes, that is how the spirits work together, Polopol replied. Of all the trees in the forest, I was summoned to that very tree where the spirit often speaks to me. This cannot be by chance.

The spirits were a type of social lubricant for the tribe. They were assumed to possess problem solving powers. Most believed the spirits were good, and everyone could believe in as many spirits as he or she wanted. Two people could not hear the same spirit, but many people could hear the same things from many spirits. The spirits did not speak aloud, they spoke as inner voices to the hearer. That was their magic. They predicted, or revealed the future, and sent signs, and omens, and advised and judged, and were at the beck and call of their believers. Spirits could bless one out of trouble, or curse one into trouble. They could heal, or cripple, or cause disease, or famine. From time to time, the spirits needed to be appeased, or thanked, by deeds such as tribal festivals, rituals, celebrations, and sacrifice.

Spirits could be anywhere, but usually dwelled in fetishes. That was how one kept them near. One who created fetishes, created homes for spirits, and was known as a keeper of the spirits, a highly respected station in the tribe.

When Kwal was fifteen, he was slim, quite tall, and lanky, with black, curly, hair, and piercing black eyes. He taught himself to carve fetishes for the people of his village. Because of his talent to carve, and the seriousness of his ways, he was known as a keeper of spirits. When the people of the village fished, hunted, or foraged in the rainforest, or at the nearby lowlands and swamps along the sea, they often brought various objects to him in hopes he could fashion for them a dwelling for a spirit. At the entrance to his hut, he would turn a piece of driftwood this way and that as he studied its curves and grain. ‘A bird, if this little bit, and that, were cut away,’ he would think. ‘A bird, if an eye were here.’ That was his talent. He visualized what could be, and knew how to create from the vision. Each evening, Kwal sharpened the knife with a special stone which was also a fetish.

Because he preferred to be alone, he built his hut an hour’s walk from the village. An assortment of carved wooden fish, sand crabs, snakes, and other animals lined the inside wall of his hut. Likenesses of human faces stared from the gnarly rooted undersides of small dried, uprooted tree trunks. Some of their hair-like roots were trimmed away to create facial features, others were left natural, and appeared as their hair and beards. Likenesses of various fruits, carved from driftwood, lay scattered about, all perfect in every detail, stained in an array of colors from bright to faded, rubbed and painted with the dyes and stains of local clays, roots, berries, and flowers. Near the center of the hut, two waist-high human likenesses stood side-by-side, man and woman. She wore bright red gingham, he wore a loin cloth. The left earlobe of the male likeness was missing. Their expressions were fixed in a sullen gaze toward the door, as were the eyes of the carved animals situated behind them. All who entered, or peered into the hut of Kwal, felt the unmistakable presence of the spirits.

It is a miracle, one would say.

How could this be? another would reply. They look so real. This is so powerful that its secret cannot be asked. It is unexplainable."

His hut is alive with spirits, another would marvel. Can’t you feel them? They are all around us. They wait to enter a dwelling. They stir the air like a soft wind. This is truly a sacred place.

Many would not raise their voice above a whisper when in the presence of the spirits that dwelled near Kwal.

Kwal was sixteen when the Portuguese slavers returned. They came soon after dawn. As Kwal carved, he did not see or hear them. He looked up and saw six ragged sailors, and raised his knife in self-defense, but was overpowered. They tied his hands behind his back, and tightened a rope-noose around his neck. Their attention then turned to the many carvings in Kwal’s hut. They took their shirts off, and used them in bag-like fashion to hold smaller carvings. They tied a short rope around the necks of the carvings of Kwal’s parents, then hung them so they swung like pendulums from Kwal’s neck. A few minutes later, one of the sailors laughed as he jerked the rope noosed around Kwal’s neck, and pulled him toward a path that led to the sea. As he was yanked away, Kwal saw his knife near the base of the upright pole at the entrance of his hut. A horrid childhood memory of the day his parents were captured, flashed before him. He trudged toward the sea, his head bowed, not from submission, but from the weight of the two likenesses of his parents. With each labored step, they thudded together.

At the swampy beach, they pushed Kwal into a skiff and rowed to a sloop moored inside a small cove. Aboard the sloop, the captain, a short, obese, gnarly, unkempt, sarcastic man, stood stiffly, high on an upper deck, and looked down upon Kwal and the sailors. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he wore a black three-cornered felt hat. A six-inch, tarred, gob of braided black hair protruded downward from the back of his head.

Caught up in the uncertainty of the times, Captain Querto was left with little choice when political factions of his country clashed. He feared loss of his commission, and the ship, Sermos Pobres, so he commandeered her, and decided not to return to Portugal. With the consent of his crew, they sailed her up and down the coast of Africa, a tramp vessel, and took on any cargo they deemed profitable.

The year was 1821, and he knew it was a risky time to be involved in slave trade. The importation of slaves was against the laws of England, and punishable by death in the United States. There was also a handsome reward for those who reported the importation of slaves. With clandestine arrangements, and payment to the right blockade ships’ captains, slaves smuggled to America brought a handsome profit, but if captured as a renegade ship that ran a blockade, all could be lost. The ship could be confiscated, the slaves freed, and he and his crew hanged. Captain Querto chose to avoid those risks. He would sail around the Cape of Good Hope to places more tolerant of slave trade, such as Madagascar, East India, and along the coast of China. He handily slipped in and out of coves along the African coast, and evaded detection, and kept the colors of France, Spain, England, America, and the Dutch, at hand, to hoist and deceive whatever ship he identified on the horizon.

Who have we here, mates? he snarled.

The sailors dumped Kwal’s carvings upon the deck. One of them called up to the captain, He’s a carver. He carved all of these.

The captain observed Kwal for a few moments. If he carved those, he is no ordinary slave. Chain him to the cargo rings on the starboard main deck. Bring those two large wooden carvings to my cabin, and mind you, treat him well. Full rations for him. Treat him well, I say! I know a man who will pay well for him. The idiot who draws his blood will be whipped soundly.

Over the next few days, the Sermos Pobres called at three small makeshift ports, took on seven more slaves, fresh water and food, and sailed for Madagascar. Kwal sat chained beneath a ragged flap of sailcloth on the main deck, sick from the toss of the ship, and the strange food he was given. Fear gripped him. Several times he panicked and tried in vain to pull free of the shackles locked around his ankles. After a few days, he quieted, and took notice of the goings on around him.

Each morning at dawn, the crew of fifteen gathered for devotion on the quarterdeck. They knelt before a foot-high crucifix affixed to the bulkhead. Captain Querto then read a few passages from his prayer book, made the sign of the cross, and the crew went about their duties.

A slave deckhand who brought food to Kwal, knew some of Kwal’s dialect, and, as best he could, answered Kwal’s questions. Why do they kneel before the sticks each morning?

It’s their spirit.

Is it good or bad?

Always bad. Their spirit shows no goodness. The stick is called the Jesus tree.

After the morning meal, they threw open the hatches to the hold and tossed the garbage from their previous day’s meals, with cold balls of boiled rice, to the prisoners below. A bucket of drinking water was lowered, and after a few minutes, retrieved. After they verified that all thirty prisoners were alive and chained to the bulkhead beams, the hatches were slammed down until the next day. Kwal watched this routine day after day until the ship docked at Ile Sainte Marie, a small, French-occupied, island off the coast of Madagascar.

As captain Querto hoped, the schooner, Nuntius was also at port. It was the flagship of French Bishop Haggneax de Buhaim. He was on his second voyage to Tonkin, and in command of a small fleet with a force of European mercenaries. Captain Querto was granted an audience with the Bishop, and hurried with Kwal, the wooden statues of Kwal’s parents, and the other smaller carvings, to the Nuntius.

The Bishop, in his late fifties, had a trimmed white beard and mustache. His robe was black. He was thin and frail, and appeared unhealthy, from the small features of his thin hooked nose and small deep-set, dark eyes, to his narrow, bony shoulders, and long spindly fingers. A six-inch silver Patriarchal Cross with a chain of half-inch oval links hung centered low upon his sunken chest. Although physically weak, he wielded great political and religious power. His decisions were final. Dedicated to efficiency and frugality, he loathed to redo a task, repeat an order, or clarify a statement. A powerful reprimand was certain when something required a second attempt, which he saw as a sign of weakness and inefficiency on the part of the subordinate. Those in his midst knew well his quiet, absolute manner. Where many bellowed and waved their arms in anger, or shook their fist to express authority, he commanded the same intensity with a near whisper, and the slight lift of an index finger from a hand that rested on the arm of his chair. He did, however, repeat some high-level actions that were necessary and worthy, in his estimation, of a Bishop to repeat, such as his present voyage, which was a second endeavor of utmost importance to France, the Roman Catholic Church, and in his view, the world. He was on a mission to restore the political power of the Giah Anuh family, who in return for French military assistance, agreed to tolerate the Christian faith in that province of Tonkin.

The Bishop inspected the carvings, and paid Captain Querto for both Kwal and his carvings. As soon as Captain Querto departed, the Bishop summoned an aide who escorted Kwal to a cabin. For the first time in weeks, Kwal was unshackled. The aide bolted the door, and left him alone. Kwal sat quiet on a wooden bench, and looked about the quarters. Sunlight beamed through a small rectangular window. A nine-inch-tall crucifix hung on the bulkhead, and a wooden bucket with a rope handle hung near the deck from an up-slanted wooden peg.

Kwal was given no food or water the first day. The next day, the Bishop and his aide brought a basket filled with pieces of wood to Kwal’s cabin, and laid a short sharp knife, a stone, and three sticks of wood on the bench beside Kwal. The Bishop took the crucifix from the wall, held it before Kwal, pointed to the basket, and then to the crucifix. Kwal understood but refused to carve. Hours later, the Bishop and the aide returned with food and water, which they showed Kwal, but left outside the locked door of his cabin. He had no choice, but to submit to his hunger and thirst. As he carved, he felt the bitter sting of defeat and helplessness. His tears fell upon his work, and blurred his vision as the figurine of Jesus took form. With the feel of the different knife strange to him, and his vision blurred, he cut his thumb. It was a small nick, but his blood smeared upon the carved body of Jesus.

When the Bishop and the aide returned to the cabin, they saw drops of blood on the deck, and examined Kwal’s hands. They feared he attempted to injure or kill himself, but upon seeing the smallness of the cut, turned their attention to Kwal’s work. The Bishop was shaken by the coincidence of blood on the torso of the figurine of Jesus on the crucifix. A sign, he whispered. God has blessed this mission. This heathen could not know the significance of the crucifixion and the blood of Jesus upon the Cross. God caused him to cut his hand. It is a sign of blessing and approval. With a quivery voice, he instructed his aide. See that he is fed and clothed, but each day hence he will carve two of these for God and the Church, or he will not be fed.

Yes, your Excellency, praise be to God, Jesus, and the Church.

The Bishop stared at Kwal with an expression of great preponderance. The voyage will be long. Have the scribe teach him to speak. See that he is catechized. His voyage through life will be long as well, and his world will become larger now. Yes, he must speak our tongue, and he must be a Christian. God has sent him here, and has givin me His sign. God wants him to be a Christian.

Yes, your Excellency, he must speak. He must be a Christian. Praise be to God, Jesus, and the Church.

Each day, the scribe and a missionary tutor called upon Kwal and taught him the French language, and the catechism of the church. The Bishop periodically inspected Kwal’s work, and blessed each carved crucifix. He took special interest in Kwal, and at times, tested his progress. He asked in a patient tone, Do you understand about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, my child?

Yes, I was the keeper of spirits in my tribe. They are spirits that speak in silence.

My child, these spirits are different, they are the living spirits of the church. The spirits of your tribe were made up by anyone who wanted to pretend they heard a spirit. These spirits of the church are the only good spirits.

Is the Jesus tree that I carve, the home of a spirit?

No, my child, the crucifix is an object that reminds us of, and represents the spirits of the church, whispered the Bishop. The crucifix represents Jesus who died on the cross, and suffered for the sins of everyone. It represents His spirit.

Yes, your Excellency, now I understand, replied Kwal.

Kwal learned to say what the Bishop wanted to hear, and feigned agreement to pacify him. He thought, ‘The spirit’s home is in the Jesus tree. He has no home until I carve it for him.’ From then on, he often befriended deception as a means of survival. He pretended to believe what his master wanted him to believe, but held to his own set of beliefs, which he regarded as true. He understood early on that belief in both, the Bishop’s spirits, and his, could reside hidden, yet juxtaposed in his mind, and the Bishop could not detect his preference for one or the other. He knew that neither he nor the Bishop could see a spirit. He also knew he had to conceal disagreement, because the Bishop would punish him. The Bishop was the mentor of this trait that Kwal would perfect and use throughout his captivity.

The Bishop, in doubt of Kwal’s allegiance to the church, ordered that the carvings purchased with Kwal be removed from Kwal’s quarters. Kwal became upset, and sulked for days. An aide became concerned, and reported to the Bishop that Kwal was ill. When the Bishop visited him, Kwal requested the carvings be returned. The Bishop replied, You have no need for those uncivilized, pagan symbols. You have new spirits. The old spirits are gone forever. You must cast away those foolish things and become a civilized man. Kwal feared further retaliation and did not display contempt for the Bishop, but defiantly thought, ‘I am the keeper of my spirits.’

After a year, Kwal reluctantly partook in his first communion. When he was seventeen, he spoke fluent French as well as the dialect of the Tonkin area. He was well known and respected, and was often summoned to accompany the Bishop’s entourage on various political excursions around the province. Many churches were under construction in anticipation of the conversion of the population to the Roman Catholic faith. Religious loyalty, trade, and political influence were payment to the French for the aid of the Bishop’s mercenary army. They slaughtered those who practiced Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. France, and the restored Giah Anuh royal family were the new rulers.

With time, the Bishop’s demeanor toward Kwal became more cordial than master and slave. Although a slave, Kwal was perceived by the Bishop as somewhat faithful, and because of his talent, enjoyed privilege that many envied. Kwal was modest about his notoriety and impact. All who saw his work, marveled at his artistry; his personal mark upon the walls of all the Roman Catholic churches constructed in the area. They were adorned with crucifixes, figurines of the Virgin Mary, and many other cameo insets, all carved by him, or under his direction.

At seventeen, Kwal was a craftsman and an artist. His repertoire of tools increased from a short knife to a sailcloth satchel full of hand forged chisels, small saws, hammers, wood augurs, rasps, drawknives, and a special set of carving knives that he, with the help of a local metal smith, designed and helped forge. He was energetic, healthy, and friendly. He was attached to the people of the area, and felt sadness when the time came to say farewells to his many acquaintances and friends. The Nuntius would sail for France within the next few days. The second mission to Tonkin was accomplished.

On the return voyage to France, the Nuntius again moored at Ile Sainte Marie to offload trade goods and take on fresh food, water, and homebound trade goods. When Kwal went ashore to help procure and load supplies, he was grabbed from behind, overpowered, tied, and blindfolded. Within an hour, he was chained in the hold of a strange ship with some fifty other captive Negroes. Hour after hour, day after day, the ship pitched to and fro. Accustomed as he was to sailing, Kwal lost all track of time, and became very ill from starvation and the unbearable stench that permeated their squalid quarters. He was also frightened.

The darkness alone was frightening. They saw light once each day when the deck-hatch above was opened, and the crew’s garbage was thrown down to them. They crawled to the end of their chains and groped for food scraps. Each day, a few buckets of water were lowered, but was often spilled before all had the chance to drink. Some died, and when the sailors above deck could no longer tolerate the stench, a rope with a meat hook was lowered to a deckhand who gagged as he unshackled the corpse, jabbed the meat hook under the chin with a quick strike of the heel of his hand, and called to those above, Hoist up. This happened six times during the journey. Kwal watched the gruesomeness of it all, and heard the wails of sorrow from the others. They watched in horror as the bodies of loved members of their tribes and families swung in unison with the ship’s sway. The crew pulled them upward with short lurches toward the block and tackle above; the chorus on deck shouting, Heave. Heave. Heave…

Aboard the Nuntius, a few day’s sail from France, Bishop Haggneax de Buhaim knelt on a cushion beside his bed, and looked upward to utter his evening prayers. He missed Kwal, and wondered about his fate. May Your Spirit be with Kwal, Oh Lord, and keep him safe. Twice, in a wavery voice, he said those words as he performed the sign of the Cross.

At the end of the torturous journey, three sailors entered the hold. One held a whale oil lantern that cast a dim light, while the others shackled the Negroes to a series of iron rings attached to lengths of rope. The slaves were led above to the main deck, and pushed into skiffs, and taken ashore, toward a signal fire, then led across a sandy beach, and prodded onto wagons. A man handled Kwal rough, and forced him downward, where he sat as his wrists were locked to an iron bar that ran the length of the wagon bed. There were seven other slaves with him. The man spoke a language that Kwal did not understand, Now you stay put right thar, boy, an’ we’ll git on outta here.

The man was white. He whipped his horses. The wagon jerked forward. Kwal was in America.

  2

DURING LATE 1807, INLAND from the coast of Virginia, near the Shenandoah River, Melodine Thacker sat in the large, luxurious, sitting room of her plantation home, and knitted. Low flames crackled soft in the fireplace. It was a cozy place. She was rather plump, aside from her pregnancy, and in her thirties. Her face was somewhat triangular, with a wide forehead, puffy cheeks, and a double chin. Her eyes were an almond color, deep-set, with puffy eyelids. They glared in craftiness. Each morning, her long auburn hair was done in a neat bun by a slave housemaid. As the time of birth neared, her already mean disposition, intensified. She shouted orders to her house slaves. Get me some tea. Put the blanket around my feet. They quickly did so. She was seldom content. The times were such that women had few rights, or a say in much, save some of what went on in the household. She was obsessed by that sliver of power she wielded over the house slaves.

For hours each day, she knitted hats, stockings, mittens, sweaters, shawls, and scarves. She was not a good knitter. If a garment turned out wrong, rather than unravel it and start anew, she dawned her face of false graciousness, and with exaggerated ado, gave it to one of the slaves as a gift. Later, if they did not wear the garment, she displayed her self-indulgent act of disappointment, a forlorn look somewhere between hurt and insult. The slaves then played her little game and treated her like a child, and wore the item to pacify her. The house slaves and the field hands all had the mark of Melodine upon them; ruptured knit hats, long-thumbed mittens, odd shaped scarves and shawls, and stockings that resembled fish nets, all of which gradually migrated to a much deserved burial along the back edge of a field. A herd of thirty sheep was required to provide the shorn wool that the slaves carded, dyed, and spun into yarn, to satisfy her insatiable urge to knit.

Melodine was sipping tea when she felt the first of her labor pains. Her fine porcelain teacup and dainty saucer flew asunder and shattered upon the floor. She screamed, and lurched forward from her thick padded chair, and fell sprawled across her footstool, where she gasped and moaned. As the pains became more intense, she shouted loud profanities. Her slaves helped her upstairs to her bedroom, where she lay in agony on the fresh laundered sheets and blankets of her soft downy bed, and shrieked out orders. Get the master! Get the doctor! Get the midwife!

Panicked slaves mounted the bare backs of horses, and rushed to find the master, the doctor, and the midwife, all of whom arrived in plenty of time to attend, comfort and console her. After an hour or so of labor, and continuous screams, she gave birth to a son. The midwife cleaned the child, and presented him to Melodine, who at once summoned an earlier designated nanny to nurse him. Melodine was very weak, and for a fortnight, required the constant attention of the house slaves, until she had enough strength to slowly, with help, negotiate the long, curved stairway down to the sitting room, where, although still weak, she managed to give house orders, and knit, when she felt strong enough.

Talbot Thacker, the father, thirty-five, was obese. He wore a Quaker-style, wide brimmed, straw hat, and an unbuttoned black suit jacket over a white cotton shirt. His face was round and pudgy, and appeared wide because of his full black beard and heavy mustache. Talbot had a violent temper that flared when the least of a situation went wrong. He had a shifty look about him, with bushy black eyebrows, and blue eyes. He always squinted, like he was stuck in a mode of suspicion. He seldom smiled unless something sinister aroused his twisted idea of humor, such as playing tricks on his slaves. He sometimes hid tools and other objects, then asked for them. When the slaves failed to find the items, he shamed them. Later, he would accidentally find the items, then scold them.

He often summoned young women slaves to the barn where he forced them to exchange sexual favors for his word not to sell off their husbands, or children. Refusal was out of the question. These were no-win situations for them. He delighted in renewing the threats, which they had to heed, because he had in fact sold off family members, with no remorse, or regard to his given word.

The child was their first, and Talbot was glad to have a son. He always held him for at least a few minutes each evening. They named him Elliot.

Talbot Thacker owned twelve hundred acres along the west bank of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River. Thirty-nine slaves worked on his plantation. He was also the Reverend Talbot Thacker, self-appointed pastor of the area’s new sect, the Our Savior’s Church of God. He was more arrogant, and dictatorial, than religious, but religion was a convenient fit for his personal agenda, which was to tell other people how he thought they should live. God was his excuse to do so. His position as pastor gave him license to perfect a dogmatic stance that satisfied his psychotic need to pontificate.

Each Sunday, some thirty faithful followers came from miles around to his small white church near the river. It was built by his slaves, but he refused to allow them to attend, and guarded against their access to any aspect of the religion he preached. His sermons were loud and fiery. For two hours each Sabbath, he bellowed from the depths of his obesity, shallow, self-interpreted, homespun revelations that he claimed God conferred upon him to pass along to his sheep.

On the Sunday Elliot was christened, Talbot preached one of his favorite sermons. As he preached, he paused, and strutted back and forth, a few feet behind the pulpit. His black shaggy hair was mussed from rapid head movements. Beads of sweat dripped from his round pink face. With an expression of weighty discontent, he resumed the sermon, and declared in a thunderous voice, God stopped the people from buildin’ a tower tuh heaven. His expression changed to a sly grin, as he whispered in a low vengeful tone. Then yuh know what He done? Well, I’ll tell yuh what He went and done. He confounded their language, an’ sent ‘em ever’ which way ‘cross their land.

Amen, the congregation said.

Again he strutted back and forth, with a painful look on his face, his thick eyebrows fixed in a scowl. He looked toward the floor, and exhibited deep seriousness and contemplation of his next words, and stepped up behind the pulpit, and shouted, and jabbed his right fist forward as if to deliver a punch, and declared, That’s when God made all them diff’rent black Cushite tribes that lives over ‘ere in Aferca!

Amen.

The reason He done that is b’cause He don’t want ever’body workin’ together on some no-count thing b’cause nuthin’ else’d ever git done. He gave us the earth tuh take from. He paused and appeared calm, then said in a lowered voice, A man needs a lot a he’p tuh do God’s work. These are troubled times, my brethren, he declared, as he cradled the open Bible upon his right hand and held it high. It’s all here in the Good Book, Lamentations chapter four, verse seven an’ eight, Zion, in prayer, says, ‘You Nazerites was pure as snow, whiter’n milk, now yer blacker’n coal.’ What the Prophet is sayin’ is that once, yuh was white and beautiful, and now yer black and ugly. If yuh turn in the scripture tuh, Amos, chapter nine, verse seven, the Lord is angry at the Israelites, tellin’ ‘em, ‘Ye are not even as good as the children of the Ethiopians tuh me,’ meanin’ the Cushites, the Negroes of the Bible. God knows what a Negro is. He knowed it back then, an’ he knows it now. How’d we ever be able tuh farm all this land without the help God has given tuh us? Thank God fer stoppin’ the Tower of Babel. Thank God fer His wisdom in givin’ us the help we need tuh do His work here in this Garden of Eden. Thank God, Jesus the Son, an’ the Spirit of the Holy Ghost. May the Spirit of God be with yuh till we meet here again next Sunday.

Amen, the congregation replied.

After the sermon, Talbot called Melodine before the congregation. The nanny followed, and carried Elliot. Talbot rambled at length about Jesus, Joseph, Mary, and Moses found in the bulrushes, then delivered a fervent prayer, and christened his son, Elliot Cabell Thacker.

When Elliot was nine, he got lost for seven hours in a forty-acre cornfield near the Thacker mansion. Six slaves were sent in different directions to find him. One found him near the center of the field, where he sat and cried, head in hands, among the six-foot-high cornstalks. After the slaves brought him home, he was fed and doted over by the women for a few hours until he calmed down. Talbot, angry, later said to Melodine, It don’t take a whole lotta sense tuh foller a row a corn outta the damn patch. Seems tuh me like that boy gets hisse’f lost a lot.

Later that year, a tutor from Richmond, one Master DeReau, twenty years old, and fresh out of the University of Paris, agreed to periodic two-day stays to educate young Elliot. When Elliot was twelve, his father required him to learn how to plant corn, hay, vegetables, grain, and tobacco, and how to raise fowl, cattle, hogs, sheep, and horses. When he was fifteen, he was authorized by his father to give orders to the slaves, and when he was sixteen, he whipped for disrespect the slave who found him in the cornfield when he was nine. He also learned about the financial books, the breeding records, and other ledgers.

These are the breeding records, Talbot explained to his son, as he placed a stack of ledgers on the study desk. There’s a ledger fer the sires, with the names of all the boars, the rams, the bulls, the stallions, an’ the Negro men. It shows all their mates, an’ all their youngins, and who they was sold to er whatever else happened to ‘em. The tradin’ we done tuh git new blood lines is in there too.

Elliot opened the ledger for the slaves, and thumbed through the pages: Oct. 3, 1797, Blueboy mated with Negress Mandy, begat Negress Lila, June 10, 1798. You mean Lila in the house is the daughter of Old Blue, that slops the hogs, and Mandy that milks the cows?

Yep,

Yuh mean yuh figger all this out?

Sure, son. Yuh got tuh, else, yuh’d git inbred culls. No tellin’ what’d happen. Might get crazy ones. Then all that money we spent on buyin’ breedin’ stock’d be a waste. They ain’t nobody gonna pay fer a crazy Negro. Yuh cain’t trust ‘em. Might as well take ‘em out an’ shoot ‘em. Ain’t worth a damn thing tuh nobody.

A few years later, a Clivorn Dixon from Richmond sent word to Talbot that a small number of smuggled Negroes were available for inspection. Talbot was interested, but ailed from gout, and decided to send Elliot.

Elliot, at eighteen, was slim. His face was long, with high cheekbones and a somewhat square chin. He wore a brown felt hat that sagged all around, and was blotched with sweat stains. He seldom shaved, and wore blue denim trousers, a cowhide belt with iron buckle, and a faded gray cotton shirt.

He was a conditioned religious fanatic with psychological scars. His childhood was replete with beatings, and ridicule, for failure to memorize biblical scripture. In matters regarding religion, his mind was stalled in a kind of schizophrenic mode that could not reconcile the hateful punishment he received for the sake of religious learning, with the tenderness, goodness, and love, expounded by the Bible. It was as if someone slapped him in the face, and then said they loved him. As a matter of social survival and harmony, he, like Kwal, exercised that great deception; he concealed his actual beliefs, and pretended to believe whatever satisfied the fanatical religious belief his father required him to accept.

I want yuh to take a little trip an’ buy us a young Negro. Mind yuh now, git a good healthy one, size ‘em up like I showed yuh. Don’t git no sick one. Now, yuh take a pack-horse, an’ another horse fer the slave tuh ride. Watch fer the Colder farm ‘bout ten mile this side a Richmond, on this side a the James River. Tell ‘em who yuh are. Tell ‘em I sent yuh. He’ll take care of yuh.

After Elliot rode for four days, he got lost and ended up on the road to Fredericksburg. He backtracked for another day, and after numerous inquiries, found the Colder farm.

Pike Colder, middle-aged, short and heavy, with a potbelly, wore blue gingham trousers held up by a belt fashioned of frayed rope, tied in a square knot, and a faded, red shirt with the second button from the top gone. Pike was a cruddy man, with wiry beard and mustache. His dirty, torn, gray felt hat was cocked forward. Its brim sagged low over his forehead, and shadowed bloodshot eyes that signaled caginess. He had the deceitful look of a continual liar. A large chaw of tobacco stretched his left cheek, and a foul combined odor of alcohol, stale onion, and sweat, permeated the hot, sultry, morning air around him. He eyed Elliot with suspicion.

I’m Elliot Thacker from over Shenandoah way, would yuh be Pike Colder?

Yup. What brings y’all over this way Mister Thacker? he asked, in a slow drawl.

Well, my daddy sent me tuh git a young Negro from yuh.

Oh yeah, I recollect the owner did say a Thacker might be by, now thet I think ‘bout it. Well, I am here tuh tell yuh, yuh come tuh the right place, Mister Thacker, he bragged. Tie yore horses over there by the waterin’ trough an’ I’ll show yuh what we got.

Pike led Elliot through a small door at the west end of a large, sagged-peak, gray, weather-beaten barn. Inside, bright blades of sunshine slipped through long vertical cracks between the rough-cut boards that sided the east end of the barn, and cast a dim, eerie, yellow-hued light throughout. The Negroes sat on the straw-covered dirt floor. Their ankles were shackled to six-foot chains, secured by iron rings to heavy beams along each side of the barn. As Pike and Elliot walked toward the east end of the barn, Elliot said, Daddy wants a young healthy male. New breedin’ stock.

Well, Mister Thacker, they’re fresh in. Been here a few weeks. Gittin’ tuh look a little better’n they did back then. Had two of the twenty-two I got, die on me. Course, they’re gittin reg’lar fed now.

What’d they die from?

Don’t rightly know. They folded up an’ died on me overnight. Had the others dig a hole and put ‘em under. That was nigh a week back. I figure if it were a catchin’ thing, the rest woulda died by now. Guess it was bad trav’lin’. No tellin’ how they treat ‘em on them boats, y’know.

At the east end of the barn, Pike opened two large doors. The morning sun spread bright upon the Negroes. There were ten on each side of the barn, men on one side, women the other, all naked.

At each space was a two-foot trough, spiked to the floor, that resembled a pig trough. The troughs were situated so that the slaves had to use their full length of chain to reach their trough. Pike took some moldy cornbread from a wooden keg, and dropped a sparse amount into each trough. The cautious Negroes came to the troughs. Their heavy chains clanked, and dust, and straw chaff rose sparkling in the sunlight. Pike picked up a hickory stick the size of a walking cane, and tucked it under his left arm. He strutted along the middle area of the barn, and said with deep-voiced authority, I’ll water ‘em later.

They knelt, heads bowed to the troughs, and pushed the cornbread into their mouths with the palms of their hands, except for Kwal, the third man from the east end. He sat down beside his trough, selected a piece of cornbread, picked off the dirt, mold, and straw, and as he ate, held one hand below the other so as not to drop any crumbs. Elliot noticed. "How old is that