Song of Slaves in the Desert

by Alan Cheuse

He proceeded to cut the bird and eat.

  “Nawssir, massa,” Precious Sally said from the stove, and my two relatives laughed.

  Jonathan turned his glance to me.

  “You haven’t changed your mind about leaving, have you? Staying here you could take a great deal more leisure.”

  “What precisely do you mean, Cousin?” I said, staring at him and trying to discern some particle of motive in the events of the previous evening.

  Jonathan gave a shrug and settled at the table with a coffee mug before him.

  “Nothing more than what I said, Cousin,” he replied.

  “Because in fact I have decided to take a bit more time,” I said.

  He sat up, and appeared to be surprised.

  “How very nice. Father?”

  “Yes, indeed,” my uncle said, his jaws still working on the meat of the bird.

  “Though I still do want to inquire about the sailings to New York.”

  “Eventually you will go, yes,” my uncle said, swallowing.

  Jonathan raised his mug toward me.

  “But not this week or next.” If he had not sounded so smug I would have taken him for being surprised by my decision.

  “No,” I said, “I don’t think so. Yet I am not entirely sure when I will go.”

  “Of course,” my uncle said.

  “At least not until the rice harvest, yes?” said my cousin.

  “I cannot say.”

  “Of course not,” my uncle said, touching a napkin to his lips in that dainty manner he had.

  “I will need the carriage for a trip to town today,” I said.

  “Oh?” Jonathan looked at me suspiciously.

  “I wish to speak to the ship’s agent,” I said. “I would like to know the schedule.”

  “Of course,” my uncle said. “one of the boys will take you.”

  “I will go alone,” I said. “I believe I can handle the horse.”

  “You have learned a lot in your short stay, yes,” my uncle said. “Has he not, Jonathan?”

  “Oh, yes, Father, indeed, he has.”

  “And I will need some assistance,” I said.

  My uncle turned to Jonathan.

  “Then you will go—”

  “Not him, sir. I will need some assistance…in the market. Those local curios you mentioned to me when I first arrived. I thought perhaps Liza might accompany me and help me find them.”

  “Did I mention such things to you?” my cousin said.

  Crockery clattered in the washing basin behind us where Precious Sally worked her pots and plates.

  “You find the fine baskets for the harvest right here on the plantation,” she said.

  “But they are worn from use, Sally,” my cousin put in. “It would be a good idea to find some good unused specimens in the market.”

  “Miss Rebecca, she could go,” Precious Sally said as she picked up dishes and silverware strewn about the floor.

  “Rebecca is teaching her reading today to the children from the cabins,” my cousin said.

  “I…we will be fine by ourselves,” I said.

  “Of course,” my uncle said. “That’s a splendid idea.”

  “Liza will be of great assistance,” my cousin said. “I am sure she has been already.”

  He sent me a sideways glance, and I held his gaze. Did he suspect anything about last night? Could Liza have said something to him as a way of keeping him at arm’s length? Or, worse, could he after all have sent her to me on a mission to tempt me to stay, making Liza into a monstrous liar? And was my uncle a part of such a plot? A cold shock of regret quivered through my body and if I had been standing next to the wide creek I might have thrown myself headlong into the waters.

  But if we were going to town that day—and there was nothing I wanted more—we would have to leave soon. The drive was long, and I hoped to spend more time with Liza, though where or how I had not even thought about at that point.

  My uncle aided us in what was now a plan, going out to look for Black Jack so that he might send him out to the barn to find Isaac who would hitch up the horses. Jonathan meanwhile went about his business for the day, whatever that business was, leaving me alone in the room for a moment with Precious Sally.

  “Massa from New York,” she said, her big brown arms showing below the rolled-up sleeves of her voluminous dress of cotton sacking with an apron of thicker sacking draped over it.

  “Is that what you call me?”

  “It is,” she said.

  “I suppose that’s who I am. Except I’m nobody’s master.”

  “Not so far,” she said.

  I shook my head.

  “You’ve been listening to our conversations?”

  “Everybody talks in front of us. Sometimes it’s like we’re not there. Sometimes it is…”

  “You know what my father wants to do?”

  “From what I hear he wants to buy part of this plantation.”

  “And I don’t want him to. I’ve decided that.”

  “But you ain’t going back to New York yet. First, you said you was going.”

  I shook my head, confused somewhat that I was having this intimate conversation about my life and family matters with a woman I scarcely knew—who, and I confess that I thought this, was a slave to boot.

  “I’m going to town to inquire about sailing schedules.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “And I would like Liza to travel with me. To help me at the market. I…want to make some purchases before I leave for New York.”

  “Uh…” she said. And then she added, “Huh.”

  It was that look, that tone of voice—I had known it all my life growing up with Marzy in the household. African or white, our servants were our consciences, and it was important for us to notice the way we treated our consciences.

  “I trust you can spare her for the day. Perhaps even overnight. We may not be able to return until tomorrow.” I paused and took a breath. “I don’t know why I am telling you this. It sounds as though I am asking your permission.”

  Precious Sally sighed, and her huge chest heaved up and down in a wave of inhalation.

  “You don’t have to ask my permissions,” she said. She seemed about to say more when my uncle came huffing and puffing back into the room.

  “All arranged.” Turning to Precious Sally, he said, “Now where is she?”

  “Right here, massa,” Liza said from the doorway. She was wearing a fresh dress and a tan straw hat that sat on her head at an angle I could only call jaunty.

  “She need a pass, massa,” Precious Sally said. “They’s been trouble up the road.”

  “Of course, of course,” my uncle said, “I’ll write it just now.” And he left the room while the three of us remained, the big woman, me, and Liza, silent, silent, silent, until he returned.

  About half an hour later we set out, the passes in my coat pocket, my heart beating, or so it seemed to me, louder than the noise of the horse’s hooves. I held the reins and Liza sat primly alongside me. The horse—a big old gelding named Archie—seemed to know the way, and obliged only now and then to give me the opportunity to urge him along.

  “How are you this morning, Liza?” I said, finding it difficult to breathe.

  “Fine, massa,” she said in a voice that gave no notice of any difficulty on her part.

  “Are you never going to call me Nate again?”

  “Maybe later, massa,” she said.

  I reached over and touched her at the knee. It was a shock to me, almost as if I had touched the tip of a candle flame, and I noticed she flinched at my touch.

  “I am suddenly tired, are you?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “But happy,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Liza,” I said, keeping my hand in place, “I have been thinking about you…wondering about you, I should say.”

  She sat silently, giving nothing back.

  “It was…” I paused,
not knowing the words, and the creak and rattle of the carriage and the clomping of the horse filled the world all of a sudden. I wanted words to fill the emptiness and ward off the confusion inside me. The heat grew steadily stronger, and the road seemed long.

  “Tell me about yourself, will you?” I said.

  Liza touched a hand to her hat as if it might be blown away in the wind, though it was a breezeless morning, except what air we stirred as we rolled along in the carriage.

  “I…was born here, at The Oaks.”

  “And your parents?”

  “My…family, they came over on the ships.”

  “From distant Africa?”

  “From across the water, yes.”

  “That’s a long way. And a long time.”

  “Not that long, Nate. They didn’t live that long.”

  “I am sorry,” I said.

  “I am sorry, too,” she said. “My mother…she died when I was born. Precious Sally helped raise me up. That’s how I come to work in the house.” She paused, and we listened together to the rumbling of the carriage wheels in the dust.

  “Nate?”

  “Yes, Liza?”

  I took my hand from her thigh and lay my arm around her shoulders.

  “I got a question. If I’m ever going to be a free woman—and that’s what I dream of—I know I got to talk better than I do. That right?”

  “When you are free, Liza, you can speak any way you like. That is part of being free.”

  “I read books, you know.”

  “I believe I know that.”

  “Next thing I want to work on my hand.”

  “That would be a good thing.”

  “The doctor says, you write a letter, it’s like casting your voice over the miles.”

  “A lovely way to put it,” I said.

  She pursed her lips and turned her face away, as if she suddenly had a desire to study the plants and trees we passed.

  “Do you ever wonder about what it’s like to be a slave?”

  “What a question! No, I never have.”

  “That’s because you don’t have to. But every one of us dreams about being free, ’cept those that can’t dream. The stupid ones. The ones be content to stay where they are every day, working until they fade away, for a few cups of flour and some pieces of meat at the weekend and the holidays.”

  “I could find many people like that in New York,” I said, “and they are supposed to be free.”

  “They are free,” Liza said. “So they can choose to be a slave or not. Slaves don’t have a choice.”

  I remembered the terrified man crossing the creek not so long ago.

  “Unless they run.”

  “You got to be something stupid just to try and run.” Silence settled over us for a little while, silence, tempered by the racketing of the wagon and the sound of the horse. Then she said, “Or awful smart, and do it the right way.”

  “What way would that be?”

  “Not that way,” Liza said, as we noticed a group of horsemen coming our way from the direction of town.

  “No, not that way,” I said as Langerhans and two of his cohorts on horseback flew past us at a gallop, the leader inclining his head toward us as we passed. I did not quite understand, though, what I had said.

  Liza grew silent and stared at the sky above the treetops, lighter than the light blue above the barns where we had begun our journey. It must be the sea, I said to myself, the sea makes the sky turn as light as an egg-shell.

  ***

  When we arrived in Charleston we went immediately to a hotel where I took a room. Liza quickly departed for the market and I made a visit to the shipping office and inquired in desultory fashion about departure dates of boats sailing to New York. When I mentioned there might be two passengers, an inquisitive clerk asked me for our names. He stared at me as though he could somehow read the plan I held in my mind. I told him nothing more and returned and went upstairs to the room. I took up a post at the window to await for Liza’s return. Outside the street was filled with carriages and towns-folk, white and slaves, walking along as if with great purpose to their lives. In my own life, meanwhile, I saw no purpose beyond the next hour, waiting as I was with a deep expectation about the woman who would return. As to my voyage home, I thought almost nothing of it now, and felt deeply powerful in my decision. This was what it was like, I took pride in, to be a free man who could freely decide his own fate.

  Time passed. My father’s pocket-watch ticked away. I was contemplating going out for a walk to the ocean-side of town when there came a knock at the door, and Liza entered the room, followed by two young slave-boys, bearing large tubs of steaming water.

  “Massa,” she said, after the young slaves had set down their burdens and left the room. “Time for a bath.”

  “A good idea,” I said. But as dusty from the road as I was, I stood there a moment, until she came up to me and began to tug at my coat.

  Not since I was a boy and bathed by my mother had I ever undressed in front of a woman in the broad light of day. It was both embarrassing and titillating to me, as Liza helped me off with my shirt, and knelt to work at removing my boots and my trousers. I was intensely excited but at the same had wandering thoughts as I studied the top of her head, the intricate intersections of wiry hairs making patterns that only another person could have braided. Who did this for her? Precious Sally? Another girl from the cabins?

  “Now,” she said, and touched me as she stood up and led me to the large porcelain tub in the far corner of the room into which the slave-boys poured the water.

  I climbed in, flinching at the heat, and then relaxing into it.

  I shut my eyes, and when I opened them again Liza had already removed her cambric, and then her skirt and stood before me, a living sculpture in sandstone, before climbing into the tub alongside me.

  “The road was dusty,” I said as she laved me with a cloth.

  “Your dust I can wash away,” she said.

  “I’ll wash you,” I said.

  “Not this you can’t wash off,” she said, holding her darker arm next to mine.

  “Well, you can’t wash the Jew out of me, either.”

  “That is not my worry. I am not even a Jew. Just a Jew-slave.”

  “You’re my slave,” I said, taking her liquid body in my liquid arms.

  “Uh-uh,” she said, “I belong…”

  “Hush,” I said, kissing her wet lips with mine.

  “Naw,” she said, just after, “I was saying, in my heart? I don’t belong to anyone.”

  I pulled back my arms and picked up the cloth and began daubing at her breasts.

  “And these are not mine?”

  “No,” she said.

  “To whom do they belong?”

  “In my heart?”

  “In your heart.”

  “Nobody.”

  “And this?” I said, dabbing the cloth at the precious place between her legs.

  “Nobody,” she said.

  “I wish I was nobody,” I said.

  “What?” she said, and then she laughed, and we embraced again, and then stood up, splashing water everywhere, as we stepped out of the tub and rubbed each other down with towel cloths before rushing to the bed.

  ***

  What followed I cannot say except that you can imagine it, the naïve boy and the wounded slave girl, what transformations of love they made.

  And the talk that followed.

  “Nate,” Liza said in a whisper, her warm words in my ear. “What if you could buy me? Would you buy me?”

  “I have already thought about that,” I said. “Indeed, I would. That way we would never be apart. I will make an offer to uncle as soon as we return.”

  “But you have to understand he will refuse. Your cousin…will force him to refuse.”

  “What interest does he have in keeping you?”

  “He is a…stubborn man. He will not give me up, not to you.”

  I accepted her vi
ew as truth.

  “Liza,” I said, “here is what I will do,” making a great revelation to myself as well as her. “When I return to New York I will advise my father to buy into the plantation. That is why he sent me, to advise him on this question. This means I will own you after all. And once I own you, I will set you free.”

  “Nate, the family will never agree to that. They would rather lose the plantation rather than set me free.”

  “They are mad, then. Why would they take such a course?”

  Liza shook her head, but remained silent.

  At that point I should have asked another question. But instead I became caught up in the intrigue of the moment.

  “Then I will steal you,” I said. “What if I bought us passage on a ship north and we left from here next week?”

  “We could not,” she said, engaged again in our speculations. “You must have papers for your slaves. A bill of sale.”

  “I…” I took a deep breath. “I could forge one.”

  “Do you even know how to begin such a thing, Nate?”

  “No,” I said. “But I can find out.”

  “And if you owned me you would truly set me free?”

  “We would be free souls together, Liza. I swear.”

  She rolled close to me, and more time went by.

  After what seemed like some hours I consulted my watch, only to find that it had stopped, for lack of winding.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  ________________________

  A Visitor (1)

  You have got a cast like a nigger,” my cousin said to me on our return while Liza was climbing down from the carriage.

  I looked over at her but she gave no impression that she had heard what he said.

  “I bathed this morning, but now I have to bathe all over again.”

  “Did she help you with your bath?” my cousin said, with Liza still within earshot. He did not give me a chance to reply before adding, “And now that blush on you makes you look even more nigger-like. Or maybe like a redskin. Or a Jew!”

  “You don’t have to speak that way, Cousin,” I said.

  “I beg your pardon, Cuz. You and my wife must speak more about this.”

  And he leaned toward me and I smelled the liquor on his breath and things sharpened a little in my understanding.

  “And so have you decided,” he said, “about staying or leaving?”