Sugar

by L. Todd Wood

  Ram Edwards was not an immigrant; he was a half-breed and he was angry. Born in England, his mother was Indian and his father British. He had a love-hate relationship with his heritage. His British Caucasian roots were fine with him, but he was embarrassed by the other half. He felt as if he didn’t fit in with either culture. He longed to be a successful British merchant, dining at the fine London establishments and mingling with royalty. However, whenever he did get close to those circles, he could feel the stares upon him. “He is a blackie,” he would hear them say. “He doesn’t belong here.” He was an outcast. This feeling of inferiority had haunted Ram since he could remember.

  He had felt this pain his whole life, not fitting in anywhere. It scarred him, left a huge mark on his soul. The white British tended to separate the inhabitants of London in a very simple way: rulers versus ruled. He was placed in the latter category. He burned with ambition and with hatred for those who treated him unfairly. One day, he thought to himself, they will pay. They will pay dearly. I will be wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, and they will beg to be seen with me!

  Ram was an attractive man. He always looked like a tanned, white gentleman, so people didn’t usually label him as Indian. He just looked different. He even had blue eyes, which was rare among people like him; the dark-eyed gene usually won in the lottery of genetic selection. Women liked him, which was good. They like him so much that he had lost respect for them. He could get any woman he wanted. This led to an overconfidence that when tied with his insecurities fostered a dangerous combination. Many a maiden, or madam for that matter, had felt his rage and anger in the heat of the night. Ram had quite the reputation as a violent lover, and he had ruined many a reputation by staining a woman’s honor.

  Ram had money as well, since he was a very successful trader. He imported many items from South Asia and had made the trip to India several times, always taking a cabin on the POSH side of the ship—port outbound, starboard home. That way he mingled with the wealthier white crowd who demanded to see the shoreline at all times instead of the endless sea from their cabins. He client base however was mostly Indian. He supplied the Indian diaspora with the comforts of home, importing everything from furniture to food and spices. He was quite a wealthy man and only in his mid-twenties. But alas, Ram was not satisfied.

  Ram was always networking with clients, meeting the new arrivals from the outlying regions of the British Empire typically in the seedier parts of London. He had met several new gentlemen at the coffee house, and this was exciting. It was always profitable and enjoyable to obtain new clients. However, on this particular day, Ram was more interested in a pamphlet that he held in his hand; he had picked it up at the restaurant from a recent arrival. The pamphlet had caused quite a stimulating conversation among the men drinking their coffee sweetened with sugar. The title read Free Land Lottery in Trinidad for those wishing to plant sugar. Ram saw the opportunity straight away. He burned with desire to dig into the details and read the information, but that would have to wait until he reached a dark corner where he could digest it. Since Ram always tried to present to the world that he was a white British businessman, a successful Londoner, he didn’t want anyone thinking he was an Indian looking to immigrate to the West Indies.

  Trinidad was an island down the Caribbean chain, only a few miles from the coast of Venezuela. The territory was taken from the Spanish without a fight about a decade before, at the turn of the century. The British were now actively trying to turn Trinidad into another jewel of the British Crown. West Indies sugar production was at an all-time high. All of the European powers were competing in the Caribbean for the production and exploitation of sugar. The demand in the coffee houses of Europe was insatiable, and the fortunes to be made were seductive. The British were consummate consumers of the sweet salt, as even the lower classes had developed a taste. London factories would serve tea with sugar to their employees at regular intervals in order to provide a sugar high to increase productivity. The drive for sugar production to satiate the European appetite was shaping the history of the world. The Caribbean was the perfect environment for sugar cane to thrive. When coupled with the importation of African slave labor, there existed a recipe for making one of these fortunes. Ram knew this. Perhaps this was the break he was looking for. Perhaps this was his chance to be respected. The ambition burned within him.

  He stopped a half hour later into a local pub near his home. The walk had calmed him somewhat. The noise in the pub was loud and the patrons boisterous. This is my kind of place. Now I feel comfortable. It was the perfect place for Ram to find an out-of-the-way place to sit and read. He ordered a pint and drank it down then ordered another. Ram was a big drinker, living for the nightlife and other pleasures. London had plenty of both. He eyed a pair of young ladies across the bar that frequented the establishment. He had paid for both of them a few weeks before, and perhaps he would do so again tonight. He had fond memories of the occasion. They were very talented.

  Ram read the pamphlet quickly then stuffed the paper into his inside coat pocket. It offered access to free land in Trinidad for planters willing to commit for ten years to develop the parcel. Ram could barely contain himself. This was what he had been waiting for. He would immigrate to Trinidad, get free land, build a plantation, import slaves, grow sugar, and get rich beyond his wildest dreams. Then he would return to London and rub his wealth in their faces. His ambitions would be realized. Best of all, as he tallied some numbers in his mind, the task would only take a few short years. Before I turn thirty, he promised himself.

  As the thoughts of his future—and the alcohol—improved his mood, Ram joined in the celebrations with the pub’s patrons. He drank one after another, which was his custom, and sang bar tunes into the night. Being a manic-depressive, the manic side of him took hold. He was overjoyed, boosted by the beer. He was on top of the world. He roared with the crowd and ended up buying drinks for the entire pub. This brought him quite a following. Ram enjoyed the attention.

  Hours later, he stumbled home to his flat a block away in the middle of the night. He howled at the moon and loudly sang an old dirge he couldn’t get out of his mind and attracted catcalls from the old women looking down on him from the floors above. “Quiet,” they yelled. Other neighbors shuttered their windows to try to keep out the noise. Finally he was silent as he reached his building. The euphoria had worn off and the depressive side of him returned. Ram was angry again, angry at the world.

  She was waiting for him and she was worried, worried about his state of mind. Ram had many secrets, one of which was he kept a slave girl in his home. Her job was to tend to the needs of the home and to his personal wants. He had bought her from the slave auction at the docks. She was a young Negro girl, barely fifteen. He had trained her to satisfy his every need and want. Ram also whipped her regularly, with pleasure.

  She was fearful as she heard him make his way clumsily to the door, muttering in his drunken stupor. Her name was Sally. She waited quietly in the bedroom, hoping he would first sit, and perhaps if she was lucky, he would fall asleep in the chair. But Sally was not so fortunate. I will be beaten tonight, she thought to herself l will also be raped over and over. She was right, because Ram had a mean streak as long as a country mile.

  Chapter Eight

  Ram arrived by ship in Trinidad six months later. He had sold his business in the City and placed his bet on Trinidad. Much to his surprise, half of Trinidad was covered with mountains. The island was actually part of South America, not the Lesser Antilles, and was separated by only a few miles from the Spanish Main. For this reason, the terrain was more mountainous and the flora and fauna more diverse and populous. It was a moist, tropical environment with the type of jungle growth one would expect in the mountains while the plains were grassy and flat. Tobago, its sister island to the north, consisted mostly of beaches. Ram was infatuated with Trinidad. There was a quiet energy to the island. The land was fertile, making it very easy to grow anything a man d
esired. It surpassed his most hopeful dreams. The land was like a blank canvas on which he intended to draw his success. He felt at home for the first time in his life.

  He had arrived in June of 1811, prior to the new war with the Americans. The lottery had recently been completed, and he was awarded four hundred acres of prime growing land in the center of Trinidad at the foot of the mountains. The cane will grow nicely here, he thought to himself as he picked up a bit of soil with his hands and let the moist earth sift through his fingers. The soil was rich and the water plentiful and easily accessible. He had also purchased three families of Negro slaves, a total of seventy-five workers. As the plantation grew, he would buy more as needed. He was pleased with himself and his recent acquisitions. His plan was unfolding nicely. To top it all off, he had obtained four teenage, Negro girls in the slave purchase, who were quite attractive. He had sold Sally at the auction docks in London, as he was tired of her anyway. Let the fun begin, he thought. He let his imagination run away with him and savored the thought. This is paradise.

  He was lucky to get the Negroes. The British had formally ended the slave trade from Africa in 1807, although owning slaves was still legal. Most of Trinidad was facing a severe labor shortage due to this new labor restriction. Ram had bought the slaves from a planter who went bankrupt and was heading back to England. Without labor, Ram’s dreams of becoming a rich planter would have been dashed before he even had the chance to get started. He had dodged that bullet. Now he could put his worry to rest. All of this work was making him edgy; he needed to relax. The slave girls will see to that, he thought and smiled to himself.

  Ram buried himself in his work, and over the next six months, a plantation was born. He hired an English architect and built a fine, expansive home that overlooked his property from the foothills. Ram wanted to impress the local aristocracy with his new palace and spared no expense. He also bought more slaves as they became available. He studied everything there was to know about planting sugar and became an expert in growing the cane. He even made some improvements on the process to streamline the workload for the slaves. With these improvements, he could work them harder in other areas. Ram was ruthless in wringing every ounce of work out of his human possessions. Many local planters frequented his plantation for advice on everything from sugar production to the slave trade. Even though he was not liked, he was respected. His future looked bright. The cane grew tall.

  Two years later, Ram was on top of the world. He had two successful harvests under his belt. His bank accounts were bulging. The local high society had accepted him as one of their own. He loved attending their parties and flirting with the local maidens. Sometimes he would get lucky and seduce one of them while her parents were in the next room chatting up the guests in their mansion. It was a game he played. It was a way to take his revenge against British high society, by bending their maidens over a table, lifting their dresses, and enjoying their forbidden fruit. He kept score with himself and was quite the ladies’ man. By this time, when he walked into a party, there were always several women who blushed.

  If examined today by a psychiatrist, Ram would most likely be labeled a sociopath. He had no feelings for others and he manipulated everyone, all in an effort to get what he wanted. Ram was also capable of extreme cruelty, often for his personal pleasure. All of these traits stemmed from his upbringing in England, where he had been part of two cultures but really belonged to none. There was a burning desire to be accepted buried deep within him, a desire that showed itself with frightening results at stressful points in his life. Because of this fact, Ram started to make enemies. Other planters were jealous of his success and angry at his dalliances with the women of the island. This was no secret. However, Ram took no notice.

  The pressures of his youth were what made him highly successful in any adventure he undertook. His drive to succeed was unlimited. Ram knew all of this about himself and exploited it fully whenever he could. He took advantage of others at every opportunity that presented itself. People were to be used only to further his aims, whether they were planters, women, slaves, it didn’t matter. To Ram, only Ram mattered.

  The demand for sugar in Britain and the continent grew exponentially. The Crown was constantly looking for new places to cultivate the cane and the labor to support it. There were also rumors that England would abolish slavery altogether at some point in the future. This led to an almost frenzied approach by the planters to get all the work they could from the slaves while they had them. They brutally worked them to the point of death. The British slave owners were famous for inventing the most horrible, grievous punishments for slaves who tried to escape. Visitors from London to the colonies were often shocked at the cruel conditions in which the slaves were expected to work and live. The slaves were often without adequate food and water. There was health care only in the sense to keep a slave working, to protect an owner’s investment in his property. His slaves were there to abuse and then throw away if necessary. The revulsion felt by visitors from London would eventually contribute to the abolitionist movement in the British Empire and on the continent, and manifest itself in a ban on slavery and emancipation for the Negroes. Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, the British Prime Minister became famous for pushing Britain to abolish slavery altogether. He also backed significant reform of the British government with the Reform Act of 1832. Earl Grey tea, flavored by bergamot oil, was named after Grey.

  Ram sat in a chair on the veranda of the grand, main house of the plantation that overlooked the fields. The afternoon tea hour was approaching, but he wanted something more than chai. He signaled to one of the teenage slave girls who worked in his house, and she brought him a cold rum drink on a plate. The rum went down easy and he wanted another. He was going to enjoy himself today. Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum.

  Rum was the alcohol distilled from sugar cane. The word most likely originated as a short form of the word rumbullion, which was slang for tumult or uproar in the seventeenth century. The connection probably originated in the early bars in the West Indies as sailors became quite rambunctious drinking the brown liquor, though the cane had been fermented into alcohol dating back to antiquity in the Far East. In any case, rum was very popular in Trinidad among the planters and slaves alike.

  Ram insisted the young slave girls go topless as they walked around his palace—as he liked to think of it. The local society ladies were appalled, but he didn’t care. It was his house. The small girl no older than fifteen, whom he called Sara, brought him his drink. Her breasts were perky and somewhat moist from the heat of the sun. Something stirred within his loins and he became excited.

  “It’s your turn, Sara,” he said to the girl after he sipped the cocktail. She nodded, put the plate down on the table near him, and proceeded to get on her knees between his legs. She undid his trousers. Ram lay his head back and closed his eyes.

  Hours later, Ram sat high on his horse as he rode south of his plantation to the western coast of Trinidad. The rum had worn off, and the warm breeze felt good on his face as he enjoyed the ride. He had imported a fine pair of thoroughbreds from England and was proud of them. These horses were developed by crossbreeding English mares and imported Oriental stallions of Arabian, Barb, or Turkoman breeding. The new breed would go on to be spread throughout the world. Today he was evaluating new lands that were available, to possibly expand his operation and set up new plantings. He rode with a representative from the British Governor’s Office and several armed guards for protection. They followed the trail down the coast from San Fernando, a town founded by the Spanish in the late 1700s. Cane fields dominated the landscape to the east for as far as the eye could see; the Naparima Plains were the breadbasket of sugar production in Trinidad. To the west lay the Caribbean Sea. The scene was breathtaking, so much so that even a cynical, angry person like Ram could admit it. His escorts kept their distance, as they knew better than to try to make conversation. Ram had few friends and wanted to keep it that way.

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p; Soon they reached a clearing near the coastline, which contained a flurry of activity. Seagoing vessels of all types were moored on the beach near the clearing. As they made their way closer, Ram could see close to one hundred slaves walking out on a lake, their weight supported by some type of black crust. They were dipping wooden paddles into the lake and bringing out a tarry material. The odor of kerosene was strong.

  “What is this place?” Ram turned and asked his guards.

  “It is Pitch Lake,” replied the governor’s assistant as he dared trot closer. “It is a natural tar lake. No one knows where it comes from.”

  Discovered by Sir Walter Raleigh while searching for El Dorado, the city of gold, Pitch Lake was actually one of the few natural asphalt springs to be located in North America and the largest natural asphalt lake ever found. It was one hundred acres across and approximately two hundred fifty feet deep. The oil from deep in the earth emanated from the confluence of two fault lines and made its way to the surface. There, once exposed to the air, the water evaporated, leaving a tarry substance.

  The slaves were taking the tar to the boats along the shoreline to help waterproof the wooden joints. It seemed to be a fairly large operation, as the demand was great. Customers’ boats were lined up and down the beach, awaiting their turn.