For the Reckord

by Barry Reckord

  ANNIE: I hear he prowls the estate at night, peeping into slave-huts.

  RHONE: Yes.

  ANNIE: A stone could brain him.

  RHONE: Yes.

  ANNIE: And there are runaways to blame.

  RHONE: Yes.

  ANNIE: You wouldn’t dare, would you?

  RHONE: What?

  ANNIE: Murder him.

  RHONE: No milady, you’d sell up and sail away.

  ANNIE: Murder him and have your freedom.

  RHONE: I want you.

  ANNIE: I’ll get you a rattle and you can play with that.

  RHONE: You called me, milady.

  ANNIE: That was Tuesday.

  RHONE: Everyday is Tuesday now.

  ANNIE: You weren’t much cop anyway.

  RHONE: You were laughin’ and moanin’.

  ANNIE: Oh, a little flattery does a man good. More good than it did me.

  RHONE: You were moving up your belly.

  ANNIE: I was panting after pleasure and not getting any.

  RHONE hears a horse pull up, and exits.

  PALMER: (To ANNIE.) I want the doctor to visit you.

  ANNIE: What for?

  PALMER: If you don’t breed, Cupid inherits.

  ANNIE: (Casually.) Is that in the settlement?

  PALMER: The doctor will look to your interest. He’s the most expensive man in the business.

  ANNIE: My father was sober when he signed that?

  PALMER: There’s no law between us. The law between us is love. I’m going to stay at my estate in Falmouth.

  PALMER exits. ANNIE goes upstairs, and ABUKU races in hunting mosquitoes, whooping, dancing, imitating their hum and singing as he kills them.

  ABUKU: (Singing.) Mosquito one, mosquito two, Mosquito taste nice with rice and callalou.

  LUCINDA enters with a water-jar, followed by CHLOE in a new dress.

  CHLOE: Lucinda I’m goin’ to a dance with Cupid. You love me dress?

  LUCINDA: And the hat.

  CHLOE: You think it will stagger the crowd?

  ABUKU: Lawd Miss Chloe, it loud, everybody will hear you.

  CHLOE: I like to look good.

  LUCINDA: That will razzle and dazzle the crowd Miss Chloe. Who givin’ dance?

  CHLOE: Barrett daughter. She want to hear all about Miss Annie so they invite me. Everybody want to hear about her, and the rumours, great God, what am I to say to be both loyal and truthful. I can’t even tek a rum because there is a truth in rum, so I am sober as a judge. And I hear dogs all night and can’t sleep, but don’t tell bakkra, or he will sell me.

  CUPID enters. CHLOE’s face falls: He is not even dressed.

  CUPID: Abuku, you rat-catcher you. (Embraces him.)

  CHLOE: The Barrett gal is so faisty I want to look good. Plenty poor whites will be there, and the ugly Barrett gal wan to hook a white man, so she goin’ to dance and rub till baby come, but over-exertion cause yellow fever and if they dead she can’t marry dem. And lawd, I can’t tek the conversation. They moan and groan and complain about the niggers, then they over-eat and get bilious and tek calomel. (To ABUKU and LUCINDA.) Come and help me get Miss Annie’s tea. I am in haste. Cupid get dressed.

  CHLOE exits with ABUKU and LUCINDA as ANNIE comes down and cuts off CUPID’s exit.

  ANNIE: Your father said I should talk to you. He didn’t tell me what to say.

  CUPID: You could offer me an estate or two.

  ANNIE: The estates are your father’s. You should inherit them.

  CUPID: And where would that leave you milady?

  ANNIE: You could offer me an estate or two.

  CUPID: Or ditch you, like your husband ditches black women.

  ANNIE: (Tearing the head off a rose and getting pricked in the process.) Like that?

  CUPID: Milady actually bleeds.

  ANNIE: (Flirting.) Beast, do attend me.

  CUPID: Go and dip it in the salt-water milady. It’s a sea of blood.

  An African song drifts in from the garden.

  ANNIE: What’s he singing?

  CUPID: The only thing worse than slavery is love.

  ANNIE: (As the song changes.) And what’s he singing now?

  CUPID: The only thing worse than love is slavery.

  CHLOE enters with tea.

  ANNIE: Better play love, at your age.

  CUPID: (To CHLOE.) Let’s play love.

  CHLOE: Waiting, watching for my love to come. Fearing what I see, in the cards. Reading the leaves. Go man go.

  CUPID: That’s very brief suffering.

  CHLOE: I’ve suffered. It’s your turn.

  CUPID: Heart-ache without you. Kick my feet, hold my head, cry heart-ache…

  RHONE re-enters, curious, hovering.

  CHLOE: Cupid is taking me to a dance mam and he’s later than women.

  CUPID: Every minute I was late I missed you miss, I missed you.

  CHLOE: I’m afraid of the runaways on the road.

  CUPID: You want to hear a runaway song?

  RHONE: Such songs may not be sung in the great-house milady.

  ANNIE: Talk it then.

  CUPID: White man come wid powder, come wid gun.

  Nigger shiver, nigger shake, nigger stagger.

  Nigger stagger, nigger stumble,

  Nigger dead.

  Dey come wid powder, come wid gun,

  Poi poi,

  Bu-dum,

  And what happen bredda, what happen den?

  Dead man get up and scare dem.

  Dead man get up, and dead man scare dem.

  RHONE: Bakkra says such things may not be said in the great-house milady.

  ANNIE: Kindly leave.

  RHONE bows and exits.

  CUPID: You tell me a poem.

  ANNIE: I went to the garden of love

  And saw what I never had seen

  A chapel was built in the midst

  Where I used to play on the green

  And the gates of this chapel were shut

  And “thou shalt not” writ over the door

  And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds

  And binding with briars my joys and desires.

  CUPID: You want to hear why the great African empires fell.

  ANNIE: Tell me why the great African empires fell.

  CUPID: Because men of action became men of opium. Kings with long pipes, smoking herbs to feel joy in their bodies. They liked feeling good. That’s why they never made guns because they didn’t like pain. They sat under shady trees, talking about psychic things: dreams, and death, and life everlasting. Then they ate and their bellies were full but their bodies felt empty, so they danced in a frenzy till they fell into a trance and out of this world. Africans are men with the dance on them, bred over centuries, and God punished them with fighting, fornicating white men, out there on business.

  ANNIE: Our bellies are full, but our bodies are empty. Wonderful!

  CUPID: Milady quotes me.

  PRINCESS: (Entering with buns.) Chloe, the buns are burnt. I’m sorry. I’m sorry milady.

  ANNIE: Sit down and have some tea, all of you.

  CUPID: Chloe, you ever sat down in a great-house from the day you were born?

  CHLOE: Surely I sit down. If milady say sit I sit down.

  CUPID: No, no, I don’t mean sit down in attendance to please milady. I mean enter and sit down on the Wedgwood to please your own bottom.

  ANNIE laughs.

  CHLOE: Is not Wedgwood it name. (Dialect.)

  CUPID: What?

  CHLOE: The chair.

  CUPID: Yes, Wedgwood from England, or Chippendale. I forget. But that’s what you slave for.

  PRINCESS: (A warning glance at CUPID.) Chippendale.

  CHLOE: I have my own room upstairs to sit down in. Why should I want to be sitting down here?

  CUPID: But you ever sit down in the Chippendale?

  CHLOE: Like a white lady?

  CUPID: Of course not like a white lady. How could you sit down like a whit
e lady. But I mean, when you were alone in the house, and nobody was looking, nobody at all, house totally empty, did you ever look round you and sit down. (He wiggles his arse mockingly and sits luxuriously, crossing his legs.) Easy. I used to read the news about Toussaint sitting on the floor. Do sit down Miss Chloe. (CHLOE sits down uneasily, and gets up immediately. They all laugh. CUPID says in a posh English accent.) Do sit at least on the edge of the seat.

  CHLOE: He’ll die laughing at me.

  CUPID: Nine nights after my death there will be dancing and merriment.

  ANNIE: He seems to be dying in earnest.

  PRINCESS: (Level voice.) He spends his life in his head, dying in rebellions.

  ANNIE: It’s the only way to stay alive.

  PRINCESS: Without dignity.

  CUPID, humiliated, leaves, and CHLOE follows to comfort him. PRINCESS sprinkles another powder-dose in ANNIE’s tea.

  ANNIE: I feel wretches pulling at my insides. Nothing else.

  PRINCESS: You don’t show it.

  ANNIE: I feel wretched.

  PRINCESS: You’ll soon be flat, and your husband demented.

  ANNIE: (Of work songs in the distance.) Why are they singing?

  PRINCESS: They’re digging the new shit-pit.

  ANNIE: (Despairing of powders.) I’m going for a ride. The horse might kick me.

  PRINCESS: You go and lie down.

  ANNIE: For nine months? Times twelve children? Tied like a beast to a stick? My mother sat sick on a couch all her life, and dropped twelve, like a sow… Distract me my dear. Tell me about your time in England.

  PRINCESS: I first heard about abolition in England, and stood there in those white drawing-rooms, saying how well off black people were.

  ANNIE: You loved Palmer?

  PRINCESS: When it was over I handed him a machete and said “Finish me.”

  ANNIE: That story pays for all your sins.

  PRINCESS: I never had common-sense. My life blew me about. Some people are born sure-footed, not me.

  ANNIE: They put one foot in front of the other like Dawes, and never fall off. See with brutal clarity in front of their nose.

  PRINCESS: (Laughing.) They made me keeper of the vineyards. But my own vineyard have I not kept.

  ANNIE: Talking of grapes, I fancy Cupid.

  PRINCESS: White ladies are not Cupid’s pleasure, milady.

  ANNIE: I need love, and he seems a lovely likely boy. Not to be snared at.

  PRINCESS: (Alarmed.) Nor easily snared.

  ANNIE: He’s nearer our colour than yours, m’dear.

  PRINCESS: Cupid is no bed-slave milady.

  ANNIE: Indeed not. If I’m childless he might inherit.

  PRINCESS: I have no wish for Cupid to inherit.

  ANNIE: I thought you were as anxious as I am to get rid of Palmer and his heirs.

  PRINCESS: For the people. For freedom.

  ANNIE: When does it come? The slave ships have sailed for a million years, and every other year there is rebellion, put down by ghouls and blood-bats with relish. There’s a cold rage that burns in their loins and licks at their brain, and only blood puts it out. You can’t wish Cupid to be mutilated in some passing rebellion.

  PRINCESS: If you are what you are, you must be for freedom.

  ANNIE: When freedom comes there will be a man with a gun on every street-corner, and the dungeons will be so full men will sleep standing up. Freedom takes a year to come and stays a day. Freedom lasts too long.

  PRINCESS: The people are rising. Freedom is nigh.

  ANNIE: My dear, look at me. I have a pretty painted face. Dollars in my head. My eyes are two golden guineas, my mouth blindly consumes. I am people. Who are you? A doomed angry fool. I’d rather stew in Palmer’s bed and breed vermin. I’d rather go riding than bleed for the world. I’m going riding.

  PRINCESS: Killers like Dawes and Rhone will protect you.

  ANNIE: I pray they do. The world’s a great-house. A few eat at table, and many wait on them.

  PRINCESS: That’s history. That’s dead.

  ANNIE: That’s past, present and future.

  PRINCESS: Slavery will burn.

  PRINCESS exits as RHONE, hovering, enters.

  RHONE: I am content to walk only after white men. Bakkra tread first, then I tread. Nobody else.

  ANNIE: (Howling.) I’m locked in sin with this jealous fool. What’s the good of sin, if we’re locked in.

  RHONE: Fix time and place to meet, so I don’t wait and fret.

  ANNIE: Go to your woman tonight, and tomorrow come and gentle me.

  RHONE: You tonight and she tomorrow night. No you tonight, and you tomorrow night.

  He grabs her.

  ANNIE: That hurts.

  RHONE: You beast Cupid and bakkra will know.

  ANNIE: I’ll grind him under your nose. I’ll sweat in his heat and stain his bed and make you smell hell, you stinking slave. (Exit.)

  RHONE: Let bakkra hang me.

  RHONE walks down the stairs and runs into DAWES.

  DAWES: How is milady? All legs?

  RHONE: Sir?

  DAWES: You lost your tongue in her?

  RHONE: What sir?

  DAWES: Poor bakkra.

  RHONE: I am in your debt for my promotion Mr. Dawes.

  DAWES: So is bakkra in mine for various favours, and I fear it Rhone. A word to his fat fed safe-niggers and I am manure. I need my own men among them. They must be fed, armed and watered from the stores and that is why you are in charge. You must have wondered… The keys… (He takes them.) And when you find your tongue hold it, for the silver we lift must be melted.

  RHONE: By me?

  DAWES: Milady trusted you man. So do I.

  RHONE: Milady?

  DAWES: Dougall the mulatto militiaman in Montego Bay will melt the silver. See to it.

  RHONE: (Rattled.) Bakkra will count the stores, and silver will not be found, and he will find I am sleeping with his wife.

  DAWES: Is evidence for that in the stores?

  RHONE: We’ll be dead Mr. Dawes.

  DAWES: We’ll walk over their five estates, and into five great-houses, and there will be white flesh on white sheets in my bed. No man on this island will be richer than me. They dive into quick-sand for gain, but they won’t be rich like me. God’s blood, you mind the stores and we’ll buy the safe-niggers, and three coffins for Palmer, his bitch and his bastard.

  CHLOE: (Off, screaming.) Mr. Rhone, Mr. Dawes! (Enters, running.) Joko dead. Bakkra prize-nigger. Joko capture Herrera, and Joko dead. Herrera is haunting the estate.

  DAWES: Ghosts frighten niggers.

  CHLOE: I made bakkra sell Lucinda’s children, and they are Herrera’s and he’s come back for me.

  DAWES: Ghosts are harmless.

  CHLOE: Is you, bakkra and Rhone murder him Mr. Dawes.

  RHONE: Belief kill and cure, and bakkra don’t believe, and I, Rhone, keeper of the stores, don’t believe. (Exit.)

  CHLOE: I am not staying in this house. Things are coming to pass. (Exit.)

  DAWES helps himself to rum, listens to work-song as slaves dig shit-pit, and exits.

  Lights down. PALMER arrives home.

  PALMER: I am here again.

  RHONE: (Off.) Safe and sound. Bakkra come.

  The cry “Bakkra come” echoes round the estate. RHONE enters, then DAWES.

  PALMER: You look after my wife?

  RHONE: And your stores.

  PALMER: Where are you going?

  RHONE: To grease your boots.

  RHONE exits.

  DAWES: Tall rum?

  PALMER: You get the invites for Lady Nugent’s ball?

  DAWES: Yes bakkra.

  PALMER: (Shouts.) Miss Annie… But Dawes, I passed a little gal with new breasts washing herself in the river. I slid down the slope, the gal ran and fought like a bush-dog, but I get me hand up and work her and wet her, and when I took her I knew I’d come home. The gal pussy purple, her belly fit, soon she drop a pickney for me. Yes Dawes
, now I’m home again. Sink another rum. (Shouts.) Miss Annie! I hear Mitchell’s son getting 600 hogshead of sugar this year.

  DAWES: Well bakkra, still all in all he’s not rich like you. And his wife looks like the bull from Lacovia.

  PALMER: But 600. Me, 500.

  DAWES: Bakkra, look on the class of sulky you drive, and look on the sulky Mitchell drives. Mitchell can’t argue with you.

  PALMER: I’m glad to come home and put up me foot. Let breeze blow my balls. So who’s dead and who’s still sweating?

  DAWES: Bakkra… your best prize-nigger’s gone.

  PALMER: Joko?

  DAWES: Joko capture Herrera and Joko dead.

  PALMER: How?

  DAWES: His hand get ketch in the mill.

  PALMER: You didn’t sever the limb?

  DAWES: Four of them stand up feeding cane, and Joko’s hand ketch.

  PALMER: And not one of them grabbed the hatchet and chopped it off.

  DAWES: So the whole of Joko gone.

  PALMER: The hatchet is right there, for that very purpose, and you never used it.

  DAWES: The mill sucked him in, and grind him up with the cane.

  PALMER: It’s the first prize-nigger I’ve ever lost.

  DAWES: Worth 200 pounds.

  PALMER: How his hand ketch?

  DAWES: They say he was dozing, and they complain about the hours, they say Kelly worked ‘em over the twelve hours and up to fifteen. But fifteen is nutten to Joko. Joko work from sun to moon in the mill-house, two weeks straight. Cane lice, hours, nutten stop him.

  PALMER: (Drinking.) Joko’s blood mek good rum.

  DAWES: Niggers are singing that Joko’s blood shed for freedom.

  PALMER: Where is Chloe?

  DAWES: Bakkra the word in every mouth is that Herrera push Joko.

  PALMER: Where is Chloe?

  DAWES: She is stoopin’ down in the yard and won’t move.

  PALMER runs out to CHLOE who is being tended by ABUKU.

  CHLOE: I made you sell Lucinda’s children Mr. Palmer and one of them was Herrera’s.

  PALMER: If there is fear in the great-house it will be heard all over the estate. Get up.

  ABUKU: (Trying to feed her.) You must eat, Miss Chloe.

  PALMER: White people fear men more than monsters. That is why we are successful on earth and niggers are successful in heaven.

  CHLOE: I want to sleep.

  ABUKU: Eat up Miss Chloe.

  CHLOE: Put out food for Herrera.

  PALMER: Herrera is dead. Get up or go back to the blasted slave-gang. Get up! (He gives her a helluva beating and kicking. She doesn’t cry or move.)