Antebellum

by R. Kayeen Thomas

  “You don’t have to say any more.” Mr. Talbert no doubt felt the discomfort of having to play by someone else’s rules. He looked back to Bradley with genuine sadness. “I’m sorry, Bradley. I know how much this nigger means to you, but you’re going to have to let him go.”

  By this time, enough of the slaves had snuck into the woods surrounding Bradley’s operation that their reaction to Mr. Talbert’s words was audible. Mr. Talbert looked around in confusion, but Bradley responded before he could say anything. “No! Naw, sir! No!”

  “Bradley, don’t make this a harder situation than it already is. Look, if the people ask you what happened, you tell them the truth. You tell them that it was Reverend Lewis’ decision...” Mr. Talbert gestured toward Reverend Lewis, who shrugged uncaring shoulders.

  “Tell them that he made you set the nigger free. Everyone knows that his father is H.P Lewis. Hell, anyone with any status in this town is wearing his daddy’s clothes as we speak. They’ll know you didn’t have a choice, Bradley. But you have to be smart. You have to let him go.”

  To everyone’s surprise, including my own, Bradley broke down into a fistful of tears. He began mumbling through his sobbing.

  “I...I...Dis...nig...nig...ger...I...cain’t...cain’t...wh...why...why...”

  Obviously not expecting the show of emotion, Reverend Lewis and Mr. Talbert withdrew slightly and looked at each other with a shared discomfort. After a few seconds, Mr. Talbert gave a deep sigh and walked up to the basket case. “Look, Bradley...umm...it will be alright, okay? Why...umm...why don’t you come into the house? I’ll have some tea made for you, huh?”

  Bradley continued to weep uncontrollably as Mr. Talbert gingerly placed a hand on his back and began to nudge him back up the hill. Reverend Lewis stopped them after three steps. “I’m sorry, but I’ll need the key to this nigger’s cage. I plan to have him loose before you return.”

  Bradley turned toward Reverend Lewis, his face bright red and sopping wet. He had hate glaring out of his glassy eyes. “If I had me’s a gun, you would be in the ground by now, sir...”

  Reverend Lewis kept a slight smirk on his face. “Well then, Mr. Bradley, I’ll thank my Lord above that you can’t afford one.”

  Bradley took the key to the cage out of his pocket and hurled it at Reverend Lewis. It struck the pastor on the side of the head, and his eyes burned with hellfire for five seconds before he calmed himself down enough to bend and pick up the key. When he looked back at Bradley, his smirk had come back, but the unholiness in his eyes still remained.

  “You’ll pay for that, Mr. Bradley. Sooner rather than later, I promise you.”

  Mr. Talbert shoved Bradley forward before he could say or do anything else, and they proceeded up the hill to the house.

  After they had gotten further up the hill, and Reverend Lewis had gotten the red flashes out of his brain, he walked up to the door of my cage. I was still lying there, like a carcass out in the sun, but I’d heard the entire conversation. When the pastor stuck the key in the lock and opened the door to my prison, he realized he wasn’t fully prepared for what he would find. After coming close enough to see my pulsating sores, his body betrayed him and he vomited all over me. The chunky liquid splashed down on my skin and was welcome with all of the other impurities. Staggering, Reverend Lewis made his way back out of the cage and up the hill for some fresh air. When he got to the top, he turned and faced the woods.

  “You niggers who came into the woods earlier,” he bellowed out into the brush. “Which one of you knows any nigger medicine?”

  “I do, sah,” Aunt Sarah answered as she emerged from the woods. She, Roka, and the other slaves had been creeping their way back toward the plantation, hoping to return before they were caught. She kept her eyes focused on the fallen leaves as she spoke....

  “Do you know that nigger down there in the cage?”

  “Yassah.”

  “Do you think he’ll live?”

  “Don’t know, sah.”

  “Well, go grab some other niggers and take him out of that cage. Fix him up, get him cleaned up and fed.”

  “Yassah.”

  As Reverend Lewis walked away, Roka signaled for four of the slaves. They came down the hill and entered my cage. Two of them grabbed my armpits, two of them grabbed my thighs, and Roka lifted my head up by the chin. My eyes fluttered as he spoke.

  “I knowed it be true...”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, and I didn’t care. My cage was empty. I was free.

  11

  “Get on outta there, all you! Bennie, Liza, y’all get movin’ and fetch all daroots I done laid ’round here! Nessie, gone head and throws all dastuff off the bed and on da floor! Roka, lays ’im down right here! Lawd, we’s see a miracle if he make it through da night!”

  People scurried around the little hut as though it was a third-world emergency room. Roka and the other men carried me like a treasure chest. If they saw and smelled the same thing Reverend Lewis did, they didn’t show it. When they brought me inside the hut, everyone else’s face turned a shade of dark green, and Nessie ran outside, along with three other girls. Seconds later, their vomit left pastel colors on the ground. When Nessie came back, Aunt Sarah snatched her up with her left hand while mixing three herbs in a bowl of water with her right.

  “Is you done? I gots me a life need savin’...”

  “Yessum,” Nessie answered with her face to the ground.

  “Good. Go take these here buckets and find Bennie and Liza! Y’all head out to da creek and take up asmany leeches you c’find, hear?”

  “Yessum.” She kept her face to the ground as she took the buckets and ran off out the hut. Aunt Sarah turned her attention back to me.

  “How he do?” Roka turned to Aunt Sarah with an eyebrow raised.

  “He half dead...shoulda been all da way dead long time go. Been waitin’ weeks to hear dis boy died off in dat cage. Folks don’ live like dat for too long. Boy got somethin’ in ’im, Roka. Don’ know what, but it been keepin’ ’im from passin’ on.”

  Roka nodded his head in agreement.

  “He be okay?”

  “Lawd Jesus naw! Good sneeze’ll send him to his maker!”

  “What we do?”

  “First thing’s pray whatever keeping him alive keep on doin’ what it doin’. Makin’ roots to help ’im, but it ain’t us keepin’ him here. If he last long ’nough for da girls to get back, I can put da leeches to ’im.”

  Roka nodded his head again, and then looked over at me. After staring quietly for a few seconds, he turned back to Aunt Sarah with his index finger pointed to his chest.

  “You need?”

  “Naw, naw, I don’t. I’m gon give ’im these here roots, but all to do nows wait. Longs I’m in here, he still alive.”

  Roka pointed to the small door of the hut.

  “I stop dem come here.”

  “Yea, that’s good thinkin’. Don’ wan’t nobody botherin’ ’im. If I come out—”

  Roka cut her off with a nod of his head, and made his way to the small door. After stepping outside, he sat like a boulder in front of it. He kept his back straight, his eyes fixed ahead, and he became a gargoyle until someone came near enough for him to either grab or gaze fearlessly at.

  I lay in the bed with my eyes fluttering, though they refused to actually see anything. Somehow I knew I was with Aunt Sarah, even though my brain seemed to be operating in Morse Code. I wasn’t conscious, but I knew, for now, that I was safe. My skin burned and I had a fever hot enough to burn a hole through the mattress. Aunt Sarah finished mixing her roots into the water, and slowly and painfully poured the bitter liquid into my mouth. She had to do it easily, or it would’ve backed up behind my swollen throat like a stopped-up sink. After I’d ingested half of her concoction, my body wretched and convulsed and I defecated explosively. Aunt Sarah hummed softly as she waited for me to finish, and then rolled me over like a baby and thoroughly cleaned me. When she was done,
she rolled me back over again and painstakingly poured the rest of her concoction down my swollen throat.

  After the second fireworks show from my bowels, Bennie, Liza, and Nessie finally returned. They would have burst through the door, had Roka not stopped them cold and permitted them to enter. They came with their pockets full of odd-looking herbs and roots, each one of them carrying a bucket full of leeches.

  “Quick, bring them!” Aunt Sarah commanded before they had all stepped fully through the door. They each rushed her their bucket, and artistically she took a single leech and carefully held it to my stomach until it latched itself onto my skin and began to feed itself with my blood.

  “Y’all seen what I’m doin’?” Aunt Sarah asked the ladies.

  “Yessum,” they replied in unison, but with uncertainty in their tones.

  “Then I needs y’all to do exactly what I done. Don’ do nothin’ different! Save for his face, neck, an’ privates, he need his whole body covered. Y’hear?”

  “Yessum...” The ladies looked back and forth, waiting for the bravest one of them to reach in and grab a leech.

  Aunt Sarah reached into the bucket and grabbed her second one. She bent over to place it on my body, then stopped and looked at the younger women.

  “Y’all waitin’ for his permission?”

  “No’m.”

  “Move then!”......

  Choosing disgust over the wrath of Aunt Sarah, each of the women plunged a hand in the bucket. Aunt Sarah ignored their muffled grunts and moans.

  “Jus’ like I did it,” Aunt Sarah harshly reminded the women. By the time they’d reached in the bucket for a third time, the younger women had struck up a conversation.

  Aunt Sarah listened, but didn’t speak. She was too busy trying to save my life.

  It wasn’t until my upper body was completely covered in leeches before Aunt Sarah noticed one of the leeches moving. She stared in quiet horror, so as not to alarm the other women. The leech moved slowly and in a straight line, leaving a trail of transparent slime behind it. As the angle coming down my side steepened, the leech moved faster, until finally it reached the edge of my side and fell off of my body completely. Bennie screamed out as the leech thumped beside her foot, lying motionless.

  “It’s dead,” Aunt Sarah said like a scientist. “My Jesus...it’s dead...”

  She looked up slowly at the other women.

  “Check the leeches y’all put on ’im first...”

  All the women began reaching out and checking to see if the leeches still had a hold on my skin. Almost half of them were nothing more than lifeless decorations.

  “What’s happenin’, Aunt Sarah?” Liza looked confused. “Why they not movin’?”

  “Dis boy blood got poison ’nough to kill da po’ things,” Aunt Sarah said, shaking her head. “Ain’t never seen nothin’ like dis... not in none my days...”

  By the time they’d finished checking all of the creatures, more than half of whom were found to be dead or dying, Aunt Sarah took them all and dumped them into one of the buckets, and then took the bucket to the door. She turned and looked at Roka before she walked past him. His gaze fell sullenly to the floor.

  “Naw! Naw, Roka, he ain’t dead; just sicker than anybody I ever seen. I needs you to dig up a hole for these here leeches. They dead now, and if they stay above ground they gon’ smell worse den anything you ever knowed.”

  Roka jumped up and began sprinting away. Aunt Sarah called after him.

  “Hold a minute, boy!”

  Roka stopped and turned around.

  “When you comes back, needs you to go back down da creek with the girls. They gotta get mo’, and I don’t want ’em runnin’ ’cross no white folk by theyself in this darkness.”

  The slightest look of defiance came across Roka’s face. Aunt Sarah wouldn’t have noticed it if she was standing right in front of him.

  “I keep two you safe.” Roka stood straight and spoke hard.

  “I know you’se protectin us, Roka, but these leeches takin’ so much poison outta this boy that it’s killin’ ’em! They cleanin’ ’da blood, and if we clean da boy blood, then da rest of him get better. You knows I only ask you to go if it be important.”

  Roka let his eyes wander at the thought, then nodded his head at Aunt Sarah before he bounded away. Aunt Sarah turned around and went back inside the hut. The girls stared at her, awaiting her instructions.

  “Roka gon’ take y’all back down the creek. Get as many mo’ leeches as you can, and bring ’em back.”

  The girls jumped up and prepared themselves to leave out into the night again. Before they left the hut, Roka was back to escort them. A large hole had been dug on the edge of the field, and a shovel rested against the nearby tree. Aunt Sarah nodded her head at Roka, he nodded back, and then he and the three women took off into the woods. Aunt Sarah came back into the house and proceeded to take out more roots and water. She mixed some more of her tonic and took a deep breath, preparing herself for my body’s reaction. To her amazement, the swelling in my throat had gone down enough for me to actually swallow the liquid medicine. She poured in a little, allowed me a moment to swallow, then poured in a bit more. My body was writhing before finishing it all, but I managed to get it all down. I shook and jerked and convulsed on the bed, and Aunt Sarah prepared herself for my explosive excrement. I jerked once or twice more, and then lay flat, still, and breathless. I was as motionless as the dead leeches, and sadness began to creep over my caretaker’s face until she saw the same substance I had excreted earlier rising out of my mouth this time.

  She ran across the room to grab several pieces of equipment and a bucket, and then ran back to me and turned my head to the side. I had already begun choking on the bile rising up through my throat. She cleared what she could out of my mouth using something that looked like a wooden spoon, and then used a long, thin wooden piece to trigger my gag reflex and clear the rest out of my throat. My body had been still the whole time, but I sputtered and coughed as my airway opened up. Once my breathing returned to normal, she fell back into her chair, relieved.

  “Thank you, Lawd...thank you, Jesus...” Her voice was a broken record until Roka and the ladies returned.

  “What happened?” Nessie stared at Aunt Sarah’s strained face as she came back through the door.

  “Nothin’, chile...nothin’...jus’ bring dem leeches back here.”

  The girls rushed to my bedside while Roka waited at the door. He stood there silently waiting for whatever news was to come.

  “He be alright,” the physician said as she approached the returned women, but they all knew who she was really speaking to. As soon as she finished her statement, Roka stepped back outside the door and froze once again.

  “He doin’ better...” Aunt Sarah redirected her statements as she looked at the three women. “Had a close call, but he pulled on through. Go on ’head and put da leeches back on ’im.”

  One by one, the three women covered my body with slimy invertebrates. Aunt Sarah regularly checked to see if any of them had broken their seal. The ones that had survived the first round were now swollen with blood, and they began to detach and try to crawl away. Aunt Sarah would simply pluck them up and place them in one of the same buckets they had arrived in. Many of them still died as a result of the bad blood they had been feeding on, but some managed to stay alive long enough to anticipate a return home. Those that had been placed on after the first ones died had no problems. They latched on to me like a fresh, hungry baby and ate to their hearts’ content. One by one they swelled up like balloons, and one by one Aunt Sarah picked them off and dunked them back into the bucket. She removed the last ones as the sun began poking its head through the window of the hut. Exhausted, she fell onto the bed at the other end of the hut and used all her remaining strength to hold up her smile.

  “He gon’ make it,” she told the three women, who were so tired they were barely able to stand themselves. “Lie on the floor, get yo’se
lves some rest. I told Massa an’ dat preachaman I needs your help to save dis boy, so thys not lookin’ for you in da fields today. I wakes you up soon.”

  The women were already asleep before Aunt Sarah finished talking. She laughed, then heaved herself back up to her feet. She could barely walk as she made her way to the door and swung it open.

  Roka sat there, eyes wide open, not moving a muscle until he saw Aunt Sarah in his periphery. He turned his head so he could face her.

  “He gon’ be okay?”

  Aunt Sarah nodded her head. “Why don’t you get no sleep?” she asked, trying to keep herself from dozing.

  “No need.”

  “Well, me and da girls is restin’, and I suggest you do same. Hard work start when we wake. Preachaman must got da fire of God behind ’im. Even got ’im to get Massa to keeps you wid me and da boy stead of in da field. Whoever he is, preachaman want dis here boy bad.”

  Roka broke his frozen stance and turned again to face Aunt Sarah. “We get him first.”

  Aunt Sarah nodded her head. “I knows it, Roka, I knows. Now get your rest...”

  She turned around to go back inside, and stole a last glance at Roka. His eyelids fluttered ever so slightly as he lay his head back against the wall. Aunt Sarah couldn’t smile, but contentment carried her back inside the hut and lay her down gently on her cot to rest.

  “Raise yourselves up!”

  The voice of the matriarch shot through the air like lightening, jerking everyone who could hear it from their slumbers and up on their feet. I heard it clearly as well, though I couldn’t respond. Whatever Aunt Sarah was doing to me was working. The voices around me were no longer distant whispers, but rather echoes off of the walls of my subconscious. I still couldn’t escape the tunnel, but now, at least, I knew there was a light at the end.

  “Liza, you go on down to da well and get as’much fresh water as you can carry!”