The Long Song (35 page)

Ezra recalled that he had replied only, ‘But me ground done feed me dis long time,’ before the massa Goodwin held up his hand to halt Ezra’s speech. He then stepped a pace back to call for Miss July.

And there was Ezra’s proof! For Ezra always believed that the massa Goodwin did not understand negro talk. In walked Miss July, her face set with a house servant’s sneer, like some bad smell was distressing her nose. And the massa said, ‘Please say what you were saying again.’

So Ezra spoke that he did prefer to work upon his own grounds, for labour in the cane fields was hard and long, and yet he got to keep no profit from the crop he planted, fed and cut. But the toil upon his grounds rewarded him with produce that was his to keep. The massa then turned to Miss July who repeated all that Ezra had just spoken, but with a bakkra’s exactness. And the massa’s eyes dimmed as he listened.

Then the massa began to say again what he had already said—about the hammock, the church, the pennies, and the fine clothes for a wife—but with his voice raised. Come, he ended with a cry of, ‘Savvy dat, boy?’ that was so loud it did wake his pickney that was bound across to Miss July’s breast. And as the pickney did holler, the massa did begin to cajole, ‘Well, boy, will you not do as I suggest? Will you? Say you will, and there will be an end to it. Come on, Ezra, say you will work for me alone.’

And Ezra, trapped within his own hut by one ‘gwan high-high’ house servant, her bewailing pickney, and the massa’s persistence, soon realised that, no, he was not happy, he was not happy at all!

Nancy, Benjamin, Anne, Peggy, Cornet and Mary were then visited by the massa who approached upon them with his smiling sweet-talk. ‘If you worked for me alone,’ said he, ‘you would receive a good wage. There would be no need for you to spend so much effort upon your lands as I would provide money enough for you to buy food from the market and more besides.’

But Samuel remembered no smile upon the massa’s face by the time he reached him. Come, his arms were folded, his mouth pinched as a dose of pepper and his brow cut deep with frown. Samuel was poised to reply to the massa’s request—he would, like the others, work a little for a wage but could never give up his fishing—but was silenced when the massa bid him wait. He then beckoned to Miss July to repeat for Samuel everything that he had just told him. And even though Miss July hesitated to carry on when Samuel said, ‘Yes, me savvy, massa, but . . . yes, me catch, but . . . Miss July, me does savvy, but . . .’ the massa Goodwin kept commanding her to continue.

Only after Miss July had repeated every blessed word, was Samuel permitted to speak. Yet he had only drawn breath to say, ‘You see . . .’ before the massa screamed, ‘Why will you not do as I say?! It will be for the good of us all. Just do as I say, damn you!’

While Fanny recalled that the massa at her house was quite bedevilled. But not with her—even after she informed him that the work upon her lands allowed her to know free. No. His vexation was with Miss July. For when Miss July began to speak Fanny’s words for him, he growled upon her, ‘I know what she said! I’m not a fool,’ and then blasted out of the hut. That haughty house servant, Miss July, had to run to follow him out. But the massa was already atop his cart and riding away. Miss July had to call after him to wait. It was only after her pickney began to howl—one screech that did crumble the wattle of Fanny’s wall—that he stopped the cart to allow Miss July to catch him and climb aboard.

Following these visitations, the massa Goodwin then let it be known that he had spent many days in prayer and deliberation. He summoned all to the mill yard so they might hear the consequence of his careful thought. Standing atop his barrels, he proclaimed to his audience of leery negroes that, henceforth, the rents for their houses would be separated out from the rents for their provision grounds.

And, what is more, he said, he now believed it right and Christian to allow those negroes who did not wish to work upon the sugar plantation named Amity, to remain both within their homes and grounds, providing that all obligations to pay their rent, upon time, and with good grace, were met.

Come, those negroes who had of late called him ‘massa ground-itch’, for being more pestering than that accursed foot ailment, hung their heads. No. Massa Goodwin was a good man, a kind man, a handsome man, a clever man, a fair man, a tall man, and a credit to his papa. Only Benjamin Brown did not join in this cringe for, he always avowed, from the first they were uttered, he sensed a trick within those fine words. A white man is a white man, no matter how friendly he believed himself to be with God, was Benjamin’s judgement.

But Fanny recalled Benjamin’s mouth gaping as much as anyone’s when James Richards read aloud the tariffs of rents for houses and provision lands that were nailed upon the mill door.

A month’s rent upon the cottage was a day’s wage, as it had been from the first. And a day’s work could see it discharged. But the rents for the provision grounds! Read it again, was called out to James Richards—so sure were they that he had read in error. Bring Dublin Hilton to see it, he can read numbers better, was yelled when James Richards repeated the amounts. But when Dublin Hilton stepped forward to squint upon the paper and pronounce exactly the same rents, the gasp that flowed through that crowd disturbed the air so that it was felt in the town as a chill.

For the massa was to charge a full week’s wage in rent for every acre of land worked! Who could ever earn sufficient to pay it? None. While scrawled by a hurried hand within a corner of this grievous note were the words, ‘To fish the river is no longer permitted’.

Elizabeth Millar said later that the deputation that marched to the great house to request a parley with the massa Goodwin about these rents, were surprised to find him waiting for them. He stood with his arms folded and his legs astride upon his veranda, as if he had been lingering a good while. He greeted them with the words, ‘I know why you have come, and I intend to give you a good explanation for my actions.’

Now, although James Richard had been rehearsing a speech—muttering the lines to himself that pleaded for fairness and mercy—he only managed to draw a breath before the massa silenced him by raising his hand to say, ‘Listen carefully to me, all of you. I have taken this measure of increasing the rents upon your provision grounds for your own good. All of you lived too long as slaves. All of you were too long in shackles to really understand what is now in your best interest.

‘I do not blame you for wishing to feed upon the first fruits of your freedom, but as your master and as the master of this plantation, I am the one who understands how you will best be served. Some of you believe that the Queen of England has granted you your lands to do with as you will, but this is not the case. Your provision grounds belong to me, and I can rent them to whomsoever I choose. The Queen, and indeed all the people of England, agree with my actions. Working for the common good is what will prove to be right for every one of you over the course of time.

‘I know you hold your lands dear, and I know that you have laboured upon them long and hard for the time you have been living at Amity. But you must now relinquish those lands so that your labour will be confined to the tasks required to be performed upon a sugar plantation. You will now all agree to work upon Amity for good wages.

‘I understand that it is the same work that you formerly performed under the dreadful tyranny of slavery. But you are no longer slaves, you are freemen, and all freemen in England—yes, white men—work for wages. It is the way of the world. And, thanks to the grace of God, you are now free to take your part within that world. You must labour for wages upon Amity with the same enthusiasm as you have worked upon your lands.

‘I have been driven to this action by your refusal to listen to my reasoning and by your defiance to work as I require. But let that all now be at an end. Let us work together to make the plantation named Amity once more the pride of Jamaica, of England, and of her Empire.’

Not one word did James Richards manage to utter of his practised argument before the massa strode in upon the house and closed the door. And all who had marched to parley, then stood in dumbfounded silence before the massa’s sealed home.

Only Dublin, sucking upon his teeth, then saying, ‘Slavery. Slavery has just returned to Amity,’ destroyed their mute reverie. Come, Cornet ran to find the shackle that had once secured him to the wall of the dreaded dungeon. His intention, he said, was to bind his wrists before this white man, whose demands had seized his freedom once more. But Dublin and Giles held him back. There was another way, they told him, a better way.

So upon a heavy, dismal night, a palaver was called within the negro village. It gathered before Peggy and Cornet’s hut, but so many did arrive that the crowd soon pressed into Betsy’s garden. James Richards began by repeating massa’s speech as best he could remember it. But disbelief at Robert Goodwin’s words soon had his congregation chanting, ‘Wha’ him say? . . . No! . . . Him lie . . . no, sah . . . me will not . . . cha . . . me is slave no more . . . it be changy-fe-changy . . . me work what suits.’

While Benjamin, standing upon Peggy Jump’s three-legged stool, begged all to listen to his talk. The minister at his Baptist chapel intended to purchase lands that negroes might work, he told them. Fanny, sucking upon her teeth, said that the minister-man was a white man too. But a man of God, said Benjamin, before the stool did topple him.

Giles then spoke very long about some lands just outside the borders of Amity that could be squatted—lands that were there for anyone to take. And as Giles detailed the trees, the grasses, and the slopes and dips of this soil, Elizabeth Millar repeated over this droning sermon, ‘Massa not speaking true. Massa tell lie and story.’ For, she explained, she still believed the good Queen in England had granted them the gift of their provision grounds.

Dublin then called for hush, but got none. Only when James Richards pressed Ezra to blow the conch was this gathering brought to order. And once the squabbling did wane, this aroused assembly soon began to speak with one voice.

All agreed that those who remained living within the negro village would continue to reside as before. They would work their lands, they would work their gardens, and they would hawk their produce at market. But none would raise even a forged penny to the massa for the renting of their provision grounds, none. No one would pay the rent upon their houses. And, within a solemn oath that was taken by all with joined hands, they agreed that not one person amongst them would work even a day for Robert Goodwin.