The Long Song (41 page)

 

 

 

 

T
HE JUDGE, PINK OF face and quite sagging with perspiration, had been wiping his sweating brow with a once cooling, but now warm damp cloth for several snatched minutes. The courthouse within the town was so hot upon that day that one of his men of law, fresh from England and dressed entirely in the thick black of justice, had slipped from his chair to collapse in a faint upon the floor to be roused with the splashing of water and the fanning of legal documents. When this judge finally looked up to find our July standing within the dock waiting for her ‘larceny of a domestic hen’ to be announced, he slowly leaned over to the clerk beside him and said in a loud whisper, ‘Is that a woman?’

For this judge believed he was gazing upon no more than a pillar of foul rags. Come, if he had been near enough to whiff the stench of her or close enough to mark the flies that girded her to feed upon her filth, he may have declared her simply shit walking.

Reader, you may recognise a sunlit courthouse room with its pale-blue walls studded with earnest plaques and flags, its wooden panels, benches and tables, bewigged white men in black and important jurors sitting stiffly to attention, but you do not know the July that stands before them in this stifling room. For we have travelled fast to be within this courtroom—perhaps thirty years has passed, or maybe more, since last we met July.

So, please forget the young woman with neat braided hair always wrapped within a clean coloured kerchief. Think not of her mouth with its mischievous turn at the corners where a wry tale or tall-tall truth looked always about to escape it. And do not search for her spirited black eyes. It is time to put that younger July from your mind for another has just walked in. And her face, if the grime was wiped from it, or she was commanded to lift her head, is so pinched with starvation that death’s bony skull can be glimpsed beneath it; her skin is as tanned, wrinkled and care-worn as a neglected hide; her hair so matted that it stands in stiff locks; and her gait so stooped that the flimsy tattered rags of the dress she wears appear like a weight for her to carry.

And no seat is offered, so she clings her fingers to the wood of the dock that she might lean against its bulk. A bible is thrust before her. What must she do? Take it? No, she must place her hand upon it as she speaks her name. For that man—the white man within that big soft chair—must know the name she goes by. But not so hushed. He requires it spoken louder. Yet still he cannot hear when all her breath is used to pronounce it.

The man commanded to listen at her mouth tilts his head so close to hers that she can see white flakes of dead skin entangled within his hair. As he straightens away from her, he puffs out the breath he held so her stench did not overwhelm him and pronounces her name. July, says he. But July who? July who? The big-big man must now know. Again his breath is held as scaly-head man leans forward, but he hears no surname. Red as a goat’s testicle his face becomes, waiting for July to respond. But she has not uttered the name Goodwin for too many years and will not speak it now. The accused knows no other name, this gasping man is finally forced to expel.

Then there be a fat-bellied, bewhiskered white man standing erect about the other side of this room behind a desk. He says that she, that negro—and his fleshy finger points steadily across at July—was a squatter upon Unity land.

‘Are you living unlawfully upon the land?’

What? She could not hear him.

‘Do you live within the boundary of the estate?’

What? How could she reply if she could not hear him?

‘Oh, no matter, carry on.’

She has been living upon that land since its ownership passed from Amity to Unity and the boundaries were redrawn, begins this fat man. She was slave to John Howarth who owned Amity, then to his sister Caroline Mortimer. Mrs Mortimer married a Robert Goodwin and the estate was subsequently sold. England is where they now reside, my lord, in England.

Many, many years, the accused has lived upon those backlands. She lives amongst several other of the negroes who used to work the plantation at Amity. Never has she paid any rent, according to the attorney. It is true it is unlevel rough and spent land, useless for cultivation, yet still within the boundary of the estate. But those negroes would not be moved.

This one (and again the fleshy finger points), declares she has no other home but this. Says she had been living upon Amity for all her life. That it was the place of her birth, where her kindreds’ bones were rested . . . et cetera, et cetera. She believes, as many of the negroes do in their child-like way, my lord, that there is no other world.

How many negroes lived there? Quite a few at first. It was the whole of the negro village from the Amity plantation. They were a blight. And, oh yes, there were several attempts made to have them moved on. The attorney at Unity—a Mr Fielding, my lord, he runs several of the estates in the parish for Sir Salisbury Edwards of Bristol, England, who bought Amity and combined the lands—said that much effort was made to reclaim the area. But never did he use unwarranted brutality, he wishes this court to know, like some Baptist ministers have implied within the press here. Never.

The attorney felt that, at the time, he was within his rights to see the negroes put beyond the land’s boundary. But he did not order the lands to be cleared with fire. Those fires were started by the negroes who did not realise how tindered the land had become during the drought of that time. And the militia were sent in only to apprehend those that took part in the prison incident in town.

If the court can recall, several hundred negroes surrounded the prison house to demand release of five or six of the squatters, or settlers, as they insisted they were, who had been charged with trespass and were arrested when the police tried to evict them. The crowd of negroes were singing and making threats that they will see Jamaica become another San Domingo and run all white men from the island. Eventually, in order to free the prisoners, this mob attacked the gaol burning it to the ground.

Very bad business indeed, very bad. But most of the negroes were caught and justice was dealt with a firm hand, as I’m sure the court can recall. This one said she had nothing to do with it but the attorney was never sure—says she’s more crafty than most.

How many of them are still living there? Well, less now, as I understand. Many died from sickness—yellow fever mostly. They have been left pretty much alone for several years. And the land there is now very poor, evidently. It hardly yields anything—the odd yellowing banana perhaps—which is why some of them have succumbed of late to starvation. There is still work for them upon the plantation if they will do it, the attorney says. But these negroes, as always, seem to fear that slavery is being brought back; that this island will be sold to the Americas and they will then find themselves again slaves . . . and so on and so on; arguments this court has had to hear too often as justification for wrongdoing. And this one, the accused, who calls herself only July, has never, ever been willing to work.

‘Are you willing to work?’

What, what? She still cannot hear him.

‘Can you hear me? Can she hear me?’

‘Do you hear him?’

What?

‘Oh, never mind. Carry on. Let’s get to the charge against her. It’s so very hot.’

And Constable Campbell is brought forth to stand within the courtroom. Skinny as a broom with a skin pockmarked as a breadfruit. The accused—and now a white bony finger does point across the room to July—was lying down at the side of the path that runs from town to Unity Pen. He thought her dead, for she was not moving. She was covered with a filthy old shawl. So he kicked her. And he was quite surprised when she began to stir. She yelled several unrepeatable cuss words upon him. He asked her what she was doing. She said that he should mind his business. He repeated the question and this time she replied that she was on her way to market. But it was a very late hour for her to be going to market and she was told so.

Thinking something suspicious about her, the constable asked her to get up from the ground. It was as she was telling him in no uncertain terms to go away, that a fowl was heard clucking underneath her shawl. The constable, at once seeing a bird caught and flapping within her garment, asked her where she got this hen from. The negro replied that she had raised it. When asked to produce the bird from under her shawl so that the constable might inspect it, the accused ran off. By the time the constable had caught up with her, she had no hen under her clothes. She had proceeded to berate the constable—in some of the foulest language the constable had ever had to endure—for making her lose her only chicken. She was then arrested for stealing.

‘Did you steal the chicken?’

‘No, massa, me did raise it.’

‘What did she say? Was it your chicken?’

‘Yes, massa, me did raise it, then me did lose it.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said, my lord, that she raised the chicken.’

‘Yes, but where did she get it?’

‘Someone ’pon Allen Pen did give me to raise.’

‘What is she saying?’

‘Something about Allen Pen. I think she’s saying that somebody gave her the fowl to raise.’

‘Yes, but are you speaking the truth? Ask her if she is speaking the truth.’

‘Me place me hand upon the book and Lord strike me down if me not speak true.’

‘What is she saying?’

‘She wishes to place her hand upon the Bible to show she is speaking the truth.’

‘Was the hen eventually found?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Has anyone complained that they are missing a hen?’

‘Not up to now, my lord.’

‘Has she been in front of us before?’

‘Umm, no, no, it does not seem so. I believe this is her first time within a court, my lord.’

‘Oh, then let her go. This really is too flimsy a case for jury to hear. Let us get on—it is far too hot.’

Once the judge-man had struck his gavel down so our July might be led out and his next case conducted in, a little commotion began to stir within this hot-hot courtroom. For a man stood up from within the seats upon which the jury sat. But this was not a white man. No. Not a mulatto. Not a quadroon, nor a mustee, and certainly not a mustiphino. It was a negro; a nigger; a black man that stood. A black man raised himself from out the jury. And his voice, as he requested leave to approach the judges’ bench, ran about the courtroom genteel and refined as any Englishman.

‘Most irregular, most irregular,’ came spluttering from the lips of all the white men within this room.

Come, July would not be led from her box—she did cling tighter to its walls for she wished to view this spectacle; a nigger thrown from the court for impersonating a gentleman. For sitting in quiet deceit amid a jury! Stealing a hen—what a puny crime when this tricky man was breathing amongst them. Let her see them chasing him around. The bewigged fat man blundering and puffing within this hunt to grab the nigger-rogue by his toe. The skinny Constable Campbell leaping over chair and table to seize this crafty puff-up black man, shouting, ‘Hold up there, hold up there,’ just like he pitiful commanded when pursuing her. The judge rising to yell, ‘A nigger is escaped in my courtroom. Catch him, catch him. I will see him hanged!’ Someone will surely arrive to fire a whip upon this cunning negro’s back. Oh, what a fuss-fuss must soon arise!

But this black man was not chased, nor grabbed; no chairs or tables were overturned in his pursuit and no whip was cracked. Approaching the bench with an upright gait, this negro man, with his hands waving gracefully to aid in the reasoning of his enquiry, spoke in a whisper to the judge. True—the judge did lean back a little, his eyebrows raised, as the negro breathed words upon him. But this judge did not command him to be caught and hanged. No. Soon he leaned over to consult his clerk upon this black man’s quandary. Eventually the judge shrugged, a you-have-my-permission-to-do-as-you-please-gesture upon the negro, who graciously bowed his head to him.

There was no fuss-fuss at all.

‘But what of me hen? The constable did make me lose it,’ July asked loudly as she was led from the court by the scaly-head man. Come, she had repeated that lie so often she now believed it to be true. But once she was outside and under the hot-hot sun, the constable merely shooed her saying, ‘Be off with you and be thankful you’re not in shackles. Go on, be off with you.’

Once July had amassed saliva enough to spit upon this man’s departing back, she dropped to sit weary upon the ground. How long would she be permitted to rest before some constable or busybody did think to move her? Could she gather her spirit to tread those stony miles back? And which way must this miserable trek to the rough, unlevel spent lands near the plantation that was once named Amity begin? As she considered whether this way up the street or that way down it, would make the right place to start, two shiny black leather shoes stepped to stand before her.