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Mister Jeremiah Beaufort’s plantation Big House was a well-appointed shack, about the size of two of his slave shacks, but whitewashed, and with treated windows, and a heavy oaken door. The overseers spent their time whipping the mules, while the slaves spent their time with shovels, wheelbarrows, and hoes. They were carving out of the swamps their tidal irrigation, and during those hard times, the station of plantation owner, master, overseers, laborers, and slaves were distinguishable only by address, not by any other particular thing, save skin color. Starvation was the primary threat against the survival of them all together, along with malaria and dysentery.
Mercantilism and Nature were their primary oppressors, there, in the beginnings of that plantation, and, being thus equivocated, Massamba, in slavery, put the elm samara in the ground, foreseeing the great square courtyard that would appear around that double-shack.
“I have planted the elm samara here,” Massamba said to Mister Jeremiah. They were huddled in the shade of an ancient, dying, oak tree: a dozen African slaves; a dozen white laborers; to make twenty-four, arranged as concentric circles, the black ring inside the white ring, to show station, even though the white ring was held by the same power as was the black ring, that towering white figure in the center, who was both of gentleness and of wrath. When Mister Jeremiah was of gentleness, he was a meadow of kindness, honey-sweetness, mercy, song, and joy. When he was of wrath, he murdered.
“Here?” Mister Jeremiah asked, there in the shade of Massamba, whose power was darkened and hidden beneath the bonds of mercantile slavery.
“Beyond the shade of this oak tree, yonder,” Massamba said, pointing. “Your empire will encompass as much as the eye can see. Row upon row of housing you will acquire, and many people will look to you for food. But in you they will not find shade.”
Mister Jeremiah was reckoning toward wrath, but his Christian wife, struggling with the fire-stove outside their double-shack, reckoned his heart back toward gentleness. “Do go on,” he said to Massamba.
“You will have as many gold pieces as there are grains of rice on this plantation, but it will all come to the fire.”
“The whole earth shall come to the fire,” said Mister Jeremiah. “While that fire tarries, I shall enjoy my gold. It is the fruit of my labor, and it shall buy me many happinesses.”
“Alas for your slaves, then,” said Massamba.
“You shall participate in my happiness.”
“I? Perhaps some of these, who languish in my shade,” returned Massamba. He was standing very tall, the black of tall for the white of Mister Jeremiah’s tall. “They perhaps will participate in your happiness, but I shall never do so.”
The white of Mister Jeremiah’s face was replaced by red. A hot wrath was coming upon him, but there his eye caught his Christian wife again, as she labored to make his supper.
“See?” Massamba said, pointing. “Even your bride is your slave.”
Wrath then tried to overcome Mister Jeremiah, and he raised his hand to smite Massamba.
“I have been beaten before!” Massamba said. “Many blows have fallen upon my body and upon my head. You may kill me, my master, but for what end? What will you avenge upon me?”
With an upraised hand, and the tightening of the white circle at his wrothful eye, Mister Jeremiah said, “Then speak.”
“Fetch me a wife worthy of me, and she will be a slave to your wife, until the days of her sleeping, and you will weep over her, and you will weep over your wife, and you will weep over me. Then you shall know the price for those many gold pieces.” A moaning lamentation, reminiscent of those stifling days of blood and murder on the captivating seas, rose up from the black circle, into the dying boughs of the oak tree. Massamba continued, “I have fertilized that samara with my own blood and with my own excrement, and I have moistened it with my own tears and with gallons of my own sweat. It shall forever be a witness to my desire for freedom.”
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“What is freedom?” Mister Jeremiah said, and he spat.
“Then you yourself know that you are a slave, bound by the chains wrought of many pieces of gold.”
“I do that,” Mister Jeremiah said. “I shall joy in it till that day when I take my sleep in the earth.”
“All the blood in the earth cries out to your wife’s God.”
“Does he hear?”
“Does he not?”
“In the time of our finding out,” said Mister Jeremiah, “we together shall also learn the truth of this matter, whether you participate in my happiness according to my will.”
“If the God of your wife judges accordingly, then I shall cling to him with her.”
A murmur came up from the white circle, intermingling with the lamentation rising and falling from the black circle, like froth bubbling in the wake of a slave ship.
Mister Jeremiah lowered his hand, at length. He gazed at the black tall before him, even while holding his own white tall. He pondered for many long minutes, while the sun passed overhead, filtering through the cooling movement of the oak boughs, rising and falling with the lamentation of the seas, with the murmuring of the anger of the seas. Finally, he spoke, “Then complete the tale of your elm samara.”
“This oak tree shall soon be broken, Mister Jeremiah, and in its place shall grow the elm from this samara, and it shall be a shade, and it shall be a fire, for all who are enslaved. My blood cannot be taken out of its being, nor my sweat, nor my tears, nor my excrement, nor the many blows which have come upon my body, and upon my head, and the ones yet to come.”
“The ones yet to come?”
“I defy you, sir.”
“Do not. I am your master.”
“You have bought me from thieves and murderers according to a curse.”
They heard the mistress of the Big House lift up her voice. “Jeremiah! Take me from this fetid swamp! I am so weary, sir, so weary of disease, and insects, and of the smell of soil and rot. Take me back to my cool and green England, whose wilderness has been conquered over ever so often for these many centuries!” And she began to cry.
The white tall broke. “You!” he said, pointing to the least of his slaves, one who was weary himself from dysentery and a wound he had received in the perils of clearing the land. “You, you limp, do you not? Go and be a servant to my wife, even now.”
One from the white circle protested. “But Mister Jeremiah, sir, we need him for the irrigation labor, if we are to finish according to your will.”
“Let him be a servant!” said Mister Jeremiah, now overcome by wrath. Gold pieces danced before his vision, and he murdered not. But he remembered. The sun had begun to weary so that the labor in the swamps must resume. The overseers reappeared and began to crack their whips, while their reluctant mules sapped their energy with beastly defiance. The two circles broke apart, and with that, also their lamentation and their murmurs. They returned to their labors, but not before they saw their kindred, who indeed had a limp, kneeling before Mister Jeremiah’s Christian wife.
She blessed him, and made him rise. Thereupon she gave him domestic labors. Mister Jeremiah seethed, knocking hard soil from his boots with the hoe which he bore in his hands.
That night a great storm was driven unto the land by the sea, which was rising and falling, and frothing with enslaving rage. Lightnings came from it, from above it, and the oak tree was split. It fell, was sawn, and in the course of hard prosperity became a great bed for Mister Jeremiah and his wife. They had many children, seven of whom survived to have children of their own, all of whom bought and sold slaves.
The day after the sea storm destroyed the dying oak tree, Mister Jeremiah remembered, and he drew up his mules and wagon by himself, and he departed for Charleston. By the time he returned, the elm samara had sprouted and was a seedling of two feet. Less than a month had passed by, not even one full moon.
“Magic,” said the slaves.
“Magic,” said the laborers.
Mister Jeremiah spat at its roots. In his retinue, he had twelve women, African slave women. One of them had a limp. To his house-slave, the servant of his wife, he gave this one as a wife. The limping man-slave fell down and kicked his legs into the air, rejoicing.
“Aha!” he cried. “Aha! Aha!” And without hesitation he took his woman into a shack, and there remained for some length of time.
A very tall woman, fair of figure, with jet-black skin, even her head, which had been shaved, was presented to Massamba.
“This one has been beaten,” said Mister Jeremiah. “She would not be subdued, yet she would not die. See? She has lost a tooth. She came to me at a discount of gold, being unbridled, but I consider her precious, to me and to you. Can you love her?”
“According to your will?”
“According to my will, but who can command love? A wife can be bought with gold pieces, but the love of a woman cannot.”
“Mister Jeremiah,” said Massamba, “you have answered a different question: will she love me?”
“I have bought you your wife,” replied Mister Jeremiah. He stood tall, white, between two black talls.
Mister Jeremiah’s wife called from their double-shack, “Jeremiah? Jeremiah! Did you not bring the priest back with you? How can these our slaves be bound to one another without the blessing of the priest?”
“Is my word not sufficient for the binding of marriage?”
Mister Jeremiah’s wife glared fierce at her husband. “Nay, sir! Your word is insufficient for these men and women, even as it was for this woman you call your wife. Your audacity shall be captivated ere these hot days pass into winter, I declare.”
“You declare?”
“By the great elm which grows at your feet,” she said, “I do declare it.”
Mister Jeremiah laughed aloud when he heard it, yet he remained tall and white. “Massamba! My slave! Add to your blood, and to your sweat, and to your excrement, and even unto your tears—add now the boiling wrath of my wife, the flesh of my flesh. What powers has your tree!”
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After some days, the slaves sorted themselves, save the house-slaves with their limps, and save the two black talls: these were determined by the will of their owner. The one laughed and loved without mediacy; the other planted a love in violence. The priest of the King of England was summoned, and each pair was paired according to the rubric belonging to the chief of the Church of England.
“King Charles extends his blessing upon your plantation, and upon all yours, and upon your house, this day,” the priest spoke.
Tall Massamba, Autumn-Leaves, standing aside his appointed woman, who was tall and very black, said, “I hereby return his blessing, by the powers of his Royal African Company.”
“Oh, Massamba,” said Mister Jeremiah. “Do not defy the king himself!”
“You do not yet know the power of my defiance.”
“But I will.”
Massamba replied, “You do not will, but you shall.”
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