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As plantations go, Master Jeremiah’s went. Over time, the social divisions of slave and laborers and overseer and master and owner grew sharp, and those same divisions became material. Jeremiah Beaufort quickly changed from Mister Jeremiah to Master Jeremiah. His twin-shack grew into a house, and the house grew into a mansion, while the slaves bent their backs in lamentation, suffering together under the whips of cruel overseers, returning to their shacks to be comforted by their softer wives, who themselves needed the hard comforts of their men, having the hard servitude of keeping fires stoked in the daytime and again at night, the one by force, the other by love.
As for the white counterparts, their material distinction was only threadbare. These laborers also lived in rows of shacks, apart from the African slaves, but, indeed, they were free to come and go; nevertheless, they always returned, and they also felt the sting of cruelty in their flesh from those whips, if indeed with a lighter hand (depending on the overseer’s relation to the laborer), and in September, the bent backs of the slave and the laborer were the same sunbaked dust and mud color, but, indeed, the white laborers distinguished themselves with their unadulterated hatred for the African slave.
The master made no distinction between laborer and slave. Master Jeremiah owned them all; the law made a distinction somehow, and for taxation, he knew the slave laws, but for distributing from his hand, he disbursed the same penny to the white laborer and the African slave. The white laborer put it in his pocket for a few minutes, and, therefore, it was his; whereas the African slave only saw it pass into provender, and it was never his.
It was the lamentation of the slave which was swelling from the humid swamps for rice fields, going up to heaven in a plea for redemption, to release them from the curse which had them bound to evil men in an evil institution—that lamentation distinguished them from the white laborer, whose song was anger and hatred and despair and adultery.
“How unfair!” the laborer’s songs accused, and they did not go up, but they hung in the air, for life and breath. What forces had brought the white laborer to this wretched existence were capricious, gods playing with men as cats play with dying mice. Their songs cut like melting ice.
And so they hated the slaves who worked beside them, captivated by a law. The white laborer, captivated by a much stronger force, when he was stung by the whip, hated the lamentation of the African slave, whose God was merciful.
“How much spit must I wipe from my face?” one of Massamba’s kindred asked of him.
“Much more. Do not be afraid.”
Another asked him, “Is it right to be angry?”
“It is right to be angry,” Massamba said. “But will you retaliate?”
“I desire it.”
“Your desire will not overthrow this evil.”
Still another said, “But they hate us.”
“And they always will. Do not be afraid of their hatred. Fear, instead, the power that brought us here.”
Another slave protested, “The overseers have beaten my wife!”
“Then they have beaten you.”
And so Massamba counseled under the elm tree.
“Your kindred have run away,” Master Jeremiah said to him, overseer at hand.
“I told them they may,” Massamba said. Master Jeremiah stood, without expression, searching Massamba for some sign of insolence or repentance, but there was none, only the simplest declaration, defiance in a word.
And so the overseer took him out from under the elm tree and hitched him to a post amidst the shacks, and there, the overseer beat him.
“Your kindred have killed themselves,” Master Jeremiah said to him, overseer at hand.
“I told them they may,” Massamba said. Master Jeremiah stood, absorbing the defiance of the word.
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And so the overseer took him out from under the elm tree and beat him.
“Your kindred have outproduced my laborers,” Master Jeremiah said to him, overseer at hand.
“I told them they may,” Massamba said. It was the same defiant word, and both Master Jeremiah and his overseer heard it, and they understood it, but Master Jeremiah’s Christian wife would not allow injustice beyond that line.
There were the owner and master, Jeremiah Beaufort, and the overseers, and the white laborers, and the slaves, but beneath the elm tree, Massamba was lord.
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“Your wife is pregnant,” said Master Jeremiah, there, beneath the elm tree, overseer at hand.
Massamba said nothing. Master Jeremiah trembled with rage. His Christian wife saw him, and she warned him with her high, clear voice, which seemed to rise before it fell upon ears and hearts.
“Your woman is pregnant,” the laborers sneered. “We’ll have to bear up under the stench of another animal, then.”
“Is your bride truly pregnant?” his kindred asked him. Even to his own kindred, Massamba said nothing.
“May I run away?” one of his kindred asked him.
“You may,” Massamba said.
On the same day, another one of his kindred asked him, “May I kill myself?”
“You may,” said Massamba. “You may take shade in the elm tree. It is the Great Elm.”
“Yes, lord,” his kindred said.
“May I shame the laborers? May I test the overseers? May I lie down and hide in the fields?” they asked, in succession, all the day.
“You may,” came the defiant word, all the day. The sun hung high in the air, pausing, beating everyone: owner and master; overseer; laborer; slave. It beat everyone silently, without mercy.
Indeed, when the sun finally rested from his labors, the one kindred ran, and the others did exactly as they were permitted. Finally, in the blackest part of the night, the last took refuge in the shade of the Great Elm, hanging himself from his great boughs. When the sun rose again, the creaking of the rope upon the great branch of the Great Elm mocked Master Jeremiah.
Then Master Jeremiah broke injustice; that boundary set by his Christian wife he smashed. “Injustice goes here and no further! Here are her shores! Here she is stayed, and roar though she might, she pauses here.” That boundary Master Jeremiah smashed.
In the red of the rising sun, he commanded his overseer, and his overseer, washed also by the red of the beating sun, laid hold of Massamba. They took him out from the shade of the Great Elm and from beside the swinging corpse of his kindred. They took him to his shack.
His shack was the primary shack, the first built, before Massamba ever landed in South Carolina, and the first seen beyond the hedgerow which hid the shacks and the mansion from each other. Massamba’s shack was more recognizable because even though it was the primary shack, and due for materials and maintenance first, his was the least of all the shacks. In the night, Massamba took what was new off his shack and put that thing, whether shake, clapboard, latch, or stone, onto whose shack was most in need of that very thing. As for Massamba, he shielded his wife when the rains came.
Without a word Massamba attended Master Jeremiah and his overseer. He did not say anything as they approached his shack. The birds themselves fell silent in the red of the sun. Massamba did not open his mouth, even when the door was opened by Master Jeremiah and his overseer to find his wife, rising, and attending to her own body.
When her eyes met his, she wept aloud for what doom impended for her, and straightaway, she was apprehended, in her pregnant nakedness, and pulled to the post, where she shrieked, washed by the red of the rising sun. The plantation heard, and they gathered from all corners to see the washing of injustice as it broke over her back. Jeremiah’s Christian wife shrieked with her, while overseers and laborers laughed and formed a wall so that she could not intervene.
The slave women took up the lamentation and made it rise up to the unanswering sky, while the birds lay still and the animals slunk away. It was a beating, not a whipping, and the beating did not rest for the number of many blows, each injustice punctuated by a thud against flesh.
Above the din of lamentation and the two women’s outcries, Master Jeremiah lifted his voice to Massamba, saying, “Do you still not speak?”
Massamba stood, his eyes upon the body of his wife, and he did not speak. He would not.
Finally, the Master called off the overseer, and the Missus went into her mansion. From there she issued forth the command that all the fires were to be extinguished, and that there would be no preparations until sunrise the next day. Massamba’s wife fell into her bed in the primary shack, where Massamba lay on the floor beside her, listening to her whimper. Some women came in, slaves and a few white women together, and they attended to her wounds, which were many, and they fed her and wiped away her tears.
“I am ashamed,” she said.
“The baby lives,” they said to her, in response.
Finally, Massamba spoke, “For what has been done to me this day, shame has descended upon this entire plantation. It is ashamed. It hides its face from all things good and wonderful which break through even the greatest of these evils; now it is hidden.” He said no more that day, nor did he give permissions for many days thereafter.
The September days became of October, and October passed away into November, when the granaries and stores were full, so that the plantation settled into days of rest. At that time, Massamba took up his place beneath the Great Elm, and he began to give permissions. Master Jeremiah was aware, but he behaved as though he were unaware. Runaways were captured, the insolent were whipped, the suicided dead were buried, and the baby increased within his mother’s womb, the seed of Massamba.
Early in the morning, before the sun had pierced the horizon, a laborer happened by, his song of despair and unfairness cutting the air with hatred and anger, when he saw Massamba giving permissions. At that, he smiled. “Look, the animal growls and moans, pretending to be one of us! We’ll see what the master says!” He made his way toward the mansion, but he paused at the primary shack, where he heard Massamba’s wife attending to her bodily needs. They heard him say, “But I already know what the master will do to Massamba’s woman.” He entered in.
They heard her screams; the plantation woke up to the shrieking of the mother of Massamba’s seed; the sky and the earth together listened to her outcries, and they ran. They all ran with every haste, to stop what Master Jeremiah had unleashed by breaking down the boundary of injustice those weeks beforehand. Yes, Massamba’s wife went into labor; yes, the baby was born; yes, the baby died.
There was a murmur, even among the laborers, even among the overseers, even within the mansion of Master Jeremiah, and the sun rose. Its light shone without mercy upon the blood which the floor of the shack was already drinking. Shafts of light broke into the darkness, and there was a rage found.
Master Jeremiah laid hands upon the laborer who had done this, and he began to beat him with his fists. The man turned aside from the blows, and he lay down upon the ground facedown, but Master Jeremiah continued to beat him in the back of his head, holding the man’s hands away from protection by pinning them beneath his knees. Massamba laid hands on Master Jeremiah to stop him, but Master Jeremiah threw him off. Men crowded into the primary shack, but it was too small for a number sufficient to carry off the rage which had Master Jeremiah.
When they finally had him, the man lay still upon the dirt floor. The laborer was not breathing.
Jeremiah Beaufort’s wife said to him, approaching from behind, bathed in a golden sun of autumn, “Now you are a murderer, Jeremiah Beaufort.”
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