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As Massamba had said, they buried him in an obscure place, amidst his many kindred, in a graveyard next to the chapel graveyard, adjacent, removed from the building itself some hundred yards or so, and separated from the other graveyard by a sad paling fence. Over the many protestations of Master Jeremiah, who owned it all, was Massamba laid to rest in that grave, marked with a gray stone with no remembrance at all chiseled into it. The new priest from the King’s Church simply refused, reckoning tradition and the King to be greater influences than a mere plantation lord in South Carolina. The Anabaptist preacher himself had died with no one yet to replace him.
And so it was, by forces greater than wealth and influence were the forces of Master Jeremiah overcome. The work of Massamba was come to naught. The lamentation of his kindred rose up from the sea, swelling in greater strength than all the hurricanes in the world.
> When he goes down he goes up behind the clouds (He lives on high)
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> They are his funeral shrouds (He lives on high)
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> He ain’t dead he’s sleeping! (He lives on high)
>
> We ain’t sad we weeping! (He lives on high)
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> We are weeping with hope (He lives on high)
>
> Hope that comes from on high (high) high (high) high
>
> With hope that comes from the one on high (Autumn-Leaves-Abraham-Son)
For three days it rose and fell, flailing without efficacy against the stone hearts of the New World. Now the Great Elm began to act.
They threw dirt over Massamba, who was granted the special privilege of a pine box. Earth plunked against the lid, which resonated, then was muted, then disappeared, and the silence of all the earth nestled upon it. The crowds walked away, his kindred and many laborers, Master Jeremiah and his children and many grandchildren—they walked away from the gravesite through a picket line of overseers, who clutched their whips and sneered as they had since that day on the Gambia River. Unchanging were they, undefeated, and irreplaceable, to keep the stone hearts in order.
Night fell.
When morning broke, there was the beginning of a stir among those in the proximity to the Great Elm. The stir became a murmur, the murmur grew into a ruckus, and there was a great gathering of overseers, who could not be ignored, whose appearance brought out laborers, slaves, and the master. A great crowd had formed around the Great Elm, and Master Jeremiah shoved his way, old man that he was, with considerable anger, to the center of the crowd, to see what was the matter.
“Desecration!” he shouted, but he looked closely. In a cradle of roots snaking away from the tree into the earth was the body of Massamba. Upon his brow was a crown of elm leaves, whispering in the morning breeze. Again he shouted, saying, “Inquiries! I want inquiries!” He waved to his overseers, and they set about with their whips to make inquiries.
The gravesite itself, apart from the chapel, was undisturbed, covered with the same flowers as the night before, but Master Jeremiah demanded it be dug up. The lamentation resumed, but it was joined by the song of the laborer, that something adulterous was coming to pass. The joys of the overseers were far, far away.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
When they dug it up, they found the pine box with its lid still fastened. Master Jeremiah commanded it be lifted. When they lifted it up with the chains worn by so many slaves who came over from Charleston to Master Jeremiah Beaufort’s rice plantation, which he dug out of evil swamps under a relentless sun of cruelty, known by his Christian wife’s justifying eyes, they found that one side of the pine box had been broken open, shattered, torn, rent asunder. “How did this come to pass?” wondered Master Jeremiah.
He looked around. “Bury him again!” he ordered. How is his body yet clean?
The next morning found the same: the dead Massamba crowned with elm leaves laid upon a cradle of roots. All the people did the same, with the same inquiries made and the same digging done, and Master Jeremiah ordered a new oaken box, glued and nailed shut, and reinforced with chains. When the body of Massamba was therein laid, and the box was buried deep beneath the earth, Master Jeremiah set a watch of overseers upon the gravesite, and he himself stood at the foot of the Great Elm, conversing with himself.
Have I not fulfilled everything my Christian wife demanded? I have fulfilled it all. She whispered to me even while I fathered children by her, and she whispered to me while I slept. It is true; I know she did. I know it because I know her. What is this devilry, then, here in the age of circumnavigation? Have we not encompassed this cold world, and made it warm for exploiting, wherever we shall roam? Have we not with lenses seen the smallest seeds and triumphed, and looked to the wandering stars, and conquered? Why should it be, then, that my Massamba, whom I bought with my own gold, should not lie resting? His was the primary shack! His was the office of chief among my slaves! Was even there a laborer higher in my house than him? Did I trust not my overseers but only him, even with my own bride, the flesh of my flesh? Let him rest, I say, you devil, you desecrating devil, who moves in the darkness!
There was a sigh above him, among the leaves, as though a single current of a light breeze had disturbed a portion of the canopy of the Great Elm, and Jeremiah Beaufort thought he heard someone say, “Shade and shadow.”
I am not a murderer. I am not. Would justice have been done for a slave baby? No, I tell you, but blood for blood. Slave baby as it was; it still had blood. I am not a murderer: I am a justifier. My wife’s eyes: they tell the truth. She would have her lips judge me, but her eyes, not so. A justifier! A cleansing force! I owned her, and I owned her baby, and she—and it—were mine to offer cleansing by the blood of that useless, worthless laborer. A free man—pheugh! I owned him just as well. He was mine to do with as I please. Therefore, it was not murder. He was not under the canopy of law! He was under my canopy, the canopy of my plantation! Therefore, it was not murder; therefore, Massamba shall lie in peace, without disturb.
Another sigh formed in the canopy of the Great Elm, and Jeremiah Beaufort thought he heard someone say, “I want him.”
Songs of dancing adultery, lamentations of the sea, the joys of my overseers’ whips, and now this…sighing…from above…from on high. The sparks of devils’ shoes light up my dark imagination. The fog of wisps cloud my will. Indeed, the dryads and the nymphs prance in gay circles ‘round my very body, unseen, but accomplishing dread mischiefs within and without.
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At that very moment, as those last syllables still hung whispered in the air, there came a great sighing from the boughs overhead, and the sound of tearing earth beneath his feet. Jeremiah Beaufort stepped back from the troubled land, and he fell, tripping over a root, upon his seat. The dawning of the sun had not come forth, but Jeremiah Beaufort knew in his heart what had just transpired. Even so, he waited for the light, and for the picket of his overseers, and the stirring and murmuring and ruckus thereafter, singing a little song he remembered on the lips of his Christian wife:
> April is in my mistress' face,
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> And July in her eyes hath place;
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> Within her bosom is September,
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> But in her heart a cold December.
“The madrigals,” he said aloud. He pondered over the melody for a little while, then again spoke aloud, “In my mistress’s heart was not a cold December, but I have brought one from hot Africa. And here is my torment: devils when devils should be no more.”
The sun rose, along with the tumult of the earth of the entire plantation. The throng was gathered, and at Master Jeremiah’s feet was a hole, and in that hole was an oaken casket.
“Leave it be,” said Master Jeremiah. “Do not even throw dirt on him; let the devilish imps do their mischievous work in that regard. Nevertheless, here he shall lie until the end of time.”
The overseers seethed.
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