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1. The Great Elm wasted no time in completing the burial of Massamba. When the night was darkest, when no light would shine, when even the night lion would not prowl, the Great Elm called, and six of Massamba’s kindred came. The Great Elm lighted their eyes so they could see their work, the heaping of the earth upon their brother, their dead lord, Autumn-Leaves-Abraham-Son. The Great Elm dropped a great many leaves, and the kindred obliged, arranging them in a pile to mark the place where Massamba lay.
After that, the Great Elm waited patiently, reaching slowly with his roots while the memory of Massamba passed into legend, then into lore, and finally into myth. In the meantime, the Beaufort Plantation grew and increased, divided among Jeremiah Beaufort’s stony-hearted children, and their wealth became too great to measure.
Some said the Beaufort name prospered because of Massamba; others said in spite of him. Regardless, the cruelty grew with the plantation: some said because of Massamba, who was not afraid to suffer; others said in spite of his suffering. Where was the offspring of Jeremiah’s Christian wife? Alas, the lines she drew, injustice against injustice, did not hold, and justice was swallowed whole, issuing forth in perversion, shellacked in a lifeless counterfeit religion that brought forth generations of stillborn masters and owners.
The sun made his habitual oppression. Backs bent. Many slaves died.
Many slaves lived.
At last, the Great Elm had worked his fingers through the oaken casket, and he took possession of the one who started him, there, on the Gambia River, preserved for life by excrement and blood, given life against death by tears and sweat. As the dead man sprang to life when he touched the bones of Elisha, so the Great Elm reached far and wide when he grasped Massamba. His enormous boughs shuddered.
2. When William Tecumseh Sherman left Chattanooga for the attack against Atlanta, he glanced east toward South Carolina, and he saw a vision.
“He suddenly turned yellow, bright yellow, like the sun,” his orderly said. “His horse got real nervous-like, and whinnied a little, but the General kept him calm. It was like he was all a-fire, all over, then he opened his mouth and swallowed all that fire. Then he said, ‘Well, boys, let’s give General Hood his provisions to stay here in Tennessee. As for us, we have business down South: the business of burning.’ He said he saw a big ol’ oak tree, or some such. That’s what he said.”
Some say he set Atlanta ablaze with his very breath, then set off like a spark toward Savannah, making a trail where everything he saw burst into flame a hundred miles from side-to-side and a thousand miles from start to finish. When he got to Savannah and burned it down, he wheeled north and went to burn the Carolinas with the Emancipation Proclamation that flamed within his breast.
Some say the lamentations of the seas rose up, and in their joyous resonations, they threatened to quench the great fire in William Tecumseh Sherman. A flash of lightning blinded him, and he cried out to God.
The Great Elm called to him through the blackness of rolling thunderclouds.
“I have to go, boys, lest the ol' drunk think I'm crazy and send me back to the crazy bin!”
And William Tecumseh Sherman made his way to the great ruins of the Beaufort Plantation. His teeth gleamed in the darkness as he laughed at his conquest, but then lightning flashed again, and he saw by its bright light the multitude of freedmen standing there, silent. One freedman took the bridle of Sherman’s horse and began to lead him to the Great Elm.
The conquering General took shelter beneath those ancient boughs, which somehow stood unmoving while the lamentation raged around. “Must be the eye of a hurricane,” he said.
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“Ain’t no hurricane,” said the freedman. “No, ain’t no hurricane do that. That’s the Great Elm. He be our kindred.”
The conquering General scowled with misapprehension. He knelt in prostration.
“No, sah,” said the freedman. “They ain’t no need in doing such a thing. Brother, don’t you understand? He’s our brother!”
The conquering General looked around, saying, “Then why am I here?”
“The Great Elm is giving you shelter, don’t you know.”
Sherman’s eyes narrowed. “Shelter from what?”
“Why, from wind and rain, and every other sort of evil thing.”
The conquering General shuddered with fear beneath the tree. He surveyed the Great Elm, looking high, looking low, and on the ground he saw a little nondescript place where elm leaves had gathered in a peculiar way. He reached out his hand to touch it.
“I wouldn’t touch that, sah!”
William Tecumseh Sherman, the conquering General, hesitated, but could not resist. No one restrained him. Everyone was free, so no one bound anyone. He touched the leaves.
A moan went up from the multitude: “Oh, oh, oh…” they lamented. “Oh…no…”
The storm, however, immediately ceased from its going back and forth and its roiling and its lamenting. “See there?” said the General, “No harm came of it.”
A message came forthwith, in the light of the day, to the General. “Your son was born, and your son has died.” The General wept.
One of the freedmen found him in a place of solitude, and he said to William Tecumseh Sherman, “It was the blood of our brother you touched, sah. His bones, his marrow. From afar the Great Elm gave you all the fire you were appointed to have, but at your test, you received more fire than the world can bear.”
“Who is this?” asked Sherman. “Who is this Great Elm, whom you call your brother?”
“Our brother,” the freedman corrected. “He is the brother of all us, through the Great Elm, breaking the curse against everyone in bonds, now in part, looking forward to when it comes in full. He is Massamba-Abraham.”
A few months later, another Abraham sat in a theater, where he was assassinated. Again, the General wept. He remembered the words of the freedman. Things generally went to Hell thereafter.
He wrote: I confess, without shame, I am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands and fathers ... tis only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.
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3. Then came the disease: Jeremiah Beaufort’s imps, it seemed, cooked up a fiery bit of mischief, but it was a fire that began under the skin of the trees, Dutch Elm Disease. The great elms did not fall, not all of them, for they had their caretakers, being standards for ancient wisdom, for eternity, for perseverance and hope. Massamba’s kindred had endured through the centuries, with the lore in their hearts and on their lips. To them the Great Elm called, and they brought saws. His great boughs shuddered in agony, and he himself looked to be fading.
“A great power has done this,” one of arborists suddenly said.
His colleague said, wiping sweat from his jet-black brow, “A greater power lies beneath this great elm.”
“I am the Lord of All Trees, now.”
Limbs came down, but the Great Elm did not. Massamba’s work continued.
4. A preacher from Atlanta got himself arrested in Birmingham, from where he wrote a letter. When he handed off the letter for publication, he meditated on what he had written, looking up and out the east-facing window. Standing on that windowsill was a woman, tall, and black as jet. Her skin shone in the sun. When she spoke, her teeth were dazzling, like the brightness of morning stars when they sing together.
“I say, Master Martin, I say, you have suffered much, and you suffer well!” She threw back her head and laughed. “You are the very image of my son. But,” and she laughed again, “can you die like I died?”
“Will it do good? Will it do good for me to die?”
“Of course good will come from an innocent death. Are you an innocent death?”
“How can I say whether I am an innocent death? Isn’t it anger that fuels justice? How can an evil fuel a good?”
“Whose anger?”
“My anger.”
“I suppose,” she said, still dazzling in every way, in her deepest black, “I suppose you could say no good came of my death, but who can say what good is, if we cannot say what justice is?”
“I can say freedom is justice, and freedom is good, and freedom fuels my anger.”
“Then your death is like mine: glass mixed with fire.” With that, she was gone.
5. Black. Everything is black.
The Great Elm was stirring.
Abe. This is bad. This is very, very bad. Wake up, Abe.
The Great Elm shuddered. His great boughs shimmered in light which broke through clouds pouring in from the sea. “Abe, I bring your dream to an end!”
Black. Everything is black. This is bad.
“Abe! I awaken you!”
“Abe! Wake up!” Lars was saying.
“Abe! Wake up!” And Blake shook him.
Fire and glass, Abe, the true stoic way. You have to wake up, Stoic, or your death will have been foolish.
Abe woke up.
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