Mind Of A Slave

The Peach, The Boy, and The Companions

3.

I WAKE TO the bustle outside my cabin. I change into the clothes I was wearing yesterday and look out of the single window to see men, women and children darting around the cabins, carrying bundles of clothes or small portions of fruit. Mama is tying her boots, crouched near the door. She looks up at me.

"Did you have a nice rest?" she asks.

I nod, absent-mindedly. "What are every'un doin'? I ain't doin' nothing. What should I be doin'?"

Mama holds the tiny clock on a chain that Papa gave her before he left. It swings across her chest when she lets it go, catching the stream of morning light from the window.

"We'll eat breakfast soon. The women will have made us something," she says.

The women have prepared a small meal from the crops they are allowed to grow around the cabin, but it is barely enough to lessen the strength of my hunger.

Minutes later Beckey arrives at the cabin, instructing me to change into the clothes I arrived in.

"They be your work clothes," she explains. "Hurry, cause Master Ramier gone be sendin' people round the Planation. You is gonna be told what work you needs to do today."

"Farm work?"

"Probly," she says.

I change rapidly and leave the cabin for the well outside. A slave woman is drinking the water straight out of the bucket. When she is finished, I approach the well and do the same.

I swallow as much as I can, thinking of the flustering heat that is to come.

I hear someone come up behind me. "I ain't seen you before," says a man with hair growing in a semi circle on his scalp.

I start and some of the water sloshes over the brim of the bucket.

"Came yesterday," I say.

"Ah," he responds. The bags under his eyes look like sacks, weighed down by his huge eyeballs. "Oh. I'm name Patrick."

"I'm Cass."

"Ha' you met Master already?"

"He took Mama and me home from the auction."

"An' how much did he pay for you an' your Mama?"

It's an odd question.

"I don't know," I say, thinking about how I passed out before the auction came to an end. It feels strange, uncomfortable, to talk about how much I was worth.

"You've finish..?" Patrick asks, indicating the bucket with his hand.

"Oh, yes." I fill it up and pass it to him.

He takes it and I notice that his hands are trembling. Then he closes his eyes and begins to mutter under his breath. I feel like I shouldn't be watching but I can't force my eyes away. I look at him curiously.

"Like animals," he mumbles. "Horses." Suddenly he is looking directly at me. "Horses."

I nod. I don't understand.

"Horses," he says one more time. "Sometime maybe I understand." Then he bows his head and starts to drink from the bucket.

I turn to see Beckey walking towards me. She stops and looks into the distance over my shoulder.

"Look a there," she says. I follow her pointed finger across the field, where a white man in a wide-brimmed hat is riding towards us.

"Who's that?" I ask.