question, ‘Pardon me, massa, but you can no see the negro dwellings?’
‘All too clearly. Now, be off with you, nigger,’ was the reply Dublin Hilton received.
However, Dublin being no longer a slave (and a man who had no need to dabble a skimmer to see if liquor would granulate), decided that now he was a free man he was able to enquire anything of this white man he desired. So he posed his question once more. The artist-man, with a heavy sigh, then told the old boiler-man that he admired the view of the lands from that position, but had no intention of including the disgusting negro hovels.
‘But they are there before you,’ said Dublin Hilton to he. At which the artist barked upon him, that no one wished to find squalid negroes within a rendering of a tropical idyll, before promising Dublin that he would set his dog upon him if he did not leave him alone.
‘But you paint an untruth,’ said Dublin Hilton.
And the artist-man did stamp his foot and scream upon the old man, ‘What business is it of yours? Away with you, nigger, away!’
Now, according to Dublin Hilton, it was just after this encounter with the artist-man that the trouble with the new massa, Robert Goodwin, did begin. However, Peggy Jump did not agree. She recalled that the massa Goodwin had already rode in upon the village to pull Ezra from out his house by his hair before she had heard the story of the artist-man. But Cornet, Peggy’s husband, agreed with Dublin. He remembered that day well. The day when the massa, caught in a devilish rage, shook Ezra like a dog with a rat for neither labouring, nor paying his rent. Come, how could Cornet forget, for he had raised a stick to the massa, yelling upon him to let Ezra go or else he would thrash him with it. And even though the massa soon calmed himself and pulled Ezra to his feet, that white man’s clear blue eyes, staring anger upon him, still haunted Cornet’s mind’s eye when he slept.
But Cornet remembered chatting with Dublin Hilton long before that day, upon the change in the overseer since he became the massa by marriage, and he was sure it was then Dublin had told him of the picture, the artist and the missing negro village. For Cornet thought the artist a cunning man to turn his eye blind to those run-down negro places.
No, the trouble had started at Christmas tide, when Robert Goodwin had sent the driver, Mason Jackson, to round up all the negroes still residing upon Amity and gather them into the mill yard. Cornet recalled that to press this gathering to move faster the driver had fired his whip. And one commotion did break out as Giles Millar and Betsy wrested that slaving cow-skin from out that dog-driver’s hand. They were slaves no more, they yelled upon him, and would dance to no lash! They threw his whip into the river and would have drowned the driver too, but the massa Goodwin had already begun to speak.
There were three fields of cane that must be taken off, the massa told everyone from atop his barrels. Those that worked to bring in this crop would be paid a full day’s wage for a full day’s toil. Come, he smiled, as he urged all to work hard over the coming days so the cane might be brought in.
But it was Christmas. Most before him were dressed in their fine holiday clothes. For example, Miss Sarah, from the first gang, had been making her costume for the Joncanoe festival in town for the whole year. She was a blue girl. As Britannia, she was to be paraded along King’s Street with a trident in her hand and a helmet made in blue silk and silver upon her head. Long time had she waited for the honour of raising the banner that said, ‘Blue girls for ever’. So no, she would not work the two off-days of Christmas.
And Peggy and Cornet had their daughter (the one who was sold away), upon a visit with them. They had not seen her pretty face for many years. She had walked with her little pickney from far, far away, and had arrived just as Peggy and Cornet were finally packed up to leave, to seek out her. So they would not work at Christmas, for they had already killed and plucked three chickens for this joyful holiday.