to the village to scold. He took the hat from his head and dashed it to the floor. Then he roared, ‘Where were the pen-keepers, why were they not with the cattle? Where were the watchmen? Why were the watch-fires all out? And why were no conches blown to summon help? One of my best cane fields was ruined, trampled to pieces, while you were all about your own business. Is that your gratitude to your masters? You care nothing for my interests—you think of no one but yourselves!’
And Tilly would have called out that she will work longer, just to cheer him, but Miss Nancy smothered her mouth, hurled her into her hut, and locked her in there.
Ezra was so surprised when, a few weeks later, he found a grinning massa Goodwin standing within his doorway, that he dropped the calabash he carried, which spilled the dirty water it held over the massa’s boot.
‘Ezra, Ezra, do not worry yourself about that, for I have something important I wish to ask you,’ the massa began before saying, ‘Are you happy, boy?’
Trick—this be a trick, Ezra thought, as the massa waited for his reply. Happy? Come, he had never heard that asked of him in the whole of his days and had no notion of what he should reply.
But the massa carried on, ‘Ezra, listen carefully to me,’ while leaning in close, like he had some secret for Ezra to learn. ‘Why do you not leave your provision lands and work just for me? I will pay you a good wage, better than any one in this parish. Enough for your rent, your food, and fine clothes for any wife you may wish to keep. You would want for nothing. And think, with that money upon your person, you would have no need to walk all the way to your lands, for you would have pennies enough. Imagine, you would not need to attend market every week—you could sleep in a hammock or go to church on a Sunday. And in the evenings you could have leisure to do whatever it is that you enjoy to do within the evenings. What do you think on that, Ezra?’
Ezra recalled that he had replied only, ‘But me ground done feed me dis long time,’ before the massa Goodwin held up his hand to halt Ezra’s speech. He then stepped a pace back to call for Miss July.
And there was Ezra’s proof! For Ezra always believed that the massa Goodwin did not understand negro talk. In walked Miss July, her face set with a house servant’s sneer, like some bad smell was distressing her nose. And the massa said, ‘Please say what you were saying again.’
So Ezra spoke that he did prefer to work upon his own grounds, for labour in the cane fields was hard and long, and yet he got to keep no profit from the crop he planted, fed and cut. But the toil upon his grounds rewarded him with produce that was his to keep. The massa then turned to Miss July who repeated all that Ezra had just spoken, but with a bakkra’s exactness. And the massa’s eyes dimmed as he listened.
Then the massa began to say again what he had already said—about the hammock, the church, the pennies, and the fine clothes for a wife—but with his voice raised. Come, he ended with a cry of, ‘Savvy dat, boy?’ that was so loud it did wake his pickney that was bound across to Miss July’s breast. And as the pickney did holler, the massa did begin to cajole, ‘Well, boy, will you not do as I suggest? Will you? Say you will, and there will be an end to it. Come on, Ezra, say you will work for me alone.’
And Ezra, trapped within his own hut by one ‘gwan high-high’ house servant, her bewailing pickney, and the massa’s persistence, soon realised that, no, he was not happy, he was not happy at all!
Nancy, Benjamin, Anne, Peggy, Cornet and Mary were then visited by the massa who approached upon them with his smiling sweet-talk. ‘If you worked for me alone,’ said he, ‘you would receive a good wage. There would be no need for you to spend so much effort upon your lands as I would provide money enough for you to buy food from the market and more besides.’
But Samuel remembered no smile upon the massa’s face by the time he reached him. Come, his arms were folded,