Horrible Harvest

“You’ve bought me a beating, missus.”

Momma didn’t offer up a reply. She got herself in a race to out-smart Mr. Stockton, and she drug Tate along with her in the process. She felt shame for it.

“Why?”

She sputtered out this word and that, trying to piece together a defense for what she done. “I wanted – You’re a better – You deserve dignity. I wanted to give that to you. You’re a better man than Cameron Miller. His advance man. My husband.” She moved across the porch and patted the palm of her hand on her chest. “I wanted you to feel the power in that. Here.”

“With respect, I cannot play at dignity under the spotlight. It is not a thing to be recited at the direction of another. It must be left up to me to wield in the moments of my choosing.” He backed away.

She curled her hand into a fist and touched it to her lips. Her eyes danced about as she tried like the devil to land on the words to save him for what she’d done, but nothing come to her, so she moved on to defending herself by attacking him, the man she’d sentenced to the lash. “Why aren’t your thoughts bloody?”

“Missus?”

“You quote Shakespeare – Hamlet, no less – A story of rage and vengeance – Where is your rage, Mr. Tate? Where is your fight? I am a bundle of rage that wants to burn down the system that makes me nothing more than a womb. I can decide nothing in my home, my town, my country. It is maddening and humiliating. Yet, I am not yoked to even a fraction of the degradation you endure. Where is your rage, sir?”

He give her question thought before saying, “I have a wife. Children.”

Momma give him a wonk-eyed look.

“All taken from me. One by one. Drip. Drip. Drip. The youngest child first. She was sold. There was my rage. I struck out. Pummeled my enslavers. Roared like a lion. I received no lashes. They made my other daughter my proxy. She was beaten and raped for my rage. And then she was sold, too. More rage. Uncontained. I couldn’t help myself. My wife received my punishment. She was beaten so badly that she could no longer bear children. She was then sold. My boy. He remains the property of Mr. Stockton, but he’s leased to a ship, same as I was as a boy. I’ve not heard word of him in five-years now. My rage brings consequences to others. That’s what I have learned. I have spent my sense of vengeance, missus. I have no more left to give.”

Momma let loose a wash of tears, for him, for her, for the world entire.

He grunted and swallowed his own heart-crushing grief. “I’ll make up that pallet now, missus.”

She reached out and touched him at the arm. It wasn’t something she put thought to. She just had to. He was afloat, attached to nothing nor no one. I was just a speck of a boy, and even I could see he was a star made up of dying light. He didn’t have nothing to shine on for.

Momma’s touch meant something special to him. It meant something to her. I could see it. I didn’t know what it was at the time. I had my suspicions, but the full truth of it was years from me at that time. I was too young to understand such bonds ‘tween two people, but bonded they were. Momma and him shared a misery that come from their shit-lives. One knew the other without giving out this detail and that. They just had a deep, abiding knowing of who the other was because of the troubles that made up the minutes of their lives.

The touch ‘tween the two didn’t last but a couple of beats of the heart, but in that time, their bitter-baked lives turnt safe. He shined a bit brighter, and she breathed a bit easier. They was forever joined by a pining that would tick past the last drop of time. The world could end, and their want for one another would soar on.

That night, in our little one-room house, when she thought Me and Charles asleep, she went to him and lay in the pallet with him. It was foolhardy and altogether required for two people so bonded. I would learn my ownself when I was so touched in such a manner by Kenneth that love weighted by desire can scorch the very soul of you if you don’t take hold of it when secret hours permit.