Mind Of A Slave

Alright

PEOPLE DON'T TALK about those who left. Life on the Planation continues as if nothing had happened. Another man gains control of the food rationing and by the next day, more vegetables have been grown in the truck-patches, but still there is not enough food.

Three days pass and people begin to starve. Hannah falls ill. Others decide to leave, figuring that it's better to take the chance than remain at the Plantation and wait for illness to drag them towards death.

A week crawls by painfully slowly.

Hannah gets sicker, and soon her parents catch her illness. I visit her three or four times a day with my head wrap tied over my mouth. She sleeps with the other sick people, in a cabin built away from the rest.

Twelve cabins have been constructed since the soldiers invaded, but even so they are crowded and smelly and on some warm nights I choose to sleep outside by the pond, instead. Amos always comes with me.

One evening I am making my way to the pond when I stumble over a tree root. I slam into the ground, and realise I can't get up.

Amos calls my name and holds out his hand towards me but I don't have the strength to reach out to it. I lie motionless, wondering if this is the end, if this is the time for me to die. But I can feel my pulse in the back of my neck as Amos tucks his arm under my head to haul me into his arms, so I know I must still be alive.

Amos carries me through the trees, while I wonder what's wrong with me. Am I dehydrated? I haven't had much food for the past few days so maybe it's hunger that is making me weak.

I am briefly aware of Amos lowering me onto the river bank, of his voice in my ear.

"I'm gone go back for help."

"No," I say with all the remaining strength I have.

I don't want him to go. I want him to stay here, with me. I want to feel his body on the ground next to mine. I want to hear his soothing voice. I want to be wrapped in his warm presence.

I expect him to lie down beside me but instead I hear rustling. I try to ask him what he's doing but I don't have enough energy.

Maybe I am dying. Or I'm floating on the brink of death.

I need to survive. I am surviving and I can live for longer. Longer. I am alive. He leans down to whisper words into my ear but I cannot hear them because I am exhausted and because I am dying.

I open my eyes with difficulty. He holds a heel of bread in front of my face. It's the bread he tried to offer me before, the one which I refused to accept. It must be stale, but stale bread is better than none.

I open my mouth, and be breaks off a piece and places it on my tongue. My teeth crunch into the hard crust.

I remember that I previously thought it was wrong to accept something that was not rightfully ours. But that was a long time ago, and before I was starving. Now I can only think about my hunger.

I eat almost the entire hunk of bread without a single guilty feeling.

I don't care about what's right and wrong anymore.

I don't care about the people who could have benefitted from sharing that bread. I only care about me. Me.

This is what starvation has done to me. It has turned me into an unfeeling, selfish girl, someone I would previously have been ashamed of.

But I don't care.

I just want to live.

"Get more," I whisper.

"What?" Amos asks.

I swallow. "Get more. More food. Please."

Amos leaves immediately and returns with an armful of pork, corn meal and fruit.

He helps me into a sitting position and together we eat as much as we can. He also brings a bucket of water, which I gulp down quickly, soothing my parched throat.

I instantly start to feel better.

When I'm done, I look at him. If he feels any guilt, he doesn't show it.

"How'd you get it?" I ask him, hoping uselessly that he found the food somewhere else, that he didn't steal.

"There weren't no one guardin' the door. An' half of it's been taken since this mornin'. We ain't the only thieves."

So other people have resorted to theft, too. Suddenly, it's every man for himself. The war not only involves the Union fighting the Confederacy, but ex-slaves fighting each other.

"You don't hafta feel guilty," he tells me.

"Can't help it," I say.

He shakes his head. "This ain't guilt. This is desperation."

"It's still wrong."

"Sometime you gotta do bad thin's to live. Anyway, you don't know nothin' 'bout guilt."

I look up at him, surprised. "Do you?"

He closes his eyes and nods. It takes a while for him to speak. "When I were at war... I were meanta be protectin' Master Ramier. That were the job for us, Hampton an' Chester an' me. They did what they was supposed to. They died for 'im, for the Confederacy. I were..." He lets out a shaky breath. "Master Ramier died when it was up to me to protect him. I weren't doin' my job... an' now..." He starts to cry. "Now Julia ain't got a Papa an'..."

I wrap my arms around him.

"You did what you could..."

"But maybe I didn't," he says. "Maybe I coulda done my job better."

We sit in silence for a long time. Then he says "Cass."

I turn to look at him. I stare into his round wet eyes and I can see his fear and worry and misery. Eyes tell you everything. "I can't bare stayin' here wid every'un who's lives I've ruin."

"You ain't ruined no bodies lives. The war ruin e'm," I say.

"But if Master Ramier weren't dead, he coulda looked after all a us."

"You don't knows that," I tell him.

"Still..." he says, "I don't thinks I can stay here much longer."

He's right. Nobody can stay here much longer if they want to live.

Nothing and no one can help us. Not the white people. Not God. We can only help each other, but we are destroying each other. If we're not careful, our entire race could be wiped out.

We no longer have a common enemy, or a common purpose. We are pets that have been released into the wild and don't know how to survive the change.

"We could leave, you knows." Amos's voice pushes me out of my thoughts.

I look at him, checking if he's serious. His eyes are fixed on mine, his mouth is set in a line. He's as serious as he can be.

"You thinks its best?"

"We could leave t'morrow. It ain't too late to fin' 'em."

I look the other way, into the fading light.

"We'll take the rest of this food an' go an' never come back."

"An' start a new life."

I gulp. I'm still looking at him, waiting to see if he will change his mind. He stares back at me intently. "So.. we gone leave? For real?"

"If it's alright."

"It's alright."

"Alright."

"T'morrow mornin'"

"Alright."