All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell Read Free Book Online Page B

stream called Petit Ruban that runs out of the ravine onto the plain and turns at the edge of the cane fields at Habitation Arnaud.
    Then we all hid ourselves behind the rocks because a whiteman on a horse was crossing the stream. He was on the way to Habitation Arnaud but he did not know it. It was plain from the way he looked about himself that he did not know where he was at all. The horse was tired and walked with its head low. Jean-Pic wanted to follow and pull the whiteman down from the horse, but Achille said that it was not wise. There was no powder for his gun and he did not know whether the whiteman had a gun in his saddlebags. Jean-Pic said that he could take the whiteman so quickly and quietly that whatever might be in his saddlebags would be of no use to him but only to us. Achille said that if he failed he would bring out the maréchaussée , or perhaps even if he succeeded, for someone might be expecting the whiteman to arrive somewhere. If we were hunted through the low country not all of us would get away.
    The whiteman went riding away down the road and instead of following we turned with the stream and went along the edge of the outermost cane piece, which was bordered by a thicket of orange trees. The stream was low but it was still running and the oranges were ripening there. We all picked and ate a few. Achille made Merbillay go back to pick up some peelings she had dropped. The hedge kept us from sight of the field but when we had gone a little way farther we could hear the voice of the commandeur crying out harshly.
    We sat down quietly then and waited until the commandeur had gone by on the other side of the hedge and away into another part of the cane piece. We could still hear the sound of the cane knives cutting not very far away. There was a low gap in the hedge that a dog might have been using, and Jean-Pic and I crawled through. I did not like to be in a cane field again. The cane was very dry, too dry, and the long leaves were brittle when I touched them.
    Jean-Pic put his hand on my arm to make me be still and he parted the cane leaves to look through. On the other side a man was bent over working. There were old scars on his back from the commandeur ’s whip and a fresh stripe which might have been from that same day. His head was in a tin cage with four foot-long spikes sticking out on the four sides of it, closed on the back of his neck with a rivet. He put down his knife and went down the row to where a woman was working with a calabash of water beside her. When he lifted the calabash we saw that he could not drink because there was a mesh gate over his mouth, locked by a key. He wet a rag and worked an end of it through the mesh and stretched out his lips and tongue to suck on it. Then he put down the gourd and came back to the place where he had been working.
    “ Ho, gâso brav ,” Jean-Pic said, speaking in a whisper that carried like a breeze. The slave jerked his head to the side and the spike in the front of the cage rattled among the leaves. His eyes found Jean-Pic on the other side of the row of cane.
    “Be still,” Jean-Pic said. “What happened to you, did you run?”
    “No,” the slave said. “I ate. They caught me chewing cane in the field.”
    “Ah,” Jean-Pic said. “I don’t hear anyone singing in this cane piece.”
    “You won’t hear anyone singing today,” the slave said. “The commandeur may wear out his whip hand but no one is going to sing today.”
    “Why?” said Jean-Pic.
    “He is killing a woman today.”
    “Arnaud?”
    “Himself,” the slave said.
    “And what is it he is killing her for?”
    “She is an Ibo,” the slave said. “Bought eight months ago, out of Le Cap. Last night she delivered herself of a son.”
    “Does he kill for that here?” Jean-Pic said.
    “The child is dead already.” The slave licked his lips and the underside of his tongue brushed over the metal mesh. “The woman is probably not dead yet.”
    “Ah, so