Caribbee Part 57

Give me the words, Mighty Ogun. Tell me the words that will make the _branco_ slaves join us.

But the prayer pa.s.sed unanswered. He watched in dismay as the women began, one by one, to back away, to retreat toward their huts in awe and dread.

Still, they had done nothing to try and halt the flames. So perhaps there still was hope. If they were afraid to join the

rebellion, neither would they raise a hand to save the wealth of their _branco _master.

Also, these were but women. Women did not fight. Women tended the compounds of warriors. When the men returned, the rebellion would begin. They would seize their chance to kill the _branco _master who enslaved them. He signaled the other Yoruba, who moved on quickly toward the curing house, where the pots of white sugar waited.

The sky had taken on a deep red glow, as the low-lying clouds racing past reflected back the ochre hue of flames from fields in the south.

Across the island, the men of the Yoruba had honored their vows. They had risen up.

Atiba noticed the savor of victory in his mouth, that hardening of muscle when the foe is being driven before your sword, fleeing the field. It was a strong taste, dry and cutting, a taste he had known before. Something entered your blood at a moment like this, something more powerful, more commanding, than your own self.

As they pushed through the low shrubs leading toward the sugarworks, he raised his hand and absently touched the three clan marks down his cheek, their shallow furrows reminding him once again of his people.

Tonight, he told himself, all the men of Ife would be proud.

"Atiba, son of Balogun, I must tell you my thoughts." Old Tahajo had moved forward, ahead of the others. "I do not think it is good, this thing you would have us do now."

"What do you mean?" Atiba eased his own pace slightly, as though to signify deference.

"A Yoruba may set fires in the forest, to drive out a cowardly foe. It is all part of war. But we do not fire his compounds, the compounds that shelter his women."

"The curing house where sugar is kept is not the compound of the _branco's _women." Atiba quickened his stride again, to rea.s.sert his leaders.h.i.+p, and to prevent the other men from hearing Tahajo's censure, however misguided. "It's a part of his fields. Together they nourish him, like palm oil and salt. Together they must be destroyed."

"But that is not warfare, Atiba. That is vengeance." The old man persisted. "I have set a torch to the fields of an enemy--before you were born the Fulani once forced such a course upon us, by breaking the sacred truce during the harvest festival--but no Yoruba would deliberately burn the seed yams in his enemy's barn."

"This barn does not hold his yams; it holds the fruits of our unjust slavery. The two are not the same."

"Atiba, you are like that large rooster in my eldest wife's compound, who would not suffer the smaller ones to crow. My words are no more than summer wind to you." The old man sighed. "You would scorn the justice Shango demands. This is a fearsome thing you would have us do now."

"Then I will bear Shango's wrath on my own head. Ogun would have us do this, and he is the G.o.d we honor tonight. It is our duty to him." He moved on ahead, leaving Tahajo to follow in silence. The thatched roof of the curing house was ahead in the dark, a jagged outline against the rosy sky beyond.

Without pausing he opened the door and led the way. All the men knew the room well; standing before them were long rows of wooden molds, containers they had carried there themselves, while a _branco _overseer with a whip stood by.

"These were placed here with our own hands. Those same hands will now destroy them." He looked up. "What better justice could there be?" He sparked the flint off his machete, against one of the straw bundles, and watched the blaze a moment in silence. This flame, he told himself, would exact the perfect revenge.

Revenge. The word had come, unbidden. Yes, truly it was

revenge. But this act was also justice. He recalled the proverb: "One day's rain makes up for many days' drought." Tonight one torch would make up for many weeks of whippings, starvation, humiliation.

"Mark me well." Atiba held the burning straw aloft and turned to address the men. "These pots are the last sugar you will ever see on this island. This, and the cane from which it was made, all will be gone, never to return. The forests of the Orisa will thrive here once more."

He held the flaming bundle above his head a moment longer, while he intoned a verse in praise of Ogun, and then flung it against the thatched wall behind him, where it splayed against a post and disintegrated. They all watched as the dry-reed wall smoldered in the half-darkness, then blossomed with small tongues of fire.

Quickly he led them out again, through the narrow doorway and into the cool night. The west wind whipped the palm trees now, growing ever fresher. Already the flame had scaled the reed walls of the curing house, and now it burst through the thatched roof like the opening of a lush tropical flower.

As they made ready to hurry on up the path toward the mill room, the drum of hoofbeats sounded through the night. Next came frantic shouts from the direction of the great house. It was the voice of Benjamin Briggs.

Atiba motioned them into the shadows, where they watched in dismay as a scattering of white indentures began lumbering down the hill, toting buckets of water and shovels, headed for the burning fields.

The Yoruba men all turned to Atiba, disbelieving. The male _branco _slaves had not risen up. They had come back to aid in the perpetuation of their own servitude. As Atiba watched the fire brigade, he felt his contempt rising, and his anger.

Could they not see that this was the moment?

But instead of turning their guns on their enemy, setting torch to his house, declaring themselves free--the _branco _slaves had cravenly done as Briggs commanded. They were no better than their women.

"The _branco _chief has returned to his compound. Like him, all the _branco _masters on the island must now be trembling in fear." Atiba felt his heart sink as he motioned the men forward. Finally he understood the whites. Serina had been right. Color counted for more than slavery. Now more than ever they needed the muskets from the s.h.i.+p.

"Quickly. We must burn the mill, then go and seize the guns. There's no time to lose."

The mill house was only a short distance farther up the hill. They left the path and moved urgently through the brush and palms toward the back of the thatched building. It stood silent, waiting, a dark silhouette against the glowing horizon.

"Atiba, there is no longer time for this." Obewole moved to the front of the line and glanced nervously at the darkening skies. Heavy clouds obscured the moon, and the wind had grown sharp. "We must hurry to the s.h.i.+p as soon as we can and seize the _branco's _guns. This mill house is a small matter; the guns are a heavy one. The others will be there soon, waiting for us."

"No. This must burn too. We will melt forever the chains that enslave us."

He pressed quickly up the slope toward the low thatched building. From the center of the roof the high pole projected skyward, still scorched where the lightning of Shango had touched it the night of the ceremony.

"Then hurry. The flint." Obewole held out the last bundle of straw toward Atiba as they edged under the thatched eaves. "There's no time to go in and pray here."

Atiba nodded and out of his hand a quick flash, like the pulse of a Caribbean firefly, shot through the dark.

Shango was with her, part of her. As Serina dropped to her knees, before the drawing of the axe, she no longer knew who she was, where she was. Unnoticed, the dull glow from the open doorway grew brighter, as the fires in the cane fields beyond raged.

"Shango, _nibo l'o nlo? _Shango?" She knelt mumbling, sweat soaking through her s.h.i.+ft. The words came over and over, almost like the numbing cadence of the Christian rosary, blotting out all other sounds.

She had heard nothing--not the shouts at the main house nor the ringing of the fire bell nor the dull roar of flames in the night air. But then, finally, she did sense faint voices, in Yoruba, and she knew Shango was there. But soon those voices were lost, blurred by the distant chorus of crackling sounds that seemed to murmur back her own whispered words.

The air around her had grown dense, suffocating. Dimly, painfully she began to realize that the walls around her had turned to fire. She watched, mesmerized, as small flame-tips danced in circles of red and yellow and gold, then leapt and spun in pirouettes across the rafters of the heavy thatched roof.

Shango had sent her a vision. It could not be real.

Then a patch of flame plummeted onto the floor beside her, and soon chunks of burning straw were raining about her. Feebly, fear surging through her now, she attempted to rise.

Her legs refused to move. She watched the flames in terror for a moment, and then she remembered the wand, still in her outstretched hand. Without thinking, she clasped it again to her pounding breast. As the room disappeared in smoke, she called out the only word she still remembered.

"Shango!"

The collapse of the burning thatched wall behind her masked the deep, sonorous crack that sounded over the hillside.

"d.a.m.n me!" Benjamin Briggs dropped his wooden bucket and watched as the dark cloudbank hovering in the west abruptly flared. Then a boom of thunder shook the night sky. Its sound seemed to unleash a pent-up torrent, as a dense sheet of island rain slammed against the hillside around him with the force of a mallet.

The fires that blazed in the fields down the hill began to sputter into boiling clouds of steam as they were swallowed