lucky.”
I stared at him. “He was lucky?”
“Mingo’s brother got dragged in through the rollers last year.”
We watched the new mill-feeder deftly hand-feeding cane stalks through the rollers, risking his life with every stalk. Treacly brown liquid spurted into a trough at his feet. I tried not to picture Mingo’s brother’s body being crushed like sugar cane, his red blood mixing with the molasses.
I followed Brice into the boiling house. It was like being inside an oven. I could literally feel the moisture being drawn from my body. The combination of the tremendous heat and molasses fumes, made it next to impossible to breathe.
Five giant copper kettles were suspended over a blazing furnace. Inside the kettles, the boiling molasses blipped and bubbled like an evil magician’s brew.
A half-naked boy, of eight or nine years old, was keeping the furnace going with bundles of cane trash. He’d reached the zombie stage of exhaustion, running mechanically from the trash pile to the boiling kettles, from the kettles to the trash pile.
What are the Bexfords thinking, I fumed, making people work in these horrific conditions? Suppose some of that scalding sludge got splashed on to the little boy’s skin? Suppose he stumbled and knocked a kettle flying? The blistering-hot molasses would stick like boiling glue.
Brice had to talk business to the overseer, a sandy-haired Scot and the only white worker in the yard. I grabbed the chance to beam loving vibes to the exhausted little boy then I went outside and beamed heaps more to the mill-feeder. (Reuben always says it’s WAY better to light one tiny candle than to whinge about the dark.)
I can’t say, obviously, if beaming vibes helped to dispel any cosmic darkness for those humans, but it had a huge effect on me.
I found myself taking a hard look at the overseer. When Brice emerged, mopping his perspiring face, my question just burst out.
“Why does that man have a whip?”
An alarmed ripple went round the yard. Brice hurried me out of earshot. “Where have you been hiding, cousin?” he hissed furiously. “Why do you think that man has a whip? To show my uncle’s slaves who has the power. To stop them rising up and killing their owners in their beds - shall I go on?”
I couldn’t speak. At some point I thought I might want to be sick.
” Slaves ?” I whispered. “All those people are slaves ?”
Brice gave an angry laugh. “Do you imagine that white plantation owners could live like emperors if we PAID our workers?”
The clues had been there from the start. The pride and pain in Quashiba’s voice when she talked about African names, the haunted harmonies floating from the fields, the suffering that came seeping out of the blood-soaked earth of Jamaica itself.
I had no excuse for my ignorance. We had learned all about this particular form of slavery at my old school. Human slavers stole thousands and millions of their fellow humans from Africa, shipping them across the sea to work in the plantations of the Caribbean, and forcing them to work in the kind of harsh conditions I’d just seen. Yet I’d pushed this information to the back of my mind. I’d wanted to have my own cool little Caribbean experience. Like la la la, hello humming birds, hello mango trees…
STOP IT! I told myself.
Slavery was way too dark to take on by myself. I had to concentrate on my own small cosmic task; getting Brice back home to Heaven before he got into any worse trouble.
To do this, I needed angelic backup, and I didn’t want to waste another minute faffing around. I had the worrying feeling that time was running out.
“I need to find a girl called Lola,” I blurted out. “Do you know her? Quashiba says she can sew.“As you can tell, I was improvising frantically.
Brice looked totally thunderstruck then tried to cover his shock. “Um, yes,” he said in a slightly too-casual voice. “I do, indeed, know a Lola.”
“Really!” I said. I literally felt
I stared at him. “He was lucky?”
“Mingo’s brother got dragged in through the rollers last year.”
We watched the new mill-feeder deftly hand-feeding cane stalks through the rollers, risking his life with every stalk. Treacly brown liquid spurted into a trough at his feet. I tried not to picture Mingo’s brother’s body being crushed like sugar cane, his red blood mixing with the molasses.
I followed Brice into the boiling house. It was like being inside an oven. I could literally feel the moisture being drawn from my body. The combination of the tremendous heat and molasses fumes, made it next to impossible to breathe.
Five giant copper kettles were suspended over a blazing furnace. Inside the kettles, the boiling molasses blipped and bubbled like an evil magician’s brew.
A half-naked boy, of eight or nine years old, was keeping the furnace going with bundles of cane trash. He’d reached the zombie stage of exhaustion, running mechanically from the trash pile to the boiling kettles, from the kettles to the trash pile.
What are the Bexfords thinking, I fumed, making people work in these horrific conditions? Suppose some of that scalding sludge got splashed on to the little boy’s skin? Suppose he stumbled and knocked a kettle flying? The blistering-hot molasses would stick like boiling glue.
Brice had to talk business to the overseer, a sandy-haired Scot and the only white worker in the yard. I grabbed the chance to beam loving vibes to the exhausted little boy then I went outside and beamed heaps more to the mill-feeder. (Reuben always says it’s WAY better to light one tiny candle than to whinge about the dark.)
I can’t say, obviously, if beaming vibes helped to dispel any cosmic darkness for those humans, but it had a huge effect on me.
I found myself taking a hard look at the overseer. When Brice emerged, mopping his perspiring face, my question just burst out.
“Why does that man have a whip?”
An alarmed ripple went round the yard. Brice hurried me out of earshot. “Where have you been hiding, cousin?” he hissed furiously. “Why do you think that man has a whip? To show my uncle’s slaves who has the power. To stop them rising up and killing their owners in their beds - shall I go on?”
I couldn’t speak. At some point I thought I might want to be sick.
” Slaves ?” I whispered. “All those people are slaves ?”
Brice gave an angry laugh. “Do you imagine that white plantation owners could live like emperors if we PAID our workers?”
The clues had been there from the start. The pride and pain in Quashiba’s voice when she talked about African names, the haunted harmonies floating from the fields, the suffering that came seeping out of the blood-soaked earth of Jamaica itself.
I had no excuse for my ignorance. We had learned all about this particular form of slavery at my old school. Human slavers stole thousands and millions of their fellow humans from Africa, shipping them across the sea to work in the plantations of the Caribbean, and forcing them to work in the kind of harsh conditions I’d just seen. Yet I’d pushed this information to the back of my mind. I’d wanted to have my own cool little Caribbean experience. Like la la la, hello humming birds, hello mango trees…
STOP IT! I told myself.
Slavery was way too dark to take on by myself. I had to concentrate on my own small cosmic task; getting Brice back home to Heaven before he got into any worse trouble.
To do this, I needed angelic backup, and I didn’t want to waste another minute faffing around. I had the worrying feeling that time was running out.
“I need to find a girl called Lola,” I blurted out. “Do you know her? Quashiba says she can sew.“As you can tell, I was improvising frantically.
Brice looked totally thunderstruck then tried to cover his shock. “Um, yes,” he said in a slightly too-casual voice. “I do, indeed, know a Lola.”
“Really!” I said. I literally felt
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