The Polished Hoe (56 page)

“We talk about Southampton and we always end up talking about Mr. Nat Turner, who led the insurrection that burn down Southampton Plantation, where he worked; and a few other Plantations as..Well, surrounding; and lick-off the heads of his owners; and likewise a few other Plantation owners heads he chop-off. In particular, the drivers. And a handful of the wives, and the girl-thrildren. Yes. Mr. Nat Turner, whose Statement is the name of a book, Wilberforce say.

“The authorities sent a Mr. Thomas R. Gray, a authority, to take Mr. Nat Turner Statement, but Mr. Gray had no understanding of the way Nat Turner speak; and Mr. Gray didn’t care, since he was a authority, cause it didn’t take no skin offa his teet, so he take-down Nat Turner words without understanding the language Nat was talking to him in; but being a authority, he put his own words in Nat Turner mouth; and in so doing, produced a authentic confession, not paying no mind that he altered Nat’s sweet, nice Southern Negro twang, that I heard those coloured ladies speaking on the train going North, into a Statement he call
The Confessions of Nat Turner, the leader of the late Insurrection in Southampton, Virginia, as fully and voluntarily made to.
And had it printed, and published in 1831.”

“I following you.”

“The year my great-gran born!”

“I following you.”

“Yes. The authority from the authorities say that Nat acknowledge the Statement ‘authentic.’ But he altered that sweet Negro language.”

“He could do that and get away with it?”

“Because he is a authority.”

“I following yuh.”

“The full date of the publication is the Fiff o’ November, 1831 . . .”

“The Fiff o’ November?
Guy Fawkes Day?
That is a day of real fireworks. How Nat Turner know about Guy Fawkes Day?”

“No master, nor overseer, no driver nor ordinary inhabitant of Waycross, of Jerusalem-Southampton, Charleston or Lynchburg and no Mr. Thomas R. Gray, authority or no authority, ever entered into a ordinary conversation with a man like Mr. Nat Turner, or Golbourne father . . . or even with you . . . to exchange common pleasantries or courtesies.

“There wasn’t no ‘Good morning, Mr. Nat. How you and the wife and the thrildren? Things all right with you, and them? Your roof leaking? I not working you too hard, is I? Okay,.Well look wha’ I gonna do for you. Ahm gonna slice-off a few working hours, without penalty, tha’s what Ahm gonna do. Now, boy, the hours you accustom working, five in the morning till six in the evening, all that gonna change from today. You gonna begin at ten o’clock sharp instead, hear? Just like me and the overseer. And you gonna knock-off at three in the afternoon, so’s you can go fishing . . .’

“You think there was any such dialogue with a authority? No, man!

“You see now, why I worship Wilberforce for his brain.”

“I didn’t know you know so much about history,
and
astrology,” he says. “Morning is coming, though.”

“Yes. Let it come. Morning soon here, as they say.”

“I have to get back to the station. And report in. Constable must be snoring by now. And go home and have my morning tea. And I have to write a report, before the Commissioner come round on his rounds. He doesn’t know nothing, at least not from me, ’bout this accident, which is what I calling it.

“The Commissioner don’t have no evidence of this accident, this incident. And I intend to keep it that way. I keeping it from him, until we, me and you, figure out something . . .”

“Morning breaking, soon. A new day coming. But I don’t want favours, Sargeant, because of what we almost went through . . .”

“What we almost went through?” he asks.

“That is separate from anything . . .”

“Was above and beyond.”

“That could have been a big mistake. Not that I am blaming you for anything. I will forget it, anyhow.”

“Forget everything?”

“It is like a person who needs to satisfy herself, and after having herself satisfied, right at the moment of satisfaction, at the point of,.Well . . . what I want to say is that,.Well . . . after a man bring a woman, the man might not know that the woman doesn’t have any more use for him. It is so. Not that this is my philosophy. But the woman out-outs the man.
Extinguish.
”

“There is a family of stinging bees that Manny tell me about that does do that to the man-bees. Sting-them-to-death.”

“The queen bee,” she says.

“There is women and there is women. Some women, if you don’t mind me talking straight to you, but there is women who, according to Manny, regardless to-what they do, and how they do it, could always come out of it, whatever it is, clean, and untouch. I not saying, Mary-Mathilda, that you is this type o’ woman, ’cause I don’t know you that-good, I only making a point. For argument sake. And then, alternatively on the other hand, there is the other kind of woman, who . . .”

“Which kind is me?” she says. “Which category you put me in?”

He is uncertain about the way she wants him to take this.

“You is the kind o’ woman that . . .” he begins. But he cannot continue to tell her the truth that lies in his mind; but he completes his comparison, nevertheless, using her as his model, but only in his thoughts . . .
You is the kind o’ woman who have already travel beyond this trash heap, a journey that didn’t last too long; and though you is the one who bring me here, who choose this spot to come to, in the cane field . . . I don’t know if you want to be the same as me, simple and low-down and nasty, to make me believe that you are on the same level, in making me take you in a cane field; I know, though, that you’s still the kind o’ woman who could, and will, wipe-off the trash from offa your dress, could get up from this trash heap anytime, and with a flick o’ your wrist, brush-off the last speck o’ cane trash, wet from the dew falling on it, clean-clean-clean from off your white cotton dress. The minute you leave this cane field, you become Miss Mary Gertrude Mathilda again. Miss Bellfeels. Wilberforce mother. The lady who lives in the Great House . . . I not so foolish not to know this . . .
“But supposing, Mary-Mathilda, supposing. Supposing, for argument sake. That I have feelings for you. What I mean is, supposing, supposing that I could be having certain feelings for you?”

“The feelings that King David had for Bathsheba? Or Romeo for Juliet? Or Caesar for Cleopatra? Which of these three couples you are imagining the two of us, me and you, to be?”

“I only know David and Bathsheba. You-yourself introduce them to me, in a story.”

“They are all the same. They’re European stories, about European love. They are different from stories of love that originate here in Bimshire and the Wessindies, or stories that come from the Amurcan South. Only the names are changed, depending on language. Romeo and Juliet in Eyetalian is the same as David and Bathsheba in the language of the Hebrews. I just don’t want you to have the idea that . . .”

“But supposing,” he says. “Supposing right now, you tell me how you feel, and I was to tell you how I feel. In the morning, a bright new day, we can start fresh. A new day, a new dawn.”

“Like playing house? Like when we were thrildren? Yes, why not play house? I will be the father. You mind playing the mother?”

“House? Why house?”

“Because.”

“What?”

“Or we could play Court. A game is a game, isn’t it? Or is this game of house, really a game of Court?.Well-yes! Let us play Court. I am in the box. I am the Defendant. And I demand disclosures, as you call it. I demand disclosures from you.

“You be the Chief Justice.”

“Sir Gerald Chester Jones-Kirton, KC?” he says.

“Yes, Sir Gerald, Lord Chief Justice.”

“My God!”

“But who will be defending me? Who my Learned Counsel, or my barster-at-Law will be, to defend me?”

“Why don’t you play the Defendant
and
the Defending barster-at-Law, at the same time, to save time and legal resources?”

“Can I be both? And who you will be, then?”

“Lord Chief Justice, Sir Gerald Chester Jones-Kirton, King’s Counsel. And while I at it, I may as.Well play the Solicitor-General, too. And the Juries. I may as.Well be all three. For the same reason. To save costs, and time.

“If this Court of Grand Sessions, a play-play Court, is to be.Well constituted, in accordance with the Jurisprudence of Law, I have to be them-three. ’Cause time is money. To save time is to make money. And vice versa. And since good justice is swift justice, it is better to save time.
Quod a-rat demonstrandum!”

“Can one man, a policeman, be Chief Justice, Solicitor-General and the Jury, all-three, together?”

“In some courts,” he says, “in certain other jurisdictions, and in some real cases, it does be that, when all is said and done. But I don’t need all three roles, because I will try honestly to act honestly in upholding the Law; and in view of the shortage of manpower in this Island, I am acting as Chief Justice, and the prosecuting police officer, namely with powers of the Solicitor-General, and the twelve men honest and fair, who are your peers.”

“Twelve men? Where the women on this Jury?”

“. . . it makes for cleaner, cheaper Jurisprudence; and the Jurisdiction of the Law.”

“It doesn’t sound too-fair to me!”

“It is a
play-play Court
, Mary-Mathilda!”

“Call to order, then,” she says, changing her voice to suit the stern, legal manner of the Court of Grand Sessions. “Call the Court to order, Officer.”

“You mean, ‘Court is in sessions.’”

“Is this why they call it
Grand Sessions
?”

“This is the Law, Mary-Mathilda. There is nothing play-play ’bout the Law, even although we are conducting a play-play Court. Remember that. And this is a serious case on the Docket. And that’s why it have to be tried in the Court of Grand Sessions, in the Annual Assizes.”

“This is a murder case, then . . .”

“We don’t have a body, or what is known in Jurisprudence as a
habeas corpus.
And with no
habeas corpus
, I not sure of the degree to give to this case.”

“Give it the third degree.”

“Murder in the first degree!” he says.

“Okay,” she says. “Who begins first?”

“I have the floor,” he says. “I’s the Solicitor-General. I going first.”

“God go with you.”

“
Muh-Lud,
” he says; and bows extravagantly, “
in the midst of the presumption that a man’s home is a man’s castle, in the declared accepted and universally Christian presumption that no harm comes in a man’s way, when that said man is sitting in his den, his front-house or his verandah on a Sunday evening after eating his supper, when the candles are glowing, and the lights are low, when the breezes waltzes over the fields of sugar canes, present in its description, an English landscape that is ideal, and for its tranquilness and serenity, in this hushed moment, on a night when the vision is reduce’ by the thick, velvet blackness of having no moon shining, into the sacred atmosphere, into the pure environment of deserved peace, up crept, Muh-Lud, like a thief, like a robber of civilization, like a sinner, like a veritable Iago . . .”

“‘
Verago’? Or did I hear, ‘Iago’? As in
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice
?”

Sargeant says, in his role as Crown.
“The very same, Muh-Lud . . .”
he answers himself.

“Iago, Iago . . . Iago!”
the Chief Justice says; and recites:

“‘O, Sir content you;
I follow him, to serve my turn upon him:
We cannot all be Masters, nor all Masters
Cannot be truly follow’d.’”

“And with an instrument, Muh-Lud, which as you might have gathered in my prelimary remarks, represented, if only in a symbolic way, the very uninterrupted horspitality, generosity and English dependency that the Crown is arguing for motive and motivation in this dasterly act prepetrated, Muh-Lud, with the very instrument which, when the Accused was given employment on and by the said Plantation, as shown in documents, was used by the Accused, namely a hoe . . .

“
A
who
?”

“Hoe, Muh-Lud. The
h
is silent.”

“
Oh-ho! Ah-ho!”

“A hoe, Muh-Lud. An agricultural instrument, implement with the sacred and indigenous oral and cultural history, like a scythe, in local parlance, a sickle, the instrument that is used in all the religious and historical portraits and portraitures, by who I am made to understand is the Renaissance artists of the European school of painters, symbolically to suggest industry, to suggest bounty and to suggest honest labour. By the sweat of thy brow, Muh-Lud, shalt thou . . .”

“
Whose
brow
?”

“Not thy brow, Muh-Lud, surely. Your labour is of a more intellectual and jurisprudential nature . . . metaphorically, Muh-Lud, metaphorically speaking . . .”

“
Proceed.
”

“A hoe, Muh-Lud, a common hoe . . .”

“
Did you say
whore
, again? A common prostitute? Surely, the Crown are not addressing this honourable Court as a whore!”