Rich Man's Coffin (15 page)

         
He rounded a sharp outcropping of rocky cliff and copped a brief reprieve from the undertow.
 
The water relented as the current slowed. It spread thin and dissipated over the top of a kelp bed broaching the surface with thick tatters.
 
The water calmed and rippled slightly in a swirling circle. It regained its turquoise tincture as it washed over the seaweed garden.
 
Black Jack waded among the plants and felt his way through the tranquil grotto.
 
He looked around as he waded through the peaceful little bay toward a sandy beach.

         
He began to swim, sea vegetation tickling his body as he stroked through the tendrils.
 
His canvass clothes hung on him soaked and heavy.
 
He struggled for shore. Underwater vegetation gave way to sand in the shallow surf, and shortly he was able to stand.
 
He stood up, and the clouds parted. The sun shined down upon him.
 
Vapor rising from his body refracted the sunlight into several sharp rays surrounding his head and shoulders, forming a heavenly rainbow.
 
He was warmed.
 
The dry, white sand before him was bright and hot.
 
It was as though the rain had not come to this bay at all.
 
Birds sang loudly and flew about, and copious colorful fruit dangled from emerald trees.

         
There he stood in all his glory, freshly baptized, saved from death and delivered to this uninhabited garden.
 
The shore was a long, smooth crescent, and Arthur stood as an actor alone on a large stage.
 
The beach extended from a low reef on the far right across to a cathedral rock cave protruding into the water on the far left.

How far am I from Te Awaiti Bay
, he wondered?
 
His time adrift was a blur now, and he could not accurately measure his travel down the coast.
 
He figured that it must be close to normal quitting time. Soon, the men would be bringing the whales back to the station and lashing them to the sheers.
 
There would be jubilation throughout the village.
But will they look for me
, he wondered?
 
The question hit him hard.
 
Black Jack asked himself,
How likely is it that an exhausted white man, bent on celebrating his catch, is gonna want to venture out again into dark waters to rescue a drowning black man?
 

Arthur ran through the possibilities in his mind before giving himself a fair answer to the question. He thought it funny that, as a slave he seemed much more valuable, but now that he was free, he might not be so prized. He became bitter. Was his value to the Master in money, or power and control?
 
What was his value to the whalers? He pondered.

         
As he stood there stewing with spite, he saw something stir among the trees at the back of the beach.
 
Maybe he was tired or had salt in his eyes, but he would have sworn to his mother on a Bible that he saw a chicken the size of a horse!
 
It ran past an opening in the brush, paused momentarily, and then vanished.
 
A bird that size wouldn’t have eaten worms, Arthur thought. It would have devoured large snakes!
 
But come to think of it, he hadn’t seen any of those here either.

         
Being warm and dry from the sun now, Black Jack decided to ditch his wet clothes and hang them on a bush. Naked, he began to explore the bay in the remaining daylight.
 
He was very thirsty, and he was happy to find a small, fresh-water stream running out of the brush right through the beach trickling into the sea.
 
It flowed out of the high hills rimming the beach.
 
The rear of the beach remained fairly flat for a few hundred yards, until it met the base of the hills where it began to rise steeply yet smoothly.
 
Next to the stream just beyond the high-tide line were two large rock formations, side-by-side, roughly the size of huts.
 
Black Jack squatted and drank from the cool stream with a cupped hand as he eyed the structures.
 
He noticed that they rested on grassy knolls just above the level of the stream so that they were given protection from the rising tide in front and any possible flooding from the stream.
 
In addition to the high grass around their bases, the rocks were surrounded by large plants which consisted of radiating, long, blade-shaped leaves growing from a center at the ground and spreading out and up above Black Jack’s head.
 
In the center was a single, straight, slender, brown stalk that sported several pods of stringy, silky, white clumps at its top.
 
It seemed to Black Jack to be the tropical version of a very large cotton plant.
  

         
Walking around the two rocks, Black Jack found an opening in one at ground level.
 
It was a small cave, obscured by the bladed plants, and suited for a man.
 
Crawling in, he found that the floor consisted of warm, dry, soft sand, and the walls and ceiling were solid, smooth stone.
 
The entrance was roughly a yard high and the same wide, and it traveled back into the rock for roughly three yards.
 
The cave ran parallel to the beach, and perpendicular to the wind and the waves, so it was fairly weatherproof.
 
Black Jack found that he had more than ample room to sit, lie down, and even to sprawl out.
 
He thought that he wouldn’t find better housing before evening. He would want to be up early to look for his crew’s approaching boats, he thought.

         
He left the cave to explore. Moving among the rocks, he gathered the smooth, long, broad leaves of the strange, bladed plants.
 
He was drawn to them because the leaves also reminded him of a plant his mama had used to weave baskets.
 
The blades were tough and sinewy, yet soft and smooth at the same time.
 
They were ideal for making a mat on the floor of his temporary abode.
 
Within several minutes he had covered the ground of his hole lengthwise, and a few moments later he had added a complete layer interwoven across the first.
 
He didn’t see much that could be done to improve upon this basic design. So with fresh water and suitable shelter, his thoughts turned to food.

         
He wandered further upstream.

 
Maybe them little crayfish will be hidin’ out somewhere
, he thought.
 
After a time searching unsuccessfully, he saw something else. Stopping and looking into the water, he watched the dark object dart from one side of the stream to the other and then disappear.
 
After staring at empty water for several seconds, he started searching for crayfish again.
 
Suddenly, he saw the strange object again.
 
It seemed similar to a snake, but it was swimming.
 

An underwater serpent
, he thought!
 
Now, I’ve seen everything
.
 
He cautiously grabbed a nearby plant stalk and crept to the side of stream, slipping the stick silently under the surface and soundly striking the black eel as it slithered from side to side.

         
The eel went limp and floated to the top. Black Jack fetched it with his stick.
 
It dangled and curved as it wrapped around, with smooth, flat, black sides and fish eyes.
 
Upon closer inspection it looked more like a fish than a snake, and he wondered which it would taste more like.
 
With no way to start a fire, Black Jack would have to eat his catch cold. He did not let the situation dampen his spirit, rather he celebrated his good fortune with ingenuity.
 

Black Jack laid the eel upon a rock in the sun, and it became warm before long.
 
His found another sharp stick, and he sliced open the eel’s skin and gutted it.
 
He made two large filets, ending up with roughly a handful of meat.
 
He gorged himself.
 
In fact, he made so little time of consuming his meal, that it took him another few minutes after finishing to realize that he was full.
 
Shortly after that, he began to feel sleepy.
 
He took a few gulps of the cool stream water, meandered back down to the beach, and crawled into the cave.
 
Warm hues of yellow, orange, violet, and blue floated by his door, seeming to salute him respectfully as they passed in the march of twilight. He counted his blessings. He thought back briefly to flying off the back of the beast, and then he said his prayers.
God, please forgive me and deliver me from my nakedness. Now I lay me down to sleep
. He drifted off into bliss, hoping that his clothes would be dry by morning.

                                               
III

         
Blue strawberries:
 
Arthur was back home in a field on the plantation in Mississippi, naked, picking big, blue berries.
 
Oddly, it was winter. The cold mist of the hoary frost mingled with the rays of the early morning sun.
 
Stranger still, Arthur was lying down on the frozen black earth between the rows of low plants.
 

The Master approached on his horse and shouted down to Arthur, “I found a way to cross the Blueberry with the Strawberry.
 
Now we grow them in winter.
 
Now that’s science, Alesworth!”
 
The overlord laughed insanely as he cracked his whip, stinging Arthur in his exposed, fleshy flank.

         
Black Jack swatted a mosquito biting his leg as he awoke, shivering.
 
He had curled into a fetal position in his sleep. He now had clenched fingers and cramped legs as he attempted to unfurl extremities in all directions.
 
Stretching out provided little relief. As the blood flowed back into his arms and legs, it took with it what little warmth was left in his core.
 
The outside temperature was close to freezing, and it was a deep, solid, steady chill that made him think that he might never get warm again.
 
As he tightened back into a ball, he peered out at the moonlit sky.
 
The cold had sharpened his senses and cleared his mind, but he was still tired.
 
As he closed his eyes and tried to drift off, he thought that it must be the dead of night, a no-man’s land for the sleepless.

         
He awoke again sometime later, chilled to the bone, and cramping.
 
At some point, he figured, his body had given up shivering.
 
Now, he felt like a living dead man, accepting an inner lack of heat that was becoming intolerable. He tried to get used to it, but his efforts were futile.
 
He could imagine only one solution for his situation:
 
He must move.
 
As Black Jack crawled from the cave, his stomach burned with hunger.
 
The sensation was like drinking vinegar, and it intensified his agony.
 
He felt as though he wanted to fling himself from the rocky cliffs to relieve his pain or maybe even run through the scratchy brush to generate heat upon his skin.
 
He was miserable and desperate.
 
He had not anticipated such an extreme swing between day and night.

         
Checking his clothes on the bush, he found them still damp. He started running back and forth across the beach, but he shortly realized that he could not overcome the chill that his own wind created.
 
Besides, his exertion only made him hungrier.
 
Passing the rocks on the far end of the bay, he saw a glimmer in the shallow tide pool. He stopped to investigate.
 

         
Gleaming in the moonlight with shells open were hundreds of mussels perched just above the water. They seemed to be staring up as if they were an audience captivated by the glowing orb in the night sky.
 
Arthur had lucked upon low tide.
 
He reached down to pluck one. As he touched the first mollusk, its shell snapped shut.
That’s as tight as the lid on a rich man’s coffin,
he thought, probing the seam with his fingertips. He remembered being an impromptu pallbearer for one of the funerals for the Master’s mother.
They must have put all her good silver and china in there
, he thought, as he remembered the overbearing weight of the casket.

Black Jack studied the intriguing object in his hand, turning it side to side in front of his face.
 
Funny, he thought, how even his close inspection would not reveal whether a creature lived inside, save for the fact that he already knew.
 
Now with its casing sealed, the effort required to remove the innards from the shell would offset any benefit of food inside.
 
It’s not worth it
, he thought.
 
But eat he must, so he hatched a plan.
 
He would simply place his finger inside the open mussels as he picked them from the rocks, then pry loose their meat with a stroke of his strong thumb.