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"Boom ... Boom! Boom ... Boom!" That's the way the old weaver go all day long when my sister, Margaret, is making cloth for the slaves down on old Doc Joe Jackson's plantation in Louisiana.
That was near the little place of Bunker, and its my birthplace, and I guess where all Mammy's children were born because she was never sold but once and nobody but the old Doc ever did own her after she come to his place.
He always say couldn't nobody get work out of Mammy but him. I guess that's just his foolery 'cause if she ain't no good the Old Doc most likely sell her to some of them white folks in Texas.
That's what they done to them mean, no account slaves - just send them to Texas. Them folks sure knew how for to handle 'em!
But I was talking about my sister, Margaret. I can still see her weaving the cloth - Boom! .. Boom! - and she hear that all the day and get mighty tired. Sometimes she drop her head and go to sleep. The Mistress get her then sure. Rap her on the head with almost anything handy, but she hit pretty easy, just trying to scare her that's all.
The old Master though, he ain't so easy as that. The whippings was done by the master and the overseer just tell the old Doc about the troubles, like the old Doc say!
"You just watch the slaves and see they works and works hard, but don't lay on with the whip, because I is the only one who knows how to do it right!"
Maybe the old Master was sickened of whippings from the stories the slaves told about the plantation that joined ours on the north.
If they ever was a living Devil that plantation was his home and the owner was It! That's what the old slaves say, and when I tell you about it see if I is right.
That man got so mean even the white folks was soared of him, 'specially if he was filled with drink. That's the way he was most of the time, just before the slaves was freed.
All the time we hear about slaves on that place getting whipped or being locked in the stock - that one of them things where your head and hands is fastened through holes in a wide board, and you stands there all the day and all the night - end sometimes we hears of them staying in the stock for three-four weeks if they trys to run away to the
north.
Sometimes we hears about some slave who is shot by that man while he is wild with the drink. That's what I'mtelling about now.Don't nobody know what made the master mad at the old slave - one of the oldest on the place. Anyway, the master
didn't whip him; instead of that he kills him with the gun and scares the others so bad most of 'em runs off and hides
in the woods.The drunk master just drags the old dead slave to the graveyard which is down in the corner away from the growingcrops, and hunts up two of the young boys who was hiding in the barn. He takes them to dig the grave.
The master stands watching every move they make, the dead man lays there with his face to the sky, and the boys is
so scared they could hardly dig. The master keeps telling them to hurry with the digging.After while he tells them to stop and put the body in the grave. They wasn't no coffin, no box, for him. Just the oldclothes that he wears in the fields.
But the grave was too short and they start to digging some more, but the master stop then. He says to put back the body in the grave, and then he jumps into the grave hisself. Right on the dead he jumps and stomps 'til the body is mashed and twisted to fit the hole. Then the old nigger is buried.
That's the way my Mammy hears it and told it to us children. She was a Christian and I know she told the truth.Like I said, Mammy was never sold only to Master Jackson. But she's seen them slave auctions where the men,
women and children was stripped naked and lined up so's the buyers could see what kind of animals they wasgetting for their money.My pappy's name was Jacob Keller and my mother was Maria. They's both dead long ago, and I'm waiting for the
old ship Zion that took my Mammy away, like we use to sing of in the woods:"It has landed my old Mammy,It has landed my old Mammy,Get on board, Get on board,'Tis the Old Ship of Zion -Get on board!"(Oklahoma Writers' Project, EX-SLAVES)
