Good Dirt

Moses

Moses

1843

M arriage to Flora made Moses more inclined to laugh when they sat down together. Never mind that he was feeling the day’s work in his arms and back. Never mind that Flora’s legs and hands were scratched and bitten from working in the fields. Never mind that Master Oldham’s nephew Jacob was getting more aggressive with the field hands. Moses was in the frame of mind to welcome a bit of mirth, all the same, when Willis showed up one evening to tell him and Flora and Uncle about the flying alligator.

Word of the alligator had come from the port city by way of the black boatmen who moved goods, people, and secret messages along the riverways of the Lowcountry. It seemed the storm on the coast had sent all sorts of debris flying about the streets in a most frightening way. When the squall moved on, it left behind an alligator, standing on a street corner and looking as stunned as the men who happened uponit.

The first people to see the two-foot-long creature swore it had fallen directly out of the sky. And if not from there, then where else? The alligator was a good walk away from the nearest river. Well, it seemed an unlikely tale at best, the kind inspired by too many cups of liquor, and when Willis related these details, Moses, Flora, and Uncle could not help but laugh. And the pleasure of having a reason to laugh brought forth more of the same.

Moses would remember that evening and the levity shared with the people he most cared for. And he would be grateful for the memory of Flora’s laughter when trouble came. That very week, a viper reared up at Flora and bit her on the ankle and made it swell in an ugly way. It happened from time to time in the fields, but it was a worrisome thing because these episodes did not always end well.

“Snake didn’t mean nothing by it,” Flora told Moses. “I was the one who ran into its burrow by mistake.” She chuckled, and Moses made an effort to smile, just to please her, but he could see she was in pain. Uncle sent two girls from up the road to gather some plantain weed. They chewed the leaves and spread the poultice on Flora’s wound. The elders had done this many times over the years and the girls, too, were learning the old ways. But they would learn, also, the bitterness of attempting a remedy that did not work. Two days later, after her breathing became more labored, Flora was gone.

The snake sickness had taken Moses’s wife away and darned near took Moses’s mind with it, too. Moses had lived on that property for most of his life. He had seen people come and go. Babies sold away from their mothers. Couples separated. But this was not the kind of going he had been expecting to see just then. How could Moses expect to face the day without Flora? He had come to cherish her role in his life in a way he hadn’t known possible. After Flora’s burial, he sat outside the cabin with Uncle and Willis, night after night, unable to say a word.

The only thing that seemed to ease the feeling that had come over him was sinking his hands into the clay. It was soon after Flora’s death that Moses took to experimenting with a technique for putting designs on the bottom panels of the large jars. Moses would shape a separate piece of clay into a thin disk, carve a shape into it, then attach the piece over the bottom of a jar that had already been formed and dried to a leatherlike toughness.

He began with outlines of flowers, then moved on to making a relief of Flora’s head. Her small, flat nose. Her two braids wound tight at the top of her neck. Willis, recognizing his sister’s profile, leaned in to watch Moses work.

“That’s a fine likeness,” Willis said. “Don’t much see the use of putting it there, though. Don’t know that anyone is going to have occasion to look at the bottom of a jar that big,” he added.

Moses nodded. What Willis said was true. Who would tip a twenty-gallon storage container so far over that you could actually see the underside? Likely no one, ever. Which gave Moses an idea. On another day, for the first time, Moses incised a piece of clay with a phrase and affixed it to the bottom of a jar. He couldn’t let anyone see that he was writing. It was one thing for him to carve the date or initials, despite the laws that barred people like him from writing. That might be risky, but it was another thing, entirely, to form a full sentence. This was to court danger in the most direct way. But as he drew a tool across the surface, Moses felt the ache in his soul dull slightly.

Lord Have Mercy, Moses wrote, then mumbled the words to himself.

Lord have mercy.