The night was so bright that Samuel could see moonlight through the cracks in the roof when he lay back in his hammock. “Feels good to be alive, night so lovely,” he murmured, half to himself.
The hammock below him made a creaking sound. “Lord knows you got no reason,” said Jesse. “It’s a hard life, workin’ another man’s farm.”
“We got plenty to be thankful for,” chimed Willy from the pallet beneath the window. “Bread and board and a house of our own. Why, Master Heathridge—”
“We got nothin’ to be thankful for! I got no gratitude toward that devil Heathridge, makin’ us work his farm and lockin’ us in this shack every night. No way for a man to live,” Jesse said bitterly. “No way a-tall.”
“Master Heathridge’s a reasonable man,” countered Willy. “He does right by us.”
Samuel sighed and concentrated on the cracks in the roof. If he thought hard enough, he could imagine himself walking in the fields in the moonlight. Sometimes he even imagined himself walking on the moon. This was one of his favorite dreams.
“I heard Heathridge talkin’ to that miserable friend of his, Jefferson, today.” Jesse had been working on the flowerbeds beneath the veranda this afternoon, Samuel remembered. Master must have taken tea outside.
“I met Mister Jefferson once. He treats his slaves real good,” said Willy.
“Jefferson was sayin’ a nigger counts as two-fifths of a man. Two fifths! What’s that, an arm and a leg?”
“Two fifths. That’s mighty generous of him to say so,” Willy mused.
Samuel tried to imagine two-fifths of the moon. It didn’t add up to much.
“So Jefferson says the three of us, we add up to one white man. Is that fair?”
“Master Heathridge is fair and reasonable. He says two-fifths, I respect that.”
“Maybe you’re two-fifths of a man, Willy, but I’m a whole man. And someday a free man. Mark my words.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that, Jesse. You got no right.”
“That’s my point, old man, I got no rights a-tall!”
“You got all the rights you need, and a load of disrespect, too. Master Heathridge cares for us and feeds us and does a damn sight better by us than we’d get by anybody else!”
“And if I leave, he shoots me in the back! What kind of rights is that, old man?”
Samuel hummed to drown out their argument. The moon was full tonight. He closed his eyes and imagined himself walking on the moon, so bright and clean and pretty, so far away from this dingy little hut and the plantation and Willy and Jesse and a world where Samuel was only a fraction of a man.
Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.