Now is Busha Davis I work to. But no matter how hard I try, him never satisfied. Find fault in everything I do. Even when I digging out the weeds from the spiral stone steps leading up to the front entrance of the Great House. Lucky for me, looking after cattle is the main thing. So after I visit to the kitchen, I take up the little switch I leave cotched behind the kitchen door. Use it to prod the mama and baby cow them all the way to the far pasture. Listen to the bells round them neck clanking, listen as them bellow to each other. Cow talk I call it, but them only talk bout where is the sweetest grass. The freshest water. The trees with big shade so them can huddle together.

After calving season, is a different kind of bellow. Them cows don’t talk. Them cry all day and all night. Crying for them babies, asking after them. Don’t know Massa get Winston to take them babies to market. Sell them off, just like when him sell off Thomas. Sell off Ellen. Sell off Jane.

Thomas got sold long time ago. Nobody sorry to see him go. Every season him turn meaner and meaner, got into fights. Spent many a night in the bilboes. The mosquito them must be sting and sting him, because one day, him beat up little Pell so bad, him face all mash up and it never look the same. Winston seen it. Catch Thomas delivering the last blow. Lock him up till Massa decide what to do with him. Tell me to fetch a wheelbarrow, put crumpled-up little Pell inside, push him up the hill to Calla. Was a hard thing pushing that wheelbarrow up the stony path, was even harder listening to little Pell moan. When Massa found out what happened, him plenty angry, got Winston to give Thomas a whipping. Winston whipped him bad, before Massa sent Thomas off in chains. Sold to a big plantation on another island cross the seas.

One day I ask Calla why little Pell got beat, when him causing nobody no harm.

‘The weak always pay for the strong,’ she tell me. ‘Take on the suffering that seem to gather round dem. When everybody look at little Pell, it make dem feel better, because dem know dem is luckier than him.’

‘But why Thomas beat him up?’ I still didn’t understand.

‘Thomas strong on the outside, but weak on the inside, have no true strength. When him look at Pell, him see himself. But him want nobody else see it.’

After the beating, little Pell turn even softer in the head. Ended up sleeping with the dogs, till one day, him just drifted off the plantation and nobody seen him since. Everybody shake them head, mutter what a bad thing, but deep down nobody really care. Even me, was a relief, no more funny-looking, smiling little Pell, following me everywhere.