After I come back from Montego Bay, everybody gather round, ask plenty plenty questions. Have to sit night after night outside the hut, tell them every little thing bout what life is like in the famous town. Tell them bout the harbour, the sailing ships, the town people seabathing in all that water. The fancy clothes, the shops, the streets at night, how them full of light. Tell them bout Mistress Josephine and little Rose, how them is free and never been no slave. But mainly everybody want to know how black, white and coloureds mingle in the streets all together. Melon come every night, Mary follow close behind, and when everybody gone, I have to tell her all the stories me collect bout Winnie. How she look, what she cook, how she faring. Even Floppy the dog get a mention. One time when I was storytelling, Massa come stumbling down the path, stand in the shadows listening. Then him go on him way to him latest favourite slave woman. Massa always like him rum, used to have a glass after supper, maybe two. But now it seem like the drinking habit catch him.

After a while, the talking nights outside the hut come to an end. And all the memories I have, come down to one. How for a time, I walked like a free man down them streets in fancy clothes, holding me head up high. Is the only thing that keep me going when plantation life seem dull, seem slow. And the unfairness of my life, start to push and poke me. And the mosquitoes buzz and start to sting. One afternoon, after I spend all day weeding in Massa garden, him come up start yelling, tell me what a bad job I done. I look round and know is not true.

‘Do it youself, then!’ I shout at him, and throw down the spade. I don’t know who is more surprised, me or Massa. Him slap me hard cross the mouth.

‘Never raise your voice to me again, boy. Or next time you will feel the lash.’ And him turn him back on me and storm away.

After that Massa must be tell Busha Davis to start jobbing me out. Send me all over the place to plantations far and wide. Sometimes the jobbing take me away for many weeks, sometimes only a few days. It make me happy to be free to work as I see fit, free to learn more bout building in stone. Sometimes even help build a new room on a massa Great House. Is hard work, but I enjoy it.

Planting season come, gone and come again, and in time I stop longing for them happy days up in Montego Bay. But no matter how long I been away, when I return to Rock Pleasant, is like time stand still, and nothing much changed.

Not this time, though.