‘Where is my son? Where is my Cargill? What have you done to him? First my husband, now my son. What a wicked, wicked, evil place this is.’

Then another day, she pick up her skirt, stumble down the path through the little forest of dogwood trees. Enter every slave hut, start throw belongings out the door. Happy to see frightened faces when she shout out.

‘I want you filthy Negroes off my property. Get out! Get out all of you! The sooner I see the back of you wretches, the better,’ before Sydney come rushing down, hustle her back up the path.

Most time though, she stay in her room, keep all the shutter them closed, don’t let in a ray of sunlight. Spend day and night alone, lock herself away, not eating, only drinking glass after glass of Melon ginger beer.

‘She make me mix it up with plenty rum,’ Melon tell me. ‘Pity the poor woman, she still in deep mourning, grieving hard for her son.’

Mistress Margaret think she is the only one grieving. What bout Stella children, grieving for a father. We each suffering in our own worlds.

One morning when she take to her bed, overcome with sadness, with the heat, I take a walk up that hill to the plantation burial ground. Sit by Massa grave, look out over the canefield them. Listen to the leaves rustling, crows cawing in the distance, hoping sound going calm my soul.

The thorn, the lie grumbling between Massa and Stella bout me birth, it finally get plucked out, but it leave behind a terrible brooding at how it shape me life.

Have twenty seasons under me bare, stubbed toes. I am no longer a boy. Now a man. But have nothing to show for it. Is true I learn to carve out a place in this chatteled world. Turn stonemason. Get sent out jobbing, do the work good. No chains round me neck, but hidden deep within the skin. Massa taught me what I is. A nothing, a slave. And I learn it good. Now Massa gone, maybe I can learn something new. How to be a different man. A man not afraid to reach out and take him just rewards.

Before long, two militia officers come riding up on them horses. Start to ask questions. Spend a long time talking to Winston bout the field slave them. Who come, who go, who hold a grudge against Massa. Line up all the house slaves. Get them to enter a little room Busha Davis set aside. Talk to them, one by one. Talk to me and Sammy and Stella too. Write down all the day and time them, where we been, what we do. Write it all down in a little black book that get full up with more and more of the word and number them.