Bear Bob's Story as told to Edward Summer

Chapter Ten
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One day the air smelled different.

     It smelled like trees. It smelled like birds. It smelled like soil.

     On that day, the cave stopped moving.

     First there was a lot of shouting. We could hear footsteps running all over the ceiling above us. Then men came and dragged us to our feet.

     They dumped barrels of cold, cold water all over us. Us. The ones of us that were left. The ones who kept moving when they kicked us. The rest, the rest, the rest were gone. Forever.

     They dumped cold water on us to wash us off. I shivered.

     We were pulled by our chains and led up steps. Up. Out of the cave. Into the sunlight.

     My eyes exploded with light. I had to close them because it hurt so much. So very much. I could hardly see.

     Now we were on top of the boat. And the boat was tied to trees with no branches that were driven into the ground.

     Still blind from the sunlight, we went down a ramp, across long flat pieces of wood. Then my feet touched the earth. The soil was dust. It was soft and warm. Under the dust was hard. And it did not move.

     That part was most strange. The cave had rocked back and forth, back and forth. Now, my head felt like it was rocking, but my body was still and solid on the hard ground.

     Oh, and the air smelled clean! There was breeze on my wet body. I shivered. But I was glad for this shivering. Soon I was dry. The air and the sun warmed me.

     Slowly, slowly, I could see again. The blurs became shapes. Trees. Real trees. With leaves and branches and birds singing.

     And people. Hundreds of people. These were the white face people. The ones with red lips cut into their faces with knives. But here, some of them... some of them... some of them... smiled. Smiled their white teeth. They looked almost human. Like my family, like my friends smiling. Smiling. Smiling.

     We walked past them, feet feeling the dust.

     They dragged us into a pen. It had wooden posts all around. It was a pen where we would have kept animals at home. And they crowded us into it and locked the gate.

     Later they brought us food. Small white grains cooked with meat. It was good. It made my stomach stop growling. It was the first food that I could actually chew, that did not run from my lips to my mouth to my throat to my insides and then out again onto the floor always staying soft and liquid.

     I chewed it and my teeth felt good biting into something. Biting. Biting.

     My stomach became full. And I fell asleep. And no one woke me up for a long time.

     When the night came, there was more food. And men -- black like us, but dressed in the strange clothing of the white people -- came and handed us blankets. Then they left us to sleep. And I slept again until morning.

     In the morning, there was more food. It was soft and gooshy this food. And sweet. They took away the blankets and for a long time we sat in the sun.

     After a time, there was much noise and many of the white men came. They pulled us to our feet and led us away. We were all still chained together. They dragged us, they dragged our chains. They led us out of the wooden animal pen.

     Now we were in a large open area. There was a part that was built up above the ground. A black man in white man clothing removed the chain from one of us. It was a beautiful woman. They led her up to platform. To the high part above the ground. She stood there naked with only chains on her feet.

     All around there were white people. The women of these people were dressed in tents. They had so much cloth around them! So much cloth! They looked like huts made of cloth moving across the ground. Had someone cut off their feet? I could not see their feet. They carried little pointed roofs over their heads. The roofs made shadows on their faces. They stood with the men and they stared at the black woman in the chains.

     A white man began to shout loudly. He pointed at our woman and yelled strange sounds. Some of the people below waved their hands in the air, and the man yelled more strange sounds. This went on for a long time. What were they saying? I had no idea.

     Finally the yelling stopped. Another white man walked to the platform and handed some pieces of something to the other. He walked up steps to the platform and placed a rope around the neck of our tribal woman and dragged her away. He dragged her down the steps. He dragged her across the yard. With the help of two black men in white man clothing, he put her into the back of a strange thing.

     This thing had four wheels. At the front were two animals that I had never seen before! They were tall and brown and had four legs and tails. They were like the zebra from my home, but they were brown. They were like the gazelle from my home, but they had no horns.

     One of the black men threw a blanket around the naked woman. Everyone got onto the thing with the wheels. The animals made a sound. Then the animals walked away. They were horses, someone told me later. Horses.  A word I learned later. The horses carried away the white men and the black men and the tribal woman. I never saw her again.

     Now a tribal man was unlocked and dragged to the platform.

     Once again, the white man made strange sounds and the crowd waved their hands. After a while it stopped, and he, too, was dragged away. There were more horses and more wheels. Then the tribal man went away forever.

     One at a time they came for us.

     Then it was my turn.

     They led me up the steps and I stood there. There were hundreds and hundreds of eyes staring at me. Staring at me. There were voices talking everywhere. The man next to me yelled as he pointed his finger at me over and over again.

     Someone came up and squeezed my arm. They grabbed my face and opened my mouth. I tried to resist, but they pried open my jaws and looked in and tried to wiggle my teeth. For a moment I thought to bite their fingers. But I did not.

     They backed away.

     The white man made strange sounds. People below us waved their arms and shouted. This went on for a time. Then it stopped.

     Two white men came up to me and led me away.

     We went up to one of the things with wheels. The thing pulled by horses. The wagon. There was a black man there, too. He was dressed much like the white men with strange cloth all around his body. He was black, but really he was brown. His skin was not so dark as mine. He smiled at me. The white men did not smile. They lifted me up and put me in the wagon. I sat still for a long time. A long time.

     Then they came with an adult man and put him in next to me. Then the black man who was dressed like the white men came and sat next to us.

     The white man, the driver, made a sound and raised a whip and the horses moved. We drove off toward the sun. It was just past the top of the sky, so I knew which way we were going. We drove off to the West. At least the sun was here in this strange place, too. The same sun we had at home. The same sun… I hoped.

     The white men talked one to the other. I did not understand anything they said. We three -- the tribal man and the brown man and me -- said nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

     After a long time, we turned to the north.

     Along the way were many, many trees. These trees were not like the trees of home. And they were not like the baobab tree. No. They were too small, too small. And the smell of the air was different.

    At last we came to a huge hut. It was taller than any hut I had ever seen in our village or anywhere else… even the place where they locked us up. This hut was high on a hill. We stopped at the base of the hill for a moment, and I looked up at the hut.

    What was most strange about this hut was the four white trees. They held up the roof. There were four of them. Each was like the other. They had no branches. They had no leaves. They had no color. They were white and as straight as the shaft of a spear.

    Then I saw a flash of red! It was incredible bright red. The red of the sun when it disappears into the night. It was a girl. A small girl. She had cloth around her neck and it was the red of the bird’s flashing wings! The girl was laughing! Her teeth showed and she laughed and laughed like my sisters laughed when they played games in front of our huts. Her eyes passed over us as she laughed. I could see her eyes. They were blue as the sky. Blue as the deep water in the stream. Blue as the rain in the mist. She stared toward us and perhaps she saw me. Then she was gone as though the wind had carried her away to a different place.

    The wagon turned now and took us in a different direction.

    There were many, many people there. Some were brown like the man with us. Most were white. They all wore strange clothing.

     Finally we stopped at a low hut. There were no white people here, only brown people. There were no white trees holding up the roof of this hut. The walls were smooth. There was no straw, no sticks in these walls.

     Some brown men with clothes came over to us and gathered around the cart. One of them lifted me down. Two more helped the other man down.

    A brown woman came over to us. She smiled. I could see all of her white teeth.

    The two white men who drove the wagon came over to us, too.

    One man watched me carefully.

    The second man bent down. He had a small metal stick and he poked it at my chains. They rattled. Then they fell to the ground.

    And the bag with the baobab seeds fell to the ground, too.

    The white man looked at the bag. The white man looked up at me.

    He picked up the bag and shook it. There was a very small sound from the seeds inside. He pulled open the top of the bag and dumped the seeds out onto his hand. One. Two. Three. Four.

    His face looked puzzled. His thin red lips got tight. His eyes got tight. He picked up one of the seeds and put it in his mouth. He tried to bite into the seed, but it was very, very hard.

    “Ugghh,” the man said. “Ugghhh.” I did not know the meaning of this sound. Then he spit out the seed onto the ground, and it disappeared into the dust.
 

    The man raised his hand. He was going to throw the other three seeds away. He looked at me. My heart was beating. I kept the tears from coming to my eyes. I held them in with my mind, and they stayed in and did not run down my cheeks.
 

    The man looked into my eyes. He looked deep into my eyes.

    Slowly, he poured the three seeds back into the leather sack and pulled the string tight. He handed the bag to me. I could feel my eyes grow wide. Perhaps they were too full from the tears that had not run down my cheeks. I took the bag from him. I held it in my hand. I held it tightly in my hand. One. Two. Three. I was thinking. One, two, three seeds left from my home. From my country. From my home.

    The white man looked into my face. His lips were tight. There were no teeth showing.

    The white man master pointed to himself and said: “Master.”

    He was telling me his name! I smiled. He wishes to be friends, I thought. I pointed to myself and said, “Masa.”

    “Yes!” he said. “You are bright! I can see it in your eyes,” he said. “It is why I let you keep your sack.”

    I did not understand a word.

     Master!” he said again and pointed to his chest. “Master.”

    “Masa” I replied pointing to myself, smiling.

    He frowned and took my hand and pointed it toward him.

    “Master,” he said. “Master.”

    I did not understand. Was his name also Masa?

    I smiled and pointed to myself once again. “Masa.”

    He struck me. He knocked me to the ground.

    “Master.” he said and walked away.

    I did not understand for a long time. But eventually, I understood.
 
 

    Many, many nights passed. I had my own bed in the hut with straight walls. House. That is what they called it. House. Cabin. That was another name. Cabin. So many names for the same thing. The walls were hard. The roof was hard. The bed was hard, but the straw made it softer. The straw smelled like my home. When it was fresh, it smelled like the grass near my home. Some nights, I lay awake while the others slept. They made noises with their breathing in the night. I lay awake, and I could not hold the tears any longer. They fell on the straw and made it smell even more like my home. Then I would sleep and dream of my mother and father and sisters and brothers and neighbors and friends and the trees and the animals and the huge sky and sounds of the night that were not here. Were not here. And I would sleep until the morning came and we were taken away.

     At first they would take me to a big field.  There were many of us people, all black and brown. Most were brown. Now they spoke a new language together. Every day I would listen to them speak and learn some new words. No one spoke my language. The white people did not even try to speak to me most of the time. They made strange faces. They pushed me. I understood that they wanted me to do what they wanted me to do.

      They wanted us to go to the big field. There were plants there. The plants were in long, long rows. Each row was like the next row. The same plants over and over again. At home, we would eat our plants, but here we did not. We went from plant to plant and pulled a small soft white ball of stuff from a branch. I tried to eat it once. It had no taste. It was dry. I spit it out, seeds and all. Cotton. That was the name. Cotton.

     We put the cotton into long bags that were taller than I was. All day we put the cotton into the bags until the bag was full. Then someone came and took the bag away and gave us an empty one. We filled the new bag. All day long we did this. All day long under the hot sun. No one could go under the trees and rest in the shade.

     I liked this cotton. I took some of it home each day inside my shirt. I hid it under my bed. Sometimes at night when everyone was asleep I took out my cotton and I touched it with my fingers. I felt the hard husk on the outside and the white softness inside and the hard small seeds inside the softness. Sometimes I fell asleep with it in my fingers. In the morning I hid it once again before I went back to the fields.