Demerara Uprising

1. Where the Feet Meet the Flame

Kofi ran.

His bare feet pounded the ashen ground, muscle memory taking over from conscious effort, through the burning sugarcane fields, through the acrid black smoke that stitched vibrant flames to the setting sun. Each breath tore at his throat, lungs raw with heat and ash. Each step slapped the parched earth, scattering embers that clung to his skin in tiny sparks. The sugarcane crackled on either side of him, tall stalks towered above forming a tunnel of flame, leaves and debris vapourised in its wake, sacrificed to the harvest. Behind him, voices shouted, orders barked, names cursed as men controlled the burn with crude birch switches, too long a burn and the sugarcane harvest would be lost, too short and it would take longer for the slaves to gather it in. Coastal winds carried the voices away. Ahead, the glow of dusk and the promise of a new dawn.

Kofi ran with purpose, not elegance; his tattered, scorched clothing smoked slightly from nearness to the burn. He burst from the field onto Middle Road, hardly a road, more like a dusty, potholed track that cut through the heart of Success Plantation. It connected the crop fields to the small settlement of shacks and sheds that spread out in front of Kofi. At seventeen, Kofi struck a gangly figure. Muscles hard and taut from hard labour, yet boyishness still lingered, as if adulthood had arrived before he’d noticed. The dim light from the settlement served as his focus, and like the proverbial moth, he fixed his gaze on home.

The words held close, silent. Would they believe him? What if the Master’s men should overhear? The consequence. The stocks were no place for a young man, any man. He should tell his mentor first. Or Quamina, the elder. No, it should be Jack that heard the news. ‘Freedom’ the word uttered from King to Captain and gossiped on the dockside. Freedom, the word made his jaw tighten and his pulse race. His breath caught and he slowed to a walk. His tongue filled his mouth, and he swallowed the word back. He took a few deep breaths in, filling his nostrils with the almost fragrant smell of charcoaled sugarcane, and ran on.

Exhaustion took its toll; his steps became heavier; the dust he kicked up behind him rose in small amber clouds. Even without the burn, the day’s heat lingered, close and oppressive, long after the enslaved occupants of Success had wearily returned to their shacks. Kofi passed a row of crudely placed stones, markers of the resting places of those who no longer walked the peninsula. He wanted to slow, to bend and gently touch the earth to respect, but the news burnt him inside like the flames stripping the cane.

Kofi ran on.

The Coopers shed looms. Kofi darted between those resting from the day’s toil and children making their amusement by chasing scrawny chickens through the bush. A group flapped as they tried to escape from under the children’s feet, their wings useless. The rhythmic clank of metal striking metal from the forge was unmistakable. Strong. Pulsating. Almost comforting. The sound twisted in his mind, dragging him back to the tall ship. Chains shackling men, women, and children. Bodies packed tightly, the stench of sickness, the dead and dying strewn across its rough wooden deck. The sight of bodies not strong enough to hang on discarded…

“Kofi.” A glance over his shoulder. He pushed harder towards the shed.

“In a moment, Auntie,” he called back.

Tonisen lowered her weary bones, sixty summers old, back down on her log. With a dismissive shake of her grey hair, she stirred the stew. The pot perfectly fluted to allow the smell to permeate across the settlement, and many a passerby stopped to inhale its heady aroma. Her life on the plantation stretched back beyond Kofi’s. To the settlement she was simply there, as constant as the cook-fire. Her calloused hands, long spared the field, still knew their work, learned as a girl over the ovens in the Master’s house, though what she cooked, and for whom, had changed.

The dilapidated timber-framed Cooper’s shed was now firmly in Kofi’s sight. Once whitewashed walls, jaded from years of weathering and seasoned by the relentless sun. Wooden doors, once segregating the furnace heat from the sun, had been removed long ago for much-needed ventilation. A futile exchange: the furnace’s man-made flame for the Guyana sun’s relentless burn. Kofi aimed for the soft amber glow emanating from inside, singling out the Cooper’s shed from the other ramshackle settlement buildings. The hypnotic beat of industry inside grew louder as he approached. Kofi skidded inside the shed through the door that wasn’t, almost colliding with the tool-strewn workbench. His face, streaked with soot and sweat, bore every mile of the flames behind him. He sagged back against the frame, gasping for breath, the ferocious heat wrapped around his already overheated frame. His pulse raced.

Relentless beats of hammer on wood carried on, steady, unapologetic. The tall, toned physique behind the strikes didn’t yield, didn’t look up. Sweat and grime cover Jack’s bare arms, while angry red scars streak across his taut muscles. Silent badges, distributed by men who claimed to ‘own’ him and left their mark in his flesh, posture and rhythm. His jawline, chiselled by nature, bore no advantage here. In this crucible of labour, it meant nothing; his beauty held no currency in hell.

Kofi’s heartbeat settled into perfect syncopation with the hammer’s rhythm. Each time he opened his mouth to speak, the dull thud of metal silenced him. The hammer’s head smashed stave after stave, the cooper’s intention exact. Metal rings framing the barrel pulsed with every strike, expanding under pressure, but holding firm. Each blow a crashing demonstration of craft and control.

The shed rattled with vibrations from each drop of Jack’s hammer. The second occupant of the forge, Quamina, eyed Kofi from behind the half-formed barrel. With the final stave wedged firmly into place, he moved to the workbench. With the finesse of an artist, he picked up a plane and glided it over the next stave, measuring, shaping and coaxing it into form as part of the sugar barrel’s growing wall. Quamina showed his age, and his resemblance to Jack was unmistakable. Like father, like son, he did not hurry. He fixed his eyes unblinking on the sweat-drenched boy in the doorway.

Kofi couldn’t wait any longer and threaded his greeting between hammer blows.

“Jack.” Thud. “Jack.” Thud. “Boat’s come in.”

Jack side-glanced at his father, an imperceptible pause. Thud. Quamina nodded to his boy. His son resumed his relentless rhythm. Thud. Thud.

With no response from Jack, Kofi crossed the bare dirt floor to the workbench. He rested his hand on the plane, with no force, but enough weight to keep Quamina from ignoring him.

“Quamina, the boat…” Kofi said.

“I hear your noise, boy, but wha’ am I to be doin’ with the news?” Quamina smirked; he turned slightly away to maintain the subterfuge.

Kofi, exasperated, turned back to Jack. Stopping short of deploying the same tactic as he did with Quamina. He was familiar with Jack, but not sufficiently to touch a barrel. Jack carried on with his work.

“Boats come. Boats go. Nuttin’ special ’bout this one,” Jack said. His cadence reflected the grind of his day; his tone dared Kofi to say what they might already suspect.

A distant bell tolled a temporary lull in their work, allowing a few hours of rest, enough to catch breath and survive tomorrow. The bell was second only to the chicken-chasing children in giving light to this sun-drenched peninsula. Jack and Quamina stopped their labour and placed their tools away with deliberate care. Despite the wretched surroundings, Jack felt order should always exist. Without tools, no barrels; without barrels, Jack and Quamina became more expendable than the fragile lives they clung to.

Tools put away, Jack wiped a filthy hand across his brow, collecting a trail of sweat and dirt in doing so. A rare smile breached his hardened face as he placed a conciliatory hand on Kofi’s shoulder. He squeezed with more strength than intended, and Kofi winced.

“Jack,” Kofi said, breath still quick, “the boat’s from England. Sent by the King imself.”

The band of brothers walked out into a wall of oppressive heat, no different from that they had left behind. A gentle evening breeze wafted across their aching limbs, bringing with it the faint smell of stew.

2. Where the Food Feeds the Soul

Georgetown dock. A fraction of the scale of Liverpool, yet equally important, formed the centre of plantation output and the heart of Demerara’s colonial base. The hustle and bustle of dock life created a constant undertone of noise, shouts from high in the ship’s rigging, children playing in the gutter among the discarded and rotting fruit, sailors unloading crates and sacks.

FAME, a large schooner, moored against the dock wall. Men scrambled along the wharf, hauling cargo and loading cart after cart. High in the rigging, sailors folded the mainsail, readying the ship for its homeward voyage. Above them, the Red Ensign and Union Jack flapped limply in the airless evening sun, symbols of British colonial reach and silent authority.

Even rats scurried down tired hemp lines with lethargy. Loud orders cut through the chaos, and a cart, different from the others, took centre stage on the wharf. From the bowels of FAME, a thin line of bewildered and frightened men, women, and children emerged, shackled and silent. Armed militias and colonial soldiers oversaw their arrival in Demerara.

Fathers cajoled their families to stay together, urging them to keep pace, to remain unseen. These few hundred were the remnants of boatfuls of captured and coerced souls. Most beaten into submission, some kidnapped, a few clinging to a promise of a new life. A promise the Governor fully intended to keep. As one caged cart filled, they shut its doors and wheeled another into place. Family ties severed for the want of an extra seat, bonds already bereft, now torn apart a second time. This crude welcome was no accident. It was preparation. A grim overture to what would follow.

A young boy wept as they completed his severance from his mother. He stood truly alone on the docks, with nowhere to turn. For a fleeting moment he was truly free, unchained and unwatched. From behind the bars of the cart, his mother mouthed the word: “Run.”

The boy hesitated. Then obeyed.

The cart erupted, cries of encouragement and shouts of glee. Despite the arduousness of their journey, this moment was worth witnessing. The boy reached the dock’s edge and paused, contemplating his next move. A soldier decided for him. A musket shot rang out across the dockside.

New arrivals, sailors and shackled souls alike, cowered at the crack. The native crowd of Georgetown raised their arms to support the mindless control. Everyone watched the boy. His body fell lifeless into the water below the waxing and waning of the FAME’s great hull.

The sun set as life at Georgetown docks returned to its uneasy normal, punctuated only by the distraught wails of a mother enduring another heart-wrenching loss.

The same sun cast its death throes of light over the weaving trail of workers returning from the sugarcane fields. Another day to be chalked up, the overseers measuring success in stalks harvested, the enslaved measuring it in how many made it through. The trudge back to the shacks was driven by the pull of hunger, the weight of exhaustion, ritual coercing their feet.

Kofi, Quamina, and Jack reached their little corner of paradise. Hardly theirs, and no paradise by any measure. But there was food.

“I will know one thing,” said Jack, patting his stomach. “The King’s news will wait till my belly’s full.”

“He’ll be waiting a mighty long while,” said Quamina.

His pace quickened, and he joined a small cluck of elderly women, too old to toil, yet still bound by duty. In a world like this, an idle slave was an expendable one. Quamina found Tonisen among them and kissed the top of her head. She paid him no heed, continuing to stir a large pot over an open fire.

“Hear me, Tonisen…” he said, nodding towards Jack. “Your grandson needs a full belly before he’ll give the King an audience.”

She cackled, “His belly’ll stay as empty as the souls on them boats.”

Jack crouched beside his grandmother. “Food cooked with love always fills me up.” He took her hand; she squeezed his. “They say the boat brings--”

“Empty souls… to replace the weak.” Tonisen offered.

Jack gave a little shake of his head. “Emancipation. There’s talk of freedom.”

“Talk,” said the old lady.

Quamina echoed her. “Chatter, chatter. It don’t mean a damn thing.”

Jack, unconvinced, “But wha’ if it’s true?”

No retort this time. His question lingered in the air like a prayer on the edge of belief. Tonisen clattered her spoon into the pot, in punctuation, not answer.

3. Where the Kisskadee Sings

The onomatopoeic call of the Kisskadee broke the silence as dawn arrived. Its shrill cry floated across the cane fields, stitching sound to heat as the temperature climbed with the light.

Jack was already about his duties. The dray cart, loaded three barrels high, rattled and bounced down Success Road, the principal thoroughfare cutting across the top of the plantations, linking them to Georgetown and the docks. Jack headed in that direction. Others soon joined him, the treadmill of plantation life relentlessly panning out in front of them. Jack didn’t speak despite knowing every trader alongside him on the dusty track. Today, he kept his own counsel.

His mule was a stubborn one, dragging the heavy cart through every rut and pile of manure. Jack, distracted, yanked at the tether around its neck and urged it forward with a swish of birch against its hindquarters. The barrel was precarious in its stacking and secured by sturdy and tightly bound hemp.

As the master wished, Jack never delivered the plantation’s crops in his everyday clothes. On trade days, he became a symbol of everything he despised. His church clothes, stiff and impractical for the work at hand, yet deemed acceptable for plantation business, more costume than comfort, a uniform of coerced respectability.

A sign carved in stone, on the verge, reads ‘Georgetown 5 miles’ not that Jack or the mule needed telling.

Georgetown was always busy on trade days, almost exciting, if witnessed out of context. Deals struck, credit notes exchanged. They never trusted Jack with money, only with the IOUs that sealed a sale. Jack walked a fine tightrope between getting enough for the sugarcane that he wouldn’t get beaten upon his return and not pushing his luck with the merchants so that he would get whipped at the dockside for his impertinence and then dragged to the stocks for his failure by the master.

Deals completed, a pocket full of IOUs, the cart empty and the mule considerably happier, Jack led them both, dust-swept and weary, towards the general store on the edge of the town square. The store was the prime destination for anything the colonial masters desired. Jack, like every other slave, had never stepped inside. He often wondered what lay behind the fly gauze that kept insects and slaves from the treasures inside. The closest they experienced to feeling like they belonged was through their furtive glances and wistful looks into the baskets of passing ladies.

Jack led his stubborn, fly bothered, companion to the water trough. A film of green clung to the stagnant water. He scooped the algae aside and splashed it beside the basin. The mule buried its nose deep in the murk and drank. Jack drank from his waterskin, then dunked it into the trough to refill it.

The door to the general store creaked open. The owner, a weasel-faced and well-fed man, stepped onto his whitewashed porch, chewing a wad of tobacco. He stared at Jack. His chewing slowed, his eyes narrowed, but his focus remained.

Jack turned away from the provocation, feeling it best to ignore the antagonistic stance of the store owner. He drank deeply and refilled his vessel again. He placed it over his shoulder and plunged his hands into the water, scooping the rancid water into his face. Jack felt brief relief as the cool water washed away the heat. The store owner ducked briefly inside before reappearing within moments, brandishing a birch switch, tapping it ominously against his boot in slow, deliberate thwacks. Jack dried his face on his sleeve. Message received.

With a yank, Jack pulled the reluctant mule’s head from the trough and walked away. A wet wad of tobacco spit landed just behind him. The owner descended the steps and dragged his switch through the dirt in front of the store, erasing Jack’s footprints.

He left the mule’s.

A row of grand houses stood on the opposite side of the square. Their frontages were whitewashed and appeared deliberately pristine. Their lawns were slightly less yellow than the surrounding grass.

Jack’s reluctant companion renewed its thirst-quenching at a second trough. Jack tied the reins to the adjacent post and rested his hands on it. He leaned into the shade cast by the Governor’s ostentatious dwelling and dared look back to the general store. Behind him, the front door opened. Daniel, a well-dressed freeman, descended the steps, exited the gate, and walked past Jack without a word. The gate slammed shut.

Jack turned toward the noise. “Daniel, my church brother.”

Daniel paused before reluctantly turning to face him. Jack beckoned him over. Daniel glanced back at the house, making sure he wasn’t being watched, before he ambled over to Jack.