style="font-size:15px;"> They walked carefully, as if they were in enemy territory. In the distance, in the gray scrub, they glimpsed some shapes disappearing quickly into the undergrowth and wondered if it was deer? It got hot quickly because it was nearing summer. The crops were very high and the cutting had begun. All along the road there were heavily laden carts pulled by oxen, wobbling beneath the weight of the crops but the oxen trudged along, these massive beast of burden doing the job of many for water, grain and grass. They were driven by young serfs with an air of indifference, almost as if they were dozing. The air was filled with flies and horseflies whose bites stung the beast unless a tail like a whip thrust them away. The road was very narrow and they were forced from the road when any passage came by.
The fields were filled with working men and women. The men had their cutlasses and sickles and the women their hoes. They were wearing gunnies, clothes made from jute sacks, and they wrapped their heads in old rags. The men’s chest were bare and dripping with sweat. We heard the cries and the signal…Whoop! The red dust rose in the path of the crops. There was a sour odor in the air, an odor from the sap of the crops, the dust and the sweat. Nobody took any notice of them. There was so much dust on the roads that they were red from head to foot and the clothes looked like gunnies. Indian and African children ran with them holding stalks which had fallen from the wagons to the road. Everyone was going to the refinery to see the first presses.
At last they arrived at the buildings. Richard and Eleanor were apprehensive because they had never been there. The carts had stopped in front of the high, whitewashed wall, and the men were unloading the crops which would be placed in large drums. The chimney spat out a heavy rust-colored smoke which darkened the sky and chocked all when the wind drove it down. Everywhere there was noise, the weering and spitting of machines with great streams of steam. Directly in front of them they saw large groups of men hand moving the product into the furnace. They looked like giants, almost naked, the sweat running down their black backs, faces twisted with pain from the heat of the fires in the furnaces. They did not speak, they simply took a bundle in their arms and threw it in the furnace, shouting Huh! With each toss.
Richard and Eleanor were so mesmerized by the process they had lost track of Loche. They stood hand-in-hand, unable to move, looking at the cast iron chimney, the great steel vat which stood out like a giant’s pot to boil the brew, and the wheels which drove the cylinders squeaked and moaned like a bed under stress. Inside the refinery the men were busy, throwing the fresh crop between the jaws of the vats and taking back the crushed cane to extract even more sap. The noise; heat and steam and the sounds of the black men grunting aroused something in Eleanor…that twitch at her clitoris which she had learned to touch to orgasm as a child. The entire moment was deafening but somehow for the two love birds it was sexually charging. Eleanor was actually sweating which she found a relative new experience… and as they held hands and looked into each other’s eyes they seemed to know that on this journey something magic had happened…it had become a journey into sexual fantasy of feelings which had been contained, suppressed by children who believed they were brother and sister. After all, the Duke loved them as his sibling children and she would be Queen which meant she had to be a virgin.
They watched the clear juice, squeezed from the cane, stream over the cylinders and it ran on its final journey to the boiling vats as Eleanor looked at Richard lovingly. Her mind saw an image replicating her own multi-year growth streaming to a fiery end. They were standing at the base of the separator when Richard saw Loche waiting in front of the slowly turning vat where the syrup cooled. There were big waves in the vat and the sugar dripped over, hung in black clots and then fell onto the leaf-and straw-covered ground. Richard and Eleanor rushed forward laughing and pushing at one another to get there first, picking up the hot pieces of sugar and took them away to the shade to suck the sweet away in the sunny afternoon. They watched the thick-russet-colored smoke coming out of the chimney and it smelled of burnt sugar and spent lives. A strange odor never experienced by the pair, representing a gift from nature borne on the shoulders of slaves and Eleanor remembered her father’s vast holdings and the serfs who toiled daily to perfection for a loaf and a shanty.
The din, the cries of the children and the men’s movements made Eleanor feverish and she started to shake. She wondered if it was the sun, the sugar, the men’s frenetic movement. Or, was it the noise of the machines and its hissing steam, the rusty, acid smoke about her, the harsh taste of the pure sugar overriding the bodies’ capacity to cleanse it through the kidneys. Or, was it the moment, the visions of the future and the dizzying effect which Richard was having on her?
She did not know that Richard was having similar issues and she got up from beneath the tree to walk about and try to feel normal. Meanwhile Richard couldn’t see straight and felt as if he was going to vomit…he tried, he heaved but there was nothing but the sour taste of spit. He called for his cousin to help him, and then looked for Eleanor and tried to call out to her but his voice was hoarse and it hurt his throat to speak.
There were many children rushing about and around him and then going to the big vat, trying to see the exact moment when the valves opened and the hissing air penetrated the huge pot to send the wave of boiling syrup running along the troughs like a blond river. Richard suddenly felt so weak and disoriented that he placed his head between his knees pulling his knees forward as far as they would go, and closed his eyes.
Suddenly, he felt a gentle hand stroking his hair and he heard a voice speaking softly to him in heavy Spanish. Por que estas Ilorando? (“Why are you crying”?) Through his tears Richard saw a large beautiful Indian woman, wrapped in her red stained gunny. She was standing in front of him, bent so that her beautiful breast came forward to the nipples. She was calm, smiling which showed her flawless white teeth against her black skin...so bright like pearls. She had a hoe with a long handle and she was balancing it on her head. She spoke to Richard softly as she rubbed her fingers through his long hair asking where he came from and then before Richard knew it he was walking with her on a crowded road as she held him to her side where he could feel the slow sway of her hip. When they entered the small town they crossed a bridge and went up to a small quirky hut. Then she left immediately upon settling him, without notice or reward. Richard watched as she walked stiffly down the road with trees encroaching and coveting its space, even growing over it…amazingly the hoe remained balanced on her head.
Richard sat looking at the large wooden house lit by the afternoon sun with its copper colored roof, a color so rich he remembered it, after that, for the longest time as the color of the sky when warning of weather to come, and the old nautical saying, “red sky at night, sailors’ delight…red sky in the morning, sailor take warning.”! Once more Richard felt the heat from the ground like a furnace on his face, and he shook off the dust and the wisps of straw covering his clothes. He got to his feet and approached the house where he heard a woman’s voice reciting prayers and upon entering he saw the woman was with Eleanor on a shady veranda at the back of the house.
The woman’s voice was so sweet and clear he could see tears running down Eleanor's cheeks and Richard’s heart began to beat very fast again. On the veranda there was a water tank and he drew dark water with a pitcher and washed his face, hands, neck, legs and feet of the red clay. The cooling water made the scratches and cuts he had suffered while walking through the cane sting. Mosquitoes and water spiders ran across the surface of the basin, and ground grubs writhed on the veranda stone walls. He heard the sweet evening voices of the birds and he smelled the smoke from the ravine. Then he went to Eleanor’s tree at the end of the garden, the large Chaeta tree of good and evil. Everything he saw and everything he touched seemed eternal. He did not know that soon, it would all be gone.
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