INDEPENDENCE DAY. [FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST.] A SHORT STORY

INDEPENDENCE DAY. [FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST.] A SHORT STORY

THE SOUNDTRACK FOR THIS STORY...

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL028611AF6DD8F7EC



This picture has inspired about 4 writes from me. This is the latest...



I hear my wife cry out as I sit on the porch looking into the night sky. The stars that flicker, the full moon that shines so bright.
I hear the bedsprings as they creak and moan. The voices as they whisper. I stand to go inside and then I remember that I cant.
I look at the houses that line the road and I see Tom as he pulls aside the flimsy rags that serve as the curtains of his house, he looks my way and I sit down and try to become one with the shadows...the night.
I wonder why things got to be this way? Why I gotta sit out here on this cold porch wrapped in sadness and all alone? Why do things have to be so unfair?
I was new to this place when I first met Ruth, she was without a doubt the prettiest woman that I had ever seen, all brown and beautiful and dressed in a calico dress. I was coming in from work and covered in dust and wearing a pair of torn pants and nothing else. My feet were bare and I stopped dead in my tracks as she passed me by and walked up to a house on the dirt road and went up the stairs and inside.
I stood there barechested and dirty as more women came down the road and went into the same house.
I saw a man as he came around the side of the house with his head bowed and he sat on the steps of the house and placed his face in his hands and I saw his shoulders shaking as he cried.
I wondered what could be happening inside the house that would make him so sad. I did'nt go anywhere near him, I simply found a tree and and sat against it. More men came and they sat on the steps with him. Some of them lit their pipes and stood around and talked, tried to console him.
After about an hour I heard a lot of noise coming from inside the house and I heard the sharp cries of a baby.
One of the women came out of the house and took the mans hand and led him inside. There was a great cry and I saw the other men rush in and they brought the man out kicking and screaming as Ruth walked out and watched them take him away.
Over the next few days I learned that the man that I saw crying at that house was married to the woman inside and that the white man who owned the plantation was having sex with his wife. The baby that had been born that night was the white mans child and that the boy looked just like him.The white man.
I also started to pay a whole lot of attention to Ruth and learned that she worked in the big plantation house as a maid to his wife. Ruth went to church at the plantation church on sundays and she sang in the choir.
I made it my business to go to church every sunday after that and pretty soon Ruth was paying attention to me. We were married a year later and needless to say I love her with all my heart.
Today I found out that the man who owns this plantation and in a way our lives had told my wife that he was coming to our house tonight and that I should find somewhere to be until he came and left. I thought about it all day before I finally realised that there was nothing that I could really do.
This thing had been happening so long...would continue to happen.
I would have prayed but I would be praying to his god... a white god.
What could he do for me?
Even the black preacher told us that we were cursed. Meant to serve the white people.
I look into the expanse of sky, the stars above my head and reach out for strength and I see one of them glow for a minute so bright that I think I must be seeing things.
I hear things moving around inside and I know that they are finished.
I stand and the door opens and there he is. He looks at me as if I am nothing and starts to place his hat on his head.
I reach into my pants and I pull the knife out and plunge it into the softness of his stomach and push it up into his heart. I have butchered plenty of animals before.
He screams out in pain and falls to the floor and I see lights as doors are opened and people pour out of their houses to see what is happening.
One of them is the so called police of the negroes and he and two more black men grab me and throw me to the ground and hold me down.
I do not struggle.
What will be, will be.
Ruth runs out of the house and looks at the body of the dead white man and at me as I lie on the ground with them holding me down and she she falls to the ground beside me and takes my hand in hers and asks me to forgive her over and over with tears in her eyes.
I want to tell her that I do not hate her, That I will love her till I die and even after that.
I hear the big plantation house come alive and it is not long before I see the white mans brother and his teenaged son appear and look at the body of their brother and father. He turns around and the rage that is on his face is so strong that it can be felt and I feel the black men kind of let go of me a little bit in their fear. He tells the black men to stand me up and they do.
He pulls a revolver from his waistband and shoots me in the knee right before he hits me with the hot pistol in my face and shatters my nose.
"What the fuck is wrong with you nigger!!!" He screams as he continues to beat me with the gun and some of my teeth shatter.
As I spit them out I hear him ask for a chopping knife and one of the slave runs to the side of the house and grabs a machete from the hook on the porch where it is located hanging by a leather strap.
I hear as he give orders to a black man to go and get a horse and hook it to a wagon and he hightails it to the barn as the white mans wife comes down the road and falls next to his body on the ground and she began to wail.
The machete is handed to the white mans brother and he calls the teenaged boy and hands him the machete and tells him to chop off the hand that killed his father.
The boy stands there and looks and for an instant I start to think that he may not have the heart to do this thing as the uncle and two black men hold me down.
It is then that I see the white boys face change and I know that he will. He chops swiftly and my right hand is gone.
It is the wrong hand.
I scream and Ruth screams with me...In me.
The black men are told to put me on the back of the wagon that arrives and a  rope is produced and placed around my neck.
I am stood up and I see the young black child that was born on the day that I first saw Ruth,his hair grows in a sort of blond halo around his head. I also see Ruth crying and being supported by some of the black women and then I see something that is totally out of place. I see the blackest man that I have ever seen. He is so strong that I can feel the power that he emanates and it calms me and gives me strength. He is wearing the skin of a golden animal and its head rests on his shoulder, it has large teeth and it and the man seem to glow.
The rope is thrown over the limb of a tree and I hear someone yell at the horses as the black man reaches out his hands towards me and I hear his voice in a language that I have never heard but I seem to understand as he says "you are free." As the rope breaks my kneck and my spirit leaves my body.

HMZAH FARUQ