Joe and Mussy

Rennie stood on the shore, her toes chilled by the frigid ocean. She leaned over to grab the brownish bottle as her friends snickered.

It was short, stubby, and corked. Not capped, corked, with a cork, an actual cork. It looked and felt old.

"Open it, open it," Jason squealed, moving closer to the pal he'd been content to leave at the water's edge moments before.

"Shut up, let me get it out," she spat, tugging the cork from the bottle's mouth.

She pulled her dark hair behind her head and gently opened the curled paper.

February 1, 1735,

To Whom It May Concern,

My name is Jonathan Joeseph Jenkins. Captain Jenkins, to be exact. I'm a ship's capitan and a trader in human cargo.

I hail from East London and work the Congo to Carolina route. I've done it for the past 22 years and have made a tidy living. No, that's not true, I got rich, filthy rich!

November past, my ship, the King George II ran aground somewhere in the south Atlantic. There was nothing on our maps. I can only surmise it was a sandbar.

We weren't far off the coast of Biafra. We'd successfully collected 332 head of prime African stock headed for the new world. It was the best haul yet.

I didn't see it coming. I didn't see a lot of things coming, not the sand bar, not the fever. About 3 days out, the crew started coming down with fever. Several died. Upon reaching the African shore, we were 11, not 32. More died as we went.

We passed the fever to the cargo. We threw them overboard as they died or became too weak to bring 'round.

Truth be told, I thought our luck was changing. The harsh winds had died and the sailing was easy. Provisions were scarce but such was sea life. Then we hit ground.

Sailing along, nothing to worry about, nothing on the map and BAM! The sand bar, or the island, whatever it was, the earth ripped the bottom from the ship.

There weren't many of us onbaord, 28 of the cargo were alive and there was me, and 4 of my men. All of us were sick with the fever.

I don't remember much aside from collapsing on the shore. I do know we all poured out onto that little stretch of sand, hungry, sick and scared. After that, I cannot rightly say.

Maybe I fell from fever. Maybe I'd allowed my eyes to close for a well-deserved repose. Either way, I woke up to the sun blinding my vision and a large face peering down at me.

His eyes were dark as the night sky and his skin not much lighter. He held a spear and had at least a dozen just like him at his back, men and women. He wore no top covering.

He poked at me, touched me and motioned to his fellows. They grabbed me and carried me off as I tried to scream.

I had no breath. I had no noise. I had nothing. Skin, bones, nothing. I was at the mercy of these savages.

I fell asleep again. Or succumbed to fever. Then I awoke. I was covered in something, a mix of moss and something foul. The smell burned my nose. The man, the dark one crouched by my side, a coconut shell filled with water in his hands. He held it to my lips.

I drank some and then backed up on my haunches. I knew exactly what was coming next. They'd kill me for sure!

I issued a warning with all the strength I had.

"I am Captain Jenkins from England." I said. "You will tell me where we are."

Nothing. The Black man patted my cheek and gently shoved my head toward the sand.

I slept some more.

And then I awoke. The sun was almost set, the sky was that fading hue of violet and orange that exists only at dusk, but somehow, more beautiful.

The music thumped in my ears, rhythmic, boyant, joyous. A woman, thick and smooth came to me, meat in her hand. I took it. I was starving.

She motioned for me to join her and the others. I declined. I wasn't about to join savages in their rituals. I just wanted off this sandbar and to get back to work.

I sat and I watched. Dark people dancing around the fire. They ate and sang and enjoyed. And every 10 minutes or so, they came to me, sitting over there on my post in the sand. They offered me meat. They offered me water and coconut and other vegetation. They offered me dance and some sort of coffee or tea.

I declined it all.

Until he came back. That man. The same one from the first day. I did something I'd never done before. I looked into his eyes. I really looked. They were soft, kind.

I looked at him, me with my tattered uniform and him in his scanty bottom covering. I looked at him man to man. I looked at him as the poor wretched newcomer who washed up on his shore. I looked at him as a fellow human who helped nurse me to health.

He and I had an unspoken understanding. I can't explain how he understood me but he did. As I got stronger, we hunted, we foraged and we laughed together. I started calling him Joe and he called me something I can't pronounce. It's close to musunga. Later it became Mussy.

So we were Mussy and Joe. He taught me to kill wild boar and fish with a single spear and I taught him some rudimentary English. And I'm not ashamed to report that he was a quicker study than me.

I can't rightly tell you the tribe. I don't know. About a fortnight later, a ship came to retrieve me and the others. We went back to London.

And then, another expedition. I declined. His magesty wasn't pleased but I was forever changed. Hence the bottle.

I sailed to the New World in hopes of a different life. I saw something that others didn't see. I saw humanity.

I saw love and care in the eyes of that man on that sandbar. I saw concern on all the faces of every single person there.

Joe was the best friend I ever had. He could have easily let me die. Couldn't blame him if he had. He didn't. He saw what I didn't until late, a fellow human. He saw a mussy, as he called it and I saw savage cargo.

I think that's all you need to know about who the real savages are.

I live today because of his, because of their humanity. HUMANITY, think about it. We are one race, the human race and I will forever do my part to articulate this fact.

They nursed me back to health. They tended me with poltuices and potions. They fed me when I was hungry and covered me when I was cold.

Joe was every much a man as I am or was, maybe more. If the situation were reversed I can't say I'd have done the same. But now, I know. I know.

Skin doesn't matter. Colour, shade or where we hail from doesn't matter. We are really and truly one humanity. I only wish I'd known it before now.

Sincerely,

Capt. JJ Jenkins, Newport, RI Colony, 1735

Rennie wiped tears from her brown eyes. These were her people, this was her history. The slave and the enslaved, African and European. Two worlds, two histories, one bottle. It was more than she could bear.