Farm Grand Riviere Du Nord, Dondon, Saint Domingue, 1789.
To Antonie like improvised commander of the men in charge of the defense, he be up to solve the part corresponding to the supplies. Mom Leroy had left prepared some cookies, coco candies and bread. But not the coffee. He put to heat the water, remembered the instructions. He made the better that him could. He proved it, it was very strong, tossed it a touch of some rum, he had the idea that that would help to be more alert.
He took a jar to the troop. The giant, Amadi, rejected the offer. He didn't say anything, pushed the bowl returning it to the youth's man hand, and doesn’t take anything, neither the bread neither the cookies. The rest of the ex-slaves they accepted it with pleasure. The happiness lasted very little time, the coffee had a horrible taste. However, nobody complained. They made grimaces, drank it of a single sip, other, with wrong pretense, they overturned the bowls, spilling the content. Antonie, offended, was served a cup, full and drank. It was necessary to demonstrate to the men under their commandment that he shared the same destination. For bitter that was. The dignity it lost to the first sip. The black and smoky liquid that burned his throat anything had in common with the coffee. With tears in the eyes, spit out from his mouth that infernal potion.
The giant had saved the tongue. Antonie laughs, roaring with enjoyment, he placed a hand in the shoulder of the African man. He, rose himself unexpectedly. He pushed away the young white man with so much force that he went to fall to about two meters of where they were. It brandished a lance, throwing it ago with all their forces to the reedbed. The same one penetrated, without touch any cane, in the seed. There was hear a direct hit, and a little moan, something had fallen. They listened steps. In each breach of the reedbed it arose the dark figures of things that seemed be men. They behaved in their hands, clubs, machetes, sticks, tridents of thrashing wheat. In spite of having the open eyes the men were noticed that they didn't look. Their look was empty and sad. As if they having activated by a silent order, they advanced toward the astonished men of the gathering. Paralyzed, horrified, without being able to believe what they saw. They joked on it, hardly some seconds ago, the joke was now a macabre reality. Amadi that was the only one in guard, threw lance after lance, demolishing one, at two, at three, to all those that he could. Out its arsenal, armed with two daggers made of bone and throw himself, like a typhon, rushed to combat that those army of silent march. It was the first time that Antonie listened the voice of the giant man. More than a voice, was a scream of war. It resounded in the mountains of Dondon, in the coffee plantation, in the seeds of indigo and cocoa. As harangue it was effective. They weren´t warriors, they were peasants, old slaves. Now it was not to defend the master's property but of defending a home and a form of life.
Antonie, a boy, converted of peasant to foreman, his skin was white, but he felt like one more of them. It didn't burden on him, more slavery than the social class, the love and the duty. And it was heavier their burden. He ordered to turn the canyon, the enemy was of the other side. Amadi was the only one with combat experience, it fought with an unusual ability. He didn't receive wound some. Even so, they were so many that surpassed him. The bodies without soul didn't make another thing that going forward, slowly, their combat ability was null, their attacks were unproductive, but they were hundred and hundred. Antonie and the Leroy brothers shot the muskets, then the canyon. The other men covered of blood their machetes, they received blows, cuts and punctures. The true enemy was the fatigue. After many minutes of fight, the blows were not so good neither overwhelming. The legs also weakened, the canyon stopped to be effective, the enemy is being too much near. Luck for the gunners that were disabled to continue shooting. They had forgotten to cool the canyon between shot and shot. If has carried out another shot more, has exploded. Neither they were functional the muskets. The times of recharge were prohibitive.
Desperate, Antonie, seeing their men faint before the raid, heady against the table, he took the jar of coffee, throwing it against one of the zombies. Something unthinkable it happened. The zombie, soaked of the bitter liquid, licked the corner of his lips. Being immobile for a while. He loosed the knife among his hands, and scream an atrocious cry. It half-closed the eyes, looked at himself the wounds, the burns. Crying with affliction picked up the steel of the floor and with cavernous voice he said:
Prays for all the dead’s.
The abandoned ones,
Those that have been killed by knife.
Killed with machetes,
What the great forest,
The plain and the water, give them cover.
There is not escape of your mirror.
Return him to the earth,
Without worm that eats it.
Finished the declamation, cut its neck. Spreading the blood in the floor. Thomas Leroy, with the help of his brothers, crawled to Antonie until inside the house. They closed the door. Winning him something from time to the death
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