Patient Anthony - A Brazilian Boy's Walk to Slavery - 1 (Republished to Groups)

Patient Anthony was eight years old on a day in August 1855 when he learned a terrible lesson.

Until then, the dark-skinned mulatto boy had known no shame at being naked and often raced bare-bottomed to the Riacho Jurema to swim in the creek.

That August morning, a stranger came to Patient Anthony, who stood naked with four others, and examined him with the thoroughness the boy had seen with vaqueiros inspecting cattle. His head, shoulders, arms, hands, trunk, legs, and feet were inspected. He was made to open his mouth wide to permit an examination of his teeth.

"As he grows older, senhor, he'll be a good worker."

Patient Anthony stood with two older boys, a young man, and a girl. They were on the dusty open ground thirty feet away from the main house of Fazenda da Jurema.

After a while, Patient Anthony raised his head slightly. He saw the senhor capitao sitting on the veranda, fanning himself with his hat. The senhor capitao's son was here, walking with the stranger as he inspected those selected to stand before him. Patient Anthony's gaze shifted nervously from the senhor capitao to some women gathered off to the left between the house and a storeroom. He looked at the black slave Mae Monica -- "Mother Monica," the senhor fondly called her -- who stood at the front of the group

"Oh, Senhor Capitao, Antonio Pacienca is a good child!" Mae Monica pleaded when she saw that her son had been chosen for the stranger. "Antonio will grow to be a man who faithfully serves the senhor capitao. As God sees me, I raise him with nothing but respect for the senhor and his family. Oh, my Master, for the love of Little Jesus of the Children, please, I beg for my Antonio!" But the senhor capitao and the sinhazinha and the senhor capitao's son all ignored her.

Patient Anthony's gaze moved to a group of vaqueiros in the shade of some trees beyond the storeroom. Several of his playmates were there, including his good friend Chico Tico-Tico, a scrawny, bow-legged caboclo. Tico-Tico, "The Sparrow," was twelve, a devil who led the gang of boys at the fazenda.

Patient Anthony turned his head stiffly to the right and saw the stranger examining the boy next to him.

The stranger was a Portuguese from Sao Paulo. He'd come to the fazenda late yesterday leading a great caravan through the caatinga. Patient Anthony and his friends had run to greet them, expecting peddlers or horse dealers. But there were no mules with merchandise or ponies for sale, and instead, the boys of Fazenda da Jurema beheld a sight they had never before seen:

The Portuguese had come riding up front on a black horse. Behind him, strung out for a great distance, a file of people walked across the white-hot sands. Most were as black as Mae Monica, but a few were mulattoes and three or four almost white -- some so young they were carried on their mothers' backs.Other mounted men rode up and down the column calling for the human beasts to step up their pace.

Patient Anthony had never seen people as miserable as those shuffling past him. Most unhappy-looking of all were black men whose necks were encircled with iron hoops and who were linked together with chains that swayed and clinked as they trod forward.

The boy Chico Tico-Tico -- Francisco Cavalcante -- and his father, Modesto Cavalcante, a vaqueiro at Fazenda da Jurema, were direct descendants of Quintino Adorno Cavalcante. Through three generations since Quintino's time, not one family of the Ribeiro-Cavalcante line had obtained possession of a single acre of land.

If one of Graciliano Cavalcanti's descendants had prospered, as vaqueiros occasionally did, by building up his own herd with his annual share of new calves, he would have had difficulty finding land to purchase. For decades already, most of the 6oo,ooo square miles of the semi-arid northeast sertao had been in the hands of families like the Ferreiras or held by absentee landlords at the coast. With a passion rivaling that of the lord donatarios of Brazil three centuries ago, these great men of the earth believed in the splendor and the glory of owning immense territories.

Nothing could be more injurious to their estate than to permit the sale of small patches of land where men of the lower classes might plant homesteads. Nothing could be more threatening to their control than to offer tenants contracts to remain permanently on their property.

Chico Tico-Tico's father, Modesto Cavalcante, was the only descendant of Graciliano still working as a vaqueiro at Fazenda da Jurema. Modesto had a wife and seven children, a mud-walled house, a dozen cattle, seven pigs, and a tame parrot. He had made many trips taking cattle to Recife, but his world lay essentially within the boundaries of the Ferreira lands, where he served the patrao with blind loyalty.

This day, when the Portuguese inspected Patient Anthony and the others, Modesto Cavalcante was with the vaqueiros watching the slaver. Chico Tico-Tico stood in front of Modesto. "Antonio Paciencia is so young," he said, turning to his father. "Why does the senhor want to send him away from the fazenda?"

"He won't be a child forever. A few years and the boy will be big and strong. He'll work with the blacks on the plantations."

"Why can't he work at Jurema?"

"He's the child of a slave. He belongs to Senhor Heitor. It's for the senhor capitao to decide what he wants to do with his property."

"Antonio Paciencia will be taken from his mother?"

Modesto looked in the direction of Mae Monica.

"Antonio Paciencia was born at Jurema," Chico Tico-Tico added. "His family is here. This is his home."

When Modesto did not respond to Chico Tico-Tico after a long silence between them, his son said, "All the times we played with Antonio Paciencia, we never thought of him as a slave."

Modesto replied quickly: "His brothers, the preto with the goats and the other one with the blacksmith -- in a few years, you'd have seen Antonio serving with them. Now he must find his place among the great herd of slaves in the south.  He'll be all right. There, among the coffee groves, he'll forget hard, dry Jurema."

End of Part 1 of 4

Patient Anthony: A Brazilian Boy's Walk to Slavery (Part 2)

Excerpted from Brazil, a novel by Errol Lincoln Uys, Second Edition, Silver Spring Books, 2000.

Please visit the writer's website with two unique literary archives:

Working with James A. Michener: The Story Behind The Covenant

Brazil: The Making of a Novel