The Train
A bastard abroad, a borrowed name and six bottles of bootleg Rhum for coin ...
clickety, clack go the wheels of iron on the rails to Kingston Town.
The heat and sour human stench was somewhat akin to a noxious, gaseous molasses which seemed unable to escape the confines of the wooden third‑class carriage, made worse by the smoke and cinder grit pouring from the locomotive stack, targeting, or so it seemed, only those with lowest‑priced tickets.
The afternoon sun beat down mercilessly on the carriages' corrugated roof, increasing the discomfort of these poor travellers, only a generation or so away from slavery, reminding them, as if they needed reminding, that although free for a generation they had yet to be freed from the indignity of poverty.
It was rumoured that there were some who, given half a chance, would willingly swap the freedom to be poor for the certainty of bed and board that slavery ensured.
This, of course, was quite contrary to the fervent belief of the abolitionists that the casting off of the shackles was the answer to everything.
Job done.
Many did not know what to do with their newfound "freedom" and oft returned of their own volition to labour for their former masters.
Thomas Mason, as he now called himself, incongruously pale, wearing a cream linen suit of a cut and quality that equally did not belong in this carriage, sat back and pondered this and his own inauspicious beginnings as he breathed the muck‑filled atmosphere of the carriage.
This because, well, what else could he or anybody else on the carriage do?
