Dream a Little Sycamore Dream

June 1777

The soft tread of moccasins on the ground of the New World has disappeared. Now it seems that the people are ghosts on the prairie and their feet grace only the forgotten hunting paths. 

They and nature have tasted the bitter tang of the cruelties borne by the pale-faced hand and even now, while more arrive on wooden boats, they can only wonder what more this will bring. 

Dozens of ships had docked here decades ago, bringing with them a new manner of beast and man, unlike the brown-skinned people of the plains. Moonfaced men clothed in garments much unlike anything they had ever seen and brandishing sticks that spat flame and metal. 

Trodding behind them were dark-skinned slaves in iron chains with sad and haunted eyes. Refugee eyes that witnessed horrors in the boats that had hauled them off from their distant sun-kissed lands.  Perhaps a kindred spirit of justice's fire still burned in the banked flames of their eyes.  

Under the palms of master and slave, trees fell quickly under the steel bite of axes, and in their place, wooden plantations rose quickly on the wide plains of South Carolina.   

“Papa I want to come with you!” The pleading cry of a little girl disrupts the rowdy breakfast room. Kitchen slaves and family members alike only chuckle at her futile attempts of grasping her father’s work pants as he moved to leave the room.  

David Marsden would likewise chuckle at his youngest daughter’s attempts of begging to go out with him and plant. He glanced at his wife with a raised brow which she returned with a humorous shake of her head. Ellie - the youngest of their six children - could be a handful when she wished to be.  

“Ellie,” her mother announced in a tone only mothers could muster. “You let your daddy go on out.” 

“But I wanna plant too!” Ellie cried. 

Her brothers and sisters laughed as she plopped on the wooden floor in a tantrum, hot tears spilling from her cheeks. 

“Oh all right,” her father said. Taking her in his arms David Marsden hugged his six-year-old daughter to his chest, his golden beard scratching at her soft face. 

“You promise me that if I let you plant one you have to follow everything daddy says, ok?” He whispered in her ear. 

Ellie nodded cautiously in agreement. Then David Marsden announced to the room that he would let Ellie choose a tree to plant on the hill near their home. “A good house will need good trees to guard it,” he announces. 

Ellie clapped her chubby little hands together and squealed joyously. Her nursemaid, Nana Clara, swept her up in her arms while David went out to the fields. At dinnertime, when asked, Ellie said she would plant a ‘see-caw-moe’ tree, failing to mimic a tree her Nana often told of in her stories.  

A week later on the hill, David Marsden, and a couple of slaves dug out the top of the hill. And Ellie’s aging nursemaid, Nana Clara, guided her trembling little hands as she dropped sycamore seedlings into the hole without much ceremony. Ellie finally went to bed in quiet peace that night, knowing that her fickle desire had been fulfilled. 

Whether by a false stroke of luck or the wicked will of a tribal god, Ellie and a couple of the plantation workers catch the dreaded scarlet fever a month later. The slaves die off in a couple of weeks. 

It is on another full moon night that Nana Clara clutches Ellie's weak hand and squeezes tightly. Ellie spams in the last throes of the fever that colors her skin in a red rash. Nana Clara whispers a prayer and a song, to the goddess of the moon and to the birds and the trees to heal her. The words are old, in a tongue that most have forgotten to speak, but the world remembers.

Nana Clara sings and prays for peaceful dreams for Little Ellie as she descends the stairs to prepare a poultice. In the kitchen, she mixes dogwood and milkwood, and other herbs of the moon, just as her grandmother had taught her in the Old Country.  

While she does this, Ellie dreams.

In her dreams, she is a bird flapping her wings on her way to the branches of the sycamore tree that she had planted weeks before. Its branches reach the sky, towering over grey stone buildings and smog. When Ellie finally lands, her nest has become the moon, and it smiles at her before wrapping her in its silver embrace. It comforts Ellie, somewhat, knowing that her tree had grown.

And on the far fields of Brandywine, 168-year-old sycamore shelters General Washington and his troops as they sleep. It feels one of its daughter trees, a tiny seedling, standing guard over a little girl's dreams while it does likewise. When the day dawns, the well-rested Americans decide that the sycamore means protection and hope.

Ellie Marsden is buried a week later beside the seeds of her beloved sycamore tree while her mother weeps bitterly. The vicar says words that are of little comfort to the family gathered there.

“But one thing is certain,” he continues unbothered by the grieving silence. “Ellie Marsden has found rest with our Lord and Savior.” At the end of the war, the sycamore has grown tall and young. And in time, the Marsdens and their children, each find their rest beside Ellie under the protective shade of the sycamore tree. 

August 1850

The South Carolina forests waited in quiet anticipation as Phillis Jackson ran in the night. 

She had been trekking through the countryside for days, barely eating and sleeping as she made her way North. To freedom. 

Phillis had run away from her master’s plantation in Savannah when her sister, who worked in the kitchens, had told her what she had heard in the private rooms as she came in to clean. 

“Massa said yous too much a distraction to Abe,” her sister had whispered to her. “Theys gonna sell you to the Smiths when they come round for the next buy.” Abraham was her husband-to-be, a prize mandingo fighter who made much money for the Lewis plantation. Selling her to the Smith’s meant more profit and fewer distractions for Abe. 

"We gonna be going then Jemimah," was all Phillis said before she started packing. It was widely known in these parts about Jeremiah Smith’s wicked reputation. And if Phillis had stayed to be sold, the child in her belly, that she was sure was there, would be gone in a week. And she’d be dead in a month after the whippings and beatings. 

Rousing Abe from his slumber and explaining her predicament, they had left under the cover of night, with only a quick kiss to their families who stayed behind. But fate had not been on their side, as one of the gate guards had noticed them slipping out.

He had roused the men and they had caught up with them by the banks of a river. Abe stayed behind to hold them off, and Phillis could only watch helplessly from across the riverbank as their dogs tore him apart. 

Heartbroken, she continued on her way North, to Charlestown, where the railroad, it was rumored, could spirit her off to New York or Boston. To the north and to freedom.

She followed the song of the Drinking Gourd traveling under the cover of darkness with only the North Star to guide her. Sometimes hitching rides in unsuspecting farmer's carts by day. Phillis subsisted on prayers to the moon and the grains she had managed to braid into her hair for food. 

By the fifth day, she was in South Carolina, and she would’ve been overjoyed at the fact if she had known. Pausing by a copse of beechwood trees, she spied a sign nailed to the middle tree. The sparseness of light made it hard to read but even in daylight, she wouldn’t have known what the letters would have said. 

Still, Phillis staggered onwards desperately to where light and the smells of supper wafted on the warm autumn air. And high in the sky, the star of the Drinking Gourd twinkled hopefully. 

As she trudged on, she whispered prayers to the moon to protect her and her child.

And in answer, by the gates of the Marsden plantation, a few of her people were there, waiting expectantly, as if someone had told them she was coming. They were dressed in quilts that said, "Little bird you are safe here come and rest awhile under our branches."

They escorted Phillis to the sycamore tree at the top of the hill to rest and gave her food from the kitchens before leaving her alone. "You are welcome here sister," one of the men, Aaron, told her as he handed her a quilt to sleep on.

Phillis accepted it gratefully and snuggled in the warmth that his hands had left behind.

It was silent and peaceful underneath the branches of the sycamore tree. And she lifted a thankful prayer to the moon for her help.

Phillis listened to the sounds of the night, as the nightingales’ on their perches lullabied her to sleep. A slight kick in her belly told her that her child found the music peaceful too.

The moon and the tree watch over them as they dream of freedom and peace.

January 1942

Dennis Rodstadter sneaks away to the abandoned plantation by the edge of town. He carries a bottle of red wine and a loaf of bread behind him as he does. 

When he spies the house, he turns and looks upward to the hill and he sees her sitting expectantly on a blanket by the old sycamore tree. The love of his life, Jenny McGuire, with her strawberry blonde locks swaying softly in the winds. 

He surprises her with a kiss that she returns wholeheartedly and they spend most of the evening talking and eating. When the time comes their kisses become hungry flames and they bathe in the fires of their love under the stars. 

When morning comes, they leave quietly not wanting to disturb the ghosts. 

The letters DR x JM that they leave carved into the bark are the only marks that they were ever there.

March 2009

An old coffee-skinned woman rests under the bench constructed by the sycamore tree. She watches silently as a pair - brother and sister - romp around the green of the meadows. 

“Now now Jeremy Rodstadter you don’t be pushing your little sister around the grass and you let her play,” Brenda Jackson shouts at the two. 

“Yes, Nana Brenda!” They shout in reply before resuming their rough play. 

The old woman merely smiles as she rests her head to watch them. 

Her family had found roots in New York decades ago, yet she had come back here, when her husband had died, to find her history. An old story that her mother had heard from her mother, something passed on through their family. A mother's story for only mothers hear of it.

It was one of danger and sorrow and loss, a tale that ended in hope and freedom bordered with nightingale songs and a sycamore tree.

“It was in the wilds of the Ole South where your great-great-great-great-gramma," her mother tickled her as she said great. "She was running.”

"Running from what momma?"

"She was running away from wolves and pale dogs like stars in the sky."

"Where'd she run to momma?"

Her mother smiled and told her, "Oh, your grandmamma ain't need to run. She was a bird and we always find our safety in the trees. We be blessed by the moon and she always takes care of her own."

Brenda only nodded as she listened and when the tale was done her momma sang her to sleep.

She still remembers the song:

Find me a star

One so very far

And find your rest

In mother moon's little nest

Dream a little dream baby bird

And I'll be here with you

As a child, she had not cared if the tale had been true for tales only lived to be told and respun. But whether truth or untruth it had brought Brenda back here to the backwoods of South Carolina. And here she was, watching over the governor's children in her old age. As a mother bird watched over the newly young.

"Now you both behave yourselves and wake Nana when y'all wanna go back on down you hear me?" Brenda called to the children.

Satisfied that they had heard her, Brenda nodded off into a dream.

In her dream, the sycamore tree has branches that reach up into the heavens and the bark is crisscrossed with the etched promises of lovers. Brenda is a bird, with the moon as her nest, and the nightingales with stars-eyes sing to her in her mother's voice. And underneath it all, the lovers and the dead and the weary find rest beneath the tree. Their dreams are all happy and hopeful, full of rest and freedom, and peace.