Predestination Unknown

by Tanya Chris

  I bridged the distance between our mouths with my tongue, swiping it slowly across his lips which parted on a breath. They were thin, hard from the weather and a life without Chapstick. They tasted like lamb and cider and they were the best thing my tongue had ever touched.

  With a stifled groan, I shifted myself more fully on top of him so that our erections made contact through the layers of worn cotton. He gasped and his hand closed painfully tight around my bicep. I buried my face in the crook of his neck. My cock throbbed hot in the crease of his hip, just as his throbbed in the crease of mine. Physical joy speared through me, sapping my strength. I could barely keep my full weight off him. I licked up the side of his neck.

  “Oh, Luther,” he pleaded, his voice a breathless whimper against my ear. “Luther, we cannot.”

  Of course we couldn’t.

  I rolled off of him and huffed out a frustrated breath. My body yearned towards the man next to me, but the man next to me wasn’t ready for that and maybe never would be.

  I needed to find a way to earn a living so I could move out of this bed, because it was going to kill me to sleep next to him night after night and keep my hands to myself. I’d never been one to go for the shy virgin shtick, but on Ezekiel it was fucking hot because it wasn’t an act designed to seduce. It was a combination of cultural conditioning and a whole shitload of goodness. Ezekiel was just good.

  Not that sex was bad. Sex was good too. Sex with Ezekiel would be amazing, especially because he’d be all adorably unsure but maybe eager to please and happy in that way he was even when doing mundane shit. If he could smile his way through rubbing down Daffy, how joyous would he be if I rubbed him down?

  And fuck I was horny, almost horny enough to stroke myself off with Ezekiel lying right there next to me. Where else was I supposed to do it? No shower, not a moment to yourself outside of your morning constitutional in a cold, stinky outhouse. No wonder Puritans were so damn pure. What choice did they have?

  “Are you angry, Luther?” The quiet voice at my side made me realize I’d gone silent on him.

  “Not at you.” I reached for his hand and wrapped our fingers together. “Just frustrated and missing the world I left.”

  “Is there someone special at home?”

  “Not a man, if that’s what you mean, but my family—my father and grandmother.”

  Maybe he could hear the homesickness in my voice, or maybe he was just glad to hear that I didn’t have a lover stashed away in Connecticut, because he found my mouth in the dim light and gave me one perfect kiss. The kiss lingered, softly, not deepening but lengthening—a touch of acceptance.

  Ezekiel rolled onto his back, pulling me down with him. I settled my head into the nook of his neck and let my hand drift over the hard planes of his abs. One thing about the college hookup scene was it didn’t include a lot of cuddling. Sharing a bed with Ezekiel, lying in the circle of his arms, didn’t have the explosiveness of an orgasm, but it released the same endorphins and lasted longer.

  “How about you?” I asked. “Have you ever, uh … This attraction you have towards other men, has there been a specific man?”

  “There were a man,” Ezekiel said slowly. I stifled the urge to push myself off his chest so I could give him a death glare. “I was still mostly a boy—sixteen, I reckon. He came to town for the reaping and there was an air he had to him, a difference in the way he spoke to me, especially when it were only we two in hearing.”

  “Did he touch you?”

  “Once, for a moment. He put his hand on my back. Here.”

  Ezekiel slid the hand that had been wrapped around my shoulder down to my lower back, to that spot reserved for lovers. Yeah, the fucker had been trying to fuck him, all right.

  “What did you do?” I asked. Maybe Ezekiel had more experience than I’d guessed.

  “What was there to do? I could not think of more, but I did always remember it.”

  I had no doubt the other guy in this story would’ve been happy to show Ezekiel some more they could have done, but I wasn’t sorry he hadn’t gotten around to it. If Ezekiel had had man-love experience before I arrived on the scene, he’d be more open to sharing some with me, but I liked him the way he was—sweet, innocent, not jaded or hungry.

  I settled my head more comfortably against his chest. My hand stroked his belly and his still pressed against that spot on my lower back that conveyed a sense of ownership. I dared the quickest of kisses to the stubble beneath his chin, then let the wash of his deepening breath lull me to sleep.

  Chapter 8

  At church the next morning, which it turned out took place in the same meeting house where the accused witches had been questioned (no wonder those benches looked like pews), Ezekiel showed Mr. Hathorne my attempts at seventeenth century calligraphy and he declared my writing “well enough” with an approving harrumph, which turned out to be the most exciting part of the morning. Puritan church services were loooong, even compared to Black Baptist services, and that was saying something.

  The sermons, because there was way more than one, included plenty of fire and brimstone but nothing about consigning gay people to hell. Probably because gay people weren’t even on their radar. Their radar was solidly centered on Satan. They talked about the Devil like he floated over our heads right at that moment. Those little girls pointing at the ceiling and screeching about spirits the day before hadn’t dreamed up their own material.

  Mr. Hathorne gave one of the sermons—a comparatively lackluster one. He would never set the world on fire. The fat dude with the cane who’d only listened during proceedings the day before only listened during services too, but I noticed he was situated front and center again. I hadn’t learned his name yet, but I could guess everyone else knew it.

  I spent a good part of lecture-time worrying about how shabby and soiled I looked and about the fact that I was only going to look that much worse as time went by. Ezekiel had put on his Sunday best that morning, not so different from his usual attire except he had lace on his sleeves and smelled fresher, but I didn’t have a second suit of clothes.

  Having nothing to change into meant I had no way of getting my clothes clean either, not without parading around the Cheever homestead in my underwear. I’d have to wear these clothes until they disintegrated, which might not be very long. My tights, which were made out of cheap, thin nylon, not wool like Ezekiel’s stockings, had already developed a run in one leg and holes around both big toes.

  My trip through the mirror had left a gash in one of my pants legs. They were blousy pants, not form-fitting at all, so the rip wasn’t horribly obvious, but I could feel the cold through it. Meantime the wig felt stupider every time I put it on, like I was pretending to be something I wasn’t. Only men like Mr. Hathorne and his chubby buddy wore wigs, and even those had nothing on my monstrosity. Still, my wig was the only thing I had that garnered any respect, so I’d resolutely jammed it onto my head that morning.

  After services, I said goodbye to the Cheever family and they headed back home together in their wagon. They were sitting down to a big Sunday dinner, no doubt, while I ate a lonely lunch in one of the pews. I finished every bite of what Mrs. Cheever had packed for me, then gathered up the writing supplies and walked across the street to the jail where they were holding Tituba and the other accused. I recognized the jailer from the day before, and he had no trouble recognizing me either. I was the Black guy in the wig.

  Unlike most of the buildings in Salem, the jail was made of stone—large round stones held together by something like an uglier version of cement. Cement made from mud. The stones lining the walls of the corridor that wound between cells were damp to the touch and illuminated by torches spaced too widely to fully banish the gloom.

  I’d seen from the outside that the jail wasn’t very large. It wouldn’t boast more than a few cells, and given the population in Salem, why would they need more? But from the inside—shadowed and dank and echoing with ancient screams—it felt endless
ly deep.

  The rubber soles of my father’s loafers were silent against the stones that paved the walkway, so I startled Tituba when I rapped lightly on the bars to get her attention. She jumped to her feet and backed farther into her cell.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” I apologized. “I’m Luther Johnson. I’m going to take the notes this afternoon.”

  Looking me over suspiciously, she said, “I’m Tituba.”

  “Yes, I know. I was at the meeting house yesterday. I was surprised to see you didn’t have black skin like mine.”

  “Why should I have?”

  “No reason. I’d heard that you did.”

  “Who speaks of me?”

  Right. In my eyes, Tituba was something of a celebrity, but she didn’t know how famous she’d eventually become.

  “I’d heard that the accused witch was from Barbados,” I clarified.

  “Yet I was not born to Barbados, only brought there afore I were brought here. I’m Arawak, from the southern Americas.”

  “I’m African.”

  She nodded. “We’re both far from home on the white man’s whim.”

  True dat.

  The jailer appeared with a rickety stool and an even more rickety table which was barely big enough for the paper and ink pot I arranged on it. I took a few practice swipes with the quill. My penmanship fluctuated between dry scratches and messy blobs. Pens with self-dispensing ink were another one of those luxuries I’d never thought to appreciate.

  Tituba watched me closely. “Do you really be here to scribe and not to beat me?”

  Even in the seventeenth century I couldn’t escape the thug stereotype. “What makes you think anyone’s going to beat you?”

  “Mr. Parris did beat me when first they come and ask were I witch. I told them I was not and Mr. Parris beat me and said that I should claim true that I was a witch.”

  Tituba worked for the family where the first little girls had gotten sick. I remembered that much from my aborted history lesson courtesy of Wikipedia on the drive up.

  “Are you a witch?”

  “I have no wish to be beaten. If that makes me a witch, then I’m a witch.”

  “Oh, sit down,” I told her, exasperated by the way she kept standing there like the beatings might commence at any moment. Even if Hathorne asked me to, I would never beat anyone.

  But I wasn’t exactly going to save anyone either, was I? I’d given some thought to it and I’d decided that I wasn’t in a position to play hero. I was powerless and possession-less, without even a clean pair of socks to my name. I wasn’t at the jailhouse to change the course of history. I was there to repay the man who’d shared what little he had with me and maybe show the people of Salem that I could have a place amongst them.

  Besides, Tituba didn’t need saving. She was one of the ones who’d survive, as best I could recall. This game she was playing turned out to be the right strategy. It was the people who denied being witches who would die.

  “I understand you’re trying to protect yourself,” I said, “but you didn’t need to go and drag in those other women.”

  “I’m asked to name others and so I do.”

  “But you’re making it up. They’re not witches any more than you are.”

  She shrugged.

  “You’re going to get them hanged.” I couldn’t remember exactly who lived and who didn’t, but I was pretty sure these first two, the Sarahs, were doomed. “If all three of you stick together and tell the truth, they’ll have to let you go. There won’t be any proof.”

  Tituba snorted. “I’ll not be beaten to save two necks as would not stretch themselves for mine.”

  “It’s not just going to be two necks,” I argued, even though I’d already promised myself I wouldn’t get involved. Show up, take some notes, earn a little recognition, go and spend the night in bed with Ezekiel, figure out how the hell to get back home. That was my plan. “You have no idea what you’re starting.”

  “’Twas not I who started it.”

  Fine then. I’d tried. I wasn’t prepared to be a hero. Whatever helpful skills I might have learned—martial arts or ancient weaponry or animal husbandry—I hadn’t learned them. And whatever dreams I might have dreamed, changing the world had never been one of them. There’d been a time for activists, like my own namesake, Martin Luther King, but the days of people who stuck their necks out for other people were over.

  Tituba was right. Why should she risk her own life to help any of these people? None of them had ever cared that she was enslaved, that she’d been stolen from her homeland, that some dude thought he had the right to beat her when she didn’t tell the lies he wanted to hear. Why should she care about them?

  I shifted my shoulders so I faced away from her, determined to follow her example and not care about them either. I used Ezekiel’s pen knife to trim the quill tip the way he’d shown me, then dipped the quill in the ink and wrote the day’s date at the top of the paper. March the 1st, 1962.

  There. I was a proper Puritan scholar.

  Hathorne and his cane-wielding cohort finally made an appearance. Hathorne introduced me to his companion as “Mr. Johnson, who will be recording the testimony,” and then, as an afterthought, finally gave me the other man’s name. Corwin.

  Corwin had stood out yesterday as better dressed than the crowd, but he was even more resplendent today in his Sunday finery. Gold braid edged his frock coat and his gut strained at the brass buttons holding his doublet closed. He had a neat goatee in addition to the mustache most of Salem’s men favored and his wig was nearly as voluminous as mine. He grunted around until the jailer appeared with a second chair for him, then lowered his body into it with a thump of his cane and ordered us to begin.

  Tituba’s testimony flowed more smoothly without the screaming children and gasping crowd, but there was nothing new to it except that the Devil’s guestbook was now up to nine signatures from yesterday’s five. He was a quick recruiter, that Devil. Really knew how to get people on board.

  When Hathorne pressed Tituba for names, she shot me a quick glance, then said she hadn’t been able to make them out. My disapproval didn’t stop her from repeating her testimony against Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn though.

  “Look.” Tituba thrust out her arms, which were covered in angry red bumps bisected by scratches.

  Hathorne and Corwin agreed that she bore the marks of supernatural torture, but I thought it was a lot more likely she bore the marks of the fleas that no doubt inhabited the straw covering the floor of her cell. I hoped I was far back enough to avoid picking up any fleas myself. It was a miracle I wasn’t already overridden with some kind of bug, given the rudimentary sanitation and lack of running water. My eight-year-old self would have loved peeing into bushes and never being forced to bathe, but my grown-up self preferred indoor plumbing and privacy.

  Hathorne and Corwin moved down to Sarah Osborne’s cell and I dragged my stool and desk behind them. Playing at star witness must have won Tituba the prime real estate, because the air grew danker as we walked deeper into the jail, moving past the next cell which housed Sarah Good until we arrived in the darkest corner of the jail house

  Hathorne called for another torch and the jailer brought one and mounted it in a holder along the wall. The flame illuminated a small square of stone with a sickly white woman huddled into the corner on a pile of straw. In the dim light, her hair was nearly the same color and consistency as straw. It clumped in unbrushed hanks around her face and straggled down her back. She couldn’t have come to look this bad in forty-eight hours. Sarah Osborne must have already been in bad shape when she was arrested.

  Regardless of how wretched she might be, she clung to her innocence, meeting Hathorne’s questions with shakes of her head or sullen but emphatic denials. I struggled with her more guttural accent, grateful she didn’t say much because it saved my having to decipher it, but after one too many clipped answers, Corwin hailed the jailer and told him not to give Sarah any
dinner that night, “as a sharpness in the stomach might promote a sharpness in her recall.”

  Corwin stormed out of the jailhouse with Hathorne at his heels, not stopping to question Sarah Good. I trailed along more slowly, noting the obvious bulge of Sarah Good’s stomach before heading around to the back of the jail for one of those thrilling outdoor bathroom breaks. By the time I made it over to the meeting house, Hathorne and Corwin were deep in conversation, so I slid into one of the pews to wait them out.

  “You heard tale of their response then,” Corwin said.

  Hathorne nodded. “Parris filled me in after you spoke with him.”

  “I don’t care for the terms of their offer. Whatever gain we reap from not paying taxes to the county seat, we’ll surely lose in feeding the poor.”

  Corwin must have been one of the men I’d overheard speaking outside the meeting house the day before because I’d heard this lament already.

  “Tenfold,” Hathorne agreed. “’Tis not an offer they make at all. ’Tis an insult.”

  “Agreed. That is why we turned them down. For now.”

  “You have a thought?” Hathorne leaned in. Even from a distance, I could see the evil in Corwin’s answering smile.

  “Don’t I always have a thought? My thought is that it would not be so expensive to feed the poor, were there not so many poor.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” Hathorne agreed, “but how shall we stop them being poor, for I swear they’re determined to it. Look at that wretch, Sarah Good. She’s had a better meal at our expense these last two days than she’s had in quite a while, I’ll wager.”

  “Exactly. She costs us money in jail; she costs us money out of jail. She will birth that babe she carries and the babe ’twill cost us yet more, mark my words. We cannot make the poor less poor, for why shall we change what is foreordained by God? But we needn’t bear the burden of them, I think.”

  “And yet, the Bible do command us to be charitable,” Hathorne suggested.

  “It do not command us to feed witches,” Corwin argued. “For the Bible cannot command us to do such as is contrary to God’s will.”