Why can’t Will?
“Come on now,” I say, putting the cornbread in his hand.
“You gotta eat.”
He slowly push himself up,
sit kinda side-like,
gritting his teeth, breathing funny.
“Why you wanna run?” I ask.
He look at me. “Why you wanna stay?”
Will and me, we so different,
sometimes I can’t believe we brothers.
“I remember life before Whitehaven.” He take a small bite.
“I seen a world outside them fences.
You young,” he say.
“You don’t know no different, no better.”
“I’s old enough to know a fool when I see one,” I say.
“Why can’t you just heed Master?”
Will look at me. “I gots my own mind. My own wants.”
“Well, so do I, Will.
How you think I got working in the Big House?”
I smile.
“Someday, I gonna be the butler,
running the place, like old Samuel.”
Will shake his head.
“Shad, you can lick Master’s boots all you want,
but they still kick you.
They still crush you under their heel.”
“You don’t know!” I shout. “I got plans.
For me. For Phoebe.
What you got, brother?
Nothing. That’s what. Nothing … but scars.”
I so angry, I’s shaking.
I snatch the cornbread outta his hand.
“Get your own damn bread if you’s so smart.”
I slam the door
and slide the crossbar.
Master right.
Will need time in here to do some more thinking.
I just hope the curing barn
can cure the madness in my big brother.
Else I won’t have one for much longer.
according to Phoebe
H e a l i n g
Yellowbird like beetles and leafhoppers,
but I know she like juicy caterpillars the best.
Today I put one on her perch. Make her work for it.
I can tell it pain her some, but she do it.
Both wings flapping, she jump
right up on that perch
to snatch where that worm inch along.
Miss Tessa laugh and clap her hands
like it a trick especially for her.
I line the cage with honeysuckle leaves
from the bush where yellow birds nest.
Every day she getting stronger.
“Why won’t it sing?” Miss Tessa ask.
I shrug.
Why would she?
Yes, she gonna be all right, Yellowbird.
Like Bea say: Time heals.
A week for a wing.
But how long does it take to fix
a broken heart?
according to Phoebe
C o l l e c t i n g W o r d s
I collect words.
Some come from Mr. Cooke’s lessons,
big words about the big world:
A-mer-i-ca
Vir-gin-ia
I feel smart knowing the words,
even if I know nothing about anything
beyond Whitehaven’s fences.
Some come from Master’s newspapers.
Small words ripped out,
saved from being twisted and burned in his fireplace:
Slave
Sale
Cook
Some I just sound out in my head myself.
Fee-bee
Mom-ma
But they’s all mine.
I keep them hidden in the pages of Miss Tessa’s old speller.
Bury it deep inside the hollow trunk
standing a mile or two inside the woods.
’Cause a slave can’t have words.
Or hope.
But I do.
I got both,
buried deep in the hollow part of me.
according to Phoebe
S t r a n g e r
Any time Miss Tessa don’t need me,
and Bea don’t notice,
I sneak out to the woods,
to my sit-spot under the dead cottonwood tree,
long moss swaying lazy in its limbs.
Sometimes I hide more words
if I find some.
But most times,
I just sit and listen to the birds talk.
Teeka teeka
Chit chit.
I could even find their nests, had I a mind to.
They trust me.
I ain’t no stranger.
But I don’t trust strangers.
’Cause any time a stranger come,
I know something bad’s about to follow.
Even birds know that.
according to Tessa
T h e H u n t
Johnny Cooke would do anything I ask.
But he can’t help it, he’s smitten with me.
He’s a hopeless teacher
but I did learn one thing from him:
my power.
I’ve toyed with his heart
and grown tired. Bored.
It was too easily captured
because Johnny Cooke is a boy.
I see that,
now that a man is here.
He arrived from the north today,
Doctor Ross Bergman:
long of limb,
broad shouldered,
wealthy, well travelled, and well read.
Dark curls. Thick beard. Deep eyes
I long to lure and hold.
Scholar.
Doctor.
Gentleman.
Mine.
Oh, yes.
I’m done with Johnny.
Besides, the hunt is far more exciting.
according to Phoebe
A P h o e b e S i g h t i n g
Miss Tessa sip her lemonade, eyeballing the dinner guest
while he talk to Master and Missus.
I can tell she like the look of him.
He young. He handsome, I suppose,
sitting there in his red vest,
his dark hair slicked back,
looking like a spring robin.
One that gots no idea the cat be on the prowl.
“But, Dr. Bergman,” Miss Tessa say,
as I tip the water jug over his cup,
“it seems a long journey just to see some silly old birds.”
That Doctor Birdman, open his sketchbook
right on the table.
He say some big words like
ornery-thollow-gee.
But I don’t hear nothing when I see his drawings.
Birds pecking. Birds preening. Birds nesting.
Every one so real, they’d fly right off the sheet.
I don’t know what kind of doctor he be,
but he surely is a watcher.
If he can draw like that, he see,
really see them,
like I do.
“Phoebe!” Missus snap.
And I realize the cup is full,
water spilling out my jug all over the table.
Before it spoil the book,
before it spill in Doctor Birdman’s lap,
I grab the napkins and mop it up.
“Thank you,” he smile, “Phoebe.”
I swear, I near about dropped that jug right there.
Master have a lot of visitors
and I serve every one.
I flit in and out with food and drinks,
or flap that big feather fan,
or perch in my corner until they need me.
I’s always invisible.
But that Doctor Birdman, he see me.
He looking right at me.
Right in me.
And I just want to disappear.
“She’d apologize,” Miss Tessa say,
“but Phoe
be can’t talk. Still, she does a good chignon, wouldn’t you say?”
She pat her hair. Wait.
“It’s lovely,” Doctor Birdman say, and she blush,
like she done it herself.
“My Phoebe also has a way with birds. Healed its wing,” Miss Tessa brag,
pointing at Yellowbird’s cage in the corner.
“Too bad it’s as mute as she is,” Miss Tessa add,
like it my fault the bird don’t sing.
Everybody laugh.
But me and Yellowbird,
we just watch.
according to Phoebe
H a t c h i n g a P l a n
“A bird lover,” Doctor Birdman say,
“Excellent! Ever see a Cedar Waxwing?”
They all looking at me now.
Miss Tessa. Master. The Missus.
I don’t know what he talking about—
my eyes look at the door.
Surely Bea need me in the kitchen right this minute.
“Answer him, girl,” the Missus say, her eyes cold.
“Yes or no.”
I shrug.
Birdman smile at me. “It sounds like this.” He whistle.
Bzee-bzee!
Oh, I know them. I nod.
I know where they is.
“Wonderful!” Birdman say.
“I’d love to see them while I’m here.”
“Phoebe will take you,” Master say. “Won’t you, girl?”
Missus smile. But it don’t reach her eyes,
it wallow on the bottom of her face like water in a rowboat.
Master tell Doctor Birdman
that I’ll be his guide,
that I know’d the woods,
that I know all about Virginian birding,
and that the doctor won’t leave Whitehaven
unsatisfied.
Doctor Birdman keep his eyes on me,
his smile stretching wide his black beard.
My nerves start pecking like a chick in the egg.
according to Master
B l o w i n g S m o k e
“What made you choose Whitehaven for your research?” Tessa asks.
“Well, of course he’d stop here,” I say.
“Any researcher worth his snuff
knows that Whitehaven is the cream of the Virginian crop.”
I nod at Phoebe who fetches the humidor, as always,
to offer me a cigar from the cherrywood box.
Then Bergman.
“I don’t smoke,” he apologizes.
“Of course you do,” I cut and light mine.
Hand it to him.
“You’ve just never tried the best. Right from my fields.”
He hesitates and takes it. Drags. Coughs.
He wasn’t lying. He doesn’t smoke.
Hell, he grips it like a pencil.
“Like this.” I take another. “You’re going to draw from it—not with it.”
The ashy tip reddens as I suck and savor,
a smoky halo ringing my head.
“Whitehaven tobacco—the richest.
Be sure to put that in your book.”
“But it’s about birds, Father,” Tessa says.
“Of Virginia,” I add. “Besides,
it’s high time you northerners
got a proper taste of the south.”
I smile, take the small vial of tiny brown seed
from my pocket,
raise it, finger on the corked end, thumb on the other.
“My great-great-granddaddy built all this
from tiny seeds like these.”
Bergman nods, draws on the brown tip.
“Five generations of seeding, pruning, harvesting, curing—
hundreds upon hundreds of slaves
working dusk to dawn
to make you that there cigar.
Now that’s something, ain’t it?”
But all Bergman does
is cough.
according to Master
F i v e G e n e r a t i o n s
To grow strong leaves, prune the flowers and small buds.
To dry strong tobacco, cure it in the barn for a few weeks.
To manage strong slaves, bridle them with fear early on.
My daddy passed on everything he knew
about running a plantation
and on his deathbed, he gave me one last thing:
a vial of seed.
Every Master Duncan carried one tucked in his pocket
just like his daddy,
and his before that,
all the way back to Great-great-granddaddy,
the first Duncan, fresh from Scotland,
the one who built all this from nothing
but a handful of hardy seed
and a will of iron grit.
A reminder, my daddy said, closing my hand around a vial
of the Duncan fortitude,
the Duncan fortune,
and the duty of the Duncan who bears it
for the next generation.
Soil, seed, slave—nothing changes, son.
But he’s wrong.
The times are changing.
North turns on South.
Slave against Master.
There’s talk of war.
I am the first Duncan in five generations
who has no son.
But I blame Maggie.
After all, it was her jealousy
that shut me out when she was fertile.
I am the first Duncan in five generations
whose land is spent.
But I blame Brutus.
After all, it was his suggestion
that we seed fields that should lay fallow.
I need more money for more land—
and Bergman is the key.
He has to be.
Else I will be the first Duncan in five generations
to be the last.
according to Bea
S w e e t a n d S o u r
“Shad know them woods better than anyone,”
I say that morning.
“He should be the guide.”
Phoebe shrug and pack the sandwiches.
We both know that fool couldn’t track a chicken in a coop.
She reaches and takes down a bottle from the top shelf.
I notice, then, how tall she’s getting,
like a slender sapling,
how even with that scar running cheek to jawbone
she’s a beauty.
Missus still thinks
beauty come from ruffles and ringlets,
or the whiteness of your skin.
Years ago, she tried to spoil Phoebe
by cutting the outside,
but it don’t change
what’s inside.
What is.
Missus wanted to send Phoebe to work the fields
after Ruthie gone.
But I make Master Duncan his favorite, sugar pie,
and I ask him:
Master, I say.
Phoebe is no field slave.
That life would surely kill her.
Give her to me. I take care of her, like she’s my own.
I teach her how to make your sugar pie
for when Old Bea can’t no more.
And when Missus stomp her foot
and throw a hissy at the table that night,
I smile in the kitchen.
’Cause I know my Master.
When she serving bitter, sour words,
he choose sugar, any day.
according to Bea
M y P h o e b e
“And who gonna do your chores now?” I grumble. “Me?”
I’s angry, all right,
but not about the work.
I rest my hand on Phoebe’s arm. “You heed old Bea,
stay with Miss Tessa.”
Phoebe nod. Her honey eyes full of serious.
I shake my head. “Ain’t nothing good com
e of being alone with a white man.”
I know she don’t want to go. She scared.
But that’s a good thing.
Scared make us look.
Scared make us listen.
Scared make us run.
It’s the nature-knowing that saves us.
You gotta listen to scared.
“Come here now, chicken.” I gather her in,
wrap my thick arms around,
nestle her safe under my wing.
wishing I could keep her there.
When Missus cut my Phoebe’s face with the knife,
I stitch her up.
And when Missus cut my Phoebe’s back with the strap,
I cool her welts.
And when Missus cut my Phoebe down
with all the hate in her bitter soul,
I raise her up.
Time and time again,
I raise that girl
with all the love I got left in me to give.
“Beatrice!” Missus call from the front room.
I stiffen and let go.
“Get gone now. Silly child.”
I hand Phoebe the heavy basket
and shove her to the back door.
“Poor you, gotta go walk in the sunshine
and listen to the birds,
while Old Bea working over a hot stove …”
And step by step,
she walk away from me.
This must be how mother birds feel
when they shove their babies out of the nest
into a world of dangers.
according to Phoebe
R e s c u e
Shad always talk to me like we conversating.
Like he know what I might say.
Most times, he right.
“Don’t go too far, now,” he tease,
as I walk out the back yard with my basket.
“I don’t want to have to come rescue you.”
I look at him.
If anybody need rescuing, it’s Shad.
Didn’t Will pull his fool self outta the swamp
when he near drown in it?
Didn’t Will kill the snake that had him and Charlie
cornered in the barn, squealing like two piglets?
Didn’t Will carry him home
when he turned his ankle on his so-called hunt?
I look at his ankle, still sore from two weeks back.
Shad wag his finger at me.
“I know what you thinking—
but I caught you pheasant, didn’t I?
And I know how my Phoebe like pheasant.”
The Gospel Truth Page 2