The Gospel Truth
Page 5
with Doctor Birdman,
without Miss Tessa.
according to Phoebe
A l o n e W i t h D o c t o r B i r d m a n
I do like Bea say:
I lead Doctor Birdman where he wanna go,
deep in the thick of the wood.
But I keep my distance.
And while he keeping an eye on the treetops,
I be keeping an eye on him.
We stop for lunch and I set up his picnic, like always.
Roast chicken leg, potato salad, and Bea’s lemonade.
And when he sit down to eat,
I perch on a fallen log
out of reach,
where I can see him,
and pick at my cornbread.
according to Phoebe
M o m m a ’ s B i r d s
Doctor Birdman lie on the blanket in the shade,
say he gonna take a nap.
It sure is something hot,
even the birds quiet now,
sheltered in the shadows,
saving their songs to sing the sun down.
He must like the quiet here, just like me.
’Cause he sure ain’t getting none back at the Big House.
Not with all the Duncans chirping at him
all his waking hours.
I wait until he snoring
and then I sneak away
to where I can’t hear him snore no more,
to where I hear them,
Momma’s birds,
calling my name.
according to Phoebe
P e a n u t s
I sneak my jar of peanuts outta the hidey-hole and sit
under the hollow tree,
breathing slow,
listening to the cicadas creak and buzz in the hot air.
The jar almost full.
I been collecting peanuts ever since
Momma showed me years ago
where to find them.
Master love his peanuts, she say.
But sometime he so eager to get cracking on the next shell
he forget each one got two nuts inside.
Seem crazy to me to throw away what you want
when it’s sitting right there in your hand.
That first night, after he done,
Momma and me sweep up the mess
he left all around his leather chair.
And back in our small cabin
we sit on our dirt floor and sort through the heap
of torn tan husks and dark skins Master toss away,
’til we find all them half shells that ain’t been cracked.
Each like a tiny egg.
And when I split one open, sure enough,
inside be a perfect peanut.
You see, Phoebe? Momma say.
Just ’cause the Master don’t want it,
don’t mean it ain’t good.
Everything the good Lord made
got a purpose.
according to Phoebe
A S o n g f o r M e
Momma and me, we filled half the jar that night.
I’s so excited—I just wanted to eat them all.
But Momma say, Wait.
The next day, she take me by one hand
and the jar in the other
and lead me out here.
She put one nut in my small palm and hold it out.
Be still, she say.
I don’t know what she at,
I just wanna eat that peanut.
Why she teasing me?
Then a small bird
hover over us,
flitting this way and that,
deciding if we belong.
I stays still as a stalk,
watch his wings flutter, watch him swoop down,
grip my pinkie like a perch in his little back claws.
Head tilting,
he watch me with that black bead eye,
ruffle his brown tail,
settle his wings.
Up close, I see he ain’t just a bird,
he a million perfect little feathers,
a curious mind,
and a tiny soul pitter-patting in his cotton-boll chest.
He peck that peanut,
pinch it in his black nib beak
and, just like that,
he gone,
swooping back to the branch of the hollow tree.
Wide-eyed, I look at Momma.
We watch that little brown bird eat that peanut
and before he go, he sing for us.
Fee-bee! Fee-bee!
“He saying my name, Momma,” I whisper,
sure my soul about to burst out my small chest.
“Did you hear?”
Momma smile at me,
tears in her eyes.
And I know she heard it, too.
All these years I been sifting through Master’s shells
and saving up the peanuts.
Sure the birds like them.
But the truth is,
I’d dig through a thousand shells for just one nut
to hear Momma’s birds
sing my name.
according to Doctor Bergman
T w o P h o e b e s
Time is running out.
I must make my move.
Soon.
Now.
After all, Phoebe and I are finally alone.
Who knows when that might happen again?
I leave the picnic blanket and easily follow her trail:
bent twigs, footprints, crushed blades.
She’s quiet,
but not invisible.
Will she do what I ask—
or will she run and tell her Master?
That is always the risk, I suppose.
Choosing a mute this time,
might work to my advantage.
Tracking her through the dense wood,
I come to a clearing.
In the center stands the trunk of a long dead tree
stripped of bark and branch,
smooth and hollowed with time.
At its base sits Phoebe:
legs crossed,
arm out like a slender branch,
hand cupped like a small brown nest.
A tiny bird flits between the tree and her hand:
Eastern Phoebe.
Common, really.
And yet, in the dappled light of the lush wood,
I consider the bird,
the girl,
the moment.
Rare Phoebe sightings:
the wary bird, so at ease around a human.
the nervous girl, so at home in the wood.
The bird sings.
The girl smiles.
And I realize,
I have never seen anything
so beautiful.
according to Phoebe
O u r L i t t l e S e c r e t
Birdman awake when I get back.
He look at me strange.
Or maybe it just strange that he look at me.
I like it better when I’s invisible.
Nothing good ever come outta being noticed.
“Phoebe.” He step toward me.
I step back.
“I’m glad we’re out here alone.” He smile.
I don’t.
“I was hoping you might do me a favor.”
He don’t take his eyes off me.
My heart flapping in my chest—
Get away! Get away!
“You can’t tell anyone—” he say,
“not even Shad or Beatrice.
It has to be …
our little secret.”
according to Phoebe
T h e P r o m i s e
“Can you do that, Phoebe,
can you keep a secret?”
He come closer.
Close enough to grab me.
But he don’t.
“I trust you,” he say, “because, well,
b
ecause the birds trust you.”
He sit on the trunk beside me.
And I let go of the breath I’s been holding.
“I need to talk to one of the slaves. But not just any slave.
He needs to be someone strong,
someone the others respect.”
He watching me, close.
“Someone,” he say, “who maybe tried to escape before?”
He tilt his head.
“Do you know someone like that, Phoebe?”
I nod.
“Wonderful.” Birdman smile.
“Tonight I need you to bring him
to the hollow tree
where you feed the birds. Can you do that?”
He know about my tree?
What else he know?
“I promise to keep your secrets safe.” He hold out his hand.
“Will you do the same for me?”
I swallow and nod.
Shake inside as I shake his hand.
But when a white man ask for something—
what else you gonna do?
according to Phoebe
D r a w n
Birdman open his pad to his last page.
My breath catch.
It’s Momma,
sitting by the hollow tree,
smiling as one of her fee-bee birds
takes a peanut from her hand.
She beautiful.
Just like I remembered her.
I look at him like he some kind of voodoo—
drawing birds so real, I swear I hear them sing,
drawing memories outta my head and
Momma right out of my heart.
I look back at the picture
drawn to her face, her smile, the scar tracing her cheek,
realizing
it ain’t Momma—
it’s me.
according to Shad
S t o r m C o m i n g
I don’t like that Bird Doctor.
No, sir.
I seen him watching Phoebe, when no one else is looking.
And just like how Bea know when a storm’s coming,
I know
deep in my bones,
something just ain’t right.
So when Bea say they’s going in the woods alone,
I follows them.
I see him sneak and spy on Phoebe,
draw her, even, from where he hide in the bush.
Who do that, I ask you?
Now, maybe he is a bird doctor and maybe he ain’t.
Alls I know for sure is that
it ain’t the birds he after.
When he move in close to my Phoebe,
whisper secrets,
take her hand,
I’s about ready to explode outta them bushes
like a crack o’ lightning.
Only he let go
and show her his book.
Yes.
Storm’s a-coming.
Only, just like Bea,
no one gonna believe me
until they caught up in it.
And by then,
it too late.
according to Phoebe
A G i f t
I tuck Birdman’s drawing inside my mind,
hide it deep.
He got a gift, that Birdman.
And he gave me one, too.
’Cause his drawing
remind me of who Momma was.
But more than that,
it remind me of who I is.
according to Master
B r o k e
I’ve got hundreds of tobacco sticks loaded with leaves,
ready for curing,
just lying where they left them in the fields.
Damn those lazy Negroes.
Brutus needs to crack the whip,
lay down the law,
pick up the slack,
motivate them!
Clearly, they aren’t working hard enough,
or fast enough.
And none of them is smart enough to see:
every leaf is like a dollar.
I won’t stand by while my money
wilts and withers in the hot sun.
I need all the muscle I’ve got in the Quarter,
so I let Will out.
The stubborn mule,
he isn’t broke yet,
but the way things are going,
if I don’t get this harvest in,
I might be.
according to Phoebe
H o t W a t e r
When I’s done rolling rags in Miss Tessa’s hair
and she done calling me for this or that,
I lie on my straw bed in the dark hall outside her door
as the Big House sigh and settle itself to sleep.
But I can’t—
my mind bubbles and boils like soup.
Maybe it a trick.
Maybe Birdman just want to get me alone
in the woods at night.
But
we already was alone;
he coulda done what he liked had he a mind to.
Besides, this time, I’d be bringing Will.
No, it ain’t about me.
Birdman want words with a slave.
But
how come he need to speak to someone like Will?
and what he got to say
that can’t be said in day light?
and why he need me to bring him?
I can’t do it.
I won’t.
Secret words ain’t allowed.
But
ain’t I got my own?
Birdman know about my tree—
maybe he know about my secret words, too.
If I don’t go,
Birdman gonna tell Master I can read and write.
If I do go,
Master gonna find out I’s sneaking out at night.
Either way,
I be pickled, peeled, and locked away forever.
Or worse,
sold down south.
Alls I know is,
I’s in hot water.
according to Phoebe
W h i p p o o r w i l l
Come midnight,
the moon just a sliver in the sky,
I creep down to the Quarters,
past forty ramshackle huts and sheds
as tired and weary as the field folk inside.
The whole world sleeping,
’cept for me
and that whippoorwill calling in the dark.
I tiptoe to the last shack where
Will’s snores rumbling out loud and clear.
Even when the door groan open,
them five or six men sleep on like the dead,
spent from a long day’s labor.
In a few hours, Brutus be blowing that horn,
getting them up long before that rooster wake the sun.
Will so big,
even in the dim light of the cabin
I know which one is his
slumped shadow.
I tiptoe over, touch his arm, and he wake.
“Phoebe? What’s wrong?”
I wave for him to follow me.
And he do,
yawning and scratching his back.
I s’pose his scars and scabs still trouble him some.
“What kinda trouble that Shad got he’self in now?”
Will grumbles,
as I lead him into the dark wood.
Only Shad ain’t the one in danger this time.
Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will!
That nightbird know as plain as I do what gonna happen
to Will,
to both of us,
if Master find out.
according to Phoebe
N i g h t W h i s p e r s
Will freeze beside me when he see
it ain’t Shad
waiting in the clearing by the hollow tree.
It Birdman.
Will crouch, try to pull
me down,
but I shake my head
and wade into the puddle of moonlight,
leaving Will where he hide.
Birdman nod at me, walk over to the bushes, and stop.
“Knowledge is the key to your cage,”
he whisper at the leaves.
“Get any men you trust
and meet here tomorrow at midnight.”
Will don’t move. Don’t make a sound.
Even when Birdman turn
and disappear into the shadow of the woods.
I wonder if Will gone, too—
’til he burst through the bushes
and grab me,
fingers like iron shackles on my skinny arms.
“What you tell him?” he say, rattling me.
I never seen Will so angry.
I shake my head.
I never say nothing to nobody, he know that.
He frown. “Why he ask for me?”
I shrug. I ain’t about to tell him
that it was me that chose Will.
“Don’t you know how dangerous this is, Phoebe?
What Master would do?”
My eyes fill up.
I nod slowly.
I know.
Lord, I know what we risking just by being here.
He let go, rub his hands on his head,
look at the darkness around us,
then back at me.
“This never happened.
We never here.
I don’t want nothing to do with that white man,” he say
before he storm away.
Will is terrifying when he mad.
but I know he ain’t angry with me,
not really.
Big Will scared.
For both of us.
And I swear, that is even more terrifying.
according to Phoebe
P e a P o d s
I sit in the kitchen shelling pea pods,
thinking on what Birdman whisper to Will last night;
peeling back what he say
to get at what he really mean.
But alls I got is more questions:
How can knowledge be a key?
And to what cage—
Will already free from the curing barn,
and you don’t even need a key for that.
Far as I know,
storehouse the only building that’s locked,