Tonka Creek was perfect for another reason. It didn’t have a resident preacher. Among the white population, various townsmen assumed the pulpit made by draping a cloth over the counter of the General Store every Sunday and painted pictures of hell-fire and damnation.
The Negroes convened in different homes each Sabbath, but followed the same practice of rotating ministry. Cain hired himself out to one of the white farmers who was a cut above a sharecropper and exchanged his great strength in the fields for his daily keep and a bed in the barn. In the evenings, he applied himself to gaining the acceptance of the local Negroes.
He attended the black services for several Sundays before he made his first move. Then he volunteered to preach.
He brought the house down. Within a month, he was the exclusive speaker at the black Sunday services. Within two months, he’d moved those services down to the banks of Tonka Creek.
“God made dis world,” he expounded. “De whole world His house. How much mo’ He like de’ sound of worship out in His biggest house den in four walls of wood?”
The population considered this and found it good.
“Every day God’s day,” Cain proclaimed. “Not just Sundays. We labor long durin’ de days, to earn our bread with de sweat of our brows, and dat’s right, dat’s proper, ‘cause man walked out of Eden under his own power, too stupid to pay attention to de words of de Lord, but we got our nights, doan we? Can’t we give him a night or two to raise our voices in praise down by de beauty of dese woods and creeks he done give us?”
The population considered this and found it admirable.
“Christ broke bread wid his followers,” Cain preached, “An' shared de wine. We do de same, but we doan do it often ‘nuff. What we got do we not got each other and Christ’s love?”
“Yeah, Lord!” chanted Cain’s congregation. “Praise God!”
They loved the wafers Cain provided for the partaking of Christ’s bread. Smoking was a tool of the devil, everybody knew that, but thanks to his deceased professor, Cain knew there was an amazing plant with leaves that could be rolled and smoked or dried and crumbled into baked goods.
They became downright attached to the drinks Cain passed down their ranks, the ones he distilled from certain mushrooms and growths of wood fungi. The world expanded in bright and wondrous colors. Occasionally, one of their ranks rose and shouted of great dangers, of huge, segmented worms crawling down trees, rivers rising and swirling with blood, strange beasts standing on their hind legs that tore and rendered sinners asunder. The congregation loved these visions of Armageddon. God would smite the world and only the blessed would be spared.
Cain sat back and smiled. One night he brought two newborn calves to the creek banks. Sheep would have been better, symbolically speaking, but sheep weren’t that common in the flat Mississippi farmlands. He stood at the head of the congregation, putty in his hands, already drunk from his special Communion. He shouted for attention.
“Christ say, ‘I be de light of the world, de blood of de lamb! How we tell Him we understan’ Him doan we drink His blood?” A machete of wicked proportions flashed, slitting the calves’ throats. Specially picked acolytes caught the brightly spurting blood in waiting vessels and passed it down the ranks.
Most of the congregation grabbed the crude goblets passing down the rows and drank with the fervor of new converts. A few of them glanced at this new Communion with horror, passing the goblets to their neighbors quickly. One or two of them even dared to rise and leave. Cain marked these people in his memory.
In the early hours of the morning, fire bloomed in three separate houses. No one ever rose and departed one of Cain’s services again.
The evening gatherings increased in frequency. Cain began to appear barechested, his great shoulders draped with necklaces and amulets of bone.
“I be Cain!” he proclaimed. “’An all us knows de story of Cain, how Cain tilled de earth and made his offerin’ to God! An' God turn his face away from him to Abel, de keeper of sheep. He like Abel’s offering, but Cain, de sweat of his brow, it not be good ‘nuff. ‘An when Cain rose up in righteousness and slew Abel, de Lord laid de blame on Cain, never seein’ nor carin’ dat he’d done turned his light from him. He make his mark on Cain and sent him out to de world, and dat mark, it set Cain and all his peoples apart from de rest of de world. An' dat mark, it be blackness!”
Cain didn’t know if this interpretation of the Biblical mark branding Cain was accurate, but since it suited his purposes perfectly, he didn’t care.
“We carry dat mark, and we de ones suffer for it, when all de time, it be God’s fault! God’s I say! What we done to make us de slaves of de white man? You say we ain’t slaves no mo’ but I tell you, we is! Jest’ de same as it wus when we in chains. An' whose fault be dat? Ours? I tell you truly! It be God’s ! De white man’s God, him what done turn his face away from us. But dat doan matter no mo! Do it? I say, do it?”
“’Doan matter!” chanted Cain’s followers. “Doan matter no mo’!”
“No! It doan matter ‘cause dey be other gods! I say to you, dere be other gods, darker and mo’ powerful den any God made in de white man’s image, and dose gods, dey be de ones whut can make us strong!”
“Strong!” chanted the crowd, hypnotized by powerful homemade hallucinogens, drunk on the scent of the blood rising from the slaughtered calves, enthralled by the power of Cain’s gospel. Their lot in life was preordained, set upon them by a vengeful god who’d looked askance at the offerings made by the original Cain. Nothing they did would ever be good enough for a white man’s god. They wondered why they’d never seen that before, why they’d never realized there were other gods, better gods, gods who recognized their worthiness.
“An’ dese gods, what we need to do? What they want? How we show ‘em we worthy o’ dere notice?”
“Blood!” chanted the crowd. “De power be blood!”
“De power be blood!” affirmed Cain. “An’ de power be in us! In each one of us! In de men, when de sight of a woman turn us hard and powerful, when we take a woman and ram our way into her, when we plant our seed! In de women, in dere dark and secret center, dat can drain de strength out of de strongest man and leave him limp as last year’s cornstalk, weak and gaspin’ to catch his breath! In de strength dat make new flesh and blood from man’s power when it meets woman’s! De white man’s god, he say dat power bad when it used without his leave. We gots to hide dat power an’ not never use it without his say so! Do dat be right? Dat de greatest power whut we has be hid under cover of sheets and blankets? Dat we’s got to have his permission—I say his permission! To be men and women like de smallest child not be allowed to wander from his yard without his mama’s leave?”
“No!” roared the crowd. “Dat not be right! Dat not be right a’tall!”
“Den let’s show de white man’s god our power!” roared Cain, and so they did. The crowd shed their clothes and writhed and rolled in frenzied couplings, dizzy from the unexpected freedom of sexual release. The sounds of animal rutting filled the night. No one retained enough clarity of vision to inspect the closest available partner. Brother took sister, father took daughter, best friend took best friend’s wife. Cain stood back. He smiled. It was good. It was very good.
In the next week, Cain moved the saga of Tonka Creek to its ultimate conclusion. He stood before his acolytes, waving his representative figures fashioned from dried corn shucks.
“An’ who profits from us? From us who wuz cast down by de white man’s god to be forever without his favor? To wander de earth with de mark of Cain on our face? I ask you? Who?”
“De white man!” chanted the crowd. “De white man!”
“An’ now, my brothers and sisters, now dat I done showed you de true way, de true light, de true power, de true gods! I say now, what you goan do ‘bout it? Is you goan stay, livin’ in yo’ shacks and scrounging de’ white man’s field for yo' bread? Is you? I say, is you?”
“No! No mo’
! No mo’!”
“An’ how you gone escape, my peoples? Does you know?”
“Tell us! Tell us!”
“Wid dese!” roared Cain. He held the corn shuck figures draped in rags scavenged from local clotheslines. “Wid dese!”
Cain bent and twisted the limbs of the figures into contortions no real limbs of flesh and blood could assume.
“Dey at yo’ mercy, my peoples! Go! Go and reap de harvest I done sown for you!”
The people raced out into the night to the outlying farms of the white farmers. When they arrived at their destinations, they watched in wonder while the white oppressors rolled and writhed in agony, limbs contorted and broken, blood spilling onto the floors.
Cain appeared, moving his way through the crowd.
“I say reap de harvest, my peoples! Reap yo’ harvest!”
They poured through the houses, using handy knives, heavy furniture, their bare hands. Torches flew through the air and a great and terrible burning filled the night. When morning came, Tonka Creek held only black and smoldering remains and a confused and baffled group of Negroes. They looked around in wonderment, bewildered at the smoking carnage. Their nerve ends screamed as the residues of Cain’s communion offerings slowly dissipated form their systems.
“My, my,” Cain mused, as he put as many miles as possible between him and the great wonders he’d wrought. His pockets were stuffed with all the ready cash he could carry, scavenged from the houses of blacks and whites alike.
“Ain’t dey goan be hurting when dey figures out dey can’t make dat stuff by demselves!”
A trace of the mad cackle of his bayou professor echoed in his laughter. “Dey need some when de white folkses come into town from Twin City. Yea, Lord, dey need some den!” He regretted he wouldn’t be around to watch the hangings.
Chapter Twenty
In the days that followed, tension hung heavy over the middle Mississippi flatlands. The whites started at every footfall, expecting a bloodbath around every corner. The blacks walked in terror, afraid some innocent action would be misinterpreted and bring white vengeance down around their heads. And while the Mississippi flatlands trembled, the instrument of Tonka Creek’s destruction passed over the Mississippi border into Alabama.
Cain thought hard on how to obtain the best bang from the lessons learned during the seven months he’d spent in Tonka Creek. Appearances were everything. Folks were fascinated by mysteries. So how to make himself even more mysterious? He remembered the great and glowing colors that bloomed in the wake of his homemade potions. Colors had power. Numbers had power, too. Like seven. He’d waited seven long years for deliverance from the cane fields of that Louisiana prison camp. Cane fields. Damn, that was funny just by itself right there. He’d taken Tonka Creek in seven months. In his ears, his mad bayou professor asked over and over, be you de sebbenth son of a sebbenth son, boy?
He walked up to a little backwoods Alabama black church. Seven Cedars Baptist. It stood right outside Seven Cedars, Alabama. He laughed. Be you de sebbenth son of a sebbenth son, boy? Well, maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. Sounded good, though. He went inside to join the ongoing service. Within a month, he’d collected a group of ten or so of the black community’s finest young men. He met with them down by the banks of Seven Cedar Creek.
“My name be Cain,” he announced. “An’ my color be sebben.”
* * *
Reverend Jackson Dennard was a pain in Cain’s posterior that had to go. Brother Dennard kept a weather eye out on the congregation of Seven Cedars. He bounced jauntily in and out of his flock’s homes in his spare time, a habit Cain found most annoying. Within a few weeks, Reverend Dennard found himself gripped with a low and unrelenting fever. It wasn’t bad enough to drop him in his tracks, but it tired him out. He spent his spare time in bed, attempting to fight off the low heat turning his bones to ground glass.
Reverend Dennard unwillingly became the first permanent member of Cain’s entourage. His flock dismembered him in the circle of oak trees down in the deep woods behind his church, Cain’s first human sacrifice. An exhilarating experience that Cain promised himself to repeat whenever possible. He strung a fine length of chain through the hole he bored in the top of the meticulously cleaned skull and hung it from the limb of one of the sweet gum trees standing as outpost for the meeting place.
He didn’t do it often, but this was a special occasion. So Cain drank from his own potions and invoked his dark gods in a special ceremony. Misshapen creatures, bat-like of body and demonic of face, flew out of nowhere, swooping and swirling above the congregation. One of them settled on top of Reverend Dennard’s skull and melted itself down over it. An eerie blue light glowed from the bone and red sparked from the eye sockets.
“Our sentry!” roared Cain. “De disbelievers, dey serve us yet, to deliver dere warning do any of our enemies draw nigh!”
Seven Cedars fell in seven months. Cain looked back on his work, pausing now and then in his flight to turn and savor the flames flickering behind him. His pockets were full, his expertise increasing. Reverend Dennard’s skull rested in his saddlebag. Sentries were very handy. In fact, he’d need more. Bigger things were coming.
* * *
He rode south, towards the Alabama Gulf coast, and nine months later he rode away from the smoldering ruins of Tarper, heading northeast towards the Chattanooga River and the Georgia border. Three more skulls joined Reverend Dennard’s in his saddlebags, one to face each direction. Two of these belonged to white men who’d dared walk among shadows where white men weren’t meant to walk.
He stopped briefly in a valley on the Alabama-Georgia border. He considered briefly and regretfully shook his head. Too close. He needed to go much further into Georgia, into the interior. Did he want another small town, a mid-sized target, a small city?
He shrugged. What the hell? He wandered into a general store and asked for a map of Georgia. He closed his eyes and placed his finger on the map. When he opened them, his finger was almost squarely in the center of the state.
“Suh!” Cain motioned the store clerk over. Reading wasn’t one of the subjects studied with the mad bayou professor. “Whut dis town be?”
“Macon,” the clerk advised.
Macon. Cain frowned. One of the larger cities in the state. Centrally located. A railroad depot of considerable traffic. Was he ready? For something that big? But hell, it was a rich little city. There’d be many Negro servants serving many well-to-do white families, large farms spreading out from the city limits. And the Ocmulgee River. Cain was very partial to creeks and rivers.
He laughed. Oh, why not? Why the hell not?
He rode out of that Alabama valley astride the finest horse he’d ever ridden. He turned his face east. In early February, 1888, he rode into Macon, Georgia. He spent several days touring, passing the time of day with the Negro inhabitants, and before the week was out, he knew where he needed to be on Sabbath next. St. Barnabas.
It wouldn’t be easy, but it was doable. And he needed a challenge, challenges kept folks on their toes. Of course, Reverend Gorley, he was a big problem. Reverend Gorley was much better educated than the unfortunate Reverend Dennard. Had a whole lot of personal charisma himself, too. But it could be done. Oh, yes, it could be done.
* * *
Cain moved slower in Macon. Bigger town, more sophisticated audience. He hadn’t even held one of his special Communions yet. So far, nothing had gone on at the river meetings that couldn’t take place in full public view. Reverend Gorley’d been having headaches from hell, but that was the extent of Cain’s preparations so far. But tonight he’d brought some of those wafers and drinks his prior congregations loved so much. Time to step things up a notch or three.
Joshua’s friends settled him down beside them in the semi-circle gathered around the campfire. Cain strode to the center of the group and took the stage. His eyes checked the attendants. Three newcomers. Good, that was good. Slow and steady. The summer was young.
/> “My brothers and sisters,” he began. “I be pleased to see y’all tonight, out in de beauty of God’s world, not all cramped up and hid from his sight in de walls of de church. Now y’all knows how I value de church, but surely He loves to hear our voices raised in praise out in His great and beautiful world.”
“Amen! Amen!”
“So c’mon! Raise our voices in praise of His great works!”
The gathering dusk filled with low and melodious voices blending in simple harmony. When the last notes had died away, Cain raised a bottle.
“Christ broke bread with His disciples. He shared de wine, and ‘fore He went to his Glory, He told ‘em, dis is my body. Dis is my blood.”
“Praise de Lord!”
“An’ we share His body and His blood, we do dat to dis day, and brothers and sisters, we find such love and happiness here together by dis riverbank, could dere be a better place to join with Christ? So, brothers and sisters, it please me greatly do you do dat now, here with me.”
“Praise God!”
The young people eagerly passed his Communion wine and specially baked wafers down their ranks. Cain grinned as their eyes widened, as the world expanded in their vision, as the great and glowing colors bloomed. He’d never get tired of watching this. It signaled the beginning of his rule.
Cain spoke steadily, his deep voice soft and melodious, but he knew his words didn’t really matter. Right now, nobody here either knew or cared what he said. They were floating, floating, on clouds of crimson and purple, soaring over the riverbanks.
Joshua rode a huge white stallion towards the newly risen moon. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he should be scared shitless. The effort just wasn’t worth the trouble. He urged his phantom mount higher. He heard Cain’s voice, soothing and soft, but it was only meaningless noise. It seemed he’d only arrived at the riverbank when Abe pulled his arm and hauled him to his feet. He was mildly resentful of the interruption. He’d passed the moon and was on his way to the stars.
Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) Page 11