“There’s more of ’em than I thought,” I whispered to her.
She turned to me with a face as calm as still water. “So what?”
I stared at her, forgetting everything else. Then I leaned over and kissed her, and focused back on the road.
The mob was close now. We could smell the burning torches from where we were hidden. The crowd became more and more excited as they approached Talbert’s property. Talbert, Bradley, Reverend Lewis, and the Governor led the crowd. They walked with purpose, feeling as if they were a part of something important.
Reverend Lewis was the first to see the object in the distance, sitting in the middle of the road.
My eyes watered as my mind went back to two hours ago.
“Mo...Mo...Moses...”
Roka had tugged at me, pulling the cuff of my pants to get my attention amongst all that was going on. I’d kneeled all the way down, putting my face almost to the dirt to hear him.
“No...no...long...now...”
I reached out to grab Roka’s hand, and he yanked me over to him with a strength that wasn’t his own.
“Last...last wish...”
“Anything, Roka. Whatever you want man.”
He shared his request with me, and I denied it. But he gripped my arm until the circulation stopped, and wouldn’t let it go until I agreed.
Crouched in the brush, I began to say a prayer for Roka, but I stopped. He didn’t need it.
“What is that?”
Reverend Lewis drew everyone’s attention to the object in the road, and tension began to build. The pace of the mob slowed, but they continued to inch forward. Not knowing what to expect, most of them had come prepared for anything, and the men, women and children pulled out rifles and muskets and took aim.
Bradley was the first to recognize the object in the road. “That... that’s that nigger Roka!”
Roka sat in the middle of the road, propped up on a log that we had placed behind him. The rifle we had given him shook in his hand, but he kept his promise. He wouldn’t let his spirit go until he’d fired his shot.
“Look here, nigger!” the Governor yelled out. They were close enough now for Roka to hear them clearly. “Drop that damn gun, or we’ll...”
It seemed like the bullet hit the Governor before the sound came. His large body fell back against the man behind him.
“Kill that nigger!”
Countless guns began firing all at the same time, and Roka’s body shook as the bullets filled in every space in his body. I turned my head away and bit my lip, desperately trying to stop my tears before any of the men and women around me saw them. But Roka’s spirit scolded me, and I lifted my head and witnessed my mentor’s death. When the bullets finally stopped, half of Roka’s head was gone.
He sat there, in the middle of the road, with half a skull and a smile on his face.
“Goddamn nigg—!”
Bradley never had the chance to finish his statement. Sarah and I had split the slaves into two groups, and Sarah had taken hers and positioned them far enough down the road to ensure that they were behind the mob. Anticipating that everyone in the mob would be focusing on Roka being shot in front of them, Sarah had quietly snuck her group out of the brush and behind the group. No sooner had the last shot been fired into Roka, did Sarah’s group, armed with rifles and muskets from the Armory, begin firing into the crowd of white people.
We could hear the shouts of white men and the screams of white women and children clearly from where we were hidden. The plan was for us to wait until the first round of ammo was gone from the guns of the slaves, and then emerge from the brush, but the war had already started, and I couldn’t wait anymore. I jumped out from the brush and sprinted across the road. Everyone at the front of the mob was now turned facing the back, trying to figure out who was firing at the back ranks of their group. The first person to turn around was a young white man, about my age. He had glanced behind him and did a double-take, not believing what he was seeing. I had my gun aimed at his head before he could raise his, and I blew his brains onto Talbert’s shoulder.
The former slaves had taken my cue and run out of the brush on my heels. The men who took aim at me had been shot before they could pull their triggers. Ella had run out behind me as well, and had somehow gotten her hands on two different pistols. She’d killed six men and two women before they knew what had happened.
Everything was chaos now. The war cries of the slaves welcomed the sun into the sky. Gunshots echoed off the trees as slave and slavemaster alike fell dead on the road. The slaves that had run out of ammo had now adorned themselves with hatchets and knives, and were releasing their anger into the hearts and bellies of their enemies. The mob, having nowhere else to run, began frantically dispersing. Any unarmed person ran as fast as they could, praying to reach the woods before they were struck with a blade or a bullet. The slaves and the armed whites killed indiscriminately, screaming bloody murder at each other as they fought to the death. Bodies began to pile up on the ground, and pools of blood began to make clay out of the sandy dirt beneath them.
“MOSES!”
I heard Ella scream my name amongst the pandemonium, and looked around desperately while praying she was still alive. When I found her, she was covered in blood that was not her own. She pointed to two men running toward the big house, and I knew they were Bradley and Talbert.
I’d heard someone once, when describing an encounter they’d had with the police, say that they ran like a runaway slave. As I sprinted after those two white men, I was assured that that wasn’t true.
By the time we reached the front door to the big house, we were close enough for me to stop, take aim, and fire at Bradley. My bullet struck him in the leg, and he limped inside as Ella and I followed. Bradley ducked off to the left, into the living room, while Talbert went right and up the stairs. Ella stopped, spat on the floor, took out her hatchet, and began to follow Talbert up the stairs.
“Ella...”
She turned around and looked at me, and her eyes stopped me cold.
“Either you can get this hatchet,” the demon in her irises told me, “or he can.”
Afraid to speak, I nodded slightly, and she began once more to stalk her prey.
I turned around to find a trail of Bradley’s blood leading behind the couch.
“Bradley!”
I called out for him to show himself, but he stayed hidden.
“Bradley!”
“Goddamn you, nigger! Look what you done!”
“Stand up!”
“I shoulda listened to Mista Talbert...goddamn I shoulda listened to Mista Talbert! I shoulda hung you when I had the chance!”
Talbert screamed off in the distance, and Bradley cringed at the sounds of agony.
“Aw God! Aw God! Aw God!”
“This the last time I’m gonna ask you,” I said. “Stand up!”
Bradley made his way to his feet, struggling, with the bullet in his leg, to stay standing. He looked at me as he limped, fear now overshadowing his contempt.
“You can’t shoot me, nigger....if you shoots me, you goes to hell! You knows that, right? You can’t shoot me, or God’ll damn your soul to hell!”
I shot him in his mouth, hoping maybe he would shut the hell up, but he just kept moaning. So I shot him in the head twice. Then I thought about being locked up in that cage, and I shot him again.
I ran upstairs then, still afraid that Ella might be hurt, although it wasn’t her screaming that reverberated throughout the house. As I walked around the corner, I picked up the pistol that Ella had dropped on the ground, and I was welcomed by the sight of Mrs. Talbert standing in the doorway of the washroom with a rifle of her own in hand. She was facing the inside of the washroom, where it was clear the screaming from Mr. Talbert was coming from, and taking aim at Ella, who was so drunk with murdering Mr. Talbert that she hadn’t even noticed. Without thinking I charged over and tackled Mrs. Talbert, knocking her back into the hallway. I
ran into her hard enough for the rifle to come flying out of her hands, and when we landed on the floor in the hallway, I ended up on top of her. She fought me as I tried to hold her down and stand up at the same time, and finally I let go of the pistol and used all my weight to pin her arms to the floor and keep them there.
She looked up at me with perverted disgust.
“You’re going to rape me, aren’t you, you black heathen nigger? You’re going to rape me, aren’t you?”
I looked at her sideways for a split second, and then let go of her right hand so that I could grab the pistol.
“Naw,” I said, and shot her in the chest.
The screaming coming from the washroom had died down a bit. I had reacted so quickly to seeing Mrs. Talbert that I hadn’t even looked inside. When I did, I wished I hadn’t.
Talbert lay on the floor, covered in blood. His entire body was mutilated. His penis lay on the tile beside his head, like a decoration. Ella sat on the floor, watching him die.
It wasn’t too much longer. When she got up and faced me, the demon was gone from her gaze.
We were walking toward the stairs, when I heard a slight noise behind us. I turned, pistol ready, and ended up pointing the barrel at one of the two Talbert children. The oldest, the boy, stood there with his own rifle in hand, trembling.
I looked at him, and then at his sister, and finally at Ella.
“Go to your room,” I commanded the children, and they ran off and slammed the door behind them.
We made our way down the stairs and into the living room, stepping over Bradley’s dead body. The battle that had started down the road had moved itself, among other places, into Talbert’s front yard. Sarah had just shoved her hatchet into an overseer’s chest, and stood up triumphantly as I looked at her through the window.
I was just in time to watch one of the sheriff’s men come up behind her and cut her throat.
She started to fall with grace as the blood spurted from the opening in her neck. Her eyes remained stuck on me the entire time. She dropped to her knees, her face showing a contentment with the inevitable, and then fell forward onto her face.
I leaned so far out the window that Ella had to grab me to keep me from falling.
“SARAH!”
“I’m going to help her,” Ella said, and ran out of the living room and through the open front door.
The shotgun blast came quick. I knew before I turned around.
“NOOOOOOO! OH GOD NO!”
There she lay, her body forced back against the wall, with a hole in her chest the size of a basketball.
“Nigger! This is the Sheriff! You come out now with your hands up!”
I ran up to the door and slammed it shut. The Sheriff and his men began firing through the door, but I didn’t care. I picked up Ella’s body and carried it into the living room, cradling it as I sat down on the floor.
My tears blurred everything. Gunshots, shouts and cries and curses from people outside, they all bled together. I sat, rocking with the body of the woman I loved, cradled in my arms.
“Why did you bring me here?” I screamed at the sky, demanding an answer from God. “She’s dead! Ella’s dead! Sarah’s dead! Roka’s dead! Why did you do this to me?”
The gunshots stopped, and I heard the faintest whispers.
“What’s his name?”
“Suh?”
“The nigger! What’s his name?”
“Dey says ’is name be Moses, suh.”
A man I took to be the Sheriff cleared his throat.
“Moses! Moses, come out with your hands up! This is the Sheriff!”
It was the first time since I’d woke up in the field that a white man had called me by my actual name.
I looked up at the sky after I’d gotten a hold of myself and nodded.
“Moses! You got until the count of ten, and then we’re coming in!”
I kissed Ella’s face, then gently moved her body to the side. I stood straight—as tall as I could make myself—and walked to the door with my head held high.
“Hands up!”
I slowly raised my hands.
“Is anyone else with you, boy?” The Sheriff was flanked by eleven people. Ten of them were his men, and they stood with their guns trained on me. The eleventh man was Law, one of the field hands I’d stayed with in the slave cabin.
“No,” I said.
“Come down here slow, boy! Any sudden moves and I’ll have these men send you to your maker!”
I slowly walked down the stairs, keeping my eyes trained on Law. He avoided my gaze.
“Is this him?” the Sheriff asked as he turned to the traitor. “Is this the nigger started all this?”
“Yassah,” Law said.
The Sheriff turned again and looked me in the eye.
“You a dead-man walking, boy. What you got to say for yourself?”
“I—”
The bullet hit me in the back, forcing me two steps forward. The Sheriff’s men, already frantic from the revolt, took no chances. They reacted quickly, and each of them had shot me before they realized I wasn’t the one who’s fired. I fell to the ground, flat on my back, numbed by my wound.
The feeling of dying felt strangely familiar.
I kept my vision long enough to see Mr. Talbert’s two children walk out of the house behind me. The son held the same rifle I had seen him with earlier.
“Damn!” The Sheriff wiped his brow with his handkerchief, frazzled by the chain of events that had just happened, I imagine. As he regained his breath, I was slowly losing mine, and the last thing I heard was the Sheriff confronting the oldest Talbert boy. “What happened here, son?”
“I...I think the niggers got mad, sir...”
And everything went black.
PART THREE
15
I felt the silence before I opened my eyes. It hovered around me like a cloud, tickling my skin and caressing my arms and legs. Sweet fragrances filled my nose and lungs, danced around in my chest before I took a moment to exhale.
I’m in heaven, I thought to myself. God...this is heaven.
I intentionally kept my eyes closed, wondering what I would see when I gathered the courage to open them. Would there be pearly gates in front of me, or golden streets like those they sing about in the church? I hoped to God that Ella, Roka, and Sarah were here with me. How could I enjoy the afterlife without them?
I realized I was sprawled on what must have been a cloud. Everytime I moved, a thick mist adjusted to the contours of my body, molding itself to my frame. I hadn’t even opened my eyes and already I wanted to return to sleep. And then I heard a sound—a beep-beep-beep, like a heartbeat, except more high-pitched. I wondered if it was the calls of angels? If instead of walking around with harps and wings, they just beep-beep-beeped all over heaven? I wondered if they were waiting to take me to God—and what kinds of questions would He ask me? I wondered if He would ask about the revolt.
Aight, I thought to myself, taking in a deep breath, here we go.
I opened my eyes and found Ella leaning over me, which made me certain I was in heaven. She looked down and caressed the top of my head. Tears formed in her eyes as she whispered words to me. I couldn’t hear words. I just let the sound of her voice sprinkle over me like tiny raindrops.
Her hair had transformed. It sat on her head in locks now, falling back to her shoulders and neck. And I realized that the sweet aroma that I had smelled while my eyes were still closed was actually coming from her. The fragrance attached itself to memories I’d forgotten about—backstage powder rooms, studio sessions, award shows. A slow familiarity started to take hold of me.
It was akin to being hit by a car going two miles per hour. The blow wouldn’t last, but it would eventually knock me over.
My eyes widened as I realized what was happening.
I looked away from Ella, and saw two women whose identities rushed back into my mind. Mama stood beside Ella, tears flowing freely down her face, and Big
Mama stood beside her, raising her hands in praise to the Lord.
“Ella,” I whispered hoarsely.
“Shhhhh...don’t talk, Moe. Don’t talk, okay? SaTia’s here...I got you...you just rest.”
I looked around the room in confusion. There seemed to be flowers everywhere. Cards, balloons, and candies were sprinkled about, and sunlight poured in through the window and illuminated my hospital bed.
“No...no...no...where’s Ella? Where’s Roka? Where’s Sarah? I can’t leave ’em! I can’t!”
Big Mama made her way to me. She reached out slowly and grabbed the sides of my head, making me focus solely on her. She looked deeply into my eyes as she spoke.
“You’re here now, baby. You hear me? You’re here now...”
Without warning, the doors to my hospital room burst open. I looked up from Big Mama and saw three white men rushing toward me. Instinctively, I jumped out of the bed. All the women in my life screamed as I leaped and made myself into a barrier between the women and the white men.
Protect them, a voice in my head screamed. It’s not over.
There was a letter opener sitting on the stand beside my bed. I deftly grabbed it and held it in my fist, ready to pierce the first white person who came close enough. The three white men, in their long coats, stopped in their tracks. One of them stumbled and fell as he saw me prepare to attack him. They made their way back to the door, their faces a mix of terror and awe as they rushed out.
In the next few minutes, things happened in flashes. The three white men returned to the doorway, a huge crowd gathered behind them, but they were content just staring at me as if I’d gone mad. I kept the women behind me, prepared at any moment to sacrifice myself for any one of their lives. I could hear their conversations dripping with confusion as I kept them to my rear, but I couldn’t focus on that now. One of these white people was going to attack—I knew it. And when they did, I’d be ready.
I screamed at the white people with all the hate I could muster. Screamed at the pain of seeing Roka shot to hell. Screamed at the pain of seeing Sarah lying dead on her face, and holding Ella in my arms, her eyes and her chest wide open for the world to see. I screamed until the lunacy spilling out of my throat was the only thing that made sense to me. I didn’t think I’d ever stop...
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