The Prophets

by Robert Jones, Jr.

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Robert Jones, Jr.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Jones, Robert, Jr., author.

  Title: The prophets : a novel / Robert Jones, Jr.

  Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2021]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020042100 (print) | LCCN 2020042101 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593085684 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593085707 (epub)

  Subjects: LCSH: Slaves—United States—Fiction. | GSAFD: Love stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3610.O627677 P76 2021 (print) |

  LCC PS3610.O627677 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042100

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042101

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Judges

  Proverbs

  Psalms

  Deuteronomy

  Maggie

  Essie

  Amos

  Genesis

  I Kings

  Beulah

  Puah

  Leviticus

  O, Sarah!

  Ruth

  Babel

  Balm in Gilead

  Romans

  II Kings

  Timothy

  Nebuchadnezzar

  Maccabees

  The Revelation of Judas

  Chronicles

  Bel and the Dragon

  Paul

  Adam

  Samuel

  Lamentations

  Song of Songs

  James

  Numbers

  Exodus

  Isaiah

  New Covenant

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my grandmothers Corrine and Ruby, my grandfathers Alfred and George, my great-uncles Milton, Charles, Cephas, and Herbert, my father Robert, my cousins Trebor, Tracey, and Daishawn, my godparents Delores Marie and Daniel Lee, Mother Morrison and Father Baldwin, and all of my elders and relatives who have passed on over, who are now with the ancestors, who are now, themselves, ancestors, guiding and protecting me, whispering to me so that I, too, might share the testimony.

  Judges

  You do not yet know us.

  You do not yet understand.

  We who are from the dark, speaking in the seven voices. Because seven is the only divine number. Because that is who we are and who we have always been.

  And this is law.

  By the end, you will know. And you will ask why we did not tell you sooner. Do you think you are the first to have asked that question?

  You are not.

  There is, however, an answer. There is always an answer. But you have not yet earned it. You do not know who you are. How could you possibly reckon with who we are?

  You are not lost so much as you are betrayed by fools who mistook glimmer for power. They gave away all the symbols that hold sway. The penance for this is lasting. Your blood will have long been diluted by the time reason finally takes hold. Or the world itself will have been reduced to ash, making memory beside the point. But yes, you have been wronged. And you will do wrong. Again. And again. And again. Until finally, you wake. Which is why we are here, speaking with you now.

  A story is coming.

  Your story is coming.

  It is the whole purpose of your being. Being (t)here. The first time you arrived you were not in chains. You were greeted warmly and exchanged food, art, and purpose with those who knew that neither people nor land should be owned. Our responsibility is to tell you the truth. But since you were never told the truth, you will believe it a lie. Lies are more affectionate than truth and embrace with both arms. Prying you loose is our punishment.

  Yes, we too have been punished. We all have. Because there are no innocents. Innocence, we have discovered, is the most serious atrocity of all. It is what separates the living from the dead.

  Eh?

  A what this now?

  Haha.

  Forgive our laughter.

  You thought you were the living and we were the dead?

  Haha.

  Proverbs

  On my knees, in the dark, I talk to them.

  It’s hard, sometimes, to understand what they saying. They been gone so long and they still use the old words that are half beat out of me. And it don’t help that they whisper. Or maybe they really screaming and just so far away that it sound like a whisper to me. Could be that. Who can know?

  Anyway, I dig in the spot they told me to and I bury the shiny sea stone just like they ask. But maybe I do something wrong because Massa Jacob still sell you off even after he say I a part of his family. Is this what toubab do to they family? Snatch them out they mother’s arms and load them up on a wagon like harvest? Had me begging. In front of my man, had me begging until the only man I ever love can’t even look at me right no more. His eyes make me feel like it’s my wrong instead of they’s.

  I ask them, the old dark voices, about you. They say you right proud. On your way to becoming a man yourself. Got a lot of your people in you, but don’t know it yet. And quick, maybe too quick for your own good. I surprised you still living. I ask them, I say, “Can you take a message to him? Tell him I remember every curl on his head and every fold on his body down to the creases between his toes. Tell him not even the whip can remedy that.” They don’t answer, but they say you down in Mississippi now, where whole things is made half. Why they tell me that, I don’t know. What mother wanna hear her child finna be carved up and carved out for no reason at all? I guess it don’t matter. Here or there, us all gone be made to pay somehow.

  Ephraim ain’t said a word since they took you. Not a single word in all this time. Can you imagine? I see his lips move, but I be damned if any sound come out his throat. Sometimes, I wanna say your name, the name we gave you, not the ugly one Massa throw on you and we act like it’s okay. I think saying your name maybe bring him back to me. But the way he hang his head, like a noose around his neck that I can’t see, I don’t have the courage. What if saying your name be the thing that take him from me altogether?

  “Can I see him?” I ask the dark. “Can Ephraim? We ain’t even gotta touch him. Just take a quick look to know he still ours, even if he belong to somebody else.” They say all Ephraim need to do is have a peek in one of those looking glasses. “How ’bout me?” I ask. They tell me look in Ephraim’s eyes. “How can I do that,” I ask, “when he won’t look at me no more?” All I hear is the wind blowing through the trees and the creek-creek of bugs in the grass.

  You like your people. You is like your people. I hold on to that and let that fill the empty space inside me.
Swirling, swirling like fireflies in the night. Holding, holding still like water in the well. I’s full. I’s empty. I’s full, then I’s empty. I’s full and I’s empty. This must be what dying feels like.

  It ain’t no use. No use in hollering at folks who won’t hear you. No use in crying in front of folks who can’t feel your pain. They who use your suffering as a measuring stick for how much they gone build on top of it. I ain’t nothing here. And ain’t never gone be.

  What he trade you for? To keep this rotten land that breaks spirit and bleeds mind? I tell you what: ain’t gone be too much more of this here. Nah, sir. Take me and Ephraim and us leave here. Don’t have to go nowhere, but leave. It be the same like slaughtering a hog. Just a sharp blade quick and deep across the throat and it be over just like that.

  And then us get to be whispering voices in the dark telling some other people how they babies is getting along out there in the wild.

  Oh, my poor baby!

  Can you feel me?

  I’s Middle Anna and that there is Ephraim. We your mam and pappy, Kayode. And us sure do miss you.

  Psalms

  July had tried to kill them.

  First it tried to burn them. Then it tried to suffocate them. And finally, when neither of those things was successful, it made the air thick like water, hoping they would drown. It failed. Its only triumph was in making them sticky and mean—sometimes, toward each other. The sun in Mississippi even found its way into the shade so that on some days, not even the trees were comfort.

  And, too, there was no good reason to be around other people when it was hot like this, but longing for company made it in some ways bearable. Samuel and Isaiah used to like being around other people until the other people changed. In the beginning, they had thought all the curled lips, cut eyes, turned-up noses—even the shaking heads—signified a bad scent emanating from their bodies because of the toil in the barn. The odor of swill alone had often made them strip bare and spend nearly an hour in the river bathing. Daily, just before sundown, when the others were bent out of shape from fieldwork and tried to find an elusive peace in their shacks, there Samuel and Isaiah were, scrubbing themselves with mint leaves, juniper, sometimes root beer, washing away the layers of stink.

  But the baths didn’t change the demeanor of the sucked teeth that held The Two of Them in contempt. So they learned to keep mostly to themselves. They were never unfriendly, exactly, but the barn became a kind of safe zone and they stuck close to it.

  The horn had sounded to let them know work was ending. A deceitful horn, since work never ended, but merely paused. Samuel put down a bucket of water and looked at the barn in front of him. He took a few steps back so that he could see the entire thing. It needed a new coat of paint, the red parts and the white. Good, he thought. Let it be ugly so it could be truth. He wasn’t going to paint anything, provided the Halifaxes didn’t force his hand.

  He walked a little to the right and looked at the trees in the distance, the ones behind the barn, down by the bank of the other side of the river. The sun had dimmed and began to dip into the forests. He turned to his left and looked toward the cotton field and saw the silhouettes of people carrying sacks of cotton on their backs and on their heads, dropping them off into wagons waiting in the distance. James, chief overseer, and a dozen or so of his underlings were lined up on either side of the constant flow of people. James’s rifle was slung over his shoulder; his men held theirs in both hands. They pointed their rifles at the passing people as though they wanted to fire. Samuel wondered if he could take James. Sure, the toubab had some weight to him, and the benefit of firepower, but putting all that aside, if they were to have a right tussle, fist to fist and heart to heart like it was supposed to be, Samuel thought he could eventually break him—if not like a twig, then certainly like a man near his edge.

  “You gon’ help me or not?” Isaiah said, startling Samuel.

  Samuel turned quickly. “You know better than to creep,” he said, embarrassed for having been caught off guard.

  “Ain’t nobody creep. I walked right up. You so busy minding other folks’ business . . .”

  “Bah,” Samuel said and waved his hand as though he were shooing a mosquito.

  “You help me put these horses in they pens?”

  Samuel rolled his eyes. There was no need to be as obedient as Isaiah always was. Maybe it wasn’t that Isaiah was obedient, but did he really have to give them so much of himself and so readily? To Samuel, that spoke of fear.

  Isaiah touched Samuel on the back and smiled as he walked toward the barn.

  “I reckon,” Samuel whispered and followed.

  They put away the horses and watered them, then fed them a shovelful of hay and swept the remainder back into a neat stack near the front left corner of the barn, near the straighter bales. Isaiah smiled at Samuel’s unwillingness, his grunts and sighs and head shaking, even though he understood the danger in it. Tiny resistances were a kind of healing in a weeping place.

  By the time they finished, the sky was black and littered with stars. Isaiah walked back outside, leaving Samuel to his grievances. This was how he would engage in his own bit of rebellion: he leaned against the wooden fence that surrounded the barn and stared at the heavens. Crowded, he thought, and wondered if, perhaps, the abundance was too much; if the weight of holding on was too heavy, and the night, being as tired as it was, might one day let go, and all the stars would come tumbling down, leaving only the darkness to stretch across everything.

  Samuel tapped Isaiah on the shoulder, waking him from his reverie.

  “Now who ain’t minding they business?”

  “Oh, now the sky got business?” Isaiah smirked. “Least my work is finished for now, though.”

  “You a good slave, huh?” Samuel poked Isaiah in the belly.

  Isaiah chuckled, lifted himself off the fence, and began walking back toward the barn. Just before he reached the door, he stooped to pick up a few pebbles. In quick succession, he threw them at Samuel.

  “Ha!” he yelled and ran into the barn.

  “You missed!” Samuel yelled back and ran into the barn after him.

  They ran around inside, Isaiah dipping and dodging, laughing each time Samuel reached out to grab him, but he was too quick. When Samuel finally leaped and crashed into his back, they both stumbled face forward into the freshly piled hay. Isaiah wriggled to get loose, but the laughter made him too weak to make any headway. Samuel saying, “Uh huh,” over and over again, smiling into the back of Isaiah’s head. The horses let out loud breaths that reverberated through their lips. A pig squealed. The cows made no sounds, but the bells around their necks clanged with their movements.

  After a moment more of struggle, Isaiah surrendered and Samuel relented. They turned on their backs and saw the moon through an opening in the roof; its pale light shot down on them. Their bare chests heaved and they panted audibly. Isaiah raised a hand up toward the opening to see if he could block out the light with his palm. There was a soft glow in the spaces between his fingers.

  “One of us gotta get to fixing that roof,” he said.

  “Don’t think of work now. Let yourself be,” Samuel said a little more harshly than he intended.

  Isaiah looked at Samuel. He examined his profile: the way his thick lips protruded from his face, less so his broad nose. His hair twisted and turned any which way. He looked down at Samuel’s sweaty chest—the moonlight turned his dark skin to glitter—and was lulled by its rhythm.

  Samuel turned to look at Isaiah, met his gentle stare with his own version. Isaiah smiled. He liked the way Samuel breathed with his mouth open, lower lip twisted slightly and tongue placed just inside the cheek like the expression of someone up to mischief. He touched Samuel’s arm.

  “You tired?” Isaiah asked him.

  “Should be. But nah.”

  Isaiah scooted over until
their bodies touched. The spot where their shoulders met grew moist. Their feet rubbed together. Samuel didn’t know why, but he began to tremble, which made him angry because it made him feel exposed. Isaiah didn’t see the anger; instead he saw beckoning. He rose to move on top of Samuel, who flinched a bit before relaxing. Isaiah slid his tongue, slowly and gently, over Samuel’s nipple, which came to life in his mouth. Both of them moaned.

  It was different from the first kiss—how many seasons ago was that now, sixteen or more? It was easier to count those than the moons, which sometimes didn’t show up because they could be temperamental like that. Isaiah remembered that it was when the apples had been fuller and redder than they had ever been before or since—where they stumbled, and shame had kept them from looking into each other’s eyes. Now Isaiah moved in close and let his lips linger on Samuel’s. Samuel recoiled only a little. His uncertainty had found cover beneath repetition. The struggle that had once made him want to choke Isaiah as much as his self was in remission. There were only traces of it now, insignificant battles in the far corners of his eyes, maybe a smidgen at the back of his throat. But it was overcome by other things.

  They didn’t even give each other the chance to fully disrobe. Isaiah’s pants were down around his knees; Samuel’s dangling from an ankle. Impatient, thrusting into each other in a haystack, the moonlight shining dimly on Isaiah’s ass and Samuel’s soles—they rocked.

  By the time the one slid off the other, they were already tumbled off the haystack, deeper into the darkness, spread out on the ground. They were so spent that neither wanted to move, though both craved a thorough washing in the river. Silently, they decided to remain where they were, at least until after they had regained control of their breathing and the spasms subsided.

  In the darkness, they could hear the animals shuffling, and they could also hear the muffled sounds of the people nearby in their shacks, singing or maybe crying. Both were viable possibilities. More clearly, they could hear laughter coming from the Big House.

  Though there were a least two walls and not an insignificant amount of space between him and the laughter, Samuel looked in the direction of the house and tried to focus on the voices emanating from within. He thought he could recognize a few.