“Nothing never changes. New face, but same tongue,” he said.
“What?” Isaiah asked as he stopped staring at the roof and faced Samuel’s direction.
“Them.”
Isaiah inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly. He nodded. “So what we do? Bash the face? Split the tongue?”
Samuel laughed. “Face been bashed. Tongue already split. You’ve seen a snake before. Better to get far away as we can. Let them slither here on they own.”
“That’s the only choice, then: run?”
“If the face don’t heed, don’t even know it’s not heeding. If the tongue don’t yield. Yes.”
Samuel sighed. Maybe Isaiah was afraid of the dark, but he wasn’t. It was where he found shelter, where he blended, and where he thought the key to freedom surely rested. But still, he wondered what happened to people who wandered off into a wilderness that wasn’t their own. Some turned into trees, he reckoned. Some became the silt at the bottom of rivers. Some didn’t win the mountain lion’s race. Some just died. He lay there silently for a moment, listening to Isaiah’s breathing. Then he sat up.
“You coming?”
“Where?”
“To the river.”
Isaiah turned on his side but said nothing. He looked in the direction of Samuel’s voice and tried to differentiate his shape from the surrounding darkness. It was all one endless mass until Samuel moved and delineated the living from the dead. But what was that sound?
A scratching noise was coming from somewhere.
“You hear that?” Isaiah asked.
“Hear what?”
Isaiah was still. The scratching had stopped. He laid his head back down on the ground. Samuel moved again, as though preparing to stand.
“Wait,” Isaiah whispered.
Samuel sucked his teeth but returned to his position, lying next to Isaiah. Just as he got comfortable, the scratching noise returned. He didn’t hear it but Isaiah looked in the direction it was coming from, close to the horse pens. Something took shape there. It was first a tiny point, like a star, and then it spread until it was the night he was brought to the plantation.
Twenty of them, maybe more, piled into a wagon drawn by horses. All of them chained together at the ankles and at the wrists, which made movement labored and unified. Some of them wore iron helmets that covered their entire heads, turned their voices into echoes and their breathing into rattles. The oversized contraptions rested on their collarbones, leaving behind gashes that bled down to their navels and made them woozy. Everyone was naked.
They had traveled over bumpy, dusty trails for what, to Isaiah, seemed a lifetime—the sun burning their flesh in the day and mosquitoes tearing it up at night. Still, they were thankful for the torrential showers, when those without helmets could drink at their leisure rather than at the gunmen’s.
When they finally reached Empty—which was what, in the quiet places, people called the Halifax plantation, and for good reason—he couldn’t make out anything except a dim light coming from the Big House. And then they were pulled one by one from the wagon, each of them stumbling because none of them could feel their legs. For some, the weight of the helmet made it impossible to stand. Others had the burden of being held down by the corpse they were chained to. Isaiah, who was just a child, didn’t even know enough to consider the man who lifted him up and carried him even though his own legs were about to give.
“I got you, little one,” the man said. His voice labored and dry. “Your maw made me promise. And I gotta tell you your name.”
Then everything went black.
When Isaiah came to, it was morning and they were all still chained together: living and dead alike. They were lying on the ground near the cotton field. He was hungry and thirsty, and the first to sit up. That was when he saw them: a group of people holding pails marching up the path, headed right for them. Some were as young as he was. They came with water and food—well, at least as close to food as he was liable to get. Pig parts that were seasoned enough to cover up the acrid taste and alleviate gagging.
A boy with a ladle approached him. He moved the ladle toward Isaiah’s face. Isaiah parted his lips and closed his eyes. He gulped as warm, sweet water leaked from the corners of his mouth. When he was done, he looked up at the boy; the sun made him squint so that at first, he could only see the boy’s outline. The boy moved a little, blocking the sun. He looked down at Isaiah with big, skeptical eyes and a chin too proud for anyone to have under those conditions.
“You want some more?” the boy called Samuel asked him.
Isaiah was no longer thirsty but nodded anyway.
When the darkness returned to itself, Isaiah touched his own body to make sure he wasn’t a child anymore. He was himself, he was sure, but what had just come to him, from a pinpoint in the dark, proved that time could go missing whenever and wherever it pleased, and Isaiah couldn’t yet figure out a way to retrieve it.
Isaiah couldn’t be certain, but the remembrance that showed itself reminded him that he and Samuel were about the same age, sixteen or seventeen now, if every four seasons were properly counted. Nearly twenty years old now and so much had remained unspoken between them. To leave it in the silence was the only way it could be and not break a spirit in half. Working, eating, sleeping, playing. Fucking on purpose. For survival, everything that was learned had to be transmitted by circling the thing rather than uncovering it. Who, after all, was foolish enough to show wounds to folks who wanted to stick their mouth-sucked fingers into them?
The quiet was mutual, not so much agreed upon as inherited; safe, but containing the ability to cause great destruction. There, lying in the dark, Isaiah, exposed too closely to a living dream, heard it speak.
“You ever wonder . . . where your mam?” Isaiah heard it say.
He then realized it was his own voice, but he didn’t remember speaking. It was as though another voice, one that sounded like his, had escaped his throat. His, but not his. How? Isaiah paused. Then he moved over, closer to Samuel. He felt his way around Samuel’s body and settled his hand on Samuel’s belly.
“I ain’t mean . . . what I mean is, I ain’t say . . .”
“You spit then try to grab it after it leave your mouth?” asked Samuel.
Isaiah was confused. “I ain’t wanna say that. It came up by itself.”
“Yeah,” Samuel said, groaning.
“I . . . You never hear a voice and think it’s not yours but it is? Or it kinda is? You ever see your life outside you? I don’t know. I can’t explain,” said Isaiah.
He thought that maybe this was the witlessness that he saw take hold of a person, because the plantation could do that—make the mind retreat so that it could protect the body from what it was forced to do, yet leave the mouth babbling. To calm himself, he rubbed Samuel’s stomach. The motion lulled the both of them. Isaiah had started to blink slower and slower. He was almost asleep when his mouth woke him up.
“Maybe a piece of you, somewhere inside, maybe your blood, maybe your guts, holds to her face?” Isaiah said, surprised at his words, rushing forth as though they had been dammed up. “Maybe when you look in the river, her face is what you see?”
There was silence and then Samuel inhaled suddenly and quickly.
“Maybe. No way to ever know,” Samuel finally replied.
“Maybe a way to feel, though,” Isaiah blurted.
“Huh?”
“I said maybe a way . . .”
“No. Not you. Never mind,” Samuel said. “Let’s go to the river.”
Isaiah intended to stand, but his body preferred lying there with Samuel’s.
“I know my mam and my pappy, but all I remember is their crying faces. Someone take me from them and they stand there watching me as the whole sky open up on them. I reach my hand out, but they only get farther and farther away until all I hear i
s screams and then nothing. My hand still reaching out and grabbing nothing.”
Both of them stunned by this, Isaiah by the recollection and Samuel by hearing it, but neither of them moved. They were quiet for a moment. Then Samuel turned to Isaiah.
“You knew your pappy?”
“A man carried me here,” Isaiah said, as he heard his history being recounted by his voice. “Not my pappy, but somebody who said he knew my name. Never told me, though.”
Just then, Isaiah saw his own hand reaching out in the darkness of the barn, small, frantic, just like that day. He thought that perhaps he was reaching not just for his mam and pappy, but also for all those faded peoples who stood behind them, whose names, too, were lost forever, and whose blood nourished the ground and haunted it. Whose screams sound like whispers now—whispers that will be the last noise the universe will ever make. Samuel grabbed Isaiah’s hand and put it back on his belly.
“Something here,” Samuel said.
“What?”
“Nah.”
Isaiah started to rub Samuel again, which encouraged his voice.
“The last thing they said to me was ‘Coyote.’ I ain’t figure that one out yet.”
“Maybe ‘beware’?” Samuel said.
“Why you say that?”
Samuel opened his mouth, but Isaiah didn’t see. He stopped rubbing on Samuel and instead laid his head on Samuel’s chest.
“I ain’t wanna say these things,” Isaiah said, his voice now a croak. His cheeks were wet as he nestled his head deeper into Samuel.
Samuel shook his head. “Yeah.”
He looked around, held Isaiah tighter, then closed his eyes.
The river could wait.
Deuteronomy
Samuel was second to wake, his face orange from the glow of a sun slow to rise. The rooster was making its noise, but Samuel had heard it often enough that it faded into the background as though it were silence. Isaiah was up already. Samuel had told Isaiah earlier in the morning to let himself lie, let himself rest, remember the moments. It would be considered theft here, he knew, but to him, it was impossible to steal what was already yours—or should have been.
He lay there, as tranquil as the morning that had dyed his body with the coming light, adamant on not budging until he absolutely had to. He didn’t see Isaiah, but he could hear him just outside the opened barn doors, heading toward the henhouse. Samuel sat up. He looked around the barn, observed the scattered hay from the night before, noticed how the dark hid those things and the day left behind trails that weren’t exactly clear. One wouldn’t necessarily assume that the cause of the mess came from pleasure. More likely, they would think it the result of carelessness, and therefore worthy of punishment. He exhaled and stood up. He walked over to the barn wall where the tools hung in rows. He went to the nearest corner and retrieved the broom. Reluctantly, he swept the evidence of their bliss back into a neat pile, nearer to where their misery was already neatly stacked. All of it to be sustenance for beasts anyway.
Isaiah came back into the barn holding two pails.
“Morning,” he said with a smile.
Samuel looked at him with a half grin but didn’t return the greeting. “You up too early.”
“One of us gotta be.”
Samuel shook his head and Isaiah smiled at that too. Isaiah put down his pails, walked over, and touched Samuel’s arm. He slid his hand down until their hands were joined. Isaiah squeezed, and eventually Samuel squeezed back. Isaiah watched as Samuel’s untrusting eyes fully embraced him. He saw himself there, in the gaze of the deepest shade of brown he had seen outside of dreams, warm and enjoyed. He opened his own eyes a bit more, inviting Samuel in so that he could know that warmth was waiting for him, too.
Samuel let go. “Well, since we up, we might as well . . .” He gestured at the plantation broadly. Isaiah took Samuel’s hand again and kissed it.
“Not in the light,” Samuel said with a frown.
Isaiah shook his head. “There’s no bottom below bottom.”
Samuel sighed, handed Isaiah the broom, and walked outside into the morning onto which a humid sky was descending.
“Don’t feel like doing this.”
“What?” Isaiah asked, following behind him.
“This.” Samuel pointed outward at everything around them.
“We gotta do it,” Isaiah replied.
Samuel shook his head. “We ain’t gotta do shit.”
“So you risk whupping, then?”
“You forget? We ain’t even gotta do this much to risk whupping.”
Isaiah folded in on himself at that. “Can’t stand to see you hurt.”
“Maybe you can’t stand to see me free neither?”
“Sam!” Isaiah shook his head and began to walk toward the chicken coop.
“Sorry,” Samuel whispered.
Isaiah didn’t hear him and Samuel was glad. Samuel walked over toward the hogs. He grabbed a pail and then, still watching Isaiah, it crept up behind him. Recollections often came back in pieces like this.
That day—it was night, really, the black sky all but stardust—they were still too young to understand their conditions. They looked up into that sky, through the knothole in the roof wood. A blink was all it was. And exhaustion held them down on a pallet of hay. Dizzy from work that their bodies could barely manage. Earlier, their hands brushed at the river and lingered longer than Samuel expected. A confused look, but then Isaiah smiled and Samuel’s heart didn’t know whether to beat or not, so he got up and started walking back to the barn. Isaiah followed him.
They were in the barn and it was dark. Neither felt like lighting a torch or a lamp so they just pushed out some hay and covered it with the piece-cloth blanket Be Auntie had made them, and then they both lay down on their backs. Samuel exhaled and Isaiah broke the quiet with “Yessuh.” And that hit Samuel’s ear differently then. Not a caress exactly, but still gentle. His creases were moist and he tried to hide them even from himself. It was a reflex. Meanwhile, Isaiah turned on his side to face Samuel and all his soft parts were open and free, tingling without shame. They looked at each other and then they were each other, there, both of them, in the dark.
All it took was a moment, so both of them understood how precious time was. Imagine having as much of it as you wanted. To sing songs. Or to wash in a glittering river beneath a lucid sun, arms open to hold your one, whose breath was now your breath, inhale, exhale, same rhythm, same smile returned. Samuel didn’t know he had the heat until he felt Isaiah’s.
Yes, recollections came in pieces. Depending on what was trying to be recalled, they could come in shambles. Samuel had started slopping the hogs when the pin that had been stabbing at his chest all morning had finally broken through. It had only a little blood on its tip, but the blood was there all the same. Who knew blood could talk? He had heard others speak of blood memory, but that was just images, wasn’t it? Nobody ever said anything about voices. But last night, Isaiah had brought so many of them with them into the barn on the end of his question, a question that had smashed all of their established rules, the ones that they had come up with between them, the ones that so many of their people understood.
Samuel tossed the hogs more food. He ignored the pin sticking out from his chest and the whispering blood, which was now coming forth as a droplet, not unlike rain, carrying within it its own multitude, its own reflections, a world—a whole world!—inside.
He began to feel hot and itchy inside.
You ever wonder where your mam?
Before then he was able to avoid the pinch of such inquiries, lose them in the abundant sorrow that permeated the landscape. No one asked each other about the scars, missing limbs, tremors, or night terrors, and so they could, therefore, be stashed in corners behind sacks, cast in waters, buried underground. But there was Isaiah digging around for sh
it he had no business digging around for, talking about he “ain’t mean.” Then why did he say? Samuel thought they had a deal: leave the bodies where they fucking lay.
They were in the dark last night, so Isaiah couldn’t see, thankfully, that Samuel shifted on the ground, almost stood up, and announced that he was heading to the river, where he would submerge himself and never resurface. Instead, he sat there, muscles flexing under the strain of grasping for something not there. He blinked and blinked, but it didn’t stop his eyes from burning. What kind of question was this?
He had let out a breath in a huff. Even in the dark, he could feel Isaiah’s calm anticipation, its steady, relentless tugging, coaxing him to open himself up yet again. But had he not opened himself up wide enough? No one else had known what it was like—what it looked like, felt like, tasted like—deep inside of him but Isaiah. What more could he give that wasn’t everything already? He wanted to hit something. Grab an ax and hack at a tree. Or maybe wring a chicken’s neck.
The quiet between them was stinging. Samuel took a deep breath as the shadow of a woman rose in the dark just at his feet. Darker than the dark, she stood naked: breasts hanging, hips wide. She had a face that was somehow familiar, though he had never seen it before. Further, a shadow in the dark made no sense. They were daytime denizens. And yet, there she was: a black that made night jealous with eyes that were, themselves, questions. Could this be his mother, stirred up by Isaiah’s broken pact? Did that mean he was a shadow, too? Suddenly, she pointed at him. Startled, he spoke suddenly.
Maybe. No way to ever know.
Maybe she made Isaiah speak, too?
As the hogs ate, Samuel tried to wipe the blood from the pin and remove it from his chest. He stopped when he heard a noise in the distance. He wasn’t sure if it was the rustling of weeds or a yell. He looked toward the trees and he saw something. It looked like the shadow. It had come back in the morning light as a reminder. Conjured up by an inquiry, it would now roam everywhere he roamed because that is what he had heard mothers were supposed to do: watch every move their child made until such time that the child was no longer a child and it was then the former child’s duty to create life and watch it bloom or watch it wither.
The Prophets Page 2