The Prophets

by Robert Jones, Jr.

  “You come to service?” Amos shouted to them, smiling as he scooted between the slats of the fence and walked toward them. His eyes darted from one boy to the other as they stopped what they were doing and turned to him. His eyes landed on Isaiah.

  Samuel let air whistle out from between his teeth and then returned his attention to the pail.

  “’Zay told me what you said to him, what you won’t tell him. I like to knock you down where you stand.” Samuel squinted, looked at Amos, stood up, and balled his fists. “Get on out of here.”

  Amos took a few steps back. “Y’all young,” he said. “I ain’t just trying to find y’all favor, but everybody.” His hands were pleading; they were pleading. “Just once. Both of y’all. Just one time.”

  “When it ever been just one time?” Isaiah replied. “Ask Essie.”

  Amos felt that in his gut. He closed his eyes. He retreated within with the hopes of coming back out with something that might be more healing.

  “Y’all mean to tell me you would have us all beat, leaned on, sold, maybe even put in the ground because y’all won’t bend a little?” Then he said, but not with his mouth: Don’t you know us all gotta bend, got to, if we want a little bit of anything that might be shaped like serenity? Nobody don’t like to give Massa want he want, but we like even less to give him a reason. And here y’all are giving him all the reason in the world. Before I found Jesus, I understood you. I felt the praise of y’all’s together time and rejoiced. But now, mine eyes have been opened and I see, I see. I tumbled for this. I tumbled and I made a deal to keep a small hush for Essie and for me and for y’all. Take it. Why won’t y’all take it?

  Yes, even now he noticed the reality flickering between them. It was like the finest of spiderwebs with a tenuous amount of dew trembling on the strands of it, suddenly snatched away and then reconstructed within the blink of an eye, delicate tendrils that were somehow stronger than they appeared, holding the weight of a rainstorm before finally giving way and allowing an unobstructed view. But that was no reason to be sad because the morning, after rain, offered up beauty of which the smell of hawkweed was just the beginning.

  Neither Isaiah nor Samuel could answer a silent question, though it seemed like Samuel was about to kneel. But no, nothing. Samuel simply returned to his pail. Isaiah got up then and moved closer to Amos.

  “My name. Please,” said Isaiah, the last word stretched, making his bottom lip quiver.

  Samuel reached over and nudged Isaiah’s hand, then shook his head. “Don’t beg like that.”

  “Son, we gotta wash each other’s hands. Can’t be just one of us,” Amos said, looking directly at Isaiah.

  Isaiah bit his bottom lip and walked into the barn.

  Samuel puffed his chest and Amos thought this might be the tussle he was ready for this time, but no. Samuel just followed Isaiah into the barn, leaving the pail as Amos’s only company.

  Isaiah and Samuel were gone, disappeared into the barn. But the spot outside, where they were just on their knees, was still covered by their shadows.

  * * *

  —

  He knew it was wrong, because what happened in The Fucking Place should be locked up there and burned, but he had asked Essie about Isaiah anyway and, as always, her response was no response. She just looked at Amos with those big, probing eyes, big because she kept things secreted within them, and despite that, all Amos wanted to do was protect her, let her be her.

  She rested soundly beside him now, worn out from fieldwork. He looked at her glistening face. Beautiful as she was, it made no sense to him why she and Isaiah had a camaraderie that produced nothing but whispers and laughter. Amos could understand himself taking a while to do what he had to do. He was older. Gray hairs had come to outline the edges of his scalp. Older men were sometimes not as virile as they were when they were younger. Had Paul given him just a little more time, he and Essie would have given him enough children to meet his fancy. Paul’s time—time for any toubab—moved differently, though; it was quick and unpredictable.

  Essie couldn’t bring the good tidings and Amos understood. Bury it, then, in the wild ground of The Fucking Place. He didn’t know if he would find it, even with a shovel in the middle of the night, but he had to try for her sake. He had to.

  The barn was dark. Inside, there were nothing but the horses and two twisted shadows on the ground. Two shadows! Twisted together on the ground. Yes, Amos had seen strange things. But this—this beat all!

  He was astonished by how obvious it was, by how easily it could be missed by those who weren’t curious enough to seek the answer right in front of them because the answer, even when revealed, remained unbelievable.

  He had thought their kinship merely hazardous at first, never thinking it wise for any two people to be so close, not here anyway. Even with Essie, his embrace was one arm only. The other arm had to be free to cry into the crook of when the warmth of other bodies turned cold. It hadn’t occurred to him until the veil was lifted, and the world was clearer to him, what Samuel and Isaiah’s peculiar closeness meant.

  In the absence of women, he understood the necessity of turning to a hand or a hog, or, in a last-ditch effort, begrudgingly and with falsehoods intact, the uncleanliness of other men. Hot was hot and release, for a man, was always imminent excepting into death. But to not have a desire for women to begin with, to produce no physical response to them whatsoever, above all, to willingly choose a male to cradle you gently into sleep, even when women were as soft and abundant as cotton . . .

  Amos shook his head to clear the image from his mind. Man on top of woman: that wasn’t just Christlike, it was sensible, right? He asked the question, but rhetorically, because he was apprehensive and uncertain about an answer. There was no suitable name for whatever it was that Samuel and Isaiah were doing, at least, none that he could remember. That he couldn’t remember bothered him as much as the act itself. They weren’t women. Women were weak, and by God’s design. Nevertheless, by carrying on as though at least one of them was female, they threatened to only further diminish what Amos imagined was already diminished to death. For Samuel and Isaiah to wear their sex this way—dewy, firm, trembling, free—even under the cloak of night, was folly. If they had cared at all for any of the others, they would have, at the very least, masked their strangeness. Hushed it better, goddamnit, so that toubab wouldn’t discover it. Didn’t they understand that here, under Paul’s word, they were nobodies?

  Hold on.

  There were bodies. They were in bodies. They just had no authority over theirs.

  Amos could look at the embracing shadows no more. Especially the one he carried from the wagon all those years ago. Can you even imagine that? Someone throwing a child into a wagon as simply as you would a sack of cotton. A child screaming and his parents being beat into the ground for daring to protest. He was impressed, though, that the boy survived the trip. A little woozy at the end of it, of course, what with the way food and water were rationed, and how the insects bit. But Amos ignored his heavy shackles to catch the boy before he passed out in the dirt. Holding him, he wondered what it might be like to have his own child, to hold him close to his chest that the baby might be tickled by the coils of his father’s hair. And looking down at son, son would look up at father, smile, and tug at the strands of his beard so that they both would be glad.

  He began walking back to his cabin, avoiding the lantern light of the patrollers in the distance. He traced his steps, recalling that he had seen Samuel and Isaiah often since they were boys, mostly near the barn and, therefore, mostly segregated from the others. One black, the other purple; one smiling, the other brooding. Maybe if someone had carried him, weak-kneed, off a wagon, Samuel might be a son, too.

  “You knew?” Amos asked folk.

  He paid close attention to their whispers. The women were thankful for the reprieve, the others grateful for their cour
age. Maggie said it was something old, from the other time, before the ships and guns came. Amos knew of no such thing. He didn’t even have to ask Essie because her and Isaiah’s shared laughter now made sense. But there wasn’t anything funny. He didn’t understand how she didn’t connect Isaiah’s failure to Paul’s.

  Paul. Amos knew that once Paul discovered that the nature of Isaiah and Samuel’s stubbornness was something other than bad aim, they would inspire a passion in him that would become uncontainable. At some point, Paul’s restless mind wouldn’t be content with just The Two of Them; he would seek to inspect the others, to find increasingly creative and heartbreaking methods of preventing Samuel and Isaiah’s unholiness from spreading. Because of those two, suffering would prosper.

  Amos felt spite growing in the midpoint of his ribs, even though it was well known that Samuel and Isaiah inspired everything around them to dance: some old folk, the children, flies, the tips of tall grass. Everything except the black-eyed Susans, which turned their heads up at whomever. Skeptical by nature, they swayed a little when the boys walked past, but never any more than that. They were secure enough in the golden of their petals that they didn’t have to worship anything else, except, maybe, the rain. Shout when she came down. Amos wished his people could be more like that.

  When he himself saw them together—now that he saw them saw them—frolicking in the marsh, hefting bales of hay, and tending to the animals, or just sitting silently side by side with their backs against the barn feeding each other with bare hands, feet too close together, he nearly glorified their names. He covered his eyes because Isaiah and Samuel were bright and coated in a shining the likes of which he had never seen. A shame that he would have to be the one to smash it.

  It was necessary, then, that the nature of his sermons change. If the entire plantation could unite in this purpose, not just him, maybe . . . With a chest full of regret, and with his softest voice, away from the circle of trees so that no toubab might hear and unleash chaos before it had the chance to be thwarted, sometimes in the confines of his shack, he chastised any person who accepted, condoned, or ignored Samuel and Isaiah’s behavior. Most people were frightened by this sudden shift because they weren’t accustomed to his river-water voice sounding so drought.

  “You think God don’t see?” he would say quietly as he pointed in the direction of the barn, his dark fingers hanging in the air, quivering like tree branches shed of leaves, hoping uncertainty wasn’t wearing him like Sunday clothing. For it had been he who Paul trusted with the words of the book and in there it had said multiply and give God His glory-glory. This is what he tried to explain above the tumult of whys that had bombarded him from the lips of almost everyone he whispered to.

  He had anticipated difficulty, resistance, since his own legs were unsure. Samuel and Isaiah were, after all, boys, oftentimes helpful ones who were one bluster and the other tranquil, but never callous or aloof. He knew some of the people had thought of them as their own children since the two were orphans. People took a special interest in orphans, secretly gave a little extra in terms of affection, though they had none to spare. The women, especially, cared for Samuel and Isaiah more than they should have, Maggie being the worst one and the one who should have known better.

  “Shiiiiit,” A Man Called Coot whispered back to Amos. “Excuse my tongue, but a tiny bit of nice-nice between us ain’t killed nobody yet.”

  “They don’t bother nobody ’round here,” Naomi said quietly. “Some of us ain’t got a lot of time no way. Might as well steal some kind of easy before the hard have its way with you.”

  But the majority of those whom Amos invited in remained silent, turned to one another with a look that Amos had seen only on the faces of toubab. It jumped from one face to the next, like lanterns being lit in quick succession. Instead of too much resistance, Amos found a frightening commonality between toubab and his own people that could be exploited quite easily. The idea that they could be better—more entitled to favor than others, have a kind of belly breeze of their own—hadn’t really occurred to them. Occasionally, Paul would show more approval toward some of them based on the speed and dexterity with which they pulled cotton, but the reward for that was more work and greater expectation, not less. Sometimes, he was a bit more lenient with the people whose color was diminished by Paul’s interference, but the cost of that was evident. Now, because of Amos, they had this new concept to reckon with: they could have access to some kind of sometime just by virtue of not being one of the excluded.

  They had come to Amos two by two, but they were seduced one by one. People began avoiding Samuel and Isaiah. They would deliberately walk the long way, past the overseers and through the weeds, to dodge them on the common path to and from the field. They left tools on the ground outside the barn instead of handing them over directly to them. They bathed farther up the shore away from them. They left no room for them at fire circles. They cut their eyes and screwed their faces each time Isaiah and Samuel dared displays that remotely resembled affection.

  Amos was there, down by the river, when Big Hosea attacked Samuel. Hosea had said that Samuel looked at him funny. Hosea was one of the few on the plantation who was sure he could take Samuel on. He always sought Samuel out to play-wrestle in the high weeds as a means to test his own strength. So it took nothing for him to punch Samuel square in the jaw right there at the river in front of everyone. For his trouble, Samuel nearly split Big Hosea’s head open against protruding rocks. Amos and others helped Hosea up as Isaiah held Samuel back. Hosea said Samuel looked at him in a way that made him feel defenseless, naked. Never mind that they were all naked from bathing. That look, he said, made him lunge for Samuel. Hosea’s chest was heaving. Amos told him to calm down, told him that no one blamed him for doing what came natural for men to do. No one mentioned, either, that between Big Hosea’s legs, his flesh was stiff and throbbing.

  Now it was Sunday. Amos was alone as he walked through the weeds, along the cotton field, and into the clearing beyond it. Just before he entered, he could see how the light fell down in that space and made things a pale gold, but the silence, too, gave things a color. He didn’t have the language to describe it. It wasn’t like it was blue, though that is what he would have said were he less observant. He would have to be content with not having an answer for everything. “Humble yourself, Amos. Be humble.”

  Once in the embrace of the clearing, he sat on the rock, crossed his legs at the ankles, brought his hands together, and started to pray. When he was done, he opened his eyes wide, for he had heard the whisper. He brought his hand to his mouth. There was a faint frown on his lips. No, he thought, but the whispering voice was quietly Yes.

  The first of his congregation broke through the trees and into the clearing. Amos straightened up. It was Be Auntie, and she was holding Solomon, who was whining just a little.

  “Good morning, ma’am. Good morning,” he said.

  Amos looked down at Solomon. His mouth tried to smile, but his eyes didn’t.

  Hush.

  Genesis

  Here is not where we begin, but it is where we shall begin. For you to know us. For us to know you. But mainly, for you to know yourself.

  We have names, but they are names you can no longer pronounce without sounding as foreign as your captors. That is not to condemn you. Believe us: we know the part we played in it, even if just through our ignorance and fascination with previously unknown things. Forgive us. The only way we can repay that debt is by telling you the story that we give to you through our blood.

  All memory is kept there. But memory is not enough.

  You are the vessel, you see, so that is why you must not give in to the temptation of the long sleep. Who will tell it if not you?

  You can never be an orphan. Do you understand? The night sky itself gave birth to you and covers you and names you as her children above all others. First born. Best adorned. Highest th
ought. Most loved.

  And despise not the dark of your skin, for within it is the prime sorcery that moved us from belly-crawl to tall-walk. From the screaming, we brought forth words and mathematics and the dexterity of knowledge that coaxed the ground to offer up itself as sustenance. But do not let this make you arrogant.

  Arrogance brings you lower, down from the mountaintops where you were breastfed. Like where you are now, down in the bottomless. Where separation is normal and joy is found in indecent places.

  To fold yourself in on yourself is where you will find power. Risen out of circles at the bottoms of oceans. By hands that stitched the cosmos so that it might be primed at the beginning of everything. A little pageantry never hurt anyone. It is all right for you to find humor in that. We like to hear your laughter.

  You must know that you come from the place where fathers held you and mothers hunted for your pleasure. Holding great spears and dancing, carrying you shoulder-high and celebrating victory. You still do the dance. We see you. You still do the dance. It is part of what you are.

  A hand is unfurling. In its own time, which seems too long to you, we know. But you must be patient. We will not judge you harshly if you succumb to the pain. It is a lot to ask of everyone, especially you, so cut off from where you are supposed to be. Return to memory when you are filled with doubt (though memory is not enough). There are no lines. For everything is a circle, turning back on itself endlessly. This is not to make you dizzy, but to give you the chance to get it right the next time.

  We know that you have questions. Who are we? Why do we only whisper to you? Why do we only come to you in dreams? Why do we dwell only in the dark? Answers soon come. We, the seven, promise.