Did Isaiah have any brothers? Was he born on this plantation? If not, did he remember his life before? Timothy decided he would ask.
On another day, Timothy pulled Isaiah away from his work. He sent Maggie down to retrieve him. When the two arrived at the back of the Big House, Ruth was standing on the porch, her arms crossed in front of her bosom. Timothy was standing behind her.
“Mag, I was calling you. Where were you? And who is this?” she said, sizing up Isaiah.
“I was fetching this here barn hand for Massa Timothy is all.”
“And what does Timothy want with this filthy creature?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. You best ask the massa himself.”
Timothy stepped forward.
“Mother, he’s my specimen. You know I paint these Negroes.”
Ruth sucked her teeth. “‘Negroes.’ You mean niggers. Call them as you see them. There’s no need for pussyfooting,” she said as she looked first at Timothy, then at Isaiah. “Well, don’t let him in the house. He’s liable to stink up the whole place. Settle any business right out here on this porch.”
Ruth stood on the porch eyeing Isaiah. Isaiah’s head was bowed and he was wringing his hands.
“Stop all that fidgeting,” Ruth said softly. “You’re making me—”
Timothy grabbed his mother by the arm.
“Mother, I think it’s best if you returned to your room. You need your rest. Maggie, would you take my mother back upstairs?”
“This is still my house, young man.” Ruth smiled. “And I will roam it as I please. Thank you kindly.” She unfolded her arms. “I wish you’d paint something else. All this beauty surrounding us and you find the ugliest thing in the world to waste paint on.”
Timothy’s face turned red before he composed himself.
“Mother, why don’t you go on inside? It will be dark soon and Maggie is about to serve tea and cookies. I’ll join you shortly.”
Ruth smiled a smile that told Timothy that she would pretend that he wasn’t trying to get rid of her. She patted him on the shoulder and walked slowly over the threshold and into the kitchen. Maggie followed her.
Timothy sighed.
“I apologize for Mother,” he said to Isaiah, who hadn’t moved an inch the entire time. He was still looking at his feet.
“No such a thing,” Isaiah replied, but he didn’t lift his head.
Timothy walked down the steps and walked up to Isaiah. He put his finger to his chin and lifted Isaiah’s head. Isaiah avoided eye contact, but wherever he would turn his eyes, Timothy would move there until, defeated, Isaiah looked him in the face.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Isaiah. I’m not like my family.”
Isaiah inhaled deeply, held it for a moment, and then let the air out slowly, silently. He scratched his head.
“Well, now. I had you summoned for a reason,” Timothy said. “I just have some questions.”
Isaiah remained silent.
“Who’s that other Negro who works with you in the barn?”
Isaiah grabbed his own thigh and squeezed.
“Samuel, suh.”
“Is he your brother?”
“No, suh.”
“I’d like to meet him. Will you take me?”
Isaiah walked very slowly to lead the way. Timothy rushed ahead of him, forcing Isaiah to speed up. Through the wide-open door of the barn, Isaiah could see Samuel’s flickering silhouette against the walls, dancing alone to lamplight.
Samuel had been down at the river, too, the day Timothy called all of them forth, had also been pored over by him and thoughtfully rejected. They were bathing, modesty a sliver of a thing among them. It was a rest day, so they could do with their time what they wished, within limits. No one could leave the plantation without a pass, and passes were almost never given. But they could sit with their families and friends at the edge of the river and fish. They could gather around a campfire and roast walnuts. They could come together in the clearing and lift their voices to God. And they could bathe.
And on that particular morning, they bathed en masse. Probably those who wanted to be clean for Amos’s service—even though they would only mess themselves again by sitting on the ground, on rotting logs, or on mossy rock as the sun tried to break through tree boughs to give great Amos the glow.
None of it really made any sense to Timothy. He had watched them once, in a circle, beneath trees, listening to what sounded to him like nothing. Yes, certainly there were good Negroes, and maybe even some of them deserved to be free or returned to where they were snatched from, but what heaven would have them sitting side by side with decent Christians? The most they could hope for was an afterlife of shelter and enough food to fuel the toil that would be their lot for all eternity.
He interrupted their bathing, but all appeared forgiven because they seemed so glad to see it was him and not his father or James. So they lined up and Timothy recalled that, among the bunch, it was only Samuel who sulked.
Samuel stood up when he heard their footsteps tramping over the dusty trail from the Big House. He held up the lantern and saw Isaiah and Timothy walking toward the barn. He frowned and looked to the darkening sky. Then he slouched and lowered his head.
Timothy waited for Isaiah to run out in front of him to open the gate. Timothy might have simply climbed it had he not been so tired. He walked inside and stepped on a pile of horse shit.
“Christ Jesus,” he exclaimed. “Ugh. Lord have . . . Isaiah, I thought you two were supposed to keep this place . . . Shit. Help me . . .”
Timothy pointed down to his boot. Isaiah dropped to his knees and unlaced it. Then he tugged on it, though it wouldn’t budge. Finally, Samuel came out with the lamp. He set it on the ground and helped Isaiah pull. With one great heave, they got it loose, all three of them landing on their asses. Timothy laughed.
“My word.” He chuckled at them.
Isaiah got up and ran to retrieve a bucket of water. He left the boot on the ground. Timothy rose and dusted himself off. Then he looked at Samuel, who stared aimlessly in the lamplight.
“Good evening, Samuel,” Timothy said. Samuel jumped as if awakened from slumber. “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, suh,” Samuel replied.
“Well?” Timothy rushed.
“You Massa Timothy, suh,” Samuel said, and added, “Good to have you back home, Massa.”
“Well, thank you, Samuel,” Timothy offered and straightened his back. His face brightened. “I wish I could say I was glad to be back. I miss the North so—cold as it is. Alas, here I am.”
There was silence between them. Isaiah came back with the bucket and he and Samuel knelt and began to clean the boot. Occasionally, Samuel would steal upward glances. Timothy watched as they worked in tandem, with perfect rhythm, like they had been made that way: arms moving, elbows jutting, hands swishing in water, fingers grasping the bucket’s edge, occasionally touching as one silently gave the other a cue in a language only they understood. They were together in a way he hadn’t ever witnessed, every separate motion building upon the other to form something that seemed to sway to its own music, back and forth, like the sea. For the first time, since arriving home, he felt like an intruder. He didn’t dislike the feeling, but the silence unsettled him.
“I’ve been painting Isaiah, you know,” he offered finally. “Out there, over by the field.”
Samuel stopped washing the boot. He took his hands out of the bucket and shook them to get the excess water off. He stood up and wiped his arms.
“Painting him, suh?” Samuel looked at Isaiah. Isaiah stood up and handed the boot back to Timothy. Samuel looked Isaiah up and down and then turned back toward Timothy.
“But I don’t see a lick of paint on him, Massa.”
“What? No,” Timothy said, laughing. “I’ve been painti
ng pictures of him. You know, like paintings that you hang on a wall.”
“Oh, I see. That’s mighty fine, suh. Yes, indeed.” Samuel glanced toward Isaiah, who was giving him a stern look.
“Yes, well, maybe I can paint you, too, one of these days,” Timothy added.
“Yes, suh.”
“If you’d like.”
“Yes, suh.”
Suddenly, Timothy found himself disturbed and tried to discover why. He stared at the two Negroes in front of him. Something about them was nagging at him. Samuel was obedient enough, tall even when slouching. But he seemed, still, not to see him, to look past him, the smile on his face strained. Samuel was the color of an eggplant, violet more than black, and sturdy. He was about Timothy’s height and had just the whitest teeth. Shocking, those teeth were, because most boys Timothy knew had teeth that were either weed green or pallid yellow.
Timothy had sat in classrooms with those other boys, who talked and talked, and whose talking revealed nothing except that their pasts were invented, no matter how fervently they believed them. But Timothy widened his eyes at their tales anyway, gasped during the dramatic pauses, and applauded vigorously at the conclusions.
Those other boys liked the way Timothy spoke, the slow certainty of his voice, and the drawl that inevitably led into a smile. His dimples, pressed snugly into each cheek, were excess; he had already won them over with his disposition. If the South had taught him anything, it taught him how to hide his flaws, flatter his audience, feign deference even when he was clearly superior in every conceivable way, and be quintessential in the art of courtesy. This while holding vile and impure thoughts, while even suppressing the girth of his manhood behind britches that threatened to burst at the seams. A raindrop at the tip of his being that would never reach fertile ground. Yes, he was a gentleman’s gentleman, and they were completely taken with him.
In the North, he was told that Negroes were free, but he hadn’t seen any during his entire time there. He imagined that the number must have been small and, therefore, sightings rare. He did, however, meet people who called themselves abolitionists. Curious folk, he thought; wanted to free Negroes from the drudgery of slavery, they said, but what to do after was always murky, always shapeless, always an exercise in inadequacy.
“Maybe send them back to Africa,” one of them said at an informal gathering at a tavern in town.
“After so many years?” Timothy retorted. “It would be as foreign to them as it would be to us, I reckon. You wish to solve what you call an act of cruelty by perpetrating another?”
“Well, do you propose that they stay here, walk among us, and lie with us in our beds?”
“Why would their presence here lead to our bedrooms?”
“Their lust would make it inevitable.”
Their lust or ours? Timothy thought. After all, he knew what lurked in the loins of men, had witnessed it up close. All it took to unleash it was a paintbrush and a skilled hand. He struggled to determine the difference between North and South and concluded that they were more alike than not, the only discernible difference being that the South had thought all of their options through to their conclusions. The North, meanwhile, still couldn’t answer the questions of who would do the work freed slaves would necessarily leave behind and how those unfortunate souls would be paid once the position of slave was abolished. These men were bad at business, though there was every indication that they were just as greedy.
Timothy looked in the direction of the Big House, then back at Isaiah and Samuel.
“Well, I must be going. Isaiah, come to the house in the morning. I’ll let Maggie know to let you in. I want to get back to work on your portrait as soon as possible.”
“Yessuh. Do you need for one of us to light your way?”
“No. I’ll be just fine. Thank you. Good night.”
He walked down the dark path toward the house with the feeling that he had not seen all he needed to see of them. He wondered what they were like when he wasn’t around. Were they as shy, as quiet? What kind of wobbly, imperfect world did they create out there in the barn? He was determined to see.
It was about three in the morning and even the faint lights from the cabins in the distance were extinguished when he climbed out of bed. He went downstairs and sat in a rocker on the front porch, hoping the night would produce a merciful breeze. He was like his mother in this. Absent all light but moonglow, the plantation was a festival of shadows. Black against black, and yet things managed to distinguish themselves from one another: the curly black of the trees from the pointy black of the cabins; the silky black of the river from the massive black of the barn. Somehow, he had not noticed that before.
He wiped the sweat from his brow. No breeze would bless him. He leaned forward. The searing, sticky night was infecting him with wanderlust. He needed to cool himself off, wash the clamminess from his skin. Perhaps a short splash in the river. He got up and the rocker continued to rock without him. He walked down the steps and walked around the side of the house, toward the Yazoo.
He began unbuttoning his shirt. He had completely removed it by the time he was near the back of the barn. He noticed a faint light emanating from within. He did now what he didn’t do earlier: he climbed the gate and hoped he didn’t step in any more manure. He crept over to the barn. He walked along the back, the side closest to the river. There was a knothole big enough to fit his fist through. He pressed his head against the wall and peeped in. He tried to make out the figures. Horses? Yes. He was on the end where the horses’ pens were. But beyond them, where the lamplight flickered, glimpses. Breathtaking.
Their heat seemed to blur everything in close proximity. Hay stuck to Samuel’s back, or maybe it was Isaiah’s. He couldn’t tell who was holding whom. That’s how close together they were, and the light offered no assistance. Nevertheless, the hay was darted against him like sewing needles, as though some unseen hand were stitching them both into existence, right there, together, in that tight embrace, slumbering, joined. Timothy began to tremble. He didn’t imagine that Negroes were this way, could be this way: What, to them, was snuggling with no bed in which to share it? Did toil not prevent the contemplation or even the time for a softer nature? Thomas Jefferson had done extensive research, Timothy learned, and the science made it clear. Yet, without any wind to chill the air, they clung to each other as though it were winter and not summer. The witnessing confused him, but also made him stiff inside his britches.
He would paint Isaiah tomorrow.
And why shouldn’t he? It wouldn’t be long before he would begin to receive visitors. For surely his parents wanted, needed grandchildren; they weren’t shy about making this known. Pestering him about whether he had met any fine ladies during his studies, travels, and such, before deciding, ultimately, that it didn’t matter, that what he couldn’t find he hadn’t the experience to do in any regard. And they, his parents, would be better at selection.
There would come young women, girls really, all with the right breeding—with the right shade of red hair, or blond to match his own; with exceptionally green eyes, or blue like his; and bosoms that had just begun to rise at about the same time that he discovered the sizzling thing that dangled between his legs; girls whose eyes would flutter when he walked into the room; whose private parts would glisten with his grin; who might recoil internally and hold back tears so as not to offend their parents or their hosts. They would be paraded before him as though his choice mattered and, once chosen, he would be forced to marry her for whom he had no desire.
And why not with a Negro? Color stopped neither his mother nor his father. There were blond-haired, blue-eyed Negroes with near-white skin who walked just like him, had the same smile and the same square shoulders as he did, the same knobby knees and the same splotchy birthmark on the chin. Only the tight curls of their tresses—and, sometimes, their thick lips and broad noses—gave Timothy r
elief when he passed one of them. His parents thought he didn’t know about Adam, the coach Negro, but he did. Had always suspected it, but knew for certain on the ride into town to see him off to college. The way his mother snapped at Adam and the way she tried to distract Timothy; it was all so very obvious then. Adam looked too Halifax not to be one. There were probably more. He wasn’t an only child after all, but wished he could have been.
He had seen enough. He backed away from the barn and tiptoed off to the river. When he was right about at the spot where he had called all of the Negroes out of the water just days ago, he stooped and splashed his face with water. He took off his pants and attempted to cool the heat between his legs, but it only grew. So he felt himself, over and over again, until he could feel himself no longer.
Drained, he trekked back to the Big House, climbed the stairs slowly, reached his room, and fell face-first into his bed. He hadn’t slept that well since he returned home. He dreamed of writhing bodies and drool. Only the sun pouring through his window a short while later, its heat beating down on his head, woke him. Temporarily blinded, he rubbed his eyes. When his vision adjusted, he surveyed his room. The painting of Isaiah, not quite finished, but finished enough, stared back at him. He blushed and turned his face.
When Isaiah arrived later that morning, Timothy came down to greet him. With Ruth still soundly asleep, Timothy led Isaiah up the stairs and into his room.
“Have you ever been in the house before?” Timothy asked Isaiah.
The Prophets Page 20