“Folks never do.”
Isaiah rolled over onto Samuel. He paused for a moment, hovered there slightly, enjoying the feeling of being taller for once. He descended a bit, leaned in, then a bit more, wondering if Samuel would let him without demanding that he go to the river and scrub the filth from himself. Finally, their navels touched. Breathing into each other, their bellies fluttered at the same time; sweaty, every time they inhaled, one’s flesh would peel from the other’s and it tickled. They laughed quietly.
Isaiah dove into Samuel, lips and teeth against his neck, hands gripped around his wrists. Samuel raised his legs and wrapped them around Isaiah’s waist. With a heave, he turned them both over so that he was on top again and Isaiah’s back was against the ground. Isaiah’s foot knocked over the bucket. Samuel turned to watch the water soak into the dirt. Isaiah grabbed him and pulled him down so that their bodies pressed. Samuel writhed gently. He smiled. He looked at Isaiah.
“You gon’ have to go to the well now,” Isaiah said. He pressed his forehead against Samuel’s.
“Now?” Samuel asked.
“When, then?” Isaiah closed his eyes.
“In the morning.” Samuel said, his lips pressed against Isaiah’s eyelids.
“And what we gon’ do if we thirsty before then?” Isaiah opened his eyes, but only partly.
Samuel took a deep breath. “All right, then.” He softly moved Isaiah aside. He got up and grabbed the bucket. Isaiah got up, too.
“I go with you.”
Isaiah kissed Samuel, then he walked on ahead.
Samuel watched him from behind. He shook his head and continued to walk at a steady pace. As he reached the door, he looked over to the wall. The tools hung on rusty nails, but they were there. Just within reach. He looked at the ground and spit before jogging after Isaiah.
Maccabees
He called for me,” Samuel said, almost mumbling while filling the trough with slop. He shook it thoughtlessly out of the pail. Steam rose off of it. The hogs were squealing and pushing one another out of the way to get to it. The flies gathered around.
Isaiah froze, but only momentarily. Then he returned to shoveling the manure out of the pen and into a pile on the other side of the fence.
“I know you heard me,” Samuel said, placing the pail down before picking up another.
Isaiah stopped shoveling.
“Yes. And there ain’t nothing for me to say. You ain’t got no choice. Just like I ain’t have one.”
“You wrong ’bout both those things.”
Isaiah looked at Samuel as he emptied the last pail.
“Don’t say that,” Isaiah whispered, wanting to tell Samuel that he had already surrendered. The battle was over. There was no longer a need. Retreat. Retreat.
“There is choices. There is always choices. You just make wrong ones.”
Isaiah felt that, just like it had been the fist that Samuel never raised at him, not the palm that had just before caressed his face after some coaxing. The rough-hewn but somehow still delicate hand that led down to the sinewy left arm, which was the protector of that troubled heart. Sometimes capable of such kindness—never forget the water carrier. But also, time had passed and no matter how hard you tried, this place crawled to a safe space inside you, leaving behind not just marks, but hatchlings to be warmed against your will by your own life’s blood. And it didn’t even give you the respect of telling you when they might hatch or if, when they did, the pain of it might show itself in the way you regarded a lover. Or, rather, in the way you allowed a lover to regard you.
Before Isaiah could protest, in his way, not in the pointed way that was Samuel’s, they saw Maggie coming down the path. Despite her limp, Maggie always seemed to walk with purpose. Even if she was just passing by on her way to the river or to go see Essie, she had the stern face and upright character of a woman with a message. They only saw her smile a handful of times, but when she did, it was contagious. She wasn’t a woman of big laughter like Be Auntie, but the small sounds that came from her mouth and the way her shoulders jerked when she was amused seemed to magnify the joy of anyone around. When Maggie was happy, all of Empty had reason to be. And when she wasn’t? Well.
Isaiah dropped his shovel and ran to open the gate for her. When she walked through the opening, she pinched her dress in her fingers and raised it so its edge fluttered just above her ankles.
“Good morning, Miss Maggie,” Isaiah said as he closed the gate behind her.
She nodded. She had a cloth in her hand, undoubtedly some meal she had managed to smuggle out of the Big House. She walked right up to Samuel.
“Good morning, Miss Maggie.”
“Here,” she said.
Maggie could be like that. She didn’t seem to have the time for pleasantries. It was as though something inside of her needed to get to the heart of matters quickly, needed the truth to be laid bare as soon as it was able. Yet, with Samuel, it seemed that the particular truth sought always had some kindness attached. Maggie’s kindness was prickly and thorned, but it was also beautiful to see coming from someone who had every reason to bristle at the very idea of kindness and hock-spit on it.
Samuel eyed the bundle suspiciously. He had never done that before.
“I ain’t gon’ eat no more of they food,” he said, trying to dampen his tone so that it didn’t come off as disrespectful to Maggie.
She laughed. “So you telling me you gon’ starve to death? Ain’t not a lick of nothing on this here plantation not they’s—whether I hand it to you or not. Might as well take the best of it.”
“Oh, I finna do just that, Miss Maggie.”
“What now?”
“Miss Maggie, don’t pay him no mind,” Isaiah said with a frown.
“What’s the matter?” Maggie raised an eyebrow as though she could sense that there was too much heat—or rather, not enough—coming off both of them. “Is this got to do with Amos’s foolishness? Essie told me he sent her to bring a peace.”
Neither of them replied.
“I know I just asked y’all a question.”
“We can handle Amos,” Samuel said.
“My foot,” Maggie said and gave Samuel a suspicious look.
Samuel reminded her of someone she hadn’t seen in a long, long while. Someone she had the good sense to put out of her mind and shut it so they couldn’t come back in no matter how politely they asked. But yes, Samuel’s face had a forgotten character: shiny skin whose source was its own light, eyelashes like a doe or something, eyes as big and oval as almonds, and heavy lips because the bottom one drooped like a studying infant taking in all of nature because it was all still new.
Yet his demeanor reminded her of someone else. The way his face welcomed but snatched itself away without a moment’s notice felt quite familiar to her. And here she was—with an apology, wrapped in white cloth, on behalf of people who were beyond forgiveness—ready to be snatched up.
“Are you gon’ take this or am I gon’ have to eat it myself? I come all the way down here for you to stand beside yourself? Boy!”
Samuel glanced at Isaiah and then took the parcel from Maggie.
“Thank you, Miss Maggie,” he said, head bowed.
“Mm-hmm,” Maggie replied as she turned.
As she started to limp away, something black flashed across her back that made Samuel flinch, though he would deny it if anyone said they saw him. It flickered quickly, the blackness, like how light can sometimes do as it passes from sky to tree bough to ground. And he told himself that is exactly what happened, that it was light he saw and not shadow—even though no light he ever saw looked like the absence of it and there were no trees close enough to make light dance like that. But he was certain (but not really) that it wasn’t the shadow returning to point its crooked finger at him for something he didn’t do, denying the accusation witho
ut even knowing what the accusation was. Nah. It wasn’t that. Couldn’t be.
Isaiah moved ahead to open the gate anew for Maggie. “Thank you kindly for your trouble. Let me get this here gate for you again,” Isaiah said. His soft eyes regarded her as one would royalty. Keen Maggie saw it there, sparkling in him. She appreciated the sentiment but knew that it was misapprehended and the young had to understand deeper things than pageantry.
“Don’t put that on me,” she said very seriously. “Unless you want harm to come.”
Isaiah was confused and didn’t understand what he’d done wrong, unsure of what he showed other than the awe he had for her, but he nodded as he closed the gate and watched her walk slowly back to the Big House.
Whatever Maggie brought with her wasn’t just in the wrapped piece of cloth. Isaiah felt it, but Samuel felt it more. Maybe because he was the one holding on to her gift or because he was the one who didn’t see (No I didn’t! he kept telling himself) the not-a-shadow-can’t-be streak across her back. Either way, whatever fight had been building in them seemed to be of secondary concern now.
“Timothy called for me,” Samuel mumbled again.
Isaiah took a deep breath and held it. He let it out. Then, because what else could he do, he shrugged. Silently, grief shook his body.
“Don’t,” Samuel said, standing still in the same spot, holding the cloth in his left hand.
Don’t what, cry or shrug? Isaiah didn’t know and he was too tired to ask. But he did think about the ways in which his body wasn’t his own and how that condition showed up uniquely for everyone whose personhood wasn’t just disputed but denied. Swirling beneath him were the ways in which not having lawful claim to yourself diminished you, yes, but in another way, condemned those who invented the disconnection. He hoped. Maybe not in this realm, but absolutely in others—if there were others. Matching hard for hard did nothing but create wreckage. But being soft, while beautiful, was subject to being torn asunder by the harder thing. What other answer was there then but to be some kind of flexible? Stretch further so that there was too much difficulty in trying to pull you apart?
Samuel was a hard thing. There was no use in trying to make him anything other than that. And he had every right, even if sometimes he didn’t understand how his rigidity, that impenetrable door that Puah was perhaps the first one to notice, was built up in the wrong direction. But some people thought hard was the answer and believed that rather than bend, you had to try to snap them in half because they were confident that you couldn’t.
Isaiah, however, knew of the sporadic but attendant softness inside Samuel. Ground cover rocky, yes, but soil giving.
And Samuel only half trusted him with that knowledge—preferred, actually, if Isaiah didn’t know at all. So some things he kept to himself. The shadow with the pointing hand would be one of them. It was in the barn, he could admit to that, but it wasn’t in the woods or riding Maggie’s back like a strapped babe.
A mutual sigh released them from having to continue the argument. No one had to willingly relent or gloat over a victory. The inhalation then exhalation of breath provided enough room for them both to hold on to a little bit of dignity even in the middle of desecration.
Samuel looked down at the bundle in his hand. He looked up and motioned with his head for Isaiah to follow him as he walked around to the back of the barn. Isaiah walked behind him, tracing Samuel’s steps, walking in them sometimes and sometimes making his own path through the chicory and spurge. When they came to the rear center of the barn, where the sun was bright with anger and the knothole that betrayed them was a kind of memorial, Samuel stopped. Isaiah walked a bit farther, to where there was a little bit of shade because a yellow pine, not thirty years old yet, was in the process of spreading itself there, and he found its scent reassuring because of the way it hid his own.
He turned to look at Samuel. Moving against his nature because there was the possibility of accusatory shadow, he walked over to where Isaiah was and sat down at the base of the tree. Isaiah sat down next to him. Samuel flattened his lap and unfastened Maggie’s cloth. And what did they have here? A veritable feast of boiled eggs, fried ham, blackberry jelly on thick slices of bread, two whole nectarines, and a big ol’ hunk of brown cake.
“Mercy,” Isaiah said.
Samuel didn’t want to remember the shadow he didn’t see. He picked up a nectarine and gestured for Isaiah to take one for himself. Almost at the same time, they bit into them. The juices ran down their faces. Isaiah wiped the juice away but Samuel didn’t. He stared ahead at the rear of the barn.
Neither of them spoke, but they each continued to eat, picking things from the cloth, slowly, carefully, one with grateful hands, the other with discerning ones, like ritual, but without prayer because they didn’t need one, and respect was freely given.
But still, it was solemn-like, holy, as unto a last-last supper.
The Revelation of Judas
Sometimes, in Mississippi, maybe in the whole world, except one other place lost to memory, the sky was heavy. It was thick with something unseen but surely felt. Maggie looked up to it as she swept the porch and had the feeling that something was looking back at her. It was smiling, whatever it was. But the smile wasn’t the kind to bring comfort. It was the same smile a man had sometimes, the wrong kind of man, the kind whose curling lips were a warning that he was prone to unpredictable acts, that he thought he was entitled to touch what he wanted to touch, take what he wanted to take, spoil what he wanted to spoil, and all of that was his birthright for merely existing. She didn’t know where men got that idea from. But it was one they shared with whoever was willing to follow.
Perhaps the heaviness was just a rain on its way. Maggie sniffed the air and yes, it had the whiff of moisture and dirt that preceded storm. But there was something else there, too: a bright and pointy smell, like a star plucked from the nighttime and brought low before it dimmed forever. No one could touch it, though, for it was hot enough to singe hairs. There was something coming. Maggie put the broom up against the Big House and dug in her apron pocket. She pulled out a handful of pig bones. She descended the stairs. She cleared a path of dirt using her foot to brush aside pebbles and dead leaves. She stooped down as low as she could before the hip caused her to wince. Then she threw the bones and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she blinked. Then she blinked again. And again and again. Finally, her eyes widened.
No, it can’t be! Lies! He wouldn’t dare.
* * *
—
Inside his shack, Amos awoke with a dull ache bumping inside his head. It was from all the rattling that he heard in his dream. No sights, no colors, just the sound of a rattling, like bones, which was off rhythm with his breath, but he wouldn’t read that as a sign, not a bad one at least. He rolled in his pallet, away from Essie and Solomon, and the stiffness between his legs made him think briefly about Be Auntie and if he should go to her this early in the morning, which he had never done because night had been their portion. And it was strange to him that Essie hadn’t said a word, didn’t ask a single question about where he roamed in the dark, out into a night where James and his fellow jackals were poised to invent a reason, any reason, to choke, whip, or shoot.
“They tried to run, Paul,” they would say of a people whose legs were so mangled from the field that they could barely drag, much less head for the North. And Paul would take them at their word not because he believed them but because the alternative was to believe the mangled people, and both God and law, as well as ownership of land, prevented him from doing that.
Amos wasn’t a fool. He realized the god he now served wasn’t the will of his people. But he knew it could be convinced to be. More than worshipped, all gods wanted to be adored, and his people had that in them more than Paul’s: to abide more, rejoice more, revere more, surrender more; climb on top of a golden pyre and burn more. He had seen it in the circle of
trees. The way his people swayed, the way they rocked, the way they offered themselves up willingly to the cloudy sky above, and the way they sang together in a harmony that wasn’t rehearsed because people who shared the same bitter lot connected in ways unseen by nature.
He covered his nakedness not out of shame but out of obligation. Massa Paul would think it savagery and Missy Ruth, perhaps, an invitation. He cloaked himself in ratty clothes, but at least they were clean. He had beaten them against the rocks himself and soaked them in a bucket of lavender water. He couldn’t ask Essie to do that and be kind to the burden that nursed at her breast; that would be too much.
He dressed quietly as Essie and Solomon snored and wheezed asleep, unmoved by his waking. He walked to the door, pushed aside the covering, and stepped out into the cloudy, humid morning. The rain will take care of this, he thought, feeling the stickiness that sapped strength and beaded in droplets on his forehead. He looked to the right, squinting, to see the big red thing that was the barn. It cast a looming shadow in the light of the rising sun behind him. He shook his head. Had they only listened. Had they only heeded. Had they only put the people above themselves, just a little; given up what everyone worth their weight in cotton had to give up in order to survive relatively unscathed—even though “unscathed” was a wholesome and comforting lie.
They felt like sons to him, particularly Isaiah, who was his charge, given to him by a mother who didn’t tell Amos what her name was, but did manage to whisper to him the child’s name, which Amos thought sounded like a howling. He was, however, emboldened by the fact that this woman had managed to hang on to her old ways even in the blue ridges of Georgia and had entrusted him to ensure her child would carry those ways with him if only in name.
He was waiting until Isaiah had become a man, or if he had the inkling that either one of them was going to be sold away, before Amos revealed Isaiah to himself. You know your name is Kayode? Haha! No, not kie-oh-TEE. Kuh-yo-DAY. Your mam tell me it mean “he brings joy” in the old tongue of her mother’s mother. Must be that in her misery-misery world, you one of the only things that ever make her smile truly. Yes suh. Oh, what’s that? Where was she? In Georgia, sure ’nough. Yes, your pappy was there too, but it be best if’n I don’t say what I saw of him that wet and greedy day other than I remember this: your face is his face.
The Prophets Page 22