It would have been their own quiet celebration, something Isaiah could have taken back with him into that barn and shared with Samuel, something Amos himself could have brought back to Essie, helping all of them to endure the breeding that had to be done so that they could live live, even if just in short bursts in the dark, rather than just survive.
He didn’t mean to use it as extortion. He saw the look on Isaiah’s face when he wouldn’t reveal it. There, then, he remembered Isaiah’s father’s face: all twisted up in the way it does when the soul is trying to leave the body. The difference between grief and sorrow lay there, a cavern in the face that threatened heartbreak for all witnesses, or, in Amos’s new language, the threat of being turned to living salt, to be like an upright but unmoving sea.
In the brand-new tongue of his master’s people, he had contemplated a different trinity. If Samuel and Isaiah’s natures rose only in each other’s company, then why not allow them each other and the pleasure of one more? Samuel and Isaiah, father and son; he wasn’t sure what the order was there. Samuel was bigger, but one could never know with twisted shadows. Puah could be the Holy Ghost. Three to make one. One out of three. This might have been the way, the truth, the light.
But, no. His gut, which is to say, his god, told him that this would have been even more obscene than what was already happening in the lair of the golden calf, would open up caverns that led to no one knows where. Besides that, Amos knew not near none of them would have it. Shame was a sturdy master with strong legs and clinging embrace.
He was almost primed to accept failure—until he dreamed that he saw Essie in their shack, turned to the side, staring at the wall, Solomon crawling at her feet and pulling at the edge of her dress.
“Paul saw me,” she muttered. “He saw me.”
That was it. Samuel and Isaiah left him no choice. They had rebuked all entreaties, no matter how reasonable. The stubbornness of youth had left them incapable of compromise. If they were determined to make this a war, then this was Amos’s only strategy: always, always, the many must have its safety over the few.
This would be his final act, he believed. Yes, that was what rumbled inside him. His mouth began to bend into the cavern he hoped never to see again. Eyes misty, he held it all back. He wiped his face with his hands and, surprisingly, took on the weight of clouds above. In them, though, he saw a dark something, waiting for him, ready, it seemed, to raise its sword in battle if it had to.
* * *
—
Maggie held her hand up before her, almost expecting it, alone, to stop Amos in his tracks. She had briefly forgotten how powerful Paul’s god was. And she was, after all, standing on the land that was now his, the very land that his god waged war on, defeating the gods that used to reign here on their own sacred territory, which Maggie didn’t even know was possible. With all of the force that sustained them right beneath their feet, how was it that these old gods, who weren’t so unfamiliar to her people’s gods, succumbed to the vigor of the newer and less wise? What chance did she have against that kind of power, removed as she was from the land where she should have been born and the people she should have been born to?
What she didn’t understand was how Amos had been able to find this god’s favor. He who had militarized his people—armed them with icy glares, boom-cannons, ships that could survive the tumultuous gray waters, and His leather-bound instruction—and led them to bounty. And what bounty meant to them was everything: not just the land, but the trees, the animals, the voices, the children. This god had expressed nothing but disdain for them and yet, here it was, fully shining on Amos in such a way that he paid her hand, which was held there by the voices and the shadows, no heed.
“Don’t cross these bones!” Maggie said loudly, not caring, for the moment, who heard her.
Amos continued to walk toward the Big House. Maggie’s mouth dropped. She moved back some. Quickly, she picked up a stick and drew a circle with an X inside it, then spit. Amos continued right past it. Stunned, she scuttled back even more. She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a pouch. Inside it was rock salt. She threw it on the ground in front of Amos and finally, he stopped. He looked down at the pouch in front of his feet.
“Cross that and not near none of us can stop what happens next,” Maggie said.
“I shoulda known you was the dark cloud,” Amos said calmly. “This a mistake, Mag. I ain’t got no quarrel with you.”
“What you finna do—I got a quarrel with that.” She put her hands on her hips.
“I been patient. I tried to . . .”
“‘Patient’? You talking they words now; talk ours.”
Amos swatted away a fly, or maybe it was Maggie’s words. In either event, his hand went up by his face in a flurry. When he finally came to a stop, Maggie eyed him up and down.
“You won’t like this before. I had seen you, so tender with Essie, up full in your manness, not a stitch of harm to you. But now,” Maggie shook her head. “It’s a bone-chilly that freeze all inside things. Your eyes starting to turn blue; I see it. Blue, you hear me?”
“How ’bout your’n circle, Maggie? You would see that expand or broke?”
No, Be Auntie ain’t tell this man! For us only! Those the rules. Oh, that girl something else! That was all right. Maggie had some private knowledge of her own.
“Were you in the dark or in the light?” Maggie said, speaking of the particular anointing hovering over Amos like a horde of gnats. “Did you fall forward or backward?”
Amos didn’t answer but his silence told Maggie what she needed to know.
“And you still took heed? You know better.”
Amos sighed and turned around, looking past the willow tree, past the cotton field, and into the woods, toward the circle of trees. Maggie knew what he was doing. He was gathering strength to get past the salt that his god knew the sting of all too well. She reached out and touched Amos’s shoulder. She heard something. It was Amos’s voice but not coming from his mouth. It was coming from the sky—no, from the clouds themselves. And this is what happened when Amos of the sky spoke:
Hearts pounded then stopped then pounded again. There were sharp intakes of breath and then long, wet exhalations. People stood up with the speed of lightning bolts and shouted louder than they were allowed. And then they looked to the sky and closed their eyes. Some of them swayed. Some of them wept. All of this was nothing but reprieve. A moment away while still there and, therefore, necessary, priceless.
Maggie snatched her hand away. She stood there shaking with fury when Amos turned back to face her.
“You see?” he asked. “You see?”
She slapped him. Dead in the face. She slapped him hard enough that spit flew from his mouth and she saw exactly where it landed and she was glad because it would be of some use. Her upturned chin told him that whatever she saw, rather heard, from the clouds, mattered less than what she could perceive on the ground. She would show him.
This was their impasse: each responding to a slight the one claims the other invoked. The truth lost both to time and to people who never understand the point of ritual. Or who understood it all too well.
Amos, tired of wielding what they knew against each other, decided it was time for risk. He looked Maggie directly in the eye, then he looked down. He stepped right on the salt pouch before kicking it full force across the weeds. Maggie jerked in disbelief.
“You . . . you would save the right-this-instant and forfeit the long-tomorrow?”
Amos held his head up and his lips formed defiance, though there was a tiny bit of fear in it. He moved Maggie aside as gently as he could and she swung at him, hitting him on his back. He stumbled, but he didn’t stray. He walked straight ahead. Maggie grabbed at his shirt and he pulled her off. She came back at him and he swung her around and she hit the ground, landing on her bad hip. She balled up her fists and cussed A
mos deep in her throat. He returned some cusses of his own. She looked back to see if she could see where his landed.
She couldn’t.
Meanwhile, Amos walked up the stairs to the Big House and Maggie crawled on the ground. The first drops of rain began to fall.
Maggie grabbed her chest. He was gon’ walk in through the front door! He had the gumption (he called it “the blood”) to walk right in through the front like a toubab. This simply confirmed what Maggie’s spirit had told her all along. Peace was tricky. There was a matter of sacrifice involved, but rarely did the peacemaker sacrifice themselves as much as they were willing to sacrifice some other, lead them up to the stake to get burned, comforting them as they were about to be lit up so that everything on earth and in the heavens could see, telling them, Don’t worry; glory’s next.
Fuck glory! Give us what’s ours by right, and what’s ours by right is our skin tint, skin, our breath scent, breath, our eye blink, our feet steps! Who broke the covenant with creation such that a person could be a cow or a carriage? Release yourself from that low-down place where another’s pain is your fortune. Get up, you hear me? Cleanse your outhouse spirit and set yourself to leave us be! Otherwise, you leave us no choice.
Those words were in her head, but they came from somewhere else. Voices, yes; more than six.
As Amos prepared to walk through the door, Maggie struggled to her feet. She looked over at the barn. The pig bones were still on the ground, but in her tussle with Amos, they had been rearranged. She limped over to them and took a deep breath. There was a new portent. She nodded and then turned to walk toward the barn as fast as her hurt could take her.
In her head, the voices continued: Don’t fret, Maggie. You know you hung on as mightily as you could.
Amos was framed by the doorway. And what was it to walk in through the front door and march proudly, chest out, but head ready at any moment to bow? They allowed Maggie to do it as keeper of the house, so there had been a precedent. And after he was gone to the far-off somewhere, where weary bones lay in rest and the tired soul was welcomed with open arms into the peaceful bosom of Abraham, some other who would come after him would have a path through treacherous terrain. And Amos, from the majesty of what he and he alone called the Upper Room, would smile like God did because he, too, would see what he did was good.
He opened the door and walked in. Slow, steady steps, and tracking no dirt on the floor; Amos was careful. Upon reaching the oak door of Paul’s study, beyond which he heard the rustling of papers, Amos noticed a marking. It was small enough to be nearly imperceptible. The scythe and lightning symbol no bigger than a boll weevil carved in the dead center of the door. Amos knew it immediately to be a rune of some kind, perhaps symbolizing the Lord, but hadn’t the Lord asked not for graven images that weren’t of His hand or word? To place no other before Him meant that all old gods, all of them, had to die, whether in who-really-named-it Africa, or Europe, or even in this here place falsely called America.
Hm. Maybe one day he might muster up the courage to ask Massa Paul about it himself. Maybe when Massa Paul was in one of his more somber moods, after having tasted the dazzling warmth of the spirits he took kindly to after a long hard day of telling people to work harder. Yes, that was the best time to find out, when Paul was fine and mellow and a nigger’s inquiry wouldn’t be seen as heresy.
Paul saw me.
A Holy Trinity.
Amos raised his hands in prayer.
Go ’head, Amos, knock on that door. Long ago, Moses also led his people through the furious waters. And they all made it out, cleansed, right on the other side.
Chronicles
The first mistake you made was in trying to reason with it.
Do you hear us?
You attempted to understand the source, hear the beat, find the rhythm for something that sprang from chaos (never, never look into the heart of that which has no heart to speak of). Foolish.
You sought the nature of something that occurred by accident so has no nature at all. Things without a nature always seek one, you see, and can only obtain one through plunder and then consumption. They have a name. They all have a name: Separation.
You have been warned.
In this, there is only so much we can tell you given our purposeful isolation. This is why it is there, you know, the bush: to insulate, to protect. Though as you have already surmised it is no match for curiosity. They tumbled down from the great mountains and they washed up from the wide sea. We were assaulted from both sides. We were doomed.
There are many stories. These stories are far older than we are. We cannot tell you for certain which of them is true. What we can verify is the outcome. The outcome is always the same: in the end, death. But before death, the unspeakable.
There are many stories to tell. Here is one:
He was forbidden from engaging in the practices that drew him away from his people and into the lair of his demise, but he was arrogant and refused to heed the warnings. He took women and subjected them to things without their consent. These were among the very first rapes. Born of these colossal blasphemies were children without our marks upon them. This was not their fault, but the blight was undeniable. As horrific as all of that was, that was not even the difficult part.
The difficult part was in realizing that all abandoned children seek vengeance.
And most will have it.
Bel and the Dragon
The ship rocked and made everyone sick, but then the whole thing smelled of sickness already. Birds were confused. The rot had made them believe there was a feast to be had when there wasn’t. Driven wild, they sat perched on masts and pecked at the scent, beaks snapping at nothing at first, then at one another before they finally dove into the ocean and sometimes came back up, their mouths filled with something other than salt water. Happy, then, to fly away, but still confused about the seductive odor of death lingering.
It was coming from the stomach of the ship where not even birds’ eyes were keen enough to penetrate. Hidden, but not a secret to those with other kinds of appetites. The crew, pissy and gruff, sang rough-hewn songs and even those could only reach the bottom by great force. Grief’s melody, in the strange tongue of a ravenous people. Laughter that stung dripped through the boards down onto the chains and onto the flesh not fully digested in the belly. Where is hope? Trapped in the ribs, which held them in place when they longed to be shat out—yes, even shat out would be better than the suffocation that allowed them yet to breathe.
Someone screamed out in the dark, a voice that Kosii couldn’t understand, but its rhythms were familiar, spoke to his blackest parts in the midst of incomprehension. The flashes of light that barged in—when one of the skinless fools came down to check on the chains, and to bring not enough water and inedible slop—allowed him the opportunity to snatch glimpses of his surroundings: other bodies chained to him and around him. Between inhaling and vomiting up the funk, and eyelids squeezed shut from the effort, he opened his and the light hurt, too, but he looked around to see if there were any people marked like him with the Kosongo symbol of eternity: the snake kissing its tail and the woman at the center. But there were too many shadows. There were too many wails and too many men crying and too many women screaming and too many people silent from death. He couldn’t hold on to who he knew he was. There was a puddle of blood on the floor, after all, and the woman next to him, big with child, had her legs spread as far as she could get them, which was not far enough, and the baby’s feet were coming first. If there were midwives among them, they were likewise chained. His mother caught babies and he watched. He could have done it, but he couldn’t lift his hands. So the baby would die and he would watch and wouldn’t even be able to tell the woman that he was sorry for her loss because he couldn’t speak her language and by the time he was able to find a way to lay a hand on her ankle after tugging and tugging at the chains, she would
have bled out and he would be touching an uncovered, unoiled corpse, and only elders were allowed to do so. He could only moan his mourning and hoped that in her last moments, she knew that it was for her and her baby.
He slept a sleepless sleep, eyes never fully shut, body never truly at rest. He couldn’t unprepare himself for the turmoil that could, at any moment, lie down next to him and everyone else like a dutiful lover.
“Elewa,” he whispered.
He lost track of him at the shore. They, the ghost cannibals, had burned everything: Semjula’s canes, Mother’s drums, Father’s blankets. The royal jewels and metals from the tips of spears they stole: adorned themselves in profane ways with them, carried them in their mouths, intended to melt pieces down to use as teeth. Gaudy displays of ignorance, no respect for the age of the items, how they had been passed down for hundreds of years from mother to son, father to daughter, each holding a piece of those who held them, blue, red, gentle, strong, shimmering once, but now stripped of their luster, debased in the grimy hands of thieves, victorious criminals who had crafted great vessels, traveled from the distant universe, but didn’t have the good sense to wash their hands before they ate. Shameless.
Kosii and Elewa had just stumbled, exhausted, out of the forest and were already separated by ten people between, in the line of joined iron collars. The skinless men had even put the craven devices on Semjula, whose neck was designed only for turquoise, shells, and a child’s embrace. People had to hold her up and still the cuts were deep.
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