The Prophets

by Robert Jones, Jr.

  Paul watched this plan crumble one morning—just to the right of him, in the lazy corner of his library where the sun refused to shine, so the best books could be placed there without worry of them being bleached by yellow rays. Right there, a pile of ash as Amos quoted chapter and verse of the destruction of Sodom and claimed that the barn had become exactly that.

  “Their blood upon them. Their blood upon them,” Amos said barely above a whisper as he quivered, head bowed, hands clasped in prayer formation.

  Niggers never had any loyalty to one another. That was what saved them from threat. No way would it have been possible to yoke them and drag them across widest oceans, then stretch after stretch of green meadow and forest, hill behind hill, to sugarcane, to indigo, to tobacco, to cotton and more, without the kin-treachery of which only they seemed capable.

  A moment, please: Untrue.

  The European, too, had a penchant for drawing the sword for the sole purpose of raising it to their sibling’s neck. But they had long since determined that sometimes, such causes for grievance could be set aside, at least temporarily: a ceasefire for the greater good. Niggers hadn’t yet learned that. Everywhere, everywhere, white folk let out a sigh of relief.

  “I taught you the Word, for you to bring it to me like this?”

  Paul was seated behind his desk, Amos on his knees before it.

  “All this time,” Paul continued. “And you forgot your purpose was to bring the Good News?

  Amos was silent but had a feverish look upon him. Like one who had seen things and called to be heeded, though fools laughed even unto the warning. Still, Paul couldn’t see defeat where it was and insisted upon victory.

  “This is a trick. You have failed at what you were to deliver. Shall I take you back to the day you interrupted my cousin and me?” Paul asked as he stood up and pointed out the window, in the direction of the cotton field. “You seek to blame God for what lies at your feet.”

  “Massa, no such a thing. I only speak truth to you. Only.”

  Paul leaned over his desk, his hands firmly planted on top of it.

  “Then I ask: What proof have you?”

  Amos wiped his brow. “Massa, suh, I say that I humbly submit to your gracious hand. My first testimony is that neither boy has given themselves completely to woman. Both can’t be barren. That seem too outside the nature the God you, in your mercy, show me. That the first thing revealed to me.”

  Paul tilted his head. “And what was the second?”

  Amos cleared his throat and swallowed. “The second: I seen they shadows touch in the nighttime.”

  Paul sighed and then shook his head. What did it mean for shadows to touch, and what did it matter if it was daytime or night? The shadows of pails touched. The shadows of trees touched. Hell, Paul’s shadow touched James’s when they were standing together and the sun was good. Of course their shadows touched! They were cooped up in that barn and were each other’s company. It was the same kind of closeness that Paul had heard about in war, where soldiers became something like brothers, but more. There wasn’t any reason to bring Sodom or Gomorrah into any of this, least of all on the very land covered by the will of his father and his mother’s very name.

  Paul sat down. He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands before his lips. He couldn’t decide which would be the greater sin: if Amos spoke true or if Amos spoke false. This matter could only be settled through prayer, deep and heavy prayer that would end with foreheads weary and clothing stained by sweat. This was what they thrashed for, the witnesses who had made the longest journey through the desert and didn’t dry up from thirst. Instead, they fell to their knees before, during, and after, and cast up gratitude to He who’d been their stone, their bread, and their water. Oh, yes, praise should come before anguish, for this is what God had said: Put no other before Me and ye shall have the abundance of Heaven.

  Paul got up and moved around his desk and stood over Amos. Paul raised his hand and brought it down thunderous against Amos’s face. Amos cowered and pleaded.

  “The blood of Jesus, Massa! The blood of Jesus!”

  Indeed, Paul thought, Jesus’s blood was precisely what this occasion called for.

  At the saloon, James had laughed.

  “I’m stunned that you’re stunned, Cousin,” James said between gulps. “You expected niggers to behave in a way that makes sense?” James laughed. “That’s why they’re niggers, for Christ’s sake!”

  “No need to take the Name in vain,” Paul said, nursing his whiskey. “I’m not certain Amos even understands what he saw. The Word overwhelms him. It’s a lot for a nigger’s mind to handle.”

  “I don’t never put nothing past no nigger,” James said. “Whether that be to lie or to lay.”

  “Still, there is a natural order,” Paul replied.

  “And when did you not know a nigger to act outside of it? I had to punish them not too long ago for looking at Ruth wrong. They’re low things; you said so yourself. But you think they capable of higher things just because you command them to be so?”

  “They looked at Ruth wrong?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  Paul touched his bottom lip. “Why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t you?”

  “You pay me to do a job, not to worry you with it. I imagine Ruth knows that, too.”

  That answer delighted Paul unexpectedly. But when that faded, he returned to Isaiah and Samuel. “I don’t tolerate paganism.”

  “I don’t understand the hand-wringing then. Get rid of them and get your money for it.”

  “I don’t like to waste the things I cultivated. You already know this.”

  “Your pride will be your end, Cousin.”

  * * *

  —

  Neither of these barn studs were of Paul’s line. Perhaps that was where the error lay. He rid them of their previous names and renamed them with the calls of righteous men, but it seemed that did nothing to surrender them unto decent passions. Somehow, through some unseen wickedness, Samuel and Isaiah, two witless niggers, couldn’t discern the difference between entries. The two bucks had natures that caused them to resist.

  Paul had heard of such unnatural goings-on in antiquity: the Greeks and the Romans, for example, who were great men otherwise, had given themselves over to obscene intimacies. This, which was nothing more than the very workings of paganism itself, was what, to his mind, led to their destruction. It was inevitable that Zeus and the like would crumble before Jehovah because chaos must always give way to order.

  The very thought of two men giving in to each other in this way sent a shiver down Paul’s spine and made him queasy. He couldn’t much longer allow them to risk incurring the divine wrath that would certainly be aimed squarely at them, but might also destroy innocent bystanders. Like all old men, God could sometimes be puzzlingly haphazard; His aim not always true. So many dead Halifax babies had been denied the ability to testify, but fortunately dipped in the baptismal waters, they held on to the right to do so.

  Isaiah and Samuel were fine specimens that responded better to instruction than punishment. He put them to work in the barn just before either of them had reached puberty. They were stunning in their leanness and musculature. He thought that giving them this specific kind of farm labor wouldn’t only build their bodies, but would also build their character. Caring for living things could do that. With this act, and their transformation and readiness, he would then breed them, hoping to create from their stock gentle but strong niggers who would take production on the plantation to an all-new high. Wouldn’t his mother and father be so pleased?

  He observed them out by the barn. Young, fit, black and blue, they moved with an efficiency and expertise of which he didn’t imagine niggers capable. They seemed to have some sort of system, one they devised themselves, which sometimes made it possible for them to accomplish all manne
r of work in time to go out into the fields and help the other niggers pick the last bit of cotton before quitting time. They would pick almost as much as the others in less than half the time.

  The key, it seemed, was in their proximity to each other. They seemed to energize each other, perhaps even inspire each other in a way that not even the couples he didn’t have to force together did. If they were his sons, he would have been proud.

  When Paul finally decided to cross the gate with specific intention, it was early morning—so early that the sun had not yet overpowered all else and drenched land and people in hot light. He held a whip in his left hand, let it dangle at his side and its tip drag against the ground. In his right hand, he held the Bible, the same one that civilized Amos. His hat was pulled low, just at the edge of his eyebrows, but the top two buttons of his shirt were undone, enough for his chest hair to protrude. He unhooked the gate and crossed the barrier surrounding the barn. He didn’t bother to close the gate behind him. It hadn’t occurred to him to bring someone with him, James or one of the other dullards, in case the two niggers had become untenable.

  The air could choke with either the scent of dandelions or manure, and the two together overwhelmed. Paul wafted through the stench toward the barn where Isaiah and Samuel busied themselves. They came to attention when they saw him. Their heads downward and their bodies erect, they stood close to each other, but they didn’t touch.

  Momentarily, Paul felt something like a breeze blow past him, something that tickled the hairs on his chest and forced him to close his eyes. It was something like a caress, unseen and gentle.

  “Samuel,” he said softly. “Fetch me a drink of water.” What he really wanted, though, was whiskey.

  Paul observed the troubled manner with which Samuel held the ladle, but careful still to ensure no drop might spill. For a moment, Paul believed that it might be fear that guided those actions, but also there was no quiver in his step and his hands didn’t tremble; downward-cast eyes evinced no supplication. Before him stood a creature who, under all the grime and drenched in the smell of grudge work, imagined itself possessing a glimmer of worthiness. This was vanity and it explained so many things.

  Paul sat on a bench and motioned for Isaiah and Samuel to stand before him. He opened the Bible, the whip still in his hand.

  “There’s trouble here,” he said without lifting his head, flipping through the pages, seeming, occasionally, to have lost his place, before closing the book with a loud thud that startled Isaiah.

  “James says that the nature of the nigger is debased, but I imagine that even nature can be changed. I watched my father do it with his own hands. Wrest it and redirect the course of rivers. Bend trees. Put flowers where he wanted them to be. Catch fish and fowl to nourish. Erect his home in the middle of what his work had rightfully claimed. His birthright that God Himself ordained as dominion.”

  At that moment, the sun revealed itself and, inch by inch, began to shine down on the standing Isaiah and Samuel, touched their crowns as though they were actually so consecrated, bright in a way that didn’t hinder sight but did make the face pinch just a little. Inside, Paul begged for a stray cloud, something that would dim the glowing and perhaps act as a sure sign that the divine wasn’t singling out the wretched before him for blessing. And then he realized that the light itself was the message, giving him the insight, guiding his wisdom, confirming his authority, God showing him the way with the first thing He had ever created. This wasn’t Isaiah and Samuel being bestowed with some sort of majesty; impossible. Rather, this was merely the dawn. God had finally touched his forehead, too!

  He took the ladle from Samuel and sipped, secure in the knowledge he held in both hands. He wasn’t thirsty, but it was necessary for them to see how elementary his power was, that there was no need to raise voices or hands and yet, with only a few words, reality had knelt to his bidding, and so simply, illustrating the only order under which it could function. He smiled.

  “Their blood upon them,” Paul said, finally settling on a direct approach. He sighed. “Bleeding is so easy. The body gives up its secrets at the slightest provocation. Man is only separated from the rest of nature by his mind, his ability to know, even if that knowing was born in sin,” he said, taking a deep breath and looking dead into their closed faces. “Fruitful!” he said a little louder than he had intended. “Multiply,” he continued, raising his hand quickly and dropping the ladle, which fell to the ground and landed at Samuel’s feet.

  “Pick it up,” Paul said calmly as he balanced the Bible on his lap.

  Both of them rushed to do so, banging heads as they stooped. Had they not been standing so close together, Paul thought. The sun shone against the ladle and stung his eyes. He pointed to the ground, gesturing for Isaiah or Samuel to hurry and pick it up. He turned toward the sun’s direction to avoid the reflecting light and was confronted with another.

  There, off in the distance, Paul saw her first as a flash, then in full form. Standing, he could be sure, at the edge of the cotton field. Actually, she was a few rows in. The cotton laced her belly like a soft belt and colorful birds flew over her head. Elizabeth held court in the morning, not in the past but here, waving at him feverishly, or was she signaling for him to come closer? Paul stood up. No, Elizabeth was telling him to go. But go where? She stopped waving. Her hands returned to her sides. Paul rubbed his eyes. He looked to the field again. Elizabeth was gone in a blink and took meaning with her.

  When Paul returned to himself and saw Samuel and Isaiah standing, looking wide-eyed at him, like he was the one in danger, he wanted to laugh, but he scowled instead. The mercy in him was walking away, no less stunned by his actions than they were, needing, maybe more than ever before, the bitterness of spirits.

  It was the first time in a long time that he had felt anything resembling doubt. Unclear of what his mother appearing on the white bluff had portended or why her calm face belied her frantic manner, he walked away, nevertheless, confident in his stride lest everyone else imagine him unsure, to their own peril.

  Why turn back and see those two boys—whom he now knew, in just that short time with them, he had to sell, not because he wouldn’t be able to increase their stock with children from their seed, but because acts of defiance were always, unequivocally, contagious. He told himself that his sadness, which had mysteriously bubbled up out of nowhere and sat heavy in the pit of his chest, rested in the troublesome arrangements that now had to be made on behalf of two insolent niggers, and not in the fact that being in their presence had almost convinced him that they belonged together, leaned up against each other in their confusion.

  He had been a disruption, but not the kind he had hoped. He, maybe, strengthened their bond, gave them the sense that together they could make a way out of no way, which was what the nature of their work had been if Paul wanted to be honest with himself. His plans worked too well. It was he who encouraged them to work in tandem, in unison, and they had but followed his instruction. It was his own fault that he neglected to recall how they lacked nuance or the depth of knowledge that allowed for a measured existence. He only had to see it for himself, witness . . .

  No! Coming here—to witness what? Niggers behaving as such; low-to-the-ground things, after all, acted lowly—was an error. The whole enterprise had conveyed to them, however slightly, that they were of some value. This was a mistake.

  There couldn’t be peace. Paul couldn’t let there be. There was something in his center, a jagged thing, that stuck him at the very thought. He would never admit to this, but there was something wild coating him, not so much an armor as a balm. And it drove him frantically toward his home. His steps, however, were unsure, the ground wavy. He felt a heaviness of limbs that made him stumble. The Bible, wet with his perspiration, slipped from his grasp. His knees hit the dirt, and before all things darkened, he saw Timothy sprint toward him.

  What was he doing on the gr
ound? Ah, yes. He must have passed out from the heat. He told himself that it wasn’t his proximity to the glow of either Isaiah or Samuel that had done it. And was there even a glow, or had he imagined it? Slaves sometimes rubbed themselves with oils from vegetation so that the sun would light them up. That had to be it.

  The sun was doubly at fault, then. Yes, it was the scorching sun that hit him in the head with its rays, and he just needed the sweetness of well water to bring him back to himself. Paul looked around, weary. Some of the slaves had gathered, surrounding him, crying, asking if he was all right, taking away all of the air he needed to return to power. He shooed them away, told them to git, and rose too quickly to his feet. He took a wobbly first step and fell down to his knees. Timothy helped him stand up again. Paul dusted himself off and took another step. He asked Timothy to pick up his Bible and then slowly and even-keeled, he walked back to the house, Timothy following behind.

  * * *

  —

  Paul rode silently in the coach later that night, almost obscured by the shadows that came from the cover of trees. Adam drove the horses at a slow, steady pace, their hooves stepping to whatever rhythm he indulged. Paul stared at the back of Adam’s head through the coach opening. He noticed that Adam had begun to lose his hair at the crown. Had he really been born that long ago? Despite impeccable records, Paul began to doubt that he had been employed at this business for so long. But Adam was indisputable evidence.

  There was a faint light coming from the town; the glow of lanterns and candles made things seem softer than they actually were and this brought Paul unexpected calm. In this calm, he paid attention to the town in a way he never bothered to before. It was still bustling, even though the shops were closed for a while now. But horses and slaves were still tied to some posts, and night ladies and rugged men with wide-brim hats and holsters, some of which were empty, casually walked the wide dirt road that split downtown in half. They were headed for the one place that had just begun to open up.