He let his eyes close. The last thing he saw was the red light creeping out of the saloon, shifting shape, blending with the night to give everything its dull glow.
“Bloody,” Adam said, grinning.
When he finally fell asleep, head lolling, and snoring, he dreamt of nothing but words.
* * *
—
When Adam saw Paul, raggedy, in front of him it was as though disparate pieces of his reality snapped immediately into place. Adam wasn’t pleased with the picture that formed. Paul reeked of spirits, and his clothes were wrinkled, shirt untucked, and pants unfastened. He was dirty. He had lost his balance and swayed in order to keep it. And his hat was missing. Adam felt a twinge in the pit of his stomach.
“Massa. Is everything all right, suh?” he said with a genuine look of concern wearing him like it was the true face and his was the mask.
Paul slurred a response that Adam couldn’t understand. He hopped down from the coach and got a little closer. He caught Paul as Paul leaned a little too much into him and breathed hell straight into his nostrils, which made him hold his breath. This was the closest he had ever been to his father. Maybe father was too strong a word. Nevertheless, he had an urge to be in his embrace irrespective of the odor and the weight. Paul, in attempting to regain his composure, put his hands on Adam’s face.
“I need you . . .”
Adam stood, holding him, losing himself and forgetting where he was by looking into his face. He was amazed by the question because it seemed to be laced with tenderness. Paul’s hand on his cheeks, feeling the pulse of his body, and sweat forming right where the palm covered. Is this what it felt like to be someone’s child? He had never before felt so close to calling any man Pa, but there it was, rising in his throat, lodged on the back of the tongue, silky.
“God has blessed us.”
“Us, Massa?”
Paul looked at Adam and now his hands went from Adam’s cheeks to Adam’s chest. Adam’s eyes widened as a smile crept upon Paul’s lips. Unseemly, but maybe Paul had finally seen it, too—the identical bridge of nose and the same muscular forehead that was unmistakably Halifax. Not that he didn’t already know, but seeing it all this close made him a firsthand witness. He didn’t have to say. He didn’t have to say anything. Adam understood. Truth could be known as long as it wasn’t spoken. Given form, truth laid waste to even the most elaborate and fortified of walls. Not even the rubble was safe. Paul began to cough and Adam patted him on his back before grabbing the lantern sitting in the coach and holding it up to Paul’s face, almost as if he wanted to make sure he wasn’t dying.
Adam’s face went blank. Here he was holding this man who was shivering even though the heat had not let up because the sun had gone down, so it must have been the spirits and whatever else had messed his hair and clothing. Adam cleared his throat.
He felt a stirring in his stomach that was likely to push right through his spine and leave a hole there that his soul could use to crawl out of the body. To go somewhere, to do something that was worthy of him being here. Not the basic drudgery that only unimaginative people with the lowest of minds could conjure up. But something that would give him the time to contemplate whether darkness could, in fact, move on its own like it was indeed living. And despite what any toubab had said, he had a soul, and not because of the toubab who interfered and caused his creation.
Since Paul had said “us” like they were actually kin, perhaps a sliver could be made into a gap. Had he the courage, Adam would have asked him about his mother. What did she think about giving birth to this special child? (He had only thought of himself as special because of how he could go from fitting into to not fitting into so many of the spaces he inhabited.) This special child who came out of the womb of the blackest of women, bright as a sunbeam, and could have damn near been a toubab if not for the tattletale mouth.
Maybe Paul treated her special, too. But what could that mean on the condition of death or worse? Adam liked to make room for the possibilities. That is what the line that sliced him as surely as the prime meridian allowed: to dance on both sides, to think a thing in theory, to measure it, observe it, to let it wander the mind for no reason other than because that was the only private place for someone like him. At the end, he had a choice to make: either give it back to its proper owner or slide it into his own britches to be used at some later time, if he was still there to use it.
Paul stumbled again and Adam held on to him and lifted him back to his feet. He realized how even his dead weight wasn’t as heavy as he imagined it would be. Paul had been talking, mumbling some strange things about God that Adam could scarcely understand because Paul’s tongue was tied by the spirits. But that was less strange than how Paul had previously held Adam’s face between both of his hands and looked him in the eye and didn’t ask for Adam to look away. This was the first time Adam saw, unflinchingly, his father’s eyes, the same eyes that looked at his mother, or more honestly, looked away from her, and whatever was the thinnest line between the two.
He wanted to believe that the cold stare was a misinterpretation. But even as Paul had tried to be gentle and use his momentary scene as the drunkard as the excuse to do so, his eyes kept telling the truth. Hard they were. Tearing, but still a golden menace.
These were the eyes his mother was also warned never to look into, not even when she was down on the ground in some older Fucking Place that rested layers beneath the one he knew so well. He wasn’t sure if Paul looked at her or looked away, but he was positive that his mother looked away. He could feel it now. He searched deep in Paul’s eyes for her face and it wasn’t there, which meant he had only her body, but not ever her mind. Surely, afterward she may have lost that herself. It wasn’t her fault.
But why would Paul treat her special? Given his color, whiter than pure black would permit, he wondered if his grandmother or grandfather were also raped. More likely, his grandmother since if it was his grandfather, his mother would have been a free woman by law, thus making him a free man. Not that they honored law above skin. Their commandments—haphazard, arbitrary, and utterly provisional—shattered sense to pieces. Father could also be uncle. Adam thought his entire life a gamble. His freedom or captivity reliant upon something as fragile as which toubab parent was shameless.
It was no longer safe to remember his mother. Doing so might bring her back to the same place and in the same condition in which she left. He didn’t want to be cruel. But most of all, he thought that the woe she would bring with her, which could, he was sure, level the ground they stood upon, wouldn’t only be a danger to Paul. He was tempted, though, to take the risk even if it meant ruin. Just to see her and see if he could see his face in hers. The mouth, he already knew.
“All right now, Massa,” he said to a still-smiling Paul. “You want I should take you back to the Big House?”
The lantern went out and Paul buried his head in Adam’s chest, and before Adam could ask again, he heard the snoring. He lifted Paul and placed him into the coach, plopping him down with more force than he intended. He looked at him for a moment. This man, this one man wielded power by his say-so alone. Outnumbered, but by the sheer force of his will had bent not only the land but the countless people under his control. How could the many be terrified of the one? The niggers back at the clearing were right: the toubab god must be the right one.
Adam shut the coach door and climbed back up to his seat. He pulled on the reins and the horses turned the coach slowly back in the direction of Empty.
If some posse had met them on their way, Paul was too deep in slumber to be of any assistance. They could snatch Adam right from under Paul’s nose and sell him down the river to some salty-minded fools who would find his skin curious and his lips even more so. Ones like him went for a bit more on the block because they were thought to be more capable of intelligence, therefore less frustrating to instruct. But they had to be wat
ched closely to ensure they didn’t blend. Nothing a hot-iron brand on the chest couldn’t solve.
Adam hoped that the thick of the woods on either side of them and the kindness of sleeping blooms would be the fence between him and thieves. The alternative was just as dangerous. He might have to kill a toubab, which was another way of saying he would have to die by suicide. There were never any real choices for chained people in this world, but for the strong . . .
It won’t that people loved the strong. No. The strong were only to be feared, placated, lied to in the hopes of acquiring favor, a comfort, even if for a moment. It was that they despised the weak. They despised weakness because there was none of the pomp and fervor erected to disguise its essential nature like there was with the strong. In the frail mercy that is weakness, deception’s weight cannot be borne. Everything collapses, leaving only the debris, the casualties, and a fine layer of dust coating the air. This becomes trapped in the lungs and chokes all who inhale, and all must rightfully inhale; nature commands it. That is to say that weakness is but a stark reflection of the faces most wish to hide. The sad face, the mourning face, the weeping face that has stared into the abyss and discovered that there is nothing staring back. Empty. There was only us: Empty’s children, every single one a cannibal. Weakness revealing how miserable it be that there ain’t no such a thing as grace.
Adam stopped the horses. The night was thick, the air was heavy, and everything was still. Crickets chirped, the wheels on the wagon creaked, and Paul’s roar remained, but otherwise, there was silence. No footfalls. No bushes rustling more than they should. No human-shaped shadows casting human-shaped darkness onto that of nature’s, which was already dark enough. There was no need to rush and Adam enjoyed the free air, the scent of pine, and a sky full of stars, looking to the left and to the right as he pleased because he imagined Paul was sleeping. He heard insects whizzing past, some knocked up against his face harmlessly. Tiny as it was, this was peace.
He jerked the reins and the horses moved again. They rode slowly. Adam’s leg shook softly to the beat of his own making. The horses’ hooves clicked. The leaves of trees rustled in the small but welcome breeze that the night was sometimes courteous enough to give after the day had been as tightfisted as it wanted to be. Adam allowed himself to slouch. He felt it then: how burdensome it was to remain straight-backed. It held the spine in a vise grip; perhaps he was more sensitive to it because the spine was part of the natural border that held one side of him from greeting the other civilly.
As they turned the bend up toward the edges of Empty, he couldn’t see a single shack in the distance; the people were asleep. But there was a small glowing coming from somewhere. Dead tired, surely, from the fields and anxious for Sunday to be here already so that they could rest on their pallets until just before noon and wander lazily to the clearing to praise something in the sky that refused to see anything beneath it. In the distance, the shacks were erased and neither the moon nor the starlight could make it right.
Adam reached the gate. Before he jumped down from the coach to open it, he sniffed the air. Beyond the blooms, the weeds, and the animals, there was something in it that he couldn’t exactly catch or name, but even the nameless took up room. He slid out of his seat and pulled open the gate. A part of it dragged against the ground, deepening, just a little, the curved route that had already been etched beneath it.
He went over to the coach, then opened the door to find Paul still snoring—laid back, drooling, and looking helpless. Adam leaned in close. Faintly, he could see the pulse throbbing in Paul’s neck. Gently, Paul’s chest heaved and caved to a rhythm that wasn’t altogether predictable. It was off, and Adam’s furrowed brow might have read as concern if his eyes weren’t looking askance. It would be so easy, he said to himself. He got closer to Paul’s face, noticing for the first time the creases that his hat normally hid. Worry wore the face like that sometimes, right across the forehead, for everyone to see, three of them, to tell the story. A warning.
Adam reached his hand out to touch them and, maybe more. Just as he did, Paul’s eyes opened. Paul lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes.
“What are you doing?” he said as he lifted himself to an upright position.
“Trying to wake you, Massa. We home.”
The both of them were motionless, Adam looking downward, Paul looking at Adam. They remained that way for a moment, allowing the silence to fill in the gaps, words sitting just on the inside of their mouths, pressing against the softer side of their lips, both on the verge of something sharp cutting the interior before striking the target. What it would be like to call him “Pa,” Adam thought. Then he reasoned that it wouldn’t be worth the risk to find out.
“Well. Go on then. Take me back to the house,” Paul said, though Adam sensed he wanted to say something else.
He left the coach and grabbed the horses by their reins and pulled. They followed him through the gate and up to the front of the Big House, where they stopped. Adam helped Paul out of the coach. Paul stumbled a bit, like a man who had not used his legs for a while and could no longer feel them. But he quickly found his footing. He looked upward and his expression changed from one of indifference to one of angst. From somewhere, he had regained himself, and the Paul of Vicksburg disappeared to be replaced by the Paul of Empty.
He didn’t need Adam, so Adam didn’t follow. The price of carrying out a favor that wasn’t asked for was costly. Sticking to the routine was the safest option. So Adam pulled the horses over toward the barn. He stopped at the fence and opened it before taking the horses, still attached to the coach, through.
He moved around to the space between the horses and the coach and undid the connection. He then unbuckled and unfastened all of the leather straps holding the horses in place, whether ones that limited their motion or ones that blocked their sight lines. But he left the reins because that was how he would bring them back to Isaiah and Samuel, who would remove them after they were placed back in their pens. Then, if they weren’t too tired, they would offer Adam some sweet water and maybe chat a bit before he walked back to his shack, alone, quiet, square, empty.
Usually, Isaiah and Samuel were up. But if they weren’t, he wouldn’t wake them. It was Sunday now and all niggers had was Sunday. He would unrein the horses and lead them into the pens himself.
He heard movement. They were up. Good. He wondered if they would mind him telling them about Paul using the word “us” even if it was during a drunken stupor. And would they also understand if he told them about the line? Surely they would if no one else did. Didn’t they, both of them, also have a line shooting down their middle?
Closer and closer to the barn and the noise coming from inside was getting louder than the sounds any two people could possibly make.
Samuel
I cradled you because you was the only one who knew I won’t no block of wood.
They stood quietly in the dark, perfectly still. They raised their voices no higher than the night sounds around them. Paul had come to them—and made a damn fool of himself, too. But his visit was a clear signal that it was time. Timothy, too, was waiting, would likely walk right into the barn now if Samuel didn’t go to him, endure a travesty, and then be rushed out so Timothy’s secret could be better kept than theirs.
There would be no argument. There would be no pleading. Just do it. Now. Then run. Just like Maggie said.
They stared at each other, but neither of them moved.
“But if you go . . .” Isaiah pleaded.
“I know.” Samuel sighed.
“They sure to be after us if you . . .”
“They sure to be after us either way.”
Earlier, between slopping the pigs and feeding the chickens, they had drawn it in the dirt: the bank, the river, the trees. Beyond that, they didn’t know. They studied it carefully before Samuel wiped it away with a bare foot. Between the patrols (be
sure to wait for the beat; even toubab have a particular rhythm) free the animals, head for the river. Food would be a problem. There was nothing to protect it from the water. So they would have to forage once they got over, where they would remain in the wilderness until passage north—past the grinding teeth of Tennessee, through the gripping claws of Kentucky, to the uncertain arms of Illinois—into free land was possible. The Choctaw had been known to give shelter despite the rumors Paul and the others had spread about cannibalism and the peculiar sweetness of black flesh, projecting their sins onto strangers.
Isaiah moved slowly toward Samuel and put an arm around his waist. He pushed against him. Samuel threw an arm around Isaiah’s neck. They pressed their faces together. For long moments, they breathed heavily into each other. One of them coughed. The other choked. A sob and its refusal. They rubbed their foreheads together. Finally, Isaiah put his hand on Samuel’s jaw and they looked each other in the eyes. They kissed. It was neither gentle nor rough, but it was full. Something had been exchanged.
When they released each other, Samuel wiped Isaiah’s face. Isaiah moved away. He bent down, feeling around for the lantern. He touched the top of it and grabbed it. He walked over to the tool wall, retrieved a flint, and lit it. He handed the lantern to Samuel.
“Across the river,” Isaiah said.
“Just keep swimming. Even if we can’t see each other in the water. We meet on the other side, deep in the trees. Climb up them if we have to,” Samuel said. “If I ain’t right behind you . . .”
“Maybe another way . . .”
“Need something sharp,” Samuel insisted.
Isaiah sighed. “I got my wits.”
“How you outwit a gun?”
“Ax no better.”
Samuel felt it then, stiff against his back, not unlike a lover, unyielding, too close, obliging or deadly depending on the wielder’s intention. He stowed it away when Isaiah was elsewhere in preparation, but somehow Isaiah still knew. Knew him, more like it. It was things like this that endeared Isaiah to him: the knowing, the touching, the seeing. They were different, though, but somehow it was okay. It felt natural.
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