The Prophets

by Robert Jones, Jr.

  Sometimes, the niggers died. Spoiled, the slavers called it. And he, with a few other men no older than he was, had to unchain the dead, carry their decomposing, vacating bodies up to the deck, and hurl them over the side of the ship for the sea beasts or the ocean itself to dispose of. He wondered how many niggers had met a similar fate, if, in death, they had begun to assemble in the deep, designing the shape of their vengeance, which would come in the form of some infinitely black whirlpool or gigantic, crashing tidal wave that would wipe clean the face of the earth like it did in Noah’s time.

  No. If James learned nothing else in the gray orphanage, he learned that God’s heartlessness would never again include mass murder by drowning. The rainbow was His promise that He would be more creative the next time His sadistic impulses got the better of Him. The priests had assured James of this, but only as a confession after they had already unleashed themselves on him and could no longer stand his sorrowful eyes.

  Weeks sailing across the gray ocean and then they finally reached land in some place called Hispaniola. He stumbled from the ship with wobbly legs that were, after such a relatively short period, no longer accustomed to solid ground. It would take him a few months to make it to Mississippi, where his mother’s sister’s son owned a plantation. He had to make his way across untamed land where people scowled because of the heat and were suspicious of every new face. Hungry and exhausted, he arrived, on foot, at the Halifax plantation just as the sun was sinking. He could barely even stretch his arm to greet his newfound cousin, but he had strength enough for a smile.

  He didn’t even allow himself the time to be overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of the land on which he stood, or the house that seemed large enough to hold everyone he ever knew. After downing bowl after bowl of possum stew, and lazy conversation with his cousin, in whom he remembered what he thought he had lost of his mother, he was escorted to a bedroom by some young darkie, and he slept until it was night again. He didn’t know what to make of Paul’s offer that he oversee the plantation and watchdog the slaves. He would get his own piece of land, right near the northern edge of the property, and he would have help with his duties, of course. Paul had befriended some poor wretches from town who were rough but malleable. He let them, too, set up their shacks just on the other side of the cotton field, a parcel of land on which they could raise their families in exchange for becoming nigger barriers. Still, they were outnumbered. They would need an equalizer.

  Out of his mind and back to himself, James got up from the table and walked over to the spittoon he had left lying on the floor. He picked it up and spit a huge wad into it. It was still slippery from the spill. He placed it down on the table and the clank against the wood almost disguised the sound of barking coming from over the fence.

  The bloodhounds’ noise meant that stirring somewhere in the thick void was a quail or an unfortunate nigger. James grabbed the lantern and retrieved the rifle from his bed. His heart beat vigorously. He spit the rest of the tobacco juice onto the ground as his boots trod the last step of his porch. The woofing continued, and it was coming from somewhere over by the barn.

  The barn was a source of vexation and an interest to almost everyone on the plantation, but James wasn’t even the smallest bit stunned by what went on between those two young niggers, Samuel and Isaiah. He couldn’t tell which was which, but the orphanage taught him to recognize animals when he saw them.

  For this particular purpose, the whippings would only make them devious, deceitful, he told Paul. It wasn’t like a fit of laziness or an eye that dared to lay itself upon the face of a white woman. No, it was a blood mark and one that was relatively harmless. It was best to just let them be. All that mattered was that the work get done. And, by all accounts, the work wasn’t done better by any other niggers in the state of Mississippi.

  “It’s ungodly, James. If I allow that here, without punishment . . .”

  “Silly to be concerned with that when you have this,” James said as he looked around the plantation. He had finally paid attention to the vastness upon which they stood.

  “Have this even longer if I breed them,” Paul responded.

  “Greed is a pitfall, Cousin.”

  “Ability, Cousin. A man does what he is able to.”

  James shook his head. He could see his cabin in the distance.

  He quieted himself. For all Paul was doing to sabotage those two animals, did he know that he had one living right in his own house? Paul and Ruth had so protected their only surviving child that they softened him and had the audacity not to notice. Had they let his strength develop unhindered by their fear and sadness, perhaps he would have had the chance to be a man. Instead, he followed after one of the barn animals, grinned insufferably, painted nature’s nonsense, and had the same desperate eyes as all malnourished people.

  He didn’t envy Timothy’s fascinations. He wanted terribly to be as far away from niggers as he could—except when they sang. For when niggers sang, it was something that no white person could imitate, not even the ones like him, who suffered and were miserable. What the folks in Paul’s church did were birdcalls compared to what the niggers did in the tree circle. One hundred wolves howling at the moon in perfect pitch. A fleet of ships creaking simultaneously at sea. He gladly stood in the trees and listened, occasionally rocking with the rhythm and humming, keeping his rifle close.

  “Sell them, if it makes it any better. I know a few folks who will give you more than they’re worth.”

  But it wasn’t singing that James heard now; it was the sound of dogs barking. He put the lantern down, but not the rifle, and climbed the fence. He grabbed the lantern through the post and trod slowly toward the slave cabins. Nothing stirred. But as he got closer to the barn, he saw the horses running free. The pigs were meandering about. Chickens were perched on the fence. The other overseers ran from around the back side of the barn.

  “What’s going on here?” James demanded. “Get these animals back in their pens. Wake the niggers and have them help you. Get Zeke, Malachi, Jonathan, and the others to come out. Need as many guns as possible.”

  “They getting paid for coming back out during their sleep time?”

  “Don’t worry yourself with that now. Do what I tell you to. I’ll go check on Ruth.”

  James ran toward the Big House.

  His lantern at his side, he ran into the house and saw Paul. He was covered in blood. The hounds were in the house, woofing and pacing in crooked lines. There was a trail of blood leading down the stairs. On the floor, at Paul’s side, a nigger with more blood on him than Paul.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” James yelled.

  Paul said nothing, didn’t so much as twitch a finger. He stared ahead at the tree that could be seen through the doorway behind James.

  “What’s the matter with you? You hurt?” He looked at Paul, held the lantern up to his face. “Paul? The animals are loose. I got some of my men waking niggers to help round them up.”

  James took a step toward him and Paul flinched.

  “What?” James asked.

  Paul mouthed some words.

  “Speak up!” James shouted. “What happened to you?”

  Paul said nothing. He swatted for James to move out of his way and headed toward the door. He dragged the nigger’s body out of it, onto the porch, then down the steps, and toward the willow tree.

  “Paul, goddamnit! The animals!” he said, following Paul, reaching the porch and refusing to step on the blood trail that he knew no amount of scrubbing would remove. “What’s going on? Paul!”

  Paul stopped. He straightened his back and then sank into himself again.

  “In the house,” he croaked.

  “Ruth?” James shouted.

  He ran back into the house and up the stairs. He looked around. He heard nothing but saw shadows. He ran down the hall. The floor was wet. There was a light
coming from up ahead. Timothy’s door was open. He walked inside. The room was ransacked. Ruth was on top of the bed, writhing, weeping to herself, mouth agape, but barely a whisper coming from her.

  “Are you hurt? Who hurt you?”

  James’s face had begun to contort. He ran around the bed and tripped over Timothy’s legs. He looked down. Timothy was disgraced. No eyes, just like the niggers in his dream.

  “Christ Jesus,” he whispered.

  He stepped gingerly over Timothy and toward where Ruth lay. He tried to pick her up to carry her to her room and help her clean herself, but each time he got his arms around her, she fought and tried to bite him. He exhaled loudly.

  “Ruth. Ain’t nothing we can . . .”

  It didn’t matter. This was how she would mourn. It seemed ancient, what she was doing. Older even than his beliefs. Like it might have come with the land itself. So maybe she was in the grasp of something, wasn’t herself because she wasn’t herself. Who was she now, then? He would have to leave her to know, and inside him was something that desperately needed to know.

  He flew down the stairs and out to where he had seen Paul. Now there was a group of others who had finally awoken, and what seemed like an endless crowd of niggers being gathered around the fat willow. James ran to the tree where Paul stood. He had dragged the nigger by his hand and held on to it. But the way he held it, like a parent would hold a child’s hand, gave James chills.

  “Rope,” Paul said.

  Zeke hooted. Malachi danced. Jonathan howled. James told Jonathan and some of the others to help with the animals despite Paul’s command.

  “These niggers ain’t godly!” Jonathan shouted into James’s face.

  Zeke started to giggle and James yelled, “Quiet!” but Zeke kept giggling.

  James walked over to Paul, pointing to the nigger on the ground beside him. “Who is that?”

  “Do it matter?” Malachi shot back.

  “Paul?” James turned to look at Paul again.

  Paul dropped to his knees and began to weep. He let go of the nigger’s hand. James bent down next to him.

  “Paul.”

  Paul looked at James. In his eyes, James saw his mother not on her deathbed, but in a coach riding away from a magnificent sunrise. She held her hands daintily and smiled at the thought of her son, who was now a man, and she didn’t even judge how he had lost himself because somewhere, perhaps, there was a piece left, but only a mother had the skill to find it. It was she, after all, who had built it. She wasn’t looking at him, no, but she was still smiling and that was enough. There, James and Paul’s relation became real, realer even than it was that first day, when he stumbled, could barely keep his eyelids open, and took all of Paul’s lies for inevitable truth. James whispered something that only Paul could hear, but it wasn’t for Paul. Then Paul said, loud enough for everyone to hear: “String this nigger up. High!”

  James blinked, then nodded. He took the listless, dying body from Paul, and he and some of the men noosed then hefted it. All of their rifles lined their backs.

  “Be on guard,” James said and some of the men stopped tending to the body and raised their weapons toward the crowd of niggers, some of whom wept, some of whom shook, while a few stood resolute in the face of everything.

  Paul began to grab at the weeds, pulling them out of the ground by their roots. He started to shove them into his mouth. Dirt still clumped at the bottom, he pushed weeds into his mouth and began to chew. Crying, moaning, and chewing. It had finally happened, James thought. Something vital had broken. He helped Paul to his feet and whispered to him, “They can’t see you this way.”

  Paul just stared wordlessly and, for the first time, James put his arm around his cousin’s shoulder. Briefly, everything was theirs. They looked at each other and it wasn’t an ending, but it was something new. It frightened James, and he could tell from his quivering lip that it had frightened Paul, too.

  After he had disassembled his lantern so that he might light his makeshift torch, James heard the buzzing. As he made his way toward the swinging body and set it aflame, the buzzing. All guns were pointed toward the niggers and he knew from his dream that was the first mistake. How many might we get? Twenty? Thirty? What of the other hundred or so? Then he saw the nigger whose name his tongue was forbidden to curl around, and she made her move, and something in him froze.

  That was why the mulatto boy was able to catch him by surprise.

  Numbers

  We are the Seven.

  Sent to you to watch over.

  What is required of you is to look up.

  And remember the star.

  But memory is not enough.

  We told you from the beginning. Perhaps not in the way you might have expected, but we told you.

  It would not make much difference to explain to you what happened to us. You already have that answer. It is how you wound up here.

  Memory is not enough, but know:

  Infants cannot be reasoned with, they can only be fed or starved.

  To break an incantation, another one of equal or greater power must be evoked.

  The cosmos is on your side.

  It will be all of you or none of you; this is immutable.

  The cure is outside of our knowledge, but that does not mean that there is no cure.

  Do not be afraid of the dark.

  For that is what you are.

  Exodus

  1:1

  Samuel’s eyes were rolling back in his head, and James had the rope in his hand. He flung it over a branch. The noose dangled. The people—themselves tired, and yet their hearts thumping loud enough to hear—weren’t sure where to look. They kept their eyes downward until they were told to do otherwise. That is, except for Maggie. Maggie’s face was creased. She shifted the weight from her bad hip to her good one, and she crunched the edges of her dress in her hand. In her other hand, the glint of metal.

  The blood dripped from Samuel’s chest quicker now. They wrapped the rope around his neck. His head rolled around as though nearly detached. His eyes were swollen, but he could see: animals roaming as far as the cotton field. That was good enough, but the other things he saw—a clenched fist, a call stuck in the throat, low-level eyes that had something written in them that he might coax out momentarily—those things gave him strength for one last smile.

  He gurgled when they raised him up, still legs that came to life flailing, an involuntary response as something else took over. His hands pulling at the rope choking him, and the burn even though he wasn’t on fire yet. But there was James creating a torch. The only question would be whether he would wait to light the flame or do it right away.

  Things were red, but they were becoming purple on their way to blue. Then black. Samuel’s choking had taken on the shape of words, one word in particular. A name. Through spittle and lips that had begun to lose their color and swell, up through the bulging veins in the throat, a mystery. Who would be able to understand that his last breath would be marked by the joy that had been given to him strictly by chance and taken from him with grave intention? A name. Just a tiny, simple name.

  “’ZAY!”

  Samuel’s legs had stopped moving as soon as the name erupted out of him, trailed by blood. James doused Samuel with the oil and then held a torch against his leg. The flames raced up his body. And no one made a sound.

  Except Puah.

  1:2

  She collapsed as was the proper way to mourn the dead, especially if they had for you a kind of affection, not exactly as you had hoped but as they were able, with pure heart, to give. So when she fell, she came down with the weight of what could have been, not what was.

  Sarah tended to her, wrapped herself around her and spoke a little something into her ear. She knew this as a way to connect them both to the line of women who had come before them, women who had, in
some other time, met their fates with the kind of courage that she was looking for in the crowd right now. Who would be the first? Would it have to be her? It seemed that it had always fallen upon the women to be the head or the heart, to throw the first spear, to shoot the first arrow, to clear the first path, to live the first life. It was a thing that took much energy and that was why they needed so much rest now. So ready to put it all down, lay it all by the river and let some greedy tide take it if it wanted to, flow it to some other body to let them fish it out of the water and drape it over themselves if they thought it would do any good.

  But no.

  Such would never be the case. Woman is the lonely road. It is at the dead of night, crossing through untamed breezes, and off to the side are the deep bushes that separate the road from the wild. In that wild, eyes ever peer, voices ever howl, and what thoughts remain are not fit for articulation. Thus no woman should ever be unarmed. As long as she had teeth, she had a weapon, and the toothless could find a pointy enough stick or sharp enough rock to bear witness.

  1:3

  Maggie knew this, too, and the calm on her face was the surest sign. She had been holding on to herself, gripping her belly in her two hands, trying to keep the memory housed there in its proper place. There was a specific feeling when a thing went from tiny to big inside yourself, with nothing but you in between it and heartbreak. You prepare for the time, and there will always come a time, when you have to watch them take the thing you yourself created and use it for untoward purposes, defile it and say that it’s in accordance with nature, and the only thing you could ever do about it is join it in death.

  Well, let there be twin deaths, then!

  It wasn’t that Samuel reminded her of someone; he was her someone. He was her flesh made real to laugh and tumble outside of her body, and the pain of that was too hard. So she had to move it to a part of her that could shoulder the weight and keep the switch to itself.