The Prophets(2)

What he trade you for? To keep this rotten land that breaks spirit and bleeds mind? I tell you what: ain’t gone be too much more of this here. Nah, sir. Take me and Ephraim and us leave here. Don’t have to go nowhere, but leave. It be the same like slaughtering a hog. Just a sharp blade quick and deep across the throat and it be over just like that.

And then us get to be whispering voices in the dark telling some other people how they babies is getting along out there in the wild.

Oh, my poor baby!

Can you feel me?

I’s Middle Anna and that there is Ephraim. We your mam and pappy, Kayode. And us sure do miss you.





Psalms

July had tried to kill them.

First it tried to burn them. Then it tried to suffocate them. And finally, when neither of those things was successful, it made the air thick like water, hoping they would drown. It failed. Its only triumph was in making them sticky and mean—sometimes, toward each other. The sun in Mississippi even found its way into the shade so that on some days, not even the trees were comfort.

And, too, there was no good reason to be around other people when it was hot like this, but longing for company made it in some ways bearable. Samuel and Isaiah used to like being around other people until the other people changed. In the beginning, they had thought all the curled lips, cut eyes, turned-up noses—even the shaking heads—signified a bad scent emanating from their bodies because of the toil in the barn. The odor of swill alone had often made them strip bare and spend nearly an hour in the river bathing. Daily, just before sundown, when the others were bent out of shape from fieldwork and tried to find an elusive peace in their shacks, there Samuel and Isaiah were, scrubbing themselves with mint leaves, juniper, sometimes root beer, washing away the layers of stink.

But the baths didn’t change the demeanor of the sucked teeth that held The Two of Them in contempt. So they learned to keep mostly to themselves. They were never unfriendly, exactly, but the barn became a kind of safe zone and they stuck close to it.

The horn had sounded to let them know work was ending. A deceitful horn, since work never ended, but merely paused. Samuel put down a bucket of water and looked at the barn in front of him. He took a few steps back so that he could see the entire thing. It needed a new coat of paint, the red parts and the white. Good, he thought. Let it be ugly so it could be truth. He wasn’t going to paint anything, provided the Halifaxes didn’t force his hand.

He walked a little to the right and looked at the trees in the distance, the ones behind the barn, down by the bank of the other side of the river. The sun had dimmed and began to dip into the forests. He turned to his left and looked toward the cotton field and saw the silhouettes of people carrying sacks of cotton on their backs and on their heads, dropping them off into wagons waiting in the distance. James, chief overseer, and a dozen or so of his underlings were lined up on either side of the constant flow of people. James’s rifle was slung over his shoulder; his men held theirs in both hands. They pointed their rifles at the passing people as though they wanted to fire. Samuel wondered if he could take James. Sure, the toubab had some weight to him, and the benefit of firepower, but putting all that aside, if they were to have a right tussle, fist to fist and heart to heart like it was supposed to be, Samuel thought he could eventually break him—if not like a twig, then certainly like a man near his edge.

“You gon’ help me or not?” Isaiah said, startling Samuel.

Samuel turned quickly. “You know better than to creep,” he said, embarrassed for having been caught off guard.

“Ain’t nobody creep. I walked right up. You so busy minding other folks’ business . . .”

“Bah,” Samuel said and waved his hand as though he were shooing a mosquito.

“You help me put these horses in they pens?”

Samuel rolled his eyes. There was no need to be as obedient as Isaiah always was. Maybe it wasn’t that Isaiah was obedient, but did he really have to give them so much of himself and so readily? To Samuel, that spoke of fear.

Isaiah touched Samuel on the back and smiled as he walked toward the barn.

“I reckon,” Samuel whispered and followed.

They put away the horses and watered them, then fed them a shovelful of hay and swept the remainder back into a neat stack near the front left corner of the barn, near the straighter bales. Isaiah smiled at Samuel’s unwillingness, his grunts and sighs and head shaking, even though he understood the danger in it. Tiny resistances were a kind of healing in a weeping place.

By the time they finished, the sky was black and littered with stars. Isaiah walked back outside, leaving Samuel to his grievances. This was how he would engage in his own bit of rebellion: he leaned against the wooden fence that surrounded the barn and stared at the heavens. Crowded, he thought, and wondered if, perhaps, the abundance was too much; if the weight of holding on was too heavy, and the night, being as tired as it was, might one day let go, and all the stars would come tumbling down, leaving only the darkness to stretch across everything.

Samuel tapped Isaiah on the shoulder, waking him from his reverie.

“Now who ain’t minding they business?”

“Oh, now the sky got business?” Isaiah smirked. “Least my work is finished for now, though.”

“You a good slave, huh?” Samuel poked Isaiah in the belly.

Isaiah chuckled, lifted himself off the fence, and began walking back toward the barn. Just before he reached the door, he stooped to pick up a few pebbles. In quick succession, he threw them at Samuel.