The Prophets(23)

“You come to service?” Amos shouted to them, smiling as he scooted between the slats of the fence and walked toward them. His eyes darted from one boy to the other as they stopped what they were doing and turned to him. His eyes landed on Isaiah.

Samuel let air whistle out from between his teeth and then returned his attention to the pail.

“’Zay told me what you said to him, what you won’t tell him. I like to knock you down where you stand.” Samuel squinted, looked at Amos, stood up, and balled his fists. “Get on out of here.”

Amos took a few steps back. “Y’all young,” he said. “I ain’t just trying to find y’all favor, but everybody.” His hands were pleading; they were pleading. “Just once. Both of y’all. Just one time.”

“When it ever been just one time?” Isaiah replied. “Ask Essie.”

Amos felt that in his gut. He closed his eyes. He retreated within with the hopes of coming back out with something that might be more healing.

“Y’all mean to tell me you would have us all beat, leaned on, sold, maybe even put in the ground because y’all won’t bend a little?” Then he said, but not with his mouth: Don’t you know us all gotta bend, got to, if we want a little bit of anything that might be shaped like serenity? Nobody don’t like to give Massa want he want, but we like even less to give him a reason. And here y’all are giving him all the reason in the world. Before I found Jesus, I understood you. I felt the praise of y’all’s together time and rejoiced. But now, mine eyes have been opened and I see, I see. I tumbled for this. I tumbled and I made a deal to keep a small hush for Essie and for me and for y’all. Take it. Why won’t y’all take it?

Yes, even now he noticed the reality flickering between them. It was like the finest of spiderwebs with a tenuous amount of dew trembling on the strands of it, suddenly snatched away and then reconstructed within the blink of an eye, delicate tendrils that were somehow stronger than they appeared, holding the weight of a rainstorm before finally giving way and allowing an unobstructed view. But that was no reason to be sad because the morning, after rain, offered up beauty of which the smell of hawkweed was just the beginning.

Neither Isaiah nor Samuel could answer a silent question, though it seemed like Samuel was about to kneel. But no, nothing. Samuel simply returned to his pail. Isaiah got up then and moved closer to Amos.

“My name. Please,” said Isaiah, the last word stretched, making his bottom lip quiver.

Samuel reached over and nudged Isaiah’s hand, then shook his head. “Don’t beg like that.”

“Son, we gotta wash each other’s hands. Can’t be just one of us,” Amos said, looking directly at Isaiah.

Isaiah bit his bottom lip and walked into the barn.

Samuel puffed his chest and Amos thought this might be the tussle he was ready for this time, but no. Samuel just followed Isaiah into the barn, leaving the pail as Amos’s only company.

Isaiah and Samuel were gone, disappeared into the barn. But the spot outside, where they were just on their knees, was still covered by their shadows.



* * *



—

HE KNEW IT WAS WRONG, because what happened in The Fucking Place should be locked up there and burned, but he had asked Essie about Isaiah anyway and, as always, her response was no response. She just looked at Amos with those big, probing eyes, big because she kept things secreted within them, and despite that, all Amos wanted to do was protect her, let her be her.

She rested soundly beside him now, worn out from fieldwork. He looked at her glistening face. Beautiful as she was, it made no sense to him why she and Isaiah had a camaraderie that produced nothing but whispers and laughter. Amos could understand himself taking a while to do what he had to do. He was older. Gray hairs had come to outline the edges of his scalp. Older men were sometimes not as virile as they were when they were younger. Had Paul given him just a little more time, he and Essie would have given him enough children to meet his fancy. Paul’s time—time for any toubab—moved differently, though; it was quick and unpredictable.

Essie couldn’t bring the good tidings and Amos understood. Bury it, then, in the wild ground of The Fucking Place. He didn’t know if he would find it, even with a shovel in the middle of the night, but he had to try for her sake. He had to.

The barn was dark. Inside, there were nothing but the horses and two twisted shadows on the ground. Two shadows! Twisted together on the ground. Yes, Amos had seen strange things. But this—this beat all!

He was astonished by how obvious it was, by how easily it could be missed by those who weren’t curious enough to seek the answer right in front of them because the answer, even when revealed, remained unbelievable.

He had thought their kinship merely hazardous at first, never thinking it wise for any two people to be so close, not here anyway. Even with Essie, his embrace was one arm only. The other arm had to be free to cry into the crook of when the warmth of other bodies turned cold. It hadn’t occurred to him until the veil was lifted, and the world was clearer to him, what Samuel and Isaiah’s peculiar closeness meant.

In the absence of women, he understood the necessity of turning to a hand or a hog, or, in a last-ditch effort, begrudgingly and with falsehoods intact, the uncleanliness of other men. Hot was hot and release, for a man, was always imminent excepting into death. But to not have a desire for women to begin with, to produce no physical response to them whatsoever, above all, to willingly choose a male to cradle you gently into sleep, even when women were as soft and abundant as cotton . . .