The Prophets(24)

Amos shook his head to clear the image from his mind. Man on top of woman: that wasn’t just Christlike, it was sensible, right? He asked the question, but rhetorically, because he was apprehensive and uncertain about an answer. There was no suitable name for whatever it was that Samuel and Isaiah were doing, at least, none that he could remember. That he couldn’t remember bothered him as much as the act itself. They weren’t women. Women were weak, and by God’s design. Nevertheless, by carrying on as though at least one of them was female, they threatened to only further diminish what Amos imagined was already diminished to death. For Samuel and Isaiah to wear their sex this way—dewy, firm, trembling, free—even under the cloak of night, was folly. If they had cared at all for any of the others, they would have, at the very least, masked their strangeness. Hushed it better, goddamnit, so that toubab wouldn’t discover it. Didn’t they understand that here, under Paul’s word, they were nobodies?

Hold on.

There were bodies. They were in bodies. They just had no authority over theirs.

Amos could look at the embracing shadows no more. Especially the one he carried from the wagon all those years ago. Can you even imagine that? Someone throwing a child into a wagon as simply as you would a sack of cotton. A child screaming and his parents being beat into the ground for daring to protest. He was impressed, though, that the boy survived the trip. A little woozy at the end of it, of course, what with the way food and water were rationed, and how the insects bit. But Amos ignored his heavy shackles to catch the boy before he passed out in the dirt. Holding him, he wondered what it might be like to have his own child, to hold him close to his chest that the baby might be tickled by the coils of his father’s hair. And looking down at son, son would look up at father, smile, and tug at the strands of his beard so that they both would be glad.

He began walking back to his cabin, avoiding the lantern light of the patrollers in the distance. He traced his steps, recalling that he had seen Samuel and Isaiah often since they were boys, mostly near the barn and, therefore, mostly segregated from the others. One black, the other purple; one smiling, the other brooding. Maybe if someone had carried him, weak-kneed, off a wagon, Samuel might be a son, too.

“You knew?” Amos asked folk.

He paid close attention to their whispers. The women were thankful for the reprieve, the others grateful for their courage. Maggie said it was something old, from the other time, before the ships and guns came. Amos knew of no such thing. He didn’t even have to ask Essie because her and Isaiah’s shared laughter now made sense. But there wasn’t anything funny. He didn’t understand how she didn’t connect Isaiah’s failure to Paul’s.

Paul. Amos knew that once Paul discovered that the nature of Isaiah and Samuel’s stubbornness was something other than bad aim, they would inspire a passion in him that would become uncontainable. At some point, Paul’s restless mind wouldn’t be content with just The Two of Them; he would seek to inspect the others, to find increasingly creative and heartbreaking methods of preventing Samuel and Isaiah’s unholiness from spreading. Because of those two, suffering would prosper.

Amos felt spite growing in the midpoint of his ribs, even though it was well known that Samuel and Isaiah inspired everything around them to dance: some old folk, the children, flies, the tips of tall grass. Everything except the black-eyed Susans, which turned their heads up at whomever. Skeptical by nature, they swayed a little when the boys walked past, but never any more than that. They were secure enough in the golden of their petals that they didn’t have to worship anything else, except, maybe, the rain. Shout when she came down. Amos wished his people could be more like that.

When he himself saw them together—now that he saw them saw them—frolicking in the marsh, hefting bales of hay, and tending to the animals, or just sitting silently side by side with their backs against the barn feeding each other with bare hands, feet too close together, he nearly glorified their names. He covered his eyes because Isaiah and Samuel were bright and coated in a shining the likes of which he had never seen. A shame that he would have to be the one to smash it.

It was necessary, then, that the nature of his sermons change. If the entire plantation could unite in this purpose, not just him, maybe . . . With a chest full of regret, and with his softest voice, away from the circle of trees so that no toubab might hear and unleash chaos before it had the chance to be thwarted, sometimes in the confines of his shack, he chastised any person who accepted, condoned, or ignored Samuel and Isaiah’s behavior. Most people were frightened by this sudden shift because they weren’t accustomed to his river-water voice sounding so drought.

“You think God don’t see?” he would say quietly as he pointed in the direction of the barn, his dark fingers hanging in the air, quivering like tree branches shed of leaves, hoping uncertainty wasn’t wearing him like Sunday clothing. For it had been he who Paul trusted with the words of the book and in there it had said multiply and give God His glory-glory. This is what he tried to explain above the tumult of whys that had bombarded him from the lips of almost everyone he whispered to.

He had anticipated difficulty, resistance, since his own legs were unsure. Samuel and Isaiah were, after all, boys, oftentimes helpful ones who were one bluster and the other tranquil, but never callous or aloof. He knew some of the people had thought of them as their own children since the two were orphans. People took a special interest in orphans, secretly gave a little extra in terms of affection, though they had none to spare. The women, especially, cared for Samuel and Isaiah more than they should have, Maggie being the worst one and the one who should have known better.