The Prophets(34)

Samuel rested his arm on the handle of the pitchfork. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He regretted letting himself open this way. A man, he thought, should have better control over his doors and locks. Still, some doors couldn’t be locked once opened. He looked at Isaiah. He stared into his eyes and was almost convinced, by their tender shape, by how they were crowned by thick, silky eyebrows, to let it go. Almost.

“How ’bout your name?”

Isaiah frowned. “My name,” he whispered. “How you could even . . .”

Samuel wiped his brow with both hands but didn’t know what to do with them afterward, so he balled them into fists. He looked intently at Isaiah.

“When you know Big Hosea to have a problem with anybody, huh?”

Isaiah’s lips parted, but only silence filled the space.

“I been knowing him since we both little. You see how he come after me? For what?” Samuel grunted.

“I know, and . . .”

“And what you do? Stand there instead of helping.”

“It was me the one who pull you off him!”

“When you shoulda been the one helping me whup him!”

Isaiah nearly buckled under the weight of that. He leaned forward. He put his hands on his legs, just above his knees, to brace himself. He exhaled. He kept looking at the ground.

Samuel eyed him from toe to head. “Yeah.”

Isaiah wouldn’t allow himself to be crushed by the heaviness or by Samuel’s attempt to stack more on top of it. He stood erect. He took two steps toward Samuel. He looked him in the eyes and then looked away to gather his thoughts. Samuel, meanwhile, had planted his feet and cracked his knuckles.

“You right. Sorry,” Isaiah said as he returned to gaze into Samuel’s squinting eyes. “I shoulda done more, but I ain’t wanna do nothing to make Amos think he got the upper hand—or make the people think we was what he said we was.”

Samuel’s lips were dry and ashy, so he licked them. His tongue darted out, drenching first the bottom then the top. He tasted salt. He put his hand on the handle of the pitchfork.

“Folks listen to Amos. Maybe we should,” he said. His grip on the pitchfork was loose and unsure.

“No,” Isaiah said quickly. “I young. Young as you. But this I know ’cause it don’t take long to learn it: anybody with a whip gone use it. And people without one gone feel it.”

Samuel snatched up the pitchfork.

“Amos ain’t got no whip!” he said as he began, furiously, to fork hay.

“But folks finna obey him just the same,” Isaiah countered.

Samuel stopped and let the pitchfork fall. It hit the ground with a thud. The two of them just stood there, silent, not looking at each other, but both breathing heavily, audibly. Finally, Samuel cracked the silence in half.

“I can’t stay here.”

“Who can’t?” asked Isaiah.

Samuel paused. He had no answer that would satisfy. The realization made his chest burn and his face itch. He clapped his sweaty palms. The sudden, sharp sound stirred a horse or two before it dissipated. It didn’t distract Isaiah, however. He kept his gaze steady, his face still prepared to receive an answer to his question.

“You ain’t never talk like this before,” Isaiah said gently.

“Maybe not talk,” Samuel replied.

“But think? Can’t be. Even in the midnight hour?”

In Isaiah’s eyes was a mist, nighttime, and two sets of calloused feet creeping alongside a riverbank. Owls hooted and the snap of fallen branches being cracked in half by heavy footsteps echoed in the distance. Far behind, a point of light and the voices of wild men laughing. A glint of metal seen by the shine of the moon and the two sets of feet speed up, into the wet of the river. Muddy and tired. Then two whole bodies submerge and, though frantic, refuse to make a splash for fear of attracting the attention of jackals disguised as men.

But the silence provides no shelter and the wildness catches up to them and drags them, by their feet, out of the water, over jagged rocks, through the broken woods until they come upon a row of bitter, eager trees willing to perform acts of vengeance in the name of stolen fruit. The men have ropes, laughter, and fingers hooked into triggers. The men bind their prey. Nooses burn necks. Tightened, they block air. Then the eyes constrict and throats mourn the denial of screaming. Pull. Pull. And up in the air the bodies go. Kicking the nothing around them. Flying nowhere.

After a while, tuckered out down to the soul, they go limp, an offense to the gods of wicked laughter. So they unload their weapons into the dead-already. Then they douse the bodies with oil and set them aflame. They think it’s a campfire, so they sing songs. Look at the monkeys. Look at the monkeys. Swinging. Swinging from the trees. The flames eventually die and the bodies eventually drop. The wild men fight over the best pieces to take home.

When Isaiah snapped back to the barn, it dawned on him that he had been standing there the entire time and neither he nor Samuel had even attempted to touch the other. He moved a step closer and stroked Samuel’s cheek with the back of his hand, his rough knuckles finding comfort against Samuel’s smooth skin. Samuel closed his eyes, leaned into the rhythm of Isaiah’s motion before finally grabbing Isaiah’s hand and holding it in place against his face. Samuel kissed Isaiah’s hand.

“There’s danger in the wilderness,” Isaiah unloaded. He figured that it was only fair that the both of them share the weight of it. Samuel lifted it, inspected it, and noticed a crack in it. Those monkey-swinging bodies: they dared go down without a fight?