The Prophets(39)
The night, too, was a place to wander. Within certain confines, of course, but it still provided a chance to explore. From one horizon to the other, this land belonged to Paul, which meant that her safety wasn’t only paramount, but guaranteed. She had made all the appropriate sacrifices to solidify the contract. You couldn’t see it, but there was a trail of blood that led from her womb to the woods and followed her wherever she went. Whether it was in downtown Vicksburg to visit the dressmaker, in the front row of the pew at church as the reverend looked at her with eyes that lingered a tad too long, in her needlepoint circle with the women who envied her only because they imagined her in possession of a life that they wanted—and she knew none of them would want her life if they knew about the wandering that Paul’s absence made absolutely necessary, or maybe they would; who’s to say?—the trail moved when she did, always led to her no matter where she stood, and connected her, forever, to the thick and thin separating man from beast. That was why she wandered the wilderness most of all. She was tethered to it for reasons she couldn’t yet understand but also felt on the cusp of the wisdom that she knew would soon come. What she knew for certain was that being in open nature was where she felt most like she was a whole body and not just a stolen piece.
The breeze felt good and she opened her legs a little wider. Maybe if she did that, other people could see the cord—she would rather think it that than a trail—and know that she was actually alive and not just some haint half existing in a spot she was chained to against her will, not being able to move on because unfinished business would never have even the slightest hope of resolution. She was here by mercy and maybe even by choice because the mercy was so reviving that she felt she owed so much to it. On her knees, then. On her knees, but only for a moment.
Still bent, she looked up to the North Star and thought maybe Timothy was looking at that same one. He was very much like his father, but he was also his mother’s sole prize. She kept all of his letters in the top drawer of a small chest beside her bed. He wrote to her often to tell her that while he still thought Thomas Jefferson had a point, maybe there was another way to think of niggers, whom he called “Negroes”; that walking on two feet meant that they weren’t the animals Ruth was certain they were, or maybe not as certain as she believed.
“My son. My special child,” she wrote to him by lamplight, straining her eyes. “You are silly. All that book learning and you kept your childlike nature after all.”
She knew that Northern ways were slippery and could slither their way through any boundary given enough will. If the North had anything, it was that: will. Loud was what Northerners were, and hypocrites. The South was a constant reminder of their roots, these U-nited States that were neither united nor stately, but were some loose configuration of tepid and petrified men trying to remake the world in their own faded image. This wasn’t a framework for liberty; this was the same tyranny of Europe, only naked and devoid of baubles.
What Northerners lacked in charm, they more than made up for in speeches: heartbreaking and endless speeches that made men raise their pitchforks and torches and march to the edge of nothing-yet with yelling mouths and tearstained faces to declare, before all of creation, that they were ready to die so that a dream they would never be a part of should live.
That was why she told Paul that Timothy should remain in Mississippi, that any education he needed could be done here because they had enough wealth to bring to bear whatever was missing from the place where the waters gather. That’s what the Natives called out, she was told, as they were mowed down and moved farther into the wild. They called on gods that held the waters together to unbind them and let them drown everything that crawled uninvited onto these lands.
And it rained. Heavy. Hard. For so many weeks that the story doesn’t even mention when it ended, so Ruth had to assume it was on the day that she first remembered seeing sun. But all that did was make the soil rich and earthworms wiggle to the surface, only to be consumed by birds, which made them fat, lazy, and easy to catch—which, in turn, made nourishment abundant for the soldiers who drove the rainmakers and their gods west. They must not have known that one of God’s most elegant acts was giving His people the strength to part waters and hurry through.
But Paul convinced her to send her only begotten son to the ravages of the winter lands and she knew he could only come back but changed. The baby who made it. The child who survived. The young man of many talents who was enough his mother to have the wisdom his father lacked, but was enough his father to understand his duty. Timothy assured her that all that he would bring back with him was knowledge and, maybe, a good wife, God willing. And she wanted so badly to believe him, but there was a quiver in his lip and he patted his forehead too much with the kerchief on a day that wasn’t that hot. Not enough of his mother in him; too much of his father.
Ruth got up from her prayerful position, descended the stairs, and walked out onto the land. The weeds beneath her feet felt cool and the dew made the ground a bit slippery, but she didn’t lose her step. She stood there in the middle and let the stars look at her for once, take her in, be in awe of her, whether she deserved it or not, before using her own hidden power to join them. The wind pushed against her nightgown and that was the only sound, though the night made its own noise: the insects, the animals, and sometimes, the hushed moans that the niggers thought might have been the makings of love, but she knew her husband to be the architect, so it was merely business. These sounds converged and, yes, perhaps even scratched out a melody. But it was all too plain to her ear to be a symphony, even with the thunder of her heartbeat added to the mix.