The Prophets(45)

By the time they had been pushed out of the barn, the animals more surprised than they were, horses flexing their front legs and pigs’ squeals drawn out, Isaiah and Samuel had seen what the fog couldn’t hide. They expected the crowd that had already gathered, golden in the torchlight of the dawn. Some were tired. Some were smiling. The latter stunned Isaiah, but not Samuel. These were people after all. There was, therefore, some kind of happiness to be found in someone else being humiliated for once. Failure of memory prevented the empathy that should have been natural. Samuel knew, though, that it was selective memory, the kind that was cultivated here among the forget-me-nots.

The morning mist would soon give way. It would no longer crown their heads and obstruct beauty from view. Soon, it would descend and bless their knees and then their ankles before disappearing into the ground itself, revealing, then, how even a horrible place like this could be winsome. Ask the dragonflies.

How many people had already died on this land and who were they? First the Yazoo, who fought valiantly, surely, but who could never have been prepared for guns, or disease molded into the shape of one. Surely, the Choctaw were next.

And then the kidnapped people, the ones who dropped dead from toil, yes, but especially the ones who refused to mule, whose very skin was defiance. They were the ones who looked on from the darkness and occasionally whispered to their children, How could you? Samuel thought they meant: How could you let them? Isaiah thought, How could you stay? Answers weren’t forthcoming and righteousness filled the voids.

Samuel raised his head first. He figured that if pain was going to be this day, it might as well be earned. One of the barely-men snatched the chain attached to the shackle around his neck, pulling him backward. But he didn’t fall. The three of them moved directly behind him, attaching his chains, and therefore Isaiah’s chains, to the wagon that James had already climbed into. An old rickety thing—the wagon yes, but James too—in desperate need of repair: wobbly and dented wheels that made the ride bumpy and unsure, but purposely made pulling it more of a chore; a bed so eaten through by who knew what that the ground beneath could be seen through it, making it a dangerous ride for passengers as well. But it had long stopped serving the purpose of lessening burdens.

James raised his right hand and one by one some of the people moved from one misty spot to the other. Isaiah had stopped counting the number of them told to cram themselves onto the flat and focused instead on the distance between him, Samuel, and them. Some of them rushed onto it, but Isaiah couldn’t exactly tell whose speed was cursed by excitement and whose was blessed by fear. As they stood in the vehicle that threatened to collapse under their weight, none of that mattered. What mattered was the elevation. Holding on to knowledge that the toubab didn’t have yet, they could now look down, and that, too, was irresistible. Even that tiny bit of height brought about a new perspective that straightened backs and raised chins, while arms met hips akimbo. Isaiah accepted this foolishness, for he knew the source was false. But it stuck in Samuel’s throat like a bluegill bone and wouldn’t dislodge.

Chained to the wagon like the animals they knew they weren’t, James sitting inside with whip in hand, and a load of people cramped behind him, Samuel and Isaiah were forced to pull. And they would have to drag the wagon around the entire perimeter of Empty. And on a Sunday, too. They wondered if this whole show irritated or pleased Amos. They glanced in the direction of the people still standing among the grass and fog and spotted Amos there, a book held under his arm. They took in small pieces of his face and reassembled it inside their heads. Samuel chose irritated, Isaiah pleased. They would never agree, so they took up another project. They eyed Empty. This was how they got to know it. Every nook. Every crevice. Every blasted blade of grass. While Samuel plotted, Isaiah focused on the details.

“Hee-ya!”

James spoke to them in animal language and to move accordingly would make a lie true. So neither of them budged. The first lash sent a shock through Isaiah and his vision blurred for a moment before returning with even more clarity. That’s when he noticed that they were almost pristine. The lines of Empty. How at each point, they were marked by something glorious: a flower, a rock, a tree. It might have been tolerable if uninhabited, if simply galloped through rather than owned. With no one around to mind someone stopping to speak to the bee that found its way to the heart of nectar and wish it good passage, then look up to the clouds and yell, “Me!” Nothing this calm should have such capacity for terror.

Isaiah looked down as the tears said, I’ma coming. He saw his feet as they dug into the squishy, slippery ground that gave no traction. The second crack struck Samuel and Isaiah trembled for him. With everything dead set on betrayal, the young men’s hearts pounded a rhythm of distrust, Samuel’s more than Isaiah’s. It was the strain that had divided them and made them prickly.

Samuel glanced at Isaiah and resented him. It swirled in his chest for a moment before being pushed back down into his stomach with deep inhalation. It would only take both of them to wait until the chains were loosed to snake them around the necks of the barely-men and strangle them before succumbing to the gun wounds that would inevitably follow. But he knew Isaiah didn’t have that in him to do. Samuel had known Isaiah for all these years and still hadn’t gotten to the heart of what made Isaiah not even want to squeeze a fist tightly. What a danger to be so callow.

Meanwhile, Isaiah avoided Samuel’s glances because they hid nothing and what use was it to explain to him that a last resort should be last, not first? But still, Isaiah’s chest swelled with the strain of understanding that they were bound together by something much stronger than the rusty chains that held them. Tempting, though, was the thought of how much peace, however fleeting, there could be if one boy dared to be remiss in his duty and failed to bring the other boy water.