The Prophets(47)

Here, trudging through this land that surrendered too quickly, Samuel found what most others didn’t know: there is a spark at the end of a lash. A tiny speck of light, absent of any color. It’s hidden behind the momentary sound of leather meeting flesh. If you blink, if you blink at all, it will be missed or discarded as a trick of the eye. But it’s there, certainly. Untainted by the blood that has now darkened the whip’s tongue. Unmoved by the cries of the righteous and the wicked alike. Making no distinction between the two, it floats above, almost to observe, but, like the trees, never to witness, and speeds down, not like lightning, but like thunder, and everything shakes. Everything. The past and the future together. And with the present left in such a state of quivering, the mind has no choice but to travel and join.

Isaiah looked at Samuel and the direction of Samuel’s eyes led him to the spark, too. Even with the tears stinging his eyes, he saw it. Most clearly just before the sting that followed. A North Star that led no one nowhere.

Wait.

Wrong.

It led people here. To Empty. Where they, too, would become so. Capable, perhaps newly, perhaps always, of interrupting true affection and replacing it with something less, for reasons that were perfunctory and only sometimes bitter. The bombast, all that frantic posing, was designed as a cover for something even more indecent: nature.

And the spark mocked them. Flaunted how easily it could pierce reality and then retreat as though it had never been there in the first place. Failed to leave behind a path from which it could be followed into that other realm. Though there was no guarantee that anything over there would be better. It could be the same or worse, and that could be what the colorlessness signaled. Besides, a beckoning was rarely a reason to rejoice. Still, the mind, in callous circumstances, insisted upon longing for every meager delight.

Language undone by the threat of violence, they could only signal and suggest, hoping gesture could be translated and Samuel didn’t mistake tucked lips for “fight,” or Isaiah think a balled fist could possibly mean “patience.” But they had known each other long enough not to fall victim to such easy deceptions. They placed desire above the indisputable for the sake of not wanting to think, which is another way of saying surrender. And they couldn’t surrender now, not after all of this, not after they had stunned even themselves at how expert they were in uniting the entire plantation against them, toubab and person alike.

Shit. Look at how even the flowers looked at them: dandelions swaying not in the breeze, because there was no breeze except in the motion of Samuel and Isaiah passing them by. The milkweed turned away, but the obedients seemed curious, dozens of smiles laced on top of one another like treachery. That was what Isaiah smelled as they passed the huddled bushes. Everyone else might have enjoyed the fragrances, but Isaiah knew what it really was. So did Samuel.

Isaiah was tempted then to scream, to allow his legs to buckle instead of needlessly resisting. It had become clear that it was the resisting that was most despised. But acquiescence would mean nothing but more drudgery, and more abuse for error. To give up now would mean that exhausted knees could crash against pillowy weeds and the chest could collapse in on itself before it hit the ground. Lying there, ass out to all eternity, but able to catch his breath and close his eyes, if just briefly, he would raise a weak smile, but still a smile. This was tiny, but still joy. He hated himself for how much he wanted it, but hated even more the circumstances that made him want it.

Samuel wouldn’t dare admit he wanted the same thing so his hate could never be turned inward. If he closed his eyes, it was only to imagine the creative ways in which that hatred could be acted out. So when his hands and teeth clenched, it wasn’t only because of the lash. And just because he was bent didn’t mean he couldn’t see their faces. He signaled as much when he raised his chin and used his lips to point Isaiah’s weary stare in the direction of the crowds of people watching them as they drudged around Empty like two white horses pulling a carriage of royalty. This was not a race, but there they were, huddled together, only some against their will, waiting at the finish line. This was not a race, but it was a race.

Why did they have to stand so close? Because most of them wanted to see. They needed to see so that they could be thankful that it wasn’t them being broken right before their eyes. At the same time, both Samuel and Isaiah noticed the smiles on the faces of some of them. Maybe not smiles, exactly, but if approval could fix the lips to curl a certain way, then this was it. Isaiah noticed something more: a heaviness in their eyelids that spoke nothing of weariness. Their heads were tilted too far back. No. The downcast gazes shouted one word: Yes!

That was the weight that finally made Isaiah collapse at the ankles. He stumbled forward, landing square in a patch of star creeper. Stretched out like one himself, he cried into them, and Maggie was the first among the crowd to make a move: her hands trembled and her eyes were alert, but she knew better than to extend a hand. Samuel just panted, and maybe his eyelids got heavy, too.

Isaiah didn’t have to say he surrendered because lying facedown stretched out like a star-fool already said it plainly. It made Samuel angry enough to pick up his disparate pieces and put them back together in glorious order. One final lash for daring and then Samuel put Isaiah’s arm around his neck and together they walked, with labored and wobbly step, chains just a-jangling, back toward the barn, bowlegged because of the spikes, but not waiting to be unchained just yet. Twin backs juicy with the marks left by whips and disapproving gazes.