The Prophets(60)

There they were, pupils as big as buttons, grinning, rubbing on flaccid genitals, not understanding why the genitals were so limp when they, themselves, were feeling so aroused—and by everything; unlocking every part of themselves freely, and letting Timothy in. Saliva was frothy in the corners of their mouths. Timothy suppressed the urge to offer them a handkerchief because he thought it might break their concentration and be seen as an insult.

When one of his dorm mates confessed to being in love with his own mother, of using his baby grasp to hold on to her pubic hairs so as to avoid leaving her womb, to remain there in the comforts of her canal, Timothy had heard enough, had, in fact, heard too much and wished that he could unhear it. He never asked another question of them, and when they went into their induced passion-stupor, he would leave the room and walk the grounds, wishing he could be as ignorant and stoic as the trees.

Out into the silvery light of the North he bounded, allowing the rays to wash over him, letting it in, deeply, where it chilled him to the bone. He hoped no one noticed what the frigidity was doing to his body: flexing his muscles, goosebumping his skin, hardening his nipples and his prick. He walked on, smiling at the stones beneath his feet, admiring the weeds that had the courage to peek out from between them, golden at their edges, but still green at their roots.

When the air greeted him, it carried with it the scent of burning logs—birch trees, perhaps, that had never imagined being cut up this way and shoved into some firepit. The flames they, these pitiful trees, had imagined were much grander, engulfing everything, but only so that they could be reborn, mightier than before, at some other time. This wasn’t that.

Timothy even smiled, faintly, at some of the other students he passed—until he remembered that unlike the stone, the weed, or the tree, they carried secrets frightening enough to chill you to the bone like a silvery light.

He had learned that horror could be planted like seeds, spring to life if given the right tenderness of soil, water, and shine. Unfurl slowly beneath the earth’s skin, burrowing down even as it stretched upward toward an open sky. Hiding, at first, its center, it could be coaxed to reveal its core, exposing colors vibrant enough to make even animals weep, unveiling fragrances that could seduce even the most ferocious of bees. You would never know it was poison until you touched or consumed it, but by then it was already too late. You had already been choked, just like the ones before you. And there was no one left unscathed enough to tell the tale, to warn the next person foolish enough to stop and admire, plucked when they should have just left well enough alone.

He wasn’t the first literate person in his family; Paul and Ruth read extensively: novels, contracts, and the religious text that was a combination of both. But he was the first to have taken his education this far, and so far north. He was bound to learn other things, discover in himself what Mississippi wasn’t wide enough to let prosper. A conscience, perhaps. And something less confined: a white thing with jagged wings that poked at his thighs at night and made the whole room hot.

His art was a sign to some of the other boys at school that their whispers, stolen glances, and subtle gestures toward one another’s groins were just fine and dandy. Timothy had to fan himself and stand behind the easel so as not to make it so obvious that he was receptive to the gazes and wanted more. His yearning went on the canvas before it stretched itself into the real time. He painted feverishly: in the morning before class, after afternoon prayer, doodles during lunch, and sketches by lamplight late into the evening. He had never been so pleased.

But Isaiah . . .

“So you work the barn and the animals. You prefer that to the field?”

“I do what I told to, suh,” Isaiah replied.

“I know that.” Timothy smiled. “Most of you do. But I mean, is it what you prefer?”

Isaiah said nothing, as though he understood that there could be no right answer but silence. He looked down at his feet.

“Please don’t move, Isaiah. Look up at me, please. Hold your head steady.”

Isaiah looked up without looking Timothy in the eye.

“Because I can have my father put you wherever I ask. So tell me: Where would you rather be?”

“I like the barn just fine,” Isaiah said quickly. “Just fine.”

It annoyed Timothy that Isaiah couldn’t tell him very much about himself. He didn’t know his age, who or where his parents were, what he dreamed about, or even what his favorite color was. Not even when Timothy painted a line of every color from his palette on a canvas and asked Isaiah to choose. Although he stared quite a long time at the blue, and then the red, he made no decision, said he couldn’t.

“But everybody has a favorite color, Isaiah,” Timothy protested.

“What’s your’n, sir?”

“Oh, that’s easy: purple. Because purple is two of my favorite colors mixed together.”

“Is that so, sir? Which two is that?”

“Blue and red.” Timothy smiled and winked.

“Then I like purple too, sir,” Isaiah said with startling conviction.

Timothy smiled and patted Isaiah on the head. But he wanted to know more.

Isaiah must have been close to his own age, but Timothy couldn’t be certain. His father kept impeccable records of everything. So if Timothy searched, perhaps he could find their names in ledgers. This is how he came to venturing into his father’s study one day, spending almost an hour perusing religious texts, bank statements, bound letters, and other things, each arranged in rows on shelves surrounding the room.