The Prophets(69)

Yet his demeanor reminded her of someone else. The way his face welcomed but snatched itself away without a moment’s notice felt quite familiar to her. And here she was—with an apology, wrapped in white cloth, on behalf of people who were beyond forgiveness—ready to be snatched up.

“Are you gon’ take this or am I gon’ have to eat it myself? I come all the way down here for you to stand beside yourself? Boy!”

Samuel glanced at Isaiah and then took the parcel from Maggie.

“Thank you, Miss Maggie,” he said, head bowed.

“Mm-hmm,” Maggie replied as she turned.

As she started to limp away, something black flashed across her back that made Samuel flinch, though he would deny it if anyone said they saw him. It flickered quickly, the blackness, like how light can sometimes do as it passes from sky to tree bough to ground. And he told himself that is exactly what happened, that it was light he saw and not shadow—even though no light he ever saw looked like the absence of it and there were no trees close enough to make light dance like that. But he was certain (but not really) that it wasn’t the shadow returning to point its crooked finger at him for something he didn’t do, denying the accusation without even knowing what the accusation was. Nah. It wasn’t that. Couldn’t be.

Isaiah moved ahead to open the gate anew for Maggie. “Thank you kindly for your trouble. Let me get this here gate for you again,” Isaiah said. His soft eyes regarded her as one would royalty. Keen Maggie saw it there, sparkling in him. She appreciated the sentiment but knew that it was misapprehended and the young had to understand deeper things than pageantry.

“Don’t put that on me,” she said very seriously. “Unless you want harm to come.”

Isaiah was confused and didn’t understand what he’d done wrong, unsure of what he showed other than the awe he had for her, but he nodded as he closed the gate and watched her walk slowly back to the Big House.

Whatever Maggie brought with her wasn’t just in the wrapped piece of cloth. Isaiah felt it, but Samuel felt it more. Maybe because he was the one holding on to her gift or because he was the one who didn’t see (No I didn’t! he kept telling himself) the not-a-shadow-can’t-be streak across her back. Either way, whatever fight had been building in them seemed to be of secondary concern now.

“Timothy called for me,” Samuel mumbled again.

Isaiah took a deep breath and held it. He let it out. Then, because what else could he do, he shrugged. Silently, grief shook his body.

“Don’t,” Samuel said, standing still in the same spot, holding the cloth in his left hand.

Don’t what, cry or shrug? Isaiah didn’t know and he was too tired to ask. But he did think about the ways in which his body wasn’t his own and how that condition showed up uniquely for everyone whose personhood wasn’t just disputed but denied. Swirling beneath him were the ways in which not having lawful claim to yourself diminished you, yes, but in another way, condemned those who invented the disconnection. He hoped. Maybe not in this realm, but absolutely in others—if there were others. Matching hard for hard did nothing but create wreckage. But being soft, while beautiful, was subject to being torn asunder by the harder thing. What other answer was there then but to be some kind of flexible? Stretch further so that there was too much difficulty in trying to pull you apart?

Samuel was a hard thing. There was no use in trying to make him anything other than that. And he had every right, even if sometimes he didn’t understand how his rigidity, that impenetrable door that Puah was perhaps the first one to notice, was built up in the wrong direction. But some people thought hard was the answer and believed that rather than bend, you had to try to snap them in half because they were confident that you couldn’t.

Isaiah, however, knew of the sporadic but attendant softness inside Samuel. Ground cover rocky, yes, but soil giving.

And Samuel only half trusted him with that knowledge—preferred, actually, if Isaiah didn’t know at all. So some things he kept to himself. The shadow with the pointing hand would be one of them. It was in the barn, he could admit to that, but it wasn’t in the woods or riding Maggie’s back like a strapped babe.

A mutual sigh released them from having to continue the argument. No one had to willingly relent or gloat over a victory. The inhalation then exhalation of breath provided enough room for them both to hold on to a little bit of dignity even in the middle of desecration.

Samuel looked down at the bundle in his hand. He looked up and motioned with his head for Isaiah to follow him as he walked around to the back of the barn. Isaiah walked behind him, tracing Samuel’s steps, walking in them sometimes and sometimes making his own path through the chicory and spurge. When they came to the rear center of the barn, where the sun was bright with anger and the knothole that betrayed them was a kind of memorial, Samuel stopped. Isaiah walked a bit farther, to where there was a little bit of shade because a yellow pine, not thirty years old yet, was in the process of spreading itself there, and he found its scent reassuring because of the way it hid his own.

He turned to look at Samuel. Moving against his nature because there was the possibility of accusatory shadow, he walked over to where Isaiah was and sat down at the base of the tree. Isaiah sat down next to him. Samuel flattened his lap and unfastened Maggie’s cloth. And what did they have here? A veritable feast of boiled eggs, fried ham, blackberry jelly on thick slices of bread, two whole nectarines, and a big ol’ hunk of brown cake.