The Prophets(70)

“Mercy,” Isaiah said.

Samuel didn’t want to remember the shadow he didn’t see. He picked up a nectarine and gestured for Isaiah to take one for himself. Almost at the same time, they bit into them. The juices ran down their faces. Isaiah wiped the juice away but Samuel didn’t. He stared ahead at the rear of the barn.

Neither of them spoke, but they each continued to eat, picking things from the cloth, slowly, carefully, one with grateful hands, the other with discerning ones, like ritual, but without prayer because they didn’t need one, and respect was freely given.

But still, it was solemn-like, holy, as unto a last-last supper.





The Revelation of Judas

Sometimes, in Mississippi, maybe in the whole world, except one other place lost to memory, the sky was heavy. It was thick with something unseen but surely felt. Maggie looked up to it as she swept the porch and had the feeling that something was looking back at her. It was smiling, whatever it was. But the smile wasn’t the kind to bring comfort. It was the same smile a man had sometimes, the wrong kind of man, the kind whose curling lips were a warning that he was prone to unpredictable acts, that he thought he was entitled to touch what he wanted to touch, take what he wanted to take, spoil what he wanted to spoil, and all of that was his birthright for merely existing. She didn’t know where men got that idea from. But it was one they shared with whoever was willing to follow.

Perhaps the heaviness was just a rain on its way. Maggie sniffed the air and yes, it had the whiff of moisture and dirt that preceded storm. But there was something else there, too: a bright and pointy smell, like a star plucked from the nighttime and brought low before it dimmed forever. No one could touch it, though, for it was hot enough to singe hairs. There was something coming. Maggie put the broom up against the Big House and dug in her apron pocket. She pulled out a handful of pig bones. She descended the stairs. She cleared a path of dirt using her foot to brush aside pebbles and dead leaves. She stooped down as low as she could before the hip caused her to wince. Then she threw the bones and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she blinked. Then she blinked again. And again and again. Finally, her eyes widened.

No, it can’t be! Lies! He wouldn’t dare.



* * *



—

INSIDE HIS SHACK, Amos awoke with a dull ache bumping inside his head. It was from all the rattling that he heard in his dream. No sights, no colors, just the sound of a rattling, like bones, which was off rhythm with his breath, but he wouldn’t read that as a sign, not a bad one at least. He rolled in his pallet, away from Essie and Solomon, and the stiffness between his legs made him think briefly about Be Auntie and if he should go to her this early in the morning, which he had never done because night had been their portion. And it was strange to him that Essie hadn’t said a word, didn’t ask a single question about where he roamed in the dark, out into a night where James and his fellow jackals were poised to invent a reason, any reason, to choke, whip, or shoot.

“They tried to run, Paul,” they would say of a people whose legs were so mangled from the field that they could barely drag, much less head for the North. And Paul would take them at their word not because he believed them but because the alternative was to believe the mangled people, and both God and law, as well as ownership of land, prevented him from doing that.

Amos wasn’t a fool. He realized the god he now served wasn’t the will of his people. But he knew it could be convinced to be. More than worshipped, all gods wanted to be adored, and his people had that in them more than Paul’s: to abide more, rejoice more, revere more, surrender more; climb on top of a golden pyre and burn more. He had seen it in the circle of trees. The way his people swayed, the way they rocked, the way they offered themselves up willingly to the cloudy sky above, and the way they sang together in a harmony that wasn’t rehearsed because people who shared the same bitter lot connected in ways unseen by nature.

He covered his nakedness not out of shame but out of obligation. Massa Paul would think it savagery and Missy Ruth, perhaps, an invitation. He cloaked himself in ratty clothes, but at least they were clean. He had beaten them against the rocks himself and soaked them in a bucket of lavender water. He couldn’t ask Essie to do that and be kind to the burden that nursed at her breast; that would be too much.

He dressed quietly as Essie and Solomon snored and wheezed asleep, unmoved by his waking. He walked to the door, pushed aside the covering, and stepped out into the cloudy, humid morning. The rain will take care of this, he thought, feeling the stickiness that sapped strength and beaded in droplets on his forehead. He looked to the right, squinting, to see the big red thing that was the barn. It cast a looming shadow in the light of the rising sun behind him. He shook his head. Had they only listened. Had they only heeded. Had they only put the people above themselves, just a little; given up what everyone worth their weight in cotton had to give up in order to survive relatively unscathed—even though “unscathed” was a wholesome and comforting lie.

They felt like sons to him, particularly Isaiah, who was his charge, given to him by a mother who didn’t tell Amos what her name was, but did manage to whisper to him the child’s name, which Amos thought sounded like a howling. He was, however, emboldened by the fact that this woman had managed to hang on to her old ways even in the blue ridges of Georgia and had entrusted him to ensure her child would carry those ways with him if only in name.