The Prophets(72)



“You won’t like this before. I had seen you, so tender with Essie, up full in your manness, not a stitch of harm to you. But now,” Maggie shook her head. “It’s a bone-chilly that freeze all inside things. Your eyes starting to turn blue; I see it. Blue, you hear me?”

“How ’bout your’n circle, Maggie? You would see that expand or broke?”

No, Be Auntie ain’t tell this man! For us only! Those the rules. Oh, that girl something else! That was all right. Maggie had some private knowledge of her own.

“Were you in the dark or in the light?” Maggie said, speaking of the particular anointing hovering over Amos like a horde of gnats. “Did you fall forward or backward?”

Amos didn’t answer but his silence told Maggie what she needed to know.

“And you still took heed? You know better.”

Amos sighed and turned around, looking past the willow tree, past the cotton field, and into the woods, toward the circle of trees. Maggie knew what he was doing. He was gathering strength to get past the salt that his god knew the sting of all too well. She reached out and touched Amos’s shoulder. She heard something. It was Amos’s voice but not coming from his mouth. It was coming from the sky—no, from the clouds themselves. And this is what happened when Amos of the sky spoke:

Hearts pounded then stopped then pounded again. There were sharp intakes of breath and then long, wet exhalations. People stood up with the speed of lightning bolts and shouted louder than they were allowed. And then they looked to the sky and closed their eyes. Some of them swayed. Some of them wept. All of this was nothing but reprieve. A moment away while still there and, therefore, necessary, priceless.

Maggie snatched her hand away. She stood there shaking with fury when Amos turned back to face her.

“You see?” he asked. “You see?”

She slapped him. Dead in the face. She slapped him hard enough that spit flew from his mouth and she saw exactly where it landed and she was glad because it would be of some use. Her upturned chin told him that whatever she saw, rather heard, from the clouds, mattered less than what she could perceive on the ground. She would show him.

This was their impasse: each responding to a slight the one claims the other invoked. The truth lost both to time and to people who never understand the point of ritual. Or who understood it all too well.

Amos, tired of wielding what they knew against each other, decided it was time for risk. He looked Maggie directly in the eye, then he looked down. He stepped right on the salt pouch before kicking it full force across the weeds. Maggie jerked in disbelief.

“You . . . you would save the right-this-instant and forfeit the long-tomorrow?”

Amos held his head up and his lips formed defiance, though there was a tiny bit of fear in it. He moved Maggie aside as gently as he could and she swung at him, hitting him on his back. He stumbled, but he didn’t stray. He walked straight ahead. Maggie grabbed at his shirt and he pulled her off. She came back at him and he swung her around and she hit the ground, landing on her bad hip. She balled up her fists and cussed Amos deep in her throat. He returned some cusses of his own. She looked back to see if she could see where his landed.

She couldn’t.

Meanwhile, Amos walked up the stairs to the Big House and Maggie crawled on the ground. The first drops of rain began to fall.

Maggie grabbed her chest. He was gon’ walk in through the front door! He had the gumption (he called it “the blood”) to walk right in through the front like a toubab. This simply confirmed what Maggie’s spirit had told her all along. Peace was tricky. There was a matter of sacrifice involved, but rarely did the peacemaker sacrifice themselves as much as they were willing to sacrifice some other, lead them up to the stake to get burned, comforting them as they were about to be lit up so that everything on earth and in the heavens could see, telling them, Don’t worry; glory’s next.

Fuck glory! Give us what’s ours by right, and what’s ours by right is our skin tint, skin, our breath scent, breath, our eye blink, our feet steps! Who broke the covenant with creation such that a person could be a cow or a carriage? Release yourself from that low-down place where another’s pain is your fortune. Get up, you hear me? Cleanse your outhouse spirit and set yourself to leave us be! Otherwise, you leave us no choice.

Those words were in her head, but they came from somewhere else. Voices, yes; more than six.

As Amos prepared to walk through the door, Maggie struggled to her feet. She looked over at the barn. The pig bones were still on the ground, but in her tussle with Amos, they had been rearranged. She limped over to them and took a deep breath. There was a new portent. She nodded and then turned to walk toward the barn as fast as her hurt could take her.

In her head, the voices continued: Don’t fret, Maggie. You know you hung on as mightily as you could.

Amos was framed by the doorway. And what was it to walk in through the front door and march proudly, chest out, but head ready at any moment to bow? They allowed Maggie to do it as keeper of the house, so there had been a precedent. And after he was gone to the far-off somewhere, where weary bones lay in rest and the tired soul was welcomed with open arms into the peaceful bosom of Abraham, some other who would come after him would have a path through treacherous terrain. And Amos, from the majesty of what he and he alone called the Upper Room, would smile like God did because he, too, would see what he did was good.

Robert Jones Jr.'s Books