The Prophets(79)
They rode on down the rigid and dusty trail. Evening sounds of birds, and cicada, which had claimed the gloaming as theirs, emanated from either side of them and also above. That’s what the trees were for, Paul thought, to shelter and to fortify. They were the breathing borders between man himself and the natural everything that Jehovah gifted to him to survey. Either could cross with some peril involved, but man, above all other creatures, had shown himself most adept at survival.
It was unusually cool, so Paul didn’t mind riding close to his cousin. Had, in fact, in that lessening light of sky and honey glow of lamp, seen the family between them. He had been told that his mother and aunt bore a striking resemblance. In this place, when all of creation was in between light and dark, Paul saw that James carried that matrilineal weight much more than he did. Despite the cranky brow, James looked like their mothers: Elizabeth and Margaret. That was why he didn’t have to do too much to verify James’s story. Kinship was clear on a subliminal level if not, at first, on an obvious one. Paul felt glad that his spiritual senses were, then, intact and led him not to turn away his flesh and blood, since all of his other relations, outside of the family he created himself, had passed—or were as good as.
Sometimes, he thought that his created family might pass, too. Ruth’s womb couldn’t catch hold at first. Might have had something to do with her youth. But soon, she gave him a son with shocking hair and piercing eyes that everyone all over town had come to see for themselves. Paul could detect the envy hidden in their voices even when he carried on about how Timothy hadn’t come into the world all shriveled up like most babes, no. He came into the world not unlike Christ, with ringed blessings above his head and the cornflower vision to see into the very souls of those who would ensure his passage was safe. He let out a deep and lasting cry, and Paul and Ruth laughed because all of those who came before him had only whimpered before they eventually, and too quickly, returned to the dust.
Downtown Vicksburg soon appeared before them. Women in petticoats and men in wide-brimmed hats hurried about, on horses and in wagons. Store owners stood out on the porches of their businesses—the tailor, the butcher, the apothecary, the haberdasher—saying so long to their customers as they prepared to close up shop.
Paul and James rode up to the saloon. It had a gentleman in front of it. Unlike the purveyors of clothes, meat, medicine, or hats, this man was greeting his clientele; he wouldn’t be saying so long until the morning sun peeked over the eastern trees. They dismounted, Paul and James, and fastened the reins of the horses to the hitching rail. They exchanged hellos with the greeter on their way in. When they entered, they moved through a number of people, nodding their respects. They sat down at a small table near the back. When the barmaid came to them, wearing a long black dress and white apron, James smiled and ordered a dark ale; Paul a whiskey. They were silent, taking in the energy of the place, until the waitress returned with their drinks, James’s in a mug, Paul’s in a shot glass.
“So you thinking of giving him what he ask for, that nigger?” James asked, taking a swig.
Paul sniffed the whiskey. Smooth and a hint too sweet. He placed the glass back down in front of him.
“The whole question, you know, is whether a nigger can minister,” Paul said.
“Or be ministered to,” James added.
“That’s not really a question,” Paul said, recognizing that James wasn’t the biblical devotee that he was. “Even the waters curve to the word of God.” Paul shook his head. “No. But can a nigger speak honor to that word, give it its just due via the auspices of his mind?”
“I say no.” James curled his hands into fists at either side of the mug.
Paul added, “I suppose the fundamental question is does a nigger have a soul?”
James grinned. “Men greater than us been debating that since the first settlers came to this hunk o’ land. Doubt we find the answer at this table or at the bottom of these here glasses.”
James held his glass up nearer to Paul and nodded. Paul picked up his own glass, and briefly the two of them clinked their glasses together—James with a “heh” and Paul trying to find the answer in the glass James said it wasn’t in.
On the ride back, James was singing some old ship song he said he learned on his voyage over. It was a briny tune that made Paul shake his head and consider how much James, himself, needed Jesus, never mind niggers. But it also made him chuckle, which made him think about how much he still needed Him, too.
“You never really talk much about your trip. Or England. Or my aunt and uncle, for that matter,” Paul quietly noted.
James inhaled. He blew the air out through his mouth. “There’s so little I remember about my mother and father. Those paintings of Aunt Elizabeth you have in the house help me a little, though,” James looked ahead of him, lulled by the rhythm of the horse beneath him. “And what’s to say about England or the ship? All I can recall is the filth.”
Paul looked at James a moment before nodding. “I reckon so,” he said. “I reckon so.”
They reached the gates of Elizabeth. They both, still on their horses, lifted their lamps up to each other in lieu of verbalizing their good nights. Then Paul went one way and James the other. Paul dismounted and tied up his horse in front of his home rather than lead it back to the barn and have Samuel or Isaiah tend to it. Tired and a little bit dizzy from the whiskey, Paul climbed the steps, walked into the house, then up the stairs, and into his bed. He longed for Ruth, but he didn’t have the strength to take off his boots, much less venture into her room, wake her by lamplight, and wonder, in the midst of it, if she were still young enough to give Timothy a sister. Not that Timothy didn’t already have sisters, but he meant one whom he and Ruth could claim; whose skin was not tainted, not even a little; who sprang out of love, not economy.