The Prophets(80)
He closed his eyes because that was the sweetest thought he could find slumber to. He smiled before the drool gathered at a corner of his mouth, the air lumbered through his nostrils, and the darkness, that he didn’t know was living, entered his room and consumed everything, even the lamplight itself.
When he coughed himself awake, golden arrows were piercing his windows because he hadn’t drawn the curtains upon stumbling in. He had one thought, above all others, on his mind: Give God His glory. Yes, then. He would share His teachings with Amos. Paul wiped his face with the back of his hand. He sat up and swung his legs around to the edge of the bed and faced the window. The brightness caused him to squint and his head pounded just a little. Despite the sting and the thumping, he smiled. James wasn’t completely right, he thought. Maybe the answer wasn’t at the bottom of one glass, or two, or three. But it could be shook loose from the mind when the ambrosia was sweet enough, by which he meant kind enough.
A few months into their study, Paul believed that it was right to provide Amos this opportunity to demonstrate, on behalf of his lot, that niggers could be more than animals. Amos’s sermons out in the tree circle had the necessary tone and tenor, and Paul had to admit that there was music in the way Amos repeated the words Paul taught him that wasn’t present even in Paul’s own pastor. But was there a hint of original thought anywhere to be found?
When Amos came to Paul crying one afternoon, right after Essie had finally given birth to the child, proving Paul right, Amos told him of white-hot dreams and spiraling. Paul immediately recognized this as communion with the Holy Spirit. He didn’t understand how, after just those months and months, God decided to press his lithe and probing hand against the forehead of a nigger—and yet, even in the ecstasy of his own midnight prayers, down, down on the abiding floor, and reciting the proverbs and the psalms and the Ecclesiastes, he felt not even the slightest touch: not on the spot on the shoulder that forever gleamed with his father’s prints, and not at the center of his head. He had no choice but to nod his understanding. He wouldn’t question God’s will, for it was almighty; anyone who knew Him knew that. And there was a crown for anyone who let that knowledge be his portion.
Yes, then, he conceded. Niggers had souls. Which, in itself, introduced new troubles. If slaves had souls, if they were more than beasts over which he and every other man had godly claim, then what did it mean to punish them, and often so severely? Was their toil in the cotton fields on Paul’s behalf also the wages of his visited sin? He returned to the Word and was comforted. For God had said, plain and clear, render unto Caesar, first, and, also, slaves shall be obedient in order to one day find reparation in that exquisite cotton plantation in the sky. The clouds were evidence.
To bring things forth from the abyss was no easy task. The land had its own mind. So did niggers. Only by wresting the control either believed they had from their hands with yours—and more than hands, will—could you claim ownership over things that imagined themselves free.
From the indistinguishable masses of black-black niggerdom, Isaiah and Samuel had grown to the peak state of brawn, which is what Paul had intended, from the start, by placing them both in the toil of the barn. It wasn’t too much to impose upon them the weight of a bale of hay, which, just like cotton picking, required the back to be strong. Besides, darkie children weren’t actually children at all; niggers-in-waiting, maybe, but not children.
The plan was to multiply them through the strategic use of their seed. Matched with the right wench, every single one of the offspring would be perfectly suited for field or farm, fucking or fuel. Niggers with purpose.
Paul watched this plan crumble one morning—just to the right of him, in the lazy corner of his library where the sun refused to shine, so the best books could be placed there without worry of them being bleached by yellow rays. Right there, a pile of ash as Amos quoted chapter and verse of the destruction of Sodom and claimed that the barn had become exactly that.
“Their blood upon them. Their blood upon them,” Amos said barely above a whisper as he quivered, head bowed, hands clasped in prayer formation.
Niggers never had any loyalty to one another. That was what saved them from threat. No way would it have been possible to yoke them and drag them across widest oceans, then stretch after stretch of green meadow and forest, hill behind hill, to sugarcane, to indigo, to tobacco, to cotton and more, without the kin-treachery of which only they seemed capable.
A moment, please: Untrue.
The European, too, had a penchant for drawing the sword for the sole purpose of raising it to their sibling’s neck. But they had long since determined that sometimes, such causes for grievance could be set aside, at least temporarily: a ceasefire for the greater good. Niggers hadn’t yet learned that. Everywhere, everywhere, white folk let out a sigh of relief.
“I taught you the Word, for you to bring it to me like this?”
Paul was seated behind his desk, Amos on his knees before it.
“All this time,” Paul continued. “And you forgot your purpose was to bring the Good News?
Amos was silent but had a feverish look upon him. Like one who had seen things and called to be heeded, though fools laughed even unto the warning. Still, Paul couldn’t see defeat where it was and insisted upon victory.
“This is a trick. You have failed at what you were to deliver. Shall I take you back to the day you interrupted my cousin and me?” Paul asked as he stood up and pointed out the window, in the direction of the cotton field. “You seek to blame God for what lies at your feet.”