The Prophets(81)

“Massa, no such a thing. I only speak truth to you. Only.”

Paul leaned over his desk, his hands firmly planted on top of it.

“Then I ask: What proof have you?”

Amos wiped his brow. “Massa, suh, I say that I humbly submit to your gracious hand. My first testimony is that neither boy has given themselves completely to woman. Both can’t be barren. That seem too outside the nature the God you, in your mercy, show me. That the first thing revealed to me.”

Paul tilted his head. “And what was the second?”

Amos cleared his throat and swallowed. “The second: I seen they shadows touch in the nighttime.”

Paul sighed and then shook his head. What did it mean for shadows to touch, and what did it matter if it was daytime or night? The shadows of pails touched. The shadows of trees touched. Hell, Paul’s shadow touched James’s when they were standing together and the sun was good. Of course their shadows touched! They were cooped up in that barn and were each other’s company. It was the same kind of closeness that Paul had heard about in war, where soldiers became something like brothers, but more. There wasn’t any reason to bring Sodom or Gomorrah into any of this, least of all on the very land covered by the will of his father and his mother’s very name.

Paul sat down. He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands before his lips. He couldn’t decide which would be the greater sin: if Amos spoke true or if Amos spoke false. This matter could only be settled through prayer, deep and heavy prayer that would end with foreheads weary and clothing stained by sweat. This was what they thrashed for, the witnesses who had made the longest journey through the desert and didn’t dry up from thirst. Instead, they fell to their knees before, during, and after, and cast up gratitude to He who’d been their stone, their bread, and their water. Oh, yes, praise should come before anguish, for this is what God had said: Put no other before Me and ye shall have the abundance of Heaven.

Paul got up and moved around his desk and stood over Amos. Paul raised his hand and brought it down thunderous against Amos’s face. Amos cowered and pleaded.

“The blood of Jesus, Massa! The blood of Jesus!”

Indeed, Paul thought, Jesus’s blood was precisely what this occasion called for.

At the saloon, James had laughed.

“I’m stunned that you’re stunned, Cousin,” James said between gulps. “You expected niggers to behave in a way that makes sense?” James laughed. “That’s why they’re niggers, for Christ’s sake!”

“No need to take the Name in vain,” Paul said, nursing his whiskey. “I’m not certain Amos even understands what he saw. The Word overwhelms him. It’s a lot for a nigger’s mind to handle.”

“I don’t never put nothing past no nigger,” James said. “Whether that be to lie or to lay.”

“Still, there is a natural order,” Paul replied.

“And when did you not know a nigger to act outside of it? I had to punish them not too long ago for looking at Ruth wrong. They’re low things; you said so yourself. But you think they capable of higher things just because you command them to be so?”

“They looked at Ruth wrong?”

“That’s what she said.”

Paul touched his bottom lip. “Why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t you?”

“You pay me to do a job, not to worry you with it. I imagine Ruth knows that, too.”

That answer delighted Paul unexpectedly. But when that faded, he returned to Isaiah and Samuel. “I don’t tolerate paganism.”

“I don’t understand the hand-wringing then. Get rid of them and get your money for it.”

“I don’t like to waste the things I cultivated. You already know this.”

“Your pride will be your end, Cousin.”



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NEITHER OF THESE BARN STUDS were of Paul’s line. Perhaps that was where the error lay. He rid them of their previous names and renamed them with the calls of righteous men, but it seemed that did nothing to surrender them unto decent passions. Somehow, through some unseen wickedness, Samuel and Isaiah, two witless niggers, couldn’t discern the difference between entries. The two bucks had natures that caused them to resist.

Paul had heard of such unnatural goings-on in antiquity: the Greeks and the Romans, for example, who were great men otherwise, had given themselves over to obscene intimacies. This, which was nothing more than the very workings of paganism itself, was what, to his mind, led to their destruction. It was inevitable that Zeus and the like would crumble before Jehovah because chaos must always give way to order.

The very thought of two men giving in to each other in this way sent a shiver down Paul’s spine and made him queasy. He couldn’t much longer allow them to risk incurring the divine wrath that would certainly be aimed squarely at them, but might also destroy innocent bystanders. Like all old men, God could sometimes be puzzlingly haphazard; His aim not always true. So many dead Halifax babies had been denied the ability to testify, but fortunately dipped in the baptismal waters, they held on to the right to do so.

Isaiah and Samuel were fine specimens that responded better to instruction than punishment. He put them to work in the barn just before either of them had reached puberty. They were stunning in their leanness and musculature. He thought that giving them this specific kind of farm labor wouldn’t only build their bodies, but would also build their character. Caring for living things could do that. With this act, and their transformation and readiness, he would then breed them, hoping to create from their stock gentle but strong niggers who would take production on the plantation to an all-new high. Wouldn’t his mother and father be so pleased?