The Prophets(91)
He wanted to believe that the cold stare was a misinterpretation. But even as Paul had tried to be gentle and use his momentary scene as the drunkard as the excuse to do so, his eyes kept telling the truth. Hard they were. Tearing, but still a golden menace.
These were the eyes his mother was also warned never to look into, not even when she was down on the ground in some older Fucking Place that rested layers beneath the one he knew so well. He wasn’t sure if Paul looked at her or looked away, but he was positive that his mother looked away. He could feel it now. He searched deep in Paul’s eyes for her face and it wasn’t there, which meant he had only her body, but not ever her mind. Surely, afterward she may have lost that herself. It wasn’t her fault.
But why would Paul treat her special? Given his color, whiter than pure black would permit, he wondered if his grandmother or grandfather were also raped. More likely, his grandmother since if it was his grandfather, his mother would have been a free woman by law, thus making him a free man. Not that they honored law above skin. Their commandments—haphazard, arbitrary, and utterly provisional—shattered sense to pieces. Father could also be uncle. Adam thought his entire life a gamble. His freedom or captivity reliant upon something as fragile as which toubab parent was shameless.
It was no longer safe to remember his mother. Doing so might bring her back to the same place and in the same condition in which she left. He didn’t want to be cruel. But most of all, he thought that the woe she would bring with her, which could, he was sure, level the ground they stood upon, wouldn’t only be a danger to Paul. He was tempted, though, to take the risk even if it meant ruin. Just to see her and see if he could see his face in hers. The mouth, he already knew.
“All right now, Massa,” he said to a still-smiling Paul. “You want I should take you back to the Big House?”
The lantern went out and Paul buried his head in Adam’s chest, and before Adam could ask again, he heard the snoring. He lifted Paul and placed him into the coach, plopping him down with more force than he intended. He looked at him for a moment. This man, this one man wielded power by his say-so alone. Outnumbered, but by the sheer force of his will had bent not only the land but the countless people under his control. How could the many be terrified of the one? The niggers back at the clearing were right: the toubab god must be the right one.
Adam shut the coach door and climbed back up to his seat. He pulled on the reins and the horses turned the coach slowly back in the direction of Empty.
If some posse had met them on their way, Paul was too deep in slumber to be of any assistance. They could snatch Adam right from under Paul’s nose and sell him down the river to some salty-minded fools who would find his skin curious and his lips even more so. Ones like him went for a bit more on the block because they were thought to be more capable of intelligence, therefore less frustrating to instruct. But they had to be watched closely to ensure they didn’t blend. Nothing a hot-iron brand on the chest couldn’t solve.
Adam hoped that the thick of the woods on either side of them and the kindness of sleeping blooms would be the fence between him and thieves. The alternative was just as dangerous. He might have to kill a toubab, which was another way of saying he would have to die by suicide. There were never any real choices for chained people in this world, but for the strong . . .
It won’t that people loved the strong. No. The strong were only to be feared, placated, lied to in the hopes of acquiring favor, a comfort, even if for a moment. It was that they despised the weak. They despised weakness because there was none of the pomp and fervor erected to disguise its essential nature like there was with the strong. In the frail mercy that is weakness, deception’s weight cannot be borne. Everything collapses, leaving only the debris, the casualties, and a fine layer of dust coating the air. This becomes trapped in the lungs and chokes all who inhale, and all must rightfully inhale; nature commands it. That is to say that weakness is but a stark reflection of the faces most wish to hide. The sad face, the mourning face, the weeping face that has stared into the abyss and discovered that there is nothing staring back. Empty. There was only us: Empty’s children, every single one a cannibal. Weakness revealing how miserable it be that there ain’t no such a thing as grace.
Adam stopped the horses. The night was thick, the air was heavy, and everything was still. Crickets chirped, the wheels on the wagon creaked, and Paul’s roar remained, but otherwise, there was silence. No footfalls. No bushes rustling more than they should. No human-shaped shadows casting human-shaped darkness onto that of nature’s, which was already dark enough. There was no need to rush and Adam enjoyed the free air, the scent of pine, and a sky full of stars, looking to the left and to the right as he pleased because he imagined Paul was sleeping. He heard insects whizzing past, some knocked up against his face harmlessly. Tiny as it was, this was peace.
He jerked the reins and the horses moved again. They rode slowly. Adam’s leg shook softly to the beat of his own making. The horses’ hooves clicked. The leaves of trees rustled in the small but welcome breeze that the night was sometimes courteous enough to give after the day had been as tightfisted as it wanted to be. Adam allowed himself to slouch. He felt it then: how burdensome it was to remain straight-backed. It held the spine in a vise grip; perhaps he was more sensitive to it because the spine was part of the natural border that held one side of him from greeting the other civilly.
As they turned the bend up toward the edges of Empty, he couldn’t see a single shack in the distance; the people were asleep. But there was a small glowing coming from somewhere. Dead tired, surely, from the fields and anxious for Sunday to be here already so that they could rest on their pallets until just before noon and wander lazily to the clearing to praise something in the sky that refused to see anything beneath it. In the distance, the shacks were erased and neither the moon nor the starlight could make it right.