The Prophets(92)

Adam reached the gate. Before he jumped down from the coach to open it, he sniffed the air. Beyond the blooms, the weeds, and the animals, there was something in it that he couldn’t exactly catch or name, but even the nameless took up room. He slid out of his seat and pulled open the gate. A part of it dragged against the ground, deepening, just a little, the curved route that had already been etched beneath it.

He went over to the coach, then opened the door to find Paul still snoring—laid back, drooling, and looking helpless. Adam leaned in close. Faintly, he could see the pulse throbbing in Paul’s neck. Gently, Paul’s chest heaved and caved to a rhythm that wasn’t altogether predictable. It was off, and Adam’s furrowed brow might have read as concern if his eyes weren’t looking askance. It would be so easy, he said to himself. He got closer to Paul’s face, noticing for the first time the creases that his hat normally hid. Worry wore the face like that sometimes, right across the forehead, for everyone to see, three of them, to tell the story. A warning.

Adam reached his hand out to touch them and, maybe more. Just as he did, Paul’s eyes opened. Paul lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes.

“What are you doing?” he said as he lifted himself to an upright position.

“Trying to wake you, Massa. We home.”

The both of them were motionless, Adam looking downward, Paul looking at Adam. They remained that way for a moment, allowing the silence to fill in the gaps, words sitting just on the inside of their mouths, pressing against the softer side of their lips, both on the verge of something sharp cutting the interior before striking the target. What it would be like to call him “Pa,” Adam thought. Then he reasoned that it wouldn’t be worth the risk to find out.

“Well. Go on then. Take me back to the house,” Paul said, though Adam sensed he wanted to say something else.

He left the coach and grabbed the horses by their reins and pulled. They followed him through the gate and up to the front of the Big House, where they stopped. Adam helped Paul out of the coach. Paul stumbled a bit, like a man who had not used his legs for a while and could no longer feel them. But he quickly found his footing. He looked upward and his expression changed from one of indifference to one of angst. From somewhere, he had regained himself, and the Paul of Vicksburg disappeared to be replaced by the Paul of Empty.

He didn’t need Adam, so Adam didn’t follow. The price of carrying out a favor that wasn’t asked for was costly. Sticking to the routine was the safest option. So Adam pulled the horses over toward the barn. He stopped at the fence and opened it before taking the horses, still attached to the coach, through.

He moved around to the space between the horses and the coach and undid the connection. He then unbuckled and unfastened all of the leather straps holding the horses in place, whether ones that limited their motion or ones that blocked their sight lines. But he left the reins because that was how he would bring them back to Isaiah and Samuel, who would remove them after they were placed back in their pens. Then, if they weren’t too tired, they would offer Adam some sweet water and maybe chat a bit before he walked back to his shack, alone, quiet, square, empty.

Usually, Isaiah and Samuel were up. But if they weren’t, he wouldn’t wake them. It was Sunday now and all niggers had was Sunday. He would unrein the horses and lead them into the pens himself.

He heard movement. They were up. Good. He wondered if they would mind him telling them about Paul using the word “us” even if it was during a drunken stupor. And would they also understand if he told them about the line? Surely they would if no one else did. Didn’t they, both of them, also have a line shooting down their middle?

Closer and closer to the barn and the noise coming from inside was getting louder than the sounds any two people could possibly make.





Samuel

I cradled you because you was the only one who knew I won’t no block of wood.

They stood quietly in the dark, perfectly still. They raised their voices no higher than the night sounds around them. Paul had come to them—and made a damn fool of himself, too. But his visit was a clear signal that it was time. Timothy, too, was waiting, would likely walk right into the barn now if Samuel didn’t go to him, endure a travesty, and then be rushed out so Timothy’s secret could be better kept than theirs.

There would be no argument. There would be no pleading. Just do it. Now. Then run. Just like Maggie said.

They stared at each other, but neither of them moved.

“But if you go . . .” Isaiah pleaded.

“I know.” Samuel sighed.

“They sure to be after us if you . . .”

“They sure to be after us either way.”

Earlier, between slopping the pigs and feeding the chickens, they had drawn it in the dirt: the bank, the river, the trees. Beyond that, they didn’t know. They studied it carefully before Samuel wiped it away with a bare foot. Between the patrols (be sure to wait for the beat; even toubab have a particular rhythm) free the animals, head for the river. Food would be a problem. There was nothing to protect it from the water. So they would have to forage once they got over, where they would remain in the wilderness until passage north—past the grinding teeth of Tennessee, through the gripping claws of Kentucky, to the uncertain arms of Illinois—into free land was possible. The Choctaw had been known to give shelter despite the rumors Paul and the others had spread about cannibalism and the peculiar sweetness of black flesh, projecting their sins onto strangers.