The Prophets(99)

Then Elewa moved closer, through the crowd, and Kosii saw that it wasn’t Elewa risen after all. It was a boy. He was pale but not hard, looked younger than Kosii even, perhaps had just reached puberty himself, walking in footsteps twice as large as his own feet. Admirable. Dirty, but it was clear that he was a boy denied the playfulness that all boys enjoyed, to give chase and smile mischievous but harmless things into existence. To pick fruit from trees and stain their hands with the juices. Stick a toe in a river and get pushed in by a friend, but only outside of the presence of the hippos that ruled the water. Watching peacocks bow and preen and walk in circles to impress their betrothed. Someone had denied this boy all of that, had interrupted his flow, dammed it, and replaced it with thorn and dry weed. And it was apparent in the moisture of his eyes, which he wiped away before it had the chance to be a sign of life.

Kosii held on to the boy’s budding sympathy with both hands, marveled at its shape, rubbed its smooth edges, and let its sweetness dance on his tongue. It was alive, curled into its own warmth and only unfurled slowly like a fist opening unto peace. This was kind, but too late. Kosii had already spotted the pulse of life throbbing in the boy’s neck and this, too, had its calling. Loud and rambunctious, wide open and seductive. It asked for him and he obliged.

He shot up and roped his chains around the skinless boy’s neck, then snatched his wrists apart. The boy kicked and struggled and thrashed. Kosii didn’t let go. The others began to charge him, but Kosii had already managed to pull himself back, up against the half wall of the deck. He took a deep breath and shouted.

“This triumph is for Elewa in the name of King Akusa!”

Then he fell backward, over the wall of the ship, the boy in his grasp. With them, the two other people chained to Kosii crashed down into the waves, shocked then comforted by the cold embrace of the water, soothed by the sea-foam and then absorbed.

Kosii wouldn’t swim. He held on to the skinless boy until his body was still then he let out his own breath and together they began to sink.

Such a shame, but he had to do it. Had to. Pressed into this corner, there was no way he was going to die alone. It had already been determined: they shall die together. For this was glory.

Elewa.

As they descended, Kosii prayed for forgiveness from the woman and the man who were chained to him. He didn’t ask them if they had wanted to drown but took it upon himself to drag them into the deep. Way down, lower now than the bottom of the beast they had dropped from. Maybe that was the sin his father left out of the story, the part about how, in order to survive the mountain people, they had come down from a mountain of their own, had to wear the remains of some other people’s children around their own necks. Victors gave themselves the right to rename murder “triumph” and adorn themselves with jewelry made from the bones of the vanquished.

So this is what it looks like, Kosii said to himself as the shifty, watery light began to fade. The view from the mountaintop; it hurts.

Then, as the blackness took everything:

Good.





James

James wandered the perimeter, kept himself at the edges, surveyed the middle spaces by walking around the entire border of the land, first alone, then with a few of his hands, like Zeke, Malachi, and Jonathan. There was no way to fortify what was already keeping the niggers at bay: the fence, the river, the woods rigged with traps and assassins, fear. Well, the last was the one exception. He could always employ indulgences that allowed them to ratchet the last up high.

“When is Paul due back?” Malachi asked.

“Not sure,” James answered. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and made more determined steps. He couldn’t locate the moon. Perhaps it was behind the trees preparing for its descent, leaving the inkiness of the sky for the sun to obliterate. He yawned and held his lantern out in front of him. Its corona wasn’t bright enough to do anything except show him how impenetrable the night could be. He kept it moving.

His clothes were a bit more raggedy than he would have liked, but he had no means, not enough means to dress better. Like Paul, for example. He had no wife to stitch something together for him, no children to wash and fold his belongings as a part of their daily chores. No children that he would claim anyway, which was probably for the best since he had nothing to give them except hard hands and aching feet, which were useless. He didn’t even have his cabin to turn over to them; that belonged to Paul. He couldn’t even afford slaves.

If James hadn’t looked so much like his mother and, therefore, like Paul’s mother, he was certain that Paul would have turned him away, accused him of fraud, and maybe called for the sheriff to lock him up for trespassing or vagrancy. But his face saved him.

“You walk that-a-way,” he said to Zeke, pointing over toward a row of slave cabins, which sat ramshackle and simple, just beyond the weeds. “Holler if you see anything out of order.”

He realized as soon as he said it the futility of the command. To be a nigger was to exist in a constant state of disorder, a darkness that could only be righted by light, a jungle that could only be untangled by machete, a chaos that could only be overruled by a slow hand and swift authority. Blood, James thought. Sometimes, he hungered for blood.

And blood was plentiful among the slaves, flowed through them like passion—singing and dancing, beating in their tongues, pulsing through their lips, stretched into wide smiles. He could smell it. They had changed very little from the ships and he had to admit to himself how much that surprised him. He had expected that they would pull themselves up like he did, find possibility in the flourishing impossible, break chains like he broke out of the orphanage. But no. They had merely brought the belly of the vessel with them everywhere they went. It assailed the senses. Then again, who were they lucky enough to be kin to?