“And what you say?” Samuel shot back, looking her dead in the face, but with not a hint of animus.
“Well, y’all already know y’all got two different ideas of peace.”
“Don’t everybody?” Samuel asked, looking at Isaiah.
Isaiah continued rocking the baby.
“I reckon,” Essie said. “We can talk about that there over the pie. Ain’t that what Mag always say toubab like to do—talk over they meals instead of eat?”
The vibration came from shared laughter. Even the baby cooed and giggled, which was what silenced Essie suddenly, pulled her out of herself, and caused her to seek the pretend shelter of the fence once more.
“Pie,” Isaiah said aloud to himself as though thinking of how the word sounded. His rich voice brought Essie back with memory.
“What kind of pie you make?” Isaiah asked as he jiggled Solomon’s arms to make him smile.
“You know that bush over by the river, the one by the hump-log, about two skips behind, where Sarah caught that black snake and scared Puah halfway out her mind?”
“Yes! I need me some blackberries,” Isaiah said.
“That and some other red ones back there in them woods. Funny how they taste tart apart and sweet together.” Essie looked around. “You got something to cut it with?” she asked, and Samuel walked over to the barn wall to get one of the tools hanging on it.
“I know you better take it to the well and wash it first,” Isaiah said.
“I know it! What you think I am?” Samuel shot back, marching out of the barn with the heat of a lie burning over his head.
Essie and Isaiah both smiled, and then the smiles left their mouths as they both looked at the baby. The quiet lingered between them, interrupted occasionally by Solomon blowing through his lips. Isaiah bounced him on his leg.
Essie tilted her head and looked at Isaiah. How he had grown from the boy whose mouth wasn’t yet big enough to hold a bounty of rainbows. She was going to ask him if he still remembered the smell. In The Fucking Place, the mildew and moss had grown thick, such that it brought with it a smell that not even rolling around in the soil as pretense could cover up. To her, she wanted to say, it smelled like eyes watching. She knew that didn’t make any sense but thought that if anyone could understand, it would be Isaiah.
The smell, or the way the morning sun shot through the decaying planks of wood, lighting up dust and giving horseflies paths to freedom. The light that offered no comfort but only illuminated a damn shame and made the air too thick to breathe. The aggravation might have been tolerable, to some degree, if not for James standing right there between light and shadow with his britches open just enough to point his weapon at them. They pretended not to see.
She wanted to know: Did it all still clutter Isaiah’s days like it did hers, both the kindness and the humiliation, each liable to show up in full form at any time—whether plucking in that confounding cotton field or after having found the perfect log on which to sit in the clearing? Sometimes, it got mixed in with Amos’s morning messages; hovering right next to the Jesus talk was the image of James’s grin. Maggie said the way to get rid of anyone from the recesses of the mind was to never speak their name again, not even think it. Which is why James seemed to avoid Maggie wherever she showed up. But how not to think a name when the mind was already so hard to control?
Sleep was the best place to hide because dreamlessness at least provided shelter. Tucked away in the darkness, no one could see, and therefore everyone was safe. Isaiah should at least recognize that place in her because she recognized it in him. Wasn’t that made clear when they squatted together, aching and sweating, in those bushes next to rock and below tree?
Was the barn a better place? How better? And if it was, indeed, love that laid itself down over everything so that there could be beauty even in torment, where possibly could Isaiah have gotten the courage to do it and only it, knowing what Paul wished to use Isaiah’s body for? It was dangerous to embrace anything but the Lord like that. Everything else could only ever be fleeting. And who wants to lose a foot, or their soul, chasing behind the wagon dragging your love deeper into the wilderness?
In that place where they pretended, what had they found? That Fucking Place where they lay in the mustiness of other bodies, some who made it out and others who didn’t, who could be buried right there beneath them or, instead, who could be hovering just above them, watching, too, and also giggling at their charade, understanding in their haint-state what they couldn’t before: however we are is however we are.
The dancing shadows were a clue. Essie might have mentioned this to Isaiah before, but she had forgotten now that her heart was filled with the blood of Jesus, who had but intervened too late and had only half promised to do so should the menace arise again. Amos said don’t worry, he would be an example. Essie wondered why since she had already been made one.
And now here Essie was, in a dusty barn, sitting right in front of decency as it held on to its enemy. Bounced it in its lap and smiled as it cooed. So she was right: she and Isaiah were no longer friend-friends. Given enough time, betrayal—no matter how tiny—makes its way up the steps and sits on the throne as though it had always belonged there. Maybe it did and it was actually surprise that had no place.
Samuel returned from the well, wet and laughing.
“You fall in, fool?” Isaiah asked.
“Nah. James and them was at the well so I went to the river. Puah was down there. She splash me with her silly self.”
“Oh,” Isaiah said. He and Samuel exchanged glances.
“Well, here,” Samuel said, extending the hay knife. “Who gon’ cut it?”
“You got the knife,” Essie said.
The knife was damp and glistening. For a moment, it crossed her mind that the barn had all manner of sharp object. There were axes and pitchforks, but also the blunt edge of a hoe or shovel that, with great force behind it, could also be useful. She looked around the barn, ignoring Isaiah, Samuel, Solomon, the animals, the insects, the smell, but not the various-shaped objects that hung on the walls or leaned against them. Why hadn’t the men gathered these things, placed them in a pile at the center of a circle, where they could choose the tool to which they were most accustomed? But it had to be all of them. At once. Because bullets were quick and would take some down. The guns couldn’t take out every one of them, however, and in that was the chance.
It would never be everyone, though. Other than suffering, spite was the only other thing they all shared. She had heard the story once from Sister Sarah when Sarah was mumbling it and thought Essie wasn’t listening because Essie made it seem, for her own interests, like she wasn’t listening. All it took was one to run back to Massa and tell tales of the plot to leave. It wasn’t like any of them wanted to do any harm, though they would be well within their rights to do so if they did; sold-off loved ones alone made that righteous. They just wanted to be somewhere free and free of.