Samuel cut three pieces. He handed the first piece to Essie, who took it into her palms. He handed another to Isaiah before he sat down holding the last piece.
“The baby can eat this?” Isaiah asked Essie, who shrugged her shoulders, then nodded.
Isaiah broke off a small piece, mashed it between two of his fingers, and then held those fingers near Solomon’s mouth. Solomon sucked the bits from Isaiah’s fingers. The baby scrunched his face and chewed. Some of it spilled out of his mouth and Isaiah pushed it back in. When he was done chewing, Solomon opened his mouth again. Samuel and Isaiah laughed.
“You ever imagine that? Two mens raising they own baby?” Essie, leaning forward, whispered.
Isaiah laughed nervously. “I seen two or more womens do it plenty. Only thing stopping mens is mens.”
“That the only thing stopping them?” Samuel asked Isaiah.
Isaiah didn’t respond. The baby tugged at him and he broke off another small piece of pie and fed it to him. Then he took a small bite of the pie himself. Isaiah smiled at Essie and nodded his head.
Samuel looked at Isaiah but was talking to Essie. “So peace. You say Amos want peace? From what?”
Essie sighed, rubbed her face, and tucked a stray braid behind her ear. “He say the punishments been getting worser. He think it have something to do with y’all not doing what you should be.”
But what should they be doing? Essie thought. The shape of them was already illuminated and cast in the sky, one a water carrier, the other the water. And why should that ever be a source of pain? Scarce though it was, she was here out of duty, out of loyalty to a man who bargained for her but overestimated the integrity of the dealmaker.
“But he say he keep away from me?” Essie asked Amos then.
“It don’t work like that, honey child,” Amos said softly. “Toubab never so plain. Is ritual that protect you whether his mouth say it or not. They rituals is what they respect. We gon’ do it their way. We jump. We take care of his seed. We preach his gospel. And you be safe. I swear it.”
This is what Essie’s silence said, but Amos failed to hear: Oh! But didn’t he break his ritual to Missy Ruth to do what he did to me? Which gospel say, “Do the most terrible thing?” And here, this Solomon, is the evidence! You a fool, Amos. But, mercy, a fool with his heart intact.
Essie refocused her eyes on Isaiah and Samuel. Samuel looked at Isaiah.
“I told you,” said Samuel.
Isaiah didn’t respond. He looked down at Solomon sitting in his lap. “Not doing what you should be,” he whispered. He smiled at Solomon, raised him in the air, which made the baby kick and giggle and chew on his own hand. Then he brought him back down and looked over at Samuel.
“Sorry,” Isaiah said, still whispering.
Samuel shook his head and moved deeper into the barn. In front of the horse pens, he lifted himself up on his toes, calves taut, ass high, and arms outstretched like he was reaching for something that he knew he couldn’t reach.
Essie looked at Isaiah. “What he doing?” she asked quietly.
“This place too small,” Isaiah said, his eyes trained on Samuel’s back.
“Oh,” she said, interpreting “this place” as “this life.”
Essie smiled anxiously. She looked at Samuel’s back. She had been sent to make an opening but had only succeeded in making the pursued retreat even farther in. She got up from the stool and stuck out her arms to take Solomon back from Isaiah.
“I hold him,” Isaiah said as he stood with the baby. “I walk y’all to the door.”
They moved slowly. “I almost don’t wanna put him down,” Isaiah said.
“I don’t know that feeling,” Essie replied before stretching out her arms for the baby just as they reached the frame of the door.
“Listen. Isaiah. Come on by. Make your case. He ain’t finna listen. But . . .”
She looked at them, Samuel’s back and Isaiah’s face, tilted back as though signaling his openness to receive glory. Her lips parted, but the words remained on her tongue.
I ain’t never gon’ say this out loud ever, but I name him Solomon because he half mine and half ain’t. Ain’t that terrible?
She focused on Isaiah’s mouth before looking at the baby in her arms. He put inside me whether I want him there or not. He come out of me raising hell behind him. And I gotta be the one to nurse him. I gotta be the one to bounce him on my knee when he cries too long. While Amos just sit across from me watching that I don’t do nothing of what he call “silly.” But what silly about me having say over what I am?
Essie stepped outside. She saw the pigs in their pen and it was the first time that she ever noticed that they were the same kind of pale as Solomon. She heard Amos’s voice: “But the fence, Essie. Remember the fence!”
What for? she thought. ’Cause it lets the things through anyway. ’Cause wood rots. And fences come down. All you need is a bad storm. And ain’t that where they come from to begin with? Ain’t the truth right there in the way they spin and destroy everything that get any kind of close to them? Ain’t they just creek waters God willing to rise?
Essie turned away from the pens and began walking slowly toward the gate. I came here with a pie I didn’t wanna make because Amos is the best I can do. He see me. Don’t you understand?
She turned back to look at Isaiah and Samuel, who hadn’t yet moved from their spots. Amos make a bargain, even if in his own head, that so far hold up and I won’t let that just fall apart and become broodmare again. Where were y’all when I needed some good, huh? In here carrying on, I reckon. Now here I am, carrying my burden in the flesh and Amos tell me I supposed to love it because that what the blood of Jesus demands. Small price to pay, he say. But who paying? He don’t bring that up because he already know the answer.
Solomon looked up at Essie as the tears began to form in her eyes. She wiped them away quickly. She blinked and came back to herself.
“Y’all be good now,” she yelled out as she began to step backward.
Isaiah waved. Samuel stood motionless, transfixed, a humming in the air that seemed to come from both him and not him, which frightened her. She turned and walked toward the gate and stood briefly at its opening. It framed her like a picture and continued to do so until she walked beyond it and headed due north.
Amos
Amos had seen strange things before: living babies retrieved from the taut-faced corpses of their mothers; beat-down men talking out loud to shadows; bodies swinging high from trees. One body in particular was that of a man named Gabriel, a friend of Amos’s father. There wasn’t much he remembered about Gabriel; it was, after all, so long ago. There wasn’t much more Amos remembered about his father, either—except his name, Boy, and his ever-stooping silhouette in the field, sometimes against a red horizon.