“You ever wonder . . . where your mam?” Isaiah heard it say.
He then realized it was his own voice, but he didn’t remember speaking. It was as though another voice, one that sounded like his, had escaped his throat. His, but not his. How? Isaiah paused. Then he moved over, closer to Samuel. He felt his way around Samuel’s body and settled his hand on Samuel’s belly.
“I ain’t mean . . . what I mean is, I ain’t say . . .”
“You spit then try to grab it after it leave your mouth?” asked Samuel.
Isaiah was confused. “I ain’t wanna say that. It came up by itself.”
“Yeah,” Samuel said, groaning.
“I . . . You never hear a voice and think it’s not yours but it is? Or it kinda is? You ever see your life outside you? I don’t know. I can’t explain,” said Isaiah.
He thought that maybe this was the witlessness that he saw take hold of a person, because the plantation could do that—make the mind retreat so that it could protect the body from what it was forced to do, yet leave the mouth babbling. To calm himself, he rubbed Samuel’s stomach. The motion lulled the both of them. Isaiah had started to blink slower and slower. He was almost asleep when his mouth woke him up.
“Maybe a piece of you, somewhere inside, maybe your blood, maybe your guts, holds to her face?” Isaiah said, surprised at his words, rushing forth as though they had been dammed up. “Maybe when you look in the river, her face is what you see?”
There was silence and then Samuel inhaled suddenly and quickly.
“Maybe. No way to ever know,” Samuel finally replied.
“Maybe a way to feel, though,” Isaiah blurted.
“Huh?”
“I said maybe a way . . .”
“No. Not you. Never mind,” Samuel said. “Let’s go to the river.”
Isaiah intended to stand, but his body preferred lying there with Samuel’s.
“I know my mam and my pappy, but all I remember is their crying faces. Someone take me from them and they stand there watching me as the whole sky open up on them. I reach my hand out, but they only get farther and farther away until all I hear is screams and then nothing. My hand still reaching out and grabbing nothing.”
Both of them stunned by this, Isaiah by the recollection and Samuel by hearing it, but neither of them moved. They were quiet for a moment. Then Samuel turned to Isaiah.
“You knew your pappy?”
“A man carried me here,” Isaiah said, as he heard his history being recounted by his voice. “Not my pappy, but somebody who said he knew my name. Never told me, though.”
Just then, Isaiah saw his own hand reaching out in the darkness of the barn, small, frantic, just like that day. He thought that perhaps he was reaching not just for his mam and pappy, but also for all those faded peoples who stood behind them, whose names, too, were lost forever, and whose blood nourished the ground and haunted it. Whose screams sound like whispers now—whispers that will be the last noise the universe will ever make. Samuel grabbed Isaiah’s hand and put it back on his belly.
“Something here,” Samuel said.
“What?”
“Nah.”
Isaiah started to rub Samuel again, which encouraged his voice.
“The last thing they said to me was ‘Coyote.’ I ain’t figure that one out yet.”
“Maybe ‘beware’?” Samuel said.
“Why you say that?”
Samuel opened his mouth, but Isaiah didn’t see. He stopped rubbing on Samuel and instead laid his head on Samuel’s chest.
“I ain’t wanna say these things,” Isaiah said, his voice now a croak. His cheeks were wet as he nestled his head deeper into Samuel.
Samuel shook his head. “Yeah.”
He looked around, held Isaiah tighter, then closed his eyes.
The river could wait.
Deuteronomy
Samuel was second to wake, his face orange from the glow of a sun slow to rise. The rooster was making its noise, but Samuel had heard it often enough that it faded into the background as though it were silence. Isaiah was up already. Samuel had told Isaiah earlier in the morning to let himself lie, let himself rest, remember the moments. It would be considered theft here, he knew, but to him, it was impossible to steal what was already yours—or should have been.
He lay there, as tranquil as the morning that had dyed his body with the coming light, adamant on not budging until he absolutely had to. He didn’t see Isaiah, but he could hear him just outside the opened barn doors, heading toward the henhouse. Samuel sat up. He looked around the barn, observed the scattered hay from the night before, noticed how the dark hid those things and the day left behind trails that weren’t exactly clear. One wouldn’t necessarily assume that the cause of the mess came from pleasure. More likely, they would think it the result of carelessness, and therefore worthy of punishment. He exhaled and stood up. He walked over to the barn wall where the tools hung in rows. He went to the nearest corner and retrieved the broom. Reluctantly, he swept the evidence of their bliss back into a neat pile, nearer to where their misery was already neatly stacked. All of it to be sustenance for beasts anyway.
Isaiah came back into the barn holding two pails.
“Morning,” he said with a smile.
Samuel looked at him with a half grin but didn’t return the greeting. “You up too early.”
“One of us gotta be.”
Samuel shook his head and Isaiah smiled at that too. Isaiah put down his pails, walked over, and touched Samuel’s arm. He slid his hand down until their hands were joined. Isaiah squeezed, and eventually Samuel squeezed back. Isaiah watched as Samuel’s untrusting eyes fully embraced him. He saw himself there, in the gaze of the deepest shade of brown he had seen outside of dreams, warm and enjoyed. He opened his own eyes a bit more, inviting Samuel in so that he could know that warmth was waiting for him, too.
Samuel let go. “Well, since we up, we might as well . . .” He gestured at the plantation broadly. Isaiah took Samuel’s hand again and kissed it.
“Not in the light,” Samuel said with a frown.
Isaiah shook his head. “There’s no bottom below bottom.”
Samuel sighed, handed Isaiah the broom, and walked outside into the morning onto which a humid sky was descending.
“Don’t feel like doing this.”
“What?” Isaiah asked, following behind him.
“This.” Samuel pointed outward at everything around them.