“You think they found somebody?” Samuel said, oddly relieved that it was James and not the shadow.
“They say you can tell by they ears,” Isaiah replied, looking at James and his men. “By how the bottom part hang. But I can’t see from here.”
“Maybe they just patrolling. Ain’t it time for the call to the field?”
“Uh huh.”
Neither of them moved as they watched the men work their way across bush and weed, still walking along the perimeter toward the cotton field, which stretched to the horizon and sometimes looked as though its clouds touched the ones in the sky.
Empty began to show signs of life as other people emerged from their shacks to look the light in the face. Samuel and Isaiah waited to see who, if anyone, would acknowledge them. These days, only Maggie and a few others had kept them in their graces, for some reason.
The sound of the horn startled Isaiah. “I ain’t never gon’ get used to that,” he said.
Samuel turned to him. “If you right-minded, you don’t have to.”
Isaiah sucked his teeth.
“Oh, you happy here, ’Zay?”
“Sometimes,” Isaiah said, looking into Samuel’s eyes. “Remember the water?”
Samuel found himself smiling even though he didn’t want to.
“And one gotta think and not just do to be happy,” Isaiah said, returning to the question Samuel asked.
“I reckon we should get to thinking, then.”
The horn sounded again. Samuel looked toward the sound, over by the field. His eyes narrowed. Then he felt Isaiah’s hand on his back. Isaiah held it there, calm and steady, the heat from it not making things worse. A moment, which would pass too quickly and yet couldn’t pass quickly enough. It was almost as if Isaiah were holding him up, pushing him forward, giving him something to lean on when the legs got a little weary.
Still, Samuel said, “Not in the light.”
Still, Isaiah kept his hand there for a moment more. He then started to hum. He would do that sometimes while stroking Samuel’s hair as they lay together in the dead of night and that would make Samuel’s sleep a bit easier.
Samuel wore an expression that said, Enough now! But in his head, etched across his mind, in bright shining voice, was:
Isaiah soothing. He always a soothing thing.
Maggie
She woke.
She yawned.
A burial place. This be a fucking burial place, Maggie whispered, before it was time to go to the other room, the kitchen that she was chained to even though not a single link could be seen. But yes, there it was, snapped around her ankle, clinking nevertheless.
She mumbled the curse to herself, but it was meant for other people. She learned to do that, whisper low enough in her throat that an insult could be thrown and the target would be none the wiser. It became her secret language, living just below the audible one, deeper behind her tongue.
The sky was still dark, but she lay in her hay pallet an extra moment, knowing it could cost her. The Halifaxes each had their own way of communicating their displeasure, some less cruel than others. She could tell you stories.
She climbed out off of the pallet and rolled her eyes at the hounds that lay on the floor by her feet. Oh, she slept on the back porch with the animals. Not her choice. Though it was enclosed and provided views out onto Ruth Halifax’s garden. Beyond it, a field of wildflowers bursting with every color, but the blues were the ones that were perfect enough to hurt feelings. Several rows of trees marked the end of the field and gave way to sandy ground that opened onto the bank of the Yazoo River. There, the people, when permitted, would scrub themselves down in the sometimes muddy water under the watchful gaze of the man whose name Maggie stopped saying for a reason. On the other side of the river, which seemed farther away than it was, a mess of trees stood so close together that no matter how hard she squinted, she couldn’t see past the first row.
She wanted to hate the fact that she was made to sleep there on the porch, low to the ground on some makeshift bed she piled together herself from the hay she got from Samuel and Isaiah, whom she referred to as The Two of Them. But so often the smell of the field calmed her and if she had to be in the damn Big House with Paul and his family, then it was best she was in the space farthest from them.
The hounds were Paul’s choice. Six of them that got to know every living soul on the plantation in case any of those souls tried to drift. She had seen it before: the beasts chased people into the sky and managed to snatch them down no matter how high they thought they could float. Them dogs: ears just a-flopping, woofing in that gloomy way they do, sad eyes and everything. You almost felt sorry for them until they got ahold of your ass and bit it all the way back to the cotton field—or the chopping block, one.
They whined and she detested the sound. Why they kept the animals enclosed was beyond her reasoning. Animals belonged outdoors. But then again, the Halifaxes were indoors so that meant all of creation had some right to be inside as well.
“Go on,” she said to the hounds, unlatching the door that led out to the garden. “Go find a hare and leave me be.”
All six of them ran out. She inhaled deeply, hoping she took in enough of the field to last her through the day. She kept her hand on the door so that it would close quietly. She limped over to another door on the opposite side of the porch and went into the kitchen. It could have been its own cabin given that it was twice the size of even the largest of the shacks people lived in at Empty. Still, she felt cramped in it, like something unseen was pushing her down from every direction.
“Breathe, chile,” she said aloud and dragged her hurt leg over to the counter that ran underneath a row of windows that faced east and looked out onto the barn.
She grabbed two bowls and the sack of flour stored in the cupboards beneath the counter. She removed a jug of water and a sifter from the cabinet left of the counter. Once combined, she began kneading the ingredients into dough for biscuits: a heavy thing that, with heat, time, and her bruised knuckles, became yet another meal that failed to satisfy Halifax appetites.
She moved over toward the front of the kitchen to get some logs to heat the stove. There was a pile of them under another window, one that faced east. During the day, that window allowed her to see past the willow tree in front of the house, down the long path that led to the front fence and intersected with the dusty road to Vicksburg’s town square.
She had only seen the square once, when she was dragged from Georgia and hauled off to Mississippi. Her old master had loaded her up onto a wagon, chained her feet, and sat her among some other frightened people. The journey took weeks. Once they got past the lumbering trees, the road opened up upon a great number of buildings, the kind of which she had never seen. She was marched from the wagon onto some platform, where she stood before a great crowd. A toubab, filthy and smelling of ale, stood next to her and shouted numbers. The people in the audience looked at her, none raised their hands in pursuit of her—none except Paul, whom she heard tell his young charge that she would make a good kitchen wench and companion for Ruth.