When the Reckoning Comes, page 22
XXVIII.
THEY WERE LIKE dogs. All grunt and growl. A pack of wolves ready for the take. Yellow-teeth-filled grins as they hollered. They jumped and raised their rifles and pistols in the air, arms stretched high like a praise toward a god they believed would one day welcome them, but there was no god here, not for this. They shouted yes and woo-boy and even hallelujah, some of them, grateful they could stop their chase.
These were the men Mira had feared her whole life. They were what her mother had tried to warn her of, to keep her away from. They were the dangerous ones, the ones who would slip into your room at night to inflict their terror. They were the cross burners, the ones who turned the magnolias and the oaks Mira loved into lynching trees. They were the ones who haunted her nightmares. She watched as they gathered, this mob of men full of ecstatic anger, as they came for Jesse.
“We got him!”
“Is this the one who did it? We need the one who did it.”
“There was another one, wasn’t there?
“Must have went toward the river. Maybe we can catch them before they get to the swamps.”
“Let’s deal with this one first!”
The men stretched their necks and cracked their knuckles for what was next. One held a rope, his fingers stroking the fibers that had been twisted together. His hands were at the ready, and at the first signal the rope would be tied into a noose, tied around a neck, and tied around the base of a tree.
“What’ll we do with this one? Take him back?”
“Not yet, I say we should do what we like.”
They soon would perform what’d been done hundreds of times. Thousands. The ritual this country perfected. They would take this body apart, limb from limb, each of them marking their own pieces to keep.
Twenty-five cents for a fragment of bone. Ten cents for the bit of liver. How much for the heart? How much? they would cry, their greedy hands grabbing, each of them wanting their choice. They would touch and fondle the flesh as it was bartered and sold. They would yank the teeth from the jaw, laughing at the crack of bones. They would take. They wanted to devour. They wanted to consume. When they were done, they would set what remained on fire.
No need to count the ways a body had fallen, how many contorted expressions appeared on the face of a body whose soul had passed. No need to count the number of crows that circled a burning carcass after the flames had smoldered, ready to peck on what these men had left. No need to count because Mira knew, the number haunting her bones like it did so many, like it did all who’d lived on.
Somewhere was a bridge where bodies were hung. Somewhere a tree, its branches twisted in the form of an ache. Somewhere grass grew from land soiled with death. Somewhere was a house built from blood, its prominent columns once a sign of wealth, of prominence, now become an altar. Oh, how beautiful. Oh, how lovely.
Somewhere were other men just like these.
A rumbling came that none of the men recognized. Slack-jawed, their bodies frozen, they stared out toward the darkness ahead, leaning to see the shadows stir. Beyond the trees something lurked for them, whispered just for them.
“What are you waiting for? Quit pussyfooting around. Let’s get this over with.”
“Wait—did you hear that?”
“Do you see something? Something’s moving in the woods.”
One man stepped forward, going ahead of the others. He was tall and lumbering. Arrogance made him unafraid, or maybe it was impatience, but after a few steps, even he stopped. He heard a sound that made him pause. “Who’s there?” he shouted, voice hoarse but booming. Hidden in the loudness was a slight tremble of unease because he too recognized that just beyond their reach was something lurking in the dark, a threat, one worthy of their attention. “Show yourself,” he dared, and he raised his rifle toward the unseen, ready to fire.
He would count to three before firing his shot, and shoot he would. He wouldn’t be the only one; his fellow men would soon follow. Together, they would blast ammunition into the night, not caring who they maimed or murdered. They stood waiting in hungry anticipation for their moment, their thick fingers grazing the triggers as he called out each number.
“One! Two! Three!”
A shot bristled through the trees. Everyone listened for the sound of pain, for a howl or a moan, but nothing could be heard.
“Jimmy, let’s just take him and go.”
“No!” Jimmy shouted back, his face reddened from fury. He wouldn’t be made a fool of, not this night, and not wanting any more seconds to pass for them all to change their minds, he ventured in the direction of his shot. The others watched him as he went into the dark.
“Is he coming back?”
“How long we going to wait here for him to come back?”
“He’s got to come back, right?”
“Who’s going after him?”
“We can’t leave him, can we?”
“Well, what are we going to do?”
The minutes passed by as the men decided what to do, hoping he’d return, their decision made for them, and they could continue. Fear made them shift their weight from foot to foot, some of them paced, some of them spit out the watery gobs that had accumulated in their mouths from their chew. Pfff, they each went, taking turns moistening the ground with their tobacco-flecked saliva.
“What was that?”
“Was that him?”
“Could have been an animal.”
“Sounded human to me. Sounded like Jimmy.”
“What do you think happened?”
“You want to be the one to go and find out?”
Would they do it? Would they go after one of their own? The men stood uneasy. They kept their focus on the darkness before them, listening for another sound that would help guide them in what to do, but they were surrounded by the quiet stillness of the night. They were afraid, somehow knowing if they followed, they would not come back.
“To hell with it.”
“This ain’t worth dying over.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
One after the other they turned in the opposite direction, leaving it all behind. Each and every one disappeared into the darkness. Mira watched until they faded from view.
When they were caught, punishment was swift and severe in its execution. Judge and jury called for their heads to be spiked onto poles and placed for miles all along the roads, a premonition for others to see that this would be the future for any who tried to do the same. Laws were created to silence the rumblings. Any who carried the look of insurrection were beaten. They were wounded and maimed. For decades after, the histories were told of those who had rebelled. Of Southampton. Of the German Coast. Of Stono. They told of what happened to their forefathers—how they were either burned to ash or cut into pieces and bartered off to the bidder with the most expensive want. Fingers chopped and sold like carnival souvenirs. Some men believed if the bones of their dead slaves were consumed you could have their powers. Their bodies a Sunday prayer. Their bodies a communion as the bones were milled to a fine powder. Organs torn from flesh, saved in jars to keep.
Those who remained continued on with their work. Fear made them forget, and so each day they suffered themselves closer to death. They longed to let go, to cast down their tools, to hear the clank of metal as it crashed to the ground and let the fields rot from neglect. They dreamed of the tide turning but knew it would never come, and with this knowledge they watched as their brothers and sisters continued to fall, watched their arms flail and knees buckle as they fell to the ground. They watched, saying nothing, as they hid their faces and closed their eyes. Every day loosening further to the reality before them.
At night before they slumbered off, they remembered the stories once told. As they held them in their minds, they swore they could hear whispers—indistinct at first, always saying their names, a susurration, asking for them to hear.
XXIX.
AFTER THE MEN were gone, Mira ran to Jesse. When Mira got to him she saw his face was pressed down in the grass, his body unmoving. He was so still that she was hesitant to touch him at first, not wanting to feel if his skin was cold and have her fear be confirmed. She didn’t see any blood, no pool of it around him, and, taking a breath, she touched his back, felt for the holes, but there was nothing. She searched harder, reaching under his shirt, feeling his sweaty skin, but she couldn’t find any wounds, no mark anywhere.
Mira put her hand in front of his face and waited. His breath was sparse but there, and the wash of relief that suddenly overcame her took her aback. At least he was alive, she thought.
“You shouldn’t have left,” Mira told Jesse, shouting it, too tired and frustrated to hold back any longer. “We could have made it. We could have made it together.”
She looked around her, trying to gauge how far they were from the house, but she had no idea where they were. If she were to leave without Jesse, she didn’t trust she’d be able to find help soon enough. Looking out onto the expanse before her, she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to find her way at all, not without sunlight, not without anything for her to see the path.
Her arms weren’t strong enough to carry him. Unconscious, he was nothing but deadweight. She pulled, was able to drag him a few feet, but fatigue set in and she had to stop. She kneeled back on the ground. “Jesse, can you hear me? You’ve got to wake up. Are you hurt? Are you shot? If you’re shot, tell me where.”
Jesse didn’t answer. Not knowing what else to do, she lifted his body so that he was lying on his back, wanting to check the front of him for signs he’d been hit. It took her a couple of times to do it, and when she got him over she was out of breath between that and attempting to pull him. She settled down to rest. After a moment she leaned over him and tucked her hand under the front of his shirt, feeling once again for a wound.
“Trying to cop a feel?” Jesse whispered. He gave a choked cough and tried to stand. Mira reached to help. The right side of his face had a streak of mud from where he’d hit the ground. He touched his cheek and winced as he wiped the mud away, revealing a bloody patch of skin underneath. “Jesus,” he said, wincing again from the pain.
“No, I—” Mira blushed, jerked her hands away from Jesse’s body.
Jesse saw her embarrassment and smiled. “I was just joking.”
“I don’t understand. You fell,” Mira said, feeling glad and astonished he was okay. She’d seen it all so clearly, heard the thundercrack of the shots, saw him as he leapt toward the ground, and yet Jesse sat before her, only slightly hurt but alive.
“No kidding.” Jesse touched his face again. His fingers lightly tapped the skin, trying to inspect if his face was swollen. “I’m still feeling the pain of it.”
“I thought— Are you sure you’re okay? You weren’t shot?”
“I tripped. That’s why I fell. Otherwise I would have kept running. I would have run and never stopped until I got to the river, but I tripped and hit my head. Why would you think I got shot?”
“The men chasing you—” Mira said, but Jesse stared at her blankly. “They fired shots. You didn’t hear them? You didn’t see?” Jesse’s silence answered her question. “You haven’t seen any of it, have you?” she asked, and Jesse turned away, unable to look her in the face.
“I thought I did,” Jesse confessed. “You were so sure that I believed you, and then with the mob I got so scared at the thought it was happening again—that I’d be blamed again, but no. I never saw anything. Or, I don’t think I did, but it doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand why I couldn’t see any of it and you could.”
“You said we all had to reckon with our past. I had to too.”
Mira pieced together the story of what had been shown to her. The Woodsmans and all the horrors done to his slaves. The night of the failed revolt. The mob of men, ones she’d mistakenly thought were after Jesse, had been hunting the slaves who escaped. They’d given up their search out of the fear of what may have happened to one of their own.
Mira looked in the direction from where Jimmy disappeared, out toward the river. The men had not wanted to follow him there. The river held one final piece that she needed to know. She got up from the ground, wiped the dirt off the front of her jeans. “It’s not over. We still need to get to the river,” she said, and Jesse nodded.
They hiked in the direction of the sound of the rustling water. Mira made her breath as sparse as she could, worried that if she exhaled too hard she’d disrupt whatever vision the ghosts might have wanted to show her. She led the way, Jesse not far behind her, each of them cautious of their steps as they walked through the woods.
“I think I hear it,” she said after they’d gone about another mile. Jesse was silent, listening. The sound of the river was there, slightly hidden among the chorus of other inhabitants of the woods—the crickets’ chirps, the movement of deer or raccoons as their bodies snuck through the brush—but underneath was the rustling of water as it flowed, making its way east toward the swamps.
With the rise of dawn approaching, they continued along, Mira hurrying in the hope of getting there before light, and after walking a few more feet they came upon it. “We made it,” Jesse said once they’d reached the edge of the riverbank.
“Yeah, we did.” Mira watched in anticipation the ripples in the water, waiting to see what else might be shown to her, but nothing else came. She trod closer to the riverbank, fighting the urge to sink her feet into the soft earth as she stepped farther in, to lower herself into the water and be hit with its shocking coldness as she let it cover her body, her face, as she sank farther down, but she would not be cleansed of this night. No salvation existed in this water but in what lay ahead.
“Hey, Mira, you see that floating? I can’t make it out, but it looks like— Do you see? What is that?”
Jesse pointed to a few feet away. Mira’s eyes followed, and there, floating along the edge, was Mr. Tatum’s body. Mira tensed, watching, waiting, not knowing what to do as Mr. Tatum bobbed in the water. As if the river knew, the current picked up, and before either of them could speak, it was carrying Mr. Tatum’s body down into the water, carrying it on, until it had disappeared.
“Do you think—” Jesse stopped.
I do,” Mira said. “We don’t have to worry about Mr. Tatum anymore. Not Mr. Tatum or Phillip. The ghosts aren’t coming back either. At least, not for me. They’ve shown me what I needed to see.”
They made their way back to the main part of the plantation. By the time they’d left the woods, it was almost morning. Around them, the grounds were empty. All the guests had long since gone. What remained were remnants from their day’s revelry. Leftover food smooshed in dirt. Drained bottles of champagne tucked among the grass. Flowers wilted, their petals blowing in the humid breeze. Broken bits of glass crunched beneath Mira’s feet as she stopped to catch her breath. A few feet away a copy of the wedding program lay crumpled on the ground. Mira reached down to pick it up and that’s when she noticed the trampled grass leading back from where they came. She flashed back to the crowd of guests who’d ventured off in search of Celine. How they’d laughed while holding their phones, taking photos with each other as they gallivanted off into the woods. She wondered if they’d met the same fate as Phillip and Mr. Tatum.
Mira dropped the program. “Let’s go. When the police come they’re going to see all this for what it was—a dispute between Phillip, Celine, and her father. We can leave and forget about all of it.”
“Not all of it,” Jesse said. His hand wrapped around hers and it was almost as before, back when they were young. Honeysuckle days, the air fragrant and heady. Jesse having gathered bunches of the wild flowers from the edge of the woods. Him in his T-shirt and cutoff jeans holding the bouquet to give her. The frizz of his Afro. His toothy grin. The two of them eating peaches, freshly bought. The sticky juice as it ran down her fingers, glistening her lips, and the taste of its sweet tang long after the twilight hour of their day’s end.
But Jesse had been right. He was not the boy she’d once known, not anymore. He was different and so was she, the past having haunted the arc of their lives, shaping who they had become. They needed to learn how to love not who they once thought each other to be, but who they were now. Before any of that could be possible though, she needed to finally tell him everything, all she’d seen, and she would begin with that first day they’d come here.
Up ahead, the gate waited for them, the metal glinting from the burgeoning morning light. As the sun crested along the horizon, its heat warmed her back. She turned to witness its gold glow filtering through the trees, ready to make the world anew.
Soon it would be morning, and those left behind would prepare for another day. Soon they’d gather together, readying themselves to begin. With the clang of the bell they’d move through the grounds to take each of their positions. We will say their names now—there’s Tom the butcher as he drains a hog, his hands bloody as he prepares meat for the smokehouse. Patty, as she launders the sheets. The slap, slap, slap her hands make as she grips the battling blocks and sticks and beats them against the fabrics to clean. See Rufus as he tends to the horses in the barn. He brushes their coats to a smooth shine. See Susan as she cares for the garden, her hands clawing into the earth as she pulls vegetables out to be cooked. See Sam as he builds spinning wheels and parts of looms, his hands rugged and worn from the wooden splinters his arthritic fingers can never pick out. See the blacksmith. See the cook. See the younger girls as they churn milk into butter. Despite the soreness in their arms they keep their motions consistent, never stopping or slowing until they see the creamy froth. See the field hands as they toil with the crops, their thin cotton shirts and trousers already sweated through from the early rising heat. They get in a rhythm as they sing their work songs, their voices a building hum. See them as they work. They repeat their motions, ones they’ve done hundreds of times, and on this day, like all those that have been before, they will begin again, performing their roles for all who’ve come to see.
