Leviticus

You too much like a woman,” Samuel said as he pitchforked hay into a pile near the horse stables. Sweat dripped from his temples to his jaw before collecting, quietly, in the dimple just above his collarbone.

Isaiah had pails in his hands. He was preparing to go milk the cows but stopped suddenly with Samuel’s observation. He was particularly struck by Samuel’s tone: not exactly coarse, but definitely the sound of a man who had been thinking about it, had allowed it to roll around his head, and in his mouth, had grown tired of keeping it locked away in his chest, and could only find reprieve in its release. Isaiah turned to look at Samuel and smiled anyway.

“I thank you,” he said and winked his playfulness.

“I ain’t trying to flatter you,” Samuel responded as he continued to pile the hay, which was now waist high.

Isaiah chuckled. “Look at that. Sweet-talking me and ain’t even trying.”

Samuel sucked his teeth. Isaiah walked over to him with pails in hand. The pail handles squeaked with each step. The sound irritated Samuel and made him bristle.

“Now I bother you?” Isaiah asked.

Samuel stopped shoveling. He stuck the pitchfork into the ground with enough force that it stood on its own. He looked down at it, then faced Isaiah.

“I can’t have no weaklings by my side.”

“You know me to be weak?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Nah, suh, I don’t,” Isaiah said. He put the pails on the ground next to the pitchfork. “But it sound like you calling me weak because I remind you of a woman.”

Samuel just stared at him.

“But none of the womens you know is weak.”

“But toubab think they weak.”

“Toubab think all of us weak.” Isaiah shook his head. “You worried too much ’bout what toubab think.”

“I better be worried. And you, too!” Samuel’s chest puffed like it was preparing to release yet again.

“Why?”

“Everybody can’t be against us, ’Zay!” Samuel yelled.

Samuel had never spoken to Isaiah in that tone before and Isaiah could see the sweat on Samuel’s brow and the pained expression on his face that announced regret etching its way in. Isaiah took a deep breath, looked down at the ground, refusing to return the volume that had just assaulted him. Instead, he spoke quietly.

“And everybody can’t want us to be what they want us to be neither.”

Samuel rested his arm on the handle of the pitchfork. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He regretted letting himself open this way. A man, he thought, should have better control over his doors and locks. Still, some doors couldn’t be locked once opened. He looked at Isaiah. He stared into his eyes and was almost convinced, by their tender shape, by how they were crowned by thick, silky eyebrows, to let it go. Almost.

“How ’bout your name?”

Isaiah frowned. “My name,” he whispered. “How you could even . . .”

Samuel wiped his brow with both hands but didn’t know what to do with them afterward, so he balled them into fists. He looked intently at Isaiah.

“When you know Big Hosea to have a problem with anybody, huh?”

Isaiah’s lips parted, but only silence filled the space.

“I been knowing him since we both little. You see how he come after me? For what?” Samuel grunted.

“I know, and . . .”

“And what you do? Stand there instead of helping.”

“It was me the one who pull you off him!”

“When you shoulda been the one helping me whup him!”

Isaiah nearly buckled under the weight of that. He leaned forward. He put his hands on his legs, just above his knees, to brace himself. He exhaled. He kept looking at the ground.

Samuel eyed him from toe to head. “Yeah.”

Isaiah wouldn’t allow himself to be crushed by the heaviness or by Samuel’s attempt to stack more on top of it. He stood erect. He took two steps toward Samuel. He looked him in the eyes and then looked away to gather his thoughts. Samuel, meanwhile, had planted his feet and cracked his knuckles.

“You right. Sorry,” Isaiah said as he returned to gaze into Samuel’s squinting eyes. “I shoulda done more, but I ain’t wanna do nothing to make Amos think he got the upper hand—or make the people think we was what he said we was.”

Samuel’s lips were dry and ashy, so he licked them. His tongue darted out, drenching first the bottom then the top. He tasted salt. He put his hand on the handle of the pitchfork.

“Folks listen to Amos. Maybe we should,” he said. His grip on the pitchfork was loose and unsure.

“No,” Isaiah said quickly. “I young. Young as you. But this I know ’cause it don’t take long to learn it: anybody with a whip gone use it. And people without one gone feel it.”

Samuel snatched up the pitchfork.

“Amos ain’t got no whip!” he said as he began, furiously, to fork hay.

“But folks finna obey him just the same,” Isaiah countered.

Samuel stopped and let the pitchfork fall. It hit the ground with a thud. The two of them just stood there, silent, not looking at each other, but both breathing heavily, audibly. Finally, Samuel cracked the silence in half.

“I can’t stay here.”

“Who can’t?” asked Isaiah.

Samuel paused. He had no answer that would satisfy. The realization made his chest burn and his face itch. He clapped his sweaty palms. The sudden, sharp sound stirred a horse or two before it dissipated. It didn’t distract Isaiah, however. He kept his gaze steady, his face still prepared to receive an answer to his question.

“You ain’t never talk like this before,” Isaiah said gently.

“Maybe not talk,” Samuel replied.

“But think? Can’t be. Even in the midnight hour?”

In Isaiah’s eyes was a mist, nighttime, and two sets of calloused feet creeping alongside a riverbank. Owls hooted and the snap of fallen branches being cracked in half by heavy footsteps echoed in the distance. Far behind, a point of light and the voices of wild men laughing. A glint of metal seen by the shine of the moon and the two sets of feet speed up, into the wet of the river. Muddy and tired. Then two whole bodies submerge and, though frantic, refuse to make a splash for fear of attracting the attention of jackals disguised as men.

But the silence provides no shelter and the wildness catches up to them and drags them, by their feet, out of the water, over jagged rocks, through the broken woods until they come upon a row of bitter, eager trees willing to perform acts of vengeance in the name of stolen fruit. The men have ropes, laughter, and fingers hooked into triggers. The men bind their prey. Nooses burn necks. Tightened, they block air. Then the eyes constrict and throats mourn the denial of screaming. Pull. Pull. And up in the air the bodies go. Kicking the nothing around them. Flying nowhere.

After a while, tuckered out down to the soul, they go limp, an offense to the gods of wicked laughter. So they unload their weapons into the dead-already. Then they douse the bodies with oil and set them aflame. They think it’s a campfire, so they sing songs. Look at the monkeys. Look at the monkeys. Swinging. Swinging from the trees. The flames eventually die and the bodies eventually drop. The wild men fight over the best pieces to take home.

When Isaiah snapped back to the barn, it dawned on him that he had been standing there the entire time and neither he nor Samuel had even attempted to touch the other. He moved a step closer and stroked Samuel’s cheek with the back of his hand, his rough knuckles finding comfort against Samuel’s smooth skin. Samuel closed his eyes, leaned into the rhythm of Isaiah’s motion before finally grabbing Isaiah’s hand and holding it in place against his face. Samuel kissed Isaiah’s hand.

“There’s danger in the wilderness,” Isaiah unloaded. He figured that it was only fair that the both of them share the weight of it. Samuel lifted it, inspected it, and noticed a crack in it. Those monkey-swinging bodies: they dared go down without a fight?

“There’s danger here,” Samuel replied. He cut his eyes, almost with cruelty, at Isaiah and picked up the pitchfork again. Isaiah grabbed him by the wrist. He stared into Samuel’s face, searching for an opening, however small.

“Don’t break us, man.”

“Ain’t I here?” Samuel asked, not exactly returning Isaiah’s gaze. “You see me or nah?”

He pulled himself from Isaiah’s grasp and returned to the pitchfork and his drudgery. For a moment, Isaiah didn’t move. He was oddly calmed by the repetitious sound of Samuel’s forking, the consistency of his one-two motion.

“I could do it, you know,” Samuel said at last. “Make it with all those womens. But I just don’t wanna.”

Isaiah stepped back, turned his mouth to one side.

“You ain’t never think that?” Samuel asked him.

“So you wanna hurt two people, not just one?” Isaiah looked around the barn—at the horses in the stables, at the haystacks, at the tools that hung on rusty nails hammered haphazardly into the barn walls, at the roof and its intersections of wooden beams. He looked and looked as though it were his mind and he was searching for the answer to Samuel’s question, but all he could find were cracks.

“Sometimes I don’t even know you,” Isaiah said out loud, still looking at the barn walls.

“You know me. I be the you you don’t let free.”

Isaiah was going to say, You mean the me I been freed, but didn’t see the point. “Sure they thank you for it,” he replied instead. “The womens, I mean. For being able to. Puah especially.”

Samuel scowled. “You jealous.”

“Maybe. But not why you think.”

“Just saying. If you feel to stay here, be easier if—”

Isaiah cut him off. “Whatever you decide is blessèd.”

With force, Samuel let out some air through his nose and raised it. “You different.” He didn’t mean to say it out loud, but it was too late. It had already middle-finger plucked Isaiah on the forehead, pinched his arm as a cross mother would. All Isaiah could do was rub the places that stung and give Samuel the eyes that conveyed his surrender.

Samuel stood there and, for the first time, was disturbed by the stench of the barn and the way it stuck to his skin. He noticed that underneath the saltiness was something sour, like food left to rot. He held his nose for a moment and suppressed an urge to heave. Finally, he walked over to the pails that Isaiah had put down.

“Let me do this. You pitch the hay,” he said as he picked up the pails and headed outside. He felt Isaiah’s eyes on his back, yes, but also his caress. But he didn’t stop.

He went to the cows. They greeted him tumultuously, mooing their anxiety.

“You looking for ’Zay, huh?” he said to them.

He sat down on the tiny wooden stool and waved away the flies that circled his head.

“I beg your pardon,” he said to the nearest cow.

Then he grabbed her teats and started to pull.