Paul
Paul was just a boy, no more than seven or eight, when his father, Jonah, led him into the middle of everything and exhaled. Jonah made a full spin and spread his arms open wide. Then he laughed. He laughed and laughed and then patted Paul on the back before resting his hand on Paul’s shoulder.
“See, boy? Look,” Jonah said, pointing.
Pointing to what? Treetops? Tall grass? A deer that stood frozen in his gaze? All of it, Paul figured. Yes, Paul saw those things. But what he saw most readily was his father’s hand on his shoulder. It was warm and firm and sent a charge through him. Had his father forgotten himself? This was their first intimacy, and Paul had, for the first time, felt like the blood of his father’s blood: his living, breathing offspring: his son. Paul looked at his father and his father looked back at him and smiled.
“This is everything,” Jonah said, looking out at the land that was his because—because God willed it.
And Paul had watched as the very land turned Jonah from a miserable man—who barely spoke, who was spiteful and covetous, not even softened by the forgiveness of his wife, Paul’s mother, Elizabeth—into the father Paul had always hoped would show up. How, then, could it not be worshipped? In their joined grasp, not unlike hands pressed together for morning grace, it had been razed. Yes, raised up in their very hands, together. The most important thing now, his father told him: Grow. Gather. Keep. Because then, in the echoing halls, and even in future whispers, they will build monuments in your honor and you will be remembered not for your failures—not for your stumbles or your transgressions or your kills—but for only your greatest triumphs.
Paul didn’t doubt that this was true, but it was Elizabeth whom he watched till the fields until her body could take no more. When she took ill, laid up in her bed, almost motionless if not for the smile that rose across her face whenever he came in to see her, Paul had never before lost anything, and the thought that he could lose his most precious thing—the one who had given him everything: life, milk, and a name that was her father’s—made something inside him crumble.
By the time Elizabeth began to tremor and bleed, not respond to Paul’s or his father’s voice, and soon, not respond at all, both boy and man silently agreed that the only way to honor her was to name everything that belonged to them after her, which was another kind of immortality. Jonah called it the Elizabeth Plantation. He committed himself to it—accumulating slaves, hiring hands, raising animals, and planting cotton damn near to the horizon—as though the “plantation” part of the name was merely a formality.
Then, when Jonah became as tired as Elizabeth had, when his hands wouldn’t stop twitching and fevers had left him parched and drained, he, too, offered himself up in tribute to the land that was his by legal right, if not by the blood fact that it had already claimed his wife.
Paul liked to think that his mother and father were both looking down on him, protecting him, magnifying his favor in the eyes of God, because look at what he had done: he had built upon the foundation they left to him and had gathered the enormous wealth that they had twisted their bodies seeking. His parents were comfortable; they had provided him a decent life and he couldn’t remember a single hungry day. But they were never this, not even with full access to the law of the land—and beyond the law, the very ethos of it—that said, No one can stop you; take as much as you damn well please!
As God had passed destiny down to his father, and his father down to him, Paul saw it as his duty to ensure that Timothy also received this Word. For in the beginning, before all else, there was the Word and the Word wasn’t merely with God: the Word was God. The first utterance, the primary incantation, the initial spell that willed itself into being from nowhere, turned nothing into everything, and had, itself, always been there in its potential, needing only to express itself through action for existence to exist. A power so grand that all it took was a breath to make the unreal real and pull the seen from the unseen.
When Timothy first came back home, Paul had brought him out to the same spot his father took him to, pointed to the same treetops, smiled at the same horizon, spun with the same openness. And when his hand landed on Timothy’s shoulder, Paul felt the same unexpected giddiness that he was certain was the thing that took Jonah from choke to laughter. But when Timothy looked up at him, the boy’s eyes were blue with worry and there was no awe. There were no jolts of joy reverberating between them. There was only the distinct scent of cotton blossom heavy in the air and the wind blowing at the tops of both of their heads.
Looking to the dark clouds in the distance, before looking back up at his father, Timothy asked, “Rain?”
Rain. Paul sat at the dinner table later that night staring at Timothy. As evening surrounded them, he looked at his son with the candles giving off only enough light to see him, and so shadows swayed on all of their faces, and the eyes of the servants glowed. Would it have been astute to point out that the expanse of the land itself—which stretched from river to woods, from sunup to sundown—was living proof of his righteousness? That ownership was assuredly confirmation?
Of what?
Of things being precisely the way they were supposed to be.
Timothy ate delicately as Paul watched. Maybe Ruth was right. Maybe his education should have been here, in the bosom, if not of Abraham, then of Elizabeth, where his hands, like Paul’s hands, could know the soil so that they need not ever touch it again. Timothy, instead, spoke of bitter winters the likes of which Mississippi couldn’t imagine; of righteous men who spoke eloquently of liberty; and of niggers unchained, of which he had heard, but hadn’t seen.
He had cultivated the most curious art form, and Paul was, in spite of himself, impressed by the divine hand his son showed. But that was just it: there was no mention of God. And there was no veil upon him that might have evinced contemplation of such matters. The North had done its job, perhaps too well.
As everyone had left the table and the slaves had cleaned it, Paul sat in his chair. Something had kept him there and he tried to determine what it was. He hadn’t, this time, remarked on where Maggie placed the cutlery. He paid no special attention to the tablecloth or its rigid corners. He said nothing when, while chewing, he bit into something hard—like a bone, but burned and circular, in the fowl that Maggie and Essie had jointly placed before him. He had carved it himself, so he had no one but himself to blame.
And yet, he didn’t want to move. He sat there as candlelight had become dimmer and dimmer still. He rubbed his eyes. He pulled his watch out of his pocket. It was attached to his waistband by a gold chain. It was only eight o’clock. He wasn’t tired but had no desire to get up.
When it came, it came from somewhere unexpected. It started not in the cave of his chest, as he imagined it would, but in the pit of his stomach. A rumbling had just begun to form as he clutched himself. The feeling was familiar. He wondered if he would make it to the outhouse in time or if he would have to call Maggie in with a bedpan. How unseemly to have to unfasten one’s britches in one’s dining place, ass exposed in the same room where one feasts, the two scents mixing in unfriendly ways such that one might be unable to separate them ever again. No, he couldn’t do that.
He managed to get up from the table. He rushed into the kitchen, past Maggie—who didn’t look at him, but bent her head as she was supposed to—and past Essie, whose back was facing him, taking the lantern they lit so that they could make quicker work of cleaning, making his way to the back of the house. He burst through the door, bounded down the steps and rushed to the left of Ruth’s garden, to the solitary red outhouse in the cusp of trees.
It was thin and shocking set against the backdrop of the wilderness. He had it built there, far enough away from the house that the odor didn’t overwhelm. Not too far from the flowers so that they, too, could be the arbitration between what stank and what bloomed. He burst into it and closed the door behind him. He put the lantern down. The smell in that summer air, the insects that buzzed and clicked; he didn’t bother to check for snakes because there was no time. He couldn’t get his trousers down fast enough as the suspenders took too long to unfasten. When he felt the warmth begin to slide down his leg, he nearly took the Lord’s name in vain. Though he was sure vanity had nothing to do with it.
“Maggie! Maggie!” Paul cried.
She arrived not as quick as he would have it. She knocked on the red door.
“Massa? You call for me?” she asked, holding another lantern up.
“Did you bring a cloth?”
“No, suh. You need a cloth, suh?”
“I wouldn’t have called you if . . . never mind. Hurry and get one. Send Essie if you can’t move quickly. Go!”
After a moment, Essie knocked on the door.
“Massa, I has the cloth Maggie sent . . .”
Paul opened the door and saw her lantern first. “Yes, yes. Now give it here.”
Paul grabbed the cloth and it was dry.
“Where . . . this . . . no water. You didn’t wet this? Where is my bowl with water?”
“Oh, you wanted water, too, Massa?” Essie put her hand to her mouth. “Maggie said you only asked for a cloth. So that’s what I did. I hurried and brought you this cloth.”
“Blasted!” Paul exclaimed. “Maggie! Call Maggie. Maggie!”
“Maggie!” Essie joined in.
Maggie returned.
“Maggie, get me a bowl of water immediately. And another pair of britches. And be hasty about it. “Essie, here.” Paul took off his pants, suspenders dangling from them. “Go and tend to these. Make sure you wash them thoroughly.”
Maggie looked back. She and Essie glanced at each other. “Yessuh,” Essie said, as she walked off holding the pants out, away from her.
Maggie returned shortly.
“Here, suh,” she said, as she placed the bowl and her lantern down on the ground.
Paul handed her the cloth and she dipped in the warm water and handed it back to him. He looked at her with narrowed eyes and a crumpled brow.
“You don’t expect me . . .”
He stood up, turned around, his ass now at the level of Maggie’s face.
“Clean me.”
He cupped himself in front as Maggie, in upward strokes, like one would with a baby, wiped his bottom, and the muddy stream down his leg, shiny in the lantern light. When she was done, she threw the soiled rag into the bowl and handed Paul the trousers.
“Where are my suspenders?” he asked, as he pulled the pants up, which were spacious around his waist and wouldn’t remain up.
“Massa, suh, I reckon you gave them to Essie for cleaning?”
“Dang it!” Paul shouted. “Move,” he continued as he pushed past Maggie and stomped his way back into the house, holding his pants by their uppermost edge so they wouldn’t fall down around his ankles.
He wanted to blame them. So he had them stand there in the kitchen as he walked back and forth, looking at them as though it were they, not he, whose words weren’t clear and thus left open to interpretation. He would have the doctor to visit and give him something for his stomach—a soothing tea, a healing rub perhaps. He had run out of both since the last time. He looked at Maggie and Essie. Their heads were bent, but they were holding hands.
“Stop that,” Paul snapped, pointing to where their hands were cupped. They released. “Heh,” he spat. “I like to beat you both where you stand,” he said as he paced. He looked them up and down in their twin white dresses, in their twin black skins, though one taller and thicker than the other, one whose body was more familiar. “Maggie: No more cranberry sauce with dinner,” he said finally. “Or maybe it was those blasted greens; the way you spice them . . .”
Maggie nodded. “Yes, Massa,” she said, looking over at Essie quickly before returning her gaze to the floor. Then: “Oh, Massa, so sorry! Your shoe,” she continued, pointing downward.
At the tip of Paul’s black boot, a brown splotch.
“Give those to me, suh. I shine them for you,” Essie said and knelt down to take them from his feet. Maggie joined her.
Paul held on to a nearby wall as they unfastened and removed his shoes. Three lanterns lined up on the floor gave them all a warm glow. He liked Maggie and Essie there, stooped, crawling around at his feet. But there was something odd: They were both kneeling, clearly. But briefly, for just a blink, he could have sworn it was they who were standing.
And that it was he who was on his knees.
“Yes, Cousin. I do need a drink,” Paul said after James asked.
He and James left the cotton sacks to James’s men, walked over to the barn, climbed atop the horses, led to them by one of the niggers who had performed all of his duties well, save one. And just a moment before, Jesus was offered as a possible solution for that by another nigger, the lot of whom was so low and insignificant beneath Jesus’s consideration that it made even James laugh. But it made Paul think.
They rode on down the rigid and dusty trail. Evening sounds of birds, and cicada, which had claimed the gloaming as theirs, emanated from either side of them and also above. That’s what the trees were for, Paul thought, to shelter and to fortify. They were the breathing borders between man himself and the natural everything that Jehovah gifted to him to survey. Either could cross with some peril involved, but man, above all other creatures, had shown himself most adept at survival.
It was unusually cool, so Paul didn’t mind riding close to his cousin. Had, in fact, in that lessening light of sky and honey glow of lamp, seen the family between them. He had been told that his mother and aunt bore a striking resemblance. In this place, when all of creation was in between light and dark, Paul saw that James carried that matrilineal weight much more than he did. Despite the cranky brow, James looked like their mothers: Elizabeth and Margaret. That was why he didn’t have to do too much to verify James’s story. Kinship was clear on a subliminal level if not, at first, on an obvious one. Paul felt glad that his spiritual senses were, then, intact and led him not to turn away his flesh and blood, since all of his other relations, outside of the family he created himself, had passed—or were as good as.
Sometimes, he thought that his created family might pass, too. Ruth’s womb couldn’t catch hold at first. Might have had something to do with her youth. But soon, she gave him a son with shocking hair and piercing eyes that everyone all over town had come to see for themselves. Paul could detect the envy hidden in their voices even when he carried on about how Timothy hadn’t come into the world all shriveled up like most babes, no. He came into the world not unlike Christ, with ringed blessings above his head and the cornflower vision to see into the very souls of those who would ensure his passage was safe. He let out a deep and lasting cry, and Paul and Ruth laughed because all of those who came before him had only whimpered before they eventually, and too quickly, returned to the dust.
Downtown Vicksburg soon appeared before them. Women in petticoats and men in wide-brimmed hats hurried about, on horses and in wagons. Store owners stood out on the porches of their businesses—the tailor, the butcher, the apothecary, the haberdasher—saying so long to their customers as they prepared to close up shop.
Paul and James rode up to the saloon. It had a gentleman in front of it. Unlike the purveyors of clothes, meat, medicine, or hats, this man was greeting his clientele; he wouldn’t be saying so long until the morning sun peeked over the eastern trees. They dismounted, Paul and James, and fastened the reins of the horses to the hitching rail. They exchanged hellos with the greeter on their way in. When they entered, they moved through a number of people, nodding their respects. They sat down at a small table near the back. When the barmaid came to them, wearing a long black dress and white apron, James smiled and ordered a dark ale; Paul a whiskey. They were silent, taking in the energy of the place, until the waitress returned with their drinks, James’s in a mug, Paul’s in a shot glass.
“So you thinking of giving him what he ask for, that nigger?” James asked, taking a swig.
Paul sniffed the whiskey. Smooth and a hint too sweet. He placed the glass back down in front of him.
“The whole question, you know, is whether a nigger can minister,” Paul said.
“Or be ministered to,” James added.
“That’s not really a question,” Paul said, recognizing that James wasn’t the biblical devotee that he was. “Even the waters curve to the word of God.” Paul shook his head. “No. But can a nigger speak honor to that word, give it its just due via the auspices of his mind?”
“I say no.” James curled his hands into fists at either side of the mug.
Paul added, “I suppose the fundamental question is does a nigger have a soul?”
James grinned. “Men greater than us been debating that since the first settlers came to this hunk o’ land. Doubt we find the answer at this table or at the bottom of these here glasses.”
James held his glass up nearer to Paul and nodded. Paul picked up his own glass, and briefly the two of them clinked their glasses together—James with a “heh” and Paul trying to find the answer in the glass James said it wasn’t in.
On the ride back, James was singing some old ship song he said he learned on his voyage over. It was a briny tune that made Paul shake his head and consider how much James, himself, needed Jesus, never mind niggers. But it also made him chuckle, which made him think about how much he still needed Him, too.
“You never really talk much about your trip. Or England. Or my aunt and uncle, for that matter,” Paul quietly noted.
James inhaled. He blew the air out through his mouth. “There’s so little I remember about my mother and father. Those paintings of Aunt Elizabeth you have in the house help me a little, though,” James looked ahead of him, lulled by the rhythm of the horse beneath him. “And what’s to say about England or the ship? All I can recall is the filth.”
Paul looked at James a moment before nodding. “I reckon so,” he said. “I reckon so.”
They reached the gates of Elizabeth. They both, still on their horses, lifted their lamps up to each other in lieu of verbalizing their good nights. Then Paul went one way and James the other. Paul dismounted and tied up his horse in front of his home rather than lead it back to the barn and have Samuel or Isaiah tend to it. Tired and a little bit dizzy from the whiskey, Paul climbed the steps, walked into the house, then up the stairs, and into his bed. He longed for Ruth, but he didn’t have the strength to take off his boots, much less venture into her room, wake her by lamplight, and wonder, in the midst of it, if she were still young enough to give Timothy a sister. Not that Timothy didn’t already have sisters, but he meant one whom he and Ruth could claim; whose skin was not tainted, not even a little; who sprang out of love, not economy.
He closed his eyes because that was the sweetest thought he could find slumber to. He smiled before the drool gathered at a corner of his mouth, the air lumbered through his nostrils, and the darkness, that he didn’t know was living, entered his room and consumed everything, even the lamplight itself.
When he coughed himself awake, golden arrows were piercing his windows because he hadn’t drawn the curtains upon stumbling in. He had one thought, above all others, on his mind: Give God His glory. Yes, then. He would share His teachings with Amos. Paul wiped his face with the back of his hand. He sat up and swung his legs around to the edge of the bed and faced the window. The brightness caused him to squint and his head pounded just a little. Despite the sting and the thumping, he smiled. James wasn’t completely right, he thought. Maybe the answer wasn’t at the bottom of one glass, or two, or three. But it could be shook loose from the mind when the ambrosia was sweet enough, by which he meant kind enough.
A few months into their study, Paul believed that it was right to provide Amos this opportunity to demonstrate, on behalf of his lot, that niggers could be more than animals. Amos’s sermons out in the tree circle had the necessary tone and tenor, and Paul had to admit that there was music in the way Amos repeated the words Paul taught him that wasn’t present even in Paul’s own pastor. But was there a hint of original thought anywhere to be found?
When Amos came to Paul crying one afternoon, right after Essie had finally given birth to the child, proving Paul right, Amos told him of white-hot dreams and spiraling. Paul immediately recognized this as communion with the Holy Spirit. He didn’t understand how, after just those months and months, God decided to press his lithe and probing hand against the forehead of a nigger—and yet, even in the ecstasy of his own midnight prayers, down, down on the abiding floor, and reciting the proverbs and the psalms and the Ecclesiastes, he felt not even the slightest touch: not on the spot on the shoulder that forever gleamed with his father’s prints, and not at the center of his head. He had no choice but to nod his understanding. He wouldn’t question God’s will, for it was almighty; anyone who knew Him knew that. And there was a crown for anyone who let that knowledge be his portion.
Yes, then, he conceded. Niggers had souls. Which, in itself, introduced new troubles. If slaves had souls, if they were more than beasts over which he and every other man had godly claim, then what did it mean to punish them, and often so severely? Was their toil in the cotton fields on Paul’s behalf also the wages of his visited sin? He returned to the Word and was comforted. For God had said, plain and clear, render unto Caesar, first, and, also, slaves shall be obedient in order to one day find reparation in that exquisite cotton plantation in the sky. The clouds were evidence.
To bring things forth from the abyss was no easy task. The land had its own mind. So did niggers. Only by wresting the control either believed they had from their hands with yours—and more than hands, will—could you claim ownership over things that imagined themselves free.
From the indistinguishable masses of black-black niggerdom, Isaiah and Samuel had grown to the peak state of brawn, which is what Paul had intended, from the start, by placing them both in the toil of the barn. It wasn’t too much to impose upon them the weight of a bale of hay, which, just like cotton picking, required the back to be strong. Besides, darkie children weren’t actually children at all; niggers-in-waiting, maybe, but not children.
The plan was to multiply them through the strategic use of their seed. Matched with the right wench, every single one of the offspring would be perfectly suited for field or farm, fucking or fuel. Niggers with purpose.
Paul watched this plan crumble one morning—just to the right of him, in the lazy corner of his library where the sun refused to shine, so the best books could be placed there without worry of them being bleached by yellow rays. Right there, a pile of ash as Amos quoted chapter and verse of the destruction of Sodom and claimed that the barn had become exactly that.
“Their blood upon them. Their blood upon them,” Amos said barely above a whisper as he quivered, head bowed, hands clasped in prayer formation.
Niggers never had any loyalty to one another. That was what saved them from threat. No way would it have been possible to yoke them and drag them across widest oceans, then stretch after stretch of green meadow and forest, hill behind hill, to sugarcane, to indigo, to tobacco, to cotton and more, without the kin-treachery of which only they seemed capable.
A moment, please: Untrue.
The European, too, had a penchant for drawing the sword for the sole purpose of raising it to their sibling’s neck. But they had long since determined that sometimes, such causes for grievance could be set aside, at least temporarily: a ceasefire for the greater good. Niggers hadn’t yet learned that. Everywhere, everywhere, white folk let out a sigh of relief.
“I taught you the Word, for you to bring it to me like this?”
Paul was seated behind his desk, Amos on his knees before it.
“All this time,” Paul continued. “And you forgot your purpose was to bring the Good News?
Amos was silent but had a feverish look upon him. Like one who had seen things and called to be heeded, though fools laughed even unto the warning. Still, Paul couldn’t see defeat where it was and insisted upon victory.
“This is a trick. You have failed at what you were to deliver. Shall I take you back to the day you interrupted my cousin and me?” Paul asked as he stood up and pointed out the window, in the direction of the cotton field. “You seek to blame God for what lies at your feet.”
“Massa, no such a thing. I only speak truth to you. Only.”
Paul leaned over his desk, his hands firmly planted on top of it.
“Then I ask: What proof have you?”
Amos wiped his brow. “Massa, suh, I say that I humbly submit to your gracious hand. My first testimony is that neither boy has given themselves completely to woman. Both can’t be barren. That seem too outside the nature the God you, in your mercy, show me. That the first thing revealed to me.”
Paul tilted his head. “And what was the second?”
Amos cleared his throat and swallowed. “The second: I seen they shadows touch in the nighttime.”
Paul sighed and then shook his head. What did it mean for shadows to touch, and what did it matter if it was daytime or night? The shadows of pails touched. The shadows of trees touched. Hell, Paul’s shadow touched James’s when they were standing together and the sun was good. Of course their shadows touched! They were cooped up in that barn and were each other’s company. It was the same kind of closeness that Paul had heard about in war, where soldiers became something like brothers, but more. There wasn’t any reason to bring Sodom or Gomorrah into any of this, least of all on the very land covered by the will of his father and his mother’s very name.
Paul sat down. He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands before his lips. He couldn’t decide which would be the greater sin: if Amos spoke true or if Amos spoke false. This matter could only be settled through prayer, deep and heavy prayer that would end with foreheads weary and clothing stained by sweat. This was what they thrashed for, the witnesses who had made the longest journey through the desert and didn’t dry up from thirst. Instead, they fell to their knees before, during, and after, and cast up gratitude to He who’d been their stone, their bread, and their water. Oh, yes, praise should come before anguish, for this is what God had said: Put no other before Me and ye shall have the abundance of Heaven.
Paul got up and moved around his desk and stood over Amos. Paul raised his hand and brought it down thunderous against Amos’s face. Amos cowered and pleaded.
“The blood of Jesus, Massa! The blood of Jesus!”
Indeed, Paul thought, Jesus’s blood was precisely what this occasion called for.
At the saloon, James had laughed.
“I’m stunned that you’re stunned, Cousin,” James said between gulps. “You expected niggers to behave in a way that makes sense?” James laughed. “That’s why they’re niggers, for Christ’s sake!”
“No need to take the Name in vain,” Paul said, nursing his whiskey. “I’m not certain Amos even understands what he saw. The Word overwhelms him. It’s a lot for a nigger’s mind to handle.”
“I don’t never put nothing past no nigger,” James said. “Whether that be to lie or to lay.”
“Still, there is a natural order,” Paul replied.
“And when did you not know a nigger to act outside of it? I had to punish them not too long ago for looking at Ruth wrong. They’re low things; you said so yourself. But you think they capable of higher things just because you command them to be so?”
“They looked at Ruth wrong?”
“That’s what she said.”
Paul touched his bottom lip. “Why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t you?”
“You pay me to do a job, not to worry you with it. I imagine Ruth knows that, too.”
That answer delighted Paul unexpectedly. But when that faded, he returned to Isaiah and Samuel. “I don’t tolerate paganism.”
“I don’t understand the hand-wringing then. Get rid of them and get your money for it.”
“I don’t like to waste the things I cultivated. You already know this.”
“Your pride will be your end, Cousin.”
Neither of these barn studs were of Paul’s line. Perhaps that was where the error lay. He rid them of their previous names and renamed them with the calls of righteous men, but it seemed that did nothing to surrender them unto decent passions. Somehow, through some unseen wickedness, Samuel and Isaiah, two witless niggers, couldn’t discern the difference between entries. The two bucks had natures that caused them to resist.
Paul had heard of such unnatural goings-on in antiquity: the Greeks and the Romans, for example, who were great men otherwise, had given themselves over to obscene intimacies. This, which was nothing more than the very workings of paganism itself, was what, to his mind, led to their destruction. It was inevitable that Zeus and the like would crumble before Jehovah because chaos must always give way to order.
The very thought of two men giving in to each other in this way sent a shiver down Paul’s spine and made him queasy. He couldn’t much longer allow them to risk incurring the divine wrath that would certainly be aimed squarely at them, but might also destroy innocent bystanders. Like all old men, God could sometimes be puzzlingly haphazard; His aim not always true. So many dead Halifax babies had been denied the ability to testify, but fortunately dipped in the baptismal waters, they held on to the right to do so.
Isaiah and Samuel were fine specimens that responded better to instruction than punishment. He put them to work in the barn just before either of them had reached puberty. They were stunning in their leanness and musculature. He thought that giving them this specific kind of farm labor wouldn’t only build their bodies, but would also build their character. Caring for living things could do that. With this act, and their transformation and readiness, he would then breed them, hoping to create from their stock gentle but strong niggers who would take production on the plantation to an all-new high. Wouldn’t his mother and father be so pleased?
He observed them out by the barn. Young, fit, black and blue, they moved with an efficiency and expertise of which he didn’t imagine niggers capable. They seemed to have some sort of system, one they devised themselves, which sometimes made it possible for them to accomplish all manner of work in time to go out into the fields and help the other niggers pick the last bit of cotton before quitting time. They would pick almost as much as the others in less than half the time.
The key, it seemed, was in their proximity to each other. They seemed to energize each other, perhaps even inspire each other in a way that not even the couples he didn’t have to force together did. If they were his sons, he would have been proud.
When Paul finally decided to cross the gate with specific intention, it was early morning—so early that the sun had not yet overpowered all else and drenched land and people in hot light. He held a whip in his left hand, let it dangle at his side and its tip drag against the ground. In his right hand, he held the Bible, the same one that civilized Amos. His hat was pulled low, just at the edge of his eyebrows, but the top two buttons of his shirt were undone, enough for his chest hair to protrude. He unhooked the gate and crossed the barrier surrounding the barn. He didn’t bother to close the gate behind him. It hadn’t occurred to him to bring someone with him, James or one of the other dullards, in case the two niggers had become untenable.
The air could choke with either the scent of dandelions or manure, and the two together overwhelmed. Paul wafted through the stench toward the barn where Isaiah and Samuel busied themselves. They came to attention when they saw him. Their heads downward and their bodies erect, they stood close to each other, but they didn’t touch.
Momentarily, Paul felt something like a breeze blow past him, something that tickled the hairs on his chest and forced him to close his eyes. It was something like a caress, unseen and gentle.
“Samuel,” he said softly. “Fetch me a drink of water.” What he really wanted, though, was whiskey.
Paul observed the troubled manner with which Samuel held the ladle, but careful still to ensure no drop might spill. For a moment, Paul believed that it might be fear that guided those actions, but also there was no quiver in his step and his hands didn’t tremble; downward-cast eyes evinced no supplication. Before him stood a creature who, under all the grime and drenched in the smell of grudge work, imagined itself possessing a glimmer of worthiness. This was vanity and it explained so many things.
Paul sat on a bench and motioned for Isaiah and Samuel to stand before him. He opened the Bible, the whip still in his hand.
“There’s trouble here,” he said without lifting his head, flipping through the pages, seeming, occasionally, to have lost his place, before closing the book with a loud thud that startled Isaiah.
“James says that the nature of the nigger is debased, but I imagine that even nature can be changed. I watched my father do it with his own hands. Wrest it and redirect the course of rivers. Bend trees. Put flowers where he wanted them to be. Catch fish and fowl to nourish. Erect his home in the middle of what his work had rightfully claimed. His birthright that God Himself ordained as dominion.”
At that moment, the sun revealed itself and, inch by inch, began to shine down on the standing Isaiah and Samuel, touched their crowns as though they were actually so consecrated, bright in a way that didn’t hinder sight but did make the face pinch just a little. Inside, Paul begged for a stray cloud, something that would dim the glowing and perhaps act as a sure sign that the divine wasn’t singling out the wretched before him for blessing. And then he realized that the light itself was the message, giving him the insight, guiding his wisdom, confirming his authority, God showing him the way with the first thing He had ever created. This wasn’t Isaiah and Samuel being bestowed with some sort of majesty; impossible. Rather, this was merely the dawn. God had finally touched his forehead, too!
He took the ladle from Samuel and sipped, secure in the knowledge he held in both hands. He wasn’t thirsty, but it was necessary for them to see how elementary his power was, that there was no need to raise voices or hands and yet, with only a few words, reality had knelt to his bidding, and so simply, illustrating the only order under which it could function. He smiled.
“Their blood upon them,” Paul said, finally settling on a direct approach. He sighed. “Bleeding is so easy. The body gives up its secrets at the slightest provocation. Man is only separated from the rest of nature by his mind, his ability to know, even if that knowing was born in sin,” he said, taking a deep breath and looking dead into their closed faces. “Fruitful!” he said a little louder than he had intended. “Multiply,” he continued, raising his hand quickly and dropping the ladle, which fell to the ground and landed at Samuel’s feet.
“Pick it up,” Paul said calmly as he balanced the Bible on his lap.
Both of them rushed to do so, banging heads as they stooped. Had they not been standing so close together, Paul thought. The sun shone against the ladle and stung his eyes. He pointed to the ground, gesturing for Isaiah or Samuel to hurry and pick it up. He turned toward the sun’s direction to avoid the reflecting light and was confronted with another.
There, off in the distance, Paul saw her first as a flash, then in full form. Standing, he could be sure, at the edge of the cotton field. Actually, she was a few rows in. The cotton laced her belly like a soft belt and colorful birds flew over her head. Elizabeth held court in the morning, not in the past but here, waving at him feverishly, or was she signaling for him to come closer? Paul stood up. No, Elizabeth was telling him to go. But go where? She stopped waving. Her hands returned to her sides. Paul rubbed his eyes. He looked to the field again. Elizabeth was gone in a blink and took meaning with her.
When Paul returned to himself and saw Samuel and Isaiah standing, looking wide-eyed at him, like he was the one in danger, he wanted to laugh, but he scowled instead. The mercy in him was walking away, no less stunned by his actions than they were, needing, maybe more than ever before, the bitterness of spirits.
It was the first time in a long time that he had felt anything resembling doubt. Unclear of what his mother appearing on the white bluff had portended or why her calm face belied her frantic manner, he walked away, nevertheless, confident in his stride lest everyone else imagine him unsure, to their own peril.
Why turn back and see those two boys—whom he now knew, in just that short time with them, he had to sell, not because he wouldn’t be able to increase their stock with children from their seed, but because acts of defiance were always, unequivocally, contagious. He told himself that his sadness, which had mysteriously bubbled up out of nowhere and sat heavy in the pit of his chest, rested in the troublesome arrangements that now had to be made on behalf of two insolent niggers, and not in the fact that being in their presence had almost convinced him that they belonged together, leaned up against each other in their confusion.
He had been a disruption, but not the kind he had hoped. He, maybe, strengthened their bond, gave them the sense that together they could make a way out of no way, which was what the nature of their work had been if Paul wanted to be honest with himself. His plans worked too well. It was he who encouraged them to work in tandem, in unison, and they had but followed his instruction. It was his own fault that he neglected to recall how they lacked nuance or the depth of knowledge that allowed for a measured existence. He only had to see it for himself, witness . . .
No! Coming here—to witness what? Niggers behaving as such; low-to-the-ground things, after all, acted lowly—was an error. The whole enterprise had conveyed to them, however slightly, that they were of some value. This was a mistake.
There couldn’t be peace. Paul couldn’t let there be. There was something in his center, a jagged thing, that stuck him at the very thought. He would never admit to this, but there was something wild coating him, not so much an armor as a balm. And it drove him frantically toward his home. His steps, however, were unsure, the ground wavy. He felt a heaviness of limbs that made him stumble. The Bible, wet with his perspiration, slipped from his grasp. His knees hit the dirt, and before all things darkened, he saw Timothy sprint toward him.
What was he doing on the ground? Ah, yes. He must have passed out from the heat. He told himself that it wasn’t his proximity to the glow of either Isaiah or Samuel that had done it. And was there even a glow, or had he imagined it? Slaves sometimes rubbed themselves with oils from vegetation so that the sun would light them up. That had to be it.
The sun was doubly at fault, then. Yes, it was the scorching sun that hit him in the head with its rays, and he just needed the sweetness of well water to bring him back to himself. Paul looked around, weary. Some of the slaves had gathered, surrounding him, crying, asking if he was all right, taking away all of the air he needed to return to power. He shooed them away, told them to git, and rose too quickly to his feet. He took a wobbly first step and fell down to his knees. Timothy helped him stand up again. Paul dusted himself off and took another step. He asked Timothy to pick up his Bible and then slowly and even-keeled, he walked back to the house, Timothy following behind.
Paul rode silently in the coach later that night, almost obscured by the shadows that came from the cover of trees. Adam drove the horses at a slow, steady pace, their hooves stepping to whatever rhythm he indulged. Paul stared at the back of Adam’s head through the coach opening. He noticed that Adam had begun to lose his hair at the crown. Had he really been born that long ago? Despite impeccable records, Paul began to doubt that he had been employed at this business for so long. But Adam was indisputable evidence.
There was a faint light coming from the town; the glow of lanterns and candles made things seem softer than they actually were and this brought Paul unexpected calm. In this calm, he paid attention to the town in a way he never bothered to before. It was still bustling, even though the shops were closed for a while now. But horses and slaves were still tied to some posts, and night ladies and rugged men with wide-brim hats and holsters, some of which were empty, casually walked the wide dirt road that split downtown in half. They were headed for the one place that had just begun to open up.
The saloon doors swung back and forth and body after body made their way into the space. Smoke and laughter escaped and reached Paul as Adam pulled the coach up to the post outside. Adam jumped down from his seat and tied the reins to the post before quick-stepping over to the coach to open the door for Paul. Paul stepped down slowly. He tugged on his collar and pulled down the brim of his hat so that his nose and mouth could be readily seen, but one had to do a bit of work to make eye contact.
“Mind the coach,” he said to Adam. “And you have your papers.”
“Yessuh,” Adam said as he nodded his head and then let his chin rest on his chest.
Paul passed a few fellows saddling up horses, friends of James, who were all cheerful enough.
“Mr. Halifax,” they said.
Paul turned to acknowledge them but made no other overture. The men read this as disrespect. But since they weren’t courageous enough to confront Paul directly about their grievance, they turned, instead, to Adam.
“You would almost think that nigger was a white man, but just out in the sun a little too long,” one said to the others.
Paul smiled and hopped up onto the boardwalk leading to the saloon.
He pushed through the saloon doors, and they creaked back and forth several times before they were still. Inside, it was cooler than he had expected it to be and a shiver shook him before dissipating at the back of his neck. Something sweet scented the air and mixed with the blunt aroma of cigars. People passed in front of him, not recognizing him at first, too caught up in the mood, which, if it could be given a color, would be crimson because it was almost as if the lanterns had been covered in some careless woman’s frock and the caress between the two would dim the whole world, recast it in the light of a fast-pumping heart, or even the blood that shot through veins with such force that one could hear the rush. This, of course, before the heat was too much and everything caught fire, but people were too rapt to notice the world burning around them, ashes mistaken for confetti.
Paul carried that crimson inside him against his will. He promised himself not to let it escape or taint his thoughts. Looking at the women in dresses buttoned to their necks, some with smiles that he didn’t recognize as strained, and the men with jugs in their hands, raising them, occasionally, in the air, awkwardly spilling some of their contents onto giggling bodies as a prelude to what will happen when they leave and step behind the saloon, behind water barrels, hidden by the starlight that couldn’t reach them. Dresses raised up and pants pulled down, and then the gyrations that don’t last very long at all before both parties feel a bit of shame as they don’t look at each other when they part. This was Vicksburg, yes, but it was also the whole world. James didn’t share much about England, Paul thought, but there was so much revealed in his silence and eyes that refused to be looked into. Paul was sure that not even an ocean between them could eliminate the ways and means that connected them.
He found his way to a back corner of the saloon and sat at a small table closest to the wall. Since he had chosen to come without James, who was often the buffer between him and the nosy Vicksburg denizens, he wanted to be as tucked into a corner as he possibly could. He preferred that James remain at Elizabeth this time, ensuring safety because he would be out late as he needed to be. He wanted to contemplate his next move without interference and arrive at his decision without James’s judgments or simplifications. That was his right as a man.
The barmaid made her way through the crowd toward him. He barely acknowledged her beyond a quick dissection that attempted to see, foolishly, what she didn’t uncover, even when she asked what he wanted to drink and even when she returned with a bottle of whiskey and a glass whose cleanliness was suspect.
“I know you,” Paul heard someone say at a distance too close for anyone with the proper manners. “You own that cotton farm over yonder. Halifax, ain’t it?”
Paul turned only slightly to see the skinny man in a hat with a jug of ale in his hand. “Elizabeth Plantation.” He nodded, simply to acknowledge him, hoping he would leave.
“We never see you ’round here without your cousin. Where’s James, too drunk to drink?”
Paul snickered and poured himself a little bit of whiskey and took a gulp.
“Jake. Jake Davis,” the man said, extending his hand to Paul, which Paul sized up and took a moment too long to finally shake. “Can I join you?”
Paul grunted and poured more whiskey into the glass. He shrugged his shoulders. Jake raised a finger and mouthed words for the bartender to send over a bottle of gin.
“Your cousin tells me that you’re looking to sell a couple of studs,” Jake said. “As it turns out, I know a buyer ready to pay you top dollar. Much more than you would get at auction.”
Paul looked at Jake with narrowed eyes. “Hm. And if that’s the case, I wonder why this buyer can’t just attend the auction like anyone else.” He took a swig of whiskey. “And I also wonder what you might want in exchange for introducing me to this buyer.”
Someone had sat down behind the piano, a man with large eyes and a mustache that grew over his mouth. His grin was too big for his face, Paul thought, and made him seem more like a painting of a man that an artist had gotten wrong. The man banged his fingers down on the keys and the first couple of notes had missed their mark. He was drunk, surely, but soon the melody made sense and the pitch was pleasurable. The man sat as upright as he could and barely looked down. Instead, he looked out at the people who had begun to clap and dance.
Paul tapped his foot because the rhythm reminded him of something his mother’s attendants used to sing to lull her and make her forget about the pain that came with wasting away. In one of the moments when she was lucid, she had described it to him, the pain. She said it was like someone was trying to pull her out of the world by folding her lengthwise until there was nothing left. And each fold, she said, felt like a red-hot poker being laid upon her soul.
“It burns,” she said.
Paul gave her water, but it didn’t matter, she said. It would just cloud everything in steam and she needed him to see what happened to her so it wouldn’t happen to him. He didn’t understand what she meant then and he still didn’t understand. The piano notes brought him back and his foot tapped a little faster now. He took another gulp and he started to feel the numbing, the buzzing, the light-headedness that he was looking for to help him forget—no, to help him remember that it was a not a loss that brought him here and there was no use in grieving. James had made it plain and only Paul’s pride had prevented him from seeing that this was merely the price of doing business. And what was a win if it wasn’t a strategy that ended in profit?
“He’s a private man,” Jake said. “Not much for public things like auctions. And before you ask, he likes to conduct business directly so he doesn’t send men in lieu of him.”
“And yet, here you are,” Paul replied.
The saloon shook as the men rose in song, something Paul had never heard before. They were slurring and off-key, but that almost seemed to be the point. Merriment had its own way, and the messiness of it all, under the red-red light, in the fuzziness of Paul’s inebriated senses, wasn’t just a kind of beauty, but beauty itself. He felt loose enough to stand and raise his glass.
“He didn’t really send me,” Jake said. “I sort of volunteered. As a favor to James.”
Paul looked down at Jake, who was still seated. “James said nothing to me.”
“I told him not to. Not unless I could be sure. But then you walked in here tonight and that was . . .”
“Providence,” Paul said.
He turned back to the table and grabbed the bottle and, this time, drank straight from it. Some of the whiskey missed his mouth and dribbled down his chin. His condition made it so that he didn’t care. Come to think of it, right now, he didn’t care about a lot of things. Not Isaiah and Samuel, not Ruth, not Timothy, not the plantation, not nothing. And the load that was loosened from him made him feel like he might well float right up to the ceiling with no earthly idea on how to get back down. And he didn’t care about that, either.
“So when can I meet this mysterious gentleman?” Paul said to Jake.
“As a matter of fact, he’s here. He’s out back. As I said before, he’s not much of a people person and prefers his privacy.”
“If he prefers his privacy, what is he doing in the back of a saloon?”
“He has other business to attend to. Otherwise, he’d be home.”
“And where is home? In fact, what is this man’s name?”
“You should save all of these questions for him. You won’t be disappointed. Follow me, Halifax. Right this way.”
So Paul followed Jake as he led him to the back, where the music could still be heard through the open door. The red-red light had followed them, too, but fainter now, confoundedly absorbed by the night as they strayed farther and farther away from the tumult that he strangely, but unmistakably, craved. Bottle still in hand, he took another swig before they made it out the back door of the saloon.
The bottle was all but dry and he threw it and lost his footing and fell down laughing. Jake helped him back up. When he got to his feet, he saw three men standing beside Jake.
“All right. So which one of these men is . . . Mr. Privacy?”
Jake said nothing as the three men charged Paul. They knocked him to the ground. Paul kicked one of them in the face and the man fell back, but the other two kept on him.
“His pockets!” Jake yelled and the two men began to tug at Paul’s pants. Paul went for his holster and one of the men grabbed his arm, trying to prevent him from pulling out his gun. Then the man whom Paul kicked returned to the fray and began to help the one who was trying to wrestle the gun from Paul. The third man, meanwhile, had managed to take the banknotes from Paul’s pocket and also pulled the gold watch from the chain attached to Paul’s waistband. He held it up to Jake.
“I got it!” he exclaimed.
“Good! Let’s go!”
One man grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it in Paul’s eyes. Paul covered his face and the men took off running. Blinking and trying to rub the dirt away, Paul fired off a shot in the direction he thought they were running. He couldn’t really see if he had hit his target. He tapped his shirt pocket and pulled out a handkerchief and began to wipe his face. He slumped against the rear wall of the saloon, looked up to the starry sky, and shook his head.
“Auction it is,” he whispered.
He slid down the wall until his ass hit the ground. He looked at his shoes a moment before he stood up. At least they didn’t take my shoes. Then he laughed. Then he laughed full belly. Then, finally, he fell backward onto the ground, unable to control the laughter that rocked his whole body. He had never before felt so light. He wished he could keep falling backward, relishing the flutter in the pit of his stomach, the tickle at the bottom of his sack. But he got up again because he thought he could float. When he was no closer to the stars than he had ever been, he swatted the thought away with his hand.
He stumbled toward the front of the saloon. He turned the corner and he saw his horse and coach, and Adam in the driver’s seat nodding off, head jerking before he caught himself and returned to the upright position. Paul straightened himself, but his mind still belonged to the whiskey.
“Where’s my boy?” he said with a smile on his face. “I need my boy.”
Adam, still dozing, didn’t hear him.
Paul got closer and repeated himself but louder. Adam shook and turned to see Paul standing there, disheveled. Forgetting himself, he recoiled at the sight of a smiling Paul. Realizing what this might earn him, he quickly resparked the dying light in the lantern at his side. He jumped down from his seat, lantern in hand, and bowed his head before Paul.
“Massa,” he said in a voice that had traces of interrupted sleep all up in it. “Is everything all right, suh?”
“Yes, my boy. Everything is perfect.” He touched Adam’s face and lifted it. He was dirtying Adam’s face with his scuffed and dusty hands. Adam’s eyes widened. “I need you, Adam.” Paul smiled with woozy eyes. “I need you to get me home right now. You hear me? Ready the horse for home. You know why?” Paul moved his face a little closer to Adam’s. “Because God has blessed us.”
“Us, Massa?” Adam interrupted before he caught himself.
“Has blessed us with the answer to my prayers. Isn’t He amazing, Adam? Doesn’t He give so much to His children, His blessed children who He has charged with stewardship of all things earthly?” Paul finally removed his hands from Adam’s face and they slipped to his chest. “Oh, sometimes I can shout, Adam,” he said. “Sometimes, I feel that I could just stand in the middle of everything, like your grandfather did, and shout to the whole entire world that there is no greater gift than to be in God’s favor. No matter how low you may fall. No matter how many times you stumble, there is no greater knowledge than knowing that everything you do is in service to God Almighty and is, therefore, righteous. That’s why your grandfather did it. I never did tell you how he spun ’round with arms extended and laughed into the sky. That’s how I know God. That’s how I know He will make a way. Just when you think there is no portion, He will come to move mountains and reveal treasures for your chest only. You may half know this. But I hope at least some of it is getting through. You aren’t us, but you aren’t them, either. So maybe I’m not wasting my time by telling you this. And if I am, no one would believe you, anyway. So it doesn’t matter.”
They stared at each other in the lantern light, two faces that were reflections of each other to even the least discerning eye. Paul saw it clearest now. In another life, they might have been actual father and son rather than the hush-hush kind. Paul swallowed the notion that Adam made a more suitable offspring than Timothy. He would shit it out later.
The light between them had started to dim and the shadows had weakened. The dark had begun to claim them.
“I think the lantern need more oil, Massa,” Adam said quietly.
“More,” Paul replied, just as quietly, just before the light went out completely and the two of them breathed heavily in the dark.
The moon, sliced in half by the encroaching darkness, was nevertheless suspended high up in the night. It could be seen through the boughs of trees, threaded against it, as Adam steered the horses slowly up the trail to the Halifax property. Adam sat erect and cautious in the driver’s seat as Paul lay back in the coach, looking straight up into the sky through its opening.
He was in and out of consciousness. His head was pounding, but he ignored it. Instead, he looked at the half-moon. He raised his palm to the sky and blotted it out, then put his hand back down. It was easier than he thought to pull the moon out of the sky. He looked at his dirty hands and then down at his torn clothing. Empty pockets. No pocket watch. To find one’s self the winner even when life had designated you the loser. If his trip to the saloon taught him anything, it taught him that. Slumber finally caught up to him. The moon he saw now was inside his head, still half, but less bright.
The horses moved slowly by Adam’s hand. The road was gentle and rocked Paul and the half-moon that was now inside him. Other than the half-eaten moon that had now left him, Paul didn’t remember much about the ride other than how comforting it was, and he was startled not just by what seemed too quick a journey (and whiskey-induced slumber was always the best kind), but by Adam, who was now leaning in near his face. Too close.
“What are you doing?” Paul asked.
He sat up, finally. Adam moved back a bit, faced the ground, and said something Paul had no interest in hearing. They remained like that—ground-seeker and gazer—until discomfort set in. Paul then told Adam to take him to the house. Adam walked to the horses, grabbed their reins, and led them through the gate he had obviously opened while Paul slept. They approached the house. Adam helped Paul out of the coach.
“You need me for anything else, Massa?” he asked.
Paul shook his head because he didn’t have the patience for words and moreover didn’t wish to waste them. He stumbled less and walked slowly toward the house.
“You all right?” Adam asked.
Paul just waved him off. Adam led the horses by their reins, coach still attached, over toward the barn.
Paul continued walking, now more steadily, toward the house. All of the lights were out, except for a warm, dim glow coming from Timothy’s room. He hated that Timothy stayed up so late and painted by such low light. The quickest way to harm the eyes, he thought. Then he saw tussling shadows in the window just as the light went out completely. Pigs squealed and he perhaps heard hooves and cowbells.
His heart became a fist in his chest, trying very hard to batter its way out. He removed his pistol from its holster at his hip and ran to the house, moving quicker than his body would normally allow. He tripped on the first porch stair and banged his knee. He crawled up the next four stairs and stood, finally, at the top and stumbled into the entrance door, pushing it open with such force that it hit its adjoining wall and swung back into Paul’s face. Annoyed, he pushed it out of his way, but gentler this time, and started for the inside staircase. He called for Maggie but didn’t wait around for her to show up. He took the stairs two at a time and stumbled, again, at the top for being unable to see in such thick darkness. He called for Maggie again, this time waiting for her to arrive with a candle or lantern, which he would snatch from her the moment she appeared. But she didn’t. He would remember that come sunrise. He took off down the hall toward Timothy’s room, calling for him and for Ruth as he sped down the long stretch of it. Where was Ruth?
He was breathing heavily now but didn’t let that prevent him from reaching Timothy’s door, which he kicked open. The room was dark, there wasn’t even a bit of moonlight coming in through the window for him to see the outline of things. He walked quickly into the room and bumped into the bed. He ran his hands across the bed but felt nothing. He climbed on the bed and crept across it quickly; too quickly, and his foot got caught in the blanket and he twisted and turned and fell off the side. He landed on something, something soft and wet. He felt around; it was a body and it was sticky. He got on his knees and looked close.
It was Timothy.
He tried to pick him up, but he was heavy, so he only got the top half of the body onto his lap. He touched Timothy’s face and felt a deep, soggy gash in it. It took his breath away. He jumped up, dropping the body to the floor.
He looked up, his lips quivered like a cowardly man’s, and he shook his head slowly, disbelief grabbing him soundly. He screamed.
For the first time, he cursed God, over and over again. Then he stopped midcurse, because that was when he saw it.
From the corner of his eye. Some sparkling thing. A twinkle. A spark. A sudden flash. An elusive memory. A silver fish in a stream. Sunlight at the edge of a wave. A thunderbolt in a passing cloud. The last note in a song.
He raised his gun just as he caught, briefly, the night. Yes, unbelievable, but true: the night was coming at him and it had teeth, gleaming teeth that had apparently kept their brightness from a steady diet of white flesh.