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The Prodigy Slave, Book Three: The Ultimate Grand Finale (Revised Edition 2020)

Page 57

by Londyn Skye


  January 16, 1845

  Two days after selling Lily

  Twenty-four hours after auctioning off his only daughter, Levi had yet to return home. After feverishly searching, Colt and Wyatt found their father face down in a pile of leaves at the bottom of an embankment, surrounded by empty liquor bottles. The brothers frantically made their way down the hill and rolled him over. He was pale, clammy, and completely unconscious. They rushed him to the town doctor where he was treated for dehydration and severe alcohol poisoning. Once coherent, Levi still refused to utter a word to his sons and to the doctor about why he had nearly drunk himself to death.

  Colt and Wyatt took their father home afterward, all three riding in complete silence. The look on Levi’s face and his demeanor was enough to make the boys realize that probing him for answers to his bizarre disappearance would have been met with stern resistance. The boys’ mother had been very coy around them as she went about pressuring Levi to sell Lily. But Wyatt was now old enough to read between the lines. However, he was convinced that the urgency to sell Lily was due to financial strain, a common issue in their household. Lily’s paternity was never even a fleeting thought in Wyatt’s mind, let alone the possibility that his father was in love with her mother. Levi’s example of high morality left Wyatt confident in his father’s faithfulness, even despite the increased tension he had noticed between his parents.

  So as young Wyatt guided the horses into the shed of their home, he had deduced that his father’s bizarre behavior was caused by yet another financial crisis. But after walking around to the back to help his father down, his confidence in that began to unravel. Wyatt and Colt stared at their beloved father lying flat on his back, looking as broken as they had ever seen a human in their lives. The sight of it had the brothers suddenly fighting to choke back a need to cry. They were truly disturbed by how debilitated their father seemed. They knew he had sold slaves during financial disasters in the past, so they were dumbfounded as to why selling Lily seemed to have instantly changed him into a man who was now like a shattered, lifeless stranger.

  “Go on to school,” Levi murmured, refusing to get up from where he lay.

  Despite their deep concern, the boys honored their father’s wish and left him alone in the shed. As they exited, they saw their mother standing on the porch. Her fury was evident to them by the way she had her hands perched on her hips. Her face was fire red as she glared at them through the slits in her lowered eyelids. Emily had been nonchalant about the fact that her own husband was missing. Wyatt almost got the sense that she was hoping he never returned. His mother’s dismissive attitude about their missing father continued to fuel Wyatt’s rage. As much as he tried to expunge such ungodly emotions, they had already saturated his soul. As his mother stood on the porch, he glared back at her, visions of mercilessly lashing her with a whip still vividly playing in his mind. He now wished she was the one to permanently disappear. He was certain that he would never have wasted a minute of sleep to search for her. That had not been the case with his father, however. Despite their mother’s objection, Colt and Wyatt had snuck out before dawn to look for him. Wyatt was hoping that she would overlook their disobedience when he told her the good news, but that was hardly the case.

  “Where have you two been?!” Emily screamed when her sons stepped onto the porch.

  “W-we were out lookin’ for pa. We finally found ’em,” Wyatt replied.

  “Nobody told you to do that!”

  “I know, but we were worried about ’em. It wasn’t like him not to come home. And we were right. When we found ’em, he was really sick.”

  “You’re right! He is sick! Sick ‘a bein’ a real man! Sick ‘a handlin’ his responsibilities, the way a real man should! So, he tucked tail and ran like the sissy little boy that he is! And I didn’t need eitha’ of you draggin’ that immature little baby back here! He would’ve come home when he decided to start actin’ like a damn grown man!”

  “HE ALMOST DIED AND YOU ACT LIKE YOU DON’T EVEN CARE!” Wyatt erupted. He then suddenly felt his neck crack from the force with which his mother slapped him across the face.

  “That’s because I don’t!” Emily replied coldly, glaring at her son as he held his bloody lip. “Just like I don’t care about any ‘a you disobedient little heathens! I regret havin’ every last one ‘a you disrespectful monsta’s! And if you disrespect me again, I’ll tie you up to a tree and whip every ounce ‘a flesh off your back!” She pushed both boys toward the steps. “Now go on to school where you damn well should’ve been in the first place!”

  Wyatt felt as though the whip would have hurt far less than his mother’s confession. He and Colt ran off to school, both feeling as though her callous words had stripped them of their spirit.

  After her boys were gone, Emily glared at the shed, hoping the reason her husband had yet to emerge was because he had perished where he lay. For once Emily and Levi wanted the exact same thing. Levi was lying in the back of the wagon, staring at the barn roof, far too paralyzed by grief to move a muscle. During his severe state of intoxication, his mind had partially blacked out. He did not even recall how much, or even what, he had drunk. But as he laid there now, thinking about Maya and Lily, he suddenly regretted that his sons had found him before his body had a chance to succumb to whatever alcoholic poison he had consumed.

  As Levi lie there alone, the weight of what he had done finally hit him full force. It was the first time he had enough mental clarity to realize that his trip to a Negro auction with Lily was not just some God-awful nightmare. It was all real. The one thing that bonded him to the woman he loved was now long gone. He suddenly sat straight up when that fact caused a sudden urge to vomit. He quickly stuck his head over the side of the wagon, just as he began to dry heave. Having not eaten for two days, it was only stomach acid and saliva that flooded his mouth. When his stomach stopped spasming, he swallowed back the bitter taste and wiped his mouth on a cloth.

  After gathering the strength to get out of the wagon, Levi walked over and looked out of the shed door at Maya’s cottage in the distance. The little person he loved more than life itself was no longer residing within its walls. The reason for that caused his head to lower in shame. As he looked at the very hands that had carried her away, his tears began saturating the dirt. The weight of guilt made it nearly impossible for him to lift his migraine-stricken head. Inside his head, an array of thoughts pounded away at him with as much force as his migraine. Simply thinking about the dark, desolate hole that he had cast Maya into had Levi’s heart pumping so fast that he felt it was on the verge of exploding. He felt a desperate need to inhale and exhale deeply, but the massive lump in his throat made him feel as though his airway was constricted. His stomach was suddenly so tightly twisted into knots that even vomiting again felt impossible. Sweat poured profusely from every pore on his body, soaking his filthy clothes. A surge of adrenaline suddenly flooded his muscles, instantly turning on his fight or flight instincts. As desperately as he preferred to flee, Levi forced himself to stay and fight. He wanted to fight to heal the woman he loved, fight for Maya’s forgiveness, and fight to feel her love again. But after his unforgivable sin, he knew the only thing he would ultimately be fighting to do was accept that Maya would now hate him for the remainder of her life. Despite that painful reality, Levi knew that an explanation and a sincere apology for his actions was long overdue. He blew out a cleansing breath and accepted that logic would never suffice as an adequate reason for his betrayal, nor would it even remotely alleviate Maya’s suffering. Still, though, he knew he owed her at least that much. With nervousness rattling his bones, he took his first step out of the shed.

  Emily peeked her head out of the window, just in time to see the pathetic sight of her husband dragging his feet toward Maya’s cottage. Since he did not perish in the shed, Emily was hoping Maya’s homicidal rage would be the cause of his death instead. But at the very least, she was satisfied by the fact that the auctioning off the
ir bastard had savagely murdered any love Maya felt for Levi. That fact brought genuine joy to Emily’s vengeful dark heart. With a grand devilish smile plastered on her haggard face, she closed the curtains and went back to her household duties with reinvigorated energy.

  In contrast, a trail of tears marked Levi’s somber journey from the shed to the doorstep of Maya’s cottage. When he was just yards away from the door, he stopped to catch his breath when he swore he felt himself suffocating in the cloud of misery Maya emitted. He inhaled deeply and then forced his feet to guide him the rest of the way. He placed his hand on the doorknob, but what he heard on the other side of the door made him hesitate to turn it. The sounds within those walls far superseded misery. In fact, Levi could think of no word that could adequately describe the anguished sobbing, piercing through the walls and torturing his ears. The despondent, nonstop wailing immediately brought forth another surge of Levi’s tears and, once again, turned on his desire to flee the scene. He ignored his cowardly desires, however, and forced himself to turn the doorknob. What his ears had heard did not remotely compare to the agonizing sight of the shattered woman now in his vision. He immediately wished that he had perished in the woods, anything to render him blind and deaf to what he was currently witnessing.

  Levi slowly closed his eyes, already wanting to erase this moment from his mind. Maya lay in the fetal position on the floor, clutching one of Lily’s dresses. Her wailing and bodily convulsions were equivalent to someone suffering intense bursts of physical torture. She was coughing and fighting to catch her breath, nearly suffocating herself as she inhaled her own mucus and tears. She remained covered in dirt from their scuffle two days prior. Her dress was torn, and dried blood remained on her back from where Wyatt had whipped her. Her eyes were black and blue, the right one nearly swollen shut. The blood and dirt on her face were washed away by a river of endless tears. She looked weak and frail. It was clear to see that just two days without food and water - and her daughter - had already taken a major physical toll.

  “Maya,” Levi tearfully whispered, sounding just as sullen as she looked.

  Maya’s sobbing continued.

  Levi approached her, got down on his knees, and touched her. “Maya.”

  She did not react to his touch. “Unless, y-you’re h-here to t-take me to m-my little g-girl, or to p-put me outta m-my misery, I don’t w-want you h-here,” she coughed.

  “Maya, can you please gimme a chance to explain?”

  “G-go aw-way.”

  “Maya, please, it’s just that I … I just needed to buy some time until I could figure out …”

  “Buy some time?!” Maya spat, whipping her head around and penetrating Levi with an icy glare. “Buy some time?! At the cost of rippin’ Lily’s heart out?!”

  “Maya, please let me explain, I…”

  “I don’t give a damn about your explanation!” Maya sat up even taller and squinted her swollen eyes at Levi. “Do you honestly believe there’s anything you could say to me that would make me hate you any less than I do right now?!”

  “No, but I…”

  “I’m convinced this a punishment to me for not tellin’ Lily who you were!”

  “No Maya, that’s not it, I swear!”

  “LIAR! I see you look at me with disdain every time she called you masta’!”

  “No, Maya, you don’t unda’stand. I just needed to buy some time until I could figure out…”

  “I said I don’t want your goddamn explanation! I want my baby back, you heartless son of a bitch!” Maya shrieked, suddenly springing to her feet. In a barbaric rage, she picked up her music box and threw it at Levi. She then picked up her telescope and began thrashing everything in the room. Levi took a step back, his mouth agape as he watched her destroy everything within her reach, swinging wildly and yelling like an asylum lunatic. She bashed and beat until her beloved telescope was left as nothing more than a useless scrap of metal. She tossed it aside and advanced on Levi. “You promised you’d neva’ hurt her!” she cried repeatedly as she began to beat wildly against Levi’s chest with the sides of her fists. He just took every one of her blows in silence, not daring to stop her. He felt he deserved far more abuse than what she was capable of giving him. Maya beat him until she slumped to the floor in exhaustion. “J-just p-put me outta my m-misery,” she begged, rocking back and forth on her knees, a river of tears pouring from her eyes. “Please, I don’t w-wanna l-live without m-my b-baby.”

  “Maya,” Levi reached down to help her up.

  She slapped his hand away, buried her face in her hands again, and remained collapsed in an inconsolable heap. “Sh-shoot me. Please! Just p-put me outta my m-misery. I don’t w-wanna live no mo’ without my b-baby … pleeease. I’m b-beggin’ you,” she whispered, as she continued to weep uncontrollably.

  Levi slowly backed away, accepting responsibility for the devastation he had caused a woman he loved more than anything. He went into the barn and drank himself into another liquor-induced coma, trying to obliterate the images of Maya crumpled on the floor. The visions were just as torturous as the look on Lily’s face, when she called him a word that he had been desperate to hear her say since her birth … Daddy.

  *****

  Daddy … As the years rolled by, that one word began to have a debilitating effect on Levi Collins. At various moments throughout his day, it echoed in his head. The solitary word was always accompanied by a perfectly preserved vision of Lily shackled in the back of Jesse’s wagon, her bottom lip quivering, and a sorrowful expression on her dirt-covered face. Daddy, he heard as a flash of Lily appeared in his mind, gazing at him with a set of tear-filled eyes that were an exact replica of his. In Levi’s head, the sound of confusion and heartbreak in Lily’s youthful voice was always just as fresh as the moment she had uttered that single word … Daddy.

  For fourteen years, there seemed to be nothing Levi could do to escape that visual and that word. While hard at work in the fields … Daddy. While barely ingesting each of his meals … Daddy. While talking to his friends … Daddy. While driving his horse’s into town … Daddy. While sitting stone-faced in the church pews every Sunday … Daddy. Seeing the efforts Maya went through to evade him … Daddy. Every father he saw with their daughters … Daddy. The last sound echoing before he drifted off to sleep … Daddy. The recurring nightmare he was jolted awake by … Daaaddyyy! Please take me back to my maaama!

  The one word that Levi was desperate to hear from his only daughter failed to bring him joy, but instead brought him fourteen years of inescapable torture. It drove his appetite away, drove his health to fail, drove his creativity into the ground, and drove his craving to play piano into a craving to try to drink that word away. The nights that Levi was awakened by the nightmare of selling Lily, he often sat in the barn drinking and banging his fists against his temples, trying to beat the haunting memory from his brain before it drove him completely insane.

  Levi’s downward spiral into insanity was compounded by the permanent shift in Maya’s demeanor. For the fourteen years that Lily was gone, he could do nothing but painfully watch from afar as Maya withered away. He had watched Maya carefully whenever rainbows lit up the sky, hoping for the slim chance that her smile would light up too. But she never even raised her head to acknowledge them anymore. That simple absence of emotion, during the rare celestial event, was all it took to convince Levi that he had completely destroyed the person that Maya once was. Selling Lily had immediately devoured her jubilant nature. Levi had to live with the fact that he was responsible for Maya’s dramatic weight loss. It was he, who had caused the ever-present sullen look on her face, and the sunken eyes that seemed to always be on the verge of tears. He had robbed her of her goddess-like, graceful movements, and caused her to now seem lifeless and mechanical. Her zest for life and nature were now only present in the beautiful memories that Levi had of her. The vivid memories of the old Maya made him so keenly aware of how she had been swallowed by sadness, and had remained subme
rged there, since the day she lost her daughter. Levi Collins simply had to accept that the man he faced in the mirror every day had completely destroyed a woman who meant the world to him.

  The fact that Maya had quickly withered away into an empty shell of a person brought the utmost joy to Levi’s wife. Emily had expected that outcome for Maya. But Levi’s mental, emotional, and physical collapse, was far worse than she had anticipated. The implosion of her husband’s life made Lily’s absence all the more worth it for her. Uplifted by the success of her mission, Emily gallivanted around the farm with an air of pride, as she watched Levi and Maya both writhe in misery for fourteen long years. She was convinced that there was nothing that Levi could ever do Maya to revitalize the person she once was, or to restore the love that Maya once felt for him. Levi, however, was convinced otherwise.

  From the moment he had cast Maya into an emotional abyss, Levi obsessively thought about the day he would be free to pull her out from the pits of despair. He longed to see life in her eyes and feel her jubilance. He prayed for God to let him live to see the day that Maya, once again, lit up with a smile, as she gazed in awe at her precious rainbows. He looked forward to a future when “yes sir” and “no sir” were not the only words she ever said to him. Just one more time, he hoped to experience the warmth he once felt whenever he caught Maya discreetly smiling at him. The sweet sound of Maya’s laughter was now a faded memory that Levi hoped to refresh. He often fantasized that there might even come a day when Maya allowed him the honor of touching her, kissing her, and making love to her again. But at the very least, he hoped the day would come when she could forgive him, and look at him with warmth in her eyes, instead of the cold hatred that she had penetrated him with for over a decade.

  Levi had once counted down the days that Maya was to deliver the most precious, life-changing treasure he had ever received. And now, for fourteen years, he had been counting down the minutes until he could deliver the very same life-changing gift for Maya. Unlike Emily, Levi knew exactly what, or rather who, it would take to revitalize the woman Maya once was.

 

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