A Perilous Proposal

by Michael Phillips

  Sometimes Jake talked to Micah, sometimes he just lay watching him putter about the barn fixing things and tidying it up. In later years, Jake Patterson always looked back on these few days as the season of his life when he began to come awake. The deeper part of him . . . the real him, the thoughtful him, the spiritual part of him—what folks might call his soul. Jake didn’t realize it yet. Most people don’t realize when they begin to come awake. It’s only later, when they look back, that they can see that things were happening to poke at the sleepiness of their soul to make it wake up. That’s how it was for Jake. He was still young and at an age when most people’s souls are still mostly asleep. All through life, situations and circumstances poke at people’s souls, trying to make them uncomfortable enough to realize that they’re asleep. Some people wake up when they grow into adulthood. Other people never wake up no matter how long they live.

  “What do you think, Duff?” Jake asked one time. “You think I’ll eber be a free man like you?”

  “That depends on what you mean, Jake.”

  “I mean, duz you think I’ll eber be free instead ob a slave?”

  “There’s all kinds of freedom and all kinds of slavery.”

  “Dere you go agin sayin’ da most out ob da way things so’s I don’t know what you’s talkin’ ’bout!”

  Micah laughed. “You know more than you think you know, Jake,” he said. “You just gotta figure out what you know.”

  “So what you talkin’ ’bout wiff dat different kinds er freedom talk?”

  “There’s freedom inside and outside,” replied Duff. “There’s lots of men like me who are free on the outside but aren’t free inside. They aren’t free from themselves. There are also lots of slaves like you who are really free on the inside because they’ve discovered what life means. That’s the only kind of freedom that really matters in the end.”

  “Dere you go talkin’ riddles agin, Duff!”

  It’s not easy to describe what one person does for another. It’s not always in outward ways, in things that are actually said. It’s the small experiences that add up to a different way of looking at things. That’s what Micah Duff did for Jake—he helped him look at things different, and to see and understand things that most folks never look at.

  Like when he was chopping some wood one day to add to the Dawsons’ woodpile, Micah stopped and picked up two chunks of the pine, looked at them back and forth, then turned to Jake.

  “What do these two pieces of wood remind you of, Jake?” he said, holding them toward him in his hands.

  “Dey jes’ look like two pieces ob wood ter me.”

  “They’re more than that, Jake. When God made the two trees that these two pieces came from, He put meaning inside those trees. Did you know that God put meaning into everything He made?”

  “Guess I neber thought ’bout it afore.”

  “Well, think about it, Jake. You gotta think about it. We’re supposed to think about it. Whenever we look around us, we’re supposed to find out the meaning God put into the things we see. That’s the only way to figure out what life means. We’ve got to figure out the meaning God put into the things around us.”

  “So what dose two bits er wood in yo hands—what dey mean, Duff? Dey don’t look like dey mean nuthin’. Dey jes’ wood, dat’s all.”

  “Just wood—I reckon you’re right, Jake. But wood with God’s meaning inside it.—Look, here’s a piece with straight grain running from top to bottom, straight and even and true. But look at this other piece. It’s full of knots. Its grain is all twisted and gnarled and going all kinds of directions. When I look at these two pieces of wood, Jake, I see two people. I see a person who’s straight and true and good. I see a person who, when he tells you something, you know it’s right because his word is as straight and true as he is inside. He’s a person whose grain is straight. But when I look at this other chunk of wood, I see a person who is all twisted up, whose inside is full of knots. He’s a pretty confused person who doesn’t know which direction he wants to grow and doesn’t know what kind of person he wants to be. That’s why his grain is growing in so many directions, because he’s all mixed up inside. You ever know a gnarled-up person, Jake, who looked like this piece of wood?”

  “I don’t know, Duff.”

  “I have. I don’t doubt this man whose farm we’re staying at is pretty gnarled up inside. He’s full of a lot of things going a lot of different directions in him, making knots in his character. So is his daughter, if she lied about what you did. What kind of person tells lies, Jake? A person who’s twisted up inside, and whose grain doesn’t run straight and true.”

  Duff turned around, set the two chunks on the chopping block, then brought the ax down first on one, then the other, until they were split into smaller pieces, then tossed them into the woodbox and continued on. For a while the sound of the ax and the splitting wood was the only sound to be heard. Then Jake spoke up again from where he lay.

  “How’d you git ter be such a deep thinker, Duff?” he said. “Sumtimes you remin’ me of a preacher. You eber been a preacher, Duff?”

  Micah laughed like Jake had never heard him.

  “I’m no preacher, that’s for sure!”

  “You sounds like one ter me.”

  “I suppose I am a thinker,” Duff went on. “But everybody’s got a brain. It’s just that some folks put theirs to use. That’s another thing I decided after I was eleven, that I wanted to use the brain God gave me. Everybody thinks, Jake. Some people don’t point their brains in directions that do them any good. They just think about things that are gone the next day, like smoke from that fire out there cooking our supper. Their thoughts just go up and are gone.”

  “Yeah, I reckon I can see dat, all right.”

  “I decided that I ought to spend my time thinking about things that mattered. That’s when I began to think about myself and whether the grain in my life was straight and true, or all knotted up.”

  “Dat soun’s like mighty big things fo sum eleben-year-old boy ter be thinkin’ ’bout. I shore neber did. I neber eben wud er thought ’bout none ob dis now effen it weren’t fo you. What made you think ’bout such things, Duff?”

  “I didn’t think about them all when I was eleven. That’s just when it started. That’s when I met an old man who took care of me for a spell. He taught me how to think.”

  “What kind er man? A colored man?”

  “No, a white man. A mysterious fellow with a big beard who kept to himself. But he happened along when I was in a bad fix. He helped me maybe a little bit like I’m helping you, Jake, though in a different way. He helped me begin thinking and understanding life and God and the order of things and fitting in with that order.”

  “I ain’t shore what you mean by dat, Duff,” said Jake.

  “What exactly?”

  “Da order ob things . . . what you mean by dat?”

  “I just mean life and God and how things work and how you and I fit into them,” replied Duff. “I’ll explain it to you like the old man explained it to me. He said that there were two kinds of people in the world—those who were content and at peace with themselves, and those who weren’t. The first kind were usually happy and were the kind of people you liked to be with. But the second kind were selfish and mixed up inside.”

  “Like dose two chunks er wood.”

  “Just like that. Then he asked me which kind of person I wanted to be. I wasn’t much more than a kid, but he always made me think about those kinds of things. Then he told me to start looking at animals. He said that the difference between animals and men was that animals don’t have a choice about what they do. They just do what animals do. But with men it’s different. We’ve got a choice whether to fall into harmony with the order of things in the world. When we do, the grain in our lives runs straight and true. When we don’t, we get all knotted and twisted up inside.”

  “But what dat mean, dat fallin’ in wiff da order ob things you’s talkin’ ’bout?
”

  “To find out what that natural order of things is, you have to know what life and the world means. That’s when God comes into it. God must have made everything for a reason. It’s like I was saying before, we’ve got to figure out what God means with things around us. We’ve also got to figure out what God means inside us. Why did He make us, Jake? Why did God make you?”

  “I don’t know . . . I figgered I just happened when I wuz born.”

  “Nothing just happens, Jake. Everything means something because God made it. You mean something. Figuring out what life means is the same as figuring out what you mean. What’s your life supposed to be about? That’s what falling in with the order of things means—living in the way God means you to live. You ever heard about being created in the image of God, Jake?”

  “I reckon so . . . but dat’s jes’ fo white folk—everybody knows dat, don’t dey?”

  “It’s for everybody, Jake, but not too many folks think much about what it really means.”

  “What duz it mean, den?”

  “That we’re supposed to be like God ourselves. That’s what it means to fall in with the natural order of the world. That’s why we’re alive. That’s our purpose. Even though we’re just ordinary people who can’t do it very well, we’re supposed to try to act like God wants us to. We’re supposed to be kind and nice and unselfish because that’s the way God is. When we fall in with how God means us to be, that’s when our grain grows straight and true. Life can’t be a good and happy thing if we don’t go along with that purpose. It’s like the sap in a tree trying to go against the way it’s supposed to grow. When you go against the way you’re supposed to grow, you can’t help but grow crooked. There’s twisted-up crooked people just like there’s twisted-up and crooked trees. Then there are people whose insides are straight just like trees. That’s what it means to fall in with the way things are supposed to be—growing the straight way we were meant to grow.”

  “But we don’t got no sap inside us tellin’ us how ter grow straight like trees duz.”

  “We do, Jake. We’ve got the best kind of sap inside us of all.”

  “What dat?”

  “God’s life is inside us tellin’ us a thousand ways every day how straight people are supposed to grow. That’s the human sap growing in us—God’s life and God’s voice telling us how to grow into straight, true people.”

  “I neber heard God tellin’ me nuthin’ like dat.”

  “His voice is so quiet, most folks never learn to hear it, Jake. But it’s there just like the sap in a tree. That’s what I mean about finding out what things around us mean. When we learn how trees grow, that helps us know how people are supposed to grow too.”

  Jake sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know, Duff,” he said. “Dat’s gwine take sum hard thinkin’ ’bout. An’ I ain’t so shore I believe what you said dat you weren’t neber a preacher.”

  Micah just smiled and went about his work. He knew seeds were getting planted in the soil of Jake’s heart, just like the bearded white man called Hawk had planted seeds in his. Now it was his own turn, Micah thought. If he kept gently watering them with hands of kindness, he hoped the seeds in Jake’s heart would sprout and grow in time.

  TWISTED GRAIN

  15

  AN HOUR LATER MICAH WAS OUTSIDE TENDING THE small fire where he was making a stew for their supper from what meat he had left from his own supply and a few vegetables he had retrieved from the table scraps the farmer’s wife had brought out to the pigpen that morning. The pig seemed fat enough, Micah thought, and wouldn’t miss them. The moment Mrs. Dawson was out of sight, he had dashed for the trough before the old sow had been able to waddle to it from the other side of her pen.

  He’d been outside a good long while. When he went back into the barn, he froze. There was Samantha Dawson across the dirt floor staring down at Jake, who was sound asleep. In her two hands she held the ax she’d picked up from the woodpile, where Micah had been chopping wood earlier that day.

  Micah stood stock-still. She hadn’t heard him. Even unable to see her face, it was clear enough what she was thinking.

  Slowly she raised the ax into the air over Jake’s head.

  Micah waited no longer. He leapt and wrenched the ax handle from the girl’s hand. Losing her balance, she toppled to the ground with a cry of anger and surprise.

  She scarcely had time to recover her shock before a huge black hand took hold of her arm and yanked her to her feet as if she weighed no more than twenty pounds. She spun around to see two great flaring eyes boring into hers from the middle of a stern black face.

  “Let me go!” she cried, struggling to free herself from his grip.

  “I will not let you become a murderer,” Micah said, still holding her tight.

  “You let go of me! I’ll kill you too if I get the chance!”

  “If you want to let your hate eat you up, you foolish girl,” said Micah, “I can’t help you, though I pity you for it. But you’re not going to kill anybody.”

  He let go of her and she made a dash for the ax. But Micah reached it first and stood to face her.

  “Aren’t you listening to what I’m saying, you stupid girl!” he said. “Maybe I can’t stop you hating. But to let you destroy yourself by killing a man that did his best to protect you, that I can prevent. Now you get out of here and you think about what I said.”

  “You evil nigger man—I hate you!” she screamed, then ran from the barn.

  The incident unnerved both invalid and his protector. In spite of Jake’s condition, things had suddenly taken a serious turn. Micah began to think that maybe it was time for them to move on.

  But the day was not over yet.

  His daughter’s shrieks and hysterical reports that the man in the barn had attacked her brought the boiling furnace of rage within the heart of the father to the surface. Above his wife’s terrified objections, he ran to the gun cabinet. He stormed out of the house a minute later. He had every intention of emptying both barrels of his shotgun into the chests of the two niggers who had dared defile his home.

  He charged into the darkened barn. Hastily he struggled to adapt his eyes to the dim light. Fortunately for Jake, he did not wait long enough. The explosion that brought Micah running from where he had been working blew a hole six inches across through the thin board of a wall about two feet above where Jake lay.

  Jake cried out in terror. Even as echoes from the shot and Jake’s yells were still reverberating in his ears, John Dawson heard the sound of running footsteps behind him. He spun around to meet them. But suddenly he felt the barrel of his gun wrested from his hands. The instant it thudded to the floor, a fist smashed into the side of its owner’s head just above one ear. The blow sent him sprawling to the ground.

  A string of horrible obscenities burst from Dawson’s mouth. He leapt to his feet, his vision even less dependable now than it had been a moment earlier, and charged at Micah like an enraged bear. John Dawson was a powerful man with great skill with his fists. Had they been outside in the sunlight, it might well have been that both blacks would have been dead within five minutes. As it was, however, having just come inside out of the bright afternoon, he was no match for one who had been working in the barn’s darkness. Micah received two or three glancing blows to shoulder, side, and back of the head. But in the end, several more sharp, wellaimed jabs from his own fists sent the farmer again to the ground, this time flat on his back. As his eyes at last began to adjust to the light, he found himself staring up into the wrong end of his own shotgun.

  “Look, Mr. Dawson,” said Micah heatedly, his righteous anger at last fully aroused, “maybe I won’t kill you to keep Jake alive. His life is not worth more than yours. But neither is it worth less. Now I’m going to give you a chance to get up and walk out of here before you do any more mischief. I don’t know what evil has gotten into you and your daughter. But if you try to hurt him again, I’ll put you in bed beside him with the other barrel of thi
s gun if I have to. Then maybe I’ll have to nurse you both back to health and teach you some respect for your fellow man by making you lie beside one black man and take food and drink from the hands of another. I’d rather it didn’t come to that. I don’t want to hurt you, but if that’s what it takes to keep you both alive, then I’ll do what I have to do. I bear you no animosity, Mr. Dawson. I’m appreciative of your hospitality. But I will not let you hurt that boy.”

  Almost beside himself with wrath to hear a black man lecture him, Dawson struggled to his feet. “You are a dead man, you hell-bound nigger!” he said, spitting the words out with venom. “You’re both dead or my name’s not John Dawson! I’ll kill you with my own two hands!”

  He strode angrily from the barn and across the yard to the house.

  Hearing the shot and fearing for what it meant, his poor wife met him at the door and followed him with a barrage of anxious questions. He shoved her away with a rude remark and for the second time in less than ten minutes made straight for the gun cabinet. By the time he had another gun loaded, however, a vicious throbbing had begun in his head. His right eye had also begun to swell shut. Along with this came the reminder that the black man in the barn still had the shotgun with one loaded barrel. And, as long as he remained in the barn, would have the advantage of the light.

  For all his raging bluster, he was not yet quite ready to die. He had not heard a word Micah had said. He had no doubt that the wild man out in the barn would blow a hole in his head if given half the chance. He still had no inkling that in Micah Duff he had probably encountered the gentlest man he would ever meet.