The Preacher's Marsh

by David Niall Wilson

He did, and then it was his turn to smile, as he handed it back to her. He wanted to speak. He wanted to tell her so many things, and to ask her even more, but she held up a finger and silenced him.

  “Not now. Not yet. You think about it, preacher man. I got people to talk to. My night is just starting, but you need to get back to your church, and your God. You got some praying to do, maybe, and some thinking. I got people waiting for me, counting on me. Tomorrow, maybe the next day, we’ll have us a talk.”

  He nodded, but she was already moving. She gathered the bones, dropped them back into the small box, and packed the pouches and tinderbox carefully. She lifted each of the bowls and tossed the ashes out into the night. He was afraid they'd burn her hands, but they’d cooled long before, and he suddenly wondered how long they had been in the swamp. Clouds obscured all but a fine mist of light that came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

  When everything was packed away as it had been when they arrived, she handed him the bag again, and he took it slowly, holding the fingers of her hand in his as she tried to release it. He held her like that, fingertips pressed together tightly, and then she slid away. He caught a smile on her lips as she turned, but she was gone in a quick flash of shadow, and he stumbled after, trying to keep up without running into a tree, or tripping over a root, or sliding into a puddle. He felt like he’d just awakened from a week long sleep, and his limbs were clumsy. She moved with the grace of a doe, and he felt her impatience as she stopped several times to wait for him to catch up.

  As his mind cleared, he tried to run back through everything that had happened, but it faded in and out. Every time he thought he remembered something specific, it shifted and he became equally certain it had been something else. All the while, her eyes haunted him, and he followed her flashing legs and wild hair through the swamp, wondering how he’d come so far from Random Illinois, and why it had taken him so long to leave.

  At the edge of his clearing, she stopped. He hadn’t even known they were close, but there was the church. The shadows were lightened slightly in the clearing, and he knew that it was not as late as he’d feared. The moon was in the sky, shining in on the thatch and bark roof of God’s house. It was beautiful in that light, and when he turned and handed her the bag, she was bathed in that same light. Her eyes shone, and she smiled at him.

  “Pray, preacher man,” she whispered. “Pray for me, and for the vision.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder, and thrilled at the touch, but held himself back from any other show of emotion. There would be time.

  “Gideon,” he said softly.

  She tilted her head quizzically to one side, studied his face, and he spoke again.

  “Call me Gideon. Please?”

  Her smile lit the clearing and she reached up to touch his cheek with the tips of her fingers.

  “Pray for me, Gideon,” she said.

  And she was gone.

  FIVE

  Gideon didn’t see Desdemona the following day, or the next, and each hour that passed distracted him further from his work. He tried to concentrate on helping to prepare the food, but he was nearly fully recovered, and the menial tasks that had kept him alive and alert on so many previous days seemed pointless and too simple. The old and the very young did not really need his assistance; they had tolerated him during his infirmity. Now he was a tall, healthy man, and all of his peers were in the fields. During picking months, there was no rest. The cotton had to be picked, then it had to be picked again and if there was time before frost or bad weather destroyed what was left, there might be a third picking. They called that a Christmas picking, though it fell nearer to Thanksgiving.

  The church building was complete. He worked on it every night, patching holes and filling in holes that didn’t really matter. He, Elijah, and Sarah had combed the woods for appropriate logs and stumps to create rough benches, and one morning, without any warning at all, he’d entered to find that an altar had been created from stacked crates. Wood was precious in the camps, and the straight, planed wood of crates was worth its weight in gold. Still, someone had found this use appropriate, and though it gave him a chill and made him feel guilty on some levels, it brought tears to his eyes.

  It wasn’t enough to keep his mind occupied. He needed to see Desdemona, though he didn’t like admitting this to himself. He needed to talk to her about what he’d seen in the clearing by the swamp, though he wasn’t sure that the answers would ease the nightmares that haunted him. As a man of God, he was concerned for her soul, but as a man he was concerned for his own, because he knew that whether or not she was willing to embrace his faith, the burning sensation that rose inside him at the thought of her would not waver or die. If she sprouted horns and claimed his soul, he might not be able to deny her.

  When the waiting grew too much, he acted. It was a morning like any other morning – a Friday. He rose earlier than usual, but he did not make his way to the fires or the gathering of food. He strapped on his boots, and dressed himself to work. His hair was growing long, dangling in his eyes and waving behind him like that of some crazed prophet. He tied it back with a colorful cloth bandana. Even at six AM it was warm, but he knew from questions he’d asked and stories others had told that it would get much worse before it got better.

  Without a backward glance at his church, he strode through the woods toward the fields. A few moments later he fell in behind the line of pickers trudging toward the fields. They weren’t talkative, but they smiled when they saw him. One of the children turned and ran back to the camp. He returned with a heavy canvas bag and tossed it to Gideon before running ahead to rejoin the line beside his parents.

  There was a murmur of discussion, but they kept it low, and fell silent if he drew too near. There was no sign of Desdemona, but he saw Elijah in the crowd, and Sarah. They reached the fields and spread out, one to a row. Even the quiet rumble of conversation died away as they disappeared into the shoulder-high plants. It was still early, and dew coated the leaves and stalks. Gideon stepped into a row beside an older man, maybe forty, maybe sixty – Gideon was unable to tell for certain. The work, the sun, and the rough life had worn the man’s features like water over stones in a river. On the other side a girl of fifteen or so started down her row, nimbly plucking the soft white bolls from the harsh, scraping, cutting pods.

  Gideon had no idea how to pick cotton. He watched for a few moments, and then set to work. His hands were raw after the first hour, but he gritted his teeth and continued. His leg ached, but he wasn’t moving that quickly, and the pain in his hands helped him ignore the leg.

  The sun rose high and hot and drained the moisture from the cotton and Gideon’s body. His throat was parched, but he’d left without water, assuming it would be provided. After three hours, his sight blurred, his skin was scorched, and he could only hobble down the row. His sack was heavy, half full of cotton, and dragged like an anchor behind him. The others had left him behind, and he moved on in a daze. As he walked and picked, bled and ached, he prayed. He started by reciting every verse he could recall from the book of Job.

  When Desdemona found him, he was mumbling snatches of the Song of Solomon and crawling down the row. He was still picking, but so slowly he hadn’t moved two yards in half an hour, and it was hard to tell if he was aware of the work, or the passage of time.

  “Hey, Preacher man,” she called out. “You better take a break and get a drink.”

  He didn’t rise, and she stepped closer, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  “Hey, she said. You gotta crawl before you can walk.”

  She held out a jug of water. Gideon dropped his bag, nearly fell forward into the dust, caught his balance, and gripped the jug so tightly his hands trembled. He drank greedily, and she had to snatch the jug back before he drained it.

  “You can’t drink like that in the heat,” she said. “You got to pace yourself. Pick slower, pick better, and get you some water. You want to come out here like a fool, that’s your business,
but if you’re gonna do the work, you gotta do it right. It won’t be you they come after with their whips and their cursing. It will be all of us.”

  He nodded.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “You’re tryin’ Preacher man, we all know that. Just don’t try so hard.”

  He glanced up again, and some of the light had returned to his eyes. He saw her standing, the sunlight glittering in a rainbow-hued aura around her face as he tried to force his vision to focus through a sheen of burning sweat. She might have been an angel.

  “Gideon,” he said softly.

  She stared at him as if the sun had stolen his senses, and he actually found the energy and spirit to smile.

  “Call me Gideon,” he said. Then, without another word, he stumbled to his feet and picked up his bag. He stood for a minute, getting his bearings. He blocked the glare of the sun with one hand and gazed up and down the rows. Every now and then he caught sight of one of the other pickers. They moved with a rhythm he couldn’t feel. They worked in tandem, not all progressing at the same speed, but part of the same force. He wasn’t part of that. Not yet. Maybe he never would be completely, but he was aware of it, and it amazed him.

  He thought of the years and years and decades of others who’d gone before. The rhythm he sensed came from the earth beneath their feet and the blood and sweat that enriched the soil. It came from the bones and endless, plodding footsteps, running up and down the rows and the stalks, plowed under with the scraggly, frizzy remnant of the cotton that sapped their souls and drained the ground of its nutrients. He’s passed fields on his way south that had been seeded with cotton so many years straight that all they produced was pathetic, bent stalks that barely supported the small and often worthless cotton bolls they grew.

  He’d also passed through fields burned to the ground. He’d seen homes desecrated and families begging beside the roads. He’d seen men steal for their families and others fight for their pride, but he’d seen it from a distance. He’d remained detached, stayed in the shadows, offered grace at a few meals and avoided confrontation. That was then.

  Here, he yearned to be a part of what was happening around him. He’d believed that in Random he felt the Lord in the church. He thought he’d felt the light and love of his God on Sundays when the tables were heavy with food, or at services where tearful women in expensive hats and dresses awash in lace had answered the call, week after week, dedicating and rededicating themselves to their faith. To his faith.

  Except it hadn’t been real. He knew that now as certainly as he knew the pain in his torn, shredded palms and the deep ache in his leg. He knew it because what he felt now, the depth of emotion these people shared, was light and day to the ladies of Random, Illinois. He thought, scandalously, that they needed to be taken out into the woods by Desdemona, or someone like her, and shown how green the grass could be, how tall and powerful the trees were and how that strength had grown from years of stretching toward the light. Centuries. Life not measured in days, but in decades.

  He turned and saw that Desdemona had disappeared back into the cotton rows. He was alone, and he turned back to the cotton. He worked steadily, and he picked up his prayers where he’d left off, or tried to. It was hard to tell what he’d been thinking, or doing, before the water. He was already thirsty again, but he saw that Desdemona had left the jug. He tucked it into the shade behind a couple of the taller plants and remembered where he’d left it. He’d move it a little at a time, use those movements to mark his progress.

  The sun had begun its long trek back down from the center of the sky, and the promise of evening, and food, surfaced like a dangling carrot before a recalcitrant mule. He smiled at that thought, as well, and left the verses of the Old Testament behind. His favorite Gospel was that of Luke, and he began reciting it to himself, trying to match the rhythm of the words to the motion of his hands, and his feet.

  He didn’t see the young man riding up behind him. He heard the hoof beats, too late to react. There was nowhere for him to go, and nothing to do but to wait, and to see what would come next. He straightened slowly, and turned. He heard the horse snort, but did not allow himself to react. When he’d spun to face the row he’d been picking for what seemed years, he faced two of the coldest eyes he’d ever encountered.

  The young man sat his mount arrogantly The horse was a powerful animal, dark brown and brutish with close set eyes and sharp, white teeth. It was the sort of animal you’d never turn your back on. So was the boy.

  “Well, what we got here,” the rider said, turning to the side and spitting a stream of tobacco juice that splattered over the mud in a vile, brown flood.

  Gideon stood and watched him, saying nothing. There was a wicked looking lash mounted on the side of the saddle, and a military issue saber hung from the boy’s hip. He’d have seen action in the war. He was too young, but Gideon knew as well as any that a great number of young men, and women, had left their homes behind to fight in the war. The gray slacks and tattered gray hat left no doubt which side of the war he’d fought on, and little doubt what his attitude toward the workers would be, for that matter.

  “I heard there was a white man back in there with the niggers,” the young man said. His face was a practiced sneer with sharp edges, and there was a twitch at the edge of his mouth that Gideon didn’t trust.

  “I heard you was buildin’ them a church – preacher from up north. Sheriff thought you was dead ‘till the rumors come through.”

  “I’m truly sorry to disappoint him,” Gideon said. He tried to keep his voice steady and his emotions even, but it was hard. He remembered Sheriff Hawkins’ cold voice, the flashing eyes and crashing boots of the others. He remembered the shadows and the pain, and his leg throbbed. His heart sped up slightly, and his already parched mouth went dry. He held his ground.

  The boy studied him the way you’d watch a lion in a circus cage, or the body of a man shot in the street. The interest was cold, distant, and deadly.

  “You don’t belong here, preacher,” the boy said at last. “Best for you if you move on.”

  “Seems to me,” Gideon said reasonably, “that this cotton needs to be picked. Can’t see a reason you should complain if one more set of shoulders bends to it.”

  The young man laughed. “You ain’t picked as much as an eight-year-old nigger, preacher. Not much loss if you was gone, I’d say.” After a hesitation, the boy sat up straighter and continued.

  “I’m Isaiah Pope, and this is my land. Mine and my fathers, and my brothers. These are our niggers, and I don’t care what a man in a fancy office five hundred miles away has to say about it. They been pickin’ our cotton all their lives, and they’ll still be pickin’ it when these are gone and the little pick-a-ninnies grow up to take their mommy and daddy’s places. Nothing you can do to change it.”

  “I’m just here picking cotton,” Gideon said. “I teach the word of our Lord and Savior on Sunday, but the rest of the days, I intend to earn my keep. I hope you can respect that.”

  The boy spurred his horse forward, and he had the whip in his hand in a flash. Gideon cried out and wheeled, tripping backward. The leather strap cracked, and a lance of pain sliced down Gideon’s side. He gripped the wound with both hands, and the lash bit again, creasing his ribs on the opposite side where he’d left an opening. He tried to lunge at the horse, but Pope laughed and cracked the whip a third time. This cut Gideon's cheek and he staggered, nearly dropping to his knees. The leather had come so close to his eye that he panicked.

  As he backed into the cotton, he rolled once, twice, then found his footing and took off down the cotton row at a run.

  “You better run, preacher,” Pope called after him. “You better run, and keep on running. You pick cotton in our fields, you’re not a white man, and you ain’t no preacher. You’re just another thick-headed nigger.”

  The words faded as Gideon crashed through row after row, afraid to look back and see the man’s leering face following him,
the hooves of the horse bearing down on him.

  “You’d better run.” The words faded, and Gideon stopped running. His leg screamed in pain from the unexpected strain, and his breath rasped through his dry, scratched throat.

  “Preacher?”

  He looked up. It was Elijah. The boy stood, his cotton sack in one hand, and his eyes wide. Gideon glanced over his shoulder, but there was no one there. Isaiah Pope had ridden on to whatever task he’d been about. Gideon dropped to his knees and lowered his head to his hands.

  He felt a hand touch gently on his cheek, then pull away. He glanced up.

  “You okay, preacher?” Elijah asked.

  Gideon saw that the boy’s finger had come away from his face with blood on the tips of the fingers. He glanced back at his own hands and saw that his right hand was sticky and red. The cut stung, very suddenly, and he tried to rise. The rows of cotton stretched out endlessly and wavered. He saw Elijah standing close by, his face a mask of concern, but he couldn’t bring the boy’s face into focus. His stomach fluttered and he tried to fight back the darkness rising within. He failed.

  * * *

  When Gideon woke, the first thing he noticed was smoke. It spiraled above him into darkness stippled with brilliant points of light. Stars. He tried to rise, but a cool hand pressed to his forehead and eased him back.

  “You need to rest.”

  He turned his head slowly, partly because of the pain in his cheek and the lump on the side of his head, and partly because he realized from his position that his head rested in Desdemona’s lap. She watched him with dark, expressionless eyes, but her lips bore an expression of concern and a hint of repressed anger.

  “What…”

  “I told you they don't want you here, Gideon. The one you met, the boy they call Isaiah, is the worst. He was away during the war. He was too young, but he slipped away late one night because he wanted to kill other men. He was afraid the war would end, and he’d be stuck here, farming cotton and forgotten.