Gloryland

by Shelton Johnson

  I reached out my hands and she took them in hers. Her hands felt like something you use to polish wood or stone. They were reddish brown, like sun was in them or too many wood fires. Her hands held memories of fierce daylight and pain. The palms were creased the way ground gets creased by creeks and gullies. Something flowed there that wasn’t water, too dry to have ever been touched by rain. She was so dry, maybe the cloud was a part of her turning into air, and me there breathing her in.

  “Boy,” she said, staring at my hands, “some people work like dogs and you can see it in their hands. If it’s good work it’s just in the hands, but if it’s bad work then it gets in the eyes, and you can see what’s rotten when they’s lookin at you. Some people, the work they do ain’t in the hands or the eyes, it’s in the breath, and if it’s sweet then they doin somethin right, but if it’s sour you can smell the rot.

  “You ain’t got nothin in you but sweet right now, and I’m tellin you to hold on to it like a secret and don’t let the sweet out. You hear what I’m sayin, boy?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, but she came back, “Don’t ‘yes ma’am’ me, boy, you ain’t understood a word I say. But that don’t matter, cause I’m puttin it all into your hands right now.”

  She spat in my hands and said something soft and squeezed them so hard I thought my fingers would snap like kindling. When she let go, there wasn’t any spit in my hands. She pressed that spittle into me, into my hands, as if what she was whispering wasn’t meant for my ears but for my hands, like hands were supposed to be talked to. She was talking all right, by holding, squeezing, and pressing what she knew about the world into me, like she was kneading bread and I was the dough.

  Sometimes Grandma Sara didn’t have no use for words at all. “Don’t trust what people say, boy,” she’d tell me. “Folks’ll say anythin if they want somethin from you, so pay more mind to what they do with their hands. Hands don’t lie.”

  Now she started talking again so I could hear. “Hands don’t lie,” she said again. “Everything been done to someone is in their hands, so you got to learn how to read hands, cause the truth is in scars and scabs, not in words. Words are nothin but lies, but hands speak truth. You hear me, Elijah?”

  “Yes’m,” I said, cause it was the only thing I could say to Grandma Sara if I didn’t want to hear something all over again.

  She took a deep breath then, so deep I wondered if the room would run out of air. When she exhaled there was a calm about her that hadn’t been there before. Then she said, “Boy, I’m just gettin you ready, don’t take it personal. I love you, but you soft and the world ain’t, so I’m just gettin you ready for what’s out there.” She paused. “I’ve seen things and felt things no one should, and I’ve lost things no one should, but I remember everything ever happened to me. I remember too good, and no one should have so much done to them and remember it all.

  “Maybe I should’ve taken up drinkin, cause I want to forget it all, but I can’t. I remember all of it, my people and what the soldiers did to my people, but we killed ’em all and kept killin ’em, and I’m killin ’em right now in my heart. They fallin dead right now, Elijah, I’m killin ’em right now. You hear ’em, boy, you hear ’em cryin out?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I lied, my hands twisted round each other like roots. “I hear ’em plenty.”

  “Then you won’t ever forget,” she said, like she was relieved. “You won’t forget what no one should remember, and then you can sit with Death and be comfortable, maybe ask Death if he wants somethin to eat, you know, be polite with that thing that’s takin away everything you love, try to make him happy somehow.

  “Yes, Lord, I’ve sat with Death a long time now, and I’m so tired of somebody who can’t laugh. It ain’t natural to never laugh. He just sit there next to me, waitin for me, but I ain’t in no hurry.” She was getting more and more agitated, until she was just about hollering to the dark of the cabin. “He just gonna have to wait some more, cause I ain’t goin nowhere till I’m ready!”

  It was quiet after she yelled, and I thought the shadows moved a bit, maybe they were as uncomfortable as I was. But it was me that moved.

  “Grandma,” I said, cause it was all I could think of, “are you ever goin to die?”

  She looked at me and she wasn’t smiling.

  “No, boy,” she said. “I ain’t ever gonna die, cause I do what I want when I want to do it, and no one can tell me anythin unless I want to hear it. You remember this, boy, Death’s a coward who sneaks up on you in the night, but if you ready and you face him down, he’ll crawl away like a worm. No need to fear a worm, and Death’s just a worm.”

  That was Grandma Sara talking. I can still hear her talking in the dark of the room where I was born, and Death in there with her, and Death is frightened of Grandma Sara.

  I never met another person without any trace of fear. It was all beat out of her so there was none left. She wasn’t brave, she just didn’t fear anything cause she had so much pain in her there was no room for anything else. She was busting with pain trying to get out, her seams were wailing. Whatever it was inside her ain’t ever been given no name or no proper burial. It can’t be killed, and it can’t live either, it’s just fierce eyes. Eyes you can’t turn away from, eyes that held Death when I was a boy. I was more scared of them than I was of Death.

  But I loved her too. I loved her strength. She looked frail and brittle like dried grass, but she was more like an old oak that holds on and never lets go. Maybe Grandma Sara was Death. Maybe Death was an old Seminole Indian who was a colored woman who was a grandmother who was a shadow in the corner of a room who was a light in the back of my mind, a fire that won’t go out cause there’s too much left to burn, and a wind blowing on that fire.

  Patrol report on Yosemite Park stationery, under “Remarks,” Wawona, Cal., July 14, 1903

  A party of (2) men and (2) horses passed through Return Canyon on route to Soda Springs w/o arms of any kind.

  Very Respectfully,

  William Alexander,

  Sgt. “L”, 9 Cavy.

  Commanding Detachment

  lighting up the woods

  I opened my eyes to red light, a soft light against the rough timbers of the house. I remember lying there half asleep, half awake, not really there and nowhere else either, wondering about red shadows flickering on a wall.

  It was so cold I could feel it under the sheets like white knives stabbing me through the blankets. I was warm in my little hollow, wandering deep inside, and I didn’t want to get up, I wanted to stay away from the night, the wind blowing through it. But that glow wouldn’t go away, so I pushed the blankets back away from my nose, down to my chin, and let in a little of that coldness. I wanted to know what was causing the light to play on the far wall, and the only way to find out was to get out of bed.

  Sounds easy enough, but it’d been such a struggle to get into that bed. Even though it was Sunday, I had chores, and Daddy’s memory was pretty good when it came to chores, especially after I turned sixteen a few weeks back. He told me on my birthday that I was almost a man, and a man works harder than a boy. Ever since, my warm bed felt more and more like a stranger, so now that I was finally here it was so hard to get up without being told to. But that light on the wall was getting stronger and I was getting weaker wondering what it was.

  Finally I just pushed the covers all the way back and breathed the cold deep, letting it know it couldn’t hurt me. Slowly I sat up and swung my legs down to the floor, then stood up. Now I was getting awake, and I could see that the light on the wall was coming from the window on the other side of the cabin. I walked over to the window, pulled the curtains apart, and peered out. It was dark on top of dark with more dark sitting on top of everything that struggled out of the ground, but off in one place there was an angry light, red and yellow, far off in the woods.

  I should’ve gone back to bed. I should’ve forgotten what I can’t forget, but I wanted to know what was lighting up the woo
ds, so I pulled on my overalls and the big wool sweater Mama made for my birthday. It was too big but it covered up the cold.

  When I stepped outside I wished that sweater was bigger. I could see my breath in the dim light of a moon that was half eaten. I picked up the old kerosene lamp sitting on the porch and fingered around on the ground for some matches that were usually somewhere round the lamp. Soon I was coaxing a little fire into the world between my hands. I walked off the porch quietly, not wanting to wake my parents or Grandma Sara.

  After taking maybe fifty steps, I reached the edge of the woods, my ankles and calves damp with dew. I stopped there and listened, but couldn’t hear anything but wind and night sounds, crickets and a great horned owl up high overhead on a branch, telling me over and over that I was a fool and to go to bed.

  I ignored it, which is what a fool would do, and started walking toward the light. There wasn’t a real path so I had to move round a lot, and soon I was scratched and bleeding from trying to go the most direct way. When I took the way that was easiest I didn’t get cut up, but I got nowhere closer to where I wanted to be. When I worked at getting to that light, the woods tore me up. Mama wasn’t going to be happy when she saw my sweater.

  Every so often, though, I’d notice the light was getting brighter and the moon dimmer. After nearly an hour of bushwhacking, I could see the branches of trees round me where I couldn’t before, and I turned down my lamp. Now I went slower and quieter, feeling my heart beating faster. I began to hear voices. And now I was crawling, not even thinking about my sweater getting dirty or tore up. It was dark everywhere except straight ahead, where there were men standing in a circle round something or someone.

  White men. I couldn’t see their faces cause they’d covered them up with white hoods. They were all in white, wearing white cloth like bedsheets, like the ones I’d left behind where I’d been safe and warm. There was a fire burning at the center of the circle, and some of the white figures standing around it had torches, but I was cold anyhow. I don’t remember ever being so cold before or since. The only man whose face I could see clearly, because he was lying near the fire and his head wasn’t covered, was a colored man. I could see him cause one of the white men had moved a bit. I recognized him cause I saw him in church that morning. George Washington. His family was sharecroppers, and I knew them.

  Mr. Washington was lying on his side with both hands behind his back. He looked really uncomfortable. The Ku Klux was talking to him. I could see one of the white men moving his head and heard a voice hard and cold. I couldn’t make out words, just the sound of that white man with the chill of the night in whatever he was saying. There were other voices too, but they weren’t having a conversation. They pointed down and laughed, but there was nothing funny in anything I could see.

  All the time Mr. Washington lay there like a sack of coal, something just dropped by the side of the road. I felt a stiffness building in my chest, a hardness I’d never felt before. I wanted to run out and tell those men to leave him alone, let him go, but I was tied up too, without any ropes on me, bound to my fear like it was a post in the ground. I couldn’t pull myself away either. I could only get closer, till I was just fifty feet away but still in the shadows of trees. But it didn’t matter, cause the time for talking was done.

  I watched one man reach down and jerk Mr. Washington up. Since his feet were tied, he couldn’t get up very well so he kinda slumped back to the ground, and this angered the man who was yanking on him. I heard what sounded like a curse, and I remember thinking it was the first time I’d ever seen a white man help a colored man do anything, but it wasn’t really no help at all.

  Another Ku Klux hooked his elbow round Mr. Washington’s left arm. He seemed unwilling to be freed from the ground, like he’d lost the use of his legs while he was lying there. But finally they had him up, sort of, and he stood there breathing deep and fast, and soon they had a rope round his neck and he breathed even faster; quick, short breaths as if he was running, but he wasn’t running. He was just standing there with the noose over his head, and then he turned his head side to side, trying to move away from it, but he could only move so much, and then they brought it down hard round his neck.

  His eyes were bright with the light of those torches, seemed brighter than the torches, and he made no sound. No one was talking now, so I could hear the wind in the branches overhead, with the stars so far away in the night, and hear the sound of the men throwing the rope over a branch on the tree behind Mr. Washington. The branch didn’t budge as they pulled tight, pulled harder. I wanted the branch to break or at least bend a little, but it was an oak and it was strong, and the weight of Mr. Washington was no weight at all to the oak. It didn’t care about a little rope biting into it. It had survived fire and wind, and nothing moved it at all, even when Mr. Washington was off the ground and his body was shaking and his legs dancing round trying to find the earth again, stabbing down, searching for something solid. Even then the oak was still and calm, and I was mad that it would do such a thing. Mad that it wouldn’t break but held the man high so his shadow could dance behind him, a crazed black giant leaping up against red flickering in the trees beyond the firelight, dancing to music I hoped to never hear.

  That oak had so many other branches, I thought it could stand to lose just one, just let one go, and Mr. Washington would fall to the ground, and maybe he could run away in the confusion of the branch breaking. But the branch held, and the only motion was George Washington hanging from it, moving slower now. But I swear I didn’t see cause I was just staring at that damn oak tree that was like me, not moving at all. Then I looked down at the ground where I was lying on my belly, breathing like I was running away, my heart trying to get free from my rib cage. But I couldn’t move, so all my heart could do was pound and pound and go nowhere.

  Something made me look up, and I saw Mr. Washington was almost still, and I saw one of the men dousing him with something. The smell of it came to me, and I knew what was splashing on him. Kerosene. Then they put their torches into him, and he burst on fire. He tried to scream but it never got out. Fear, shock, and the rope wouldn’t let it out. He was blazing, becoming smoke, and then they put their torches out, smothering them real good, until the only light left in the world was the light coming off Mr. Washington’s body.

  He was lighting up the woods now, casting shadows, moving back and forth, slowly swinging from that oak. The branch was burning hot, and then the branches above him caught fire and the whole tree began to burn, but the branch never let go. I could smell the wood burning and I could smell him, both were in my eyes and my lungs, and smoke was going up into the black sky, moving between the stars till it blacked out the stars and the only light was from the burning tree. It lit up everything I could see and not see, it hurt my eyes to see such a blaze. Everything was visible except the Klan men. They were gone into the dark, and the light couldn’t find them.

  For a long time, hours maybe, I just stayed where I was, in the coldest shadow I’ve ever felt. Though there was plenty of heat not too far away, I stayed away from it, curling up round myself like there was a little bit of heat somewhere deep inside me, as if I could curl round my own heart, but it gave me no comfort.

  The wind began to blow and the trees started talking. I knew whatever they were saying had nothing to do with what had happened, nothing to do with the life that was taken. And I thought about God and wondered where he was that night, cause it was still Sunday. George Washington had probably talked to God in church that morning. Then I looked at him, yeah, I raised my head and looked at what they’d done to him.

  Could this have been the answer to his prayers?

  The Horse’s Paces Walk, Trot, and Canter

  It is necessary, in order to make the horse handy, to exercise him at trotting out; but it is not enough that he should trot fast; the quickness of the pace should not detract from his lightness in hand, or the ease with which he should be capable of answering all indications of
the hand and leg.

  from Cavalry Tactics

  sidewalk

  Some months later came a day when I was just too tired to care about what might happen if I began to think of myself as a man. I wasn’t a boy anymore, but white people still called me boy or nigger, and I thought they should know that I was a man, just like Mr. Washington. He was a man, a good man, and that’s why they killed him. I could never forget what I’d seen in the woods, Lord knows, I couldn’t even talk about it.

  Talk? I wanted to scream, but there was a rope round my neck too. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. That rope made me a nigger. Fear made me a boy, and I didn’t want to be a boy or a nigger anymore.

  Daddy was a man, a strong man. He wouldn’t hide that, so he was bound to have a run-in with Sheriff Reynolds. Yeah, Daddy was still walking round and all, but after that he held his head lower than he used to, let his shoulders slump a bit, so you might’ve thought that fire was out, but you’d be wrong. He wasn’t dead, like I’d been thinking. He just walked like the dead so he’d be left alone, but if you walk like the dead and can fool someone like the sheriff, it may be just a matter of time before you fool yourself.

  Mr. Washington had chosen to walk with his head up, which meant he wasn’t a nigger. The Ku Klux don’t usually kill niggers. George Washington was a man. That’s why he was killed.

  For a long time I figured I had just two choices. I could walk the rest of my life with my head down and be sick on the inside. Or I could walk with my head up and be fine on the inside. Course that would attract the notice of the Ku Klux or some kind of attention I didn’t want, and I’d be dead soon. But there was a third choice.

  Daddy wasn’t a nigger either. That’s why he stood up to Sheriff Reynolds. He eventually backed down on account of me, on account of Mama, on account of something that was more important than himself, his family. That was the third choice. It’s not a question of standing or running, but how long you going to stand or how long you going to run? You got to understand that there’s always a third choice even if you can’t see it or feel it. Like Daddy. He was busted up inside, and I’ve seen him busted up on the outside too. That’s called sharecropping. Even after winning an argument with a mule, you eventually heal. Daddy would be all right. That’s how he got to be strong and old.