by R. A. Nelson
“What would you do if you didn’t do this?” I say.
He reaches into the neck of his shirt and handles the slave tag, thinking about it awhile. “There’s someplace I sure would like to see before the day I die,” he says.
“Whereabouts?”
He blows out a long breath. “Place called Ouidah on the west coast of Africa. Gate of No Return. That’s a spot on the beach where over three million folks left on slave ships. Ouidah was the center for the slave trade. I want to stand at that gate, walk through it. Walk around the Tree of Forgetfulness, too.”
“What’s that?” I say.
“Tree they forced them slaves to walk around. Men had to walk around it nine times, women seven. It was a ritual… so the souls of the slaves would forget where they come from and never return to Africa to haunt the kings that sold them.”
Certain Certain never made it past the eighth grade, but he has read books thicker than my arm. Everything from the Civil War to the Louisiana Purchase and folks like de Soto and Frederick Douglass.
“I didn’t know there was an actual place where you can still go and see things about slavery,” I say. “I mean over there. Why don’t you go do it, then? Go see it?”
“I might. I might. Take you with me.”
“Why me?”
“You involved, Lightning, whether you know it or not. We all involved. Ghosts of slavery still with us today.”
“But—”
“You think on account of Michael Jordan selling his drawers all over TV, everything is hunky-dory? No, sir. Still got a good ways to go. Something like that done to a whole race of people— millions of them—it echoes a good long while. Hundred years, two hundred, that’s an eye blink—walk a mile in a black man’s shoes, tell me we ain’t still feeling it, black and white both.”
“But I didn’t do it. I wasn’t even alive back then. Besides, I’m part Cherokee.”
He gives a little snort. “Good for you, Tonto. So you tell yourself, ‘This ain’t my fight. My people were doing just fine and dandy till these white and black folks showed up and all hell broke loose.’”
He rubs his eyes and lets out a big yawn.
“It’s what we all owe, Lightning. You know what I’m sayin’? Ain’t enough just to say, ‘Wasn’t me, wasn’t you.’ And I ain’t letting my own people off the hook, neither. Them African kings sold they own down the river, right? Can’t forget that.”
“But it doesn’t seem like doing much,” I say, thinking about Ouidah again, “just to visit a place.”
“Yeah, you right. But I’ll tell you one thing: it’s a start. Least we can do is pay our respects. Help spread some awareness about what happened. Tell other people about it.”
The volunteers straggle by. We sit there listening to their engines rumble away across the pasture, till they’ve left us in darkness.
“What do you … what do you think would have happened?” I say. “You know, if slavery had never happened? What would Africa be like now?”
“Huh. You askin’ the wrong man that question, doctor. Too many ifs. Too much water under the gate. Who can say? Maybe the flag of free Nairobi be planted on the moon today, all we know.”
Certain Certain stands and stretches so hard, I can hear his bones cracking.
“I’m tired like to death.” He says good night and climbs into the truck.
When I crawl into bed, it’s hard to shut off my mind. I have a thing I do when it gets like this. Miss Wanda Joy taught me to pray for all the sinners and whoremongers and alcoholics and a whole long list of folks trapped in a living hell on Earth. So I lay there in my bunk praying for their deliverance from the bondage of evil, eyes clamped shut, where I can see nothing but black in front of me.
Before I know it, it’s like I’m inside the blackness with them. I can feel their presence there, held in slavery to Satan. I go forward and touch the blackness. I push against it, and a hole shaped like an X tears through. I poke my fingers through the X, peeling the darkness back. There’s light on the other side.
That is the light of our Great Redeemer, Jesus Christ. All the trapped people, they are attracted to the hole I’ve made. They come over, all of them, tearing through that hole. Through the light of His love, I have set them free.
Later in the night I jerk up in my bunk, thinking I’m still inside my dream; something heavy is moving around outside, tromping the ground close to the motor home. My heart sets to hammering.
The sound is so close, it’s like it’s trying to bust its way through the door. I can hear creakings and groanings and smell dirt through my little side window.
I listen for Sugar Tom or Miss Wanda Joy, but they’re not stirring. I think about calling out, but something tells me, No, sit still, don’t let it know you are here. I feel the motor home begin to shake; the steps get heavier and heavier. Praise Jesus, how many of them are out there? What is out there?
Then I remember: we are parked next to a whole herd of cows. I feel pretty silly, even laugh at my fear. I listen awhile longer as everything begins to settle down. Then I lay back down, and in a wink it’s morning.
I ask Sugar Tom and Miss Wanda Joy what did they think about the hullabaloo? They didn’t hear a thing. I step outside the motor home and walk around blinking in the sun, feeling a chill crawl all over my back.
Nothing. No hoofprints.
Not a single one.
The congregation is a little better at the Cobbville service.
I handle thirteen folks, all told. Everything from TMJ to shingles to back troubles caused on account of one leg being longer than the other. By the end of the night, Certain Certain is flat exhausted just from catching them as they fall.
“Twenty-three new souls dedicated themselves to walking with the Lord,” Miss Wanda Joy says. I catch a crooked little smile as she jots down the total in her big green ledger. Sugar Tom calls my healings “the crowning moment of the service.”
Now they’re passing the collection plates, and Sugar Tom is drowsing behind the curtain while I watch the night through the saddle flap.
This is the first time since Verbena that I’ve felt halfway comfortable with the way things are going. Maybe I’m being ungrateful? Is this the life I need to be in? Maybe I haven’t truly understood the whole importance of my mission up till now. Maybe—
It’s her—a flash of blue at the rear of the tent, mixed in with the back of the congregation. That same shade of blue …
Lucy!
What in the world is she doing here? What should I say? What should I do? I scramble to straighten my shirt, smooth my hair.
Should I go straight to her, ask her if she’s all right? But she must be, elsewise why would she be here?
She wants to thank me. Thank me for saving her life.
I stand frozen and slack-jawed watching her. She’s staring straight ahead, not speaking to anybody else. How long has she been there like that? The whole service? What is she waiting for?
She’s waiting for me.
The congregation is starting to break up. I look around quick, scanning the faces. No sign of her parents. I haul back the saddle flap and look outside: no Gulf Breeze motor home. Maybe she rode over with a friend? To see me.
Okay, Ronald Earl. Just go talk to her. Do it now.
I hop down from the stage and make a beeline for the center aisle, keeping my eyes straight ahead so they will let me through. I can see folks swirling past Lucy. I feel like there’s a big silver hook in my side yanking me toward her.
“Little Texas,” Miss Wanda Joy calls, but I pretend I didn’t hear.
Lucy. The inside of my head is on fire. She’s starting to move away now, skirting the last row of chairs. There’s something odd and jerky about the way she is walking, like her leg is hurt or something.
I spy a blue flick of Lucy’s dress as she turns the corner of the tent. What do I say? Ask her about her school? Her folks? Her town? Anything but the healing. Let her bring that up.
I run to t
he back entrance and race around the corner. I jerk my head right and left; I see people streaming across the lumpy grass. A scattering of cloudy stars. The Wilbankses’ little frame house glowing yellow. The line of a fence, cars, a dog nosing around a tractor tire.
And nothing else.
“So how’d we do?” Sugar Tom says.
“The Church of the Hand won’t starve … yet,” Miss Wanda Joy says, clutching the prayer box to her lap.
“Speaking of which,” Certain Certain says, “I could eat the hind end of a mule. Without the sauce.”
We pile into the motor home and head out to Shoney’s. Everybody else is keyed up from the service, saying it was our best in weeks. They all chatter away, Sugar Tom having fun with a cute little waitress. But I was that close to talking to Lucy. That close. I am pure heartsick.
“You were quiet tonight at supper,” Miss Wanda Joy says when we get back.
“Yes’m.”
She shakes the box in her lap, letting me hear the coins bounce. “It was a good service. Nothing to worry about.”
“I know.”
“Our next stop is Clampton. They were good to us last time.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Well. Sleep.”
She moves away from my end of the motor home, skirts swishing and leaving behind a cloud of lavender.
Laying down in my bunk, I feel like a car is squatting on my chest. Why is she so important to me? Why do I feel like I’ve lost something I never had to begin with?
I fall into a ragged sleep and keep waking up with pieces of dreams on the edges of my mind. Each scrap of dream has something blue in it, hanging just out of reach.
The next morning the sun comes up like three-day-old orange juice. I rub my stinging face and stare out at the dark green of the trees against the horizon.
YOU ARE NOW ENTERING CLAMPTON, MISSISSIPPI, a little sign tells us. The town looks to be a little bigger than Cobbville, but every bit as run-down—a gang of saggy old homes ranging around a town square, and brick stores with messages painted on them advertising stuff nobody has bought for probably fifty years.
“I suspect the national pastime around here is sitting on your ass shelling purple hull peas,” Certain Certain says.
We have a lot of volunteers in Clampton, so Sugar Tom and me spend the hours reading and playing chess while Certain Certain supervises. Sugar Tom likes to call the chess men things like Hittites, Amalekites, and Jebusites. I have never beaten him.
“‘I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt,’” Sugar Tom says. “Checkmate.”
“Huh?”
“Some days the Spirit is close, Ronald Earl, others it’s far away.”
When it’s time for the service, I sit peeking through the saddle flap. No Lucy, only the same kinds of faces I always see. I know what they’re expecting. I just don’t know how much of it I want to give.
“Game time,” Certain Certain says.
After Sugar Tom introduces me, I stand there in the lights and the screaming, and that’s all I do. I’m not smiling, I’m not doing anything. I let it soak into me, not thinking about the whiteness, not thinking that I need to get started. Just feeling. I let them settle down. Then I let them more than settle down. They go so ghostly quiet, you would think I was all alone.
My head is hanging a little, eyes down. Then I begin to hear them whisper, wondering if something is wrong. Maybe I won’t do it this time. Maybe this is the time I just walk off and keep going. Quiet. Quiet. And then I see it. The chessboard still sitting there over behind the curtain, the game pieces still laid out. I raise my head and say this:
“Have you ever played chess, brothers and sisters? A chessboard has pieces on it. Pawns. Bishops. Knights. Rooks. A king and a queen. One player takes black, one takes white. If you corner the other player’s king, you win. Simple as that.”
Even I’m not sure where this is going.
“Are we the Lord’s chess pieces, my brethren?” I say. “Is that what we are here for, for Him to play games with us? Do we even have any say in where we end up on the chessboard of life?”
Miss Wanda Joy looks like she just swallowed a broomstick sideways. She makes motions with her hand, cutting it across her neck: Cut it off.
But I can’t.
“Maybe one side of the board belongs to Jesus, the other to Satan. Which side do you pick? And what piece? Are you a bishop, thinking you can sneak catty-corner past the devil? Or maybe you’re a knight, hopping out of trouble? A pawn, where you can only march straight ahead, Satan’s sacrifice? A rook, plowing straight in a line, no matter what? Or maybe you’re a queen. You can go anywhere, do anything you want. All the power is in you. But maybe, my brethren, just maybe, you are a king. You spend your time hiding from life, letting others fight your battles. The most powerless player on the board.”
A smattering of voices holler out, “Amen.”
I sneak a glance at Miss Wanda Joy. She’s not slashing her throat anymore. I feel my voice rising, the whiteness coming up behind my eyelids, climbing my throat. I close my eyes and raise my arms.
“This is what I’m here to tell you, brothers and sisters, ah! It doesn’t matter what piece you are in this game, ah! Because a great reckoning is coming, ah! The arm of Christ Jesus, ah! is coming to sweep aside every piece on the chessboard, ah! Each and every one of us, ah! Queen to pawn, ah! The Lord’s side, ah! Satan’s side, ah! All will fall like wheat to the thresher, ah! For the Great Harvester, ah! He is coming to take His accounting, ah! at the End of Days, ah! when the dead in Christ, ah! I say the dead in Christ, ah! shall rise like a great anointing, ah! and ‘they that sow in tears shall reap in joy,’ ah!”
Now they’re on their feet, waving their hands in the air, swaying back and forth, yelling out “Amen” and “Praise His name!” It goes on and on, the praising and the hollering, my arms up in the air, and I remember again why I’m standing here, why I’m talking. It’s not me. It’s not me, it’s something using me, something bigger and brighter and cleaner than I could ever be.
Hallelujah!
“As there is no sanitary hookup here,” Miss Wanda Joy says, all grim, “we will be staying in a motel tonight.”
What she’s really saying is the place where we’ve parked the motor home, sidled up against a used-car lot, isn’t somewhere we can just let our toilet hosepipe dump on the ground, like we’re used to out in the country. Folks would talk.
“The devil’s playground,” Miss Wanda Joy says when she signs for the rooms.
The man behind the counter just smiles; he doesn’t have tooth one, and his skin looks like a field that’s been left fallow, all sunken and punched with holes and stubble.
The rooms are small and damp, but it feels good to get a shower in a tub where your elbows aren’t knocking the walls. Me and Certain Certain bunk in together, and Sugar Tom and Miss Wanda Joy take the room next door. I figure they spend most of the evening reading, holy scripture for her, stories about things like a girl from Russia with X-ray vision for him.
Miss Wanda Joy generally doesn’t like us watching much TV, but the first thing Certain Certain does is grab the remote and flip it on, keeping the volume low, on account of the thin walls.
He skims down to his drawers and socks. Certain Certain’s legs look like they haven’t seen the sun since birth. The slave tag is a hot little square of brownish gold on his chest. He pretty much never takes it off, like it’s some kind of protection for him.
We watch a show where a man gets to pick from twelve different sinful women to marry. He gets to kiss them all, sometimes even with the other women looking. They squabble and cuss each other something fierce. Miss Wanda Joy would have an aneurism.
“Not worth spit,” Certain Certain says. “He might as well throw darts. Not one of them gals got the brains the good Lord gave a turnip.”
But I can sure stand looking at them.
We watch a bunch of other stuff we shouldn’t be watching, too. This
is how we keep up with things in the outside world. Certain Certain laughs at a cell phone commercial.
“Day is coming, Lightning, people will always know where they are. Satellites, navigators, tracking each and every one of us. But don’t let folks kid you … they lost the true path a longtime ago. Ain’t no GPS indicator goin’ locate their tails for them.”
Last thing I remember is Arnold Schwarzenegger toting a casket full of weapons on his shoulder while the army tries to blow him up. Then somewhere Certain Certain must’ve cut out the light, on account of I wake up hours later with a big old blob of moonlight on my belly, coming through a gap in the curtains.
I’ve always liked watching the moon, so I slip out of bed and yank the curtains back—and holler the worst cuss word I’ve ever said.
By the time Certain Certain gets the light switch, I’m scrabbled up against the door, trying to find the knob.
“What is it, boy? What’s got you spooked?” he says, scratchy and fuddle-headed.
“Out there!” I say, shaking my finger at the window. “She—she’s looking at us!”
Certain Certain goes over and hauls the drapes all the way open. “Can’t see a damn thing,” he says. “Too bright in here. Cut the lights out.”
I flip the switch on the lamp. “Ain’t nothing,” he says. I dare to look—an empty sidewalk running in both directions and the shiny parking lot, all lit up by a big fat spring moon.
“She was there!” I say, starting to feel a little ridiculous. “I saw her. Her face was pushed up against the glass, looking straight at me, when I opened the curtains….”
I could see her hair brushing her shoulders, her wet eyes, not much more. The thing is, she didn’t move one bit when she saw me—just kept staring straight into our room, giving me the awful feeling she had been standing right there for hours, knowing I would have to take a look outside sooner or later. Waiting all night, just hoping to catch a glimpse of me. Stare straight into my eyes.
Somebody’s beating the door down. We cut the lights back on and drag on our pants. Miss Wanda Joy hurries in wearing a purple bathrobe with a gold cross crocheted on the pocket. Her hair is done up all over with bobby pins, with one or two wispy pieces trailing down her back. Her eyes look like two fried eggs.
