Soulcatcher Read online

  Oboto touched Malawi's arm just before they were pushed into the warehouse, and Malawi saw—away in the distance beneath a day-old moon—a vessel a hundred times the size of the thatch-roofed homes in his village, with sails like white bird wings and great, skeletal trees springing from its deck and piercing the clouds. This he heard the phantoms call the Providence. Then it was dark as they were shoved into the warehouses. Families in his coffle were separated—husbands from wives; children from their parents—so those in their cells, then later on the ship, could not talk to each other. By some miracle, one he thanked his ancestors for, they'd blundered and not separated him from his brother, who had seen twenty harvests, five more than Malawi himself.

  That night their jailers fed them a porridge made from roots and grainy honey beer. As they ate, Oboto told him, "Don't be afraid, little brother."

  Malawi was indeed afraid but did not want to anger Oboto. "I'm not, as long as you are here—"

  "No"—his brother cut him off—"listen to me. Even if I am not here, you must not be afraid. Malawi, I have been watching these people who raided our village, and the ones from the ship ... They are not strong."

  "But they have many guns," said Malawi, "and chains and great ships!"

  "And they bleed when they are cut." Oboto moved closer to him as a guard passed their cell. He whispered, "I've seen them faint in the sun, and I watched one from that ship cry when he passed water, as if he was afflicted and doing so was painful. Did you see some of them up close? Their rotten teeth, I mean. A few are missing fingers. Or a hand. They touch others in places forbidden, and all the while they look afraid, fingering their rifles, looking over their shoulders. Their mothers have not yet finished with them. They are barbarians. Malawi, I don't think the spirits respect them. How could they? They smell bad. They are unclean. They are dead here"—he touched his chest above his heart—"not us. Some of the white men I saw, the ones with the whips, grovel before others in fear and have stripes on their backs as if they were slaves. The ones doing the hardest work, unloading crates from the ship for trade, don't understand as many tongues as you or I."

  "Yes..." Malawi nodded slowly, for his brother spoke well, as always. "I saw that." As a merchant's son, he'd picked up enough Ibo and Bantu to converse passably well when he accompanied Mbwela on trips to buy and sell goods. And he'd seen one of the phantoms, a young man close to his brother's age, fall down in the heat when unloading a crate of goods from the Providence, and because he was slow in rising, one of the other ghosts beat him, bloodying his mouth. He'd seemed different from the other devils. His nose was hooked like that of a hornbill beneath blue eyes that could have been splinters from the sky. This was probably his first trip to Africa and it seemed no one had told him that it was a good idea to take fluids all day, even a little, because your body was constantly losing moisture, whether you were perspiring or not. "But," said Malawi, "I am afraid of them. I'm sorry..."

  "Don't be sorry." Oboto touched Malawi's arm gently. "I was afraid too when I saw them burning the village. When our parents died. And I prayed to our ancestors to let me die—yes, I did that during the journey here—but they helped me understand."

  "What?" said Malawi. "Why they have taken so much from us?"

  "No, they showed me what they cannot take. And I will show you."

  Malawi knew—as their captors could not—that before the raid on their village Oboto was destined to be a griot, a living book who carried within himself, like a treasure, his people's entire history from time immemorial. Its recitation took three full days. When he was a child all the adults agreed that Oboto's gift of recall distinguished him for this duty, and from his fifth harvest he could be seen trailing behind gruff, old Ndembe, who was griot then but getting a bit forgetful in his sixties, repeating after his teacher every chapter of their tribe's history. He learned their songs for war and weddings, the words they sang when someone died or was born. He learned the chronicle of their kings and commoners, the exploits of their heroes, folklore, and words for every beast, plant, and bird as well as the rhymes their women sang when they made fufu, taking into himself one piece of their culture at a time, then stitching it into an ever-expanding tapestry that covered centuries of his people's hopes and dreams, tragedies and victories. Now Malawi realized their village had not been wiped from the face of the world; its remains were kept inside Oboto. And during that night in the warehouse, while the other prisoners wailed or wept, Oboto began to teach his younger brother, transmitting all he knew, beginning with the story of how their gods created the world, and then the first man and woman.

  Oboto continued after he and Malawi were bathed, branded, and brought on board the Providence. During the night they were kept below, tightly packed together, and forced to lie on their right sides to lessen the pressure on their hearts. Those on the ship's right side faced forward; those on the left faced the stern. Hatches and bulkheads had been grated and apertures cut around the deck to improve the circulation of air, though in those depths Malawi wheezed when he whispered back the ancient words his brother chanted.

  Come morning, they were forced topside. The phantoms covered their mouths with rags, went into the hold to drag from below those prisoners who'd died during the night, and then by 9 A.M. cleaned this unholy space with chloride lime so it could be inspected by the ship's captain. Up above, more phantoms washed and scrubbed the decks and splashed buckets of salt water on Malawi and the others, then from buckets fed them a pasty gruel the color of river mud in messes of ten. And all the while, Oboto quietly sang to his brother—in a language their captors could not understand—how their people long ago had navigated these very waters to what the phantoms called the New World, leaving their hieroglyphics and a calendar among the Olmecs, and a thousand years earlier ventured east, sprinkling their seed among the Dravidians before their cities were destroyed by Aryans who brought the Vedas and caste system to enslave them. On and on, like a tapestry, Oboto unfurled their past, rituals, and laws in songs and riddles as they ate or when the phantoms shaved their hair and clipped their nails every few days.

  Slowly, after weeks of suffering, it dawned on Malawi that this transmission from his brother, upon which he fastened his mind night and day like a prayer, was holding madness at bay. It left him no time to dwell on his despair. Each day the prisoners were brought together for exercise. To dance and sing African melodies beneath mist-blurred masts and rigging that favored the webwork of a spider. Week after week, Oboto used that precious time to teach, at pains to pass along as much of their people's experiences as his younger brother could absorb, though after six weeks Malawi saw he was weakening. His voice grew fainter, so frail that at night when they lay crushed together, Malawi had to place his ear close to Oboto's lips, catching the whispered words as his brother's chest rose and (ell, each of his weak exhalations a gift from a world they would never see again.

  When Oboto's wind was gone, Malawi held him close and chanted his brother's spirit safely on its journey to join their ancestors and he kept the rats away. The hatch creaked open. Sunlight spilled into the hold, stinging his eyes. The phantoms came below cursing—they were always cursing—and drove the prisoners onto the deck. One of them, the hook-nosed phantom, began unchaining Malawi from Oboto. "I guess he was some kind of kin to you, wasn't he? That's too bad. I've lost family too, so I guess I know how you feel." He removed the last of the shackles from Oboto, then stood back, waiting for Malawi to release his brother. "Go on now, you can turn him loose. He's dead."

  Malawi did not let go. He tried to lift his brother, slipping his arms under Oboto's shoulders, but found him too heavy. The phantom watched him struggle for a moment, then took Oboto by his feet, and together they carried the body onto the deck, with Malawi still singing his people's funeral songs. They stepped to the rail, Malawi blinking back tears by then, the edges of his eyes feeling blurred. Then he and the phantom swung his brother overboard, dropping him into wind-churned waters. Instantly, Oboto disappeared beneath the roily waves. For a few seconds Malawi's heart felt so still he wondered if he might be dead, too, then involuntarily the words he'd learned came flooding back into his thoughts, and he knew there was much in him—beyond the reach of the ghosts—that was alive forever.

  The phantom, his yellow hair flattened to his forehead by spray, was watching Malawi closely, listening to the lay on his lips. He was very quiet. Malawi stopped. The boy said, "Naw, go on. I don't understand what you're singing, but I like it. It's beautiful. I want to hear more ... C'mon."

  Malawi looked at him for a moment, unable to understand all his strange words. He glanced back down at the waters, thinking that Oboto's songs had only taken him so far. Just to before the time his village was raided. His people's chronicle was unfinished. New songs were needed. And these he must do. Hesitantly at first, and then with a little more confidence, he began weaving the events since his and Oboto's capture onto the last threads his brother had given him.

  Malawi sang and the phantom listened.

  Confession

  "Y'ALL WANT ME to sit there?" he said, nodding toward the barrel amiddlemost the old barn because his hands were tied behind his back. Tiberius was wearing a linen frock and red velvet waistcoat He was thin, clubfooted, and not too happy that the militiamen had brought him back to Colonel Hext's place after what he and the others had done to the old man's wife. But they hadn't killed him, as they'd done with fourteen of his co-conspirators—laying waste to them in a one-sided battle—and maybe, Tiberius thought, they'd let him live if he just did what they asked. He sat down heavily on the barrel, taking just a moment to glance round at the bins of grain, the lofts of hay and straw overhead, and the frail light shafting down from cracks in the roof to the spot where they'd placed him. "All right now, I'm sittin' down, just like you asked, but you don't have to push. What's that? want to know why I joined up with Jemmy?"

  Tiberius looked down at his bare feet, took a long breath, then his eyes fluttered up at the three white men surrounding him. They were passing a flask of home brew between them. Of the trio he recognized two. Mr. Hutchenson, owner of the general store in Stono. Tiberius placed his age at forty. Forty-five. He wore a pair of riding boots and a tattered balandranas. His eyes were a bit red-webbed from the whiskey, his chestnut hair was thinning, and Hutchenson looked at him with a profound sadness, or so Tiberius thought. He'd ran errands for his Bathurst family since he was a boy, and prayed that Hutchenson, if no one else, would understand how his life had been turned upside down in the last twenty-four hours—or, more precisely, since the king of Spain promised to shelter and protect runaway Negroes if they made it to Augustine. The other man he knew was Ethan Whittaker, an overseer with a gray Cathedral beard, who worked on the farm of Tiberius's master, William Boswell, and Tiberius was more than a little afraid of him, seeing how ruthlessly the heavyset Whittaker drove blacks at planting time; he was drumming a short-handled whip over and over against his palm. The last man—Ethan called him Colonel Bull—was dressed in a travel-stained coat and had a double-barreled gun loaded with buckshot hitched under his arm. He had the air of a parson or maybe a politician, somebody important at least, but Tiberius'd never seen him before—or had he?—so when he spoke, staring up at the three men standing over him, he directed his words at Hutchenson.

  "Sir, you know me. I ain't never been one for trouble, or for fightin', or steppin' out of line in any way. Ain't that so? I was born right here, not like Jemmy and them others who come from Africa. I played with your children when we was growin' up. You remember that? I don't know nothin' but here. And I always been thankful Mastah Boswell let me work in the house, seeing how I can't get around too well. You ask him, he'll tell you what a good worker I am. I'm always hup before anybody at the house, even before the daylight horn is blown to wake hup the field hands. It takes me time to walk from the quarters, but I'm there before Mastah Boswell, wearin' his Beard box, gets outta that big bed with its pewterized nickel headboard. See, I'm the one lays out every day his razors imported from England—he likes a different one every morning, you know? I lays out his linen shirt with lawn ruffles on the sleeves, his cravat, and breeches. If it's cold, I'm the one lights the fireplace downstairs, and I carries coal in a pan to all the other fireplaces upstairs and down—it stays colder in them second-floor rooms than downstairs, you know. And it's me makes sure Mastah Boswell's breakfast is just like he wants it. Toast with a li'l flavor of woodsmoke in it. And he likes his coffee roasted and ground no more'n two hours before I serves it to him. His wife, well, she favors egg bread, grilled fowl, bricks of cheese, and fish from New Orleans, along with ice water and mint tea in the morning. You ask them if I don't make that old cook Emma have everything just so on the table, with the pewter bowls and plates set out right pretty, before the mastah and missus come downstairs."

  He saw Hutchenson nodding. He'd eaten more than once at Boswell's home, knew how much effort went into preparing those elaborate meals, and Tiberius felt consoled by the slight upturn at the corner of his lips. "I've always done my best by 'em, and read my Bible like they wanted. You know, just between you'n me, some folks in the quarters didn't like me much 'cause I worked in the house. I told 'em it was on account of my affliction that Mastah Boswell didn't send me to the fields. But that didn't change their minds. They still thought I had it easier than they did. I swear, sometimes I felt like I was livin' in two worlds, just 'cause I worked in the house. On Sunday, the day y'all give us to ourselves, I'd bring food the mastah and missus didn't eat over to that spot near the general store where coloreds get together to talk and dance and such. If Mastah Boswell complained to his wife 'bout one of the field hands, I'd take that fellah aside and tell him what I heard so Mistah Whittaker there wouldn't wind up havin' to whip him. What's that? How'd I meet Jemmy? Yessir, all right. I'll talk about that. Just let me collect my thoughts a li'l..."

  The white men waited. Tiberius, facing the open barn door, could see other Carolina militiamen bringing their bound captives to Hext's farm. The sky above Colleton County was fast losing light. He found it hard to swallow, but cleared his throat, licked his dry lips, and went on:

  "I reckon Jemmy come to St Paul's Parish 'bout a year ago, him and a wagonload of other saltwater Negroes. That's what we call them come straight from Africa. I don't know who his mastah is. At first I didn't pay them no mind when I seen them on Sundays at the gatherin' place. I couldn't talk to most of them, they bein' from Angola and all. They couldn't read or figure. Jemmy, he spoke better English than them others. I guess what they talked was Portuguese. It sounds a li'l bit like Spanish, don't it? Thing is, there was somethin' 'bout Jemmy that was ... different. Oh no, I'm not just talkin' 'bout the way Jemmy looked. They was all big, strappin' boys. Jemmy stood six feet five. You got to figure they had to be strong 'cause workin' rice broke so many people down. Visit any of the quarters, and you'll find somebody got malaria. Cholera. Whooping cough. The children keep intestinal worms. So, yessir, Jemmy, he was fit. But more'n that, he had somethin'... inside. You could see it in his eyes. The way he looked right through you. If I recollect rightly, them Angolans was workin' on a road crew round the time we heard about the Spanish king's proclamation. That was last Sunday. Della, she took a newspaper from Mastah Boswell's study, and Jemmy asked me to read it, which I did, tellin' 'em 'bout how slaves who fled to the Presidio at St. Augustine, Florida, was free. Jemmy listened real close when I read that newspaper. His eyes got real quiet. Then he told the others what I said in Portuguese. Just 'bout that time, Mistah Whittaker, you come out of Mistah Hutchenson's store, seen what we was doin', and ripped that paper right outta my hands. Jemmy snatched it back. And him doin' that liked to make you so mad"—Tiberius laughed, then caught himself—"you commenced to beatin' on him with a harness strap. I ain't never seen you so wild. But Jemmy took it straight up without makin' a sound. Didn't take his eyes off you either or move until finally you was all sweaty and breathin' hard and tuckered out, and just threw down that strap and rode off. You remember that last Sunday?"

  The other white men looked quizzically at Whittaker, whose cheeks flushed bright red. The muscles around his eyes tightened. He spat a foot from where Tiberius sat, then turned away.

  "Yeah," he nodded, "Jemmy had that effect on lots of people. It was like there was somethin' inside him too heavy to move. Excuse me? Come again, Mistah Hutchenson? Was I afraid of Jemmy? Well, yessir, I suppose I was. And ... What?...If I was scared, why'd I join up with him? Oh sure, I was just getting to that..." Tiberius leaned forward, stretching out his arms behind him to take the pressure of the ropes off his wrists, then sat back, both feet planted on either side of the crate. "The way it come 'bout was when 1 went to the meetin' place this mornin'. When I got there I was surprised. Wasn't nobody playin' music. Or dancin'. Or carousin'. They was all sittin' together under a tree, and Jemmy was right in the middle. I smelled liquor. I turned round to leave, but Jemmy told me to sit down. They was all starin' at me. 'Bout eighteen field hands. Fellahs you didn't fool with. I'm talkin' 'bout men so tired from that awful work in the rice fields that in the morning some of'em was so stiff and sore they couldn't bend over to put on their shoes. Men that'd cut you just as soon as look at you. And at one time or another, Jemmy'd either gone heads up with every one of 'em, or backed 'em down, or done somethin' to make them respect him. I figured, yeah, maybe I better sit down. Once I found a place, Jemmy went back to talkin'. He talked a long time. Listenin' to him, I felt maybe like I was in church or somethin'. He was citin' all the things—horrible things—white people had done. Like cripplin' runaways. Castratin' 'em. Pesterin' the women. Workin' the field hands 'til they dropped in the water, and all that evil, says Jemmy, was done just so people like Mastah Boswell could have his fresh coffee and grilled fowl every morning. But it didn't have to be that way, Jemmy says. Back in Africa, he knew somethin' different and he never let it go. And we didn't have to either. I heard him say somethin' like 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.' He was talkin' 'bout the Spanish down in Florida. Jemmy said if we struck out together, we could make it to St. Augustine."