I hated James that night. Nobody had ever said anything so cruel to me before.
And if what we’d done was a sin, then it’d come from inside us both. Not just me. And not because I was the woman.
I studied Daddy’s hands as he passed ears to me. The silks hung from his fingers like temptations that wouldn’t fall away no matter how hard he shook them.
I looked at Mamma’s hands as she coaxed the shiny threads from between kernels, determined to remove every last clinging menace.
I left silks on my ears on purpose—little secret ones that wouldn’t be noticed right away. And I must have been the Devil, at least a tiny bit, because I was on fire from the inside, hot and smoldering and thinking terrible things about James.
I handled the corn so hard I punctured kernels with my fingers. I thought being the Devil wouldn’t be so bad if I could just burn James up.
By the time I saw him again, I didn’t feel quite the same way. He said he was sorry, but it was the weight of his hand on my thigh, the way his thumb stroked easy that reminded me how much I loved him too. He was so scared, and I wished I was powerful enough to protect him. I wished I had wings like a bird so I could hide him underneath. If I was a bird, I’d peck him five or six times hard on the head and then let him under my wing.
“We gotta run away,” his voice quaked.
“Where would we go?”
“To the beach?”
“We can’t do that,” I pleaded, even though a part of me wanted to race for the road. “They’d find us. We don’t have any money.”
James wept. He started crying hard, and I hadn’t seen him cry since he was little. It looked so funny, big sobs sputtering out of an almost full-size man’s throat. They weren’t the kind of tears people had in church, where they just fell freely and ran down faces like rain on a windshield. They were squeezed out through squinted eyes, and accompanied by a sound like his lungs were colliding into one another. I didn’t know what to do. It scared me for him to cry, but I tried not to let him know.
“Do you have any idea what they did to Ben Harback for fornicating?” James asked me.
“Locked him in the cellar for forty days,” I told him.
“They did more than that. They cut him. And the reason he had to stay underground for forty days was because he had to heal up before he could walk around again. And that day in the field, that day when he passed out, he was already sick and in pain.”
“No,” I said.
“It’s true. And if we stay here, that’s gonna be me, Ninah,” and he broke down again.
“Least you don’t have a history of sin,” I tried to comfort.
“Don’t matter,” he stammered. “Don’t make one bit of difference.”
“If you knew we weren’t being Jesus for each other, then why’d you keep doing it?” I asked him, not accusingly, and I ran my fingers through his soft dark hair.
“I didn’t think God would let it happen,” he said. “Cause God was with us the whole time. I didn’t know something so awful could come from something so nice.”
I started to tell him that it wasn’t awful, but then I thought about what might happen to us. At the very least, we’d be sleeping in graves until the frost.
But I was glad to know that he thought God was there. All along. Right with us all that time.
“We’ll run away,” I told him. “I’ll come up with a plan.”
“We can’t.”
“Yes, we can,” I assured him, and I put my hands into the tops of his trousers, and that’s when I felt it. Barbed wire. Wrapped around him again and again.
“Where’d you get it?” I asked him.
“The barn,” he said. “There’s more in there.”
“Come here,” I said. “One more time.” And I pulled him to me so that I could feel it too, the sharp wires x-ing into my skin, poking little holes into each of us each time he pushed.
“Harder,” I told him.
“It hurts,” he choked, and paused to wipe his eyes.
“Harder,” I insisted. “To know Jesus’ pain.” It was difficult to know for sure where all the tears were coming from.
That next morning at breakfast, I couldn’t eat. Just the smells of the food were too strong, corn bread so thick and hot and oniony. I put a piece in my mouth and chewed and chewed as it got bigger. I had to swallow everything twice, and even then it didn’t want to stay.
James wasn’t eating either. He wasn’t even trying. I watched him staring at his fork still resting beside his plate, his eyes studying it like a holy relic he couldn’t imagine touching.
“James, you feel all right?” Bethany asked him, and he looked up from the table quickly to nod.
His eyes looked surprised—like somebody stung by a bee. I wondered if mine looked that way too.
In the fields that day, I figured it all out. On Thursday when James went with the men to the tobacco auction, I’d hide between the big burlap heaps of tobacco on the back of the ton truck. And then James would distract them when they first got to the warehouse, and I’d jump off and dive under the truck until the men walked inside.
I’d meet James outside the warehouse, next to the highway, and we’d run into the woods and then follow the road along until a trucker came by. We’d thumb a ride into town.
We’d go to Ajita Patel’s house and call Corinthian Lovell, who would help us, I was almost sure. I’d cut my hair, and she’d paint up my lips, and we’d cut off James’ pants into shorts so he wouldn’t be recognizable as a Fire and Brimstone. Then maybe she could call Ben Harback and he’d take us to the beach an hour away where we’d disappear.
We’d get jobs in a store or maybe as lifeguards or something. We’d find a barn somewhere and sleep there until we made some money. Or we’d call the gym teacher from school and see if she’d loan us enough money to get by for a week until we found a job.
We’d find somebody who had a garden and sneak in after dark and pick tomatoes and cucumbers to eat until we could afford to buy food of our own. And later, we’d sneak back into that garden and replant it. Either that, or we’d leave them a fruit basket on their doorsteps at Christmas, anonymously.
I wondered if people at the beach planted gardens.
The more I thought about it, the happier I got. We could just leave. Contrary to what anybody might think, me and James could just run away and be done with Fire and Brimstone forever.
But it didn’t happen like that.
We finished filling a barn that day, in spite of the heat and stickiness that teamed up against us. We were so tired we could have skipped supper and gone straight to bed, but we didn’t. I sat at the table and ate, though James only pretended to.
Then when it was time for prayer partners, I staggered out to the barn to meet James, who was tending the fires with Barley and Mustard. I was going to tell him about our plans if I could get him far enough away from the other boys. And even though I was scared, I was a little excited.
By the time I got to the barn, I was hollering out. Then I saw Mustard stretched out on a drag and Barley laying on his back on the stringer, already asleep even though it was barely dark. Barley rolled over and said, “Ninah, shhh.”
“Y’all make him do all the work,” I fussed.
“It’s his turn, ” Barley said.
“Huh?” Mustard jumped up quick, his eyes springing open. “What?”
“Go back to sleep,” I told him, “It’s just me.”
I peeked into the barn, calling James, but I didn’t see him. I thought maybe he’d gone out back to wait for me at the place where we prayed when he tended fires.
But he wasn’t there either.
“Did you find him?” Barley asked. He was up, but groggy, and walking behind me.
“No,” I said.
“Huh,” Barley pondered. “Is it late?”
“Quarter to nine.”
“Well, he’s got to be around here. We were just talking to him not long ago. We just layed down.
He can’t be gone far.”
“Maybe he had to use the bathroom,” I said, and walked back to the barn shed and waited.
There were a couple of lanterns hanging from the rafters, and I stooped in the sand beneath the light, picked up a tiny stick and twiddled it in the doodlebug hole, around and around, waiting to see if the bug was at home.
“If he don’t come soon, I’ll be your prayer partner,” Barley offered. I couldn’t tell if he was teasing or not.
“He’ll come,” I said.
Looking through the rickety barn door, I could see the low burners blazing orange, spread out all along the ground, heating up the tobacco inside. It was very dark except for the orange glow given off by the squat fires, and I could see the shadows of tobacco hanging from the rafters, from the wooden bars stretched from wall to wall, layered like hair. It reminded me of what Hell must be like, looking into that hot door, and I wanted to back away.
It was a funny feeling that shook me, one I can’t exactly describe. I thought I might throw up or pass out, and so I walked away from the light and away from the barn’s heat. But I tripped over a tobacco stick and stumbled into the drag where Mustard had been sleeping.
“Hey, Ninah. You okay?” he asked, then yawned.
“Yeah. I think I got too hot,” I answered, and I tried to sound ordinary, but my voice was marbled with panic. I was almost sure James had left Fire and Brimstone without me.
If I couldn’t be with James, I wanted to be alone, but Mustard didn’t know that. He hopped down and stood with me, away from the light.
“It’s too hot to even breathe,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“James probably snuck off to the pond to cool down.”
“You think so?” I asked hopefully.
“He told me this morning he wanted to finish that barn early enough for us to have time to go swimming. I guess after me and Barley fell asleep, he just went on his own.”
“He’s never done that before. And he was expecting me.”
“Yeah,” Mustard said. “Maybe he forgot.”
But I knew James hadn’t forgotten. He might not have wanted to see me. He might even have left me. But I knew for a fact that James hadn’t forgotten me. No matter what, he wouldn’t be able to do that.
“Well, I’m real worried about him,” I said finally, and I guess Mustard got concerned about him too because he told Barley that we were going off to look for James and to stay awake until he got back.
Ten minutes later, I was sitting behind Mustard on a horse, trotting through the woods. Mustard had the reins in one hand, a lantern in the other, but my hands were empty. Even though I could see the little branches, I didn’t stop them from slapping me as they swung past Mustard.
We darted in and out of trees, and I studied the moon, narrow as a claw, the stars that hung prickly above me. Though it was night, the temperature hadn’t dropped much, and I was sweating. I could feel the horse sweating beneath my thighs, and I could smell the hot dampness of our bodies. My legs itched from the rough, damp rubbing.
I was almost sure James wasn’t swimming, and I tried to concentrate on the shadows the lantern cast, on the horse’s breathing and Mustard’s. I tried not to notice the fear that felt like it was hugging me too tight. In my mind, I talked to James the way I talked to Jesus—as if he was really there.
“Don’t leave me here,” I prayed. “Just because the baby ain’t in your body don’t mean you can go. Not without telling me, at least. The least you could’ve done is told me.”
I tried to convince myself that when we got to the pond, we’d find James splashing around, and we’d probably hop in the pond with him and play. I’d have to take off my dress and just swim in my underwear. I’d have to pull up my hair to keep Mamma from noticing. I told myself we’d barely make it back before prayer partners were over, and I tried to feel excited and brave.
But I feared that in spite of Mustard and the horse, I was already completely alone. I didn’t want to live at Fire and Brimstone without James.
Just before we got to the pond, I could see another light shining dim through the bushes and trees. Mustard turned the horse in that direction, looked back at me, grinned, and said, “Told you.”
“James,” I yelled out happy. “Hey, James.” And I decided in just that instant that I was going to take off all my clothes and dive into the water and not worry about my hair. I’d tell Mamma I went swimming instead of to prayer partners. I’d tell Mamma that I prayed underwater. I decided I might even tell her about the baby, and I decided it wouldn’t matter if Mustard saw me and James kissing. I decided I didn’t care.
“James, you idiot,” Mustard hollered. “What would you have done if the barn’d burned down?”
But nobody answered.
“That’s strange,” I said.
Mustard stopped the horse near an old broken tree that had fallen into the pond. Though the roots were still partially planted in the ground, the tree sloped down from the bank and gradually disappeared into the water. I knew the boys liked to dive from the trunk even though they’d been warned that they could be caught on limbs underwater. So when I saw the flashlight sitting so still on the tree trunk, abandoned a few feet from the place where water swallowed the old oak, I hopped off the horse right away, climbed onto the tree, and carefully made my way towards the flashlight.
“James,” I called out, feeling the panic rush back down to my toes and numb me all over. Mustard waved the lantern around so we could see the surface of the pond, but James wasn’t there.
The lantern shook as Mustard bolted towards me, sure-footed even though the tree was only a few feet wide, and the light bounced on the water with his steps, making the shadows of other trees appear to wave violently.
By the time he reached me, I had already picked up the piece of rope I found running along the length of the tree and then going under beside the trunk.
“What’s the rope for?” I asked. Has this rope always been here?”
“James,” he called. “James?”
And I pointed the flashlight to the land-tied end of the rope and saw that it was knotted around the roots. Then I straddled the log, and pulled from the other way. I could feel the rope giving, then tightening. I caught the rope between my toes and stretched my leg into the pond as far as I could, but the rope was much longer.
Then Mustard grabbed the rope behind me, and we both pulled, and Mustard told me it might just be a sunken boat, and I cried because the other end was too heavy to be the kind of boat you can float in a regular pond and because Mustard was crying too.
We pulled for a while more, but the rope was clearly hung.
“James can hold his breath for a real long time. He’s even better at it than Barley,” Mustard whispered.
“Should we swim down and try to loosen it?” I asked him.
“Not yet,” Mustard said, but his voice sounded like pleading even though he didn’t mean for it to.
So we jerked and tugged and fought more with the rope, and leaned backwards until we fell, both of us, off the tree and into the water, knocking the lantern in too. And I sunk like a cinder block. I squinted my eyes shut and rose back up and met Mustard dripping and clutching the tree. To my right, the lantern floated away, and the light was dim from just the flashlight because there was no moon to speak of.
But when we climbed back on and pulled again, the rope wasn’t caught anymore. I passed it back to Mustard, grabbing handful after handful of wet rope, and it wasn’t as slippery as I thought rope should be, or as light.
Finally we pulled a massive piece of tree out of the water, and as it surfaced, I could see a body tied to it.
“Get the flashlight,” I told Mustard. “It might not be him.”
But it was James. James and a big chunk of tree tied together like twins joined at the side. The rope was wrapped and knotted around his waist, and then knotted around the middle of the waterlogged tree. They were so twisted together th
at it looked like they’d grown that way, and a branch thinned narrow in four or five directions over his head.
I stood on the trunk looking down at James, his mouth gaping, and the water captured in my dress dripped down on him. I was suddenly cold and suddenly still, and I didn’t hear Mustard say, “Give me the rope,” until he’d already pulled it from my hands.
We towed him to the edge of the pond, and then Mustard heaved him onto the grass. I stayed on the bank with James while Mustard rode back to get help. I didn’t untie him from the thick piece of tree, or wipe away the algae draped over his ear and neck. I didn’t touch him. I held the flashlight on him and studied the way he’d wrapped himself in rope and wood. I wondered if he’d known he would smell like a plant, so fibery, when he was pulled from the pond. I wondered what the rope was for—if he’d worried that no one would find him and he’d sink to the bottom, or if he’d worried that without it, he might change his mind. I imagined him fastening that knot around his waist, so tight it looked elastic around his thin middle. I imagined him swimming down, feeling for the thickest branch. I wondered if he’d died tying knots. I wondered how long it took his lungs to fill.
I held the rope in my hands and watched him, framed with cattails and reeds. And later when I heard voices shouting, voices screaming out as they came towards the pond, the sounds seemed so far away, like how voices from Hell must sound to God, so forgettable.
I’m not sure who cut the rope from his body or who cut the rope from the tree. But when Daddy led me home, I still had it in my hands, twisted around and around.
Some people say you can’t change history, but that isn’t entirely true. We did it at Fire and Brimstone, and it was easy.
James didn’t take his own life. He drowned on a hot night, caught on a root in the bottom of the pond. Nobody ever mentioned that he was tethered to that sunken tree with thick, deliberate knots.
And that was that. At his funeral, with everybody crying and howling so, nobody even blinked when Grandpa Herman said his death was accidental. Nobody minded that he praised James and talked about what a good companion he’d make for the angels. That’s what we wanted to hear.