James

by Percival Everett

“What you suppose an earthquake feels like?” Huck asked. “Like when you pa wakes you up in the middle of the night.”

“You have a notion, like Raynal, of natural liberties, and we all have them by virtue of our being human. But when those liberties are put under societal and cultural pressure, they become civil liberties, and those are contingent on hierarchy and situation. Am I close?”

How strange a world, how strange an existence, that one’s equal must argue for one’s equality, that one’s equal must hold a station that allows airing of that argument, that one cannot make that argument for oneself, that premises of said argument must be vetted by those equals who do not agree.

I am called Jim. I have yet to choose a name. In the religious preachings of my white captors I am a victim of the Curse of Ham. The white so-called masters cannot embrace their cruelty and greed, but must look to that lying Dominican friar for religious justification. But I will not let this condition define me. I will not let myself, my mind, drown in fear and outrage. I will be outraged as a matter of course. But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.

At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.

“Way I sees it is dis. If’n ya gots to hab a rule to tells ya wha’s good, if’n ya gots to hab good ’splained to ya, den ya cain’t be good. If’n ya need sum kinda God to tells ya right from wrong, den you won’t never know.” “But the law says…” “Good ain’t got nuttin’ to do wif da law. Law says I’m a slave.”

There were those slaves who claimed a distinction between good masters and cruel masters. Most of us considered such to be distinction without difference.

I had already come to understand the tidiness of lies, the lesson learned from the stories told by white people seeking to justify my circumstance.

“Some might say that my views on slavery are complex and multifaceted.” “Convoluted and multifarious.” “Well reasoned and complicated.” “Entangled and problematic.” “Sophisticated and intricate.” “Labyrinthine and Daedalean.” “Oh, well played, my dark friend.”

After being cruel, the most notable white attribute was gullibility.

“Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.”

“It’s a horrible world. White people try to tell us that everything will be just fine when we go to heaven. My question is, Will they be there? If so, I might make other arrangements.” Easter laughed.

Bad as whites were, they had no monopoly on duplicity, dishonesty or perfidy.

“We’re slaves. We’re not anywhere. Free person, he can be where he wants to be. The only place we can ever be is in slavery.”

And yet, with all that running, no place appeared like a new place. Perhaps that was the nature of escape.

“To fight in a war,” he said. “Can you imagine?” “Would that mean facing death every day and doing what other people tell you to do?” I asked. “I reckon.” “Yes, Huck, I can imagine.”

We knew that she, I, all of us, were forever naked in the world.

I had never seen a white man filled with such fear. The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened