James

by Percival Everett

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.”

riverboat. I admit that I entertained briefly the thought that I was going to drown to death. Drowning to death always made a person more interesting, but I wanted, at that moment, to be, to remain, as boring as possible.

the Bible itself was the least interesting of all. I could not enter it, did not want to enter it, and then understood that I recognized it as a tool of my enemy. I chose the word enemy, and still do, as oppressor necessarily supposes a victim.

DEEP IN THE NIGHT from deep in the forest, I heard the barking and howling of hounds. I pulled myself into an even tighter ball atop the tree roots that had become my bed. There was a mama raccoon that lived in the tree. She had taken to walking past me nonchalantly in the darkness. Tonight she stayed in the tree, high above me, listening to the dogs. We were both animals and we didn’t know which of us was the prey. We accepted that we both were. I considered running, leaving my raccoon friend, but in which direction does one run from lightning?

His angular face might have been distinguished, but I reserved such valuations for after I’d heard someone speak.

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

Wiley looked at me. He was basically honest, his practice of owning people notwithstanding. But

These white men scared me. They scared me because they weren’t invested in my being afraid of them.

NEVER HAD A situation felt so absurd, surreal and ridiculous. And I had spent my life as a slave.

A man who refused to own slaves but was not opposed to others owning slaves was still a slaver, to my thinking.

He’s black just like you and me.” I paused. “Well, he’s black.” “That’s a white man,” she said. “No, he just looks white,” I said. “It happens.”

“Belief has nothing to do with truth. Believe what you like.

It was as if there were two different bodies of water. The Mississippi, in fact, seemed like many different rivers. The level was always rising or falling. Sediment got pushed around, changing the locations of bars and shelves. Islands changed shape, sometimes becoming completely submerged, and old outcroppings disappeared while new ones materialized overnight. The upshot was that we had no idea where we were.

I considered the northern white stance against slavery. How much of the desire to end the institution was fueled by a need to quell and subdue white guilt and pain? Was it just too much to watch? Did it offend Christian sensibilities to live in a society that allowed that practice? I knew that whatever the cause of their war, freeing slaves was an incidental premise and would be an incidental result.

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 him.

“Judge, I have no interest in killing you, though it wouldn’t make my lot any worse, would it? I can’t feed your fantasy that you’re a good, kind master. No matter how gentle you were when you applied the whip, no matter how much compassion you showed when you raped. So, you dispensed fewer lashes when you punished. You often let us rest when temperatures soared.” “I’m going to see you dead, nigger.” “No doubt.”

A white man prowled the camp, a bully lashed to his belt. He swaggered like white men did after rape.