James

by Percival Everett

“We used spit instead. Tom Sawyer said it would do the same thing and how could we rob a bank wif our hands all cut up. One boy cried and said he was going to tell and Tom Sawyer shut him up wif a nickel.” “Ain’t you tellin’ me yo secrets right naw?” I asked. Huck paused. “You’re different.” “ ’Cause I’m a slave?” “No, taint that.” “What it is, den?” “You’re my friend, Jim.” “Why, thank ya, Huck.” “You won’t tell nobody, will ya?” He stared anxiously at me. “Even if we go out and rob us a bank. You won’t tell, right?” “I kin keep me a secret, Huck. I kin keep yo secret, too.”

“Why did God set it up like this?” Rachel asked. “With them as masters and us as slaves?” “There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.”

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.

“I ain’t a mule, Huck.” We drifted on. “Ain’t I doin’ wrong, though?” Huck said. He was troubled. “How am I s’posed to know what good is?” “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.” We drifted on, our silence becoming quieter.

Wiley glared at me and then slapped me on my back like a chum. “Hey, work good and I treat you good. Right, Easter?” “Dat sho is raght, Massa Wiley,” Easter said. “I’m gonna git me some breakfast,” Wiley said. As he walked away, he said to the air, “That’s the easiest slave I ever got.” I looked at Easter. “He’s right. If he didn’t own slaves I’d like to think that old Wiley was a decent fellow.” “If,” I said.

It was clear that the people we had escaped on the beach were not following us; they were too concerned with being survivors. White people often spent time admiring their survival of one thing or another. I imagined it was because so often they had no need to survive, but only to live.

“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.”

“Could you have imagined a black man, a slave, a nigger, talking to you like this? Who’s lacking in imagination?” “Are you going to kill me?” “The thought crossed my mind. I haven’t decided. Oh, sorry, let me translate that for you. I ain’t ’cided, Massa.” 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.