James

by Percival Everett

Safe movement through the world depended on mastery of language, fluency.

“Because they need to know everything before us. Because they need to name everything.”

“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.”

“How do they know it’s gonna rain?” the boy asked. “Dey’s a part of nature and weather be a part of nature and dem parts talk to each other.”

In truth, I was afraid to sleep again for fear of Huck coming back and hearing my thoughts without their passing through my slave filter.

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 will not let myself, my mind, drown in fear and outrage. I will be outraged as a matter of course.

I considered the notion of telling Huckleberry that the body I had seen in that flooded house was his Pap.

Wait, really!?

I would come back for my family, I promised myself.

I hope he's able to

“Then I’d wish dat you was free like me.”

Aw what a sweetie

“Don’t every man got a right to be free?” Huck asked. “Ain’t no such things as rights,” I said.

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.” We drifted on, our silence becoming quieter.

I’m gonna get me a job and save me sum money and come back and buy my Sadie and Lizzie.” “Then they will belong to you?” Huck asked. “Naw, dey jest won’t belong to nobuddy else. Dey won’t belong to nobuddy. Dey be free.”

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.

And so, after these books, 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.

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

“I see a lot of things in that face. I see—”

Is James actually Huck's biological father?!

“What do you mean you lost your tenor?” Wiley asked. “I mean, we simply can’t find him. We were riding the train and it seems very likely that he, being drunk, not an unknown condition to him, fell off or out, however one dismounts a moving train.”

I looked at Easter. He knew what I was thinking. I had stood and listened to this transaction and never once was I asked for either opinion or desire. I was the horse that I was, just an animal, just property, nothing but a thing, but apparently I was a horse, a thing, that could sing.

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

“Because, Huck, and I hope you hear this without thinking I’m crazy or joking, you are my son.”

Called it

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.

I pointed my pistol at him. “I am the angel of death, come to offer sweet justice in the night,” I said. “I am a sign. I am your future. I am James.” I pulled back the hammer on my pistol.

“And who are you?” “I am James.” “James what?” “Just James.”