The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr

Author:Robert Jones, Jr. [Jones, Jr., Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

Nebuchadnezzar

It had never dawned on Isaiah how things so close together could be so far apart. The barn was just yonder, a good stone’s throw from the Big House, and yet, when walked by legs, the distance between them felt like a journey. The house seemed to be at the bottom of some enormous mountain, or down, maybe, in some deep valley where the thinnest of rivers hid from the sky and wolves roamed. Down there, where you expected it to be warmer, and yet things were chilled enough to blue the hands and feet, and turn breath to smoke.

And here you were, lost and at a loss for how anyone barefoot and without tools could make his way out of it, climb surfaces that seemed too smooth to cling to or too solid to dig into, with nothing but what might be an errant star to guide you upward, into the place that is only marginally safer than the place you’re trying to escape.

What of the ascent itself? Isaiah had a strong mind, and he couldn’t figure out if it was at all worth it. A road that was supposed to be level was sloped and its incline became more difficult with each step. There was nothing to stop him from tumbling back down right as he reached the uppermost part of it. You could break your bones and then there would no longer be a point in getting up and trying again. You wouldn’t be able to. Couldn’t.

Yet, the yearning that pulled him at his center like a rope that had been thrown down from the mountaintop, from the level plains at the top of the ridge, from the places that were supposed to be cold but somehow, maybe because they were closer to the sun, were warm to every touch. The grass took on a different character: dewy and blue green instead of dry and gold. People and animals lived together in what he guessed you could call a kind of harmony, but it came from barest necessity rather than a haunting desire. There was one reason, and one reason only, to make the attempt to, wingless and unsure-footed, try to ascend any old way.

By the time the birds had finished singing, after they had completed their circling of his head, he remembered the pain. His own, yes, because it can only be tragedy to be forced, but doubly so when the body refuses to fail; also Timothy’s because he was unprepared. Isaiah hadn’t anticipated finding a hint of joy in being the source of it. Besides, whatever joy there was quickly faded once he realized that it was the kind of thing that Timothy had no objection to. It was all so very bizarre, and also very new to Isaiah, to learn that toubab had not only relished giving it out, but secretly—in their quiet places, out of the sight of anyone who might judge it horribly, use it against them, or give to them in a way for which they were truly unprepared—they were intent on receiving it.

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