The men started stamping. “Call it Brother Jennings.”
“You ain’t got to look far or wide to see whose ass he lean down and wipe anytime they ask him. God ain’t nothing but a butt boy for rich White men. He let them do whatever thing they want, then make they way as smooth as glass. But White man, he ain’t content with all that. He got to rule it all. God his mistress, but he wed to the Devil. How many times we find his workings in them woods? How much our blood he feed his soil, how many upside down crosses he be burning. They been courting the Devil since before Jesus walked the earth. And they doing it still. Back to the day Eve spawned them.”
The men pushed closer, their faces hungry for his words like dogs waiting to fetch.
Otha watched her husband’s eyes go black as he talked about Eve. He told the old story of how she alone baked evil in the bread of the world. Then he added, “Cuz who you think give birth to every nature of pestilence on this old planet earth? Locust and yellow fever — cotton blight and slavery — and when she took that bite of the apple, she open her legs and out come all of that, and worst of all — out come the White man!”
The Reverend looked at the two young initiates. “You just boys and just catching on to they curse. You got to know they born with it, but when they get they first blood it’s too late. One day you’ll find yourself wrapped up in knots for the want of a woman. You gone want her touch and she gone make sure you do by how she parade in front of you, but the second you reaches out she got to say no. Why? Cuz it’s the nature of woman to make you shamed of the desires she done give to you in the first place. Cuz she carry evil inside her like a disease she don’t never catch but can’t help but spread.
“So hard as it might be for y’all boys to understand, we got to get them early. Got to snatch they evil when we can still use it against any enemy what come to cut us down.
“Some folks say slavery and the whip make us crazy. Some say we got so twisted up with pain and hate so we do this here. But is that true, brothers?”
The men screamed out like someone held a knife to their throats. “No! No Brother!”
“I say unto y’all, we as wise as Solomon and learn to use what we got, to take the reins of evil. We needs us some vessels to do just that!!!”
There was a pause in the crowd. Her heart pounding in her mouth, Otha watched as a giant of a man brought six little girls into the center of the circle. They were crying. Weeping. Little crumpled girls who looked like they had been kept in a dark box, cramped, wincing in the light of the fire. Next she saw Papa Bell’s grandbaby, little Ruby so pretty, her face like a heart. She wasn’t dirty, but had on a pretty blue dress. A blue bow in her hair. Why!? What are they gonna do to that girl? Those girls? What are they—? Otha almost stood. Almost. But God or the Devil held her tight to where she crouched.
“And these little ones here?” A practiced treble rang in her husband’s voice as he preached hellfire. “Don’t be mistook by they age, like a rattler and they poison, they come of age they gonna bite us.”
The circle of men shouted out “Heya!” and “Speak it Brother, Speak it!”
Otha watched in horror as he pushed six crying girls forward.
A power surged through her husband so that he shook from head to toe, reached his hand into the heavens and screamed, “And do you know how we take they evil?”
The men answered, “Yes! We do, Brother Jennings!”
“How we do it?!”
A man hollered like a hammer. “We teaches them!!!”
“What do we teach them?”
A flurry of voices screaming on top of each other:
“How to use they lust to please us—!”
“—so we can take—”
“—take they power back.”
“Yes, my Brothers! Take it back! And what Make They Power Stronger!?”
Obeah, the man who had poured the powder around the circle, answered. “The blood make it so.” Otha didn’t notice until he spoke that the man had a butcher knife. That he was standing over the calf.
The Reverend said, his voice as flat as death, “Them gals is for y’all to do with as you please. Them that paid go first.”
Otha saw one of the girls run and try to break out of the circle, only to be grabbed hard and thrown back with the others, so she crumpled her body and stood still. One of the city men pulled her towards him and held her possessively, arms crossed over her chest.
“But this one …” Her husband gently took hold of Ruby. He held her face and gave her a smile. “This one belong to me. Ain’t nobody else touch her. She a prize heifer, worth a-plenty. We send her out where she collect the White man’s power and bring it back to me so’s I can lead y’all.”
The drums began. The girls were all crying, sobbing uncontrollably. Ruby looked glazed and accepting.
Otha heard a sound, a high careening cry, she looked and saw that the knife had been plunged into the calf’s neck by Obeah. Its legs bucking, writhing, blood spurting on the white sheet.
She jumped, so that the branch broke that she rested upon. The Reverend peered in her direction and searched the dark of the woods. Otha watched little Ruby do the same. In a split second the child’s eyes saw her. The Reverend took a step towards the woods, and Otha tasted bile in the back of her throat. She watched the girl Ruby take her husband’s hand and turn him away from her. She saw her husband’s face twist into a jagged grin as he called out to the men. “Now don’t break ’em y’all! They for training! We gots to keep them whole!”
Penter Rankin ran up and threw an ale barrel full of white powder into the pit fire and the flames turned bright blue and green. A wall of blue smoke filled the clearing. It rolled so high and thick it seemed to cover the sky, so that Otha could only see shapes and bits and pieces of men and girls. Arms pulled, dragged off. Pants … legs running. Screams. Screams of the children. The dying heifer calf moaning. Pain. Red on one face. A child’s cheek red. A man’s hands.
Otha was frozen. She wanted to run. Wanted to tell. But who would she tell? Where would she — where would she??? But she waited because, maybe, maybe one day she could tell God. He wasn’t listening now … But later, when the blue smoke was gone. When he could see into the fire. See what they were doing. She would tell the Father so he could set it straight.
Then, then she couldn’t wait — Otha lifted to go, to run, towards or away she did not know, but a hand slapped over her mouth. Another over her eyes. She fought, fought like life was a treasure that she would die to protect. Another set of hands held her down now. She tried to bite, and scream, she kicked into the hands holding her legs. She heard another scream pealing through the trees, a child was screaming louder, louder still. She managed to lift up, against the weight of hands — bodies. Someone punched her hard on the back of her head and she fell forward. In a second, a shock jerked through her, blocking all transmission, so that a jangle of images cut through her. She came to — minutes? hours? later, jerking on the dumb earth. They were still around her. Her hands were moving, moving against the carpet of dry needles, eating at the earth with her hands. Another jolt shot through her and scrambled the last of her reason. Time stopped and crushed in on itself, too too much for her tender spirit to fathom. Otha was shut down, and passed into unconsciousness.