Columbia is the story of Theodore Lomax, a nineteen-year-old Union solider in the American Civil War, who is as committed as any to the ideal of human freedom. After being assigned to the army of William Tecumseh Sherman, shortly after the general’s infamous March to the Sea, he willingly participates in the destruction of civilian property in Columbia, South Carolina, believing his acts are justified by Southern resistance to the Northern cause of emancipation. But when the destruction escalates into violence against the civilians themselves, he becomes disillusioned, and feels compelled to strike out in opposition to his own countrymen.
The novel is told from Lomax’s point of view, but there are ten other supporting characters, each with a story of his or her own. There was a time when I thought these stories, or these “Reflections in Broken Glass,” should alternate with the chapters in Columbia, presenting a richer but perhaps more tangled tapestry of the lives that painfully converge in the novel’s climactic scenes. But Columbia is clearly a more coherent narrative without them. Still, they were valuable to me as an author, and so I’ve decided to share them here.
“Sophia,” centers on the character of Sophia Hawthrone, and describes her first experience among slaves in the unreconstructed South, trying to save their heathen souls and finding a truth that had long eluded her.
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
The first time Sophia Hawthorne met Erasmus Wolcott she took him for someone who cared about the immortal souls of his fellow man -- both those with white and those with black skin. Wolcott was a slave owner, one of the largest in South Carolina, with more than three hundred human beings held in bondage to work his gigantic plantation. Sophia had come to the South from her parish in Connecticut precisely to see to the spiritual needs of slaves -- to perform missionary work, as it were, not in some far-off land across the ocean, but in her own backyard, in the United States of America -- and in her innocence she was at first surprised to find a slave owner such a willing supporter of her calling.
“These people need your help, Sister,” Wolcott told her poignantly over dinner her first night on his plantation, his rough and calloused hand closing tightly over her forearm wrapped in the black cloth of her habit. “Some of them still worship the false gods their ancestors did in Africa. If I showed you the collection of carved idols we’ve confiscated from them over the years, it would turn your hair white. Where they keep getting them from I have no idea, but they go to great lengths to hide them from us and to keep them safe.”
Sophia only nodded her head, more preoccupied with the pressure of Wolcott’s hand on her arm than with the idolatry his slaves might be practicing.
“You don’t believe me?” Wolcott said. “My hand to God, I tell you it’s the truth. Some of these people have never even seen a cross before coming here. It’s tragic, to think of their souls suffering in torment in the next life, especially when you realize how much they have suffered in this one. Father, tell her. Tell the Sister her work is certainly cut out for her here.”
The other dinner guest was Richard Tyler, a priest from Sophia’s own parish, who had been in the South ministering to slaves like the ones owned by Wolcott for two years, and who had recently sent for Sophia to join and assist him.
Tyler nodded his head after taking a long, slow sip of Wolcott’s wine. “It’s a difficult journey,” he admitted softly. “For us as well as for them. Their heads are so full of superstition, they have to be led very carefully towards the truth. It should start getting easier, though, with Parson Abraham’s arrival.”
“Parson Abraham?” Sophia asked, finally extracting her arm from Wolcott’s grasp. “Who’s that?”
“A former slave,” Wolcott said. “Parson Abraham Finch. Given his freedom years ago and answered the Lord’s calling. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him. There was a time when he traveled throughout the North, speaking to congregations of all stripes about the brutalities he suffered as a slave. But now he’s returned to the South, and almost exclusively goes from plantation to plantation, preaching the Gospel to his African brothers. He’s not welcome everywhere, but he’s certainly welcome here. Wouldn’t you say, Father?”
“Most assuredly,” Tyler responded, after draining even the dregs out of his wine glass. “His message is the same as mine, but I’m told he’s received so much better by the slaves. I suppose they see him as one of their own and, of course, he once was. He must make it easier for them to envision the possibility of enlightenment.”
“He’s coming here?” Sophia asked.
Tyler nodded his head. “Tomorrow. He’s expected sometime tomorrow.”
Sophia was uncertain what to make of much of this, but did not ask any more questions, fearing she may have asked too many already. She had little experience around men, and still felt uncomfortable in their presence. And, of course, Tyler was a priest, and it was not appropriate for a nun to ask too many questions of a priest.
The following evening she attended her first worship service with the slaves. It was held after sunset in a long, log house built between the slave quarters and the stables, a “praise house,” as Sophia later learned it was called. She, Tyler, and Wolcott arrived before the slaves and were met shortly by Parson Abraham.
The Parson was a dark-skinned Negro, with hair gone completely white and cut close to his skull. He had reportedly arrived on the plantation earlier in the day, and had enjoyed a glass of Wolcott’s fine wine in the parlor with the slave owner and the priest that afternoon, but this was the first Sophia had seen of him. Wolcott and Tyler welcomed him warmly and then Wolcott introduced him to Sophia.
“Sister,” Abraham said solemnly, bowing before her and making no movement to touch her. He was an old man, older than either Tyler or Wolcott. “I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.”
He spoke clearly, and with obvious education. Sophia returned a similar pleasantry, and then stood quietly as Wolcott, the Parson, and Tyler discussed the service the clergymen would be conducting that evening.
“Which hymn will you be starting with?” Wolcott asked.
“Which one would you like?” Abraham replied.
Wolcott started. He had clearly been directing his question more to Tyler than to the Parson. “Well,” he said hesitantly. “Nearer My God to Thee has always been one of my favorites.”
Abraham nodded his head. “Nearer My God to Thee, it is. Sister, do you know that one?”
Sophia was startled, not expecting to be pulled into the conversation. Looking quickly to where the Parson indicated with the tilt of his head, she saw an old wooden piano she had not noticed before.
“Sister,” Abraham said again. “Nearer My God to Thee. Can you play it on the piano?”
“Yes,” Sophia said quickly. “Yes, Father, of course I can.”
The word ‘Father’ was out of her mouth before she even realized she had used it. Abraham wasn’t a priest, was he? No, he couldn’t be. He was a … Parson, whatever that was. But he spoke like a priest, and the use of that chosen form of address was so automatic, it came uncontrollably to Sophia’s lips. No one else, however, appeared to have noticed.
“Wait a minute,” Wolcott said. “How about Amazing Grace?”
“How about it?” Abraham asked him. “You want to do that one instead? Sister, I assume you know that one.”
“Yes,” Sophia said, quickly this time. “Yes, of course I—”
“No,” Wolcott interrupted even more quickly. “I think I’d prefer The Lord is My Shepherd.”
“The Lord is My Shepherd?” Abraham said. “Fine. Sister?”
But this time Wolcott interrupted before Sophia could even open her mouth. “Parson,” the slave owner said evenly. “Why do I get the sense you’ll agree to any hymn I suggest?”
“Because I will,” Abraham said matter-of-factly.
Wolcott gave the Parson an exasperated look, his eyes then appealing to Tyler and even Sophia for assistance.
“Forgive me, sir,” Abraham said, slightly bowing his head in deference to Wolcott’s frustration, “the hymns just don’t matter. Not which one we start with and not which one we end with. If you’ll pardon me saying, the poor folks coming out of your fields can’t read, and they don’t know any of the hymns. Whichever one we pick, it’ll just be the four of us singing, and I don’t think any of our souls need cleansing.”
“Well, we’re not just going to sing at them, are we?” Wolcott asked.
“No, sir,” Abraham said. “We’ll start by singing -- Amazing Grace, probably, I think Amazing Grace might be best -- but then we’ll start talking, telling them all about Jesus and the things he did for them in words they can understand. If we connect with any of them, that’s how we’ll do it.”
“Well, Parson,” Tyler said quickly, cutting off Wolcott before he could make another objection. “I’m sure you know best. How long have you been doing this?”
The Parson turned and gave the priest a wide smile. “Thirty-three years,” he said with some satisfaction. “Ever since I got my freedom.”
Tyler returned the smile. “And in all that time, how many slaves would you say you’ve brought to Christ?”
“A good many,” Abraham said. “And a good many free men, too. I haven’t kept track and it’s probably too late to start counting now, but it sure has been a good many.”
“Has it been difficult?” Sophia asked, the words escaping her before she even realized they were on her lips.
The Parson did not act offended. He turned to Sophia with a magnetic smile still on his face. “To some extent, yes, Sister, it has been difficult. But it’s the Lord’s work, and difficult or not, it must be done. The life of a slave is a miserable one, there’s no doubt about it. But the torment they feel in the fields or under the overseer’s lash pales in comparison to the torment they will feel in fiery hell if they don’t receive the Gospel. That’s what keeps me moving and motivated. They don’t all hear me, but many do, and those that do are saved. When my time comes and the good Lord finally calls me home, all those black faces in His heavenly kingdom will be a welcome sight.”
Sophia opened her mouth to ask another question, but Abraham unexpectedly turned away from her and back towards Tyler. “That’s where I’ll do my counting, Father,” he said gleefully. “When my work is done, in the bosom of our Lord, I’ll be able to look around and see all those who have heard my preaching and heeded the message.”
“Amen to that, Parson Abraham,” Tyler said.
It was not much longer before the slaves themselves entered the praise house. Sophia had recently retreated to the piano bench and had been quietly tapping on the well-worn keys, trying to get a sense of how long it had been since the instrument had been tuned, when a hush fell over the voices of the men. Looking up she saw torchlight and moving shadows through the smeared and bleary windows of the building. The sounds of their approach carried easily into the room, the shuffle of their feet over the soft brown earth and the sway and clink of the chains that bound them. In a moment the noises stopped and then the door rattled and opened, a tall white man dressed in a long gray coat and a wide-brimmed hat stepping into the room. In his hand he held a wooden axe handle, polished smooth, but absent the sharpened head that would have made it a truly formidable weapon. Sophia watched as the man’s sour countenance scanned the room for a few quick seconds, and then as his gaze settled on Wolcott.
“They’re here, Mister Wolcott,” the man said gruffly, almost as if he held the slave owner in contempt.
“Very well, Pembroke,” Wolcott said to the man. “Bring them in, then.”
The man named Pembroke nodded and turned to look out the door he still held propped open with one hand. He made a beckoning motion with the axe handle and Sophia saw the long black shadow standing outside the praise house begin to roll and move in the torchlight. The first slave appeared in the doorway, a young man a full head shorter than Pembroke. Sophia saw him clearly. His feet were bare, his head was stooped -- dressed in a pair of unhemmed brown pants a full six inches too short for him and a white shirt hanging open almost to his belly. Pembroke both held the door open for him and stood back as far as he could from the doorway to let him pass. The short chain the slave wore tethered his ankles together and forced him to waddle awkwardly and noisily across the wooden floor. Just as quickly a second slave appeared, this one taller and a little older than the first, but his dress similar and his face stooped forward in an identical fashion. There followed a third, and then a fourth, and then a dozen or so more, each as unique an individual as God ever created, but each identical to the others in dress, posture, and shuffling gait, their ankle chains clanking loudly on the floor as Tyler rushed forward to guide them into the wooden pews.
“Sister, please,” Abraham said to her, suddenly appearing at her elbow. “Amazing Grace.”
Sophia obediently sat and began playing the hymn on the piano. The instrument was upright, and seated before it its wooden frame shielded much of the room from her field of vision. As she played, she could no longer see the slaves entering the praise house, but she could still hear them and, despite herself, she could smell them, a dank, musty odor of human sweat and tobacco fields rising within the room like a crescendo.
Sophia played two full verses of the hymn, listening to the feet shuffle, floorboards creak, and chains jangle, and imagined the collection of black souls assembling on the low wooden benches that served as pews in this nailed-together House of God. On the start of the third verse, Abraham began to sing, his deep voice resonating throughout the confined space and, very quickly, Sophia heard Tyler and Wolcott join in. She added her voice as well, but doubted anyone on the other side of the piano heard her.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound;
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
They sang all six verses, and Sophia played one more when they had finished. The silence from their congregation was nearly complete, and had been since the middle of the third verse, by which time all the slaves had been brought into the praise house and had been settled into their seats. As Abraham had predicted, they had not joined the chorus, either not knowing the words to this most beautiful of songs, or not believing it was their place to do so. When she finally lifted her fingers off the piano keys after playing the last notes, Sophia stood and saw the assembled slaves for the first time, really saw them with their faces upturned and their eyes staring wide in fascination at the black-skinned man who stood before them and whose voice had just thundered at them. They were crammed as many as would fit in each row of wooden benches, so many that they were practically sitting on top of each other, with six white men with axe handles -- the one named Pembroke and five others -- standing in two columns of three flanking them on either side. Although she was sure none of them had ever seen a nun’s habit before, not a one of them turned to look at her when she suddenly popped up over the top of the wooden piano, choosing instead to keep their attention focused on Abraham.
The Parson stood in front of them in silence for several long moments before addressing them. Tyler and Wolcott had during the course of the hymn stepped off to the side of the room, allowing Abraham complete command of the front. There was no altar or pulpit as Sophia had seen in every other church she had visited. Just dirt on the wooden floor, the piano she had played, and a rough, wooden cross propped up in one of the corners. Looking at it now for the first time, it was so old and battered Sophia believed it could very well have been the one Christ himself had once been nailed to.
“Children of God,” Abraham said suddenly, his voice breaking the silence that had gathered in the room and drawing Sophia’s attention back to him. “Now that your hard day’s labor is at an end, Mister Wolcott has asked me to come speak to you about Jesus Christ and the good news of salvation. How many of you have heard of Jesus Christ before?”
No one in the room moved a muscle or made a sound.
“Come on, it’s all right, now,” Abraham said, stepping forward to be a little closer to his congregation, his voice adopting a more colloquial tone than Sophia had heard before. “Mistah Wolcott asked me to come here and speak to you. Now, raise up your hand if you’ve heard of a man named Jesus Christ before.”
There was some rustling in the crowd as the slaves shuffled in their seats and looked around to see if any would raise their hand. Still, no one did.
“Not a one of you?” Abraham said incredulously. “You mean to tell me that not a one of you stupid field hands have ever heard of a man named Jesus Christ before?”
Sophia had no idea what Abraham was trying to do, but as shocked as she was to hear the Parson insult the slaves whose souls he had come to save, it did animate them in a way his words hadn’t before. She watched as the six white overseers flanking the congregation tightened their grips on their axe handles and turned on the balls of their feet to face their charges more directly, and as the slaves crammed into the wooden benches muttered and pitched and rolled like an angry sea. Suddenly, one tall black man at the very back of the room sprung to his feet and shouted at the Parson.
“We’s heard of Jesus, you old black preacher man. But he weren’t no man. They say he was the very Son of God!”
“Amen!” Abraham shouted, his voice filling the wooden structure as if capable of rattling the roof right off its joists. “Amen, brothers!” he said, extending his arms out to the congregation as if trying to embrace them. “Hear the lone voice crying out in the wilderness. Jesus Christ was the very Son of God, but he was also a man, a man like you and me, with hopes and dreams, and his life full of sweat, blood, and toil. And he died, he came into this world and he died so that none of us would ever have to die again. Do you hear what I’m saying, brothers? How many of you know what I’m talking about? How many of you know the truth about Jesus Christ?”
It was as if a silent blanket had been draped over the gathered slaves again. Even the man who had leapt to his feet at the back of the room stood passively, cowered by the sudden passion Abraham had shown. The overseers stepped in closer and restrained their charges even further, silently reminding them of the threats contained in the white knuckles on their axe handles.
Sophia could see Abraham was disappointed by this development. He had clearly been expecting the slaves to rise up and meet his passion with equal emotion. When they didn’t, he brought his own energy back under control and turned slowly away from them, walking back to the wooden cross propped up in the corner.
“Any of you fools know what this is?” Abraham said softly, his hands clasped tightly behind his back but his manner clearly indicating the battered cross.
Sophia looked out across the room and saw no signs that anyone had even heard him, although the Parson’s voice had clearly carried to the back of the chamber. Even the man in the back who had spoken before had reseated himself.
“Hmmm?” Abraham said, turning back to face the congregation. “This cross. These two pieces of forgotten wood hammered hastily together. Do any of you uneducated field hands with loam under your fingernails and mush between your ears know what this represents?”
Sophia looked nervously at Wolcott and Tyler standing together off on the side of the room. By the looks on their faces they were equally unclear about what the Parson was attempting to do. His demeanor and tone of voice were downright hostile to the slaves who had been brought before him.
“You!” Abraham barked suddenly. “You, in the back row, the one who stood up before. Yes, you, you nappy-headed fool. What’s your name?”
All eyes in the room turned toward the slave, but he did not respond to Abraham’s question. He did not shrink away from the attention, but neither did he stand and speak as he had the last time.
“Mister Wolcott,” Abraham said suddenly. “What is this poor fool’s name?”
The eyes all shifted to Wolcott -- white and black alike, swooping to him until they beheld the lord of the plantation himself, sputtering and trembling in surprise at being addressed so unexpectedly and so casually. Sophia’s eyes were no different than anyone else’s, and in her observation she could see clearly Wolcott didn’t know what the slave’s name was. In that moment she felt convinced Erasmus Wolcott hadn’t the faintest idea what any of the slaves on his plantation were named.
“Thomas,” one of the overseers said awkwardly. It was obviously not his place to answer on behalf of his employer, but the response pulled the attention away from Wolcott, and Sophia supposed for that Wolcott would be thankful. “His name is Thomas, but out in the fields we call him Dark Tom. He’s black as the ace of spades and just as wicked.”
Abraham actually smiled at this piece of news. “Well, Dark Tom,” he said with special emphasis. “You mean to tell me you know Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but you know nothing about the cross they nailed him to? Is that what you expect me to believe?”
Tom said nothing, his only movement being that necessary to bow his head.
“Stand up, boy,” Abraham said, his voice adopting a tenor of command it had not possessed before.
It was enough to catch Tom’s attention and make him look up, but he did not rise to his feet.
“I said, stand up, boy!” Abraham thundered at him. The tone of authority was unmistakable -- a tone Tom had no doubt been jumping to all his life -- but still he stayed seated on his wooden bench, evidently supposing the old, black preacher had no real power over him.
But Tom was not the only one who had been trained to respond to authority. The overseers themselves, so used to giving the slaves orders and seeing them followed immediately, could not abide the sight of one of their charges being so willfully disobedient, so directly indifferent to the words of command spoken over him. Without even looking to their employer for direction, two of them moved forward and stood behind and on either side of Tom, their wooden axe handles tapping out a threatening beat in the palms of their hands.
Abraham smiled. “They call you Dark Tom,” he said almost pleasantly, “and I’m sure you’ve given them good reason to. Well, here’s a question for you, Dark Tom. Would you rather stand of your own accord or have these two gentlemen drag you unceremoniously to your feet?”
Tom looked over both of his shoulders in succession, meeting the menacing stares of the overseers with something between fear and anger, and then slowly rose to his feet.
“Very good,” Abraham said contentedly. “Now there are no obstructions between us and we can look each other square in the eyes. So, I’ll ask you again,” he said as he reached beneath his tunic, produced, and held up a small wooden cross. “This man. This Son of God you spoke of so passionately before. What’s this cross have to do with him? What happened to him there and why?”
Despite her beliefs and the reasons she had come and been sent here, to Sophia, this slave, this Dark Tom, looked very much like the Devil himself. The overseer had called him black as the ace of spades, and Sophia guessed that was about right. In terms of the color of his skin, Tom was the blackest man Sophia had ever seen, blacker, by far, than even Abraham. But it was more than that. There was an innate sense of hostility about him. From the moment he had first spoken, Sophia had sensed something almost malevolent about him, as if he dreaded the idea of even being brought here. And the way he had responded to Abraham, when he had been asked about his prior knowledge of Jesus. Tom had sounded so hostile, so antagonistic. As if he was questioning Abraham’s right to be speaking before them.
We’s heard of Jesus, you old black preacher man.
“Answer me!” Abraham shouted at him. “You know the truth, but you refuse to speak! Answer me, by God!”
And then it happened. In a more serene moment, Sophia may have had the presence of mind to realize it had only been a matter of time before she witnessed such an act, but now it shocked her, made her actually cry out and clap a hand involuntarily over her mouth. One of the overseers standing behind Tom unslung his axe handle and clopped him with it on the back of the thigh. Sophia clearly saw the painful expression that leapt to Tom’s face as the slave clutched awkwardly at the injury, struggling to remain standing.
Wolcott and Tyler were already stepping forward, realizing too late this had gone on long enough, when Abraham produced another wooden icon from under his tunic and held it aloft for all the slaves to see.
“Then what about this?” he cried. “All you who claim not to recognize your Savior’s cross. How many of your poor, tortured souls recognize this?”
Sophia could not even see what the item was. She turned and squinted in an attempt to get a good look at it, but her gaze was immediately drawn by the actions of the congregation, over half of whom were falling off their wooden benches.
“Mobutu!” a dozen or more of the slaves cried in unison as they and their brethren prostrated themselves on the dirty floor of the praise house. “Ulu akbah, Mobutu bu nimbimi!” And after these strange and foreign words, all the slaves who had dropped to the ground began to hum and grumble in the back of their throats, rhythmically bowing their heads and scraping them on the floor. A scattering of slaves remained seated on the benches, their heads bowed and their bodies unmoving, but the clear majority now knelt in the dirt at their feet, ululating and rocking back and forth, Dark Tom among them.
Wolcott and Tyler stopped in their tracks and the overseers backed away to the corners of the room. Abraham looked almost helplessly around, his eyes searching and then locking with Sophia’s. The Sister saw grief in the Parson’s eyes, grief like she had never seen before, grief like an open wound torn across the Parson’s face. Sophia’s eyes flicked upward, following Abraham’s raised arm to the object he still held in his hand, and saw a small wooden figure with a large head and deeply-set eyes.
“They are lost,” Abraham said softly, his lips trembling with the news they were charged to deliver. “In sight of the truth, they are lost beyond recovery.” And with that he allowed the wooden figure to drop forgotten to the floor and rushed out of the praise house.
+ + +
Later that evening, Sophia lay partially awake in her bed long after the rest of the plantation house had fallen silent. The events of earlier that evening weighed heavily on her mind and would not let her drift off to sleep. Before going to bed she had spent a good deal of time praying, seeking the peace and solace that often came in troubled times when she commended herself and her cares to the wisdom and protection of her Creator. But this night her prayers had not had their usual effect. She was exhausted, and her fervent prayers had left her more exhausted. But no serenity had come with the exhaustion, and although her body felt as though it had been stomped into sacrificial wine, the blissful sleep would not come, and she found herself tossing and turning, sometimes fitfully in a half-awake state and other times nearly conscious as she stared blindly into the darkness and re-lived all she had seen and heard that evening.
Faces passed in and out of her field of vision as if floating in the air above her, each of them filled and exaggerated with the emotion she had subconsciously felt from them. Erasmus Wolcott, his cravat tied loosely around his neck, his eyes full of compassion but his mouth set firmly with distaste. Father Tyler, his neck encircled by his priestly collar but his eyes strangely closed, and a flush of red seeping across his cheeks. Parson Abraham, his eyes accusing her, tortured and sad. The overseer, the one named Pembroke, with eyes darting and frightened, as if waiting for a monster to descend and crush him. Dark Tom, his eyes glassy and blank, as if looking not at Sophia but through her and at something only he could see. The panoply of slaves, their faces all different on the outside but all exactly the same on the inside, like different pieces of rubber pulled over the same basic mold. And the figure Abraham had held up before them, a grotesque thing carved from a piece of magnolia, with a protruding belly, an open circle for a mouth, and eyes like pits into the soul. They were like the characters in a play Sophia herself had written, but whose ending she could no longer remember. As she hovered near sleep, they pressed in on her in turn, keeping her tethered ever so tenuously to the land of the living.
In her more lucid moments, she remembered more than just the characters from her play, she remembered and saw whole scenes -- actions and events that had occurred both before and after Abraham had fled the praise house.
She remembered how the slaves had first come shuffling into the structure, heads bowed and backs stooped, and she remembered the overseers who had stood around them, tapping their wooden axe handles into their open, white hands. She remembered the hymn they had sung while the slaves had taken their seats, and the disjointed discussion Abraham had had with Wolcott over which one it would be. She remembered Abraham’s words to the slaves, both the ones that had cherished and the ones that had denigrated them. And of course she remembered the way the Parson had confronted the one named Thomas about whether he knew more than he was revealing.
Very clearly she remembered the small figurine Abraham had held up before them, the wooden figure he had kept concealed beneath his tunic until he had reached the edge of his frustration. And she also remembered the way the slaves had reacted to its appearance, falling down on their faces and crying out those strange words Sophia could both not repeat and not forget.
Mobutu! Ulu akbah, Mobutu bu nimbimi!
After Abraham had dropped the idol -- for, of course, that’s what it was, the graven image of some false god -- and fled from the praise house, Sophia had watched from her position behind the piano as several of the slaves in the front row began to slither forward, closing the distance between themselves and the object of their pagan worship. Even now, Sophia had no idea what had possessed her, but at the sight of their advance she had rushed forward, placing herself practically astride the fallen god, saying nothing, but with her presence and posture daring the still prostrated slaves to take the figure. She meant to take the idol for herself, knowing nothing about it other than it was somehow the key to all that had happened that day, and she felt she might very well have kicked one of the slaves if they had come too close to taking it for themselves.
All of the slaves stopped their forward movement, and two of them looked up at her from their positions on the floor. Sophia could not say what it was -- the strangeness of her dress, her bearing of command, the stern look on her face, the weight and power of God that sustained her -- but whatever it was the slaves got the message. Sophia briefly saw understanding pass over their upturned faces, and then they began slinking back in the direction they had come.
It was then that Wolcott’s overseers descended on the congregation and began breaking it up. Some of the slaves were still chanting to themselves in their strange language, but their recitations of fidelity quickly turned to cries of anger and anguish as the men with the axe handles laid into them, striking them, hauling them to their feet, and rounding them up and out of the building. In all that confusion and cacophony, Sophia took the opportunity to bend down and pick the discarded idol up from off the wooden floor.
It looked down on her now, perched where she had placed it on the shelf above her headboard. She had studied it a great deal in the privacy of her own room, the one let to her by Wolcott, turning it over and over in her hands in an attempt to know it from every angle. As fruitless as this scrutiny proved to be, it had only been possible because she had quickly hidden the idol in her nun’s robes after picking it up. Much like the overseers descending on the slaves, Tyler had descended on her, bent on escorting her as quickly as possible from the praise house, and would surely have confiscated it from her had he seen it in her possession. Clutching her painfully around the arm, the priest pulled her in the direction of the exit and brought her out into the warm evening air just as she saw one of the overseers strike the slave named Thomas in the face with his stout wooden axe handle. He mumbled and Sophia thought cursed under his breath as he continued to pull her in the direction of the plantation house, Sophia struggling to keep to her feet and not lose hold of the dark idol she still clutched beneath her habit.
In the front parlor of the plantation house, Sophia was witness to an argument between Wolcott and Tyler. Wolcott, it appeared, had beaten them all back to the house by fleeing at the first sign of trouble and stood pacing the floor as Tyler and Sophia burst in on him. The subject was what to do about Abraham, who had not been seen since his departure from the praise house.
Although the two men shouted and berated one another as if in passionate argument, in fact they both agreed on what was to be done. Abraham, if he ever showed his face again, would be asked to leave the Wolcott plantation, and escorted forcibly to the property line shortly thereafter. Neither man had ever seen such a spectacle before, and could not believe what the Parson had done, especially after coming so highly recommended. Throughout the discussion, Sophia sat quietly in a chair by the window, her hands tucked beneath her robe and her fingers caressing the smooth curves on the idol’s face, while her ears listened with worry and her eyes tried to penetrate the darkness beyond. The men ignored her, and although Sophia could have slipped out without them noticing, she did not, knowing she had not been dismissed and that in such circumstances it was best to bow to Tyler’s authority over her.
But it was Sophia who first saw the Parson’s return. The moon was bright that evening and it cast an eerie glow over the plantation’s landscape, illuminating the buildings, the trees, and the plowed earth well enough to reveal their shapes and their textures, but little else of their details and none of their color. Into this backdrop a figure suddenly appeared, moving steadily across the planted fields and towards the great plantation house in which Sophia sat. It was Abraham, Sophia knew that immediately, even though it was not until he burst in on them that there was enough light to positively identify him. And even then it was difficult. The Parson’s appearance had changed in the time since he had last been with them. His clothes were torn and his eyes blazed with a fire unlike anything Sophia had ever seen before.
He took one look at Wolcott and Tyler, their eyes shocked at the Parson’s sudden appearance, and Abraham turned and fled from the room he had just entered, bounding up the main staircase in the plantation house two steps at a time. Wolcott and Tyler gave chase, rushing past Sophia and all but forgetting her in a mad rush to capture the Parson and deliver their decision unto him.
Sophia did not rise to follow them, staying seated almost serenely in her chair by the window, looking out over the darkened fields and listening to the heavy footsteps and then the raised voices above her. They must have caught up with Abraham in the hallway, for their voices carried down the staircase and Sophia found she could hear them clearly. Despite that opportunity, after a few exchanges, she began to tune the voices out and could not later recount all that was said between the three gentlemen. Wolcott wanted Abraham to leave that very moment, and Tyler supported his desire, but Abraham was incapable of hearing them and unwilling to bend himself to their will. What Sophia remembered him saying more clearly than anything else was a protestation that Wolcott had a bigger problem with his slaves than he had imagined when he had called the Parson here to help expose them to the Word of God.
With the men removed from her vicinity and her desire not to eavesdrop on their argument, Sophia found herself bringing the wooden idol out from under her habit cloth and focusing all of her concentrated attention on it. All that had happened that evening, she knew, had been orchestrated by this little thing and the idea it represented. The figure stood about six inches tall, and its wide, round head accounted for nearly half its height. Turning it over in her hands, Sophia could see each individual knife stroke the carver had used to fashion it from the block of wood it had once been, and the care he or she had taken in making sure certain proportions and features were just right. This was not something crudely made, something dashed off in half an hour by some loafing field hand. This was a delicately wrought work of art produced by a talented artisan, someone who had a vision in his or her head and an ability to imprint that vision on the world. The eyes were exaggerated in size, filling up most of the face, and deeply set, very much like the bottomless pits Sophia had first taken them for. She put her finger in one, and learned it was not bottomless at all, but marveled at the way the interior of the socket was smooth and almost polished to the touch. The artist, whoever he or she was, had carefully constructed each part of the figure with the blade, even the parts not readily seen by the observer. The mouth was round and much smaller than the eyes, but lined with a tiny raised ridge Sophia realized must have been lips. There was a small narrow neck leading down to a pair of broad shoulders and a large protruding belly, with the figure’s arms first separating and then joining again with the wood in a pair of folded hands just above the small indentation that represented the navel. Looking closely, Sophia was able to count ten fingers, each one with a few small scratched lines representing knuckles and an oval disc at its very tip representing fingernails. The legs were bowed, and hanging between them practically to the figure’s knees was a thick, capped shaft that could only have been a penis.
And it was black. Carved from one of the soft woods that flourished in the swampy bottomlands of South Carolina, the figure had been stained black until it practically shone with a light of its own.
What was it? Sophia found herself wondering until it began to cause a pain in the center of her forehead. It was an idol, obviously she knew that, an image of some pagan god, but what did it mean? Was it African? Did the slaves bring it with them from that far away continent? Sophia didn’t see how that was possible. The slave trade from Africa had ended years ago, and she knew for a fact the slaves on Wolcott’s plantation were second, third, or even fourth generation Americans. None of them she was sure could even find Africa on a map. But the idea that the worship of some pagan god, complete with idols and who knew what else, could spring up spontaneously among the slave population was just as unlikely. Remembering how the slaves had prostrated themselves in front of this little wooden figure, their actions filled with both fear and adulation, Sophia had a hard time believing this was something they had invented themselves. Whatever it was, it must have been taught to them, handed down from their elders, the way it might have for generations in Africa. But did they even know their ancestors came from Africa? Sophia knew plantation slaves were taught little more than how to do their chores, and that many Southern landowners intentionally broke up slave families to keep traditions like that from being handed down. Was Wolcott one of those landowners? Were his slaves related to one another? Were there children and parents and grandparents here? Remembering the faces she had seen in the praise house that evening, she realized there very well might not be. The slaves present had all been young men, none of them more than twenty-five years old.
It was while Sophia’s mind was wrapped up in these thoughts that Tyler came down and surprised her. The argument upstairs had ended moments before and the priest had come down to find her.
“Sister Sophia?” Tyler said, his voice and his presence startling her.
“Oh, Father,” Sophia said, springing up from her chair and turning to face him. “I didn’t hear you coming.”
Tyler looked at her suspiciously.
“Is your conversation with Parson Abraham over?” Sophia said, trying to regain her composure and slow her heart rate.
“Yes,” Tyler responded guardedly. “The Parson will be leaving us in the morning. What’s that you’re holding?”
Of course Tyler was referring to the idol. Sophia did not try to hide it, knowing there would be no point in her doing so. She brought it up from her side and positioned it so Tyler could clearly see it. “It’s the object Parson Abraham held up before the slaves at the end of his… his… presentation tonight. He dropped it as he fled, and I thought I would pick it up to see what it was.”
Sophia did everything she could to maintain an unemotional tone of voice, but she could already see Tyler’s brow wrinkling in distaste. She most pointedly did not hold the idol out for the priest to take it from her and instead held it very close to her breast.
“Sister,” Tyler said sourly. “Do you know what that object is?”
Sophia looked down on it as if seeing it for the first time. “Why, it’s some kind of idol I should think.”
Tyler nodded his head. “It’s an idol of an African god. Mo-bu-tu, or some such nonsense. The Parson says slaves in this area have been worshipping him for a hundred years or more. Here, give it to me.”
“A hundred years!” Sophia said, holding the idol out and looking at it again. She intended to ignore the priest’s request to give him the statue, and she thought if she talked fast enough she might be able to keep Tyler from realizing it. “Why would slave owners allow their slaves to practice such a religion?”
“They do not allow it,” Tyler said testily. “The slaves do it in secret.”
“In secret!” Sophia exclaimed, clutching the idol close to her breast again. “But how is such a thing possible? The slave owners control every part of the lives of their slaves. Unless they wish it, how can the slaves worship an African god? And how could such worship carry on for a hundred years?”
“I don’t have all the answers, Sister,” Tyler said. “Both Abraham and Wolcott say it’s true, and Wolcott says it’s something he and his fellow landowners have been trying to bring to an end. That is in part why we are here, to bring the true Word of God to these pagan slaves. Until tonight, however, Wolcott had no idea the situation on his own plantation was so dire.”
The priest was obviously going to say more, but Sophia quickly interrupted him. As she did so, she slowly began lowering the idol until it eventually hung at her side again, partially covered by the sleeve of her habit.
“Has the Parson encountered the practice of this African cult on other plantations?”
Tyler paused, his brain evidently trying to stop the flow of one conversation before starting another. “Yes. Or at least he claims to. He claims to have brought the slaves of three afflicted plantations to Christ, but—”
“Then why have you and Wolcott asked him to leave? Can’t he help here the way he has in those other places?”
Tyler shook his head. “Wolcott and I, we don’t -- well, we don’t trust the Parson. Not after the performance he gave this evening in the praise house. Whatever Abraham’s experience, Wolcott and I feel better introducing the God of our fathers to these slaves in a more traditional way.”
Sophia slowly nodded and bowed her head, slipping both hands, with the idol in one of them, behind her back to adopt an appropriately supplicant pose. “I understand, Father,” she said. “What can I do to help?”
“Nothing,” Tyler said hurriedly, his mind clearly on matters other than the obvious subterfuge the Sister had just perpetrated. “Just go and get some rest. With Abraham leaving in the morning, I’ll be preaching the next sermon to the slaves, and I will need your help to prepare.”
“Yes, Father,” Sophia said. “Good evening and God bless.”
“Good evening and God bless, Sister,” Tyler said, dismissing her and moving more fully into the parlor.
And that is mainly how Sophia found herself as she was now, lying awake in her guest bed, thinking about all that had transpired that evening with the carved image of Mobutu watching over her from the shelf atop the headboard. She could tell the reaction of the slaves to the idol had disturbed Tyler greatly -- more so, Sophia thought, than anything the Parson might have done to provoke or dramatize it. The Father had not been thinking clearly since those events. Sophia doubted she could have escaped him with the idol behind her back if he had been. So the slaves were worshipping a pagan god some number of them or their progenitors had brought over from Africa. Was that really all that surprising? Well, yes, Sophia supposed it was surprising, especially when she took into account as she had before the generations that had probably come and gone since the first slaves brought the idea of Mobutu over in those awful wooden ships. But Tyler was more than surprised at this revelation. He seemed shocked. Shocked and horrified in a way Sophia would not have predicted. He and Wolcott both, as they had paced nervously in the plantation’s front parlor earlier that evening, had practically been jumping out of their skin, and Sophia could tell with even her distracted attention that they were well nigh sickened by what had transpired in the praise house and what it meant about the slaves who lived on Wolcott’s plantation.
It was strange. Sophia and Tyler, they had both chosen this. They had both signed on for missionary work, and must have known there would be false gods to contend with. At least Sophia had. She was a young nun, just a few years out of the convent and anxious to find her intended place in God’s service. She had prayed almost constantly for such a revelation, willing from the earliest of ages to commit her life to God’s essential purpose, but had not as of yet been so chosen. As a girl in the convent, she had been surrounded by other girls who spoke of hearing God’s voice in their heads, whispering to them sometimes daily in a way which was a mixture of both a doting father and a jealous lover, and she had longed for just such an intimacy. But Sophia never heard any voices in her head other than the one born of her own critical mind, constantly questioning all the things around her that those chosen just accepted as part of the natural order of things. Frustrated in such an environment, she had eventually signed on for missionary work, thinking she would be sent to some far away place -- the West Indies, perhaps, or maybe even South America -- some place where her recitation of the Word of God would be the first time those powerful words had ever passed human lips, and that exclusivity would somehow bring her closer to His revealed wisdom. She had not expected to be sent to South Carolina, one of the richest states in her own country, bringing that message to the thousands of slaves who worked its plantations. But whether it was South Carolina or South America, people everywhere who had never heard the Word of God invented their own gods and worshiped them. Cut off from His truth, that inner human need to have a relationship with their Creator would drive any to manifest the nearest possible facsimile. Wouldn’t it? Isn’t that what people did? Isn’t that what made them people? It was obvious to Sophia, driven, as she knew she was, by such a similar need. She remained surprised, however, that such an elemental truth was so difficult to grasp by worldly, educated men like Father Tyler and Erasmus Wolcott.
Somewhere between one and two o’clock in the morning, Sophia’s process of thinking was interrupted when she noticed for what she thought was the first time light coming out from under her closet door.
That light hadn’t been there before, had it? No, she told herself. It couldn’t have been. A light like that in this darkened room? She would’ve noticed it. If it had been there before she surely would have noticed it.
Curious, and unable to sleep anyway, Sophia pushed her counterpane aside, stepped down onto the little stool that sat beside her bed, and made her way quietly across the cold floor to the closet door. The light was definitely there, and dark shadows were sometimes cast across it, as if someone on the other side of the door was walking around and obstructing the light source.
Who is it? Sophia thought. Was there someone in her closet?
Deciding to investigate further and only partially afraid for what might happen, Sophia gently placed her ear against the closet door and listened. She heard a human voice, talking, but too softly for her to be able to determine who it was or what was being said.
The thought that this may not be a closet after all passed through her brain just before she quietly pulled the door open and peered inside. Beyond was not a closet, but a room very much like the one she was staying in, with the headboard of a four-posted bed pushed against the far wall, and an armoire and a dressing table positioned in two corners of the room. But unlike her room, this one contained Parson Abraham, kneeling on the floor at the foot of the bed in his dress pants and undershirt, his hands clasped, head bowed, and lips muttering in intense prayer.
At first, Sophia was too shocked by the realization the door had not led to a closet. Although she had not previously opened it, placing her clothes and personal items in the room’s large wardrobe instead, she had just assumed upon entering her room this door had been to a closet. In this confused state she stepped more fully into the other room and let the door shut partially behind her.
“Parson?” she said, her voice barely above that of a whisper.
Abraham did not immediately respond, but he did raise his head and stop muttering the prayer he had been offering. “Did I wake you, Sister?” he said finally, not turning around to face Sophia.
“No,” she said. “I was awake. I’m having a difficult time getting to sleep tonight.”
The Parson did not move as far as Sophia could see, but she got the distinct impression he was heavily weighing her words, probably more heavily than they deserved to be.
“Will you pray with me?” Abraham asked her, bowing his head as if not needing to wait for an answer.
But Sophia’s answer was almost immediate. Striding thoughtlessly across the room in her nightgown, she said, “Yes, of course I will,” and moved to join Abraham at the bed. Whereas the Parson knelt at the very foot of the bed, his elbows and forearms up on the mattress, Sophia stood on the side around one of the bed corners from him. His head still bowed, Sophia knelt carefully beside him, her knees already protesting about the hard, wooden floor, and put her arms up on the mattress as well.
Abraham’s gnarled left hand reached out and closed over Sophia’s right, the touch taking the nun by surprise. The Parson’s hand was warm -- warmer than it probably should have been, Sophia thought -- but it was not sweaty and it gave her no discomfort at all. With her hand wrapped within his it was almost like wearing a mitten on a cool autumn day. Sophia looked up for direction but found Abraham’s head still bowed.
“For whom do we pray, Parson,” she asked timidly.
There was a long silence before Abraham answered. His head remained bowed throughout and near its end the Parson took a long, deep breath, sucking air into his lungs from the very corners of the room and blowing it out, by the sound of it, to the four corners of the Earth.
“For me, Sister,” Abraham said slowly, lifting his head to show Sophia a face with tears still wet on its cheeks. “I was praying for me, for God to give me the strength to do what must be done tonight.”
“Tonight?” Sophia said, surprised. “What must be done tonight, at this hour?”
“Wolcott and Tyler,” Abraham said in lieu of a reply. “They have asked me to leave. They will see to it in the morning. If I am to save any souls on this plantation, it’s going to have to be tonight.”
Sophia did not understand. She shook her head and silently conveyed her incomprehension.
Abraham smiled at her, the expression just as warm as the enclosure formed by his hand. He worked his way to his feet without releasing her and Sophia soon found herself joining him.
“This is your first visit to the South, isn’t it, Sister?”
“Yes,” Sophia said.
“And your first visit to a plantation?”
“Yes,” she said again. “Prior to yesterday, I had never even seen a slave before.”
“They’re not like you thought they would be, are they? The slaves.”
Sophia shook her head. “No,” she said, hesitating. “They are… They are…”
Abraham nodded, tugging gently on her arm as if trying to pull the words out of her. “Go on, say it. You won’t offend me.”
Sophia was less worried about offending the Parson and more worried about finding the right words. She remembered the way the slaves had first shambled into the praise house, chained and cowed like cattle just being taken from the field. Then she remembered the defiance the one named Tom had shown, and the rapture that had lighted the faces of those who had crawled across the floor towards the fallen idol. It was as if they lived only at these two extremes. The monotony of eternal servitude defined the bulk of their existence and kept them stupefied and obedient most of the time, but they had this spark of divinity within them, this life force that had the power to break the chains that bound them if it could only be harnessed and directed in the right fashion.
“They’re so raw,” Sophia said. “Almost unformed. As if they are only the base materials from which God first fashioned Adam.”
Abraham nodded his head. “Yes,” he said reassuringly. “Yes, you are very perceptive, Sister. People like Wolcott and Tyler, they are like most others. When confronted with slaves who worship African gods, they can conclude they are savages, that they have been claimed by evil forces and knowingly worship the Dark One. But this is not the case. They worship the gods of their fathers because this is what they have been taught to do, and no one has taught them any different. Your description of them as Adam was before God breathed life into him is very apt. They are not true men. They are still made solely out of clay and can be molded in almost any form. You will see. With your help, I will tonight finally form them in the image of the one true God.”
Sophia did not know what the Parson meant, and did not know what help he required of her. But rather than ask, she merely nodded her head and allowed Abraham to lead her from the bed chamber, through the darkened house, out onto the plantation fields and deep into the woods beyond. She felt no real fear. Even as her slippered feet sank into the mud of the freshly plowed earth and the branches and thorns of the forest tug and tore at her nightgown, her heart within her chest beat strong and true, and her mind was at peace. In future times of strife, she would often find herself looking back on this night, and her trek into the primordial forest with Parson Abraham Finch, and find a calming strength in her memory of both her resolve and her actions. Abraham, she knew, then as he drew her by the hand under the moonlight and forever as she recalled the things he had done that night, was a true missionary of Holy God. Of all the “Men of God” she had known before and would come to know in the future -- not Richard Tyler nor Archibald Lynch nor any of the others who would call themselves priests, preachers and prophets -- none of them would ever match Parson Abraham in his ability to bring souls to Christ. For the Spirit of God truly dwelled within that withered old man, and that Spirit was revealed to Sophia even if it hadn’t been to men like Erasmus Wolcott. It wasn’t a voice in her head, but it was a revelation all the same.
Sophia could smell the torches long before she saw them. Almost as soon as the two of them entered the forest -- their long, silent trek across the broken plantation field finally behind them -- she could smell their smoky flavor in the air.
Abraham brought them to a halt. “They will be deep in these woods,” he whispered to her, the first words that had passed between them since leaving the plantation house. “You can smell the torches they use for light, but they dare not risk anyone seeing them. They will be so well screened by the trees that we may need to walk a good long way to find them.”
Sophia nodded. “We’ve walked a good long way already, Parson,” she said, not as a reprimand but in recognition of her tired feet, one of which was bare after having its slipper sucked off by the plantation mud.
“Do you wish to turn back?” Abraham asked her, his voice soft and unthreatening, as if he already knew the answer to his question, but was willing to have her respond to it if she needed to.
Sophia looked momentarily at her own feet, and then over to the Parson’s, both of them bare and their broad toes caked with mud. Reaching down, she removed the remaining slipper from her foot and flung it deep into the woods beside them. “No,” she said resolutely. “I do not wish to turn back.”
Abraham smiled at her, and then turned and began moving into the forest. Sophia followed him, his white undershirt easy to see in the filtered moonlight that came down through the branches of the trees. There was no path -- at least none Sophia could see -- their feet stepping over and on all manner of underbrush and soil. Despite her faith in the Parson, Sophia could not help but wonder how long it was going to take them to find the slaves. It had to already be past three in the morning, and there was no telling how large the forest they had just entered was. Would they just wander around hopelessly until daylight? And how much longer would the slaves even be there, wherever it was that they were? Wouldn’t they be put back to work in the fields at dawn? Hadn’t they better be back in their slave cabins before the overseers came around to rouse and collar them?
Sophia did not have long to ponder these reasonable questions. In no time at all, after walking in what as far as Sophia could tell was a perfectly straight line, she began to see the flicker of orange fire through the trees ahead of them. As soon as she saw it and realized what it was, Abraham stopped and drew her close.
“We are going to creep forward, now,” he whispered, practically into her ear. “Try to move as quietly as possible. When we reach a certain point, I’m going to clasp your arm and give it a tight squeeze. Like this,” he said, demonstrating what he planned to do while moving his lips away from her ear so he could look in her eyes and confirm she understood what he was telling her. “When I do this, it means you are to stop and conceal yourself in the brush while I move on alone. It will not be safe for you to proceed any further. When I reveal myself to them, they may become agitated and could injure you if they see you accompanying me. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Sophia nodded her head. She understood the mechanics of the direction she was being given, but not its rationale. “But, Parson,” she said. “I thought you brought me here to help you. How am I to help you if we separate and I conceal myself in such a manner?”
Abraham gave her another of his warm and reassuring smiles. “Pray,” he said simply. “Pray for me, Sister. When I make myself known to them and begin my struggle, pray to God to reveal Himself to them. Pray that He breathes His life-giving breath into them. If he does not, I will fail and you will need to make your way back to the plantation house by yourself. Do you think you can do that?”
Sophia shook her head, feeling real anger. “Fail?” she said, her voice still whispering, but forcibly so. “You will not fail. How can you fail?”
Abraham’s smile only widened, his eyes suddenly sparkling in the dim torchlight. “Pray for me,” he said solemnly, then rose, and began moving quietly away from her.
Sophia watched him go, the whiteness of his undershirt standing out starkly in the dark forest as he approached the circle of slaves congregated in a small clearing no more than twenty yards from where she now crouched. She had not really looked at them before, her attention drawn as it was to the Parson and his simple words. But now as she watched Abraham make his stealthy way towards them she gave her eyes and mind an opportunity to take them in, to absorb as much as she could about who they were and what they were doing before Abraham revealed himself to them.
They were arranged in a circle, about a dozen of them, and even at this distance she recognized some of them as those who had been in the praise house earlier that evening. For the first time she realized they were completely silent, standing with their heads bowed and facing inward from the perimeter of the circle they formed. Within that circle, four wooden stakes had been set in the ground, each about five feet tall, and at the top of each a torch burned—a hacked-off piece of tree limb wrapped in cloth and burning fiercely and bright—forming a perfect square. And within that square a single slave stood, someone tall and thin, dressed only in a loincloth fashioned from a dirty bed sheet. This slave was hopping around, doing some sort of rhythmic dance, turning with each leap so that he eventually completed a circuit within the square of torches. Sophia did not recognize him, could not recognize him, for he wore an enormous wooden mask, a long and oval-shaped thing, its sneering eyes and gaping mouth set in a field of painted red, white and black stripes.
Sophia had no idea what to think of this religious service, if that was, in fact, what it was. But she had no time for reflection, for just after she had taken in these images and before her brain could attempt to arrange them in a way that made sense to her, Parson Abraham stepped out of the brush and into the clearing. The participants in the circle stood far enough away from each other that they formed no real barrier against his entry, and indeed, they made no movement toward him or attempt to restrain him. As far as Sophia could tell, none of them even looked up.
The man in the square of torches, however, reacted quite differently to Abraham’s presence. He immediately stopped his rhythmic movements and began to jump wildly up and down, his arms and legs shaking in the air with each leap, and his throat beneath his mask erupting in a long series of cries and exhortations. If it was a language, it was one Sophia had never heard before. To her it resembled the cries of a sick or wounded animal, like the shrieks of the birthing cows she had helped tend on the convent’s farm as a little girl, and both it and the memory it had conjured chilled the blood in her veins. Instinctively making the sign of the cross and folding her hands before her, Sophia began to fervently pray as Abraham had bidden her to do, beseeching the Lord in heaven to protect both her and the Parson from whatever violence the masked shaman intended.
Abraham showed no outward signs of fear. He stood implacably before the demonstration, almost as if simply waiting for it to end. And slowly Sophia realized a demonstration was indeed all it was. As violently as the slave shook and jumped about, and as loudly as he howled and snarled, he did not leave the illusionary confines of the square defined by the four torches. He occasionally rushed forward, as if he intended to swoop down on Abraham and snuff out his life, but each time he stopped abruptly, unwilling or unable to cross the line connecting the stakes bearing the torches. If he was an animal, he was a caged one.
“Enough of this, Tom!” Abraham suddenly shouted at the shaman, the Parson’s voice incredibly strong over the inhuman cries. “I am not your enemy and I will not be frightened away. I bring the truth that will set you free!”
Abraham’s words had an immediate effect on the shaman. He stopped both his movements and his screams. Standing solidly within the torches, he reached up and removed the large wooden mask from his head, revealing his features for the first time. Sophia did not know how Abraham had recognized him, but the Parson had correctly identified him as Thomas, the slave who had confronted him from the back pew of the praise house, the one the overseers referred to as Dark Tom. He stood glaring at Abraham, his eyes twisted and nostrils flaring, a trickle of blood still flowing down from a wound high on his forehead.
“What do you know of truth, you old black preacher?” Tom spat at him. “All you know is what the white man told you.”
“I know what this is,” Abraham said, suddenly holding up the idol he had taken from Sophia’s bedroom shelf before venturing out, holding it up as he had during the worship service in the praise house. “No white man ever told me about Mobutu. Ulu akbah, Mobutu bu nimbimi.”
The words clearly caught Tom off guard. He staggered within his diamond of fire and had to lean on the massive wooden mask like a cane in order to steady himself. All around them the slaves still stood silently watching as if entranced.
“What have you done with your cross, old man?” Tom said, quickly composing himself. “Don’t you still worship that?”
“I still have it,” Abraham said, holding the small wooden emblem up with his right hand so that it counterbalanced the idol in his left. “And I worship the grace it symbolizes. You will, too, Tom.”
Tom laughed. “Look around you, old man,” he said, sweeping his long, thin arm out in a tremendous arc matching the curve of the circle comprised of catatonic slaves. “Do I look like I need to worship anything? I’m the king of this hill.”
“You are,” Abraham countered quickly, “but it is a very small hill. That is all Mobutu can offer. He can make you the lord of an extremely insignificant and transitory kingdom. The cross, and the man who died upon it, they can make you part of the heavenly kingdom, and can bestow upon you a permanent state of grace.”
Tom looked confused by Abraham’s words. Sophia was not surprised. They were difficult concepts to the uninitiated, and Tom was an uneducated slave. Sophia couldn’t be sure Tom even understood all the words the Parson had used. Make him understand, Lord, she prayed, her hands still clasped before her and shifting herself to assume a true kneeling position. Allow Tom to see Your truth as Abraham reveals it to him. In Jesus’s blessed name, give Tom the ability to understand and receive Your grace.
Abraham lowered his arms and tossed both icons on the ground between him and Tom. “What do you really have here, Tom? Look at yourself. Look around you. Dancing to the Devil’s rhythm while surrounded by a bunch of drugged fools. What did you give them? Nightshade? Passionflower? Will they wake up in time to get them back to their cabins? In time for the overseers to rouse them and chain them together for another trip out to the white man’s fields? Because isn’t that your truth, Tom? The lash, the collar, and the cotton bag? Mobutu can’t save you from that. You may tell yourself he can, but you know down deep in your heart he can’t. Even now, you can feel the sun creeping up towards the horizon. And with its return this spell you’ve weaved around yourself and the others will dissolve and you’ll be back in the only reality you currently have. Your long, hard road of pain and toil that leads to eternal death. You know that’s your truth. Why are you hiding from it behind that mask?”
They were powerful words, spoken in a forceful manner by a true servant of the Lord, and Sophia heard them clearly from her position in the brush behind Abraham. And if she could hear them, then Tom undoubtedly could, standing much closer to the Parson and within his field of projection. But would the slave really hear them? Really hear the message they contained and fully realize its truth? Sophia prayed he would, prayed to God like she had never prayed before -- she, a nun, who had been praying to God and looking for His will at work in the world since she was five years old. She prayed fervently, beseechingly, as if not only Tom’s eternal soul depended on it but her very own.
“I’m not hiding behind this mask, old man,” Tom said evenly, his tone neither angry nor frightened. “The world you speak of, the white man’s world of cotton and lash, it hides from me when I wear it.”
Sophia could not help but vocalize her disappointment, a sharp, painful cry escaping her as the tension that had tautly filled her form snapped and she physically collapsed in the undergrowth of the South Carolina forest. She, of course, remembered the Parson’s commandment that she remain silent, but she was powerless against the force of her disappointment. Had God not heard her? Or was Tom too far gone that God had abandoned him to his dark fate?
“What was that?” Tom snapped, his voice turned suddenly angry and distrustful. “Who have you brought with you, preacher man?”
Abraham did not immediately respond.
“Come on, old man!” Tom shouted. “Who is it? I know it isn’t old Mistah Wolcott crouching down there in the woods.”
“It is not,” Abraham confirmed, his voice revealing he had hoped it would not come to this, but determined to pursue a new tack now that it had. “Your master in this world is asleep in his soft bed in his warm house. The person who has accompanied me tonight is a servant of the master of the world yet to come, and someone you would do well to emulate.”
“Who is it?” Tom demanded, stepping forward in an attempt to get a better look but careful not to leave his fortress of torchlight. “It’s not that fool priest Mistah Wolcott brought down from the North to save us, is it?”
“No,” Abraham said simply. “No, it is not.” Then, back over his shoulder and to Sophia, he said, “It’s okay, Sister. You can come forward.”
It took Sophia only a few moments to collect herself. Rising easily to her feet, she smoothed out the front of her torn and muddy nightdress and began to move forward, her bare feet oblivious to the cuts and scrapes they had borne on their difficult trek through the forest. As she entered the clearing, passing between two practically catatonic dark-skinned men, and as she came up to stand beside Parson Abraham, the silent and dangerously prideful thought that maybe God was going to answer her prayers after all floated through her mind.
“Who’s that?” Tom squawked, his eyes squinting as his mind searched for some familiarity in the figure that had appeared apparition-like before him. “A white woman?”
“This is Sister Sophia, Tom,” Abraham said grandly. “The nun who came south with Father Tyler at Mister Wolcott’s bidding, and who played the piano so beautifully at our service this evening. But unlike the good priest, who is more concerned with the quality of Wolcott’s wine than the salvation of his slaves, Sister Sophia has come here to help me save your soul tonight.”
Tom eyed both Abraham and Sophia suspiciously. “Nah!” he said spitefully. “That ain’t no Sister Nobody. You’re trying to trick me, old man.”
“Tom!” Abraham suddenly shouted. “Open your lazy eyes and look at her! She’s in her nightdress. She’s got brambles in her hair and her feet are cracked and bleeding. She walked here with me in the middle of the night all the way from the plantation house. She lost her slippers in ankle-deep mud and got all scratched and bug-bitten coming through this dark forest. She doesn’t look like she looked at the praise house tonight, but it is her!”
“It ain’t her!” Tom cried back, unconsciously stepping over the artificial line of his staked torches for the first time. “It ain’t nobody! Ain’t no white woman alive who would do such a fool thing.”
“She did it for you, Tom,” Abraham said quietly.
“It ain’t her!” Tom shouted.
“Tell him, Sister,” Abraham said. “Tell Tom you’re here to help him.”
“I’m here to help you, Thomas,” Sophia said, the fatigue and pain miraculously gone from her body, and a deep and untapped inner strength suddenly supporting her.
“Did you hear that, Tom? Did you hear her voice? Say it louder, Sister.”
“I am here to help you, Thomas!” Sophia cried aloud, all the passion that had left her suddenly returning and filling her breast until it felt about to burst.
“Sing, Sister,” Abraham commanded. “Sing like you did in the praise house this evening.”
Sophia did not hesitate, her voice bursting forth and filling both the clearing and the night with those oh-so-familiar words.
Amazing Grace… How sweet the sound… That saved a wretch… Like me…
“You recognize it, don’t you, Tom?” Abraham shouted, making himself heard without diminishing Sophia’s hymn. “The song and the voice. The same you heard tonight when you mocked me and Almighty God with your feigned belief. It’s her. It is Sister Sophia.”
Tom stood in dumbfounded amazement, the African mask forgotten in his numb fingers. “It is her,” he said, more in confirmation to himself than to Abraham.
“Yes!” Abraham said, stepping boldly forward as Sophia continued to sing. “And do you know why she’s here, Tom? Do you know why she has come here with me to help you?”
Tom looked at the Parson, not realizing he had stepped closer, much less that he had asked him a question.
“She has come because she believes in her very soul that God will save a miserable creature such as even you if you simply open your heart to Him. He’s saved me, and He’s saved her, and He will save you if you only let Him. Look at her, Tom! Look into her song and you will see her open heart. There is nothing hidden there, nothing that separates you from her, not even the contrasting colors of your skins, which has created such a deep gulf in the world of men. Can your god do that? Can Mobutu unite white with black and give the sight to see them all as one, all as sinners equally far from salvation? Sister Sophia is a white woman from the North, and it is her faith in God that has brought her scarred and bleeding to your clearing tonight. She brings the light of the one true God with her. Will you see it, Tom? Or will you hide from it behind Mobutu’s mask?”
Tom looked down at the mask in his hands, then up to Sophia, his eyes suddenly brimming over with tears. Sophia continued to sing, and when Tom dropped down to his knees and Abraham rushed forward to keep him from toppling over, it was as if she had been joined by a chorus of angels.
+ + +
By the time they got back to the plantation house the sun had just cleared the eastern horizon. Abraham and Sophia had led them all back, the two of them with joined hands, Tom coming along behind in their shadow, and the rest the slaves, recently roused from their drugged slumber, a few paces behind that, collected together in a small jumble like a frightened herd.
The plantation’s remaining occupants -- free and slave alike -- had already risen, and were all occupied in a good deal of commotion. The slaves themselves stood in the dooryard of the great house, chewing on the black-speckled cornbread that had been provided for their breakfast, while the white overseers and their servants ran frenzied from place to place, some gathering tools, others gathering weapons, and one coming over from the overseer’s cabin with the leashes of six barking hunting dogs held tightly in his hands. On the veranda, Wolcott and Tyler stood, their night clothes hidden under large, colorful robes, each holding a cup of coffee in his hand, and their feet encased in furry house slippers. Behind them, in the windows of the house, the worried black faces of several house slaves peered out into the morning air.
“We’re late,” Abraham said softly, really so that only Sophia could hear him. “As I feared, the morning count has come up short and they’re organizing a search party.”
Tom raised himself up in order to peer over the Parson’s shoulder, and then shrunk down again into the protective shadow.
It was the one crossing the yard with the dogs who saw them first. Closer than all the others, Sophia could see him clearly as the overseer called Pembroke, and as soon as Pembroke recognized them he loosed the dogs and began shouting wildly. The dogs closed the distance with terrifying speed, all of them growling like demons as they charged around Abraham, Sophia and Tom, and chomped down viciously on the flesh of six of the slaves, turning and twisting their bodies frantically in an attempt to knock their victims off their feet.
“Stop!” Sophia cried in horror, seeing blood splash across the plowed earth and hearing the pitiful cries of the tortured. “Oh, Lord! Help them!”
Abraham stepped forward and tried to grab one of the animals, but its movements were too swift, and Tom, rather than try to rescue one of his former supplicants, cowered timidly behind Sophia. The nun watched as Abraham kicked repeatedly at the dog, connecting several times with the animal’s ribcage, but it did no good, focused as the dog was on subduing its prey.
In a few moments a dozen or so white men appeared on the scene -- overseers and some of their workers -- and quickly succeeded in doing what the Parson had failed to do. Six of them each grabbed one of the animals by the collar, pulled them off their victims, and began patting and stroking their necks and backs. The dogs themselves, luxuriating in the rewards offered by their white masters, looked happily around with their long tongues falling out of their mouths, exactly as if they had just returned a wounded quail or pheasant. It was the most horrifying thing Sophia had ever seen, the other white men roughly dragging the human victims to their feet, flaps of bloody flesh torn and hanging loosely off their bodies.
The one named Pembroke was one of the last to arrive. Coming in from a different direction he was largely unobserved until directly on top of them, clubbing Tom across the back with the wooden axe handle he had wielded in the praise house the night before and dropping the slave to the muddy earth.
Sophia spun around. “Stop it!” she cried, stepping over Tom to put herself between him and Pembroke. “He’s saved! Don’t you understand? The power of God has saved him!”
It was clear Pembroke did not understand, that he was not even interested in trying to understand. “Get out of the way, Sister,” he told her sternly. “These black bastards are going to get what’s coming to them.”
“No!” Sophia cried, desperately trying to find the words to make herself heard and make it clear things had changed. Tom and the others were no longer just chattel, and there was more going on here than just a handful of slaves having broken the rules of the white man’s world. “You can’t do this to them! I won’t let you!”
Pembroke was unimpressed. Placing the tip of his axe handle against Sophia’s belly, he pushed steadily until she began to stumble backwards, toppling over Tom’s form and falling herself into the blood-soaked mud. In the time it took Sophia to gather her wits and clear her vision, Pembroke cracked Tom over the head to ensure he was subdued and then muscled him to his feet and began dragging him back towards the plantation house.
Parson Abraham appeared at Sophia’s side, helping her rise to at least a sitting position.
“He’s not just a slave anymore!” Sophia shouted across the field, shouted at Pembroke, at Wolcott, at the world. “Can’t you understand that? He’s free! His soul is free!”
Abraham’s strong hands clasped Sophia’s shoulders. “Sister,” he said softly, soothingly, as if trying to calm a frightened animal. “Sister, save your strength. You have a great deal of work ahead of you here.”
Sophia looked up into Abraham’s face, his head framed in the light of the morning sun. “Me? Parson, what about you?”
“It’s time for me to go,” Abraham said solemnly.
“Go?” Sophia cried, nearly as exasperated as she had been moments ago. “You can’t go. Not after what they’ve just done. You have to stay and help me help the slaves.”
Abraham shook his head, settling into a kneeling position behind Sophia and letting her slump exhaustedly into his arms. “They won’t let me,” he said, his very words directing her eyes to the forms of Wolcott and Tyler, unmoved side by side in their colorful robes on the veranda. “Remember? I’m to leave this morning. That’s why we made our dangerous journey last night.”
Sophia remembered. In the passion of the moment she had forgotten, but now she remembered all the events that had transpired over the past twenty-four hours. And as she remembered her eyes narrowed on the figures of Wolcott and Tyler, momentarily relegating the scurrying images of slave and overseer alike to the periphery. They looked like clowns, she realized, the both of them, dressed as they were in their ridiculous clothes and furry shoes. But at the same time they were terrifying. Standing sentinel amidst the subjugation, strife and savagery, their white coffee cups held without quaver in identical hands, and even coming up in unison from time to time to pour more of the hot brown liquid into their all-consuming orifices. Did it not touch them? The evil that surrounded them; would it ever touch them? Or would they stand aloof and in charge of it all for the rest of time? And if so, why would God allow such a thing?
“They won’t allow me to stay either,” Sophia said. “Will they?”
“I believe they will,” Abraham said. “For a time at least. When you’re back in your habit and properly subdued you will still be useful to them, and for the sake of these poor souls I would ask you to allow yourself to be used for as long as they’re willing to have you. The slaves are going to need someone who knows the truth if they are going to come and be saved.”
“The truth?” Sophia asked.
“Yes,” Abraham said. “The one that will forever remain hidden from men like Wolcott and Tyler. The same one you helped Tom realize, and the only one that has the power to bring people in bondage to the one true God. The truth that all of us, black and white, are the same in God’s eyes. The slave owners in this land, many of them feel guilt over enslaving their fellow man because they know it’s wrong and that it runs counter to God’s law. They want to make the lives of their slaves happy to help placate that guilt. And they see God’s message as a way to do that, that the promise of eternal bliss in the next world will help the slaves accept the burdens imposed upon them in this one. But it is a perversion of God’s message to use it in this way, and it shows how little these slave owners understand what God has said about sin, damnation, and eternal life. If the white man truly understood God’s message he would be more concerned with his own soul than those of his slaves.”
Sophia closed her eyes. The Parson’s words were like a healing balm on her irritated nerves. Of all the holy men who had spoken to her about truth, she knew this former slave named Abraham was the only one who did so with any real authority. As he spoke, she felt the presence of the Holy Spirit descend upon them, and at once her troubled soul knew profound peace.
“I must go,” Abraham said. “But you will stay. You will stay as they peel the skin off the backs of these poor slaves, as they crush Tom under heavy weights and feed his dismembered pieces to their dogs, as they re-impose their rigid reign of unquestioned dominance over this plantation. And when those trials have passed, you will stay as they trot the slaves out to the fields every morning and trot them into their praise house every evening, as they work to convince themselves of their deep benevolence. And through it all you will be here and in a position to talk about truth with the slaves, to bring them to an understanding of God’s true vision for us all, and how it is all of our responsibility to make sure it doesn’t just exist in heaven.”
Sophia nodded her head. She would do it, she would do precisely what Abraham described, for as long as she could get away with it. And when the time came that they asked her to leave, just as they were asking Parson Abraham, she would go and continue the same work elsewhere, bringing the true Word of God to those who had been lied to and deceived. She would do exactly that, knowing it is what God had called her to do.
+ + +
“Sophia” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
Image Source
https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/shermans-march
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