That morning the dogs came, their panting heavy and labored as their paws slapped against the tree where Ness hid.
From afar there was a whistle, an old Dixie tune that lifted from the ground before the sound could be attached to a body. “I know you’re here somewhere,” the Devil said. “And I’m glad to wait you out.”
In broken Twi, Ness called to Aku, who was further up in the distance, holding baby Jo. “Don’t come down, whatever you do,” Ness said.
The Devil continued approaching, his hum low and patient. Ness knew he would wait there forever and soon the baby would cry, need food. She looked over at the tree Sam was in and hoped he would forgive her for all that she was about to bring upon them, and then she climbed down the tree. She was on the ground before she realized that Sam had done the same.
“Where’s the boy?” the Devil asked while his men tied the two of them up.
“Dead,” Ness said, and she hoped her eyes had that look in them, that look that mothers got sometimes when they came back from running, having killed their children to set them free.
The Devil raised one eyebrow and laughed a slow laugh. “It’s a shame, really. I thought I mighta had me some trustworthy niggers. Just goes to show.”
He marched Ness and Sam back to Hell.
Once they got there, all of the slaves were called out to the whipping post. He stripped them both bare, tied Sam so tight he couldn’t even wiggle his fingers, and made him watch as Ness earned the stripes that would make her too ugly to work in a house ever again. By the end of it, Ness was on the ground, dust covering her sores. She could not lift her head, so the Devil lifted it for her. He made her watch. He made them all watch: the rope come out, the tree branch bend, the head snap free from body.
And so this day, while Ness waited to see what punishment Tom Allen had in store for her, she couldn’t help but remember that day. Sam’s head. Sam’s head tilted to the left and swinging.
Pinky carried water up to the porch where Tom Allen sat, waiting. When the little girl turned back around, her eyes caught Ness’s, but Ness didn’t hold her gaze for long. She just continued to pick cotton. She thought of the act of cotton picking as she had since the day she saw Sam’s head, like a prayer. With the bend, she said, “Lord forgive me my sins.” With the pluck, she said, “Deliver us from evil.” And with the lift, she said, “And protect my son, wherever he may be.”
James
OUTSIDE, THE SMALL CHILDREN were singing “Eh-say, shame-ma-mu” and dancing around the fire, their smooth, naked bellies glistening like little balls catching light. They were singing because word had arrived—the Asantes had Governor Charles MacCarthy’s head. They were keeping it on a stick outside the Asante king’s palace as a warning to the British: this is what happens to those who defy us.
“Eh, small children, do you not know that if the Asantes defeat the British they will come for us Fantes next?” James asked. He lunged at one of the little girls and tickled her until all of the children were giggling and begging for mercy. He released the girl and then put on a somber face, continuing his lecture. “You will be safe here in this village because my family is royal. Do not forget that.”
“Yes, James,” they said.
Down the road, James’s father was approaching with one of the white men from the Castle. He motioned to James to follow them into the compound.
“Should the boy hear this, Quey?” the white man asked, glancing quickly at James.
“He is a man, not a boy. He will take over my responsibilities here when I’ve finished. Whatever you say to me, you may also say to him.”
The white man nodded, and looked at James carefully as he spoke. “Your mother’s father, Osei Bonsu, has died. The Asantes are saying we killed their king to avenge Governor MacCarthy’s death.”
“And did you?” James asked, returning the man’s stare with force, anger beginning to boil up in his veins. The white man looked away. James knew the British had been inciting tribal wars for years, knowing that whatever captives were taken from these wars would be sold to them for trade. His mother always said that the Gold Coast was like a pot of groundnut soup. Her people, the Asantes, were the broth, and his father’s people, the Fantes, were the groundnuts, and the many other nations that began at the edge of the Atlantic and moved up through the bushland into the North made up the meat and pepper and vegetables. This pot was already full to the brim before the white men came and added fire. Now it was all the Gold Coast people could do to keep from boiling over again and again and again. James wouldn’t be surprised if the British had killed his grandfather as a way to raise the heat. Ever since his mother had been stolen and married to his father, his village had been swelteringly hot.
“Your mother wants to go to the funeral,” Quey said. James unclenched the fist he hadn’t realized he’d made.
“It’s too dangerous, Quey,” the white man said. “Even Nana Yaa’s royal status might not protect you. They know your village has been allied to us for years. It’s just too dangerous.”
James’s father looked down, and suddenly James could hear his mother’s voice in his ear again, telling him that his father was a weak man with no respect for the land he walked on.
“We will go,” James said, and Quey looked up. “Not attending the Asante king’s funeral is a sin the ancestors would never forgive.”
Slowly, Quey nodded. He turned to the white man. “It is the least we can do,” he said.
The white man shook hands with the two of them, and the next day, James, his mother, and his father headed north for Kumasi. His grandmother Effia would stay home with the younger children.
—
James held the gun in his lap as they rode through the forest. The last time he’d held one was five years before, in 1819, for his twelfth birthday. His father had taken him out into the woods to shoot at swaths of fabric he had tied to various trees in the distance. He told James that a man should learn to hold a gun the same way he held a woman, carefully, tenderly.
Now, looking at his parents as they rode through the bush, James wondered if his father had ever held his mother that way, carefully or tenderly. If war had been the way of the world of the Gold Coast, it had also defined the world inside his compound.
Nana Yaa wept as they rode inside the carriage. “If it weren’t for my son, would we even be going?” she asked.
James had made the mistake of telling her what his father and the white man had talked about the day before.
“If it weren’t for me, would you even have this son?” his father muttered.
“What?” his mother said. “I could not understand that ugly Fante you speak.”
James rolled his eyes. They would go on like this for the rest of the trip. He could still remember the fights they had when he was a small boy. His mother screaming loudly about his name.
“James Richard Collins?” his mother would shout. “James Richard Collins! What kind of Akan are you that you give your son three white names?”
“And so what?” his father would reply. “Will he not still be a prince to our people and to the whites too? I have given him a powerful name.”
James knew now, as he knew then, that his parents had never loved each other. It was a political marriage; duty held them together, though even that seemed to be barely enough. By the time they passed the town of Edumfa, his mother was going on about how Quey wouldn’t even be a man were it not for James’s late great-uncle Fiifi. So many of their arguments led to Fiifi and the decisions he had made for Quey and their family.