“Bullshit.”
“It wasn’t just one day either, man. It was like a month straight. You know his birthday just passed. When the last time you talked to his mom?”
“They put her in that home some years back. But whatever, man. I’m not about to play with you. You ghost for fifteen years and this is what you come back with?”
“I’m serious, D. I’m on a Greyhound heading home. I’ll be there in the morning. Will you meet me tomorrow evening? By the river where we used to go? Please? This shit is bugging me, man.”
“Whatever,” Darius snapped, and ended the call.
Tavis’s haunted voice followed Darius home. He was so distracted that he didn’t notice the rusty nail on his doorstep until it pierced straight through the sole of his oxfords and into his right foot.
“Goddamnit,” he swore, hopping into his house. He threw down his bag and flopped onto his couch, then gently removed his shoe. It’d only barely penetrated the skin—one small bead of blood welled up in the center of his foot. It was rusty, sure, but he didn’t want to go to the emergency room tonight. He hit it with some alcohol and wrapped it in gauze. Then he made a little dinner, brushed his teeth, and went to bed.
The voice came to him in the night.
“Show me that stream called the river Jordan
That’s the old stream that I long to cross . . .”
Darius normally slept late on Saturdays, but when he woke at 3:45 in the afternoon he saw that Tavis had called six times. He’d sent a couple halting texts as well:
I’m here. At Lamplighter Inn. Goin 2 see ma then headed 2 river.
Meet me there.
Darius turned the request over in his head. Tavis wasn’t deserving of forgiveness. But he didn’t deserve to be alone. His thoughts were interrupted by someone singing an old song in a boy’s voice, an echo of days long gone.
“I get weary and sick of tryin’
I’m tired of livin’ an’ scared of dyin’”
Darius shot out of bed.
“Fred?” He frantically searched the room. His phone buzzed. It was Tavis.
Headed 2 River.
Meet me there.
“River ain’t changed since we was kids,” Tavis said, trying to break the silence. It was fall but the bugs and fish were still out. Darius picked up a rock, skimmed it across the thick water. It skipped six, seven times before sinking beneath the surface.
“The fuck you doing here, Tavis? And why you calling me? What you want?”
Tavis shrugged. He looked rough in his oil-spattered coveralls and work boots. His fingernails were black, face gaunt, stubble sickly gray. Darius felt embarrassed in his leather boots and cable-knit sweater.
“You should have stayed,” Darius managed. “You should have stayed and dealt with it.”
“Like you had to?” Tavis snarled. “I’m not you, and you damn sure ain’t me. I couldn’t just deal with it. I couldn’t stay here.”
“Why the fuck not!” Darius advanced on Tavis, shoved him. Tavis was taller than Darius, but leaner. He stumbled over a rock. Both men froze. Brush rustled in the gloomy distance.
“Long low river,” a voice echoed off the trees in the low twilight. “It just keeps rolling along.”
Both men recognized the voice.
“Fred?” they called.
“No,” the voice said. A shrouded figure appeared in the trees. “Fred’s gone.”
Tavis had produced a knife from his coveralls. Darius motioned for him to put it away. “Stop playing games and show yourself.”
The shrouded figure hobbled into view. It wore a long blue raincoat and pulled the hood away to reveal an old woman’s face. The two men recognized her instantly.
“Ms. Harriet?” Tavis said. “I don’t—”
“Hush your wicked mouth,” she said, jabbing a finger at Tavis, who snapped his jaw shut so fast his teeth clicked. Tavis moaned in pain.
“What are you doing out here, Ms. Harriet?” Darius asked in a whisper. “And how can you speak in Fred’s voice?”
“Y’all took him,” she murmured, so low that Darius could barely hear her. “Y’all took him and for fifteen years I had to let y’all be until I could find a way to make you pay. But my ancestors showed me how. And it’s time.”
“Time for what?”
“I didn’t need your blood, just for you to step across my hate.” At that moment, Darius’s right foot throbbed. Ms. Harriet continued. “Fred got no right being my ancestor. But I’ll let him use me. I sure will,” she said in her own voice. Then, in Fred’s:
“Tote that barge! Lift that bale!”
Unbidden, the two men’s bodies began to move, their bones creaking in protest.
“IknewitIknewit,” Tavis whimpered. “Oh Godddddd—”
“They never found my baby. Not one piece of him. But it was never their job to find him.”
“Ms. Harriet,” Darius said, tears rimming his eyes. “Please—”
“Not their job,” the old woman shouted, baring her last two teeth that them. “It’s yours. Tote that barge! Lift that bale!”
“No,” Darius gasped as his body shuffled toward the water. It seeped over his ankles, his knees, and it was all he could do to turn to Tavis, who was straining to look at him as well. Tavis’s expression was blank, faraway. They were chest-deep when he said:
“I’m tired of living, D. But I’m not scared of dying.”
As his head went beneath the surface of the muddy water, Darius heard Ms. Harriet sing in Fred’s voice one final time.
“Pull that rope. Until you dead.”
Joy, and Other Poisons
VAJRA CHANDRASEKERA
We learn to milk our toxins and history calms the fuck down. Everything’s different since the glands were discovered.
Every morning, after we brush our teeth—the gums are too sensitive after the milking—we go out into the world and find a partner. We sit down and we take turns
