“Oral traditions,” Ezekiel said.
“Some other time.”
“Has to be now,” Ezekiel said. “Forces is on the move.”
Rhett made a high-pitched little sound in his sleep, almost a whimper.
“What forces?” Roy said, lowering his voice still more.
Ezekiel glanced down at Rhett, spoke softly too. “In the mountain. Who’s more in touch with the forces in the mountain than me, smokin’ it every day in my own lungs, tastin’ it on my own tongue?”
“I don’t understand.”
“About me tastin’ the mountain?”
“I get that part.”
“You do?”
“I don’t understand what you want to talk about.”
“Your name and my name,” said Ezekiel. “Roy and Zeke. Must be the starting place.”
“Zeke?”
“To all my friends. An’ I got lots of friends, Roy, what with my hobby and such.”
Ezekiel took Roy by the arm, led him out the back of the Mountain House. Roy didn’t want to leave Rhett, and Ezekiel’s grip was light, easily resistible, but Roy didn’t resist. They stepped between the sagging slats of the slave quarters, went inside.
“Make yourself at home,” Ezekiel said, sitting on the floor. Roy sat too. Ezekiel lit a candle, twisted it into the hard-packed earth. The candle illuminated a box lying next to it, a casket, leather-bound and shaped like Roy’s inherited chest, but tiny, almost pocket-size.
“Roy Hill and Zeke Hill,” said Zeke, “if you see the direction ahead.”
“What’s in the box?” Roy said.
“Family ashes, brother,” Ezekiel said.
“Are you stoned?”
“Needless to ask. Care to partake of a small sample, on the house?”
“No.”
“I’ll join you in that,” said Ezekiel. “Partakin’ of nothin’.” He glanced down at the casket. “Roy and Zeke. Know where we’s sittin’, this very moment in time?”
“The old slave quarters.”
Ezekiel nodded. “Slave quarter to the Mountain House, where the ol’ massah-you know that word, massah? — like to come on up Sundays, spend some social time, accordin’ to the oral traditions. With me so far, or you gonna object to oral traditions bein’ history?”
“I’m not,” Roy said.
“Then how about if I told you these family ashes was the earthly remains of my great-great-grandfather Roy Singleton Hill?”
“I’d say you’re full of shit.”
Ezekiel didn’t seem to hear that. “Roy Singleton Hill, Confederate hero, best of the good ol’ boys,” he said. “His earthly remains passed on down in my family-my side of the family-from one generation to the next.”
“Maybe you passed on the box,” Roy said. “But what makes you think his ashes are inside?”
“Oral traditions,” Ezekiel said. “What you already agreed was history. Got to pay more attention, Roy. Forces is on the move.”
“I’m not saying there’s no ashes,” Roy said. “Just that they’re not his.”
Ezekiel shook his head. “You people in denial,” he said.
“What people is that?”
“The kind of people that denies.” Ezekiel extended his bare arm toward Roy, inches above the candle flame. “You see this?”
“The heart with the arrow?”
“Not the tattoo, man. I’m talkin’ about the color of my skin.”
“What about it?”
“How would you-what’s the word we needin’ here? describe-describe my skin?”
“Describe it?” said Roy. “Human skin.”
Ezekiel’s eyes met his. “You a good man,” he said. “You jus’ be careful now not to let the goodness get in the way of seein’ right.”
“You’re losing me.”
“Last thing I want,” said Ezekiel. “What I’m tryin’ to get across-does this look to you in your eyes like black skin?”
“Well,” said Roy, “you’re black.”
“I’m black, but this ain’t the color black. Ever go to kindergarten, Roy? Ever be mixin’ up the paints? How would you come to a color like this, startin’ with pure Dahomey black?”
Roy thought of Mrs. Hardaway tracing his schoolboy drawing with her coffee-bean-colored finger, polished red at the end, didn’t answer.
Ezekiel shook his head. “You in bad denial, man. Mix in the white-any kindergarten kid tell you that.”
“I’m not denying it,” Roy said. “I’m saying his ashes aren’t in there.”
“That’s the arrogance part goes hand in hand with the denial.”
“If I showed you where he was buried,” Roy said, “would that be arrogant too?”
A quiet night in the cemetery, the mountain rising dark on one side, the silhouette of the cross over the chapel on the other. Ezekiel drove his pickup along the cart path the hearses used, past all the gravestones, growing smaller and more worn, to the woods at the foot of the mountain.
“Stop,” Roy said.
Ezekiel stopped. His headlights shone on the stone:
Roy Singleton Hill
1831–1865
Hero
Ezekiel went still.
“You’ve never seen this?” Roy said.
“How would I ever be doin’ that? We in the white graveyard, man.”
They got out of the pickup, walked to the stone. Ezekiel knelt, ran his fingertips over the sunken lettering.
“I see a stone,” he said. “I read the writing. Don’ mean he’s down there.”
“Now who’s in denial?” Roy said.
“Not me, man. The history of conspiracy is on our side.”
Roy missed that one. “Why would you want him anyway?” he said.
“Want him?”
“If he slept with women who had no choice?”
“Funny way of sayin’ rape,” Ezekiel said. “I don’ want him, Roy. It’s just the fact-him and the slave women, all my ancestors.” Ezekiel went to the pickup, came back with a long-handled spade.
“Why would I let you do this?” Roy said.
Ezekiel paused, gazed at Roy, the two of them standing over the gravestone. “You a good man,” Ezekiel said. He pushed on the stone, grunted, toppled it over. The stone fell with a thump and the earth trembled, very slightly. Roy felt it in the soles of his feet.
Ezekiel drove the spade into the middle of the bare blackened rectangle where the stone had stood. It sank in easily, came up easily with a clump of earth that Zeke flung to the side. He dug for a while, fast in the beginning, then slower, the digging and flinging growing more labored, sweat dripping off his chin. Ezekiel got down only two or three feet, hard to tell because the sides kept caving in on him, before he leaned on the spade and said: “Satisfied?”
“Satisfied?” said Roy, looking down at him. Dust from the grave boiled in the headlight beams. An image took shape in Roy’s mind, a crazy one, of Ezekiel lying in the hole he’d just dug.
“That he ain’t here,” said Ezekiel.
