Between Fathers and Sons: An African-American Story – by Eric V. Copage

THE VITAL QUESTION

The sound of my breathing filled my room, and with every breath, the weight of my body seemed to dissipate into the air. I felt myself expanding beyond the boundaries of my skin. I felt myself rising like an infinitely fine mist, passing through my ceiling, through the clutter in the attic, through the shingles of the roof, and into the humid night air. I continued rising and mingled with the gauzy vapors of the night sky. As I rose, I saw the lights of my neighborhood, the neighborhoods around it, and eventually, The City itself spread out below me before a convergence of clouds covered it. I accelerated as I rose beyond the clouds, zooming through world after world after world after world. I soared past lands of lofty mountains, rushed over lands of hot desert sands, darted through lands of steaming jungles, and sped across windswept prairies of ice. As I entered each realm, whatever contained my spirit shuddered violently.

I fell with a thud; a cloud of red dust flew up around me. Startled and dazed, I lifted my head and wiped my eyes. It was either sunrise or sunset, I couldn’t tell which. I had landed on an endless plain of red-colored sunbaked clay. I scanned the horizonless distance where land and sky merged in the ochre half-light. I squinted and somehow was propelled to within half a football field’s length away of a seated man dressed in colorful traditional Ashanti robes; to his right stood another man, also dressed in Ashanti robes. They were situated near a towering baobab tree with its tangle of bare branches. As I rose to my feet, I saw that the seated and standing men were flanked by at least a hundred armed men, distributed evenly on each side.

The armed men, apparently soldiers, stood at attention, each with a rifle resting on his shoulder. I shivered when the two men, their entire retinue of soldiers and the tree, suddenly streaked in my direction as one unit, as if they were atop a single piece of earth. In a heartbeat, they had moved in a herky-jerky, zig zaggy path towards me, and I was dwarfed by the enormity of the tree’s grey trunk, its roof of leafless limbs now draping me in a coarse mesh of jagged shadows. The man I presumed to be the king sat on a wooden stool, his legs spread wide, hands relaxed on its corresponding thigh, a study in authority and equilibrium. He was resplendent in the wedges, spires, and arcs that comprised the jewel-like geometry of the folds of his royal robe. Its colors – ruby red, emerald green, sapphire blue, and glittering gold – were so brilliant they made my eyes ache as if I were looking directly at the sun. I had to turn my head away from their radiance.

Rings upon rings of gold and silver hoops encircled the king’s ankles. He wore sumptuous leather flip-flop sandals, their broad black velvet straps decorated with four pinkie finger-sized sculptures in gold of Sankofa, the mythical bird that cranes its long neck backward while holding an egg in its beak, its claws resolutely facing forward. The part of the sandals that touched the king’s soles were covered in gold leaf. His feet hovered effortlessly an inch or two above the red earth as if they rested atop the invisible force of another world.

The king’s soldiers gazed ahead, expressionless. They wore Union Army uniforms of the American Civil War – light blue pants, gray woolen shirt, dark blue jacket, and a blue cap whose flat crown slouched forward towards its stiff bill on every head. The king looked straight ahead, impassively. He did not seem to notice me. The standing man I took to be the king’s adviser. He turned his head in my direction and spoke:

“I will tell you a story. When I finish, I will ask you a question.

You may not move from that spot until you answer that question. Your life depends on your answer to that question.”

With those final words, I heard the clank of metal as the king’s soldiers cocked their weapons and pointed them at me.

A black man guides a half dozen slaves to freedom. At the end of the first day, they make an overnight stop in an empty cabin in a forest. The next morning, when it’s time to continue, the former captives refuse to open the cabin door. They are afraid of the wolves they heard outside during the night.

But the black man tells the group he has made dozens of journeys through these parts. He’s traveled under daylight, moonlight and through moonless darkeness. He’s slept in cabins, caves and under the stars in this area. He’s traveled in all seasons – spring, summer, fall and winter. He has traveled in the area through rain, sleet, snow, and debilitating heat – through droughts and through floods. He is intimately familiar with the plants and animals in these parts and has even foraged for them and hunted them for food.

I’ve never seen even one wolf around here, the black man said. The nearest wolves are miles away.
We have traveled in forests like this before, said one of the former captives. Despite your assurances, we know there are wolves. We know their signs. We’ve been mauled by them in broad daylight and bare those scars.
If there are no wolves in this area, another in the group said, what was thatghostly howling all last night?

The wind through trees, the black man answered.

What were those shadows moving at the bottom of the door? asked another.

Deer walking towards the nearby pond to drink, the black man replied.

What was the scratching outside the cabin’s back wall?

Raccoons searching for food, the black man responded.

Yet, despite every reasonable explanation, the slaves remained steadfast in their belief that wolves were right outside the door ready to devour them and refused to budge. Finally, the fugitives confidently followed the black man out the door towards freedom.

The king’s adviser looked at me solemnly: How did the black man convince the group there were no wolves?

The sun and stars completed their circuit twenty-one times, and I had no answer to his question. I could smell the stench of adolescent sweat rising from me. My stomach roared with hunger. My throat was raw and parched. The soldiers advanced upon me by one giant step. After another twenty-one circuits of the sun and stars, the soldiers took another step towards me. I was on the edge of despair when I looked up and saw the answer. It streaked far above me like a shooting star across the wine-red sky. I reached for it. I wanted to tell the king’s adviser the answer, but no sound escaped when I moved my lips to speak. I looked with pleading eyes while continuing to work my wordless lips. I felt tears of frustration trickle down my cheeks as I struggled to make any kind of sound. The king looked on, unmoved. The soldiers looked on, unmoved. The adviser looked on, unmoved. Finally, I dropped to my knees and tried to scribble the answer with my finger in the bone-hard clay—when I found myself sitting up in my bed, my sheets heavy with sweat, my tongue swollen with thirst, the answer to the vital question gone.