The Sea of Dead Souls

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS

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The Sea of Dead Souls Nina Louise

Off Menu Press 2022

Copyright © 2022 Nina Gibson

By Off Menu Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

Off Menu Press contact@offmenupress.com Printed by Minuteman Press: Berkeley, CA, USA ISBN - 978-0-578-38236-4 First edition

For my mother, Eleanor Louise McIntyre The most memorable goddess of them all

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time.

–Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston

The Red River

Gatson’s Farm 216 miles 70 hours walking

Wild Oak Grand Bayou Natchitoches

Alexandria Lafayette

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS

Preface: An Explanatory Note

I can remember the exact time the idea for this novella came to mind. It was spring 2020. The class of 2020 had started the last of our courses before graduation some five months away. Those were a long five months. Within weeks, we were told of COVID-19 and by March, spring break to be exact, we were told not to return to campus. The rest of the semester would be online. And so it began. A classmate brought it to my attention that there was a greater story to unfold in the Gatson’s fight for freedom. She knew of Naomi from the historical fiction novel I had just completed for my capstone project.

When I attended an award ceremony for The Little Tokyo Historical Society where I received an award for a short story as a finalist, a member asked me if I had ever heard of Bronzeville. And did I know that Little Tokyo was a mostly Black community for nearly three years in the 1940s?

Stunned at the revelation, I asked to hear more, and this was how Naomi came to be.

Research ruled my final year of my master’s program at Loyola Marymount University. I wanted to know all I could about the First Great Migration (1910-1940) and the Second Great Migration (1940-1970) that I had known little about except for Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other

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NINA LOUISE Suns with actual real life individuals who fled the south for the north with intentions for a better life, better jobs and a place to call home free of Jim Crow.

Why write this when Wilkerson’s book details the trials and tribulations of real life migrants who successfully made it to the Promised Land? Because when one uncovers a story, there are always others to be told. And truth be told, survival stories act as an inspiration for those in need.

The stories of neighbors keeping Blacks from fleeing were prevalent, especially in states with a strong white supremacy stronghold. If all the sharecroppers fled, who would farm the land? What would happen to the economy of those cities?

This story is about the telling of Black survival and the road to their freedom. Naomi, her brothers, Ma and Pa and even The Sheriff and his son, Jack, are built around the themes of family, and the rights of human-beings and justice. Being able to do the right thing even if the law orders you otherwise.

I wrote this to bring readers closer to the lives of people in a time when suffrage was felt all across America and not just in the souls of Black folks. I hope you will learn about a piece of history rarely written about in literary fiction and come to embrace the struggles of migrants of the past and present. Whether we come to love all the characters in this novella, I hope you can embrace their plight. We can only move forward in this world if we refuse to make the same mistakes repeatedly. The life of fleeing migrants became my passion in the same year in which, because of the pandemic, they forbid us to go anywhere. For a while, none of us could leave our residences. Though not a southerner, I relied on friends to guide my path and research. I researched everything from the crop the Gatson’s could plant year round to the trees that lined the Red River. There was no stone left unturned. My educational background in the department of English as a creative writer and researcher speaks to my knowledge of southern life during the 1940s for African Americans and Asian Americans who call this land home.

Notes and poetry printed in the Chicago Defender during the Second Great Migration served as a particular moment of inspiration for writing this novella. History in print, with wonderful accounts of how they made it north, was information I wanted to share with others. When Naomi realizes she can save another from a terrible fate, a bit of

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THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS hope slips back into her life and it is in these moments where Naomi’s story came alive for me. To bring someone hopeless to hope is not a simple task, but with Naomi and her affection for the goddess Oshun, it was easy to walk by her side and reveal her story page by page.

The 1940s were a rough time for those in the south. They were finally recovering from the 1930s Great Depression, cities and states were thriving. Newspaper ads were calling on southerners to stay put as their crops were in demand, and in those same newspaper ads, they were begging southerners to move north for war and industrial jobs growing by the day. As I wanted historical content to play a role in what America endured in the 1940s, I also wanted the readers to feel as if they were there, living alongside Naomi.

I want the reader to ask themselves, if they could, would they flee like the Gatson family so desperately wanted to do?

I also hope the reader gets a sense of literary works of this era, the works of writers of the Harlem Renaissance period and the movements Blacks made to enrich their lives and the lives of their children.

This is a labor of love and watching the Gatson’s make their dreams a reality felt like being a part of all the families from both migrations. Be kind to yourself. We all struggle and we all survive–at least I like to think that we do or that we can. The saying, the grass is not always greener on the other side, can be true for some, but for others, the grass is not only greener, but rich and full of unstoppable possibilities. Soon, we will be able to travel around the world again. And if you must, go find your space to call your own.

Let nothing hold you back, not even fear.

Nina Louise January 2022

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NINA LOUISE

Cast of Characters

Naomi Gatson: Twenty-five years old, born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. Born with the ability to see dead people and to conjure the spirits of African goddesses. Lives with her brothers and their Pa on their farm where they grow sweet potatoes and Sugar Cane.

Jacob Gatson: Seventeen years old, Naomi’s younger brother who was also born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. He desires to play baseball in the Negro League and to flee to the north with Naomi.

The Sheriff: Fifty-two years old, born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. The local sheriff for over twenty years since his father passed. He was groomed for the role of the sheriff by his pa. His first love was Ernest Hemingway and Ella ‘Ma’ but when he lost her to Pa, he gave up on his dreams.

Pa Gatson: Fifty-five years old, born in New Orleans and moved to Shreveport when he was twelve years old and met Ella and the Sheriff shortly after his arrival. As kids, they were best friends. Pa inherited his farm from his father who inherited the farm from his former owner before he died.

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS Ma Gatson: Fifty years old when she died, Miss Ella was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, but spent many summers with relatives in New Orleans, Mississippi and Virginia. She traced their roots back to a plantation in West Virginia where her Nana told her stories of the Underground Railroad and African goddesses.

Abe and Aaron Gatson: The brothers, twenty-seven years old, as Ma named them straight from her wound. They had no desire to marry and leave their ma and pa and hoped to help the family flee north once they enlisted in the Army.

Jack: Seventeen years old, born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. An only child, he received most of his education from the Negro library as a young student of Naomi. Jack hopes to be a writer and move to New York.

Ester: Twelve years old, born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. She met Jack at the church Negro library and read with him when Naomi was not around. She promised herself to him once she turned of age. Together they vowed to marry and move to New York.

Lewis: Twenty years old, born in Mississippi but returned to Shreveport where his pa’s family lived until they moved north. Jacob’s best friend since childhood. They were once inseparable until Lewis had to move again.

Sara: Fifteen years old when she died, born and raised just up the street from Naomi, her best friend. Sara was due to move north for safekeeping until the Sheriff turned his attention from Naomi to her.

Oshun: The River goddess of love, fertility, sensuality and purity appears when needed to help Naomi when she needs her the most.

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NINA LOUISE

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS

I Spring 1940

The sea carries with it many myths surrounding the bodies of people whose journey has taken them across these waters where the ghosts of the seas are hard to ignore. The Greeks believed the goddess Amphitrite, wife of Poseidon, nurtured their oceans. The dragon god Ryūjin, was the tutelary deity of the sea in Japanese mythology. She symbolized the power of the ocean, known to have a large mouth which could take human form. Yemaya is the African mother goddess of the living seas who came to life through the African diaspora by way of the Transatlantic Slave Trades. She is known to comfort and cleanse her children of sorrow.

No wonder then, Naomi Gatson of Shreveport, Louisiana—raised on stories of the African goddess, Oshun— wished to escape the life of a farmer, to flee to the sea and rest at the bottom of the ocean with her ancestors. She was almost certain had it not been for men she had known since birth, the afterlife would have called on her long ago.

On this Spring day, the year the Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor and the week after her twenty-sixth birthday, the heavens called on her Ma. The family huddled under the Japanese maple tree Pa had planted for her on their tenth anniversary. The gardener in town insisted Pa try something new.

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NINA LOUISE He said, “Miss Ella gonna love dis here tree. It don’t grow much but it gonna shade the house sum, just like you want it ta.”

At the time, Pa’s oldests, Abe and Aaron, known everywhere as ‘the brothers,’ as they rarely saw one without seeing the other, suggested he plant the tree at least ten feet from the house. Just in case the local gardener with the seed shop, Mr. Gardner — yes, that was indeed his name and everyone in town made fun of it—was wrong. Mr. Gardner had suggested six feet. If he were wrong, then Pa would have plenty of land to give the Japanese maple tree space to spread its wings.

And spread it did. Within a year, the tree grew ten feet tall and eight inches wide. The dark pink, almost purple hued leaves blew onto Ma’s lap, into her sweet tea and across damn near half the porch every doggone day. Pa took pride in being smarter than Mr. Gardner gave him credit. He planted the tree eight feet from the house instead of the recommended six. That was ten years ago and now the tree they call Ella, named after Ma, stood fifteen feet tall and lifted part of the house off its foundation due to its proximity.

Naomi used to laugh at her Ma and her walks around the tree, inhaling at every turn. The wind picked up and the chlorophyll soaked grassy dirt filled the area with a sweet after taste. This sweetness would stick in your mouth long after the honey-baked bun left your tongue, easing down your throat like water off the bone.

“What you smellin Ma?” “Sweet buns, pies, cakes, heaven. Yes, heaven is what it is.”

It would be the last time Ma walked her tree. The last time she walked at all.

As Pa tacked on the remaining hopes and desires for his children in prayer, Naomi’s eyes stared into the supple heart-shaped leaves. She had no tears to shed. She could hear Ma giving thanks to God for a safe passage. She told Naomi to close her eyes and Naomi watched as Ma ventured with spirits full of light and a body void of dread. Naomi was angry and frustrated, not sad or depressed like her brothers and Pa. Circling the tree as Ma had done several times over, Naomi was reminded of two memories, Ma’s confession of nearly kissing the Sheriff days before she married Pa and Kang. Zhang Wei Li was the older brother of Cho Lin Wei Li. Everyone called them Kang and Lin and they were one of just

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS a handful of Chinese families in the south. They moved to town after the incident with Sara. Lin latched on quickly, but Kang, at least in public, treated Naomi like a bug he needed to squash every chance he could. Until his confession under this very tree. When they moved, Naomi had no one to call a friend.

Then she recalled Jacob’s best friend Lewis.

“Where is Lewis? He too busy to pay his respect?”

Her younger brother by nine years kept his head down, “Pa told me...”

Pa squeezed Jacob’s arm, “...I told him to tell no one. The less people know the better.”

A low-brow scowl painted Naomi’s ashy face orange as she turned toward the tree and away from the grave.

She realized it was better for Lewis to send his respects via postage. He flirted with Naomi too much, despite his childhood relationship with Jacob. As Naomi saw it, they practically grew up together, Lewis was family. Lewis was Jacob’s twin in every way imaginable.

Pa began his prayer.

Naomi had come to terms with God long ago.

If there was a God, the incident at the train station would have never happened. At least that is what Naomi told her nine year old self. No one spoke about that day. Although all one needed to do was watch Pa wobble on his good leg with cane in hand, to know the Gastons were beaten. When they returned home that day, Naomi repeated in her head, “We ain’t dead. We ain’t dead. WE AIN’T DEAD.” Until the words creased her pillows.

No one in the Gatson family settled on dying with the exception of Naomi, and she was not entirely sure death would bring her what she sought the most: peace of mind.

Each year that passed after the horrible incident on the train platform, the incident that damaged her Pa in more ways than Naomi could count, each year squeezed her by the neck, the rope twisting, stretching, piercing deep into her skin. If she stayed here, she would die like Sara had, but if she fled, if she could get away, she could die any way she chose.

The Gatson men were wired different, as they would have it, there was too much life to be had, too much living awaiting them. Each one of them had a dream. Pa wanted to play trumpet in a jazz club in Harlem. The brothers wanted to see Europe via the Army and Jacob wanted to

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NINA LOUISE play in the Negro baseball league. Too full of life and too full of themselves, Naomi told them once, “No man whose body is at constant risk should ever dream so big.” Yet, Naomi knew—sooner or later, the disease of joy and dreams would catch a hold of her pitiless soul and one day she would arise to a word she dreaded more than life, hope.

“Dear Lord, thank you for granting a secure journey for Miss Ella to the afterlife.” Naomi’s Pa held his head to the ground, shifting his body to the rhythm of the wind, picking up a robust movement like they had never seen before. “We ask that we get these here children off safely too, until ain’t no one left here.” Naomi’s eyes darted from Pa to her brothers. She could tell Pa’s pupils were looking up to heaven by the way his eyelids fluttered, lifting off the rim.

“We all gonna get outta here sooner or lata. All of us.”

“Amen,” Abe said.

“Amen and Amen,” added Aaron. Like Pa, he swayed back and forth too, though not because of a bad knee, he had a nervous tick about him. Aaron could not sit or stand still for long periods of time. Naomi wondered how he would survive basic training camp should the brothers get called to enlist in the Army soon.

Jacob, 17 going on 30, like Naomi, was never one for prayers, biblical quotes, or Sunday school service. Yet, this morning he held one hand to the heavens and the other to Pa’s back to keep him from falling over. Pa made everyone go to church no matter what they felt deep down in their hearts. Like or dislike for God, it didn’t bother him none. If you was his child, you was gonna go to church and he made sure they knew this when he unlatched his belt.

He said, “I plan on seeing every damn one of y’all in the afterlife, whether you wanna be there or not.” And he meant it. Pa swore too much, but it was all the sinning he had left in him.

When Pa opened his eyes they were dry as Ma’s cornbread battered by the sun. Naomi returned his gaze. He would not smile and neither would she. The brothers wept their way back into the crooked white farmhouse. Its wooden steps led to a huge chestnut door so thick even the Sheriff could not knock the door down if he tried.

“Come on gal, let’s eat.” Naomi hated her nickname. Only Pa got away with calling her gal. The Sheriff tried on several occasions but the fire steaming from Naomi’s

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS cheeks curbed his tongue. Still, if he could get away with it he would. The Sheriff had a habit of being either wholly sour or wholly sweet and neither personality suited Naomi much.

Nor could she understand the constant attention all the ladies around town and the girls at school showed him. He is a handsome man, she gave him that, but it was his personality or lack thereof which turned her off to his crude remarks and ill-temper. Naomi had come to realize there was a side of the Sheriff only those who said ‘no’ to him knew.

Pa limped down the burial mole hill. Ma lay on the other side of the house where she would neither be disturbed nor disturb the living. Naomi eventually knew her Ma’s flesh would decompose, water evaporating from the skin, leaving every single body part her Ma possessed dried out, turning her bones dark as ash. Naomi could imagine the roots of the Japanese Maple tree intertwining with her remains, sprouting new life while brightening the purple hues into a soft pink, Ma’s favorite.

The wind attacked Naomi’s thin arms, the leaves and dead broken branches scrapped against her plump legs.

A crackle in the sky shining white hit the earth with a thunderous roar. The drizzle started slow. Naomi touched the tree at its heart. Had it not been for her ample figure, the wind would have swept her away.

“Fittin Ma, very fittin.” She remembered the other goddess Ma would tell her stories about before she rested her eyes. The story of the African rain goddess of the sea, Mujaji who poured down her love to her children using her power to gently cleanse the believer’s spirit through rain and restoration. If Ma wasn’t telling her stories about goddesses, she was telling Naomi about the Sheriff and their romance that never was. Naomi pictured a young Ma and a young Sheriff huddled under a tree like Ella, his lips near hers before Pa came running up the hill and around the corner to save them from the torrential rains. Naomi shook the story Ma had told her long ago from her head.

Almost within an instant, Lin’s brother, Kang popped in. If she had ever had a young love, a first love, it was Kang. In public he hated her, acted like she was the scum of the earth and though those hateful events scarred her, it was a similar moment, under a tree, during a rainstorm where she came close, real close to inhaling the scent of heaven.

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NINA LOUISE “Naomi! Get in this here damn house, ya hear?”

Naomi snapped to her father’s bellowing voice. She leaned into the tree and kissed Miss Ella goodbye and scurried off before Pa had another heart attack. She removed her shoes at the door, and peered back at the tree as if it spoke to her. Mr. Gardner had called the tree seeds “Anshin Shite.”

He said in Japanese it means to be at peace. She whispered, “Be at peace Ma.” By the time she reached the screen door, Jacob held it open. She gazed at the tree one final time, the branches, the falling leaves around the stump became Ma. She knew it would not be long now before she never saw it again.

He tugged on her arm, “Come on now.”

She closed the screen door carefully, it latched tight to its base. A storm’s coming, Ma and not the goddess of the sea or the goddess of the rain can prevent the dying of the Gastons, if it is going to be anyone else, then it might as well be me. ⇸⇸ “Do you see anything Abe?” “No sir.”

“Jacob?”

The brothers posted themselves at each end of the house, Abe in the back, near the kitchen with Pa, Aaron, and Naomi. While Jacob glided between the two big windows in the front parlor searching for signs of life. In search of their spies.

After supper, when darkness fell, the house glowed from the two dim lamps they owned out front by Ma’s davenport, the only other place in the house she would sit other than the oval mahogany kitchen table, seating for five, which Pa bought for her as a consolation gift for marrying him.

Pa inherited the Gatson farmhouse from the eldest son of a former slave owner, who had passed on to his children the heart of an abolitionist. The Gatsons had been here for centuries retaining the property through the end of the civil war until the only living male Gatson divided the large estate into three, giving two sections to the descendants of his father’s former slaves. Naomi heard tales of former slave owners giving their land away to their former slaves, but she insisted everytime the topic came about, that they were false

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS tales, until Pa showed them grandpoppa’s deed now in his name.

Pa would often tell them: not all white men were bad. And he aimed to prove it by taking them to town, marching them into the bank and showing them the deed in his Poppa’s name.

Naomi had a lot of questions about Grandpoppa’s owner and why they all deserted the land after the war, leaving only Poppa and the Miller family to stay on caring for their property. Like Pa, the Millers were strapped to the land, unable to get away, because their daddies were former slaves.

Until one night. Like a fog hovering over the sea, the Miller’s just up and disappeared.

One day when pa turned up all purple and blue from a “we just havin fun,” run in with the Sheriff, Pa shouted, “This here my land, this here my land.” Until Naomi asked pa, “Why do you care if we goin to desert this farm anyway?”

“I may leave this place one day, but it will always remain in the hands of a Gatson. You, bes believe.”

The Sheriff had “befriended” Pa when they were children in school together, but as most of the town folks saw it, the Sheriff had bullied Pa into a friendship he could never escape. The rumor drifting from generation to generation had it that the Sheriff’s grandpa was the uncle of the slave owner who owned Pa’s grandpoppa. As Pa saw it, the Sheriff was a distant relative who no one would claim.

“They names ain’t even the same,” Pa insisted. He would never consider the Sheriff family, not even in his final days.

They held candles to guide their way as Aaron checked the rooms and Naomi followed. She could hear Pa moving the table to the wall. He lit the stove. Their home could only be warmed by the stove. Pa made an excuse every night to turn it on for at least an hour or so until the entire three bedroom one bath filled with comfort.

“What we looking for Aaron?”

“Not what, but who.”

“Then, who?”

“Sheriff, of course. Would anyone else have the nerve to be lurking around our property?” Aaron scooted into Ma and Pa’s room. Naomi stood at the door. She could

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NINA LOUISE still smell the cough syrup, the diarrhea medicine, and Ma’s own homemade Vick’s soaked into their sheets along with the vanilla and lemongrass scented oils and healing rubs, neighbors showered upon her. Her demise grew from the root of her bones, spilling into her blood, catching wind.

The scent drew Naomi back, dizzy, she wobbled a bit before securing the candle tightly in her grasp.

“Why would the Sheriff be hounding our home?

Ain’t he got something better to do?” When Naomi opened her eyes, she saw Ma standing next to Aaron as he leaned his square sturdy frame toward the window. Ma reached out her hand to pat his back as if to say, “good job.” Aaron stood, let the curtain drop and spun around to find Naomi’s mouth open, pointing to something beside him. Her eyes fought the pull of the sight of Ma and her brightened lively skin, and her eyes, pure as gold. Naomi’s eyes sparkled too as they began to water, Aaron grinned, took hold of his candle and strolled out the room.

“Pa. Naomi seeing ghosts again.”

A burst of cold air hit Naomi from behind. She spun on her heels, peered into her room and found nothing or no one. She watched as Aaron checked the next room.

Another source of energy rolled through whipping Naomi’s nightgown up while whisking her Ma away. When Aaron came back into the hall, he took his sister by the hand and led her back into the kitchen with the others.

“Was it Miss Ella this time?” Pa asked.

“No.” “Yes it was, stop lying: everybody knows you see the dead. No use hiding it now.” Aaron said.

Aaron pulled up a chair next to Abe who had opened a map, and spread it on the floor. Naomi and Jacob sat on the map corners holding the faded streets of Louisiana down with their knees. Pa sat in a chair next to Jacob and the brothers sat across from them. Naomi knew this was another one of their schemes to vanish into thin air, just like the Millers had. All of them, with the exception of Pa, were included in this plan. He always intended to stay back—it was the perfect cover, he said.

“Why would the Sheriff be watching us? We ain’t tried to run for nearly fifteen years,” Naomi said.

“Same reason he stole Miss Lucille’s youngest. The law runs lawless around these parts.”

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS “Pa, do you hear Abe? Tell him that’s nonsense.

The Sheriff ain’t got no use for a 12-year-old girl like Ester.”

“Rumor has it, he savin’ her for his youngest, Jack.

Ain’t he about seventeen, eighteen now? They say the girls his age don’t like him none, because he so damn prideful and smart. Plus they say around town he can’t find no girl his own shade cause he fancy only colored gals,” Aaron leaned in close, “Jack’s been wanting you for some time now. Why you think we can’t let you go nowhere without one of us tagging along?”

“Ain’t it funny though, how the colored girls don’t fancy Jack none, but love the Sheriff. Just don’t make no sense.” Naomi added.

“Yes, it do. If you think about it. The Sheriff got money and means to help them and their family. If all he wants is a kiss here and a kiss there, a night here and a night there, why wouldn’t a girl without a damn bit of sense do whatever she could to make her life even the least bit better?”

Pa asked.

They stared at pa in utter disgust.

“Remember now, they don’t know him like we do.

They don’t know him like you do Naomi.” Jacob added. “He can be real fake when he wants something bad.”

Naomi sat back against the wall. She saw Ester as a baby, how warm her skin was when she picked her up for the first time. Her Mama’s tiny two-room shack bustled with children, four girls and two boys. Until Ester was big enough to read to and play with, Naomi complained and asked why Ester’s sisters could not care for her.

“But Ester is simple and harmless, she’ll never recover from such a violation.” Naomi watched her brothers, their mouths moved but she heard none of it. She had traveled back to the day she started caring for Ester.

The next youngest girl was Millie Jean, all of eightyear old. “They gots to work,” their Mama said. What kind of work she got to do? Naomi soon found out as she watched the little child pander for money and food in town. At home Millie Jean was the water girl and the sheets cleaner. The other two girls, both older than Ester, had boys already coming to the house, buying them things, finding them jobs.

At thirteen and fifteen, Naomi thought they were too grown for their own good.

“It’s they Mama’s fault,” Naomi uttered to Ma

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NINA LOUISE every time she returned from a full day of babysitting. They were too pretty to be working as somebody’s maid. But Ester’s Pa was not like the rest of them, so she came out dark as chocolate just like Naomi.

“What you thinkin’ bout, Naomi?” Jacob asked.

But he already knew.

“Nothing,” Naomi said. She leaned over to put her finger on the map, “Why we trying to run now? Pa will never survive the trip and you can’t stay here or he’ll hang you.”

She removed her finger and aimed it at Abe and then Aaron.

“And you two haven’t got the call for the Army yet. So why we doing all this mess if we can’t go yet?”

“Because as soon as they get word. As soon as they leave. You two leavin.” Pa pointed his cane at them. Naomi fell back into the wall, defeated. The brothers slumped into their chairs. The taste of freedom dripped from their tongues like the crusted ole cherry pie from weeks back–the remains burnt to a crisp.

“Where we going to go Pa?” “You two bound for the promised land and I got two tickets with your names on it for proof.” He lifted the map with his cane, then removed a piece of floorboard partially sticking up. Jacob grabbed the two tickets before Naomi’s back left the wall. Jacob showed her the ticket with her name on it.

“By way of Lafayette. Pa, we will never make it that far south without getting caught. The Sheriff knows too many folks up in those parts.”

“No ma’am, his folks hail from Texas, most of them in Dallas,” Pa said. “He’ll head there first to scout you two out, it won’t even occur to him to search south until it’s too late.”

“You got it all worked out, don’t you Pa?” Naomi asked.

“I may not ever get there, but damn it, my babies gonna be free from this retched slave cropping lynching town.” Pa stood. He motioned for Jacob to put the tickets back, Jacob sealed the hole with the floorboard jimmied out of place securing the map and their path to freedom.

“My baby girl ain’t gonna be no Sheriff’s wench,” he wobbled to the stove, “it’s the last promise I owe your Ma,” Pa glared into the cherry pie bustling with filling as if he had seen his wish come to pass. To Naomi’s surprise Pa

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS pulled out the last cherry pie Ma had made months back, meant to be their celebration pie, we leavin pie. The pie that was not to be touched until well after the new year. Naomi smiled as she watched Pa. He had always been a stubborn, determined old fool. But Naomi also knew something Pa did not. The Sheriff was always two steps ahead of them. It would only be by the grace of God, if there was one, by Pa’s calculations or the hand of Oshun that could save them now. ⇷⇷ Pa slept, his breath deep and long, then hitched angling for air, this rotation continued at eight second intervals. Naomi heard the brothers in the front room snoring the roof off its foundation. Going over the families names, addresses, work locations, every detail of those willing to hide them by way of horseback or foot until they could make way for the train departing out of the Lafayette station for the West.

She held her blankets tightly to her chest and wondered why on this night she did not see Grandpoppa, his wife, or Ma surrounding Pa as they had done in her dreams long before Ma passed on.

“Miss Naomi,” Jacob said. She glared at him with one eye. He picked her up and carried her to the room they have shared since Abe and Aaron threw Jacob out for talking in his sleep.

“I’m tired Jacob.”

“Promise me you ain’t goin to fetch that gal.”

“I will do no such thing. I can’t let the Sheriff and his boys have their way with her, she’s just a child.”

“If I tell you Jack fancy her the way he used to fancy you, will you leave it be,” he placed her on her cot.

“No sir. Least you forget, I know that boy Jack rather well.”

Jacob backed away from Naomi, pacing the room.

“Pa gonna to kill us if we get caught.”

“We ain’t getting caught, cause we ain’t doing nothing.”

“You know where he hiding her, don’t you? He done tried to take you there too, right? I think I know the place too, but, just hear me out. I think we can get help and even better a place for Ester to hide once we free her.”

“I’m listening.”

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NINA LOUISE “Miss Carlotta, they maid. She been taking the girl food, letting her piss and stuff, but I think she planning something on her own. I think she done involved that rich lady from New Orleans, you know the one they call the Heiress cause she come up here to spend until her pockets empty. She visits with the Sheriff’s wife every Sunday before she leave.”

Naomi said nothing. She stared at Jacob for a long time until he realized he had done said something wrong.

From her glare, he stepped back until he met the wall. In frustration, Naomi tossed her head up to the ceiling. She had a mountain of questions for Jacob.

“You’ve known this all along? Where she been?

How long she been missing? And ain’t said nothing?”

“I told all of them. The brothers, Ester’s sisters— even they Mama, but she say the Sheriff told her she would be well taken care of if she would let him have Ester.”

“What has gotten into this god-awful world?”

“That’s why I started watching all of them and honestly Miss Naomi, I think Jack behind it too along with his Mama. I think they tryin to set Ester free.”

“I can’t bet on that and neither can you. I am going to do what I need to do to keep my soul at ease. Where is Jack now?”

“He at a tournament in New Orleans, they be back in a day or two.”

“A day or two? Then that is all the time we need to free Miss Ester.”

“If the Sheriff finds out it was you, he’ll take you for sure and we ain’t never gonna see you again.”

Naomi drifted from their room to where Abe and Aaron rested on two mattresses side by side, brothers even a war could not separate. Naomi laid on the cot by the wall across from the window. She watched the chest of her brothers rise and fall. She knew she had one chance to save Ester, she had to make a clean escape because if she got caught by the Sheriff, she was doomed to pay a price her Pa and the brothers could not afford.

Naomi called out to Ester. She smiled when nothing came back, no wind whipping leaves against the house, shaking photos or rearrangement of furniture. Naomi wanted to call out to Oshun for help, but there was something about Oshun and her tales that caused a stir in the pit of her

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS stomach. She would never tell another soul this but thoughts of Oshun and her powers scared her a little. So she called out to Mujaji, the rain goddess, the queen ruler of Lovedu who used her powers to form rain as a medicine for the earth. At first Naomi heard nothing; when she woke near dawn, light droplets flooded her window pane.

19

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NINA LOUISE

II

Naomi could scarcely sleep without thoughts of Ester in the old abandoned Miller’s shack, not even a mile down the road. The farmhouse had been off limits for years since the Miller’s made headway out West. The house had become a haven for drifters, a slaughterhouse, a whorehouse.

Word got out the Sheriff was going to put the property up for auction. He would give the Millers a full year to claim ownership of their land but in the meantime, it belonged to him as far as he was concerned. The Sheriff put up ‘No Trespassing’ and ‘Danger - Stay Out,’ signs to ward off the unruly types.

It worked. Naomi knew the Sheriff could get away with his crimes and no one would be the wiser. But Jack, if he intended to double-cross the Sheriff— his own daddy— there was no telling what the Sheriff would do.

She got up early, did her due announcing to the family she would be heading into town and before anyone offered to accompany her, she flat out said, “Jacob will be my escort this afternoon so don’t you worry none.” Though the brothers had not a clue what Naomi was up to, Pa knew otherwise.

They left just before the sun broke free. This allowed for an abundance of time to comb the main street and the Sheriff’s residence, and to locate the New Orleans

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS Heiress who had come all this way to rescue a Black child from the clenches of evilness.

As luck would have it, the residence in question was not downtown but within eyeshot of Jack’s mother’s pride and joy, her “All Things Baby” shop which had been in her family for years now. They sold everything from clothes to diapers, bottles, bibs, ceramic crafts such as foot and hand prints. You name it, they had it for sale. And though she had plenty of workers, none were Negro and they rarely if ever frequented the shop.

It is no wonder then, Naomi’s lurking around had caused a stir. She stood near the shop window and peered in.

She could see Jack’s home down the street as the businesses ended and homes began. When she looked into the window a third time, she stared right into the face of the Heiress, Ester’s Savior. Naomi was not entirely sure how she knew her but she did; she smacked a smile on her face so wide her hair stood up highlighting every wrinkle the old woman earned.

She waved Naomi in the shop, they both glanced over to the Misses behind the counter as she nodded assisting a customer and walked her out as Naomi walked in. The Misses, the Sheriff’s wife known to Naomi as Jack’s mother, closed the door behind the astonished customer. She flipped the sign ‘closed - out to lunch’ for all the world to see.

“You know about Ester?” The Misses asked.

“I do.”

“And you come to save her?”

“I have.”

“Well you can’t. You just can’t.”

The Misses pressed against Naomi and forced her backwards until Naomi backed into the exit door which led to the alley. She stared at the Heiress in an attempt to gather assistance. The woman simply smiled, patted her silky white gloves, then eyed Naomi, and motioned her to leave.

Naomi studied the Heiress. She worked hard trying to appear more like a young Greta Garbo than an aged Katherine Hepburn. Her glamor overdone for the town of Shreveport and the high class society who garnered her favor, like the Misses who had never cared much for Naomi since Jack took a liking to her, her books, and her non-stop goddess stories. Naomi could tell Jack was not the only reason his mother disliked her.

“Leave Ester to us. We are going to take care of

21

22

NINA LOUISE that brilliant child, believe me,” she motioned again with her gloves, “that girl is not meant for sharecropping.” Naomi wanted them to know: everything Ester knew, she learned from her. But instead she grabbed the doorknob, twisted it using her body to crack the door open. The alley filled the air with dumpster dust and mixed aromas of grease, rotten food, and urine.

Great.

She knew she could escape these crazy ladies, but now where will she send Ester once she freed her. We could buy another ticket for the West, she could join us. She considered her options. Now she wished she had not told the ladies her intentions. Naomi wished she had somehow gained them as allies. Not another second goes by before she bumped into another body. It must be Jacob with a clear getaway plan until she hears his voice.

“Miss Naomi, what are you doing here?”

She wobbled on her thick two-inch heels, as an arm grabbed her and spun her around. Naomi fell into the arms of a man hovering above her with dusty blonde hair, ocean eyes, and a firm-body layered for battle in Louisiana’s ill-tempered Spring weather.

“Jack! What are you doing here?”

“This is my mother’s shop, “What are you doing here? You know my father will tether you for coming here.”

He moved her into a shaded spot in the corner of the alley where they stood between two dumpsters in the doorway of an adjoining shop.

“I know about Ester.”

“Of course you do. Is there any cruel deed my father does that actually slips past you?” He peered above the dumpsters, keeping a lookout. “Don’t even say it Naomi, just don’t.

“You can’t steal a child, it’s not right. She is too young and there are plenty of colored girls skipping after you if that’s all you want. She’s just a baby, she is not even thirteen.”

“She’ll be thirteen in a few days,” Jack said. He looked away from the street and focused his gaze back on Naomi. “Besides, it ain’t what you think. I mean it is sorta but…” He peered over again. “But we aim to free Miss Ester and send her off to New Orleans.”

“With the Heiress? What makes you think the

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS Sheriff doesn’t know your plan?”

Jack surveyed the area and looked from the street to Naomi and back. “He don’t suspect a thing. You got to go before anyone sees you here. If they get word to him, if one of his deputies sees you, he’s going to know.”

“You expecting someone?”

“He could show up any minute, Naomi, trust me.

We have it under control.”

“I am going to get Ester.” She whirled around him and shifted toward the street when Jack reached for her arm, pulling her back to him. They are close enough to feel each other’s chests heave. Naomi stepped back, but Jack pulled her into his chest tighter.

She sighed, “Jack?”

For a moment, Jack holds her close. He can feel the rapid steady thump, pounding from her chest to his. He sniffs her hairline; her scent gets him every time. His lips skirt across her forehead. He closed his eyes, running his lips down her cheek.

Naomi shoved Jack away. Their eyes connected, then she looked to the street. No one. She eyed the shop’s back exit door. Still, nothing. She could not meet his gaze.

When her eyes met his, he would not turn from her.

“I want to save her too, Naomi. I never wanted my father to buy her for me, I never told him I liked her. He did this all on his own.” His face flushed red and his hand shook.

He ran his hand through his hair. “If it weren’t for those damn library sessions the Sheriff would not have ever known about her.”

“Jack, you don’t really think you can have a life with Ester, do you?”

“Not now,” he leered at Naomi from her head to her box-toed shoes, “this is why we are sending her to New Orleans to Miss Margaret’s house. She is planning on opening her home for Negro girls who want an education. Don’t ruin this for her, Naomi. Don’t ruin this for us.”

Naomi glided deeper into the alley, “It is against the law. You two can never be.” She spun back towards him, “Are you planning on keeping her as your wench until the laws change?”

“Naomi, don’t say such horrible things. We plan on waiting till her mind is mature and then we’ll see... Maybe the world will start changing for the better.”

23

24

NINA LOUISE “What a dreamer you have become. Who had the gall to make you such a hopeful man?”

Jack took Naomi’s hand in his, “You did, remember?” He bent down bringing her gloved hands to his lips.

“So, like your father, always breaking the rules, seeking what they say you can’t have.” Naomi looked Jack up and down, then stared up at the sky. “Then again, maybe you are your father’s son.”

Jack headed back to his mother’s shop door, “I have to solidify the arrangements. Will you trust me?”

As he stepped back into the sunlight, Naomi watched him open the door, before it closed, she said, “I do, but I must see for myself that she’s in agreement.” Naomi hurried down the alley. Jack hurried after her, but when he got to the street, she had vanished, not even the scent of her vanilla strawberry potion remained. ⇸⇸ Jacob pulled Naomi close to him as they turned the corner. He pressed her body against his; people around them on the crowded streets whispered irate disapprovals under their breath. “What were you thinking?” Jacob asked.

“You said he was gone for another day, if not two.

Your sources have been deceitful.”

T hey ducked down another alley. “Listen, I trust my snitches,” he held Naomi by the arm. “They say, the Sheriff may be on his way back too.”

“What? Now? I got to go warn Jack.” She squirmed from his grasp.

“We ain’t got time for that. We gots to go get her now.”

They stared at one another for a long time using a silent language only they knew. Pa had always said, despite the nine years between them Naomi and Jacob were like his second set of twins: they ate the same, slept the same, held the same thoughts, only Naomi was the rebel of the two, always running toward danger while Jacob ran the other way.

“Okay,” Naomi agreed.

“Okay. Let’s go free Ester.” He took Naomi’s hand, “looks like the underground railroad is back in business after all in good ole Louisiana.”

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS “Jacob Gatson, are you actually paying attention to the readings I assign you?”

“Of course, I do. I ain’t about to be the only dumb Gatson in the family.”

They merged into human traffic; time was not on their side. They would have to take the bus to their old school where the farms of Shreveport began. The trek to the Miller’s ole rusted-down farmhouse was four miles. Naomi guessed they had her gathered in the shed, or if the Sheriff was hateful enough, in the outhouse. The main house had always been off-limits. He knew the place had once been overrun by homeless stragglers, runaways from town, druggies and whores looking to house a business. The Sheriff would have none of it, now that he intended to own the land. His town was on the road to ruin but not if he could stop it.

They decided Jacob would run the last mile home.

He would warn the brothers and insist they bring the battered truck Pa bought off the Miller’s before they fled to carry Ester to freedom. Abe or Aaron could help get Ester to the Heiress and be back long before the sun set. Jacob and Naomi knew their plan would work. They would have thought differently had they seen the eyes fixed on them from the front seat of a 1938 Chevrolet Pickup. Jack, his mother, and the Heiress watched the rescuers board the city bus headed northeast where nothing thrives and everything except cotton or corn dies.

25

26

NINA LOUISE

III

The black, gray, and white clouds formed a shape Naomi could not make out, circling each other in the sky, the black billows swallowing the pristine whiteness whole.

Naomi wondered how much time they had, Jacob carried off with her handbag and winter coat which allowed her to run fast like she did when she was young. Now, with the sky shifting, she regretted giving him her coat.

The Millers’ property line was outlined to perfection. The manicured property next to the Millers housed a new tractor, and a fresh coat of white paint draped their two-story, five bedroom house. The Gatsons never associated with their non-negro neighbors; they had learned from past tortures of young men and missing girls to mind their own business.

“Ester is my business!” Naomi cried.

She battled the tall grass attacking her body from every angle. She sensed the petrichor in the air and knew the flow of fluids from the goddess of rain, Mujaji, would approach soon. To keep her mother’s tales alive, she passed the stories of the goddesses on to Ester and Jack. Naomi favored Oshun and realized she might have encouraged them both with too much talk of the goddess of love, who flowed her strength and powers through the river. Jack and Ester

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS enjoyed exploring the river as much as Naomi did.

When Naomi approached the big house, she remained cautious as she crept to every window for evidence of Ester’s captivity. There was nothing out of the ordinary. The mattress once there when she was younger was now gone.

The sofa, too. The house lay empty apart from the palmsized roaches, and rats the size of a foot while ants roamed through the walls.

Naomi knelt at the edge of the back house; startled, a sudden snap, sprung her to her feet. She had a clear view of the outhouse and the farmer’s shed. The Miller’s had extended additional living quarters when their eldest son took a wife. From what Naomi had been told, someone could live in that shed for days if not weeks without want or a need for anything.

She sprinted to the outhouse first. It was a windowless square wooden box with no ventilation, and a simple man-made toilet resembled a large round bowl with a pipe secured to its middle. Naomi knew this from Abe, who used it often until the whiff of feces became too much to bear.

Naomi cracked the door, the stench drew her mangled face back, “Ester? Ester?” No response. She rounded the outhouse for signs of life. A loud clatter came from the shed.

She saw light, then two candles. Naomi took a deep breath, dropped low to the ground as she squirmed her way toward the shed. There were two windows on each side, Naomi planted herself in the middle against the wall to view both windows. She crept up from the corner window on the right, the clattering had been replaced by the sound of sizzling bacon.

And then—there she was. Naomi spied Ester leaning on the counter; toast popped up. Naomi jumped. A thump landed against the shed. She crouched until her butt hit the moist muddy ground.

Eyes above looked out into the boundless, near-dark farm with only the illumination of overcast skies smiling down.

Naomi crawled to the door. Before she could open it, the door swung wide open with Ester standing front and center.

“Dear Lord, Miss Naomi, you scared the Jesus right out of me. What are you doing here?”

Naomi flew off the steps, landing on the muddy ground again. She stared at Ester, soaked in her own sweat, hair disheveled, fingers caked in mud, she brought them to her face. “I’ve come to rescue you.”

27

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NINA LOUISE “Rescue me? From what?”

A flash of light glowed across the shed and spread onto the tall green grass until it disappeared along the gravel dirt road. Naomi hopped up, jumped through the shed’s side door nearly knocking Ester down. Ester shut the door searching the grounds for movement. Nothing. Ester latched the door with a resounding click.

“I don’t need no saving, Jack ain’t gonna hurt me.”

“Jack isn’t going to hurt you, not ain’t gonna, and it’s not Jack I am worried about.” Naomi said. She glanced around the shed equipped with a cot, small nightstand, two seater table and chairs and a mini-stove and fridge. A spacious one-room unit fit for a person, two at best, filled with accommodations one would find unnecessary for a kidnapped victim.

“Here, put those hands over this sink,” Ester said.

Naomi stepped forward then back again. The sink was merely a bowl with a hose coming out of the side of the wall with no obvious place for drainage. Ester pulled Naomi close by her wrists and let the warm water run against the mud until it began to dissolve. They both sighed. They smiled at each other, then started to laugh.

“So, I can’t run you out of here? Get you off to the Heiress before she changes her mind?”

“That woman is not going to change her mind about me, she likes me too much. Plus, Jack paid her plenty to have me as her first private student,” Ester said. She grabbed a towel, turned the hose off while patting Naomi’s fingers dry.

“The Sheriff doesn’t come around? He leave you be?”

“Yes and no.” Ester avoided Naomi’s piercing glare, “I think he waiting on that time of the month to finish so he can have at me first. He thinks then, Jack won’t want me no more.”

“Dear Lord, Ester, you are only twelve.”

“I be thirteen in another week. But that’s why he been coming around lately when Jack not here.” Ester finished wiping her hands dry when the front door of the shed flew open. Jack slammed the door behind him, “The Sheriff’s coming, we need to hide.” He pointed to Naomi.

A truck screeched to the front. Without a second thought, Jack grabbed Naomi’s hand and led her out the

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS back door. “Act normal, we’ll wait until he’s gone,” Jack said.

He grinned at Ester as the door closed.

They heard the truck door slam shut and almost immediately the front door opened. They slid to the spot between the two windows and crouched down. Listening carefully, they heard only the sounds of shoes scraping across the floor, a hollow menacing laugh bounced off the tin walls, and floated into the mist above. ⇷⇷ As they hunched below the windowsill, out of sight, they cradled one another. They heard what sounded like a bottle shattered against the wall, the Sheriff’s attempt to make the trash bin next to the back door through which they had fled. Jack had pulled on the door too hard and it bounced back open; a sliver of a crack but should the Sheriff peek out, they would be discovered.

Three against one, Naomi liked those odds. Yet she knew Jack would never fight his father and she would be the one who would have to end him. She would be on the run for the rest of her life with Ester. She would never see Pa again, nor the brothers, or Jacob. Naomi would be a wanted fugitive, a criminal, a murderer.

Jack whispered, “Just be patient, he’ll pass out soon and we will have more than enough time to get Ester back to town.”

She nodded. Naomi would not let her fear for Ester overtake reason. She could not make out what the Sheriff ranted about, he seemed to be telling Ester she would not have to be a house prisoner for long. He demanded food and asked her rather politely if she had seen Jack. When she said, “No.” They heard a hard smack land on her flesh. Naomi jumped. Jack cringed.

“You are turning into one nice little rose bud, just like your nasty sisters.” The Sheriff said.

“Stop, you’re hurting me,” Ester said.

Jack motioned to get up, Naomi held him down.

“Wait,” she said. She tugged on him harder, bringing him back down into her fold. “He’ll leave her be.”

Jack considered his options, as he put his arm around Naomi’s shoulder holding her close. The door slammed shut, then the Sheriff said, “Jack may want you

29

30

NINA LOUISE bad now, but it ain’t for nothing but training. I break you in, that’s for sure.” They heard what sounded like Ester’s body hit the wall. They looked above their heads, waiting.

The sign they were looking for came when Ester said, “I’m ok, don’t you worry none.” Naomi and Jack let out a huge sigh, their bodies fell back into their huddle.

“I don’t care how you feelin girl, just give me something to eat,” the Sheriff said. They could hear Ester shuffling around, making him a plate with dishes clattering, pots and pans moving about and more toast rising from its heater box.

The mist turned to rain, the slurping of food and drink faded, the melody of the torrent against the window drew Naomi’s remaining energy out through her pores. Her mind wandered. Though she believed the goddesses guided her life by way of her ancestors from the sea, she knew God held the finished plans. She knew God was the only reason Jack, who Naomi cared for in his youth, now returned the favor. Naomi was no fool. She knew he had gone out of his way even in his younger years to protect her. She blamed Pa for Jack. She knew if Pa and the Sheriff had not had a long history crawling back to their youth, they would have never sought out Naomi as his caretaker.

She refused the job offer, not only because the Sheriff rarely if ever paid negroes who worked for him, he made them work from sun up until sun down and most of them stayed on with him until they died. Naomi would have none of it, she refused to live by the Black codes the southern states adopted after the civil war and the abolition of slavery.

The desires of white men to keep the negro uneducated, shackled by labor in the fields of servitude lingered in her mouth like soured grapes.

All through his toddler years, Naomi would see Jack running around throughout town, she marveled at the fact that his older siblings could not seem to keep him in line. They first met face-to-face when he had just turned five.

Their home had been decorated top-to-bottom with balloons, flowers and streamers which draped their front yard trees.

When Naomi and her Ma got off the bus, they could see how they spoiled young Jack.

They could also hear half the neighborhood calling for Jack. They thought nothing of it and carried out their plan to pick up some yarn so Ma could teach Naomi how to

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS make a sweater. Jack’s mother was in a frantic state when she called out to Naomi’s Ma asking for her help to search for Jack. As if they could say no. Ma told Naomi to go one way while she went the other. Naomi did not need to go far, she came across the alley of Jack’s mother’s store and saw a group of kids, a bit older, circling another child. When Naomi drifted closer to them, she recognized the child as Jack.

Naomi’s thirteen-year-old body was still boyish, but she was taller than most girls her age. One of the big kids, maybe seven, drew his hand back as if he intended to punch Jack square in the face.

“Excuse me, I know you have no intention of actually striking that child, do you?” Naomi asked.

The group of four turned to Naomi. She continued to approach them. “Aren’t you young men a bit too old to be messing around with a boy such as this. The Sheriff’s son, no less?”

“What’s it to you, nigger girl,” the tallest boy said.

“Yeah, what’s it to you,” They chimed in.

To Naomi’s surprise little Jack stood up, eyes red and cheeks covered in his tears, pushed the older boy so hard he fell to his knees, “Don’t you call her no bad words,” he said. Jack ran to Naomi embracing her fully as he wrapped his little arms around her knees.

“Mr. Jack,” she said, “I am surprised you know me. How is that possible?” He wiped his face across her skirt, stood back smiling wide at her, “I go to your church library on Saturdays. Even though your books are old and dirty, My momma say it’s free childcare.”

“Does she, now?” Naomi chuckled. She pulled out a handkerchief from her old secondhand clutch and proceeded to wipe the snot off Jack’s nose and her skirt. She refolds it nicely, noticing the boys had not moved. “Come on now Mr. Jack, let’s get you back to your birthday party.” She held her hand out to him. Jack took her hand in his and flashed a smile to the boys before he stuck his tongue out.

They were out of the alley when one of the other boys moved away from the troubled circle and said, “Excuse me Miss, you ain’t gonna tell on us are ya? We can still come to his party, right?”

Naomi looked at the quivering child, “That will be up to Jack here. I won’t say nothing if he won’t.” But Jack did not say a word. He stuck out his tongue again and turned to

31

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NINA LOUISE Naomi as she led him home.

During the four-block walk to Jack’s house, Jack told Naomi his favorite thing about going to her church library on Saturdays. Reading time, he had told her. The church library posted signs throughout the weekend encouraging children to read out loud and if there was a need for an argument or a fight, they could not use negative or bad words while in the house of the Lord. Naomi knew the Sheriff used every bad word in the book. She had also heard the Sheriff use that bad word on more than one occasion. She was not surprised the child from his party had used it to attack her, her surprise was that Jack considered it a bad word. Jack was a special child; he had enough sense to side with his Saturday church rules than those in his own home. His kind-hearted behavior would get him into trouble as he aged in this worldtoo -cruel for him.

After the incident that bonded them, she met with Jack every Saturday at the church library to show him they indeed had good books for him to read and they were not all dirty and old. When she missed a Saturday, he came looking for her. On his tenth birthday, Naomi figured he was having another party and took a pass on the library in light of the early morning heatwave, fancying herself fit for a swim.

Jack caught up with her at her favorite hideaway spot near the Red River shoreline. To those on the other side, she could not be seen, for the trees shaded her as did the pile of rocks created by someone else in need of hiding. Naomi concluded the river was miles long, some told her it traveled all the way south to Lafayette and as far north as Dallas. She could see clear over to the other side, but if anyone were to see her, she would be long gone before they crossed over. She made the mistake of telling Jack where she could be found if and when he needed her. She lay out of view from the road and river sun-bathers, with a perfect view of the bright sky boiling down on her, drying her insides as well as the cream-colored slip and matching undergarments she wore.

She rested her head on her hands, inhaled the soiled dirt, saltwater river, and the Cherry bark Oak trees surrounding her. Naomi laid under the tree with its long rich green leaves piled beneath as her bristly bed.

“I knew I would find you here.”

Naomi’s eyes shot open, “Jack, what on earth are you doing here?” Naomi jumped to her feet. She searched

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS for her summer dress and used it as a shield to hide her bareness. “Don’t worry Miss Naomi, I can’t see nothing.” He turned around, “I come to ask you to my party.”

Naomi wiggled through her dress, “Jack, stop messing, you know the Sheriff would see us dead before he would see me in his house.” She retied her hair in a bun, patted herself down and wiped the ashes from the sun off her face. “You may turn around now.”

“I know. I was just kidding. I wanted to return your book to you.”

“The Weary Blues? Langston Hughes? You took this home with you?” Naomi took the book from his outreached hand, “Are you trying to have me hanged?”

“No ma’am. You know I would never let them do that to you, Miss Naomi. I would rather die than see you hanged.”

“You must not say such things.”

“Why? It’s the truth. And besides, you have saved my life many times over, it’s about time I return the favor.”

Jack watched her search through the leaves, over the rocks and around the trees. “Who are you expecting?”

“No one.” She gathered her knapsack and threw it across her shoulders with her worn through shoes. “We must part ways Jack. This is Negroland, the Sheriff will tan your hide if you are caught this far from home.”

“Let’s go for a swim first.”

“Jack, no.”

It was too late. Jack threw off his shirt, kicked off his shoes and tossed them on the rocks as he waddled into the water. She watched him float further out, paddling his feet and arms like children do. She glanced everywhere and found no one glaring back. She moved closer to the water, within full view of other river water thrill-seekers. Ma was right. Negroes stayed away from the water, not only because they are forbidden to be on park grounds, but her Ma told her, they harbored a fear that the ancestors’ spirits lived in all bodies of water.

“Our people stayed away because they feared the spirits would come and seek their souls for retribution,” Ma had said.

Naomi lacked belief in this ghostly fairytale and whenever she had the chance, she dipped her toes in any body of water she could find. After she walked the water, she

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NINA LOUISE floated in it until she learned to swim. She would not fear any water spirits since she knew the goddess of rain and the goddess of the sea were on her side. And if by chance they came for her, she would be ready. Naomi also felt covered in the shadowing watchful eye of her guardian goddess, Oshun.

She never questioned Oshun’s loyalty to her or their family.

But every time Oshun showed her face, Naomi feared the worst. The goddess of love, prosperity, and fertility casted a dark cloud over the Gatsons. The sight of Oshun struck a fear in Naomi she could not name. Rather than feeling the development of love, Naomi woke to nightmares of dread, death, and despair. Naomi was sure Oshun’s presence would bring her to her death covered in the bones of her ancestors at the bottom of the sea.

“Naomi! Naomi!”

Naomi witnessed a frantic Jack waving his arms around, gasping for air, taking in water with each struggle.

She dropped her shoes and bag, ran to the shoreline, and dove in. When she came up, she was an arm’s length away from him.

“I got you, hold still, just hold still,” she said.

Naomi tried to grab his arm, but he continued thrashing. She reached around his neck, but fear overtook Jack and he spun on her pulling her down with him. When she resurfaced, Jack was nowhere to be seen. She could not call for help, not a single person was within earshot. She dove under searching the water with her eyes closed, swimming left, then right, unable to hold her breath any longer, she came up empty handed. Naomi peered around frantically, caught her breath then dove under again, and this time her foot caught hold of his descending arm. She pulled him up and above the surface. His body jerked, his mouth spouted gulps of water. She held him, both arms around his chest; the waters, normally rough, had grown calm. Naomi’s body had tired out, her arms weak, her legs trembled, she could barely paddle them back to shore. She knew it was the hands of the spirits guiding them, floating them back to shore. Oshun had shown up and saved them both. Oshun had finally arrived amidst blue skies without a rain cloud in sight. Once Naomi hit sand, she carried Jack around the rocks, where they both fell onto the warm, wet ground in search of air.

They laid there for a prolonged time. Far off voices sprung them to their feet. She pulled Jack behind the tree

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS with her. They spied through the trees to find the sources, two old Negro men came into view walking away from them and down towards the river.

“Now is the time,” Naomi said. “You must run as far and as fast as you can. Can you do it?”

“Yes. Yes, I can.”

“And you will tell no one of this, my secret hideaway?”

He nodded. “And you will tell no one I almost drowned?”

“Of course not, I swear,” Naomi said. Putting her hand over her heart.

“Your secrets are safe with me, Miss Naomi Gatson.”

She eyed him, still uncertain. He took two fingers, squeezing them together, then ran them across his lips. He backed up, turned, and began running, but came to a halt and turned back.

“Can we read All Quiet on the Western Front, again?”

“I was hoping we could read, Age of Innocence or Mrs. Dalloway.”

“You can’t be serious.”

She put her hand on his head, airing out his matted hair, “No, I am certainly not serious.”

“Thank God.” “Hurry.”

She watched him run through the fields, past the Millers’ property, and to the road where he picked up his bike and pedaled for home. ⇸⇸ A flash of lightning crossed the sky, then cracked down on the earth with a resounding boom. Both Jack and Naomi perked up as if neither had dozed off. The sky performed a dance of light setting their bodies a glow.

“We better go now, or we’ll never get out of here.”

Naomi said.

Jack nodded, put his finger to his mouth as he slowly stood up and angled for a view at the corner of the window. He signaled for Naomi to wait. Jack inched closer, he flew backwards when Ester’s eyes stared back at him.

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NINA LOUISE “Ester, is he out?” Jack said. Barely audible, but she understood. She pointed to the door. Jack nodded, softly climbing the three steps to meet her. Naomi stood, looked over her shoulders, out into the tall green field, then between the shed and the outhouse towards the Red River. They had no choice; it would be the only way to go to avoid capture.

Ester inched out the door. The Sheriff must have passed out after his last drink sitting at the table. He had fallen over in his chair, sprawled out, blocking the door. Ester stepped carefully over his head. Jack lifted her off her feet, bringing her into his chest, holding her close. He closed the door as softly as he had opened it. They embraced for a moment too long for Naomi’s comfort.

She cleared her throat, “We gots to go.”

Jack should have released her down onto the bottom step, but he held onto her tight. As he stepped down, the last step broke in two; the soggy wood made a hollow pop.

They froze. Naomi grabbed Ester’s hand and started running for the river. Jack heard his father mumble and move about before he started running to catch up with the girls. He never looked back.

Once behind the trees, they made their way to the river.

Oshun, an angel one moment, a demon the next, summoned a downpour, assuring a difficult journey ahead.

Naomi looked upstream, then down: “There is no other way but up stream.”

“Downstream is faster. I can swim now if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I can too,” Ester said.

“Listen, swimming won’t beat his truck, but ours might. I am not sure where the brothers are, but I know Jacob made it to them and they’re waiting on us. It’s the only way we’ll make it.”

Jack stared across the river, then downstream.

The storm shifted a notch, leaves blew everywhere, the river waves pounded against the shore, the trees, the sand. Jack nodded. In the distance they could hear the Sheriff calling for Ester. They moved swiftly through the trees, panting, and struggling to grasp the crisp air hovering in the night. Jack stopped, through the trees a light shone off in the distance. It was not a house; it was a truck’s headlights.

“Naomi, Ester!” Jack called.

The girls had been at least ten paces ahead of him.

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS When they looked back, Jack hunched over on a tree pointed inland, away from the river. Naomi dropped to her knees, she saw a body like that of one of the brothers get out on the driver’s side.

“It’s them. Come on, let’s go.”

“Are you sure?” Jack asked.

“The Sheriff won’t be that fast. He’s drunk. He’ll search the property for her first, sit back in his pickup and try to figure out if she left on her own or had help. He’ll assume she had help. He’ll try our farm first, and when he finds nothing. He’ll head to town and look for you.”

Naomi stopped at the tree by Jack, “We have only minutes to remain ahead of him. Only minutes Jack.”

“Ok. Ok.” Naomi took Ester’s hand and led her out through the trees towards the truck, Abe and Aaron appeared in full view within moments. Jack followed behind them, his eyes searching for the Sheriff’s truck or a gang of trucks they might run into on a night like this. Abe handed her the keys, “Now remember what I told you?”

Naomi nodded. She ushered Ester to the truck.

Jack was dumbfounded, halted by the sight of Abe and Aaron. He realized he had actually never met or seen the brothers first hand. They were never at church, never seen around town. He was certain the brothers were a figment of Naomi’s imagination, yet here they stood. Jack could hardly believe they had come to help him. The brothers got out of the car and Naomi took the driver’s seat.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked.

“We are getting Ester to the Heiress. Come on, Jack.”

Jack hurried, squeezed in the front, glaring at Naomi, “Since when did you learn how to drive a truck?”

Naomi turned the key and shifted the gear in reverse, she stopped, eyed her brothers, then shifted to first gear.

“We will stall him as long as we can. Hurry back safe.” Naomi said to the brothers, just before she sped off, riding the river trail down-stream passing several farms before catching the main road out to Shreveport. The rain continued to pour as they drifted onto Main Street like a cloud eased into the melancholy night sky: seamlessly. Jack directed Naomi through the town streets. As they inched

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NINA LOUISE closer, she noticed every light in Jack’s house was on, a signal for them or a warning to the Sheriff. Either way Ester would be safe once she left this truck and landed safely in the care of the Heiress.

Jack directed her around the block, they circled the opposite end of the alley of his mother’s store. Naomi stepped on the brakes hard when she saw the car.

“It’s okay, it’s the Heiress.” Jack opened the door, slid out taking young Ester with him.

“Wait.” Naomi jumped out of the truck. She left it running as she crossed the gleaming headlights. Naomi enveloped Ester in an embrace, “I am so very proud of you, Miss Ester. You did good.”

“I know you think this is all craziness Miss Naomi, but it really is going to work out. The goddesses showed up to guide us, didn’t they? And just like I prayed, God showed up to help us, too, didn’t he Miss Naomi?” Naomi watched Jack open the back door. “Well, I guess they did show up and do their jobs.”

“Now we got to just do ours.”

“And what is that?”

“Faith. We must remain faithful at all times, no matter what.” Ester hugged her tight. She let go and hopped in the back seat with the Heiress. Naomi could not release the smirk on her face. She taught Ester well. She watched as Ester and Jack held hands through the open window. It’s foolish isn’t it? Young love cannot last forever, not this kind of love anyway, right?

“I will be waiting for you,” Ester said. Naomi approached the window, she didn’t have to lean in to see the Heiress, eyes ahead, sitting like a queen. She smiled at Ester, putting her hand on Jack’s forearm.

“Be good, study hard, be strong,” he said. He leans in the window planting a kiss on her cheek. “I will be with you shortly.”

“Very well,” Ester said. The car pulled ahead; she stuck her head out the window. “I will be waiting.”

Foolishness.

“Jack, you have to go,” Naomi looked toward his house. “You can do it, right?”

He nodded, “I have to. It’s the only way to keep you both safe.” Jack stood there motionless, his chin to the ground. A tear, then another, drops into the pool of water in

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS which he stands, “You know it was always you, right Naomi?

I could never love anyone the way I love you,” He held his head up, squeezed his eyes shut, and held two fingers above his nasal bone where his eyes meet. “But I know it could never be, I know that now, Miss Naomi.” His eyes opened and hovered above her head. The black sky where the stars shone brighter than they ever had before. She nodded. Jack strode over to her, clutched her tight and rested his head into her neck, “Maybe in another lifetime then.”

“Maybe.”

He cupped her head between his hands, kissed her forehead, “Goodbye, Naomi.”

“Goodbye, Jack.”

When the warmth left her skin, she opened her eyes. Jack stood where the street met the alley, and then he was gone. She made her way to the truck, sat for a second before she shifted to first gear.

Stopped at a red light, Naomi peered up and into Jack’s house, the third house from the curb. She spotted his shadow upstairs. Jack moved fast. He threw off his clothes. A car honked. Naomi sailed through the light and pulled alongside the house before Jack’s. She hoped he had enough time. Jack disappeared from the window. Naomi should have left, but she could not force herself to pull into the street and head home. She sat back and closed her eyes.

“You can do this Jack; we are almost home free.”

She was about to merge with traffic when the Sheriff pulled up recklessly in front of his house. Naomi scanned Jack’s room. He emerged from another room draped in only a towel. She spied the Sheriff arguing with the misses.

She pulled on his sleeve before he shoved her away. The commotion warned Jack who jumped into his jeans before he grabbed his bag of muddied clothes. He released the bag out his window and when he turned around, he met with the fist of the Sheriff. The Sheriff tried to strike again, but Jack ducked, bounced back up and landed an uppercut on the Sheriff’s jaw. The Sheriff fell backwards.

It’s about time, Jack.

Naomi shook her head and pulled forward. She pressed the gas hard. She had to get home. The Sheriff would come gunning for her next.

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NINA LOUISE

IV Fall 1940

Naomi could hear the tree branches attack the side of the house, the books lining the wall swayed with the rhythm the wood made when they connected. The hollow noise swished like wind tunnels had formed at every angle of the house. It had rained often since they rescued Ester. Only of late had the ground begun to dry and freeze with bits of frost nipping at its core. Naomi looked out the window half expecting to find the Sheriff at her doorstep. The disappearance of Ester Jones happened months ago, and though the Sheriff made it known to the Gatsons that he was sure they had something to do with it, he never once approached them.

Naomi saw something, someone cross their front yard. It was not the Sheriff she found at her front steps. No, someone else waited for her. His lean athletic shape resembled Jacob from the back. When she opened the door, he did not turn to greet her; he paced around in circles avoiding Naomi’s gaze. The back of his head filled with tree bark and crumbled stems left an impression he had been tree climbing earlier, perhaps to escape one of the farm-owners’ dogs or to pluck figs or apples from its branches. She was still unsure who the visitor was. Naomi drifted across the porch, leaned on the banister, examining his worn, discolored clothes, darkened on his backside. He wore only one shoe and his

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS shirt was thin with stains caked around his chest and abdomen.

“Do I know you sir? Have you come to see the brothers or Jacob?”

“No ma’am, I come to see you,” he said. He turned slightly her way. Naomi glimpsed red markings, a rash maybe, partially around his neck. He sat on the top step, his back to her. “I wanted to thank you for saving my sister. For saving Ester.”

“Cesar, is that you? Let me get a good look at you.”

Naomi hopped down the steps and tried to place herself before him, but he was too quick, he jumped up immediately, dragging his feet to the Japanese Maple tree.

A gust of wind picked up, covering his dirty foot in mud and purple leaves. Naomi got within arm’s length of him, his back to her, when he turned his head back, he worked hard to form a smile. She saw tears in his eyes, although he never let those tears rise to greet her.

“I got my papers today. Going to basic training first thing in the morning.”

“Cesar, that is excellent news, your mama must be proud.”

“I thought she would be, but she done run out of the house hollering and screaming, I think she done run off and brought trouble back with her.”

“Well, don’t you worry none. I am sure she is just concerned about how she going to make ends meet with your older brothers married now and gone north, and your sisters too right? Now she has an empty house except for you and who’s left, little Casey and Marcus?”

“It don’t matter now, she’ll probably sell them off too, just to get by.” Cesar said.

Naomi had almost said the same thing. She had a knack for bad timing when it came to her sense of humor, she could tell Cesar was none the wiser.

Naomi reached for his shoulder as Cesar moved toward the tree, closer to her Ma’s grave. “You should be happy, you made it out of here and once you have enough money saved you can send for them or at the very least help your mama out.”

“It’s too late for all that daydreaming now, Miss Naomi. Where I’m going, they can’t follow…” “...they sending you off to war?”

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NINA LOUISE “I just come to thank you for Ester,” Cesar bent over her Ma’s grave and wiped the leaves from the engraved stone, revealing her Ma’s name and age. Loretta ‘Ella’ Gatson, 1888-1940. “I wanted to apologize for treating you so harshly all those years in school. I should have never teased you like that, I should have never left you standing outside that party when we was kids.”

“What’s done is done. I wish you no ill will.”

“I must be on my way now, but I wanted you to know I never regretted anything more than I regretted how I treated you,” Cesar said. He stood, but his eyes refused to meet hers.

“Naomi, why you got the door wide open in this cold? Come on now and git here in dis house,” Pa called.

Naomi turned back to the house, ran up the steps, peered through the doorway, “Be a minute Pa,” and closed the door. She spun back around toward Cesar, but he was gone. She ran down to the tree. Her eyes pierced through the branches. She searched the road, not even ten feet from the house, then circled to the back of the farmhouse—nothing.

Cesar had vanished.

Naomi ran up to the road following the trail in both directions. She did not find a single trace of Cesar’s presence. She plodded through the uneven grass and mounds of leaves back to the house. Naomi sat on the steps facing the road, thinking in time he would reappear. Her body began to feel the dipping temperature from her nose to her feet. She wore no coat over her burnt orange, thick winter dress with nylons, shoes so flat they were ruining her feet, and the light gray shawl Ma knitted for her last Christmas.

Naomi had resigned to head inside the house when the Sheriff pulled up and onto the road leading to their front door. She popped off the porch and headed to greet the truck with no clear sign the truck intended to stop. The Sheriff hit the brakes within an inch of Naomi. She never moved, never flinched. She glared at him and refused to take her eyes off him. His frown rose to a grin, eventually evolving into an explosion of laughter. He jumped from the truck and slammed the door shut.

“What you doin out here gal, tryin to catch yo death?” the Sheriff said. He flew by her. Naomi rolled her eyes as he popped his head inside their home, and searched for Pa, then closed it shut, hard. She walked toward the ma-

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS ple tree still searching for Cesar. She did not want to befriend the Sheriff now, but she had to make nice; there was no telling what he would do if he turned sour on her. It was her responsibility to keep Jack, Ester, and her family safe.

“I was having a conversation with Cesar when he just up and ran off, so dang fast, he left not a single trace.”

The Sheriff walked the length of the patio towards Naomi. When he put his hand on Ma’s rocking chair, Naomi glared at him. For a second, in the haze of the sunset she could see what all the fuss was about when it came to the Sheriff. He was easy on the eyes, some would dare say outright handsome: it was his football build, Blue eyes and blonde curly hair that left every woman he approached swooning. Naomi watched the Sheriff from time to time pick out a vulnerable Black girl and spoil her rotten till she could not think straight, just like he did Ma before she married Pa. Jacob was right. No one knew the Sheriff like they did. But the spell the Sheriff cast on others in town didn’t work on Naomi. Naomi could never see past the incident at the train station. Every time she saw him, she saw a cluster of dried loose bones buried at the bottom of the ocean.

“Ester’s brother, Cesar?”

“That be the one.”

“Well then, what they say about you really is true then ain’t it? That boy been dead since this afternoon. They cutting him down now,” the Sheriff returned to the door, but turned back around again, “damn gal, you crazier than your ma ever was. No wonder no one will have you.” He flew inside, “Ernest, where you at, boy? I got news.”

Jacob appeared from around the side of the house, he tiptoed over to Naomi as if the Sheriff could hear his presence. “Miss Naomi, can you get from the head of the Sheriff’s truck now? Come along with me to the back of the house till he gone.”

Naomi had not realized she had walked back over to the truck, she stared it down, begged it to turn on and run her down. Jacob tried to guide her with him, but she would not budge.

“Did you not just see Cesar here, just a bit ago.

Maybe he ran toward the river.

“No one has run past me all day. Not one person, now come on.”

“Stop bossing me around, I ain’t afraid of him. I

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NINA LOUISE don’t need your protection.”

Jacob scurried her along when the brothers ran up behind them like they had been running all day.

“He here?” they said together. Jacob nodded. They hurried to the side of the house. The brothers were grinning from ear to ear like it was Christmas morning. “We got word from the United States Army. We headed out first thing come mornin.” Aaron said.

“You gonna be alright Miss Naomi?” Abe said.

She nodded, “As soon as all my brothers are free, I’m going to be more than alright.”

They waited out back on the porch huddled in a corner sure to be out of view in case he came looking for them. Nothing could take Naomi’s mind off seeing Cesar, she realized now how his appearance felt so misplaced. The voices inside the house became loud and boisterous, her thoughts lingered on the Sheriff. If she left this place alive, it would be over his dead body. That would be okay by her.

They could both die here. She would have no regrets. Then she looked at Jacob who held her close for warmness. They all huddled around one another on the back porch. Sometimes Naomi could not even explain her desire to meet with her ancestors. In so many ways she wanted to live, but life in the south drained her. The calming sea was the only thing that brought about peace.

The Sheriff burst into laughter again. He had been exhibiting his cruel means of torture over the last several weeks, never once feeling comfortable to approach the house until now. He had been by the house just days after Ester’s disappearance and posted “WANTED” signs. He must have thought it was 1840, not 1940.

WANTED: ESTER LYNN JONES 13 YEARS OLD THIEF BELIEVED TO BE IN LOUISIANA $1,000 REWARD. Most Negroes tore the signs down the minute they went up. Many suspected Naomi had something to do with it, so on her account, they stayed out of it. It was no secret that the Sheriff had been angling for Naomi since she hit puberty,

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS and most suspected it was because of his desire for her that he refused to let a childhood friend like her pa flee north with his family. Not once, but twice, he prevented their passage North. The second time, the Sheriff had just caught them in time. He heard through gossip that the Gatsons were on their way to the Promised Land with plans to vacate their farm and Shreveport by day’s end.

The Sheriff and his deputies got there right as the train was about to pull off. He halted its departure with a false tale of a thief on board and proceeded to kick off all the farmers who worked in his county. Naomi, nearly ten when it happened, had already begun to sprout like a flower in bloom. She carried one-year-old Jacob on her hip when the Sheriff pulled Pa off the train, kicked him several times in the back, stomach and legs, before finally issuing him a harsh stomp on the knee with a resounding pop heard throughout the train platform. Naomi spent the last decade and a half trying to forget the look on the Sheriff’s face that day as he beat on pa. It was the final glare her way that made her so scared she almost peed her pants. He looked at her like he owned her and he made it clear: He would beat her too if she ever tried to flee again.

And so, for the second time they failed to flee.

The first was four years before Jacob was born in 1924. By 1920 Pa had heard all he needed to hear about successful ventures in Harlem and everyone knew pa lived for his dream to play the trumpet in every club he was welcomed in. When word got around there was a good life to be had outside of the southern states, everyone they knew was picking up and leaving. The first round of migrants heading north had begun only ten years earlier and still pa waited.

Those who fled before them wrote often of their successes with work, wages, living accommodations, and the friendliness of their neighbors. Naomi was too young to remember how the Sheriff caught up with them that time; it was her brothers who would tell her later how they tried to take the bus right out of town. They made it a few stops before the Sheriff got a hold of them and threw them off. They had to walk the four-mile journey back to town before hitching a ride from a neighboring farmer back home.

As Naomi grew older, she started to suspect what her brothers already knew. The Sheriff fancied their Ma and must have been disappointed she would rather be a good

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NINA LOUISE man’s wife than the Sheriff’s wench. Naomi would overhear conversations Pa had with the brothers as to why Naomi was never to be left alone, not even with Ma. He told them how the Sheriff—still a young man—would pick Negro girls at random, trick them or sweet talk them with gifts to following him to the Millers’ house, and have his way with them. Some of the girls went on their own accord, considering he was a handsome young man and had a reputation for spoiling his ladies with anything they wanted, especially the darkskinned ones. But the girls who refused him never came back to school, never came back to town, and if they didn’t have a Pa or brothers to protect them, they all but vanished from Louisiana.

Naomi knew better though, especially when she lost the last close friends she had in Shreveport. Cho Lin and her brother Kang moved out of town with their family when school became too unbearable. The young Sheriff ‘s taunts and cruel behavior made its way to one of the few Chinese families in town. When they moved to town, Naomi thought she could finally let the memory of Sara go. Afterall, she had made a new friend and the pounding in her heart when Kang was around made her smile.

Her first letter had been simple. Can we be friends? Lin. Naomi had never met an Asian person before and the few Chinese kids that attended her school kept to themselves. She had heard their parents tried to get them enrolled in white schools, but the school board refused them every time. They had lived in Mississippi for generations but heard the work and people were friendlier here. She called herself Lin because her Chinese name was too difficult for Americans to pronounce, and she grew tired of the relentless bullying. Naomi had agreed and their friendship blossomed.

They walked home together, studied together, but it was her brother who drew curious stares from Naomi. She liked Zhang who went by Kang during school hours. He was mean to everyone. Still, she dreamt of him. Offered him smile after smile only to be rejected again and again until she could no longer smile while in his presence.

“You promised to write. You have to keep your word.” Lin begged.

“Of course, I have nothing better to do. We can exchange sonnets.” Naomi said. She looked at Kang when the word sonnet left her mouth. He smirked.

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS “You know I can’t stand poetry, there is no use for it.” Lin said. She hugged Naomi tight, released her with a firm grip on her arm, “Don’t let the Sheriff scare you out of town too. You can beat him, I know it.” Lin leapt off the platform and onto the train. She stood next to Kang.

“Why the Sheriff would bother with an ugly duckling like you is anyone’s guess,” Kang said with a smirk. Lin struck him in the arm. The train started to move. “But like Lin said, if anyone can bring a man to his knees, then I would bet my money on you.” Kang returned her goodbye smile with a soft grin. As the train departed, he waved goodbye until he disappeared beyond the tracks. Naomi never told Lin, she never told anyone that Kang had appeared at her farm under Ella the night before. He apologized for being mean and confessed.

“Maybe if we had met a hundred years from now this could have happened,” Kang stared off into the river, then he turned his gaze on Naomi, “maybe we could have… married.”

Naomi was stunned. She could not tell if she was dreaming or dead and in heaven, until he bent down and kissed her. Her first kiss, sweet, tender, passionate and real.

He confirmed what she had known all along—he liked her too. When Kang vanished amidst the train fumes, she felt happy and sad. Now she knew what Ma meant, to love someone you could never have despite the cruelty they showed you.

And as for Miss Sara: he made sure Naomi discovered her hanging from a tree across the road from the Millers’ property. The way Sara hung, Naomi knew she had done it herself to avoid the wrath of the soon-to-be Sheriff.

He never forced himself on anyone else after Miss Sara. He frequented the whorehouses, but he never stepped foot on the Millers’ property again until he owned it. Sara had just turned fifteen. Her pa had plans to send her north, he had started to suspect the Sheriff had his eye on his Sara.

“We got family in Chicago and they love it there.”

Sara had told her once.

“Pa say Chicago real nice, but he wants, he needs to get to Harlem. It’s his dream he say.” Naomi said in a long drawn out southern accent. The girls stared at one another for a long time. They laughed all the way home. It was the last time Naomi remembers laughing so hard her belly

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NINA LOUISE ached.

The unrest she felt in her stomach was the same feeling she had when he approached her after she found Miss Sara. Even before his pleas began, Naomi knew he had come to plead his case, to put all the blame on Sara. He would tell her he had no intentions of messing with Sara, he only wanted to see if she was like all the other girls. Would Sara give him what he wanted for a price? When Naomi said nothing, he sobbed like a child who lost his childhood pet.

He begged for forgiveness. All an act, so when the time came, Naomi would come to him willingly and with no regrets.

She watched as he begged her not to tell no one, he begged her to never leave town or he would make her pay. Even if the next body she came across hanging from a tree was that of her own Ma. And this was his apology? From that day on whatever goodness ma had buried in Naomi’s head about the Sheriff and his good side had met its death like her beloved Sara. Naomi knew then, the Sheriff could never be trusted.

She remembered that day he said he would change, be a good man, treat her like royalty. She stood up from the porch, pointed her finger at him and told him the next body she would see hanging from a tree would be his own. He said nothing. His mouth would not, could not close.

His blood-shot eyes dried quickly, he hopped in his truck, slammed the door, and reversed to the road before stopping.

“I’m going to git you Naomi Gatson, one way or another.”

Unless I get you first. God-willing, Naomi hoped her death would come swift as Oshun came, and carry her to the sea, just like Ma and their ancestors.

He sped off. Naomi knew she would die before she let a man like the Sheriff touch her. She turned sixteen the year Sara died. He was forty and that was almost ten years ago. When he left at sunset, the shivering foursome headed in the back door, flipped the oven on and sought out all the makings for a sweet and tart Cherry pie.

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS

V February 1941

When word came from the Army, Abe and Aaron were thrilled. The two could hardly contain their enthusiasm.

They neglected to see their departure date for training at Fort Knox, Kentucky would come well after the holidays; they were unable to report for duty until after winter. They still held their heads high making sure to tell no one, not even their closest friends or their lovers about their plans to fade into the dusk when it was time.

They spent their days showing Jacob how to plow the fields, where to buy the best stock, who to call on if the land needed help. They built an underground shelter in the back near the barn to store their goods. They made sure there was enough space for Naomi and Jacob along with Ma and Pa’s keepsakes too dangerous to take on their travels.

Pa refused to put anything belonging to Ma inside, he said, “I didn’t give her much but what she got, you four should divide amongst yourselves. They can’t be in the ground where she lay, mixing ash and bone with treasures of the heart just ain’t right.”

Jacob put his baseball mitt in the underground storage, he had not played since he injured his arm last season. He hoped to make it to the all-stars, a dream only plausible in the minds of white men, but he still dreamed one day he

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NINA LOUISE could play in the Negro baseball league.

Abe and Aaron tossed in their Bibles, a few pieces of jewelry their girls had given them, and their farmer’s uniforms, tan overalls, and boots, tucked neatly, one on top of the other. Ma once stored blankets and old winter coats in the corner of the long metal blue drawer, but now, they used that space to store the family items underground. The use of the drawer ensured no items left inside would be damaged, despite the Louisiana weather and the unpredictable temperaments of the goddesses.

“Why store what we never gonna see again?” Naomi asked.

“Just cus we ain’t gonna be here don’t mean I ain’t got plans for this place. We got Gatson’s everywhere and some in need of a home.” Pa said.

“Pa ain’t no family we know gonna want this here farm. But I may bring my kids back here just to dig up this damn time capsule.” Jacob said. They all laughed. “What?”

Jacob asked.

“The world gonna be something special if you have some kids. You can barely feed yo self.” Abe said.

Naomi decided to keep her Bible and the cross-necklace Ma made for her when she had started school. She kept the only photo she had of Ma in the Bible, but the other things like her knitted sweaters and scarfs she had outgrown or worn out, she placed inside in a large bag. She sat the bag beside Ma’s only jewelry box, a pink and white box she had owned since childhood. It had nothing else in it except tin earrings, a bracelet made from wood, and a few rings Pa had won for her at the county fair. They placed all her knitted sweaters, hats, and scarfs on top of the drawer. Each one of them stood over the hole in the ground wearing a knitted sweater, hat, and scarf their Ma had made for them before she passed. Pa, covered in two scarfs and two sweaters, was always colder than the rest of them. If he weren’t sick, looking near death and clearly unable to stand on his own, he would still be shivering.

They continued to spend their nights mapping out Naomi and Jacob’s path to Lafayette: Who should they ask for when they reached a destination? When should they travel the roads—by day or night? Where could they find help, no matter where they were? And how were they expected to get from one safe house to another, without being seen by any-

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS one who might report their whereabouts back to the Sheriff?

Naomi had a plan of her own. They would leave, follow this route, but not until Pa was well enough to join them. If they left now, right after the brothers, they would have no lead to speak of and they would get caught for sure.

The Sheriff kept good tabs on the Gatson farm, whether he did it himself or not.

When the time came for the brothers to leave, it was three in the morning. They woke only Naomi, letting Pa and Jacob snore until the sun rose. They guided her to the back door, filled her hands with most of their savings before embracing her in a group hug. They were draped with their duffle bags around their shoulders, layered in shirts, Ma’s sweaters, and winter jackets. They were prepared. “Take this Miss Naomi, we ain’t gonna need it in boot camp.”

“Just do as Abe asks, you gonna need this more than we will,” Aaron said.

“Will you make the bus in time?”

“We are taking the Red river south, until we reach the other end of town, we should make it just before last call,” Abe said.

“Even if the Sheriff knows about this bus departure, he won’t be able to kick us off once we get on and we done signed our papers and sent them in already. We officially belong to the United States Army,” Aaron said.

Naomi embraced them again, she fought hard to hold back her tears. The women of this town, the friends they shared, and even Pa could not separate the brothers.

How would they manage to stay as one in war? Naomi had no idea. Though they could not be separated by no one else, she alone had the power to separate them, just one word to either Abe or Aaron and one would stay if she asked. Deep down, she knew this was meant for them, they would make it to the river, to the bus, to the war or die trying.

“Don’t wait too long. He’s a senseless man and he will never let up, once he knows we’ve gone,” Abe said.

“I know, but we can’t leave Pa, not now, not like this.”

“The last stop in Lafayette is where we will send you mail until ya’ll make it to Los Angeles. Promise me Naomi, you will make it out of here,” Aaron said.

Naomi nodded, “I promise.”

They hugged their sister tight one last time. Quiet-

51

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NINA LOUISE ly they floated out the back door, through the barn and over their makeshift time-capsule-grave covered in weeds, leaves, and fallen tree branches. Once cleared from the barn, they looked back, waved, and began their trek to the river. Naomi would never lay eyes on her brothers again. She would receive several letters from them and knew their daily routines so thoroughly, it was as if she had been training for the 78th Tank Battalion, herself. The last letter she would receive would be before their final attempt to board the train to the North. The notice came by way of the United States Army. ⇷⇷ She went into the house to tell Pa that the brothers had left, and in a matter of hours, they would know whether they made it safe or not. Leaving their Pa by Ma’s grave to die never occurred to Naomi as an option. She hoped to see him get well, to see him stand upright when he finally boarded the train free of nooses, poverty, and second-class citizenship. Pa would not survive the year. He had somehow caught hold of what Ma had or something altogether foreign ambushed his body. A man who looked closer to 75 than 55; a head full of gray, muscles and joints no longer flowed together in harmony, and almost all his teeth had gone due to too much tobacco, liquor, and his love for Sugar Babies.

Ma had foreseen his death; she said he would die of a broken heart. Jacob, twelve at the time, insisted: “Can’t no man die of a broken heart.” He stammered on, “it don’t make no sense.” Then Ma went on to tell them the story of how they met. She recalled she had been late every day for school lugging her baby brother and all their books when her paper tote fell apart scattering their books across the road.

She saw a car coming and tried to collect them all before they sank into the muddy earth, but as she ran for the last book, clear on the other side of the road. The steam engine automobile, which had never been seen before on their side of town, sped up, and someone yanked Ma out of the way. They stood to the side of the road and watched as the automobile threw dirt and mud in their faces.

“What the heck was that?” Ma asked.

“An automobile. You ain’t ever seen one before?”

“No sir. And why he got his name on the back?”

“I think that’s the maker. Carl Ben, it says.”

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS “No, there was a Z on the end, Benz it must be.

What kind of name that?” Ma asked.

“Not a farmer’s name. That for damn sure.”

Ma looked at the boy and said her heart swooned left and then right. She had never felt a weird feeling in her stomach like she did that day after meeting Pa. They went to collect her last book, a notepad caked in mud, when he introduced himself as Ernest Gatson. She forgot to introduce herself as her babbling brother caught her attention and they ran to his aid, frightened by the strange automobile, they held his hand the rest of the way to school on the promise of candy if he would stop crying.

Creole girls like Ma were a dime a dozen in Shreveport and like her, most of them come up from New Orleans seeking work and a home. She knew Ernest could have had any girl he wanted; he was so cute, tall, and sturdy for a boy not even thirteen years old. Ma swore it was the stories she told of the goddesses that kept him coming back for more.

Soon they were teenagers hanging out at the river, when she began to develop, and looked more like a woman than a child. Ernest had asked her to marry him when she got old enough. Ma, only fourteen at the time, had said yes, she most certainly would marry the only man in town who desired a better life outside of farming. He promised to take her away from the land of crops, manure, and rotten flesh. And he tried, Ma knew he tried his hardest, but Ma also knew it had never been meant to be.

If they had not bonded with the Sheriff in their childhood years, if he had not been taken with Ma as much as with—if not more than—Pa, they would have made it out of town. They would have escaped the south and all its demons. But Ma had been too pretty, too shapely, and too smart for her own good. And she knew once the wedding came and the babies too, it would get harder and harder to leave. Girls like her never leave far from home, she had said once, if not a few times.

Ernest thought otherwise, he would not let the taunting of the Sheriff hold him back. He had heard on good account that the Great Migration had begun to unfold as he and Ma married and welcomed the brothers, Abe and Aaron.

They had heard about thousands upon thousands of Negroes leaving the southern states for the north, and they were sure the move would be good for them too. The onset of World

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NINA LOUISE War I in 1914 confirmed their decision, but Ma, barefoot and pregnant with Naomi, could scarcely walk ten paces let alone stand on a bus or train for hours on end. They tried after Naomi was born and the Sheriff refused to let them on the bus.

Pa would not surrender his dream for his wife or his family and once he got a hold of the Chicago Defender, with ads promoting industrial jobs paying three times as much, nothing could hold him back. Then the Chicago Riots happened in 1919 and they decided to wait. Harlem would become their new destination even though Ma thought Los Angeles or anywhere near the sea would be best. When they had Jacob and tried for a second time, Ma told Pa to consider Harlem. She too had heard a great deal about the success of Negroes in New York and wanted to see for herself. This time, the Sheriff had his deputies surround the house for days until they missed their train and any other ample opportunities they had planned for their escape north. Pa had a plan. Their train would leave in a few days. The Sheriff went back to work. The deputies went back to work, but the train station was as far as they would make it.

The Sheriff had known Pa for over twenty years, and still, he shoved him off the train destined for the West.

Pa fell hard. A popping sound and the grimace on his face revealed another injury creeping up on his left hip; one more injury sure to keep him from ever trying to leave Shreveport again. He glanced at his wife and four kids through the train window. His eyes told them to go, leave him and flee. His wife watched the Sheriff she had known most of her life kick her husband in the back and several more times in the knee.

Pa grabbed his knee; he bit his tongue in agony refusing to cry out. Refusing to let the Sheriff see he had won.

When Naomi stepped off the train, she heard him shout, “You ain’t never leaving the South.” He was about to stomp on Pa’s knee again when Abe ran over and shielded Pa with his body. He took two kicks to his back before the Sheriff realized he was drawing a crowd, and not the kind he could fight off. “Negroes are deemed by God to serve us white southerners, so say our own Minister,” he said.

Naomi looked at Pa, his eyes turned black, she watched the whites of his eyes almost disappear as he burned holes in the Sheriff’s back. The train whistled, gradually chugging along heading out of the station. Pa would not give

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS up. He motioned for the boys to help him up. Naomi had Jacob on her hip, he drooled and played with her hair. Ma looked to the train then back to Pa. They would never make it.

“Don’t even think about it,” the Sheriff said.

Pa got up and hurried, limp and all toward the train.

“I will see you all hanged, even your youngest.”

Ma and Pa stopped in their tracks; their eyes rested on one another for a second. “Another time,” Ma whispered. Pa nodded, but this had been their third try. The injuries Pa sustained that day ensured he would never try to leave again. The Gatsons’ fifteen year hiatus from trying to flee the south was about to end.

Naomi moved closer to Pa’s wheezing, shivering body. She placed an extra blanket at his feet and over his body. Jacob stumbled in, dressed in layers with his knitted blanket hugging him up to his ears, he stared at them and said nothing. He could tell his Pa was dying and had been for as long as he could remember. He was about to sit next to Naomi when she pointed to Pa’s wallet on the only dresser in the room.

Jacob handed her the wallet, and sat next to her, opening his blanket to cover her too. “What you want with this?”

“Something I want to show you,” she said. She opened the wallet and pulled out a folded piece of newspaper. Pa began to snore. “Pa ain’t going to make it till summer, his body can’t take much more.”

“The brothers left already?”

Naomi nodded. Pa stirred, mumbled in his sleep, and said, “You gotta go gal, I git the Sheriff for you, I git him real good, I promise.”

Naomi and Jacob turned their stares from Pa to one another, “Pa thinks on the Sheriff’s next visit he could poison him or something, maybe even set the house on fire, but I told him the whole country would come for us, thinking we done killed a white man and run off. We would never be safe.”

“He is most certainly losing his mind too.”

“Listen, Pa’s plan will work. But we are going to have to stay here for a bit longer.” Jacob looked at her, his face says, why? How long? We ain’t ever gonna get out of this town. “The Sheriff gonna take you away and no one will be left here but me.”

55

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NINA LOUISE “Trust me, I got it all figured out. He’ll watch us for weeks, probably even have his deputies pay us a visit. We will carry on like normal, like we have nothing planned. I will take care of Pa and help with the crops, but you got to do most everything else.”

“I know.”

“But as soon as Pa takes his last breath, we run, even if we are being watched. Because once Pa dies…” “... he’ll burn the house down and take you wit him.”

“Here, I wanted to show you this,” Naomi said.

“It’s a poem he cut out of the Chicago Defender and has kept in his wallet ever since: ‘They’re leaving Memphis in droves Some are coming on the passenger, Some are coming on the freight Others will be found walking For none have time to wait.’”

Jacob stared at the cutout newspaper clipping, his eyes watered. Naomi rubbed his head and leaned against his shoulder. “Pa ain’t ever gave up on his dreams.”

“And neither will we. We have to make it to California Jacob; we have to make it for them.”

Jacob rose at the sound of pellets hitting the window, he held the curtain back so Naomi could see the rain. “I wonder who your rain goddesses are helping down the river tonight?”

Naomi looked at him and said nothing. Then Jacob realized—the brothers, of course.

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS

VI

Pa felt better. It was evident by the way he marched in and out of the kitchen, to his bedroom and back, seeking something worthy to do. When the brothers did not return hours or days later, they sent out feelers to their neighbors asking them to search the woods, the swamps, the river, the trees for any sign of them. By the end of the week with no word from towns folk, neighboring farmers, or a visit from the Sheriff, they knew the brothers had escaped the southern threshold binding them to its land for nearly three decades. So, Pa moved around, light on his feet, barking orders, circling the yard in his lightweight pajamas until he found something that was broken or broke something in no need of fixing in the first place.

When the Sheriff came around two weeks after the brothers had gone; he came with clear intention to let Pa know, no one else in his family would be permitted to leave Shreveport. He walked the house by Pa’s side, helped him chop wood, and watched him fix the barn door, then rake the fallen rich, purple leaves from the Japanese Maple tree toward the Sheriff’s truck and away from Ma’s grave.

Naomi sat on several bags of crop feed laid on the corner of the porch and rested her feet on the railing as she read, W.E.B. Du Bois’, Black Reconstruction in America.

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NINA LOUISE Jacob sat on the porch cement steps downing the last of his sweet tea, drenched in a white T-shirt and blue jeans, covered in dirt from harvesting sweet potatoes. On cue, Jacob rose to head back inside. He knew the Sheriff had intentions of leaving soon and whenever he prepared to leave the Gatson farm he always left them with a warning or a threat geared toward Jacob, the youngest Gatson with the most to lose.

“Where you goin’ boy?” the Sheriff asked.

“To finish the crops. You care to help?”

“You gettin’ smart with me boy?”

Jacob carried himself through the screen door and into the house. The Sheriff climbed the steps, followed him like he intended to drag him back outside for a one-on-one fight. “Excuse me, are you on my Ma’s porch about to enter my Ma’s house like you pay the deed? Ma been dead not even a full season now and you want to start breaking rules like you made them,” Naomi said. She looked up from her book, and shot him a glare. The Sheriff let the screen door Pa installed months ago slam shut. “Get off my Ma’s porch and stay out my Ma’s house.” Naomi returned her gaze to her reading and took a sip of her sweet tea.

The Sheriff stared at Naomi. He had nothing to say. In his head he was calling her a wench, a low-grade negress, a darkie, a weirdo. He had called her these names many times before, out loud and to her face. She glared back at him and watched him shift his feet from side to side, not knowing what else to do.

“I may be a weird darkie to you, but this is my home and you are no longer welcomed here. Not in the house, not on the porch, not in the yard, nowhere near us Gatsons,” Naomi took another sip, held the tea in one hand and the book in the other as she got up and walked the Sheriff off their porch.

When he nearly tripped off the last step, he reached for his gun.

“What’s wrong with you gal? Ever since your mama passed you been gettin’ mean and spiteful. Me and your Pa go way back, we lifelong friends. You know I am only looking out for y’all. And Jacob, you know I was just messin wit him.”

“You ain’t never been a friend to the Gatsons, especially not to Pa. You killed off Ma and frightened the brothers away. They would rather fight a war that ain’t got

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS nothing to do with them than fight you and your white-sheet boys. You can take your hand off your gun now. Pa has no intention of crashing your skull in with a shovel, burying you alive and sinking your truck in the Red river.” Naomi leaned on the railing, took another sip, glared at the Sheriff’s gun, then to Pa who the Sheriff noticed had been raking the leaves with a shovel and not a garden rake. His eyes were messing with him. Every time he’s around Naomi something on him falters.

The Sheriff took his hand off his gun, he moved a step closer to Naomi, “You know I could have your farm burned to the ground?”

“Now what good would burnt sweet potatoes do you?”

The Sheriff chuckled, “You always know the right thing to say, don’t you gal?”

“My name is Naomi.”

He turned to leave, “make sure no one else tries to disappear or I won’t keep the promise I made to your Ma and I will burn this shithole farm to the ground, sweet potatoes and all.” He hopped in his truck, “and get rid of that damn book, ain’t that been banned from the south? Damn if you don’t really test my last nerve.”

He pulled out as he always did, loud and harsh.

The dirt from the earth flew circles around Pa, splattering his bare legs with mud. As he pulled away, Jacob crept to the screen door, “can we finish the last row before dinner and before you get us all killed?” he faded into the house and out the back door.

“Pa, please get in the house and clean up,” Naomi said. “It might be a good idea to make sure all the rifles in the house are fully loaded, just in case.”

She glanced at Pa who wore a wide smile on his face exposing his toothless grin and nearly black gums. He used the shovel as a cane to aid his walk back to the house and up the steps. “It would have been so easy to dispose of him right here and now, wouldn’t it? No more worries, no more wondering, we could have left town tomorrow and…”

“Pa, they would have known. And we would have been on the run for the rest of our lives. That ain’t no way to live. We want to be free, free of any kind of bondage, especially his.” Naomi opened the screen door for Pa. He let the shovel drop at the door and scooted inside. Pa pretended

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NINA LOUISE to be well, healed from his sickness, worked on Jacob and clearly on the Sheriff, but Naomi could not be fooled. The longer he pretended, the worse his body felt, she could tell by the way he slept into the afternoons before rising. She knew in a matter of time Pa would not get up at all. ⇸⇸ It was May when they first received word from the brothers. A neighboring farm some miles further north from the Gatson farm had their eldest stop by, offering a helping hand to Jacob and a fist full of letters for Naomi. They waited until the sun had set, the wind simmered and the animals in their care, a pig, several chickens, and two stray cats settled in their comfort for the night.

Naomi had lit nearly a dozen candles throughout the house and now that the weather had grown warmer, Jacob and Pa dripped with sweat even while they sat still. ⇷⇷ The Gatsons filed in their truck with loads of sweet potatoes to carry to the market where they planned to buy feed to begin their harvest for sugar cane come fall. The profits from their months of harvesting sweet potatoes will get them by until they set the land to harvest sugar cane for late fall. They planted another round of slips, which 100 days from tomorrow, will grow to ample Stokes sweet potatoes. Pa switched to growing the Stokes version of the potato when he realized the Jewel, though lovely to look at with their copper-colored hue and storage life, had no comparison to the Stokes for buyers. The towns folk loved the Stokes for their purplish color and size, and buyers raved about how much healthier they felt after only a week or two on the Stokes diet.

The sugar cane harvest in the fall carried the load of their financial burdens throughout the rest of the year with substantial savings hidden in the base of their home in multiple areas, along with maps, names, numbers, addresses for their journey north. The hideaways reminded Naomi of a story her Ma had told her about her ancestors and their plight to make it to free land as slaves. She had told her how the underground railroad had never really been underground. “This had been a code for the abolitionists to fool the

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS slave catchers,” Ma said, “but the hard part was on the slave to get from the south to the north before they could be transferred from station to station during the nights, undetected by hunters, owners, or anyone else looking to cash in on catching a runaway slave.”

“What does transfer mean and what is a station, Ma?” “People would work together, using their homes or businesses to hide runaway slaves in their basements and attics until it was safe to move them to another home.

They called the homes “stations” to deflect attention from their properties. Transfer was the word they used when they moved the slaves from one place to the next.”

“Did Oshun help the runaway slaves?”

“I am sure she did. They probably asked God to send them a spirit to guide them through the harsh waters and land they traveled by night. So many of them sought their freedom and won, Naomi.” Ma laid beside her with an open book of the water gods as they snuggled together. “This is why you should never give up on your freedom, others have endured far more than you and I survived. You are strong too, Naomi, if anyone in this family can make it to the north, it will be you.” Naomi remembered the look on Ma’s face.

Ma had resigned to stop fighting the Sheriff, to give up her dream of freedom, even if Pa had not. As Naomi sat in the back with the wind on her face, using her arms to hold down the crates of their last three months of hard work, she closed her eyes and held the sun to her skin. She let it warm her, until her nerves twinged at the sensation of fire, then a flash of the brothers appeared.

They sat on the tail end of the truck on opposite sides of each other, each holding a weapon: a rifle, long, brown, and sturdy. They were in full Army uniform right down to the issued chestnut brown combat boots. They grinned their bachelor smiles, getting them any girl in town they wanted. It was their caramel complexion, chocolate eyes, and football player builds that attracted all the attention every young man desired.

They motioned Naomi their way. She slid sideways to her knees and crawled towards them. Jacob heard her fumble as one of the crates hit the head of the truck, near his seat. He opened the small sliding glass window and saw

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NINA LOUISE Naomi crawling towards the back. “Miss Naomi, what you doin?”

As if a glass of ice-cold water rushed her face, she sat up on her knees, awoke from her trance, and stared back at Jacob.

“You startled me.”

“I startled you? Will you get away from the back of the truck before you fall out?” Naomi watched Pa spy her from the rearview mirror, he formed a small grin on his face, knowing something had egged her towards the back of the truck. She slid back into her former position, bracing the crates with her arms.

Then Pa said, “We going to be hearing from the brothers soon I take it?”

“You say that every Saturday Pa and then we never hear from them.”

“Today will be different. I am almost sure of it,” Pa coughed on his last few words, heavy from the belly. Naomi knew word from the brothers would not be the only news coming their way come fall.

After Jacob called her to her senses, she would not see the brothers for months. Then it would be too late to dive off the end of the truck onto the road and into a black abyss, where she prayed her brothers would not be waiting for her. Naomi prayed her vision was a dream and not their apparitions. ⇸⇸ They got their first letters from the brothers when they arrived home as the sun began to settle. The third letter had been tucked on the far end of the porch, underneath the feed. Naomi would not have thought nothing of it, had she not seen one of her neighbors walking their road for town.

He bowed his head when they passed and proceeded to look her square in the face. Naomi knew him as a good buddy to the brothers and after he flashed a thumbs up sign, she rushed to search for the letters out as soon as they arrived home.

The Gatsons stuck to their normal night by night routine. They dined by candlelight with open windows for fresh air, they gathered in Pa’s room for bible reading and prayer or any story they could find to keep their minds off

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS the brothers and the anticipated escape plan.

Naomi searched the windows for any sign of the Sheriff or his deputies—nothing, not tonight. She tried to sort through ideas that kept him away for so long. He had let days go by before, but never weeks, never months. Did Pa really fool him into thinking he was on the mend and had abandoned all plans to leave Shreveport? The Sheriff could be arrogant, but he was no dummy. He knew someone else would run, sooner or later, if not all of them. So where had he gone off to? The answers would come after she retreated to the brothers’ room and opened the fourth letter. She would not share this with Pa or Jacob, this letter was for her eyes only. The letter was from Jack.

Naomi filed in after Pa and Jacob had settled on the cot. Pa could not bear to be in the bed he had shared with Ma for nearly four decades. The brothers had built him a small cot he could set aside across from the window, in case Ma needed water, food, or to use the restroom; toward her end, she insisted on using the outhouse, none of the men understood why. Naomi understood: Ma wanted to see the glare of the sun, feel the blood rush to her cheeks, and inhale the earth –– its leaves, dirt, and even the manure during crop season brought a smile to her face. Ma cherished the cats scurrying around her legs, craving her soft touch, and her sweet sing-song tone when she called their names. Ma enjoyed her life to the very end.

Pa kept the cats out of the house as much as he could for fear Ma’s sickness would spread to them; they would always find their way in and into her bed, and by her side they lay. When she died, she was surrounded by her animals, her children, and Pa. Jacob flipped through a copy of Gone with the Wind, Pa flipped through the book of Psalms. Naomi flew in with a light gust of wind, holding three letters in one hand and three small bags of Sugar Babies in the other. Pa heard the rattling of the candy before his weary eyes rested on the envelopes. Naomi wrestled with how reckless it was of her to feed into Pa’s sweet tooth, but he was dying and nothing brought him joy like his Sugar Babies.

“Neither one of you will be reading tonight.

Tonight, belongs to the brothers,” Naomi’s smile rose from the tips of her toes to the top of her bun. Jacob and Pa could barely utter a single word. They gawked at the letters; sure

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NINA LOUISE Naomi had played a cruel joke on them. She tossed a bag of Sugar Babies into each of their laps and took a seat between them. The messy scribble assured them it was from Abe. ⤕⤕ When Naomi retired to the room she shared with the brothers, she realized they had left it in perfect condition for her. Their cots combined into one double mattress with cleaned sheets and blankets to lift her high off the ground.

The wooden crates they had slept on were needed now to transport and store sweet potatoes. Naomi moved the cots to the bed frame they had made for her. They said if they needed to make a bed for Ma, they might as well make a bed for their beloved goddess of a sister—and so they did.

Since the brothers’ departure she slept as if no ghosts or goddesses roamed the house. She pushed the heavy mahogany frame against the window. She needed to feel close to the goddesses to heed any warning they might send her way, and she wanted to see the Sheriff coming. Something told her he had been quiet for too long. Something told her he was working up a plan.

She imagined him coming in the middle of the night, trying to snatch her out of her bed from her home. He had promised to remodel the Miller home and hire only Negro hands to work the land. He would give her the profits to spend during the day in the city as she lay in wait for him by night. The house grand, the land reaping off the soil of Negro folks her Ma spoke of in history books. She would live like a queen there, possibly better than the Sheriff’s own wife.

But at what cost?

Her legs, permanently spread open for his lust, his desires, his needs. She lay awake most nights wondering what it was he saw in her. Naomi, Ma, Ester, and Sara had caused such an open wound to fester in the Sheriff, a wound that exposed the flesh of his guts, his intestines, and his barely functioning liver on the cusp of infection.

Ma had said, “He got a deep laceration he been carrying around since childhood. Only a good woman gonna stop the bleeding, but he ain’t never gonna find one since he too busy stealing others.” Naomi had wondered if Ma had tried to tell her she could be the woman he needed. Was her Ma telling her she was the cure for his disease? Ma knew

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS about Sara. And Pa would never agree to such an arrangement. Some days ma knew the Sheriff for the cruel man he was, other days she kept her head in the clouds when it came to his wrongdoings. Naomi was convinced it was the kiss they almost shared days before she married Pa. “The one thing I regret about that day is your pa nearly catching us.”

“Ma, you really would have kissed him?” Naomi asked.

“He was a different man back then. I can’t explain it. It was a sweet moment, for a second I forgot he was White and I was Black. I forgot we could not live happily ever after.

He was nice back then, but once me and your pa married.

Well, let’s just say, he ain’t been the same since.” Ma had said.

Naomi could never look at the Sheriff in an agreeable way. Even after he sent her dresses, flowers, fruit-plants to grow in the yard and every so often a book to read: A Farewell to Arms, As I Lay Dying, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

His books were always tragic stories.

Naomi read them all, making sure to tell him otherwise as she continued to sneak and hide books from Langston Hughes and other Harlem Renaissance writers making a name for themselves. Gone with the Wind and The Good Earth remained favorites, though she was not entirely sure why. When she needed strength she didn’t look to God, but to Scarlet O’Hara and Tea Cake from Their Eyes Were Watching God. Naomi had stopped watching God long ago, but she remained hopeful in Oshun and her ability to lead her from bondage to free land and if possible, if not too much to ask–free choice.

The brothers had won their freedom. Naomi knew she and Jacob were next if she could only summon the courage to leave her father behind. Reading the letters from Abe had taken a toll on Naomi, her body ached from days in the field, but now her spirit felt drained like water gushing from the faucet. Pieces of her memory and her thoughts flowed down the drain with every ounce of strength she had left.

She hoped this letter from Jack would be the honey to her tea, seeping into her bloodstream, awakening the sweetness missing in her life since childhood.

Naomi gathered her three candles, two on the windowsill and the other on the nightstand at the head of her

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NINA LOUISE twin three-layer cot bed. She sat high above the ground and as her eyes searched the road and the tall grassy fields for any sign of life.

She opened the letter inch by inch knowing she may always have to keep it on her body to keep out of the clutches of the Sheriff. Jack had used plain school writing paper and a standard issued envelope from the post office. He had gone to great efforts to remain untraceable in case his pa had intercepted the letter. He would be able to claim that it had not come from him, but from another Jack. This letter had come with a warning. To write her, Jack had put them both in danger. She admired his improved penmanship. Jack had come a long way and defined himself as a literary man of worth.

Lights streaked by one minute and were gone the next. Naomi ducked and held the candle out to her side. If it tipped, she risked setting the house ablaze. She leaned back up and peered out of the window. Nothing. No one. She sighed. Her insides mangled. She inhaled, closed her eyes, and said, “Oshun, bring me peace.” When her eyes reopened the words came into focus.

Date: July 31, 1941 Dear Miss Naomi, I write to you in haste and you must use this information wisely. My suspicious father has suspected for some time now in my harboring of Ester in New Orleans.

I believe while his deputies watch your every move, the Sheriff watches mine. He slips away at random and spies me from afar. Lucky for Ester, who has been preoccupied with schooling and etiquette classes –– piano, singing, and cooking –– knows nothing of my concern.

However, the Sheriff has caught me several times away from my boarding school in wait for Ester and it has only been by the grace of God –– or as you would say-by the grace of Oshun –– that he has not caught us both and put us in shackles. I start college in New York in September and the Heiress has assured me that Ester’s training will last for two years and will require two more years to pay the handsome debt we owe her. I hope that my leave of this colorful city will end the Sheriff’s search. Lord-willing.

This is what I must tell you. He has plans to spend Thanksgiving with me in New York. When I asked

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS about Christmas, he smirked and said the Miller farm will be redone by then and his houseguest settled in and will be ready to bring in the new year with him. Mother thankfully had been elsewhere at the time of this news. We are no fools.

We both know what he means and now we know when and where he plans to harbor you. Please take heed of this advice. I will try my best to alert you of urgent news needing your attention, should there be just cause. Otherwise, I have left something for you at the Post Office in New Orleans before your departure. It is the least I could do.

I know you have grave feelings for the Sheriff, and deservedly so because he will stop at nothing to make this happen. He has lost all reason. I fear for his mental state as he carries not only his issued weapon, but two knives and a rifle in his truck at all times. Miss Naomi, hear me well, I fear he will take action soon to rid any interference of his most prized desired possession; I have no doubt he will make Jacob and your Pa disappear if you remain in Shreveport before the new year. Please, do what you must.

My dear sweet goddess of the earth, please do not force me into a position I will never win. I gave everything to save Ester, but as you know, as you have always known, I would give my life to save yours.

Your most cherished student, Jack Naomi rose from her bed, blew out her candles, except for one. She used the glow of its golden hue to guide her down the hall. She roamed the living room like a faint, soundless, ghost. The wood below her feet did not crackle or pop as it did when Jacob stomped across, or when Pa hammered his cane and strutted around day and night. She grew frantic. Inhaling, exhaling, several times before her breath returned to normal. She stood before the bookshelf, combing each one with her eyes. She hoped for a story of a woman who survived a long journey in search of fresh air.

There were no books about Oshun or any of the goddesses.

The stories Ma told her as a child were only tall tales, fables, myths. Her finger traced Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry, and Larsen’s Quicksand, but The Poems of Phillis Wheatley, stood out as if it had been edged to the corner willing itself to fall into her hands. She slid the light flimsy book from its tight, unbreathable spot and into her hand. The cover nearly shed its body.

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NINA LOUISE “Can’t sleep either?” she heard Jacob ask. She spun around, the candle in one hand and the open letter and book in the other, she hid the words of despair, anguish, freedom, behind her back.

“Jacob, you startled me,” she turned back to the bookshelf, sliding in Miss Wheatley with Jack tucked between the pages.

“You always so jumpy. Is there anymore sweet potato pie? That will help me sleep,” he glided his deep heeled stride into the kitchen where a half-eaten sweet potato pie remained on the counter near the stove. Naomi followed him. “Do you think Abe left anything out in those letters, so Pa and you won’t worry? Did you leave anything out?” Jacob grabbed a fork and turned to watch Naomi’s response.

“I read the letter as it was written. They will be fine. Training in Fort Knox is getting the best of them. But they are with that Battalion now, the 78th, did he say?” she asked. Jacob shook his head.

“Tank training got to be pretty hard, don’t you think?”

Naomi nodded. She watched him devour the pie with only a fork in hand as if he had not eaten two plates of dinner and two slices of pie before Naomi finished the first letter. “They built for tank training, they ain’t built for the water. The ocean will spit them up like rebuked holy water.

Save a slice or two for Pa, will you?” Naomi left Jacob standing at the counter eating the last of the pie when he stopped, shrugged his shoulders, and continued to finish the pie off.

“Night Jacob,” she called.

“When we working tomorrow will you tell me the Oshun story again? Lord, I can’t wait to hear more.”

Naomi gave a “hmmm hmmm” as she sauntered back to her room. She eyed the bookshelf and wondered if Jacob would notice as she slipped the letter back into her housecoat pocket. She thought better of it. No one touched those books but her. The dust gathered daily now with the windows open all through the day and most of the night. No matter how often Naomi cleaned book after book, cobwebs formed from thin air, dead ants found their way through pages of Jane Eyre. Even the cats shook their coats when passing by as if invited to shed a layer of the soul with those resting elsewhere.

Her last candle set off a deep yellow glow in the

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS corner where her cot rested. She laid there in her mind rereading the letter from the brothers.

We wake up before sunrise every morning and when we fall out just after dinner, sleep comes easier than it ever had before. The heat is getting to Aaron. He tells me often how he can’t seem to catch his breath before we move on to another training session. The book work is hard for him, but he gets by. The climbing walls, running through manmade hurdles, and crawling in the mud is like second nature for us.

Naomi remembers how Pa made her read it twice, like he had never been aware of his boys playing around in the mud or traveling across the Red river just to see how fast they could make it to the other side. It became a Gatson challenge Naomi never participated in. We nearly drowned in the Red river, Abe had said. I don’t think we should have lied about being able to swim. We can float some, but something told me we may need to do more to survive this training.

Pray for us Miss Naomi, the land is dry in most spots but then a covering of water comes around and I can smell the fear of death rising from Aaron’s veins. We run through creeks and trails, and soak our bodies in ponds and waterfalls. Yet, still, we miss home. Or maybe what we should say is we miss Ma. Naomi thought about Ma and her stories to ease her to rest. Ma never understood why sleep never came easy for Naomi. Oshun took all her children from land and sea, delivering them to a place of peace, to a place where birds land on your shoulders singing, where dogs bark like they are talking, and where cats purr in harmony. For those on land, she may need to carry them to the sea, but for those stuck in the grime of the ocean’s earth she carries them up, up and far away. Maybe to land, but sometimes when she asked them where they want to go, they point to the sky and told her to take them as high as her powers can take them.

This was the story she would begin with tomorrow with Jacob. She would leave out what she feared he already knew: Their brothers may not have left here with any intentions of ever serving in a war at all. Their intentions might have been to free the Gatsons of the Sheriff once and for all, opening the door to lead the family down the road to their great escape, all the while, holding their hands out to Oshun, begging her to carry them as far as her wings could fly.

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VII

Before the Gatsons could catch their breath, fall crept up on them. They reworked the fields to lay the first sugar cane crop. Naomi had hoped the first crop would be picked and sold before Thanksgiving, leaving them with a second crop for Pa. He could now afford to hire second hands to assist. They would leave him extra in case he needed to bribe a few neighbors to keep their mouths closed about the last of the missing Gatson children. Pa knew most everyone around here except the new owners of the large plantation a mile north from their farm on a hill: the Du Bois family.

They had been here a short year, a young couple with both their parents and four babies all under five. Every time they stopped to say hello, they asked if the Gatsons needed something from town. They let their little ones out so they could run ragged and try to kill the Gatsons’ cats. Naomi spied their every move, tracked their mannerisms and accents.

She noticed their loose limbs like they never feared for their lives. They waved their hands around and kicked at the grass or dirt or whatever got in their way. They were New Yorkers for sure.

By their third visit to Shreveport from New York, Naomi knew two things about the new neighbors: first, they were the most annoying Negroes she had ever met in all her

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS life. Second, Naomi suspected they were harboring a fugitive from the law. They never said as much but it showed in the way they talked, moved, stared. They were always bragging about “Harlem this” and “Harlem that.” Yet, here they were.

They told Jacob how he would fit right in; how the women would love him, he would find a job in a day and be rich by Sunday. They struck Naomi as fools, but Jacob loved their visits and so did Pa. Neither one suspected an evil bone in their bodies. Naomi believed they held a secret shared only with the Sheriff, either because they had to, or because he discovered it all on his own and now they owed him. They were enemy number one.

The minute Jacob or Pa mentioned the need for a second hand for the crops come Thanksgiving, Naomi buried them ten-feet-deep with her eyes. After a while, they shut up all together. Besides, the Gatsons found it hard to get a word in edgewise. The Du Bois’ made it clear about their relation to the great W.E.B., however, they were not entirely sure how the blood flowed or crossed paths.

“We are certain,” the woman had said, “he is a cousin of my husband’s mother’s sister. More proof they were indebted to the Sheriff, for if he knew, they would all be hanged. They were spies. And once W.E.B had been brought up, Pa and Jacob came to understand the same. They had to act fast. The Gatsons’ plan of action needed to be as swift as the sunrise and undetected, as more eyes then they had previously considered were upon them now. Especially after the brothers’ friend from town delivered more letters, out in the open, right in front of the Du Bois family. How could he know? They were Negroes. And in Shreveport, Negroes trusted one another with their most valued intimate secrets.

“Now, what you got there, Miss Naomi?” Mrs. Du Bois asked. She carried herself over to Naomi and the messenger, planted her body between them as if they were hiding something belonging to her. The messenger froze, whispered an apology, and walked off in haste.

“None of your business,” Naomi said. She stared Mrs. Du Bois directly in her eyes. She meant to tell her, she knew who she was working for and could care less. “Carry on now. We got more sugar to plant for our second reaping come Christmas and unless you and your children plan on helping...” Naomi cocked her head and waited for her reply.

“No ma’am, we got things to do in the city. We are very busy

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NINA LOUISE people,” she hurried her husband and her children in their new farmer’s truck filled to the rim with corn and layered in mud, dust, and compost. Once they were out of sight, the Gatson’s hurried inside.

“Damn. Damn. Damn,” Naomi said. She paced from the door to the bookshelf and back. The men watched her. It had not escaped any one of them that the arrival of the messenger in front of the Du Bois family had somehow put them in a dangerous position.

“Gal let’s go eat and read the letters. We can worry about those foolish neighbors later,” Pa said.

“Yeah, I want to know what the brothers are up to.

Are they overseas yet? Are they fighting the Germans?” Jacob asked.

Naomi rubbed her temples and stared at them, “Who are the foolish ones now? Do you know where they headed? Straight to see the Sheriff. In an hour or so he’s going to pay us a visit, turn this house over for the letters or worse, he won’t come at all because he knows our plan.”

“What plan?” Jacob asked.

“To leave here before Thanksgiving when he’s gone. When he’s in New York with Jack.” Naomi slapped him across his head. “Now listen, go to the messenger’s farm, tell him he got to get out of town now. I will get word to the brothers. We are no longer reachable here.”

Jacob headed to the door, “Okay but...” “...Jacob, his life is more important than these letters. They can wait. He has only minutes now before the Sheriff and his posse come after him. His time is up. Now run, fast as you can. These letters be here waiting when you get back.”

Jacob nodded. He fled out the door and through the fields it had been mere seconds before his silhouette disappeared into the November sky.

“What’s running through that goddess-like mind of yours?”

“We have to burn the letters. Every last one. Out front, so he sees and then…”

“And then what?”

“We have to leave you, Pa.” They stared into each other’s eyes for a long time.

Pa could sense her hesitation. Her eyes revealed her desperation to locate another solution. Pa knew what he had always

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS known: there was none. He wobbled to Naomi.

“If Ma could only see you now,” he cupped her face. A tear escaped. “You read; I’ll cook.”

Naomi nodded in agreement. She followed Pa’s footsteps as he strolled into the kitchen. She heard a loud crack, turned to the window, and saw the ash black sky cry out. Another crack sent a lightning bolt across the entire horizon. Blinding bright, the third crack hit the earth. Please God, don’t let Jacob or the messenger get struck by lightning. She had almost turned to leave when droplets began to hit the windows. Pa and Naomi would not be the only ones shedding tears tonight. The fire would be put out before it even began. ⇸⇸ Jacob returned as the dinner spread of buttered biscuits; grits with cheese; bacon; and eggs sardou were prepared. A jar of cane syrup and fig preserves dressed the of the center table where the letters sat. They set the table as he washed up. His voice carried through the light water sprouting from his water hose rinse in a near empty bathtub.

“He was gone before I got there. His pa said he grabbed some things and said he would send word as soon as he made it somewhere safe.” The thunder showers fell heavy against the house. Jacob yelled like he lay underground covered in mud. “I told them they should leave at least for a night or two, but they said there was no use in running. The Sheriff would catch up to them sooner or later.” Jacob stood before them now in a baggy t-shirt and jeans. He had grown accustomed to wearing what his brothers left behind, including their shirts and work jeans, too big for Jacob’s slender figure.

“He’ll burn them to the ground,” Pa said.

“Not tonight,” Naomi said. She glanced at the window and watched as the rain continued to pour. They were due for a new roof. Pa and Jacob starred up above the back door, the slow drip through the ceiling had widened over the years. If they didn’t replace the roof this year, it would cave in on them.

“Tell me,” Jacob insisted.

As they ate, Naomi told him about the two short letters from the brothers. How they had been assigned to a

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NINA LOUISE tank, the 78th Tank Battalion. They were in armed warfare training mode to learn every piece and section of the tank, to understand how the engine started, to how it traveled.

Back in May, they were redesignated from the 758th to the 78th Tank Battalion since it was deemed a (light) unit, which meant the brothers might not see much war action after all.

Abe wrote that they would not see war for a while. It seemed his white superiors had no desire to release them out into the world, even if it meant helping them fight the war. All Abe said in the first letter referred to tank training.

“We struggle,” he wrote, “how to remember every piece of the tank that puts it together and makes it work.

It’s like knowing every single part of the human body.” They were assigned to be the tank’s protectors. They would walk alongside the tank once they headed into battle.

In the second letter, Abe rattled on about the food, how horrible everything they slopped onto their metal plates tasted. Everything contained too much water and not enough butter or oil. “We miss your cooking. We miss Ma’s hot-water cornbread with the rich honey she would buy from the Berry sisters at the market. They ended the letter saying they would not write again until they leave for the war. “It is too hard wondering whether y’all are alive or dead. Send us word. And if you can, send us food.”

Jacob laughed. “Who could possibly send food through the mail? That will never happen, not in this lifetime.”

“We will get word to them, and soon,” Naomi said.

“How?” Jacob asked.

“Ester.” Pa said.

“Ester?”

“Yeah. She wrote too,” Pa said. “All is well with her and Jack. They planning on moving to New York, probably Harlem, once she graduates.”

“They got white folks in Harlem?” Jacob asked.

“Jacob, be serious and Pa, stop filling Jacob’s head with nonsense. She said nothing of the sort,” Naomi said.

She got up, piled their plates onto hers and placed them in the sink. “Jacob please get to these before the critters do.”

She took a final biscuit and headed out of the kitchen. “What about Ester and Jack?”

“What about them? They are fine. She is still in hiding; he is still in school. She is learning to be a fine lady

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS and they plan on marrying once it’s legal,” Naomi said. She turned in the doorway, “bring that empty pail in the truck out to the porch when you are finished. We have much to discuss.”

“Legal? It ain’t never gonna be legal for mixed races to marry one another.”

Naomi opened the front door and waited.

“Pail? What we need a pail for?” Jacob asked.

“Boy, if you don’t do as your sister asked, I swear,” Pa said. He rose slower than usual. The cold had returned with a vengeance. He felt it in his knees, his achy wrist bones, and his throbbing head. “I need my rest. Call out if the Sheriff come, I git my rifle ready and be waitin on him.”

When Jacob joined her on the porch, he set the pail down between them. He sat in Ma’s rocking chair. As usual, Naomi perched up on the porch railing. Tonight, the wet cement steps would not do. She threw the lit match in the pail before Jacob had a chance to take a sip of his third glass of sweet tea. She envied his sleek physique, how he could eat nonstop and drink anything and everything without gaining so much of an ounce. At fourteen, she had to cut four biscuits down to two, and five servings of cornbread down to three –– two if she had not worked the fields that day –– just to maintain her weight. She threw the pile of letters in her lap in the pail, all at once.

Jacob stood, “Miss Naomi, what the hell?”

“It has to be done. We leave nothing behind,” She said. Then she set the pail on fire.

Naomi glared to the edges of the road. Then, there it was: she heard the Sheriff’s truck before they saw it. He pulled up within an inch of the steps. He idled in his truck, stared at the pail ablaze, then turned his gaze to Naomi.

“Go on inside, I’m right behind you,” Naomi said to her baby brother.

Jacob did as asked. He noticed the Sheriff kept his lights on and the engine running. He wondered why he didn’t just run off with Naomi now. Pa could not fight him off.

Jacob would die trying but he would lose, they both knew it.

Why wait? Why delay the inevitable? He stood on the other side of the screen door and watched as Naomi approached the passenger window. The rain poured. He heard nothing. A click behind him and Pa’s rifle came into view. Pa pointed at the window, fixed on the Sheriff.

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Damn, if only we could do it and get away with it.

When Naomi sauntered up the steps and into the house, Jacob stepped back. She wore a smirk on her face he had never seen before. And the Sheriff vanished into the night with an ease and peace Jacob could only interpret as victory.

“What did you do?”

“It’s the only way he’ll stop hunting us down. He gets what he wants, and I get what I want.”

“How the hell is being his whore gettin’ what you want?”

Naomi crossed over Jacob. She took the rifle out of Pa’s hand. “My virginity is little price to pay for the safe passage of the last Gatsons out of the south and into the north to the Promised Land.” She dragged the rifle on the floor behind her to her room but paused. “You will finally get a chance to smell freedom Pa, finally.” Then she closed her door.

Jacob looked as if he had been struck several times over in the gut.Pa’s eyes said he refused to help. Fight your own battle, the look on Pa’s face said, my daughter has paid the ultimate price for my freedom, let it be. “This isn’t happening right Pa? You won’t let her do it. Pa say you won’t?”

Pa turned from him. The shame hit the floor as he dragged his worn and battered feet to his room.

“Pa?” The click of his door resounded through the shabby farmhouse unable to hold its own during the winter storm. Soon there would be snow on the ground. Pa could not make the trip, whether he knew it or not. Naomi is the only Gatson left destined to be free. Jacob knew it. And deep down, Pa did too.

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS

VIII

Naomi laid in her bed. The ceiling took a life form of its own, flickering moments she had shared with Ma when she was as healthy as an ox. Ma rummaged around in her room, always telling stories. If they weren’t about W.E.B Du Bois or Marcus Garvey and his tales of working her up about returning to Africa, she spun wild tales about Oshun, and her powers of love and tireless fights for justice. But before Oshun, her stories were always about the Sheriff.

A hitch would appear in Ma’s voice that made Naomi think when they were younger, if he had not been so mean half the time, she might have liked the Sheriff better than Pa. Naomi recalled the time she had begun to bleed. As Ma showed her how to clean herself and what to do for her aching stomach, full grown breasts, and a non-stop sweet tooth, she told Naomi she was a woman now—that she would now, more than ever, attract the attention of men. Lots of them.

“You got your brothers looking after you and that’s good and all, but the Sheriff is the one who will take care of you till the end,” Ma had said.

“The Sheriff? Jack’s Pa?” Naomi moved from her cot to the floor, lifted up her dress and laid her hot torso on the cold wood floor, “The

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NINA LOUISE same man that kicked us off the train some time back, that Sheriff? I don’t want no man like him Ma, besides, little Jack thinks he gonna marry me one day.” Naomi watched her Ma finish cleaning her sole nightstand with a dust rag. She said nothing. Naomi glared at Ma who situated her curvy figure against the window. As she leaned further into it, Naomi half expected her to suddenly dissolve into the wall and disappear altogether. Ma had a knack for losing herself in the past retelling tales of what she called the good years, before she and Pa got married and the Sheriff, a longtime friend, quickly turned foe.

“He’s not that bad, Naomi. He can take care of you the way no other man in this town can. Anything your heart desires, he would give you. He probably wouldn’t even force himself on you until the lust won out and maybe not even then for fear of losing you forever. That is how it had been for us. He begged, he pleaded with me not to marry your Pa. He promised me the world.”

“Ma!” Naomi shouted. She covered her ears.

Ma turned her gaze on her daughter, sprawled out on the floor, looking every bit her twin but darker, curvier, with stunning chestnut eyes, Ma knew no man could resist.

Naomi held her gaze. “He said he would never lay a hand on me if I promised to never leave his side. Hard to believe ain’t it? Considering the kind of man he turned out to be?”

“Ma, you ain’t going to give me away to him, are you?”

“Gal, please. The men in this house would die before they would see you by that man’s side. I guess I would too. Sometimes it’s not easy being replaced. Even if the affection is now geared toward your own daughter,” Ma moved toward the door. “You fancy him a little bit, don’t you?”

“Ma. Lord knows I don’t.”

“Then why you always staring after him?”

“Because I wonder how a man like that can have a kind, sweet kid like Jack.”

“He was once sweet,” Ma said, “real sweet.” she stopped, looked off into the ceiling as if remembering one or two occasions where the Sheriff had been more than sweet to her. “Give it another ten years, when me and Pa are dead and gone and maybe you can be the woman to sweeten him up again.” Ma opened the door and left.

Naomi rested her chin on the floor, swayed her

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS belly from side to side and said, “Over my dead body.”

“Not all white people are bad, Naomi. And not all bad people are white. If you care to live a long and prosperous life, you bes remember dat. There was a time the Sheriff was a real good person, just like your Jack, then his pa got ahold of him, taking him to all those hateful meetings, lynches and whore houses, his spirit just broke.”

Naomi watched Ma set her laundry on the bed.

She could see the sadness that crept in around the corners of Ma’s mouth. “ And I didn’t help none by gettin married to pa right out of school. Everyone he knew, everyone he loved, broke his heart. That day under the Miller’s tree laid it all on the line for us.”

Ma continued to tell Naomi a story she had heard many times before, but she knew by now to just sit and listen. It was the last day of school for Ma, like Pa she had started working to help her family, but everyone, especially the young Sheriff to be made sure she remained in school until she graduated. Pa had left school after the eighth grade to help feed his brothers and sisters. Pa had told the young Sheriff he intended to marry Ma and the sooner the better.

He was ready for his own family. The young Sheriff waited for Ma outside of her last class. As soon as she emerged, he grabbed her hand and they ran for the hill. The hill that leads to the Miller’s house, to home, to Pa. As Ma would tell it, they ran all the way without a word. The rain came down light as feathers, still, the young Sheriff swung her under the Miller’s tree to confess.

“He said, after taking a long breath and looking at me like I was the moon and the stars, tears filled his eyes, full of love and passion and he said it, he finally said it.” Ma said.

“I love you, Miss Ella, I love you so much I can’t hardly breathe.” He pulled her in close, “you can’t marry anyone else but me, you just can’t.”

“We can never marry and you know that. Your pa would rather see you dead and so would mine.”

“We can run away. We can head north to Chicago or New York.”

“It’s still not legal. I like you and all but…” She had said.

“You know damn well Ella, what we feel for one another is more than like.” He said. He cupped her face in his hands and bent down to kiss her, but Ma moved.

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NINA LOUISE “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t moved, other times I am glad I did. I don’t know if your pa would have married me if he had caught us kissing.”

“So this is where Pa stormed up the hill and interrupted the kiss?”

“No, nothing like that. When I moved, I startled him. I think I hurt his feelings, he pulled me tighter and said, I will love no one else the way I love you. I moved closer to him, stood on my toes and brought his head down to mine, right as our lips touched I heard your pa shouting my name.

I pulled away and ran towards him.”

“Ma how does this story change every time you tell it? Did the Sheriff run after you this time? Did he try to take you from Pa’s grasp and attack him?

“No, he just stood there and watched us head home. Your pa knew he was there, he knew he was trying to steal his girl, but he did nothing and from then on he never said much to the young Sheriff unless he had to.”

“I know Ma, he turned mean from that day forward and that’s what growing up does to those who dream like children, ain’t that right ma?”

“We are always bold, brave and full of dreams as children and then we grow up.”

Naomi remembers the last words Ma always used to say after telling the ‘young sheriff was a good man’ story.

And then we grow up.

Naomi smiled, remembering her childish self, what she wouldn’t give for a little bit more of that spite and spirit. She grew tired of the built-up stress, the anguish surrounding Pa and the wonders of Oshun as her constant companion. What if the Sheriff were a better tracker than he had seemed? If Jacob could get out alive and if they indeed left Pa behind, how long would it take for him to die?

Naomi sat up straight in bed at the crackling of thunder.

Oshun told her, she could not, she must not do it.

“Sorry Ma, I can’t do it.”

A soft rapping at the door turned Naomi’s gaze from the window as Jacob slid in. Naomi turned back to the window.

“It hasn’t rained in weeks. They’re trying to tell you something.” Jacob sat at the door. “Who?” Naomi knew what Jacob would say, but she wanted to hear him say it. She needed to believe that someone else believed in the stories of

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS goddesses, in the ghosts of ancestors. She needed to believe she had not come close to the edge of madness. “The goddesses. Who else? This is going to sound cruel,” Jacob’s voice became low and hollow as if air couldn’t breathe life into his words. “We have to leave Pa,” Jacob took his gaze from the floor to Naomi. Their eyes glossed over, melded into one.

Jacob wanted to plead, to say something else that would help Naomi change her mind.

Then, she said, “I know.” ⇷⇷ They worked in the fields non-stop for the next two weeks. If they could get this batch to town before Thanksgiving next week, they could leave Pa with enough money to handle the rest of winter and Spring on his own. They devised their plan over the sugar cane, knee-deep in mud.

While Jacob talked of various ways to ease Pa’s demise, Naomi thought only of the gifts the Sheriff had gotten in the habit of leaving on their porch at dawn. This had been happening ever since she had agreed to live with him at the Miller’s old farmhouse. The night she burned the letters she remembered how confident he sounded when he shifted his truck to reverse.

“By Christmas then?”

Naomi nodded. She stepped down from his truck and watched him pull away. The honeymoon phase of their soon-to-be union had begun. He always left her gifts in threes: body lotion or a bar of Camay soap, accompanied with a blue silky dress and fancy dress shoes on his first visit, followed by more soap, a necklace and furry house slippers on his second trip. This morning he left her another dainty dress meant more for summer than winter, practically see through. Naomi turned the package inside out and upside down waiting for the slip to fall out, but instead a heart bracelet and earrings tumbled to the ground. Had she liked him even a little, this magical spell may have worked on her.

She abandoned the memory of opening her pretty spring dress this morning when she heard Jacob yelling at the top of his lungs.

“Naomi. Naomi. Damn gal what you over there thinking about? Pa got to go somehow. We can’t just leave him here to die.”

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NINA LOUISE “We are not going to poison our own Pa.” “Then, what? Huh, tell me what we gonna do?”

Naomi grabbed her basket of sugar cane, “There has been a duel a long time coming. I think one way or another, Pa is going to get the freedom he deserves.” She carried the basket to the edge of the back porch and set it down with the other crates and baskets they had gathered, ready for the weekend.

Jacob looked like a natural born salesman as he auctioned off their sugar cane left and right. Naomi had two deliveries to make. She sent word to Ester and Jack, a heads up. She had been careful not to mention when or where they were headed only, she would be in touch once she could. She had written the brothers back weeks ago and let them know the Gatsons would no longer receive their mail at this address. They too would get the hint and read between the lines. Naomi tried not to worry. The brothers were busy with training, they could not be expected to write every week. Still, she felt sick to her stomach whenever their names popped into her head.

She held four letters in hand, one for the brothers, one for Ester, one for Jack, and the last for the messenger who fled that night, never to be seen or heard from again. If the deputies caught her, she could relinquish Jack’s letter with little suspicion, but there would be trouble if they got word of the messenger’s whereabouts. He needed money to get North and it was the least the Gatsons could do.

The second drop off, Naomi arranged all her gifts from the Sheriff into a tidy package and labeled it: Jack’s Ma. She would know it was from Naomi and that these were gifts from her husband to his new mistress. If they were indeed out of town this week, the package would be here when they arrived home. Naomi smiled at the thought of how the conversation would bring about a rippling effect of the Sheriff’s quick demise.

She had been thoughtful enough to carry a basket full of sugar cane in for Mr. Adler. He often had to skip the weekly farming sales-trade only blocks from his post office since his workers refused to work Saturdays. Naomi had taped the three letters to the bottom. Mr. Adler knew by now where to find her letters to mail out in case someone–or the Sheriff himself were to catch her in the act of trying to reach freedom by way of alliances. They exchanged nods and she ran her hand across the bottom of the basket before she sat it down on his counter.

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS He had barely gotten her name out of his mouth when the door opened again. A deputy. Naomi pulled out her letter for Jack and slid it across the counter.

“Well, what do we have here?” the deputy asked.

Naomi and Mr. Adler knew him well. He had a reputation for harassing the kids and teenagers often hanging out in the alleys. Some said he fancied the boys more than the girls.

Naomi turned to him, her fingers never left the edges of the letter, “Just a little note for Jack. I hear he will be home for Christmas. I wondered if he might be so kind as to bring me some of that Cherries Jubilee they are so fond of in New York.”

The deputy moved closer and eyed the letter as if he could read the lie between her lips, “Now, you know better Miss Naomi, can’t travel with food like that on the train.

Besides, I hear by Christmas you gonna have a new home to call your own,” he glared at her for a long time. Naomi glared back.

She wanted to say something, but anything she said would reveal her plans to never step one foot in that house.

“Is that what you hear? Then I guess my new stepson will have very little cupboard space to fit a gift for his new ma.”

The deputy smirked. The frustration read on his face like wild beets smashed on the ground, bleeding small spots of color from his cheeks to his fingers. He snatched the letter, held it up to the light, then proceeded to tap it on her nose as if he were going to force her to open it and read it aloud. If she threatened him with a visit from the Sheriff, the deputy would have second thoughts. Fortunately for her, she did not have to. He put the letter back down on the counter, looked her up and down one last time before he headed out.

“Just because you gonna be someone’s wench for the month don’t give you the right to be all uppity,” he turned back to gloss over her appearance once more, “be careful or he might just up and give you a way to the next deputy in line.”

Hardly. If she knew anything about the Sheriff, Naomi was assured he would never hand her off so easily to a wannabe sheriff like deputy Douglas. The Sheriff would kill any man who tried to take Naomi for himself. His intentions had been clear for years. “Good day, sir.”

“See you soon, Miss Naomi.”

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NINA LOUISE Once the door clicked on his sparkling work shoes, Naomi turned to Mr. Adler, who had been holding his breath.

“Dear lord, I hate that man,” Mr. Adler said, “I’ll take care of this for you, then. And I believe this letter is for you, from Jack” He pulled a tiny envelope from his pocket and slid it across the counter.

Naomi nodded. She slid him the letter and reached over for his hand and cupped Jack’s letter between her fingers, “Thank you so much Mr. Adler.”

“The pleasure has been all mine, Miss Gatson. It has been an honor serving your family.” She nodded again, headed for the door, then remembered what else she had hoped to find here waiting for her. “No word from the brothers?”

“No ma’am.”

“Well then, you take real good care of yourself Mr. Adler.”

“Safe travels, Miss Gatson.”

She looked at him. He knew this would be their goodbye. She opened the door and left. ⇸⇸ When Oshun arrived, Naomi dreamed of the sea.

Oshun carried her through rich mountainous lands: green, earthy and alive. Naomi’s fingertips grazed the lions she ran beside, she reached into the land gathering food to hand feed the giraffes and when Oshun skirted their feet along the waters, Naomi danced with dolphins. As they crossed the sea making way for land, Oshun released her. Naomi drifted to the bottom and as she fell, her eyes remained fixed on the dismantled bones, joining together, collecting in Oshun’s arms as one. Once she hit the seafloor, piles of bones surrounded her, they assembled as one and reached for the surface. She closed her eyes, thinking the time had come to let go, but a swift Oshun lifted her up and above the bones across vast oceans until land caked between the cracks of Naomi’s toes. Her dreams of Oshun were full of lives dripping in gold. Each time Naomi awakened with a new desire to survive. Oshun managed to slip a piece of Naomi’s past into her memory and her future.

When Naomi had nightmares, they came in spades. Sometimes she would go days, even weeks before

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS seeing a ghost from her past, a vision of Ma or Oshun. Other times the demons would flood her with voices and faces she hoped she would never see again. She should have known after the deputy’s remarks that sleep would be hard to come by, and once it did the demons would manifest into her world and she would not be able to escape.

Naomi eclipsed into a dream when the Miller’s farmhouse came into view. She descended the hill and glanced back to see the only home she knew fade in the twilight. When she heard someone call her name, “Naomi.”

She looked back expecting to find Pa. But on the second calling, she realized the Sheriff had called her name. She held a basket of sugar cane and swayed it about, careful not to let the daisies she rounded up fall to the ground. She smiled at him. He waved her to the house. The house looked nothing like it had when the Miller’s lived there, nothing like it had when she was a child.

The house rose from the freshly chopped fields with a fresh coat of pale yellow paint. The huge door shined of mahogany matching the wrap-around porch to perfection.

Numerous daisy plants lined the walkway leading to the front door. She took note of the new roof, the new large front windows and the scattered rocking chairs, four in all. He opened the door for her and led her in. He did not embrace her but stood back, took her hand, and twirled her around and around. Then Naomi caught sight of the new furniture, the classic teal four-burner stove, the wide sink, and a refrigerator so large she imagined a human body could fit inside.

And oh-the-books spread throughout the living room; she gasped. She set her basket down and embraced the Sheriff with a full hug. She felt like a little girl on Christmas morning.

Naomi admired the yellow and brown furniture.

All the tables and chairs matched the hardwood floors and the heavy door decorated with three tiny windows to peek out arriving guests. She waltzed into the kitchen where the yellows, browns, and blues brought about a crisp and rich feeling Naomi had never known before. She opened every cabinet to find something new and sparkling. She ran her fingers across the tea kettle and the coffee cups the Sheriff had laid out for them near the new stove. Blue and yellow hand towels dressed the sink and the stove. Her grin could not fall even if she tried to force it.

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NINA LOUISE She ran to the rooms, two small ones separated by a bathroom. Orange and navy replaced the yellows and browns. The front bedroom’s bed loomed high off the ground as if it had been stacked with two crates instead of one. She touched it, leaned on it, then flung her body across it, her feet dangled over the edge.

She sprung up when she heard the Sheriff ask, “Are you happy now?”

Again, like a little girl, Naomi smiled, grabbed the rag doll huddled in between several pillows and mouthed “yes,” to the Sheriff. She fell back into the bed.

The house became dark. The lights dimmed at the corners of the ceilings. Thunder cracked and Naomi turned to see rain attacking the bedroom window sill like it intended to enter and harm her. She sprung up.

This time deputy Douglas stood before her, stared her down and shoved her back onto the bed. He leaned over her, he slithered his body across hers, until they met face to face. He cradled her body between his legs. He held a beer in one hand and a knife in the other. He laughed loud, spitting beer onto himself and Naomi’s summertime dress the Sheriff had bought her. She tried to move. She tried to get up, but each time he held her down, the knife throbbed at her throat.

Her eyes grew wide. Naomi called out for the Sheriff. Twisting and turning as the deputy tried to put his lips on hers.

The Sheriff staggered into the room. He glared at Naomi.

“You were just a tease, you little whore. Did you really think I would leave my wife for you?”

Naomi continued to squirm, to move from under the deputy’s paralyzing weight. The Sheriff poured his beer on Naomi’s face, then on her dress. He yanked her bun undone and squeezed her cheeks. The Sheriff leaned further in to plant a kiss on her breast, which he had cupped in his hand, when she pulled back, and freed her hands, she shoved them both to the floor.

“NO!” Naomi screamed.

A heavy lower-body crash caused the Deputy to spill his beer. The Sheriff hit the nightstand and took a small tumble to one knee. Naomi screamed again; this time, the roar shattered the window. The Sheriff moved to strike her with his beer bottle across the face when she kicked him in the groin. Naomi kicked him again in the head. He collapsed into the nightstand, it crumbled beneath his weight. She

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS took the bottle from his hand, jumped down from the bed and onto the Deputy. She struck him fast in the eyes, and watched as red oozed from his eye socket. Then Naomi pierced his neck. The water fountain of blood gushed everywhere.

She should have gone for the neck first. It was a fatal wound. Still, he shoved Naomi to the floor. He lunged for her, tore her dress, and exposed her bra. He pinned her down by the neck and began to tear at her undergarment when the Sheriff crawled over to them and slammed his broken bottle into the back of the deputy’s head. The Deputy fell backwards and onto the floor, dead.

Naomi watched as blood pooled from the back of his head and onto the once sparkling clean floor. She hurried to get up and out when the Sheriff grabbed her by the foot.

“You are mine, I told that damn fool he could scare you but he couldn’t have you. No one can. YOU ARE MINE.” Naomi scrambled to her feet, the broken bottle caught her heel and she bled. He grabbed her by the back of the head and threw her against the wall. She toppled over.

He picked her up and threw her on the bed. His hands laid on her legs, he inched her dress up higher and higher. Naomi could not catch her breath. She struggled to bring air to her body.

Her demeanor changed. She smiled and began to laugh.

“You want this Sheriff? You want me?” she asked.

She sat up and tore at his shirt. She took hold of his belt buckle undoing the latches and unzipped his pants. The Sheriff stood up. She could tell he was both shocked at her behavior and surprised. He smiled his devilish smile and climbed on top of her. Naomi had never seen a bulge in a man’s pants itching to come out before. It beat at the Sheriff’s boxer’s until it found it’s opening. When the Sheriff took hold of his member, she watched him as he tipped his head up to the ceiling, eyes closed, feeling a relief he had not felt for a long time. This is not how Naomi dreamed it would be.

She only dreamed of Kang and sweet kisses that tasted like Sugar Babies and orange soda pop. Naomi drew an exhausted breath, her eyes watered and her hands shook from fear.

She had heard Ma and Pa going at it late in the night, the loud panting, moaning, banging always scared her. She was sure Pa was trying to kill Ma. One night, Abe told her it is

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NINA LOUISE just what grown folks do to make babies or show their love for one another.

“Don’t you worry none,” he had said, “you will know when it’s love or when they tryin ta hurt’cha.”

She reached up to pull him down toward her; she turned to her side, grabbed the loose belt, swung it around his neck, pulled him down onto the bed and tightened her hold until he lost all his color. Naomi wrapped the belt around the palm of her hand, her bloodied foot pushed the Sheriff away from her as she pulled the belt tighter and tighter. The Sheriff squirmed. He struggled for air, his arms flared about aimless and desperate, searching for safety. He turned red, then blue-white. He grappled for the belt, then his hands went limp. His life lost air.

Naomi screamed.

A startled Jacob and Pa stood at Naomi’s bedroom door. Jacob inched closer to Naomi, he feared she was still daydreaming, or nightwalking as they called it, and that she may attack unaware of who he was. She held a broken drinking glass in one hand and a candle in the other, dimly lit, its wax dripped at her feet. The charred edges of the glass cut Naomi on the arm, and inner-thigh, blood dripped in pools around her. Jacob had to wake her before she killed herself.

“Hey there, gal, it be alright, you safe now, ” Jacob said.

“Let’s go clean you off and fix up them there cuts. Shall we?”

He reached his hand out for the broken short glass. He should not have called her ‘gal’ she had told him time and time again how she hated the nickname. He knew why. Pa had given it to her when she was a girl, but when the Sheriff took to calling her gal too, Naomi refused to answer.

Her stare flickered and her eyes grew wide as she woke to the terrified look on Pa’s face. Jacob tried to soften the look of worry, but Naomi ached all over her body as if the violation had been real. She stepped back fearing she would harm Jacob. He reached out his hand again.

Naomi’s eyes followed Jacob’s hand to the broken bloody glass. She gasped, “Dear Lord, did I kill the Sheriff?”

She gripped the candle tighter and took another step back.

Jacob moved to steady her balance. He put his arm around her waist and removed the glass from her grasp. Naomi collapsed into his arms as they fell onto the bed.

“You had a bad dream is all.”

Naomi took in the pool of blood on the floor below

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS her feet, she inspected her injuries. She would live.

Jacob jumped up and grabbed a towel from the end of Naomi’s bed. She kept towels in the room for Ma’s bout with night sweats to cool her forehead on nights too difficult to sleep. He placed the towel in her hand and watched as she smeared the blood away from her arm and leg. The small cuts would scar her for life, but they would not bring about her end, not on this night.

Jacob glanced toward Pa who had already begun the slow walk back to his room. “All will be okay Pa, don’t you worry none,” Jacob said.

They listened to the dragging of Pa’s cane and the scurrying of his feet before they turned their gaze away from the door and to one another.

“We gotta leave Pa.” “I know.”

“When?”

“Soon enough, Jacob, soon enough.” ⇸⇸ Three days later the Gatsons gathered around their tiny kitchen table for their final Thanksgiving meal. Naomi cooked a feast for a dozen grown men. The counters spilled with dishes full of cornbread dressing, green bean casserole, buttered rolls, and corn biscuits. The ham, turkey, and mashed potatoes covered the stove. Abe’s and Aaron’s empty seats were filled with sweet potato casserole and baked macaroni and cheese. Cherry, apple, and pecan pies cooled on the oven racks, and filled the air with warmth, sugar and broken promises.

Naomi had outdone herself. The Gatsons expected no guests, still, they eyed the windows frequently for the Sheriff’s arrival. If Jack had done right by Naomi he would be found at a dinner table somewhere in New York City.

But her gut ached. The pain she felt on the night she woke to cuts and bruises stayed with her, buried in the pit of her stomach. She imagined worms running around in her insides, tangling her body parts into one solid pile of goop. She had no appetite. Even her beloved pecan pie brought along with it sorrow, as she stared into the glaze of nuts, cinnamon, and brown sugar. Naomi and Jacob decided they would leave everything here for Pa. They would not take

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NINA LOUISE a single bite. It would be hard enough on the run without an extra bag of food holding them down. If all went well, they would hit their first safe house before the sun set. They could go a half or a full day without food.

Pa had not stopped eating since he woke to the smell of the turkey and dressing. He had not said much since Naomi’s, “attempt to die,” as Jacob had put it. He knew it was a dream. Pa was certain she had planned to take her own life that night. Jacob could run on his own, and Pa would be left here alone to deal with the Sheriff and his illness by himself.

They had run a last drop of sugar cane to the neighbors several farms south of the DuBois’ in hopes to avoid suspicion. The Robbins had helped them a great deal during the Great Depression. All the neighbors took care of one another, but the Robbins went above and beyond to make sure none of their neighbors went hungry. Mrs. Robbins had been Ma’s one good friend, having been with her through thick and thin, and as Ma recalled on several occasions, she had saved Ma’s life. When Naomi asked how, Ma would say, “Mrs. Robbins even as a child had a knack for being at the right place at the right time.”

“Thank you Jesus. Thank you Oshun,” Ma said.

And that was that, she never embellished the incidents. On their return home Naomi waved to a young boy in the street. When they passed him, she smiled and recognized him as the eldest of the DuBois children. He was twelve, thirteen at best. He was a runner and a talker. They needed to leave soon before word reached the Sheriff. The last time they visited the Robbins’ the brothers fled hours later. They had to outrun the law, the Sheriff and now the eldest DuBois’ mouth. For all Naomi knew they would be spending the rest of their lives on the run.

They prayed, they ate, they danced when the radio transmitted more than a single song. Naomi and Jacob watched their Pa disappear into his room during one of his many coughing fits. He always emerged with a towel drenched in blood. Naomi cleaned what she could in the kitchen. She left expiration notes on each of the leftovers and made lists of the families Pa, if up to it, should take them to before they spoiled. “‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,’ is on gal.

Come on out here and dance with your Pa one last time.”

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS Naomi could hear Duke Ellington’s piece booming louder.

Ma and Pa raised them on jazz. The brothers and Jacob took after their parents and could hold a beat, but Naomi could not dance to save her life. This fact never prevented her from joining them on the living room dance floor even if she bushwhacked their toes with her two left feet.

Pa had not smiled for weeks, but hearing Ellington play sparked memories in him. Even his cough and his cane could not prevent him from enjoying one of his favorite tunes. He did not speak once about Naomi replacing him on the flight for the north. Naomi raised Jacob and Jacob would not leave this house without her. On the night she assaulted herself with a broken glass and candle, Pa set his own plan into motion. Abandoned and left to die, the journey north is not one he could accomplish with or without the help of his son. He battled his own night demons. Ma came to him, cradled him in his sleep, told him to let them go, let them flee. It was hard to comply with her wishes. But each day he lost the strength to beg them to stay at least until his death.

Naomi ran out into the living room and spun Jacob around by the arm. Pa smiled, chuckled. The damage had been done. He could not halt what he had started. He had to delay them for as long as he could until his helper arrived. By the third song the radio cut off and Jacob fetched their things, a small luggage for each of them. A large cotton sack Naomi often carried to the river held her valuables and Jacob swung around a matching satchel across his chest. The shame wore on Pa’s face. Once he had wanted nothing more than the freedom of his children, now he pleaded with them in every physical way he could-for them to stay.

“Read for me will you, gal, one last time?”

Naomi stood in the kitchen at the back door, her suitcase ready, her satchel thrown across her chest like Jacob. They stood there smiling at one another, Jacob’s hand on the door, he was ready, he wanted to go now. Naomi closed her eyes, patted his shoulder.

“Okay Pa, what shall I read to you?” Naomi moved toward the other room, back to Pa. Her gut told her she should kiss him on the forehead, tell him she will see him again soon. She owed Pa, she had not the guts or the will to sacrifice her life for his. Ma never asked her to, she said, “Run first chance you get.” Oshun, the goddess of rivers and love, opened the heavens, showering her love on them. She

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NINA LOUISE too told them tonight was the night. She told Naomi to run.

Guilt held her back.

Pa situated himself in Ma’s old reading rocker. No one had used it since she passed. He held her makeshift book in his hands. It was the one and only story Ma ever wrote for her. They had worked on it together when Naomi turned fifteen. She had wanted proof of the goddesses and their existence and believed if they could not be found in a book, they were not real. Ma searched the local libraries, book stores, but no one had written about the Yoruba people in Nigeria and their gods or goddesses. Naomi had almost given up. She stopped reading her bible and believed even those stories were false, made up by men to regulate other men and especially women. She read authors who she could prove existed.

“You want me to read, ‘Oshun, the Goddess of Love and Water?’ ” Naomi asked. She grinned, eyeing the booklet.

She remembered how she had drawn the pictures as Ma described Oshun and her fight for justice. As a girl, she could not keep up. Her wrist hurt and her yellow crayon filed down to the nub.

She knelt beside Pa, took the book in her hand and ran her finger across the cover, “I don’t even know if I can make out Ma’s handwriting anymore.”

“Don’t be silly, you know the story by heart.”

It was true. She had been so proud of her first book. Naomi shared it with the brothers, Jacob, Jack and most of her teachers. When the Sheriff got a hold of it and tried to rip it to pieces, she lunged at him and beat on his chest with such violent force, he fell to the ground. When he rose he threw her and the book to the ground, but before Naomi fell, she got off a clear shot and punched him in the nose. She grabbed her booklet of no more than ten pages and ran. It would be weeks before the Sheriff showed his face around their farm again. He never spoke of the incident.

Naomi picked at the specks of dirt smashed into the cover where she had colored a picture of Oshun walking across the blue sea. Oshun wore a gold tiara, draped in gold earrings, a necklace and stacks of gold and silver bracelets. Naomi had used the brown crayon to color her skin. They were the same shade of brown. She prided herself on the gown, it revealed little skin but opened mid-thigh to reveal Oshun’s luscious long legs. The gown flowed wide and long in the wind. Tears streamed down her face as she looked up at Pa, took his hand

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS in hers and sat on the floor. She opened the first page: Oshun, the goddess of water The goddess of love is called to defend her people.

Naomi reads the writing on the bottom of the next page: Oshun - the Mammy Waters Controls all where water runs free.

Naomi flipped the page: She calls to her sisters, the goddesses of earth, of the skies When she needs help.

She surges with energy every time her face touches water She is a force of Harmony She turned another page. Naomi drew a huge heart covering the entire page.

A force of harmony Clouds covered the gray skies. Naomi had worked hard to make the clouds a lighter gray than the sky, with a crack of blue and a half sun. She drew only two stars and a lopsided angel in the corner.

Oshun enjoyed bathing herself.

Naomi drew Oshun half deep in the ocean water wetting her hair. On the next page, she had Oshun laying on the beach, surrounded by gold, admiring herself in a mirror.

She loves gold as much as she loves her people Oshun carries a mirror to admire her beauty A pot of honey hung around her waist.

The next two pages showed a huge ship in the sea.

Naomi had drawn black bodies surrounding its edges: bodies leaping into the air as others fell into the sea. Naomi had drawn pirates with weird wicked hats, missing teeth, dirty skin, and tattered clothing. Some of these men pushed bodies into the sea. On the last page, on the back of the ship, she

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NINA LOUISE drew two girls holding hands—their bodies hovered above the ocean as they lept.

Injustice angered Oshun otherwise feisty and assertive.

On the final page, Naomi had drawn another huge picture of Oshun embracing, cradling, the Black bodies that had jumped from the ship to land.

Evil-doers! Enslavers!

Oshun shouted through her tears. The final page showed a picture of the sea engulfing the ship with hands and bones floating up, reaching towards the break of the sea, reaching towards the heavens. Naomi wrote on the last page. Ma had fallen asleep twice and insisted there was no better ending than Oshun shouting to the heavens. Naomi disagreed and drew one more hand breaking through the sea and wrote in the final words of her first ever booklet.

My spirit is free.

My spirit has been renewed.

My spirit is reborn.

Naomi glared at the final image for a long moment.

She could hear Jacob scuffling behind her. She heard Pa’s heavy breathing, he drifted off, taken by sleep. Soon, his snoring replaced his heavy breathing. Naomi jumped up.

She placed the booklet in Pa’s lap. She kissed his cheek, then hurried to meet Jacob at the back door. They gathered their things, opened the door and closed it softly behind them.

They stared into the back window of the home they had known all their lives, watching their Pa rest. Then a roaring sound of a truck pulled up to the porch, its lights beamed into the house. The illuminated exposed every nook and cranny the home held. Jacob and Naomi scurried off the back porch and ran.

“The Sheriff,” Jacob said.

Naomi nodded. She glanced at the oranges and honey left out for Oshun as they ran for the river. It was Naomi’s offering to the goddess for her assistance in their getaway. Jacob pulled on her hand and they sped up, through

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS the crops, the tall green grass and behind the trees towards the Red River.

Jacob maintained a fluid, quick pace. He had trained his legs for this moment, but Naomi–had she not run with him often–would have fallen into the dewy, splintering tall grass. And the way Jacob ran, Naomi wondered if he would have left her behind. She dropped Jacob’s slippery hand and stopped behind a tree to catch her breath. Pa must have woken to the Sheriff’s thundering roar unto their property, he honked and flashed his lights that shone as far as the river trees. Naomi and Jacob hid. When the trees went dark, Naomi could hear the men arguing, their voices growing fainter with every step she took. She heard the door slam and guns clicking as they approached the edge of the Gatsons’ farm and the beginning of marshes and swamp water leading to the river. They faced south for town.

The trees sparse in some areas and thick and cluttered in others, Naomi took two steps and then another two, before she ran to Jacob’s side at another tree. The Sheriff called her name.

“Naomi. Naomi, you can’t run forever.”

She looked back at the house, it seemed miles away. Yet, she heard the Sheriff as if he stood next to her, whispering in her ear. To see him standing there in the middle of the field not far from the house, reminded her of every nightmare she had of him. Before she woke, he was always standing in the middle of their field, their crops, calling her name.

The Sheriff could run no more, he had stopped, bent over, out of breath, unable to find his words. Naomi appeared from behind the tree, she exposed herself and for a brief second when he regained his composure and looked up—his eyes laid on hers.

“Naomi? Come on,” Jacob said.

“I will find you, ya hear. No matter how long it takes, I will find you.”

Naomi moved out of view and watched as Pa sprung from the back porch with his shotgun in hand. He crept towards the Sheriff and aimed the shotgun at his back.

Something was wrong. Jacob could tell by the look on Naomi’s face. He searched through the trees to find Pa approaching the Sheriff.

“She ain’t gonna be where you going,” Pa shouted.

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NINA LOUISE Fifty years of built up resentment twitched now in his thumb.

Pa could not see what Jacob and Naomi saw. The Sheriff with his rifle between his legs took it in hand, spun around and fired into Pa’s body. Pa, at the slightest inclination of movement, fired a shot. The Sheriff took the shot on the side, but his rifle got off a good and clear shot striking Pa up close.

The Sheriff stumbled around. He tried to use his shotgun to steady his fall. His hands flew up and into the air, the barrel of the shotgun howling at the sky.

Pa stood for a second. Naomi motioned towards the house. She wanted to go back to Pa. Jacob grabbed her arm, shook his head and with arduous effort pulled her away.

Naomi’s eyes stayed glued to Pa. She glimpsed as he grabbed his belly, blood poured out like wine from its bottle. He fell to his knees. Pa picked up his rifle and fired another shot –– at close range –– into the Sheriff’s body. Naomi and Jacob were blind to any bodily movement the Sheriff, if still alive, could have made. They watched Pa throw his head back and howl a screeching cry at the moon.

“Run, my babies run,” Pa cried out. “I miss Ma so much I think it’s about time we meet again.”

Like Jacob, Naomi could not stand to watch Pa die, even if it meant making sure the Sheriff was dead. They picked up the pace, ran through trees, trudged through sunless brown water when they heard another shot.

Jacob glanced back at Naomi, “We can make it. We almost there.”

She smirked. They were nowhere near almost there. The shootout between Pa and the Sheriff had bought them some time. Whether the last shot was from Pa or the Sheriff, they had to make it out of town before anyone discovered the body...or bodies. It occured to Naomi this might have been Pa’s plan all along to buy them some time. They were still on the run. Either the Sheriff or his deputies would come looking for them until they were out of the South, and even then, Naomi rest assured the Sheriff would travel as far as his search might take him just to find her.

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IX

They ran most of the night and into the early morning hours on the outskirts of Shreveport with little rest between farmhouses. The bus ride could last over an hour on a good day into the city, but they could not afford to be seen.

Their three hour jog led them near the edge of the city by 4:00 am. And there, huddled in the tall grass alongside the river, they slept. By the time the ground warmed, they rose and continued on. They inched by one officer slumbering in his car, then another, before jolting past the ‘Welcome to Shreveport’ sign.

Jacob and Naomi ate inland closer to the river and away from the main streets and traffic. They kept to the river’s edge until the sound of the hydraulics from aircraft carriers led them across the highway. They hoped to reach the street leading them into Wild Oak where a little farmhouse sat with a woman, her husband, and four children, awaiting their arrival.

The brothers came to mind. Naomi knew so many families along the Red River, but as quickly as she had thought about it, she realized most of them must be the families of the brokenhearted women Abe and Aaron had left behind. They had six stops in all. The seventh would lead them to the open city gates of Lafayette. And if they were

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If the Sheriff were indeed dead and it did not look like a double murder, their sudden disappearance could be seen as flight. From town to town they would be hunted. It dawned on Naomi, as they rested by the river for a second catnap, that there would be flyers with their names, descriptions, and a bounty on their heads. Naomi broke her silence with God. “Just this once,” she pleaded, “please get Jacob and me North. Please let us be free.” They were almost to the house, when Jacob looked back at her.

“Did you say somethin?”

“Just a prayer.”

“This faith of yours ain’t pleasin to God. It can’t come and go as it pleases.”

“No one said it went anywhere. Are we here?”

“Dear lord, you look a mess.”

“Like we been runnin’ for hours?”

Jacob chuckled, “Yeah. And yes ma’am, I think this little house is the one.”

They left the river behind them. Their clothes reeked of urine infested mud, days old sweat and salty river water. Naomi’s long trousers covered her worn farm shoes.

Her hair loosely tied in a bun at the nape of her neck released a hand full of curls cascading down her back. Jacob in a pair of the brothers’ old overalls looked no better. They hung on him like a child in his father’s clothes. Dirt and grass stains decorated his body from his head of short curls to his boots.

The pair dragged their worn and blistering feet another quarter of a mile. The small house did not appear suitable for six bodies, let alone eight. The only thing Naomi knew about this family is they owed the brothers a favor and they promised Abe they would help in any way they could.

Their home flashed a candle in every window. The secret hideaway hosts were expecting them to arrive any day. The candles were a sign of safety. They were clear to knock on the door and seek refuge. Naomi watched the sunrise settle into the clear sky; she strained her neck to catch a final glimpse of the glimmer falling off the side of the sun.

The brothers had insisted they lay low for as long as they could at the first stop. “You could make it to Grand Bayou before they even notice you two gone, but if things go bad, lay low for as long as you can. Until you are certain it is safe,” Abe wrote, in his last letter to the house.

THE SEA OF DEAD SOULS He did not know the Sheriff would return. Or that Pa had planned to shoot him dead. This meant instead of hiding out here for days it would have to be weeks, maybe longer. But the brothers had arranged for them to help out the secret hosts in every way they could. Jacob would help their crops and Naomi would watch the babies. They were a young couple, their eldest only eight years old. Naomi recognized the woman as a girl who had come by the farm once or twice asking about Abe. She knew this woman held a soft spot in Abe’s heart or he would have never had the guts to ask her young family to risk their lives and their farm to help in his family’s escape plan. The woman motioned them about the back of the house.

She greeted them there with a hot pail of water and clean towels. Her youngest, six months or less, wailed for a feeding.

“You two look god awful. Clean up as best as you can before you come inside. I got sum piping hot food waiting on ya.”

“Yes, ma’am. Sho will.” Jacob said. He wanted to say more, but she went inside and closed the door.

By the time the head of household had decided to go to town for supplies, food and The Shreveport Times, Naomi and Jacob had been there almost a week. They itched to leave. Jacob did not like to be bossed around by anyone else other than Naomi and from the crop fields to the house, every minute a stranger was giving him orders. For Naomi, it was the demands they made for them to attend church. Jacob warned her she needed at least another week’s rest. Their journey would be 27 miles and at least nine hours if they didn’t stop for food or rest. He feared because of their worn shoes, without enough rest, their feet would never recover.

“It looks like you two may be in the clear to head out.” The man brought the papers in last. Hollered for Jacob’s help and as the wife and eldest daughter threw the groceries in the kitchen, Naomi grabbed the newspapers along with the baby and headed out to the porch to sit and read for herself. “No one appeared to be looking for two Negroes on the run. Paper said, your Pa shot the Sheriff and the Sheriff killed him in self-defense. Neighbors say you two ain’t missing but you headed north over a week ago—those are some neighbors you got. They done saved y’all from a lynch mob.”

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Jacob poked his head out the front door, “Is it true? Can we go?”

Naomi did not bother meeting his stare. She read, cradling the baby, “I think we can.”

“Jacob man, stop messin round, we needs your help.” The man called.

“Let’s do this soon. I think I’ll be dead if we wait here much longer,” Jacob said.

There were quotes in the paper from neighbors how the Gatson kids had left their Pa to fend for himself weeks ago. The article made it seem like they were selfish children who had no plans to carry along a dying man to the Promised Land. There was nothing about the authorities and their desire to question them about the deaths that took place on the Gatson farm. She searched the obituary for their deaths. Pa hadn’t been listed. But neither had the Sheriff.

“Did he survive? Is the Sheriff still alive?”

“What’s that you sayin Miss Naomi?” the Misses asked.

“Nothing ma’am.”

Before she could give the idea a second thought the misses called her into the house to help make dinner, which really meant the Misses would watch while Naomi cooked.

Their hosts were having the best time of their lives. The lady of the house hadn’t cooked one meal since Naomi’s arrival and Jacob did most of the field work. It was no wonder they had all the energy in the world to work at loosening the box springs on their bed. Naomi put toilet paper in her ears to drown out the moaning and shouts. Jacob slept through it all, as did the babies. Only the eldest laid wide awake, eye-balling Naomi. Each night Naomi stayed in the Wild Oak home, she told the girl of Oshun. Her eyes lit up every night before she dozed off. She had a million questions for Naomi, but Naomi insisted they not wake the others, if she told her the story of the River goddess she had to remain silent until the very end of the story. Naomi dragged it out for days making sure to answer all the questions the girl had before they left.

Jacob led Naomi out of the house the following night when the house fell silent. Even the slightest noise could be heard from the roof to the ceiling. They left a note and money for the day’s supply of fruit, nuts, and bread they stashed in their bags. Still, they managed to slide out the

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back door, rummaging through the fields until they made their way on the small strip of highway near the river. The overgrown grass, tall and unkept, hid them from view.

They stopped twice to let their legs rest. The energy from the apples and pears sustained their excitement into the 11th hour when they arrived on the doorstep of the farmhouse on the outskirts of Grand Bayou. Their new hosts said little and unlike the first family they were an old married couple without a young body in sight. They showed Jacob and Naomi their room and handed Jacob a list of duties to attend to while they were hiding out. They asked for money for food and extra if Naomi and Jacob intended to eat as well. The note was accompanied with three local newspapers and a request for them to stay no longer than a week.

“We can’t afford trouble,” the note read, “And our boy comes around every other Sunday. Sorry we could not be of greater help. Aaron was a good soul, and he was always good to our boy.”

When Naomi finished reading the note, Jacob glared out the window and watched the rain hit their small window sill. They lacked any type of hospitality as Jacob completed the list of house chores; repaired the screen door, front and back, repaired the leak on the roof, and fixed the broken steps on the front porch, along with each window in the house that let in too much air and water when it rained.

Jacob was done in three days. Naomi cooked as often as they would let her. On the fourth day, when her feet completely healed, the host ran his errands in town. Jacob gave them three times the money needed for the short list of food they required for their next journey. Again, the papers said nothing.

That night Jacob suggested they leave the following evening after the snoring rattled the house. Naomi agreed. Her body had become accustomed to the long walks even before their journey as a child, and then a teenager.

God must have known what they would have to endure and prepared their body early on. Jacob had lost three toenails.

Naomi lost two. She would be relieved to leave this house.

There was something about the way the couple watched them. They stared at them as if they were murderers, sinners with nothing good on their minds, with no plans for a better life.

After dinner, they retired early to their room. They

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slept for five hours before waking to the horrifying sound of heavy breathing. It was just before midnight when they left the Grand Bayou farmhouse for Powhatan. Two houses down, five more to go. Naomi could see the train every night in her dreams. The train looked just as it did when she was a child. Big, brown, and shiny. It reeked of body odor, gasoline and floral perfume. The vision carried her to Powhatan like a goddess, floating on thick white clouds. This left Naomi unaware of the blisters forming on her heels and toes. She rested with her back to the damp ground and her face to the sky, counting climbing ants on the tree bark above her and the butterflies flapping from the Red River to the tall grass hiding her frame. Her smile stayed on her face until Jacob came running back from a local town market with two Coca-colas in hand and a newspaper.

“We can’t stop at the house in Powhatan. We gotta go all the way.”

“What do you mean all the way?”

“Alexandria if we can make it. We have to hide out with people we know, people we can trust. I think them damn Grand Bayou hosts done alerted the cops.” Jacob handed Naomi a coke and gathered his things.

Naomi hopped to her feet, “That’s nonsense? Jacob that does not make any sense. Why would they do that, we are not wanted criminals?”

“Can you make it?” Jacob asked.

“Jacob it’s another 60-65 miles away at best. It means we sleep out here for several more nights at least, it will take us days to get there.”

“The cops were everywhere. And not just any cops either.” Jacob grabbed his things and started down the river.

“I think I saw Deputy Doug. I think he put a price tag on us and that’s why they did what they did.”

“Deputy Doug?” Naomi said.

“The cop car definitely read Shreveport, but I couldn’t get a straight look at his face. I hid as they searched until I could head this way without drawing any attention.”

Naomi followed after him, dazed, she swayed with the trees from one end of the river to the other, “But why would they call the cops on us and why would they wait until we left when we were there for five nights? It just does not make any sense.”

“I don’t know, but can you make it?”

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“Calm down, calm down.” Naomi scooted her feet along the dirt gravel. In her mind, she did not think she could, but in her heart, she knew she had to make it. “Do I have a choice?”

Natchitoches stood nearly twelve miles down the river. Jacob had been guided by the brothers to move inland once past Powhatan. The road leading to the next town was only visible to those searching for runaways if the runaways chose not to hide amongst the forest swamp lands. Naomi and Jacob crossed Bayou Pierre and Grand Ecore before heading down the small strip of road. Fear carried them to Natchitoches on aching feet and worn legs. A few hours of daylight remained; they rested until nightfall, slept in the fields, ate the last of the nuts, figs and pears before they resumed their journey.

The openness of Natchitoches exposed them from building to building and house to house. They were starving.

It would be too risky to seek out a shop for food or water.

The constant fear of a search party by foot, horse, or car, kept them moving steadily and closer to the inland smaller roads.

They heard no commotions, hunting dogs, or police cars leading in or out of town. For a moment they felt a little safe, at least, safe enough to rest.

Naomi had not paid attention to the sign they passed, she could not remember if it was Cypress or Melrose.

She only knew they had walked for another six hours before she told Jacob she could go no further. Not on this dark abandoned road.

“Can you sleep on an empty stomach?” He asked.

Naomi collapsed into a pile of waist-deep grass and mud. Not a tree in sight to shield her from the black skies or lingering folk who wandered their lands with nothing to do but drink and smoke. Jacob used his body to cover Naomi as a drifter in shabby clothes skidded by them and paid them no mind.

“Should we run?” Naomi asked. She knew she could not lift her feet another step, but she would try if it meant safety.

“No. He looks in greater need of a meal and a fresh bath than we do.” Jacob stood. He peered over the fields of grass and watched the man scurry down the road as if late for a dinner prepared long ago. “I have an idea,” he said.

He rattled his pockets, the sounds of coins clicking together bounced off the buttons of his overalls.

“We are in the middle of nowhere. What ideas

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have you got, running through your head?” Naomi asked.

She laid her things bunched up together so she could rest her head on something other than the ground.

“One that will shorten our travel and leave us far less exposed then we are right now. Wait here, if I am not back after you have rested — leave without me. I will find you. I promise.”

Before she could hop up to halt him, Jacob hurried across the dirt road, “Jacob, don’t you dare…” “...It’s the only way. You can handle yourself, goddess of strength. Trust me.” And with that, he fled behind another wall of weathered tall grass.

Naomi peered around. Jacob was right, the man had carried himself along the road evaporating into the night like highway dust. Still, she grabbed her bags, held tight to the one with a kitchen knife and her spare pair of shoes. She huddled in a tight ball. Sure she would not get a wink of sleep until Jacob returned. But they walked some thirteen hours and she was unprepared for the toll it took on her body. She thanked God for her protection; moments later, she slept.

Naomi woke to rustled leaves and mud splattering against her face. When she wiped the caked mud covering her eyes and her ears, she spied Jacob rolling around in the field with the drifter from earlier.

“Jacob. Jacob!” Naomi searched her bag for the knife but withdrew one of her shoes. She angled for a position to hit the man who had Jacob pinned face down in the mud as he threw punches from both sides. Naomi swatted him hard, twice, before he turned on her and swung at her body. Naomi tumbled over.

Jacob managed to free himself loose. He wrestled the man until his older, bigger opponent lay face down in the mud. He punched him several times in the back of his head and a few in his back before Naomi caught his fist.

“Enough. We need to go.” She dragged him away from the man. They collected their things and headed down the road. Naomi and Jacob hovered along the edge, half-exposed along the fields of grass. Naomi said nothing for a long time. After a fight, men often found it hard to explain themselves.

“Did your idea pan out?” Naomi asked.

“We won’t know for another hour or so. Let’s just walk until we can’t walk no more.”

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“And what happened when you returned?”

“That dirty old man had walked back and circled the road. He must have seen me and followed because before I could wake you he was on top of me attacking me with blows. He must have been a boxer in another life. He went on and on about how I ruined his chance at love, how I ruined his chance at freedom.” Jacob stopped. “Wait, I have something for you.”

“So he thought you were someone else?”

“I guess. Didn’t even see you until I told him to leave us alone. Then he stopped pounding on me and turned to you. Just stared for a long time. I didn’t know what else to do, so I went after him.”

“Lord, Jacob. You are just as hot headed as the brothers,” Naomi turned around to find Jacob with two bags of Sugar Babies, two Coca-Colas and a wrapped half-eaten egg salad sandwich. She rushed for the sandwich.

“This was your big bright idea?”

“Sort of.”

Naomi grabbed the sandwich out of his hand. She stuffed the half sandwich down her throat in three large bites. “Could you not have bought two? Why did you have to eat the other half?”

Their swift stride moved them through the fields, each using a free hand to clear the grass blocking their sight.

“I did buy two. I was just hungrier than I thought.”

“Greedy. Naomi chuckled. She could not help but feel giddy after eating, a Gatson habit she supposed.

“Sing me a song.” Jacob asked.

“I don’t like singing. You sing.”

Jacob sang a church hymn Naomi had not heard since she was a little girl. When a tear escaped she stopped and glared up at the dark sky. She envisioned Ma, Pa, and Oshun and somehow the image of their joyful faces gave her strength.

Naomi and Jacob walked until the Sugar Babies were gone and the empty coke bottles remained in their hands, hanging from the edges of their fingers like they had carried their sodas this way since childhood. Naomi dragged her feet, but maintained the lead. A crackle shot across the sky. Then another, lightning and then the thunder. Then the rain.

“Damn it. We can’t catch a break today, can we?”

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Jacob said.

“Jacob Gatson,” he ran beside her and pulled out a jacket from one of his bags, “Let’s just see if we can find a big tree to huddle under for a little bit, until the rain lets up.”

“But we need to stay near the road.”

“Why?” Naomi asked.

Jacob opened his mouth as he spotted an old and tattered truck headed their way. It moved slow enough for the passenger to lean his head out of the window. Jacob and Naomi ducked. When the truck passed, Jacob walked to the edge of the road peeking his head out. It was not a police car.

The truck came to a halt and a man leaned out again, “Jacob Gatson? The man paused, then got out “Naomi. Jacob that you?”

Naomi reached for Jacob’s arm a second too late, he dashed into the road, “Lew. Lewis, you damn eager beaver, that you?”

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X

Naomi knew the name well. Lewis Carter grew up at a farm just north of theirs. His family moved away after he graduated high school when his Papa, his Ma’s Pa got sick and died suddenly. His Ma’s Ma, Nana would be left to care for herself if they did not move to help her, so Lewis, his mother, and his baby sister left Shreveport for Alexandria.

Jacob had wanted to move with them but he was only fifteen and had no job prospects. And Jacob had no desire to break his Ma’s heart, even when she made him angry by favoring the brothers more often than not.

Naomi ducked down in the grass. She heard a door slam shut, “Jacob, damn if your directions weren’t dead on.”

As she recognized the voice, she rose. She caught them in an embrace. Lewis stood back to view Jacob from head to toe.

They could have been brothers. In another life, Naomi was sure they were.

“I remembered this road from one of our football games we had in Chopin.”

“Yeah, the high school isn’t far from here. Naomi, that you?” Lewis yelled.

Before she could straighten her back, Lewis swept her into his arms and planted a huge kiss on her cheek. Lewis stood back. His face distorted, “What the hell did you two

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do? Sleep in shit?”

“Lewis Carter.” Naomi said.

“Sorry Miss Naomi, but damn if you two don’t stink something awful.”

The man driving the truck tapped his hand on the door, “We gotta go before we get shot out here.”

Lewis put a light arm around Naomi, took her bags off her shoulder and moved her to the back of the truck.

Jacob hopped right in.

“Sorry about this Miss Naomi, but you gonna have ta lay in the truck bed with this tarp over y’all.” Naomi stepped up but missed the tail end and slipped. “Nothing to worry about, we’ll lift you up,” Lewis said. His wide grin never left his face.

Jacob grabbed her under her arms as Lewis held and lifted her by her knees. To them she was as light as a feather. “Did you see any signs of deputy Doug or any cops?”

Jacob asked.

“Just one or two in their usual spots. But with all the Japanese they got to keep track of now, I think even your deputy done returned home by now.” Lewis hopped in.

“The Japanese?”

“I thought y’all knew,” Lewis said, “Since you been keeping tabs on the papers and all.” The truck pulled away, made a hard U-turn as slow as his truck could go, “The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor on the 7th and we going to war wit them. Cops been rounding up every Asian face they see since.”

“The 7th? What is today?” Naomi asked.

“It’s Christmas Eve, Miss Naomi. I think your goddesses done sent you a gift. Merry Christmas.”

Naomi barely made out the word ‘Christmas’ as the truck driver sped off like a jolly party of four white folks in a hurry to go nowhere fast. Jacob eased Naomi down onto the layered tarp. He held onto another tarp to cover their bodies and shield them from view. Even in the blackness, Naomi could feel Jacob’s stare.

“Should I register for the Army?”

“No, sir. They already got the brothers, they can’t have you too.”

“Tell me about Nana’s ma and how she managed to go to church all the time and still worship the goddesses.”

“She didn’t worship goddesses, she believed in

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them. There’s a difference and I don’t remember a lot. If you recall, she was nearly 96 when she died. We were young.”

“But Ma told you everything that woman told her, so spill it.”

Jacob tried to huddle close to keep them from shifting with the weight of the truck. Jacob gagged. Naomi pushed him away.

“What now?”

“We really do smell like..” “..Don’t you dare.” Naomi sniffed at the collar of her coat, “Lord!” Naomi and Jacob burst out in laughter so hard they sounded like howling wolves. The truck hit a hole dug deep into the earth as their bodies took flight for two seconds before landing hard on the truck bed.

Naomi held her head, “Ouch,” she looked Jacob’s way but could not see if he offered her sympathy or not.

“This is what Ma told me. She said that Nana had come from a Nigerian tribe. I don’t know if the tribe was called Yoruba or if that was just the name of the people we come from there. She said the religion was not really a religion at all but like a spiritual devotion they practiced. She compared the goddesses to that of the Greek gods and how white folks feel and think about them.”

“Well then, they ain’t real. Those are fairy tales.

You know, what we Southerners call lies.”

“Exactly. But she told Ma to think of our goddesses from Africa as God’s twelve disciples. She said God is the root of the tree and the branches are his disciples, those branches grow other branches and those are the gods and goddesses sent from the creator to aid human-beings in their life journey, at least those who believe.”

The truck continued to bounce around carrying them from one side of the truck to the other. Jacob laughed and when Naomi rolled back his way, he held onto her, “Well, then I guess it is fortunate that you believe in them but don’t worship them. I am almost certain that’s a sin.”

“I am sure it is. But Nana always said there’s no harm in believing in others who believe and know the works of the one true God, the one with the highest power. You put your faith in your Ministers, right? Same thing.”

“Just don’t tell people you believe in Voodoo or we’re doomed before we even settle in California.”

“Oshun’s name, her full name, carries Voodoo in it but she is love, harmony, righteousness and fertility. She is

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not about causing others harm, that’s just a bad misconception traveling these American lands since enslavement.”

The road becomes smooth and slick. They listen to the rain hitting the tarp, beating the truck on all sides.

They are weary-eyed and sleep-deprived. When Lewis pulled the tarp from their shielded bodies, he looked like they felt: exhausted. Naomi and Jacob sat up when he announced with excitement, “We here.” ⇷⇷ They arrived in Alexandria well after the Christmas trees and decorated colored lights had come down.

The Carter home was small, much smaller than the Gatson farmhouse. Naomi spent most of her time outside the house on the porch, reading. When inside, she could feel the walls closing in. Lewis had a younger brother who died when they still lived in Shreveport. The loss brought him closer with Jacob. Despite the distance between them, they acted as if they had been separated only days instead of years. Lewis’ older brother, older by several years, married his high school sweetheart and moved closer to town; he had left Shreveport long before their brother’s suspicious death.

The two-bedroom, one-bath house would not be so bad if Naomi and Jacob had not arrived. The worried gaze Mrs. Carter threw Naomi’s way every time they talked of heading North for the train to the Promised Land, sent Naomi to the davenport. It was the only part of the house where Naomi could breathe, if even for a moment. Mrs. Jackson never issued a dispute. Her negative interjection came with the mention of Lafayette, or how grand the train ride would be, or how the north commissioned men and women for fancier jobs outside of housekeeping. Mrs. Jackson always spun the conversation and told them there was no greater job than the one she’s held since fourteen. Yet, when her own son pressed her about the lack of a raise, she fell silent.

She fussed about the shipyard jobs Jacob and Lewis had secured. A letter arrived and offered them jobs as soon as their feet touched down in Los Angeles.

“Where will you live?” She asked, “How will you eat?” As if Naomi, who had fed her family for the last several years could not be trusted to keep her baby boy Lewis wellfed. Naomi wanted to leave as soon as the snow stopped

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falling and the earth dried from warmth. They would leave as soon as Lewis helped his neighbor fix the truck, their ride for at least half of the way to Lafayette. “If it makes it part of the way, we gonna be damn lucky,” the neighbor said. He chuckled. He worked hard every morning to convince Naomi his old truck, the same one that saved them from several more days of walking days ago, was closer to death than a second life.

The men worked.

“You can never have enough savings. Lord only knows how expensive it is out there,” Lewis said.

The truck was fixed. Then it snowed again. Then a thunderstorm. Naomi grew tired of waiting. It was already the new year: 1942. The second week of February rolled by, and the Sheriff and his deputies could be anywhere.

Naomi lost steam. They needed to leave now. She heard no arguments from the men. Three days later they piled into the same old broken down truck that carried them to Alexandria.

The neighbor cried about having little money or gas to take them all the way to Lafayette. Pine Prairie, he insisted. Lewis held his ground and fought his friend for a few more miles.

He would drop them off in Reddell.

“Some friend you have there, Lew. He could have at least taken us to Eunice. We might have been able to get away with a bus ride from there,” Jacob said.

“No buses. We avoid crowds at every cost.” Naomi snapped.

“No one is looking for us anymore. We can take a bus.”

“No buses.” Naomi picked up her suitcase and skirted the edge of the road. They headed for Eunice.

“Dang it Lew, you should have paid him more.”

“I gave him damn near half my check from last week. The greedy bastard was just mad he can’t come.”

“Let’s get a move on, gentlemen. The sun will be up in a few hours and we should find cover, a place to sleep until nightfall.” Naomi stopped and waited for them, “Eunice is thirteen or fourteen miles, four or five hours tops. We should make it in time for breakfast.” She let Jacob lead and smacked Lewis on the back of his head when he passed.

“What was that for?”

“You cuss too much, watch your language. Your friend was kind enough to give us a ride in the middle of the

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night. He risked his life to help us, the least you could do is show him some respect,” Naomi said.

Eunice filled its space with dirt and tall green trees.

They ate at the nearest empty motel diner. They slept until nightfall. Crowley, their final stop, a little town west of Lafayette where the brothers knew a family who would hide them until they were free to board the train headed for California.

Naomi estimated the walk would take them close to eight hours. She daydreamed of Oshun. The rivers and the vast waters she traveled. The thought of the river goddess warmed her feet to the frosted cold ground. Lewis complained non-stop. “It’s too damn cold, sorry Miss Naomi, to be walking this late at night. Can’t we rest sum?” Jacob handed him his sweater and jacket. “We rest when we git there, Jacob said, “And stop all that dang yapping, you beaten my eardrums to death.” They walked for hours with not a single car or truck forcing them off the road and into the ditches.

They stayed at the Crowley farm for twenty-two days. It was the only train they could reserve with enough seats for three. The Crowley host was a single woman in her thirties, a few years older than Naomi and most likely the love of Abe’s life. Only Abe would have been smart enough to fall for a woman who ran her own farm and produced her own breads, jams and honey for the townsfolk in Lafayette.

She beamed as she flaunted her success. Jacob was smitten at first sight and if truth be told, so were Lewis and Naomi, for entirely different reasons of course. Lewis marveled at her beauty while Naomi envied the woman’s ability to live on her own and with her own money. She had heard of women like Miss Crowley, but she had never met any woman with no desires of a man and no need for one. If they had not left when they did, Jacob might have fallen in love with both her brains and her beauty, too.

Cara Crowley had a way about her. Her ways reminded Naomi of Ma. She held the shape and beauty of a deity, skin like honey, frizzy cherry chestnut hair braided down her back, while her curves were rotund, her feet were small.

She never spoke of Abe or Aaron. She had no man and few friends. Naomi suspected her safety had come into play more times than not. When after a few days, they discovered upon keen observation, Cara was never alone. Ministers came by with folks in need of temporary shelter. Customers came

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from as far as Alexandria, Baton Rouge, and Lake Charles.

Naomi realized why Abe had never mentioned her or worried about her welfare. She owned two rifles and a handgun, not to mention the German Shepards roaming her farm.

Naomi had never seen men falling over themselves to get at a woman like Jacob and Lewis did. Even half her customers tripped over their words trying to get Miss Cara attention. Jacob and Lewis begged her to give them work to do around the house. Can we fix your porch, Miss Cara? Do you need a new roof, Miss Cara? How about that bathroom Miss Cara, can we fix it up for you? Can we feed your dogs?

Naomi chuckled every time they begged her for work. They were like two school boys lusting after their teacher.

She did not give Jacob no mind, but Lewis—she put him to work the minute he woke up–his mouth took some getting used to. Naomi could tell by the way Miss Cara stared at Jacob when she thought no one was looking. Jacob resembled Abe in the worst way. A light-skinned boy who had neither Abe’s height nor sturdy muscular body. Jacob came off as a young man in search of himself, innocent, naive, but strong and capable. But if you looked at him dead in his face, around the eyes, his forehead, the soft pink hue of his lips, you saw Abe. Much like the young man who came every other day with flowers and an order for a loaf of bread and her perpetually sold-out Apricot jam. Cara liked the handsome traveler or she would never have stored two jars of the Apricot jam he walked all the way from Lafayette to purchase. He was older than Jacob but young in spirit. He was the kind of man a woman could easily warm to if another one had not clogged her thoughts. When he came around even Jacob and Lewis disappeared into the distant thoughts of Miss Cara’s mind.

In the morning Lewis and Naomi set out to purchase train tickets for Los Angeles, Jacob stayed behind. “I need to finish the bathroom,” he said, “just in case you get us tickets leaving tomorrow.”

They had no such luck. The next train departing from Lafayette with three seats available would not depart for another eight days. They’d spent two weeks at Miss Cara’s place and Naomi could sense the welcome mat slipping from underneath their feet.

When they returned Jacob sat on the porch with

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a letter dangling between his fingers. Cara sat in her chair at the edge of the porch breaking down her display table. Nothing was left other than two containers of honey and one jar of strawberry jam. Jacob and Cara looked as if life had been snatched from them.

“I don’t think this is good news, Miss Naomi,” Jacob announced. He flipped the letter over one final time presenting it before her. The letter was from the United States Army. Naomi grabbed the letter from Jacob and tore it open. She stopped to view Cara carrying her sellable items indoors, she closed the door behind her.

The letter was short and direct. “Are they dead?”

Jacob asked.

“Yes, Jacob, our brothers are dead.”

“But how? They didn’t even ship off to war yet.

How could they be dead?” Jacob scratched at his matted short hair. A habit since childhood when he grew angry or confused.

“The letter states there was a training accident while out to sea.”

“The sea? But they can’t swim.”

“Exactly.” Naomi refolded the letter and handed it back to Jacob. She disappeared inside the house. Cara was nowhere to be seen. The sky lit up, snapped and crackled onto the earth.

In the blackness, Jacob said, “That day on the truck, when you floated to the back, when you almost fell to your death, that was them, wasn’t it?”

Naomi said nothing.

“They have been dead for months, even before we left. Pa and you said nothing. Why?” “What good would it have done? Dead is dead. Pa is still dead. Death changes nothing.” ⇸⇸ Over the next few days, Cara vanished like footprints in the sand once the tide came in. At first it had seemed as though she’d vacated the area. But as Lewis and Naomi set up her selling table with the stock of goodies stored in the barn, Jacob tended to Miss Cara with trays of food left at her door, day and night. On the fourth day, when there was next to nothing left in her barn, Miss Cara

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appeared with enough honey and jams to sell through to the weekend. On that day, she made three dozen loaves of fresh bread and sold them before the bread cooled.

The night before they were to leave for Lafayette, she made them each a loaf of bread set aside with the jam of their choice and a jar of honey. Naomi wanted to apologize.

She wanted to thank her. She wanted to ask her to join them, but she knew Cara would say no, her life after all was better here than it could ever be anywhere else.

That night, Naomi woke to the sounds of a steady knock, a tremble and moaning. Or whispers? She could not be sure. The squeaking followed. She turned from the window to find Jacob gone and Lewis, dead asleep. If she had been Cara, maybe she would have wanted the same affection from a man who looked so much like her lost love.

Maybe Naomi could do what Miss Cara Crowley had done for want of affection and remembrance. If desperate enough, she could overlook a man’s age and boyish mannerisms.

Cara embraced one last chance to be with Abe. Jacob’s form offered her the chance to say goodbye.

Before dawn, they did.

Cara watched them leave. They waved and never looked back, except Jacob. He would confess to Naomi years later, Cara had been his first love.

When they boarded the train for the North, the train for Los Angeles, there was not a seat to be found, though they paid for three. A man older than Naomi relinquished his seat to her. While Lewis hobnobbed in an area full of seated women, Jacob stared at Naomi.

“Spit it out.” She said.

“Do you think he’s dead?”

“Who?” “The Sheriff?” Jacob asked.

“He hasn’t come to me, in my sleep or otherwise, if that is what you’re asking.” Naomi turned her gaze from Jacob. Her eyes glued to the billowing banner on the train, ‘Bound for the Promised Land,’ it read.

“I just wonder how long we gonna have ta keep lookin over our shoulders, especially you.”

She glanced his way, his concern evident on his face, “We’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

“Because the goddesses watch over you?”

“Because God watches over US.” They exchanged

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“I know you chose Los Angeles because of the ocean, but...you’re not goin ta go out in it right? Not like the brothers. You don’t plan to…”

“No, I don’t plan to leave you on your own, Jacob Gatson.”

“Good. Good. You and your goddesses and this love with the sea, something you have never seen in real life before was starting to worry me.” Jacob waited for a response, but Naomi continued to gaze outside. He nodded, as if satisfied with their discussion and moved closer to Lewis.

In seconds, the women passengers exploded in laughter. As usual, Lewis had the ladies in stitches, flirting was what he did best, especially when those around him were nervous or on edge. Naomi watched every passenger in their car, slowly each face filled with joy and relief.

Then Jacob looked back at Naomi, “You see something?”

She shook her head. She did not want him to know the entire family stood surrounding them, full of grins wide enough to reach the sun. But as she watched Ma spying on a young girl cradling a sea urchin, her visions turned to Jack and Ester. “I was just thinking about Jack and Ester. I wonder if we shall ever see them again?”

“Don’t you worry none about Jack, he can only survive so long without the care of his African goddess to guide him,” Jacob grinned. He patted Lewis on the shoulder, then after a while, satisfied that Naomi would be okay, he turned his dashing smile on the seated ladies.

Naomi wished she could tell Jacob the truth, that she no longer had thoughts of dying, or reuniting with Ma, Pa and now the brothers. But until today, those were the only thoughts which brought about peace. Relief swept over her when she was in Ma’s arms and it was all she craved now.

Ghosts, the dead, those images drove her to think of the sea.

Once she grazed the ocean floor bottom, Naomi would be free of them. She had not told him the brothers traveled by their sides almost daily since their death. Pa too, every so often. They were all here beside her on the train—everyone but the Sheriff. When her thoughts turned to Kang, hope creeped in. Maybe Naomi should consider the Promised Land as her second chance. Maybe it was time to let the ghosts go.

Naomi smiled hard. Giddiness rose from her

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twinkling feet to her forehead. The train chugged forward as she tried to keep herself from exploding with laughter. The land opened and green fields replaced the buildings and the streets of Lafayette. In the field up ahead she spied a family walking uphill and soon their bodies morph into Ma’s, Pa’s, the brothers, Jacob and Naomi. She watched her childhood self laugh and chase a young Jacob around a large Oak tree– the Millers’ tree.

The Millers, a party of nine, had not moved north yet. The house was full and bustling with energy. As the Gatsons passed, they waved and exchanged hellos. A young Naomi runs into their yard, chasing Jacob and then the Millers’ little ones around the front house and to the side where the laundry hangs. They bob in and out of dull colored sheets and towels before Jacob covered in a sheet almost brought the linen line down. Naomi scooped him up in her arms and ran after their family to catch up.

The Millers shout their goodbyes. Naomi had no idea she would never see a single one of them again. She had no idea their play-tree is where she would discover her best friend Sara’s lifeless body, some three years later. Ma was healthy, Pa was still strong despite a limp and a bad smoking habit. The brothers were rumbling, tumbling teens. The Gatsons were happy, even with three failed attempts to head north.

Naomi could not understand the stories of the goddesses Ma filled her head with or the stories of the North bestowed on her by Pa. It was Kang, who in a rare nice moment alone with Naomi, told her about the sea. He had said, their immigrants had come far, had traveled the torturous sea to get here—to America—to freedom. He said he should not take their journey lightly and despite being difficult most of his life, he hoped to make his ancestors proud. He pulled out a cigarette when his friends showed up, and moved away from his sister and Naomi. He started talking trash and threw his empty coke bottle away before giving them the finger and running off with his friends.

Kang, like everyone else, fell in love with Oshun and the mystery behind the goddess and her powers.

Through the years of their hate/like relationship, Kang left Naomi notes through his sister. They were never personal.

They were never an attempt to get to know Naomi, or so she thought. They were always about Oshun. If she believed that

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Asian goddesses existed. Naomi often thought the reason so many people loved the stories of Oshun was not because she was magical, but because she renewed their hope in the possibilities of magic. The kind of magic that could turn water to wine, one fish into endless fishes, a loaf of bread to endless bread. Shackled bodies to freed bodies.

What Kang said to Naomi days before his family left the south for good, minutes, before acting like a jerk again, words she doubted would ever leave her memory were: if I don’t make them proud, then I will join the dead souls at the bottom of the sea until your Oshun or some Chinese mythical goddess I have yet to discover, will come and gather my bones, carry them to land for my second chance—my rebirth.

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The End

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Naomi’s Reading List: These were the books Naomi assigned her students Jack, Ester, Jacob and many others to go forth and soar like the wind. Make a difference in the world.

The Blacker the Berry: By Wallace Thurman 1929 Quicksand: By Nella Larsen 1928 Passing: By Nella Larsen 1929 Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral: By Phllis Wheatley 1773 A Farewell to Arms: Ernest Hemingway 1929 The Age of Innocence: Edith Wharton 1920 Mrs. Dalloway: Virginia Woolf 1925 All Quiet on the Western Front: Erich Maria Remarque 1929 Black Reconstruction in America: W.E.B DuBois 1935 As I Lay Dying: William Faulkner 1930 The Good Earth: Pearl S. Buck 1931 The Ways of White Folks: Langston Hughes 1934 Harlem Shadows: Claude McKay 1922 Their Eyes Were Watching God: Zora Neale Hurston 1937

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Book Club: Topics and Questions for Discussion The story begins with Ma’s death at her burial site under her Japanese Maple tree. Why do you think the story of the Gatsons is rooted in nature? As this element is evident in the goddess, Oshun, the River goddess and the setting of this novella. How did this speak to you when you were reading or well after you put the book down?

Many scenes go back in time to tell the story of Naomi’s youth and that of her Ma’s. Did you feel there was a balance between the two women who are very much alike yet different? In what ways did you notice their differences? And in what ways did you think, like mother like daughter–if at all?

Naomi and Sara are teenagers when the Sheriff starts making his advances toward Sara, the only girl in town willing to say no. In what way did her death shape Naomi? Discuss the impact of her female relationships and the important role they play in Naomi’s final decisions.

In the opener, the Transatlantic Slave Trade is referenced which is historical and goddesses from mythology which are not grounded in reality for the average person. Discuss with your group if you think Naomi’s story would have read differently if she did not see ghosts or believed in her goddesses.

Where would you believe Naomi would have summoned her strength from if not from them?

Naomi’s relationship with her brothers, Pa and the Sheriff ultimately shape her relationship with men. How do you feel the attention she received from Kang along with her first kiss may have opened her eyes to something she had never seen in a man before?

In many ways this novella is about family, freedom and the right to your own life and your own body. What effect do you think the near sexual assualt on Naomi may cause her to feel about her body and her life? Do you think Naomi will ever feel free in a woman’s body, let alone a Black woman’s body?

When Ester is freed and sets off with the Heiress she tells

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Naomi on page 21, that the goddess showed up to guide them and just like she prayed, God showed to help them. Do you think this was Ester’s way to get Naomi to acknowledge God and that he can answer prayers when you believe? Why or why not?

Naomi’s faith in God falters all throughout this novella.

When did you recognize the change from hopeful that God would show up to Naomi’s action as a true believer? Or are you still uncertain she evolved and found her faith again?

Whether you were taught about the south and the horrendous acts they inflicted upon Black bodies and the things neighbors, family and friends did to keep others from fleeing the south to the north, how does knowing about these historical events affect the way you feel about the characters and their journey?

Some might say Oshun acted as Naomi’s missing mother to guide her in ways Ma would have done if she were alive when they set out for their final escape plan. How did you read Oshun and Naomi’s relationship with her? Did you see Oshun as another guiding figure in Naomi’s life or the internal Naomi bursting out of her confinements before her misery destroyed her?

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Acknowledgements

This great little novella, To The Sea of Dead Souls, would not have come to life had it not been for many people with whom I owe gratitude and many thanks. Foremost, I must thank my editor, Rebecca, and the off menu press team for their wonderful guidance and confidence in us as a team and in the story of Naomi and her family. Though the research was extensive, I know had it not been during the pandemic I would have so many more people to thank with names attached, like librarians who recommended the right books and professors from the African American or Ethnic Studies departments. Instead, I relied heavily on my professors from my writing classes to guide my research.

Chuck Rosenthal, who offered sound advice for the characters and their path along with great places to search out their homeland. Gail Wronsky has shown me time after time how well poetry can blend with prose, melting the readers’ hearts while asking them to think and wonder. Marika Price for suggesting I tackle such a hearty story about a southern family trying to escape for freedom and their lives.

Many thanks also go out to the authors of the era which is known as the Harlem Renaissance and authors such as Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Migration and

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how it Changed America and Black Protest and The Great Migration: A Brief History with Documents by Eric Arnesen.

These books helped me establish the foundation of the setting, tone and characters from the novella. Matt Clayton’s African Mythology: Captivating Myths of Gods, Goddesses, and Legendary Creatures of Africa. Gina DiNicolo, The Black Panthers: A Story of Race, War, and Courage―the 761st Tank Battalion in World War II. Diane Esguerra, The Oshun Diaries: Encounters with an African Goddess. Laurie Lanzen Harris’ book, Defining Moments: The Great Migration North 1910-1970 and Milton C. Sernett’s Bound For the Promised Land: African American Religion and The Great Migration.

Without these authors and during this pandemic, I would have been lost and unable to complete my novella class with a manuscript I could be proud of and ready for publication.

I am blessed to have wonderful workshop partners that have always put the story, characters and the writing first. Thank you, Antioch LA and LMU writing workshops.

I also want to thank my family, my brothers, who always support me in every way they can and my friends, who have always read excerpts for me and given honest feedback and always ask why and how, just to dig deeper and to know more. And I have to acknowledge the professors at Antioch University Los Angeles who pushed the why and how to my limits and always asked me to write deeper, ‘get ugly, get uncomfortable’ they would say and let your characters discover who they are. Rob Fox and Deborah Lott are two of the most challenging writing professors I have ever had the pleasure of learning from. Their advice still lingers.

And a special shout out to my fellow writer, Kemi Ogun, who always offers the best advice when I need it. And finally, to my mother’s sisters, my aunt Kathy and aunt Trish who are as encouraging as my mother would be if she were still alive today. They know how much I miss and treasure the woman who made goddess her middle name. I love you all so much. Thank you for joining me on this journey.

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This novella was produced by Off Menu Press, a small press dedicated to publishing work by authors whose voices have been excluded from the literary canon.

Rebecca Gross, founder + editor-in-chief grace novacek, art director anais peterson, digital content coordinator

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dead souls by nina louise

Naomi Gatson has lived her entire life in Shreveport, Louisiana. Her pa and ma had only one wish for her, and her three brothers: to flee the south for the north. It’s the spring of 1941, and Ma has died. The Gatsons plan their family escape almost immediately. But the dead who have tried to flee keep popping up around Naomi, complicating the Gatsons’ journey. The Sheriff’s obsession with Ma and, later, with Naomi, has only made their plan more dangerous. As Pa’s health declines, the brothers become the target of the Sheriff’s violence. Once the brothers get word that they are being drafted to the Army, the Gatson’s know it is now or never. An intelligent woman of twenty-six years, Naomi is the one who must devise the family’s departure. Will the Gatsons evade the sheriff’s clutches? Will they arrive safely in the north? This is the tale of their passage towards freedom.

From the first lines of The Sea of Dead Souls, Nina Louise illuminates the ways the sea can represent trauma or possibility to those who came to America’s shores by choice or by force. Surrounded by ghosts and protected by the goddess Oshun, the protagonist Naomi is an indelible literary heroine: formidable and admirable in her aspiration to escape the South. This is a magical and deeply affecting work by an author of expansive imagination and heart.

⇸ Shawna Yang Ryan, author of Water Ghosts

Nina Louise is the author of this historical fiction novella, The Sea of Dead Souls. She holds a master’s degree in English from Loyola Marymount University.

She is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. She has been published on The Little Tokyo Historical Society website. She has received the Grace KJ Abernathy Scholarship in Creative Writing. She gets her magical side from the goddesses of Africa and her romantic side from Korean dramas. She loves researching hidden treasures of history, and uncovering strong women and their unlikely alliances. novella

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