BY MICHAEL TRE RANDALL
Copyright is held by the author.
“REMEMBER WHAT I told you. No matter what, I’d come back for y’all.”
Lizzy’s husband stood in the frame of their cabin, the halfmoon high above framing his silhouette with an aura of silver. It had been nearly a decade, his life long ago given in the war for their freedom. He vanished at Fort Wagner, Quincy’s name surely among the hundreds killed or captured. Though there was never a body recovered, nor any official word as to what had happened to him, she chose to bury him in her mind after years of silence. She hoped their daughter Mary did too. She thought she buried him. Yet, there she was. Reaching her hand out to touch the dark skin on his exposed chest. His flesh was warm. That was a good sign.
“What you do?” she asked.
Quincy placed a hand over hers and stepped through the open doorway, his boots heavy on the old wooden floors. “What I had to.”
Lizzy stepped back and scanned him, taking in the physical features of her husband. A massive man with the shoulders of a bull and a blazing hot gaze that rivaled the sun. A wooden longbow was strapped to his body, the drawstring pressed against his open grey shirt and exposed chest. A necklace of deep blue beads adorned his neck. His hair and beard had grown much thicker and longer than she remembered, but that was certainly her Quincy. On the outside, at least.
She then reached out from within, her soul searching and feeling for him. She looked for any sign of darkness. Corruption. Evil. None was found. Her Quincy was alive.
“May I kiss you?” he asked, his voice deep and sorrowful.
“Not yet,” she sighed. “I wanna make sure this ain’t a dream.”
“It ain’t,” he said. “I’d never lie to you, Lizzy.”
“So tell me what you doin’ here! How you alive, Quincy?” Lizzy’s voice was a whisper, but there was no masking her frustration and confusion. She looked back at Mary, who still thankfully slept soundly in the corner of their home.
“Wait till mornin’,” Quincy said. “So I can tell you both.”
“Fine. But you sleepin’ outside. And you better still be there at sunrise.” Lizzy hesitated a moment, then placed a hand on his arm to pull herself up and kiss his bearded cheek. “Go wash up in the back.”
Quincy smiled. “Yes ma’am.”
***
Quincy followed his wife’s instructions, gathering fresh water from the well and filling the basin. He had procured a bar of soap in his travels that smelled of lavender. He got to work, scrubbing and rinsing days of grime and dust that had accumulated during his travels. He took out his razor and did his best to shave under the low light of the moon with his small wood-framed mirror. The blade nicked his skin a few times. The wounds closed instantly.
He hardly slept that night. He had dreamed endlessly of this moment, the opportunity to hold his wife and child in his arms again. Mary was two when he went off to fight in the war, and he hated every soul that threatened her freedom and kept him from seeing every second of her growth. He would kill them all over again, kill them like they killed him. But that was done. They were all free, he was finally home, and he could finally give his family the life they deserved.
***
Mary opened the door to see the back of a large man sitting down on the porch. His shirt was tattered and worn, and a brown hat with a wide brim rested atop his head. To the right of him was a large bow constructed from dark wood with carved runes and symbols along with a brown leather quiver of arrows. A puff of sweet-smelling tobacco smoke rose from the front of him and drifted into the hazy purple sky.
“You been good baby girl?” he asked with a voice calm like distant thunder.
Mary’s eyebrows furrowed and she jerked her head backwards. “Who are you?”
The man turned around. A strong jaw on a dark, clean-shaven face, and amber eyes that were identical to hers. He smiled warmly at the sight of her, a thin cigar between his lips.
“Daddy?” she asked.
He nodded once and stood, towering over the child despite being two steps down below. She had grown to look like their mother, deep-brown skin and long, curly, gravity-defying hair. But the honey-coloured eyes in her head, she got those from him. He tossed the cigar onto the ground and stamped it out before opening his arms. She threw herself into them. He lifted her and gently squeezed. “I missed you,” he said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
“Come on inside now, Mary,” Lizzy called from behind them. “You too Quincy. Glad you ain’t burned up out there.”
“Now why would I go and do that?” Quincy chuckled as he set their daughter back down. Once they were inside, he placed his bow and quiver of arrows in the corner and assisted Lizzy in lighting the lanterns while Mary set the table. He then sat with his daughter while Lizzy prepared to make breakfast.
“Gon’ head and tell us how you’re here,” Lizzy said as she kindled the fire in the hearth.
“Well,” Quincy started with a deep breath. “I died. Or came damn near close to it. Don’t fully know. A bullet hit my heart, Lizzy. I felt it. I saw it. I was there, laying on top of my dead brothers, and my dead brothers on top of me. I couldn’t breathe. So I prayed to whoever was listening. God. The Devil.” He shrugged. “Whoever. I made a promise, and I needed to keep it.”
Lizzy sat down at the square wooden table across from him to the left of Mary. “Which one answered your prayer then?”
“Neither. I was gone. Then I woke up somewhere far away. West. Sun damn near frying me as I lay on the ground.”
“How’d you get all the way out there?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know,” Quincy answered. “I got up and checked myself. The hole in my heart was closed, and the bullet that made it was in my hand.” He reached into his pocket and placed on the table a tiny dull metal cylinder with ridges at its base and a soft-pointed tip. “I looked around and saw nothing but sand and hills and mountains. But then . . . there he was, standin’ far away from me.”
“Who?” Lizzy asked.
“Another man. Black skin. Scrawny, but tall and still strong lookin’. He was dressed fancy, a kind of suit I ain’t never seen before, a suit more blue than the sky above and a tie greener than the roots you be workin’. I closed my eyes once. When I opened ‘em, he was right in front of me. Had a strange lookin’ bow in his hands. He offered it to me, and said if I took it, I’d get back home. He’d keep me safe.”
“And you took it.” Lizzy nodded towards the bow resting in the corner. “So that’s it then?”
Quincy scratched his shaven jaw. “No.”
“No?”
“Look at me again, Lizzy. Really look at me.”
Her soft face grew stern as her dark eyes narrowed at him. She reached her brown hand across the table, and he took it, staring back into her eyes. She was tired before, but with the clarity only a good night’s sleep and the return of her love could bring, she could finally see. A power flowed through him. Something ancient. Complex. Primordial flames that were kindled long ago in lands that were distant, yet, close. “What did you do?” she whispered.
“What I had to,” he said while rubbing a coarse thumb on the back of her hand. “I fought. I killed. Everything I could to come back to you.”
“Mmhmm,” she muttered. “Come on out with it, Quincy.”
“Out with what?”
“Your soul. It’s not yours anymore, is it?”
Quincy looked at his wife, his hand still in hers. He looked over at Mary whose brows were furrowed in confusion. “My soul is mine. My life is mine,” he protested.
“Then why he bring you back? The old gods don’t work for free.”
Quincy sat quiet for a moment before he smiled and laughed. “No they don’t. But we have, as he called it… a deal.”
“And what ‘deal’ is that?”
“Just work. Nothin’ you’d find disagreeable. My soul is mine, Lizzy. I swear.” He squeezed his wife’s hand. “There’s a good life waitin’ for us out there . . . y’all just gotta trust me. Do you?”
Lizzy stared at her husband for a long while, memories flashing of their life before. It had been hard, but they had each other. They fought for each other. She looked at her daughter, the picture-perfect combination of her parents, the physical manifestation of their love that survived both enslavement and now supposedly death. The sheer joy on Mary’s face to have the father she had lost just as her memories started to solidify. Could Lizzy truly take that joy away from her child? Was she willing to deny that joy to herself?
She squeezed his hand and brought it up to her lips. A tear welled in Quincy’s right eye.
“Always,” she said. “But I’ll cut you back down if you make me regret it.”
Quincy smiled and in turn kissed her hand. “I know you will.”
***
Michael Tré Randall is a writer, visual artist, graphic designer, and art historian born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and currently residing in New Jersey. As a writer, he explores the realms of fantasy, science fiction, literary fiction, history, and romance. His hobbies include playing video games and D&D, watching movies, reading, working out, and spending quality time with family and friends.
