Heartfire

She thought of Antigone as she did it, spreading dirt on her brother's corpse despite the edict of Creon forbidding it. Am I ritually burying my husband's brother? If I thought Alvin might be saved by letting him die… but I'd lose Alvin. This is his beloved little brother that he played with half his growing-up years. If he dies it can't be by my hand, even indirectly. It would destroy my life with Alvin, and wouldn't necessarily save his. In Alvin's heartfire, which she spent a moment checking, there was no path that did not lead to Calvin's treachery. As long as the boy is alive, Alvin isn't safe.

And yet it was for love of Alvin that she didn't let him die. The powders drifted down onto Calvin's body, got sucked in through his nostrils, and almost at once he became more animated. He sat up. “I'm so damn hungry,” he said.

Gullah Joe screamed. “No! Go back! Get out of here!”

Calvin rose to his feet. “This the bastard trapped me here outside my body?”

“It was an accident,” said Margaret. “Don't harm him.”

Calvin reached up, then winced and stumbled.

“Heal yourself!” cried Margaret again.

Calvin stood there, apparently trying something that no one else could see. “I'm getting better by the second,” he said. “Just having my bug back in my body, it's healing me by itself.”

At that moment, Fishy screamed. Margaret whirled around, and there was Denmark, knife in hand, staggering toward Calvin, brandishing the blade. Fishy leapt onto his back, tugging on the knife arm, and finally toppling the two of them onto the floor.

In the meantime, Calvin wasn't swaying anymore. He was steady on his feet, and when he turned around to face Denmark, he had the presence of mind to heat the knife so hot that Denmark screamed and flung it from him. “You got into my body!” Denmark screamed at Calvin, but now he was holding his burned hands limply in front of him. “I be wearing your castoff!”

Calvin seemed not even to notice Denmark. It was Gullah Joe he was looking for. “You lousy bastard, you filthy trap-laying witch!” he cried. “Where are you!”

At that moment a seagull started fluttering frantically around the room. Before it could find an open window, Calvin pointed at it and it dropped to the floor. In the instant, the bird disappeared and Gullah Joe lay there where it had been. Calvin advanced toward him, and the look of hate and rage on his face was terrible to behold.

“Calvin, stop it!” cried Margaret. “It was an accident! They caught you in a snare but they had no idea it was you, and when they realized your powers they had no choice but to keep you confined for fear of whatever vengeance you might take.”

Calvin regarded her in silence for a moment, then turned back to the circle he had been in. He yanked all the charms from the ceiling until the circle didn't exist anymore. Gullah Joe's weeping was the only sound they could hear. But when Calvin walked over to the lesser circle and began pulling down those charms too, Joe began to shout at him. “Leave that alone! I begging you! You turn them loose like that, some of names never find they way home to they body!”

Calvin paid no attention to him. He tore the charms from the ceiling and then opened the new net, this time by hand, scattering the namestrings all over the attic floor.

“Don't hurt them,” Gullah Joe pleaded, weeping. “Stop him, Denmark!”

But Denmark was sitting on the floor, weeping.

“Tear up the name-strings,” cried Fishy. “Give the slaves back their anger!”

Calvin looked over at Fishy and smiled nastily. “What good does anger do for anybody?”

Then, savagely, furiously, with the power of his mind alone he unmade all the knotted strings until they lay in tatters. They all watched the seething pile of name-strings as bits of this and that flew upward from the untangling mass. And then all lay still, the bits and pieces commingled.

Now that the deed was done, Gullah Joe stopped remonstrating with Calvin. He looked up toward the invisible sky beyond the ceiling that crouched overhead. “Go home to you body, you! All you name go home!” Then he sank to his knees, weeping.

“What are you crying for,” demanded Calvin. He looked at Denmark, too, who was only just begi

“You too strong a wind for me,” said Gullah Joe. “Oh, my people, my people, go home!”

Calvin lurched toward him a couple of steps, then fell to the floor. “I'm dying, Margaret,” he said. “My body's too far gone.”

“He be dying, that save me the trouble of killing him,” said Denmark. “All we done for our people, he just undid it all.”

“No!” cried Fishy. “He be setting us free! All our rage tied up in that net, that be the bad jail of all. We be slaves then, right down to the heart. Give up ourself so we can hide? From what? The worst thing already happen, when we give you our name-string.”

Margaret knelt beside Calvin's body. “You have to heal yourself,” she kept murmuring to him.

“I don't know where to start,” Calvin whispered. “I'm filled with corruption clear through.”

“Alvin!” cried Margaret desperately. “Alvin, look! Look at me! See what's happening here!” She rose to her feet and began forming letters in the air. H-E-L-P. C-A-L-V-I-N. H-E-A-L H-I-M! “Look at me and save his life, if you want him to live!”

“What you do in the air, you?” asked Fishy. “What you waving at?”

“My husband,” said Margaret. “He doesn't see me.” She turned to Gullah Joe. “Is there something you can do to help all those lost names return home?”

“Yes,” said Joe.

“Then take your friend Denmark and go do it.”

“What are you going to do” asked Denmark sullenly.

“I'm going to try to get my husband to heal his brother. And if he can't, then I'm going to hold Calvin's hand while he lies dying.”

Calvin let out a deep moan of despair. “I ain't ready to die!” he said.

“Ready or not, you'll have to do it sometime,” Margaret reminded him. “Heal yourself, as best you can,” she told him. “You're supposed to be a Maker, aren't you?”

Calvin laughed. Weak and bitter, the sound of that laughter. “I spend my whole life trying to get out from under Alvin. Now the one time I need him, it's the only time he isn't right there under foot.”

In the ensuing silence, Gullah Joe's voice came, soft and low. “They do it, them,” he said. “They finding the way back.”

“Then you'd better go out into the street and spread the word through the city,” said Margaret. “They're filled with rage long pent up. You have to keep them from rising up in a fruitless rebellion as soon as all their strong passions come back.” They did nothing. “Go!” she shouted. “I'll take care of Calvin here.”

Gullah Joe and Denmark staggered out into the street, going from house to house. Already the sound of moaning and singing could be heard all over the city. In Blacktown, they collared every black person they could find and explained it to them as best they could, then sent them out with the warning: Contain your anger. Harm no one. They'll destroy us if we don't keep to that. The taker of names says so. We're not ready yet. We're not ready yet.

Inside the warehouse attic, Margaret and Fishy were reduced to mopping Calvin's brow as he lay delirious in his fever-racked stupor. Body and soul were together again, but only, it seemed, in time to die.

After a while a third pair of hands joined them. A Black woman who moved slowly, hesitantly. Her speech was slurred when she asked a question or two; it was hard to understand her. Margaret knew at once who she was. She laid her hand on the Black woman's hand; on the other side of her, Fishy did the same. “You don't gots to work today,” said Fishy. “We take care of him.”

But the woman acted as if she didn't understand. She kept on helping them take care of Calvin as if she had some personal stake in keeping him alive. Or maybe she was simply loving her neighbor as herself.