Walk Through Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.’
”
    The man closed the book. “And from those three men all the people of the earth are descended. I and my kind from Shem and Japheth; you and yours from the accursed Ham. You see, Ham’s descendants …” He opened the book again, found the proper page, and read a long list of names that meant nothing to William. When he concluded he explained that those were the nations of Africa, from whom William was descended. “Your blood is not completely Negro, that is true, but you should be proud of it anyway. Some say that the Negro is not even a man, is another form of being entirely. I, however, cannot dismiss the words of the Lord. You and I are both descended from one of the Lord’s chosen. My race, however, is blessed with mastery of the world, while yours is assigned a place just beneath me. Each race has been ordered in such a way to allow them to shine. You do see the logic in this, don’t you?”
    William nodded and mumbled, “Yessuh.”
    This was the divine rule of things, Mason explained. When this order was upset chaos was loosed upon the world. Think of all the so-called free Negroes in Maryland. Did they live wondrous lives with that freedom? Did they prosper and grow rich and satisfied the way the better of the white men did? Of course not, for such were challenges beyond their capacity, and it wasthe evil of the northern white man which led them to spread such fiction. He picked out a particular former slave as an example, a man whose freedom was purchased by another free Negro. For him, liberty only led to the basest of degradation. He took to theft and developed hungers that he hadn’t known as a slave. He insulted white women and acquired a taste for liquor. He roamed the streets like some pariah of biblical times. Before long he was found dead, hung by his legs from a tree, his head bashed into mush by clubs, genitals severed from his body so that they were no longer a threat to female virtue.
    Mason studied the downturned face of the young boy searching for the effect of his words. “That would never happen to one of my Negroes. That will never happen to you. You are protected so long as you are faithful to me. You will always be protected from the anger of other white men, from the poisons spread down from the north and from your own baser nature. I take your welfare as a matter of honor. Understand?”
    “Yessuh.”
    “Good. I have always been very happy with you, William. You are a fine boy despite the misfortunes of your parentage, and I trust you will always obey me as you should.”
    Three days later William was hired out to the family of an Annapolis shipbuilder and his life of toil began. In truth, he saw nothing akin to logic in the man’s words. As a boy of eight he didn’t try. He sat there wishing that the interview would end, knowing that his mother would ask him about it later, angry at himself because he knew he couldn’t lie to her. It wasn’t until much later, when he heard such theories repeated, that he sought to make some sense of them. He never did. He wasn’t even sure that he understood what Ham’s crime had been in the first place. Was Ham cursed for seeing his father’s own depravity? Why would God honor the wishes of a drunk, a man that woke groggy from overconsumption? Was it simply that Ham had looked upon him and saw him as he really was, while theother sons turned their eyes away? Was he cursed for knowing the truth about the man from whom the entire world was descended?
    The beginning of his third week as a fugitive found William a lean, ghostly version of his former self. His food was long gone. He had to tighten the cord that held his trousers up. His face took on the gaunt qualities attributed to the starving and the holy. His eyes retreated back into his skull. The flesh of his nose became a thin veil over the contours of the bone and cartilage beneath it. He was taken by a