Nine

Nine

I had always thought that if something like this ever happened, time would slow down enough for me to see everything that happened, maybe even enough to stop it.

I was wrong.

Everything happened too fast. I couldn't act quickly enough to help him. Isaiah was on his feet in a second, ready for a fight. Ethan advanced on him first, and Isaiah got two good punches in before they overpowered him. Together, they got Isaiah's arm twisted behind his back before I could even move. They dragged him out into the rain and threw him down in the mud. I followed, screaming.

Isaiah was calling my name, I was trying to get to him, but too much was happening. They were beating down on him with such ferocity. Isaiah was thrown to his knees. My father and Ethan were nothing more than an enraged blur of fists, their figures obscured by the pouring rain.

He wasn't calling out anymore. I didn't even know if he could still talk. I threw myself at them, caught hold of Isaiah’s hand. He got to his feet and I pulled him away from the fight. We only made it a few feet before I lost my footing in the mud. Ethan grabbed me around the waist and pulled me away, kicking and screaming, while Daddy held Isaiah down, holding his face in the mud.

They didn’t hit him again, but I knew it was far from over. Daddy took up the rope Ethan had dropped. I screamed louder than before. I knew the intention was to hang him, but they wouldn't do that first. They were too cruel, too angry. Daddy tied Isaiah's hands behind him and dragged him through the mud to the tree. Our tree.

Somehow, he was still conscious. “Addy!” Isaiah cried, “Help me!” he called in a broken voice. But there was nothing I could do.

Daddy tied off the other end of the rope around a tree branch and hoisted Isaiah above the ground so he hung from the tree by his wrists. Then my father backed up and reached for his whip.

The first lash cracked across his back with a sickening snap. Isaiah's cry of pain was like nothing I had ever heard before. It was the kind of horrible sound that made me want to take a flame to my brain and burn away my memory.

I ran towards him, but Ethan still held me back. There was another lash and another. I could hardly count how many there were. Twenty? Twenty Five? Thirty? They went on and on, like the lightning streaking across the sky.

Not knowing what else to do, I struggled in Ethan’s hold. "Stop, make him stop!" I cried. "Ethan, let him go! Cut him down!” He stood unnaturally still. “Ethan, please,” I could barely speak for crying, my voice was giving out, “just let him go!” It was as if he hadn't heard me. The whipping went on, but Isaiah’s cries had stopped. I didn’t even know if he was alive. "Ethan!"

Ethan hit me hard across the face and I toppled back. He yelled something that I couldn’t hear over the rain and the cracks of the whip.

I was stunned too stunned to get up right a. I watched as Ethan took out his other length of rope and tied it into a noose.

Then I snapped.

I realized then that Isaiah was going to die if I did not do something. I had to save his life.

I acted quickly. I ran after Ethan, grabbed the pistol, unused, thank God, from his belt and fired into the air.

"STOP!"

To my amazement, they did. The thunder clapped above us as we stood there, not sure exactly what to do next. I hadn’t been counting on having him listen to me. I pointed the pistol at Daddy. My hand was as shaky as my voice.

"Cut him down."

The wildness in my father’s eyes was replaced by something like fear. I kept the pistol pointed in his direction as he moved towards the tree. I put my finger in the trigger as he took out his knife; I wasn’t sure what he would do with it. But he reached out and cut the rope.

Isaiah crumpled to the ground and I was unable to keep up the act. I dropped the pistol and raced to his side. No one would dare to stop me now. I took his bloody, half-naked body in my arms. I could feel how shredded the skin of his back was, so ripped up and torn apart. Isaiah’s terrified eyes focused and softened when he saw me.

Years later, I would almost be able to convince myself that I had not seen what I saw next. It was impossible. But at that moment, Isaiah smiled. He just looked up at me with the smallest, weakest smile I had ever seen. He was happy to see me. Then he closed his eyes and tried to say something. At first, nothing came but a low, agonized moan. The word was no more than a breath. I wasn’t even sure if I really heard it.

“Addy.”

“Isaiah,” I was just as quiet. Isaiah went limp in my arms and I panicked, thinking he was gone. I kissed his bloodied, swollen lips. Something that was almost joy sprung inside me when I felt his shallow, ragged breathing on my face.

He had barely survived, and he would make it for now, but it wasn’t over. He would still die if I didn’t finish what I had started with Daddy and Ethan.

I looked back to the cabins. Ruben, Eli and Hannah stood by their door, looking on with shock. I knew they had seen what happened, and they were angry and afraid. Ruben and Hannah were restraining Eli, who looked like he was ready to leap into action.

I looked back to where my brother and father stood. "You’ll not kill him, Daddy," I said as forcefully as possible. "You won’t lay another finger on him"

My father came towards me. “You are in no position to make demands, little lady. Now get out of my way or I’ll make you move. I’m going to finish this once and for all.”

"If you do," I continued, trying not to listen to his threats. There was nothing more he could do to me, "If you touch him again I swear to you I will be the next one gone.” I couldn’t tell if my bravado was coming off the way I intended.

"What makes you think I care if you stay or go now?"

"If you didn't care about me you never would have done anything like that. Or maybe you don’t care about me, but I’ll bet having a daughter on the run would be almost as bad for the family reputation as a daughter who slept with a slave."

That assumption had been a gamble, but I could see in his eyes that it was true. I remembered what I had heard him say only a few hours ago. He would do anything to keep me safe, and if they discovered us, he would kill Isaiah. He was protecting the family the only way he knew how. Maybe he even thought he was protecting me.

Daddy spat and turned away from us, defeated but not done fighting. "I don't want to see that slave trash again,” he muttered to no on in particular. “Do you hear me? I don’t want to see him near my daughter. I don't want to see him on my land. I don't want to see him in all of Alabama! And if I do, if he's still on my plantation by dawn, then by God he's still my property and I will do as I like with him!"

"Daddy, please, no!"

He didn’t seem to hear me. “If that boy ever comes back here, I tell you he will wish he’d never been born. I’ll tear the skin off his goddamn darky back! If he ever puts his hands on you again there won’t be nothing you can say to stop me from stringing him up!”

“I won’t let you…”

"And you…” he growled before I could finish, looking at me with searing contempt, "will not go with him. If you follow that slave I swear I will track you down and shoot that n****r so full of holes he won’t know what hit him! And I’ll drag you back here if it’s the last thing I ever do!”

Then my father turned and stalked back towards the house. Ethan glared at us with lethal eyes, waiting for me. "Get inside, Adeline," he said coldly. When I didn’t answer, he grabbed my arm. “Get inside, I said,” he growled. I jerked away.  He grabbed his pistol out of the mud. "If you stay out here I’ll come back kill him tonight. I don’t give a damn if you stay or go.” I looked up at him, unable to let go of Isaiah.

Ethan made a disgusted noise in his throat and turned. “Come on!” he barked, giving up and skulking towards the house.

Ruben put a hand on my back and I turned with a start. “You coming, Adeline?”

“Adeline, come on!” Ethan called furiously from the back porch. All I wanted in the world was to stay with Isaiah all night, to make sure he was all right. But if I resisted Ethan now, things would only get worse.

I looked at Ruben and shook my head. “I can’t,” I breathed, my voice coming like a pathetic rasp.

Eli crouched down next to me, staring at Isaiah without saying a word. He screwed up his face and pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes, and I knew he was trying hard not to cry. “Goddamn it, brother,” he muttered in a broken voice. “This goddamn world.”

“Hey, hey,” Ruben squeezed Eli’s shoulder. In the face of everything, Ruben was still clear eyed and level headed. “Come on, Eli. Let’s get him home.” He turned back to me. “We’ll take care of him, little sister.”

I touched Isaiah's bruised face lightly and looked at him for a long minute before I stood and turned to Hannah, who looked so severely distraught I wondered if she could even hear me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, knowing those words could not even begin to make up for what I had done. “Would you please, please tell him that I’m sorry for everything?” She said nothing, but gave me a small, sad glance before she turned away from me too.

Ruben and Eli picked Isaiah up together and carried him into his cabin with Hannah at their heels.

I looked back at the house. Mama was waiting there on the porch, emotionlessly staring at the brutal scene in front of her. She made no move to comfort her daughter. She acted as though a man had not just received a deathly beating in front of her. I knew that she knew everything that had happened.

It would be a long time before I realized she was the one who had found us out. It wasn’t Isaiah’s fault, or mine. Just the odd chance that Mama would have come to check on me in my room that night, and found my bed empty, just the odd chance that Ethan had happened to know which cabin was Isaiah’s, because it was the one next to Hannah’s.

I did know that neither Mama nor anyone else would ever mention this again. That was the good southern family’s way.

I knew everyone would expect me to forget this night too. But I never would. Even if I tried, even if I wanted to, there was no way I could forget what happened here tonight.

I turned with a final backwards glance towards the cabins. I was so utterly alone. I had lost my love, my family, and my innocence and had nothing to show for it but my own bloody hands. At that moment, I knew that, as much as anyone tried to repress the things that happened, nothing would ever be the same again.

I would never be the same again.

Then I walked slowly to the house.

Reviews

[Bexfinch]

awsome chapter if this was a movie my parents would definietly let me see it although they would probably smother me to death covering my eyes on the kissing scenes. You can get a persons attention easilsly andknow how to make a person feel a certain way at time . ^ __^ keep writing stuff like this or as descriptive.

[C. Porter]

HOLY SH*T! I'm going to kill both of them (Harold and Ethan). I don't CARE if Ethan was acting under his father's influence!!!!!!!!!! I HATE THEM ALL!!!!!!! If I didn't know there were about 20+ chapter to go, I don't know how I would be able to survive (slight exxaggeration).

[Lorraine]

That was an intense chapter. It was filled with clashing emotions that definitely made it a lot more exciting. Isaiah almost got himself killed if not for Adeline's threat, while Harold and Ethan think they were protecting her by doing what they were doing. Oh, things like this are products of twisted beliefs. Nice Chapter.

Keep Writing. ^___^